Articles

G. John Ikenberry, professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, and Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, participated in a debate at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University on May 8, 2007. Christopher Lydon hosted the debate.

"How has a state whose founding fathers were secular people who believed in rule of law and democracy drifted toward religious extremism and authoritarianism? Three primary factors—variations on the Triple A theory of influence (Allah, the Army, and America)—have led Pakistan down this path: a powerful independent military, the mushrooming of religious militant groups, and the hydra-headed monster that is the intelligence services."

"...how can the United States maximize the benefits that primacy brings and minimize the resistance that its power sometimes provokes?"

Carter, Deutch, and Zelikow addresses the threat of Catastrophic Terrorism in Foreign Affairs.

Op-ed by Dr. Ashton B. Carter and Dr. Graham T. Allison in The Washington Post

A careful reader of the discussion in the Russian and American national security community could conclude that Americans are more concerned about the threat of a nuclear terrorist attack than are Russians. Specifically, American experts have described more vividly potential nuclear terrorist attacks on U.S. soil than have Russians, at least in the writings and conversations that are publicly accessible. Why this is the case is a puzzle. No one doubts that in Chechen fighters Russia faces serious, capable, determined adversaries. Moreover, if Chechnya succeeded in capturing, stealing, or buying a nuclear weapon (or material from which they could make a nuclear weapon), their first target would surely be Moscow, not New York or Washington DC.

Criticizes "the failure of American policymakers to develop any concept or strategy for dealing with the 'new-thinking' Soviet leadership". Proposes that "the United States and its allies... reach beyond containment to aggressive engagement of the Soviet Union in ways that encourage Gorbachev's reformist instincts" by means of specific tests of his intentions in the fields of arms control, regional conflict and human rights.