FPRI Featured Bulletin: E-Notes May 2008

Chinese Foreign Policy in Hu’s Second Term: Coping with Political Transition Abroad

By Suisheng Zhao

China’s international diplomatic activism does not necessarily mean that the Hu leadership has altered China’s foreign policy in a more aggressive direction, as China is still juggling its passive foreign policy with its new role as a global power.

Read “Chinese Foreign Policy in Hu’s Second Term”

FPRI Featured Bulletin: E-Notes May 2008

The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace

Aaron David Miller

For eight years under Bill Clinton, we stumbled at Arab-Israeli peacemaking; for eight years under President Bush we stumbled at how to make war, at least in this part of the world. What is it about America, the greatest power on earth, that accounts for this situation? Why can’t we seem to get it right?

Read “The Much Too Promised Land”

FPRI Featured Bulletin: E-Notes May 2008

The Democratic Prospect in East Asia

By Carl Gershman

East Asia is today the region of the world where alternative systems of democracy and authoritarianism are most sharply counter-posed. But while there is little chance of a democratic rollback in East Asia, the performance of its new democracies has been uneven.

Read “The Democratic Prospect in East Asia”

FPRI Featured Bulletin: E-Notes May 2008

Los Zetas: the Ruthless Army Spawned by a Mexican Drug Cartel

By George W. Grayson

The several dozen drug bands that operate in Mexico furnish the lion’s share of cocaine, marijuana, heroin, and methamphetamines that enter this country. They also accounted for more than 4,500 deaths during the past two years—with the figure spiraling to 961 by April 18 of this year. Mexican scholar Raul Benitez insists that “Los Zetas have clearly become the biggest, most serious threat to the nation’s security.”

Read “Los Zetas”

FPRI Featured Bulletin: E-Notes May 2008

More Than Just Tools and Toys: Teaching Innovation

By Lawrence Husick

Humans have also responded to scarcity through innovation: inventing new ideas and tools with which to create value in order to mitigate scarcity. Understood properly, innovation is a central theme of human history and societal organization, and it may be used as an organizing principle in the teaching of history, economics, and many other fields.

Read “Teaching Innovation”

Recent articles

• Robert Kaplan on the New Balance of Power, 4/2008
• An Israeli View of the Iranian Nuclear Challenge, Efraim Inbar, 4/2008
• Kosovo: The Revenge of CNN and the Politics of Emotion, Michael Radu, 4/2008
• More past articles by author · date · subject · FPRI publication

Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program

The Global "Go-To Think Tanks”: The Leading Public Policy Research Organizations in the World

By James G. McGann

Gone are the days when a think tank could operate with the motto “research it, write it and they will find it”. Today, think tanks must be lean, mean, policy machines. The report that follows summarizes the findings of a pilot project to identify some of the leading think tanks in the world, and provides lists of what might be called the “go to think tanks” in every region.

• View The Global "Go-To Think Tanks”: The Leading Public Policy Research Organizations in the World, 2007 (24 pages, 265K )
• More about the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at FPRI

From the archives

• Spotlight on Cuba: When Repression Masquerades as Social Justice: Confessions of a Cuban Boy
• Spotlight on Iran: Iran: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Tradition of Persian Statecraft, Adda B. Bozeman, in Orbis, Summer 1979 (1.3MB )
• Spotlight on Iran: War and the Clash of Ideas, Adda B. Bozeman, in Orbis, Spring 1976 (2.7MB )