Michael Levi, Elizabeth C. Economy, Shannon O'Neil, and Adam Segal
How to Really Win the Clean-Energy Race
The world faces a daunting array of energy challenges. Oil remains indispensable to the global economy, but it is increasingly produced in places that present big commercial, environmental, and geopolitical risks; greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere; and the odds that the world will face catastrophic climate change are increasing. These problems will only worsen as global demand for energy rises.
Environmental advocates and security hawks have been demanding for decades that governments solve these problems by mandating or incentivizing much greater use of the many alternative energy sources that already exist. The political reality, however, is that none of this will happen at the necessary scale and pace unless deploying clean energy becomes less financially risky and less expensive than it currently is. This is particularly true in the developing world.
A massive drive to develop cheaper clean-energy solutions is necessary. Indeed, many claim that it has already begun -- just not in the United States. They warn that the United States is losing a generation-defining clean-energy race to China and the other big emerging economies.
They are right that the United States is dangerously neglecting clean-energy innovation. But an energy agenda built on fears of a clean-energy race could quickly backfire. Technology advances most rapidly when researchers, firms, and governments build on one another's successes. When clean-energy investment is seen as a zero-sum game aimed primarily at boosting national competitiveness, however, states often erect barriers. They pursue trade and industrial policies that deter foreigners from participating in the clean-energy sectors of their economies, rather than adopting approaches that accelerate cross-border cooperation. This slows down the very innovation that they are trying to promote at home and simultaneously stifles innovation abroad.
To be sure, clean-energy innovation alone will not deliver the energy transformation the world needs. It can drive down the cost of clean energy and narrow the price gap between clean and dirty sources, but it is unlikely to make clean energy consistently cheaper than fossil fuels anytime soon. Government policies will still need to tip the balance, through regulations and incentives that promote the adoption of alternatives to fossil fuels. CLEAN BUT COSTLY
Clean energy is almost always more expensive than energy from fossil fuels, and often by a big margin. A recent
Clean energy for transportation fares just as badly in terms of cost. In most countries, ethanol and biodiesel are considerably more expensive than conventional fuels. Cars that run on electricity, meanwhile, suffer from high battery costs that can easily cancel out those cars' lower fuel bills. Compounding the problem, the cost of clean energy is often highly uncertain: the cost of nuclear power, for example, depends strongly on the availability of financing on reasonable terms.
Nor is cost the only problem that demands technological progress. Nuclear power, for example, remains vulnerable to nuclear proliferation and uncertainties over the safety of waste storage. The sun and wind produce electricity intermittently, and battery and grid technologies are not yet able to smooth over the gaps in their delivery of power. No one has even tried to build and operate a commercial coal plant that captures and stores its greenhouse gas emissions.
Yet the world is woefully underspending on clean-energy innovation. The IEA recently presented a scenario in which global oil consumption would be reduced by a quarter and global greenhouse gas emissions would be cut in half by midcentury. To reach this goal, the IEA estimated that the world would need to spend an average of
Some have found hope in reports that the major emerging economies -- China, Brazil, and India -- are making big investments in clean energy. Yet their innovation efforts, although important, are not as impressive as they may seem.
China has invested in a wide range of clean-energy technologies, pumping unprecedented amounts of money into renewable energy and in 2009 leading the world in financing wind technology. Several of its companies are making big investments in electric vehicles. Three Chinese power plants currently under construction will aim to demonstrate carbon capture and sequestration on a commercial scale. China can also build highly efficient conventional coal plants at costs far lower than in the West.
Yet
Brazil has narrowly tailored its clean-energy innovation to biofuels. Commercial investment in innovation has, predictably, flowed mainly into improvements of existing technology, which in Brazil means first-generation sugar-cane ethanol for cars. Yet on the most important international frontier for biofuels -- so-called second-generation cellulosic ethanol, which uses waste or crops grown on land that cannot be used to produce food -- Brazil is relatively quiet.
India is even further behind. It has not, to date, made major investments in clean-energy innovation. Its science and technology spending in general has also lagged.
