Aid and Development Archive

Far more than they appeared to at first glance, two news stories in recent days have framed America’s position in the world at the outset of Joe Biden’s presidency in unusually stark and powerful ways. The first trumpeted a $400 billion investment agreement between Beijing and Tehran, with China vastly increasing its trade with Iran. It comes at a moment when the United States is hoping to force the Iranian government back to the negotiating table to reinstate and even broaden the international agreement aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The Trump administration withdrew from that deal, reimposing […]

As COVID-19 starts to loosen its grip on the world, it makes sense to ask what we’ve learned from this punishing experience, so that we can be better prepared when the next pandemic strikes—which it will. Although it will take years to absorb the plague’s many lessons, here are four insights from the past year that should inform multilateral pandemic preparedness in the months and years ahead. The planet is out of balance, endangering human health. This pandemic has been severe, but it should not have come as a surprise. The past half-century has seen a surge in zoonoses, or […]

Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Managing Editor Frederick Deknatel highlights a major unfolding story in the Middle East, while curating some of the best news and analysis from the region. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Middle East Memo by email every week. Everyone, it seems, has been searching for meaning in the gigantic container ship stuck in the Suez Canal—which was finally freed Monday, six days after blocking one of the most vital shipping routes in the world. For all the memes that have proliferated online, there is also some analysis: for example, that this is a “warning […]

On everything from soccer to geopolitical issues, Argentina and Mexico have enjoyed a history of close ties. But today more than ever, their warm relationship is offering Latin America an alternative pole of power and influence, based on a vision of regional autonomy and solidarity. One indication of this was Argentine President Alberto Fernandez’s three-day trip to Mexico City last month, at the invitation of his Mexican counterpart, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, widely known as AMLO. The summit was marked by a flurry of private meetings, official ceremonies, news conferences and effusive mutual praise. “A friend is nothing more than […]

The last time the global economy cratered, in the fall of 2008 in the wake of an American banking crisis, it was China that set the pace—both in insulating itself from most of the damage, and in generating enough new demand in its own economy to prevent a far worse downturn than the already terrible recession suffered in much of the rest of the world. Even now, years later, the scale of China’s response back then is poorly understood. As the economic historian Adam Tooze recounted in his 2019 book, “Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World,” […]

In a vitriolic address to Argentina’s Congress on March 1, President Alberto Fernandez put to rest any illusions that he would be a moderating influence on his vice president and political mentor, former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. (The two are unrelated.) During his speech, the president attacked Cristina Fernandez’s traditional enemies, including the press, the judiciary and the political opposition. More surprisingly, he also criticized the International Monetary Fund, despite being in the middle of discussions to renegotiate Argentina’s $44 billion debt. In fact, the president claimed to be “in no rush” to reach an agreement with the IMF, […]

Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Managing Editor Frederick Deknatel highlights a major unfolding story in the Middle East, while curating some of the best news and analysis from the region. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Middle East Memo by email every week. “Mosul Welcomes You,” read banners across the city when Pope Francis visited Sunday, the last full day of his landmark trip to Iraq. Most of the banners covered crumbling buildings or hung on walls still pockmarked by bullets and artillery. The pope arrived in Mosul by helicopter, flying over the “the rubble of houses [that] stretched […]

Sometime this month, the U.S. Congress will likely approve the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, and with that will come the first real test of the new president’s favorite slogan: “America is back.” The return of the United States that Joe Biden has so frequently promised has always contained a strong whiff of nostalgia. It is a message that has mostly been directed outwardly to the world, saying that after a period of relative decline, of withdrawal and of drift through much of this century, the U.S. is eager to reassume its long-accustomed mantle as undisputed leader of […]