BOOKS AND BOOK CHAPTERS
November 2009
The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order
By David Ekbladh, Research Fellow, International Security Program
The Great American Mission traces how America's global modernization efforts during the twentieth century were a means to remake the world in its own image. David Ekbladh shows that the emerging concept of modernization combined existing development ideas from the Depression. He describes how ambitious New Deal programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority became symbols of American liberalism's ability to marshal the social sciences, state planning, civil society, and technology to produce extensive social and economic change. For proponents, it became a valuable weapon to check the influence of menacing ideologies such as Fascism and Communism.
AP Photo
October 2008
Searching for Oil: China's Oil Strategies in Africa
By Henry Lee, Director, Environment and Natural Resources Program
Pressured by skyrocketing demand, Chinese oil companies have branched out across the globe seeking new oil supplies to feed the country’s economic growth. By 2006, China had made oil investments in almost every part of the world, including Africa.
October 2008
China into Africa: Trade, Aid, and Influence
By Robert Rotberg, Director, Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution
“Two myths have been concocted by the West on Africa: that the Western impact on Africa has been benign while China’s record in Africa has only been negative. The truth in both areas is more complex. This volume, China into Africa, brings out the complexity of the China story in Africa and illustrates why more balanced assessments are needed on Africa’s relations with the world”
--Kishore Mahbubani
Dean, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore
March 2008
Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa
By Robert Paarlberg, Former Research Fellow, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project/Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, 2007-2008
Heading upcountry in Africa to visit small farms is absolutely exhilarating given the dramatic beauty of big skies, red soil, and arid vistas, but eventually the two-lane tarmac narrows to rutted dirt, and the journey must continue on foot. The farmers you eventually meet are mostly women, hardworking but visibly poor. They have no improved seeds, no chemical fertilizers, no irrigation, and with their meager crops they earn less than a dollar a day. Many are malnourished.
Nearly two-thirds of Africans are employed in agriculture, yet on a per-capita basis they produce roughly 20 percent less than they did in 1970. Although modern agricultural science was the key to reducing rural poverty in Asia, modern farm science—including biotechnology—has recently been kept out of Africa.
January 17, 2008
Ruthless Humanitarianism
By Doug Brooks and Matan Chorev, Senior Research Assistant, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Over the past twenty years, Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) have become significant elements of national security arrangements, assuming many of the functions that have traditionally been undertaken by state armies. Given the centrality of control over the use of coercive force to the functioning and identity of the modern state, and to international order, these developments clearly are of great practical and conceptual interest.
This edited volume provides an interdisciplinary overview of PMSCs: what they are, why they have emerged in their current form, how they operate, their current and likely future military, political, social and economic impact, and the moral and legal constraints that do and should apply to their operation. The book focuses firstly upon normative issues raised by the development of PMSCs, and then upon state regulation and policy towards PMSCs, examining finally the impact of PMSCs on civil-military relations. It takes an innovative approach, bringing theory and empirical research into mutually illuminating contact. Includes contributions from experts in IR, political theory, international and corporate law, and economics, and also breaks important new ground by including philosophical discussions of PMSCs.
2008
War, Peace and Hegemony in a Globalized World:The Changing Balance of Power in the Twenty-First Century
This book focuses on how the US could adapt its foreign policy initiatives to fit in with the growing aspirations of a multipolar world for a more balanced international order.
August 25, 2007
Worst of the Worst: Dealing with Repressive and Rogue Nations
By Robert Rotberg, Director, Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution
"This volume makes an unparalleled contribution to the growing and vital field of measurement and human rights. [The book] offers a useful categorization and assessment of repressive and 'rogue' states, allowing us to measure the extenet of repressive state behavior more accurately. His [Rotberg] work should embolden external critiques and facilitate more transparent and accountable foreign policy."
--Sarah Sewall, Director, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard University
May, 2007
Technological Learning and Sustainability Transition: The Role of Institutions of Higher Learning in Africa
By Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project; Principal Investigator, Agricultural Innovation in Africa
May, 2007
Integrating Science and Technology into Development Policies: An International Perspective
February 2007
"Introduction: Seven Tenets"
By Philip D. Zelikow, Former Associate Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School; Former Faculty Affiliate, International Security Program and Ernest R. May, Former Faculty Affiliate, International Security Program
"Almost from the beginning, a central theme of U.S. foreign policy has
been support for democracy against dictatorship...."
