Search

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

101. Iran's Youth, The Unintended Victims of Sanctions

Author:
Djavad Salehi-Isfahani
Publication Date:
08-2010
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The effect of the international sanctions on Iran is to deepen its current economic recession and make recovery very difficult if not impossible. In doing so, it will inflict pain on the general population. By prolonging the recession, the sanctions will hurt Iran's youth (15-29 year olds) particularly harshly, as they will bear the brunt of the resulting unemployment. They account for 70 percent of unemployment, and any improvement in their condition depends on economic recovery.
Topic:
Economics and Sanctions
Political Geography:
United States and Iran

102. Same As It Ever Was: Nuclear Alarmism, Proliferation, and the Cold War

Author:
Francis Gavin
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Many scholars and practitioners share the view that nuclear proliferation and its effect on U.S. national security interests constitutes the gravest threat facing the United States, that it is worse than ever before, and that new, more effective policies are needed to confront the problem. At the same time, the history of nuclear proliferation—in particular, the history of the Cold War—reveals little about contemporary nuclear dangers and possible policy solutions. According to this view, the so-called Long Peace offers few meaningful lessons that can be applied to the complex and dangerous world we face today.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States

103. Posturing for Peace? Pakistan's Nuclear Postures and South Asian Stability

Author:
Vipin Narang
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
On November 26, 2008, terrorists from Lashkar-e-Taiba—a group historically supported by the Pakistani state—launched a daring sea assault from Karachi, Pakistan, and laid siege to India's economic hub, Mumbai, crippling the city for three days and taking at least 163 lives. The world sat on edge as yet another crisis between South Asia's two nuclear-armed states erupted with the looming risk of armed conºict. But India's response was restrained; it did not mobilize its military forces to retaliate against either Pakistan or Lashkar camps operating there. A former Indian chief of Army Staff, Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury, bluntly stated that Pakistan's threat of nuclear use deterred India from seriously considering conventional military strikes. 1 Yet, India's nuclear weapons capability failed to deter subconventional attacks in Mumbai and Delhi, as well as Pakistan's conventional aggression in the 1999 Kargil War. Why are these two neighbors able to achieve such different levels of deterrence with their nuclear weapons capabilities? Do differences in how these states operationalize their nuclear capabilities—their nuclear postures—have differential effects on dispute dynamics?
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
Pakistan, United States, South Asia, India, and Mumbai

104. The Myth of Military Myopia: Democracy, Small Wars, and Vietnam

Author:
Jonathan D. Caverley
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
A capital- and firepower-intensive military doctrine is, in general, poorly suited for combating an insurgency. It is therefore puzzling that democracies, particularly the United States, tenaciously pursue such a suboptimal strategy over long periods of time and in successive conflicts. This tendency poses an empirical challenge to the argument that democracies tend to win the conflicts they enter. This apparently nonstrategic behavior results from a condition of moral hazard owing to the shifting of costs away from the average voter. The voter supports the use of a capital-intensive doctrine in conflicts where its effectiveness is low because the decreased likelihood of winning is outweighed by the lower costs of fighting. This theory better explains the development of the United States' counterinsurgency strategy in Vietnam during Lyndon Johnson's administration compared to the dominant interpretation, which blames the U.S. military's myopic bureaucracy and culture for its counterproductive focus on firepower and conventional warfare.
Topic:
Development
Political Geography:
United States and Vietnam

105. Powerplay: Origins of the U.S. Alliance System in Asia

Author:
Victor D. Cha
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
In East Asia the United States cultivated a "hub and spokes" system of discrete, exclusive alliances with the Republic of Korea, the Republic of China, and Japan, a system that was distinct from the multilateral security alliances it preferred in Europe. Bilateralism emerged in East Asia as the dominant security structure because of the "powerplay" rationale behind U.S. postwar planning in the region. "Powerplay" refers to the construction of an asymmetric alliance designed to exert maximum control over the smaller ally's actions. The United States created a series of bilateral alliances in East Asia to contain the Soviet threat, but a congruent rationale was to constrain "rogue allies"- that is, rabidly anticommunist dictators who might start wars for reasons of domestic legitimacy and entrap the United States in an unwanted larger war. Underscoring the U.S. desire to avoid such an outcome was a belief in the domino theory, which held that the fall of one small country in Asia could trigger a chain of countries falling to communism. The administrations of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower calculated that they could best restrain East Asia's pro-West dictators through tight bilateral alliances rather than through a regionwide multilateral mechanism. East Asia's security bilateralism today is therefore a historical artifact of this choice.
Topic:
Security
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Europe, and Asia

