International Security

International Security, the quarterly journal edited at the International Security Program of the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center and published by The MIT Press, ranks first for citations and impact among international relations journals, according to two prominent metrics, Impact Factor and SCImago Journal Rank.

This policy brief is based on "Future Warfare in the Western Pacific: Chinese Antiaccess/Area Denial, U.S. AirSea Battle, and Command of the Commons in East Asia," which appears in the summer 2016 issue of International Security.

This policy brief is based on "Should the United States Reject MAD? Damage Limitation and U.S. Nuclear Strategy toward China" which will appear in the summer 2016 issue of International Security.

Many policy analysts have suggested that China is developing antiaccess and area denial capabilities that could force the U.S. military out of the Western Pacific. The threat, however, is limited. China will likely acquire the ability to partially restrict the U.S. military's freedom of movement in the East and South China Seas, but the United States will maintain a sphere of influence sufficient to protect most of its allies in the region.

China's growing nuclear arsenal threatens to erode the United States' damage-limitation capability—its ability to destroy Chinese forces and thereby significantly reduce the damage that an all-out Chinese nuclear attack would inflict on the United States. Nevertheless, the United States should not attempt to preserve this capability. Doing so is technologically infeasible, would not add to the U.S. nuclear deterrent, would heighten tensions with China, and would increase the risk of nuclear escalation in a crisis.

In foreign counterinsurgency campaigns from Vietnam to Afghanistan, the United States has often found local elites to be more hindrance than help. Client governments resist U.S.-prescribed reforms crucial to counterinsurgency success because such reforms would undermine their power. The history of the United States’ involvement in El Salvador’s civil war shows that placing strict conditions on military and economic aid is crucial to gaining client governments’ compliance.

Alliances between local combatants and neighboring rulers played a crucial role in the Congo Wars. Yet the transnational dimensions of the conflicts remain understudied. Case studies reveal that the rulers of Angola, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda, and Zimbabwe intervened in Congo to secure their own political survival. They forged alliances to thwart domestic rebels supported by foreign rulers or to gain access to resources that could ensure the loyalty of domestic elites.

Jonas Schneider responds to Gene Gerzhoy's spring 2015 article, "Alliance Coercion and Nuclear Restraint: How the United States Thwarted West Germany's Nuclear Ambitions."

Michael Cohen responds to Mark Bell's summer 2015 article, "Beyond Emboldenment: How Acquiring Nuclear Weapons Can Change Foreign Policy."

Joshua Itzkowitz Shifrinson argues that, during the 1990 negotiations over German reunification, the United States made the Soviet Union an informal pledge not to expand NATO.