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To mark the centennial of the Council on Foreign Relations, George Gavrilis tells the story of the organization's founding by a small group of influential New Yorkers at the end of the First World War and its growth into a diverse national organization and one of America's most prominent institutions. Drawing from a rich trove of archival sources, oral histories, and contemporary interviews, Gavrilis crafts an engrossing and intimate account of the Council's path, following it through the Second World War, its immediate aftermath, the Cold War, Vietnam, the emergence of globalization, and the rise of China. This short, entertaining, and highly readable book provides an insider perspective on the major foreign policy issues that shaped the Council-and how the Council in turn influenced the debates over American foreign policy-and outlines the Council's future role in a rapidly changing society and world.

"For too long, the topic of sunlight reflection has been a third rail of climate change discourse, limiting both basic research and diplomatic discussion. That situation is starting to change as the devastating implications of a fast-warming planet become impossible to ignore," asserts Senior Fellow Stewart M. Patrick in a new Council Special Report, Reflecting Sunlight to Reduce Climate Risk: Priorities for Research and International Cooperation.Sunlight reflection, also known as solar geoengineering, involves reflecting sunlight back into space to reduce rising temperatures on Earth. The simplest and most cost-effective methods are either dispersing aerosols in the stratosphere (mimicking the effects of volcanic eruptions that have periodically blocked sunlight and cooled the planet) or using ocean salt crystals to make low-lying clouds brighter and more reflective-a process called marine cloud brightening.Patrick-senior fellow in global governance and director of the International Institutions and Global Governance program at the Council on Foreign Relations-warns that "the long-predicted climate emergency is now," and "the approaches currently being pursued to prevent catastrophic warming and mute its implications are not being enacted fast enough."There are three main approaches to managing risks from the changing climate: reducing emissions; removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; and adapting to build resilience and minimize the effects of a warming planet. Patrick finds that "although efforts to decarbonize have begun in many countries, global emissions continue to rise. The shift to renewable energy . . . is happening far too slowly to prevent significant warming by midcentury, and adaptation has its own limitations."Patrick argues there is a fourth "potentially fast-acting, low-cost, and high-leverage way to limit increasing global temperatures and their attendant effects. That method is sunlight reflection." According to Patrick, it would be "a stopgap strategy to 'shave the peak' of anticipated warming and its effects, buying time for more durable solutions" such as emissions reduction, decarbonization, and adaptation to progress and scale up. The author acknowledges that sunlight reflection is untested, under-researched, and involves the use of techniques that are susceptible to human error and unintended consequences. At best, it would be an imperfect and partial response to climate change. Nevertheless, he says, its risks and possibilities should be investigated, analyzed, and weighed against the known dangers of climate change, given the escalating threat to both social and natural systems posed by rising temperatures.To this end, the author calls for the creation of a well-funded and effectively organized U.S. national research program, grounded in close international cooperation, to carefully consider the deployment of sunlight reflection as a tool in the climate change arsenal.He further recommends the United States strive for international agreement on the norms and rules that govern any actual application of sunlight reflection techniques. Without strong international cooperation, he warns, there is a growing danger that individual governments may take matters into their own hands, with potentially negative geopolitical consequences."It would be vastly preferable for the world to make progress on the science of sunlight reflection and to discuss its national and international governance openly today, so that policymakers are prepared to make informed decisions on its potential deployment tomorrow, rather than being forced to act out of ignorance on the fly when all other options have failed," Patrick concludes.