Major scientific advances are still most likely to occur in the developed world, alongside much of the work necessary to commercialize clean-energy technologies and the capital required to support those efforts.
Yet the United States cannot rest on its past successes. The scale and pace of U.S. innovation in clean-energy technology today are not commensurate with the challenges posed by climate change and by the growing demand for oil. According to the
This will not change without government intervention. The question is what kind of intervention makes the most sense. the United States could, in theory, promote clean-energy innovation strictly through measures such as cap-and-trade or renewable-energy mandates that directly drive clean-energy deployment. As technologies were implemented, firms would learn through experience and make incremental innovations. In addition, once firms and inventors anticipated stronger regulations and incentives in the future, they would invest in more ambitious long-term efforts to develop next-generation technologies.
But there are important limits to this dynamic. Companies are likely to underspend on innovation since they cannot always reap the full rewards of their investments. A company that discovers new principles that allow it to make far more effective batteries, for example, may see some of its ideas replicated by others without compensation. A firm that experiments with different schemes for financing rooftop solar panels before finding one that works will probably not be able to stop its competitors from copying it and competing with it. Many of these valuable and necessary innovative activities will thus never happen in the first place, even if the right long-term market incentives are in place.
Politics can also prevent those long-term incentives from being created. If people cannot be convinced that radically improved cars will be available by 2030, their elected leaders will not be willing to mandate big cuts in oil consumption by then; if politicians cannot be persuaded that eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants is possible by midcentury, they will not condone cap-and-trade systems that purport to do just that. Yet this creates a vicious cycle. Firms and inventors will not pump enough money into game-changing technology without the right long-term goals and strong policy support. Wariness about achieving ambitious long-term goals can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A U.S. strategy to break this cycle requires two basic elements. First, the U.S. government must create incentives that promote the widespread adoption of efficient energy technologies and alternatives to fossil fuels. These incentives could take the form of pricing instruments (such as gasoline taxes or cap-and-trade systems), focused financial incentives (such as tax credits for electric vehicles and grants to wind-farm developers), or direct regulation (such as fuel-economy standards for cars or pollution limits for power plants). Such policies would not only increase the use of clean-energy technologies but also encourage innovation, since inventors would have much larger markets for their technologies. In many cases, these policies would also encourage domestic manufacturing, since for many clean-energy technologies (such as advanced wind turbines), there are significant commercial advantages to locating manufacturing near deployment.
In addition to creating market incentives, the U.S. government should also support innovation directly by helping fund clean-energy research, development, and demonstration projects. It should also adopt policies that encourage investors to finance companies that operate in the "valley of death" between invention and commercial viability.
Even with extremely ambitious programs, no one country will produce the majority of the clean-energy innovation that the world needs. Different countries' efforts need to be tightly connected so that they can build on one another. U.S. utilities, for example, will need to utilize Chinese advances in clean-coal implementation; Indian solar manufacturers will need to benefit from basic research done in the United States in order to meet their government's targets; and Brazilian biofuel engineers will need to be able to tweak the inventions of Danish enzyme companies to make them work with local sugar cane.
This is already happening in certain places.
Yet many governments may instinctively move in the opposite direction, particularly if they worry that they are engaged in a clean-energy race with other nations. Aggressive government support for innovation is typically sold as support for domestic workers and companies. That can quickly lead to "green protectionism," with politicians coming under pressure to wall off domestic markets or to discriminate against foreign firms. Governments also promote their own local technology standards in an effort to ensure that their domestic companies can control markets and collect royalties. This sort of Balkanization of clean-energy markets blocks the free flow of technology.
The most heated debate over cross-border flows of clean technology has focused on intellectual property rights. When they think about intellectual property rights, many policymakers in emerging economies look to HIV/AIDS drugs as their model. In the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, expensive intellectual property associated with the most effective drugs prevented their rapid diffusion to patients in
With this experience in mind, policymakers from the emerging economies have used global climate change negotiations to push the developed countries to relax their patent rules. The developed countries, in turn, have responded by arguing that poor intellectual property protection is actually a major reason that clean technology does not spread more quickly. (Their lesson from the HIV/AIDS experience is that even small concessions on intellectual property rights lead to much bigger demands.) They have therefore advocated strengthening that protection. But both sides overstate their claims.
