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Hudson Institute Issues Commentary to New York Post: America Is No Longer Left vs. Right: It's The Resentful vs. the Resilient
WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, issued the following commentary on Nov. 26, 2025, to the New York Post:* * *
America Is No Longer Left vs. Right: It's The Resentful vs. the Resilient
By Liel Leibovitz
American politics is awfully confusing these days.
You've got pundits like Tucker Carlson, pretending to be conservatives yet criticizing President Trump's policies, siding with Iran, and fawning over Vladimir Putin.
You've got newspapers like the New York Times, pretending to be progressive ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, issued the following commentary on Nov. 26, 2025, to the New York Post: * * * America Is No Longer Left vs. Right: It's The Resentful vs. the Resilient By Liel Leibovitz American politics is awfully confusing these days. You've got pundits like Tucker Carlson, pretending to be conservatives yet criticizing President Trump's policies, siding with Iran, and fawning over Vladimir Putin. You've got newspapers like the New York Times, pretending to be progressiveyet celebrating Hitler-loving creeps like Nick Fuentes.
What's going on?
To figure it out, forget the old and irrelevant distinctions between left and right, or between Republicans and Democrats.
The only fault line that matters these days is between resentment and resilience.
On one side are those who blame everything on everyone else.
Can't land the sort of high-paying job you're convinced you deserve? Feeling priced out of the tony Brooklyn neighborhood you'd love to call home?
No worries! It's not your fault for not being smart enough, or not working hard enough, or failing to understand that a four-bedroom apartment on a tree-lined street right off Prospect Park isn't a universal human right.
There's nothing you can do, goes the gospel of resentment, because you don't really have any agency at all.
The game is rigged, and you're not in control of your destiny.
You are, as Bob Dylan once neatly put it, only a pawn in their game, the "they" being the dastardly billionaires who must be crushed for the rest of us to breathe free.
This whiny, supine, and fundamentally un-American way of thinking gave us Zohran Mamdani, whose ideas revolve around the magical solution of making everything free somehow.
It also gave us Fuentes, whose preoccupations are just the same but whose prescriptions are much darker and more ruinous.
These two young men may claim different ideological affiliations, but they've much more in common than they'd like to admit -- including support for the Palestinians, world champions at blaming everyone but themselves for their terrible choices.
Both believe America is rotten and unfair, and that the only way to fix it is to burn it all down first and worry about the rest later.
On the other side of this divide are resilient folks who have very little time and patience for the language and logic of victimhood.
They know we have problems, but they also understand that this is America, and the one key feature of this great and godly country is that it gives everyone a fair shot.
Don't like the way your employer is practicing partisan politics rather than journalism? Quit, start your own publication, and if you're good enough (hey there, Bari Weiss!), you'll soon have a much more valuable media company on your hands.
Have a decent idea and the skill to pull it off? Build something worthwhile (here's looking at you, WhatsApp founder Jan Koum!) and, who knows, you might just sell it for tens of billions of dollars one day.
If you think these are just exceptions to the rule, fairy tales that have little to teach us about real life in real America, take a quick look at the stats: Adjusting for both inflation and changes in household size, the median income in America has soared by 40% since 1970, reaching a historical peak of $83,730 in 2023.
Which, put bluntly, means that, all yowling about affordability aside, things in America are looking kind of rosy.
But don't bother America's spiteful sore losers with such good tidings.
While the resilience crowd focuses on building -- strong families, thriving communities, and successful companies -- the resentment crowd harbors dark fantasies about punishing their enemies and rewards any blowhard who promises to make the guilty pay.
One side believes that you deserve everything and must work for nothing; the other, that you deserve nothing and must work for everything.
Which side will win? To answer the question, grab a book of American history and turn it to just about any page.
This nation had known its fair share of shadowy figures who were experts at playing the blame game.
From Father Coughlin to Louis Farrakhan, we've had no dearth of demagogues who rose by telling their followers that their lives, their liberty, and their happiness had all been stolen by nefarious others, usually the Jews.
These villains have all vanished from the limelight because America, bless it, was founded on sturdier principles.
America's first millionaire, Benjamin Franklin, captured them best.
"I find that the harder I work," he reportedly quipped, "the more luck I seem to have."
Remember that the next time some bitter bum tells you his misfortune is all your fault.
Read in The New York Post (https://nypost.com/2025/11/25/opinion/america-is-no-longer-left-vs-right-its-the-resentful-vs-the-resilient/).
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Original text here: https://www.hudson.org/politics-government/america-no-longer-left-vs-right-its-resentful-vs-resilient-liel-leibovitz
[Category: ThinkTank]
InfluenceWatch Podcast 386: Soros's Not-So-Independent News
WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 -- The Capital Research Center issued the following InfluenceWatch wrapup on Nov. 25, 2025:* * *
InfluenceWatch Podcast #386: Soros's Not-So-Independent News
By Sarah Lee and Michael Watson
What makes a journalistic outfit "completely independent"? According to Drop Site News, the outlet is exactly that, and "reader-supported" to boot. But recent Open Society Foundations spending reports suggest that the outlet is not completely reader-supported: George Soros's philanthropy spent $250,000 to support the creation of a "MENA desk" for the group through a fiscal sponsorship ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 -- The Capital Research Center issued the following InfluenceWatch wrapup on Nov. 25, 2025: * * * InfluenceWatch Podcast #386: Soros's Not-So-Independent News By Sarah Lee and Michael Watson What makes a journalistic outfit "completely independent"? According to Drop Site News, the outlet is exactly that, and "reader-supported" to boot. But recent Open Society Foundations spending reports suggest that the outlet is not completely reader-supported: George Soros's philanthropy spent $250,000 to support the creation of a "MENA desk" for the group through a fiscal sponsorshipcut-out. Joining us to discuss the Open Society-Drop Site relationship is Chuck Ross, senior investigative reporter at the Washington Free Beacon.
