South Asia

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

Joseph Nye argues that official statements about India and America's "shared values" do not make an alliance. Following the basic logic of balance-of-power politics, India and the United States seem fated not for marriage but for a long-term partnership — one that might last only as long as both countries remain preoccupied with China.

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.

Pakistan’s floods of 2022 were the latest, and most damaging yet, addition to the long history of floods in the country. As the muddy waters slowly recede, the need for speeding up action to face future floods stands clear.

For many, integrating “decarbonization” into public policy, corporate and financial strategies has become a requirement, not an option — yet, what happens when the critical link between climate stability and decarbonization breaks?

William L. d'Ambruoso writes that ruthlessness does not guarantee success, but it usually proves necessary — a difficult truth that should sit uneasily with democratic counterinsurgents who are supposed to care about human rights. 

Charli Carpenter and Lise Howard write that a U.N. peacekeeping mission could help avert civil war in Afghanistan.

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.

To prevent Afghanistan from falling into endless civil wars and put an end to the long-lasting suffering of Afghan people, it is imperative for regional and global actors to pressure the Taliban toward compromise and put all its efforts into finding a durable solution to the country's political crisis.