The conventional narrative of transnational crime describes a weak nation-state exploited by sophisticated organized criminal groups. In this zero-sum worldview, the state loses control as nonstate actors gain power. In some countries, however, government institutions—from executive bodies to intelligence services to central banks to the police—are involved in a  range of illicit activities. In a recent piece in Foreign Affairs, Moises Naim labeled this phenomenon “mafia states,” arguing that the new breed of criminal statehood poses a particular threat to the international community by “blurring the conceptual line” between the licit and illicit worlds.

To analyze the structure of illicit networks and assess gaps, weaknesses, and opportunities in anticrime efforts, Google Ideas and the Council on Foreign Relations launched a new roundtable series. The second roundtable, “Illicit Networks: Mafia States, Nonstate Actors,” convened fifteen experts to deconstruct the concept of ‘mafia states’ and explore its role in illicit networks. The discussion (summarized here) yielded several important observations.

• When it comes to the illicit, the traditional dichotomy between states and nonstate actors is no longer applicable. Criminal organizations are inherently attracted to states or regions where there are market opportunities, oversight is limited, institutions are weak, corruption is pervasive, and rule of law is absent. But illicit networks can also be harnessed by the elements of the state to advance political interests and reap profits. To varying degrees, states such as North Korea, Venezuela, Myanmar, Guinea-Bissau, Russia, and Ukraine, among others, rely heavily on profits from transnational crime. Existing multilateral tools to combat transnational crime, however, have yet to acknowledge and adapt to this convergence between states and organized crime. International treaties and initiatives primarily target nonstate criminal actors, and rely on states to comply with and implement recommended policies—a tactic that is significantly undercut when the state itself is involved in illicit activities.

• Mafia states are not a “new” threat. States have long been engaged in, or complicit with, illicit activity. For centuries, states smuggled goods to evade taxes and tariffs. For example, both the American Continental Army and the Confederate Army depended on transatlantic smuggling during the Revolutionary War and Civil War. And no contemporary criminal organization rivals the power and influence of the British East India Company, which held a monopoly on the global opium trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But the establishment of new global prohibition regimes, particularly over the past several decades, exponentially increased the number of illicit commodities—including trafficking of endangered species, counterfeit products, and drugs—which were previously unregulated. Criminal groups as well as states have exploited the increasing demand for prohibited goods and the high profits available to those who assume the risks of trading in them.

• The term “mafia state” oversimplifies a broad spectrum of criminal-state relationships. There are weak and failing states like Somalia that are coopted or directly challenged by criminal organizations; “swiss cheese” states that have pockets of integrity and holes of criminality, such as Guatemala; and states that are fully functioning criminal enterprises, epitomized best by North Korea—also known to U.S. officials as the “Soprano state.” But illicit activity is not confined to weak or rogue states. China’s counterfeit industry employs millions of workers, and several high-ranking officials in Venezuela have been officially labeled “drug kingpins” by the U.S. government. In order for law enforcement to be effective, policymakers need a sharper and more nuanced understanding of the nature and functions of illicit networks.

• State collusion in transnational crime exacerbates law enforcement challenges. As sovereign entities, government institutions and officials enjoy a certain degree of protection and noninterference. Sheltered by the state apparatus, criminal groups can conduct their operations in relative security and stability, as well as gain access to critical tools of their trades, from passports to shipping registries to false end-user certificates for arms transfers. The usurpation of sovereignty for illegal activities plays havoc with global law enforcement cooperation. To address and overcome these challenges, Moises Naim proposes establishing “coalitions of the honest” among countries that meet certain standards of conduct. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), for example, helped to set new norms for anti-money laundering and increase transparency in financial transactions.

• Critical information gaps impede progress. The activities of illicit networks are inherently difficult to track and quantify. Official statistics from international institutions and organizations are often based on fuzzy estimates provided by states themselves, which have a stake in the outcome (whether it is to increase financial assistance or mask the problem). Moreover, there is no single institution that collects solid data on illicit networks or facilitates information sharing among political authorities around the world. Technology may help overcome this information vacuum, if it is harnessed to organize, visualize, and publicize data in the public domain. Recent user-generated initiatives such as I Paid a Bribe, a website where citizens report instances of corruption, offer promising models for the future. 

Trends in population growth, urbanization, water scarcity, and climate change, are increasing the vulnerability of large populations to storms, droughts, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and pandemics. In an era of globalization, shocks in one place can now resonate around the world, as demonstrated by the 2007-2008 global food crisis, which was caused (PDF) by spiking oil prices, droughts, and government policies with unforeseen consequences. The 2010 Icelandic volcano disrupted global trade and caused problems ranging from severe economic losses in Kenya to challenges for the U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Meanwhile, both governments that have financed comprehensive disaster relief efforts, and their private nongovernmental organization counterparts, are facing an era of contracting budgets. In fact, last year, the U.S. Senate refused to fund disaster relief for the first time, after Hurricane Irene swept up the East Coast.

