Science & Technology

Will China succeed in what some call its grand strategy of displacing American power? Whichever scenario emerges also depends on the strategy the US chooses in response, rites Joseph Nye.

Joseph Nye argues that prudence results from the fear of creating unintended consequences in unpredictable systems and can develop into a norm of nonuse or limited use of certain weapons or a norm of limiting targets. Something like this happened with nuclear weapons when the superpowers came close to the brink of nuclear war in 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis. The Limited Test Ban Treaty followed a year later.

On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, launching the nuclear age. On the 75th anniversary of that somber event, Belfer Center experts reflect on the event and its aftermath. 

Henry Kissinger warns that many existing domestic and international institutions that have helped govern the past decades will not survive the Covid-19 crisis. He is surely correct.

President Donald Trump's manipulation of America's privileged international system will strengthen other countries' incentives to extricate themselves from US networks of interdependence in the long run. In the meantime, there will be costly damage to the international institutions that limit conflict and create global public goods.

Natalie Jaresko (MPP ’89), former Finance Minister of Ukraine, returned to Harvard on October 31^st, 2016 to take part in the Future of Diplomacy Project’s international speaker series. In a public seminar moderated by Faculty Director Nicholas Burns, Jaresko, who currently serves as chairwoman of the Aspen Institute Kyiv, reflected on her time in office from 2014 to 2016. In her two years in office, the Ukrainian government  had to contend with the Russian annexation of Crimea, a national debt crisis, widespread governmental corruption, and political instability.