On March 5, Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke to the Shanghai delegates to the National People’s Congress (NPC) session in Beijing. China’s top leaders use these side meetings to convey policy guidance on a range of issues, and Xi used this particular one to offer his perspective on relations with Taiwan. There has been some nervousness in the wake of the January 16 elections, which swept the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to power in both the executive and legislative branches. Because the Beijing government has always suspected that the fundamental objective of the DPP is to permanently separate Taiwan from China, observers were waiting expectantly to hear what Xi would have to say about Taiwan.

Well before the March 5 speech, of course, Xi’s subordinates responsible for Taiwan policy had already laid out what Taiwan President-elect Tsai Ing-wen and her party would have to do to prevent cross-Strait relations from deteriorating, and they continued to emphasize those conditions after Xi’s speech. But analysts believed that Xi’s own formulation would be the clearest indicator of Beijing’s policy. He is, after all, China’s paramount leader, and his words carry a far greater weight than those of other Chinese officials.

This is what Xi said to the Shanghai NPC delegation about Taiwan [translation by the author, emphasis added]:

Compatriots on the two sides of the Strait are blood brothers who share a common destiny, and are people for whom blood is thicker than water…Our policy towards Taiwan is correct and consistent, and will not change because of a change in [who heads] the Taiwan authorities. We will insist upon the political foundation of the “1992 consensus,” and continue to advance cross-Strait relations and peaceful development…If the historical fact of the “1992 consensus” is recognized and if its core connotation is acknowledged, then the two sides of the Strait will have a common political basis and positive interaction [virtuous circle] can be preserved. We will steadily push forward cross-Strait dialogue and cooperation in various fields, deepen cross-Strait economic, social, and financial development, and increase the familial attachment and welfare of compatriots [on both sides], close their spiritual gap, and strengthen their recognition that they share a common destiny. We will resolutely contain the separatist path of any form of Taiwan independence, protect state sovereignty and territorial integrity, and absolutely not allow a repetition of the historical tragedy of national separation. This is the common wish and firm intention of all Chinese sons and daughters, and is also our solemn pledge and obligation to history and to the people. The fruits of cross-Strait relations and peaceful development require the common support of compatriots on the two sides; creating a common and happy future requires the common effort of compatriots on the two sides; and realizing the great revival of the Chinese nation requires that compatriots on the two sides join hands to work with one heart.

The italicized sentences are key: They state what the new DPP government should do if it wishes to maintain healthy cross-Strait relations and affirms Beijing’s resolve to oppose any behavior it doesn’t like. Xi didn’t threaten specific actions, but he probably didn’t have to. As always, Beijing reserves the right to decide what DPP attitudes and actions constitute separatism and a quest for Taiwan independence. 

Xi didn’t threaten specific actions, but he probably didn’t have to.

Some background

There are two important points of reference contextualizing this statement from Xi. 

Xi on November 7, 2015. First, there are his reported remarks on the future of cross-Strait relations during his unprecedented meeting with current Taiwan president Ma Ying-jeou in Singapore last November 7. At that time, Xi first appealed to ethnic solidarity and national unity, as he did again on March 5. He asserted that the stakes to end the state of division between Mainland China and Taiwan were very high because it was a critical part of how he views rejuvenating the Chinese nation—a theme he repeated to the Shanghai delegation. 

Xi said Taiwan, under the new government, could either continue to follow the path it has walked for the last seven-plus years under the current Ma Ying-jeou administration (“peaceful development”), or it could take the path of renewed “confrontation,” “separation,” and zero-sum hostility. If Taiwan wished to follow the first path, Xi insisted, its leaders must adhere to the 1992 consensus and oppose “Taiwan independence.” Without this “magic compass that calms the sea,” Xi warned, “the ship of peaceful development will meet with great waves and even suffer total loss.” He was willing to overlook the DPP’s past positions and actions, but only if it identified with “the core connotation of the 1992 consensus” (a reference to the PRC view that the Mainland and Taiwan are both within the territorial scope of China, a view the DPP contests). Xi alluded to the “core connotation” on March 5 but did not re-state its content. Xi then made clear that if “disaster” occurred, it would be the DPP’s fault—it was therefore up to Tsai, he implied, to accommodate to Beijing’s conditions. 

In language and tone, Xi’s Singapore statement was far more strident and alarmist than what he said on March 5. He made that first statement more than two months before the election, when perhaps he thought that tough talk would weaken Tsai’s and the DPP’s appeal to voters. If that was his objective, he failed. The tone of his March 5 remarks was more modulated, but the substance was the same. Beijing would define the crossroads that Taiwan faced, and it was up to Tsai to take the right path—at least what it defined the right path.

Beijing would define the crossroads that Taiwan faced, and it was up to Tsai to take the right path—at least what it defined the right path.

Tsai on January 21, 2016. Second, there is an interview that Tsai gave to Liberty Times (Tzu-yu Shih Pao) on January 21—less than a week after the elections—in which she sought to meet Beijing partway. For the first time, she used the phrase “political foundation” and said it had four elements: 

• “The first is that the SEF-ARATS discussions of 1992 are a historical fact and both sides had a common acknowledgment to set aside differences and seek common ground;” 
• “The second is the Republic of China’s current constitutional order.”
• “The third is the accumulated results of the more than 20 years of cross-strait negotiations, exchanges, and interactions;” and
• “The fourth is Taiwan’s democratic principles and the will of the Taiwanese people to make sure that Taiwan voters understood the limits to his tolerance.”

