Russia & Eurasia
Liberal Internationalism Forgotten: Myth & Memory in the Legacy of George H. W. Bush
This article challenges the dominant portrayal of George H. W. Bush as the exemplar of a realist president. The image of Bush as a cautious realist was less a reflection of his record than the product of partisan and scholarly mythmaking. In the 1990s,…
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s Battle for Belarus
Recorded on location at the Aspen Security Forum, this discussion centers on the geopolitical status and democratic movement of Belarus. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya details her transformation from a political outsider into the leader of the country's democratic…
How the Soviet Collapse Shaped North Korea
Dr. Young argues that the fall of the USSR profoundly influenced Pyongyang's grand strategy. Rather than embracing reform, he explains that North Korea interpreted the Soviet collapse as a failure of ideological fervor and leadership.
Saving Socialism: What North Korea Learned from the Collapse of the Soviet Union
The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s sent shockwaves through the remaining communist world, confronting states like China and North Korea with an existential challenge. While scholars have extensively examined how Beijing interpreted and…
Beyond the Hype: The Reality of Precision-Strike Weapons in Ukraine
Cameron Tracy joins to discuss his TNSR article on “technological surprise” and “normalization through use” in the Russo-Ukrainian war. He explains how forecasting about warfare often overweights extreme scenarios and is reinforced by professional and…
Technological Surprise and Normalization Through Use: The Tactical and Discursive Effects of New Precision-Strike Weapons in the Russo-Ukrainian War
Expectations of the performance of military technologies are marked by hopes that one’s own systems perform well while those of adversaries perform poorly, and fears of the inverse. These expectations shape states’ preparation for war and their conduct in…
The Influence of Psychological Factors in the Search for Strategic Stability
Many of the leaders of new nuclear powers sit atop regimes that are personalistic in nature, and thus less constrained by institutions or public opinion than more democratic regimes. Such authoritarian leaders have more freedom to allow their psychological…
Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Strategic Stability
How will advances in artificial intelligence impact strategic stability? A growing number of studies and reports assessing the ways that advances in AI could influence global politics focus on the potential risks to strategic stability from integration of AI…
Strategic Stability and Its Limits: Reflections on Schelling
Emerging technologies possess the potential to transform military competition and the international system in an uncertain, potentially destabilizing fashion. Are there ways to capture the benefits of these new technologies without unleashing catastrophic…
Introduction: Emerging Technologies and the Future of Strategic Stability
Emerging technologies developed since the end of the Cold War—and their proliferation to new actors—call into question the prospects for strategic stability in the twenty-first century. Strategic stability exists when rivals are mutually deterred and lack…
Wars of the Greater Middle East, 1945–92
This article examines the history of war and society during the Cold War in the Middle East and parts of South Asia—two regions linked by geography, history, and culture. Few other regions have been so touched by war, or so fixed the attention of world…
Negotiating Primacy: Strategic Stability, Superpower Arms Control, and the End of the Cold War
The United States successfully used the concept of strategic stability to tip the nuclear balance against the Soviet Union during the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) of the 1980s and early 1990s. Both superpowers sought to employ strategic stability to…