To help understand the threat posed by natural disasters in the near future, and potential policies to mitigate their damage, CFR’s International Institutions and Global Governance (IIGG) program sponsored a workshop on April 12, 2012, in Washington, DC, to gather experts on international cooperation and disaster relief from the U.S. State Department, Defense Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. intelligence community, the United Nations, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, and academia. A full summary of the discussion can be read here. Below are some interesting takeaways.

• The developed world remains at risk: While natural disasters tend to generate higher numbers of deaths or injuries in less developed countries that often suffer from weaker infrastructure and less robust medical systems, the developed world remains at risk. The tropical storm Katrina in the United States, and the tsunami and earthquake that struck Japan in 2010 served as wakeup calls. The complex infrastructure of developed countries is often extremely fragile, and may be vulnerable to natural disasters we don’t fully comprehend, such as magnetic storms generated by solar flares. One study, for example, concluded that a massive solar storm on the scale of the Carrington Event of 1859 would knock out the U.S. power grid from Canada to Georgia, and from the East Coast to the Mississippi for as long as sixteen months, and incite societal panic.
• Local capacity is crucial: Local officials and analysts are best positioned to understand the threat and the nature of damage and needed assistance in the wake of a disaster. This contrasts with certain bureaucratic missteps that often occur when decisions are being made at higher levels by officials who don’t really understand the threat on the ground or what resources are needed. A number of promising initiatives, from Australia to Taiwan to Pakistan are helping train local officials and citizens to prepare for, and respond to, disasters.
• Rising powers are expected to become more involved: Though rising powers are beginning to respond, they are not homogenous, and questions remain about which of them will step up to the plate. For its part, Brazil moved into the ranks of the top ten donors to the World Food Program last year. On the other hand, some nations, like Turkey, India, and to some extent China, resist being labeled “donors”, not wanting to raise expectations. China and Russia have expressed their view that the current aid system is “broken” and they are not interested in supporting it. China and India, however, suffer from high exposure to natural disasters, and thus may participate more in global disaster risk reduction and response efforts. In short, the extent and impact of contributions from rising powers remains to be seen.
• The U.S. Response Is Overly Militarized: While the U.S. commitment to providing global assistance after natural disasters has been laudable, it relies too heavily on the logistics of the U.S. military and financial strength of the Department of Defense. In a survey of twenty-two disaster prone nations, governments attested that they don’t want boots on the ground, but they do believe they would benefit from innovations and consultations on their own threat assessments and response plans. At the same time, reducing the vulnerability of an area is inextricably linked to development. Properly safeguarding housing, infrastructure, and communications systems so that a disaster does not destroy them is typically less expensive than rebuilding after a disaster strikes. U.S. civilian agencies are best positioned to support such development in a sustainable way, by working with local partners and domestic organizations to bolster their capacity. Especially as the United States seeks to reduce spending, investing locally to build their response capabilities will reduce the costs for the United States.

On CFR.org, I argue that at first glance, NATO’s upcoming May 19-21 Chicago summit can be seen as a moment of triumph, but that there are fundamental questions about the future of the alliance that will go undiscussed. My colleagues in the United Kingdom, Israel, Turkey, and Russia, don’t necessarily agree though. Read their opinions on the second installment of CFR’s new Council of Council’s Global Expert Roundup.

The alliance’s successful military intervention in Libya demonstrated to many NATO’s continued relevance as the world’s premier collective defense organization and the only military alliance capable of conducting intense operations beyond its borders. With critical air support, the alliance prevented the mass slaughter of civilians and helped overthrow an execrable dictator, Muammar al-Qaddafi, without the loss of a single allied serviceman. NATO remains, in the words of its new Strategic Concept, “an essential source of stability in an unpredictable world.”

Behind the scenes, however, the picture is less rosy. The alliance continues to confront fundamental questions about how it should define its role and mission in the twenty-first century, and whether its member nations have the political will and capacity to fulfill its mission. In particular, countries are ambivalent about whether the alliance should continue to conduct operations outside the North Atlantic, or limit missions to member nations’ borders. The collection of twenty-eight sovereign democracies is sometimes fractious, each with its own national interests, threat perceptions, and domestic constraints. None of these issues is officially on the Chicago agenda, but they will form part of the background for discussions and will surely influence the commitments NATO nations are prepared to make when it comes to conducting out-of-area operations, developing new collective capabilities, and forging partnerships with non-member states.

Three items will dominate the official agenda in Chicago: navigating a tricky endgame in Afghanistan, implementing NATO’s new “smart defense” doctrine, and bolstering the alliance’s global partnerships.

View the entire Expert Brief here on CFR.org. 