So, Tsai accepts the 1992 meetings as a historical fact and acknowledges that the two sides did reach an agreement of sorts, but does not accept the 1992 consensus itself as a historical fact. She spoke more about process than content. The Republic of China’s “current constitutional order” is also part of the foundation, which some have read as Tsai’s acceptance that the Mainland and Taiwan are both parts of China’s territory (Beijing’s “core connotation”)—I, however, am not so sure. Tsai did not reject Xi’s requirements out of hand, but she framed them in her own way. 

So are ties growing friendlier?

Was Xi’s tonal moderation on March 5—relative to November 7—an indicator that mutual accommodation was going on? Perhaps. But the fact that the November meeting was ostensibly private while the March speech was public might explain the difference. 

Moreover, the stream of Chinese articles and statements since March 5 that explicitly restate Beijing’s long-standing preconditions are reason to doubt that much accommodation is actually occurring. The three basic scenarios I outlined last December—accommodation, limited Chinese punishment of the Tsai administration, and comprehensive punishment—are still in play, and the key variable remains whether Xi and his subordinates trust Tsai Ing-wen’s basic intentions. That is, will they accept her recent formulations as a good-faith effort to avoid deterioration? The next milestone will be May 20, when Tsai Ing-wen gives her inaugural address and may provide a more detailed formulation of her approach to China.

“Although we are seeing a strengthening recovery in the United States, the overall performance of the global economy continues to fall short of aspirations,” said Treasury Undersecretary for International Affairs Nathan Sheets to a Brookings audience yesterday. In the event, hosted by the Global Economy and Development program and the Economic Studies program at Brookings, Undersecretary Sheets described six “pillars” that form his offices “core policy agenda for the years ahead” to support “a growing and vibrant U.S. economy.”

1. Strengthening and rebalancing global growth. Undersecretary Sheets noted the “persistent and deeper asymmetry in the international economic landscape,” and called for policymakers to “work together toward mutually beneficial growth strategies” such as boosting demand.
2. Deepening engagement with emerging-market giants, such as China, India, Mexico, and Brazil. On India, for example, the undersecretary noted that “faster growth, deeper financial markets, and greater openness to trade and foreign investment promise to raise incomes, reduce poverty, and bring many more Indians into the global middle class.”
3. Framing a resilient global financial system. “To be sustained,” he said, “growth must be built on a resilient financial foundation.” (See also Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard’s remarks yesterday on the Fed’s role in financial stability.)
4. Enhancing access to capital in developing countries. “Expanding access to financial services for the over 2 billion unbanked people in the world promises to open new possibilities as the financial wherewithal in these populations grows,” he said.
5. Promoting open trade and investment. Undersecretary Sheets explained that “Increased U.S. access to foreign markets, and the consequent rise in exports of our goods and services, is an important source of job creation in the United States.” He described current trade priorities, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) concerning China, and the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) concerning India.
6. Enhancing U.S. leadership in the IMF. Undersecretary Sheets said that Treasury and the Obama administration “are firmly committed to securing approval for the 2010 IMF quota and governance reforms.” Citing the widespread support already in place for these policies, Sheets argued that “without these reforms, emerging economies may well look outside the IMF and the international economic system we helped design, potentially undermining the Fund’s ability to serve as a first responder for financial crises around the world, and also our national security and economic well-being.” He also called on the Senate to confirm six administration nominees as executive directors or alternate executive directors at the IMF and multilateral development banks.

Watch the video here:

Get a transcript of Undersecretary Sheets’ prepared remarks here.

Brookings expert Donald Kohn, the Robert S. Kerr Senior Fellow, moderated the discussion. The speaker was introduced by Senior Fellow Amar Bhattacharya.

Event Information

In an era of fluid geopolitics and geoeconomics, challenges to the global order abound: from ever-changing terrorism, to massive refugee flows, a stubbornly sluggish world economy, and the specter of global pandemics. Against this backdrop, the question of whether leader summitry—either the G-7 or G-20 incarnations—can supply needed international governance is all the more relevant. This question is particularly significant for East Asia this year as Japan and China, two economic giants that are sometimes perceived as political rivals, respectively host the G-7 and G-20 summits. 

On April 18, the Center for East Asia Policy Studies and the Project on International Order and Strategy co-hosted a discussion on the continued relevancy and efficacy of the leader summit framework, Japan’s and China’s priorities as summit hosts, and whether these East Asian neighbors will hold parallel but completely separate summits or utilize these summits as an opportunity to cooperate on issues of mutual, and global, interest.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #G7G20Asia

Audio

• Japan’s G-7 and China’s G-20 chairmanships: Bridges or stovepipes in leader summitry?

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160418_g7g20_transcript

Introduction:  The sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform and the resulting discharge of millions of gallons of crude oil into the sea demonstrated graphically the challenge of environmental protection in the ocean waters shared by Cuba and the United States.

While the quest for deepwater drilling of oil and gas may slow as a result of the latest calamity, it is unlikely to stop. It came as little surprise, for example, that Repsol recently announced plans to move forward with exploratory oil drilling in Cuban territorial waters later this year.

