Political Science: International Relations 
Essential
Economic Freedom and Peace
"Since before the time of Thucydides, states have used wealth to acquire more territory and to dominate the affairs of their neighbors. Understanding the reasons that the powerful countries of today are less prone to dispute than their predecessors is critical to maintaining the peace and to extending its benefits more broadly."
Recommended
Fuel vs. Food
By Indur M. Goklany: "In recent years, we've heard that climate change could be catastrophic for nature and humanity. But it's becoming increasingly evident that over the next few decades, climate-change policies could prove even more catastrophic."
Don't 'Pull an Iraq' in Afghanistan
By Benjamin H. Friedman: "This week at a NATO summit in Bucharest, Romainia, American officials asked Europeans to send more troops to the war in Afghanistan. Leaders in both the Democratic and Republican Parties agree that higher troop levels and a deeper commitment to state-building are the path to victory in Afghanistan. But both sides are wrong, and Iraq shows why."
Who Says the Surge Is Working?
By Terry Michael: "When it comes Iraq, neoconservative true believers have been allowed to set the bar of "success" below ground level. In this, they're aided by media siding with power instead of challenging it, all while congressional Democrats cower in their cloak rooms."
Peace Won't Come to Zimbabwe
By Marian L. Tupy and David Coltart: "The case against Mr. Mugabe and the ZANU-PF for crimes against humanity would be compelling. They have turned one of Africa's most prosperous and relatively free nations into an Orwellian nightmare. Since 1994, the average life expectancy in Zimbabwe has fallen to 34 from 57 for women and to 37 from 54 for men. Some 3,500 Zimbabweans die every week from the combined effects of HIV/AIDS, poverty and malnutrition."
Health, Africa’s struggle
By Thompson Ayodele: "Foreign aid in the form of hard currency is flowing in unprecedented quantities into the ministries of health of many African countries.
"But despite this generosity things are not improving: medical staff are demoralised, access to essential medicines remains low and corruption remains a serious problem."
Learning the Right Lessons From Iraq
By Benjamin H. Friedman and Christopher Preble: "By insisting that there was a right way to remake Iraq, we ignore the limits on our power that the enterprise has exposed and risk repeating our mistake. Deposing Saddam Hussein was relatively simple, but creating a new state to rule Iraq was beyond our grasp. Maybe the United States can improve its ability to manage occupations, but the principal lesson Iraq teaches is to avoid them."
Ohio Needs More Foreign Trade
By Daniel T. Griswold: "But tinkering with a 14-year-old trade agreement [NAFTA] will not bring an industrial renaissance to Youngstown and other Rust Belt cites. The relative decline of those regions dates back to the 1960s and 1970s, when the American economy began a transition from heavy industry toward an information-based service economy."
The AtomicTerrorist: Assessing the Likelyhood
By John Mueller: "A terrorist atomic bomb is commonly held to be the single most serious threat to the national security of the United States. Assessed in appropriate context, that could actually be seen to be a rather cheering conclusion because the likelihood that a terrorist group will come up with an atomic bomb seems to be vanishingly small. Moreover, the degree to which al-Qaeda--the chief demon group and one of the few terrorist groups to see value in striking the United States--has sought, or is capable of, obtaining such a weapon seems to have been substantially exaggerated."
Is The Domestic Terror Threat ‘Overblown’?
By Benjamin H. Friedman: "Time and again, federal officials held press conferences to announce the break-up of a terrorist plot and vaguely described the disaster prevented. The evening news and the headlines repeated their lurid claims. Months later, the inside pages of the papers would report that the plot was not what we were told — and TV doesn’t even bother. The plans have turned out to be unfeasible or preliminary. "
Redefining Success in Iraq
By Christopher Preble: "The surge was certainly successful in one sense: it took sufficient steam out of the "get out now" movement to effectively halt congressional efforts to force a troop withdrawal. It also allowed Sen. McCain to resurrect his moribund campaign. "Thank God [Iraq]'s off the front pages," the leading proponent for the war told reporters on board the Straight Talk Express."
The Terrible 'Ifs'
By Benjamin H. Friedman: "We spend vast amounts on defenses against threats unlikely to affect Americans. Experts, defense officials, and politicians justify the expenditures by saying they are necessary to protect the public from worst case dangers. Those claims ignore what is probable and what defenses cost. They exaggerate the danger our enemies pose and strip resources from more probable dangers, making us less safe."
Raw Deal
By Sallie James: "Hollywood had better hope that a services liberalization deal reached Dec. 17 between the United States and the European Union holds. Without a successful resolution to the long-running Internet gambling dispute, American movies, music and software could be vulnerable to copyright infringement."
Guests in the Machine
By Kerry Howley: "Guest worker programs may be the best hope many of the world's poorest people have for improving their lives."
