ASIA
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June 4, 2009
Bonn Climate Negotiations: From the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements
Announcement
By Sasha Talcott, Director of Communications and Outreach and Robert C. Stowe, Executive Director, Harvard Environmental Economics Program; Manager, Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements
The current negotiations in Bonn, Germany, mark a major step on the road to the next international climate agreement. With the negotiating text now being discussed, the Harvard Project has a wide array of research papers and policy ideas, each condensed into a two-page summary, which may be useful to those working on these issues. We have chosen to highlight some of those most relevant to the Bonn negotiating agenda.
August 1, 2008
New Commission on United States Policy toward Russia
Announcement
The Belfer Center at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and The Nixon Center are pleased to announce a new Commission on United States Policy toward Russia. The commission will be co-chaired by former Senator Gary Hart and Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE).
November 2009
The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order
Book
By David Ekbladh, Research Fellow, International Security Program
The Great American Mission traces how America's global modernization efforts during the twentieth century were a means to remake the world in its own image. David Ekbladh shows that the emerging concept of modernization combined existing development ideas from the Depression. He describes how ambitious New Deal programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority became symbols of American liberalism's ability to marshal the social sciences, state planning, civil society, and technology to produce extensive social and economic change. For proponents, it became a valuable weapon to check the influence of menacing ideologies such as Fascism and Communism.
May 2009
Acting in Time on Energy Policy
Book
By Kelly Sims Gallagher, Senior Associate, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group
Energy policy is on everyone's mind these days. The U.S. presidential campaign focused on energy independence and exploration ("Drill, baby, drill!"), climate change, alternative fuels, even nuclear energy. But there is a serious problem endemic to America's energy challenges. Policymakers tend to do just enough to satisfy political demands but not enough to solve the real problems, and they wait too long to act. The resulting policies are overly reactive, enacted once damage is already done, and they are too often incomplete, incoherent, and ineffectual. Given the gravity of current economic, geopolitical, and environmental concerns, this is more unacceptable than ever. This important volume details this problem, making clear the unfortunate results of such short-sighted thinking, and it proposes measures to overcome this counterproductive tendency.
December 2008
The Globalization of Martyrdom: Al Qaeda, Salafi Jihad, and the Diffusion of Suicide Attacks
Book
By Assaf Moghadam, Associate, International Security Program/Initiative on Religion in International Affairs
This groundbreaking volume examines the rise and spread of suicide attacks over the past decade. Sorting through 1,270 terror strikes between 1981 and 2007, Assaf Moghadam attributes their recent proliferation to the mutually related ascendance of al Qaeda and its guiding ideology, Salafi Jihad, an extreme interpretation of Islam that rejects national boundaries and seeks to create a global Muslim community. This unflinching analysis provides new information about the relationship between ideology and suicide attacks and recommends policies focused on containing Salafi Jihadism.
November 18, 2008
Securing the Bomb 2008
Book
By Matthew Bunn, Associate Professor of Public Policy; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom; Co-Principal Investigator, Energy Research, Development, Demonstration, and Deployment (ERD3) Policy Project
Associate Professor of Public Policy and Project on Managing the Atom Co-Principal Investigator Matthew Bunn provides a comprehensive assessment of efforts to secure and remove vulnerable nuclear stockpiles around the world, and a detailed action plan for reducing the risk of nuclear terrorism. Securing the Bomb 2008 was commissioned by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). The full report, with additional information on the threat of nuclear terrorism, is available on the NTI website.
October 2008
Western Political Thought in Dialogue with Asia
Book
By Takashi Shogimen and Cary J. Nederman
Given the rise of globalization and coinciding increase in cultural clashes among diverse nations, it has become eminently clear to scholars of political thought that there exists a critical gap in the knowledge of non-Western philosophies and how Western thought has been influenced by them. This gap has led to a severely diminished capacity of both state and nonstate actors to communicate effectively on a global scale. The political theorists, area scholars, and intellectual historians gathered here by Takashi Shogimen and Cary J. Nederman examine the exchange of political ideas between Europe and Asia from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century.
June 2008
Terrorism, War, or Disease? Unraveling the Use of Biological Weapons
Book
By Anne L. Clunan, Peter R. Lavoy and Susan B. Martin
The use of biological warfare (BW) agents by states or terrorists is one of the world's most frightening security threats but, thus far, little attention has been devoted to understanding how to improve policies and procedures to identify and attribute BW events. Terrorism, War, or Disease? is the first book to examine the complex political, military, legal, and scientific challenges involved in determining when BW have been used and who has used them.
February 2008
La République de Dieu
Book
By Charles G. Cogan, Associate, International Security Program
La République de Dieu is a collection of essays on the idea of God; on evangelism ("La République de Dieu"); on Islamic fundamentalism ("L'Islam médiéval"); and followed by empirical chapters analyzing a number of conflicts between the Muslim and non-Muslim world: Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Arab/Israeli.
2008
War, Peace and Hegemony in a Globalized World:The Changing Balance of Power in the Twenty-First Century
Book
This book focuses on how the US could adapt its foreign policy initiatives to fit in with the growing aspirations of a multipolar world for a more balanced international order.
