Conflict & Conflict Resolution

Calder Walton recounts how Russia and China are using their intelligence agencies to reverse the outcome of the Cold War

 Stephen Walt decided to look back to see if 2022 had gone according to his expectations. In his last column of 2021, he had described "Biden’s 2022 Foreign-Policy To-Do List." What did he get right, what did he get wrong, and how well did the Biden administration perform?

Stephen Walt's argument tries to answer the following question: What impact will the decisions taken at the recent Party Congress have on the balance of power and U.S.-China competition? From a U.S. perspective, was what just took place in Beijing good news or not?

The authors write that this is a moment of great hope for Iran but also great worry. Although the extensive frontline participation of women in protest movements often makes them more effective, it also raises the stakes dramatically. Defeat of today's protesters could be followed by an even deeper patriarchal backlash. 

Ivan Arreguin-Toft analyzes the West's information technology asymmetry of capability, which has given way to asymmetry of vulnerability. While democracies worldwide remain threatened, they also contain the means to restore themselves.

Der Tagesspiegel  profiles asymmetric conflict and cybersecurity expert Ivan Arreguín-Toft. 

Bullets Not Ballots: Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare, which was published as part of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs in May 2021, has been named the American Political Science Association (APSA) Foreign Policy Section's Best Book for 2021–2022.  The award will be presented in September 2022 at the APSA Annual Meeting in Montreal, Quebec.

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

Kelly Greenhill argues that by exploiting political divisions that exist within targeted states, the threatened or actual deployment of engineered flows of migrants has long been a distressingly effective policy instrument, and it is unlikely to go away anytime soon. Unless policymakers begin to confront the forces that enable weaponized migration, the favored policy responses seem destined to increase, rather than curtail, its use.

The Gazette spoke with Erica Chenoweth, Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Chenoweth studies mass protest movements, civil resistance, and political violence, and is the author of "Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know."