Search results

The approach taken by authorities in the oversight and supervision of FMIs is important in promoting and maintaining financial stability in Moldova. While well-functioning FMIs can greatly improve the efficiency, transparency, and safety of financial systems, they can also concentrate systemic risk, which requires effective oversight and supervision to achieve public policy objectives. In the context of Moldova, the authorities are confronted with a national decision to create a single CSD that has good governance, robust risk management practices, and financial soundness. Vulnerabilities in FMIs could potentially undermine the implementation of monetary policy, or generate systemic disruptions in the financial markets, and more widely across the economy. A problem may be initiated by the inability of a participant to settle its obligations, or by operational failures of the system as a whole. The resulting default may be passed on to other participants, and get transmitted across financial systems and markets, threatening their stability. This note reviews the oversight and supervisory framework for FMIs in Moldova. In this note, FMIs cover payment systems, central securities depositories, and securities settlement systems. Payment systems were assessed in the 2008 Republic of Moldova FSAP Update and are not covered in this note. Securities registrars, which play a key role in the capital markets, are not FMIs and are assessed under principle 11 on CSDs of the PFMIs. The analysis was based on the authorities' answers to the IMF's questionnaire, IMF and World Bank technical assistance reports, and background documentation. The mission met with representatives from the NBM, NCFM, MSE, NSD, and independent registrars. This note was prepared based on the information available in February 2014. The note includes (i) an overview of the FMIs and description of past and ongoing reforms, and (ii) an assessment of the main issues at stake.

Background: The Social Insurance is part of the Swedish welfare system that is intended to create economic security for citizens in the event of unemployment, sickness, functional disability, and old age. The Swedish sickness‐benefit insurance is based on the standard insurance principle meaning that sickness benefits are related to level of lost income. The increasing number of sick listed people and people with disability pension (DPs) in Sweden may lead to marginalisation of individuals as they are not part of the labour market. The government has decided that the number of sick‐listed people should be halved by 2008, which means a tougher judgment of the applications for sick leave compensation. To be qualified for sickness benefit the disease has to impair the work ability in relation to the specific demands of the work of that person. The evaluation of the work ability in a percentage is an important element with regard to the policy on disability. The social insurance officers (SIOs) who are assessing the work ability are dependent on judgments from the physicians as expertise, and the guidelines in the social insurance act. The eligibility criteria for DP and the process of dealing with applications for DP is scarcely studied. Objectives: The overall aim of the thesis was to explore demographic and health differences between those, who were granted and those, who were not granted disability pension. The second aim was to study how the process from applications to decisions on disability pensions were executed and perceived by the social insurance offices and to elucidate their working conditions during the decision process. Material and methods: The first two studies explored differences between those granted DP and those not granted DP. Study I was a register‐based retrospective case‐control study carried out in the area of a county in Sweden. The cases were all individuals rejected a full disability pension 1999‐2000, in all 99 cases. Controls were every tenth person who was granted a full DP during the same period, 198 controls. Determinants were recorded from the Social Insurance (SI). In study II demographic data and medical diagnoses were obtained from the SI records. Data concerning self‐reported health, HRQoL, social networks and use of health care were collected by a postal questionnaire. The study objects were the same as in study I. In study III and IV indepth interviews were carried through to study the social insurance officers' perspective on the process from application to decision on disabilitypensions as well as their experiences of prerequisites and hindrances in their work with DP applications. The transcribed data were analysed by an inductive content analysis. Results: Unemployment, living in the main municipality and age below 50 years were determinants for rejection of DP. Medical status as described in the Social Insurance records had less association with the outcome. There are variations in praxis of rejection of applicants between social insurance boards in different geographical areas due to other reasons than medical. The nDP group had more often multiple diagnoses, and lower self‐reported health and HRQoL compared to those granted DP. Those not granted DP also had significantly smaller social networks. The SIOs perceived that they had to make rapid decisions within a limited time frame, based on limited information, mainly on the basis of incomplete medical certificates, and with no firm criteria for the regulations on the individual case level. Communication among the various authorities as employment offices and social services suffered from lack of common goaldirected strategy. In study IV the SIOs described their working conditions when executing the applications for DP. The SIOs perceived recurrent changes in rules and regulations as frustrating as they at the same time had to face the client. The large number of clients prevented them from being able to offer clients activities and support them in the way they were supposed to do. The SIOs powerful position and how their discretion was implemented made them feel responsible for performing their work well. SIOs are to be considered as typical street‐level bureaucrats as they have to perform their work between the policy, rules and clients. Conclusions: The individuals had an increased risk to be rejected DP if they were younger than 50 years, unemployed, and lived in the main city. No evident differences in medical diagnoses were found between the groups. The results indicate that there may be other reasons than medical in praxis. Contrary to expectations, those not granted DP do not seem to have better health, but rather to suffer from more sickness than those, who were granted DP. Unemployment leads to inability to qualify for compensation and benefits that are associated with participation on the labour market. The group not granted disability pension appears to be a disadvantaged group in need for a co‐ordination between different parts of the social welfare system. The different perspectives were perceived as obvious obstacles in the communication between professionals in the welfare system as they had other goals and demands. Clients, that have comprehensive problems and are in need of coordinated measures from many authorities to get entrance to the labour market still suffer from lack of coordination. One question is how the different public officers use their discretion when handling clients and how the cooperation can be improved. ; The electronic version of the printed dissertation is a corrected version.

