Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs - History of international relations

The Decade the World Tilted East

Niall Ferguson — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 10:47:02 -0600

"The question I wanted to pose was not especially original, but increasingly it seems to be the most interesting question a historian of the modern era can address. Just why, beginning in around 1500, did the less populous and apparently backward west of the Eurasian landmass come to dominate the rest of the world, including the more populous and more sophisticated societies of eastern Eurasia?"

Rooting for Arms Control

Andrew Brown — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:08:11 -0600

"Dwight Eisenhower was the first Republican to recognize that the achievement of an international system to restrain the proliferation of nuclear weapons would be well worth a minor abrogation of national sovereignty. It is to be hoped that the necessary handful of Republican senators will endorse the collective wisdom of predecessors Root, Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and join their Democratic colleagues in supporting START renewal and ratification of the CTBT."

The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order

David Ekbladh — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:51:25 -0600

The Great American Mission traces how America's global modernization efforts during the twentieth century were a means to remake the world in its own image. David Ekbladh shows that the emerging concept of modernization combined existing development ideas from the Depression. He describes how ambitious New Deal programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority became symbols of American liberalism's ability to marshal the social sciences, state planning, civil society, and technology to produce extensive social and economic change. For proponents, it became a valuable weapon to check the influence of menacing ideologies such as Fascism and Communism.

The Year the World Really Changed

Niall Ferguson — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:59:19 -0600

"...1989 was less of a watershed year than 1979. The reverberations of the fall of the Berlin Wall turned out to be much smaller than we had expected at the time. In essence, what happened was that we belatedly saw through the gigantic fraud of Soviet superpower. But the real trends of our time—the rise of China, the radicalization of Islam, and the rise and fall of market fundamentalism—had already been launched a decade earlier."

Who Caused the End of the Cold War?

Joseph S. Nye — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:31:25 -0600

"Ultimately the deepest causes of Soviet collapse were the decline of communist ideology and the failure of the Soviet economy. This would have happened even without Gorbachev. In the early Cold War, communism and the Soviet Union had a good deal of soft power. Many communists had led the resistance against fascism in Europe, and many people believed that communism was the wave of the future....Although in theory communism aimed to instill a system of class justice, Lenin's heirs maintained domestic power through a brutal state security system involving lethal purges, gulags, broad censorship, and the use of informants. The net effect of these repressive measures was a general loss of faith in the system."

Ernest May: Bridging the Chasm Between History and Policy

Sharon Wilke — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:17:33 -0500

On September 24, 2009, the Belfer Center hosted a seminar to discuss Ernest May's unique ability to serve as a bridge between history and policy. A member of the Belfer Center's board of directors until his death in June 2009, Ernest May was a world renowned historian of international relations and foreign policy and a member of the Harvard faculty for over 50 years. During the seminar, "Reflections on Ernest May: A Rare Bridge Between History and Policy," a number of May's colleagues, students, friends, and family members reflected on Ernest (Ernie) May, the man, and on his "extraordinary" contributions.

Do not count on the Tories winning just yet

Niall Ferguson — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:05:45 -0500

"Most commentators assume that whenever the election happens it will be won by the Conservatives. The Labour party had its worst performance in the recent elections since 1910. As in the 1990s, the electorate is sick of the incumbent party. Just as the Labour party had young, telegenic Tony Blair in 1997, so the Tories today have young, telegenic David Cameron.

Yet this is to overstate the strength of the Conservative position."

Who Are These Belligerent Democratizers? Reassessing the Impact of Democratization on War

Vipin Narang and Rebecca M. Nelson — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:21:55 -0500

In a key finding in the democratic peace literature, Mansfield and Snyder argue that states with weak institutions undergoing incomplete transitions to democracy are more likely to initiate an external war than other types of states. We show that the empirical data do not support this claim. We find a dearth of observations where incomplete democratizers with weak institutions participated in war. Additionally, we find that the statistical relationship between incomplete democratization and war is entirely dependent on the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire prior to World War I. We also find that the case selection in Mansfield and Snyder rarely involved incomplete democratizers with weak institutions. We therefore conclude that the finding that incomplete democratizers with weak institutions are more likely to initiate or participate in war is not supported by the empirical data.

