South Asia

20 Items

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).

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, center, speaks during the opening session of a high-level meeting on countering nuclear terrorism, Sept. 28, 2012 in the General Assembly at UN headquarters.

AP Photo/ Mary Altaffer

Policy Brief - Quarterly Journal: International Security

States Will Not Give Nuclear Weapons to Terrorists

    Authors:
  • Keir A. Lieber
  • Daryl Press
| September 2013

Assessing the risk of nuclear attack-by-proxy turns on the question of whether a state could sponsor nuclear terrorism and remain anonymous. A leader could rationalize such an attack—and entrust terrorists with a vitally important mission—only if doing so allowed the sponsor to avoid retaliation. After all, if a leader did not care about retaliation, he or she would likely conduct a nuclear strike directly. Giving nuclear weapons to terrorists makes sense only if there is a high likelihood of remaining anonymous after the attack.

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

Marisa Porges' Journey from Naval Flight Officer to Counterterror Expert

    Author:
  • Wesley Nord
| Summer 2013

"Belfer Center Fellow Marisa Porges' career has already spanned the worlds of academia and policymaking, the government and the military. As an undergraduate at Harvard, Porges earned honors with a degree in geophysics and, during senior year, commanded her Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps unit. After graduation, she commissioned as a naval flight officer in the U.S. Navy and managed the weapons systems aboard EA-6B Prowlers, a carrier-based electronic warfare jet.... [now] as a doctoral candidate in the Department of War Studies at King's College London and a research fellow with the Belfer Center's International Security Program, she now combines scholarship and practice."

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

Aisha Ahmad: Knowledge Without Action Is Injustice

    Author:
  • Dominic Contreras
| Spring 2012

As a child, Aisha Ahmad remembers vividly the arms bazaars in Peshawar and the throngs of bearded mujahedeen commanders as they passed through her grandfather’s smoke laden offices in the Pakistani frontier province.Though she was born in the UK and grew up in Canada, her family retained strong ties with their native community and during her youth Ahmad regularly traveled to the unruly Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.

Policy Brief - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Nuclear Policy Gridlock in Japan

    Author:
  • Jacques E.C. Hymans
| November 2011

The historical growth in the number and variety of Japanese nuclear veto players has made the country an extreme case of stasis in fundamental nuclear policies. Japan is not the only country to experience this phenomenon, however. In many advanced industrialized democracies, the old Manhattan Project model of top-down, centralized, and secretive nuclear institutions has gradually given way to more complex arrangements. And as a general rule, the more numerous the veto players, the harder the struggle to achieve major nuclear policy change.

Following a screening of Countdown to Zero, Belfer Center Director Graham Allison (left) talks with Countdown producer Lawrence Bender (right), former CIA agent Valerie Plame, and Harvard professor Peter Galison.

Gleitzman Center

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

Countdown to Zero Draws Heavily from Center Experts and Research

| Winter 2010-11

When the Academy Award-winning producer of An Inconvenient Truth,Lawrence Bender, wanted to create a new nuclear proliferation film, he turned to leading experts at the Belfer Center.

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

Belfer Center Newsletter Summer 2010

| Summer 2010

The Summer 2010 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This issue highlights the Belfer Center's involvement with the Nuclear Security Summit, which was organized by Center alumni Gary Samore and Laura Holgate.

Assessing the Summit: Gary Samore (left), who was responsible for organizing the Nuclear Security Summit, discusses highlights of the Summit with the Belfer Center Board of Directors in April. The Center’s Matthew Bunn is also pictured.

Belfer Center Photo

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

Center Supports Summit Efforts to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism

| Summer 2010

Belfer Center alumni Gary Samore and Laura Holgate played a key role in organizing President Obama's Nuclear Security Summit in April. Additionally, MatthewBunn's Securing the Bomb 2010 was released the day the Summit began, and Graham Allison provided attending leaders with materials that included a nuclear terrorism threat assessment and fact sheet.