Worldwide, deaths from cancer exceed those caused by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), tuberculosis, and malaria combined. Seventy percent of deaths due to cancer occur in low-and middle-income countries, which are often poorly prepared to deal with the growing burden of chronic disease. Over a period of 18 months, the cancer care and control South-South knowledge exchange brought together a group of stakeholders from five countries in Africa - Botswana, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia to share experiences, lessons, and good practices through a set of video conferences and a site visit to Zambia. All five countries have demonstrated commitment, initiated various cancer control and cancer screening programs, and expressed interest in sharing their experiences. The knowledge exchange on cancer care and control aimed to raise awareness, increase knowledge of effective strategies, and strengthen regional collaboration in cancer control planning and expanding equitable access to cancer treatment. This paper presents highlights of the country experiences shared, common challenges discussed, and innovative solutions explored during the knowledge exchange. Topics addressed include population-based surveillance and data collection to better document the burden of cancer; strategies for designing and implementing successful national cancer care and control programs; innovative approaches for strengthening cancer prevention efforts such as human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccination programs; task sharing and other strategies to build capacity and increase access to services; analytical tools for understanding the costs of programs; financing models, including public private partnerships, to increase cancer prevention and care; policy reforms needed to improve access to palliative care; and opportunities for regional collaboration.

Credit programs have been long viewed as salient means to develop the Philippine agriculture sector, especially small-farm agriculture. From subsidized-directed, credit programs in the country have become more market-oriented in recent years. However, there have been little to no studies examining how access to credit affects the agricultural performance of poor agricultural producers, including the beneficiaries of the agrarian reform program. This policy study utilizes primary data from the Department of Agrarian Reform's Baseline Survey on Project Convergence on Value Chain Enhancement for Rural Growth and Empowerment (ConVERGE) to analyze borrowing incidence among Agrarian Reform Beneficiary Organization (ARBO) member households, particularly those engaged in farm production. The results show that (1) borrowing ARBO agricultural households are better off than the nonborrowing ones in terms of housing characteristics and agricultural performance; (2) farmer associations and cooperatives are among the top sources of agricultural credit in the countryside aside from microfinance institutions; (3) and Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA)-holding ARBO agricultural households have higher borrowing incidence than the average ARBO agricultural households. Strengthening credit retailers' leadership and management capacity through training is needed to further improve their lending performance and widen their reach in the countryside.

Policymakers and donors have long viewed credit programs as salient means to develop the agriculture sector, especially the small-farm agriculture. Credit programs in the country have evolved from subsidized directed credit programs to a more market-based approach. There have been little to no studies that examine poor agricultural producers' access to credit and how it affects agricultural performance, especially in the context of Agrarian Reform Beneficiary Organization (ARBO) members. This policy study utilized primary data from the Baseline Survey of Project ConVERGE, a project of the Department of Agrarian Reform, to analyze the borrowing incidence among ARBO member households, particularly those engaged in farm production. It appears from the results of the study that: membership in an ARBO is associated with better credit access; borrowing ARBO agricultural households are better off than nonborrowing ARBO agricultural households; and farmer associations/cooperatives are among the top sources of agricultural credit in the countryside aside from microfinance institutions; and Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA)-holding ARBO agricultural households have higher borrowing incidence than the average ARBO agricultural households. Strengthening the capacity of credit retailers through trainings, especially in leadership and credit management, is needed to further improve their lending performance.