* Washington Free Beacon: EXCLUSIVE: Soros Bankrolling Anti-Israel Drop Site News (https://freebeacon.com/media/exclusive-soros-bankrolling-anti-israel-drop-site-news/)
* Washington Free Beacon: Same Game, Different Name: 'Radioactive' Arabella Advisors Announces Rebrand to 'Sunflower Services' as Prominent Donors Flee (https://freebeacon.com/democrats/same-game-different-name-radioactive-arabella-advisors-announces-rebrand-to-sunflower-services-as-prominent-donors-flee/)
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Sarah Lee
Sarah Lee was born and raised in Atlanta, Ga., but found herself drawn to Washington, DC, the birthplace of her mother, after completing a master's degree in public administration from the University of Georgia in 2010.
*
Michael Watson
Michael is Research Director for Capital Research Center and serves as the managing editor for InfluenceWatch.
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View link to podcast here: https://capitalresearch.org/article/influencewatch-podcast-386-soross-not-so-independent-news/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Center of the American Experiment Issues Commentary: Study Finds - Weak Relationship Between Spending and Academic Outcomes
GOLDEN VALLEY, Minnesota, Nov. 26 (TNSrpt) -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary:* * *
Study finds: Weak relationship between spending and academic outcomes
By Catrin Wigfall
More spending doesn't clearly translate into better academic outcomes, according to research from the center-left Brookings Institution.
For years, American Experiment has argued that there is a weak and often inconsistent relationship between higher K-12 education spending and improved academic outcomes, ... Show Full Article GOLDEN VALLEY, Minnesota, Nov. 26 (TNSrpt) -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary: * * * Study finds: Weak relationship between spending and academic outcomes By Catrin Wigfall More spending doesn't clearly translate into better academic outcomes, according to research from the center-left Brookings Institution. For years, American Experiment has argued that there is a weak and often inconsistent relationship between higher K-12 education spending and improved academic outcomes,emphasizing that simply increasing budgets does not guarantee better performance.
The recent research from the Brookings Institution reinforces this position, finding that additional school funding -- while sometimes helpful in specific contexts -- does not reliably translate into meaningful gains in student achievement. Together, these findings highlight that the quality of spending and the effectiveness of policy design matter far more than the size of a school's budget.
The dollars
There are very large and persistent gaps in how much states spend per student: Some states spend more than double what others do. For example, Brookings Institution calculates that raising all states' spending to match the 2018-19 average in the highest-spending state (New York) would cost almost $600 billion. Even raising spending to match the next-highest state, New Jersey, would cost roughly $360 billion.
So, while other factors may influence educational outcomes, differences in funding across states are large enough that -- if money is a key driver of school quality -- we would expect to see differences in outcomes across states; and we believe examining that relationship systematically has merit.
The results
Despite the big differences in spending, the link between state-level per-pupil spending and educational outcomes (like test scores and high school graduation rates) is weak, according to Brookings.
When comparing spending-outcome slopes (i.e., how increases in spending relate to outcomes) to causal estimates from other research, the authors find that the slope across states is much smaller than what causal studies suggest. Much of the small positive correlation is explained by differences in student socioeconomic status. After adjusting for state poverty rates or per-capita income, the relationship between spending and outcomes shrinks or even disappears.
One might expect that more funding benefits disadvantaged students more (because they often have greater needs), but Brookings does not find a stronger positive relationship between spending and outcomes for economically disadvantaged students. In fact, they find the spending-outcome slope for disadvantaged students is "if anything, flatter" than for more advantaged ones.
...[W]e show that no matter how we cut the data, the state-level relationship between spending and test scores is small; it is essentially zero for economically disadvantaged students. For high school graduation, there is more evidence of a spending-outcome connection, but the relationship is much weaker than expected based on the results of a recent meta-analysis (JM benchmark) and, again, essentially zero for economically disadvantaged students.
The authors suggest several possible reasons why more spending doesn't clearly translate into better outcomes, including efficiency/productivity issues -- higher-spending states may not be using additional resources in the most effective ways -- and differences in input costs.
Minnesota, take note
Simply increasing state-level school spending isn't guaranteed to improve outcomes significantly, according to Brookings.
That conclusion resonates strongly in the case of Minnesota. Despite historically high funding levels in public education and COVID-era aid, statewide proficiency remains low, with just under half of public-school students proficient in reading and less than half proficient in math. National test results also show the state has not recovered to pre-COVID levels of proficiency, and Minnesota's ranking has fallen to middle-of-the-pack, with states that spend far less and serve similar demographics outperforming Minnesota in both reading and math.
This suggests that the decline in achievement in Minnesota -- accelerated by disrupted in-person learning and extended school-closure policies during COVID -- has not rebounded effectively despite large investments. Other states have rebounded, with less spending involved.
To make spending more effective, Minnesota should consider reforming institutional or regulatory barriers so that resources could possibly translate to better outcomes. For example, pay structures are often tethered to rigid teacher union salary schedules, which are based only on years in the classroom and educational attainment. Salary scales based instead on evaluation scores and performance metrics have shown positive and significant effects on student math and reading achievement.
