National Security

Article 5 for the Next Decade of NATO

Collective defense is at the heart of European security. Enshrined within Article 5 of its founding treaty, NATO allies see “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack...

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Religion and Resistance: The Ukrainian Orthodox and Greek Catholic Churches in Resistance Efforts in the War Against Russia

Editor’s Note: This article is based on the 26th Annual Templeton Lecture on Religion & World Affairs, given by Dr. Heather S. Gregg on November 01, 2022.    ...

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Biden Takes on Grand Strategy

Editor’s Note This is the first article in a series on the Biden administration’s new National Security Strategy.  Bottom Line The National Security Strategy aims to break down the separation between “domestic” and “foreign” policy—but does not provide a...

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Mainstreaming Extremism: The Legacy of Far-Right Violence from the Past to the Present

One of the most striking sights on January 6, 2021, was that of a far-right extremist carrying a large Confederate flag through the halls of Congress. The American Civil War had ended over 150 years before, but the briefest...

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Five Trends Driving the Future of Terrorism

In mid-May 2022, eighteen-year-old Payton Gendron approached a grocery store in a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Buffalo, NY. He opened fire with a Bushmaster XM-15 semi-automatic rifle, killing ten people. The attack was one of the deadliest racist massacres...

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Afghanistan After Zawahiri: America’s Counterterrorism Options in the New South Asia

  Despite the attention in Washington currently paid to developments in Ukraine and the Taiwan Strait, terrorism remains a threat to US national security. The recent counterterrorism strike against Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul highlights that the fight against al-Qaeda,...

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The Age of Zawahiri Ends in Kabul

For Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s longtime leader, last Saturday probably began like any other. The veteran Egyptian jihadist liked to start the day by reading alone on the balcony of his safehouse in the Sherpur neighborhood of Kabul, Afghanistan. However,...

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Security Challenges in the Eastern Mediterranean

Introduction On May 2–3 2022, the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Syria/Iraq Office and the Foreign Policy Research Institute convened a panel of foreign policy experts for a dialogue on security challenges present in the Eastern Mediterranean. The first day addressed state fragility...

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Reviving the Prospects for Coercive Diplomacy in Ukraine

The United States and its allies in the West have been unable to use the threat of military force to coerce Russia into stopping its war in Ukraine. In part, this is because the West is more concerned about...

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Waiting for the Documents: The Function of U.S. National and Defense Strategic Documents

We are anxiously awaiting the release of a new National Security Strategy (NSS) from the Biden administration, from which more detailed strategies will be crafted that will lay out the challenges and priorities for the U.S. national security establishment....

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