One of the most intriguing and indeed progressive features of the Labour government is its willingness to have itself judged against a wide range of targets, as set out in the Public Service Agreements (PSAs) which accompanied the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) in 1998.The second Comprehensive Spending Review due in summer 2000 will be accompanied by a revised set of PSAs negotiated between the Treasury and individual departments. This second round of PSAs will rightly concentrate on the key policy outcomes which departments are aiming to deliver. The several hundred targets which assess the managerial effectiveness of the government machine will be covered by a separate series of Service Delivery Agreements. However, ironically the remarks by the Prime Minister on health service funding appear to undermine the whole CSR process, and threaten to turn the debate back to a focus on how much money gets spent on the public services, rather than the welcome focus on outcomes implied by the PSAs.The PSAs in effect set out in detail the government's strategy, which immediately raises the question of whether they should signal more clearly the government's priorities across the many different policy outcomes. Several of the articles in this issue of New Economy focus on the key areas of policy which should be central to the agenda of a centre‐left government: restoring full employment, eliminating child poverty and putting sustainable development at the heart of government strategy rather than at its margins. Matthew Taylor leads off by discussing the tensions which lie at the heart of the PSA process. Performance targets can have perverse outcomes if they are not designed carefully. The PSA process is highly centralising and may sti?Ÿe local initiative. It is not clear that modern government is best delivered by the Treasury telling everyone what to do.In an act of modest self‐indulgence the editor contributes an article to this issue which argues that a commitment to the attainment of full employment alongside a commitment to eliminating child poverty would represent a really powerful and radical agenda for the Government. Less weight should be given to closing the productivity gap, which is less of a problem than usually thought. Lisa Harker takes up the issues raised by the government's anti‐poverty strategy noting the absence of any debate about which of the poverty indicators the government intends to track should be given priority. She also notes that adopting a clear measure of income poverty brings challenges for government, raising the question of how far it should explicitly address poverty through higher bene?žts to provide 'security for those who cannot work'.The urgency of tackling child poverty is given weight by the chilling conclusion set out by John Micklewright and Kitty Stewart that on three key measures of child well‐being – child poverty, children in workless households and the teenage birth rate – the UK's performance is the worst in the EU. It is this 'child poverty gap' with our European partners which should make us ashamed not the productivity gap. Fran Bennett and Chris Roche argue for genuinely participatory approaches to the development of indicators of poverty and social exclusion which focus not just on what is measured, but also on who decides which indicators are important. This approach features heavily in debates in the developing world, but the OECD countries could learn from this experience. Chris Hewett and Matthew Rayment note discouragingly that seven major government departments made no reference to sustainable development in their aims and objectives as set out in the PSAs in 1998. By and large, the key environmental issues are still seen as only a priority for the DETR and no one else. It is not clear that any relationship between the PSAs and the government's sustainable development strategy is evidence of joined up government or merely coincidental overlapping government.The original PSAs made little or no reference to the goal of securing greater racial equality and Sarah Spencer takes up this omission by looking at a range of areas of public policy where a focus on outcome based measures relating to racial equality are needed. The achievement of race equality objectives necessitates a contribution from each of the key Whitehall departments responsible for domestic policy, and from all departments in relation to their own employment practices. Damian Tambini discusses the 'Ulysees Effect' by which the announcing of targets amid great fanfare forces the government to nail its colours to the mast. In the area of electronic service delivery, targets have so far been quite successful in jolting government agencies into taking action. If potential problems relating to data protection and social exclusion do not emerge, targets in this area will be seen as a useful tool of radical modernisation. However, if the negative effects of electronic service delivery do become more severe, then the government will have to face some difficult choices: abandon the targets, fudge the ?žgures, or push them through despite the negative consequences. Andrea Westall discusses four recently published IPPR reports relating to business or industrial policy. A common theme is that government has a role as a market maker and catalyst by bringing players together to encourage the formation of innovative solutions rather than intervening in a broad and possibly blunt way. This role requires an element of risk and 'letting go' rather than devising programmes with clearly de?žned outcomes and targets – somewhat anathema to the Treasury with its emphasis on performance targets as set out in the PSAs. Rebecca Harding looks at the establishment of regional venture capital funds, arguing that in the north of England the main problem may be the lack of demand for venture capital, so that it may not be the correct tool for supporting innovative small businesses in all regions. Robert Atkinson explodes some of the myths held about the emerging 'new economy'. This includes the notion that technological change is destroying employment (preposterous when viewed against the tremendous jobs growth in the US economy) or that economic change calls into question the continued viability of large corporations or the role of the state.Finally David Osmon offers a different model from the government's proposed public private partnership for achieving a more efficient London Underground. The combined infrastructure and operations of some underground lines could be leased to the private sector which could then compete with the publicly operated lines. If the private companies achieved efficiency savings they could then bid for further franchises and in the meantime those lines still in public ownership would be subject to competitive pressures to increase their efficiency. With all the uncertainty surrounding the current PPP this idea is worthy of consideration.

