International Security & Defense

Former International Security Program Postdoctoral Fellow Andrea Gilli and his co-author Mauro Gilli have won the America in the World Consortium (AWC) Best Research Article on U.S. Foreign Policy and Grand Strategy for "Why China Has Not Caught Up Yet: Military-Technological Superiority and the Limits of Imitation, Reverse Engineering, and Cyber Espionage," which appeared in International Security (Winter 2018/19).

Calder Walton recounts the history of World War II which shows that Britain and the United States were in a Cold War with the Soviet Union before they knew it. The same is true today: Britain and the United States are in a Cold War with Russia whether policymakers in London and Washington like it or not.

Federal agents confronting protesters in Portland offers a reminder of how much discretionary power every U.S. president exercises—and why voters should not give the job to someone whose instincts are fundamentally authoritarian.

Despite the far-reaching effects of the current pandemic,  the essential nature of world politics will not be transformed. The territorial state will remain the basic building-block of international affairs, nationalism will remain a powerful political force, and the major powers will continue to compete for influence in myriad ways. Global institutions, transnational networks, and assorted non-state actors will still play important roles, of course, but the present crisis will not produce a dramatic and enduring increase in global governance or significantly higher levels of international cooperation. In short, the post-COVID-19 world will be less open, less free, less prosperous, and more competitive than the world many people expected to emerge only a few years ago.

Matt Chorley is joined by two experts on Russia — Dr Jonathan Eyal from RUSI and Dr Calder Walton from Harvard — to dissect the Russia report, published by the British Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, and look at the country's history of interference abroad.

The administration of President Donald J. Trump has consistently used fear of China to undermine nearly five decades of bipartisan consensus on US–Russian nuclear arms control. The negative consequences of these actions may last far beyond the Trump presidency. If generations of agreement between Democrats and Republicans on bilateral nuclear treaties with Russia erode, it will pose a significant setback to US national security and global stability. Future leaders may ultimately need to consider new approaches to nuclear risk reduction that preserve the benefits of the arms control regime.

In this podcast, hear the dramatic story of how we were able to denuclearize three countries in three years, directly from the participants: Senator Sam Nunn, Secretary William J. Perry, Secretary Ash Carter, and Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, one of the key members of the U.S. team.

From 1991 to 2003, the Iraqi leadership faced a cheater’s dilemma —specifically, how much it should disclose about its past weapons of mass destruction capabilities and cover-up efforts. An examination of the Iraqi leadership’s handling of this key policy dilemma reveals how pervasive principle-agent problems shaped Iraqi behavior.

On July 26, 2014, U.S. embassy personnel safely evacuated from Tripoli in an overland convoy to Tunisia during an intensely kinetic period of the Libyan civil war.

Using Taiwan’s most recent elections as an example to elucidate the nature of Chinese propaganda and disinformation, this report identifies China’s motives, tactics, and actors in its foreign information warfare.