Reports & Papers

This report assesses the relationship between Europe and Russia as the sum of great power reactions to the Ukrainian crisis and Russia's annexation of Crimea. Despite agreement on a no business-as-usual principle, important national nuances have arisen stemming from different historical bonds to eastern Europe and Russia (Germany, Poland, United States) or different interests in the region (France, United Kingdom).

In a Harvard Kennedy School IDEASpHERE session titled "Challenges to US Global Leadership," Graham Allison, Nicholas Burns, David Gergen, David Ignatius, and Meghan O’Sullivan discussed challenges as well as opportunities facing the United States. Burns moderated the session.

Challenges include the rise of China and the future of the U.S.-China relationship, the crises taking place around the world, and the reputation of the U.S. worldwide. An unexpected opportunity is the increase in available energy sources in the United States.

This workshop report, based on two days of intense discussions hosted by the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University and held under the Chatham House rule, summarizes the predominant views of a select group of Afghan politicians and former military officials, Pakistani journalists and scholars, current and former United Nations officials, diplomats, humanitarian workers, and representatives from the U.S. military on the opportunities for, and obstacles to, security and political reconciliation in Afghanistan.

The advent of the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) signals the international community’s commitment to ending genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, and serves as a declaration that state sovereignty will no longer be a shield behind which perpetrators of mass atrocities can hide. Despite achieving consensus for RtoP’s vision among UN member states in 2005, efforts to move RtoP from words to action have stalled.

At a crucial moment, this paper analyzes the challenges the international community faces in Afghanistan and finds that five problems have crippled the effort from the beginning – ambiguous objectives, poor coordination, a mismatch of goals and resources, unrealistic expectations about centralized institutions, and inattention to regional dynamics. The authors offer practical, actionable recommendations that will help the international community achieve a positive outcome in Afghanistan and the region.

"There is an emerging consensus among foreign policy experts that the growing insurgency and militancy in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) poses the greatest security challenge not only to Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also to the United States. Some scholars even project that a major terrorist act with al-Qaeda footprints in the United States might result in an American strike and ground invasion of this area."