Identification and registration of international migrants is one of the main concerns and duties of border agencies around the world. They are at the core of the set of the processes that constitute contemporary borders. The shaping, maintenance and function of registration systems is a multi-factorial social process that challenges and at the same time co-shapes what modern nation borders are regarded to be in the modern era. International migration and more specifically irregularised migration, in turn, challenges the traditional function of a border as a firewall that either allows or blocks a person's mobility. Thus, it is often associated with discourses of security, order, national identity of the receiving state, and humanitarianism. The discourse around migration and borders is saturated with the presence of a number of categories that are widely and unproblematically circulated without consideration of their ontological and epistemological status which is often more complicated than it is presented. Critical scholars from the fields of border and migration studies, surveillance studies and Science and Technology Studies (STS) have challenged the naturalization of those categories, as well as the invisibility of much of the border related work that produces, maintains and circulates them. This dissertation aims to contribute to the aforementioned body of work, and at the same time participate in the recent debate around irregularised migration and the border regime of the EU, as well as around the so-called "migration crisis" originating in the spring of 2015. It does so, by critically examining the social processes that constitute what is the identification and registration of irregularised migrants in the external borders EU, with an ethnographical focus on the Greek islands situated in the maritime borders between Greece and Turkey. Furthermore, by constructing a genealogy of the Dublin system, consisting of the Dublin Regulation and the EURODAC Regulation, the latter being the main Information Communication Technology (ICT) tool used in the EU for the administration of asylum applications and the governance of asylum seekers and other irregularised migrants. Conducting ethnographic fieldwork with the actors that work on identification and registration of irregularised migrants is a chance for a deeper understanding of their practices, their technological and discursive tools, their own conceptualization of their work and position in the border regime of the EU. In addition, it allows the researcher a direct (to the possible extent) access in the process of construction of categorization schemes and their reification in manageable data that are crucial for the governance of the migrant populations. Furthermore, the research method of interviews allows for the re-addressing and further examination of controversies and "anomalies" that come up during fieldwork. Finally, critical reading of policy papers is the base for the construction of a genealogy of registration systems that in turn helps in the conceptualizing of contemporary practices. These practices, I argue are not exclusively about discovering a well hidden truth, but also about shaping it; not only about revealing a migrant's identity, but also and perhaps more importantly about constructing and attributing it. Border and migration related policies have an ambiguous relationship with the practices of actors in the field. They dictate and determine them but the level difference renders them two distinct realities. Policy papers and state strategies mean nothing outside their actual implementation by field workers. The complexity of both levels, as well as that of the relationship between them, the organizational structure of the EU, and the different practices and policies developed in domestic level in each Member state render universal accounts of the "EU's borders" an impossible task. Instead, geographically localized, and politically and contextually situated accounts can capture instances of the complex phenomena that is border work. And that is a purpose in which the present thesis ascribes itself. ; Identification and registration of international migrants is one of the main concerns and duties of border agencies around the world. They are at the core of the set of the processes that constitute contemporary borders. The shaping, maintenance and function of registration systems is a multi-factorial social process that challenges and at the same time co-shapes what modern nation borders are regarded to be in the modern era. International migration and more specifically irregularised migration, in turn, challenges the traditional function of a border as a firewall that either allows or blocks a person's mobility. Thus, it is often associated with discourses of security, order, national identity of the receiving state, and humanitarianism. The discourse around migration and borders is saturated with the presence of a number of categories that are widely and unproblematically circulated without consideration of their ontological and epistemological status which is often more complicated than it is presented. Critical scholars from the fields of border and migration studies, surveillance studies and Science and Technology Studies (STS) have challenged the naturalization of those categories, as well as the invisibility of much of the border related work that produces, maintains and circulates them. This dissertation aims to contribute to the aforementioned body of work, and at the same time participate in the recent debate around irregularised migration and the border regime of the EU, as well as around the so-called "migration crisis" originating in the spring of 2015. It does so, by critically examining the social processes that constitute what is the identification and registration of irregularised migrants in the external borders EU, with an ethnographical focus on the Greek islands situated in the maritime borders between Greece and Turkey. Furthermore, by constructing a