"China wants to replace the United States as the strongest and most influential power in Asia and beyond," warns Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy Robert D. Blackwill. "Washington should launch an all-out effort to limit the dangers that Beijing's economic, diplomatic, technological, and military expansion pose to U.S. interests in Asia and globally," he writes.To more effectively compete with China, Blackwill offers proposals starting with modernizing U.S. domestic infrastructure, improving education, and harnessing next-generation technologies. On the foreign policy front, Blackwill recommends spending fewer resources on the Middle East, deepening ties with allies in Asia and Europe, shifting military assets to Asia, and seeking a more constructive relationship with Russia."Although the Trump administration is the first to recognize the failed policies of the past toward China, it has developed no such grand strategy toward the country, and thus no integrated and detailed work plan. This puts the United States at a major strategic disadvantage because China does have a grand strategy," writes Blackwill.On ratcheting up tensions between the United States and China, the author warns, "If both foolishly continue to actively seek primacy in the Indo-Pacific, few consequential compromises will be advanced or accepted by Washington or Beijing. With little or no willingness by either side to take the other's vital national interests into account, the road opens to sustained confrontation and perhaps even, in extremis, military conflict.""However, such a dangerous outcome is far from inevitable," Blackwill writes. "Washington and Beijing, through sustained diplomacy, can manage this enduring policy contention in ways that avoid perpetual confrontation. This would require thoughtful and prudent statecraft in both capitals, which is now not the case."

Managing foreign policy crises has become a recurring challenge for U.S. presidents. Since the end of the Cold War, there have been one hundred twenty occasions in which a threatening development overseas triggered a period of intense, high-level deliberation about what the United States should do in response (see the list of U.S. foreign policy crises from 1989 to 2019). This equates to an average of fifteen crises for each four-year presidential term. Although the stakes varied from crisis to crisis, each required the president to decide--usually in pressured circumstances and with considerable uncertainty about the risks involved--whether the situation warranted sending military forces in harm's way to protect U.S. interests. On more than forty occasions, the president determined that it did. While most of these crises were eventually resolved with little or no lasting impact on U.S. interests, some festered and became more difficult and costly to address at a later date.It is unlikely that foreign policy crises will become any less frequent or vexing for future U.S. presidents. By most appraisals, the world is entering a more turbulent and crisis-prone era. Recent actions by the United States, particularly by the Donald J. Trump administration, have contributed to this turbulence as well as to the perception that the United States may no longer be as committed to playing an active role in some regions. Such uncertainty could encourage some states and actors to test the United States' resolve; others, hedging against U.S. disengagement, could adopt policies that are inadvertently destabilizing.Virtually every U.S. administration--certainly those in recent years--has aspired to be more proactive about managing foreign policy crises. Despite the best of intentions, however, U.S. policymakers continue to be surprised by threatening developments overseas, reacting in a belated and ad hoc fashion. This track record does not suggest that similar efforts in the future could produce better results. It is vital, therefore, that the United States devote more attention and resources to preventing potential crises from arising and being better prepared to manage them when they do. For the last ten years, the Center for Preventive Action (CPA) at the Council on Foreign Relations has closely studied how to accomplish this task. This report represents a distillation of CPA's findings and recommendations.

China's massive, globe-spanning Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) seeks to build everything from railways, ports, and power plants to telecommunications infrastructure and fiber-optic cables. Chinese President Xi Jinping's signature foreign policy endeavor, BRI has the potential to meet developing countries' needs and spur economic growth, but its implementation creates risks that outweigh its benefits. Unless the United States offers an effective alternative, China could reorient global trade networks, set technical standards that would disadvantage non-Chinese companies, lock countries into carbon-intensive power generation, increase its political influence over countries, and acquire power projection capabilities for its military. The COVID-19 pandemic has made a U.S. response more urgent as the global economic contraction has accelerated the reckoning with BRI-related debt. China's Belt and Road: Implications for the United States proposes that the United States respond to BRI by putting forward an affirmative agenda of its own, drawing on its strengths and coordinating with allies and partners to promote sustainable, secure, and green development.

