Israeli-born political economist who established the causal-mechanism framework linking the Soviet-Afghan war to the USSR's collapse
Rafael Reuveny is an Israeli-born scholar of international political economy and professor at Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs. His 1999 article 'The Afghanistan War and the Breakdown of the Soviet Union,' co-authored with Aseem Prakash, demonstrated that the Soviet-Afghan war accelerated the USSR's dissolution through four causal pathways: perception effects, military effects, legitimacy effects, and glasnost effects. It became the standard framework for the causal-mechanism debate on the war's role in the Soviet collapse. His broader research spans economic globalization, climate migration, the resource-conflict nexus, and modeling the collapse of historical civilizations.
Career Timeline
- 1978B.S. (Magna Cum Laude), Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
- 1978–1985Officer, Israel Defense Forces
- 1985Moved to the United States
- 1996MBA, Indiana University
- 1997Ph.D. in Political Science, Indiana University
- 1997–현재Professor, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University
- 1999Published 'The Afghanistan War and the Breakdown of the Soviet Union' (with Aseem Prakash)