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Global Governance Initiative
Governments of the world have achieved universal consensus on the need to
confront global challenges collaboratively. Yet while documents such as the
United Nations Millennium Declaration and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
have set goals and targets, the world's inter-related problems of security,
poverty and environment have received little coordinated attention. Instead,
there has been a wide array of competing, overlapping, variably effective, and
often wasteful efforts.
It is clear, however, that where progress is achieved towards the goals, the
process involves a range of actors acting in pre-determined concert with
assigned roles, responsibilities, lines of authority and accountability. Such
mechanisms represent the de facto practice of diplomacy for many of the most
vital issues the international community faces today. Yet there is no law, code
or framework to encompass this reality.
The New America Foundation's Global Governance Initiative moves beyond the
narrow conception of global problem-solving as an inter-state diplomatic
enterprise by exploring the existing modes of successful cooperation among an
array of diverse actors such as governments, international organizations, NGOs,
corporations, philanthropists, and universities. Which models are most effective
and scaleable? Which actors are contributing the most resources? What
international legal frameworks can be created to capture this new diplomatic
context? How is American foreign policy affected by such a diverse array of
domestic actors playing these diplomatic roles?
Through issue-oriented seminars, policy papers, public events, and eventually
a book it will both re-frame discussions of global governance and produce
concrete recommendations towards more flexible and effective structures
appropriate to the 21st century context of diffusing power and legitimacy. The
Global Governance Initiative is directed by Parag
Khanna, who is also a Senior Research Fellow at New America.
With a recount announced for the Iranian election, and opposition candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi demanding a fresh election, the political situation in Iran remains on a knife's edge.
We're witnessing the mobilizing power of anti-incumbent forces, particularly youth, who are fed up, and the role of technology in getting voters to the ballot boxes and out on the street.
The final stretch on the road to Yarkand, about 125 miles from China’s border with Pakistan, feels like the middle east. Each village is a collage of single-storey mud-brick homes with turquoise door-gates. People travel by donkey cart or scooter-rickshaw. Men greet each other the Muslim way (palm to the chest and a slight bow); women wear headscarves. In small villages many signs are still in Uighur, the local language. But for how much longer?
Many see the global economic crisis as proof that we live in one world. But as countries stumble to right the wrongs of the corporate masters of the universe, they are driving us right back to a future that looks like nothing more than a new Middle Ages, that centuries-long period of amorphous conflict from the fifth to the 15th century when city-states mattered as much as countries.
Since taking office, President Obama has made great efforts to address the "Muslim world." In his first formal international television interview, with the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya, he announced, "My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that Americans are not your enemy." Then, speaking to Turkey's parliament, he declared, "The United States is not, and will never be, at war with Islam."
It has been obvious some time that the Pakistani Army has lost control over more than just the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the Swat Valley. The army has now been stripped of the main pillar of its credibility: It is no longer the only institution capable of holding the country together, despite that view being a longstanding axiom in Pakistani politics. Indeed, while some Pakistanis fret about a C.I.A., MI-6 and Afghan and Indian conspiracy to dismember Pakistan, the… more
Grand explanations of how to understand the complex twenty-first century world have all fallen short-until now. In The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order, Parag Khanna shows how America's dominant moment has quickly been replaced by a geopolitical marketplace where the European Union and China compete with the U.S. to shape world order on their own terms.The primary battlefield is the Second World, regions lying between the three leading empires and the third world:… more
Grand explanations of how to understand the complex twenty-first century world have all fallen short-until now. In The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order, Parag Khanna shows how America's dominant moment has quickly been replaced by a geopolitical marketplace where the European Union and China compete with the U.S. to shape world order on their own terms.The primary battlefield is the Second World, regions lying between the three leading empires and the third world:… more
Given the challenging situation in Iraq, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the transatlantic partners share the belief that only a regional approach will be successful in creating a sustainable peace. Americans and Europeans, however, pursue different strategies towards the common goal.Should the Americans engage in a bilateral dialogue with states like Syria and Iran or should Europeans facilitate a new “trialogue”? Are there strategies that have worked in the past in other regions and… more
