Charles G. Cogan
Associate, International Security Program
Contact:
Telephone: 617-864-3959
Email: chuck_cogan@harvard.edu
Website: http://www.drcharlesgcogan.net
AP Photo
March 28, 2012
"Your Red Lines Are Not Our Red Lines"
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Charles G. Cogan, Associate, International Security Program
"Netanyahu's red line is, in effect, a license to attack Iran at any moment of choosing, as the capability to create a nuclear weapon may reside in an Iranian scientist's head. It is not at all the same as the physical manufacture of a nuclear bomb and its delivery vehicle. However, even the United States' red line, if acted upon in a preemptive attack, would be highly destabilizing for the region and the world."
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March 4, 2012
"Turning the Tables On Netanyahu"
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Charles G. Cogan, Associate, International Security Program
"...[T]he United States should stay out of the business of starting unprovoked wars. We have had one disastrous example in the recent past: the American invasion of Iraq in 2003."
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February 8, 2012
"Syria: Three-Level Chess Game"
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Charles G. Cogan, Associate, International Security Program
"...[W]hat the Sunni powers seem to reproach Syria for is that it has allowed Iran to penetrate the Arab world, through a crescent that stretches from Iran through Iraq through Syria to include the large Shiite party in Lebanon, the Hezbollah, which is a major recipient of Iranian military support and a constant threat to Israel. A lesser recipient is Hamas, but the latter is a Sunni organization which may be taking its distance, both literally and figuratively, from Damascus."
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February 2, 2012
"Does Obama Have Baraka?"
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Charles G. Cogan, Associate, International Security Program
"The operation of Abbottabad was much better coordinated between the military and the CIA than was the unfortunate attempt, thirty years earlier, to rescue the hostages held by the Iranian "students" at the American Embassy in Tehran, during the presidency of another Democratic president, Jimmy Carter. Although the two operations were very different, they resembled each other in some aspects. Both represented military interventions in countries with which the United States was not at war. Also, in both cases, it was the CIA's responsibility to acquire intelligence on the internal situation in the country and prepare the groundwork for the intervention. As for the military, it was their responsibility in each case to carry out the attack."
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January 17, 2012
"Not Another War, Please!"
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Charles G. Cogan, Associate, International Security Program
"Apart from the question, never asked and never answered, as to why Iran cannot have nuclear weapons while India and Pakistan can, there is the lassitude that has set in over the successive wars in Afghanistan — which has lasted much too long — and Iraq — which has been essentially fruitless. A new war is certainly to be avoided, if possible."
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January 6, 2012
"The Presidential Election and the Nostalgia of '48"
Op-Ed
By Charles G. Cogan, Associate, International Security Program
Truman, the bland underdog from the Middle West, came out swinging in the election campaign, fustigating the "do-nothing" Republican Congress and promising to "give 'em hell!" We see certain parallels today in what was the abortive—and absurd—attempt on the part of largely Tea Party Republicans in the House to deny the extension of tax cuts to 160 million Americans.
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December 21, 2011
"A War to End All Misbegotten Wars"
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Charles G. Cogan, Associate, International Security Program
"Hopefully, the Iraq experience will put an end to the succession of misbegotten wars of the U.S., the most recent one before that being the manifestly more tragic Vietnam War (1963–1975), with 58,000 American soldiers killed, a war that was claimed to be an anti-Communist struggle rather than what it was: the extension of an anti-colonial war."
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December 12, 2011
"A Potted History from Our Presidential Ph.D."
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Charles G. Cogan, Associate, International Security Program
"From the beginnings of Islam, the faithful were part of the overall community of believers, the "umma." States only came along later. In earlier times there were two major polities in the Near East region, the cities of Damascus and Cairo. With the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, two League of Nations mandates were created, one designated Syria and Lebanon under French mandate, and the other designated Palestine and Iraq under British mandate. Three of these creations eventually became independant states, but Palestine did not."
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December 7, 2011
"Ex Cathedra in Ramallah"
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Charles G. Cogan, Associate, International Security Program
"In the center of Ramallah there is a huge chair that has been created, symbolizing the chair in the UN that the Palestinian state is supposed to occupy. Alongside there are posters with the number 194, which has a double significance. UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948 provided for the right of return for displaced Palestinians to come back into what is now Israel. 194 also refers to Palestine as becoming the 194th state to enter the United Nations."
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December 6, 2011
"Balls-Up in Pakistan"
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Charles G. Cogan, Associate, International Security Program
"It's become known as "Memo-gate": a memorandum submitted by a circuitous route to Mike Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The memo was delivered during the second week of May 2011, a few days after the raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed Osama bin Laden. The message in the memo was: rein in the Pakistani military; stop them from staging yet another coup to add to Pakistan's history of military takeovers; and specifically, disband the "S" section of the Pakistani military intelligence service, the ISI...."
