American Enterprise Institute Research Articles

A Quantitative Analysis of the Belt and Road Initiative

Purpose: The article aims to examine the effects of the Belt and Road Project (BRI) of China and its recent developments.
 Methodology: It does this by analyzing the effects Chinese investments have had on their largest beneficiaries. The article considers several factors such as transport, energy, and debt profiles of the countries after receiving aid under BRI.
 Findings: Through our analysis, we have found that the project is by far the most secure investment developing countries might have especially considering the diminishing aid of the USA and European countries. It is largely beneficial for both China and the beneficiaries encouraging economic growth. We have made our conclusions based on data reported through various research articles both domestic and international. These include but are not limited to papers from the SAIS-CARI website, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the World Bank, and the Boston University Energy Database.
 Recommendations: We recommend that in the future studies should be further conducted on the progress of BRI projects that have been started or planned in the future as well as the effects previous long-term investments are currently having on beneficiaries. Some research should also be conducted comparing the effectiveness of loans from the US and European countries when compared with Chinese counterparts

Inferring school district learning modalities during the COVID-19 pandemic with a hidden Markov model.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many public schools across the United States shifted from fully in-person learning to alternative learning modalities such as hybrid and fully remote learning. In this study, data from 14,688 unique school districts from August 2020 to June 2021 were collected to track changes in the proportion of schools offering fully in-person, hybrid and fully remote learning over time. These data were provided by Burbio, MCH Strategic Data, the American Enterprise Institute's Return to Learn Tracker and individual state dashboards. Because the modalities reported by these sources were incomplete and occasionally misaligned, a model was needed to combine and deconflict these data to provide a more comprehensive description of modalities nationwide. A hidden Markov model (HMM) was used to infer the most likely learning modality for each district on a weekly basis. This method yielded higher spatiotemporal coverage than any individual data source and higher agreement with three of the four data sources than any other single source. The model output revealed that the percentage of districts offering fully in-person learning rose from 40.3% in September 2020 to 54.7% in June of 2021 with increases across 45 states and in both urban and rural districts. This type of probabilistic model can serve as a tool for fusion of incomplete and contradictory data sources in order to obtain more reliable data in support of public health surveillance and research efforts.

American Enterprise Institute roundtable on addressing the underlying causes of the banking crisis of 2023

American Enterprise Institute roundtable on addressing the underlying causes of the banking crisis of 2023

Practical Applications of The Trouble with State Government Employee Pension Plans: The Case of Connecticut

In <b><i>The Trouble with State Government Employee Pension Plans: The Case of Connecticut</i></b>, from the Winter 2022 issue of <b><i>The Journal of Retirement</i></b>, author <b>Mark J. Warshawsky</b> of the <b>American Enterprise Institute</b> explores threats to the financial viability of state- and municipal-employee pension plans. Unlike the private sector, most public-sector employers still offer defined-benefit (DB) lifetime pensions to employees. However, many of these pensions are seriously underfunded. That threatens the retirement income security of public employees and puts taxpayers at risk of having to pay for bailouts. The author pinpoints several factors contributing to this problem. Most significantly, states and municipalities have contributed too little to their DB plans and have made optimistic assumptions about future investment returns. Using the State of Connecticut’s DB plans as a case study, the author finds they have tried to address these problems by extending amortization periods to pay off liabilities. The author tests these measures and finds that the Connecticut plans are still overly optimistic and at risk of shortfalls. He therefore suggests that the federal government regulate public-employee DB plans and that Connecticut close its DB plans and offer defined-contribution (DC) plans instead.

