Middle East & North Africa

Joseph Nye considers lessons from his own work on preventing the spread of nuclear technology in the 1970s.

This year's G7 summit in Hiroshima sees nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation sitting high on the agenda, amid rising tensions between the nuclear states and an increasingly divided international order.  Six contributors offer their analyses, including the Belfer Center's Mayumi Fukushima.

According to the "Madman Theory" outlined by Daniel Ellsberg and Thomas C. Schelling, and embraced by Presidents Richard Nixon and Donald Trump, being perceived as mad can help make seemingly incredible threats—such as starting a nuclear war—more credible. However, recent research has largely concluded that the Madman Theory does not work. 

Ivan Arreguin-Toft argues that non-material considerations like cyber power matter just as much as material ones in debates about U.S. retrenchment from the Middle East.

Nathaniel L. Moir writes of historical cases in which a U.S. tendency to over-rely on military capabilities and American economic strength proved unwise and how such power eventually proved to be irrelevant. In addition to the Vietnam War as an example, the rapid collapse of the Republic of China and its large military forces in late 1948 and 1949 offers some parallels with the collapse of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan Government, despite the United States investment of trillions of U.S. dollars.

As the United States emerges from the era of so-called forever wars, it should abandon the regime change business for good. Then, Washington must understand why it failed, writes Stephen Walt.

Stephen M. Walt advises presidential candidate Joe Biden to embrace nationalism while reaffirming liberal values: They are an election-winning combination.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has published a document from the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs concerning nuclear problems and tensions in the time of COVID-19. The document has been co-signed by a large number of Pugwash colleagues and personalities.