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The Weekly GAB – Friday, February 19, 2016
U.S. Global Leadership Coalition | www.usglc.org

USGLC in the News

DENVER BUSINESS JOURNAL
Promoting Economic Growth in Emerging Countries Pays Off for U.S., Officials Say at Denver Forum<http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/blog/finance_etc/2016/02/promoting-economic-growth-in-emerging-countries.html> | Monica Mendoza
When it comes to global economics, the equations and answers are not always easy. But if the U.S. sticks to a plan of investing in developing countries, it will be economically rewarded, the speakers said. That was the key message Thursday from U.S. Trade and Development Agency Director Leocadia Zak and U.S. Rep. Ed. Perlmutter, D-Golden. The two were keynote speakers at the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition luncheon Thursday at the Four Seasons Hotel Denver. Together with Jason Gross, executive director of USGLC, they talked about how America’s engagement abroad spurs economic growth in Colorado and promotes our national security.

Campaign 2016

C-SPAN
South Carolina Town Hall<http://www.c-span.org/video/?404898-1/jeb-bush-town-hall-meeting-columbia-south-carolina>
Governor Jeb Bush, Republican Candidate for President
“I believe that as long as you have hard power, that you are committed to the kind of security support that is necessary to keep us safe, soft power is an element of foreign policy that can be quite effective. This is an area of soft power, if you will, that has been, PEPFAR being the best example of a phenomenal success that leveraged our resources with many other foundations and others and millions of people have been saved from death from AIDS and malaria. And that kind of approach is a very helpful thing for our national security, very helpful for America’s, how people view America around the world. And so I support those initiatives.”

THE WASHINGTON POST
Republican Voters Deserve a Foreign Policy Candidate Forum<https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/02/17/republican-voters-deserve-a-foreign-policy-candidate-forum/> | Jennifer Rubin
Candidates have been able to skate by on one-liners and deflect legitimate questions. Who does Trump consult with on foreign policy? If governors are better commanders in chief than senators, would Bush prefer Kasich to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)? When does the president need to go to Congress for buy-in on use of the military? (It would be interesting to see which candidates, if any, have thought about the president’s inherent Article II powers.) Do they have any sense as to how presidents make decisions? It would be enlightening to hear them explain what they would do if advisers disagreed and in what instances, like in President George W. Bush’s case, they would go around the Pentagon to reformulate policy. Several of them like to say they will “listen to the commanders,” but if so, Cruz, for example, wouldn’t advocate carpet bombing or curtailing the NSA. The candidates should have some understanding of what the military’s role is and what constitutes a presidential-level decision.

USA TODAY
Hillary Clinton is the President We Need<http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/02/18/hillary-clinton-president-foreign-policy-crises-sanders-bush-kasich-nicholas-burns/80472346/>
Nicholas Burns, former Under Secretary of State in Bill Clinton and George W. Bush Administrations
Republicans Jeb Bush and John Kasich have both run large state governments, have been active in national politics and have, by experience and interest, a good grasp of America’s place in the world. But neither has the specific and deeply rooted experience Clinton earned as secretary of State, senator from New York and first lady in her extraordinary, indeed unique, service to our country. That is one of the many reasons I am supporting her and advising her campaign. She has broad and in-depth knowledge of global politics and economics, and has advocated for a strong national defense. Based on her time as a highly effective secretary of State, she is deeply respected by other world leaders for her intelligence and drive, and her reliability and integrity. These are vital qualities for a successful American president. She also has both the temperament to build coalitions with our friends and allies, and the toughness to deal firmly with our adversaries.

THE BOSTON GLOBE
The Great Dumbing-Down of U.S. Foreign Policy<https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/16/the-great-dumbing-down-foreign-policy/C5mIEjo0aeX75njFRlQKkN/story.html>
Stephen Kinzer, Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University
American presidential campaigns no longer offer voters reasoned debate about world affairs or foreign policy. Candidates compete with each other to promise that they will keep America safest, build the strongest military, and kill the most enemies. At town-hall meetings and other events during the current campaign, voters have rarely asked foreign policy questions. When they do, they ask only two things. The first is: What will you do to crush ISIS? Inevitably the reply is some variation of “They are savages, and I will destroy them.”

Who’s in the News

THE HILL
Better Foreign Aid<http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/269598-better-foreign-aid>
Mark Green, former Representative and Ambassador to Tanzania, and Rob Mosbacher, former Chief Executive Officer of OPIC
At home, even though our aid makes up a tiny portion of the federal budget, many in the public arena (especially conservatives) are reluctant to support foreign assistance. In our experience, this reluctance is less an objection to the idea of providing aid and more about questioning whether traditional aid programs are really effective. Educating policymakers and opinion leaders about how reforms in foreign assistance can serve America’s (and the world’s) best interests is essential. The Consensus for Development Reform (CDR), for which we serve as co-chairmen, believes that aid is an essential element of an effective foreign policy. We also believe there are important reforms that will yield better results for those we help and more faithfully serve our national interests. These reforms can also help policymakers demonstrate both that they are good stewards of taxpayer money and that the America’s development strategy reflects our values and fills a critical role globally.

MEDIUM
Building a More Resilient West Africa<https://medium.com/usaid-2030/building-a-more-resilient-west-africa-e18de2b16553#.u6yfoioto>
Ann Mei Chang, Director at U.S. Global Development Lab at USAID
We now know that thousands of deaths could have been prevented at the peak of the Ebola epidemic with better and more actionable health data, including transmission rates, case notification, infection control options, geographic spread, health service availability, and related animal health data. The inability to use this type of information — because it was incomplete, inaccurate, or simply not available — significantly hampered the national and international response to the epidemic…The next generation of health information systems have to not only quickly and accurately deliver the necessary information to healthcare workers, but they need to be able to communicate with each other. The wide range of people involved in combating epidemics such as Ebola need to be able to efficiently and seamlessly share information to ensure coordinated responses and better resource distribution.