Conclusion
Focusing on raw education spending is not the solution to persistent education challenges. Instead, policymakers should shift more attention from how much is spent to how effectively resources are used. Scrutinizing whether additional funds are being spent in ways that improve instruction, support students' needs, and raise productivity doesn't happen enough. Greater attention to governance and spending transparency in how school boards budget and spend, and a shift to outcome-based or performance-informed resource strategies, would be positive places to start.
The findings of the Brookings report, along with other research, underscore a growing recognition that improving educational outcomes will require more than simply adjusting the size of state budgets. Policymakers, researchers, and advocates are increasingly converging on the idea that productivity, not just funding levels, must be central to future reforms.
In the months and years ahead, the impact of this report will likely depend on whether state leaders embrace its challenge to move beyond funding debates and toward a more nuanced understanding of educational quality and efficiency. If they do, the conversation about school finance may finally shift toward more of what students truly need to learn and thrive.
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Catrin Wigfall is a Policy Fellow at Center of the American Experiment.
catrin.wigfall@americanexperiment.org
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REPORT: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/20250929_CESO_ReberGoodman_StateSchoolFinance.pdf
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Original text here: https://www.americanexperiment.org/study-finds-weak-relationship-between-spending-and-academic-outcomes/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Center of the American Experiment Issues Commentary: Minnesota's High Employment Level Slows Its Per Capita GDP Growth Rate
GOLDEN VALLEY, Minnesota, Nov. 26 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary:* * *
Minnesota's high employment level slows its per capita GDP growth rate
By John Phelan
Yesterday, I looked at why Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita growth in Minnesota has ranked 38th out of 50 states since 2014. Using the framework and data from our recent report "Accounting for Growth: Measuring the sources of per capita economic growth at the state level," which "broke down the growth rate ... Show Full Article GOLDEN VALLEY, Minnesota, Nov. 26 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary: * * * Minnesota's high employment level slows its per capita GDP growth rate By John Phelan Yesterday, I looked at why Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita growth in Minnesota has ranked 38th out of 50 states since 2014. Using the framework and data from our recent report "Accounting for Growth: Measuring the sources of per capita economic growth at the state level," which "broke down the growth rateof per capita GDP into its components; the per capita growth rate in human capital, physical capital, and Total Factor Productivity," I found that:
Minnesota's average annual rate of per capita human capital growth between 2014 and 2023 ranked 42nd out of 50 states. This was driven by low rankings for the growth of the employment/population ratio (43rd out of 50 states), and the per worker skills arising from education (42nd) and experience (45th).
Employment
In October, I summarized how we assemble our estimates of human capital per capita at the state level.
Human capital has both quantitative and qualitative components.
The quantitative components are the number of people employed (E) and the average number of hours each of these workers works annually (hours). Taken together, these give you a measure of what might be called "raw labor."
The qualitative components are the skills which augment each hour of raw labor. We call this "knowledge capital," and it arises from either the education (hEduc) or the experience (hExp) of the average worker.
Multiplying all these together gives you the total stock of human capital in each state in each year (H) and dividing that by the population (N) gives you the per capita stock of human capital (h), as shown in this equation:
[View formula in the link at bottom]
It follows, if you remember your high school math, that we can break down the growth rate in human capital per capita (gh) into the growth rates of its components using this equation:
[View formula in the link at bottom]
This will allow us to calculate how much human capital growth comes from the growth of raw labor and how much comes from the growth of knowledge capital.
Updating my estimates for 2024, for its share of the population employed (E/N) "Minnesota ranked fifth out of 50 states with a rate of 52.4%, an impressive score." But, in 2014, it ranked fourth. This is not to ring an alarm bell -- we've dropped one spot and are still fifth -- but it is to say that the scope for our state to grow its economy by increasing the share of the population employed is probably bumping up against some limit and it already was in 2014. The slow growth of this element of human capital in the period since 2014 should not be a surprise.
Immigration
While increasing the share of given population working can be expected to increase GDP per capita, the same is not necessarily true for increasing the number of people working via immigration.
In our 2021 report "The State of Minnesota's Economy: 2020: A focus on economic growth," I noted that:
Whether a policy which increases the population, such as expanding immigration, leads to higher per capita incomes depends on two things.
The first is whether the new arrivals have an employment ratio at least as high as that of the population already here. If they do not, they actually will lower the employment ratio, exacerbating the very problem the policy is intended to solve...
The second is whether the new arrivals are at least as productive as the workers already resident. Considering GDP per capita, immigrant workers add to the denominator (population) as well as the numerator (GDP). If these workers increase the population by a greater percentage than they increase GDP, they will actually lower GDP per capita.
What matters is the [relative] skill level of the workers...
In any discussion of immigration as a tool to increase the growth rate of per capita GDP, these questions need to be borne in mind.
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John Phelan is an Economist at the Center of the American Experiment.
john.phelan@americanexperiment.org
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Original text here: https://www.americanexperiment.org/minnesotas-high-employment-level-slows-its-per-capita-gdp-growth-rate/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Center of the American Experiment Issues Commentary: Anatomy of a Viral Video - On Our Way to 5 Million Views
GOLDEN VALLEY, Minnesota, Nov. 26 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary:* * *
Anatomy of a viral video: On our way to 5 million views
By Bill Walsh
Anatomy of a viral video: On our way to 5 million views
Have you watched this video yet?
