While China’s influence in Southeast Asia is inevitable, the region welcomed Secretary Blinken’s recent trip as a counterweight to Beijing, says USIP’s Brian Harding: “[The region] wants balance, which means they want the United States to be as engaged as possible.”
U.S. Institute of Peace experts discuss the latest foreign policy issues from around the world in On Peace, a brief weekly collaboration with SiriusXM's POTUS Channel 124.
Pacific Island nations will be attending the 2023 U.N. Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP28) in Dubai this week with their concerns well known. USIP’s Gordon Peake discussed what the island states will expect from the summit, how the U.S.-China strategic competition is playing out in the region and what more the United States can do to build support in the region.
As the international community discusses new approaches for building peace, the private sector is “increasingly a major part of these geopolitical discussions,” says USIP’s Andrew Cheatham, with more and more “partnerships of states and private sector corporations working together to pursue national interests.”
The 2023 U.N. Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP28) risks becoming two December weeks of negotiations in Dubai rife with visible conflicts: With the chair of COP28 perceived by many as having conflicts of interest with the oil and gas industry, a newly released Global Stocktake report highlights how far global action is from achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Iraq is projected to be among the five countries hardest hit by the impact of climate change. The country is already witnessing depreciating water supply and accelerating desertification, leading to the loss of as much as 60,000 acres of arable land each year, according to Iraqi government and United Nations sources. These climate phenomena threaten the livelihoods and food security of Iraq’s population of an estimated 43 million, creating conditions for displacement, instability and a deterioration of social cohesion. The water crisis has grown steadily amid severe drought, upstream damming practices in Turkey and Iran, and increased domestic consumption within Iraq’s borders.