The connection between women's economic participation and global prosperity is undeniable. Over the past two decades, international organizations and world leaders have increasingly recognized how critical women's economic empowerment and financial inclusion are to economic prosperity and growth.However, despite growing awareness that women's economic empowerment is critical to women, their families, and broader economic prosperity, many countries still legally undermine women's economic participation and undervalue women's work. Of the 189 economies surveyed in the World Bank's Women, Business and the Law 2018 report, 90 percent have at least one regulation that impedes women's economic opportunities. More than one hundred economies still prevent women from working in certain jobs; fifty-nine economies provide no legal recourse to women who experience sexual harassment in the workplace; and in eighteen countries, men can legally prevent their wives from working outside the home. An array of other legal barriers--from limitations on access to finance to laws restricting women's agency and mobility--prevent women from fully participating in the economy. Even in 2018, the legal landscape for women in the economy fails to reflect the value women's participation adds to economic growth. But change is on the horizon.Over the last decade, several countries have enacted legal reforms that significantly advance women's rights. Today, all but thirty-two countries legally guarantee gender equality in their constitutions, and a record number of countries now have laws prohibiting discrimination or violence against women. While these gains--rightfully celebrated-- show that progress is possible, proposals to eliminate the critical barriers that limit women's economic potential remain absent from mainstream discussions on international and national economic policy, and barriers to female economic enfranchisement persist in every region of the world.In order to realize the economic potential of 50 percent of the world's population, nations need to do more to level the legal playing field for women. This volume collects in-depth analysis and commentary on legal barriers to women's economic participation, with a focus on five areas in which the greatest obstacles to women's economic participation endure: financial inclusion, identification laws, land rights, workplace discrimination, and family law.As this collection of case studies shows, the gains from ensuring that women everywhere have the right to compete fairly in the economy are significant and achievable. Nothing less than humanity's collective prosperity and stability are at stake.

"America's network of international relationships is its foremost strategic asset, even as the agency charged with advancing U.S. interests through diplomacy-the Department of State (DOS)-has fallen into a deep and sustained period of crisis," write former diplomats Uzra S. Zeya and Jon Finer.In Revitalizing the State Department and American Diplomacy, they argue that "left unaddressed, the challenges that DOS faces risk causing irreparable damage to America's standing and influence in the world, ability to advance its interests overseas, and security and prosperity at home."The authors note that "despite the decades-long failure to implement essential reforms-and even in the face of sustained hostility from the [Donald J. Trump] administration-diplomacy remains the best tool the United States has to advance its foreign policy interests.""But many of the challenges facing the DOS have existed for decades," they explain. "Deficits in diversity, institutional culture, and professionalization are endemic to the State Department as an institution, and a diminished policy role for career officials persisted under previous administrations."Zeya and Finer identify areas in greatest need of reform and offer the following recommendations for the next secretary of state: Twenty-First-Century Statecraft. The State Department should develop "greater expertise in the range of issues that will be essential to American leadership in the twenty-first century," which include climate change, pandemic disease, shifting global power, economic competitiveness, equity, anticorruption, and technological transformation. Institutional Reform. "Make the State Department a diverse, equitable, and inclusive institution" by underscoring diversity as a national security priority, overcoming a risk-averse culture, delayering and decentralizing decision-making, and bridging the career-noncareer divide.Workforce Expansion. "Urgent attention needs to be devoted to revitalizing the professional path and retention of the current DOS workforce," which has seen "a brain drain of senior talent" and "Civil Service staffing frozen at 2017 levels." The authors suggest greater flexibility in career paths and enabling return, as well as rebooting and expanding training and continuous learning.Beyond the Near Term. "The State Department would also benefit from some longer-term thinking" including amending the Foreign Service Act, implementing unified national security budgeting, and establishing a Diplomatic Reserve Corps."When properly empowered and entrusted with significant responsibilities, American diplomats play essential roles in consequential outcomes for the country," the authors write.Revitalizing the State Department and restoring diplomacy "means addressing deficiencies in DOS policy focus and capacity, institutional culture, and workforce diversity and flexibility, while laying the groundwork to cement these and other changes through legislation," the authors conclude.Finer was chief of staff and director of policy planning at the U.S. Department of State. He is currently on leave as an adjunct senior fellow at CFR. Zeya is CEO and president of the Alliance for Peacebuilding and previously had a twenty-seven-year diplomatic career.

