National Security

In These PagesOur winter issue of Orbis offers an eclectic selection of topics. We start with a discussion of “offshore balancing,” a strategy that recently has attracted a great deal of attention among both scholars and policy makers as an alternative...

Abstract Amidst recent Western military campaigns that have defied strategic logic and produced few, if any, tangible gains, the utility of force in contemporary conflicts is being questioned increasingly, yet very few useful answers are emerging. Unfortunately, policymakers have...

Editor’s Note At Orbis, we are saying goodbye and “job well done,” to Michael Horowitz, University of Pennsylvania, who has been our book review editor for several years. Beginning with our spring 2016 journal, we will welcome Chris Miller,...

Abstract American efforts against the ISIS foreign fighter threat largely have failed because they underestimate the malignance of ISIS recruits. This article proposes a modified strategy comprising three aspects: 1) a counter-narrative stressing ISIS’s attacks on Sunni Muslims, questioning...

Abstract The effort to raise host nation security forces was central to the U.S. strategy in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. poured massive resources into both countries. Unfortunately, U.S. planners failed to understand the cultural and political environments...

Abstract This article contends that during the Republican administrations of the 1920s, U.S. officials pursued no deliberate strategy of offshore balancing. On the contrary, Washington hoped to transcend the necessity for balance of power policies altogether through developing a...

Introduction Why do states responsible for unleashing violent nonstate actors fail to stop them? Why do they sometimes continue to actively give support despite rising costs and, at best, marginal utility? These questions carry with them real-world significance. The...

In the fall of 1919, a year after the guns of the Great War fell silent, a senior British officer dined with the former German general Erich Ludendorff. The conversation turned to Germany’s recent defeat, which Ludendorff blamed on...

Politicians, pundits and analysts will no doubt continue to debate whether the terms of the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran, the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), could have been more favorable to the West, whether the United...

Jan. 11 marked the anniversary of Alexander Hamilton’s birth in 1757. During his own lifetime, Hamilton had committed defenders as well as passionate detractors, and that division continues today. Despite the controversy he generates, Hamilton was second only to...