Photo: President Obama views the DMZ, Pete Souza, 3/25/12

NONPROLIFERATION

Bombs Away? Being Realistic about Deep Nuclear Reductions. James M. Acton, The Washington Quarterly, Spring 2012, pp. 37-53. “There are about 22,000 nuclear warheads in the world today. Reducing that number—eventually to zero—is a major element of U.S. President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. To date, his administration’s progress toward this goal has been modest, even with agreement on a new round of U.S.–Russian cuts with the New START treaty. Nonetheless, opponents of his agenda, particularly in Congress, worry that any further arms control will pitch the United States down a slippery slope toward zero. Simultaneously, supporters increasingly complain that Obama has not been bold enough. Their frustration, which is felt in capitals across the world, risks compromising the willingness of key states to support important U.S. foreign policy objectives, especially those related to nonproliferation. Neither these fears nor these frustrations are fair. Skeptics and supporters tend to ignore the practical realities of deep reductions. Nuclear-armed states will only agree to deep reductions if at least three demanding conditions are met: arms build-ups in China, India, and Pakistan must be stabilized; nuclear-armed states—especially Russia and China—will have to be convinced that arms control will not undermine the survivability of their nuclear forces; and nuclear-armed states will have to be satisfied that reductions will not exacerbate existing imbalances in conventional forces.” READ MORE

Resets, Russia, and Iranian Proliferation. Stephen Blank, Mediterranean Quarterly, Winter 2012, pp. 14-38. “The Obama administration touts the reset policy with Russia as one of its signal achievements in foreign policy. One of the key elements of its argument is Russia’s help with Iran. Upon closer inspection it appears, however, that this support is tenuous and limited. Indeed, we may have reached the end of the line in terms of Russian support for the United States regarding Iranian proliferation of nuclear weapons. Though Russia clearly opposes Iranian nuclearization, it does not regard this as nearly as great a threat as does the United States, and the evidence is quite compelling that Russia sees Iran as a partner against the United States and that the US concessions made to Russia to elicit support against Iran appear to have been excessive.” READ MORE

To Keep the Peace with Iran, Threaten to Strike. Michael Singh, The Washington Quarterly, Spring 2012, pp. 55-69. “While Iran’s nuclear program has been on America’s foreign policy agenda for the last twenty-plus years, one gets the unmistakable feeling that the issue is finally coming to a head. After several years of slowly ratcheting up sanctions while seeking to shield the Iranian people and their own economies from harm, the United States and the European Union have gone for the economic jugular by targeting Iranian oil exports. On December 31, 2011, President Obama signed into law sanctions, passed overwhelmingly by the U.S. Congress, that impose penalties on any foreign bank—including any central bank—that conducts petroleum transactions with Iran. The European Union took an even more dramatic step, imposing an embargo on the purchase of Iranian oil by its member states.” READ MORE

Showcase of Missile Proliferation: Iran's Missile and Space Programfalse. Uzi Rubin, Arms Control Today, Jan/Feb 2012, pp. 14-20. “Russia strongly resents the European missile defense system and argues that Iran's missile industry is not competent to threaten the West with missiles in the foreseeable future. [...] the issue of Iran's technological competence is at the heart of a major controversy between the United States and Russia.” READ MORE

FOREIGN POLICY

War Powers and the Atlantic Divide. Kenneth B. Moss, Orbis, Spring 2012, pp. 289-307. “As within the United States debates have arisen over how much unilateral power the President has to deploy force, so too debates are being raised across Europe. Depending on each country’s history, system of government, and economic status, various historic positions are shifting. Public, as well as elite, voices are shaping the debate. Another point of tension is NATO’s changing role as countries develop autonomous war caveats. Extended analysis of how Great Britain and Germany are grappling with these concerns has great import for U.S. policy. Learning to skillfully persuade its European allies will gain the United States better cooperation from those who do not share the U.S. war powers model.”  READ MORE

U.S. Grand Strategy and Counterterrorism. Audrey Kurth Cronin, Orbis, Spring 2012, pp. 192-214. “Ten years into a trillion dollar effort to answer the attacks of September 11, 2001, it is difficult to tell whether U.S. counterterrorism is achieving its intended effects, much less explain how it fits within a viable American grand strategy. As dramatic changes unfold in the Arab world, experts still debate whether or not the United States is winning the fight against al Qaeda.”  READ MORE

How to Deter Terrorism. Matthew Kroenig and Barry Pavel, The Washington Quarterly, Spring 2012, pp. 21-36.  “For more than 50 years during the Cold War, deterrence was a cornerstone of U.S. strategy. The United States aimed to prevent the Soviet Union from attacking the West by threatening to retaliate with a devastating nuclear response. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, however, many observers argued that deterrence was irrelevant to the U.S.-led war on terror. Analysts claimed that unlike the Soviet Union’s leadership, terrorists were irrational, willing to incur any cost (including death) to achieve their goals, and would be difficult to locate following an attack. For these reasons and others, it was thought that threats to retaliate against terrorists would be inherently incredible and insufficient to deter terrorist action.” READ MORE

