The RAND Blog

This weekend's elections in Pakistan are more likely to yield continuity than change, an outcome that could offer some opportunities for enhanced engagement between Washington and Islamabad, a pair of RAND experts told reporters on April 6.

During a conference call from Washington, Seth Jones, associate director of RAND's International Security and Defense Policy Center, and Jonah Blank, a senior political scientist, said a relatively free and fair election would be a welcome sign of political stability for a key U.S. partner in South Asia.

“There is an opportunity for reengaging a new civilian leadership that may have a short honeymoon period. …There is an opportunity to reset the U.S. relationship with Pakistan on some key issues,” Jones said.

On Friday, President Obama named Ambassador James F. Dobbins, a veteran diplomat and the current director of the RAND International Security and Defense Policy Center, as his special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“Jim's intellect, skills, and experience will serve the United States well in this critical post,” RAND President and CEO Michael Rich said. “We are honored to have had Jim's wisdom and leadership at RAND for more than a decade and thankful for the numerous contributions he has made to our security and defense research.”

During their administrations, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush turned to Dobbins for a range of difficult assignments, including as envoy for Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti, and Somalia.

This commentary appeared in The Korea Herald on May 7, 2013.

In many ways, the alliance between the U.S. and South Korea is closer today than it has been for some time. But even in a very close relationship, issues will arise that require adjustments. This understanding set the context for the summit between President Barack Obama and President Park Geun-hye. And regardless of the decisions reached at the summit, the details of many agreements will take months to be resolved.

A key challenge to the alliance is the recent round of extreme threats from North Korea, including its declaration of war at the end of March. Pyongyang's persistent belligerence has raised serious concerns about peace and security in Northeast Asia. North Korea's military inaction suggests that its bluster has been directed primarily at an internal audience, which may reflect serious political instability. This instability could present another challenge for the summit.

This commentary appeared in Chicago Tribune on May 5, 2013.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's high school and college classmates cannot believe he could be responsible for the Boston Marathon carnage. They describe him as kind, friendly and popular. He likes rap, marijuana and had a great time at his senior prom. He was a good student who won a college scholarship. There is no reason to think of him as anything other than a normal teenager — except, of course, the allegations that he and his brother Tamerlan placed explosives near the marathon finish line, killing three and gravely wounding scores, and the manhunt that left Tamerlan and a police officer dead, and Dzhokhar and another officer severely wounded.

As authorities gathered the pieces of this puzzle, one seemed to take the shape of the republic of Chechnya, in Russia's restive North Caucasus region. The Tsarnaev family is ethnic Chechen, though neither brother grew up in the republic. Chechnya is perhaps best known in the West for two recent wars against Russian rule. One ended in 1996 and succeeded partially. The second began in 1999 and failed utterly. In the process, what had been a largely secular separatist movement increasingly took on overtones of religious extremism, forcing those other perspectives out or into cooperation with the Russian government.

This commentary appeared in Christian Science Monitor on May 3, 2013.

North Korea has captured global attention with its provocative behavior in recent months, the latest being this week's sentencing of US citizen and tour leader Kenneth Bae to 15 years of hard labor. Secretary of State John Kerry, during a recent visit to Seoul, vowed that “the United States will, if needed, defend our allies and defend ourselves.”

But after issuing threats, conducting nuclear tests, and launching missiles, what will North Korean leader Kim Jong Un do next?

The remainder of this commentary is available at csmonitor.com.

This commentary appeared in The Wall Street Journal on April 30, 2013.

Ronald Coase ranks among the world's most influential economists, yet he rarely appears in the media spotlight. That's because he channels his influence through other economists, while maintaining a prudent distance from the glare of quotidian policy disputes. Mr. Coase, who received the Nobel Prize for economics in 1991, has originated some of the most important economic ideas of recent years. These include the eponymous Coase Theorem, which states that strong, precisely defined property rights can reduce the social costs of private transactions. He has also pioneered the law-and-economics field, using economic insights to illuminate legal problems. He's 102, yet his intellectual output remains dazzling.

In “How China Became Capitalist,” Mr. Coase and Ning Wang, an assistant professor of global studies at Arizona State University, offer a “historical narrative of the chain of actions” that brought about China's remarkable transformation from a deeply impoverished socialist country to the world's second-largest economy.

This commentary appeared in U.S. News & World Report on May 1, 2013.

Both Israel and the United States now believe that chemical weapons have been used in Syria's civil war, most likely by Syrian government forces. If the rebels have even some of the chemical weapons, that could be worse, for it will mean that they are no longer under government control. They could be used in Syria today and elsewhere tomorrow.

So now what? The pressure for doing something to remove the threat posed by chemical weapons stockpiles is mounting, but there are no good options. The U.S. could selectively provide additional arms and support for President Assad's foes, carefully avoiding those with al-Qaida affiliations. It could demand further investigation by international authorities, which could take months to approve and mobilize. Or it could launch a risky military intervention, with or without the help of allies, in the midst of a civil war.

Perhaps the worst thing the United States could do, though, is nothing.

This commentary appeared on The Health Care Blog on April 30, 2013.

Dementia is a chronic disease of aging that robs people of cognitive function, leaving them unable to tend to even the most basic activities of living. But demented persons can live for many years, incurring long-term care bills that can leave surviving spouses impoverished and estates depleted.

In a study published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, my colleagues and I reported that the total costs of paying for care for seniors with dementia in the United States are expected to more than double by 2040. Medicaid pays these costs for the poor, and some people have private insurance. But for large numbers of elderly Americans, dementia brings not only human suffering but financial ruin as well.

Drug and alcohol use among the nation's youth remains a problem. While evidence-based prevention programs are available, practitioners, especially those in smaller, community-based settings, often have difficulty using them. This is because resources are limited, prevention is complex, and communities often lack the capacity to adapt and implement “off the shelf” programs. A result of this “gap” between research and practice is that communities and schools often do not use the most evidence-supported programs, and often implement them poorly when they do.

For example, a recent report (PDF) by the Department of Education showed that fewer than 10 percent of schools were implementing evidence-based drug prevention programs, and fewer than half of those schools were doing a good job of implementing those programs. Common ways to bridge this gap, such as information dissemination, fail to change practice or outcomes at the local level, in part because they do not sufficiently address capacity or use community input. Building a community's prevention capacity through greater collaboration between researchers and practitioners could improve the quality of prevention and outcomes.

This commentary appeared on the RWJF's Human Capital Blog on April 29, 2013.

Dementia, a chronic disease characterized by significant impairment of cognitive functioning, afflicts 15 of every 100 Americans over age 70 — and it is their caregivers who are perhaps most familiar with the disease's effects.

Family members are often the ones who find themselves navigating the complex system of nursing homes, in-home health care, and health insurance (Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance), all while dealing with heartbreaking changes in the physical and mental functioning of their spouses, siblings, parents or grandparents. Indeed, my own family is struggling to sort through an overwhelming number of options and decisions to help ensure that my 86-year old grandmother receives the best available care now that she is unable to live without daily assistance.