After so many splashy summits, President Obama’s decision to hold this year’s Group of Eight (G8) meeting at Camp David is inspired. The success of leaders-level meetings depends, above all, on opportunities for candid conversation away from media flashbulbs and crowded convention halls. The secluded setting—nestled in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains—will provide a welcome intimacy to deliberations among leaders of the world’s advanced market democracies. Given their daunting global agenda, they can certainly use the peace and quiet.

The real action may be hidden from view. A year ago the G8 emerged from an early retirement, thanks to its strong performance in Deauville, France. Essentially, leaders from the developed world have clearly decided that it’s useful to continue meeting as a smaller group, hammer out some consensus on the major problems that they all confront, and coordinate a response to major global shifts—without having to talk about every (often valid) gripe of all twenty countries in the G20. The seven leaders (not including the Russian substitute) have a diverse set of tasks from their electorates, but are far more aligned than the G20—in terms of both motivations and domestic constraints. The forum isn’t likely to trail blaze a path forward on Syria, nonproliferation, or world hunger, but will give some of the world’s most powerful men and women a valuable opportunity to understand each other’s positions and debate the way forward. So what’s on the agenda?

Advancing Political Transition in the Middle East and North Africa: The centerpiece of last year’s Deauville summit was its Declaration on the Arab Spring, including the launching of a “Deauville Partnership” designed to foster continued political liberalization and economic development (in Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Turkey, and Libya). As the turbulence of the past twelve months has underscored, the path to participatory politics and prosperity in the Arab world remains volatile and uncertain. At Camp David, the conferees will likely reaffirm their support for religious pluralism, democratic principles, anticorruption and the rule of law, market liberalization, and increased women’s political participation. (There’s just not much more they can do.) The G8 is unlikely to offer any breakthrough initiative on the crisis in Syria, where the Annan Plan has all but collapsed. Following the acrimony of the Libyan intervention, and because of their longstanding support for the Assad regime, Moscow has little appetite to call for stronger coercive steps against Damascus.

Hollande’s Arrival: Camp David will mark the first foray into international summitry for François Hollande, France’s first Socialist president in seventeen years, who will have been sworn into office just three days before and lacks any foreign policy experience. The assembled leaders will surely press him to walk back two controversial campaign commitments—his pledge to revisit the painstakingly negotiated fiscal pact to stabilize the eurozone and his promise to remove French combat troops from Afghanistan during 2012 (two years ahead of schedule). Europe’s budget-cutting treaty finally earned the region a little confidence, but it is already on shaky ground. To prevent it from unraveling, German Chancellor Angela Merkel in particular will need to show flexibility on the pace at which Europe’s highly-indebted nations cut spending. As for Afghanistan, NATO insisted last week that it expects France to maintain its troops in the country. If Hollande digs in his heels, the result could be acrimony at the NATO summit immediately following.

Putin’s No-Show: Host Obama will also need to accommodate an unexpected but familiar guest, Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, standing in for new (and old) President Vladimir Putin—who is apparently determined to snub the U.S. president after an election campaign replete with anti-American rhetoric—as well as growing pique at congressionally-inspired moves to punish Russia for its human rights abuses. Putin’s move surely annoyed White House officials who had shifted the G8 meeting from Chicago (which will host the NATO summit immediately afterwards) in part to placate non-NATO member Russia. At Camp David, the question for the G8’s Western leaders will be whether they can actually pocket commitments from the more sympathetic Medvedev—or whether he is even empowered to speak for Russia.

Bolstering Nuclear Nonproliferation: Over the past decade, the G8 has become a hub of efforts to control and reverse the spread of nuclear weapons. Camp David will review progress. This includes evaluating implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1540 (which requires UN members to prevent WMD from falling into the hands of nonstate actors), as well as efforts to build on the 2010 and 2012 Nuclear Security Summits, in assisting nations in improving the security of their nuclear and radiological holdings. The G8 is unlikely, however, to achieve major progress to confront the challenge of Iran, despite increased concerns contained in IAEA reports of the potential military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program. Given Russia’s cool(ing) relations with the West, the final communiqué is unlikely to call for anything more than full Iranian compliance with its international obligations.

Delivering on Food Security: The sole session at Camp David devoted to development will focus on how to bring reliable food supplies to the one billion people who go to bed hungry. In 2009, at their summit in Italy, the G8 launched the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative (AFSI). That initiative, championed by president Obama, committed donors to invest $22 billion over the next three years in agricultural development, with a particular emphasis on empowering women smallholders. At Camp David, the G8 will take stock of what’s been done over the past three years—and have invited four African heads of state to join them for this conversation. The bottom line: the international community has been slow to deliver on aid, disbursing only 22 percent of the $22 billion as of last July, thanks in part to low recipient absorptive capacity. Contributions to a trust fund set up to support AFSI have also lagged: Of the forty plus donors in L’Aquila, only seven have pledged money to it. More disturbingly, the nongovernmental organization ActionAid reports that donors have sidestepped country-owned plans with at least three quarters of their assistance.

