Articles

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.

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."

Christopher Clary and Gaurav Kampani respond to Jaganath Sankaran's winter 2015/16 article, "Pakistan's Battlefield Nuclear Policy: A Risky Solution to an Exaggerated Threat."

Conventional accounts of the United States’ 1972 Linebacker I and Linebacker II deep air interdiction campaigns portray them as crucial to stopping the North Vietnamese Army’s Easter Offensive and convincing North Vietnam to sign the Paris peace accords. In fact, however, U.S. close air support and battlefield air interdiction contributed far more to achieving these outcomes than did the Linebacker campaigns.

Ronan Tse-min Fu, David James Gill, and Eric Hundman respond to Adam P. Liff and G. John Ikenberry's fall 2014 article, "Racing toward Tragedy? China's Rise, Military Competition in the Asia Pacific, and the Security Dilemma."

Do great powers balance against each other, as neorealist theory predicts? Over the past two centuries, great powers have typically avoided external balancing via alliance formation, but they have consistently engaged in internal balancing by arming and imitating the military advances of their rivals.

Pakistan has developed tactical nuclear weapons to deter India from executing its Cold Start war doctrine. India, however, has disavowed that doctrine. Further, the use of such weapons against Indian troops inside Pakistan would kill and injure countless civilians, while risking massive nuclear retaliation by India. In this International Security article, Jaganath Sankaran argues Pakistan should reconsider the role of tactical nuclear weapons in its military strategy.

Jon R. Lindsay responds to Lucas Kello's fall 2013 International Security article, "The Meaning of the Cyber Revolution: Perils to Theory and Statecraft."

Recent scholarship points to a drop in battle deaths over the past several centuries and suggests that war is declining. Improved medical care, however, has made battle wounds more survivable. War has become less fatal, but not necessarily less frequent.

Many academics and policymakers argue that the removal of leaders is an effective strategy in combating terrorism. Leadership decapitation is not always successful, however. A theory of organizational resilience explains why some terrorist organizations survive decapitation. Application of this theoretical model to the case of al-Qaida reveals that the deaths of Osama bin Laden and other high level al-Qaida operatives are unlikely to cause significant organizational decline.