Conflict & Conflict Resolution

Stephen Walt analyzes why the United States will regret putting effort into its latest Middle East policy: Pushing for the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Atonement is an apology and reparations payments from one state to another for mass atrocities and other human rights abuses. The only case of atonement so far is that of West Germany and Israel in 1952. The West German decision to atone for the Holocaust was neither a moral choice nor the result of U.S. pressure. Instead, both countries saw atonement as politically expedient.

Daniel Sobelman argues that the Middle East is today characterized by a deep geopolitical competition over the region's political order and orientation. This reality is the result of the failure, over the past two and a half decades or so, to establish a Western-oriented regional order on the one hand, and the rise of a regional strategic camp seeking to introduce an anti-Western order, whose core values are "resistance" to U.S. influence and the rejection of Israel's existence, on the other hand.

Belfer Center experts on the U.S.-China relationship and Middle East issues shared thoughts on the significance of the unexpected Iran-Saudi Arabia agreement brokered by China. 

Stephen Walt analyzes why China's foreign-policy reset will—or won't—work out.

Stephen Walt critiques Biden's foreign policy record and argues for creative solutions to the problems of a new era.

Stephen Walt posits that realists recognize that evil acts occur and that some states behave worse than others, but they also understand that all states compete for security in an imperfect world and that no country's conduct is beyond reproach. 

Joseph S. Nye writes that If there is one person other than Vladimir Putin who can end Russia's war in Ukraine, it is Chinese President Xi Jinping. But Xi has so far remained on the sidelines and is likely to stay there, owing to various domestic political vulnerabilities and his own lack of courage and imagination.

Stephen Walt argues that the ultimate goal should be conflict resolution in Ukraine—not just an end to the fighting but a political arrangement that makes a resumption of war later on less likely.

As Russia's war on Ukraine continues and much of the world distances itself from Putin's violent attack on a democratic country, China's President Xi embraces Putin and his actions—a complete reversal of what former President Richard Nixon engineered with China's Chairman Mao 50 years ago.

In The Great Wager, a five-part documentary-style podcast, Belfer Center Fellow and China correspondent and bureau chief in Beijing for The New York Times from 2012 to 2019, joins with WBUR “Here and Now” host Scott Tong to peel back the curtain on Nixon’s historic trip to China in February 1972. They provide details about what happened—off-the-books meetings, divulged military secrets, spies, subterfuge, and a never-before reported secret visit to the CIA headquarters where the Chinese were shown maps of where spy stations would be located in China.