National Security

US and Russia: A Pacific Reconciliation?

Australian Institute of International Affairs Russia’s Far East is just as susceptible to Chinese power as the countries of the Indo-Pacific and if the country wants to shore up control over this region, repairing relations with the US will...

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Why Russia Wants the U.S. to Believe the Election Is Being Hacked

PBS NOVAnext Another day, another hacking. At least, that’s what it seemed at first. In August, two election databases in Arizona and Illinois were hacked. Arizona responded by shutting down voter registration for nearly a week, and in Illinois,...

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Syria and the Cycle of American Intervention

The Atlantic To revisit the U.N.’s anointing of Aleppo as a World Heritage Site is a haunting exercise. The U.N. celebrated the city’s “13th-century citadel, 12th-century Great Mosque and various 17th-century madrasas, palaces, caravanserais and hammams,” all of which...

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Does America Need an Enemy?

The National Interest IN THE first century BC, the Roman historian Sallust wrote that the republic had descended into internal strife because of the destruction of its enemy, Carthage, in the Third Punic War. Fear of the enemy, or...

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How National Security Decisions are Made

National security decisions have increasingly become centralized within the White House in what is called “palace politics," where those with access to the President help to shape national security decisions. Cabinet members face getting boxed out of the decision-making...

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Fighting Back: What Governments Can Do about Terrorism

Humanities and Social Sciences Online Paul Shemella is a retired US Navy captain teaching at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and a fellow at the Center for Civil-Military Relations (CCMR). His military career was largely spent in...

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Is Russia Really Winning in Syria and Ukraine?

The National Interest Moscow just can’t catch a break. Last month, the Kremlin was shifting the discussion on Ukraine away from Russia’s involvement towards Ukraine’s noncompliance with the Minsk Accords, and preliminary discussions were underway among European Union ministers...

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How the EU Can Use Russia Energy Ties to Keep Ukraine Tensions in Check

World Politics Review Following meetings with Ukrainian officials in Kiev early this month, the vice president of the European Commission, Maros Sefcovic, who holds the energy portfolio for the EU as a whole, laid out his vision for how...

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Commentary: Russia and Japan are Drawing Closer. Is Trump Helping?

Reuters For decades, the dispute over ownership of four islands in the Kuril archipelago has prevented Russia and Japan from developing closer economic ties and ending tensions dating to World War Two.   Japan views the Russian occupation of...

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Can Fancy Bear Be Stopped? The Clear and Present Danger of Russian Info Ops

War on the Rocks Former Secretary of State Colin Powell was curt to his former aide. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump “is a national disgrace and an international pariah,” he wrote. In the leaked email, Powell, whose public persona...

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