Asia & the Pacific

39 Items

The 1st Battalion of the world-famous Foreign Legion arrived in Paris on July 12, 1939.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Leaning on Legionnaires: Why Modern States Recruit Foreign Soldiers

    Author:
  • Elizabeth M.F. Grasmeder
| Summer 2021

Modern states recurrently buttress their militaries with legionnaires—soldiers who are neither citizens nor subjects of the governments for which they fight. Legionnaire recruitment is a function of political constraints on a government's ability to enlist citizens and its perceptions of external territorial threats.

Announcement - Managing the Atom Project, Belfer Center

2016-2017 Harvard Nuclear Policy Fellowships

| December 15, 2015

The Project on Managing the Atom offers fellowships for pre-doctoral, post-doctoral, and mid-career researchers for one year, with a possibility for renewal, in the stimulating environment of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. The online application for 2016-2017 fellowships opened December 15, 2015, and the application deadline is January 15, 2016. Recommendation letters are due by February 1, 2016.

A Hatf-8 (Ra'ad) missile (precursor to the Nasr missile), capable of carrying nuclear war heads, loaded on a trailer during the Pakistan National Day parade in Islamabad, Pakistan on Sunday, March 23, 2008.

Emilio Morenatti / AP

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Pakistan's Battlefield Nuclear Policy: A Risky Solution to an Exaggerated Threat

| Winter 2014/15

Pakistan has developed tactical nuclear weapons to deter India from executing its Cold Start war doctrine. India, however, has disavowed that doctrine. Further, the use of such weapons against Indian troops inside Pakistan would kill and injure countless civilians, while risking massive nuclear retaliation by India. In this International Security article, Jaganath Sankaran argues Pakistan should reconsider the role of tactical nuclear weapons in its military strategy.

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Announcement

Symposium on the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Nuclear Disarmament, Non-proliferation, and Energy: Fresh Ideas for the Future

Dec. 15, 2014

The ninth Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will be held at the UN Headquarters in New York from April 27-May 22, 2015. This is the fourth such conference since the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995. Participating governments will discuss nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation, and the peaceful use of nuclear energy with a view to arriving at consensus on a number of issues.

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Pantex Plant is the only U.S. serial  production facility.

NNSA

Report - Nuclear Threat Initiative

Innovating Verification: New Tools & New Actors to Reduce Nuclear Risks

    Author:
  • Verifying Baseline Declarations of Nuclear Warheads and Materials Working Group
| July 2014

Part of NTI's Innovating Verification reports series, Verifying Baseline Declarations of Nuclear Warheads and Materials analyzes how baseline declarations can contribute to near- and long-term arms control and non-proliferation goals and how to verify them without compromising sensitive information.

Analysis & Opinions - The Huffington Post

Another Successful Special Operation

| June 8, 2014

"We should look at what happened from a different point of view. This was another successful special operation: recovery of a prisoner of war, with Taliban shooters in the hills overlooking the scene somewhere — nowhere — in Afghanistan; and with American C-130 gunships prowling overhead. In came the helicopter, and in a few minutes Sgt. Bergdahl was whisked away. No one got hurt."

Soldiers quickly march to the ramp of the CH-47 Chinook helicopter that will return them to Kandahar Army Air Field on Sept. 4, 2003. The Soldiers were searching in Daychopan district, Afghanistan, for Taliban fighters and illegal weapons caches.

U.S. Army Photo

Report - New America Foundation

Strategic Empathy: The Afghanistan Intervention Shows Why the U.S. Must Empathize with its Adversaries

| April 2014

"...[H]ow did such vast and sustained investments not deliver a more favorable outcome? Conditions were undoubtedly challenging, but most observers — and indeed U.S. officials — agree that major mistakes were made....But the most egregious error of the United States was to pursue a strategy founded on a misreading of its enemy."

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

New Study Finds Four-Year Nuclear Security Effort Making Major Progress But Won't Complete the Nuclear Security Job

| March 23, 2012

On the eve of the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea, a new study finds that an international initiative to secure all vulnerable nuclear stockpiles within four years has reduced the dangers posed by many of the world’s highest-risk nuclear stockpiles.  But the new analysis, by researchers with the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center, also concludes that much will remain to be done to ensure that all nuclear weapons and material are secure when the current four-year effort comes to an end.

U.S. Army soldier directs traffic as Afghan citizens gather in Panjwai, Kandahar province, Afghanistan, Mar. 11, 2012. Afghan President Hamid Karzai says a U.S. service member has killed more than a dozen people in a shooting.

AP Photo

Analysis & Opinions - The Boston Globe

The Links to Violence

| March 14, 2012

"What did his supervisors know and when did they know it?...The killings are an unambiguous crime. It's possible that the killer just woke up in the middle of the night and went on a shooting spree, but for all we know, his superiors had grave concerns about his mental stability but were unwilling, or unable, to act on them. We have already learned that the soldier was in the midst of serious marital problems and was having difficulties reintegrating back and forth to civilian life after four tours of duty — a series of disclosures that suggest he was already on someone's radar."