Charles Kenny

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The Water Wars That Weren't

Technology and trade can ensure water scarcity is not a constraint on progress. In PERC Reports.

A Proposed UK Party Manifesto Section on Global Cooperation

A CGD note. Can't hurt asking....

America Shouldn’t Copy China’s Belt and Road Initiative

A co-authored Foreign Affairs piece with Scott Morris. The US should leave infrastructure to the World Bank and 'compete' bilaterally with China on human rather than physical capital.

Biden’s Foreign Aid Is Funding the Washington Bubble

With Scott Morris in Foreign Policy. Only 3.9 percent of US foreign assistance is actually executed by recipient country governments. Take out Jordan and that's less than one percent.  Pathetic and diplomatically counter-productive.

Contact Trace

Three years ago I wrote a 'novel'. Even got as far as getting an agent, and by golly my timing was good.  It was a story about a new infectious disease spreading worldwide and the bungling US response.  But in the end what the process demonstrated is that I should probably stick to non-fiction.  If you can't sell umbrellas when the skies are fast-darkening, maybe it says something about your umbrellas.  One editor's response from January 2020: "I thought the story had a certain resonance that might appeal to readers worried about real-world pandemics, but I didn’t always feel the plot had a fresh enough hook." That was kind: there are parts that I already cringe at having written. Still, I find it of minor personal historical interest, --not least that there were things I though were stretching plausibility in fiction that turned out to happen in real life a few months later.  Here it is.

5 Reasons to Be Optimistic About 2022

For Foreign Policy. More equitable vaccination, new vaccines, more sustainable power, India will be the world's largest country, renewed economic growth and some hope for tigers.

A Dark Pandemic Year Could Still Portend a Brighter Future

Maybe... for Foreign Affairs.

Your World, Better

6046cfa1-d6ae-4d12-94ca-9a0ef7df86faYour World, Better: Global Progress and What You Can Do About It is a book written for the smart and engaged middle school student.  It looks at how America and the World has changed since the reader's parents and grandparents were young: what has happened to health and wealth, homes, school and work, rights and democracy, war and the environment, happiness and depression.   It talks about the things that have gotten better, the sometimes-intensifying challenges that remain, and what readers can do about them. 

Your World Better is optimistic, but it doesn’t shy away from the considerable problems we face: from inequality through discrimination and depression to climate change and infectious threats.  It is meant to encourage kids to help make the world better themselves: tip them from a sense of powerlessness toward action, not into complacency.

The pdf of Your World Better is available to download here for free.  Or you can buy a kindle version for 99 cents or a hard copy for $8.10 on Amazon (or six pounds on UK Amazon here).  Any author royalties from those sales will be donated to UNICEF (so far, a bit more than $800 has been donated, thanks!). I talk about the book to Marian Tupy for the Human Progress podcast and to two (fantastic) middle schoolers for NPR.  Then I did a Slack chat with five middle schoolers for Slate. A CGD discussion about the book and talking to children about progress is here. And here's a fifteen minute video about the book (or try it on Youtube).  I am happy for the *text* (not pictures) to be copied or redistributed in any medium, and/or remixed or transformed for any purpose, with attribution.

"Everyone, no matter how old, or how young, should read this. I’m sending to grandkids and their parents." --Nancy Birdsall

"Great read for middle school kids who want to understand how the world is getting better -- and can become even more so!" --Parag Khanna

"How can you pass up a free book?! And one that is so relevant for today? If you know a middle school student or teacher, pass this along! Incredibly fresh and honest." --Karen Schulte 

"Kids are taught that everything's getting worse and we're all doomed--factually incorrect, and a message that leads to cynicism & fatalism, not constructive action. An antidote: Charles Kenny's new Your World, Better..." --Steven Pinker

 

The U.S. has always been — and always will be — a nation of nations

On the fact we're a nation of immigrants worried about immigration.  In the Dallas Morning News.

A Manifesto for Globalization

A CGD note in part based on this.

You Do Not Need to Worry About the Bubonic Plague Squirrel in Colorado

For Slate. Title says it all.

The World Health Organization isn’t perfect, but it needs more money and power, not less

In Technology Review.  

Nationalism Can’t Beat a Global Problem

For slate: America First can't beat a pandemic.

Direct cash payments work. We’re about to see how

In the Washington Post on the COVID-19 stimulus component that is giving cash directly to people.  

Pandemics Close Borders—And Keep them Closed

Leaders around the world have restricted nonessential travel to varying degrees, some sealing off their borders entirely, to help curb the spread of the coronavirus. In the past, these measures may have worked. But the history of disease-driven border lockdowns has some sobering lessons.  For Politico.

Close the Pentagon: Rethinking National Security for a Positive-Sum World

CLOSEPENTAGONCOVER

“You don’t have to be a peacenik or a lefty to be persuaded by this trenchant and witty book that the 21st-century American war machine is stupefyingly wasteful, protecting us against threats that no longer exist and failing to protect us against those that do.”

--Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor, Harvard University, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature.

“An agile and effective study concluding that the US military is not only wildly inefficient, but mostly designed to deal with problems that scarcely exist and inadequate or even irrelevant for dealing with problems that actually do exist.”

--John Mueller, Ohio State University and Cato Institute

 

The Pentagon, famed as the world’s largest office building, recently underwent a renovation. It took ten times as long and four times the cost of constructing the building in the first place.  That history leaves the Pentagon as a potent symbol of America’s foreign policy infrastructure: dominated by a massive, increasingly inefficient military machine better suited to the challenges of the mid-Twentieth Century than the early Twenty-First. 

My new book Close the Pentagon describes the changing threats to America’s national security: the decline of war and the rise of global challenges that can only be tackled with collective action.  It outlines the awesome inefficiency of the Department of Defense at its traditional role of war fighting and its limited capacity to adapt to new tasks.  It concludes that America’s foreign policy apparatus should be overhauled –US military spending reduced to the global average with savings used to support economic assistance, global collective action and domestic priorities. 

Close the Pentagon is available as a paperback ($7.99) and e-book ($3.99) and the first chapter is available for free here.   I wrote about it on the CGD blog in The Hill at Responsible Statecraft, Politico and for Barrons, and talked about it to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.  There's a pretty negative review by David Swanson here: beyond the fact he doesn't like my writing style and disagrees on the importance of resource dependency as a cause of conflict, I think perhaps he was looking for a book about the many moral failings of US foreign policy and I wrote one about the ineffectiveness of the Pentagon in responding to national security threats.

Below a brief overview of the book’s argument.

Prophecies of peace have gone awry before and it is too early to declare we are in a totally new era.  But the decline of violence means that –currently at least-- we are left with the remnants of war.  Violent threats to the US and its allies are from small groups not big armies, and are a serious but exaggerated policing issue. 

There are arguments over the causes of the relative peace of the post-1945 era: nuclear weapons, deterrence, hegemony, new institutions, new values, new connections.  But while many factors may play a role, there are reasons to doubt the importance of a large US military to peace and reasons to highlight economic and social factors including new norms of behavior.

The changing nature of state power and economic wealth from people and land through resources and manufacturing to institutions, ideas and interconnection means that war is no longer a route to power.  Resource reliance is now the curse of poor countries, and fighting for those resources a strategy that only makes sense in broken economies.  That suggests the death of zero sum international relations and the importance of integration to global prosperity and peace. 

Interconnection is a factor in some of the new threats to national security. New global challenges include the warming atmosphere, polluted seas, disease, financial instability and international crime.  These threats require collective response to shore up the global commons and preserve and extend our positive sum gains. 

The US military is obscenely, inefficiently, over-fit for the purpose of deterring aggression against America and its allies.  At the same time, the Pentagon’s effectiveness in foreign entanglements is demonstrated by its mostly-not-winning-streak over the past seven decades: Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq.  US military presence doesn’t prevent civil wars and the US Navy is over-equipped for duty against pirates.  A massive Pentagon bureaucracy, including a huge army of contractors, runs a dysfunctional military management and procurement system.

That inefficiency is one reason the Pentagon should not lead on new national security threats. It is ill designed to tackle cyber-‘war’ or support research and development programs, let alone lead on global pandemic response.  Other tools including aid agencies have a far better track record in delivering results. 

How to respond? The Defense Department still has vital roles: sea lanes protection; logistics for the responsibility to protect; training; defending the homeland and allies.  But new national security threats take global cooperation best managed outside of the Pentagon. Set a short term goal of cutting military spending to one and a half times our nearest competitor’s as part of a realignment of international relations budgets.  The longer term goal should be to reduce defense spending to the global median of 1.5 percent of GDP.

A portion of those savings should be redirected so that the US reaches the United Nations goal of 0.7 percent of GDP going towards aid flows to developing countries.  It should also provide finance for reinvigorated engagement in trade and investment agreements as well as international organizations and treaty making. 

What could go wrong? Even if it is a significant cause of peace, US primacy won’t last.  It is inevitable that America will lose relative power to countries like China, India and Nigeria as they grow richer.  The question is, how do we sustain peace in a multipolar world? The answer: bind the new global powers into a peaceful, rules-bound world system.  And the problem: Washington DC is busy heading in the other direction.  This is the biggest risk to continued global peace and American prosperity that we face.

  

How America Leads Abroad: An Examination of Multilateral Development Institutions

I gave testimony to the House Committee on Financial Services Subcommittee on National Security, International Development, and Monetary Policy (video here).  I said the IBRD should get its capital increase, and the IFC should get its capital increase if it reforms.