Iraqi Allies Deserve Better than Red Tape
By Malou Innocent: "Many Iraqis, desperate to earn decent wages and bring stability to their country, support American forces by working as Arabic interpreters. "Terps" are paid a modest sum, and they enable soldiers to communicate with Iraqi civilians and track down insurgents. But working with the Americans can come at a high cost."
Milton Friedman with Charlie Rose
"An hour with Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman. Friedman discusses his life, his contributions to economics, the Republican Party and his view on the direction of the United States and the world in coming years."
Enabling The Kremlin
By Andrei Illarionov: "For the past few months, the official Russian media have shown little warmth for the Bush administration. Taking their cue from the Kremlin, the Russian press has been happy to denounce Washington when it criticized, even very cautiously, authoritarian actions. But Washington's own cold shoulder turned into a warm embrace this week when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice openly endorsed President Vladimir Putin's anointed successor, Dmitry Medvedev, and effectively undercut her past statements urging Russia to adopt a more democratic course and to hold truly competitive elections."
Big Ideas Need Small Places
By Jesse Walker: "The desert republic of Molossia doesn’t appear on many maps, and it doesn’t have a seat in the United Nations. But if you drive about 18 miles northeast from Carson City, Nevada, you’ll find it."
Why We Trade
By Russell Roberts: "We’re used to shrugging off all sorts of rhetorical gobbledygook from our politicians. But when you hear U.S. presidential candidates start to mouth off about free trade, watch your wallet: A discredited 14th-century theory of economics is enjoying a dangerous renaissance in the 2008 campaign. "
Fat on the Farm Bill
By Dr. Sallie James: The Farm Bill is the ultimate example of concentrated benefits and diffused costs. Farm subsidies are hard to justify on their merits, and even harder to justify when they go to massive corporate farms.
The Case for Restraint
By Barry R. Posen: "If more activism has not produced better policy, what is to be done? The United States should try doing less: It should pursue a grand strategy of restraint. Less is not nothing, however, meaning in essence that the United States should conceive ways to shape rather than to control international politics."
Inside Track: A Troubling Interventionist Consensus
By Christopher Preble and David Rieff: "Presidential hopefuls and policy wonks debate amongst themselves how to improve America’s effectiveness as world policeman and decry any challenge to that role, as if they believed it to be somehow inscribed in our country’s DNA. We believe that the United States should adopt a fundamentally different approach."
Let's Take a New Look at African Aid
By Andrew Mwenda: "In this provocative talk, journalist Andrew Mwenda asks us to reframe the "African question" -- to look beyond the media's stories of poverty, civil war and helplessness and see the opportunities for creating wealth and happiness throughout the continent. Most important, he says, the solution to Africa's problems is not more aid."
Chill Out
By Bjorn Lomborg: "The discussion about climate change has turned into a nasty dustup, with one side arguing that we're headed for catastrophe and the other maintaining that it's all a hoax. I say that neither is right. It's wrong to deny the obvious: The Earth is warming, and we're causing it. But that's not the whole story, and predictions of impending disaster just don't stack up."
A Dangerous Position on Darfur
By Ted Galen Carpenter and Christopher Preble: "The suffering in Darfur cries out for action, but it is not clear that it calls for military action, much less that U.S. troops should lead the effort. There are dozens of countries that have far greater tangible interests at stake in Darfur than does America, and many of these countries also possess the capacity to deploy forces there."
Taiwan's Defense Budget: How Taipei's Free Riding Risks War
By Justin Logan & Ted Galen Carpenter: "It would be dubious enough for the United States to risk war with an emerging great power like China to defend a small client state, even if that state were making a serious effort to provide for its own defense. It would be even worse to incur that risk on behalf of a client state that is not willing to make a robust defense effort."
Petraeus, the Surge & History
"Many have repeated the claim that Iraq is Vietnam all over again. History never repeats itself exactly, so no example is perfect. But the American surge in Iraq bears a striking and little-noted resemblance to the Germans' ill-fated offensive in the last year of World War I."
What Can Foreign Aid Do for The World's Poor?
"Billions upon billions have been spent by governments and institutions like the World Bank over the last half-century to launch less developed countries onto a trajectory of growth. Yet despite all this money—or perhaps because of it—many countries continue to languish in abject poverty. Do we need to spend even more, faster?" William Easterly, Branko Milanovic, Deepak Lal, Jules S. Coleman, and Steve Radelet engage in a debate about the problems with foreign aid and what can be done about it.
Central and South Asia
What is the U.S. role in Central and South Asia? What does the future relationship between India and the United States look like? What, if anything, is to be done about secular strife in the Kashmir region? Read what Cato scholars have to say on this and related questions.