International Security & Defense

This piece is a series in the Defense, Emerging Technology, and Strategy (DETS) Program’s analysis on the war in Ukraine, including a corresponding policy brief on Ukraine’s Battlefield Technologies and Lessons for the U.S. published in July 2023. 

The United States tends to react to unexpected events with a combination of fear, political recrimination, and bravado—not a particularly effective mix when it comes to evaluating and responding to potential crises. Despite widespread expressions of concern, some warranted and some hyperbolic, the Chinese surveillance balloon spotted over Montana (and tracked across the country before a fighter jet shot it down over the Atlantic) did not represent a crisis. In fact, it was a gift from Beijing: a necessary wake-up call about the shortcomings in the United States’ national defense. 

The costly Ground-based Midcourse Defense system remains unproven and unreliable in deterring North Korea’s threat to use intercontinental ballistic missiles. An airborne boost-phase intercept system may offer an alternative defense against North Korea without threatening Russian or Chinese deterrents.

Adérito Vicente discusses with Mariana Budjeryn, a Research Associate at Harvard Kennedy School, the history and current challenges of the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

The U.S. should accept with humility its inability to fully eliminate terrorism. Specifically, U.S. policy must balance “ends, ways, and means;” establish clear and achievable objectives; adopt efficient, effective, and resource-sustainable strategies; ensure synchronization of diplomatic and military efforts; build alliances to share the burden of countering terrorism; and leverage cooperative mechanisms and regional partnerships to increase the capacity and willingness of regional states to defend their sovereignty and contribute to multinational coalitions against terrorism.  A balanced, integrated, and synchronized strategy encompassing defense, diplomacy, economic, and humanitarian assistance lines of effort should be cornerstone of a revamped foreign policy in the coming decades.

Within NATO, and in U.S.–EU and NATO–EU relations, considerable effort will have to go into: rebuilding trust; strengthening democratic governance and shared values; aligning threat perceptions; breaking down barriers to collaboration; maximizing defense value for money; and tackling new and emerging challenges collectively. No problem can be solved successfully by the U.S. alone, by NATO alone, or just in the U.S.–EU context. The most effective approaches will combine the institutional strengths of both NATO and the EU and all 36 of their respective member states.

Both sides of the Atlantic are converging in their assessment of the challenges China poses to transatlantic prosperity and democracy. The U.S. and Europe must now build on this convergence to advance a common strategy toward China. Only together can the U.S. and Europe, alongside other democratic nations, maintain the necessary leverage in trade, technology and multilateral engagement to hold China accountable to a set of standards that protects democratic societies and contributes to global stability.

To develop a stronger transatlantic approach toward China, the Biden administration must work to rebuild trust in the transatlantic relationship and recommit to multilateral alliances and institutions abandoned by President Trump. Europe for its part must unite and take action where it sees China exploiting its critical industries and infringing on its values. A common position on China at the EU–level and across several influential EU member states is critical to making transatlantic cooperation on China feasible.

Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) convened a strategy group of experts and former government officials from the United States and Europe over the past year to discuss the crisis in the transatlantic relationship and to propose a strategy to revive and strengthen it.

On November 20, the Future of Diplomacy Project's Fisher Family Fellow, Ambassador Peter Wittig, hosted a virtual study group that explored the key question of how much restoration of the old Western order is possible and desirable under a Biden presidency and how much re-invention is necessary to re-energize the transatlantic partnership.

Ambassador Peter Wittig is a five-time Ambassador. He served in Spain, at the UN, in Lebanon and Cyprus before working in the cabinet of two Foreign Secretaries at headquarters. Most recently he was the German Ambassador at the United Nations in New York (2009 - 2014) representing his country in the Security Council, in Washington (2014 - 2018) and in the United Kingdom (2018 - 2020).

For nearly 60 years, attempts at finding a lasting political solution to the conflict in Cyprus have created an environment known as the “graveyard of diplomats” for practitioners of international relations.¹ Hastily constructed by the British Royal Air Force in December 1963 because of intercommunal fighting between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, a demilitarized buffer zone, or “Green Line,” partitioned the two communities and has separated the island and its inhabitants ever since. Now, Cyprus hosts an amalgamation of different powers: two British sovereign bases which cover 98 square miles, the “Green Line” patrolled by the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) spanning 134 square miles, a de facto state only recognized by Turkey called the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” (TRNC) occupying one-third of the island, and the Republic of Cyprus which has de jure sovereignty over the entire island but is located in the southern two-thirds.