Unlike in the case of HIV/AIDS drugs, the patents that protect intellectual property are only a small part of the cost of essentially all clean-energy technologies. Relaxing them would not do much to change total costs in most cases. Even in the few instances in which companies strategically withhold licenses in order to deny market entry to potential competitors, forcing them to give up control over those patents would not speed up technology diffusion. Most advanced clean-energy patents are relatively useless without the accompanying trade secrets, know-how, and expertise, and thus active collaboration between the patent holder and the firm wishing to acquire the patent is necessary. That cooperation is unlikely to occur if governments strip companies of their patent rights.
Nor would fixing weaknesses in developing-world intellectual property protection be a panacea for clean-energy companies. Although they usually leave their most advanced technologies at home, foreign companies are already active in the clean technology sector in Brazil, China, and India, despite problems with intellectual property rights in all three. Better protections for intellectual property could accelerate and expand the spread of technology, and should be encouraged, but there is no reason to believe that intellectual property rights are more important to the flow of technology than other factors.
Open investment and trade policies are critical complements to improved intellectual property rights. The power of open investment is most clearly on view in Brazil and India. Brazil, for example, allows unlimited foreign investment in biofuels, evidenced most recently by a
Brazil and India have uneven but relatively open approaches to trade. The wind sector provides a useful illustration: Indian tariff structures and quality-control systems tend to promote the domestic assembly of wind turbines but still allow components to be sourced abroad. Brazil, meanwhile, has traditionally used high tariffs and nontariff barriers to encourage independence from imports across its economy. It tried this approach for several years in its wind sector but failed.
China, in contrast, has taken a much more aggressive approach to trade. For the last two decades, foreign companies have faced pressure to grant critical intellectual property rights to Chinese firms as a condition of market access. Until recently, for example, wind turbines produced in China had to have at least 70 percent domestic content, and Chinese-owned companies were given preferences in wind-power contracts. And since 2006, under the rubric of "indigenous innovation,"
The result of all this forced technology transfer has been an unprecedented backlash from foreign companies that do business in China. The risk to China is that these efforts could backfire; foreign firms might shy away from investing in China or selling goods there, potentially slowing the flow of foreign clean-energy technology and thus hampering
the United States should push back strongly against Chinese protections while encouraging Brazil and India to open up their markets even further. This means protesting promptly and loudly if and when China first announces a new protectionist policy; there is often a significant lag between
the United States should be careful, however, not to kill off policies that support clean energy in the process of promoting openness. Sometimes, rules requiring domestic content may be a necessary price for getting clean-energy schemes off the ground. If the United States were to succeed in persuading developing nations to end such requirements, it might gut domestic political support there for clean-energy programs in the process. That would be a Pyrrhic victory, on environmental, technological, and commercial grounds.
the United States should also set a good example with its own domestic markets. Several senators have called for barriers to the use of imports and for foreign investment in clean-energy projects supported by the economic stimulus package. Their stated goal is to maximize the returns to U.S. firms and workers. Yet such policies would make it more difficult for the United States to build on overseas innovation -- and for foreign firms to access technology developed in the United States. In addition, by cutting off U.S. firms from cheap clean-energy solutions developed overseas, these policies could raise U.S. energy prices, thus damaging competitiveness and employment throughout the economy.JUMP-STARTING THE GREEN REVOLUTION
An open innovation system is essential to speeding up the development and diffusion of clean-energy technologies. But even in an open system, energy technology tends to spread slowly, making openness alone insufficient. Moreover, although U.S. firms may applaud a push to strengthen intellectual property rights and increase trade and investment, many developing countries will resist, fearing that it will cost them their own positions in the clean-energy race. The U.S. government needs to lend a hand, actively helping spread advanced energy technology, something that developing countries have demanded for years.
