Articles

54 Items

An old man walks past a gutted car in downtown Kabul, Thursday, June 25, 1992.

AP Photo/B.K. Bangash

Journal Article - International Security

Dealers and Brokers in Civil Wars: Why States Delegate Rebel Support to Conduit Countries

    Authors:
  • Niklas Karlén
  • Vladimir Rauta
| Spring 2023

State support to non-state armed groups outside a state’s own territory is commonly seen as a direct relationship between a state sponsor and a rebel group. But powerful states can use a third state—a dealer or broker—as a conduit for military and other support. States that fail to identify an alignment of interests with these intermediary dealers and brokers face strategic failure.

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Newspaper Article - Harvard Gazette

Russia’s Remaining Weapons Are Horrific and Confounding

| Mar. 23, 2022

Along with concerns over the possible deployment of tactical nuclear weapons, the Biden administration is now warning that the Russian military may launch a chemical weapons attack in Ukraine. Russia has used chemical weapons during past conflicts, notably in Chechnya and Syria, in violation of international law. Russian officials denied Biden’s accusation during a U.N. Security Council meeting Tuesday.

an alert from the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

AP/Jon Elswick

Journal Article - Foreign Affairs

The End of Cyber-Anarchy?

| January/February 2022

Joseph Nye argues that prudence results from the fear of creating unintended consequences in unpredictable systems and can develop into a norm of nonuse or limited use of certain weapons or a norm of limiting targets. Something like this happened with nuclear weapons when the superpowers came close to the brink of nuclear war in 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis. The Limited Test Ban Treaty followed a year later.

Members of the 576th Flight Test Squadron monitor an operational test launch of an unarmed Minuteman III missile

USAF/Michael Peterson

Journal Article - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

The Overwhelming Case for No First Use

| Jan. 13, 2020

The arguments in favor of the United States' declaring that the only purpose of its nuclear weapons is to deter others who possess them from using theirs — in other words, that in no circumstances will this country use nuclear weapons first — are far stronger than the arguments against this stance. It must be hoped that the next US administration will take this no-first-use step promptly.

An Al-Shabaab military training camp in Somalia

Al-Kataib

Journal Article - CTC Sentinel

Black Banners in Somalia: The State of al-Shabaab's Territorial Insurgency and the Specter of the Islamic State

| March 2018

"This article examines al-Shabaab's organizational state, including its strengths and potential weaknesses, through an analysis of its administrative, military, and media activities in 2017 and into the first quarter of 2018. Primary sources produced by al-Shabaab and core Islamic State and Islamic State–Somalia have been used in tandem with relevant secondary sources, including local and international news reporting and NGO, United Nations, African Union, and U.S. government publications, and in consultation with sources on the ground when possible so that the militant groups' claims are not simply taken at face value."