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Begin New Search Political Geography Soviet Union Publishing Institution Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University

1. Strategies of Inhibition: U.S. Grand Strategy, the Nuclear Revolution, and Nonproliferation

Author:
Francis Gavin
Publication Date:
08-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The United States has gone to extraordinary lengths since the beginning of the nuclear age to inhibit—that is, to slow, halt, and reverse—the spread of nuclear weapons and, when unsuccessful, to mitigate the consequences. To accomplish this end, the United States has developed and implemented a wide range of tools, applied in a variety of combinations. These “strategies of inhibition” employ different policies rarely seen as connected to one another, from treaties and norms to alliances and security guarantees, to sanctions and preventive military action. The United States has applied these measures to friend and foe alike, often regardless of political orientation, economic system, or alliance status, to secure protection from nuclear attack and maintain freedom of action. Collectively, these linked strategies of inhibition have been an independent and driving feature of U.S. national security policy for more than seven decades, to an extent rarely documented or fully understood. The strategies of inhibition make sense of puzzles that neither containment nor openness strategies can explain, while providing critical insights into post–World War II history, theory, the causes of nuclear proliferation, and debates over the past, present, and future trajectory of U.S. grand strategy.
Topic:
National Security, Nuclear Weapons, and Grand Strategy
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Soviet Union, and Germany

2. Barriers to Entry: Who Builds Fortified Boundaries and Why?

Author:
Ron E. Hassner and Jason Wittenberg
Publication Date:
08-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Fortified boundaries are asymmetrical, physical barriers placed along borders. These boundaries are more formidable in structure than conventional boundary lines, but less robust than militarized boundaries. Their goal is to impose costs on infiltrators and in so doing deter or impede infiltration. A novel dataset of all such boundaries worldwide shows that states are constructing these barriers at an accelerating rate. More than half of barrier builders are Muslim-majority states, and so are the vast majority of targets. A multivariate analysis demonstrates that, contrary to conventional wisdom, states that construct such barriers do not tend to suffer disproportionately from terrorism, nor are they apt to be involved in a significant number of territorial disputes. Instead, differences in state wealth and migration rates are the best predictors of barrier construction. Qualitative case studies suggest that the most effective fortified boundaries are found where the initiating state controls the territory beyond a boundary that blocks the only access route into the state.
Topic:
Nuclear Weapons and Global Security
Political Geography:
United States, Soviet Union, and Mexico

3. "Confronting Soviet Power: U.S. Policy during the Early Cold War"

Author:
Paul Avey
Publication Date:
04-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
U.S. policy during the early Cold War is better explained by balance of power logic than ideology. Not only did the United States initially seek to cooperate with the Soviet Union, shifting toward a confrontational approach only when the balance of power tilted in the Soviet Union's favor, but it later sought to engage communist groups that promised to undermine Soviet power. Given the vast differences between U.S. and Soviet ideology, the United States' willingness to put ideology aside in these instances suggests that relative power concerns are more important in generating and shaping confrontational foreign policies than is ideology.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States and Soviet Union

4. "Preventing Enemy Coalitions: How Wedge Strategies Shape Power Politics"

Author:
Timothy Crawford
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
States use wedge strategies to prevent hostile alliances from forming or to disperse those that have formed. These strategies can cause power alignments that are otherwise unlikely to occur, and thus have significant consequences for international politics. How do such strategies work and what conditions promote their success? The wedge strategies that are likely to have significant effects use selective accommodation—concessions, compensations, and other inducements—to detach and neutralize potential adversaries. These kinds of strategies play important roles in the statecraft of both defensive and offensive powers. Defenders use selective accommodation to balance against a primary threat by neutralizing lesser ones that might ally with it. Expansionists use selective accommodation to prevent or break up blocking coalitions, isolating opposing states by inducing potential balancers to buck-pass, bandwagon, or hide. Two cases—Great Britain's defensive attempts to accommodate Italy in the late 1930s and Germany's offensive efforts to accommodate the Soviet Union in 1939—help to demonstrate these arguments. By paying attention to these dynamics, international relations scholars can better understand how balancing works in specific cases, how it manifests more broadly in international politics, and why it sometimes fails in situations where it ought to work well.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Soviet Union and Germany