As Cuba continues to develop its deepwater oil and natural gas reserves, the consequence to the United States of a similar mishap occurring in Cuban waters moves from the theoretical to the actual. The sobering fact that a Cuban spill could foul hundreds of miles of American coastline and do profound harm to important marine habitats demands cooperative and proactive planning by Washington and Havana to minimize or avoid such a calamity. Also important is the planning necessary to prevent and, if necessary, respond to incidents arising from this country’s oil industry that, through the action of currents and wind, threaten Cuban waters and shorelines.

While Washington is working to prevent future disasters in U.S. waters like the Deepwater Horizon, its current policies foreclose the ability to respond effectively to future oil disasters—whether that disaster is caused by companies at work in Cuban waters, or is the result of companies operating in U.S. waters.

Downloads

• Download Map of the North Cuba Basin
• Download Full Paper

The mobile economy in China and India has grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade. Mobile technology has the potential to shrink the broadband gap, improve financial inclusion, and support humanitarian efforts. A recent report from the Boston Consulting Group adds another interesting perspective into the existing conversation about the impact of mobile technologies. India appears poised to eschew building up its fixed broadband infrastructure and jump directly to mobile. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in India appeared poised to take advantage of this amazing change.

Mobile innovation lower costs and improve performance

Source: Boston Consulting Group

Maximum download speeds have risen greatly when comparing second generation networks with current fourth generation technology. 2G networks were capable of reaching 20 kilobits per second and 4G technologies can reach 250 megabits per second, which is about 12,000 times faster. At the same time the actual cost of network infrastructure per megabyte is falling dramatically: a 95 percent decrease from 2G to 3G and 67 percent decrease from 3G to 4G. Subsequently, the consumer cost of data per megabyte decreased sharply. From 2005 to 2013, the average cost of a mobile subscription relative to the maximum data speed dropped about 40 percent each year or 99 percent in an 8 year period. Higher speeds and lower costs make mobile a viable development platform for SMEs. In America this had led to the growth of the app economy. In India this effect is even more pronounced.

Widespread use of mobile technologies fuels the leap

In 2013 India reached 900 million mobile connections and became the second largest market in terms of mobile connections and unique subscribers. Indians spend 45 percent of their incomes on mobile technologies and platforms whereas Americans only spend 11 percent.

Source: World Bank Indicators

For the average Indian, mobile is the only point-of-entry to the Internet. Mobile devices are much more common than computers. The PC penetration rate in India of 5 percent stands in stark contrast to the 75 percent rate for mobile devices. Rates of fixed broadband Internet usage increased at a snails pace in India and at the same time mobile cellular subscriptions soared. More and more people in India are choosing to access Internet solely through mobile devices. Currently about 34 percent of people in India access the Internet exclusively from mobile devices. Flipkart an Indian e-commerce company predicts that 75 to 80 percent of their customer’s traffic will come on mobile platforms. The proliferation of mobile technologies in India provides incentives for SMEs to focus on developing mobile oriented business models.

Existing mobile focused SMEs lead the leap

SMEs in India place a greater emphasis on mobile platforms compared to companies in other countries. About 25 to 35 percent of surveyed SMEs in India are identified as mobile leaders, firms that use mobile productivity tools, operational tools (real-time job tracking or mobile data analytics) and sales and marketing tools. In developed countries such as Germany, only 14 percent of the surveyed SMEs are mobile leaders. Further, mobile oriented SMEs are thriving in India in a variety of fields. India’s largest E-commerce marketplace Flipkart Sidesteps has seen its traffic grow twice as face on mobile when compared with PC. Anti-violence apps such as FightBack and mobile health initiatives such as Swasthya Samvedana Sena are also experiencing great success.

India is in the midst of a mobile revolution that is categorically different than other parts of the world. Without existing complex legacy systems, businesses in India are now in the unique position to leapfrog terrestrial Internet technologies and reap the full benefits of a truly mobile economy.

Yikun Chi contributed to this post

Find more content about techpolicy on TechTank

Event Information

Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March and the continuing crisis in Ukraine have triggered the most heated confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cold War. The standoff over Ukraine has raised critical questions about Russia’s ambitions in the post-Soviet space and the future political perspectives of the countries caught between Russia and the European Union. Despite political and economic pressure and ongoing occupation by Russia, Georgia is pursuing democratic transformation and a path toward the West.

On May 5, the Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) at Brookings hosted Georgian Defense Minister Irakli Alasania for an address on Georgia’s vision for Euro-Atlantic integration during a period of increased insecurity in the region. In his remarks, Minister Alasania shared his insights on the upcoming NATO summit and Georgia’s approach to enhancing its relations with the West while attempting to normalize relations with Russia to lower tensions still simmering from the war six years ago.

Irakli Alasania previously served as Georgia's permanent representative to the United Nations from 2006 to 2009 and before that as special representative of the president in Georgian-Abkhazian negotiations. He is the founder and chairman of the Our Georgia-Free Democrats Party and one of the founders of Georgian Dream Coalition.

CUSE Director Fiona Hill provided introductory remarks and moderated the discussion.

Audio

• Georgia's Euro-Atlantic Aspirations and Regional Security

Transcript

• Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20140505_georgia_security_transcript

Everyone is struggling to understand why so many whites—including many who are not suffering economically—are rallying to the angry words and fearful music of Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Meanwhile, blacks and other minorities are sticking with the status-quo incrementalism of Hillary Clinton. It's an odd juxtaposition, but there's an explanation, one with far-reaching ramifications. A wide and growing optimism gap has opened between poor and middle-class whites and their counterparts of other races—and the former are the congenital pessimists.