1990s and the Remaking of the Neoconservative Foreign Policy Paradigm

This essay explains how neoconservative foreign policy doctrine evolved from strenuously seeking to defeat the communist enemy during the Cold War to thoroughly seeking to preserve America’s newfound “unipolar moment” by constructing new enemies to defeat. It analyzes the generational transition within the neoconservative movement from the 1970s to the 1990s and its empire-building project in the post-Cold War era. Based on neoconservative publications and contributions to magazines such as Commentary, The National Interest, and Weekly Standard as well as the publications, reports, and statements of neoconservative think tanks (The Coalition for a Democratic Majority, The Committee on the Present Danger, American Enterprise Institute, The Project for New American Century, among others), the essay argues that the themes associated with the neoconservatives after 9/11—such as militarism, preemptive war, regime change, democratization, and unilateralism—had been rooted in the neoconservative discourse since the 1970s. It also shows that the post-9/11 neoconservative foreign policy approach was the product of neoconservative narratives during the Cold War era and after the fall of communism. (RA)

American Enterprise Institute Roundtable: Government Policies Reshape the Banking System

The U.S. federal government response to the 2008 financial crisis, including new laws, prudential regulations, and Federal Reserve monetary policies, has left a lasting impact on the U.S. banking industry. Along with a nearly 50% drop in the number of independent depository institutions since 2000, the industry has become much more concentrated in a few large “systemically important” institutions. At the same time, the largest banks have responded to incentives provided by increased regulatory requirements and the Fed's zero interest rate policy by reducing their lending to the private sector and increasing both their real estate holdings and their reliance on deposits to fund them.For the five well‐known banking scholars who take part in this AEI‐organized discussion, such recent changes have troubling consequences for both the industry and the broader economy. After economic historian Richard Sylla describes a 100‐year movement of U.S. banking toward a system characterized by a few large banks with extensive branch systems, bank authority Alex Pollock points to the growing role and influence of the Federal Reserve and government‐sponsored enterprises in the “banking credit system.” And bank consultant Bert Ely points to a number of large and growing industry risks. Along with their unprecedented real estate holdings, Ely notes the massive holdings of U.S. government debt by both the Fed—which is identified as having an enormous interest rate mismatch and exposure—and the banks it supervises. At the same time, low interest rates have been squeezing banks’ margins and reducing their capital cushions to absorb losses that may arise from the pandemic.Charles Calomiris, who recently stepped down as Chief Economist of the OCC, views such extreme consolidation as an unhealthy trend—one that, along with banks’ growing dependency on deposits (and hence government guarantees and support) and reliance on real estate lending have become the main components of a “three‐legged stool” that are making large banks and banking systems throughout the world ever more subject to government influence. As a result of such dependence, the U.S. banking system is becoming more vulnerable to economy‐wide “shocks” such as the expected effects of a sharp increase in interest rates or a sudden plummeting of real estate prices. As Calomiris argued in his famous book (with Stephen Haber), U.S. banks—and indeed banks in most nations, thanks to “political bargains” with their governments that seem inevitable—appear to be becoming ever more “fragile by design.”

John W. Suttie (1934–2020)