Given fiscal realities, the Obama administration and other donors are reluctant to pledge additional agricultural aid and are instead focusing on stimulating private sector involvement in African agriculture—through reforms to land tenure, credit services, trade liberalization, and the like. Such changes are long overdue. But it’s unclear that private sector investment alone will address the chronic malnutrition that afflicts at least 200 million children around the world. A comprehensive approach to global food security must include a public investment component, reflect the priorities of local farmers, and focus on human nutrition as well as simple food production.

When it comes to “rising powers,” the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, and especially China—tend to get the most press. But there’s another emerging player that promises to shape world politics in the twenty-first century with its robust growth, political evolution, and strategic choices. It is Turkey, a country that straddles some of today’s most critical divides: between Europe and the Middle East, between the West and the developing world, between secular democracy and religious piety. Turkey’s evolving might, its geographic position, and model of moderate political Islam make it a natural candidate for “strategic partnership” with the United States. This is the conclusion of U.S. Turkey Relations, a just-released CFR task force report co-chaired by former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright and former national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley—and directed by my able colleague, Steven A. Cook.

What makes Turkey so special? Real estate, for one thing. Turkey is both a physical and symbolic bridge between the West and the turbulent Arab and broader Muslim worlds. There is little that the United States can do to respond to the deepening crisis in Syria, for example, whether it is imposing sanctions or launching military intervention, without buy-in from Ankara. But Turkey’s significance to Washington is far greater than location. Politically, it offers reforming Arab states like Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt a compelling governance model, proving that a ruling Islamic party (in this case the Justice and Development Party or AKP) can preside over a vibrant democracy that brings sustained growth (including a red-hot 10 percent rise in GDP in 2010) to its people. Turkey shows Islamist reformers that there is indeed a middle ground between strongman rule and sharia law.

In their public comments accompanying the report’s release, the co-chairs were effusive about Turkey’s prospects, with Hadley calling it “one of the five or six most important countries in the world today.” A bit of hyperbole, perhaps, since Turkey currently ranks only seventeenth globally in GDP (PPP), fifteenth in military expenditure, and eighteenth in population.  Still, it clearly belongs in the top ranks of emerging powers, as reflected in its G20 membership and its increasing determination to flex its diplomatic muscles—albeit not always successfully, as in the ill-considered 2010 effort with Brazil to head off UN Security Council sanctions on Iran.

Notwithstanding occasional bilateral frictions, including over Israeli conduct, Turkey’s emergence as a diplomatic player is something the United States should celebrate. As the CFR report makes clear, the two countries’ interests are broadly aligned on numerous regional and global issues, from promoting stability in the Middle East to ensuring reliable flows of energy, combating terrorism, curtailing WMD proliferation, expanding international trade and investment, and advancing global development. The challenge is to turn these shared interests into common strategies and coordinated policies, through a more structured, and regularized process of consultation modeled on the U.S.-China strategic and economic dialogue—one of the report’s most compelling (and easily accomplished) recommendations.

The CFR report does not sugarcoat Turkey’s internal challenges and political shortcomings. While celebrating the transformation wrought by the Erdogan government, the task force bemoans the AKP’s sometime authoritarian tendencies, including crackdowns on journalistic freedom and judicial independence. It also cautions that Turkey’s transformation is incomplete, particularly when it comes to the evolving, fraught relationship between the civilian government and the Turkish military. Finally, the report acknowledges that the unresolved position of Turkey’s Kurdish minority may limit its role as a model for multiethnic democracy in the Middle East. The task force recommends that the United States and other democracies deepen their diplomatic efforts to persuade Turkey to “write a constitution that will advance and deepen democracy” on each of these fronts.

Upgrading the U.S.-Turkey partnership is especially urgent when Europe is increasingly inward-looking and internally divided, with nations focused on their own ongoing macroeconomic and fiscal difficulties. The European crisis has put on indefinite hold the question of whether Turkey will ever be admitted to the EU, and, in turn, made many Turks question the advantages of EU membership. In the absence of progress on that front, a U.S.-Turkish strategic partnership offers a way to ensure that Turkey keeps one foot anchored in the West, even as it pursues a more ambitious diplomatic and trade agenda to its south and east. One priority for the United States, the task force suggests, is expanding modest trade between the two countries, by negotiating a bilateral Free Trade Agreement. Another step would be to upgrade its role in the NATO alliance in recognition of Turkey’s stalwart performance in Afghanistan (including commanding the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on three separate occasions).

