National Security

DIRECTORATE OF INTELLIGENCE Not invented here and not used either: What is intelligence after 9/11 and who gets it? During the Cold War, the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence (DI) produced a limited number of finished intelligence products. The average...

Sixty years ago—February 23, 1945—a Marine patrol from Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marine Regiment reached the summit of Mount Suribachi, the highest point on the volcanic island of Iwo Jima. It was the fifth day of the savage...

The Foreign Policy Research Institute convened a conference on the future of the reserves and National Guard on 6 December 2004 at the Union League of Philadelphia. A very distinguished group drawn from the current and retired ranks of...

In a speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio, on August 16, 2004, President George W. Bush confirmed a long-rumored shift in America’s overseas military force posture. He announced that over the next decade...

Just as it took a few years after World War II for the nature of the Cold War and the strategy of containment to become evident, so too the reality of the Bush doctrine and the practicalities of waging...

There are two certainties at this time of writing: (1) our armed forces will maintain a significant presence in Iraq for the foreseeable future and (2) the threat from al Qaeda and similar aligned groups will not be going...

The initial military phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom has been a stunning success. In just twenty-one days the United States drove Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime from power and destroyed its military and security apparatus. This is more than remarkable....

As the saying goes, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” A perfect example of this has been U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan. While stories (and photographs) heralded an era where special operations personnel could call...

One year after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the United States remains involved in its first global war of the 21st century. Notwithstanding the stunning military success in the Afghan theater of operations, the fact is that...

Even though embroiled in a global war against terrorism, the United States continues to view and conceptualize the world along Cold War lines. This is particularly the case in the realm of military organization. Today, the Department of Defense...