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4001. In the Eye of the Beholder: How Leaders and Intelligence Communities Assess the Intentions of Adversaries

Author:
Keren Yarhi-Milo
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
How do policymakers infer the long-term political intentions of their states' adversaries? This question has important theoretical, historical, and political significance. If British decisionmakers had understood the scope of Nazi Germany's intentions for Europe during the 1930s, the twentieth century might have looked very different. More recently, a Brookings report observes that “[t]he issue of mutual distrust of long-term intentions . . . has become a central concern in U.S.-China relations.” Statements by U.S. and Chinese officials confirm this suspicion. U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke noted “a concern, a question mark, by people all around the world and governments all around the world as to what China's intentions are.” Chinese officials, similarly, have indicated that Beijing regards recent U.S. policies as a “sophisticated ploy to frustrate China's growth.”
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Europe

4002. Military Primacy Doesn't Pay (Nearly As Much As You Think)

Author:
Daniel W. Dresner
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The 2008 financial crisis dramatically worsened the fiscal future of the United States. In the first five years of the Great Recession, the debt-to-gross domestic product ratio of the United States more than doubled, and multiple bond-ratings agencies downgraded U.S. federal government debt. The inevitable debate in Washington is where and how much to cut federal spending. The national security budget is a natural target for fiscal conservatives. Their logic is clear-cut: defense and war expenditures are not the primary culprits for the parlous fiscal state of the United States, but they acted as accessories. For the 2013 fiscal year, the U.S. federal government has budgeted more than $685 billion in defense expenditures. Tacking on budgeting for intelligence and nuclear forces raises that figure to more than $725 billion. With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down and al-Qaida's top leadership decimated, the security threats to the United States have also declined. At the same time, the country possesses an unparalleled lead in defense assets and expenditures. Given its unchallenged military supremacy, targeting cuts toward defense spending after a decade of dramatic budgetary increases is a natural ambition.
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, and Washington

4003. Why States Won't Give Nuclear Weapons to Terrorists

Author:
Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
For the last two decades, U.S. leaders have focused on the possibility of nuclear terrorism as a serious threat to the United States. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, those fears grew even more acute. In his State of the Union Address four months after the attacks, President George W. Bush warned a worried nation that rogue states “could provide [weapons of mass destruction] to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred.” Both Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice amplified the president's warning in order to justify the war against Iraq. According to Rice, “Terrorists might acquire such weapons from [Saddam Hussein's] regime, to mount a future attack far beyond the scale of 9/11. This terrible prospect could not be ignored or wished away.” Such fears continue to shape policy debates today: in particular, advocates of bombing Iran's nuclear facilities often justify a strike based on the idea that Iran might give nu-clear weapons to terrorist groups. Even President Barack Obama, who as a senator opposed the war against Iraq, declared, “The American people face no greater or more urgent danger than a terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon.” For U.S. leaders, the sum of all fears is that an enemy might give nuclear weapons to terrorists. But are those fears well founded?
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, America, and Iran

4004. A Model Humanitarian Intervention? Reassessing NATO's Libya Campaign

Author:
Alan J. Kuperman
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
On March 17, 2011, the United Nations authorized military intervention in Libya to protect the country's civilians. The Security Council was reacting to violence between Libyan government forces and domestic opponents that had erupted the preceding month. Two days after the authorization, NATO initiated the intervention, including establishing a no-fiy zone and launching aerial attacks on government forces. After seven months, Libyan rebel forces conquered the country and killed the former authoritarian ruler, Muammar al-Qadda, in October 2011. Western media and politicians praised the intervention as a humanitarian success for averting a bloodbath in Libya's second largest city, Benghazi, and helping replace the dictatorial Qadda regime with a transitional council pledged to democracy. Based on this ostensible success, many experts now cite Libya as a model for implementing the humanitarian principle known as the “responsibility to protect” (R2P). Before such conclusions are embraced, however, a more rigorous assessment of the net humanitarian impact of NATO's intervention in Libya is warranted.
Political Geography:
Libya

