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Illuminating the Arts-Policy Nexus 

Illuminating the Arts-Policy Nexus is a fortnightly series of articles on the role of art in public policymaking.  This series invites WPI fellows and project leaders as well as external practitioners to contribute pieces on how artists have led policy change and how policymakers can use creative strategies.

 

WPI BOOKS
Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World

 

In Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World, World Policy Institute Senior Fellow Ian Bremmer illustrates a historic shift in the international system and the world economy—and an unprecedented moment of global uncertainty.

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Sharmeen Gangat: Crime and (the Lack of) Punishment in Pakistan

The night of May 10, 2007, was violently nightmarish for us. My husband and I were on a yearly trip from our home in New York to visit family and friends in Pakistan. We arrived in Karachi on the night of May 10, 2007. My family met us at the airport and in just 20 minutes of landing, our car, carrying my sister, brother, and myself, rolled up to the front of my parents' house. Another car, carrying my husband and father, had left the airport bit sooner. We expected to see them removing the luggage as we pulled up. Instead, I saw my father and husband standing outside their car, encircled by four, young, clean-shaven boys brandishing AK-47 assault rifles. Before I could comprehend the situation, there was a burst of rifle shots. In utter confusion, my brother threw the car into reverse. The armed men began spraying bullets at us, and we crashed into a lamppost. Wielding their rifles, they surrounded our car, smashing the windows with their guns and forcing us out into the street. I was convinced that I would not see my loved ones again. My brother was pulled out of the car and beaten up before my eyes, while my husband and father looked on at gunpoint. Meanwhile, another vehicle pulled alongside our car, yelled something at the armed boys, and they all zoomed off, taking only our luggage. We thanked our stars that it had not been worse.

THE INDEX - March 12, 2009

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Jonathan Power: Libya's Lesson for Iran

It is rapidly becoming a truism that the Middle East problems are so intertwined that they must be all negotiated into tolerance and disarmament at more or less the same time—not sequentially as before.

Still, it is better in an analysis such as this to single out Iran, because if Iran can be got right then a lot of the other dominoes will be easier to fit into place. It is Iran that Israel fears most. It is Iran that has so much influence on Hamas. It is Iran that can contribute significantly to peace in Iraq and Lebanon. And to discuss Iran we must talk about Libya. Libya only a few years ago had many of the same problems as Iran today. Not only was it on the cusp of producing nuclear weapons—it was a terrorist state writ large. The downing over Lockerbie, Scotland, of a U.S. airliner was only the apogee of a continuous line of terrorist activity over a 30-year period. Yet, by careful diplomacy, its teeth were gradually withdrawn and, in September of last year, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on a visit to Tripoli, declared that the rapprochement with Libya was ”an historic event.” Former Vice-President Dick Cheney likes to assert that it was Iraq that did the trick; that Muammar el-Qaddafi finally got scared by American sabre-rattling. ”Five days after we captured Saddam Hussein, Qaddafi came forward and announced that he was going to surrender all his nuclear materials to the United States.” The record suggests otherwise. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage flatly contradicted his boss. Libya's concessions ”didn't have anything to do” with Hussein's capture, he said.