Three million others have (and counting). American Experiment released the video last month to promote our recent report titled Shattered Green Dreams: The Environmental Costs of Wind and Solar. The goal of the video was to reach people who ... Show Full Article GOLDEN VALLEY, Minnesota, Nov. 26 -- The Center of the American Experiment, a civic and educational organization that says it creates and advocates policies, issued the following commentary: * * * Anatomy of a viral video: On our way to 5 million views By Bill Walsh Anatomy of a viral video: On our way to 5 million views Have you watched this video yet? Three million others have (and counting). American Experiment released the video last month to promote our recent report titled Shattered Green Dreams: The Environmental Costs of Wind and Solar. The goal of the video was to reach people whomight be predisposed to believing the hype of green energy, specifically wind and solar. They were taught in school that green energy is far superior to coal, natural gas and nuclear and their widespread adoption is necessary to save the planet from the catastrophe of global warming.
With that audience in mind, we wrote the hook: if something seems too good to be true, it usually is. From the script:
If something seems too good to be true, it usually is. We've heard over and over that wind and solar are the clean and green solution to our energy needs. Power without the downsides of fossil fuels. It sounds great on the surface, but is it true?
The video then takes the next two and a half minutes to challenge what people have been told about wind and solar energy. It explains that wind and solar are both low-power energy sources that require exponentially more wind and solar farms to produce the same amount of power as nuclear or natural gas. When you consider the land use, material needs (massive amounts of minerals), manufacturing and transportation costs, lifespan and damage to ecosystems and wildlife, wind and solar energy production literally does more environmental harm than good.
Which is why the video ends where it began: If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Instead of producing the video in-house, we contracted with Scope and Sequence, a vendor we met at a national conference. They specialize in animated videos that "explain important ideas through video to help your audience understand, care, and act."
Unlike most of our content, this video (and paper) has a global message for a global audience. It's hitting the market at a crucial moment as people around the world are finally waking up to the realization there are much better uses of our time and money than trying to reduce the world's temperature by 1 degree over the next 50 years. When Bill Gates begins to sound like Bjorn Lomborg, you know a paradigm shift is imminent. Forcing Americans (especially those left of center) to challenge their perceptions of wind and solar will speed up this shift.
Once the video was finished, we wrote a marketing plan that included all the usual pieces:
* Press release
* Post on YouTube
* Shared on social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok)
* Posted on our website
* Shared in our weekly email to 200,000 subscribers
The video performed above average -- around 7,000 views. We were pleased.
Then we began the paid marketing campaign with a modest budget exclusively on YouTube. We divided the advertising spend equally between Minnesota residents and the rest of the country. Because the video was produced to convince those predisposed to value wind and solar energy, we specifically targeted people on the left side of the political spectrum.
The video immediately took off.
It reached 200,000 views in just a few days. And the engagement was better than any video we've ever produced. The average viewing time was over 2 minutes (total video length is 2:40) and the average percentage viewed was 74.8%. Obviously, the hook was working, and most viewers were sticking with the video until the end.
Views have risen in linear fashion -- the more we spend, the more views we get. As of this writing, the video has been seen 3.4 million times with the average view time holding at just under 2 minutes. We are getting one view for every penny spent on the campaign -- money well spent!
Our mission at American Experiment is education. Our goal is to get information in front of Minnesotans that will challenge the way they think about issues such as energy. This video was designed for and targeted to people on the left side of the political spectrum, and millions of them are watching it until the end.
We have no plans to stop dedicating pennies to this campaign so millions more can view this video and change the way they think about wind and solar energy. It's very rewarding to be part of a campaign that is actually changing hearts and minds on such an important topic.
If you want to help spread this message about the environmental costs of wind and solar, click on the button below and donate a few thousand pennies to put this video in front of a few thousand more people. There has never been a better ROI for your contribution!
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Bill Walsh is the Director of Marketing and Communications at Center of the American Experiment.
bill.walsh@americanexperiment.org
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View video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loLXjggF3F4
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Original text here: https://www.americanexperiment.org/anatomy-of-a-viral-video-on-our-way-to-5-million-views/
[Category: ThinkTank]
CSIS Issues Commentary: Satellite Imagery Shows Tehran's Accelerating Water Crisis
WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary on Nov. 25, 2025:* * *
Satellite Imagery Shows Tehran's Accelerating Water Crisis
By David Michel, Will Todman and Jennifer Jun
Introduction
Tehran is experiencing an unprecedented water crisis. Satellite imagery analysis shows that key reservoirs that feed the capital are far below their typical seasonal variation. The Iranian president has warned that Iran has "no choice" but to move the location of the capital due to the water crisis. In the short term, water rationing has been imposed ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary on Nov. 25, 2025: * * * Satellite Imagery Shows Tehran's Accelerating Water Crisis By David Michel, Will Todman and Jennifer Jun Introduction Tehran is experiencing an unprecedented water crisis. Satellite imagery analysis shows that key reservoirs that feed the capital are far below their typical seasonal variation. The Iranian president has warned that Iran has "no choice" but to move the location of the capital due to the water crisis. In the short term, water rationing has been imposedon some neighborhoods, and authorities may have to evacuate residents from Tehran. This crisis is driven by mounting demand for water, a historic drought, and persistent mismanagement. The Iranian government faces no easy way out, as necessary reforms would undercut the regime's political economy and could risk triggering broad social unrest.