The New Imperialism: Stabilization and Reconstruction or the Responsibility to Fix? Anthony C. E. Quainton, Mediterranean Quarterly, Winter 2012, pp. 5-13.  “As a result of the wars undertaken in Iraq and Afghanistan by the George W. Bush administration, the United States has taken on a responsibility to reconstruct the political and economic institutions of these countries. This responsibility has been carried out through provincial reconstruction teams that operate at the local level to rebuild the societies shattered by war. In conceptual terms, the responsibility increasingly reflects the new emphasis on reconstruction and stabilization operations laid out in the State Department’s 2011 Quadrennial Defense and Development Review, which sets the groundwork for future interventions both to prevent states from failing and to rebuild states devastated by war or natural disaster. The ambitious nature of this strategy suggests a new age of American imperialism under which the “responsibility to protect” of the 1990s may become the “responsibility to fix” of the twenty-first century.” READ MORE

The 21st Century Force Multiplier: Public-Private Collaboration. James Stavridis and Evelyn N. Farkas, The Washington Quarterly, Spring 2012, pp. 7-20. “For about the last decade, the U.S. government has been recruiting private business and non-profit collaborators to volunteer expertise, exchange information, and even operate together to enhance national security, provide humanitarian assistance, or promote economic development around the world. The main objective of such collaboration is to improve effectiveness. The federal government has worked to harness expertise it doesn’t have—in the cyber arena, for example, by working with industry experts to help the U.S. government, its NATO allies, and the business community itself improve their cyber defenses. In the development field, Uncle Sam tapped into the operational experience of multinational businesses to bring clean water to poor communities in developing countries. With the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) leading the way, the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and State, among others, have been steadily increasing collaboration with private entities. Indeed, the most recent National Security Strategy calls on the executive branch to work with the private sector, repeatedly referring to public–private partnerships.” READ MORE

EU ISSUES

U.S.-Europe Relations. Is the historic trans-Atlantic alliance still relevant? Roland Flamini, CQ Researcher, March 23, 2012, var. pages. “Following World War II, the U.S. alliance with Western Europe stood as the cornerstone of American foreign policy in the face of Cold War threats from what was then the Soviet Union. Forged in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) — the alliance's enduring defense pact — the partnership is rooted in the shared values of democracy, rule of law and free-market principles. But with the emergence of China and India as global economic powers, the Arab Spring revolutions and Iran's uncertain nuclear ambitions, the United States has shifted its political and security priorities to the Asia-Pacific region, leaving Europe worried that its historic ties with the United States are fraying. In May, President Obama will host two meetings of European leaders that could help define the trans-Atlantic alliance for years to come: a NATO summit in Chicago and a summit of the Group of 8 industrialized nations at Camp David, the presidential retreat.” READ MORE

Europe in the Throes. Stanley Pignal, World Policy Journal, Spring 2012, var. pages. “ From codifying an acceptable banana to setting chemical safety standards, the European Union has inserted itself into the daily lives of every EU citizen. With a European economic crisis testing the EU’s ability to work together, the Financial Times’ Brussels correspondent Stanley Pignal documents how the Euro bureaucracy has slowly—albeit imperfectly—expanded its regulatory stranglehold over the Continent’s economy. Still, Pignal argues reducing EU bureaucracy during this recession would be detrimental for Europe. In this instance, less red tape means more constraints.” READ MORE

Will Europe Arrest Its Strategic Fade? Justin Vaïsse, Policy Review, March 30, 2012, var. pages. “Not surprisingly, ‘Power and Weakness’ was written during a peak of extroversion and assertiveness on the U.S. side. It could conceivably also have been written from 1980 to 1984, at the height of transatlantic disputes over Euromissiles and the Siberian pipeline. But it could not have been written during the Clinton years, when American strategic culture seemed to be redefined by the imperative of ‘zero deaths,’ and it could not be written in the 2010s under Barack Obama. U.S leaders have always had a constant superiority over European ones in terms of military capacities, which gave them more options, and they have had global responsibilities to shoulder. But they have not necessarily had a Martian cultural predisposition to use the military, and have often made a subtle use of different levers of power, as European leaders have generally done (admittedly, the latter didn’t have the choice to go all-military against other major military powers). It always struck me that the powerful dialectic established by Kagan between military means and political ends worked better to explain George W. Bush’s America than Europe. The idea that Europeans’ relative military weakness has led them to pacifism and a Kantian vision of the world seems at the very least debatable, while I find more convincing the idea that Bush’s overreach and excessive confidence were a product of a preponderance of easily usable military power (inherited from the Reagan military build-up, which accelerated the U.S. advance over the rest of the world). In this case, the means somehow defined the ends, rather than the other way round, with little benefit for political wisdom. READ MORE

