Books

The riveting, secret story of the hundred-year intelligence war between Russia and the West with lessons for our new superpower conflict with China.

The Nuremberg Tribunals, like the Tokyo Trials, were landmarks in implementing international justice because they documented genocide and countless atrocities that Axis forces committed against millions of humans worldwide. Reflecting on the importance of the Nuremberg Tribunals, it is also worthwhile to remember the challenges journalists encountered after World War II as they assessed changes to international law. Finding clear and succinct ways to present complex legal proceedings for readers across the globe was a formidable task. The tribunals were also historically momentous because of the evidence the tribunals revealed used to prosecute those responsible for perpetrating mass violence.

Hand-Off details the Bush administration’s national security and foreign policy as described at the time in then-classified Transition Memoranda prepared by the National Security Council experts who advised President Bush. Thirty of these Transition Memoranda, newly declassified and here made public for the first time, provide a detailed, comprehensive, and first-hand look at the foreign policy the Bush administration turned over to President Obama.

Geopolitics and climate change now have immediate consequences for national and international security interests across the Arctic and Antarctic. With chapters that raise awareness, address challenges, and inform policy options, Polar Cousins reviews the state of strategic thinking and options on Antarctica and the Southern Oceans in light of experience in the circumpolar North.

North America has survived a tumultuous three decades since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. What characterizes our shared region today? What sort of region can advance our shared interests and well-being over the next generation? This volume from the Wilson Center and Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center offers an agenda for how the region’s leaders can forge inclusive and effective strategies that ensure North America’s next decades build upon past successes—while addressing serious shortcomings.

The authors argue that emergencies and disasters know no borders, and responses demand cooperation. Highlighting examples of successful cooperation— as well as a few notable failures—they call for a comprehensive North American Emergency Management Compact to address growing challenges that result from a changing climate and interwoven connections.

For the United States, the dominant approach has been economic coercion. Despite applying stringent sanctions, the United States has been ineffective in convincing North Korea to give up its nuclear arsenal in return for a brighter economic and diplomatic future. The myriad U.S. sanctions have also failed to halt major progress in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. However, these setbacks have not caused the United States to change its strategy of economic coercion. On the contrary, the United States has considerably increased its use of this economic statecraft tool. In contrast, China has deepened its economic engagement with the North Korean regime since the late 2000s. Through the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and its counterpart the Workers’ Party of Korea, China has cultivated and monetized political ties. Doing so has provided a powerful mechanism through which the Kim family regime—leaders of North Korea’s ruling and prosperous 1 percent—has shored up stability and thrived.

Capital Choices analyzes the creation of different SWFs from a comparative political economy perspective, arguing that different state-society structures at the sectoral level are the drivers for SWF variation. Juergen Braunstein focuses on the early formation period of SWFs, a critical but little understood area given the high levels of political sensitivity and lack of transparency that surround SWF creation. Braunstein’s novel analytical framework provides practical lessons for the business and finance organizations and policymakers of countries that have created, or are planning to create, SWFs.

The untold story of the founding father’s likely Jewish birth and upbringing—and its revolutionary consequences for understanding him and the nation he fought to create.