Integrating Turkey into U.S. diplomatic relations would be another forward-looking step by the Obama administration to adjust to the twenty-first century and its changing power dynamics. Having already paid more attention to Brazil and India, and shored up a constructive (though tense) relationship with China, a partnership with Turkey is a logical next step. The world is changing and the United States must adapt its diplomacy.

After emerging from the 2008 financial crisis relatively unscathed, Brazil’s inevitable entrance into the club of major global powers is increasingly accepted. The Internationalist and Carlos Simonsen Leal of the Brazilian Getulio Vargas Foundation discuss Brazil’s perspective on global finance and international security. Simonsen says:

1. “Every sensible Brazilian” is worried about the actions of the U.S. Federal Reserve and European Central Bank. Brazil, having suffered through hyperinflation, believes their injection of liquidity into markets is “dangerous.”

2. The exchange rates of the Chinese renminbi and the overvaluation of the real relative to the dollar are sources of concern for Brazil. “We are not protectionist at heart,” argues Simonsen, “but if everyone is playing a game where they don’t mind about liquidity and they want to devalue their currencies, we are not going to risk inflation.”

Watch this video on youtube here.

3. Brazil is opening many new embassies and consulates. It is motivated not only by commercial diplomacy (cultivating broader markets for Brazilian exports), but also by a desire to have a benign influence on relations among countries. “After all, Brazil is a country that hasn’t had a war in 150 years. Not many countries can say that.”

4. Brazil is a strong supporter of democracy, and has many common interests with democracies. “We’d like to see democracy everywhere,” says Simonsen.

5. Brazilians are divided about joining the United Nations Security Council. Opponents worry that it may be too costly, or that it’s too early–or perhaps that if the time comes for Brazil to join the body, it will be because the Security Council is no longer powerful. For now, the Group of Twenty’s elevation to the premier forum for global economic coordination has satisfied some Brazilian aspirations to flex its muscles around the world.

This video is part of The Internationalist, a series dedicated to in-depth discussions about leveraging multilateral cooperation to meet today’s transnational challenges.

The recent UN alert that drought in the Sahel threatens 15 million lives is a harbinger of things to come.

In the next twenty years, global demand for fresh water will vastly outstrip reliable supply in many parts of the world. Thanks to population growth and agricultural intensification, humanity is drawing more heavily than ever on shared river basins and underground aquifers. Meanwhile, global warming is projected to exacerbate shortages in already water-stressed regions, even as it accelerates the rapid melting of glaciers and snow cover upon which a billion people depend for their ultimate source of water.

This sobering message emerges from the first U.S. Intelligence Community Assessment of Global Water Security. The document predicts that by 2030 humanity’s “annual global water requirements” will exceed “current sustainable water supplies” by forty percent. Absent major policy interventions, water insecurity will generate widespread social and political instability and could even contribute to state failure in regions important to U.S. national security. (Look here for a webcast from the Woodrow Wilson Center of experts and U.S. government officials discussing the findings.)

The simultaneous ubiquity and scarcity of water is one of Earth’s little ironies. Globally, 97.5 percent of H2O is contained in world’s oceans. Of the planet’s “fresh” water (the residual 2.5%), more than two-thirds is encased in ice packs and glaciers, particularly in Antarctica and Greenland, another thirty percent in groundwater, and almost one percent in high latitude permafrost. That leaves us with about 0.4 percent of global fresh water to account for: about two-thirds of that is contained in freshwater lakes, with the rest distributed among soil moisture (12 percent), the atmosphere (9.5 percent), wetlands (8.5 percent), rivers (1.5 percent) and vegetation (1 percent).

The need for reliable sources of fresh water is as old as our species, of course. What is new today is the combustible combination of surging global demand for increasingly scarce fresh water in certain volatile regions of poor governance. Several factors are driving this trend.

• Demographic pressure: By 2025, the world’s population will swell from seven to nearly eight billion. The vast majority of this increase will occur in the developing world, particularly Africa. In rapidly expanding urban centers, demand for fresh water will rise for personal consumption, sanitation, industry, and hydroelectric use.
• Declining Fresh H2O supplies: According to Global Water Security, “one third of the world’s population will live near water basins where the water deficit will be larger than 50 percent by 2030.” Many regions that are already experiencing water stress will become “extremely more stressed” or even “exceptionally more stressed.” In some areas, rapid depletion of underground aquifers will be the culprit. In others it will be reductions in meltwater as glaciers recede. In the Andes, hundreds of glaciers will simply disappear in coming decades, eliminating dry season water supplies. Similar, though more gradual, dynamics will be at play in the Himalayas, sometimes referred to as the world’s “third pole”.
• Changing dietary preferences: Meanwhile, the global middle class will surge from 1.8 to 4.9 billion by 2030. Wealthier populations will consume more meat, requiring a shift to more energy and water-intensive agriculture focusing on the raising of livestock and feed grain. Already today, some 93 percent of fresh water consumed is devoted to agriculture (from a combination of riverine, lake, and groundwater sources). Without massive behavioral changes, changing land use and food consumption patterns will place even greater pressures on fresh water resources.
• Poor Water Management: Adapting to a new era of water scarcity will require enormous investments in integrated water management, particularly in the developing world. This would include improving agricultural efficiency through new irrigation systems and drought-resistant crops; renovating infrastructure to reduce urban “water leakage” (which averages 30-50 percent in many cities); clarifying rights to the use of subterranean, riverine, and lacustrine water resources; and introducing pricing mechanisms that reflect the true economic value of water—admittedly a politically volatile step in societies where free (or cheap) access to water is viewed as an inherent, longstanding right.

