National Security

AbstractThe casual media observer might well believe that nuclear terrorism is highly likely in the United States and it is a question of “when, not if.” This is the view of the “conventionalists.” But there is a second school,...

Abstract The World War II experience of public service created a generation of scholars who devoted themselves to policy-relevant research during the early Cold War. The Vietnam War led to a split between the two groups, and scholars and...

Abstract Sovereignty is the bedrock of international law. If security requires that the United States transgress sovereign borders to attack foreign fighters and their support networks hiding in third countries, then the U.S. should adopt a strategy to amend...

What do Mexican civil instability and an increasingly well-armed narco-insurgency mean for homeland defense? What lessons about confronting U.S. military power might the drug networks have learned from those other malevolent networks, the same ones responsible for 9/11? And...

On the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan U.S. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines have confronted third-party national combatants. Widely known as “foreign fighters” these individuals have gained deadly skills, combat experience, and global connections that can be exported and...

Having been asked to address the question that provides the title to this FPRI Footnote, I begin by interrogating and unpacking the question. What does the question mean? Does it mean: Can terrorist organizations that may somehow get their hands...

Welcoming Remarks Walter A. McDougall,Co-Chair of FPRI’s History Institute and professor of history and international relations at the University of Pennsylvania, remarked that his December 1946 birth date coincided with Andrei Gromyko’s veto of the U.S. plan for UN...

The Dawn of the Nuclear Age The Nuclear Age began with the World War II Manhattan Project (1942–46), which culminated in the Trinity test on July 16, 1945, of the “Gadget” and the August 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and...

The last job I had with the Bush administration was coordinator for police training, judicial reform, and counternarcotics in Afghanistan. When I got the job, the National Security Council said, “It’s got three parts. First, you have to go...