John Weston Suttie (Figure 1), former President of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) and the American Society for Nutritional Sciences (ASNS), died on December 21, 2020, in Green Valley, Arizona. As a scholar, researcher, mentor, and association leader, John had a profound impact on American science. John was a lifetime resident of Wisconsin, spending almost his entire life there. He was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and grew up on his family's dairy farm. After attending high school in nearby Galesville, he married Leone Stenberg, and they settled in Madison, Wisconsin, while he earned his bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees from the University of Wisconsin in 1957, 1958, and 1960, respectively. After graduation, Suttie became a U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, UK, from 1960 to 1961, and then returned to Madison to join the faculty of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he spent his entire career, rising through the ranks to become Professor and Chair of the Department of Nutritional Sciences (1988–1997) and Professor in the Department of Biochemistry. He was also the Katherine Berns Van Donk Steenbock Professor in Nutrition and Director of the Center for Coagulation Research. Suttie retired as a professor emeritus in 2001. As his academic appointments indicate, Suttie's research spanned the disciplines of biochemistry and nutrition, focusing on the mechanism of action of vitamin K as an enzymatic cofactor and its role in blood coagulation. Although it was known to be needed for the biosynthesis of several protein factors involved in the blood-clotting cascade, there was little information about the functional role of the vitamin or its mechanism of action when he took up the problem. Suttie's team showed that it was a cofactor in glutamate γ-carboxylation of prothrombin, as well as other blood coagulation components. This unique post-translational modification occurred at multiple sites in these proteins, providing calcium ion binding sites that are a prerequisite for the activation of the precursor forms. His subsequent myriad contributions on the mechanism of action of vitamin K, including studies on its metabolism and nutritional roles, and his many contributions to the blood coagulation field made him an international leader in both areas of research throughout his career. In recognition of his outstanding contributions to science, Suttie received many awards and honors, including the 1974 Mead Johnson Award and the 1980 Osborne and Mendel Award from ASNS, the 2002 Bristol–Myers Squibb/Mead Johnson Award for Distinguished Achievement in Nutrition Research, and the 2004 Conrad A. Elvehjem Award from ASNS. He was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1996. John Suttie was an affable individual who was devoted to the advancement of science and health-related research. He greatly enjoyed sharing his thoughts and stories, and he had a wry sense of humor that probably reflected his roots as a Wisconsin farm boy. He enjoyed poking a bit of fun at his friends and colleagues but never maliciously, reflecting his delightful sense of humor, and he was always willing to listen to more than one side of an argument. As a result, he was a strong leader with both purpose and resolve. As President of FASEB, he led the organization during an important and formative period that gave him the opportunity to display his talents. Under his guidance, the board elected to use reserve funds to dramatically expand support for FASEB's public affairs activities and establish a new membership category, Sustaining Associate Member, for smaller societies that were ineligible for regular membership. Both actions contributed substantially to the Federation's subsequent growth in size and effectiveness. Three new societies joined in this new category during his term and helped the organization to continue to become a recognized leader in science policy. He also built upon existing programs, e.g., by inviting important government figures like Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to speak at the annual FASEB Federal Funding Conference (Figure 2) and playing an active role in organizing a symposium on the Future of Biomedical Research in conjunction with the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute in 1997 (Figure 3). Participants in this landmark meeting included the Directors of NIH and the National Academy of Sciences and several members of Congress. These many contributions rendered him one of the most effective presidents of the organization. Suttie was also President of ASNS (1993–1994), served as Editor of the Journal of Nutrition (1998–2003), and was a member of the Journal of Biological Chemistry Editorial Board (1981–1986). He served on the National Research Council Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources, the Food and Drug Administration Blood Products Advisory Committee, Public Policy Committees of the ASNS, American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Research Extension, Education, and Economics Advisory Board, and the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine. In addition to science, John had many other passions; first among them was his family and his wife, Leone. He was also an avid golfer, and in his retirement years, spent much of his winters in Arizona pursuing this pastime. He was also a lifelong fan of the Wisconsin Badgers and enthusiastically promoted his home state whenever he got the opportunity. This multitalented man was a singularly important figure in science and health research advocacy and will be fondly remembered by his many friends and colleagues from all over the world.

American Enterprise Institute Roundtable: Was Milton Friedman Right about Shareholder Capitalism?*

In this look back at Milton Friedman's famous essay in The New York Times 50 years ago organized by the American Enterprise Institute, three well‐known panelists discussed whether executives should continue to be guided by Friedman's oft‐cited statement that the “social responsibility of business is to increase its own profits.”One pretext or prompt for this discussion is the Business Roundtable's recent rethinking of the corporate mission, with its emphasis on all corporate stakeholders, employees and local communities as well as shareholders. Among the panelists, Marty Lipton takes the most enthusiastic view of this alternative to shareholder primacy. Now often identified as “stakeholder capitalism,” this alternative is embraced by Lipton as part of a “New Paradigm” in which large, universal owners act more or less in concert to pressure private companies to play a greater role in protecting the environment and lifting people out of poverty.By contrast, fund manager Cliff Asness and former Bush advisor and Columbia Business School dean Glenn Hubbard find considerable relevance and resilience in the old shareholder paradigm. Hubbard, for example, emphasizes the impossibility of maximizing long‐run value in highly competitive product and labor markets without taking care of all important stakeholders. And while sympathetic to the intent of the Business Roundtable—and the value of ensuring enough investment in corporate stakeholders—both Hubbard and Asness are troubled by the prospect of a corporate governance system trying to hold corporate managers accountable in a stakeholder‐centric world.

