July, 2007

Ever wonder how much money it costs to feed a family for one week? A recent study published by TIME highlights photojournalist Peter Menzel responds to the world’s food crisis. Menzel posed several families from the international community surrounded by their weekly caloric intake.

Excellent piece from this weekend’s NYTime Book Review - Samantha Powers on the War on Terror. Good references listed for further reading, too.

This op/ed's been making the rounds, and our added question mark to the title is intentional.

The first film of entrepreneur, technology policy expert, and former Brookings Fellow Charles Ferguson may be worth a look. No End in Sight, which garnered accolades at Sundance, purports to offer an insider’s view into mistakes made during the planning and early implementation stages of the war.

Rule of law and accountability are early casualties in conflict settings. Michael Gordon describes the Rule of Law Complex established in the Green Zone to detain and try suspected militants.

For all of its problems, Afghanistan does not suffer from a dearth of coalition troops, according to Rory Stewart’s op-ed in the NYT. Citing the decline in security following a British troop increase in Helmand, Stewart’s finds virtue in maintaining a relatively light foreign footprint in Afghanistan.

The Western Project in Africa has more than its fair share of historical baggage. African author Uzodinma Iweala reminds us that just because aid to Africa has become fashionable doesn’t mean that it’s free from that dark past.

Title of the Daily Dish's post and what's happening in Baghdad. We've all seen it coming - the neighborhoods are separating themselves. Mixed areas have become homogenous, and largely not through peaceful means.

The Washington Post has an excellent piece on the status of Hebron, in the West Bank, in today’s edition.  Hebron remains heavily militarized, with Israeli soldiers enforcing a strict division of the city that is meant to separate roughly 700 Israeli settlers from the

In late May, PCR Project Co-Director Rick Barton headed to the PRC to look at Chinese society through the lens of CSIS’s Smart Power project. For two weeks, Rick, his wife, and Freeman Chair in China Studies Research Associate Xiaoqing Lu – a dear friend of the PCR Project – traveled around the country talking with government officials, academics, students, entrepreneurs, and journalists. With stops in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Nanning, and Hong Kong, the main goal of the trip was to gather information on China’s approach to its growing role in the international system. Below is a sampling of photos taken:

From one of our best sources here in-house, a thought-provoking counterpoint to the conventional wisdom on foreign assistance. Key quote: