Articles

112 Items

People practice combat skills in urban areas during a training course for national resistance of the Municipal Guard near Kyiv, Ukraine, on Jan. 19, 2024.

AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka

Journal Article - International Security

A “Nuclear Umbrella” for Ukraine? Precedents and Possibilities for Postwar European Security

| Winter 2023/24

Europe after the Russo-Ukrainian War must develop a new security structure to defend against any Russian aggression. The safest option is a non-offensive, confidence-building defense. This option includes proposals such as the “spider in the web” strategy and the “porcupine” strategy to provide for European security in a region threatened by Russian expansion—without relying on the threat of nuclear war. 

Flowers bloom around graves of World War I soldiers prior to a foundation laying ceremony at Loos British Cemetery in Loos-en-Gohelle, France, Thursday, May 4, 2023.

AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

The Peril of Peaking Powers: Economic Slowdowns and Implications for China’s Next Decade

| Summer 2023

Peaking great powers facing a slowdown in growth are likely to try to violently shake up the world. These findings amend classic theories of great power conflict. They help explain some of the most consequential geopolitical events in modern history. And they have ominous implications for contemporary Chinese foreign policy. 

A security guard stands near a sculpture of the Chinese Communist Party flag at the Museum of the Communist Party of China on May 26, 2022, in Beijing.

AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Strategic Substitution: China’s Search for Coercive Leverage in the Information Age

    Author:
  • Fiona Cunningham
| Summer 2022

After the mistaken U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999, China turned to information-age weapons to create a risk of escalation to nuclear war with the United States. This shift helps compensate for its conventional military inferiority.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, second from right, inspects the preparation of the launch of a Hwasong-14 ICBM in North Korea on July 4, 2017.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Defending the United States: Revisiting National Missile Defense against North Korea

| Winter 2021/22

The costly Ground-based Midcourse Defense system remains unproven and unreliable in deterring North Korea’s threat to use intercontinental ballistic missiles. An airborne boost-phase intercept system may offer an alternative defense against North Korea without threatening Russian or Chinese deterrents.

Chinese military vehicles in parade.

(AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Dangerous Confidence? Chinese Views on Nuclear Escalation

    Authors:
  • Fiona S. Cunningham
  • M. Taylor Fravel
| Fall 2019

China and the United States hold opposing beliefs about whether nuclear war can be avoided in a potential crisis or armed conflict. Taken together, these opposing beliefs increase the risk of nuclear escalation and can lead to greater crisis instability.

Learning to Deter: Deterrence Failure and Success in the Israel-Hezbollah Conflict, 2006–16

AP

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Learning to Deter: Deterrence Failure and Success in the Israel-Hezbollah Conflict, 2006–16

| Winter 2016/17

Comparing Israel and Hezbollah’s interactions before and after the 2006 Lebanon War offers insights into the sources of deterrence stability. Since 2006, Israel and Hezbollah have learned to apply rational deterrence theory. Careful communication of capabilities and resolve has contributed to a decade without war. This history also illustrates how a weak actor can deter a stronger adversary by minimizing its own vulnerability and maximizing that of its opponent.