Articles and Op-Eds: 2010

Articles and op-eds by New America fellows and staff are available below. To jump to another year's archives, please use the links at right.

Will His Failures Save the State?

  • By
  • Joe Mathews,
  • New America Foundation
December 31, 2010 |

As he leaves office, Arnold Schwarzenegger is emphasizing his successes as governor. But it is his failures that need more public attention, because they may represent his greatest and most lasting contribution to California.

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Keeping a Crucial DREAM Alive

  • By
  • Gregory Rodriguez,
  • New America Foundation
December 31, 2010 |

The DREAM Act, a bill that would have put some undocumented immigrants who arrived in this country before they were 16 on a path to citizenship, failed to pass the Senate in part because Republicans are in full anti-immigrant mode. But it also failed because not one American leader urged us to seriously consider what it means to be American in the 21st century.

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To Help the Poor, Get Rid of Their Cash

  • By
  • Jamie M. Zimmerman,
  • New America Foundation
  • and Ignacio Mas, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
December 31, 2010 |

The recent ad spot for M-Kesho, the groundbreaking mobile phone-linked bank account launched earlier this year in Kenya, is endearingly playful. To gently teasing music, a man with a jar of coins digs a gigantic hole in an empty grass field. He sticks his jar deep in the mud, but finds that the hole he’s dug is now too deep to get out of. “There are easier ways to look after your money,” a voiceover tells us. No kidding.

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Future shock? Welcome to the New Middle Ages

  • By
  • Parag Khanna,
  • New America Foundation
December 28, 2010 |

Imagine a world with a strong China reshaping Asia; India confidently extending its reach from Africa to Indonesia; Islam spreading its influence; a Europe replete with crises of legitimacy; sovereign city-states holding wealth and driving innovation; and private mercenary armies, religious radicals and humanitarian bodies playing by their own rules as they compete for hearts, minds and wallets.

It sounds familiar today. But it was just as true slightly less than a millennium ago at the height of the Middle Ages.

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Peretz in Exile

  • By
  • Benjamin Wallace-Wells,
  • New America Foundation
December 26, 2010 |

The part of Israel that remains perfect to Martin Peretz is vanishingly small. But it does still exist, tangibly enough that you could trace its perimeter on a map of Tel Aviv: the ethnically mixed neighborhoods of Jaffa, the impeccably preserved Bauhaus downtown, the symphony halls and dance theaters, the intersections that still hold traffic, tense and honking, at 2:30 in the morning, the cosmopolitan sidewalk cafés that make real the old liberal dream.

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Will Facebook Friend China?

  • By
  • Christina Larson,
  • New America Foundation
December 23, 2010 |

On Dec. 20, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg -- who was recently named Time's 2010 "Person of the Year" -- stopped by the Beijing offices of Baidu, China's leading web-search company, to chat with co-founder Robin Li. The two men, both youthful, energetic, self-made billionaires, have much in common.

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There Were More Drone Strikes — And Far Fewer Civilians Killed

  • By
  • Peter Bergen,
  • Katherine Tiedemann,
  • New America Foundation
December 22, 2010 |

In the first 11-and-a-half months of 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama's administration authorized more than twice as many drone strikes, 113, in northwest Pakistan as it did in 2009 -- itself a year in which there were more drone strikes than during George W. Bush's entire time in office.

Given the evident importance of the program to U.S. policy toward Pakistan, it is necessary to ask what we know about the drone strikes, where they happen, and whom they are killing.

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A Cup of Plenty?

  • By
  • Parag Khanna,
  • New America Foundation
  • and Karim Makdisi, Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut
December 22, 2010 |

This month Britain dispatched a delegation of smooth-talking spokesmen -- including Prime Minister David Cameron and Prince William -- to Zurich, where the FIFA executive committee was in the process of deciding which country would host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. Making one final pitch to the international soccer organization, the Brits argued that they didn't just deserve to host the tournament -- they were genetically destined to get it.

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Publish or Perish

  • By
  • Charles Kenny,
  • New America Foundation
December 22, 2010 |

On Dec. 7, Nigerian authorities filed charges against former officials of Halliburton -- including one Richard Cheney -- for their involvement in a 10-year, $182 million cash-for-contracts scandal related to the construction of a power plant in southern Nigeria.

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Cyberteeth Bared

  • By
  • Parag Khanna,
  • New America Foundation
  • and Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group
December 22, 2010 |

2010 was the year that removed all doubt that cybersecurity is now a geopolitical problem.

We learned from diplomatic cables exposed by WikiLeaks that from Europe to the Middle East to China and beyond, Washington is having an even tougher time than we thought getting what it wants. The leaks themselves have only made matters more delicate, not just by embarrassing some of America’s friends, but by fueling conspiracy theories that Washington was somehow behind the leaks.

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