Analysis + Opinion

Pentagon says Poland’s fighter jet offer is not ‘tenable.’

The Pentagon on Tuesday rejected an offer from the Polish government to send its MiG-29 fighter planes to a United States air base in Germany for eventual use by Ukraine, a rare note of disunity between two NATO allies as they confront Russia.

Analysis + Opinion

The Russian sanctions regime and the risk of catastrophic success

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Western governments have turned to economic sanctions as their principal response.  Erik Sand and Suzanne Freeman explore the potential consequences of sanctions and outcomes/responses by Putin and the West.

Analysis + Opinion

How the war in Ukraine could get much worse

Analysis + Opinion

For this border crisis, Poles extend a warm welcome, unlike last time.

Years of nationalist, anti-refugee policies have left Poland with a fragmented immigration system. It’s now mostly up to citizens to handle what the UNHCR said was “the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II."

In the News

You should be scared

How do we respond to dystopian images and messages in the news? Roger Petersen contributes his analysis on the war in Ukraine and the weapon of fear. 

Analysis + Opinion

The ghosts of history haunt the Russia-Ukraine crisis

If we want to understand whether Putin has any commitment to these talks, we have to understand the view of both men (and many others) that Ukraine is not now nor should ever be an independent state.  And we have to wonder what it means that the man placed in charge of the negotiations from the Russian side has explicitly called the country he is negotiating with a “phantom.”

News@E40

Understanding the war in Ukraine with MIT SSP

“Understanding the War in Ukraine” is a special seminar presented by MIT's Security Studies Program held on March 2, 2022. Participants in the panel discussion and subsequent Q&A were: Mariya Grinberg, a professor of Political Science at MIT; Barry Posen, a professor of Political Science at MIT; Carol Saivetz, a special adviser to MIT SSP; Elizabeth Wood, a Russia specialist and professor of History at MIT; moderated by M Taylor Fravel, director of MIT SSP.

In the News

Nuclear fears intensify as Ukraine war builds. What is Putin's threshold?

Quoted: “If the Russian campaign starts to feel like it's a military catastrophe, that's where escalation to nuclear weapons comes into play,” says Barry Posen, Ford International Professor of Political Science at MIT....“I don't like the discussions I'm hearing from the fringes of the establishment,” says Posen. “I don't like the emotions running hot. I don't like the weird appearance on our side, way too early, of a kind of victory disease: ‘Let's win this thing. Maybe Putin will fall’.”

In the News

Q&A: Climate Grand Challenges finalists on building equity and fairness into climate solutions

A team led by Evan Lieberman, professor of political science and director of the MIT Global Diversity Lab and MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives, Danielle Wood, assistant professor in the Program in Media Arts and Sciences and the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Siqi Zheng, professor of urban and real estate sustainability in the Center for Real Estate and the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, is seeking to  reduce ethnic and racial group-based disparities in the capacity of urban communities to adapt to the changing climate.

Analysis + Opinion

From 1994: Posen's "A Defense Concept for Ukraine"

In 1994, SSP professor Barry Posen published "A Defense Concept for Ukraine" in the Russian language journal Ukraine: Issues of Security. Today, for the first time, Posen and SSP are publishing that plan in English. Given the ongoing war in Ukraine, and the apparent sturdiness of Ukrainian defense forces, it is a timely piece of analysis from the twilight of the Cold War.