Articles

125 Items

A Chinese soldier stands guard next to Tiananmen Square

AP/Louise Delmotte

Journal Article - Global Studies Quarterly

Two Paths: Why States Join or Avoid China's Belt and Road Initiative

    Authors:
  • M. Taylor Fravel
  • Raymond Wang
  • Nick Ackert
  • Sihao Huang
| 2023

Although China's motives for developing the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) have been well studied, scholars have yet to comprehensively examine why states seek to join the initiative. The authors fill this gap by examining how and why states join the BRI. Countries join by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with China on cooperation under the BRI framework.

People watch a TV news program showing the tweet of U.S. President Donald Trump while reporting North Korea's nuclear issue

AP/Ahn Young-joon

Journal Article - Security Studies

Madman or Mad Genius? The International Benefits and Domestic Costs of the Madman Strategy

| 2023

According to the "Madman Theory" outlined by Daniel Ellsberg and Thomas C. Schelling, and embraced by Presidents Richard Nixon and Donald Trump, being perceived as mad can help make seemingly incredible threats—such as starting a nuclear war—more credible. However, recent research has largely concluded that the Madman Theory does not work. 

Robert Stavins

Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

Newspaper Article - Harvard Gazette

Glimmers of Movement, Hope at COP27

    Author:
  • Alvin Powell
| Nov. 23, 2022

Following the COP27 climate conference in Egypt, Robert Stavins said in an interview with the Harvard Gazette that the talks were both frustrating and hopeful: frustrating because they did little to accelerate the slow pace of action to reduce carbon emissions, and hopeful because of a reawakened dialogue between the world’s biggest emitters—the U.S. and China—and movement to address climate-related damage to the world’s most vulnerable nations.

A man looks at a destroyed Russian tank placed as a symbol of war in downtown Kyiv, Ukraine

AP/Natacha Pisarenko, File

Journal Article - Texas National Security Review

What's Old Is New Again: Cold War Lessons for Countering Disinformation

| Fall 2022

Hostile foreign states are using weaponized information to attack the United States. Russia and China are disseminating disinformation about domestic U.S. race relations and COVID-19 to undermine and discredit the U.S. government. These information warfare attacks, which threaten U.S. national security, may seem new, but they are not. Using an applied history methodology and a wealth of previously classified archival records, this article uses two case studies to reveal how and why a hostile foreign state, the Soviet Union, targeted America with similar disinformation in the past

Robert Stavins

Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

Newspaper Article - Harvard Gazette

Separating Signal from Noise at COP26

    Author:
  • Alvin Powell
| Nov. 17, 2021

For an assessment of what was done, and left undone, at the recent United Nations’ Conference of the Parties on climate change, the Gazette spoke with Rob Stavins, the Harvard Kennedy School’s A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development and head of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, who attended his first COP in 2007 in Bali. 

Black Americans register to vote in the July 4 Georgia Democratic Primary in Atlanta, Ga., on May 3, 1944. Registrations are increasing in Atlanta as black schools are giving instructions to students in ballot casting procedure.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

White Supremacy, Terrorism, and the Failure of Reconstruction in the United States

| Summer 2021

White Southerners opposed to Reconstruction used violence to undermine Black political power and force uncommitted white Southerners to their side. Although structural factors made it harder for the U.S. government to suppress this violence, a series of policy failures prompted Reconstruction’s failure and generations of injustice.

Journal Article - Terrorism and Political Violence

Book Review: The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West

| 2021

David Kilcullen, a professor at the University of New South Wales, contributes to the debate of  whether contemporary great-power resurgence constitutes a second bi-polar competition by assessing resurging state and non-state competitors and the challenges they pose to the United Statesled world order. While the emerging security environment might not be a new Cold War, Kilcullen contends it may be more dangerous than in the past.

Granddaughter of President Dwight Eisenhower Mary Jean Eisenhower (front row 4th from L), the great-grandson of President Eisenhower Merrill Eisenhower Atwater (5th) and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (5th) and others pose for photo ahead of the reception to mark 60th anniversary of Japan-U.S. Security Treaty at Iikura Guest House in Tokyo on Jan. 19, 2020. (The Yomiuri Shimbun)

AP Photo/Pool for Yomiuri

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Network Connections and the Emergence of the Hub-and-Spokes Alliance System in East Asia

    Author:
  • Yasuhiro Izumikawa
| Fall 2020

A social exchange network approach reveals how three U.S. allies—Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—contributed to the emergence and shape of the hub-and-spokes alliance system in East Asia. This finding enables scholars and policymakers to devise appropriate policy responses as the system changes.