BROWSE BY PUBLICATION TYPE
June 2012
Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power
Book
By David E. Sanger, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
President Obama's administration came to office with the world on fire. Confront and Conceal is the story of how, in his first term, Obama secretly used the most innovative weapons and tools of American power, including our most sophisticated—and still unacknowledged—arsenal of cyberweapons, aimed at Iran's nuclear program.
Confront and Conceal—with an updated epilogue for this paperback edition—provides an unflinching account of these complex years of presidential struggle, in which America's ability to exert control grows ever more elusive.
April 8, 2013
"Incompatibility Hinders BRICS Bloc"
Op-Ed, Taipei Times
By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
"...[W]hile the BRICS may be helpful in coordinating certain diplomatic tactics, the term lumps together highly disparate countries. Not only is South Africa miniscule compared with the others, but China's economy is larger than those of all of the other members combined. Likewise, India, Brazil and South Africa are democracies, and occasionally meet in an alternative forum that they call IBSA (the India, Brazil, South Africa Dialogue Forum)."
April 8, 2013
"Take Burden off Veterans Affairs"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
By Juliette Kayyem, Lecturer in Public Policy
"Long-neglected computer upgrades are coming on line, but the VA's promises that the backlog will be overcome by 2015 seem specious given that 97 percent of all claims are still made in paper. Continued delays aren't only concerns for those who've already fought. They could discourage new recruits. The Defense Department is well aware that its ability to recruit troops to an all-volunteer force is made more difficult if veterans' services are being neglected."
May 2013
"Understanding Revolution in the Middle East: The Central Role of the Middle Class"
Journal Article, Middle East Development Journal, volume 5
By Ishac Diwan, Lecturer in Public Policy, Middle East Initiative
This paper presents the outlines of a coherent, structural, long term account of the socioeconomic and political evolution of the Arab republics that can explain both the persistence of autocracy until 2011, and the its eventual collapse, in a way that is empirically verifable. The changing interests of the middle class would have to be a central aspect of a coherent story, on accounts of both distributional and modernization considerations, and that the ongoing transformation can be best understood in terms of their defection from the autocratic order to a new democratic order, which is still in formation.
April 7, 2013
"Two Saints and a Sinner"
Op-Ed, Jadaliyya
"Recently there has been a marked decline in attempts by either the government or private persons to claim that their opponents are foreign agents or elements acting in their interest. This is not because political discourse has become kinder and gentler. It has become notably more intense and it is certainly not limited to debates about policy differences. Striking, however, is how infrequently anyone levies the once-common charge that opponents are not Egyptian...it is too early to say if this is a station on the way to a discourse that is both more civil and more probing or simply two distinct communities that refuse to listen to each other. But it is a significant change."
April 4, 2013
"The Palestinian Occupation: Even (Or Especially) the 'Gatekeepers' Say It Isn't Working"
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Charles G. Cogan, Associate, International Security Program
"...[U]nlike the French in Algeria, the Israelis, back in history, had a leading presence in the land they much, much later moved in on; nevertheless, there are similarities. What struck me most about The Gatekeepers was reminiscent of The Battle of Algiers: thousands and thousands of indigenous faces shouting or silently expressing their unhappiness at living under the thumb of foreign occupying forces. Looking at this sea of frustration, in frames that must have come largely from official Israeli footage, I said to myself, how can the Israelis, in continuing an occupation that has lasted over 45 years, hope to contain this movement?"
April 4, 2013
"Is it Time to Worry?"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
By Juliette Kayyem, Lecturer in Public Policy
"But today's scare is not just a matter of concern for China. The nation's insular government, dense population, and environmental ills have already combined to create several global pandemics. The 2003 SARS outbreak began in China, and, by its end, killed about 800 people and caused close to $50 billion in economic losses. China had originally prevented disclosure of the SARS outbreak, telling nervous global public health officials to take a hike."
Spring 2013
Belfer Center Newsletter Spring 2013
Newsletter
By Sharon Wilke, Associate Director of Communications
The Spring 2013 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This edition highlights the Belfer Center’s deepening engagement with China.
Spring 2013
"Lee Kuan Yew - the Man and the Book"
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
Belfer Center Director Graham Allison and Robert Blackwill, a former Harvard professor and now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, with Belfer Center associate Ali Wyne, have written a new book that has people once again focusing on Lee, now 89 and as blunt as ever. Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World, was published in February by MIT Press to acclaim from reviewers, including Fareed Zakaria, who said on his weekly Sunday talk program on CNN: “This short book [is] packed with intelligence and insight. If you are interested in the future of Asia, which means the future of the world, you've got to read this book.”
(DoD Photo)
Spring 2013
"Serving the Nation"
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
Belfer Center “graduates” occupy some of the hottest seats in government as the second Obama administration confronts stressful policy choices in science and technology, national security, and domestic finances amid clashing party politics and volatile viewpoints.
