TLC Experts Archive

By 2050 the world’s farmers will need to roughly double production in order to feed an additional 2 billion people. Most of this population growth will occur in countries that are already food insecure.

The U.S. Feed the Future initiative was created in 2010 to respond to increasing levels of chronic food insecurity in many developing countries. The initiative adopted a whole of government approach ostensibly to tap into expertise residing outside of the principal agency in charge of foreign assistance and development, the U.S. Agency for International Development. Unfortunately, the extent to which Feed the Future capitalizes on the expertise and budgetary resources of a wide array of government agencies remains largely untapped.

When considering U.S. foreign assistance programs, one often hears calls for sustainability. In other words, programs should promote the partner developing country’s ability to graduate from aid and take charge of its own economic growth. Achieving sustainability requires investments in human and institutional capacity. For food security and global agriculture, this means building the capacities of countries to solve their own problems. 

The interests of the United States are threatened by a broad range of conditions that will become worse in the absence of progress on basic indices of human development. This is no time to coast. From the recent Ebola outbreaks, to the instability caused by chronic hunger, to terrorist recruitment fueled by crushing poverty, the United States has a deep interest in being a leader on development issues. The President should find an Administrator who will command immediate respect in Congress and overseas and who is dedicated to two years of strengthening the momentum created by Dr. Shah.

We should neither lose confidence in our ability to influence events, nor downsize our global activities. An unstable world should cause us to redouble positive efforts to support humanitarian interests and American values abroad. 

The United States needs to institutionalize a global agriculture and food security strategy across a broad swath of public and private interests.

An independent arms monitoring group has collected evidence that fighters in the Middle Eastern extremist group known as the Islamic State, labeled a “network of death” by President Obama, are using weapons and ammunition manufactured in at least 21 different countries, including China, Russia, and the United States.

It is tempting and provocative to reevaluate Ukraine’s decision to become a Non-Nuclear Weapon State after the Russian annexation of Crimea. It is tempting because Moscow has broken some of the security assurances it made in return for Soviet nuclear weapons based in Ukraine in the early 1990s and Ukraine’s incarnation as a Non-Nuclear Weapon State Party to the NPT. It is provocative because of the ongoing debate over NATO’s nuclear future and Ukraine’s relationship to the Alliance.

The standoff in France over General Electric Co.$17 billion deal with Alstom SA isn't just about jobs. It is also about nukes...The U.S. and France have been at odds over nuclear technology before, said Thomas Moore, a senior fellow at the Lugar Center think tank, usually over Washington's tougher stance on nonproliferation. The two countries butted heads in the 1970s when the U.S. negotiated a deal, which remains in force, to block South Korea's plans to begin reprocessing nuclear fuel.

As Ukrainians struggle to preserve their independence and territory under Russian threat, they also are searching for reliable alternatives to Russian energy supplies. The decision to look across the Atlantic makes sense because U.S. liquefied natural gas could be part of a broader diversification strategy for Ukraine and its region. But the success of that strategy will depend upon key domestic reforms in the U.S. and Ukraine, private financial commitments, and concerted energy diplomacy by Ukraine and the Euro-Atlantic community.

In 2008 a group of foreign policy luminaries issued a proposal to promote a “fresh, smart approach to U.S. foreign policy and engagement in the world.” As the name of their new coalition implied, the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) sought to reform a foreign aid system that was badly outdated and poorly equipped to meet the challenges of the 21st century. MFAN offered a set of core principles and priority actions for making foreign assistance more effective, more efficient, and better at serving our national interests. Their ideas inspired each of us to engage in foreign aid reform from our individual leadership positions within and outside of Congress.

The Ukraine crisis has once again trumpeted European vulnerability brought by over-dependence on Russian gas. Russian aggression, added to its gas supply posturing and actions more akin to blackmail than trade, demonstrate that it cannot be considered a reliable partner in developing mutual energy security. Indeed, at their meeting in late March 2014, European leaders concluded that efforts to reduce Europe's high gas energy dependency rates should be intensified and asked the European Commission to propose by this June a comprehensive plan for growing EU energy independence. Yet already running along Russia's soft underbelly is one of Europe's best options for natural gas diversification: the Southern Corridor.

Congressional leadership is critical to rebalance the energy terms of engagement in Europe. Energy is at the heart of the ongoing crisis. President Putin relies on oil and gas revenues to pay for his military adventurism and to maintain domestic political support. He wields influence through corporate tie-ups and direct control of gas supplies to individual states.

The United States and Mexico concluded a transboundary hydrocarbons agreement, officially titled the “Agreement between the United States and Mexico Concerning Transboundary Hydrocarbon Reservoirs in the Gulf of Mexico,” (TBA) in February 2012. The agreement provides the United States substantial geopolitical, energy security and environmental benefits while potentially helping the U.S. oil and gas industry gain access to a huge market that may offer jobs and gains across a long value chain. The Mexican Senate ratified the agreement in April 2012. However, the U.S. Congress needs to enact implementing legislation to give the Department of Interior the authority to play its role in the agreement.

Potential conflicts centered on energy resources generally can emerge from at least four sources: instability due to lack of energy access, poor governance of energy resources, efforts to control energy-rich territory, and use of energy itself as a strategic tool or even as a weapon.

Congress should put aside partisanship and turf protection as it considers bold changes to a decades-old and increasingly inefficient international food-aid program.