We've been tracking the debate surrounding climate change at Foreign Affairs from the very beginning and decided to gather the highlights of that coverage into one handy collection. As always, we present a full range of expert opinion and argumentation, giving readers the information and resources they need to come to their own informed opinions on the seriousness of the problem and the relative merits of alternative solutions.

Taiwan "is becoming the most dangerous flash point in the world for a possible war that involves the United States, China, and probably other major powers," warn Robert D. Blackwill, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy, and Philip Zelikow, University of Virginia White Burkett Miller professor of history.In a new Council Special Report, The United States, China, and Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War, the authors argue that the United States should change and clarify its strategy to prevent war over Taiwan. "The U.S. strategic objective regarding Taiwan should be to preserve its political and economic autonomy, its dynamism as a free society, and U.S.-allied deterrence-without triggering a Chinese attack on Taiwan.""We do not think it is politically or militarily realistic to count on a U.S. military defeat of various kinds of Chinese assaults on Taiwan, uncoordinated with allies. Nor is it realistic to presume that, after such a frustrating clash, the United States would or should simply escalate to some sort of wide-scale war against China with comprehensive blockades or strikes against targets on the Chinese mainland.""If U.S. campaign plans postulate such unrealistic scenarios," the authors add, "they will likely be rejected by an American president and by the U.S. Congress." But, they observe, "the resulting U.S. paralysis would not be the result of presidential weakness or timidity. It might arise because the most powerful country in the world did not have credible options prepared for the most dangerous military crisis looming in front of it."Proposing "a realistic strategic objective for Taiwan, and the associated policy prescriptions, to sustain the political balance that has kept the peace for the last fifty years," the authors urge the Joe Biden administration toaffirm that it is not trying to change Taiwan's status;work with its allies, especially Japan, to prepare new plans that could challenge Chinese military moves against Taiwan and help Taiwan defend itself, yet put the burden of widening a war on China; andvisibly plan, beforehand, for the disruption and mobilization that could follow a wider war, but without assuming that such a war would or should escalate to the Chinese, Japanese, or American homelands."The horrendous global consequences of a war between the United States and China, most likely over Taiwan, should preoccupy the Biden team, beginning with the president," the authors conclude.

The North Korean nuclear program is headed in a dangerous direction. Yet the United States and its allies have not set forth a coherent or unified strategy to stop it. This Task Force, sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, evaluates the challenges facing the United States in and around the Korean peninsula and assess American options for meeting them. The situation on the peninsula has deteriorated rapidly since October 2002, when North Korea admitted having a secret highly enriched uranium program that put it on course to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons. North Korea has since withdrawn from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, asserted it possess nuclear weapons, and declared that it is reprocessing its spent nuclear fuel. Having initially emphasized the need for a negotiated solution, North Korea's recent rhetoric has stressed the deterrent value of nuclear weapons. Co-chaired by Morton I. Abramowitz and James T. Laney, and directed by Council Senior Fellow Eric Heginbotham, the Task Force makes specific recommendations to help guide U.S. foreign policy: 1) articulate a strategy around which U.S. regional partners can rally; 2) as part of that strategy, engage in a serious negotiating effort with North Korea and test its intentions by proposing an interim agreement; 3) secure the commitment of U.S. allies to take tougher action should talks fail, 4) restore the health of the U.S.-ROK alliance; 5) persuade China to take greater responsibility for resolving the crisis; and 6) appoint a full-time high-level coordinator for Korea.