My research finds deep divisions in our country—not just in terms of income and opportunity, but in terms of hopes and dreams. The highest costs of being poor in the U.S. are not in the form of material goods or basic services, as in developing countries, but in the form of unhappiness, stress, and lack of hope. What is most surprising, though, is that the most desperate groups are not minorities who have traditionally been discriminated against, but poor and near-poor whites. And of all racial groups in poverty, blacks are the most optimistic about their futures.

Based on a question in a Gallup survey asking respondents where they expected their life satisfaction to be in five years (on a 0-10 point scale), I find that among the poor, the group that scores the highest is poor blacks. The least optimistic group by far is poor whites. The average score of poor blacks is large enough to eliminate the difference in optimism about the future between being poor and being middle class (e.g. removing the large negative effect of poverty), and they are almost three times more likely to be higher up on the optimism scale than are poor whites. Poor Hispanics are also more optimistic than poor whites, but the gaps between their scores are not as large as those between blacks and whites.

In terms of stress—a marker of ill-being—there are, again, large differences across races. Poor whites are the most stressed group and are 17.8 percent more likely to experience stress in the previous day than middle-class whites. In contrast, middle-class blacks are 49 percent less likely to experience stress than middle-class whites, and poor blacks are 52 percent less likely to experience stress than poor whites (e.g. their odds of experiencing stress are roughly half those of poor whites.

Why does this matter? Individuals with high levels of well-being have better outcomes; they believe in their futures and invest in them. In contrast, those without hope for their futures typically do not make such investments. Remarkably, the poor in the U.S. (on average) are less likely to believe that hard work will get them ahead than are the poor in Latin America. Their lack of hope is even evident in the words they use, as David Leonhardt (2015) found in a Google search. The words of the wealthy—such as iPads, foam rollers, and exotic travel destinations—reflect knowledge acquisition and health-conscious behaviors; those of the poor -- such as guns, video games, diabetes, and fad diets—reflect desperation, short-term outlooks, and patched-together solutions.

What explains optimism among poor blacks compared to their white counterparts? Some scholars, such as Jeremy Jackson at the University of Michigan, highlight high levels of resilience and a strong sense of community among blacks, something which our data also suggests. There also may be an Obama effect, given the historical marker made by the election of the first African-American president, and support for President Obama remained steady among blacks over the course of his tenure.

And despite visible manifestations of black frustration, as in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., and continued gaps in wage, mobility, and education outcomes, there has been black progress. As Eduardo Porter of the New York Times wrote in 2015, at the same time that the gaps in achievement and proficiency have widened across income groups, they have narrowed between blacks (and Hispanics) and whites: The proficiency gap between the poor and the rich is nearly twice as large as that between black and white children. The overall black-white wage gap has also narrowed (black males earned 69 percent of the median wage for white males in 1970 and 75 percent by 2013 [CPS, 2014]).The gap in life expectancy between blacks and whites has also narrowed to its lowest point in history—3.4 years , at 75.6 years for blacks and 79 years for whites.

Poor and high school-educated whites have fallen in status, at least in relative terms. Andrew Cherlin (2016) finds that poor and middle-class blacks are more likely to compare themselves to parents who were worse off than they are, while most blue-collar whites are insecure and facing much more competition for jobs than their parents did. And the markers of their desperation are increasingly evident. Take the increase in mortality rates related to opioid addiction, suicide and other preventable causes among uneducated whites—but not blacks and Hispanics—which was first highlighted in a 2015 study by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, and has since been reported by others, including Joel Achenbach, Dan Keating, and colleagues (2016) in the Washington Post.

Another part of this story is the increasing distance between the lives of those at the top and bottom of the income distribution. Fear of falling behind is even starker if “success” is increasingly out of reach. Sergio Pinto and I (2016), for example, find that poor respondents who live in more unequal cities and suburbs report more stress and worry than those in more equal ones (based on Gallup data). And both poor and rich respondents who live in more unequal areas are less likely to report having family and friends they can rely on in times of need.

The American Dream of prosperity, equal opportunity, and stable democracy is being challenged by increasing income inequality, the hollowing out of the middle class, decreasing wages and increased insecurity for low-skilled workers, and rising mortality rates. We were, until recently, caught by surprise by the depth and breadth of the problem. If it does nothing else positive for our country, the widespread alarm caused by Donald Trump’s political rise and his promises to build walls, ban trade, and create further divisions within our society has woken us up.

The depth and scope of this problem requires difficult political fixes, such as long-term investments in public health and education. It requires developing new forms of social assistance—and language—which encourage hope rather than stigmatize poor recipients—something that Latin Americans have done successfully in recent years. It also requires reducing the distance between the lives of the rich and the poor, so that attaining success—and living the American Dream—is not something that seems forever out of reach for the poor. Finally, tracking well-being as a complement to GDP, as many countries are already doing, would provide an important gauge of the happiness and health of our society in the future—and prevent us from being as surprised by such trends as we were this time.

Carol Graham is the Leo Pasvolsky senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of “Happiness for All? Unequal Lives and Hopes in the Land of the Dream” (Princeton University Press, forthcoming).

