News & Announcements

Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson’s "Deal or No Deal? The End of the Cold War and the U.S. Offer to Limit NATO Expansion," International Security, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Spring 2016), pp. 7-44, has been named the co-winner of the 2017 Article Award given by the Diplomatic Studies Section of the International Studies Association (ISA). This annual award is presented to the author(s) of the article that best advances the theoretical and empirical study of diplomacy—particularly articles that attempt to connect the study of diplomacy with broader issues and trends in the discipline.

The question of whether women should serve in the front lines of combat is one that's also been in the front lines of the news of late. As we await a final decision on the role of women in war by Secretary Ash Carter, Security Mom host Juliette Kayyem sits down with author Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, the author of Ashley's War, which is about Ashley White, one of the first women to be killed in combat in Afghanistan.

On April 28, the Project on Managing the Atom joined the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, The Netherlands government, and the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) in convening nuclear nonproliferation experts from around the world at the United Nations to participate in a Symposium on the 2015 Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference.

This seminar examined the prospects for further nuclear arms reductions between the United States and Russia, including the possibility that negotiations might be expanded to weapons not limited by the New START Treaty. The seminar covered U.S. and Russian differences over missile defense and how those might be resolved to allow a cooperative NATO-Russia missile defense arrangement for Europe.

“The departure of the last American troops from Iraq brings relief to a nation that has endured its most painful war since Vietnam...And it could very well be the last one,” wrote Steven Pinker and Joshua Goldstein in the New York Times last December. On Monday January 30th, the Belfer Center's Stephen Walt and Monica Duffy Toft joined Goldstein and Pinker at the JFK Jr. Forum and asked: "Is War on the Way Out?"

Hassan Abbas, a former Pakistani government official and senior advisor to Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center, recently spoke to Simon Shercliff, First Secretary Foreign Security and Policy for the British Embassy, about the future of Pakistan. Their conversation touched on a range of topics, including the militants' recent attacks on the Pakistani military, Pakistan's relationship with India, Pakistan-UK relations, and U.S. aid to Pakistan.

With the United States and China expected to be the two dominant powers in the twenty-first century, it is essential that they actively manage their relationship to avoid military conflict, a group of distinguished Chinese and American scholars said at a major conference in Washington, D.C. The scholars—from Harvard Kennedy School, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and elsewhere—have worked together for more than two years to create a blueprint for a new relationship between the two countries.

One should not expect much benefit to come out of the impending IAEA report discussing Iranian nuclear activity, Joshua Gleis writes.