In 2013 President Xi Jinping announced the launch of two new Chinese connectivity projects: an "economic belt" along the historical Silk Road in Eurasia and a twenty-first-century Maritime Silk Road to expand cooperation between China and Southeast Asian nations. The common theme of both was to increase China's collaboration and communication with regional nations to bolster mutual development and prosperity.Over the next decade the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) became a gigantic infrastructure, trade, and connectivity project, spreading beyond Eurasia and Southeast Asia to regions such as South Asia, the Middle East, and many parts of Africa. Some China watchers argued that the BRI is China's updated and planned grand strategic vision of its historical Middle Kingdom hierarchy-China centered in a global network of connectivity where all roads (territorial and maritime) lead to Beijing. Others worried that the BRI is China's strategic plan to gain geopolitical power by making smaller and weaker countries beholden to it indefinitely. Still others cautioned that the BRI, far from being a monolithic and well-planned-out vision, is deeply fragmented by domestic interests, diluting its effectiveness as a unified grand strategy. These arguments evaluate whether the BRI is a success or failure for China-that is, whether the BRI strengthens China's geopolitical status and brings it economic benefits. Those factors are important, but they are China-centric. In the end, success also depends on a more neglected consideration-the recipient countries' perceptions of China and their reception of the BRI. Success or failure of the BRI in South Asia can be determined by asking two questions. First, do recipient countries view the BRI as a positive Chinese initiative that brings significant benefits, either political or economic? The BRI and China are seen as synonymous, so positive views of the BRI can not only boost positive views of China but, in theory, also make recipient countries amenable to further cooperation with China. Second, has the recipient country been able to manage the BRI to advance its own domestic agenda? If recipient countries see the BRI as advancing their stated political or economic goals, then they are likely to continue to welcome expanded Chinese investment. Conversely, if they view the BRI as either not delivering on the promise of economic benefits or as leading to significant political side effects, then it can give recipient countries pause. In the long run, this could affect further cooperation with the BRI and China. In South Asia, even if a recipient country sees the BRI and China positively, it has not necessarily also been able to manage the BRI to its satisfaction. Pakistan is one example. Then again, even when the BRI and China are viewed negatively, such as in India, the government has been able to use the specter of the BRI to advance other interests.The lesson for the United States is that if it seeks to curb China's influence in South Asia, it should pay attention to how potential recipients of this largesse respond to China and the BRI. The United States cannot match the BRI's investments in South Asia, but it can support South Asian countries choosing to cooperate with China, as well as India, the dominant power in the region. If the BRI delivers on its promise of providing connectivity and infrastructure in South Asian countries that sorely need both, it can contribute to domestic stability-a less volatile South Asia is in U.S. interests. The United States can gain stronger partnerships and increased credibility by actively empowering South Asian countries to assess the BRI's merits and demerits, and supporting alternatives for those who opt out, rather than opposing the BRI wholesale.This discussion paper was made possible by the generous support of the Ford Foundation.

A Council-sponsored Task Force says that the United States should support the evolutionary development of democracy consistently throughout the Middle East. It points out that a strategy to promote democracy entails inherent risks, but that "the denial of freedom carries much more significant long-term dangers."

"Human trafficking is more than a violation of human rights: it is also a threat to national security, economic growth, and sustainable development," warns a new Council Special Report, Ending Human Trafficking in the Twenty-First Century. However, the United States "lacks sufficient authorities and coordination across the federal government to address human trafficking adequately, instead treating this issue as ancillary to broader foreign policy concerns." "Critics who challenge the allocation of political and financial capital to combat human trafficking underestimate trafficking's role in bolstering abusive regimes and criminal, terrorist, and armed groups; weakening global supply chains; fueling corruption; and undermining good governance," write Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Senior Fellows Jamille Bigio and Rachel B. Vogelstein. Trafficking generates $150 billion in illicit profits, and "an estimated twenty-five million people worldwide are victims-a number only growing in the face of vulnerabilities fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic." Despite efforts by multilateral institutions and governments around the world, the authors explain that "anti-trafficking efforts are undermined by insufficient authorities, weak enforcement, limited investment, and inadequate data." To address these gaps, the Joe Biden administration "should lead on the global stage . . . by strengthening institutional authorities and coordination, improving accountability, increasing resources, and expanding evidence and data," the authors contend. Specifically, it should "enact due diligence reforms to promote corporate accountability for forced labor in supply chains," including by expanding the U.S. National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking; "reform labor recruitment systems to combat the exploitation of migrant workers"; "increase trafficking prosecutions by scaling the successful U.S. anti-trafficking coordination team model, which includes law enforcement, labor officials, and social service providers"; "leverage technology against human trafficking; and increase investment to counter it"; and "enlist leaders in the private, security, and global development sectors to propose innovative and robust prevention and enforcement initiatives." Such efforts will advance U.S. economic and security interests by boosting GDP with improved productivity and human capital, and saving governments the direct costs of assisting survivors. By elevating the issue, Bigio and Vogelstein conclude, "human trafficking can be eradicated with a comprehensive and coordinated response."

