Articles & Multimedia
Showing 2921-2940 of 3007 Publications
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To Rethink the State Department, Look to Business
Demands on the State Department may be growing but, if last week’s congressional hearings are any indication, the State Department’s coffers will not be. Even longtime champio...
By Kristin M. Lord & Richard Fontaine
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LYONS: Forcing Our Military’s Submission
The recent contrived uproar over the inadvertent burning of the Koran led by corrupt Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his controlling mullahs should be seen for what it is: a...
By Major Fernando Lujan & USA
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How to Get Afghans to Trust Us Once Again
“Ooooh, Major Far-nan-do, we’re gonna sell you to the Taliban for a million dollars . . . laa-di-laaa . . . we’re gonna trade you for a new truck . . . for a new house!” It wa...
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Before Attacking Iran, Israel Should Learn from Its 1981 Strike on Iraq
On June 7, 1981, eight Israeli F-16 fighter jets, protected by six F-15 escorts, dropped 16 2,000-pound bombs on the nearly completed Osirak nuclear reactor at the Tuwaitha co...
By Colin H. Kahl
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The Economist Debate: Syria
The escalating bloodbath in Syria has long since reached the point at which the international community must act to protect Syrian civilians and to push for a political transi...
By Marc Lynch
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Military Options Likely Wouldn't Quell the Crisis in Syria
How should the United States, and the international community, respond to the escalating bloodbath in Syria? Over the last two months, the overwhelming weight of editorial and...
By Marc Lynch
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The Iran Containment Fallacy
It has become increasingly fashionable in Jerusalem and Washington to advocate a military strike on Iran. Central to the case for war is the argument that a nuclear-armed Iran...
By Colin H. Kahl
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SOF Power
Special operations forces are one of the big winners in the Obama administration's new Pentagon budget request released this week. The budget cuts hundreds of billions of doll...
By Travis Sharp, David W. Barno & USA (Ret.)
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Twitter, Democracy, and Internet Freedom
Twitter has taken fire in recent days from activists and bloggers who fear that the company’s new censorship policies will muffle online freedom. News reports recall the ways ...
By Richard Fontaine
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U.S. Must Ensure Relations with India don’t Fracture over Iran
Iran is the crisis of the hour in Washington, and for the first time in recent memory talk now routinely turns to military action. In an effort to forestall Tehran’s pursuit o...
By Richard Fontaine
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The Pentagon's Way Forward
The new defense guidance and budget request released by the Pentagon can best be described as “pivot-but-hedge” approaches to global engagement. Set against the backdrop of re...
By Nora Bensahel, Travis Sharp, David W. Barno & USA (Ret.)
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Supremely Irrelevant
One year ago today, Egyptians took to the streets to demand the removal of Hosni Mubarak's three-decade-old dictatorship. As they waved flags and chanted for the fall of the r...
By Colin H. Kahl
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You Can't Have It All
On Thursday, President Barack Obama and his top defense advisers unveiled new strategic guidance to direct the U.S. military as it transitions from a decade of grueling ground...
By Nora Bensahel, Travis Sharp, David W. Barno & USA (Ret.)
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Commentary: Americans can agree that the Iraq war was a mistake
This was a preventive war designed to prevent Iraq from using or proliferating its presumed weapons of mass destruction to terrorists or terrorist states, but those weapons di...
By John A. Nagl
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The danger of military success
Most American military specialists know about Stonewall Jackson and Ulysses S. Grant, but not many study the Duke of Wellington and his campaigns on the Spanish Peninsula. The...
By USA (Ret.) & Robert Killebrew
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Cutbacks and crises
The subject of the hour in defense circles is guessing how deeply the defense budget is going to be cut as the U.S. economy retrenches, and which services will be winners and ...
By USA (Ret.) & Robert Killebrew
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Afghan Strategy Begins to Make Gains
To U.S. voters weary of war after a decade of casualties, high costs and frustration, the conflict in Afghanistan may look like a quagmire. The accepted image now seems to be ...
By John A. Nagl
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The US Navy Fostered Globalisation: We Still Need It
The financial world is obsessed with stock market gyrations and bond yields. But the numbers that matter in the long run are those of US warships. Asia has been at the centre ...
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John Stuart Mill, Dead Thinker of the Year
Fundamentally, the past year has been about grappling with the most profound question in political philosophy: how to create legitimate central authority. In one Arab country ...
By Nora Bensahel
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Syria and Other Wars Without End
Syria is in the early stages of what every indication suggests could become a long, cruel, and bloody civil war. In the early hours last Wednesday morning, the Free Syrian Arm...