Robert S. Strauss Center For International Security and Law - Specific Research Areas

Specific Research Areas

The Strauss Center’s research covers the full range of issues affecting global affairs, with key focus areas leveraging The University of Texas’s specific research strengths:

• America’s Role in the World: America faces tough challenges overseas. China, India and Brazil are emerging as new power centers. Peace in the Middle East remains elusive. Russia is resurgent. Global trade both helps and hurts American workers. Transnational problems such as nuclear proliferation, climate change and infectious disease raise questions about the effectiveness of America’s tradition of acting unilaterally. The United States needs to find new ways to succeed in a shifting global environment.

• Technology, Innovation, and Global Security: The United States has been both a creator and beneficiary of the technology revolution. America’s economic competitiveness and national security depend on remaining a vibrant leader on the cutting edge of technology and innovation. But in the current international environment, America faces increasing challenges to its technology leadership. Finding ways to sustain innovation, apply technology to solve global economic and security problems and avoid the dangers of misuse and abuse of scientific advances are among the most pressing issues of our day.

• Energy and the Environment: Abundant energy is both essential to sustaining global prosperity and a potential source of its undoing. The global economy has been built on relatively low-cost energy supplies. But as energy costs soar, economic growth is stymied and potential conflict looms. At the same time, the world’s reliance on fossil fuels is changing Earth’s climate and threatening to devastate the global ecosystem. These developments could shake the foundations of modern society and fundamentally alter the geopolitical landscape.

• Global Governance: Globalization is profoundly altering the lives of people around the globe—for better and for worse. The increased flow of goods, services, capital and ideas across borders stimulates economic activity and enhances prosperity. But is also threatens age old cultural practices and economic interests, breeds resentment between the poor and the rich, triggers disputes over rules, rights and responsibilities and provides new opportunities for criminals and terrorists. Managing the disputes that globalization generates and mitigating the dangers it unleashes is one of the great challenges of the 21st century.