Gendered “Risk” and Racialized Inheritance: Toward a Feminist Analysis of Debt in US Higher Education

Feminist Studies 47, no. 3. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 729 Leifa Mayers Gendered “Risk” and Racialized Inheritance: Toward a Feminist Analysis of Debt in US Higher Education The financial aid system in the United States has expanded significantly in recent years, propelled by both the increasing costs of higher education and the greater social and economic emphasis placed on obtaining a bachelor’s degree. Over the past two decades, the percentage of undergraduate students who completed college with debt has more than doubled, to 65 percent, and graduates in the class of 2018 had an average of $29,200 in debt.1 As student debt has expanded, political debates about this crisis and its effects have burgeoned. Recent conversations about how to reform the student loan system have increasingly centered on how the responsibility for risk should be allocated among borrowers, institutions of higher education, and lenders. While some researchers urge colleges and universities to take responsibility for high rates of default by student borrowers, others call upon students to “share[e] responsibility for their personal choices”2 and 1. Veronica Gonzalez, Lindsay Ahlman, and Ana Fung, Student Debt and the Class of 2018: 14th Annual Report, (Oakland, CA: The Institute for College Access and Success, September 2019), 4. 2. Carlo Salerno, “Let’s Fund College the Same Way Investors Fund Start-Ups,” Forbes, August 19, 2015. 730 Leifa Mayers mitigate their own risk by choosing remunerative majors and careers.3 Prominent policy researchers have promoted “income share agreements ,” through which private investors exchange up-front funding for a percentage of future income that is paid back over a period of time following graduation.4 Meanwhile, recent proposals to reform higher education lending have included “institutional risk-sharing,” which tethers institutional viability to graduation and employment outcomes.5 These political and policy discourses are intertwined with materialities of risk in an increasingly financialized system of higher education. Through a series of legislative reforms that began in 1978, the opportunity to discharge most federal and private student loans in bankruptcy was first delayed and then eliminated.6 Unlike car and house loans, student loan debt is secured not by property, but by the person and their future labor.7 Thus, not only is the magnitude and pervasiveness of student loan debt “financializing” student life, but it also refashions student subjects as entrepreneurs and risk managers.8 While the risk attendants of debt operate differently in student loan borrowing than speculative financial markets, they nonetheless inflect student borrower subjectivities. Martin and colleagues describe the consolidation and dispersal of risk as primary instruments of private wealth generation within finance capitalism.9 Whereas securitization bundles 3. Joel Best and Eric Best, review of Game of Loans: The Rhetoric and Reality of Student Debt, in Beth Akers and Matthew M. Chingos, Sociology 54, no. 4 (2017): 373. 4. Miguel Palacios, Tonio DeSorrento, and Andrew P. Kelly, Investing in Value, Sharing Risk: Financing Higher Education Through Income Share Agreements (Indianapolis, IN: Center on Higher Education Reform, American Enterprise Institute, February 2014), 7–12; Investing in Student Success Act of 2017, S. 268, 115th Cong. (2017); Alison Griswold, “Because You’re Worth It: Afraid of Student Loan Debt? Sell Stock in Yourself Instead,” Slate, April 10, 2014. 5. Student Protection and Success Act, S. 1525, 116th Cong. (2019); Student Protection and Success Act, S. 2231, 115th Cong. (2017). 6. The Bankruptcy Reform Act, Pub.L. 95–598, 95th Cong. (1978); Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, Pub.L. 109–8, 109th Cong. (2005). 7. Jeffrey J. Williams, “Student Debt and the Spirit of Indenture,” Dissent 55, no. 4 (2008): 75. 8. Randy Martin, Financialization of Daily Life (Philadelphia: Temple Press, 2002), 1. 9. Randy Martin, Michael Rafferty, and Dick Bryan, “Financialization, Risk and Labour,” Competition and Change 12, no. 2 (2008): 121. Leifa Mayers 731 disparate financial assets and facilitates their movement through the market, derivatives spread out financial value to minimize the effects of market volatility. Thus, investors can purchase bundles of loans in the form of bonds and quickly resell or disperse their value. Although federal student loans are not similarly commodified, they represent financial risk that is affixed to the individual borrower...

