Charles G. Cogan
Associate, International Security Program
Contact:
Telephone: 617-864-3959
Email: chuck_cogan@harvard.edu
Website: http://www.drcharlesgcogan.net
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May 7, 2012
"François Hollande—No More 'Mr. Pudding'?"
Op-Ed, Christian Science Monitor
By Charles G. Cogan, Associate, International Security Program
"Hollande's immediate problem will not be with the US but with Germany — his first foreign destination as president. He has promised to renegotiate a European Union treaty mandating deficit and debt limits. He wants to inject more growth into the pact, but the likely result will be a separate add-on of measures (whose effectiveness remains to be seen), rather than a change in the pact itself (which German Chancellor Angela Merkel firmly opposes)."
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May 1, 2012
"The Controversy Over the bin Laden Raid Anniversary: The Real Contrast Is Between Obama and Carter"
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Charles G. Cogan, Associate, International Security Program
"Obama is a risk-taker who went ahead with the bin Laden raid against the recommendation of Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and the President's No. 2 military adviser, Gen. James Cartwright. Carter, on the other hand, was a pacifist-inclined president who dallied for months before deciding to go ahead with an operation to rescue the hostages in the American Embassy compound in Tehran."
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April 8, 2012
"Ariel (Sharon), We Hardly Knew Ye"
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Charles G. Cogan, Associate, International Security Program
"What is not known generally outside Israel is that Ariel Sharon, who as Prime Minister in 2004–2005 orchestrated Israel's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, was planning to follow up with a third unilateral withdrawal, this time from the Israeli-occupied West Bank. He had gone ahead with the planning and had assembled an informal team under the aegis of his chef de cabinet, Dov Weissglass, in order to implement the idea."
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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."