FOREIGN POLICY
Africa’s Energy Revolution is Almost Here<http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/16/power-africa-electricity-development-un/>
Alex Thier, founder of Triple Helix, and former USAID senior official
With U.S. President Obama’s launch of the Power Africa initiative in 2013 and the new Electrify Africa bill passed by the U.S. Congress on Feb. 1 (that’s right — Congress got something done, and it was a foreign aid bill, no less), the prospect of electrifying Africa has once again galvanized the development community. Power Africa is an umbrella initiative that has, in the past two years, generated over $30 billion in investment commitments from partners seeking to dramatically increase both the number of megawatts produced (30,000 more by 2020) as well as the number of people who can now access that power to an additional 60 million. What the Electrify Africa Act does: it essentially gives bipartisan support to these goals, and calls for a plan to reach them. It makes the effort a congressionally authorized one. While it doesn’t appropriate any funds directly, it reinforces support for Power Africa in the budget process.

Development & Diplomacy

THE CONVERSATION
AIDS: How Far the World Has Come and How Far it Needs to Go to Get to Zero<https://theconversation.com/aids-how-far-the-world-has-come-and-how-far-it-needs-to-go-to-get-to-zero-54393>
Lawrence Gostin, Professor of Global Health and Director of the O’Neill Institute at Georgetown University
This social mobilisation also unleashed unprecedented resources in global health — new funding for biomedical research, vaccines, and treatment. Moreover, social mobilisation around AIDS literally transformed global health governance. It fundamentally altered the foreign assistance of the most powerful countries. For example PEPFAR in the United States, and UNITAID, formed by Brazil, Chile, France, Norway, and the United Kingdom. For the first time, the major powers began to frame an infectious disease as a national security threat, addressed at the highest political levels at the G8. Social mobilisation drove the United Nations’ response, prompting the first high-level summit ever held on a health issue to be devoted to AIDS.

QUARTZ
Even US Republicans Agree with Obama on This: Africa Needs Electricity<http://qz.com/613636/even-us-republicans-agree-with-obama-on-this-africa-needs-electricity/> | Yinka Adegoke
The keyword: “Renewable.” As the great Fela Kuti once sang, Africa has an abundance of light and other renewable energy sources, but African governments haven’t been able to harness them efficiently. As we’ve written before at Quartz, however, attempts to solve this problem are moving the continent ahead in the renewables game. Solar power is advancing by leaps and bounds and attracting enthusiastic investors…There have also been a mix of innovative technologies and business models to make solar in particular a better bet for getting electricity to people—cheaper, safer and greener than any traditional grid. But such toys need support from the West, particularly the US. This is where Electrify Africa could make a difference. Ed Royce, a Republican from California who chairs the House foreign affairs committee, says the act could help “[reduce] reliance on charcoal and other toxic fuel sources that produce fumes that kill more than HIV/AIDS and malaria combined.”

Politics & Foreign Policy

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
South Carolina GOP Voters Feel the Benefits of Free Trade – But Also to Scars<http://www.wsj.com/articles/south-carolina-gop-voters-feel-the-benefits-of-free-tradebut-also-the-scars-1455663542?cb=logged0.8186220170464367> | Bob Davis and Valerie Bauerlein
Few states have been more nimble than South Carolina in adjusting to global competition. The state turned the loss of 80,000 textile and apparel jobs since 1980 into part of its pitch to foreign manufacturers and U.S. exporters that need a big pool of workers to staff new car, tire and aerospace plants. Even some Chinese textile makers, once the scourge of the state’s business establishment, are setting up beachheads in South Carolina, which leads the nation in percentage of workers employed by foreign companies—8.4% in 2013. Yet the benefits are unevenly spread and have gone disproportionately to the college-educated in larger population centers. And though the new jobs generally pay better than those in textiles and apparel, there aren’t nearly enough of them to make up for the losses when international competition hammered those older industries. (See Attached For Full Story)

THE HILL
House Rejects Obama's Request for $1.8 Billion to Fight Zika<http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/269905-house-gop-rejects-white-house-request-for-zika-funding> | Sarah Ferris
Federal health officials had requested $1.8 billion to combat the Zika virus both in the U.S. and abroad. Most of that money would have gone to the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) for research into vaccines and diagnostics of the relatively unknown disease, which is largely spread by mosquitoes and has infected dozens of people in the U.S. since spreading from Latin America. GOP leaders, led by Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), told the administration on Thursday that they should first use the money left over from the government’s emergency Ebola response before seeking new funding.

THE GUARDIAN
El Niño is Causing Global Food Crisis, UN Warns<http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/feb/17/el-nino-leaves-100-million-people-hungry-short-of-water-droughts-floods-worldwide> | John Vidal
New figures from the UN’s World Food Programme say 40 million people in rural areas and 9 million in urban centres who live in the drought-affected parts of Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, Malawi and Swaziland will need food assistance in the next year. In addition, 10 million people are said by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) to need food in Ethiopia, and 2.8 million need assistance in Guatemala and Honduras. Millions more people in Asia and the Pacific regions have already been affected by heatwaves, water shortages and forest fires since El Niño conditions started in mid-2015, says Ocha in a new briefing paper, which forecasts that harvests will continue to be affected worldwide throughout 2016.

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