Drivers of the Crisis
Tehran's worsening water crisis represents the chronicle of a dearth foretold. Relentlessly mounting demands, rising environmental pressures, and persistent policy deficiencies have long converged to impose unsustainable strains on the city's water resources. However, as the capital navigates the current crisis, these underlying drivers of continuing water insecurity will remain.
Tehran lies in Iran's central Markazi basin, a region encompassing over half the country's land and the bulk of its population, but holding less than one-third of its freshwater resources. Tehran itself has doubled in size since the Islamic Revolution, growing from 4.9 million people in 1979 to 9.7 million today. It is projected to add another million inhabitants by 2035. Typically wealthier than their rural compatriots, urban residents demand and can afford more water-intensive services, such as dishwashers and washing machines. Tehran's water use has risen even more sharply than its population, climbing from 346 million cubic meters (m3) per year in 1976 to 920 million m3 in 2001 to some 1.2 billion m3 now.
Rampant urbanization exacerbates the challenges facing water managers. Captured and corrupted by state elites, municipal authorities base zoning and development decisions on politics rather than sustainable spatial planning. Much of Tehran's proliferating construction is unpermitted, violating development codes and the city's master plan. Unregulated building severely strains the city's water networks. Even as Tehran struggles with drought, one-third of the water entering its supply systems is lost to leaks and theft before reaching consumers. Uncontrolled expansion has also slashed the city's vegetation cover by nearly 90 percent, replacing green spaces with impermeable surfaces that impede rainfall from infiltrating the soil to replenish rivers and groundwater aquifers. As urban demand has ballooned, built-up areas spread, and green space shriveled, Tehran's water footprint has overwhelmed the carrying capacity of its water resources.
Mismanagement compounds the city's water woes. Iran substantially subsidizes water services. Tariffs are set far below the cost of provision. In 2024, urban consumers paid only 52 percent of the actual costs for receiving their water, starving utilities of the resources to effectively maintain supply networks while encouraging over-consumption. Consequently, though planners base Tehran's annual water allocation on an allotment of 130 liters a day per capita, 70 percent of the city's consumers exceed this threshold, with average daily per capita use ranging from 200-400 liters.
Distorted economic signals warp the whole of Iran's water sector, with significant ramifications for Tehran. Driven by a sovereign imperative to ensure national food security, the Islamic Republic heavily subsidizes agricultural water use too, which claims 90 percent of the nation's total water demand. Depending on storage levels in its reservoirs, Tehran draws 30-60 percent of its water supply from the Tehran aquifer, a groundwater reserve it shares with surrounding farmers. Indeed, groundwater withdrawals for crop production account for half of Tehran Province's total water footprint. But chronic over-exploitation, exacerbated by widespread illegal wells, is rapidly depleting this collective resource as well, with the region now irretrievably losing 101 million m3 of groundwater annually.
The current collision of supply and demand bodes ill for Tehran's water future. Now in its fifth consecutive year, the ongoing drought afflicting the capital reflects rising trends in the duration and intensity of drought events across Iran and declining long-term precipitation around Tehran. Climate models foresee worsening droughts and dry spells for the city ahead. Policymakers and practitioners have warned for decades of Iran's gathering water crisis. Robust reforms to strengthen water resilience can no longer wait.
Satellite Imagery Analysis
Tehran typically receives the bulk of its water supply from five main reservoirs situated around the city. Satellite imagery analysis confirms the structural pressures Iran faces by illustrating how severely Tehran's main water sources have depleted. Using the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), a standard metric derived from Sentinel-2 imagery, the surface water extent in Tehran's five major reservoirs between June and November 2025 were compared. The NDWI distinguishes water from surrounding land by analyzing how the surface reflects green and near-infrared light. It is important to note that the NDWI measures surface area rather than volume and does not capture the full hydrological picture. Even so, large decreases in surface extent indicate significant reservoir stress.
The June-to-November comparison captures both seasonal variation in these reservoirs and the additional depletion driven by Iran's prolonged drought. June represents the post-snowmelt peak period when water levels are typically at their highest following winter precipitation and spring runoff, while November reflects conditions after the hot, dry summer months and before winter precipitation is supposed to begin. Although declines are expected during this interval, the magnitude of the decrease is notable.
The results show that four of the five reservoirs experienced steep decreases in surface water. Lar and Latyan shrank by more the 70 percent, far exceeding normal seasonal variation, while Taleqan and Amir Kabir declined by 28 percent and 20 percent, respectively. Only Mamloo remained relatively stable, at an 8.5 percent decrease. Such disparate changes are notable because these reservoirs do not feed a single unified supply; each serves different parts of the capital. Uneven depletion across these systems can therefore contribute to geographically unequal water availability across neighborhoods, compounding the crisis.
Implications and Government Choices
Tehran's water problems have various knock-on effects. Excessive groundwater extraction is exacerbating land subsidence in the central plains, damaging roads and infrastructure. The decrease in water in dams has contributed to chronic electricity shortages, as Iran typically relies on hydropower for 4.4 percent of its electricity generation. The drought is also undermining Iran's food security, which depends on domestic agricultural production. Parched land also increases the likelihood of sand and dust storms, which cost $150 billion annually to manage in the broader MENA region, and raises the risk of deadly flash flooding.
