Governance

Juliette Kayyem argues that the Biden administration should lay out transparent plans to safeguard the electoral process no matter who is ultimately sworn in.

Joseph Nye considers lessons from his own work on preventing the spread of nuclear technology in the 1970s.

Meghan Garrity details the history of mass expulsions since the centennial of the signing of the Lausanne Convention—a treaty codifying the compulsory “population exchange” between Greece and Turkey. An estimated 1.5 million people were forcibly expelled from their homes: over one million Greek Orthodox Christians from the Ottoman Empire and 500,000 Muslims from Greece.

Should a nuclear war “never be unleashed?” Can nuclear weapons be used to “ensure the safety of the Russian people?” Both, according to President Vladimir Putin, who has become fond of alternating assertive and conciliatory tones in his messaging on the conditions for the use of nuclear arms. Such discourse comes as he tries to coerce Ukraine into accepting his land grabs and prevent the West from escalating assistance to Kyiv, all while keeping China content.

Nathaniel L. Moir writes of historical cases in which a U.S. tendency to over-rely on military capabilities and American economic strength proved unwise and how such power eventually proved to be irrelevant. In addition to the Vietnam War as an example, the rapid collapse of the Republic of China and its large military forces in late 1948 and 1949 offers some parallels with the collapse of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan Government, despite the United States investment of trillions of U.S. dollars.

Jacqueline Hazelton writes that regimes battling a counterinsurgency often depend on corruption to stay in power.

Stephen Walt warns that after making the right call on withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden better get ready for second-guessing from hawkish critics convinced the war could somehow be won and by Republicans looking to exploit the issue. 

A Middle East-wide forum could facilitate dialogue and transparency on a range of short-term measures, engendering momentum to then take on other more complex items, such as regional arms control.

Stephen Walt unpacks foreign-imposed regime change and concludes that if the United States can't stop COVID-19 transmission at home, there is no reason to think it should ever try running another country.

As the world commemorates the 70th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, the Center for the National Interest's Korean Studies team decided to ask dozens of the world's top experts a simple question: Do you believe that the Korean War will finally come to an end before its next major anniversary in 2025? Joseph Nye provides his answer to that question.