genealogy of the Dublin system, consisting of the Dublin Regulation and the EURODAC Regulation, the latter being the main Information Communication Technology (ICT) tool used in the EU for the administration of asylum applications and the governance of asylum seekers and other irregularised migrants. Conducting ethnographic fieldwork with the actors that work on identification and registration of irregularised migrants is a chance for a deeper understanding of their practices, their technological and discursive tools, their own conceptualization of their work and position in the border regime of the EU. In addition, it allows the researcher a direct (to the possible extent) access in the process of construction of categorization schemes and their reification in manageable data that are crucial for the governance of the migrant populations. Furthermore, the research method of interviews allows for the re-addressing and further examination of controversies and "anomalies" that come up during fieldwork. Finally, critical reading of policy papers is the base for the construction of a genealogy of registration systems that in turn helps in the conceptualizing of contemporary practices. These practices, I argue are not exclusively about discovering a well hidden truth, but also about shaping it; not only about revealing a migrant's identity, but also and perhaps more importantly about constructing and attributing it. Border and migration related policies have an ambiguous relationship with the practices of actors in the field. They dictate and determine them but the level difference renders them two distinct realities. Policy papers and state strategies mean nothing outside their actual implementation by field workers. The complexity of both levels, as well as that of the relationship between them, the organizational structure of the EU, and the different practices and policies developed in domestic level in each Member state render universal accounts of the "EU's borders" an impossible task. Instead, geographically localized, and politically and contextually situated accounts can capture instances of the complex phenomena that is border work. And that is a purpose in which the present thesis ascribes itself.

The objective of the present paper is to study the factors associated with environmental bilateral aid to recipient countries over the 1990-2013 period, to assess whether it is motivated by non-environmental factors such as donors' self-interest. Environmental ODA is measured using the AidData's Core Research Release, Version 3.1. Three kinds of variables that might influence environmental aid allocation are considered: the environmental and non-environmental needs and merits of recipient countries, and the economic and political interests of donors. Environmental needs and merits variables include vulnerability to extreme climate events and the stringency of climate policy. The Poisson and Fractional regressions find that while vulnerability to climate change seems to be a key determinant of environmental aid, its allocation is poorly linked to recipients' climate mitigation policies. We also find weak evidence of association between donors' interest variables and environmental aid on average, exception made for trade. But a donor-by-donor analysis allows to get deep dive into all the relations above and unveils that some donors are more sensitive to environmental variables, while others rather seem focused on their economic and political interests.

The objective of the present paper is to study the factors associated with environmental bilateral aid to recipient countries over the 1990-2013 period, to assess whether it is motivated by non-environmental factors such as donors' self-interest. Environmental ODA is measured using the AidData's Core Research Release, Version 3.1. Three kinds of variables that might influence environmental aid allocation are considered: the environmental and non-environmental needs and merits of recipient countries, and the economic and political interests of donors. Environmental needs and merits variables include vulnerability to extreme climate events and the stringency of climate policy. The Poisson and Fractional regressions find that while vulnerability to climate change seems to be a key determinant of environmental aid, its allocation is poorly linked to recipients' climate mitigation policies. We also find weak evidence of association between donors' interest variables and environmental aid on average, exception made for trade. But a donor-by-donor analysis allows to get deep dive into all the relations above and unveils that some donors are more sensitive to environmental variables, while others rather seem focused on their economic and political interests.

The objective of the present paper is to study the factors associated with environmental bilateral aid to recipient countries over the 1990-2013 period, to assess whether it is motivated by non-environmental factors such as donors' self-interest. Environmental ODA is measured using the AidData's Core Research Release, Version 3.1. Three kinds of variables that might influence environmental aid allocation are considered: the environmental and non-environmental needs and merits of recipient countries, and the economic and political interests of donors. Environmental needs and merits variables include vulnerability to extreme climate events and the stringency of climate policy. The Poisson and Fractional regressions find that while vulnerability to climate change seems to be a key determinant of environmental aid, its allocation is poorly linked to recipients' climate mitigation policies. We also find weak evidence of association between donors' interest variables and environmental aid on average, exception made for trade. But a donor-by-donor analysis allows to get deep dive into all the relations above and unveils that some donors are more sensitive to environmental variables, while others rather seem focused on their economic and political interests.

