Defense and Security

By Sanaa Alvira, WIIS Member On the first anniversary of Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s death in August 2019, India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh paid homage to the former Prime Minister in Pokhran, the site of India’s first nuclear detonation. Addressing the media, and subsequently reiterating his statements in a tweet, Singh said, “…India has strictly adhered to […]

By Roxana Allen Although envisioned by many philosophers in the 18th and 19th century, only after the carnage of World War I did diplomats begin to create the structures of a united Europe. These first proposals on European unity, like those after them, were challenged by the idea of national sovereignty. In the interwar period, […]

By Dr. Swadesh M Rana, WIIS Member* Reliable data is still missing on how many more women may have become game changers if their lives were not cut short as collateral damage or indirect casualties of the post World War Two armed conflicts across the globe. Fought largely by men, the nature of these conflicts […]

Written by Kathyrn Urban (Excerpted from the full article originally published on New Atlanticist on April 4, 2019.) For generations, NATO has defended against conventional enemies, promising its member countries solidarity in the face of adversity. That promise survived its first major test in 2001, but in a globalizing and technologically changing world, NATO risks being left […]

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Wednesday, November 14, WIIS President Chantal de Jonge Oudraat was honored as a Gender Champion at the annual Ploughshares Fund conference on nuclear policy. The concluding presentation at the 2018 Ploughshares Fund Conference, “The Future of US Nuclear Policy,”was titled “Gender Champions in Nuclear Policy.” Ploughshares Program Director Michelle Dover introduced Ambassador […]

Written by John Arnold, Sarah Kenny, Hannah Lynch and Nadia Crevecoeur View the PDF: Women and the 2018 US Mid-term Elections When the 116th Congress is sworn into office this winter, there will be a record 121 women and counting ready to take their seats.[1] The 2018 midterm elections showed America countless firsts, giving voice […]

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about how many women are presently working in the cyber security field. A figure of eleven percent has been used for several years and only recently appears to have increased. In 2017, (ISC)² found that the eleven percent figure was still unchanged[1]. In a study from summer […]

Stabilizing U.S.-Chinese Relations Written by: Amanda Spencer The relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China is more fragile than at any time since the normalization of relations in 1979. Bilateral tensions continue to rise as disagreements loom over potential trade wars, growing strategic competition, and cyber espionage. Re-establishing a strategic partnership […]

Written by Elsa B. Kania Elsa Kania is a rising senior at Harvard College and was a 2014-2015 Boren Scholar in Beijing. She is currently an intern on the threat intelligence team at FireEye. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of FireEye, Inc.  The Chinese Ministry of National […]

Jill Zabel In January 2013, the Department of Defense officially opened combat roles to women for the first time. To some degree, this policy change is merely a formality: women have long been serving in combat roles, particularly in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, out of necessity. But in other ways, this policy is a […]