Reaffirming Transatlantic Unity. Kurt Volker, Policy Review, March 30, 2012, var. pages. “Bob kagan’s essay, ‘Power and Weakness,’ was and remains brilliant. Funny and illuminating, it crystallized a set of thinking at a critical moment in history. And it stands the test of time: It still illuminates fundamental impulses in Europe and America. The world has changed substantially since 2002. And the reflection of these fundamental impulses has changed as well. Europe’s post-modern self-absorption was an indulgence in 2002; now in 2012 Europe’s self-absorption is fully warranted and indeed a vital U.S. interest. We cheer on as Europe seeks to save itself, lest it bring down the entire ‘old world’ global economy. Meanwhile, the United States’ muscular assertions of 2002 have been replaced by retrenchment on the left and near neo-isolationism on the far right — causing justified worry among European allies. The description of a muscular, assertive U.S. foreign policy still attracts many in the U.S. foreign policy elite — but in an era of deficits, recession, and war fatigue, they lack broad voter support and the ability to assert their worldview. Neither situation is better.  Yet despite the changes, Kagan’s fundamental conclusion also remains the right one for today. The United States and Europe share common values, and need to work together to protect and advance those values in the world. We need to understand our differences, which do exist, but we must also get beyond them to make the world a better and safer place.” READ MORE

AFPAK

Afghans Look at 2014. Thomas Barfield, Current History, April 2012, pp. 123-128.  “Afghanistan’s future looks ever more unpredictable as international forces now in the country move toward a planned drawdown in 2014. Recent widespread riots over Koran burnings and fury over a US soldier’s killling of 16 civilians have added to the aura of a country becoming less rather than more stable. Indeed, many Afghans fear a return of the destructive decade of isolation and civil war that the US intervention ended in 2001. Three questions are on the forefront of their minds. Are the Taliban likely to topple the existing Kabul government and retake power if international forces withdraw? Will the administration of President Hamid Karzai remain in place after 2014 or be replaced by a changed leadership structure? And what role will Afghanistan’s neighbors play in the country’s future?” READ MORE

A Strategy of  “Congagement’’ toward Pakistan. Zalmay Khalilzad, The Washington Quarterly, Spring 2012, pp. 107-119. “As Pakistan undertakes a comprehensive review of its relationship with the United States, the United States should similarly review its approach to Pakistan. In the ten years since the 9/11 attacks, the key threat in South Asia has been the nexus between the Pakistani military as well as security services and the syndicate of violent extremist groupsal-Qaeda, the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and other insurgentsoperating against the United States, Afghanistan, and India. During the Bush and Obama administrations, the United States has sought to induce Pakistani leaders to break with these groups. While Pakistan has cooperated to a degree against some of them, the U.S. strategy has failed to transform Pakistan’s behavior.” READ MORE

The Enduring Madrasa Myth. C. Christine Fair, Current History, April 2012, pp. 135-140.  “Madrasas remain a worrying issue for US policy makers concerned about the terrorism threat that Pakistan continues to present both in the region and beyond. Yet the widespread acceptance of the purported ties between Islamic schools and militancy in Pakistan relies on a number of empirically flawed assumptions and assertions regarding the prevalence of madrasa enrollment, parental educational preferences, the relationship between madrasa and non-madrasa education, and the roles that madrasas play in fostering militancy. In fact, ongoing debates over Pakistan’s madrasas are focused on the wrong set of questions. Reframing this debate is important because the staying power of madrasa-related myths has significantly affected US policy in the region and has even undermined those within Pakistan who seek to reform the educational system.” READ MORE

The Broken US-Pakistan Partnership. Shashank Joshi, Current History, April 2012, pp.141-147.  “Nearly three decades on, Pakistan is fighting two wars: one with, and one against, the United States. And after a decade of rising temperatures in Afghanistan, it looks as though Pakistan has allowed the water to boil over—with grievous consequences for the relationship between Washington and Islamabad. Indeed, as American forces begin to trickle out of Afghanistan, and as Pakistan continues to be seized by domestic political convulsions, the prospects for prolonged cooperation dim by the day. Pakistani leverage over the United States is shrinking as fast as Washington’s patience, and America is now traveling down a path toward containment of Pakistan. Understanding the contours and risks of a containment strategy will be one of the most important tasks for observers of South Asia in the years ahead.” READ MORE

