Asia & the Pacific

15 Items

Vietnamese sky raider pulls out of its bomb run after a phosphorous bomb explodes

AP/Nick Ut

Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Affairs

Judging Henry Kissinger

| Nov. 30, 2023

Joseph S. Nye writes that evaluating ethics in international relations is difficult, and Kissinger's legacy is particularly complex. Over his long tenure in government, he had many great successes, including with China and the Soviet Union and the Middle East. Kissinger also had major failures, including in how the Vietnam War ended. But on net, his legacy is positive. In a world haunted by the specter of nuclear war, his decisions made the international order more stable and safer.

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.

Bullets Not Ballots Front Cover Image Crop

Book - Cornell University Press

Bullets Not Ballots: Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare

| May 2021

In Bullets Not Ballots, Jacqueline L. Hazelton challenges the claim that winning "hearts and minds" is critical to successful counterinsurgency campaigns. Good governance, this conventional wisdom holds, gains the besieged government popular support, denies support to the insurgency, and enables military and political victory. Hazelton argues that major counterinsurgent successes since World War II have resulted not through democratic reforms but rather through the use of military force against civilians and the co-optation of rival elites.

Joseph Nye

Martha Stewart

Audio - Harvard Magazine

How Do Past Presidents Rank in Foreign Policy?

| Mar. 02, 2020

How do presidents incorporate morality into decisions involving the national interest? Moral considerations explain why Truman, who authorized the use of nuclear weapons in Japan during World War II, later refused General MacArthur's request to use them in China during the Korean War. What is contextual intelligence, and how does it explain why Bush 41 is ranked first in foreign policy, but Bush 43 is found wanting? Is it possible for a president to lie in the service of the public interest? In this episode, Professor Joseph S. Nye considers these questions as he explores the role of morality in presidential decision-making from FDR to Trump.

ARDE Frente Sur Commandos (Contras) take a smoke break after routing a Sandinista National Liberation Front base at El Serrano, Southeast Nicaragua 1987.

Wikimedia CC

Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Policy

What Putin Learned from Reagan

| February 17, 2015

"If the president of the mighty United States — which had the world's largest economy and powerful military forces stationed all over the world — was sufficiently frightened by the ragtag Sandinistas that he was willing to organize and back an illegal civil war against them, is it just barely conceivable that Putin and Medvedev and many other Russians might be just a mite concerned that a country of some 45 million people right on their border might be getting ready to realign, and bring the world's most powerful military alliance right up to their doorstep?"

Lakhdar Brahimi. "The wily, veteran Algerian diplomat," writes Burns, "who has the toughest job in the world -- UN envoy for the Syrian civil war."

(UN Photo)

Analysis & Opinions - The Boston Globe

Peacemakers 2012

| December 20, 2012

"As the holidays approach, 2012 hasn't provided much hope for the seasonal wish of 'Peace on Earth,' Not when the headlines reveal the savagery of the Syrian and Congolese civil wars, Hamas-Israel rocket barrages, insurrection in Mali, fighting in Afghanistan, violence in Egypt, and the heartbreaking nightmare of the death of innocent young children in Newtown, Conn," writes Nicholas Burns, director of the Belfer Center's Future of Diplomacy Project. "But, if we look at this year more closely, it is possible to find people, thousands of them, who may not have the power of a state at their disposal but are pushing the cause of peace step by difficult step in every corner of the world."

Rape of the Sabine Women, 1963; Pablo Picasso (Spanish (worked in France), 1881–1973); Oil on Canvas. *Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

*Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society

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

Picasso, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Malcolm Wiener

| October 24, 2012

As visitors step through the doors of the Kennedy Memorial Library for events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, they will find on display Picasso's 1963 Rape of the Sabine Women - on loan from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. The connection between Picasso's painting and what is widely accepted as the most dangerous moment in human history was brought to light for many by Malcolm Wiener, a member of the Belfer Center’s International Council and the person for whom Harvard Kennedy School’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy was named.