The Real Immigration Crisis

For Foreign Affairs.  The next several decades will see populations in Europe and North America age and shrink as people have fewer and fewer children. That trend will hurt economic growth and dynamism and leave too few workers for every retiree. Robots and artificial intelligence will not save rich countries from the economic consequences of a shrinking population. Nor, without a dramatic reversal of current policies toward immigrants, will a flow of workers from elsewhere. To avoid sclerosis and decline, the rich world will have to compete to attract immigrants, not turn them away.

How helping families relocate could increase economic mobility

In the Economist: moving really helps poor kids and support for parents can make that happen.

Can gentrification be a force for positive social change?

For the Economist.  A new paper suggests it displaces few people and often improves life for those who stay.

Why America lost so many of its black teachers

In the Economist: desegregation led to the rise of teacher testing, which has depressed the number of African American teachers.

How many Americans live on $2 a day?

Probably not very many, but the safety net is still a mess.  Me for The Economist.

The benefits of pre-schooling may extend for generations

Me, in The Economist, on pre-K.

Depression is increasing among Americans reaching middle age

For The Economist.  Across genders and race/ethnicities, Americans get more miserable as they reach middle age.  White men still kill themselves more often, though.

Fighting crony capitalism at the World Bank

In The Hill, railing about the the IDA Private Sector Window.

Why illegal crossings on America’s southern border have hit an 11-year high

In large part because the administration is turning away asylum seekers at regular crossing points.  Me in The Economist.

How welfare reform has had a negative effect on the children of single mothers

The 1996 welfare reform effort in the US shrank welfare rolls, moved people into work, increased the number of very poor and led to more antisocial behavior among children.  For the Economist.

Why Are Apple and Google Hosting an App That Subjugates Saudi Women?

Me in Slate: Absher  is used for a number of government services in Saudi Arabia, but it also allows Saudi men to specify when and where adult women under their “guardianship,” including unmarried daughters and wives, are allowed to travel. It is hosted by both Google and Apple.  This is bad.  

How immigration-law enforcement can affect high-skilled American women

Undocumented immigrants provide a lot of child care.  If they aren't around, it is harder for working mothers.  For The Economist.

The Trump administration is driving up citizenship applications

Scare people that they may not be able to apply for citizenship later, they will apply for citizenship now.  Me in the Economist.

Bank of America

The U.S. shouldn’t get to pick the head of the World Bank. And not just because Trump is president.  Me in Slate.

How equal rights can boost economic growth

For the Economist --gay marriage and more minorities in the workforce are good for the economy.  Patriotic heterosexual white men should support equality.

Americans want equality at work; less so at home

You can't have equality in the workplace if you don't have it in parenting and childcare.  Me in The Economist.

Why life expectancy in America is down again

Opioids and a lagging public health response.  In The Economist.

Is political polarisation cutting Thanksgiving dinners short?

Bipartisan dinners are shorter.  In the Economist.

The gap between poor and rich neighbourhoods is growing

On stagnating regional convergence in the US.  In the Economist.

What Robopocalypse?

Suggesting there is no end of work.  For SAIS Perspectives.

The Bogus Backlash to Globalization

Resentful Nativists Oppose Free Trade and Immigration—Don’t Appease Them.  Me in Foreign Affairs.

America’s fertility rate continues its deep decline

I you want more babies, let in more women and help them work.  For the Economist.

What Should Silicon Valley Companies With Saudi Money Do?

Discussing Anand Giridharadas' idea for a boycott on accepting Saudi investment money, in Slate.

Trade and immigration have never been so popular in America

Trump is in a shrinking minority.  For the Economist.

The American dream doesn’t exist in many neighbourhoods

Where and to whom you are born in the United States are both hugely important to life chances.  For the Economist.

How life expectancy varies across America

In one town the average age of death is 97; in another, it is 56.  For the Economist.

America’s unfair voting laws

ID laws and other restrictions on voting don't lower voter fraud but they do disenfranchise minorities.  For the Economist.

Why is bankruptcy rising among older Americans?

In part because baby boomers have always been profligate.  For the Economist.

The cost of rescinding work permits for spouses of immigrants on H-1B visas

Piece on Trump administration getting rid of work authorizations for spouses of H1-B visas, for the Economist.

Is it getting harder for American women to combine work and family?

For the Economist: expectations are up, support for parents isn't.

Women, especially younger ones, could swing the mid-terms

Women don't like Donald Trump.  They also appear energized to vote.  For the Economist.

Immigrants and the wage gap

For the Economist.  Slowing wage convergence between migrants and natives isn't driven by lower skills as much as by native discrimination.

America's Cultural Divide Isn't Growing

For the Economist: there are sometimes big divisions in attitudes and consumer behavior, but they aren't growing between races, genders, income groups, religions, regions or urban and rural areas. 

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