Articles

In the Henty Mance interview, Joseph Nye, who coined term 'soft power,' says that the turmoil facing the United States and Harvard was worse in the 1960s.

In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008, China began to move away from the market-based approach that had shaped its economic policies for three decades, and toward something that might be termed "party-state capitalism," which involves a high degree of CC control over strategic sectors of the economy. This has led to significant changes in the U.S.-Chinese economic relationship, as both sides have made efforts to secure supply chains, screen inward and outward capital flows, diminish the power of global firms, and reorganize alliances to protect against economic coercion.

A new theory of war duration suggests that strategic narratives explain why the U.S. war in Afghanistan endured and ended. A robust anti-terrorism narrative generated audience costs for presidential inaction. As the narrative weakened, these costs declined, and the war ended.

Of all the intractable issues that could spark a hot war between the United States and China, Taiwan is at the very top of the list. And the potential geopolitical consequences of such a war would be profound. Taiwan-"an unsinkable aircraft carrier and submarine tender," as U.S. Army General Douglas MacArthur once described it--has important, often underappreciated military value as a gateway to the Philippine Sea, a vital theater for defending Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea from possible Chinese coercion or attack.

During war, states trade two types of products with their enemies. To maximize revenues, states continue to trade products that are essential to the domestic economy or that their adversary takes a long time to convert into militarily capabilities.

Nathaniel L. Moir reviews Antonio Giustozzi's The Taliban at War: 2001–2018 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).  He writes, "Through an assessment of the intra-politics of the Taliban's different shuras, along with the success and failures these shuras have achieved over the recent past, Giustozzi brings readers up to date on the Taliban's organizational status as it moved toward negotiations with the Afghan government."

The U.S. military’s prevailing norms of military professionalism are poorly suited to meet today’s civil-military challenges. They undermine the military’s nonpartisan and apolitical ethos, weaken civilian leaders' control of military activity, and undercut the country’s strategic effectiveness in armed conflict.

Nathaniel L. Moir reviews In The Warlords' Shadow: Special Operations Forces, the Afghans, and Their Fight Against the Taliban by Daniel R. Green  (Naval Institute Press, 2017).

For Saudis these days, life is a roller coaster. Even as Iranian missiles threaten their national security and livelihood, previously unimaginable social freedoms accelerate. All this leaves some Saudis squealing with delight; others are frozen with fright.

Rather than debating whether China is challenging a single, U.S.-dominated liberal order, scholars and analysts should consider China’s actions in relation to multiple orders in different domains, where China is supportive of some, unsupportive of others, and partially supportive of still others.