Featured Fellows - Focus on Research

Melissa Willard-Foster on Peace Agreements (Research Fellow, International Security Program)

Q: What are key components to a lasting peace agreement?

A: First, let me begin by explaining how I define peace agreements. I see them as bargains that are struck between the two contending sides. For any bargain to hold, the two sides must have a continued interest in upholding their side of the deal. What this means for the peace agreement is that it must reflect each party's long-term interests. The problem is that peace agreements often reflect each party's present capabilities instead. And when these capabilities change, the agreement collapses. So, for example, one side may want to fully eliminate the other, but it discovers in the course of war that it lacks the ability to do so. In these cases, the peace agreement ends up being little more than a truce that ends once that side amasses sufficient power to defeat its opponent.

Because peace agreements often reflect capabilities rather than interests, a second component that becomes very important to their survival is the means specified for their enforcement. If peace agreements can't change the parties' long-term interests, they need to find a way to make violating the peace so costly that neither side would dare do it. One way to do this is to use a third party to monitor or enforce the peace agreement and this is largely the role UN peacekeeping forces play. But enforcement is vital when one side clearly wins the war, too. The victor has to be willing to bear the costs to enforce the peace indefinitely. This is often cited as the reason the WWI peace collapsed. The Versailles Treaty wasn't enforced and so Germany rearmed.

Vipin Narang on Taliban threat to Pakistan nuclear weapons (Research Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom)

Q: How much of a threat does the Taliban pose to Pakistan's nuclear stockpile, and what is Pakistan doing to protect against that threat?

A: When the army itself has custody of nuclear weapons, it's hard to conceive of a realistic threat to the integrity of those assets. It's clear that the Pakistan army hasn't relinquished control of nuclear weapons to the civilian government now, so in the unlikely event of a Taliban takeover, I don't think that the army would relinquish control to the Taliban, either. That said, there are several points of vulnerability that do warrant attention.

The Pakistani nuclear infrastructure that produces nuclear weapons has personnel liability programs, but over time it's conceivable that an insider could steal or divert enough nuclear material that would go undetected and perhaps pass it off to more radical elements either within or outside of Pakistan. When nuclear weapons are being transported between the civilian nuclear infrastructure and the army, Pakistan does not use robust, large convoys. They transfer clandestinely. Those tend to be less guarded and can be a potential point of vulnerability when foreign knowledge of a transport route might enable somebody within the Pakistani nuclear establishment to work or collaborate with terrorist organization that could target that particular convoy.