In new Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center analysis of Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) take-up at the county level, Benjamin Harris, a fellow in Economic Studies, and Research Assistant Lucie Parker use zip-code level data on taxes and demographics to take a "fresh look" at the EITC. "Since its creation in 1975," they write, "the Earned Income Tax Credit has played a major role in the U.S. safety net." Earlier this year, Harris presented EITC take-up using IRS data from 2007. Compare that to the new list of ten counties with the highest share of EITC recipients below:

"The regional variation EITC claiming is stark," Harris and Parker conclude. "The counties with the highest share of taxpayers claiming the EITC are overwhelming located in the Southeast. ... [O]ver half the taxpayers in a large share of counties in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi claim the EITC. With few exceptions, almost all counties with high EITC claiming are located in the South. Relative to the South, the Northeast and the Midwest have much lower claiming rates. Moreover, average EITC benefit closely follows the pattern for share of taxpayers taking up the credit: in counties where more taxpayers claim the credit, the credit is larger on the whole."

Visit this U.S. map interactive to get county level data on share of taxpayers claiming EITC as well as average EITC amount, in dollars, per county.

Event Information

Antibacterial drugs are a critical component of the nation’s public health armamentarium, and have saved millions of lives by preventing and treating a range of bacterial infections. However, antibacterial drug development has been hampered by challenges unique to the antibacterial drug market, which have stifled innovation and left patients and providers with fewer options to treat increasingly resistant infections. One consequence of the dwindling antibacterial drug pipeline has been a reduction in effective oral antibacterial drug treatment options, which are particularly important in the ambulatory and transitional care contexts. Recent proposals to re-invigorate the antibacterial pipeline are geared towards serious infections treated in the inpatient setting, which may lead to a greater focus on intravenous therapies. However, addressing both current and future needs in the infectious diseases space will require a balanced mix of both oral and parenteral antibacterial drugs.

In cooperation with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at Brookings held an expert workshop on November 20, 2014, to identify the most promising strategies to support oral antibacterial drug development. Participating stakeholders included experts from the drug development and health care industries, the clinical community, government, and academia. These stakeholders shared their insights on potential regulatory, scientific, and economic strategies to reinvigorate the oral antibacterial drug pipeline. 

Event Materials

• Reinvigorating the Oral Antibacterial Drug Development Pipeline Agenda
• Reinvigorating the Oral Antibacterial Drug Development Pipeline Discussion Guide
• Biographies 20141118
• Reinvigorating the Oral Antibacterial Drug Development Pipeline Slide Deck

Event Information

As Africa's oldest independent country, Ethiopia has a history that is unique in the continent. The country has faced its share of conflict, including a protracted civil war from 1974 through 1991. A land-locked location in Eastern Africa, the country has also been witness to climate catastrophes, — including the drought that killed a half a million people in the 1980s and the threat of a new drought today. Despite being one of Africa's poorest countries, Ethiopia has experienced significant economic growth since the end of the civil war, and a majority of its population is literate. In addition, Ethiopia is a crucial U.S. security partner, particularly when it comes to counterterrorism, in a region plagued by threats.

On April 25, the Africa Security Initiative at Brookings hosted a discussion examining the security situation in Ethiopia, in broader political, economic, and regional context. Panelists included Abye Assefa of St. Lawrence University and Terrence Lyons of George Mason University. Michael O’Hanlon, co-director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, moderated.

Video

• The security situation in Ethiopia and how it relates to the broader region

Audio

• The security situation in Ethiopia and how it relates to the broader region

We are kicking off the new Millions Learning video series with a spotlight on Teach For All, one of the 14 case studies examined in the Millions Learning report. Teach For All is an international network of local, independent partner country organizations dedicated to improving educational opportunities for children and youth around the globe. From China to Bulgaria to Peru to Ghana, each partner organization recruits and trains recent top-performing graduates and professionals to teach in their country’s underserved communities for two years, with the ultimate goal of developing a cadre of education leaders, both inside and outside of the classroom.

In this video, Wendy Kopp, CEO and co-founder of Teach For All, discusses Teach For All’s unique approach to building a pipeline of future “learning leaders and champions” and the role that a supportive policy environment plays in enabling this process. Kopp then explains how Teach For All grew from the original Teach For America and Teach First in the United Kingdom to an international network of 40 partner countries, sharing her own lessons learned along the way.

To learn more about Millions Learning, please visit our interactive report, Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries, and/or visit our webpage.

Video

• Getting millions to learn: Interview with Wendy Kopp of Teach For All

Extreme poverty around the world has decreased from around 2 billion people in 1990 living under $2 per day to 700 million today. Further, nine out of 10 children are now enrolled in primary schools, an increase over the last 15 years. Progress in both areas since 2000 has been part of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, which set targets for reducing extreme poverty in eight areas, and which were the guiding principles for global development from 2000 to 2015. Today, the global community, through the UN, has adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals to continue these poverty reduction efforts. 

In this new episode of Intersections podcast, host Adrianna Pita engages Brookings scholars Laurence Chandy and Rebecca Winthrop in a discussion of how digital technologies can be harnessed to bring poverty reduction and education to the most marginalized populations.

Listen:

Chandy, a fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings, says that the trends in getting people digitally connected "are progressing at such speed that they’re starting to reach some of the poorest people in the world. Digital technology is changing what it means to be poor because it’s bringing poor people out of the margins.”

