A nation must think before it acts.
E-Notes are policy-oriented articles covering current developments around the globe that impinge upon American foreign policy and national security priorities.
The concept of “global governance” is in the air. For many of the world’s elites—who gather at places like Geneva, Davos, The Hague, UN headquarters in Manhattan, and wherever the G20 meets—global governance is the “big idea.” Leading thinkers...
Read more »When I received the assignment for today, it reminded me of that 1999 book, Dow 36,000. At the time the authors wrote it, the Dow stood at 10,300, and the book became a bestseller. But today the Dow is...
Read more »The major national security controversies over the last decade have revolved around intelligence. Critics blamed the intelligence community for failing to alert policymakers before the September 11 attacks, but others argued that the White House ignored intelligence that warned...
Read more »The “policy wonks” who assume high government office after an election rarely think about implementation. They act as if executing policies is a job for somebody else. At the very end of my book, I quote the famous line...
Read more »Ten years ago, Afghanistan was politically fractured, economically irrelevant, and socially repressive. The Taliban government, recognized by only three countries at the time, reduced the nation’s GDP per capita to under $170, almost completely destroyed public infrastructure, and ruptured...
Read more »The end of 2011 will mark a watershed in U.S.-Iraqi relations. The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that the United States and Iraq signed in December 2008 calls for all American forces to leave Iraq by December 31, 2011....
Read more »In several respects, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington led to improvement in United-States-China relations. But what has been good for the U.S.-China relationship has not been as good for the United States and,...
Read more »Maritime chokepoints are among the most sensitive locations where geography, trade, and politics meet. The challenges posed by Middle Eastern chokepoints, in particular, were evident even before the massive dependence on oil of the twentieth century. These points have...
Read more »As my FPRI colleagues and I have written many times since September 11, 2001, the goal of terrorism is not total destruction and annihilation, but rather, disruption to achieve political leverage needed to bring about change. Osama bin Laden...
Read more »Thinking back to that awful September day in 2011, the first thing to come to mind is that given the rapid-fire series of simultaneous, systemic and symbolic attacks that was ripping across television screens (a tell-tale sign of Al...
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