Column Archive

According to a coordinated series of leaks to the media last week, the Pentagon is in the process of finalizing its first formal cybersecurity strategy. Several unnamed Defense Department officials have confirmed that the 30-page classified document will be completed later this month, with the Pentagon expected to release a declassified 12-page version as well. The leaking, which was deliberate, may be a trial balloon to gauge domestic and international response to the strategy’s tenets. That way the text could subsequently be revised, especially when it undergoes further White House review to ensure it harmonizes with the administration’s overall cybersecurity […]

As the United States debates just how much more effort it wants to put into the Afghanistan-Pakistan sinkhole, evidence mounts of the need to pursue a strategic pivot back toward the Middle East, where the Arab Spring is increasingly threatened by a Persian winter of revolutionary discontent. For some time now, Iran has been showing signs of mounting internal divisions between competing hardline factions led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But it has also become more desperate about asserting its alleged leadership of the region’s ongoing wave of uprisings, including a far more active […]

It is time for President Barack Obama to initiate an informal, tripartite dialogue with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev about stabilizing the global price of oil. Leaving the decision in the hands of speculators has not served the interests of any of these three countries. At midweek, the price, while coming down, still stood higher than $100 a barrel, with Brent crude currently trading at roughly $112 a barrel. Counterintuitively, oil producers are hoping the price descends further, because if oil gets too expensive, customers begin looking for other sources of energy. Last week, speaking […]

AMSTERDAM — Backpackers around the world took notice when the Dutch government announced plans to ban sales of marijuana to tourists in the Netherlands. Some observers viewed the decision as part of a definitive move to the right in Dutch politics. The reality, however, is not so simple; the Netherlands is not about to become a conservative country. Rather than a move to the right, the latest news is one more piece of evidence that the old distinctions between left and right can no longer tell the full story in Dutch politics. Like in much of Europe, politics in the […]

In March, the Stimson Center released a report (.pdf) by Gordon Adams and Rebecca Williams reviewing U.S. security assistance programs. Titled “A New Way Forward,” the report argued that the United States should restructure its security assistance programs away from “security,” as defined in Cold War terms, and toward “governance,” which more accurately reflects U.S. interests in the post-War on Terror world. The difference is hardly trivial. “Security” assistance focuses on improving the tactical and operational capabilities of fielded armed forces, whether against domestic or international foes, while “governance” assistance aims to “strengthen state capacity in failing, fragile, collapsing and […]