Significantly, the intelligence community does not predict that increased competition for water resources will, by itself, be a source of violent conflict—a finding borne out by a rich body of research. And yet the same document warns that water stress may well “contribute to the risk of instability and state failure,” particularly “when combined with poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions.” The accompanying map makes clear that many of the countries likely to be hardest hit are fragile and/or authoritarian states located within the broad arc of instability encompassing North Africa, the Horn, the Arabian Peninsula, and southwest, central, and south Asia. In other words, states least able to cope.

Regional tensions over shared river basins will also rise. States will use diplomatic and other leverage to preserve their water interests, and “upstream” states will be tempted to use water as a diplomatic weapon, including by threatening to impede flow. Nonstate actors, notably terrorists and other extremists, may also seek to sabotage dams and other infrastructure.

Regional stability and peace, therefore, increasingly depend on effective management of the world’s 263 shared international water basins. “Today, water basin agreements often do not exist or are inadequate.” Analyzing the current capacity to manage seven major water basins, Global Water Security assesses mechanisms to govern the Brahmaputra and Amu Darya to be “inadequate,” and those governing the Tigris-Euphrates, the Nile, and the Mekong as “limited.” (The Indus and the Jordan rivers earn a higher, “moderate” score.)

By revealing the scale and consequences of global water crisis, the intelligence community has performed a great service. But the policy response to date has been just a drop in the bucket.

Senator Marco Rubio, a leading contender to serve as Mitt Romney’s running mate, has a surprisingly centrist foreign policy vision according to his address at the Brookings Institution last Wednesday. Florida’s junior senator sees a world of complex, transnational threats that make it impossible for the United States to hunker down in an isolationist crouch. He recognizes the need for international partnerships. He’s in favor of foreign aid and the defense of human rights. And he believes military force should always be on the table in defending U.S. security. Senator Rubio, meet Barack Obama.

GOP critics and their op-ed and think tank allies routinely paint Obama as a foreign policy naïf—an appeaser, a peacenik, and worse. They conveniently overlook, as Peter Bergen recently pointed out, that the president has authorized the most intense counterterrorism operations in U.S. history, to say nothing of a victorious coalition operation that deposed Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi. (The president even used his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 2009 to justify the use of military force in a world of evil-doers).

One might have expected Senator Rubio to descend into caricature of Obama, and launch into a full-throated defense of American unilateralism. Refreshingly, he instead outlined a strategy of pragmatic internationalism.

So what did we learn from Rubio?

• Isolationism is impossible in an age of security interdependence: Like Obama, Rubio understands that globalization has erased the line between “foreign” and “domestic,” and that today’s security threats respect no borders. “Every aspect of our lives is directly impacted by global events,” Rubio explained. He offered the security of cities, living costs, and food safety as “ just a few examples of everyday aspects of our lives that are directly related to events abroad and make it impossible for us to focus only on our issues here at home.”
• Multilateralism reflects enlightened self-interest. As the president himself has done, Rubio lionized the generation of far-sighted wise men who had “a vision, the will and the means” to create and defend liberal norms and principles of world order after World War II.

“The purpose of the institutions we established, from the United Nations to the World Bank and the IMF, was to spread peace and prosperity…. Other nations consented to our leadership because they saw what the economic and political values of the American world view had achieved and they wanted the same for themselves.”

• Foreign aid remains essential to secure U.S. objectives. Rubio acknowledged that America’s surging deficit and national debt make slashing the foreign aid budget tempting. But he cautioned that “foreign aid is a very cost-effective way, not only to export our values and our example, but to advance our security and economic interests.” The Senator counted the effort to combat AIDS in Africa as one of the U.S assistance programs he is “proudest of.”

To be sure, Rubio tried to force some daylight between him and the president. He criticized Obama for unsteady leadership in catalyzing global cooperation, for placing undue faith in rising powers, and for overreliance on formal multilateralism.

On each of these counts, Rubio’s indictments were unpersuasive.