Myanmar is going through a critical transformation in its development path - from isolation and fragmentation to openness and integration; and from pervasive state control, exclusion, and individual disengagement, to inclusion, participation, and empowerment. This dual shift is happening against a backdrop of broader political reforms that started in 2011 when a new administration took office. The country's transition after the planned elections in 2015 will be a major test of the progress on political reforms. There remain risks of political instability, policy discontinuity, and stalled reforms due to vested interests.

The opioid crisis in the United States shows no sign of abating. Mexican drug cartels are making more money than ever before while fueling the deaths of more than a hundred thousand Americans every year. Overdose deaths in the United States quadrupled between 2002 and 2022. Law enforcement appears overwhelmed and helpless. It is little wonder, then, that extreme measures are being contemplated to ease the suffering. Planning for the most extreme of measures — use of military force to combat the flow of drugs — is apparently moving forward and evolving. It is an idea that has wedged itself into former President Trump's head, and now he's reportedly fine-tuning the idea toward possibly sending kill teams into Mexico to take out drug lords..Invading Mexico, which think tanks close to the former president have recommended, is a spectacularly bad idea for many reasons. Employing special forces to do the job, like Trump is apparently contemplating, may seem like a middle ground, an alternative that carries less risk and lower costs. While not as insane as an invasion, it would still be a dangerous, counterproductive and ultimately pointless endeavor.The first problem would be tactical. While U.S. Special Forces would have little trouble killing drug kingpins, they may well have a tough time finding them. Since Trump has telegraphed the operation, cartel leaders — who are, as a rule, ardent self-preservationists — would go underground (or, more accurately, even more underground) immediately upon his election. Gathering intelligence on their whereabouts would prove difficult, since Mexican authorities would be unlikely to help. Security services generally object to having their sovereignty trampled.Close coordination with those security services would be rather unwise anyway, since many Mexican officials are on the cartel payroll in one form or another. Four years ago, General Salvador Cienfuegos, who was Mexico's Secretary of National Defense, was arrested in Los Angeles on drug trafficking charges. Under intense diplomatic pressure from a humiliated Mexico City, the United States dropped the charges and released him. In October of last year, he was given an honorary military decoration by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who himself has been the subject of much speculation about drug-related corruption.Even if it proved possible to track down the kingpins, killing them would have little effect on the drug trade. Those proposing the special forces "solution" to the fentanyl crisis do not appear to grasp the basic economics: Supply will always find its way to high demand, and new narcotics entrepreneurs will always arise. When the Colombian cartels waned in the 1990s, one may recall, other suppliers quickly emerged in Mexico. If the current moles in Mexico are whacked, new ones will soon pop up elsewhere. Killing the middlemen of the drug trade never solves the problem. The long, sad history of drug interdiction should teach us all a lesson: The drugs always find a way.Sending teams of special forces southward on shoot-to-kill missions would also threaten to undo the tenuous rules by which Mexican narcotics trade operates today. The cartels, as violent and barbarous as they are to each other — and to incorruptable Mexican leaders — generally avoid targeting U.S. law enforcement. But if the United States treats this crisis like a war, then so too will the cartels, and they have non-trivial lethal capabilities. Their violence would get worse, and it might well begin targeting U.S. drug-enforcement agents. If we stop following the law, they will stop following the rules.There are better ways to address the fentanyl epidemic. For instance, the United States could take what might be called the "quaalude approach." Some of us are old enough to remember that oddly named illegal depressant, which was popular in the 1970s but had essentially disappeared by the late 1980s. The United States did not militarize the issue but led an effort to eliminate, or at least control, the manufacture of the precursor chemicals for quaaludes around the world. Without those chemicals, the drug dealers could not create their poisons. Fentanyl is also the product of complex chemical engineering, unlike cocaine or opium. Attacking its manufacturers, rather than its salesmen, contains the only possibility to control the epidemic. This would involve negotiation with China, which is the main supplier of fentanyl's precursor chemicals today. Some progress has been made in this direction under President Biden, but not enough to make a substantial difference.If revenge is the goal, then perhaps U.S. Special Forces are the best tool. But revenge very rarely makes for a sound basis for policy. Killing kingpins might make us feel good, and it might burnish presidential reputations, but it will not save vulnerable young people. Other options exist, ones that are far less risky, and that offer more hope for success.Nonetheless, if Trump wins the presidency in November, deadly attacks on the cartels will be a serious possibility. It would be a perfect Trump policy, one that grabs headlines and makes him look tough yet do little good and even backfire. He has ordered assassinations before, after all. If our warriors kill cartel leaders, it will allow us to bask temporarily in the glow of national vengeance. But such actions will have no effect on the drug trade, and Americans will still die by the tens of thousands. Like so many Trump policies, targeting drug kingpins would provide distractions and illusions, all to no purpose. We call our struggle against drugs a "war," but it is fundamentally a law-enforcement problem. Changing that by militarizing the issue will just make the violence worse. And it will not change the fundamental fact that drugs, given high demand, will always find a way.

