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.

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.

This study provides a whole-systems simulation on how to halve global CO2 emissions by 2050, compared to 2010, with an emphasis on technologies and costs, in order to avoid a dangerous increase in the global mean surface temperature by end the of this century.

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."

Harvard University has created a Presidential Committee on Sustainability (PCS) to advise President Larry Bacow and the University's leadership on sustainability vision, goals, strategy, and partnerships. The Harvard Gazette spoke with committee chairs Rebecca Henderson, the John and Natty McArthur University Professor; John Holdren, the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard Kennedy School; and Katie Lapp, executive vice president, about why it is so important to act now; the role of the PCS in developing collaborative and innovative projects; and how the campus community can get involved.

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).

Many states have been paid to join multilateral military coalitions. These payments are largely covered by “pivotal states”—those that care the most about an operation’s success—and take the form of deployment subsidies and political side deals to attract critical contributors to the mission.

When do autocratic rulers in oil-producing countries support private sector development? We argue that the size of oil rents per capita has an important effect on ruler support for the rule of law, respect for private property rights, and other factors that promote private investment.