MIDDLE EAST

Libya's Assets and the Question of Sovereignty. Leonardo Bellodi, Survival, April/May 2012, pp. 39-45. "International law remains silent on who should represent a state, and contains no criteria to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate governments."  READ MORE

Egypt's Troubled Transition: Elections without Democracy. Khaled Elgindy, The Washington Quarterly, Spring 2012, pp. 89-104. “With the convening of the country’s first post-revolutionary parliament in late January 2012, Egypt’s troubled transition has entered a new phase. As the battle over Egypt’s future shifts from Tahrir Square to the newly elected People’s Assembly, Egyptians may be facing their most difficult challenges yet. The country’s interim rulers, the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces (SCAF)—a 20-member body representing all four branches of the Egyptian military (similar to an expanded U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff)—have laid out an ambiguous and problematic roadmap. With presidential elections and the drafting of a new constitution scheduled to take place by July 1, the transition is imperiled by an ever-present threat of popular unrest as well as an economy teetering dangerously close to collapse. Yet, it is increasingly clear that the most formidable threat to Egyptian democracy comes from the ruling military council itself, through its manipulation of the political process, growing repression, and desire to remain above the law.” READ MORE

Egypt’s Unfinished Revolution. Mohamed El-Khawas, Mediterranean Quarterly, Winter 2012, pp. 52-66. “Egypt’s revolution has produced odd results. President Hosni Mubarak was replaced in 2011 by the military, which plans to stay in office until 2013. The interim government has been trying to reconcile the differing demands of young revolutionaries and emerging political parties. It has been struggling to deal with an ailing economy and deteriorating security. Although the goal is to transfer power to a democratically elected government, building an infrastructure for sustainable democratic institutions has been slow, messy, and difficult. Youth are disappointed in the outcome of their efforts to reform the country, fearing that the demands that triggered the revolution may not be met.” READ MORE

Peace Before Freedom: Diplomacy and Repression in Sadat's Egypt. Jason Brownlee, Political Science Quarterly, Winter 2011-2012, pp 641-668. The author “assesses the foundations of the contemporary U.S.– Egyptian alliance, which was consolidated in 1979 by the Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty. He concludes that the bold diplomacy of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was matched by fierce repression at home.” READ MORE

UNITED STATES

Have President Obama's Re-Election Prospects Brightened? Charles E. Cook, Jr, The Washington Quarterly, Spring 2012, pp. 193-198. “Have the 2012 elections reached an inflection point? It’s far too soon to say that the trajectory of this election has changed directions, but we are beginning to see enough indicators to suggest that the presidential race may have shifted from uphill for President Obama to something more likely to be a very close fight and a more evenly-balanced contest. Simply put, the political environment for Republicans is not quite as favorable as it appeared three or four months ago.” READ MORE

Meet the New Boss. Jonathan Alter, Atlantic Monthly, April 2012, var. pages. “Tattered finances, broken schools, rampant crime—Rahm Emanuel is taking on an entrenched bureaucracy and a legacy of corruption to fix the problems that American voters care about most deeply. Can the mayor of Chicago make the city that works work?” READ MORE

Presidents and the Political Economy: The Coalitional Foundations of Presidential Power. Jacob S. Hacker, Paul Pierson, Presidential Studies Quarterly, March 2012, pp. 101–131. “Presidents shape the economy; the economy shapes presidencies. Yet analyses of presidential influence over the economy usually examine this interplay through an excessively narrow focus: the ability of presidents to shape short-term economic outcomes, particularly as these affect their own reelection prospects. Here, drawing on work in comparative political economy, we ask about the capacity of presidents to influence long-term economic developments, particularly the degree to which the economy produces broadly distributed growth. Focusing on the transformation of American tax policy over the last generation, we stress the constraints and opportunities that come from “durable policy coalitions” of partisans, activists, and organized economic interests seeking enduring shifts in governance. We develop this argument in part through a contrast with the influential views of Larry Bartels, who claims that presidents have a powerful immediate impact on economic inequality. We suggest that presidents are generally much more constrained, while attempting to clarify when and how they make a difference.” READ MORE

The Evolution of Election Polling in the United States, D. Sunshine Hillygus, Public Opinion Quarterly, December 2011, pp. 962-981.  “Public opinion polls have long played an important role in the study and conduct of elections. In this essay, I outline the evolution of polling as used for three different functions in U.S. presidential elections: forecasting election outcomes, understanding voter behavior, and planning campaign strategy. Since the introduction of scientific polling in the 1936 election, technology has altered the way polls are used by the media, public, candidates, and scholars. Today, polls and surveys remain vital to electoral behavior and our understanding of it, but they are being increasingly supplemented or replaced by alternate measures and methods.” READ MORE