Becoming White Again: The Bildungsroman, Whiteness, and the Culture of Poverty

Becoming White AgainThe Bildungsroman, Whiteness, and the Culture of Poverty Christian Ravela (bio) "When white poverty becomes politically salient it is clear that historical consciousness is at stake" —Tiffany Willoughby-Herard On March 2, 2017, the notorious policy entrepreneur Charles Murray gave a talk at Middlebury College. His presentation stirred much controversy, leading to a massive student protest that halted the event and ended with injuries. On August 7, 2017, NPR's Fresh Air featured an interview with J. D. Vance to discuss Hillbilly Elegy, his New York Times best-selling memoir about his life in Ohio, growing up with those he affectionately called "hillbillies." Both events index the mainstream interest and dialogue on the now mythic "white working class" prior to and in the wake of Donald Trump's election. Concern over this white working class has become ubiquitous, ranging from the public prominence of economists Ann Case and Angus Deaton's 2015 study (2015) of the growing number of "deaths of despair" among middle-aged, working-class white men to academic monographs like Arlie Hochschild's Stranger in Their Own Land and Nancy Isenberg's White Trash, to countless cover stories on the opiate/heroin crisis in magazines like Time and The New Yorker, to popular films like I, Tonya (2017) and Ladybird (2017), to the television reboot of Roseanne (2018), and even to the immensely popular podcast S-Town (2017). Indeed, Hillbilly Elegy is being adapted by Ron Howard into a film for Netflix in 2020. If all sectors and mediums of US culture have been probing the questions about who this white working class is and what its problems may be, then what is particularly interesting about Murray and Vance [End Page 181] is the extent to which they answer these questions with the pernicious call to a culture of poverty.1 Murray's bona fides on the matter need little explanation. He is best known for co-writing The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life with Richard J. Herrnstein. The book garnered much controversy as sections of it linked racial inequality to intelligence.2 He later wrote Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010, in which he identified a growing culture of poverty in white working-class communities resulting from increased US class divisions. Vance's credentials on the matter are far less well known, but, as Elizabeth Catte noted, his memoir is suffused with the idea, going so far as to cite Murray approvingly.3 Indeed, Murray and Vance spoke together on the problem of the white working class at an event held by the American Enterprise Institute. How is it, then, that Charles Murray aroused such instant ire from liberals and leftists alike while J. D. Vance gets invited to speak in liberal forums like Fresh Air and TED talks? How is it that their promulgation of the culture of poverty can receive such widely different receptions, at once roundly rejected as racist and lauded as thoughtful and earnest? Of course, it is not entirely the case that Vance has been completely accepted as an unproblematic figure. As I will discuss later on, he was met with protests by activists during his panel at the 2018 Appalachian Studies Association annual meeting. Such an event challenges the easy explanation of Vance's rise and national reception as a simple matter of novelty (as opposed to Murray's long and infamous history in the US public sphere); instead, it pushes these questions toward considerations of the cultural politics of race, region, and nation.4 This essay pursues these questions and issues by examining perhaps an unlikely source—J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy (Elegy) itself. Specifically, I argue that Elegy's narrative form comes to naturalize Vance's white-culture-of-poverty thesis for liberal audiences. Hillbilly Elegy is a quintessential bildungsroman.5 It follows J.D.'s development from an anger-filled and hopelessly lost child to a self-sufficient but psychically damaged adult through his movement in and out of Middletown, Ohio.6 In so doing, Elegy establishes and normalizes a white culture of poverty as both the catalyst for J.D.'s moral development and the...

