Sen. Lugar was an honored guest Monday, May 9, 2016, at a Pentagon ceremony to mark the 25^th anniversary of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter praised Sen. Lugar and his colleague, former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn, also in attendance, as “forward thinking statesmen.” He called their proposal to cooperate with America’s Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union, to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles an idea that was “brand-new to history.”... Read More

Today, nearly six years after the Cardin-Lugar Amendment on extractive industries disclosure was enacted, the Securities and Exchange Commission is on the cusp of issuing a final rule to implement the legislation. The rule will require all petroleum and mining companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges to report to the public—shareholders and investors—how much money they pay to the governments in the foreign countries where they operate. This is a strong example of bipartisanship at work.... Read More

International donors, led by the United States, have prioritized global food security since price hikes in 2007 and 2008 threw several hundred million people into poverty. Investments have been made in raising smallholder productivity, reaching women with extension services, reducing post-harvest waste, improving the nutrition of children, and providing farmers with access to information they need to participate in markets.... Read More

The Republican presidential debates have brought out the partisanship in nearly all the candidates. In the contest for the supposedly angry, energized base voters, the candidates are pushing and pulling one another to stake out more extreme and uncompromising positions.... Read More

Improving foreign aid accountability, especially through transparency, monitoring and evaluation, has been the hallmark of The Lugar Center’s (TLC) work in Foreign Aid Effectiveness and in partnership with the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN). Knowing--and publicizing--just how much assistance is going where, and gaining honest measurements of its impact are vital to making foreign aid more effective.... Read More

Last May the Lugar Center and the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University released our initial Bipartisan Index covering the 113th Congress.  As part of this launch, we also shared charts that showed the 112th and 113th Congresses as the most partisan since 1993, when judged according to our bill sponsorship and co-sponsorship metrics. ... Read More

The USAID-led Feed the Future (FfF) initiative is a signature Obama administration program supporting food security and poverty reduction in a number of developing countries. Now in its 5^th year, USAID reports that it has reached about 14 million farmers and made improvements on nearly 10 million hectares of farm land in its 19 focus countries. Its progress reports (2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015) are glowing, although there has been no independent evaluation of its impact. (The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has done a report on coordination issues but not on whether Feed the Future is accomplishing its objectives.)... Read More

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in an insightful op-ed in the Washington Post, “The kind of president we need,” called for a chief executive who can compromise, solve problems and, most importantly, “be a true unifier of Americans.”  In my view, this is particularly important in foreign policy.... Read More

The Iran nuclear deal—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—met a lot of resistance from hardliners in Teheran. They complained that Iran was being forced to adopt stricter non-proliferation policies than any other country. In many ways they are right.... Read More

The passage of a bipartisan budget deal avoiding a government shutdown and the selection of policy-minded Rep. Paul Ryan (R Wis.) as the new Speaker of the House signal at least a brief truce in the bitter partisan fights over the budget and spending that have roiled Capitol Hill.... Read More