Asia & the Pacific

38 Items

The ghost town of Kayaköy (Livisi) in southwestern Anatolia

Wikimedia CC/William Neuheisel

Analysis & Opinions - Political Violence @ a Glance

Why Do Mass Expulsions Still Happen?

| Jan. 30, 2023

Meghan Garrity details the history of mass expulsions since the centennial of the signing of the Lausanne Convention—a treaty codifying the compulsory “population exchange” between Greece and Turkey. An estimated 1.5 million people were forcibly expelled from their homes: over one million Greek Orthodox Christians from the Ottoman Empire and 500,000 Muslims from Greece.

Afghan security personnel guard around the Green Zone,

AP/Rahmat Gul

Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Affairs

The Hearts-and-Minds Myth

| July 15, 2021

Jacqueline L. Hazelton analyzes why the United States fails at counterinsurgency in light of its withdrawal from Afghanistan. She asserts that the belief that democracy is necessary for long-term stability and can flow from the barrel of a gun is rooted in misleading accounts of past counterinsurgency campaigns, such as the Malayan Emergency and the 1948–1954 insurgency in the Philippines.

Protesters kneel

AP/Patrick Semansky

Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Policy

Revolutions Happen. This Might Be Ours.

| June 16, 2020

Stephen Walt writes that political institutions are not permanent phenomena: they are artificial human creations and only as enduring, adaptive, and effective as people make them. He hopes for a serious and sustained process of democratic change, one that respects the nobler features of the U.S. constitutional order yet addresses all the ways in which The United States has failed to live up to its own professed ideals. The alternative, he fears, will be something much more dangerous. 

U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Jennifer Oberg, background, a communications maintenance instructor, and Senior Airman Raquel Martinez, foreground, check a ground control station during training

USAF

Analysis & Opinions - Real Clear Defense

AI and Quantum Supremacy Will Not Defeat Revolutionary Warfare

| Nov. 13, 2019

Nathaniel Moir writes that Revolutionary Warfare is not insurgency or guerrilla warfare: It is driven by ideology and commitment, not technology. Revolutionary Warfare's foundation is the perceived legitimacy of its political rationale among the population in which it is propagated. No matter how expertly or technologically advanced contemporary conflict is fought, it will not compensate for lack of political rationale.

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

International Security

| Summer 2017

A sampling of articles in the Spring 2016 issue of the Belfer Center's journal International Security.

International Security is America’s leading journal of security affairs. 
IS was ranked first in impact factor for 2014 among 85 journals of international relations in the annual “Journal Citation Reports”® released by Thomson Reuters. International Security’s 2014 Impact Factor is the highest of any international relations journals.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, meets with Saudi Arabia Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the Hangzhou International Expo Center in Hangzhou in eastern China's Zhejiang province, Sept. 4, 2016.

AP

Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Policy

Vladimir of Arabia

| November 2, 2016

"Despite being on different sides of the Syrian civil war, Putin has managed to bring Riyadh into its diplomatic orbit through cooperation on oil policy, given how both Saudi-led OPEC states and Russia need substantially higher prices for government budgets to break even."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrives for a Conference on Afghanistan in Brussels, Oct. 5, 2016. The 2-day conference, hosted by the EU, will have the participation of over 70 countries to discuss the current situation in Afghanistan.

AP

Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Policy

The 2016 Epidemic of Afghan War Amnesia

| October 16, 2016

"...[T]he well-intentioned Western effort to create a new Afghan state from scratch was equally misguided, as the new constitution envisioned a centralized, Western-style government in Kabul that was at odds with Afghan history and traditions. It also presumed a level of administrative competence and a revenue base that far exceeded Afghan capacities. Yet none of the international participants who embraced this outcome seemed to realize they had taken on an unrealistic and open-ended burden and that the new Afghan state would be dependent on lavish outside support more or less indefinitely."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, joined by U.S. Ambassador to France Jane Hartley, looks at the U.S. Embassy in Paris in the French tricolor after he lit it on November 16, 2015, in a sign of solidarity following the November 13 terrorist attack.

Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Policy

The Cold Realism of the Post-Paris War on Terror

| November 20, 2015

"...[W]e now know that the notion that regime change leads to a better democratic or a humanitarian outcome is decidedly false. From Iraq, where the West tried a heavy footprint strategy, to Libya, where it opted for a light one, the idea that Europe or the United States can actually execute democratic change by force has been exposed as a fallacy."

Aftermath of barrel bomb attack in Aleppo, Syria, February 6, 2014

Creative Commons

Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Policy

Why Obama Should Just Let Putin Have the Mess in Syria

| October 29, 2015

"President Barack Obama could use this moment to devise a real political strategy, rather than oscillating between moralizing tirades against Putin's support for what remains of the Syrian state and the apolitical, meaningless mission of degrading the Islamic State. U.S. strikes in Syria should only be tied to positively defined goals, such as counterterrorism to defend U.S. interests, stopping the Islamic State from resupplying operations to Iraq, or supporting Kurdish enclaves."