Harvard–Belfer on Syria

Lebanon’s sectarian governance system has been over 150 years in the making. But the Syrian fire next door, which has taken an increasing sectarian nature, is likely to burn for a long time. With such dire prospects, what is the fate of Lebanon’s governance system? Will it lead the country inexorably towards civil strife?

"How can the governments that themselves routinely use political violence or demean their own people be the ones that counter this phenomenon? How can governments like the United States credibly work to curtail political extremism when a major and continuing promoter and enabler of such extremism is American military adventurism and criminality around the world? How can foreign governments strike a realistic balance between their awareness of the violence-inducing politics of governments in the Middle East and their own strategic desire to maintain those governments in place?"

New York Times columnist and former Fisher Family Fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project, Roger Cohen, discussed his new memoir, "The Girl from Human Street" and the problems the Jewish community and the wider world confront with the rise of global displacement, Islamic State, and violent extremism.

Can the United States, European Union and Russia cooperate against the burgeoning common threat posed by the so-called Islamic State, even as their diplomats cross swords over the most recent escalation of fighting in Ukraine? The short answer is yes, but the path to cooperation will not be easy. The hard truth is that even when relations were good, counterterrorism cooperation was never as robust as many had hoped after 9/11. This was because of a fundamental conceptual gap about the nature of the terrorist threat.

For the United States, the threat comes in the guise of foreign radicals, determined to undermine the institutions of American society. That is the lesson Washington drew from 9/11 as it formulated its response. Al Qaeda in fact might have had a more limited goal of driving the United States from the Middle East, but Washington depicted the threat as one against the West's fundamental democratic values. For Russia, the terrorist threat is inextricably linked to separatism. That was the lesson Moscow drew from Chechnya as it formulated its counterterrorist policies. There were quite a few radical Islamists among the Chechen fighters even in the 1990s, but Moscow primarily saw them as a group determined to carve off territory for an independent secular state, not necessarily to destroy Russian society as such.

"As a public service, therefore, I offer the following Top 10 Questions to ask Ash Carter at his confirmation hearing....Under what conditions would you recommend the use of force against Iran's nuclear facilities? Given that a military attack could delay an Iranian bomb for only a year or two, and would probably increase Iran's desire to obtain an actual deterrent, does keeping 'all options on the table' make sense?..."

For the second year in a row and the third time in four years, Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has been ranked the best university-affiliated research center in the world.

The ranking appears in the Global Go To Think Tank Index, produced annually by James McGann, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program. The purpose of the index, said McGann, is to “highlight the important role that think tanks play in civil societies and governments around the world.”

This article assesses Iran's strategy in dealing with the threat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). It examines the implications of the rise of ISIS in Iran's immediate neighbourhood for Tehran's policies in Syria and Iraq and investigates how each of these countries affects Iranian national interests. It provides an overview of the major events marking Iran and Iraq's relations in the past few decades and discusses the strategic importance of Iraq for Iran, by looking at the two countries' energy, economic and religious ties. It also considers Iran's involvement in Syria since the beginning of the Syrian conflict.

"We have learned much about the Arab world in the last four years, including a combination of heroism and criminal deviance that both dwell deep within our societies. In fact, we have learned more about ourselves in these four years than we did in the preceding century — because this has been the only stretch of time in which history in the Arab region has been driven heavily, even primarily, by the actions and sentiments of its own ordinary men and women, rather than only by its narrow elites or foreign powers."

"This moment is about as American as it gets here in the United States. The exemplary release of a Congressional investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency’s brutal interrogation techniques reflects the finest practice of citizen oversight of government executive and security agencies, truly one of the United States’ great gifts to the world; at the same time, the revelations of torture and deception at the highest levels of government reflect the worst practices of police states and authoritarian despots."

The U.S. must act with much greater conviction to respond to the humanitarian meltdown in Syria. With more than 200,000 people dead and 11 million Syrians homeless--half the population--this is now in International Rescue Committee President David Miliband's words, "the greatest humanitarian crisis of the century."

What is needed? More cross-border aid to refugees trapped between a vicious Syrian government and rebel groups, pressure on Russia and China to support the relief effort, and expanded aid to reinforce neighboring Jordan and Lebanon. Professor Burns writes in his column, without decisive action, "Syria's civil war will almost certainly worsen as 2015 approaches."