From an April 8th panel about natural gas, expert Mikkal Herberg of the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) was interviewed by DCFR. This brief offers a unique global perspective about present and future gas supply and consumption. The market for natural gas is said to be evolving into a global one versus the original trading blocs of the past. Is this the golden age of gas? Will natural gas be the fuel of the future? To continue reading, please download the document below.

According to Joshua Muravchik, author of The Next Founders: Voices of Democracy in the Middle East, “[t]here is no reason why the democratic idea cannot have a rebirth in the Middle East, where it was popular in the early twentieth century.”  Undaunted by doubters, who point to the excess of autocratic regimes in the region and who consider the prospects for change dim, Muravchik projects an informed optimism.

Brent Scowcroft, former U.S. national security advisor, believes President Obama should make a revival of the Palestinian peace process his chief foreign policy concern.  “We have to continue in Iraq.  We have to continue in Afghanistan,” he acknowledges.  “But we also could do more….The United States needs to be assertive in a way it never has.” 

Adam Segal, Maurice R. Greenberg senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, discusses China’s reemergence as a geopolitical power and stakeholder.  “The U.S.-China relationship is no longer bilateral,” he says.  The crisis in global financial markets underscores his fundamental point that the United States must “think more expansively about how every kind of issue now has to deal with China.”

Riordan Roett, director of Western Hemisphere studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, comments on China’s growing presence and influence in Latin America.  “If the United States doesn’t revisit our policies in Latin America, there will be a vacuum,” he warns.  “Power abhors a vacuum…and the only country that would be in a position to occupy that vacuum is China.”