A team of experts recommend ways to rebalance our national security budget.
Rebalancing Our National Security: The Benefits of Implementing a Unified Security Budget
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diplomacy
Staunching Syria’s Wounds
Almost 18 months after the onset of popular democratic protests, the Syrian revolution increasingly resembles a bloody marathon with no clear finish line on the horizon. But as Syrian society slowly disintegrates, non-aligned states from the developing world may show the way forward to a diplomatic resolution.
Debating Syria
Diplomats are currently scrambling to find a solution to the problem that is Syria. The country is already in a civil war. The dictator Bashar al-Assad doesn’t look like he’s packing his bags any time soon, though plenty of pundits are quick to label him a “dead dictator walking.” Russia and China are reluctant to support measures that would precipitate regime change. Talk about a diplomatic nightmare.
Diplomats’ Reports in the Cold War Years: Indispensable or Exercise in Futility?
Post-World War II U.S. administrations often marginalized diplomats’ reports that dissented from their policies on the Cold War, China, and the Vietnam and Iraq Wars.
WikiLeaks: Diplomatic Communiques May Strike Deeper Chord Than Last Dump’s War Crimes
Even though the last WikiLeaks document dump revealed the details of war crimes, the next one, which just leaks diplomats’ communiqués, may have a deeper impact.
Lessons from Moscow and Tehran
Following three decades of mutually hostile postures characterized by minimal communication and limited and sporadic cooperation, the United States and Iran may be about to reengage more constructively.
Such a development, while important for us, would be of even greater significance for the greater Middle East and beyond. Its impact on a variety of relationships, including that between the United States and Israel, and those between Israel and its neighbors, would be transformative and positive. But much must happen by way of careful and persistent diplomacy to get the various moving parts in place. As Washington proceeds to restructure what is probably the key relationship in the region — namely, that between itself and Iran — it would do well to consider how another country has approached its own relations with Iran, in good times and bad. That country is Russia.
A Fat Budget for Weapons, Thin for Diplomacy
In their first debate, Barack Obama and John McCain will audition for the role of change agent. Here’s one thing the moderator needs to ask: how they would change the military-led foreign policy of the past eight years.
U.S. Should Boost Nonmilitary Security
At a time when national consensus on anything is rare indeed, here’s one example: The balance between our spending on military forces and other security tools – like diplomacy, nonproliferation, foreign aid and homeland security – needs to change.
A Unified Security Budget for the United States, FY 2009
In this fifth annual edition of the “Unified Security Budget,” as with the previous four editions, a non-partisan task force of military, homeland security, and foreign policy experts laid out the facts of the imbalance between military and non-military spending. The ratio of funding for military forces vs. non-military international engagement in the Bush administration’s proposed budget for the 2009 fiscal year has widened to 18:1 from 16:1 in the 2008 fiscal year, according to the report.
North Korea, Japan and the Abduction Narrative of Charles Robert Jenkins
In the 1960s, a subculture of Americans became obsessed with alien abductions. Their ur-narrative revolved around the experience of Betty and Barney Hill, a sober, middle-aged, interracial couple who told of being taken from their car one night in 1961 and subjected to medical investigation by extraterrestrials with small bodies and large foreheads. They were not the type to fabulize simply to draw attention to themselves, so their story attracted interest beyond the usual UFO fans. Gradually others came forward with similar tales.