Articles

Christopher Darnton responds to Rachel Metz's Winter 2022/23 article, "The Cult of the Persuasive: Why U.S. Security Assistance Fails."

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.

Why do U.S. leaders struggle to end military interventions? William McKinley’s 1898 decision to annex the Philippines reveals why, through a phenomenon called the “meddler’s trap.” This concept denotes a situation of self-entanglement, whereby a leader inadvertently creates a problem through military intervention, feels they can solve it, and values solving the new problem more because of the initial intervention. 

Calder Walton says both seek to topple the United States from atop world stage, with China's blend of money, influence, all-hands-on-deck approach posing the greater threat.

Can intelligence serve as a coercive instrument in international relations? While coercion literature mostly addresses military and economic means, this article argues that coercion can also include the deliberate public disclosure of intelligence. Intelligence can be employed to threaten adversaries, reduce their latitude, and force them to adjust their plans and operations

Many accounts of the formation of American and British grand strategy during World War II between the fall of France and the Pearl Harbor attacks stress the differences between the two sides’ strategic thinking. These accounts argue that while the Americans favored a 'direct' Germany-first approach to defeating the Axis powers, the British preferred the 'indirect' or 'peripheral' method. However, a review of Anglo-American strategic planning in this period shows that before official U.S. wartime entry, both sides largely agreed the British 'peripheral' approach was the wisest grand strategy for winning the war.

Elias Götz responds to Michael McFaul’s fall 2020 article, “Putin, Putinism, and the Domestic Determinants of Russian Foreign Policy.”

An influential model of democratic civil-military relations insists that civilian politicians and officials, accountable to the public, have "the right to be wrong" about the use of force: they, not senior military officers, decide when force will be used and set military strategy. While polls have routinely asked about Americans' trust in the military, they have rarely probed deeply into Americans' views of civil-military relations. 

Why did Russia’s relations with the West shift from cooperation a few decades ago to a new era of confrontation today? Tracing the causal influence of domestic determinants—individuals (President Vladimir Putin), ideas (Putinism), and institutions (autocracy)—reveals Putin’s significant influence in the making of Russian foreign policy.

Jacqueline L. Hazelton reviews Timothy Andrews Sayle, Jeffrey A. Engel, Hal Brands, and William Inboden (eds.). The Last Card: Inside George W. Bush's Decision to Surge in Iraq. (Cornell University Press, 2019).