Prepare to Deal with Discontinuities
Special Roundtable: Advising the New U.S. President
Nicholas Eberstadt | Asia Policy
January 01, 2009
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Wendt Scholar
Nicholas Eberstadt
"Discontinuity plays a critical part in determining the risks and opportunities that national actors must face in the world arena. The magnitude of the dangers posed (or alternatively, the rewards offered) by sudden discontinuities can be very great indeed. Therefore, as a matter of statecraft, it is highly prudential to the degree feasible to prepare for the unexpected."

If we wish to consider the international policy challenges that may face the new U.S. president, we might begin by reflecting on the experience of the outgoing Bush administration.

The first year of the Bush administration saw the September 11 terrorist attacks by al Qaeda on the U.S. homeland. The final year of the Bush presidency saw a global financial panic in which governments around the world committed trillions of dollars of taxpayer-funded subsidies and public guarantees in the hope of keeping a global economic crisis from spiraling even further out of control. . . .

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Nicholas Eberstadt is the Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at AEI.

About the Author

 

Nicholas
Eberstadt
  • Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist and a demographer by training, is also a senior adviser to the National Board of Asian Research, a member of the visiting committee at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a member of the Global Leadership Council at the World Economic Forum. He researches and writes extensively on economic development, foreign aid, global health, demographics, and poverty. He is the author of numerous monographs and articles on North and South Korea, East Asia, and countries of the former Soviet Union. His books range from The End of North Korea (AEI Press, 1999) to The Poverty of the Poverty Rate (AEI Press, 2008).

     

  • Phone: 202-862-5825
    Email: eberstadt@aei.org

  • Assistant Info

    Name: Kelly Matush
    Phone: 202-862-5835
    Email: kelly.matush@aei.org
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