Articles

In this Q&A, Joseph S. Nye talks about his advice for the interim and future president of Harvard in the wake of Claudine Gay's resignation, which countries should be highest on our radar to prevent the threat of nuclear war, what role the U.S. should play in the Russia-Ukraine war, the significance of U.S. alliances in the Middle East, and more.

Power transitions affect a state’s ability to exercise economic statecraft. As a dominating and a rising power approach parity, they face structural incentives to decouple their economies. This decoupling affects business-state relations: high-value businesses within the dominant power tend to oppose their state’s economic statecraft because of its costs to them, whereas low-value businesses within the rising power tend to cooperate because they gain from it. 

Divestment is a prominent strategy championed by activists to induce positive social change. For example, the current fossil fuel divestment movement includes over 1,500 institutions that control $40 trillion in assets. A primary pathway through which divestment is theorized to be effective is by influencing public beliefs and policy preferences, thus pressuring policymakers to take action. However, prior research only tests this argument via qualitative case studies. The authors assess the impact of exposure to information about fossil fuel divestment on public opinion through the use of national survey experiments in three major greenhouse gas emitters: the U.S., India, and South Africa.

Why does the U.S. Army rely on persuasion to influence military partners to improve their forces despite repeated failures that undermine U.S. foreign policy goals? The army prioritizes its role as a fighting force, not an advisory group. U.S. leaders have developed an ideology—the cult of the persuasive—to advance army bureaucratic interests.

David C. Logan and Robert C. Watts IV respond to Isaac B. Kardon and Wendy Leutert's spring 2022 article, "Pier Competitor: China's Power Position in Global Ports."

Opportunistic repression arises when states use crises to suppress the political opposition. An examination of the relationship between COVID-19 shutdown policies and state violence against civilians in Africa, including and a subnational case study of Uganda, tests this theory.

Joseph Nye, Jr.'s Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump skillfully examines modern American presidents and ethics.

William James reviews Comparative Grand Strategy: A Framework and Cases edited by Thierry Balzacq,  Peter Dombrowski, and Simon Reich (Oxford University Press, 2019).

SWJ interview with Nathaniel L. Moir, Ph.D., an Ernest May Postdoctoral Fellow in History and Policy at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Moir is completing a book manuscript on Bernard Fall for publication.

Caleb Pomeroy responds to Michael Beckley’s fall 2018 article, “The Power of Nations: Measuring What Matters.”