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.

Calder Walton recounts how Russia and China are using their intelligence agencies to reverse the outcome of the Cold War

Rather than revolutionizing war, drones demonstrate its evolution. The principle of air warfare remains avoiding exposure to the enemy. Drones are unlikely to shift the offense-defense balance toward the offense because they are vulnerable to attacks from the ground and air.

America is a country built on immigrants and refugees, a truth acknowledged by former President George W. Bush in his recent collection of post-White House paintings, “Out of Many, One: Portraits of America’s Immigrants.” That spirit inspired a namesake Belfer Center Future of Diplomacy Project event featuring three notable women portrayed in the book who discussed the role of foreign-born Americans and their own decisions to enter public service in their adoptive nation.

If the United States were to withdraw from Europe, any European effort to develop an autonomous defense capacity would be fundamentally hampered by profoundly diverging threat perceptions and severe military capacity shortfalls that would be very costly and time-consuming to close.

Did the Western powers promise in 1990 not to expand NATO? An examination of the evidence leads to the conclusion that the Russian allegations are by no means baseless, which affects how the U.S.-Russian relationship today is to be understood.

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

On a cool day late last September, half a dozen Chinese engineers walked into a conference room in the heart of Geneva's UN district with a radical idea. They had one hour to persuade delegates from more than 40 countries of their vision: an alternative form of the internet, to replace the technological architecture that has underpinned the web for half a century. 

Whereas today's internet is owned by everyone and no one, they were in the process of building something very different - a new infrastructure that could put power back in the hands of nation states, instead of individuals.

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

President Trump has strongly criticized NATO and European countries on defense spending, publicly hectored European leaders, upset summits meetings, and pressured traditional allies with economic sanctions.  Transatlantic tensions have been called a “crisis”.  Yet the current situation echoes a certain historical continuity.  In its seventy years of existence, NATO has weathered more severe crises and proved itself capable of extraordinary resilience.  Then, as now, the alliance found renewed purpose in ambitious programs of adaptation.  In adapting to today’s challenges, Europeans and Americans have a shared interest in looking back to the future.