Discussions of Pentagon spending in Washington routinely ignore the fact that at $886 billion for next year, the military budget is already at one of the highest levels since World War II. With better management and a more realistic strategy, that sum would be far more than is needed to provide an effective defense of the United States and its allies.Unfortunately, the Pentagon, the arms industry, and their allies in Congress have failed to make a careful assessment of America's defense needs. Instead, they're pushing an ill-considered plan to supersize the weapons production base at the expense of other urgent national needs.The main argument used by Pentagon budget boosters is that the United States is in danger of falling behind China in developing and deploying next-generation systems, like unpiloted vehicles controlled by artificial intelligence. This approach would also include taxpayer subsidies for the building of new weapons factories, which could lead to a permanent expansion of the arms sector. Doing all of this could push the Pentagon budget well over $1 trillion in the next few years, a huge and unnecessary spending binge that would further militarize our economy at the expense of investments in addressing major challenges like climate change and outbreaks of disease.Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks unveiled the Pentagon's new approach in a speech to the National Defense Industrial Association in August of this year:"To stay ahead [of China], we're going to create a new state of the art… leveraging attritable, autonomous systems in all domains which are less expensive, put fewer people at risk, and can be changed, upgraded, or improved with substantially shorter lead times," she said. "We'll counter the PLA's [People's Liberation Army's] with mass of our own, but ours will be harder to plan for, harder to hit, and harder to beat."Building new systems, based on complex new technologies, able to be produced in large numbers in short order would be a daunting task. It would run counter to the record of the Pentagon and the arms industry over the past five decades, which is rife with examples of cost overruns and schedule delays. The Pentagon's dream of new high-tech systems that are affordable and quick to produce is unlikely to be fulfilled. A forthcoming report from the Pentagon on the nation's "defense industrial strategy" suggests that the solution is to fund smaller, more nimble arms firms, because "the traditional defense contractors in the [defense industrial base] would be challenged to respond to modern conflict at the velocity, scale, and flexibility necessary to meet the dynamic requirements of a major modern conflict."Regardless of who takes up the challenge of building next generation systems, the notion that new technology can solve the array of security challenges facing America is a dubious proposition. Every generation brings hopes of a new, miracle technological fix that will allegedly dramatically increase U.S. military capabilities. From the "electronic battlefield" in Vietnam to the "revolution in military affairs" that was touted in the 1990s, this approach has produced some systems that are more accurate and better networked. But the existence of this technology has not enabled the United States to actually win wars — in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. That's because technology cannot overcome a determined adversary engaged in irregular warfare on its home turf, and that the goal of reshaping entire societies by force was wildly unrealistic in the first place. The idea that emerging technologies will do any better and increase the ability to "win" a war with China is misguided at best. War with China would be an unprecedented disaster for all concerned, and the goal of U.S. policy should be to prevent such a conflict, not spin out scenarios for "winning" a war against a nuclear-armed power.In addition, contrary to the claims of the Pentagon and the arms industry, China's military is not 10 feet tall, nor is its arms industry. As I note in a new paper for the Brown University Costs of War project, however one chooses to measure it, the U.S. spends two to three times what China spends on its military. The U.S. also has large advantages in numbers of basic systems, including nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers, advanced combat aircraft, nuclear-powered submarines, and transport aircraft. In fact, as Dan Grazier of the Project on Government Oversight has noted, China's military strategy is "inherently defensive." When it comes to emerging military technology, the relative strengths of the U.S. and China are harder to assess given a lack of transparency on research into these areas. But the best course is not to run an arms race with China in the development of AI-driven robotic weapons. As Michael Klare has noted in a report for the Arms Control Association, there are real concerns that "AI-enabled systems may fail in unpredictable ways, causing unintended human slaughter or uncontrolled escalation."The best hope of fending off a war between the U.S. and China over Taiwan rests with smart diplomacy, not "smart" weaponry. A good start would be to revive the "One China" policy, which calls, among other things, for China to commit itself to a peaceful resolution of the question of Taiwan's status, and for the U.S. to forswear support for Taiwan's formal independence and maintain only informal relations with the Taiwanese government.That approach has kept the peace in the Taiwan Strait for five decades. There is no good reason to expand the U.S. arms production base to accelerate the development of dangerous, next generation weapons systems. But unless Congress and the public act soon to rein in these efforts, we may soon enter a brave new world that will make the current security landscape look benign by comparison.

