Publications

When Taiwan’s soon-to-step-down President Ma Ying-jeou made a pre-Lunar New Year’s visit to Itu Aba / Taiping Island in late January 2016, the international-lawyer-turned-president was reaffirming a long-standing claim that the Republic of China held sovereignty over the largest...

1979 was a bad year for U.S. foreign policy. At home, the country was being battered by stagflation and the second oil shock, developments that raised fundamental questions about the economic underpinnings of American power. Abroad, the United States...

This address by Dr. Mackubin Owens was given at The Institute of World Politics on February 11, 2016. A video of this lecture may be found here. February 12, 2016 marks the 207th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. Although...

Last summer, Donald Trump described Mexican immigrants as “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” In December, he called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Many commentators claim that this wild rhetoric helps...

The tides of war are not receding. The Harvard psychiatrist Steven Pinker, in hisbestselling book The Better Angels of our Nature offers a detailed explanation of mankind’s evolution from a Hobbesian world of brutish, short and violent lives to today’s benign...

​A​ growing number of terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe have a North African connection — yet Washington policymakers continue to pay far less attention to the region than is warranted. ISIS and al-Qaeda, by contrast, regard...

European heads of state and government meet in Brussels 18-19 February 2016 to discuss the terms of a proposed renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with the EU. The UK’s future hangs on these talks. Success or failure in getting a...

When Jimmy Carter came into office, he was determined to reverse the growth in defense spending that had been bequeathed to his administration by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. In particular, he tried to make good on his campaign...

Gray, it seems, is the new black. The concept of “gray zone” conflict has generated significant attention and controversy recently, within both the U.S. government and the broader strategic studies community. Some analysts have identified gray zone conflict as...

In a blockbuster investigative report dated January 25, Adam Goldman of the Washington Post has revealed just how General David Petraeus managed to avoid a prison sentence for leaking highly sensitive, classified information to his mistress and biographer, Paula Broadwell. In the interview...