Winthrop, a senior fellow and director of the Center for Universal Education at Brookings, says that "I think [education] access is crucial. And I do think that’s almost the first wave because without it we could work on all the ed tech—fabulous apps, great language translated content—but if you do not have the access it’s not going to reach the most marginalized."

Listen to this episode above; subscribe on iTunes; and find more episodes on our website.

Chandy was a guest on the Brookings Cafeteria Podcast in 2013; Winthrop has been a guest on the Cafeteria a few times to discuss global education topics, including: access plus education; investing in girls' education; and getting millions learning in the developing world.

Summary

Global education plays an important role in contributing to U.S. foreign policy objectives. In a recent speech, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton highlighted education, along with health, agriculture, security, and local governance as the core areas for U.S. international development investment. She emphasized the importance of education, particularly of girls and youth, in improving global stability, speeding economic growth, and helping global health, all of which advance U.S. interests in the world.

But how effective has the U.S. government been in supporting global education? Unfortunately, its many good education activities and programs are not leveraged for maximum impact on the ground, especially in situations of armed conflict and state fragility. Challenges of U.S. foreign assistance—for example, fragmentation across multiple agencies, lack of policy coherence, diminished multilateral engagement—generally affects its work in education. Luckily some of the core strengths of U.S. assistance have an impact as well, specifically the large amount of resources (in total terms, if not relative terms) devoted to education and the vast breadth and depth of American academic, philanthropic and NGO partners engaged in pioneering work on education in the developing world.

This report analyzes the effectiveness of U.S. government education work specifically in relation to conflict-affected and fragile states. Findings across five domains—global reach, resources, technical expertise, policy and multilateral partnerships—show that U.S. education aid falls critically short of what it is capable of achieving. The U.S. government has substantial strengths in this area, especially in global reach, resources, and technical expertise, demonstrating a real comparative advantage in the field of education in situations of conflict and fragility. However, its fragmented policy across agencies and its limited multilateral engagement prevent it from maximizing its strengths, leaving it punching below its weight on this important issue. In this sense, the U.S. government is a classic underachiever, failing to efficiently deploy its many capabilities and potential for maximum impact.

There has never been a better time for looking at the aid-effectiveness of U.S. government education work. The Obama administration is bringing increased focus on the Paris Principles for Aid Effectiveness to its development initiatives. The U.S. Congress is actively engaged with pending legislative action to modernize foreign assistance and improve U.S. support for universal education. Two major reviews of foreign assistance are underway: the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review led by the Department of State and USAID, and the Presidential Study Directive on U.S. Global Development Policy led by the White House.

Questions about foreign assistance reform asked in these two reviews can be applied to the education sector. For example, how can the U.S. government improve its education assistance by using a “whole-of-government” approach, by focusing on comparative advantages and strengths, and by improving coordination and by increasing multilateral engagement?

Careful analysis and answers to these questions can help propel the U.S. from its current position as an underachiever to being a leader in global education, specifically in contexts of conflict and state fragility.

This report makes nine specific recommendations, many of which could be achieved without any substantial increase in funding, that would enable the U.S. government to greatly increase the effectiveness of its education aid to populations living in contexts of conflict and state fragility.

Downloads

• Download

In a new research paper—The case for universal voting: Why making voting a duty would enhance our elections and improve our government—Brookings scholars E.J. Dionne, Jr. and William Galston make the case for universal voting—an electoral system in which voting would be regarded as a required, civic duty. Why not treat showing up at the polls in the same way we treat, say, a jury summons? Dionne and Galston argue that universal voting’s benefits would include enhancing the legitimacy of our governing institutions, increasing turnout and the diversity of the American voter base, and easing the intense partisan polarization that weakens our governing capacity.

What do you think of Dionne and Galston’s proposal? Specifically, if voting and registration rules were made easier, should voting in national elections be universal and mandatory for all eligible citizens?

To voice your opinion, click the image below and vote. We will share the results on social media.

A wave of retrenchment by global financial institutions may be undermining years of progress in providing the world’s poor with financial services.

What appeared to be only a vague concern a year ago is now front and center in discussions regarding global financial regulation. The reason: new regulatory and legal uncertainty regarding financial services, stemming from record fines levied on a handful of banks for failures to comply with international sanctions and anti-money laundering rules. A recent successful civil action in the U.S. against Arab Bank has further increased banks’ worries about their possible civil liability. Rightly or wrongly, the financial industry is reading these actions as raising the bar for compliance. As a result, we are seeing key and vocal market players use these developments to justify a wholesale retreat from services that are a lifeline for millions of people at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

For example, late last year a big bank in Australia sent letters to companies providing remittance services laying out a stark choice: close their accounts, or the bank would unilaterally shut them down. Accounts held by remittance companies have also been closed by banks in the U.K., the U.S., and New Zealand. If these remittances providers do not find alternatives, we may experience a global reduction in remittance services, and—due to reduced competition—increased cost to use those that remain in operation.