The encounter between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and King Abdulaziz Al Saud aboard the USS Quincy in the Suez Canal on February 14, 1945, represents the launching point for relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia. From the start, it was an unlikely partnership. The deal that developed over time was straightforward. The United States needed unimpeded access to the vast reservoirs of oil beneath Al Saud's desert sands, and Saudi Arabia needed protection from avaricious neighbors and great powers.But in recent years, the U.S.-Saudi strategic partnership has frayed. The United States has grown frustrated with Saudi Arabia's human rights record and reluctance to stabilize the oil market, while Riyadh has come to believe that Washington is no longer willing to guarantee the kingdom's security.With their new Council Special Report, The Case for a New U.S.-Saudi Strategic Compact, Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies Steven A. Cook and Distinguished Fellow Martin S. Indyk give a thorough history of the special relationship between the world's foremost democracy and the Middle East's preeminent monarchy, and envision what a renewed partnership would look like.As Cook and Indyk warn, "Seventy-seven years after the original Roosevelt-Abdulaziz pact, the changing circumstances require a reassessment of the relationship's value to each side, for if urgent action is not taken, the process of separation that is already under way is likely to accelerate, damaging the interests of both sides."

The early advantages the United States and its allies held in cyberspace have largely disappeared as the internet has become increasingly fragmented, more dangerous, and less free. China and Russia in particular are working to export their authoritarian models of the internet around the world. While freedom on the internet declines, threats in cyberspace grow. Cybercrime and cyberattacks on critical infrastructure have cost billions of dollars worldwide and disrupted thousands of lives. And while the U.S. response has focused on domestic policy and resilience, more attention should be paid to rethinking a vision of foreign policy for cyberspace. Confronting Reality in Cyberspace: Foreign Policy for a Fragmented Internet outlines a strategy founded on three pillars: building a trusted internet coalition, employing more targeted pressure on adversaries and establishing pragmatic cyber norms, and getting the U.S. house in order. The Council on Foreign Relations sponsors Independent Task Forces to assess issues of current and critical importance to U.S. foreign policy and provide policymakers with concrete judgments and recommendations. Diverse in backgrounds and perspectives, Task Force members aim to reach a meaningful consensus on policy through private deliberations. Once launched, Task Forces are independent of CFR and are solely responsible for the content of their reports. Task Force members are asked to join a consensus signifying that they endorse the general policy thrust and judgments reached by the group, though not necessarily every finding and recommendation. Each Task Force member also has the option of putting forward an additional or a dissenting view.

Book Description The persistent problem of the tens of millions of children across the developing world who grow up without receiving the most basic education has attracted increased public attention in recent years. This crisis is acute in rural and poor areas of sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. More than 180 governments have committed to addressing this crisis by pledging that every boy and girl will receive a quality basic education by 2015. This target is now firmly established and endorsed as one of the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Yet to reach the overall goal of universal education for children, policymakers will need to make special efforts to address the economic, social, and cultural barriers that keep even larger proportions of girls in poor countries out of school. Indeed, extensive research confirms that investing in girls' education delivers high returns not only for female educational attainment, but also for maternal and children's health, more sustainable families, women's empowerment, democracy, income growth, and productivity. What Works in Girls' Education summarizes the extensive body of research on the state of girls' education in the developing world today; the impact of educating girls on families, economies, and nations; and the most promising approaches to increasing girls' enrollment and educational quality. The overall conclusions are straightforward: educating girls pays off substantially. While challenges exist, existing research provides us guidance on how to make significant progress. About the Author Barbara Herz, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, has worked on and written about girls' education for more than 20 years. When she worked at the World Bank from 1981-1999, she launched the Women in Development division and then headed another division covering education, health, and population in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Gene B. Sperling is the director of the Center for Unviersal Education at the Council on Foreign Relations. He previously served as national economic adviser to President Clinton from 1996-2000, and represented the Clinton administration at the 2000 UN World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal.