Confronting Islamist Insurgencies in Africa: The Case of the Islamic State in Mozambique

The proliferation of Salafi-jihadi insurgencies across Africa challenges the United States’ counterterrorism approach. From its inception, the insurgency in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique was driven by local and foreign dynamics, which have been complicated by additional external intervention in the conflict. Using the Cabo Delgado insurgency, we demonstrate how efforts to address its global dimensions, such as the group's affiliation with the Islamic State, can work against attempts to mitigate its local drivers. We conclude with recommendations for a more effective U.S. response that takes both the local and global dynamics into account. This article builds on our February 2021 report “Combating the Islamic State's Spread in Africa: Assessment and Recommendations for Mozambique,” published by the American Enterprise Institute.

Research Committee Update

Recently I gave each of my five kids a copy of a book that I had been delighted to read, The Curmudgeon's Guide to Getting Ahead by Charles Murray. I identified with the curmudgeon, hence the title of this column. Murray's book had its origins in postings the author made on the internal website of the American Enterprise Institute where he works, with tips for entry-level staff and interns such as: Excise the word “like” from your spoken English. Don't suck up, meaning don't excessively flatter supervisors. Make strong language count.

A Two Tiered and Categorical Approach to the Nondelegation Doctrine

This essay was written for a book of essays on the nondelegation doctrine to be published by the American Enterprise Institute. Building upon an earlier article, I explore the original meaning of the Constitution’s prohibition on the delegation of legislative power to the executive. I make two main claims. First, I argue that there is a two tiered nondelegation doctrine, with a strict tier extending to certain areas and a lenient tier extending to other areas. Although the strict tier imposes very substantial restrictions on delegation, the lenient tier does not. The lenient tier covers legislation in various areas, including spending laws, the territories, foreign commerce, and foreign and military affairs. The most important area that is covered by the strict tier is domestic law regulating private rights. Second, I argue that the strict tier imposes a categorical prohibition on the delegation of policymaking discretion to the executive. Under my approach, the executive does not exercise policymaking discretion when it undertakes law interpretation or genuine fact finding. Such activities may involve some uncertainty, but so long as the executive is genuinely seeking the meaning of the statute or finding facts, it is not exercising policymaking discretion. Unlike other strict approaches to the nondelegation doctrine that prohibit the executive from being given “too much” policymaking discretion, my approach categorically forbids the executive from being given any policymaking discretion in the areas governed by the strict tier. Thus, my approach avoids criticisms, like that of Justice Scalia, that argue that no distinction in kind can be drawn between statutes that permissibly and impermissibly delegate policymaking discretion.

John Marshall's Judicial Statesmanship in &lt;i&gt;McCulloch v. Maryland&lt;/i&gt;

Writing on the early American republic, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that federal judges not only be good citizens, educated and upright men, but must also find statesmen in them. Yet nearly 200 years later, notions of judicial remain nebulous — and divisive. Nevertheless, both proponents and critics of judicial seem to largely agree on one thing: judicial requires a judge to go beyond the law to decide cases. There is a better way to think of judicial statesmanship. In his seminal study of statesmanship and party, Professor Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. observed that [i]t is not that a statesman is unprincipled or above principle; it is rather that his principle loses its refinement in the translation to public speech, and thence to party program.” This is how judicial is best understood — not in terms of what the judge adds to the law, but in terms of what the judge declines to add to the law, or at least what the judge declines to say about the law. And this is the statesmanship that Chief Justice Marshall exemplified in McCulloch v. Maryland. This short essay is written for a volume on the 200th anniversary of McCulloch v. Maryland, edited by Gary Schmitt for the American Enterprise Institute.

