Today, Dominic Parker explains how entrepreneurial activity and market incentives can generate improvements to environmental challenges like pollution and the overuse of resources; Andy Hall applies the radical revolutionary thought of Common Sense author Thomas Paine to the rise of artificial intelligence; and H.R. McMaster speaks with the leader of Norway’s Conservative Party about the future of security in the Arctic region in the face of mounting Russian threats.
Energy and the Environment
In this interview for Defining Ideas, Senior Fellow Dominic Parker explains the value of “enviropreneurs,” or innovators who set out to find market-based solutions to environmental problems. Whether the challenge is water quality, the state of a fishery or hunting ground, the supply of electricity, or an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, Parker argues that there are ways to harness personal incentives and market forces to pursue better environmental conditions. This approach often stands in contrast to state-and regulation-centric models. Parker explains that mitigation, geoengineering, and adaptation should work in harmony to address problems including climate change, and that governmental regulation is rarely as successful as the free market in convening such forces. In the end, says Parker, entrepreneurs and businesses that set out to gain by fostering environmental progress can do good while doing well. Read more here.
Freedom Frequency
Thomas Paine, America’s pamphleteer prophet, proclaimed that the new country represented “the birthday of a new world,” writes Senior Fellow Andrew B. Hall for the Founders & Fellows series. Hall says Paine viewed self-government as essentially a new, invented technology with revolutionary potential. The “technology” of representative democracy did indeed bring about an institutional revolution, Hall writes, but in today’s America it’s clear that representative democracy also has flaws: The loudest voices pick the candidates and the issues, the quiet majority laments its lack of participation, and candidates don’t always succeed at giving voice to their constituents. And Paine had his own flaws, Hall says, notably a radical conviction that America needed to sweep away all traces of the past, scorning tradition and learned wisdom. Still, Hall suggests that Paine’s high-flown language might have something to offer us today in the face of the revolutionary policy challenge of artificial intelligence. In Hall’s view, Paine can inspire us to channel technology to pursue a more perfect union at the dawn of “a new world.” Read more here.
At Freedom Frequency, Mira Rapp-Hooper argues that American leaders are in general agreement with their Chinese counterparts that the two great powers should pursue strategic “stabilization”—but what does this entail? As this essay explains, the many variables include possible concessions to China to meet goals the United States desires; what a “Plan B” might look like to Asian allies if America deprioritized the Indo-Pacific; how those nations would diversify their security alliances; and above all, new uncertainty about Taiwan. Even as the immediate likelihood of a Chinese invasion seems to have eased, Rapp-Hooper argues—giving Taipei a rare window of opportunity, and America a chance to bolster regional deterrence—Washington has cast doubt on the possibility of arms sales to Taiwan. In the end, the United States must decide what to defend, and at what cost. Out of that decision could come several fateful moves by one or more Asian nations, including to pursue their own nuclear weapons. Read more here.
International Affairs
What will it take to protect critical infrastructure and to preserve democratic resilience in a more dangerous European security environment?
The Big Idea: On the latest episode of Today's Battlegrounds, Senior Fellow H.R. McMaster speaks with Ine Eriksen Søreide, leader of Norway’s Conservative Party and a former minister of foreign affairs, about the future of US-Norway cooperation in the High North, as well as Russia’s threat across the Arctic and North Atlantic regions. Watch or listen here.
Library & Archives
The Hoover History Lab and Hoover Institution Library & Archives invite you to an in-person and online event with authors Lisa Blaydes and Visiting Fellow Samuel Helfont as they discuss their recent book Ba‘thist Iraq Through Archives: Reflections, Explorations, and Opportunities. This event will take place Wednesday, August 26, 4:30–6:30 pm PDT in Hoover’s Shultz Auditorium and will be streamed live online. The opening of Iraq’s Ba‘th Party archives revolutionized the study of Iraqi politics and history, offering scholars unprecedented access to the inner workings of one of the world’s most impenetrable autocracies. This new volume brings together leading scholars to take stock of what we have learned from over a decade of research using the Ba‘thist archives. Blaydes and Helfont offer a new understanding of Iraq’s history, with wider implications for understanding authoritarianism in general. The event will also feature Senior Fellow Stephen Kotkin and Deputy Director Eric Wakin. Read more here.
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