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1. Defending America in Cyberspace

Author:
Keith B. Alexander, Emily Goldman, and Michael Warner
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
PRESIDENT BARACK Obama has identified cybersecurity threats as among the most serious challenges facing our nation. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel noted in April that cyberattacks "have grown into a defining security challenge." And former secretary of defense Leon Panetta told an audience in 2012 that distributed denial-of-service attacks have already hit U.S. financial institutions. Describing this as "a pre-9/11 moment," he explained that "the threat we face is already here." The president and two defense secretaries have thus acknowledged publicly that we as a society are extraordinarily vulnerable. We rely on highly interdependent networks that are insecure, sensitive to interruption and lacking in resiliency. Our nation's government, military, scientific, commercial and entertainment sectors all operate on the same networks as our adversaries. America is continually under siege in cyberspace, and the volume, complexity and potential impact of these assaults are steadily increasing.
Topic:
Security, Development, and Government
Political Geography:
United States and America

2. Dodd-Frank: Money Never Sleeps

Author:
Christopher Whalen
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
PRESIDENT OBAMA and Congress continue to wrestle with competing ideas to fix America's housing crisis, ranging from abolishing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to introducing new regulations for repairing the rickety mortgage-financing system years after it crashed. To understand the enduring nature of today's housing-system mess, it is not really necessary to do much more than to look backward. To look, that is, at the careers of two former prominent politicians, each of whom has played an integral role in American finance in recent decades.
Topic:
Government and Reform
Political Geography:
United States, New York, and America

3. Misunderestimating Bush and Cheney

Author:
Christian Caryl
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
A SPECTER is haunting Washington-the specter of George W. Bush. President Obama may have spent almost five years in the White House by now, but it's still possible to detect the furtive presence of a certain restless shade lurking in the dimmer corners of the federal mansion. Needless to say, this is something of a first: usually U.S. presidents have to die before they can join the illustrious corps of Washington ghosts, and 43 is, of course, still very much alive in his tony Dallas neighborhood, by all accounts enthusiastically pursuing his new avocation as an amateur painter. Yet his spirit is proving remarkably hard to exorcise.
Topic:
Government and War
Political Geography:
United States, Washington, and Middle East

4. Woodrow Wilson: A Frenzied Pedagogue

Author:
Amity Shlaes
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
A. Scott Berg, Wilson [5] (New York: Putnam, 2013), 832 pp., $40.00. WHICH PREVIOUS president does President Barack Obama resemble most? Historians have likened the forty-fourth president to the thirty-second, Franklin Roosevelt. Obama, after all, chose to open his first term with a progressive campaign that explicitly evoked FDR's progressive Hundred Days. But Roosevelt functioned in a more political and opportunistic fashion than does Obama.
Topic:
Government and War
Political Geography:
America

5. Tithing at the Crude Altar

Author:
Michael T. Klare
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
PRESIDENT BARACK Obama has often stated that one of his highest priorities is to vanquish the "tyranny of oil" by developing alternative sources of energy and substantially reducing America's reliance on imported petroleum. But we will not be energy independent for the next thirty to forty years, even with a strong push to increase energy efficiency and spur the development of petroleum alternatives. During this time, America will remain dependent on oil derived from authoritarian regimes, weak states and nations in the midst of civil war.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, Iraq, America, and Middle East

6. Battlefield: El Paso

Author:
Douglas S. Massey
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
IT IS commonly accepted that the United States was "invaded" by an unprecedented wave of illegal immigrants beginning in the 1980s. According to the Department of Homeland Security, by 2008 there were 11.6 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, 61 percent from Mexico. The next-closest source was El Salvador, at just 5 percent. Hence the "invasion" was framed as a Mexican issue, with pundits from Lou Dobbs to Patrick Buchanan warning of dire consequences for America if it was not checked, by force if necessary.
Topic:
Security and Government
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Mexico

7. Canaries in the Cooling Tower

Author:
Charles A. Duelfer
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
IN LIGHT of the costly tragedy in Iraq, some have commented that inspections would have been an alternative to war. They were not. It was not that simple. Moreover, even with the most intrusive and extensive inspection system ever implemented, we still did not know the extent of Iraq's WMD capacity. Arms inspections are no substitute for war or political compromise, or good independent intelligence. Too often, too many have expected too much from such mechanisms. Inspections are not a goal in themselves. As the urgency and perils of North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs continue to escalate unchecked, attention repeatedly turns to inspections as the remedy of all ills. Yet, the invasiveness of the Iraq inspections was unique. We will never again be able to cajole another country to the extent we did Baghdad. And still we see the limits that even these intrusive inspections had. But, there are untold lessons to be learned from this bizarre case. More than anything else it goes to show that, in spite of their failings, inspections have a purpose and can be wielded to gain information and to deter WMD programs.
Topic:
Security, Government, and United Nations
Political Geography:
Iraq and North Korea

8. Tyranny for the Commons Man

Author:
Barry Schwartz
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
HOW DOES one escape a dilemma in which multiple individuals acting in their own rational self-interest can ultimately destroy a shared limited resource-even when it is clear this serves no one in the long run?
Topic:
Security, Development, and Government

9. Heirs of Sargon

Author:
Robert D. Kaplan
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
IRAQ HAS never been left alone. The late British travel writer and Arabist Freya Stark writes: "While Egypt lies parallel and peaceful to the routes of human traffic, Iraq is from earliest times a frontier province, right-angled and obnoxious to the predestined paths of man."1 For Mesopotamia cut across one of history's bloodiest migration routes. It was the subject of foreign invasions and the by-product of ethnic conflicts.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Iraq and Egypt

10. A Revisionist's Burden

Author:
H. W. Brands
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
"EVERYONE IS entitled to his own opinion," Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, "but not to his own facts." Samuel Butler, the nineteenth-century English author, wrote that "though God cannot alter the past, historians can."
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States and Canada