On February 26, CSS Post-Doctoral Fellow Ben Denison spoke on a panel at the Cato Institute (Washington, D.C.), on “The Failure of Forcible Regime-Change Operations.” The panel also featured Lindsey O’Rourke (Boston College), Alexander Downes (George Washington University), and Christopher Preble (Cato Institute).
Read MoreBy Bryan Cassella
Our understanding of the effectiveness of sanctions regimes, which were once seen as simple and straight-forward strategies to apply pressure on target states, has evolved with the successes and failures of past attempts. Research on the factors that contribute to the success of sanctions is still relatively new, and it remains unclear how the characteristics of the target state affect the results.
Read MoreBy Thomas Cavanna
On March 5, Notre Dame Professor Dan Philpott, a leading scholar of religion and global politics, presented his new book, Religious Freedom in Islam: The Fate of a Universal Human Right in the Muslim World Today, at the Center for Strategic Studies.
Read MoreBy Thomas Cavanna
Joshua Shifrinson, assistant professor at Boston University’s Pardee School for Global Affairs, presented a new paper entitled, “Staying the Top Dog: Suppression Strategies and Great Power Politics,” at the CSS Research and Policy Seminar on February 25. The paper sets the foundations of his next book.
Read MoreThomas Cavanna, visiting assistant professor at The Fletcher School, presented an early version of a new paper on Europe’s position within the global U.S.-China competition for influence at the CSS Research and Policy Seminar on December 10, 2019. The paper is part of Cavanna’s ongoing region-by-region study of the Belt and Road Initiative and its impact on U.S. grand strategy.
Read MoreRegime change in Iran is unattractive for at least three major reasons: the poor track record of the policy in general, the difficulty of finding suitable candidates to run a different kind of regime, and the simple fact that the central tenets of Iranian foreign policy actually predate the Islamic regime and may well persist even with new leaders and a changed form of government.
Read MoreWhether trying to achieve political, security, economic, or humanitarian goals, scholars have found that regime-change missions do not succeed as envisioned. Instead, they are likely to spark civil wars, lead to lower levels of democracy, increase repression, and in the end, draw the foreign intervener into lengthy nation-building projects.
Read MoreThe fact of the matter is the United States has made analogous military withdrawals in comparaable circumstances before when it intervened in areas peripheral to its national interests, such as Syria. In such circumstances, America’s intervention does not serve a clear vital interest and less costly policy options might exist that could still protect America’s peripheral interests without risking long-term attachment to a specific area.
Read Moreow is it possible that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter can be almost universally reviled within the United States as a programmatic disaster, and yet has never lost a competitive tender abroad and continues to attract considerable demand from foreign air forces? The answer, he suggests, lies with the unique abilities of the United States to develop and control cutting-edge military technologies.
Read More“After a war breaks out, what factors influence warring parties’ decisions about whether to offer talks, and when may their position on wartime diplomacy change?” (1). Her book addresses a crucial theoretical issue that the literature has long neglected. But it also offers compelling historical case studies and important policy implications.
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