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Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. In 2019-2021, he served as the Director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, executive secretary of the department's Commission on Unalienable Rights, and senior adviser to the...
Georgia Didn’t Pick That Fight
Russia had positioned tanks and troops for an invasion long before it was “provoked.” By John B. Dunlop.
New Labour— and Old Unions
Are Britain’s unions, pushed into the political wilderness during the Thatcher years, reemerging as a political force? In a word, no. By Hoover fellow Gerald A. Dorfman.
“Give Up Sovereignty!”
Russia's Oil in America's Future: Policy, Pipelines, and Prospects
Presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin will hold a summit at the end of September that will focus on economic and other ties between the United States and Russia. The two presidents have long recognized the central position of energy in our bilateral relations, and in that sphere, nothing is as critical as oil. Today Russia may again be the largest oil exporter in the world, but very little yet comes to the United States. Russia’s oil industry is dominated by rich and aggressive young private companies. Generally, they are eager to deal with foreigners, but despite significant state reforms they often are still inhibited by a dilapidated, state-controlled delivery system and a residue of traditional thinking and institutions. Many of Russia’s as-yet-unresolved post-Soviet prob-lems exploded in mid-2003 when the prosecutor general’s office attacked Yukos, the country’s most modernized, productive and pro-American private oil company. Thus even as Washington and American oil industry leaders actively sought alternatives to unstable sources in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, basic questions re-emerged in Russia about the privatizations of the 1990s, the security of private property, the mixing of law and politics, and the exercise of power in the Kremlin. Today Russians, with the support of American and European allies, must create conditions that will welcome the foreign funds, technology, and expertise needed to develop the critical oil industry but also to lay foundations of law and infrastructure that will help make Russia a stable member of the world community. Americans must decide how much involvement Russia can constructively absorb to promote not only short-term oil supplies but also long-term Russian development and broader U.S. foreign policy goals. Finally, the critical long-term lesson of 9/11 and other recent experiences for Americans is that even as we cultivate Russia as an ally and major source of oil, we must actively develop alternative sources of energy. In an unstable world, the United States must not forever be held hostage by other nations with their often very different cultures, institutions and interests.
Hoover Institution Fall Retreat 2004
The Hoover Institution Fall Retreat, October 24-26, 2004, again captured the times with speakers addressing current public policy and events that affect our lives.
Where Hard Power Meets Soft
The Bush administration always insisted that encouraging democracy abroad was critical for international security. Europeans—surprise!—now agree. By Amichai Magen.
Communism, Democracy, and Golf
How should we deal with the reality of a United States that a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall is the world’s ideological reference, economic innovator, and only global superpower? Hoover fellow Ken Jowitt offers some suggestions.
America’s Democratic Credentials
Hoover fellow Michael McFaul, who has the president’s ear on Russia, argues that promoting freedom is both moral and wise.
The Case against the International Monetary Fund
In July 1944, delegates from forty-four nations gathered in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to design a postwar international monetary system that would promote world trade, investment, and economic growth. The framers created the International Monetary Fund (IMF or fund) to supervise the new "Bretton Woods monetary regime" that sought to keep national currencies convertible at stable exchange rates and to provide temporary, low-cost financing of balance-of-payments deficits resulting from misaligned exchange rates.
In reality, the framers of the Bretton Woods regime created an international price-fixing arrangement enforced by the IMF. After joining the fund, each member country declared a value for its currency relative to the U.S. dollar. The U.S. Treasury, in turn, tied the dollar to gold by agreeing to buy and sell gold to other governments at $35 an ounce; the inflation of the 1960s, however, made the U.S. commitment to sell gold at that price unsustainable. To preserve U.S. gold reserves, President Richard Nixon closed the gold window in August 1971, effectively uncoupling the dollar from gold and ending the fund's original mission of supervising a system of pegged exchange rates. Looking for a new mission, the IMF quickly evolved into a financial medic for developing countries. Beginning in the early 1970s, the IMF skillfully used a series of global economic crises to increase its capital base and financing activities.
Has the expansion of IMF financing activities alleviated the balance-of-payments problems of member countries and encouraged prudent, progrowth economic policies? The evidence, much of it supplied by the IMF, demonstrates that the fund does more harm than good. Historical studies as well as recent initiatives in Mexico, East Asia, and Russia reveal that IMF financing programs, which rarely prescribe appropriate economic policies or sufficient institutional reforms, are at best ineffective and at worst incentives for imprudent investment and public policy decisions that reduce economic growth, encourage long-term IMF dependency, and create global financial chaos.
It is time to scrap the IMF and strengthen market-based alternatives that would promote an orderly and efficient international monetary system. Key reforms include floating exchange rates, internationally accepted accounting and disclosure practices, unfettered private financial markets, and fundamental legal, political, and constitutional rules that would allow free markets to emerge and countries to achieve self-sustaining economic growth and development.
