Articles

12 Items

Military watching the start of work on the first part of some 180 kilometers of a 5.5 meter-high metal wall

AP/Czarek Sokolowski

Magazine Article - Foreign Affairs

When Migrants Become Weapons: The Long History and Worrying Future of a Coercive Tactic

| March/April 2022

Kelly Greenhill argues that by exploiting political divisions that exist within targeted states, the threatened or actual deployment of engineered flows of migrants has long been a distressingly effective policy instrument, and it is unlikely to go away anytime soon. Unless policymakers begin to confront the forces that enable weaponized migration, the favored policy responses seem destined to increase, rather than curtail, its use.

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.

President Khamenei visit an Iran-Iraq war battlefield in August 1988.

Khamenei.ir/Wikimedia Commons

Journal Article - Intelligence and National Security

Arming Iran from the heart of Westminster? The Iranian military procurement offices, rumours and intelligence, 1981–1987

| June 10, 2020

During the Iran-Iraq war there were extensive rumours in the press regarding Iran’s use of Iranian Military Procurement Offices (IMPOs) in London to purchase arms. This article seeks to interrogate the facts behind these rumours: what was going on inside the IMPOs? How much intelligence did the British government have about this? Not a huge amount – largely a result of the IMPOs being a challenging target and Britain’s intelligence priorities in London lying elsewhere. More broadly the paper seeks to provide insights into the challenges of gathering intelligence from – and responding to the activities of – foreign government targets on home turf, as well as providing insights into an under-considered area of intelligence – that surrounding embargoes and sanctions.

U.S. Treasury Department building

Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Journal Article - American Journal of International Law Unbound

Due Process Is in the Details: U.S. Targeted Economic Sanctions and International Human Rights Law

| 2019

The United States has employed targeted sanctions—economic and travel restrictions imposed directly on natural and legal persons—in a wide range of policy areas in the past two decades.  A substantial literature has considered the compatibility with international human rights law of the targeted sanctions practices of other actors, particularly the UN Security Council and the European Union. But relatively few scholars have examined U.S. targeted sanctions practices from that perspective. This essay argues that in principle, current U.S. designation practices can be reconciled with international standards. 

Bushehr nuclear power plant's electricity generating section, Iran, Oct. 26, 2010. Iran began loading fuel into the core of its first nuclear power plant, moving closer to the facility's start up.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

The Iranian Quagmire: How to Move Forward. Position: Tit-for-Tat Diplomacy

| November/December 2010

"...Iran's nuclear strategy is based on mastering the independent nuclear fuel cycle, seeking a cooperative relationship with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) according to its Safeguards Agreement, and enhancing regional and global nuclear disarmament. While Iran's progress in moving forward with the elements of this strategy brings challenges for the P5 + 1 group—namely reaching consensus on the mutual interests of all concerned parties—Iran supports continued discussions with this group to find a result acceptable to all parties in the diplomatic process."

Russian troops ride atop armored vehicles near the village of Khurcha in Georgia's breakaway province of Abkhazia, Aug. 10, 2008, heading toward the border of Georgia.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Caucasian Review of International Affairs

Identities, Interests and the Resolution of the Abkhaz Conflict

| Summer 2008

"The recent crisis in Abkhazia reveals a fundamental qualitative change in the conflict in which the balance among three main actors is shifting, and increasingly the conflict plays a more important role in the triangular relations between Georgia, Russia and the West. The search for a new equilibrium in the conflict, one that would be an optimal outcome for the actors involved, will require rethinking the mutually constitutive roles (identities) and interests they want to assume with respect to the conflict and the entire South Caucasus...."

Two offshore oil rigs in the Caspian Sea

Journal Article - China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly

Energy Supply and Demand in Eurasia: Cooperation between EU and Iran

| November 2007

Energy diversification has emerged as one of the most important priorities for a majority of the European countries and the EU. Growing energy demand in Europe combined with a high reliance on Russia as an energy producer have led the EU to look to the Caspian Sea region for alternative energy resources, especially in natural gas. Iran has the 2nd largest natural gas reserves in the world and could assist Europe in diversifying supplies. This article argues that there is substantial potential for energy cooperation between Iran and the European countries, particularly Turkey. Increased Iranian participation in the Eurasian energy market, both as consumer and producer, could lead to other benefits including economic development and more efficient energy extraction.