Diamond (Still) in the Rough: China’s New Charm Offensive in Southeast Asia
In early September, China hosted the 10th China-ASEAN Expo in southern Chinese city of Nanning. There, Chinese Premier Li...
A nation must think before it acts.
National Security Program
Zawahiri’s Latest Message: Please Listen To Me Jihadis, Stop Bickering
While it’s not uncommon to see Ayman al-Zawahiri wagging his finger in a quarterly or semi-annual propaganda video spewing...
What the Unit Costs: U.S. Federal Reserve Policy, International Currencies, and Military Procurement
At first glance, the movement of currencies seems to have little to do with the trajectory of military capabilities. ...
The Coup That Wasn’t Tweeted: Looking Back At Egypt’s Social Media Revolution
Some might say that July 3, 2013 brought the end of the Arab Spring. The Egyptian military unseated the democratically...
Field Notes: Kinmen Island, Republic of China (Taiwan)
The steel sensei bends over the artillery shells and his gloved hands embrace a heavy round. He lifts the...
External Forces Driving al-Qaeda Action and Zawahiri’s Global Conference Call
Earlier this week at FPRI, I proposed the “two competing al Qaedas hypothesis” as a theory for explaining the...
Al-Qaeda Plots, NSA Intercepts & the Era Of Terrorism Competition
This weekend, the U.S. closed 22 of its embassies throughout the Middle East and North Africa in response to...
Turning Point: Japan’s Upper House Election and National Security
On Sunday, July 21, the Japanese electorate propelled Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) (together with its...
Foreign Fighters and Ants: How they form their colonies
Swarm intelligence has proven particularly useful over the past two decades in identifying more efficient methods for computer engineering,...
Playing the Long Game: Unrest and Changing Demography in Xinjiang
The latest bout of violence between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese erupted in Lukqun, a township in China’s far...