Shortfalls in the chain that spreads energy technology around the world exist from the R & D stage, to demonstration and commercialization, to the eventual diffusion of mature technologies. Even in the most advanced developing countries, scientists often lack access to resources comparable to those in the United States. Brazilians working on R & D in sugar-cane biotechnology, for example, report that even limited access to U.S. scientific facilities and personnel could yield big returns. Moreover, since early stage R & D is disproportionately conducted by governments or on government contracts, relying on market mechanisms such as trade and investment to create cross-border R & D collaborations will invariably fail. Instead, governments will often need to arrange collaborative projects by providing targeted financial support and linking government laboratories. the United States has taken some initial steps toward strengthening joint R & D programs with Brazil, China, and India through efforts such as the
Another important target is small and medium-sized enterprises, which play critical roles in experimenting with and commercializing new technologies but have limited capabilities in much of the developing world. In India, for example, large, vertically integrated conglomerates dominate the clean-energy industry, and in China, big state-owned enterprises are the major players. Venture capital and private equity, on which smaller companies normally rely to support innovative activities, are also relatively weak in all three countries. U.S. policy cannot fix all these gaps, but it can help.
First, the United States could partner with the Brazilian, Chinese, and Indian governments to provide intellectual property insurance for initiatives involving small or medium-sized clean-technology enterprises. Intellectual property rights are often critical to the survival of small U.S. technology firms, and worries about the protection of intellectual property can deter them from partnering with foreign firms. Smaller companies in the big emerging economies, meanwhile, face greater barriers than large companies to establishing trust with U.S. companies; intellectual property insurance could help break down those barriers. the United States should only pursue such programs, however, if its counterparts have not adopted a hostile approach to intellectual property rights, as China has done in recent years.
Second, the United States could strengthen its efforts to help familiarize U.S. companies and researchers with potential partners in the big emerging economies.
Third, the United States could help create permanent hubs in developing countries where researchers and firms could exchange ideas and identify joint opportunities. A similar idea was proposed by India in advance of the
Fourth, U.S. policymakers should help establish cross-border demonstration projects and commercialization efforts. These might, for example, include demonstrating the viability of U.S. carbon capture and sequestration technology in India or commercializing U.S.-developed biofuel enzymes by applying them to Brazilian sugar cane in commercial-scale pilot plants. Good ideas often die because they cannot get money to help them grow; as is the case in the United States, financial support for demonstration projects and commercialization efforts abroad will help new clean-energy technologies become commercially viable.
Cross-border commercialization may at times boost foreign manufacturers at the expense of manufacturers in the United States, but the benefits to U.S. companies are likely to outweigh the losses, particularly if those efforts are packaged with increased access to growing clean-energy markets. Many U.S. inventions that might fail at home, or only spread internationally after several product cycles, could find robust demand abroad, where consumers have different needs and preferences. Moreover, participation in demonstration projects helps U.S. firms gain insight into foreign markets. The alternative is not U.S. dominance in those markets but, more likely, stronger roles for companies from more flexible developed countries, such as
U.S. support for cross-border demonstration and commercialization projects should not be unconditional, however. Before supporting costly, large-scale demonstration projects, the United States should make sure that the host country is on its way to developing the necessary policy infrastructure to support widespread adoption of the technology under testing. U.S. firms should also be promised access to the new clean-energy markets in exchange for these commercialization and demonstration projects. And such efforts should be co-financed by the host countries, since their firms and economies will benefit as a result. the United States should be flexible when it comes to sharing any financial burden, particularly in the case of India, where government resources are severely limited.
The last area in which the U.S. government should provide support is in directly encouraging U.S. clean-energy exports and overseas investment by U.S. companies.
Many of these initiatives -- particularly those that focus on the more commercial end of the innovation spectrum -- could cost a considerable amount. But they would have their benefits -- not only in terms of cutting global oil consumption and reducing greenhouse gas emissions but also in helping U.S. clean-energy innovators and companies. And when it comes to climate change, they might present a more attractive alternative to the other options, which tend to involve financial support for clean-energy deployment in the developing world with few strings attached. Money that boosts U.S. clean-energy companies while helping the big emerging economies adopt advanced technologies is likely to be much easier to sell politically than funds that are not tethered explicitly to U.S. economic goals.WINNING TOGETHER
None of these policy initiatives will reduce demand for oil, lower greenhouse gas emissions, or create bigger markets for U.S. clean energy unless they ultimately boost demand for clean energy around the world, and, in particular, in Brazil, China, and India. A system that drives down costs for clean energy should go a long way toward promoting the creation of bigger markets: the cheaper clean energy is, the more likely countries are to enact policies that promote its adoption. Moreover, an approach that helped ensure that the big developing countries became producers rather than just consumers of advanced technologies would lower those costs even further, since those countries can often exploit lower local labor costs and economies of scale, particularly when producing for their own markets. In Brazil, China, and India, empowered clean-energy producers can also be an important constituency pressing for stronger clean-energy regulations and incentives, just as they are in the United States. In China, for example, solar manufacturers have been pressing for strong domestic solar requirements, in order to mop up excess supply.
To be sure, active U.S. government intervention to make clean-energy markets work better is not without its own risks. Even smart and well-informed policymakers are bound to make mistakes. Some technologies that they support will turn out to be commercial dead ends, and the interests of U.S. firms and potential partners in Brazil, China, and India will sometimes conflict. Resources will no doubt be wasted. But the costs are dwarfed by the perils of inaction.
The success of other nations in clean energy does not imply U.S. failure. the United States can benefit greatly from clean-energy innovation around the world, so long as it also pursues its own robust efforts at home. Each major economy has its own natural advantages when it comes to energy technology innovation and development. An enlightened U.S. strategy should aim to create a global innovation environment that weaves together those distinct strengths in pursuit of common energy goals. Not everyone will like every part of the package. Some U.S. firms will chafe at efforts that might help competitors in the developing world. Some emerging economies will resist opening up their markets to those same U.S. firms. Only by enlarging clean-energy markets can everyone enjoy a bigger piece of the pie.
The alternative is not a world in which the United States dominates the clean-energy field alone, or even one in which another country solves
MICHAEL LEVI is Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment, ELIZABETH C. ECONOMY is Senior Fellow for Asia Studies, SHANNON O'NEIL is Fellow for Latin America Studies, and ADAM SEGAL is Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Available at Amazon.com:
The End of History and the Last Man
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations?
Running Out of Water: The Looming Crisis and Solutions to Conserve Our Most Precious Resource
Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water
Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization
At War with the Weather: Managing Large-Scale Risks in a New Era of Catastrophes
Friendly Fire: Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti-American Century
Dining With al-Qaeda: Three Decades Exploring the Many Worlds of the Middle East
- G20 Summit: Hitting Singles in Seoul
- The Consequences of Fiscal Irresponsibility
- GDP Now Matters More Than Force: Policy for the Age of Economic Power
- What Population Growth and Decline Means for the Global Economy
- Leading Through Civilian Power: Redefining Diplomacy and Development
- The Future of American Power: Dominance and Decline in Perspective
- Who Do You Call If You Want to Divide Europe?
- The Game Changer: Coping With China's Foreign Policy Revolution
- Why the Retirement Age Is Increasing
- Religion's Growing Influence in International Politics
- The Difficulty of Integrating Rising Powers
- Ban-ki Moon Has United Nations 'Drifting Into Irrelevance'
- Bachelet Faces Uphill Battle at U.N. Women
- Murderous Tactics Fueling Terrorist Propaganda
- Benjamin Netanyahu: A Hawk in the Ointment
- Diminished Capacity
- Moscow's Modernization Dilemma: Is Russia Charting a New Foreign Policy?
