News & Announcements

212 Items

Announcement - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

ISP Research Fellow Apekshya Prasai Selected as a 2023 HFG Emerging Scholar

| July 17, 2023

Apekshya Prasai, a political science doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was recently named a 2023 Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Emerging Scholar.   The Emerging Scholars (nine in all) are doctoral candidates who are in the final year of writing dissertations on the nature of and responses to violence around the world.

News - Financial Times

Putin Puts world on Alert with High-Stakes Nuclear Posturing

| Mar. 07, 2022

Heather Williams, a nuclear expert at King’s College London and visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, said it was “totally ambiguous” but in keeping with a leader who has a history of being a “nuclear bully”. “It is classic Putin, creating ambiguity and uncertainty,” Williams said. “Putin is so good at that because he knows that it keeps people on edge.”

Anti-terrorist operation in eastern Ukraine (War Ukraine) from 2015

Wikimedia Commons/ Ministry of Defense Ukraine

News - Il Fatto Quotidiano

“Putin avanzerà, ma a Kiev nessun governo fantoccio”

| Mar. 07, 2022

Noi che siamo spettatori dell’abisso, come dice Ian McEwan, a cosa dobbiamo ancora assistere? Alla conquista da parte di Vladimir Putin, per via della sua enorme supremazia, di tutte le centrali nucleari. Riuscirà anche a disarticolare i presidi logistici della difesa di Kiev.

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News - El Pais

Is Putin Willing to Press the Nuclear Button? Keys to Understanding the Kremlin’s Strategy

| Mar. 03, 2022

Francesca Giovannini, the executive director of the Project on Managing the Atom at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science, believes that the nuclear option, while improbable, should not be completely ruled out. “The circumstances are very complex,” she argues. “And he [Putin] is under a huge amount of pressure.”

And then there are the extreme circumstances of the moment. “I think that he is under huge internal pressure,” says Giovannini. “He’s not crazy. I don’t think that he would launch a strategic bomb. But it worries me that he could consider the option of a tactical one. To send a message that he is prepared to do anything to defend Russian interests. Thinking that perhaps an attack with a tactical warhead in Ukraine would not trigger a military reaction from NATO against Russia.”

News - The Washington Post

War in Ukraine Enters a New Phase, Even More Unpredictable and Dangerous than the Last

| Mar. 01, 2022

The initial stage of the war in Ukraine has confounded expectations. Russia’s military invasion failed in key objectives, upending predictions of a rout of Ukraine. Then, after years of avoiding direct confrontations with Moscow, Western nations are now directly punishing Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies with truly devastating economic sanctions while openly supplying arms to Ukraine.

Though there were peace talks for the first time on Monday, there are no signs that the cycle of escalation will go down. Amid unprecedented global pressure, Putin is doubling down on a defensive posture that pits Russia against almost everyone else in the world. He has ratcheted up the levels of violence in eastern Ukraine, bombarding the city of Kharkiv with suspected cluster munitions, while putting the country’s nuclear arsenal on alert.

AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari

AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari

News

Event Podcast: "Resilience Drivers in the Healthcare System in Times of Conflict: The Case of Lebanon"

Apr. 29, 2019

Audio recording of an April 29, seminar with Dr. Randa S. Hamadeh, Director, Primary Healthcare and Social Health department, Ministry of Public Health, Lebanon.

Co-sponsored by the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Vladimir Putin meets with U.S. President Donald Trump at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, July 2017

Kremlin.ru

News

US Retired General: At the Meeting With Trump, Putin Will Have the Advantage

July 09, 2018

On 16 July in Helsinki, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin will meet his American colleague Donald Trump. The leaders will discuss a number of complicated questions, but the summit will be a success, even if the government leaders cannot reach agreement - so thinks retired Brigadier General and Associate Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, Kevin Ryan. Ryan talked to "Eurasia Expert" about the significance of the meeting between the American and Russian leaders for relations between the two countries, the future of NATO, and explained how American space forces will differ from Russian or Chinese space forces.