Analysis & Opinions

Does the March 22 terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall concert venue outside Moscow signal a return of recurrent large-scale terrorism to Russia? Hopefully not and there are multiple ways to lower the probability of such recurrence.

Stephen Walt elaborates his top five reasons why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to take innocent lives, destabilize the region, consume disproportionate amounts of Washington's political bandwidth, and perpetuate fear, suffering, and injustice.

Juliette Kayyem argues that the sooner President Joe Biden acknowledges that the United States will likely be drawn into a fight to protect shipping traffic through the Suez Canal, the more time the U.S. military has to plan, and the less severe the harm will be to the global economy.

Juliette Kayyem warns that a second Trump term would validate the violent ideologies of far-right extremists—and allow them to escape legal jeopardy.

Stephen Walt analyses the past thirty years of U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East, focusing on five events.

As the war in Israel and Gaza continues, Professor Stephen Waltf and Ambassador Edward Djerejian were two of the five Harvard faculty and affiliates with expertise in the region who spoke with The Crimson about their views on the future of the conflict.

Stephen Walt writes that this event—and the many clashes that preceded it—may also reveal the limits of power. War is the continuation of politics by other means, and powerful states sometimes win on the battlefield and still lose politically. Hamas will never be able to defeat Israel in a direct test of strength, but its attack is a tragic reminder that Israel is not invulnerable and the Palestinian desire for self-determination cannot be ignored. It also shows that the Abraham Accords and the recent efforts to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia are no guarantee of peace; indeed, they may have made this latest conflict more likely.

Juliette Kayyem asks: How did Israel not see it coming?

Juliette Kayyem writes that he didn't want to merely murder people; he wanted to do so with the attention of the world.

Foreign Affairs has recently published a number of articles on how the United States should engage with the Taliban government in Afghanistan, extremist forces within the regime, how the West can help ordinary Afghans, and the fate of the country’s women. To complement these essays, Foreign Affairs asked a broad pool of experts for their take. As with previous surveys, Foreign Affairs approached dozens of authorities with expertise relevant to the question at hand, along with leading generalists in the field. Participants were asked to state whether they agreed or disagreed with a proposition and to rate their confidence level in their opinion. Two Belfer Center experts participated, International Security Executive Editor Jacqueline L. Hazelton and Future of Diplomacy Project Senior Fellow Paula Dobriansky.