106. Sex and the Shaheed: Insights from the Life Sciences on Islamic Suicide Terrorism

Author:
Valerie M. Hudson and Bradley Thayer
Publication Date:
04-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Theoretical insights from evolutionary psychology and biology can help academics and policymakers better understand both deep and proximate causes of Islamic suicide terrorism. The life sciences can contribute explanations that probe the influence of the following forces on the phenomenon of Islamic suicide terrorism: high levels of gender differentiation, the prevalence of polygyny, and the obstruction of marriage markets delaying marriage for young adult men in the modern Middle East. The influence of these forces has been left virtually unexplored in the social sciences, despite their presumptive application in this case. Life science explanations should be integrated with more conventional social science explanations, which include international anarchy, U.S. hegemony and presence in the Middle East, and culturally molded discourse sanctioning suicide terrorism in the Islamic context. Such a consilient approach, melding the explanatory power of the social and life sciences, offers greater insight into the causal context of Islamic fundamentalist suicide terrorism, the motivation of suicide terrorists, and effective approaches to subvert this form of terrorism.
Topic:
Islam and Terrorism
Political Geography:
United States and Middle East

107. Status Seekers: Chinese and Russian Responses to U.S. Primacy

Author:
Deborah Welch Larson and Alexei Shevchenko
Publication Date:
04-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Since the end of the Cold War, scholars and foreign policy analysts have debated the type of world order that the United States should strive to create—a hegemonic system, a multilateral institutional system, or a great power concert. Initially, a major issue was whether attempts to maintain U.S. primacy would stimulate counter - balancing from other states. But since the 2003 Iraq War, a new consideration has emerged—how to persuade other states to cooperate with U.S. global governance. States that do not oppose efforts by the United States to maintain stability may nonetheless decline to follow its leadership. This is a matter for concern because although the United States can act alone, it cannot succeed on such issues as controlling terrorism, curbing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), rebuilding failed states, or maintaining economic stability without help from other states.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, and Iraq

108. The Deception Dividend: FDR's Undeclared War

Publication Date:
04-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
When do leaders resort to deception to sell wars to their publics? Dan Reiter and Allan Stam have advanced a "selection effects" explanation for why democracies win the wars they initiate: leaders, because they must secure public consent first, "select" into those wars they expect to win handily. In some cases, however, the "selection effect" breaks down. In these cases, leaders, for realist reasons, are drawn toward wars where an easy victory is anything but assured. Leaders resort to deception in such cases to preempt what is sure to be a contentious debate over whether the use of force is justified by shifting blame for hostilities onto the adversary. The events surrounding the United States' entry into World War II is useful in assessing the plausibility of this argument. President Franklin Roosevelt welcomed U.S. entry into the war by the fall of 1941 and attempted to manufacture events accordingly. An important implication from this finding is that deception may sometimes be in the national interest.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
United States

109. Nuclear Terrorism: Threat Briefing

Publication Date:
04-2010
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Key Questions Nuclear Terrorism: Threat Briefing Who could be planning a nuclear terrorist attack? What nuclear weapons could terrorists use? Where could terrorists acquire a nuclear bomb? When could terrorists launch the first nuclear attack? How could terrorists deliver a nuclear weapon to its target?
Topic:
Nuclear Weapons and Terrorism
Political Geography:
United States

110. Reducing the U.S. Transportation Sector's Oil Consumption and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Author:
Henry Lee, Kelly Sims Gallagher, W. Ross Morrow, and Gustavo Collantes
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Harder Than it Looks. Reducing oil consumption and carbon emissions from transportation is a much greater challenge than conventional wisdom assumes. It will require substantially higher fuel prices, ideally in combination with more stringent regulation. Higher Gasoline Prices Essential. Reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the transportation sector 14% below 2005 levels by 2020 may require gas prices greater than $7/gallon by 2020. Tax Credits Expensive. While relying on subsidies for electric or hybrid vehicles is politically seductive, it is extremely expensive and an ineffective way to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the near term. Climate and Economy Not a Zero Sum Game. Aggressive climate change policy need not bring the economy to a halt. Even under high-fuels-tax, high-carbon price scenarios, losses in annual GDP, relative to business-as-usual, are less than 1%, and the economy is still projected to grow at 2.1-3.7% per year assuming a portion of the revenues collected are recycled to taxpayers.
Topic:
Climate Change and Oil
Political Geography:
United States