Governance

125 Items

A supporter of Nigeria Labour Party's, Presidential Candidate, Peter Obi, during a rally in Lagos Nigeria

AP/Sunday Alamba

Newspaper Article - Harvard Crimson

Belfer Center Fellow Discusses Nigerian Election Violence at HKS Seminar

    Authors:
  • Jina H. Choe
  • Erika K. Chung
  • Emma H. Haidar
| Nov. 14, 2022

International Security Program Fellow Megan M. Turnbull, an international affairs professor at the University of Georgia, discussed the conditions leading to election violence in Nigeria during a virtual seminar hosted by the International Security Program on November 10, 2022.

Black Americans register to vote in the July 4 Georgia Democratic Primary in Atlanta, Ga., on May 3, 1944. Registrations are increasing in Atlanta as black schools are giving instructions to students in ballot casting procedure.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

White Supremacy, Terrorism, and the Failure of Reconstruction in the United States

| Summer 2021

White Southerners opposed to Reconstruction used violence to undermine Black political power and force uncommitted white Southerners to their side. Although structural factors made it harder for the U.S. government to suppress this violence, a series of policy failures prompted Reconstruction’s failure and generations of injustice.

In this photo taken on Wednesday, March 28, 2018, members of the Kurdish internal security forces stand on their vehicle in front of a giant poster showing portraits of fighters killed fighting against the Islamic State group, in Manbij, north Syria. Manbij, a mixed Arab and Kurdish town of nearly 400,000, was liberated from Islamic State militants in 2016 by the YPG fighters with backing from U.S-led coalition airstrikes. With Turkey's threats, the town has become the axle for U.S. policy in Syria, threate

(AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

The Political Power of Proxies: Why Nonstate Actors Use Local Surrogates

| Spring 2020

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.

Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces raise an Iraqi flag after retaking Bartella, outside Mosul, Iraq, Oct. 21, 2016.

AP

Analysis & Opinions - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

What ISIS Can Teach Policymakers

| October 21, 2016

"Compared to other terrorist groups and even legitimate governments around the world, ISIS has done fairly well with security policies in the area (at least better than the Baghdad government). However, that is not the case when it comes to other public concerns."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrives for a Conference on Afghanistan in Brussels, Oct. 5, 2016. The 2-day conference, hosted by the EU, will have the participation of over 70 countries to discuss the current situation in Afghanistan.

AP

Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Policy

The 2016 Epidemic of Afghan War Amnesia

| October 16, 2016

"...[T]he well-intentioned Western effort to create a new Afghan state from scratch was equally misguided, as the new constitution envisioned a centralized, Western-style government in Kabul that was at odds with Afghan history and traditions. It also presumed a level of administrative competence and a revenue base that far exceeded Afghan capacities. Yet none of the international participants who embraced this outcome seemed to realize they had taken on an unrealistic and open-ended burden and that the new Afghan state would be dependent on lavish outside support more or less indefinitely."

The Islamic State of Afghanistan

Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Policy

The Islamic State of Afghanistan

| December 22, 2015

"A negotiated solution would require a military stalemate on the ground, and this depends on NATO forces guaranteeing that Afghan forces in key positions will not be overrun. This is the political objective that should inform Western military support in Afghanistan from here on out: to make clear to the Taliban that they can achieve more through a peace deal than through fighting and to make clear to Western electorates that this isn't a forever war."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, joined by U.S. Ambassador to France Jane Hartley, looks at the U.S. Embassy in Paris in the French tricolor after he lit it on November 16, 2015, in a sign of solidarity following the November 13 terrorist attack.

Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Policy

The Cold Realism of the Post-Paris War on Terror

| November 20, 2015

"...[W]e now know that the notion that regime change leads to a better democratic or a humanitarian outcome is decidedly false. From Iraq, where the West tried a heavy footprint strategy, to Libya, where it opted for a light one, the idea that Europe or the United States can actually execute democratic change by force has been exposed as a fallacy."

A Lynx Helicopter of the Army Air Corps ready to touch down on a desert road south of Basra Airport, to link up with a RAF Regiment vehicle patrol. 25 November 2003.

Harland Quarrington/MOD

Testimony

Written Evidence Submitted to the UK Parliament's Defence Select Committee

| October 13, 2015

This written testimony to the UK Parliament's Defence Select Committee focuses on the continuing challenges posed to the United Kingdom by the weakness of state institutions and the resultant instability, civil war, and insurgency in the Middle East and North Africa. It argues that the spillover effects of this state weakness threaten the UK directly and the cohesion of its vital European security partnerships.To avoid a cycle of inaction followed by tardy and inappropriate over-reaction, the UK needs to work with its international partners to craft a strategy of sustained engagement towards the region.