EUROPEAN STUDIES
November 16, 2009
"The Year the World Really Changed"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Newsweek
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"...1989 was less of a watershed year than 1979. The reverberations of the fall of the Berlin Wall turned out to be much smaller than we had expected at the time. In essence, what happened was that we belatedly saw through the gigantic fraud of Soviet superpower. But the real trends of our time—the rise of China, the radicalization of Islam, and the rise and fall of market fundamentalism—had already been launched a decade earlier."
AP Photo
June 15, 2009
"The Media Must Take Some Responsibility"
Op-Ed, politics.co.uk
By Azeem Ibrahim, Research Fellow, International Security Program
"The first responsibility is to tell the whole truth. In this scandal, too many commentators have seemed to think that the public interest is best served by their all jumping onto the same bandwagon to tell us the same story: politicians are the bad guys. They are wrong. The public interest is best served by their actually doing what they are paid to do — to report fairly who did what. And that involves admitting that not only did a few MPs make honest mistakes, but that some have come out of these revelations with their reputations actually improved, by claiming little or nothing."
AP Photo
June 4, 2009
"We Need a Debate on Europe"
Op-Ed, politics.co.uk
By Azeem Ibrahim, Research Fellow, International Security Program
"...[M]ore of us want to leave than ever before. More than half want the UK to leave the EU but keep trading links, according to a recent BBC survey. More authoritative polling from the Economist still shows that over the last fourteen years, the number of us wanting to loosen the UK's ties to the EU has also risen to over 50 per cent. In the BBC's survey, a full 84 per cent agreed that Britain should vote before transferring any more power to the EU....nobody born after 1957 has ever been able to vote on it. Even those who voted to stay in in 1975 did not realise just how many regulations we would subsequently have to follow, and how much they would cost British business."
AP Photo
May 13, 2009
"Here's an Easy Way to Save Taxpayer Ł100m — Dump Half Our MPs"
Op-Ed, The Scotsman
By Azeem Ibrahim, Research Fellow, International Security Program
"If parliament were a business, solutions would be clear. We would cut the numbers employed, bring more talented people in, and give them the resources to get on with doing a better job. The same solution is right for parliament. This means reducing MPs' numbers to improve their aggregate quality. Does anyone really believe we need more than 323, half the current number?...The next task is to bring more talented people into politics. We need to attract MPs who have more life experience and have had a job in the real world. Halving the number of places available would ensure parties picked the best candidates, and a political version of market forces would see the most qualified and competent MPs remain...."
AP Photo
November 19, 2008
"Obama and Ozdemir: Breaking Barriers"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative
"Cem Özdemir, 42, was elected Saturday as co-leader of the Green Party, capping a career in the German and European parliaments that started in 1994. In terms of breaking color and ethnic barriers, this equals or even tops the historic first elected American Black president, because the nature of European societies is so much less pluralistic and culturally-racially-ethnically less egalitarian than American society."
Fall 2008
"Wishful Thinking or Buying Time? The Logic of British Appeasement in the 1930s"
Journal Article, International Security, issue 2, volume 33
By Norrin M. Ripsman and Jack S. Levy
British appeasement was primarily a strategy of buying time for rearmament against Germany. British leaders understood the Nazi menace and did not expect that appeasement would avoid an eventual war with Germany. They believed that by the time of the Rhineland crisis of 1936 the balance of power had already shifted in Germany’sfavor, but that British rearmament would work to reverse the balance by the end of the decade. Appeasement was a strategy to delay an expected confrontation with Germany until the military balance was more favorable.
April 1, 2008
Is NATO Dead or Alive?
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Dr. Elizabeth D. Sherwood-Randall, Former Founding Senior Advisor, Preventive Defense Project
PDP Senior Advisor Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall examines the future of NATO and asks: Will the Alliance, established to fight the Cold War, survive the 21st century?
Photo Credit: Kai Mörk
February 10, 2008
PDP Co-Director Ashton B. Carter participates in Munich Conference on Security Policy
Press Release
By Jeffrey Kim, Former Affiliate and Research Assistant, Preventative Defense Project, 2007-2008
From February 8-10, 2008, PDP Co-Director Ashton B. Carter participated in the 44th Munich Conference on Security Policy (also known as Wehrkunde).
Spring 2006
Wherein the Divide? Terrorism and the Future of Atlanticism
Journal Article, Perceptions, volume XI
By Matan Chorev, Senior Research Assistant, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
This article argues that the tactical and strategic divergence in the approach to counterterrorism across the Atlantic is best understood through the prism of strategic culture. The different experiences with international terrorism have contributed to vastly different perceptions of the terrorist threat and in turn to different counterterrorism approaches. The paper introduces the concept of strategic culture, outlines the two continents' experience with terrorism and explains why the end of the Cold War brought new tensions to the fore. It suggests that a strategic culture analysis of the divergent approaches to terrorism will help inform and enrich the ubiquitous one-dimensional realist rendering of the Atlantic divide and demonstrate that under the right conditions, international terrorism, rather than leading to permanent divorce might paradoxically be the very thing that transforms the Atlantic relationship back towards a consolidated Atlantic community.
Summer-Fall 2007
"The Virtues and Vices of Fixed Territorial Ownership"
Journal Article, The SAIS Review of International Affairs, issue 2, volume XXVII
By Boaz Atzili, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2006-2008
Today, territorial ownership of states is essentially fixed, in marked contrast to earlier periods in history. This change has affected states in two very different ways. In regions in which most states are socio-politically strong, fixed territorial ownership is a blessing. It enhances peace, stability, and cooperation between states. In regions in which most states are socio-politically weak, however, fixed territorial ownership is largely a curse. It perpetuates and exacerbates states' weakness, and contributes to internal conflicts that often spill overacross international borders.
