Articles

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.

Power transitions affect a state’s ability to exercise economic statecraft. As a dominating and a rising power approach parity, they face structural incentives to decouple their economies. This decoupling affects business-state relations: high-value businesses within the dominant power tend to oppose their state’s economic statecraft because of its costs to them, whereas low-value businesses within the rising power tend to cooperate because they gain from it. 

China leverages its market in a form of “predatory liberalism” that weaponizes the networks of interdependence created by globalization. ne response to China’s bullying would be for its targets to form an alliance to retaliate against China’s high-dependence trade should Beijing act against any alliance members. 

Dominant normative theories of civil-military relations focus on ideal-type scenarios that do not reflect the messy, inherently political character of elite decision-making. A case study of civil-military dynamics during the Iraq War identifies four decision-making strategies that George W. Bush and Barack Obama used to avoid incurring a domestic political penalty for rejecting the military’s preferences.

Overall, "sanctions-proofing" activities by governments do not offer an impermeable shield against financial sanctions due to the strength of the US dollar, the reach of multilateral sanctions, and the speed with which coordinated sanctions can be imposed. However, some sanctions-proofing strategies enable governments to continue pursuing their goals despite sanctions pressure. Analysis of Russia's adaptations to the sanctions should temper expectations of sanctions' ability to alter wartime behavior. The threat of sanctions did not deter war and the initial imposition of sanctions did not coerce a change in the decision to wage war.

A textbook case of coercive diplomacy, Hezbollah's maneuver was calculated and deliberate, which reflects the group's strategic expertise. Drawing on open-source materials and public statements in Arabic and Hebrew, this article analyzes Hezbollah's coercive-diplomacy campaign and examines its implications for escalation scenarios between Israel and its central military opponent.

David C. Logan and Robert C. Watts IV respond to Isaac B. Kardon and Wendy Leutert's spring 2022 article, "Pier Competitor: China's Power Position in Global Ports."

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

New forms of international cooperation and technology competition with China are the main drivers of public investment in energy innovation, though it remains insufficient to help meet climate goals.

As latecomers to the industrialization process, developing countries may face barriers to upgrading from the production of mass-produced goods to higher-value technologies. Using a comparative qualitative case study focusing on three renewable energy technologies, this paper develops a typology of catching-up opportunities in green energy industries and finds that policymakers should target certain technologies in their industrial strategies based on certain technology characteristics, and should seek opportunities to capitalize on a local niche that creates a need for innovation.