By Aiden Warren
In its drive to produce fissile material for weapons, augment its weapons production facilities, deploy additional delivery vehicles, construct additional nuclear reactors, and expand its reprocessing capabilities, Pakistan has clearly placed the expansion and improvement of its nuclear weapons arsenal at the heart of its overall security strategy.
Read MoreBy Thomas Graham
The future of the Russian-led effort to consolidate the BRICS (the BRICs plus South Africa) as an influential multilateral organization is less certain because of inherent contradictions in the members’ ambitions, prospects, and security challenges. The United States engages Russia for strategic, not economic reasons.
Read MoreBy Jolyon Howorth
The total absence of the European Union, as a bloc, during the Libyan crisis of spring 2011 has led analysts to pose tough questions about the future of Europe as a collective security actor. The progress made toward the EU’s Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) since 2003 was to some extent a reflection of the extraordinary nature of this relative pooling of sovereignty in the security field.
Read MoreBy Andreas Borgeas
This study finds that militant Islam amongst the Uighur in Kazakhstan remains a fringe and localized presence, which will struggle to gain sufficient popular support for historical and contextual reasons. Even so, the United States can take specific steps to help Kazakhstan ensure that Islam remains a moderate—rather than extremist—force in the country.
Read MoreBy Paul Rexton Kan
This article explores the online clash between the hacker group, Anonymous, and the Mexican drug cartel, Los Zetas. This type of cyberwar was unique: it was an incident where two clandestine non-state groups used the digital domain to attack each other and it was largely a private affair.
Read MoreBy Nicoli Nattrass
U.S. commitment to fight- ing AIDS in Africa has traditionally been, and still is, buoyed by bi-partisan support. This support has remained strong post-2007. Even so, the view is widespread that African country governments ought to take greater ownership of combating the problem and reducing aid dependency in managing it.
Read MoreBy Stephen S. Roach
The United States needs to wean itself from excess consumption and subpar saving, while China needs to do the opposite—greater emphasis on private consumption and the absorption of surplus saving. These transformations are daunting but provide major opportunities for both nations.
Read MoreBy John-Michael Arnold
The phenomenon of strategic surprise—a category of unexpected events so consequential that they call into question the premises of existing strategy—has posed a recurring challenge to U.S. foreign policy. Although there is a voluminous literature on the subject, most scholars have focused on surprises unleashed as a deliberate strategy of states in their effort to seize the advantage against adversaries.
Read MoreBy Jonathan Papoulidis
Fragile states constitute a global development crisis. Government capacity and public institutions in these states are weak and international aid approaches are often fragmented and piecemeal.
Read MoreBy Rob Cuthbert
The licensing system is not only a formidable check on a free press in Burma, it is another example of Burmese interiors and exteriors contradicting each other. As Burma gives journalists more freedom, the license requirement ensures that the Burmese Government retains ultimate control over the press.
Read MoreBy Michael Morrison
As the Chinese Communist Party prepares for a major leadership transition, China’s foreign policy think tanks are poised to contribute to the conceptualization and propagation of major foreign policy initiatives. This article examines the degree to which Party and State leaders look to think tanks for analysis, and how think tanks can be used as a window into Chinese decision-making.
Read MoreBy Patrick Mendis
A series of Chinese-built ports and airfields across the Indian Ocean comprises a grand “string of pearls” strategy within which Sri Lanka has become a crown jewel. The new forces of global power are geoeconomic, in which every capital in the world—from Washington, Beijing, London, and New Delhi to Karachi, Tehran, and Tokyo—seeks out Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, as part of the twenty-first century’s latest “Great Game.”
Read MoreBy John Teton
The long-recognized human right of freedom from hunger remains unrealized because traditional remedies for addressing it continue to prove inadequate. Nonetheless, the goals of ending starvation and malnutrition worldwide can be achieved through a global commitment to the International Food Security Treaty, which will place that right under the protection of enforceable national and international laws, and catalyze the development of systems necessary to effect those goals.
Read MoreBy John M. Owen IV
Insofar as I remember my own thinking before I was trained in political science, my natural inclination concerning political life was toward idealism. I tended to believe that ideas—especially political ideas or ideologies—were where the action was, and I assumed that ideologies motivated people more than material interests did.
Read MoreBy Hossein Askari
In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, the fundamental stability of the conventional financial system has been seriously questioned. Excessive leveraging, combined with an inherent asset-liability mismatch, exposes institutions to unsupportable risk, and threatens the overall soundness of the financial system.
Read MoreBy Steven C. Roach
States adopt policies and strategies designed to serve primarily their own national interests. The International Criminal Court’s recent indictments of Omar al-Bashir and Moammar el-Qaddafi highlight growing concerns with some states’ strategies. My aim is to address these concerns as well as the changing, positive dynamics of imposing international justice.
Read MoreBy Oona A. Hathaway, Sabria McElroy, Sara Aronchick Solow
During the first hundred and seventy years of US history, courts generally applied a strong presumption that treaties could be used by private litigants to press their claims. That presumption began to erode in the wake of World War II, and in 2008 the United States Supreme Court effectively reversed it.
Read MoreBy J. Michael Greig and Paul F. Diehl
It is important to recognize the distinctions between the short-term and long-term effects of peacekeeping missions and to understand the ways in which the presence of peacekeepers shapes the incentives of warring sides to reach peace agreements.
Read MoreBy Michael Beckley
Two assumptions dominate current debates on US foreign policy toward Pakistan. First, Pakistan shares a robust “all- weather” friendship with China centered on core national interests. Second, Pakistan’s ability to turn to China in times of need insulates it from US pressure and renders hardline US policies counterproductive.
Read MorePakistan’s historical and contemporary support for jihadi groups has caused US policy prescriptions over the past decade to focus prominently on the need to change Pakistan’s strategic orientation. In this article, the authors explore one aspect of Pakistan’s strategic calculations that has received insufficient attention in public debate: the degree to which Afghanistan’s aggressions against Pakistan have helped to shape the latter’s support for religious militant groups.
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