In Case You Haven't Heard…

Scott Gottlieb, M.D., former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and now a fellow at the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, wants to establish rules for vaping, and these could include setting up a system for e‐cigarettes to be over‐the‐counter (OTC) medicines, nicotine‐replacement tools like gum and patches. In a June 24 opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, he writes that e‐cigarettes can be a tool to help adult smokers quit, while also keeping teens away from smoking, but he says this will be a “tough job” for the FDA. He said while e‐cigarettes are “less harmful” than combustible cigarettes, they aren't safe; they can damage the lungs, and they can lead to nicotine addiction. There are medical products to treat nicotine addiction: gum and patches that are so safe they can be bought over the counter. E‐cigarettes are not that safe. He thinks that the JUUL‐type systems that are favored by minors and sold in convenience stores should be regulated differently from the open systems primarily used by adults, which have refillable cartridges. “The FDA could allow vape stores that follow common manufacturing processes for e‐liquids to band together to file a common application for market approval,” he writes. Still, there could be a more specific path altogether, in which e‐cigarettes could be approved as OTC drugs, like gum and patches. “The e‐cig manufacturers would need to run clinical studies to prove that their products don't create undue risks relative to their ability to help smokers quit cigarettes,” he writes. “The OTC pathway would treat cartridge‐based e‐cigs similarly to nicotine gums and patches, requiring them to clear a higher bar to prove they are effective smoking‐cessation tools. But it also would provide more‐stringent safeguards against products that appeal to kids but don't help adults.”

CHALLENGES TO RUSSIA’S NATIONAL SECURITY IN THE CONTEX OF RUSSIAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS UNDER THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

The article deals with the issues of Russia's national security, conditioned by the trends of the development of Russian-American relations during the administration of D. Trump. The author analyzes the factors that influence the US foreign policy toward Russia in 2017-18. The article proves that the tendency to deterioration of relations has a long-term character, which is caused by fundamental processes in the American elite. The main trend in its development is the strengthening of neoconservative forces and the growing influence of the so-called deep state. The influence of the neocons was manifested in the staffing of the American foreign policy course. Leading positions in the US government were taken by persons associated with neoconservative think tanks - the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Brookings Institution, the Atlantic Council, and others. The author determines the nature of American foreign policy as a combination of foreign policy idealism and elements of realism. The process of developing a new American strategy in a changing world, a realistic realization of the US limits of its power predetermines turbulence and instability in US-Russian relations, the alternation of elements of containment and dialogue in mutual relations. The basis of the US national strategy remains the neoconservative principle of “peace through strength”, which is currently manifested in the modification of the US nuclear component and the destruction of the existing structure of strategic stability.

Why did neoconservatives join forces with neoliberals? Irving Kristol from critic to ally of free-market economics

ABSTRACT This paper demonstrates how the neoconservative programme, as articulated primarily by Irving Kristol, offered a conservative viewpoint distinct from and theoretically opposed to neoliberalism. It does so by explaining the founding vision of Kristol and Daniel Bell’s influential neoconservative journal The Public Interest, and the former’s subsequent response to the social and political contestations of the late 1960s. The also paper provides an explanation of how Kristol’s strategy of moral and cultural insurgency – within institutions such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Wall Street Journal – attempted to fill in the practical gaps of neoliberalism’s economistic understanding of the defense of American society. The concluding section will reflect on the extent to which this critical exchange between neoconservatism and neoliberalism during the period of both movements’ political maturation, from roughly 1965 to 1980, provides an answer to long-held questions about the possibility of a viable conservatism in America.

