International Security

Richard W. Maass responds to Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson's spring 2016 article, "Deal or No Deal? The End of the Cold War and the U.S. Offer to Limit NATO Expansion."

Can states deter adversaries in cyberspace? Analogies drawn from nuclear deterrence mislead; nuclear deterrence aims for total prevention, whereas states do not expect to prevent every cyberattack. Additionally, cyber deterrence is possible even though it can be hard to identify the source of a cyberattack. Attribution problems do not hinder three of the major forms of cyber deterrence: denial, entanglement, and normative taboos.

Nicholas D. Anderson responds to Nina Silove's spring 2016 article, "The Pivot before the Pivot: U.S. Strategy to Preserve the Power Balance in Asia."

Claims that drones will soon remake warfare or international politics are unwarranted. Although almost a dozen states now possess armed drones, and more are racing to acquire them, they will not play a decisive role in interstate conflicts. Drones will rarely be “winning weapons,” because they are vulnerable to air defenses. States will, however, continue to use drones against terrorists and domestic opponents.

In recent decades, the United States has attempted to overthrow the regimes of several other countries in the hopes that the new regimes will be friendly toward Washington. Does foreign-imposed regime change (FIRC) succeed in making target states more accommodating to interveners’ interests? A new dataset and an analysis of foreign interventions in the Congo Wars show that FIRC damages relations between intervener and target state more often than it improves them.

How do great powers decide whether to arm or ally with client states? Great powers face the “patron’s dilemma”: ensuring clients’ security without being drawn into unwanted conflicts. Thus, great powers offer alliances only to states whose interests closely match their own, and arm only states that are relatively weak and therefore unlikely to behave aggressively. U.S. policies toward Israel and Taiwan reveal that the United States engaged in calculation of its rational interests instead of being influenced by domestic politics.

During the 1971 Bangladesh war for independence from Pakistan, the Pakistan army carried out a genocide that killed hundreds of thousands of Bengalis in what was then East Pakistan. The perpetrators never faced trial. Archival documents reveal how India and Bangladesh sacrificed the opportunity for war crimes trials to gain Pakistan’s agreement on key security goals—the Simla peace agreement and recognition of Bangladesh’s independence. The legacy of this decision continues to blight Bangladesh’s politics.

William Z.Y. Wang responds to Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth's winter 2015/16 article, "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers in the Twenty-first Century: China’s Rise and the Fate of America’s Global Position."

Derek Grossman; and Sheryn Lee and Benjamin Schreer respond to Scott L. Kastner's winter 2015/16 article, "Is the Taiwan Strait Still a Flash Point? Rethinking the Prospects for Armed Conflict between China and Taiwan."

Aisha S. Ahmad's "The Security Bazaar: Business Interests and Islamist Power in Civil War Somalia," International Security, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Winter 2014/15), pp. 89–117, has received the Best Security Article Award given by the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) of the International Studies Association. This is the first year that ISSS has given a Best Security Article Award, so Aisha Ahmad is the inaugural winner.