The U.S. Japan alliance has faced new challenges: domestic opposition to U.S. bases in Okinawa; Chinese criticism of a stronger U.S.-Japan security relationship; and growing international frustration with Japan's economic policies. The alliance remains crucial to both nations' interests, but the management of bilateral security ties has become more complex. The U.S.-Japan Alliance explains the inner workings of that alliance and recommends new approaches to sustain this critical bilateral security relationship. The authors are scholars and practitioners who understand where the alliance came from, how it is managed, and the strategic decisions that will have to be made in the future. The volume is divided into four sections: the role of the alliance in the context of the East Asian strategic environment; the bilateral military relationship; the domestic politics of the alliance in both Japan and the United States; and the economic dimension of the security relationship. The volume concludes with the editors' recommended agenda for the future of the alliance.

Ever since withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, the US has incurred criticism for its stance on climate change. Victor (energy and sustainable development, Stanford University) presents three alternative policy options the US could pursue, in the form of hypothetical presidential speeches. T

What if you took seventy-five of the most experienced professionals in the fields of finance, economics, foreign policy, and national security and confronted them with two dozen policy problems triggered by a massive contraction in the stock markets? That is the premise of Stress Testing the System: Simulating the Global Consequences of the Next Financial Crisis. Based on a policy simulation that was conducted before the September 11,2001 attacks and is now even more relevant, Council Fellow Roger Kubarych draws several key lessons: government policymakers need to dedicate time and resources to identifying the principal vulnerabilities of financial and political systems-and anticipating their possible consequences. While it won't help them predict a crisis, playing out a variety of low-probability, high-cost events will leave leaders better prepared when one occurs. Kubarych notes that policymakers' first priority in a financial crisis is to stabilize markets-all other problems are subordinate. This book is more than a revealing account of the lessons and implications of time- and crisis-pressured decision making: it is an instructive guide to organizing business and financial "war-gaming." Kubarych provides an insider's look at the collaboration among great minds that led to a successfully crafted scenario played out with real-world accuracy.

This Council Policy Initiative frames the issues raised by the "ClintonDoctrine", which advocates U.S. military intervention against large-scale humanitarian abuses.The introduction offers a hypothetical memorandum prepared by a national security adviser to the president, setting forth relevant precedents and context. Three perspectives on U.S. policy options follow, written as speeches theU.S. president might make to the American people: one, humanitarian intervention can serve national interests; two, humanitarian interests alone do not justify military intervention; and three, strategic interest and moral imperative must be balanced.

"More and more countries are being drawn into the Chinese model of state-controlled networks that limit privacy, build in the capacity for censorship, and provide the backbone for the surveillance state," Knake explains. By forming a digital trade zone among democracies, "the United States and its allies can create a compelling alternative to the authoritarian web," he writes.The author makes a number of recommendations for the U.S. government to create a digital trade zone, including: Establish a treaty organization to coordinate cybersecurity and law enforcement efforts. "Working with Canada and Mexico, the United States could establish such an organization under the auspices of USMCA [United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement], work out its functions, and then seek to draw in other countries to participate."Create a shared tariff and sanctions policy. "Trade zone members should agree to jointly sanction nonmember states that harbor cybercriminals or participate in banned activities."Create sustained funding for collective efforts. "The agreement should require each member state to contribute annual payments to the treaty organization."Involve nongovernmental stakeholders. "For the digital trade zone to achieve its goals, individual and corporate user groups, internet service providers, content service providers, software and hardware makers, and cybersecurity companies will all need to be involved."Clean up the open web. "A crucial part of this effort should be a sustained, coordinated effort to dismantle the infrastructure used by cybercriminals."Table the hardest issues. "Certain complicated issues in internet governance are unlikely to be resolved by trade negotiators and should be tabled to prevent stalling the formation of the trade zone.""The United States has a short window to draw Europe in and create a competing vision that would attract fence-sitters such as Brazil, India, and Indonesia, which have democratic traditions and are wary of Chinese hegemony on the web," warns Knake. "By tying access to the digital trade zone to obligations for cybersecurity, privacy, and law enforcement cooperation . . . the United States and its allies can force countries to choose between access to their markets or tight control of the internet in the Chinese model.""Securing an open, interoperable, secure, and reliable internet against threats from authoritarian regimes will likely require abandoning hope that such a network can be global," concludes Knake.

