SOUTHEAST ASIA
AP Photo
March 17, 2010
"Afghanistan: From Nation-Building to Governance and Back Again"
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Charles G. Cogan, Associate, International Security Program
"Ambassador Holbrooke is not one to sit idly on his mandate. He has assembled an impressive and numerous personal staff. He plans to carry out a "civil surge" in Afghanistan that will increase the numbers of U.S. civilians there from the 300 who were in-country at the beginning of 2009 to 900 at the end of 2010. (Over the same period, he said, the U.S. military strength will go from 31,000 to 100,000). Holbrooke stated that the main priority of the surge is the development of Afghan agriculture, which at one time in the past was quite prosperous."
Spring 2010
"International Security Journal Highlights"
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
Among the articles featured in the Winter 2009/10 Issue of the Belfer Center journal International Security are "Same As It Ever Was: Nuclear Alarmism, Proliferation, and the Cold War," by Francis J. Gavin, Posturing for Peace? Pakistan's Nuclear Postures and South Asian Stability," and Understanding Support for Islamist Militancy in Pakistan." International Security is America's leading journal of security affairs.
Winter 2009/10
"The Myth of Military Myopia: Democracy, Small Wars, and Vietnam"
Journal Article, International Security, issue 3, volume 34
By Jonathan D. Caverley, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2007-2008
The problems of fighting an insurgency with a firepower- and capital-intensive strategy are well known, yet democracies have failed to adopt more effective strategies. Scholars have identified military bureaucracy and culture to explain this tendency, but it can also be attributed to a desire to shift the cost of war away from the less-wealthy voter, who is more apt to support less-effective, but less labor-intensive strategies, if they lower the cost of fighting. This theory explains Lyndon Johnson's decision to pursue a suboptimal counterinsurgency strategy in the Vietnam War.
AP Photo
December 8, 2009
"America and China Diverge on a Shared Korean Goal"
Op-Ed, Financial Times
By John S. Park, Associate, Project on Managing the Atom and Drew Thompson
"...if China continues to prioritise friendly commercial relations with North Korea and Iran, it will threaten its own long-term security. A chronically proliferating North Korea would provoke Japan to reassess the need for a nuclear deterrent, while a nuclear-armed Iran could destabilise the Gulf and global energy markets. Crafting an approach that includes a sustained US-China engagement to clarify each side's intent, provides for China's energy security and maintains a focus on the threat of nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran is more likely to achieve our shared non-proliferation goals."
November 2009
The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order
Book
By David Ekbladh, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2009–2010
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.
2009
"Pride and Prejudice and Prithvis: Strategic Weapons Behavior in South Asia"
Book Chapter
By Vipin Narang, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom, 2008–2010
Vipin Narang's chapter "Pride and Prejudice and Prithvis: Strategic Weapons Behavior in South Asia" in the book Inside Nuclear South Asia was published by Stanford University. Narang examines the ballistic missile flight-testing pattern in the region as a proxy for nuclearization and as an indicator for both states' strategic weapons decisions, attempting to clarify the variables that drive both India and Pakistan to test strategic weapons when they do.
November 4, 2009
"Muddling Through: How Development's Past Shapes Its Future"
Op-Ed
By David Ekbladh, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2009–2010
International development is back. President Barack Obama has given it significance in U.S. strategy not seen since the Cold War. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's much touted "Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review," emphasizes her own belief that it is, "a core pillar of American power."
AP Photo
Fall 2009
"Transformative Choices: Leaders and the Origins of Intervention Strategy"
Journal Article, International Security, issue 2, volume 34
Leaders of great powers have different causal beliefs about the origin of threats, which in turn shape the cost-benefit calculation they make when contemplating foreign interventions. An analysis of John F. Kennedy's and Lyndon B. Johnson's decisionmaking processes during the Vietnam War illustrates how different intervention strategies can influence leaders' decisions whether or not to become involved in a war. Scholars can apply this typology to George W. Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq.
AP Photo
October 9, 2009
"Whatever He Decides, Afghanistan Will Hurt Obama"
Op-Ed, The Providence Journal
By Aaron Rapport, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2009–2010
"...Obama is unlikely to decrease his commitment to Afghanistan, even if assessments of the situation there grow increasingly dire. Instead he will probably opt to push the day of reckoning down the road. This is not just cynical politics on Obama's part. Powerful, success-oriented individuals tend to believe they can find solutions to even the most intractable problems if they are given enough time. As a result, they underestimate the long-term risks and costs of their actions."
AP Photo
July 6, 2009
"On Robert McNamara"
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
"...I assign the Errol Morris film The Fog of War to my students in a course about leadership and ethics in foreign policy. What the film shows is a man who belatedly realized his frailties and decided to warn a younger generation not to repeat his mistakes. Many former policy makers spend their time after office trying to cast their actions in the best possible light for history. Bob was a rare exception in exposing his mistakes...."
