2011

It's been in place for nearly 30 years; nearly 160 countries (plus the European Union) have signed it. But the United States has yet to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. As a result, the United States, the world's leading maritime power, is at a military and economic disadvantage.

The convention codifies widely accepted principles on territorial waters (which it defines as those extending 12 miles out to sea), shipping lanes and ocean resources. It also grants each signatory exclusive fishing and mining rights within 200 miles of its coast (called the exclusive economic zone). Although the United States originally voted to create the convention and negotiated many provisions to its advantage, Congress has never ratified it.

As researchers and financiers seek to capitalise on obesity innovation, RAND Europe Senior Economist Roland Sturm considers the consequences of not tackling the root cause

Obesity has been in European headlines for several years, attracting substantial resources into research and development. This could be a positive development because obesity is among the biggest public health issues in Europe. But a rapid flow of resources into very narrow areas, together with highly visible and exaggerated media exposure, has led to an outcome that more resembles California's Gold Rush than a route toward effective health policy.

The options available to the United States and its partners in Libya have sharply narrowed. As the US did in Bosnia, NATO and others must develop a train-and-equip program for the Libyan rebels that would help the opposition government gain control, oust Qaddafi, and establish a democracy.

The insurrection in Libya against the 42-year dictatorship of Muammar Qaddafi has turned into a military stalemate. The battle lines have moved back and forth in Libya's crescent west of Benghazi, the opposition's de facto capital. Mr. Qaddafi has consolidated control of western Libya, and his forces are laying siege to the city of Misurata, the last remaining opposition stronghold in the west. A proposal for negotiations and a ceasefire by the African Union was rejected out of hand by the opposition leadership on the grounds that it did not provide for removal of Qaddafi, his sons, and his inner circle. With Qaddafi showing no signs of leaving, the options available to the United States and its partners have sharply narrowed.

In absolute terms, the U.S. increased its GDP, population and military spending from 2000 to 2010. In relative terms, the story is not always as good, especially in GDP. This commentary appeared in Wall Street Journal on April 13, 2011.

It's fashionable among academics and pundits to proclaim that the U.S. is in decline and no longer No. 1 in the world. The declinists say they are realists. In fact, their alarm is unrealistic.

Early declinists like Yale historian Paul Kennedy focused in the 1980s on the allegedly debilitating effects of America's "imperial overstretch." More recently, historians Niall Ferguson and Martin Jacques focus on the weakening of the economy. Among pundits, Paul Krugman and Michael Kinsley on the left and Mark Helprin on the right sound the alarm.

International business practices encourage piracy in the Gulf of Aden and work against national and international interests. The business community needs to examine its practices or piracy will continue to flourish.

Some 33,000 ships a year currently transport oil, gas, manufactured goods, raw materials and food through shipping lanes around Somalia. Pirates in the Gulf of Aden on the eastern horn of Africa have captured more than 1,600 vessels in those waters in the last five years. They now hold 27 ships for ransoms that range from $2 million to $5 million a ship.

"Bad cases make bad law." This axiom of jurisprudence can as easily apply to the use of force. What is happening in Libya at the moment is a "bad case" in three ways: military intervention in its civil war does not derive from well-established precedent, does not draw on unambiguous principle, and may not set a course or parameters for future conduct of various nations and institutions in similar — or roughly similar — cases. This conclusion will be tested the next time the U.S., its European and Canadian allies, and others are faced with a situation that seems to cry for outside intervention.

This is not to say that decisions on Libya taken in Paris, London, Washington and other capitals, plus at NATO headquarters in Brussels, came out of nowhere. They were based on a resolution of the UN Security Council (under Chapter VII enforcement provisions of the UN Charter). That has been important in the past to NATO's European members and to some other countries, although not always a necessary condition. Witness the NATO air campaign to stop Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing in 1999 in Kosovo. (In that situation, in the absence of a Security Council resolution authorizing intervention, each ally assumed the responsibility for choosing its own juridical basis for approving NATO military action decisions, a precedent that may prove appropriate in some future circumstances.)

The decision by NATO to assume leadership of the military campaign against Col. Moammar Gadhafi's military forces could have a significant impact on future trans-Atlantic relations, giving the Europeans a larger voice in the management of trans-Atlantic affairs. This is something they have long claimed they wanted.

However, if the intervention is to succeed, the United States and its allies need to bring political goals more in line with military means.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans think the war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. Behind this figure is a prevalent pessimism that the war is unwinnable.

Curiously, most Afghans have a very different view. In fact, Afghans in general are much more optimistic about their future than we Americans are about ours. Fully 59 percent of Afghans think their country is moving in the right direction, the most recent published poll found in November, vs. 28 percent of Americans who feel that way now about the United States. Asked a version of Ronald Reagan's classic question — Are you better off today than five years ago? — 63 percent of Afghans say yes. In America, consumer confidence has edged up in recent months but is still down 40 points since 2007.