Articles

Through structured interviews and a literature review, we assess which approaches to protection against insider thefts in the casino and pharmaceutical industries could be usefully applied to strengthen protections against insider theft in the nuclear industry, where insider thefts could have very high consequences.

States use wedge strategies to prevent hostile alliances from forming or to dis­perse those that have formed. These strategies can cause power alignments that are otherwise unlikely to occur, and thus have significant consequences for international politics. How do such strategies work and what conditions promote their success? The wedge strategies that are likely to have significant effects use selective accommodation—concessions, compensations, and other inducements—to detach and neutralize potential adversaries. These kinds of strategies play important roles in the statecraft of both defensive and offensive powers. Defenders use selective accommodation to balance against a primary threat by neutralizing lesser ones that might ally with it. Expansionists use se­lective accommodation to prevent or break up blocking coalitions, isolating opposing states by inducing potential balancers to buck-pass, bandwagon, or hide. Two cases—Great Britain’s defensive attempts to accommodate Italy in the late 1930s and Germany’s offensive efforts to accommodate the Soviet Union in 1939—help to demonstrate these arguments. By paying attention to these dynamics, international relations scholars can better understand how balancing works in specific cases, how it manifests more broadly in interna­tional politics, and why it sometimes fails in situations where it ought to work well.

"He again has demonstrators on the streets. And, he has lost the one principal opposition leader with whom he appeared to be able to work," said Xenia Dormandy, director of the Project on India and the subcontinent at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. "It is unclear whether whoever replaces Benazir will hold the same accommodative views as she did."

Hui Zhang re-examines the North Korean explosion on October 9, 2006. His research suggests that the test was likely not a failure if Pyongyang had planned for a yield of 4 kt, as it told Beijing prior to the event.

Hui Zhang provides a path-breaking technical assessment of the Korean nuclear test, publishing a comment (with co-authors Jungmin Kang and Frank von Hippel) on the test and the limits of nuclear forensics in Arms Control Today.

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

Nation-states fail because they can no longer deliver positive political goods to their people.

Scenario one: If North Korea fired a nuclear-armed missile that devastated an American city, how would the U.S. government respond? The state-sponsored attack would fit within the Cold War paradigm; therefore, the certain American response would be an overwhelming retaliation aimed at destroying Pyongyang, Kim Jong Il's nuclear and missile programs, and North Korea's million-man army. Such a response would result in enormous collateral damage, killing millions of North Koreans. Despite reservations about the morality of such a response, those who established the Cold War nuclear doctrine recognized -- and accepted -- the unintended deaths of millions of innocents. Whoever occupied the White House during such a nuclear attack would understand this also.

"Poor leadership has been the depressing norm in Africa for decades. But as a bold new initiative by a group of past and present African leaders takes off, good governance may finally come to the continent."