Articles

141 Items

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.

Great Decisions Cover

Foreign Policy Association

Journal Article - Foreign Policy Association

The State of the State Department and American Diplomacy

| Jan. 03, 2019

During the Trump administration, the usual ways of conducting diplomacy have been upended. Many positions in the State Department have never been filled, and meetings with foreign leaders such as Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin have been undertaken with little advance planning. What effect are these changes having now, and how will they affect ongoing relationships between the United States and its allies and adversaries?

Journal Article - Small Wars Journal

Twilight Zone Conflicts: Employing Gray Tactics in Cyber Operations

| October 27, 2016

"...[A]ctors that employ gray tactics in cyber operations need not be successful in actually infiltrating a system to further their revisionist ambitions. Rather, the sheer ramifications from the cyber action itself, has the power to disturb a nation's psyche and challenge the geopolitical status quo."

Aircraft assigned to Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 5 fly in formation above the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63), Pacific Ocean, June 23, 2008.

Kyle D. Gahlau/ U.S. Navy

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Future Warfare in the Western Pacific: Chinese Antiaccess/Area Denial, U.S. AirSea Battle, and Command of the Commons in East Asia

| Summer 2016

Many policy analysts have suggested that China is developing antiaccess and area denial capabilities that could force the U.S. military out of the Western Pacific. The threat, however, is limited. China will likely acquire the ability to partially restrict the U.S. military's freedom of movement in the East and South China Seas, but the United States will maintain a sphere of influence sufficient to protect most of its allies in the region.

Soldiers stand on guard next to a Chinese navy nuclear submarine at the Qingdao base in east China's Shandong province on August 19, 2013.

Yin Haiyang/ AP

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Should the United States Reject MAD? Damage Limitation and U.S. Nuclear Strategy toward China

| Summer 2016

China's growing nuclear arsenal threatens to erode the United States' damage-limitation capability—its ability to destroy Chinese forces and thereby significantly reduce the damage that an all-out Chinese nuclear attack would inflict on the United States. Nevertheless, the United States should not attempt to preserve this capability. Doing so is technologically infeasible, would not add to the U.S. nuclear deterrent, would heighten tensions with China, and would increase the risk of nuclear escalation in a crisis.