How Smart and Tough Are Democracies? Reassessing Theories of Democratic Victory in War

Alexander B. Downes — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 17:10:01 -0500

New evidence challenges the near-conventional argument that democracies are more likely than nondemocracies to win wars they start. A reanalysis of original data on war outcomes and an in-depth case study of the Johnson administration's decisions regarding Vietnam in 1965 demonstrate that democracies of all types are not significantly more likely to win wars. Furthermore, they are constrained by domestic politics and are often pressured into unwinnable wars.

A Useful Guide to Islamism's Essence

Rami Khouri — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:31:18 -0500

A new book cuts through much of the ideological venom, post-9/11 vengefulness, neo-Orientalist stereotyping -- or the mere simpletonian nonsense -- that characterize much of what is said and written about Islamist movements.

Frazer offers lessons on transformative U.S.-Africa policy

Beth Maclin — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:51:09 -0500

Former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer gave a public address," Solutions: A Transformative U.S.-Africa Policy," at Harvard Kennedy School's John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum on April 7, 2009. Belfer Center Director Graham Allison moderated the event.

Colonial Values Rule Again in Palestine

Rami Khouri — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:41:47 -0500

Colonialism is all about one law for white men, and a different, harsher set of rules for the native darker people. Such is the negotiating reality for Palestinians with Israel and the West.

Acting Against Atrocities: A Strategy for Supporters of the Responsibility to Protect

Claire Applegarth and Andrew Block — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:46:43 -0500

The advent of the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) signals the international community’s commitment to ending genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, and serves as a declaration that state sovereignty will no longer be a shield behind which perpetrators of mass atrocities can hide. Despite achieving consensus for RtoP’s vision among UN member states in 2005, efforts to move RtoP from words to action have stalled.

Dialogue or Dictating to Iran?

Rami Khouri — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:41:11 -0500

The American gestures to Iran seem sincere and serious, but from the Iranian perspective they still suffer from the persistent structural weakness of dictating the rules of the game to Iran and others in the Arab-Asian region.

Criminally Unhelpful

Rami Khouri — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:38:32 -0500

"It is bad enough when two of the world’s most powerful governments pull back from their previous positions of branding Israel’s contraventions of international law and UN resolutions as illegal and impermissible and instead call them “unhelpful” or just a threat to a lasting settlement. It is infinitely worse when the United States and the EU spend half their waking hours trying to spread democracy and the rule of law to the rest of the world while watering down a central Israeli contravention of the rule of international law."

Report from the Commission on U.S. Policy Toward Russia -- The Right Direction for U.S. Policy Toward Russia

Sasha Talcott — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:48:18 -0500

With the leadership of the Bipartisan Commission on U.S. Policy towards Russia, established by the Belfer Center at Harvard Kennedy School and the Nixon Center in Washington, Belfer Center Director Graham Allison met last week in Moscow with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Professors Nye, Walt, and Ruggie of Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center Named to List of Most Influential Faculty in Foreign Affairs

Beth Maclin — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:03:39 -0500

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Joseph Nye, a member of the Belfer Center board of directors, is the most influential international relations scholar on U.S. foreign policy in the last 20 years, while the Belfer Center’s Stephen Walt and John Ruggie both rank among the 20 most influential academics in international relations, according to a biannual survey of international relations faculty by the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) Project.

Q&A with Meghan O'Sullivan

Meghan O'Sullivan and Beth Maclin — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:20:18 -0500

Meghan L. O'Sullivan is a lecturer in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. From July 2004 to September 2007, she was special assistant to President George W. Bush and served as deputy national security advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan during part of that tenure. She spent more than two years in Iraq, most recently in fall 2008 at the request of Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General Raymond Odierno, to help conclude the security agreement and strategic framework agreement between the United States and Iraq.

Intrastate Conflict Program Advises on Governance in Africa

Beth Maclin — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:30:16 -0500

The Belfer Center's Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution (ICP) traveled to meet with leaders and officials in Rwanda and Malawi in January to discuss the 2008 Index of African Governance.