Rubio’s main critique was that the Obama administration has too often substituted a pusillanimous “engagement” strategy for true leadership. He condemned the administration for failing to understand that “ effective coalitions don’t form themselves…and more often than not, they can only be instigated and led by the United States.” But Rubio’s supporting evidence was weak. The closest he could come was in chiding the administration for taking the slow route to victory in Libya—but even then, he had to concede that the coalition approach had succeeded.

More broadly, Rubio criticized Obama’s effort to cultivate rising powers as responsible stakeholders. Rubio sees this as a mirage, particularly when it comes to authoritarian China. The hard truth is that “there is no one else to hand off the baton to, even if that were a good idea…who will lead if we do not?” Yet in the same breath, Rubio concedes the United States can’t do it all:

“America should work with our capable allies in finding solutions to global problems. Not because America’s gotten weaker, but because our partners have grown stronger…. Our greatest successes have always occurred in partnership with like-minded nations.”

The problem with this formulation, of course, is that mere assertions of U.S. leadership are no longer enough to secure followers. Compromises must be made, and deals must be cut. The United States cannot simply rely on “like-minded nations.” To address climate change, nuclear proliferation, and a host of other global issues, the United States has no choice but to engage China, as well as other major players like Russia, India, Brazil, and Turkey.

Finally, like other Republicans, Rubio perceives a slavish Democratic devotion to formal international organizations. He charged that American power has been “diminished” by the “one nation, one vote formula of the UN General Assembly or the Human Rights Council,” with “absurd and often appalling results.” Nor is Rubio impressed with Obama’s efforts to forge consensus on the UN Security Council, since, “as we have seen on North Korea, on Syria, on Iran,” that body is too often paralyzed by veto threats from China and Russia.

This critique is simply a bum rap. The Obama administration has never limited multilateral cooperation to working through formal institutions, and it has made pragmatic use of coalitions of the willing. Where the Obama administration differs from its predecessor is in working assiduously within universal membership bodies—including the flawed UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council—in an effort to reform these from the inside out. Finally, Rubio’s critique of the Security Council has little to do with the Obama administration, per se—it’s simply a structural function of the UN Charter’s veto provisions. What Rubio neglects to mention is that the administration, despite the inherent limits of the Council, has achieved the strongest sanctions resolutions ever on both North Korea and Iran.

The real test of whether Rubio is offering something new came in his discussion of Syria. Here the Senator, revealingly, pulled his punches. For weeks, interventionist senators like Joseph Lieberman and John McCain have called for arming the rebels and establishing a no-fly zone. Rubio was more circumspect. While arguing that the United States should  “help the people of Syria bring [Assad] down,” he was vague about what stronger “American leadership” in Syria would actually entail. He spoke of working with Turkey and the Arab League to provide the opposition with food, medicine, communications equipment, “and potentially weapons,” but quickly backtracked in the subsequent Q&A, suggesting in a response that he shares some of the Obama administration’s qualms about the nature and coherence of the Syrian opposition:

“First of all, we have to ensure that whoever it is, if ultimately we equip them or our allies equip them, we understand the nature of who they are, their ability to protect these weapons from falling into the wrong hands… you can’t just give that over to a force that’s largely disorganized and can become—you know, the weapons could fall into the wrong hands in a global marketplace.”

In other words, before arming an inchoate rebel force in a looming sectarian war in the heart of the Middle East, we should probably know who we are dealing with. Such circumspection sounds strangely familiar….

Among the many frustrations in development, perhaps none looms larger than the “resource curse.” Perversely, the worst development outcomes—measured in poverty, inequality, and deprivation—are often found in those countries with the greatest natural resource endowments. Rather than contributing to freedom, broadly shared growth, and social peace, rich deposits of oil and minerals have often brought tyranny, misery, and insecurity to these nations. Fortunately, as my colleague Terra Lawson-Remer points out in a new CFR memo, all is not lost. There are concrete steps the international community can take to help break this curse

First, a few facts. The correlation between energy dependence and authoritarianism is clear. “There are twenty-three countries in the world that derive at least 60 percent of their exports from oil and gas and not a single one is a real democracy,” observes Larry Diamond of Stanford University. There are numerous hypotheses to account for this correlation, as I note in my book, Weak Links: Fragile States Global Threats and International Security. Most obviously, easy resource revenues eliminate a critical link of accountability between government and citizens, by reducing incentives to tax other productive activity and use the revenue to deliver social services effectively. The same revenues also generate staggering wealth that facilitates corruption and patronage networks. Together, they consolidate the power of entrenched elites and regime supporters, sharpening income inequality and stifling political reform. The history of the oil-rich Arab Middle East has long been a case in point—with Saudi Arabia being exhibit A.

