Reports & Papers

The human tragedy continuing to unfold in Gaza and Israel reminds us how important it is to get strategic forecasting right. While in no way excusing Hamas’ culpability for 7 October, we also cannot dismiss the fact that the failure to anticipate and prepare for such an attack has had grave consequences for communities on both sides of this conflict, undermined efforts to bring peace and prosperity to the region, and affected global interests through the expansion of the conflict to the Red Sea and potentially beyond. 

This report summarizes a five-session study group with 25 Harvard students hosted by MEI Senior Fellow Ambassador (Ret.) Edward Djerejian on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The sessions took place in the spring of 2023. 

From July 11-12, 2023, NATO leaders gathered in Vilnius, Lithuania for one of the most significant NATO summits in history. This timely brief by Eric Rosenbach, Grace Jones, and Olivia Leiwant serves as a background piece on Ukraine’s history with NATO, potential future pathways for accession, and the operational impact Ukraine’s NATO membership could have on the alliance. 

This report is based on four extended trips to the Kingdom since the author’s April 2019 paper, Profile of a Prince: Promise and Peril in Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030. While this report will focus primarily on changes in foreign and defense policy in the Kingdom, it also will update readers on the breathtaking changes in economic and cultural life of the Saudi people. 

In the past year, it has been vital to keep in mind one axiom that has become a cliché: the fog of war is dense and thickened by disinformation and propaganda. To ensure we have our feet on a solid foundation as we try to interpret the latest news from Ukraine, we created a weekly Report Card. 

Ownership of reforms by citizens is often presented as important for success. This paper explores media engagement and support for economic reforms in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries using text analysis techniques on publicly available sources. Results show that while reform efforts have intensified in recent years in the GCC, these efforts tend to focus on stronger rather than weaker policy areas, potentially limiting the growth-enhancing effect of reforms. Social media analysis using Twitter shows that the population’s support for reforms has been declining. The analysis of traditional
news media points to more engagement by international than by local media. However, sentiment from international media is less positive about economic reforms in the GCC. Sentiment in international media and social media matters, as evidenced by its positive and strong correlation with FDI inflows into the GCC.

The Model of International Green Hydrogen Trade (MIGHTY) is an optimization model to investigate renewable hydrogen production, consumption, and trade between countries. MIGHTY supports strategic analysis by policymakers and investors about the potential roles that countries and regions will play in future renewable hydrogen markets. This paper introduces the model and describes the model formulation.

In late 2017, Mexico made headlines as Italian company Enel bid what was then a world-record low price for renewable energy in the country’s third such energy auction. This development was possible due to the historical and sweeping energy reforms passed with broad support in Mexico in 2013. Then-President Enrique Peña Nieto had succeeded where previous Mexican presidents had failed, reversing decades of resource nationalism and overhauling the energy sector through constitutional reforms that gave the private sector a larger role and advantaged renewable energy in Mexico’s economy. The 2017 auction seemed to indicate Mexico’s bright future not only as a conventional oil producer, but also as a clean energy power.

This paper explores the spillover of protests across countries using data on nonviolent and spontaneous demonstrations for 200 countries from 2000 to 2020. Using an autoregressive spatial model, the analysis finds strong evidence of “contagious protests,” with a catalyzing role of social media. In particular, social media penetration in the source and destination of protests leads to protest spillovers between countries. There is evidence of parallel learning between streets of nations alongside the already documented learning between governments.  

Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) convened a strategy group of experts and former government officials from the United States and Europe over the past year to discuss the crisis in the transatlantic relationship and to propose a strategy to revive and strengthen it.