5. Chronic Misperception and International Conflict: The U.S.-Iraq Experience

Author:
Charles A. Duelfer and Stephen Benedict Dyson
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Why did the United States and Iraq and themselves in full-scale conflict with each other in 1990–91 and 2003, and in almost constant low-level hostilities during the years in- between? We suggest that the situation was neither inevitable nor one that either side, in full possession of all the relevant information about the other, would have purposely engineered: in short, a classic instance of chronic misperception. Combining the psychological literature on perception and its pathologies with the almost unique firsthand access of one of the authors— Charles Duelfer—to the decisionmakers on both sides, we isolate the perceptions that the United States and Iraq held of each other, as well as the biases, mistakes, and intelligence failures of which these images were, at different points in time, both cause and effect.
Topic:
Intelligence
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and Soviet Union

6. "India's Nuclear Odyssey: Implicit Umbrellas, Diplomatic Disappointments, and the Bomb"

Author:
Andrew B. Kennedy
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Why did India merely flirt with nuclear weapons in the 1960s and 1970s only to emerge as a nuclear power in the 1990s? Although a variety of factors informed India's prolonged restraint and subsequent breakthrough, new evidence indicates that India's “nuclear odyssey” can be understood as a function of Indian leaders' ability to secure their country through nonmilitary means, particularly implicit nuclear umbrellas and international institutions. In the 1960s and 1970s, India was relatively successful in this regard as it sought and received implicit support from the superpowers against China. This success, in turn, made acquiring the bomb a less pressing question. At the end of the Cold War, however, nonmilitary measures ceased to be viable for India. In the late 1980s, waning Soviet support and the failure of Rajiv Gandhi's diplomatic initiatives led to the creation of India's de facto nuclear arsenal. In the 1990s, India developed a more overt capability, not simply because the pro-bomb Bharatiya Janata Party came to power, but also because its external backing had vanished and because its efforts to improve its security through diplomacy proved unsuccessful.
Topic:
Security, Diplomacy, and Nuclear Weapons
Political Geography:
China, India, and Soviet Union

7. Recommendations for Democratization Assistance in the Caspian Region

Author:
Vladimir Shkolnikov
Publication Date:
05-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
This paper discusses Western democratization assistance programs to Caspian states over the last ten years and the lessons policy makers should learn from these programs. It makes the following points: The euphoria of the early 1990s over the end of the Cold War caused Western organizations to have unrealistic expectations for democratic development in the former Soviet Union. Western democracy assistance programs have often failed to take the perspective of “the ordinary person on the street” in recipient countries into consideration. Instead, these programs usually reflect external, Western-imposed priorities. Western democracy-promoting organizations have often failed to appreciate the extent to which traditional institutions in Caspian societies (such as kinship networks) managed to survive the Soviet period and still influence the societies of the region. Western democracy-promoting organizations have failed to take into consideration the security challenges that Caspian states have had to confront during their first decade of independence. The war against global terrorism gives the West an opportunity to reevaluate its policies towards the Caspian region. Rather than relying solely on experiences of North American and Western European democracies, Western democracy-promoting organizations need to draw upon the recent experiences of new democracies of Central Europe in creating new models for the Caspian region.
Topic:
Democratization
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Central Asia, Asia, Soviet Union, and North America

8. Globalization and the Development of Welfare States in Post-Communist Europe

Author:
Mitchell Orenstein and Martine R. Hass
Publication Date:
02-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
How has globalization influenced welfare state development in postcommunist Europe? We focus on the leading East-Central European accession states, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, and show that these states have experienced radically different welfare state developments since 1989 from their neighbors in the former Soviet Union. The first pa rt of the paper proposes that these divergent paths can be explained by a “Europe effect”. We argue that the effects of globalization have differed greatly, depending on a country's position in the international economy and geopolitical relations. We demonstrate that countries closer to the European Union have used welfare state programs to compensate citizens for the traumas of system transition and economic openness, while the welfare systems in the former Soviet states have collapsed to a far greater extent, in terms of spending and effectivness.
Topic:
Communism, Globalization, and Government
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, Poland, Soviet Union, Hungary, and Czech Republic