Africa

195 Items

Peter Ajak speaking to a small group outside.

Courtesy of Peter Ajak

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

Belfer Center Fellow Peter Ajak Navigates Challenges from Lost Boy to South Sudanese Activist

| Spring 2023

Peter Ajak is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Belfer Center’s International Security Program. A South Sudanese peace activist, a scholar, former political prisoner, and a former child soldier and Lost Boy of Sudan, Ajak’s life has been consumed with the commitment to bring freedom to his people.

An old man walks past a gutted car in downtown Kabul, Thursday, June 25, 1992.

AP Photo/B.K. Bangash

Journal Article - International Security

Dealers and Brokers in Civil Wars: Why States Delegate Rebel Support to Conduit Countries

    Authors:
  • Niklas Karlén
  • Vladimir Rauta
| Spring 2023

State support to non-state armed groups outside a state’s own territory is commonly seen as a direct relationship between a state sponsor and a rebel group. But powerful states can use a third state—a dealer or broker—as a conduit for military and other support. States that fail to identify an alignment of interests with these intermediary dealers and brokers face strategic failure.

Hijacked airliner headed toward World Trade Towers on September 11, 2001

REUTERS/Sean Adair

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

Countering Terrorism With "Blue Sky" Thinking

| May 19, 2022

In the past, strategic surprise has often stemmed from a failure of imagination. Most intelligence failures are rooted in a lack of foresight or early warning of impending events. Blue sky thinking seeks to prevent these surprises by devoting more attention not just to known risks and likely scenarios, but also to low probability, high impact events. In an unprecedented step in forging ongoing global collaboration, 129 global experts gathered in Amman, Jordan, in December 2021. The conference was held under the auspices of Jordan’s Aqaba Process and facilitated by representatives from the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center’s Intelligence Project. Attendees included intelligence officers, diplomats, military officers, private sector practitioners, and academics representing 29 countries, 5 continents, and 68 government and private sector organizations. Through presentations and discussion under Chatham House Rules, the conference facilitated an open exchange of ideas on the possible next big threats from terrorism and on strategies for moving forward.

Book - University of Michigan Press

Capital Choices: Sectoral Politics and the Variation of Sovereign Wealth

| Mar. 07, 2022

Capital Choices analyzes the creation of different SWFs from a comparative political economy perspective, arguing that different state-society structures at the sectoral level are the drivers for SWF variation. Juergen Braunstein focuses on the early formation period of SWFs, a critical but little understood area given the high levels of political sensitivity and lack of transparency that surround SWF creation. Braunstein’s novel analytical framework provides practical lessons for the business and finance organizations and policymakers of countries that have created, or are planning to create, SWFs.

Zimbabwe Prime Minister Robert Mugabe attended an election rally near Harare, in July 1985.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Insurgent Armies: Military Obedience and State Formation after Rebel Victory

| Winter 2021/22

When winning rebels face intense security threats during civil wars, rebel field commanders are more likely to remain obedient during war-to-peace transitions because they have less incentive to challenge newly installed rulers and less capacity to mobilize supporters outside the postwar military hierarchy.

A leftist combatant of the FMLN stands guard as a U.N. helicopter lands carrying guerrilla commanders in San Jose Las Flores, Jan. 22, 1992.

AP Photo/Luis Romero

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

A Farewell to Arms? Election Results and Lasting Peace after Civil War

| Winter 2021/22

An analysis of new data on postwar election results and remilitarization finds that losing elections does not drive belligerents to remilitarize. Instead, remilitarization is often determined by citizens’ ability to accurately understand and vote according to the postwar military balance of power.

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

You Don’t Miss International Cooperation Until It's Gone

| Dec. 02, 2020

As Joni Mitchell sang, “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”   Classroom education was often deemed boring by students and obsolete by tech visionaries.  Then the coronavirus made it difficult or impossible to meet in person.  The result:  We yearn for the irreplaceable in-class experience.
Perhaps the same is true of international economic cooperation. It was never especially popular. The theory, first formulated in a 1969 paper by Richard Cooper, said that countries could agree to coordinated bargains that achieved better outcomes, relative to the “Nash non-cooperative equilibrium.”  But economists thought of plenty of reasons to be skeptical.  The multilateral institutions of cooperation such as the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations agencies, were downright unpopular among the public.  Many Americans regarded them as invading US sovereignty, while other countries viewed them as an invasion of their sovereignty by the US.

Joe Biden and his special presidential envoy for climate, John Kerry, will take a more multilateralist approach than Donald Trump.

Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Analysis & Opinions - The Guardian

Joe Biden Will Lead the US Back to International Cooperation

| Dec. 02, 2020

Like the Joni Mitchell song puts it, “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” For example, classroom education was often deemed boring by students and obsolete by tech visionaries. Then, Covid-19 made it difficult or impossible to meet in person. Now we yearn for in-class experiences.

Perhaps the same is true of international economic cooperation. Multilateral institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the UN agencies have long been unpopular among much of the public for supposedly encroaching on national sovereignty. But then Donald Trump came along and made international cooperation well-nigh impossible. While other G20 leaders discussed pandemic preparedness at their recently concluded summit, for example, Trump evidently tweeted more false accusations of electoral fraud and then played golf.

President-elect Joe Biden and his climate envoy, John Kerry, at The Queen theater.

Carolyn Kaster/AP

Analysis & Opinions - Bloomberg Opinion

What Does Success Look Like for a Climate Czar?

| Dec. 02, 2020

President-elect Joe Biden’s decision to create a new cabinet-level position for climate-related issues — and to choose so prominent a figure as former Secretary of State John Kerry to fill it — demonstrates Biden’s sincerity over putting climate at the very center of U.S. foreign policy. It is easy to understate the importance of this appointment, given the flurry of czars created by most new administrations.

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Analysis & Opinions - Bloomberg Opinion

After Oil: Throwing Money at Green Energy Isn’t Enough

| Sep. 17, 2020

The geopolitical and geo-economic forces wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, as examined previously in this series, are likely to slow the transition to a more sustainable global energy mix. Fortunately, the pandemic has also resulted in governments gaining vastly greater influence over whether this shift stalls or accelerates.