Articles

264 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. 

A Life In The American Century Author: Joseph S. Nye Jr.

AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH © MARTHA STEWART

Magazine Article - Newsweek

Don't 'Jeopardize Free Speech That Is Fundamental' to Harvard, Says Prof

    Author:
  • Meredith Wolf Schizer
| Jan. 24, 2024

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.

A Chinese soldier stands guard next to Tiananmen Square

AP/Louise Delmotte

Journal Article - Global Studies Quarterly

Two Paths: Why States Join or Avoid China's Belt and Road Initiative

    Authors:
  • M. Taylor Fravel
  • Raymond Wang
  • Nick Ackert
  • Sihao Huang
| 2023

Although China's motives for developing the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) have been well studied, scholars have yet to comprehensively examine why states seek to join the initiative. The authors fill this gap by examining how and why states join the BRI. Countries join by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with China on cooperation under the BRI framework.

 Protesters on demonstration bus interacting with police and pedestrians during 918 Shenyang Anti-Japan Demonstration, September 18, 2012.

Wikimedia Commons

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

To Punish or Protect? Local Leaders and Economic Coercion in China

| Fall 2023

During foreign policy disputes involving China and some of its most important commercial partners, why do local leaders punish or protect foreign commercial actors? The decision comes down to the political incentives facing each local leader. Understanding this variation is important because how local leaders treat foreign businesses can influence the overall effectiveness of the Chinese government’s economic coercion against foreign states. 

"Speaking of Leaks," cartoon, Independent, January 29, 1917.

Wikimedia Commons

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

"Wars without Gun Smoke": Global Supply Chains, Power Transitions, and Economic Statecraft

    Authors:
  • Ling S. Chen
  • Miles M. Evers
| Fall 2023

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. 

Flowers bloom around graves of World War I soldiers prior to a foundation laying ceremony at Loos British Cemetery in Loos-en-Gohelle, France, Thursday, May 4, 2023.

AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

The Peril of Peaking Powers: Economic Slowdowns and Implications for China’s Next Decade

| Summer 2023

Peaking great powers facing a slowdown in growth are likely to try to violently shake up the world. These findings amend classic theories of great power conflict. They help explain some of the most consequential geopolitical events in modern history. And they have ominous implications for contemporary Chinese foreign policy. 

Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with the State Council Presidium

Ramil Sitdikov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

Journal Article - Washington Quarterly

Lessons in Sanctions-Proofing from Russia

| 2023

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.

Journal Article - Middle East Policy

Iran and the SCO: The Quest For Legitimacy and Regime Preservation

| 2023

At the 2021 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, the bloc announced the approval of Iran's longstanding bid for membership. The Islamic Republic has viewed its involvement in the organization as a means of bolstering external legitimacy, fostering security-oriented regionalism, and promoting the transition toward the so-called multipolar world order. The SCO, led by Russia and China, has served as a regime-preservation network by providing Iran with a source of solidarity against external pressure. Tehran's commitment to the normative order, sustained by the SCO's discourse of noninterference, sovereignty, and countering the “three evils”—terrorism, extremism, and separatism—has galvanized the organization's role as a common front against the imposition of liberal norms and challenges to regime security.

Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and U.S. President Richard Nixon

AP/Henry Burroughs

Journal Article - International Theory

Conceptualizing Interstate Cooperation

| 2023

There seems to exist a general consensus on how to conceptualize cooperation in the field of international relations (IR). The authors argue that this impression is deceptive. In practice, scholars working on the causes of international cooperation have come to implicitly employ various understandings of what cooperation is. Yet, an explicit debate about the discipline's conceptual foundations never materialized, and whatever discussion occurred did so only latently and without much dialog across theoretical traditions. In this article, the authors develop an updated conceptual framework by exploring the nature of these differing understandings and situating them within broader theoretical conversations about the role of cooperation in IR.