US PRIMACY
AP Photo
November 10, 2008
"Joy in America"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative
"George W. Bush and his band of zealots used the anger-based emotional high after 9/11 to simultaneously misdiagnose themselves, their enemies, their friends and their place in the world. Consequently, they pursued catastrophic domestic and foreign policies. Obama must beware such pitfalls. He and his senior officials must understand more accurately how the United States and the world actually interact, in good times or bad, in order to forge policies based on credible analyses that are free of self-congratulatory emotionalism or pride."
AP Photo
November 7, 2008
"The New President and the Future of American Power"
Op-Ed, Daily Star
By Joseph S. Nye, Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations
"The challenge for Barack Obama is that more and more issues and problems are outside the control of even the most powerful state. Although the US does well on the traditional measures of power, those measures increasingly fail to capture much of what defines world politics, which, owing to the information revolution and globalization, is changing in a way that prevents Americans from achieving all their international goals by acting alone....As the world's largest economy, American leadership will remain crucial. The problem of American power in the wake of the financial crisis is not one of decline, but of a realization that even the most powerful country cannot achieve its aims without the help of others. Fortunately, Barack Obama understands that."
Martha Stewart
October 30, 2008
Brent Scowcroft Addresses International Issues Facing the Next President
News
Former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft called on the next president to engage in civilized dialogue on foreign policy during a Forum address Wednesday evening (Oct. 29) at Harvard Kennedy School.
October 22, 2008
"Can Iraq End the Colonial Era?"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative
"The wider issue at stake beyond American soldiers in Iraq is the effective end of the colonial era mentality that put Western troops and officials above the law, and kept indigenous Arab and Iranian national interests subservient to the greater colonial dictates of powers like England, France and, today, the United States."
AP Photo
September 2, 2008
"The Neocons vs. The Realists"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, The National Interest
By Joshua Muravchik and Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs; Faculty Chair, International Security Program
"A must-read debate about our foreign-policy future. Does realism offer the best solutions to today’s threats? Or will neoconservatism be responsible for our policy triumphs? The choice is clear after eight years of failed Bush policies, says Walt, but Muravchik thinks the House of Kristol may well be vindicated." — National Interest
Summer 2008
"Correspondence: Of Polarity and Polarization"
Journal Article, International Security, issue 1, volume 33
By Joseph M. Parent, Joseph Bafumi, Charles A. Kupchan and Peter L. Trubowitz
Joseph Parent and Joseph Bafumi reply to the Fall 2007 International Security article, "Dead Center: The Demise of Liberal Internationalism in the United States," by Charles Kupchan and Peter Trubowitz.
July 3, 2008
"Joseph Nye on Smart Power"
Q&A
By Doug Gavel and Joseph S. Nye, Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations
The days of American hegemony on the world stage appear to be waning. The rise of other global powers, the diffusion of economic and human capital, and the increasingly powerful influences being exerted by non-state actors — including terrorists — have ushered in a new era in geopolitics. Joseph Nye is university distinguished service professor and Sultan of Oman professor of international relations. He is the author of many books and articles on international relations, including his most recent book, “The Powers to Lead.”
AP Photo
July-September 2008
"When Does the Mission Determine the Coalition? The Logic of Multilateral Intervention and the Case of Afghanistan"
Journal Article, Security Studies, issue 3, volume 17
By Sarah Kreps, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2007-2008
"Using the debate between the logic of appropriateness and consequences as a theoretical backdrop, I argue that neither is able to explain the United States' choices between unilateralism and multilateralism in post-Cold War military interventions....In this article, I suggest that "consequences" are best specified according to time horizon, which creates intertemporal tradeoffs between the long-term benefits of multilateralism and immediate payoffs of unilateralism, and the nature of the intervention, which affects the operational payoffs of multilateralism. I test this argument and the existing explanations against the case of Afghanistan. Its within-case variation — largely unilateral in combat operations and robustly multilateral in post-conflict phases — lends strong support to the logic of consequences as specified according to time horizon and operational payoff."
July-August 2008
"Size Matters"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, The American Interest, issue 6, volume 3
By Richard N. Rosecrance, Adjunct Professor; Senior Fellow, International Security Program
"As the American political system hurtles toward its quadrennial encounter with the oracle of democracy, it is worth our while to take stock of the country's place in a world beset by bewilderingly rapid change. (Heaven knows none of the candidates will bother to do this.) I want to suggest that an old yet generally neglected subject remains particularly relevant: the relationship between the size of political units and the effective scale of systems of economic production and exchange. Another way to describe this relationship is by recourse to the hoary scholarly phrase "political economy", a term of art that has unfortunately gone out of style...."
May 29, 2008
Your Government Failed You: Breaking the Cycle of National Security Disasters
Book
By Richard Clarke, Faculty Affiliate, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
It's not just Bush and Cheney that are to blame. The system is broken. That's the message in this provocative sequel to Against All Enemies. When Richard Clarke apologized for 9-11, he never thought that there would be so many more government failures in so short a time, but climate change, Katrina, the struggle with al Qaeda, the insecurity in cyberspace, and the failure of homeland security all bespeak a larger problem, a systemic failure. Clarke documents the failures and suggests solutions for making government work better in its most important job, protecting us.