Editorial introductions

Current Opinion in Hematology was launched in 1994. It is part of a successful series of review journals whose unique format is designed to provide a systematic and critical assessment of the literature as presented in the many primary journals. The field of hematology is divided into nine sections that are reviewed once a year. Each section is assigned a Section Editor, a leading authority in the area, who identifies the most important topics at that time. Here we are pleased to introduce the Editor and the Section Editor for this issue. EDITOR Thomas P. StosselThomas P. StosselStossel graduated from Princeton University (summa cum laude) and Harvard Medical School (cum laude from). He trained in internal medicine, hematology and research at Boston's Massachusetts General and Children's Hospitals and at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He served as professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, head of hematology-oncology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and of experimental medicine and hematology at Brigham & Women's Hospital. He was President of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and of the American Society of Hematology, and served on the Lasker Awards Jury and as editor-in-chief of The Journal of Clinical Investigation. He is now editor in chief of Current Opinion in Hematology, on the editorial advisory board of Collabryx and the scientific advisory board of The Forsyth Dental Institute. The NIH continuously funded his research on mechanisms of how cells move about the body for over 40 years. This research won him an American Cancer Society Professorship and election to The National Academy of Sciences, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and The National Academy of Medicine. He also received honorary degrees from Linköping and Geneva Universities, an NIH MERIT award, and the Dameshek and Thomas Awards of the American Society of Hematology. He has authored 299 publications and two textbooks, and is an inventor on 17 issued patents. He was a scientific advisor to Biogen and Dyax Corporations and currently is a Director of Velico Corporation and Founding Scientist and Director of BioAegis Therapeutics, companies undertaking respectively clinical development of his discoveries concerning blood transfusion and inflammation control. For his policy work concerning the medicine-industry interface, he received the Academy of Pharmaceutical Physicians’ Sherwood and American Medical Writers Association's McGovern Awards and was appointed a Visiting Scholar of the American Enterprise Institute. Rowman and Littlefield published his book on this topic in 2015 (Pharmaphobia: How the Conflict of Interest Myth Undermines American Medical Innovation). With his wife, Kerry Maguire (DDS, MSPH and others), Stossel co-founded a 5013c charity, Options for Children in Zambia, that provides voluntary dental and medical care in that Sub-Saharan African country. For this effort he received the 2012 Humanitarian Award of the Brigham & Women's Hospital Hippocrates Society. SECTION EDITOR David C. DaleDavid C. DaleDr David C. Dale, Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington, USA, is a native of Knoxville, Tennessee, and a graduate of the Harvard Medical School, USA. He trained in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital Boston, USA, and the University of Washington Medical Center, USA and received research training at the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, USA. His research interests are in inflammation, neutrophils, and the clinical problem of neutropenia, interests which link the specialties of hematology, oncology and infectious diseases. Dr Dale is actively involved in teaching, research and patient care at the University of Washington, where he served as dean of the school of medicine. He is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, Association of American Physicians, American Clinical and Climatological Association, American Society of Hematology, Infectious Disease Society of America, and American Society for Clinical Oncology. He has served as President of the American College of Physicians (ACP) and chair of the Board of Governors. He also served as a member of the Board of Regents of ACP, President of the Society of General Internal Medicine, President of the Western Association of Physicians, President of the Medical Honor Society-Alpha Omega Alpha, and is currently President of the American Clinical and Climatological Association. He is editor-in-chief Emeritus of the medical textbook, Scientific American Medicine and has served on the National Board of Sponsors for Physicians for Social Responsibility. He is co-Director of the Severe Chronic Neutropenia International Registry.

Interview with Ambassador Roger Noriega on the United States-Cuba relationship

Roger F. Noriega is a former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs (2003-2005) and a former U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States (2001-2003). He now coordinates the American Enterprise Institute's program on Latin America. In retrospect, how would you evaluate the policies led by the Bush Administration and advocated by the Commission Assistance to a Free Cuba (regime change, democracy promotion, restrictions on travel, etc) ? Our policies were oriente...

FDA’s Gottlieb seeks lower drug development costs

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration wants to drive drug costs down—both the prices paid by patients and the increasingly expensive investments required during the early stages of drug development. That’s the message FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb delivered at the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society conference in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, calling the status quo “an unsustainable path.” Gottlieb, a former fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, promised to encourage competition but also to target companies that “game our rules to extend their drug monopolies.” Gottlieb declared that FDA has broad goals for modernizing data collection and evaluation of drug trials, which he surmised should help the industry save on drug development. But he also stated that such savings ought to be passed on to consumers. New data collection techniques are increasingly being used in so-called seamless clinical trials, in which the three traditional trial phases