International Security

In Pakistan and Nigeria, jihadist entrepreneurs have capitalized on external trigger events not only to successfully challenge established religious doctrine and norms, but to adopt radically new norms, including the use of gendered violence.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, China is a cautious bully that seeks to balance between the need to establish resolve and the economic cost of coercion, seen through its territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

Liberal market-oriented states are in a natural alliance to preserve and protect a global order that is systematically buttressing states’ embrace of market-oriented norms and values.

Caleb Pomeroy responds to Michael Beckley’s fall 2018 article, “The Power of Nations: Measuring What Matters.”

Is India shifting to a nuclear counterforce strategy?

The liberal international order led by the United States was destined to collapse. Liberal excesses provoked a powerful nationalist backlash. In the emerging multipolar world, a realist order will manage the world economy, and Chinese-led and U.S.-led bounded orders will help the two great powers prosecute their security competition.  

Maintaining the liberal international order is central in the debate over U.S. security and foreign policy. Much of what the liberal order purports to explain, however, can be explained by other theories. Analyzing issues through a grand-strategic lens would provide broader options for achieving U.S. interests.

What explains the scale and speed of nuclear proliferation? One key factor is the level of competition among suppliers in the market for nuclear materials and technologies. When suppliers form a cartel, fewer countries can acquire what they need for a nuclear weapons program. If great power competition intensifies, suppliers will find it harder to cooperate and nuclear proliferation could accelerate.

Many states have been paid to join multilateral military coalitions. These payments are largely covered by “pivotal states”—those that care the most about an operation’s success—and take the form of deployment subsidies and political side deals to attract critical contributors to the mission.

Beginning in the 1400s, Europeans built the global international system by using naval force to achieve commercial success. Europeans had a technical capacity and a cultural inclination to control the seas that Eastern empires lacked.