Russia and a few other Eurasian countries have been home to the fastest growing epidemics of HIV in the world over the last several years. This volume offers country-specific accounts, authored by the leading players in the analysis of the situation and the fight against the virus.

THE FUTURE OF RELIABLE AND SECURE ELECTRIC POWER

Providing reliable and secure electric power to meet the growing demands of this century, and mitigate the adverse effects of climate change, is a daunting challenge. The situation has given rise to increased interest in the potential for distributed power systems (DPS): a combination of distributed sources of power production and distributed energy storage. This study examines the economic, environmental, and energy security case for DPS.

Scholars from the Brookings Institution's Energy Security Initiative and the Hoover Institution's Task Force on Energy Policy offer recommendations for ensuring the security and sustainability of our electricity system now and for future generations through the greater deployment of DPS. Their report provides a comprehensive survey of the current technology and policy landscape of DPS and offers suggestions for its most effective use in civilian and military settings, along with warnings on its possible pitfalls. They discuss the current economic, environmental, and energy security costs and benefits of DPS, the policies and regulations currently in place to promote DPS and their effectiveness, the potential benefits of increased penetration of DPS and the barriers to achieving them, and what federal and state governments can do to further encourage DPS.

CONTRIBUTORS: John Banks, Jeremy Carl, David Fedor, Kevin Massy, Pedram Mokrian, Jelena Simjanovic, David Slayton, Amy Guy Wagner, Lisa Wood

Russia and a few other Eurasian countries have been home to the fastest growing epidemics of HIV in the world over the last several years. This volume offers country-specific accounts, authored by the leading players in the analysis of the situation and the fight against the virus.

This dramatic narrative of breathtaking scope and riveting focus puts the "story" back into history. It is the saga of how the most ambitious of big ideas -- that a world made up of many nations can govern itself peacefully -- has played out over the millennia. Humankind's "Great Experiment" goes back to the most ancient of days -- literally to the Garden of Eden -- and into the present, with an eye to the future.

Strobe Talbott looks back to the consolidation of tribes into nations -- starting with Israel -- and the absorption of those nations into the empires of Hammurabi, the Pharaohs, Alexander, the Caesars, Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, the Ottomans, and the Hapsburgs, through incessant wars of territory and religion, to modern alliances and the global conflagrations of the twentieth century.

He traces the breakthroughs and breakdowns of peace along the way: the Pax Romana, the Treaty of Westphalia, the Concert of Europe, the false start of the League of Nations, the creation of the flawed but indispensable United Nations, the effort to build a "new world order" after the cold war, and America's unique role in modern history as "the master builder" of the international system.

Offering an insider's view of how the world is governed today, Talbott interweaves through this epic tale personal insights and experiences and takes us with him behind the scenes and into the presence of world leaders as they square off or cut deals with each other. As an acclaimed journalist, he covered the standoff between the superpowers for more than two decades; as a high-level diplomat, he was in the thick of tumultuous events in the 1990s, when the bipolar equilibrium gave way to chaos in the Balkans, the emergence of a new breed of international terrorist, and America's assertiveness during its "unipolar moment" -- which he sees as the latest, but not the last, stage in the Great Experiment.

Talbott concludes with a trenchant critique of the worldview and policies of George W. Bush, whose presidency he calls a "consequential aberration" in the history of American foreign policy. Then, looking beyond the morass in Iraq and the battle for the White House, he argues that the United States can regain the trust of the world by leading the effort to avert the perils of climate change and nuclear catastrophe.

Fast Forward is equal parts science primer, history lesson, policy prescription, and ethical treatise. This pithy and compelling book makes clear what we know and don't know about global warming; why the threat demands prudent and urgent action; why the transition to a low-carbon economy will be the most difficult political and economic transaction in history; and how it requires nothing less than a revolution in our sense of civic responsibility. William Antholis and Strobe Talbott guide the reader through two decades of climate change politics and diplomacy, explaining the national and international factors that have influenced and often impeded domestic climate legislation and global negotiations. Recent United Nations-sponsored summits have demonstrated that the world cannot wait for a binding global treaty. Instead, the authors believe that the ""Big Four"" of America, the European Union, China, and India must lead the way forward. They recommend a new international mechanism modeled on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that would monitor national commitments and create incentives for other countries to coordinate their efforts to cut emissions. Antholis and Talbott put their recommendations for legislative and diplomatic action into the larger context of our obligation to future generations, echoing a theme stressed by a diverse coalition of religious leaders calling for ambitious action on climate change. The world we leave to our children and grandchildren is not an abstraction, or even just a legacy; we must think about what kind of world that will be in deciding how we live -and act -today. Praise for Fast Forward "William Antholis and Strobe Talbott brilliantly explode the economic and scientific myths about climate change while elevating the political debate to a transgenerational moral crisis. Their synthesis of science, economics, religion, and philosophy is a clarion call to action for anyone interested in the future of the planet -which means all of us."" -Andrea Mitchell, NBC News "In their very timely and fast-paced account of where we are today on the politics of global warming, the authors see Copenhagen as having pointed up the futility of relying on the United Nations as the only vehicle through which to tackle climate change." -Ed Luce, Financial Times "Strobe Talbott and Bill Antholis have made an admirable and important effort to move beyond the recent political rancor in Washington. They have a plan for leaders who want to be serious about energy and climate." -Senator Richard G. Lugar (R-Ill.)

