April 7, 2016

"Obama Was Not a Realist President"

Foreign Policy

By Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs; Faculty Chair, International Security Program

"...[A]fter seven-plus years in office, this most articulate of presidents never articulated a clear and coherent framework identifying what those vital interests are and why and spelling out how the United States could advance broader political ideals at acceptable cost and risk."

Creative Commons

April 6, 2016

"How Candidates Can Capture the 'Security Moms'"

CNN.com

By Juliette Kayyem, Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

"Clinton, Sanders and down-ballot Democrats have the capacity to win the Security Moms away from Republicans by embracing them and acknowledging that the Democratic Party's approach to security — maintaining international alliances, criticizing the scapegoating of Muslim communities and supporting first responders — is successful."

(Marc Nozell CC)

April 7, 2016

"Who Wants an Abortion?"

The Huffington Post

By Charles G. Cogan, Associate, International Security Program

"Although he later backtracked (or tried to), Donald Trump's statement that only women should be punished for having an abortion may finally have jolted the American people into a perception that we could have a possible wacko president in the offing....Whoever would make such an absurd and unfeeling statement about women might well have something wrong with himself."

Creative Commons

March 24, 2016

"The Mouse That Roared—Once Too Often"

By Chuck Freilich, Senior Fellow, International Security Program

"The United States, certainly the Democratic side, has simply had it with Netanyahu's policies on the Palestinian issue, with his double talk, and with what appears to be an intentional attempt to bury the two-state solution. If the premier truly understands the United States, he knows that a moment of reckoning on the Palestinian issue is nearing and that whichever candidate is elected will likely present us with fateful decisions, or cool the tenor of relations."

March 16, 2016

"Views from the Ground on the A-10 Debate"

War on the Rocks

By Jacquelyn Schneider and Julia Macdonald, Research Fellow, Project on Managing the Atom/International Security Program

"The bigger concern about the future of CAS is perhaps not whether the F-35 is as capable a platform as the A-10 (see, for example efforts to replace the A-10 with low-end CAS alternatives). Instead, it is whether the Air Force's move towards multi-mission platforms in general is a deliberate shift away from supporting ground troops with an exclusive platform, meaning CAS as we know it could retire with the A-10."

Creative Commons

March 11, 2016

"How the Republican Foreign Policy Elites Misdiagnosed Trumpism"

Foreign Policy

By Emile Simpson, Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy, International Security Program

"We're clearly living through a historical moment. U.S. foreign policy, now forced through the democratic process to respond to blue-collar grievances, could move in drastically different directions. The question is whether it will evolve in a nationalist or internationalist direction."

March 8, 2016

"Attribution and Secrecy in Cyberspace"

War on the Rocks

By Michael Poznansky, Research Fellow, International Security Program and Evan Perkoski, Research Fellow, International Security Program

"A key component of our framework entails distinguishing between two qualitatively different types of secrecy in the cyber domain. The first — the use of secrecy at the planning and execution stages of an attack — is often a technical prerequisite for success. The second type of secrecy — whether to claim credit for an attack privately or publicly — is a political decision. While many factors plausibly drive credit-claiming or credit-shirking behavior, two in particular stand out as significant: (1) whether target compliance is the objective; and (2) whether the perpetrator is a state or a non-state actor."