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June 15, 2013
"Apocalyptic Words from Men in Hiding"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
"The fact that both [Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah] must remain in hiding and cannot openly take a stroll among their compatriots in their lovely capital city, Beirut, reflects at one level the seriousness and dangers of this war. They both fear being assassinated, and for good reason: Several of their predecessors and warriors in arms in fact have been assassinated in recent years. This also mirrors the intensity and the stakes of the war, which both sides see as a zero-sum contest in which one side will win and the other will disappear from history."
MCC/David Ausserhofer Photo
June 13, 2013
Harvard Project Co-hosts Workshop on Options for a New International Climate Regime
News
By Bryan Galcik
The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements and the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) convened thirty leading international researchers and policymakers on May 23 and 24, 2013 at MCC in Berlin. MCC and the Harvard Project are preparing a synthesis report intended to inform the UNFCCC's Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action as it attempts to forge a new agreement by December 2015.
Wig Zamore STEP Photo
June 13, 2013
"Dangerous Cargo: Action Needed on Hazardous Materials"
Op-Ed, Power & Policy Blog
By Lewis M. Branscomb, Director Emeritus of the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program; Professor Emeritus of Public Policy and Corporate Management and Ryan Ellis, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program/Project on Technology, Security, and Conflict in the Cyber Age
"The threat of terrorism complicates matters even further. In April, two men in Canada were arrested for plotting an attack on rail lines near Toronto. In the US, homeland security officials have warned that shipments of hazardous materials are an attractive terrorist target."
June 11, 2013
"Qusayr Portends Great Danger, Waste and Stupidity for All"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
"Pro- and anti-Syria/Hezbollah groups in Lebanon have been quarreling and shooting each other for decades. That dynamic now will expand, as the Syrian and Lebanese arenas merge into a single battleground, fuelled by the active determination to fight for their survival by both Hezbollah and by Lebanese Salafists and others who see Hezbollah’s bold new militarism as spearheading Shiite-Iranian-Syrian domination of Lebanon. It remains unclear if Lebanon’s heightened tensions and shootouts will remain confined to traditional arenas in the north, northeast and south, or expand into Beirut and other regions."
May 2013
"From Power-Sharing to Majoritarianism: Iraq's Transitioning Political System"
Report Chapter
By Nussaibah Younis, Research Fellow, International Security Program
"The greatest political challenge facing Iraq today is its transition from a power-sharing to a majoritarian form of government without a concomitant depoliticization of ethno-sectarian identities."
June 10, 2013
"Original Sin and the American Constitution"
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Charles G. Cogan, Associate, International Security Program
"What the original Constitution did was to implicitly recognize slavery and to put down in black and white for history what was part of the genesis of the American republic....it gave the impression that a black man was worth three-fifths of a white man. (Indians were not part of the counting and were not taxed)."
June 6, 2013
"Only the Right CEO Can Create a Culture of Integrity"
Op-Ed, Corporate Counsel
By Ben Heineman, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Corporate Counsel recently ran an article entitled "Bringing Compliance to the C-Suite," based on a Rand Corporation conference of a similar name and previewing a subsequent report-out. The focus of the conference, as reflected in papers presented there and referenced in the article, is that a variety of pressures cause CEOs to act badly or, at the least, to be indifferent to issues of corporate integrity. This is, of course, an important perspective.
June 6, 2013
"Obama and Xi Must Think Broadly to Avoid a Classic Trap"
Op-Ed, New York Times
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
"As President Obama welcomes China’s new president, Xi Jinping, for an informal “shirt-sleeves” summit meeting in California on Friday, the bureaucracies of both governments must be quivering...
Let us hope that these two leaders will rise above their bureaucracies’ narrow goals to confront the overarching challenge facing the two most important nations in the world.
Simply put, can the United States and China escape Thucydides Trap?
June 6, 2013
"Turkey and Jordan Mirror the Citizen-State Challenge"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
The loose parallels between events in Jordan and Turkey reflect the wider reality across the Middle East of citizens and states that have not fully defined their relationships through a social contract that both shape and see as legitimate. We see this in every country in the region, without exception, in Arab countries that suffer their own modern legacy of dysfunctional statehood and citizenship, and in non-Arab Israel, Turkey and Iran.
June 5, 2013
Stephen W. Bosworth Joins Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center as Senior Fellow
News
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Ambassador Stephen W. Bosworth, who transformed Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy during his 12 years as dean, is joining Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs as a senior fellow. Belfer Center Director Graham Allison said Bosworth would bring to the Kennedy School a wealth of experience as a career diplomat, with a long focus on Asia and the Korean peninsula, areas of intense interest for the Belfer Center.
