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Latest Articles, Op-Eds and Speeches by Selig Harrison:

China’s North Korean Calculations
When President Obama hosts the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, in Washington later this month, North Korea is certain to be high on the agenda. But as in the past, Beijing is likely to use its leverage with Pyongyang only if a major war threatens.
International Herald Tribune, January 06, 2011

Drawing a Line in the Water
THE crisis in the Yellow Sea, which was set off by the North Korean shelling of South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island last month, is probably mystifying to many Americans. Why did the North fire a deadly artillery barrage at a sparsely inhabited, relatively insignificant island? Why has the United States dispatched an entire aircraft-carrier group to the scene?
New York Times, December 12, 2010

Pakistan Divides U.S. and India
"Obama Mission: Billions to Pakistan, Billions From India" — This screaming headline in the Times of India ahead of President Obama's visit to New Delhi explains why a quiet crisis is developing in what seems, on the surface, to be an increasingly promising relationship between the world's two largest democracies.
LA Times, November 12, 2010

The New Faces of Reform in North Korea
Kim Jong-Il's bold moves to strengthen his grip on the Workers Party, the Army, and the bureaucracy in North Korea mark an important victory for the advocates of economic reform and improved US ties in the Pyongyang regime. The Obama administration should quickly signal its readiness for a resumption of denuclearization negotiations, linked to the normalization of US-North Korean relations.
Boston Globe, October 13, 2010

U.S. Must Stabilize Chinese Relations
As fears of a prolonged recession grow, so does the need to stabilize U.S. economic relations with China.
LePolitico, September 30, 2010

China's Discreet Hold on Pakistan's Northern Borderlands
While the world focuses on the flood-ravaged Indus River valley, a quiet geopolitical crisis is unfolding in the Himalayan borderlands of northern Pakistan, where Islamabad is handing over de facto control of the strategic Gilgit-Baltistan region in the northwest corner of disputed Kashmir to China.
International Herald Tribune,, August 26, 2010

How To Leave Afghanistan Without Losing T
As prospects for an early U.S.-NATO military victory in Afghanistan fade and pressures for the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces grow, the debate over U.S. policy in Afghanistan focuses increasingly on one key issue: Is it possible to negotiate terms for disengagement that would not constitute a strategic defeat?
Foreign Policy, August 25, 2010

A Smart Pashtun Play
While the U.S. struggles to get its act together in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai, widely ridiculed as corrupt and ineffectual, is consolidating his power and moving toward a peace deal with the Taliban. The U.S. is trying to stop him, but Karzai’s bold moves could help the U.S. and NATO find a graceful way out of the deepening Afghan quagmire.
Newsweek, July 6, 2010

U.S. Aid Fuels Dangerous Deal in Pakistan
WITH ONE hand, Pakistan scoops up its multiplying millions in US aid. With the other, it buys nuclear reactors from China that will give it the capability to add 24 nuclear weapons per year to its estimated existing arsenal of 70 to 90.
The Boston Globe, June 29, 2010

Barack Hasn't Banned the Bomb
Barack Obama prepared the way for his Nobel peace prize, and became the hero of nuclear disarma ment advocates and the bête noire of true believers in nuclear weaponry, with 11 potent words in a speech in Prague on 5 April 2009. This speech was a direct challenge to three powerful adversaries: the Pentagon bureaucracy, the defence establishments of Japan and other countries covered by the US “nuclear umbrella” and the US defence industries lobbying to sustain or increase US nuclear weapons deployments...
Le Monde Diplomatique, April, 2010

Should U.S. Keep "First Use" Option?
When should the U.S. use nuclear weapons? Most Americans would no doubt reply: when and if it is attacked with nuclear weapons. But in the struggle over what nuclear policy should be for the Obama administration, Pentagon strategists, egged on by Japanese defense hawks, argue that the U.S. should also be free to launch a nuclear first strike against an enemy armed only with conventional weapons, as it did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki 65 years ago, or one seeking to develop nuclear weapons...
USA Today, March 30, 2010

Iraq, Iran, and the United States
The 2003 American invasion of Iraq aroused both anxiety and hope in Iran. The advent of U.S. military forces and bases on its western border posed a potential threat to its security. At the same time, the destruction of the Sunni-dominated Saddam Hussein dictatorship stirred expectations that the Shiite majority in Iraq would come into its own, at last, after five centuries of Sunni minority rule, and that Iraq would tilt toward Iran after U.S. forces left. Seven years later, the Obama administration remains committed to the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of 2011. However, major uncertainties remain concerning our future role there and how it will affect Iran...
Foreign Service Journal, March 2010

Zardari's Courage
...To promote a détente, the U.S.should support Pakistan's embattled president, Asif Ali Zardari, in his escalating struggle with the generals in Islamabad over the terms of peace with New Delhi. The principal obstacle to peace is the Pakistan Army, which needs tensions with India to justify the enormous, U.S.-subsidized defense budgets that underpin its privileged status in Pakistan. Serving and retired generals run a variety of Army-linked business conglomerates with net assets exceeding $38 billion...
Newsweek, March 5, 2010

Tehran's Biggest Fear
The biggest threat to the ruling ayatollahs and generals in multi-ethnic Iran does not come from the embattled democratic opposition movement struggling to reform the Islamic Republic. It comes from increasingly aggressive separatist groups in Kurdish, Baluch, Azeri and Arab ethnic minority regions that collectively make up some 44 percent of Persian-dominated Iran’s population...
New York Times, December 27, 2009

How to Exit Afghanistan
With the Taliban growing steadily stronger, 30,000 more US troops will not lead to the early disengagement from the Afghan quagmire envisaged by President Obama, even in the improbable event that Hamid Karzai delivers on his promises of better governance. What is needed is a major United Nations diplomatic initiative designed to get Afghanistan's regional neighbors to join in setting a disengagement timetable and to share responsibility for preventing a Taliban return to power in Kabul...
The Nation, December 22, 2009