International Relations and Security

BY DEREK PHAM While strategic ambiguity has been a significant instrument of US defense strategy in the Asia-Pacific, emerging regional threats and power imbalances have made this strategy increasingly difficult to justify. Strategic ambiguity insulates us from hard commitments in regional conflicts not directly related to our interests and exacerbates China’s uncertainty about our motivations. […]

In a rare sight this Monday, His Royal Highness Prince Turki bin Saud al-Faisal, former Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States and Dan Meridor, former Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, addressed a public audience together at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. The former statesmen discussed instability in the Middle East, potential areas for […]

BY WILLIAM DENN At a friend’s wedding a couple weeks ago, I exchanged introductions with a woman seated next to me. Upon learning that I was an active duty soldier, she said, “Thank you for your service.” She was sincere, but awkwardly confessed that she didn’t quite know what to say when meeting soldiers who […]

“The Turtle’s Rage,” directed by Pary al-Qalqili, is a raw, intimate look into one man’s anguish over the loss of his homeland. That man is Pary’s exiled father, who recounts for his filmmaker daughter what it means to be Palestinian, to be in constant conflict with Israel, and what the realities of return look like […]

“Arab civilization, such as we knew it, is all but gone.” Those are the words of Hisham Melham, Washington bureau chief of Dubai-based media outlet Al-Arabiya. In a 2,000-word piece for Politico, Melham argues that Arab civilization has collapsed, and that it won’t be revived in his lifetime. Is this gloomy outlook overwrought, or simply […]

  I am honored to dedicate the APJ’s first blog post to a visionary who gallantly opted to sit on the right side of world history at the cost of his life: President Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso. This African hero was killed, dismembered and buried in an unmarked grave on October 15, 1987 during […]

In this installment of “Inside the Middle East: Q&A,” Ambassador Robert Ford, former United States Ambassador to Syria from 2011 to 2014 and Algeria from 2006 to 2008, discusses his experiences with the State Department in Iraq and Syria, US strategy in the Syrian Civil War, and Syria’s future. Ambassador Ford also gave a public […]

On Thursday, October 2, 2014, Vice President Biden addressed an audience at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government on a range of foreign policy topics. As a special feature, the Kennedy School Review has collected student perspectives on some of the policy issues the vice president covered in his remarks. ———————– The Islamic State of […]

The Winter Games don’t deserve to be Olympic Games. BY JORDAN WARD, PANGYRUS This article is being published in collaboration with Pangyrus.   The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has a problem. With Stockholm, Krakow, and now Lviv pulling out of the running to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, they’ve been left with slim pickings. […]

A New U.S. Defense Strategy for the 21st Century BY GREGORY WHITTEN AND ERUM JILANI THE UNITED STATES HAS EMBARKED on a new defense strategy: the rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region. Moving forward, the United States will play a deeper and more enduring role in promoting security and prosperity in the region. The rebalance to […]

Abstract Under the Compact of Free Association (COFA), citizens from Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands—also known as COFA migrants—are granted broad migration rights in exchange for providing the United States the use of and access to strategic military defense positioning in the Pacific. For many years, these […]

In this installment of “Inside the Middle East: Q&A,” Peter Maurer, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, discusses the challenges to providing humanitarian assistance in Syria, the action (and inaction) of the UN Security Council in the crisis, and the politicization of aid. You can watch the interview, conducted by Jennifer Quigley-Jones, […]