ARTICLES AND OP-EDS
October 29, 2012
"Russia, China on 'Wrong Side of History' in Arab World"
The Diplomat
By Chuck Freilich, Senior Fellow, International Security Program
"China, a great power in the making, and Russia, a fading but nonetheless aspiring power, have repeatedly positioned themselves on 'the wrong side of history' in regard to the Iranian nuclear program, events in Syria, and more. Great power status confers not just prestige and influence, but also a need to share responsibility for international security and the 'global good.' With their uncaring pursuit of narrow national interests, neither is demonstrating a predilection to do so."
AP Photo
October 15, 2012
"Fifty years after Cuban missile crisis: closer than you thought to World War III"
Christian Science Monitor
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
Graham Allison writes that fifty years after the Cuban missile crisis, many people find it hard to believe that the confrontation could have pushed the U.S. and Soviet Union to nuclear war. Robert F. Kennedy’s newly released papers remind us why this was the most dangerous moment in recorded history.
“My fellow Americans, with a heavy heart, and in necessary fulfillment of my oath of office, I have ordered – and the United States Air Force has now carried out – military operations with conventional weapons only, to remove a major nuclear weapons build-up from the soil of Cuba.” Allison writes that these are the words President Kennedy almost delivered in October 1962.
AP Photo/Gali Tibbon
October 12, 2012
"Why Netanyahu Backed Down"
New York Times
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School and Shai Feldman, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
FOR three years Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his defense minister, Ehud Barak, seemed to be united in urging an early military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. But last week that alliance collapsed, with Mr. Netanyahu accusing Mr. Barak of having conspired with the Obama administration, in talks behind his back.
October 11, 2012
"The Toughest Sanctions"
Boston Globe
By Juliette Kayyem, Lecturer in Public Policy
"Companies that manage the transport of all these resources can have tremendous impact on any nation's survival, making the movement of goods across the seas an unrecognized animating force in foreign affairs. The sanctions and the resulting economic crisis made the route through the Strait of Hormuz unsustainable for this major shipping line."
October 11, 2012
"Whom Would You Call?"
Washington Post
By David Ignatius, Senior Fellow, Future of Diplomacy Project
According to the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, currently a Fischer Family Fellow with the Belfer Center’s Future of Diplomacy Project, “Any presidential election is in part a referendum on the 3 a.m. question: Whom do you trust to answer and make a wise decision if the red phone rings in the middle of the night with a nuclear crisis? The remaining weeks of this presidential campaign will focus more on the foreign policy issues that will help Americans make this decision. And it should help concentrate our minds that this month marks the 50th anniversary of the most dangerous moment in modern American history, the Cuban missile crisis.”
October 11, 2012
"Red Lines in the Sand"
Foreign Policy
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
In a new Foreign Policy op-ed, Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, writes that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been campaigning so virulently for President Obama to draw stricter red lines regarding Iran’s nuclear program because of “his knowledge that Israel and the United States have been complicit in a process of drawing red lines they say Iran will never be allowed to cross, watching Iran cross those lines, and then retreating to declare the next obstacle on the path to a bomb to be the real red line.”
October 10, 2012
"WMD Free Zone in Mideast: An Opportunity for Detente with Iran"
Power & Policy Blog
By Tytti Erästö, Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom
"The P5+1 and Iran should take note of the fact that there is a new window opening, and try to make most of it. The new opportunity comes in the form of a historic conference for the establishment of a weapons of mass destruction free zone (WMDFZ) in the Middle East—a conference which will be held in Finland in the coming December. What is special about this opportunity is that it allows Iran and the P5+1 to step outside of the negative dynamics created by their previous interactions, and to approach the nuclear issue from a different perspective."
October 9, 2012
"The Cuban Missile Crisis at 50"
Moscow Times
By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
"We can conclude that nuclear deterrence mattered in the crisis and that the nuclear dimension certainly figured in Kennedy's thinking. But it was not the ratio of nuclear weapons that mattered so much as the fear that even a few nuclear weapons would wreak intolerable devastation."
October 9, 2012
"Did Bibi's bomb bomb?"
Haaretz
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
Netanyahu’s cartoon oversimplified the Iranian nuclear threat. That should not, however, cause us to miss the central message he was attempting to send.
AP Photo
October 4, 2012
"Inside Bibi's Bunker"
Foreign Policy
By Chuck Freilich, Senior Fellow, International Security Program
"How these debates will be resolved depends on Israel's unique policymaking process. The question of whether to strike Iran is not just up to Netanyahu: In Israel, like other parliamentary democracies, the premier is merely "first among equals" — not the chief executive or commander in chief, as in the United States. With the exception of very limited circumstances, such as responding to imminent attacks, the Israeli prime minister requires cabinet approval for all national security decisions."
