Articles

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."

Richard W. Maass and Carla Norrlof respond to Daniel W. Drezner's Summer 2013 International Security article, "Military Primacy Doesn't Pay (Nearly As Much As You Think)."

While the threat of "resource wars" over possession of oil reserves is often exaggerated, between one-quarter and one-half of interstate wars since 1973 have been connected to one or more of eight distinct oil-related causal mechanisms. Understanding these mechanisms can help policymakers design grand strategy and allocate military resources.

U.S. scholars and policymakers commonly worry that a lack of "energy security" hurts U.S. national security, yet few have analyzed the links between states' energy requirements and the probability of military conflict. An investigation of these links identifies threats to U.S. national security flowing from other countries' consumption of oil, rather than just U.S. consumption. Furthermore, while many of the security threats associated with Persian Gulf oil have decreased, new oil-driven dangers are emerging in Northeast Asia.

"In our view, the field has moved away from a careful reliance on theory, and is just mindlessly going out and testing hypotheses without thinking very hard about what's really causing what."

Africa is yet to adopt full scale technology-led development. Steve Mbogo spoke to the Director of the Belfer Center's Science, Technology, and Globalisation Project and professor at Harvard University Calestous Juma on the opportunities that await the continent as a late comer.