126 countries now publish a national security strategy or defense document, and 45 of these feature
a leaders’ preambles. How these talk about the world, or not, is surprisingly revealing of historical
global strategic hierarchies.
national security
Want to Start a National Security Think Tank?
You're going to need some help. Since 2017, when I departed the Beltway in favor of (literally) greener pastures, I've been trying to figure out how to create an institutional presence for...
Levee en Masse–but it’s only an operational concept!
Over at the National Interest T.X. Hamnes has a nice critique of AirSea Battle, seemingly the Pentagon's reigning  strategy…sorry, operational concept...for dealing with a rising China and the...
Podcast No. 3: Elkus and Atherton on “Grand Blog Tarkin”
Adam Elkus and Kelsey Atherton discuss strategic studies and speculative fiction.
More national security Posts
What to Do? The Climate Security Policy Conundrum
This is re-posted from e-IR. I hesitated to write anything about climate and security until I had read all (or damn near all 17 articles) of the recent special issue of the Journal of Peace Research.My initial mandate for this post was to talk about the significance of climate and security for militaries, and as part of a project funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, I obviously should have something to say about that. My reaction, however, was that to conceive of climate and security as purely or primarily a military problem would reinforce a narrow understanding of the issue and...
RIP: Habeas Corpus . . . and Normative Power
The news that President Obama plans to sign the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) permitting indefinite detention for Americans accused of supporting terrorism is a sad day for those who believe in basic civil and human rights. Equally, this move calls into question optimistic views about international norms and the power of human rights. Glenn Greenwald and others cover the threat to basic freedoms in posts that are well worth reading. By comparison, the import for scholars of norms may seem minor but is nonetheless worth pondering. Norms against indefinite detention have long been...
Pornography and National Security: The ever expanding threat
In today's 'horrors of bad social science', we have a piece by Jennifer S. Bryson, director of the Witherspoon Institute’s Islam and Civil Society Project, (which seems to be a conservative think-tank) who has written a piece for the Institute's blog on the threat of pornography for national security. (No really.)Bryson asks the question that no serious scholar has ever, ever addressed and comes up with an argument to be considered. In fact, she is getting right on top of this hard and pressing issue.She reaches around the boundaries of conventional thinking about terrorism and slowly but...
Dr. Strangelove’s Mineshafts
What would the world be like after a nuclear attack of some type? That's the question answered by the President's National Security staff in the June 2010 second edition of the Planning Guidance for Response to a Nuclear Detonation. I haven't read the entire 130 page document, but I did read a chunk of it, as well as an interesting article about it by Ira Chernus, a professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Here's the provocative opening paragraph that got me to click on his piece:Good news! You’ve got a pretty good chance of surviving a terrorist’s nuclear...
You can’t create national security policy in a vacuum
Stephen Biddle has a spot-on piece over at Foreign Policy on how Presidents, and Obama in particular, must take into account domestic politics when setting national security strategy. Â With the release of Bob Woodward's latest book, Obama's Wars, many have jumped on the President's alleged quote that he can't lose the entire Democratic Party to justify the need to set a troop draw-down date for Afghanistan as evidence that he's putting politics above national security (as if anything can be separated from politics).Biddle responds:...I do know that it's no sin for a president to consider the...
Visualizing National Security Rhetoric
Obama's 2010 National Security Strategy according to Wordle:Bush's 2002 National Security Strategy according to Wordle:
Aasif Mandvi, Our Future Overlord
The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10cScary Plotterwww.thedailyshow.comDaily Show Full EpisodesPolitical HumorHealth Care CrisisI just saw this clip from last Thursday and I think the inversion of US/South Asian security ethics is just brilliant.
“Freedom Fries” A Threat to National Security
When I make the connection between health and national security in my classes, we usually talk about pandemics or bio-warfare. But check this out: a new study from the Army Times tells us that unhealthy diets also drastically reduce America's military readiness. Turns out 35% of young Americans between the ages of 18-24 are unfit to serve in the military because they're too fat, up from 6% 20 years ago. Noah Schactman has more. Is this any surprise, really? Perhaps the US government should declare a global war on cholesterol in the name of national security. Only instead of using unmanned...