- NATO Summit Unlikely to Answer the Most Important Questions
- Franco-German Call for Change in the EU Meets with Much Opposition
- A Tenuous Deal in Iraq
- Conflict or Cooperation? Three Visions Revisited
- A New Global Player: Brazil's Far-Flung Agenda
- Pax Ottomana? The Mixed Success of Turkey's New Foreign Policy
- Rise of the Mezzanine Rulers
- Globalizing the Energy Revolution
- Democracy in Cyberspace
- The Digital Disruption
- Africa: Agriculture's Final Frontier
- A Reading List for the Twenty-first Century
- Latin American Leaders Could Have Learned From South Korea
- Region Ignoring Venezuela Coup Threats
- To Fight Corruption, Start Cutting Red Tape
- New Congress Won't Lead to 'Fortress America'
- The Shifting Balance of Power
- Checking China's Territorial Moves
- Why China Has a Point About Quantitative Easing
- China's Rate Hike: Winners and Losers
- Taiwan's Shadow
- Fools Rush in Where Europe Rushes Out
- Germany to Muhammad: Go Home
- Can NATO Nudge Russia Westward?
- French Demonstrations Tell a Familiar Tale
- Chavez a Pain for Spain
- Nestor Kirchner's Death May Mark End of an Era
- Petraeus Follows Iraq Formula in Afghanistan
- Heavy Handed Intervention Has Stalled Arab-Israeli Peace Process
- George Clooney Urges Obama and Media To Focus On Sudan
- Fighting Hunger in Des Moines
- Rise in Tourism to Miami May Signal Danger Ahead
- Peru May Be Next Latin American Success Story
- Nobel Winner Right About Risks of e-Books
- Nestor Kirchner's Death May Mark End of an Era
- Chavez a Pain for Spain
- Economic Woes Put Brittle Nations on Edge
- A Divided and Insular European Union
- Do not Expect China to Budge on the Yuan
- Why on Earth Does America Want a Stronger Chinese Currency?
- Nuclear Club Has Yet Another Applicant
- Nuclear Armament Still Our Central Issue
- Embattled Islam
- 'Europe Looks East' Hints at the Future
- Choosing Between the Evil of Two Lessers In Afghanistan
- Chavez Lost Ground but Will Fight Back
- Education Too Important to Be Left in Government Hands
- Latin America In Denial About the Quality of Its Schools
- Millennium Development Goals for Women Largely Unmet
- North Korean Succession Plans Are Shrouded in Mystery
- Rogue BFFs North Korea and Iran Make Quite a Pair
- American Role in Israeli-Palestinian Talks Is a Problem
- Iraq Reluctant to Pay Its Fair Share of Security Costs
- Iran's 'Shaky' Ahmadinejad
- United States Could Be Alone as Europe Turns Inward
- Hugo Chávez May Lose Even if He Wins
- Brazil Needs Dose of Constructive Paranoia
- Latin American Commodity Exporters Need to Diversify
- Stoned on Righteousness
- Our Man in Moscow
- Widening Divide in American-Chinese Commercial Interests
- The New Old World Order
- Global Human-Rights Cause Gets a Shot in the Arm
- Obama's Foreign Policy Performance
- New Russia Takes Root in Saint Petersburg and Moscow
- Dismantling Worst-Case Proliferation Scenarios
- A Numbers Game in the Middle East
- Middle East Peace Talks: Here We Go Again
- Obama and Clinton Revive Middle East Peace Talks
- Guess Who's Coming to the Table
- Iraq: Unanswered Policy Questions on U.S. Troops
- Iraq: Implications of a Pointless War
- Iraq: Book Review
- Iraq: No Drums and No Bugles: None Dare Call It Victory
- Pakistan's Leadership Sustains Flood Damage
- A French Leftist Ritual Takes on Sarkozy
- United States Losing Latin America Market Share
- The Power of Being Multilingual
- Chavez's Obsession With Past Turns Creepy and He's Not Alone
- Obama Could Help Stop Mexico's Bloodshed
- Interdependency Theory: China, India and the West
- The Dangerous Dog Days of Summer
- The Next 500 Years
- A New Plan For Nuclear Postures
- Strengthening the Political - Military Relationship
- Hydraulic Pressures: Into the Age of Water Scarcity?
- South Korea: Prosperity and Anxiety
- China Wealthy? That's Rich!
