On February 28, the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center hosted J Alexander Thier, Assistant to the Administrator and Director of the Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for a discussion on USAID's goals and activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including long term strategies.

State Department Policy Planning Director Anne-Marie Slaughter argues that the United States much fundamentally restructure its foreign policy making apparatus in order to effectively engage the challenges of the 21st century.

On Tuesday, June 29, the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center hosted a roundtable discussion with Dr. Arvind Virmani, Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

From Joseph S. Nye, Gulf News:  The American political scientist Andrew Moravcsik makes the argument that European nations, singly and collectively, are the only states other than the US that are able to "exert global influence across the full spectrum from ‘hard' to ‘soft' power.

Alan Wood argues that it's time to rethink how we fight poverty in the developing world, shifting from aid to profit-based approaches. 

Quite a while ago, trade and development economist Peter Bauer (1915-2002) of the London School of Economics famously remarked that aid was a transfer of wealth from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.

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Today, hunger, poverty, and desperation remain prevalent throughout much of the developing world. If we are to live in a 21st century more prone to peace than violence, the developed countries must move expeditiously to address the developing countries’ requirements for energy, water, and agricultural production.