Hence, the answers provided are never conclusive, but rather detail the range of opinion within the field.
Following those issue questions is the “Background” section, which provides a history of the issue being examined. This retrospective includes important legislative and executive actions and court decisions to inform readers on how current policy evolved.
Next, the “Current Situation” section examines important contemporary policy issues, legislation under consideration and action being taken. Each selection ends with an “Outlook” section that gives a sense of what new regulations, court rulings and possible policy initiatives might be put into place in the next five to ten years.
Each report contains features that augment the main text: sidebars that examine issues related to the topic, a pro/con debate by two outside experts, a chronology of key dates and events and an annotated bibliography that details the major sources used by the writer.
Acknowledgments
We wish to thank many people for helping to make this collection a reality. For many years, Thomas J. Billitteri, former managing editor of CQ Researcher, gave us his enthusiastic support and cooperation as we developed this edition. Now, Kenneth Fireman, managing editor of CQ Researcher, is carrying on the tradition of helping College Editorial with our new edition texts. He and his talented editors and writers have amassed a first-class collection of Researcher articles, and we are fortunate to have access to this rich cache. We also thankfully acknowledge the advice and feedback from current readers and are gratified by their satisfaction with the book.
Some readers may be learning about CQ Researcher for the first time. We expect that many readers will want regular access to this excellent weekly research tool. For subscription information or a no-obligation free trial of Researcher, please contact CQ Press at www.cqpress.com or toll-free at 1-866-4CQ-PRESS (1-866-427-7737).
We hope that you will be pleased by the 2021 edition of Global Issues. We welcome your feedback and suggestions for future editions. Please direct comments to Anna Villarruel, Sponsoring Editor for International Relations, Comparative Politics, and Public Administration, CQ Press, an imprint of SAGE, 2600 Virginia Avenue, NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20037; or send e-mail to [email protected].
—The Editors of CQ Press
Contributors
Jonathan Broderis a Washington-based reporter and editor. He was a senior writer for Newsweek, a senior editor at Congressional Quarterly and served as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, South Asia and the Far East for the Chicago Tribune. Broder’s writing also has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Smithsonian and the World Policy Journal, among other publications. He previously reported for CQ Researcher on financial services deregulation and on India.Lola Butcheris a journalist who covers health care policy and business issues, trends and controversies. Her work has appeared in Undark, Knowable, Fast Company, TheAtlantic.com, Salon, Neurology Today, Managed Care and other publications. She is a member of the Association of Health Care Journalists and a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism.Sarah Glazeris a New York-based freelancer who contributes regularly to CQ Researcher. Her articles on health, education and social-policy issues also have appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Her recent CQ Researcher reports include “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” and “Universal Basic Income.” She graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.A. in American history.Reed Karaim, a freelance writer in Tucson, Ariz., has written for The Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, Smithsonian, American Scholar and other publications. He is the winner of the Robin Goldstein Award for Outstanding Regional Reporting and other journalism honors. He is also the author of two novels, the most recent of which, The Winter in Anna, published by W. W. Norton & Co., is set at a small town weekly newspaper. He is a graduate of North Dakota State University in Fargo.Rachel Layneis a Boston-based freelance journalist whose work has appeared in outlets including CBS, USA Today, HBS Working Knowledge and MIT Technology Review. She also spent 20 years at Bloomberg News, where she covered multinational corporations, among other roles.Melba Newsomeis a health, education and general interest writer. Her work has appeared in national publications such as The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Oprah, Playboy, Reader’s Digest, Time, Good Housekeeping and Wired.Stephen Ornesis a freelance science and medical writer in Nashville, Tenn., whose articles have appeared in Scientific American, Discover, New Scientist, Science News for Students, Cancer Today, Physics World and other publications. His book, Math Art: Truth, Beauty, and Equations (Sterling Publishing), was published in April 2020.Sara Toth Stubis a Jerusalem-based U.S. journalist who has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, U.S. News & World Report and other publications. She usually covers business, culture and travel.Bill Wanlund,a former Foreign Service officer, is a freelance writer in the Washington, D.C., area. He has written for CQ Researcher on abortion, intelligence reform, the marijuana industry and climate change as a national security concern.Charles P. Wallacewas a foreign correspondent for 35 years, working for United Press International, the Los Angeles Times and Time magazine on virtually every continent. He won the Business Journalist of the Year award in 1999 for economic reporting on Europe. He previously reported for CQ Researcher on global fishing controversies.
Global Issues, 2021 Edition
1 U.S.-Iran Relations: Is a Military Conflict Inevitable?
By Jonathan Broder
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members participate in a graduation ceremony at the Khatam al-Anbia Air Defense University in Tehran on Oct. 30, 2019. Khamenei has urged a “resistance economy” in the face of U.S. sanctions.
IRANIAN SUPREME LEADER PRESS OFFICE/HANDOUT/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
From CQ Researcher, November 15, 2019
The Issues
On the moonlit night of June 20, 2019, U.S. fighter jets, laden with precision-guided bombs and rockets, were in the air over the Arabian Sea while U.S. Navy warships below prepared missiles for an attack. Their targets: a trio of radar and missile installations in Iran.
Earlier that day, President Trump had ordered the attack in retaliation for Tehran’s downing of an unmanned U.S. spy plane flying in what the Trump administration said was international airspace over the Persian Gulf—an assertion strongly denied by Iranian officials, who said the drone was in Iranian airspace and ignored several orders to leave.1
But 10 minutes before the strike was to commence, Trump abruptly called it off, explaining later he deemed the likely deaths of some 150 Iranians during the attack a disproportionate punishment. “We were cocked and loaded to retaliate last night on three different sites,” Trump tweeted the next day.2
Trump’s last-minute decision to abort the attack underscores just how close the United States and Iran came to a military clash after more than a year of escalating tensions. Yet, despite what now appears to be Trump’s reluctance to use force against Iran, the two nations remain on a dangerous course toward armed confrontation unless they step back from their respective approaches, say independent analysts and former officials of both countries.
For Trump, who prides himself on being the first U.S. president to seriously confront Iran, a step-back would mean relaxing his so-called “maximum pressure” strategy of harsh economic sanctions aimed at forcing Tehran to permanently end its nuclear program and scrap long-standing regional security policies. For Iran’s clerical leaders, whose long