NATO
AP Photo
April 2010
"Prestige Matters: Chinese and Russian Status Concerns and U.S. Foreign Policy"
Policy Brief
By Deborah Welch Larson and Alexei Shevchenko
"China and Russia are more likely to engage in constructive status-seeking behavior if the United States finds ways to recognize their international status and distinctive identities. For example, strategic dialogues, formal summits, and strategic partnerships can help to establish issue agendas for future collaboration and symbolize that states are political equals. Engagement through trade and investment does not resolve conflicting political goals."
Sharon Wilke
March 23, 2010
President of the Republic of Estonia Encourages NATO and EU to Communicate
News
By Sarah Kneezle, Coordinator, The Future of Diplomacy Project
Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the President of the Republic of Estonia, spoke to students, faculty and members of Boston’s Estonian community at the Kennedy School on March 22.
January 2010
"Preface to Going Nuclear"
Book Chapter
By Sean M. Lynn-Jones, Editor, International Security; Series Editor, Belfer Center Studies in International Security
"Concern over nuclear proliferation is likely to increase in the coming years. Many observers believe that the spread of nuclear weapons to one or two more states will trigger a wave of new nuclear states. More states may turn to nuclear power to meet their energy needs as other sources of energy become more costly or undesirable because they emit carbon that contributes to global climate change. As more nuclear reactors are built, the world's stock of nuclear expertise and fissionable materials is likely to grow."
January 2010
Going Nuclear: Nuclear Proliferation and International Security in the 21st Century
International Security Reader
By Michael E. Brown, Editorial Board Member and Former Co-Editor, Quarterly Journal: International Security, Owen R. Coté, Editor, International Security, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, Editor, International Security; Series Editor, Belfer Center Studies in International Security and Steven E. Miller, Director, International Security Program; Editor-in-Chief, International Security; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom
The spread of nuclear weapons is one of the most significant challenges to global security in the twenty-first century. Limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials may be the key to preventing a nuclear war or a catastrophic act of nuclear terrorism. Going Nuclear offers conceptual, historical, and analytical perspectives on current problems in controlling nuclear proliferation. It includes essays that examine why countries seek nuclear weapons as well as studies of the nuclear programs of India, Pakistan, and South Africa.
AP Photo
February 16, 2010
"Nuclear 'Constraint' in Russia"
Op-Ed, International Relations and Security Network
By Simon Saradzhyan, Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"... [W]hile references to NATO-related threats have won more play in the media, the innovations in the doctrine's provisions on nuclear weapons are clearly more significant. For the first time since the adoption of the first-use policy, the Russian leadership has decided to constrain, if only somewhat, the use of nuclear weapons in a strategic document."
AP Photo
February 12, 2010
"NATO's New Afghan Strategy Underlines the Necessity of Talking to the Taliban"
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Azeem Ibrahim, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2008–2010
"The Taliban's often brutal form of conservative justice shocks the liberal sensibilities of the western electorates paying for the war. Bringing them into the political process will mean conceding that where, for example, young brides wed older men, NATO troops are not the right means to change those customs and attitudes."
AP Photo
December 1, 2009
"Karadzic Trial a Reminder of EU Responsibilities"
Op-Ed, The Scotsman
By Azeem Ibrahim, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2008–2010
"As we once again become accustomed to seeing his [Karadzic's] face in the news and hearing updates on his case at the UN Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, many will be tempted to see the crimes of which he is accused as just more violence from a violent region, and dismiss the whole Bosnian war as a local Balkan problem, for which blame can be confined to a part of the map which we have associated with violence for centuries.
But that is a self-serving half-truth. The other half is much more disturbing: we — mainstream Europe and its foreign policy establishment of the time — could have stopped the worst of his excesses, but decided not to."
AP Photo
Summer 2009
"Testing the NATO Alliance: Afghanistan and the Future of Cooperation"
Op-Ed, Harvard International Review, issue 2, volume 31
By Azeem Ibrahim, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2008–2010
"...[O]n the ground, Afghanistan does not look like a NATO mission, but a deployment of an ad hoc alliance. This impression is bolstered given that eight non-NATO countries are also contributing troops. This arrangement calls into question how genuine and useful the alliance will be in the future. It is no good to argue that NATO countries should share the burden more equally. That will not be enough to persuade skeptical governments to offer more troops. The truth is that the differences in deployment levels reflect real differences of public and political opinion. Unfortunately, there is no reason to expect that they should agree in the future either, as there is no longer agreement on what constitutes NATO's mission in Afghanistan."
AP Photo
September 2009
"The Next Government Must Fund Britain's Armed Forces to Match the Many and Growing Threats to National Security"
Policy Brief
By Azeem Ibrahim, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2008–2010
"The choice facing the next Prime Minister and government is clear. On the one hand, he can continue the policy of the present Government. This will result in a slow slide down the second division of nations, an inability to defend the sea passages on which our global trade and standard of living depend (ninety per cent of our trade still comes by sea), an inability to secure our growing imported energy supplies and the vital food supplies which we in this country take for granted.
Or, the next Government can resist this decline, hold firm against the pressure to reduce defence funding, and provide an adequate defence provision with contingency reserve capability for all three Services. If this decision is made, it should be done as a deliberate and well researched policy."
Summer 2009
"The Limits of Coercive Airpower: NATO'S 'Victory' in Kosovo Revisited"
Journal Article, International Security, issue 1, volume 34
Despite NATO's overwhelming strategic superiority, Milošević was able to reject his adversary's terms of surrender until his political position became untenable. This suggests that airpower may have greater limitations as a tool of statecraft than its supporters maintain.