Natural resource revenues have also been linked to slow economic growth rates, inequality, and poverty. One culprit may be the so-called “Dutch disease,” whereby resource revenues raise a country’s exchange rate, hurting competitiveness in non-resource sectors. Other factors may include the volatility associated with commodity prices, which can have especially negative impacts on weak-state economies; and the underdevelopment of agricultural and manufacturing sectors during boom periods in resource-based economies. And even when oil abundance produces high growth, it often benefits only a few corrupt elites rather than translating into higher living standards for most of the population. Oil-rich Angola is a case in point. Despite having one of the world’s highest growth rates from 2005 to 2010, averaging some 17 percent annually, its score on the human development index remained a miserable 0.49, and its infant mortality rate was lower than the sub-Saharan African average.

Finally, the very presence of oil and gas resources within developing countries exacerbates the risk of violent conflict. The list of civil conflicts fought at least in part for control of oil and gas resources is long. A partial list would include Nigeria, Angola, Burma, Papua New Guinea (Bougainville), Chad, Pakistan (Balochistan), and of course Sudan. Econometric studies confirm that the risk of civil war greatly increases when countries depend on the export of primary commodities, particularly fossil fuels. At least three factors could explain this correlation. First, the prospect of resource rents may be an incentive to rebel or secede. Second, wealth from resources may enable rebel groups to finance their operations. Third, the high levels of corruption, extortion, and poor governance that accompany resource wealth often generate grievances leading to rebellion.

Given this sorry picture, can anything be done? In fact, the past decade has seen a raft of international initiatives designed to combat corruption and improve governance in resource-rich nations. The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative works to improve revenue management in some thirty resource-rich countries. The Open Government Partnership co-chaired by the United States and Brazil, aims to fight corruption by securing concrete national action plans to fight corruption from governments. The Publish What You Pay and Publish What You Lend campaigns call on transnational corporations and banks to publicize their payments and loans to local authorities. The Equator Principles seek to ensure that private bank investments do not exacerbate environmental and social risks. The World Bank-sponsored Stolen Assets Recovery (StAR) Initiative assists successor governments in tracking down the wealth looted by deposed autocrats. Finally, the Dodd-Frank Act of 2011 mandates annual reports by U.S. extractive industry companies to the SEC disclosing payments to host governments.

While each of these steps is worthwhile, such a piecemeal, fragmented approach suffers from inherent limitations. These initiatives are largely voluntary, and thus unenforceable. They are not universal (and in many cases lack participation from critical emerging economies). And they are riddled with loopholes.

The secret to improving governance in resource rich countries, Lawson-Remer argues, is to improve cooperation among three groups: “capital-exporting countries, international financial institutions, and private sector companies.” To advance this overall goal, she calls on the United States to work with likeminded countries in major multilateral frameworks (including the Group of Eight, Group of Twenty, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the Financial Stability Board) to forge consensus on four priorities.

First, the donor community should extend the International Finance Corporation’s recently updated transparency requirements for extractive industries to all bilateral development finance. Second, the international community should work to build demand for accountability in resource-rich countries by providing grants to local civil society actors, so that they are in a position to monitor revenue flows. Third, major financial centers should agree to harmonize transparency requirements for extractive industries in the biggest stock exchanges, building on the Dodd-Frank legislation. Finally, the financial institutions that subscribe to the Equator Principles should “establish independent monitoring mechanisms” to ensure that their membership is actually living by these standards, rather than paying them mere lip service.

This basket of initiatives, if implemented, could give developing countries a fighting chance to ward off the resource curse. The fate of such proposals, like so much in global economic governance today, will depend on whether they can win support from governments and corporations not only in the OECD world, but also within the dynamic emerging economies that are driving today’s global growth. Finally, given the difficulty of winning global endorsement for all of these initiatives separately, the United States should push them as a package.

As U.S. and EU leaders prepare for the NATO summit in May, the Internationalist talks to Robin Niblett, director of Chatham House, about why NATO will remain important for Europe and the United States even after the war in Afghanistan winds down. Niblett argues:

• The European appetite for NATO missions outside the euro-Atlantic space remains “mixed.” While some countries, like the United Kingdom, are open to a more global role for NATO–such as the one in Afghanistan–others, especially those in Eastern Europe, value the assurance of U.S. protection and are less willing to see NATO engage outside Europe.
• European nations increasingly confront the question of whether to pool assets as they reduce military spending. “In a Europe that shares pretty much the same security threats around it,” governments must decide how to move forward with NATO’s new “smart power” doctrine, which envisions lower defense costs by reducing duplication between countries.
• You’d probably want to invent NATO if you didn’t have it. For all the challenges of NATO operations and disagreements between countries, “in the end, when they do want to act together, they can.” Together, the transatlantic alliance possesses “some of the most sophisticated military assets.” As a result, NATO will remain relevant after Afghanistan.

This video is part of The Internationalist, a series dedicated to in-depth discussions about leveraging multilateral cooperation to meet today’s transnational challenges.