Articles

235 Items

People practice combat skills in urban areas during a training course for national resistance of the Municipal Guard near Kyiv, Ukraine, on Jan. 19, 2024.

AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka

Journal Article - International Security

A “Nuclear Umbrella” for Ukraine? Precedents and Possibilities for Postwar European Security

| Winter 2023/24

Europe after the Russo-Ukrainian War must develop a new security structure to defend against any Russian aggression. The safest option is a non-offensive, confidence-building defense. This option includes proposals such as the “spider in the web” strategy and the “porcupine” strategy to provide for European security in a region threatened by Russian expansion—without relying on the threat of nuclear war. 

People stuck flowers in remains of the Berlin Wall during a commemoration ceremony to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall at the Wall memorial site at Bernauer Strasse in Berlin, Saturday, Nov. 9, 2019.

AP Photo/Markus Schreiber

Journal Article - International Security

We All Fall Down: The Dismantling of the Warsaw Pact and the End of the Cold War in Eastern Europe

    Author:
  • Simon Miles
| Winter 2023/24

The non-Soviet members of the Warsaw Pact contributed to the end of the Cold War along with the superpowers. These Eastern European states recognized that their relationship with the Soviet Union would impede their success in the post–Cold War world, so they ended the Pact.

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. 

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.

George C. Marshall, Chief of staff, and Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War, confer over a map in the War Department

U.S. Army Signal Corps

Newspaper Article - Harvard Crimson

Belfer Center Fellow Discusses Political Influence of U.S. War Department

    Authors:
  • Michael Gritzbach
  • Emily L. Ding
  • Julia A. Maciejak
  • Makanaka Nyandoro
| Oct. 17, 2022

Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy Grant H. Golub discussed the World War II–era expansion of the now-defunct U.S. Department of War during a virtual International Security Program seminar on October 13, 2022.

A man looks at a destroyed Russian tank placed as a symbol of war in downtown Kyiv, Ukraine

AP/Natacha Pisarenko, File

Journal Article - Texas National Security Review

What's Old Is New Again: Cold War Lessons for Countering Disinformation

| Fall 2022

Hostile foreign states are using weaponized information to attack the United States. Russia and China are disseminating disinformation about domestic U.S. race relations and COVID-19 to undermine and discredit the U.S. government. These information warfare attacks, which threaten U.S. national security, may seem new, but they are not. Using an applied history methodology and a wealth of previously classified archival records, this article uses two case studies to reveal how and why a hostile foreign state, the Soviet Union, targeted America with similar disinformation in the past

Oleg tests a drone on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine.

AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Why Drones Have Not Revolutionized War: The Enduring Hider-Finder Competition in Air Warfare

    Authors:
  • Antonio Calcara
  • Mauro Gilli
  • Raffaele Marchetti
  • Ivan Zaccagnini
| Spring 2022

Rather than revolutionizing war, drones demonstrate its evolution. The principle of air warfare remains avoiding exposure to the enemy. Drones are unlikely to shift the offense-defense balance toward the offense because they are vulnerable to attacks from the ground and air.

Military watching the start of work on the first part of some 180 kilometers of a 5.5 meter-high metal wall

AP/Czarek Sokolowski

Magazine Article - Foreign Affairs

When Migrants Become Weapons: The Long History and Worrying Future of a Coercive Tactic

| March/April 2022

Kelly Greenhill argues that by exploiting political divisions that exist within targeted states, the threatened or actual deployment of engineered flows of migrants has long been a distressingly effective policy instrument, and it is unlikely to go away anytime soon. Unless policymakers begin to confront the forces that enable weaponized migration, the favored policy responses seem destined to increase, rather than curtail, its use.