Remittance services are not the only targets. Trade finance and civil society organizations have also been affected. For instance, in the Netherlands an NGO involved in supporting the peace-building work of women's groups and women leaders in the Middle East and North Africa was recently refused a bank account by a large international bank. After the NGO explained to the bank that its work entails working with partners in the region, the bank decided not to provide a bank account in order to avoid any risk of funds (indirectly) ending up in Syria. And there are many examples like this, hampering the work of NGOs and humanitarian organizations, particularly in areas of conflict where they are most needed. In recent months, stories like this have become too numerous—and too widespread geographically—to be ignored; this is a global phenomenon.

This trend of account closures has become known as “de-risking”—a term that confuses more than it clarifies. Risk management, when properly carried out, is an essential and healthy component of running a bank. Under international financial industry norms, banks are expected to use a risk-based approach to evaluate whether to do business with a potential customer, and to monitor transactions for signs of suspicious activity. If there is a reasonable basis to believe a particular client creates significant risks regarding money laundering (ML) or terrorist financing (TF), a bank is fully justified in ultimately refusing to offer services.

 “De-risking,” however, is very different. The influential Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the standard setter for combating money laundering and terrorist financing, noted in an October 2014 statement that “de-risking refers to the phenomenon of financial institutions terminating or restricting business relationships with clients or categories of clients to avoid, rather than manage, risk.” The result, criticized by FATF, is the “wholesale cutting loose of entire classes of customers.”

Our concern lies not with the principle that some clients may be too risky for banks. Rather, the problem is the magnitude of de-risking. Current de-risking measures are excluding many clients that conduct legitimate transactions. And, because de-risking ends up pushing clients and transactions towards the informal and shadow financial system, it can actually increase global risks in this area.

It is therefore urgent for the international community to act. We need to better grasp what is really happening, and why. We believe that the solutions going forward will have to build on three pillars:

1. Public authorities need to provide more meaningful information on ML/TF risks to the financial industry, clarify their regulatory expectations, and adopt a genuinely risk-based approach in their supervisory and enforcement actions.
2. Financial institutions need to step up their understanding of the risks of their customer base, and direct internal control efforts accordingly. Risk management approaches should focus more on individual clients, and not write off entire sectors.
3. Countries with significant inflows of remittances need to improve the effectiveness of their regulatory regimes to combat ML/TF, and to provide more comfort to global financial institutions with banking relationships with clients in the developing world.

Millions of people in developing countries depend on remittances to help pay for basic necessities like food and shelter. In recent years we have seen important progress with banks and mobile network operators introducing innovative ways to serve the poor—including “mobile money” solutions that have enormous potential for enabling cross-border transactions. It would be a shame to see that trend reversed. Let’s not have those at the bottom of the economic pyramid pay for the criminal behavior of a few, and let’s make sure that enforcement action really targets the “bad guys.” Preserving access to the global financial system for the poorest and most vulnerable is a critical imperative, both economically and ethically.

Editors’ Note: Organized crime actors have increasingly adopted advanced technologies, with law enforcement agencies adapting accordingly. However, the use of ever fancier-technology is only a part of the story. The future lies as much behind as ahead, writes Vanda Felbab-Brown, with criminal groups now using primitive technologies and methods to counter the advanced technologies used by law enforcement. This post was originally published by the Remote Control Project, a project hosted by the Oxford Research Group.

The history of drug trafficking and crime more broadly is a history of adaptation on the part of criminal groups in response to advances in methods and technology on the part of law enforcement agencies, and vice versa. Sometimes, technology trumps crime: The spread of anti-theft devices in cars radically reduced car theft. The adoption of citadels (essentially saferooms) aboard ships, combined with intense naval patrolling, radically reduced the incidence of piracy off Somalia. Often, however, certainly in the case of many transactional crimes such as drug trafficking, law enforcement efforts have tended to weed out the least competent traffickers, and to leave behind the toughest, meanest, leanest, and most adaptable organized crime groups. Increasingly, organized crime actors have adopted advanced technologies, such as semi-submersible and fully-submersible vehicles to carry drugs and other contraband, and cybercrime and virtual currencies for money-laundering. Adaptations in the technology of smuggling by criminal groups in turn lead to further evolution and improvement of methods by law enforcement agencies. However, the use of ever fancier-technology is only a part of the story. The future lies as much behind as ahead (to paraphrase J.P. Wodehouse), with the asymmetric use of primitive technologies and methods by criminal groups to counter the advanced technologies used by law enforcement.

The seduction of SIGINT and HVT

The improvements in signal intelligence (SIGINT) and big-data mining over the past two decades have dramatically increased tactical intelligence flows to law enforcement agencies and military actors, creating a more transparent anti-crime, anti-terrorism, and counterinsurgency battlefield than before. The bonanza of communications intercepts of targeted criminals and militants that SIGINT has come to provide over the past decades in Colombia, Mexico, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other parts of the world has also strongly privileged high-value targeting (HVT) and decapitation policies-i.e., principally targeting the presumed leaders of criminal and militant organizations.

The proliferation of SIGINT and advances in big-data trawling, combined with some highly visible successes of HVT, has come with significant downsides. First, high-value targeting has proven effective only under certain circumstances. In many contexts, such as in Mexico, HVT has been counterproductive, fragmenting criminal groups without reducing their proclivity to violence; in fact, exacerbating violence in the market. Other interdiction patterns and postures, such as middle-level targeting and focused-deterrence, would be more effective policy choices. 

