South Asia

31 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.

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.

David Miliband and Nicholas Burns

Benn Craig/Belfer Center

Analysis & Opinions - Future of Diplomacy Project, Belfer Center

Conversations in Diplomacy: David Miliband on the Global Refugee Crisis

| Apr. 13, 2017

David Miliband, President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, discusses the drivers behind the displacement of over 65 million people and the changes that must be made to existing political and humanitarian systems in order to address the crisis on a global scale.

A Royal Air Force Reaper RPAS (Remotely Piloted Air System) at Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan.

Sergeant Ross Tilly (RAF)

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Separating Fact from Fiction in the Debate over Drone Proliferation

Claims that drones will soon remake warfare or international politics are unwarranted. Although almost a dozen states now possess armed drones, and more are racing to acquire them, they will not play a decisive role in interstate conflicts. Drones will rarely be “winning weapons,” because they are vulnerable to air defenses. States will, however, continue to use drones against terrorists and domestic opponents.

teaser image

Analysis & Opinions - The Oregonian

The Islamic State has made a big mistake

| July 7, 2016

In the global revulsion at the recent terror attacks in four Muslim countries, the United States and its allies have a new opportunity to build a unified command against the Islamic State and other extremists. FDP Senior Fellow David Ignatius examines the diplomatic relationships needed to create an effective counterterrorism strategy.

LTTE bike platoon north of Kilinochi, Sri Lanka, 2004. The LTTE closely monitored their troops and brutally punished the few soldiers who raped.

Creative Commons

Analysis & Opinions - The New York Times

How to Counter Rape During War

| October 28, 2015

"...[A]rmies that rape should be publicly named and shamed, a tactic that research shows significantly ameliorated the severity of genocides and state-sponsored killing in the last several decades. If a soldier is widely identified as a rapist, or a commander is known around the world to tolerate rape, the shame and threat to their reputation may dissuade their peers — particularly those who seek international legitimacy — from raping."

Ethnofederalism: The Worst Form of Institutional Arrangement…?

Getty Images

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Ethnofederalism: The Worst Form of Institutional Arrangement…?

    Author:
  • Liam Anderson
| Summer 2014

Critics of ethnofederalism—a political system in which federal subunits reflect ethnic groups’ territorial distribution—argue that it facilitates secession and state collapse. An examination of post-1945 ethnofederal states, however, shows that ethnofederalism has succeeded more often than not.

Supreme Allied Commander Europe Admiral James G. Stavridis, General David H. Petraeus (new Commander of ISAF) and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen during a news conference at NATO Headquarters, July 1, 2010.

DoD Photo

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

NATO in Afghanistan: Turning Retreat into Victory

| December 2013

NATO after Afghanistan is an organization that suffers from a certain fatigue pertaining to future stabilization challenges. NATO will not automatically cease to conduct operations after 2014, but the level of ambition will be lower. The Afghanistan experience and the failures of the light footprint approach calls for a thinking that is less liberalist "in the abstract" and more focused on provision of basic services (security, development, and governance).