Student Publications

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.

In light of China’s pursuit of semiconductor independence, how can the U.S. maintain industry leadership and supply chain resilience?

When a crisis occurs, be it a hurricane, forest fire, or a pandemic­, highly skilled disaster teams are on standby to assess situations, deploy resources, and coordinate amongst multiple organizations allowing the fastest possible recovery. Every crisis manager asks similar questions when confronted with a significant issue. Successful crisis managers utilize a similar thought process, one that can be replicated when dealing with any crisis. 

This report will address four questions in the Pacific NATO debate. First, is there a historical precedent for a Pacific NATO? This report does find a precedent in the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), though it was largely unsuccessful due to its lack of regional adoption, weak mutual defense provisions, and ultimately became tainted by the Vietnam War.

Second, would such an alliance be necessary given the plethora of existing multilateral partnerships in the region? While there is a broad multilateral landscape in the Indo-Pacific, there is currently no agreement that combines both the wide reach and deep obligations of a hypothetical Pacific NATO. However, the Quad and RIMPAC do bring together many of the key Indo-Pacific powers and serve as an important foundation for U.S.-oriented multilateral regional security.

Third, how could such an alliance be structured? This report examines three options: expanding NATO’s mandate beyond Europe, building on its Enhanced Opportunity Partner (EOP) program, and creating a new alliance system. It also uses the case of Montenegro’s NATO accession to generate a broad set of criteria for future membership.

And fourth, how would Indo-Pacific nations, including China, respond to such an alliance? This would be exceedingly difficult. China has significant economic leverage over even our closest allies, like Australia and Japan.

Intractable internal disputes abound, particularly between South Korea and Japan and four nations—Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam—with competing claims in the South China Sea. Two of the United States’ most important partners in the region, India and Singapore, have a longstanding aversion to exactly this type of alliance system. And for newer partners, like Malaysia and Indonesia, the value proposition is even less clear. The Chinese are likely to respond to any attempts at a multilateral military alliance in its backyard with a whole-of-government effort to stop it. If that alliance includes Taiwan, it could result in even more aggressive action.

The 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) is predicated on a single organizing principle: America’s military pre-eminence is rapidly eroding. This is not a new concept. For years, experts have warned that the economic and technological advancements of U.S. adversaries, coupled with the 2008 financial crisis and America’s focus on peripheral conflicts, have caused a decline in America’s military dominance. 

In this context, the advances of near-peer competitors such as China and Russia have created plausible “theories of victory” in potential conflicts across Eastern Europe and East Asia. Competitors’ unaddressed improvements in strategic innovation, economic investment, and dual-use technology increases the risk of conflict and strains the U.S. alliance system. It is urgent that the United States reestablish and maintain credible deterrents against these near-peer competitors. After decades of focusing on post-Cold War ‘shaping’ operations, the American military needs to reinvigorate for full spectrum great power competition.

This report is intended as a blueprint on how to begin that process from graduate students at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. Contained inside are 12 memorandums. Each provides a high-level overview and specific recommendations on a key issue of American defense policy. 

Recent years have seen a cascade of revelations regarding Russian attempts to interfere with or disrupt elections in the West. While the Russian government’s influence campaign in the 2016 US presidential election is the most well-known, it was by no means an isolated incident. Western governments are waking up the threat that Russian cyber and information operations pose to the integrity of their elections and the stability of their domestic politics. However, the question of how to counter these efforts remains unanswered.

Security assistance has long been an important component of American statecraft. The foreign policies of successive administrations have focused on empowering US partners to confront their own security challenges, rather than solving them through American force alone. Today, US foreign and defense policy indicates an intent to work “by, with, and through” partner forces to achieve shared goals. However, the outsourcing of American security objectives comes with a host of potential risks to civilians living in conflict zones or fragile states. Fighting with or relying on local partners–whose interests, priorities, and capabilities may not necessarily align with those of the United States–can complicate or even degrade America’s ability to minimize civilian harm during military operations.

This Policy Analysis Exercise (PAE) examines the causes and consequences of civilian harm in security partnerships, and its implications for US foreign policy

While disinformation is a relatively new priority for Western democracies, countries such as Taiwan and South Korea have spent decades battling influence operations from internal and external actors. As democracies, they share structural strengths and challenges with the US, such as the free-flow of information and protections for civil liberties. Based on interviews with over fifty government officials, journalists, and civil society members, the Taiwan and South Korea case studies outline the many specific disinformation characteristics. By highlighting lessons learned from Taiwan and South Korea’s experiences, we hope to equip US policymakers with a wider portfolio of potential solutions.

This report interrogates the widening gap between responsive lawmaking in Congress and the deepening complexity of advancements in science and technology. It finds that certain weakened capabilities have atrophied the organization’s absorptive capacity, or the ways by which it recognizes the value of, assimilates, and makes use of knowledge outside of itself. We propose the design of a new internal body—the Congressional Futures Office—as an optimal response among a set of considered options.