A large part of the problem is that the seductive bonanza of signal intelligence has lead to counterproductive discounting of the need to:

1. develop a strategic understanding of criminal groups’ decisionmaking—knowledge crucial for anticipating the responses of targeted non-state actors to law enforcement actions; Mexico provides a disturbing example;
2. cultivate intelligence human intelligence assets, sorely lacking in Somalia, for example;
3. obtain a broad and comprehensive understanding of the motivations and interests of local populations that interact with criminal and insurgent groups, notably deficient in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan; and 
4. establish good relationships with local populations to advance anti-crime and counterinsurgency policies, such as in Colombia where drug eradication policy antagonized local populations from national government and strengthened the bonds between them and rebel groups. 

In other words, the tactical tool, technology—in the form of signal intelligence and big-data mining—has trumped strategic analysis. The correction needed is to bring back strategic intelligence analysis to drive interdiction targeting patterns, instead of letting the seduction of signal data drive intelligence analysis and targeting action. The political effects, anticipated responses by criminal and militant groups, and other outcomes of targeting patterns need be incorporated into the strategic analysis. Questions to be assessed need to include: Can interdiction hope to incapacitate—arrest and kill—all of the enemy or should it seek to shape the enemy? What kind of criminals and militants, such as how fractured or unified, how radicalized or restrained in their ambitions, and how closely aligned with local populations against the state, does interdiction want to produce? 

Dogs fights or drone fights: Remote lethal action by criminals

Criminal groups have used technology not merely to foil law enforcement actions, but also to fight each other and dominate the criminal markets and control local populations. In response to the so-called Pacification (UPP) policy in Rio de Janeiro through which the Rio government has sought to wrestle control over slums from violent criminal gangs, the Comando Vermelho (one of such gangs), for example, claimed to deploy remote-sensor cameras in the Complexo do Alemão slum to identify police collaborators, defined as those who went into newly-established police stations. Whether this specific threat was credible or not, the UPP police units have struggled to establish a good working relationship with the locals in Alemão.

The new radical remote-warfare development on the horizon is for criminal groups to start using drones and other remote platforms not merely to smuggle and distribute contraband, as they are starting to do already, but to deliver lethal action against their enemies—whether government officials, law enforcement forces, or rival crime groups. Eventually, both law enforcement and rival groups will develop defenses against such remote lethal action, perhaps also employing remote platforms: drones to attack the drones. Even so, the proliferation of lethal remote warfare capabilities among criminal groups will undermine deterrence, including deterrence among criminal groups themselves over the division of the criminal market and its turfs. Remotely delivered hits will complicate the attribution problem— i.e., who authorized the lethal action—and hence the certainty of sufficiently painful retaliation against the source and thus a stable equilibrium. More than before, criminal groups will be tempted to instigate wars over the criminal market with the hope that they will emerge as the most powerful criminal actors and able to exercise even greater power over the criminal market—the way the Sinaloa Cartel has attempted to do in Mexico even without the use of fancy technology. Stabilizing a highly violent and contested—dysfunctional—criminal market will become all the more difficult the more remote lethal platforms have proliferated among criminal groups.

Back to the past: The Ewoks of crime and anti-crime

In addition to adopting ever-advancing technologies, criminal and militant groups also adapt to the technological superiority of law enforcement-military actors by the very opposite tactic—resorting asymmetrically to highly primitive deception and smuggling measures. Thus, both militant and criminal groups have adapted to signal intelligence not just by using better encryption, but also by not using cell phones and electronic communications at all, relying on personal couriers, for example, or by flooding the e-waves with a lot of white noise. Similarly, in addition to loading drugs on drones, airplanes, and submersibles, drug trafficking groups are going back to very old-methods such as smuggling by boats, including through the Gulf of Mexico, by human couriers, or through tunnels. 

Conversely, society sometimes adapts to the presence of criminal groups and intense, particularly highly violent, criminality by adopting its own back-to-the-past response—i.e., by standing up militias (which in a developed state should have been supplanted by state law enforcement forces). The rise of anti-crime militias in Mexico, in places such as Michoacán and Guerrero, provides a vivid and rich example of such populist responses and the profound collapse of official law enforcement. The inability of law enforcement there to stop violent criminality—and in fact, the inadvertent exacerbation of violence by criminal groups as a result of HVT—and the distrust of citizens toward highly corrupt law enforcement agencies and state administrations led to the emergence of citizens’ anti-crime militias. The militias originally sought to fight extortion, robberies, theft, kidnapping, and homicides by criminal groups and provide public safety to communities. Rapidly, however, most of the militias resorted to the very same criminal behavior they purported to fight—including extortion, kidnapping, robberies, and homicides. The militias were also appropriated by criminal groups themselves: the criminal groups stood up their own militias claiming to fight crime, where in fact, they were merely fighting the rival criminals. Just as when external or internal military forces resort to using extralegal militias, citizens’ militias fundamentally weaken the rule of law and the authority and legitimacy of the state. They may be the ewoks’ response to the crime empire, but they represent a dangerous and slippery slope to greater breakdown of order.

In short, technology, including remote warfare, and innovations in smuggling and enforcement methods are malleable and can be appropriated by both criminal and militant groups as well as law enforcement actors. Often, however, such adoption and adaptation produces outcomes that neither criminal groups nor law enforcement actors have anticipated and can fully control. The criminal landscape and military battlefields will resemble the Star Wars moon of Endor: drone and remote platforms battling it out with sticks, stones, and ropes.