Summer 2012 Board of Overseers’ Meeting at the Hoover Institution
The Hoover Institution hosted its annual Board of Overseers’ summer meeting during July 10–12, 2012.
The program began on Tuesday evening with two dinner presentations hosted by John Raisian. Hoover fellows Daniel Kessler and Michael McConnell discussed “Health Care and the Constitution,” with McConnell beginning by speaking to the current health care situation as affected by the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act and explained the difference between mandates enforced by a penalty versus a tax. Kessler spoke about changing the subsidy formula, Medicaid and Medicare, and the need to “get costs down.”
The Limits of the Welfare State
Despite the economic storm, European voters refuse to let the traditional left take the wheel. By Patrick Chamorel.
Beyond Closed Borders
Look at the biggest antipoverty success story of recent years—welfare reform—and you might see the makings of a solution to illegal immigration. By Jeffery M. Jones.
China Calling
China has come to Africa. Can U.S. policy makers find ways to mesh, not clash, with Beijing’s interests? By Christopher C. Starling.
Religion and Economic Development
The advantage of moderation
China's Stubborn Anti-Democracy
Hoping for change isn't enough.
Men with a Mission
The Scheinman collection brings to life the story of how two friends, a white American and a black Kenyan, helped African democracy bloom. By Tom Shachtman.
Public Diplomacy: Lessons from King and Mandela
Restoring America’s image around the world
Freedom's Fall in Hong Kong
On July 1, 1997, the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong becomes the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. China has signed an international treaty with Britain and issued a Basic Law, or miniconstitution, for Hong Kong; these promise that Hong Kong can remain autonomous for fifty years after 1997, save in matters of security and diplomacy, and ensure that Hong Kong people will continue to enjoy their rights and freedoms under Hong Kong law.
China has made a mockery of these promises and guarantees. China has dissolved Hong Kong's duly elected Legislative Council and replaced it with a handpicked assembly. China has set up a mechanism that will nominate a new chief justice who will do China's bidding. China has scrapped or modified a number of existing laws, thereby rolling back Hong Kong's current civil liberties. China has placed editorial consultants inside leading Hong Kong newspapers. China has announced restrictions on press freedom, freedom of assembly, freedom of political parties to solicit funds, and freedom of demonstration. China has indicated that English education will be downgraded. And, in a marked departure from Hong Kong's level economic playing field, China's state-owned firms have acquired Hong Kong assets at substantial discount to market. These below-market acquisitions presage a new era of graft, cronyism, connections, and bribery for Hong Kong under Chinese rule.
A Strategic Flip-Flop in the Caribbean
For almost three decades the U.S. embargo of Cuba was part of America's cold war strategy against the Soviet bloc. It should have been lifted after that ‘‘war’’ ended since Castro ceased to threaten the United States and its neighbors and adopted the standard rules of international behavior. But inertia, a powerful Cuban American lobby, and misguided politicians set new demands: democracy, improved human rights, and economic reform. When Castro demurred we tightened the sanctions in 1992 and again in 1996 with the Helms-Burton Law. The United States has never committed the resources necessary to overthrow Castro, however, and the pressures we have applied have utterly failed to advance the three objectives. Worse yet, in the post–cold war world the policy and political outlook that sustain it have become a strategic liability. They promote conflict, both within Cuba—where a crisis might draw in the U.S. military—and abroad, as occurred in 1999–2000 after the arrival in Florida of the rafter boy, Elián González. They allow pressure groups to stand in the way of the policy-making process of the U.S. government. For example, the lobby manipulated wishy-washy politicians in 1998–1999 and got the president to turn down a widely supported proposal for a bipartisan commission to conduct the first comprehensive evaluation of the policy in four decades. Finally, the imperialistic Helms-Burton Law alienates allies worldwide and will poison relations between the United States and Cuba for decades to come. Castro will benefit no matter what we do, but on balance he gains more if we maintain the sanctions because they provide a scapegoat for his own repression and economic failures even as they enable him to maintain his cherished global image as the ‘‘scourge of U.S. imperialism.’’ Castro can wage a worldwide campaign against the embargo to bolster his image knowing Washington is too inflexible to change it. Indeed, whenever Washington has lightened up, Castro has tightened up and effectively prevented further improvement. Lifting sanctions need not mean establishing friendly relations with Castro—which he would reject in any event—or supporting his efforts to get international aid without meeting standard requirements. The ultimate responsibility for maintaining this antiquated and potentially dangerous policy falls on politicians who either do not understand the need for, or for political reasons are afraid to support, a new policy to benefit both Americans and Cubans in the post–cold war world.