- Islamism Unveiled: From Berlin to Cairo and Back Again
- Beyond Moderates and Militants: Charting a New Course in the Middle East
- Middle East Peace Talks: Pointless Talks
- Why Israel Can't Rely on Deterrence Against Iran's Nuclear Program
- How to Handle Hamas
- Bringing Israel's Bomb Out of the Basement
- Iraq: Anxious Iraqis Look at Uncertain Future
- Iraq: U.S. Combat Troops' Departure Leaves Uncertainty in its Wake
- Iraq: A Promise Kept?
- An Unlikely Trio: Can Iran Turkey and the United States Become Allies?
- Staying Power: The U.S. Mission in Afghanistan Beyond 2011
- Long Road Ahead for Afghan Security Forces
- Afghanistan's Dirty Little Secret
- Russia's New Nobility
- Mexico Needs U.S. Help But Not Troops
- Mexico's Narco Problems Are Our Problems, and Vice Versa
- No 'I' in 'Team,' but Plenty of 'I' in India
- Afghanistan - There Can Be No Graceful Exit
- Afghanistan Timetable Remains a Factor of Uncertainty
- We Are Playing Fidel Castro's Game
- Has the Time Come to Legalize Drugs?
- Handling Tensions on the Korean Peninsula
- Richard C. Holbrooke: Pakistan Aid Inadequate
- Afghanistan Leaks Answer Few Questions
- Afghanistan & The Karzai Problem
- Afghanistan - Winds of Changing Policy
- Obama's Juggling Act in the Middle East
- Defusing Lebanon's Powder Keg
- Germany's Good Fortune Tips the Scales Against its Neighbors
- End Poverty: Export Capitalism
- Haitian Quake Hasn't Dislodged Status Quo
- Why We Go Back to Haiti
- Iraq - Mission Accomplished II
- The Fight Escalates Against Fake Drugs
- China's Coal Addiction
- Afghanistan: The Pentagon's Lost War
- Afghanistan: The Cost of Nation Building
- Afghanistan: Pentagon Papers Redux?
- Behind Iraq's Long Political Indecision
- Venezuela - Colombia Spat to Pass, Return
- Will China Rule the World?
- NATO's Future Involves More Global Partnerships
- Gloom Awaits U.S. Climate Diplomacy
- U.S. - U.K.: Difficult Duet in Afghanistan
- 'Pariah of the Pacific' Has Ham-handed Grip on Fiji
- Turkey Takes the Veil
- For Israel a Two-State Proposal Starts With Security
- Is It Too Late to Stop Iran
- The Middle East's Private Little War
- Reality and Reform for How the EU Keeps Its Peace
- Chancellor Angela Merkel's Sinking Support
- The Real Reason Why Afghanistan Is a Lost Cause
- The War Drones On
- When the 'Right War' Goes Wrong
- The Afghanistan Paradox
- Pakistan's Gambit in Afghanistan
- Obama Wasting Opportunities in Latin America
- Stopping Nuclear Proliferation Before It Starts
- Veiled Truths: The Rise of Political Islam in the West
- Steps to Stop Iran From Getting a Nuclear Bomb
- Iran: The Nuclear Containment Conundrum
- Iran: The Right Kind Of Containment
- China Is the Key to Handling Nuclear North Korea
- Coping With China's Financial Power
- What China's Currency Reform Means For Investors
- Russian-American Obstacles Overshadow Obama-Medvedev Meeting
- Russia's Courtship of Silicon Valley
- Ukrainian Blues: Viktor Yanukovych's Rise and Democracy's Fall
- Russia: Prisoners of the Caucasus
- The Afghan Challenge Is Far Tougher
- New Guard, Old Policy on Afghanistan
- Fear and Uncertainty in Afghanistan
- Afghanistan: Bribing the Enemy
- Afghanistan Poses Difficult Challenges
- Defining Success in Afghanistan
- Sad Stan, Famous Petraeus
- The Challenge of Reconciliation in Kenya
- The Tyranny of Unity in Zimbabwe
- Mexico: The New Cocaine Cowboys
- Under Santos Colombia Could Rise to the Next Level
- Autocrats' Latest Weapon: Indirect Censorship
- Latin America's Rich Should Be More Generous
- Castrocare in Crisis
(C) 2010 Foreign Affairs

