The US Department of Defense (DOD) has recently release a new Cyber Strategy, which provides the rationale for the DOD’s establishment of 133 Cyber Mission Team co-ordinated by a growing Cyber Command. Experts and government officials alike regularly point to the disruptive nature of new information technology and the potential for cyber conflict to transform warfare. But what changes are happening in practice? What is the actual impact that cyber conflict will have on international relations? Is that dialogue about cyber conflict in line with the reality?
When President George W. Bush ordered U.S. troops to invade Afghanistan in 2001, Robert Grenier, then the CIA station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan, found himself directing the country’s “southern campaign” -- orchestrating the final defeat of the Taliban and Hamid Karzai’s rise to power in 88 chaotic days. What results is a post-9/11 race to unseat the Taliban and al Qaeda that forever changes the United States’ relationship with Afghanistan.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (often referred to as ISIS, ISIL, or The Islamic State) is becoming increasingly technically sophisticated in the way they target their adversaries. In late November 2014, a Syrian activist group running the non-violent campaign “Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently,” which documents ISIS’s human rights abuses in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, received an anonymous email containing advanced malware.
Over the past year, much ink has been spilled on how women need to speak up and lean in – on how they need to be represented more and better across foreign policy institutions and in and on the media. According to the Op-Ed Project, women author only 10-20% of op-eds. Another way to look at the status quo: a woman over 65 is less likely to be cited as an expert in the media as a boy in the 13 to 18 age group. We can do better than this. But how?
When Emma Sky, a British civilian, volunteered to help rebuild Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, her assignment was only supposed to last three months. She went on to serve there longer than any other senior military or diplomatic figure, giving her an unrivaled perspective of the entire conflict. Ms. Sky became a tireless witness to American efforts to transform a country traumatized by decades of war, sanctions, and brutal dictatorship; to insurgencies and civil war; to the corrupt political elites who used sectarianism to mobilize support.
In his newest book, Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917 – 1947, Bruce Hoffman, the director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, provides a landmark history of the battles that led to the creation of Israel. Based on newly available documents from Britain’s National Archives, Anonymous Soldiers brilliantly re-creates a crucial period in the establishment of Israel, chronicling three decades of growing anti-colonial unrest that culminated in the end of British rule and the U.N.
Ever since reports of abusive tactics surfaced in the early 2000s, the efficacy of interrogation methods used by the U.S. military and intelligence services has been an issue of contention. Over the past 15 years, the debate has focused largely on whether or not abusive tactics were necessary to elicit intelligence. The discussion has been largely among politicians, with little input from scientists who have relevant data, or from practitioners who can speak to the efficacy of ethical, science-based methods that treat detainees with respect. Until now.
In his new book, Once Upon A Revolution: An Egyptian Story, Thanassis Cambanis tells the inside story of the 2011 Egyptian revolution by following two courageous and pivotal leaders—and their imperfect decisions, which changed the world. In January 2011, in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, a group of strangers sparked a revolution, but had little more than their idealism with which to battle the secret police, the old oligarchs, and a power-hungry military determined to keep control.
On January 22, 2009, just days after becoming president, Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13492, ordering the closure of the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Yet nearly six years later, while some detainees have been transferred to other locations, the prison remains open and 127 men are still being held. In fact, Sunday, January 11, will mark the 13th anniversary of the prison’s creation.
Following the Arab Spring protests in 2011, North Africa experienced one disruptive event after another, which spilled over into the Sahel. Tunisia’s dictator fell and the country held elections, Egypt overthrew Mubarak only to have the Muslim Brotherhood led government ousted, the United States intervened in Libya which has since devolved into an ongoing armed conflict, and jihadists took over two-thirds of Mali which they later lost in a French intervention.