Nuclear Issues

In this Q&A, Joseph S. Nye talks about his advice for the interim and future president of Harvard in the wake of Claudine Gay's resignation, which countries should be highest on our radar to prevent the threat of nuclear war, what role the U.S. should play in the Russia-Ukraine war, the significance of U.S. alliances in the Middle East, and more.

Stephen Walt critiques Henry Kissinger's professional life by dividing it into three parts: as an academic at Harvard; as national security advisor and secretary of state; and as an author, pundit, and sage, much of it conducted as the head of Kissinger Associates, the consulting firm he founded after leaving government.

Joseph Nye considers U.S. options for risk reductions as nuclear threats escalate and China-Taiwan tensions rise.

Most public discussion this winter reflects a conviction that Ukraine must — and can — win a decisive victory. But what constitutes a win against a country such as Russia? As we consider the road ahead, we cannot escape the brute fact that Putin commands an arsenal of roughly 6,000 nuclear weapons that could kill us all.

Stephen Walt explains why Putin understood that Ukraine's fate was more important to Russia than it was to the West.

 Stephen Walt decided to look back to see if 2022 had gone according to his expectations. In his last column of 2021, he had described "Biden’s 2022 Foreign-Policy To-Do List." What did he get right, what did he get wrong, and how well did the Biden administration perform?

Stephen Walt offers a tentative and far-from-comprehensive survey of what scholars have to say about the war in Ukraine.

Russia's war in Ukraine has brought questions of nuclear deterrence back to the fore, reminding world leaders that risk reduction must remain a top item on the global agenda. Because political and technological change will always introduce new issues, the work of maintaining a "just deterrence" is never done.

It doesn't exactly make sense anymore for the United States to shield allies under its nuclear umbrella. In fact, fetishizing the bomb and using it to try to protect others may be dangerous, writes Stephen Walt.

Stephen M. Walt critiques to Francis Gavin's review of his 2018 book, The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy, and offers his view on how one should not evaluate U.S. grand strategy.