With a revised foreword by Brookings President Strobe Talbott and a new introduction by Berlin's editor, Henry Hardy. George Kennan, the architect of US policy toward the Soviet Union, called Isaiah Berlin ""the patron saint among the commentators of the Russian scene."" In The Soviet Mind, Berlin proves himself fully worthy of that accolade. Although the essays in this book were originally written to explore the tensions between Soviet communism and Russian culture, the thinking about the Russian mind that emerges is as relevant today under Putin's postcommunist Russia as it was when this book first appeared more than a decade ago. This Brookings Classic brings together Berlin's writings about the Soviet Union. Among the highlights are accounts of Berlin's meetings with the Russian writers in the aftermath of the war; a celebrated memorandum he wrote for the British Foreign Office in 1945 about the state of the arts under Stalin; Berlin's account of Stalin's manipulative ""artificial dialectic""; portraits of Pasternak and poet Osip Mandel'shtam; Berlin's survey of Russian culture based on a visit in 1956; and a postscript reflecting on the fall of the Berlin Wall and other events in 1989. Henry Hardy prepared the essays for publication; his introduction describes their history. In his revised foreword, Brookings' Strobe Talbott, a longtime expert on Russia and the Soviet Union, relates the essays to Berlin's other work. The essays and other pieces in The Soviet Mind - which includes a new essay, ""Marxist versus Non-Marxist Ideas in Soviet Policy"" - represent Berlin at his most brilliant and are invaluable for policymakers, students, and anyone interested in Russian politics and thought - past, present, and future.

On May 11, 1998 , three nuclear devices exploded under the Thar, or Great Indian Desert, shaking the surrounding villages-and the rest of the world. The immediate effect was to plunge U.S.-India relations, already vexed by decades of tension and estrangement, into a new acrimonious standoff. The situation deteriorated further when Pakistan responded with a test of its own two weeks later. Engaging India is the revealing, authoritative account of the intensive talks that the United States conducted on parallel tracks with the South Asian nuclear powers over the next two and a half years. Bill Clinton's point man for that high-stakes diplomacy takes us behind the scenes of one of the most intriguing and consequential political dramas of our time, reconstructing what happened-and why-with narrative verve, rich human detail, and penetrating analysis. From June 1998 through September 2000, in the most extensive engagement ever between the United States and India, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and Minister of External Affairs Jaswant Singh met fourteen times in seven countries on three continents. They grappled with the urgent issue of arms control and nonproliferation, but they also discussed their visions for the U.S.-Indian relationship, the potential for economic and strategic cooperation between the two countries, and the implications of Hindu nationalism for the evolution of Indian society, politics, and security. Their personal rapport helped raise the level of trust between the two governments. As a result, the United States was able to play a crucial role in defusing the crisis between India and Pakistan over the contested territory of Kashmir in the summer of 1999-thus, perhaps, averting a war that could have escalated to nuclear conflagration. The Talbott-Singh dialogue laid the ground for Clinton's transformational visit to South Asia in March 2000. That presidential journey opened a new chapter in relations between the United States and India. It also set the scene for U.S. cooperation with both India and Pakistan in the war against terror after September 11, 2001. In addition to providing an insider's perspective on a fascinating and instructive episode in diplomatic history, the story told here is vital background for understanding what happens next in a region that is home to nearly a quarter of humanity and that was, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, "the most dangerous place on earth".

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the once numerous pronouncements of a coming conflict with China have been muted as both countries face new challenges. The contributors to this insightful volume discuss some of the most critical issues in contemporary U.S.-China relations and provide historical and cultural perspectives on these issues. The importance of every major development in U.S.-China relations is discussed, from the success of Chinese economic reform and the rise of civil society to the EP-3 collision and the Taiwan Strait issue. While not all contributors have the same interpretation of events or conception of their implications, this volume provides a balanced, non-partisan account that presents readers with a brief and comprehensive summary of the issues at the forefront of the debate over the future of U.S.-China relations.

Here, an agenda-setting team of experts looks at how terrorism can be understood, contained, and ultimately defeated. September 11 marked the beginning of a new era - an age of terror in which counter-terrorism will be one of the highest priorities of national governments and international institutions. How we proceed in this new war largely depends on the answer to a prior question: what exactly happened here and why? In The Age of Terror, eight historians and policymakers address this question and examine the considerations and objectives of policy decisions in post-September 11 America.