International Security

Recently declassified archival documents offer new insight into Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat’s decision to accelerate the peace process with Israel by visiting Jerusalem. The historical evidence provides strong support for a prospect-theory explanation of Sadat’s bold diplomatic initiative.

While China’s grand strategy under Xi Jinping is clearly distinctive, it does not fundamentally break with the grand strategy that Chinese leaders have embraced since the early 1990s—one that aims to realize China’s “dream of national rejuvenation.”

The U.S. military’s prevailing norms of military professionalism are poorly suited to meet today’s civil-military challenges. They undermine the military’s nonpartisan and apolitical ethos, weaken civilian leaders' control of military activity, and undercut the country’s strategic effectiveness in armed conflict.

Is indiscriminate loyalty what allies want? The First Taiwan Strait Crisis (1954–55) case suggests that allies do not desire U.S. loyalty in all situations. Instead, they want the United States to be a reliable ally, posing no risk of abandonment or entrapment.

A simplified nuclear exchange model demonstrates that China’s ability to launch a successful nuclear retaliatory strike in response to an adversary’s nuclear first strike has been and remains far from assured. This study suggests that China’s criterion for effective nuclear deterrence is very low.

Unlike state sponsors, which value proxies primarily for their military utility, nonstate sponsors use proxies mainly for their perceived political value. An analysis of three case studies—al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the People’s Protection Units in Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon—illustrates this argument.

Analysis of the West's differing responses to Ukrainian and Armenian mass movements reveal that, contrary to the popular Wilsonian narrative, the West assists democratic movements only when that assistance coincides with its material interests.

In the context of the South China Sea, China uses coercion primarily to maintain its reputation vis-à-vis other states, but remains aware of the potential costs of its actions.

The Chinese Communist Party changed its internal security strategy in Xinjiang in early 2017 because of Beijing’s changing perception of Uyghur involvement in transnational Islamic militancy abroad, which heightened perceived domestic vulnerability to terrorism.

States are more likely to reveal secret military capabilities during peacetime competition when the effects of the asset in question can be substituted with another military advantage and when the adversary is not equipped with countermeasures.