Climate Team Suggests Post-Kyoto Ideas

Sasha Talcott — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:27:11 -0500

A new report from the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements outlined several promising ideas for successors to the Kyoto Protocol ... guidance on the most intractable challenges facing global climate negotiators, including participation by developing countries, how to reduce deforestation, and how to prevent a "collision" between climate policy and international trade law

The Move Toward Preventive Military Action is an International Phenomenon

Thomas M. Nichols — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:38:18 -0600

"...[P]reventive military action is a lot bigger than George Bush, 9/11, the UN, or anything else. The problem is not as new as you might think; the erosion of national sovereignty and the growing temptations of preventive war have been in the works since at least the late 1980s, and in countries all around the world."

Demographic Projections Predict Fundamentalist Populations Surpassing Secular Counterparts

Beth Maclin and Eric Kaufmann — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:26:52 -0600

According to demographic projections, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian fundamentalists will gain significant ground against their liberal and secular counterparts by 2050, even surpassing them in some cases, Belfer Center Fellow Eric Kaufmann said at last week’s International Security Program (ISP) brownbag presentation.

Jerry Doesn't Miss Condi

Rami Khouri — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 10:48:34 -0600

The world is a better place today because Condoleezza Rice has retired from American public service, and my water turtle Jerry has found a new home with friends in Beirut.

The Origins of Global Jihad: Explaining the Arab Mobilization to 1980s Afghanistan

Thomas Hegghammer — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:35:30 -0600

The Arab involvement in Afghanistan was the result of two main factors: the entrepreneurship of the Palestinian preacher Abdallah Azzam, and the rise of a "soft pan-Islamism" promoted since the mid-1970s by non-violent international Islamic organizations such as the Muslim World League.

This policy memo is based on Thomas Hegghammer's ISP brownbag seminar presentation.

Israel's Siege of Washington

Rami Khouri — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:57:13 -0600

"Israel is using the two arsenals it is most comfortable with - military force to kill, injure, terrorize and displace thousands of Palestinian civilians, and the equivalent political overkill to bludgeon the American political establishment into total submission."

Bribery Warrants Global War

Ben Heineman — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:09:02 -0600

"Anti-corruption rhetoric exceeds commitment and accomplishment, especially in emerging-market nations. Building durable, transparent and accountable institutions in the highly diverse developing world -- with failed, failing, fragile and rising states -- is key, though complex and time-consuming."

Moving Toward Gaza-Israel Diplomacy

Rami Khouri — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 12:37:21 -0600

The U.N. Security Council resolution is "a welcomed move if it stops the immediate killing and suffering, but it will not achieve anything lasting because it does not address the core issues in the conflict. I would list these as: From the Israeli side, ending attacks by miniature missiles and other small, home-made projectiles into southern Israel; and from the Palestinian side, ending Israel's attacks on and strangulation of the Gaza Strip."

Punishing Gaza in Vain

Rami Khouri — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 10:32:29 -0600

History shows Israel's insistence on military overkill (literally) will only cause the Palestinians to come back stronger and with more political will. Its insistence on Middle East military dominance results in fewer friends and more enemies.

Respect Will Decide the Gaza Ceasefire

Rami Khouri — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:48:36 -0600

"Reasonable people would expect that Israelis and Palestinians alike prefer a ceasefire to active warfare, especially since mutual attacks have never resolved the core conflict. Hamas' decision to extend the ceasefire is not going to be made on the basis of what makes its people more or less comfortable, or what entices Israelis into opening the gates a little bit wider to allow more consumer goods to enter Gaza. The basis on which Hamas makes such decisions reflects its wider worldview of the character and aims of Israel, and the nature of its confrontation with Israel."

Bush-Rice: A Legacy of Lies and Delusion

Rami Khouri — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:30:59 -0600

"George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice have tried their hand at real-time historical revisionism and plain old-fashioned political fantasy, by claiming that they leave the Middle East in better shape than it has been for decades."