Policy Currents | The newsletter for policy people
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** April 25, 2024
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Don’t Expect Iran-Israel Escalation to Wane
Last Friday morning, Israel conducted a retaliatory strike against Iran, targeting an air base in the central part of the country. The response came less than a week after Tehran launched a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel--and in spite of strong urging from the United States and others that Israel refrain from striking back.
Although the strike appears to have been largely symbolic, the decision still raises an important question, says RAND's Raphael Cohen: Why is Israel bucking its allies yet again, especially after those very countries just helped it intercept incoming Iranian missiles?
The main reason is simple: Israel and Iran are at war. While this war has been mostly covert for years, it has come out of the shadows since Hamas's October 7th attacks. "As long as Israel and Iran remain engaged in conflict," Cohen says, "they will continue to trade blows--no matter what the United States and other allies may counsel Israel to avoid escalation."
Washington's best chance at preventing a regional war from breaking out in the Middle East may be to convince Iran to rein in its proxies--including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis--and to do something about its burgeoning nuclear program. Otherwise, the conflict between Israel and Iran will only continue to spiral.
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Cobalt Mining Contributes to Poverty and Servitude in the Congo
Political instability, armed conflict, human rights abuses, and poverty have plagued the Democratic Republic of the Congo for decades. A core part of this ongoing crisis is the battle over the DRC's vast natural resources. For example, the Congo is home to two-thirds of the world's cobalt, a mineral that's essential to producing green-energy technology, such as batteries for electric cars. A boom in industrial-scale cobalt mining has led to mass forced evictions and what some have called "modern-day slavery." According to RAND's Marie Jones, more must be done to provide transparency into the cobalt supply chain by examining labor practices, environmental degradation, and gaps in investment into DRC infrastructure.
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The Impact of COVID-19 on Prison Education
As lessons from the pandemic continue to emerge, a new RAND study focuses on a group that is often overlooked in discussions about the effects of COVID-19: the 1.2 million incarcerated adults in U.S. federal and state prisons. More specifically, our researchers conducted an analysis to understand the pandemic's impacts on state prison education programs. Unsurprisingly, COVID-19 had considerable--and lasting--negative effects, and it remains to be seen whether correctional education systems will fully recover. However, the authors do note some bright spots, namely the adoption of educational technology and preparation for future pandemics.
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** RAND Recommends
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- In an interview with Wired, RAND president and CEO Jason Matheny discussed AI and biorisk, "competition without catastrophe" in the U.S.-China rivalry, and much more.
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- Graduating high school students are a critical source of new recruits for the U.S. military, but recruiters often don't have what they consider to be adequate access to secondary schools. RAND researchers conducted the first systematic analysis of these issues.
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- Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida recently called for the United States to act like a global power. RAND's Jeffrey Hornung explains how Japan's leader turned the tables on Washington in a way that few expected.
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