Things can only get better or at least they can hardly get much worse. The United States limped through 2020, its daily life muted by Covid, its oldest wound of racism reopened by the death of George Floyd and, above all, the fabric of its democracy strained by the behaviour of its outgoing president.
The year was bookended by two low points for Donald Trump, both of them self-inflicted. In January, he faced a Senate trial, having become only the third president in US history to be impeached. In November, he lost his re-election bid, then spent the weeks afterwards seeking to cling desperately to power. He traduced basic tenets of American public life in the process.
The Alabama Innovation Commission has announced a partnership with the Hoover Institution at California’s Stanford University to promote innovation and economic growth within Alabama.
Chaired by Tuscaloosa’s own state Rep. Bill Poole, the commission will collaborate with the Hoover Institution to incorporate intellectual resources into recommendations for practical and timely applications.
“I am confident that the work that the Alabama Innovation Commission and the Hoover Institution will produce through this partnership will have a profound impact on the future economic trajectory of our state,” said Poole, a Republican who also chairs the Ways and Means Education Budget Committee in the Alabama House of Representatives. “We must all work together on initiatives like this to create smart solutions that will continue to make Alabama an attractive state for business investment and job creation.”
The debate over what China wants and why Beijing acts the way it does continues.
The Center for the National Interest recently hosted a panel of experts to discuss China s foreign policy. The transcript of the event can found below.
More than a half-century ago, George Kennan published an analysis of the sources of Soviet conduct that helped to shape US policy toward Moscow throughout the Cold War. More recently, the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff – an organization that Kennan founded and led – published an analysis of 21st-century Chinese conduct meant to provide the underpinnings for a new American approach to contending with Beijing’s growing might.