Tehran's water crisis comes at a precarious time for the Iranian regime. Iran is still reeling from the war with Israel and the United States in June, which humiliated the supreme leader and deepened divisions within the regime. Recent statements from Israeli leaders have stoked fears of a renewed attack. In late September, the E3 (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) triggered the snapback mechanism, reimposing UN sanctions on Iran for the first time in a decade. Furthermore, a leadership transition is looming in Iran, as the supreme leader is 86 and experiencing health issues. Past water shortages around the country have previously fueled civil unrest and have already sparked limited protests in Tehran.
The Iranian regime has few palatable options to respond to the mounting water crisis. The government has reduced water pressure at night to reduce leakages and has begun rationing bottled mineral water in Tehran. It is now considering wider water rationing. President Masoud Pezeshkian said that evacuations of parts of Tehran could be necessary if Tehran does not receive rainfall soon. More dramatically, he warned that Iran now has "no choice" but to move its capital, as the central Iranian plateau is becoming uninhabitable and Tehran is becoming ecologically unsustainable.
Yet, other solutions would challenge Iran's political economy and stability. It is difficult for the government to phase out water-intensive agriculture and industries. Efforts to combat the "water mafia," particularly the excessive water usage of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters, would undercut a key revenue stream for the security apparatus, which helps secure the regime. Meanwhile, national food self-sufficiency is enshrined in the constitution (Article 43.9) and is seen as a strategy to withstand sanctions. Increasing water and electricity prices to help rationalize water consumption would also risk sparking public unrest. The scale of the current crisis will force the regime to act. The question is whether it can stomach the necessary reforms to keep Tehran habitable.
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David Michel is the senior fellow for water security with the Global Food and Water Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Will Todman is the chief of staff of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department and a senior fellow in the Middle East Program at CSIS. Jennifer Jun is an associate fellow and project manager for satellite imagery analysis with the iDeas Lab and Korea Chair at CSIS.
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Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/satellite-imagery-shows-tehrans-accelerating-water-crisis
[Category: ThinkTank]
CSIS Issues Commentary: Global Alignment Index - Tracking Support for U.S., Chinese, and Russian Leadership
WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary on Nov. 25, 2025:* * *
The Global Alignment Index: Tracking Support for U.S., Chinese, and Russian Leadership
By Gregory B. Poling and Andreyka Natalegawa
The United States and like-minded democracies are engaged in a systemic competition for global leadership. They are pitted against an increasingly coordinated authoritarian club that includes Iran, North Korea, and especially China and Russia. The military, economic, and technological aspects of that competition garner intense interest ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary on Nov. 25, 2025: * * * The Global Alignment Index: Tracking Support for U.S., Chinese, and Russian Leadership By Gregory B. Poling and Andreyka Natalegawa The United States and like-minded democracies are engaged in a systemic competition for global leadership. They are pitted against an increasingly coordinated authoritarian club that includes Iran, North Korea, and especially China and Russia. The military, economic, and technological aspects of that competition garner intense interestfrom policymakers and the wider public. But at its heart, this is a normative struggle over the international system--whether the rules-based order crafted by the United States and democratic partners will adapt and endure or be replaced, at least in part, by norms more amenable to the ambitions of China and Russia.
The struggle over the way the system works cannot be won just in Washington, Brussels, or Tokyo, where allies have traditionally been in agreement. It will be determined among those states belonging neither to the U.S. alliance network nor the revisionist constellation of China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. Those states, often lumped together as the "Global South" or "Nonaligned World," represent roughly five billion of the world's eight billion citizens. But few of them are actually "nonaligned." They have normative preferences and act on them, supporting those rules and institutions that are most attractive to their public and elites. In an increasingly multipolar world, the support of the global majority will be necessary for the success of most rules and institutions.
With deft policy and a willingness to give "nonaligned" partners the space to disagree when they need to, the United States can ensure it wins more arguments than it loses. But to succeed, Washington will need to advance norms that the global majority can get behind and be more discerning in the use of national power, investing in programs that can most efficiently persuade the fence sitters. The United States will not be able to do everything everywhere. Instead, it will have to compete with China and Russia amid relative resource scarcity, without the tools of U.S. soft power dismantled by the Trump administration. U.S. policymakers, therefore, need a more rigorous way to measure the scale and drivers of changes in global alignment over time.
To that end, the authors have developed a Global Alignment Index that scores individual countries on their relative alignment with the United States and China, and with the United States and Russia, in each year from 2008 to 2024. These scores are constructed using UN voting behavior and Gallup public opinion surveys of support for U.S., Chinese, and Russian global leadership. This inaugural version of the index includes the countries of Southeast Asia and the BRICS (excluding China, Iran, and Russia)--15 in total--for which sufficient data is available. More detail is provided in the methodology section below. The authors compare changes in alignment to other data, such as trade flows and major global developments. The findings offer some initial insights into what has or has not affected support for U.S., Chinese, and Russian norms over the last decade and a half.
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Finding 1: The United States and Its Adversaries Were Neck-and-Neck
Figure 1A: U.S.-China Alignment Score
Figure 1B: U.S.-Russia Alignment Score
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The index reveals that, contrary to claims of declining U.S. influence relative to China in Southeast Asia and the BRICS, both had, on average, become more aligned with the United States over the last 16 years. In 2008, the average U.S.-China Alignment Score was -2.17 across Southeast Asia and -1.65 for the BRICS members, firmly in China's corner. Since then, that score has trended modestly upward, particularly in Southeast Asia. In nearly half of the subsequent 16 years, the U.S.-China Alignment Score for Southeast Asia has fallen between -0.5 and 0.5--effectively a dead heat. The story is even better for the United States when compared to Russia, where both Southeast Asia and the BRICS have, in most years, fallen into this competitive range or modestly aligned with the United States. This is not a prediction for future alignment, especially given the policy changes introduced by the Trump administration. But it does indicate that Southeast Asia and the BRICS countries have recently been more aligned with U.S. preferences than is often acknowledged.
