IRAQ WAR
October 17, 2012
"Advice To The Next President: National And Homeland Security"
Op-Ed, WBUR
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School and Juliette Kayyem, Lecturer in Public Policy
"Having a professional military means that the United States can go to war while the vast majority of citizens are not directly affected. Therefore it falls upon the president, more than any other individual, to make sure the nation goes to war only if and when absolutely necessary."
AP Photo
September 2012
"Giving the Surge Partial Credit for Iraq's 2007 Reduction in Violence"
Policy Brief
By Stephen Biddle, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 1985–1987; Editorial Board Member, Quarterly Journal: International Security, Jeffrey A. Friedman, Research Fellow, International Security Program and Jacob N. Shapiro
Why did violence decline in Iraq in 2007? Many credit the "surge," or the program of U.S. reinforcements and doctrinal changes that began in January 2007. Others cite the voluntary insurgent stand-downs of the Sunni Awakening or say that the violence had simply run its course after a wave of sectarian cleansing. Evidence drawn from recently declassified data on violence at local levels and a series of seventy structured interviews with coalition participants finds little support for the cleansing or Awakening theses. This analysis constitutes the first attempt to gather systematic evidence across space and time to help resolve this debate, and it shows that a synergistic interaction between the surge and the Awakening was required for violence to drop as quickly and widely as it did.
September 3, 2012
"Afghan War Still Rages, Yet Soldiers Get No Play in Tampa"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
By Juliette Kayyem, Lecturer in Public Policy
"It may very well be that the issue doesn't rank because the party that helps create veterans no longer has a monopoly on helping them. To make the point clear, Obama signed an executive order on Friday improving mental health access to veterans and their families."
AP Photo
August 9, 2012
"Obama's Foreign Policy Doctrine"
Op-Ed, Gulf News
By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
"...Obama did not back away from rhetorical expressions of transformational goals regarding such issues as climate change or nuclear weapons, in practice his pragmatism was reminiscent of more incremental presidential leaders like Dwight Eisenhower or George H. W. Bush."
Summer 2012
"Testing the Surge: Why Did Violence Decline in Iraq in 2007?"
Journal Article, International Security, issue 1, volume 37
By Stephen Biddle, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 1985–1987; Editorial Board Member, Quarterly Journal: International Security, Jeffrey A. Friedman, Research Fellow, International Security Program and Jacob N. Shapiro
Why did violence decline in Iraq in 2007? A new analysis suggests that a synergistic interaction between the surge and the Awakening caused the significant drop in violence, creating a set of circumstances that neither could have achieved alone.
AP Photo
June 11, 2012
"Suicide is the Biggest Foe for US Troops"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
By Juliette Kayyem, Lecturer in Public Policy
"As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan draw to a close, the stress on America's military should be easing. But Pentagon statistics obtained by Robert Burns of the Associated Press on Friday show that there were 154 suicides in the first 155 days of 2012. The external enemy is not the primary reason for the body bags anymore; suicides are exceeding combat deaths in Afghanistan by 50 percent."
AP Photo
June 7, 2012
"The Pentagon is Stopped from Going Green"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
By Juliette Kayyem, Lecturer in Public Policy
"Fuel convoys are particularly subject to attack by hostile forces, and half of the Marines killed in Afghanistan and Iraq were supporting fuel transportation. Oil and water are the two commodities we import the most to the battlefield; the long line of a supply chain is a welcome mat for every IED and enemy. The biggest cost driver in the Pentagon's shrinking budget is oil; fuel increases in 2011 and 2012 cost the government an extra $3 billion."
Summer 2012
Belfer Center Newsletter Summer 2012
Newsletter
By Sharon Wilke, Associate Director of Communications
The Summer 2012 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 Belfer Center involvement with the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit and other activities to help shape debate on national and global security. We also spotlight Henry Kissinger’s return to Harvard and his remarks about power and politics, James Baker’s acceptance of the 2012 Great Negotiator Award, and Graham Allison’s cover story in TIME magazine describing decisions behind the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. And more....
AP Photo
May 3, 2012
"Al Qaeda Loses Its Way"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
By Juliette Kayyem, Lecturer in Public Policy
"Today, the Jordanians who have any favorable feelings about Al Qaeda are a paltry 13 percent. By 2006, Al Qaeda began to stray from its anti-Western foundations and focus its wrath on moderate Muslim citizens there and elsewhere. The Jordanians began to turn on bin Laden, and have been turning ever since. Eventually, the United States wound down its operations in Iraq and adopted a less confrontational posture in the Middle East."
Spring 2012
Paul Doty's Legacy Lives on Through Influential Journal
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
As soon as Paul Doty launched what is now Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in 1974, he began planning a scholarly journal on international security. He shrugged off colleagues’ concerns that there would be little market for such a journal.Thirty-six years after the first issue appeared in the summer of 1976, the Belfer Center’s quarterly International Security consistently ranks No. 1 or No. 2 out of over 70 international affairs journals surveyed by Thomson Reuters each year.
