National Security

Download The Hunt for Mobile Missiles: Nuclear Weapons, AI, and the New Arms Race  This report examines the increasing ability ...

International relations is going soft, with countries from India to Qatar to Turkey opting for soft power persuasion over hard power pressure. Soft power collectively refers to the tools in a nation-state’s arsenal that do not punish, reward, or...

On August 15, 2020, President Donald Trump announced that he would look into the possibility of granting a pardon to Edward Snowden, the former contract employee for the National Security Agency (NSA) who “perpetrated the largest and most damaging...

When the U.S. Department of State released its annual country reports on terrorism a few weeks ago, many security analysts were curious how Sudan would be assessed. The state has been officially listed as a sponsor of terrorism since...

The threat to American influence from the propaganda and disinformation activities of a range of actors—from powers like the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation to non-state actors like violent extremists—is one of the most pressing challenges...

With its passage of the National Security Act of 1947, Congress created the National Security Council (NSC) as part of its reorganization of the federal government’s national security appa-ratus following World War II. The primary role of the NSC...

With the unveiling of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced that great power competition was now the “primary focus of U.S. national security.” After nearly 20 years of muddling through counterinsurgencies in Iraq...

How should the United States define its national security? At the U.S. Army War College, where I teach, that is one of the first questions we pose to our students. It’s not a simple one. While there is general...

COVID-19 has shown that atypical, transnational security issues need to be taken seriously. Man-made threats are not the only forces that can devastate the globe and fundamentally disrupt daily life. Experts refer to climate change as a “force multiplier,”...

As the United States prepares for the July 4 holiday, Senate Majority Whip John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, proposed a curious amendment for the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the omnibus spending bill that...