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Finding 2: Public Versus Regime Alignment
Figure 2A: U.S.-China Net Approval and Vote Coincidence in BRICS and Southeast Asia
Figure 2B: U.S.-Russia Net Approval and Vote Coincidence in BRICS and Southeast Asia
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The Global Alignment Index is created by combining measures of public and regime alignment. When the Alignment Scores are broken out into their constituent parts, as they are here for the average scores across Southeast Asia and the BRICS, a few lessons are evident. First, public and regime alignment tend to move in the same direction over time, though public opinion is slower to change year-over-year. More importantly, Southeast Asian and BRICS publics are, on average, considerably more aligned with the United States than are their governments. This strongly suggests that the United States would do better by continuing to support open societies in which public opinion can have a greater effect on state behavior. Abandoning support for civil society and good governance may be convenient in the short term, but it is likely to decrease rather than increase a given country's alignment with the United States over time.
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Finding 3: Country-Level Variation
Figure 3A: U.S.-China Alignment Score Heatmap, 2008-2024
Figure 3B: U.S.-Russia Alignment Score Heatmap, 2008-2024
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These averages are useful, but they paper over variability across both Southeast Asia and the BRICS. In Southeast Asia, the Philippines and Vietnam are strongly aligned with the United States compared to China, as is Myanmar (though this represents just one side of the Burmese civil war; since the 2021 coup, its UN voting behavior has been determined by the resistance-aligned representative who occupies the country's seat in the United Nations). Vietnam, however, has grown more aligned with Russia since 2022. Every other country in the region is more aligned with Washington than they were a decade and a half ago but are not consistently in the U.S. camp. Malaysia, Indonesia, and most worryingly, Singapore have moved into greater alignment with China since 2022. Russian global leadership appears much less attractive to most states than does China's, but the two tend to move in the same direction year-over-year.
Among the BRICS, the direction of movement has mostly been toward the United States, closing the gap with China and Russia. But the BRICS show more variation than their Southeast Asian counterparts in their alignments with China versus Russia. India, for instance, has been modestly more aligned with the United States than China since 2020 but remains marginally favorable toward Russia. The opposite is true of Brazil, which recently has marginally favored China over the United States but is still slightly more aligned with the United States than with Russia.
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Finding 4: Trade Does Not Increase Alignment
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One of the most surprising findings of the index is that trade volumes have little impact on--and may even negatively affect--alignment. Over the period examined, both Southeast Asia and the BRICS have grown far more dependent on bilateral trade with China than with the United States. But those countries have, on average, grown less aligned with China over that time. This means that increasing reliance on trade with China has neither improved most publics' views of Chinese global leadership nor led their governments to align with Chinese preferences at the United Nations.
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Finding 5: The Impact of Events Is Hard to Measure
Figure 5A: U.S.-China Alignment Score
Figure 5B: U.S.-Russia Alignment Score
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Foreign policy narratives often focus on major events and their perceived impacts; this includes the South China Sea island building and arbitration, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the invasion of Ukraine. These obviously matter and may have reinforced longer-term trends in how countries and publics viewed Chinese and Russian revisionism or U.S. global leadership. But in most cases among the countries examined, it is hard to tell how much each development drove shifts in alignment. Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea occurred during a period of upswing in both Southeast Asian and BRICS alignment with the United States over Russia. It may have helped keep that swing going, but it was already evident by 2013. Southeast Asian alignment with Washington over Beijing surged in the same period, 2013 to 2016, which coincided with the period of Chinese island-building and high-profile incidents in the South China Sea. That the surge happened in Southeast Asia but is not evident among the BRICS suggests that it was region-specific, and the South China Sea provides the best explanation. But that momentum dissipated in 2017, indicating that political shifts in Washington and perhaps Manila under Donald Trump and Rodrigo Duterte had a larger effect than ongoing maritime tensions.
During the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, alignment with Washington over Beijing improved marginally across both Southeast Asia and the BRICS (there was no similar movement in the U.S.-Russia Score), which suggests that China's behavior during the early pandemic harmed its standing. Alignment with Washington over both Beijing and Moscow continued to improve in 2021, contrary to narratives that the United States suffered for its slow provision of vaccines abroad and China's comparative advantage in providing personal protective equipment and other support. The United States likely benefited from a change in leadership, which had far more effect than either country's Covid-19 diplomacy.
The impact of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine is more evident. It coincided with a substantial increase in alignment with the United States over Russia, and to a lesser degree over China. In fact, 2022 was the high-water mark for Southeast Asian and BRICS alignment with the United States over the period studied. But that dissipated quickly, with both Southeast Asian and BRICS averages swinging back toward favoring China and Russia as the war dragged on. The effect of Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza is murkier. It would have had little impact on the 2023 Alignment Scores, coming too late in the year to be reflected in either Gallup polling or most UN votes. But the 2024 scores suggest that the war did not have as much, if any, impact on average U.S. standing across Southeast Asia and the BRICS. Individual country scores suggest that perceived U.S. support for Israel extended the downturn in alignment with the United States in Muslim-majority countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, and to a lesser degree, Egypt, but not elsewhere.
