South Asia

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

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.

Jacqueline Hazelton writes that regimes battling a counterinsurgency often depend on corruption to stay in power.

Stephen Walt asks whether the United States is a good model for other liberal states and whether its policy judgments are ones that others should trust and follow, especially with respect to foreign policy.  He argues that—on balance—the answer to both questions is "no."

What sounded so simple during last year’s presidential campaign has turned out, like everything related to Iran, to be quite complicated.

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.

Stephen Walt explains ISIS's ability to hang around despite its unrelieved brutality and its near-total failure to deliver on any its promises.

In August 1936, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a speech that openly denounced war in a way that is almost entirely absent from political discourse today. America's contemporary disinterest in peace isn't just morally dubious; it's strategically myopic, writes Stephen Walt.