"Since January 2019, U.S. policy toward Venezuela has centered on [President Nicolas] Maduro's removal. The United States has advocated for a transitional government to facilitate a return to democracy," writes Council on Foreign Relations Fellow for Latin America Paul J. Angelo in a new Council Special Report, The Day After in Venezuela: Delivering Security and Dispensing Justice. "The best-case scenario-and one that the United States endorses in its 'Democratic Transition Framework for Venezuela'-would be a provisional government replacing Maduro and overseeing the transition to fresh presidential and legislative elections."Angelo maintains that international actors have not planned enough for stabilizing the security environment and fostering transitional justice in a post-Maduro Venezuela. "Quickly establishing public order and reinstating the rule of law would be crucial for [U.S.] support to be effective. And only after it has revived institutions to credibly deliver security and dispense justice could Venezuela restore democratic governance," Angelo explains."The immediate aftermath of Maduro's departure could see conflict among armed factions, unstable political coalitions, incentives for corruption and criminality, a divided international response, and an outflow of migrants and refugees," he cautions."U.S. policymakers would need to anticipate the fallout from a transition, even under the most auspicious conditions, and identify opportunities to ensure that the transitional context begets the restoration of democracy," he writes. These include: "The United States should focus first on activities aimed at building trust with the Venezuelan authorities and people. . . . U.S. authorities should condition their support on the transitional government's commitment to a democratic transition and to alleviating humanitarian suffering, while seeking points of entry that engender goodwill and create opportunities for deeper U.S. involvement in the country's reconstruction.""In addition to working through the United Nations and [Organization of American States], the U.S. government should negotiate with potential spoilers of the transition outside Venezuela," including China, Cuba, and Russia."The U.S. government should use its relationships with other governments in the hemisphere and in Europe that have sustained less hostile relations with Maduro to ensure that international assistance has a multilateral brand.""Maduro will leave behind a legacy of oppression, economic ruin, and raging insecurity," Angelo warns. "Whether post-Maduro Venezuela devolves into anarchy and conflict, like Afghanistan, or follows the path to full democracy, like Chile, will depend on how Venezuelan authorities and its international partners manage the transition in its earliest days."

The United States and the world were unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic, despite decades of warnings highlighting the inevitability of global pandemics and the need for international coordination. The failure to prioritize and adequately fund preparedness and effectively implement response plans has exacted a heavy human and economic price, and the crisis is not yet over. Emerging and reemerging infectious diseases are a threat to global and national security that neither the United States nor the world can afford to ignore. This Task Force proposes a comprehensive strategy that includes institutional reforms and policy innovations to help the United States and the multilateral system perform better in this crisis and when the next one emerges. Without increased U.S. leadership on and adequate investment in pandemic preparedness and response, the United States and the world will remain unnecessarily vulnerable to epidemic threats. The Council on Foreign Relations sponsors Independent Task Forces to assess issues of current and critical importance to U.S. foreign policy and provide policymakers with concrete judgments and recommendations. Diverse in backgrounds and perspectives, Task Force members aim to reach a meaningful consensus on policy through private deliberations. Once launched, Task Forces are independent of CFR and are solely responsible for the content of their reports. Task Force members are asked to join a consensus signifying that they endorse the general policy thrust and judgments reached by the group, though not necessarily every finding and recommendation. Each Task Force member also has the option of putting forward an additional or a dissenting view.