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Finding 6: U.S. Elections Matter, A Lot
Figure 6A: U.S.-China Average Alignment Score By Administration
Figure 6B: U.S.-Russia Average Alignment Score By Administration
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The effect of changes in U.S. administrations is much clearer than that of individual events. Vladimir Putin has been in control of Russia for the entire period analyzed here, and Xi Jinping has been leading China since late 2012. The global aims of the Chinese and Russian governments have been consistent over time, while those of the United States have shifted between administrations. Averaging the scores for each administration is revealing. The data includes only the last year of the Bush administration, but the scores in that year are consistent with the widespread belief that U.S. standing abroad had reached a nadir by that point. Barack Obama's first administration oversaw a modest improvement, which continued into his second administration. Alignment with the United States decreased considerably during the first Trump administration before recovering nearly to the levels of Obama 2.0 during Joe Biden's presidency.
The tools of U.S. influence did not change markedly from administration to administration, suggesting that the Bush and Trump administrations were using those tools to advance norms that Southeast Asia and the BRICS, on balance, found less attractive than those favored by Obama and Biden. This suggests that the 2025 U.S.-China and U.S.-Russia Alignment Scores are likely to decrease.
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Finding 7: BRICS Membership Does Not Change Alignment
Figure 7A: U.S.-China Alignment Score By BRICS Entry Year
Figure 7B: U.S.-Russia Alignment Score By BRICS Entry Year
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Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia joined the BRICS in 2023 and 2024, and the grouping's membership will likely continue to grow. This trend has policymakers in Washington worried, but that concern seems premature. The Alignment Scores of three original BRICS members--Brazil, India, and South Africa--show a mixed record since joining the organization. India has grown modestly more aligned with the United States compared to China over the last decade and a half, while South Africa has trended modestly toward China, and Brazil has ended up roughly where it started, despite swinging considerably from administration to administration. On the U.S.-Russia Score, all three original BRICS members were little changed between their dates of accession and 2024, though Brazil and South Africa have swung considerably more than India over that time. BRICS membership has not moved the members into greater alignment with China or Russia. That could change with the new members, but there is no evidence to support that yet.
Methodology
The U.S.-China Alignment Scores and U.S.-Russia Alignment Scores for each country are created from an average of two indicators: net approval ratings sourced from Gallup's annual world poll and UN voting coincidence scores on key votes as identified by the U.S. Department of State in its annual Voting Practices in the United Nations report. These two indicators serve as proxies for public and elite, or regime, alignment, respectively.
Net approval ratings are derived from three questions in Gallup's annual world poll:
1. Do you approve or disapprove of the job performance of the leadership of the United States?
2. Do you approve or disapprove of the job performance of the leadership of China?
3. Do you approve or disapprove of the job performance of the leadership of Russia?
Results from Gallup's surveys are based on nationally representative, probability-based samples among the adult population aged 15 and older in each country. This report focuses on findings between 2008 and 2024. The authors first determined net approval for the United States, China, and Russia in each country by subtracting the percentage of respondents reporting disapproval from those reporting approval. By subtracting the China and Russia net approval scores from the U.S. net approval score, these provide a relative U.S.-China and U.S.-Russia indicator for each country. In years where these relative approval scores are positive, respondents are more supportive of U.S. global leadership than that of China or Russia. In years where the scores are negative, the inverse is true.
For UN voting coincidence statistics, this analysis focuses on contested General Assembly votes identified by the Department of State as "important" in the annual Voting Practices in the United Nations report. This analysis applies the methodology the State Department used from 2017 to 2021 to calculate voting coincidence across all years: It tallies one point for votes that are the same as those of the United States (or China or Russia), zero for those that are opposite, and half a point when one country, but not both, abstained on a resolution. The total number of points is then divided by the total number of votes excluding absences. Each country's voting coincidence with China and Russia is subtracted from its voting coincidence with the United States to generate another relative U.S.-China and U.S.-Russia indicator.
These two indicators--of relative public approval and relative UN voting coincidence--are averaged to generate the U.S.-China and U.S.-Russia Alignment Scores used in the index. Those scores are presented on a scale of -5 to 5, with positive numbers signifying greater alignment with the United States and negative numbers signifying greater alignment with China or Russia. Any missing scores indicate that Gallup did not conduct surveys in the country that year.
For trade statistics, this analysis relies on the UN Comtrade database, using figures reported by the countries of analysis (i.e., Southeast Asian and BRICS countries). The trade percentage included in the chart above reflects the difference in how much a country traded with the United States and how much it traded with either China or Russia, expressed as a percentage of the country's overall trade volume. In years where this trade percentage is positive, the country conducted more trade with the United States than with China or Russia, with the value of the percentage reflecting the size of the difference in this trade as a share of the country's overall trade volume. In years where this percentage is negative, the inverse is true.
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Gregory B. Poling is a senior fellow and director for the Southeast Asia Program and the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Andreyka Natalegawa is an associate fellow for the CSIS Southeast Asia Program.
The authors would like to thank Lauren Mai, Japhet Quitzon, Gemma King, Sophia Datta, Hpone Thit Htoo, and Rocio Gatdula for their research support.
This commentary is made possible through the support of CSIS and the Japan External Trade Organization.
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Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/global-alignment-index-tracking-support-us-chinese-and-russian-leadership
[Category: ThinkTank]