Articles

241 Items

People watch a TV news program showing the tweet of U.S. President Donald Trump while reporting North Korea's nuclear issue

AP/Ahn Young-joon

Journal Article - Security Studies

Madman or Mad Genius? The International Benefits and Domestic Costs of the Madman Strategy

| 2023

According to the "Madman Theory" outlined by Daniel Ellsberg and Thomas C. Schelling, and embraced by Presidents Richard Nixon and Donald Trump, being perceived as mad can help make seemingly incredible threats—such as starting a nuclear war—more credible. However, recent research has largely concluded that the Madman Theory does not work. 

 workers from the Misr Spinning and Weaving Factory in the northern industrial town of Mahalla el-Kobra, Egypt, beat on makeshift drums

AP/Paul Schemm, File

Journal Article - Journal of Peace Research

A Win or a Flop? Measuring Mass Protest Successfulness in Authoritarian Settings

| 2023

Previously rare events, mass protest movements have become popular vehicles for those seeking political, economic, and social change. How do scholars and policymakers evaluate movement success? Most studies addressing movement outcomes are grounded in the goal attainment approach, where movement success is dependent upon fulfilling one's stated demands. The models derived from this approach heavily rely on visibility and transparency in the policymaking process. These offer limited analytical utility for scholars studying movements in authoritarian states, where policymaking is shrouded and media is state-controlled. Evaluating movements solely on their fulfillment of mission goals is highly problematic, as movements produce more outcomes than their intended goals. Movements also produce unintended benefits: concessions unrelated to the movement's mission. These include negative consequences, or societal costs.

Protesters wave pride flags

AP/John Raoux

Journal Article - Journal of Peace Research

Guest Editors' Introduction: Nonviolent Resistance and Its Discontents

| 2023

In the past decade, myriad studies have explored the effects of nonviolent resistance (NR) on outcomes including revolutionary success (short-term and long-term) and democratization, and how nonviolent mobilization can play a similar role to violence in affecting social change in some settings. This special issue seeks to advance scholars' and policymakers' understanding of the role of nonviolence by tackling some key assumptions in existing work that are complicated by historical and contemporary realities of deepening polarization worldwide. This issue addresses four key areas within conflict and peace research that limit scholars' and policymakers' ability to make sense of NR: (a) the fragmented nature of civil resistance campaigns in terms of supporters and demands; (b) the increasing prevalence of authoritarian or anti-egalitarian nonviolent campaigns; and (c) the complicated nature of revolutionary success. Cutting across all three of these substantive areas is another key area, which is: (d) the United States as an increasingly salient site of conflict and contention.

Protesters walk past a police security line

AP/Emrah Gurel

Journal Article - Journal of Peace Research

Swords into Ploughshares? Why Human Rights Abuses Persist after Resistance Campaigns

| 2023

Human rights abuse tends to increase during national crises, such as civil wars and mass nonviolent uprisings. Under what conditions does this abuse abate or persist? The author argues that violent challenges provoke much more coercive state responses, exposing more personnel within the security forces to extreme forms of repression and priming them (both leaders and followers) to reproduce these behaviors after the conflict has terminated. This effect is mitigated or avoided when challengers rely on nonviolent tactics instead of violence, leading to less post-conflict abuse.

U.S. Army Soldiers share tactics and training with Nigerian Army Soldiers, Nigeria, February 8, 2018.

Capt. James Sheehan, U.S. Army

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

The Cult of the Persuasive: Why U.S. Security Assistance Fails

    Author:
  • Rachel Tecott Metz
| Winter 2022/23

Why does the U.S. Army rely on persuasion to influence military partners to improve their forces despite repeated failures that undermine U.S. foreign policy goals? The army prioritizes its role as a fighting force, not an advisory group. U.S. leaders have developed an ideology—the cult of the persuasive—to advance army bureaucratic interests.

Ukrainian Armed Forces use M777 howitzers donated due to the 2022 Russian invasion

Ukrainian Ground Forces via Wikimedia Commons

Journal Article - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Distressing a system in distress: global nuclear order and Russia’s war against Ukraine

| Nov. 08, 2022

While prosecuting its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has relied heavily on nuclear threats, turning the war in Ukraine into a dangerous nuclear crisis with profound implications for the global nuclear order and its two constitutive systems of nuclear deterrence and nuclear restraint. These two interconnected systems, each aiming to manage nuclear possession and reduce the risk of nuclear use, are at once complimentary and contradictory. While tensions between these systems are not new, the war in Ukraine exacerbates them in unprecedented ways. The system of nuclear deterrence seems to be proving its worth by inducing restraint on Russia and NATO, while the system of restraint is undermined by demonstrating what happens to a country not protected by nuclear deterrence. The latter lesson is particularly vivid given Ukraine’s decision to forgo a nuclear option in 1994 in exchange for security assurances from nuclear powers. Russia’s use of nuclear threats as an enabler for escalation and the specter of Russian tactical nuclear use against Ukraine goes well beyond its declared nuclear doctrine. The outcome of the war in Ukraine thus has critical importance for deciding the value of nuclear weapons in global security architecture and for resolving the conundrum between the systems of deterrence and restraint.

Ugandan Asians have their papers examined by ship's officer of the SS Haryana before they boarded the ship

AP Photo

Newspaper Article - Harvard Crimson

Kennedy School Postdoc Discusses Government-Sanctioned Mass Expulsion at Belfer Center Seminar

    Authors:
  • Cam E. Kettles
  • Jasmine Palma
  • Rysa Tahilramani
| Nov. 04, 2022

Meghan M. Garrity, an International Security Program postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center discussed her research on government-sanctioned mass expulsion events at a virtual seminar on November 3, 2022.