4005. The Permanence of Inconsistency: Libya, the Security Council, and the Responsibility to Protect

Author:
Aidan Hehir
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The United Nations Security Council–sanctioned intervention in Libya in March 2011 was heralded by many observers as evidence of the efficacy of the responsibility to protect (R2P). According to Gareth Evans, the intervention constituted “a textbook case of the R2P norm working exactly as it was supposed to.” This ostensibly “unprecedented moment” led many to predict the dawn of a “new era.” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon summed up the mood: “By now it should be clear to all that the Responsibility to Protect has arrived.”
Political Geography:
Libya

4006. Just War Theory and the 2008–09 Gaza Invasion

Author:
Michael L. Gross, Jerome Slater, Davis Brown, and Tamar Meisels
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Jerome Slater's normative treatment of Israel in the 2008–09 Gaza War spotlights an often misunderstood domain of the security studies field: just war theory. This is a largely understudied area, given its normative framework of analysis in a field that historically is largely devoid of norms. My sense is that this journal may be becoming a forum for the reintroduction of this framework to the field, thanks to Slater's article and Robert Pape's call for a revised standard for humanitarian intervention. As a student of the ethics of war, I welcome this development. But precisely because just war theory is understudied, it is still highly prone to oversimplification and abuse. Slater regrettably engages in both in his attempt to apply it to the conduct of Israel in the Gaza War.
Political Geography:
Israel

4007. Nuclear Negotiations with Iran

Author:
Paul R. Pillar, James K. Sebenius, Michael K. Singh, and Robert Reardon
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
James Sebenius and Michael Singh are to be commended for advocating rigor in the analysis of international negotiations such as the one involving Iran's nuclear program. Although they describe their offering as a neutral framework for analyzing any negotiation, they are not at all neutral regarding the negotiations with Iran; and they present conclusions that derive directly from specific substantive assumptions, especially about Iranian objectives. The authors repeatedly describe their assumptions as “mainstream,” implying that they are uncontroversial and that any differing ones are too extreme to be worth considering. For an assumption to reside within the mainstream of popular and political discourse about Iran, however, does not make it correct. Sebenius and Singh do something similar with assumptions about U.S. interests, while sliding silently between the descriptive and the prescriptive in a way that fails to contrast actual policies with possible ones that would be consistent with those interests. Many readers' principal takeaway from their article will be that a zone of possible agreement probably did not exist as of the time of their writing and probably will not exist unless the United States takes steps toward going to war with Iran. That answer, however, given the questionable assumptions on which it is based, is very likely wrong.
Political Geography:
United States and Iran

4008. Reviewers for Volume 37

Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
From April 1, 2012, to March 31, 2013, International Security received 275 article manuscripts. International Security relies heavily on the evaluations and advice of external reviewers in making its editorial decisions. The editors thank the reviewers listed below for their invaluable assistance. As in previous years, we are recognizing outstanding reviewers for the exceptional quality, quantity, and timeliness of their reviews. Outstanding reviewers are denoted with an asterisk.

4009. The Islamist Moment: From Islamic State to Civil Islam?

Author:
Fawaz A. Gerges
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
FOR SCHOLARS INTERESTED IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, particularly religious - based movements, what is taking place in the Middle East is historical - an Islamist moment par excellence. Islamists or religio - political forces are poised to take ownership of the seats of power in a number of Arab countries in the coming years. They have already won majorities of parliamentary seats in Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco, and will probably make further gains in others after the dust settles on the Arab uprisings.
Political Geography:
Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia

4010. Drone Wars

Author:
Peter Bergen and Jennifer Rowland
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Washington Quarterly
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
At the National Defense University (NDU) on May 23, 2013, President Barack Obama gave a major speech about terrorism-arguing that the time has come to redefine the kind of conflict that the United States has been engaged in since the 9/11 attacks. Obama asserted that ''[w]e must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us.'' Thus, the President focused part of his speech on the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which Congress had passed days after 9/11 and which gave President George W. Bush the authority to go to war in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies. Few in Congress who voted for this authorization understood that they were voting for what has become the United States' longest war, one that has expanded in recent years to countries such as Pakistan and Yemen.
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, United States, and Yemen