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11. America’s Double Government: The Hidden Agenda of the National Security State

Author:
Andrew J. Bacevich
Publication Date:
11-2017
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Center for the Study of Statesmanship, Catholic University
Abstract:
Which figures and organizations actually set the tone for American foreign policy? Do Congress and the executive still enjoy their constitutional powers, or has the authority of Madisonian institutions of government been eclipsed by the national security state? The Center for the Study of Statesmanship, in conjunction with the John Quincy Adams Society, hosted a panel discussion entitled “America’s Double Government: The Hidden Agenda of the National Security State” on November 29, 2017. This video is an edited highlight reel of that event. Featured scholars include: (1) Andrew Bacevich, a prominent author of several books on the American over-reliance on military intervention and professor emeritus of International Relations and History at Boston University and a Visiting Senior Fellow at CSS. (2) Michael Glennon, author of National Security and Double Government and professor of international law at Tufts University. (3) Louis Fisher, who has served as a Senior Specialist in Separation of Powers at the Library of Congress and is a Visiting Senior Fellow at CSS.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, National Security, and War
Political Geography:
United States and Middle East

12. The ad bellum Challenge of Drones: Recalibrating Permissible Use of Force

Author:
Alejandro Chehtman
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Drones constitute an incremental advance in weapons systems. They are able to significantly reduce overall, as well as collateral, damage. These features seem to have important implications for the permissibility of resorting to military force. In short, drones would seem to expand the right to resort to military force compared to alternative weapons systems by making resorting to force proportionate in a wider set of circumstances. This line of reasoning has significant relevance in many contemporary conflicts. This article challenges this conclusion. It argues that resorting to military force through drones in contemporary asymmetrical conflicts would usually be disproportionate. The reason for this is twofold. First, under conditions of radical asymmetry, drones may not be discriminatory enough, and, thereby, collateral damage would still be disproportionate. Second, their perceived advantages in terms of greater discrimination are counteracted by the lesser chance of success in achieving the just cause for war. As a result, resorting to military force through drones in contemporary asymmetrical conflicts would generally be disproportionate not because of the harm they would expectedly cause but, rather, because of the limited harm they are ultimately able to prevent. On the basis of normative argument and empirical data, this article ultimately shows that we need to revise our understanding of proportionality not only at the level of moral argument but also in international law.
Topic:
International Law, War, Military Affairs, Weapons, and Drones
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, and Europe

13. The Effect of Civilian Casualties on Wartime Informing: Evidence from the Iraq War

Author:
Andrew Shaver and Jacob N. Shapiro
Publication Date:
02-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC)
Abstract:
Scholars of civil war and insurgency have long posited that insurgent organizations and their state enemies incur costs for the collateral damage they cause. We provide the first direct quantitative evidence that wartime informing is affected by civilian casualties. Using newly declassified data on tip flow to Coalition forces in Iraq we find that information flow goes down after government forces inadvertently kill civilians and it goes up when insurgents do so. These results have strong policy implications; confirm a relationship long posited in the theoretical literature on insurgency; and are consistent with a broad range of circumstantial evidence on the topic.
Topic:
War, Insurgency, Counterinsurgency, Information Age, Civilians, and Casualties
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and Middle East

14. Confidence Building in Cyberspace: A Comparison of Territorial and Weapons-Based Regimes

Author:
Dr. Mary Manjikian
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
Abstract:
An analysis of weapons-based confidence-building measures shows how academics can work together to self-police their research for national security implications, socialize new members of the academic community into the importance of considering security issues, and develop and disseminate norms regarding what is and is not a moral and ethical use of these technologies. It may be possible for academics and policymakers to come together to work for a ban or build-down on cyber weapons patterned on international efforts to ban chemical and biological weapons and implement export regimes to control the export of code which may form the components of cyber weapons. If we conceptualize cyberspace as territory, we can also learn from the example of territorially-based confidence-building measures such as those implemented along the Indo-Pakistan border. This approach stresses the importance of developing notification procedures to prevent misperceptions and the escalation spiral, as well as communicating regularly to establish trust between all parties. The case studies presented here illustrate the promises and pitfalls of each approach and offer valuable warnings to policymakers seeking to implement such measures in cyberspace. They show what happens when not everyone in a regime is equally committed to a specific outcome by illustrating the difficulties of monitoring compliance in confidence-building regimes, and show the ways in which doctrines and confidence-building measures may not be perfectly aligned.
Topic:
Security, National Security, Science and Technology, War, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Cybersecurity
Political Geography:
United States and Global Focus

15. The Army War College Review Vol. 1 No.1

Author:
Dr. Larry D. Miller
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
Abstract:
The Army War College Review, a refereed publication of student work, is produced under the purview of the Strategic Studies Institute and the United States Army War College. An electronic quarterly, The AWC Review connects student intellectual work with professionals invested in U.S. national security, Landpower, strategic leadership, global security studies, and the advancement of the profession of arms.
Topic:
Security, National Security, War, and Global Security
Political Geography:
United States