In the article an attempt was made to present the assumptions of Polish legislative solutions concerning e-health in the context of one of the basic principles of European philosophical and legal thought – the principle of subsidiarity. The principle of subsidiarity, the essence of which is to leave it to the political communities to carry out tasks for which they can take responsibility, has been incorporated into the legislation of nation states and the European Union, determiningthe identity of European civilisation. Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and the preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of Poland are an example of the translation of the subsidiarity principle into legal norms. Attention has been paid to the possibility of decentralising and delegating competences to lower levels of public authority in the field of health, using or amending the e-health legislation accordingly. Appropriate division of tasks and competences in the area of health care, taking into account the subsidiarity principle, can be observed at both national and EU level. European Union law recognises the autonomy of the Member States to define national health regulations. On the basis of selected national and EU regulations, a definition of e-health has been proposed, understood as a set of provisions within the health care system regulating the collection, processing of data and provision of health care services in order to identify and optimise the satisfaction of individual and collective health needs as well as to pursue an effective health policy by public authorities. The basic assumptions of key national and EU legal acts are also indicated. On the basis of the solutions adopted in the Act on Health Care Services Financed from Public Funds, the formal possibility of delegating and effective performance of tasks has been demonstrated in the field of health protection by local government units. New information and communication technologies provide the basis for a more complete implementation of the subsidiarity principle in health protection, as they enable the necessary knowledge on the collective and individual health needs at European, national and any other expected level – regional, population, age to be gathered and transferred. They are a tool, previously unavailable, for the precise identification of the needs of separated communities. On the other hand, new technologies can be a tool for communities to meet these needs to the extent that they are able to provide organisational and financial security. The combination of new information and communication technologies with the application of a systematic concept of tasks implementation based on the principle of subsidiarity will allow for a change in the model of health care in Poland. ; In the article an attempt was made to present the assumptions of Polish legislative solutions concerning e-health in the context of one of the basic principles of European philosophical and legal thought – the principle of subsidiarity. The principle of subsidiarity, the essence of which is to leave it to the political communities to carry out tasks for which they can take responsibility, has been incorporated into the legislation of nation states and the European Union, determiningthe identity of European civilisation. Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and the preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of Poland are an example of the translation of the subsidiarity principle into legal norms. Attention has been paid to the possibility of decentralising and delegating competences to lower levels of public authority in the field of health, using or amending the e-health legislation accordingly. Appropriate division of tasks and competences in the area of health care, taking into account the subsidiarity principle, can be observed at both national and EU level. European Union law recognises the autonomy of the Member States to define national health regulations. On the basis of selected national and EU regulations, a definition of e-health has been proposed, understood as a set of provisions within the health care system regulating the collection, processing of data and provision of health care services in order to identify and optimise the satisfaction of individual and collective health needs as well as to pursue an effective health policy by public authorities. The basic assumptions of key national and EU legal acts are also indicated. On the basis of the solutions adopted in the Act on Health Care Services Financed from Public Funds, the formal possibility of delegating and effective performance of tasks has been demonstrated in the field of health protection by local government units. New information and communication technologies provide the basis for a more complete implementation of the subsidiarity principle in health protection, as they enable the necessary knowledge on the collective and individual health needs at European, national and any other expected level – regional, population, age to be gathered and transferred. They are a tool, previously unavailable, for the precise identification of the needs of separated communities. On the other hand, new technologies can be a tool for communities to meet these needs to the extent that they are able to provide organisational and financial security. The combination of new information and communication technologies with the application of a systematic concept of tasks implementation based on the principle of subsidiarity will allow for a change in the model of health care in Poland.