International Security

The coronavirus pandemic has provided an opening for Donald Trump to attack transparency, voting rights, and accountability.

The U.S. military’s prevailing norms of military professionalism are poorly suited to meet today’s civil-military challenges. They undermine the military’s nonpartisan and apolitical ethos, weaken civilian leaders' control of military activity, and undercut the country’s strategic effectiveness in armed conflict.

Is indiscriminate loyalty what allies want? The First Taiwan Strait Crisis (1954–55) case suggests that allies do not desire U.S. loyalty in all situations. Instead, they want the United States to be a reliable ally, posing no risk of abandonment or entrapment.

A simplified nuclear exchange model demonstrates that China’s ability to launch a successful nuclear retaliatory strike in response to an adversary’s nuclear first strike has been and remains far from assured. This study suggests that China’s criterion for effective nuclear deterrence is very low.

Unlike state sponsors, which value proxies primarily for their military utility, nonstate sponsors use proxies mainly for their perceived political value. An analysis of three case studies—al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the People’s Protection Units in Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon—illustrates this argument.

Analysis of the West's differing responses to Ukrainian and Armenian mass movements reveal that, contrary to the popular Wilsonian narrative, the West assists democratic movements only when that assistance coincides with its material interests.

Joseph Allen and Juliette Kayyem discuss the need for a national plan going forward to beat COVID-19 and then detail it:  Limit the number of people who could be exposed to this novel coronavirus through social distancing; produce testing kits (on front end) and resources to avoid a decimation of our health system (on the back end); then manage the virus through a variety of measures until a vaccine is available.

Calder Walton describes four ways how intelligence services are certain to contribute to defeating COVID-19 and why pandemic intelligence will become a central part of future U.S. national security.

Joseph Nye writes that Trump's strategy of great power competition and trade wars is inadequate because the information revolution and globalization are changing world politics. Even if the United States prevails over China as a military power,  the country cannot protect its security by acting alone.

The Trump administration has made one mistake after another—and, with some foreign-policy changes, could emerge with more global power anyway. Stephen Walt details those recommended foreign policy changes.