16. The Education of an Anti-Imperialist: Robert La Follette and U.S. Expansion, Richard Drake

Author:
Edward Rhodes
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
“History,” Winston Churchill is reported to have observed, “is written by the vic¬tors.” The losers, if they are lucky enough to avoid vilification, are airbrushed out. When it comes to our understanding of American foreign policies of the first four decades of the twentieth century, the history-writing victors have, for the most part, been liberal internationalists. Democrats and Republicans alike, in the wake of the Second World War, concluded that the task of making the world safe for America demanded active, global U.S. politico-military engagement. In the name of liberal international institutions, Washington's “Farewell” injunctions against entangling alliances would be consigned to the waste bin of quaint anachronisms.- See more at: http://www.psqonline.org/article.cfm?IDArticle=19341#sthash.wG3JMQox.dpuf
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Education, and War
Political Geography:
United States and Washington

17. Sleepwalking Again: The End of the Pax Americana 1914–2014; After Gaza 2014: Schabas; Peer Review Redux; In this Issue

Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
I think it is difficult to contest that the most important state player in world affairs over the last one hundred years – and consistently so over this period – has been the United States of America. World War I – into which, to borrow from Christopher Clark's justly celebrated book, we 'sleepwalked' – marks a useful starting point. It is not only the fairly important role America played in bringing WWI to an end that signals the beginning of this era, but also the no less important role it played in shaping the aftermath. Wilson's 14 points were considered at the time 'idealistic' by some of the yet-to-be 'Old Powers'. But by dismantling the Ottoman Empire through the principle of self-determination (not at that time a universal legally binding norm) it was an early swallow to the demise, a mere generation later, of all other colonial empires and the truly decisive reshaping of the balance of power in the post-WWII world. The US played an equally cardinal role in ideating and realizing the United Nations Organization and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – two lynchpins of our current world order.
Topic:
Human Rights and War
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Gaza

18. The Misunderstood Lessons of Bosnia for Syria

Author:
Andrew Radin
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Washington Quarterly
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
In developing U.S. intervention policy in Kosovo, Iraq, Libya, and most recently Syria, the 1992 to 1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina has repeatedly been used as an analogy. For example, John Shattuck, a member of the negotiating team at the Dayton peace talks that ended the war, wrote in September 2013 that for Syria “the best analogy is Bosnia…Dayton was a major achievement of diplomacy backed by force…A negotiated solution to the Syria crisis is possible, but only if diplomacy is backed by force.” Many other analysts and policymakers with experience in the Bosnian conflict—such as Nicholas Burns, the State Department spokesman at the time; Christopher Hill, a member of Richard Holbrooke's negotiating team; and Samantha Power, who began her career as a journalist in Bosnia—also invoked the Bosnian war to urge greater U.S. involvement in Syria. Although the rise of ISIS has significantly altered the conflict over the last year, echoes of the Bosnian conflict remain in Syria: the conflict is a multiparty ethnic civil war, fueled by outside powers, in a region of critical interest to the United States.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Libya, Kosovo, and Syria

19. Scholarship and the ship of state: rethinking the Anglo-American strategic decline analogy

Author:
Katherine C. Epstein
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
This article uses the centenary of the First World War as an opportunity to re-examine a major element of the existing literature on the war—the strategic implications of supposed British decline—as well as analogies to the contemporary United States based upon that interpretation of history. It argues that the standard declinist interpretation of British strategy rests to a surprising degree upon the work of the naval historian Arthur Marder, and that Marder's archival research and conceptual framework were weaker than is generally realized. It suggests that more recent work appearing since Marder is stronger and renders the declinist strategic interpretation difficult to maintain. It concludes by considering the implications of this new work for analogies between the United States today and First World War-era Britain, and for the use of history in contemporary policy debates.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Britain, United States, and America

20. Humanity Considerations Cannot Reduce Wars Hazards Alone: Revitalizing the Concept of Military Necessity

Author:
Yishai Beer
Publication Date:
10-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
The exercise of brute force by militaries, though common, reflects professional incompetency. A well-trained military has an inherent interest in enhancing its operational effectiveness and constraining unnecessary brutality. The law of armed conflict, however, generally ignores the constraining effect of the necessity principle, originally intended to allow only the minimally necessary use of force on the battlefield. Consequently, the prevailing law places the burden of restricting the exercise of brute military force upon humanitarian considerations (and the specific norms derived from them). Humanity alone, however, cannot deliver the goods and substantially reduce war’s hazards. This article challenges the current dichotomy between the two pillars – mistakenly assumed to be polar opposites – of the law of armed conflict: necessity and humanity. It calls for the transformation of the military’s self-imposed professional constraining standards into a revised legal standard of necessity. Though the necessity principle justifies the mere use of lethal force, it should not only facilitate wielding the military sword but also function simultaneously as a shield, protecting combatants and non-combatants alike from excessive brutality. The suggested transformation would bind and restrain the prospective exercisers of excessive force, political and military alike, and restrict the potential damage that might be caused both intentionally (to combatants) and collaterally (to non-combatants). The combined effect of the current changes in war’s pattern and the law of armed conflict, in the military and social thinking of recent decades, and the new strategies available due to the development of new military technologies have all created a new war environment – one that may be ready to leverage the constraining potential of military professionalism into a binding legal standard and norms.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, International Law, Treaties and Agreements, and War
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Europe