National Security

I want to say, first of all, that you are the saints of your profession. Most of you are high school teachers. This is the most important period of education in the life of a young person—13 to 17,...

As some of you know, I have a very personal connection-intellectually and physically-with the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. In 1999, I served as a scholar on a bi-partisan blue-ribbon commission that issued a report,...

Writing before the 2008 election, Richard Kohn, the eminent historian and student of US civil-military relations, predicted that “the new administration, like its predecessors, will wonder to what extent it can exercise civilian ‘control.’ If the historical pattern holds,...

Abstract Hybrid threats have now joined a growing suite of alternative concepts about the ever evolving character of modern conflict. Here and abroad, the hybrid threat construct has found traction in official policy circles despite its relative novelty. It...

Abstract The recent resurgence of interest in insurgency and counterinsurgency has revealed a deficit in material written by and for the diplomat, the actor ostensibly responsible for the political component of a counterinsurgency campaign. Classical theorists stress that progress...

Abstract This history of intelligence contracting in the United States is in many ways the story of American intelligence itself. For all the current criticism of this “new post-9/11 industry,” intelligence contracting pre-existed the creation of formal intelligence bureaucracies...

Abstract The 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...

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...