By Bernard I. Finel, PhD America’s Defense Needs (This article was originally published in Defense News, February 4, 2008) Recently, several prominent defense analysts from the Heritage Foundation have been promoting a concept they call “4 Percent for Freedom.” They argue that in order to keep America strong, we ought to set a floor…
By Holly Crystal Gell Security in the Age of Terrorism We are six years into the “war on terror” and senior administration officials are still unable to grasp the nature of the challenge we face. Recently, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes offered a rather optimistic assessment of the…
By Bernard I. Finel, PhD America’s Defense Needs Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack of the Brookings Institution ignited a firestorm when they pronounced significant military progress in Iraq and skewered critics of the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy as “unaware of the significant changes taking place.” (“A War We Just Might Win,” op-ed, The…
By Bernard I. Finel, PhD Security in the Age of Terrorism While we have learned a lot about terror networks since 9/11, there are still large gaps in our knowledge. Those gaps are significant because they explain some of the failures of our strategy. Our knowledge of the problem of Jihadism comes largely from two…
By Bernard I. Finel, PhD Security in the Age of Terrorism The Role of American Foreign Policy in Encouraging TerrorismThere is an on-going debate about the responsibility of American foreign policy in encouraging anti-American terror. On one hand, critics of American foreign policy claim that U.S. support for Israel and oppressive secular regimes in the…
By Bernard I. Finel, PhD Security in the Age of Terrorism In the five plus years since the attacks of 9/11, analysts have danced around the connection between Islam and terrorism, getting the issue mostly wrong. Understanding the connection between the two and speaking publicly about the connection is complicated for many reasons. First, there…
