Providence College – National Security Expert Ludes ’93 Examines Challenges to U.S.
Providence, R.I.–The executive director of the American Security Project, Dr. James M. Ludes ’93, presented a good news/bad news perspective during a talk on “National Security and the Obama Administration” at Providence College on February 25.
According to Ludes, the bad news is that the United States is facing major global security challenges at the same time that it has lost the moral high ground it held after 9-11. The good news is that he believes we can turn this situation around.
“We now have a choice between a national security policy based on fear and one based on hope,” said Ludes, who graduated from PC with a bachelor’s degree in history and modern languages.
The American Security Project is a non-profit, bipartisan public policy and research organization dedicated to fostering knowledge and understanding of a range of national security issues and cultivating strategic responses to 21st century challenges. Ludes has served as executive director since 2006.
Ludes, whose talk was sponsored by the College’s chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha, the political science honor society, said that any new security policy will need to develop responses to several global security challenges, including terrorism and global warming. To do so, he argued the United States would need a new set of tools to deal with national security.
On terrorism, Ludes said that the country made a major mistake when it invaded Iraq. He referenced a theory that anti-American extremists were losing support in the Islamic world before 9-11 but were counting on the United States to respond to the attacks by invading an oil-rich Arab nation and in the process revitalizing their movement. He said that opinion polls in the Islamic world continue to show great distrust of U.S. intentions.
“We are not winning the War on Terror,” he said. “Statistics show that even when we subtract Afghanistan, Iraq, and Israel from the mix, terrorist attacks are up significantly throughout the world.”
Ludes also clearly views climate change as a national security issue. Rising sea levels have the potential to inundate vast areas of coastline, including some areas in the United States. As temperatures warm, the bread basket of the Great Plains could move north into Canada as far as Hudson Bay, endangering our food supply and disrupting our economy, he said.
“It threatens the existence humanity has created for itself over the last 10,000 years,” he added.
In addition, world-wide armed struggles for scarce resources such as drinking water could engulf the planet. Ludes said that we must lead a global effort to reduce carbon emissions, one that includes India and China. “We must end our dependence on oil and rapidly develop alternative energy sources,” he said.
An expanded tool kit
To meet these challenges, Ludes believes we must expand the set of tools available to policy makers. With the largest military budget in the world, Ludes is concerned that the United States is still too oriented toward conventional warfare.
“No state or terrorist group is going to face us in a conventional war,” he said.
Ludes believes the United States can strengthen its military at lower cost but also believes we need to spend more on other instruments of national power–such as aid to other countries, diplomacy, and communication to people around the world. He called on the Obama Administration to reconstitute the U.S. Information Agency to explain our policies to the world.
