News & Announcements

Marking one year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Belfer Center this week hosted Ukraine’s Foreign Minister for a discussion of the war and its significance for Ukraine and the world. In this special feature, we include video from Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba’s conversation with the Center’s Eric Rosenbach and Paula Dobriansky. We also include a report card on the war from Graham Allison and Kate Davidson, a policy brief from the Sexual Violence in Conflict project, interviews that highlight perspectives from the people of Ukraine and Russia, and new insights and perspectives from a range of experts on how the war is impacting global order as well as regions and people around the globe.

The U.S. Department of State announced Tuesday, October 18 that Eric Rosenbach, Belfer Center Co-Director and former Pentagon Chief of Staff and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Global Security, has been named to the Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board (ISAB).  

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.

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. 

Belfer Center experts in security, intelligence, cyber, nuclear, and energy offer analysis and insight into Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs today announced the appointment of Lori Garver and Beth Sanner as non-resident Senior Fellows. Garver is a former Deputy Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) and current CEO of Earthrise Alliance. Sanner was Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration and is now Professor of Practice at the University of Maryland's Applied Research Lab for Intelligence Security. They will both share their experience and expertise with students and faculty of Harvard Kennedy School and the greater Harvard community.      

The International Security Program at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Security Studies Program at MIT invite applications for a ONE-year, pre- or post-doctoral fellowship in Grand Strategy, Security, and Statecraft. The program is supported by a grant from the Charles Koch Foundation and is open to applicants from political science, history, and other relevant disciplines. It is intended to support research addressing fundamental issues of U.S. grand strategy, foreign policy, and America's role in the world: Projects that are likely to broaden the contemporary debate on these topics are of particular interest.

In his first public comments since U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan, former Secretary of Defense and Belfer Center Director Ash Carter joined Harvard Kennedy School Dean Doug Elmendorf for a wide-ranging discussion about Afghanistan during a JFK Jr. Forum event Wednesday, October 6. Their discussion ranged from national security and U.S. foreign policy over 20 years to the immense contributions and sacrifices made in Afghanistan and how best we can promote human rights going forward.

A complete video along with clips from the event are available here.  The transcript is accessible here.

The Distribution of Military Capabilities (rDMC) dataset is a catalog of over 18,000 types of military equipment spanning 173 countries from 1970–2014. This data is sourced from the IISS Military Balance and organized into a machine-readable format, which may be downloaded.