Daniel Goldsmith

Renewable Energy in Abu Dhabi: Opportunities and Challenges

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is an oil-rich country located in the eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula. Abu Dhabi is the largest emirate in the country, and Abu Dhabi is the capital of the UAE. The country has the one of the highest per capita rates of CO2 emission and water consumption in the world. Most of the water consumed is produced in desalination plants, which are energy intensive. The leadership of the country has made the bold decision to establish a renewable energy (RE) sector to diversify its energy sources and the economy as a whole. The Masdar Initiative was established to promote this objective. The government has established its first RE policy; the goal is to have 7% of power come from RE sources and technologies by 2020. This paper highlights the different RE projects of the Masdar Initiative, with particular emphasis on the power sector, and examines the new concentrated solar power (CSP) plants developed as part of the initiative.

Using System Dynamics to Model and Better Understand State Stability

The world can be complex and dangerous - the loss of state stability of countries is of increasing concern. Although every case is unique, there are important common processes. We have developed a system dynamics model of state stability based on an extensive review of the literature and debriefings of subject matter experts. We represent the nature and dynamics of the €O¬oads€U generated by insurgency activities, on the one hand, and the core features of state resilience and its €O£apacity€U to withstand these €O¬oads€U¬ on the other. The challenge is to determine when threats to stability override the resilience of the state and, more important, to anticipate conditions under which small additional changes in anti-regime activity can generate major disruptions. With these insights, we can identify appropriate and actionable mitigation factors to decrease the likelihood of radical shifts in behavior and enhance prospects for stability.

Lost in cyberspace: Harnessing the Internet, international relations, and global security

International relations theory, analysis, policy, and strategy were derived from experiences in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and, therefore, were built on the assumptions that states are the relevant entities in world politics, and agreements among states will reduce the potential for conflict and violence. This traditional view respects national borders and territorial integrity and assumes that cross-border transgressions are exceptions. But some critical features of cyberspace do not correspond with this traditional view of the state system and the usual ways that nations engage in politics and conflict. Cyberspace has created new ways to aggravate global tensions and new opportunities for avoiding conflict. Already, new patterns of cyber-based conflict have been exposed, from transnational crime and espionage to cyberwar that could disrupt military systems, shut down government servers, or damage critical infrastructure. While there is some emergent cooperation in regard to cyberspace, such as cyber-crime treaties, these efforts are just beginning. An understanding of how the cyber domain influences international relations theory and practice—including its implications for power, politics, conflict, and war—is crucial to the expansion and success of such efforts.