PRESS ROOM

Rand Paul announced his candidacy for the presidency last week under the slogan"Defeat the Washington Machine, Unleash the American Dream." Yet he seems to be ready to give the biggest Washington machine of all - the Pentagon - a free pass... READ MORE »

Last week President Obama and senior members of his administration met with the power sharing heads of Afghan government President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah to discuss the road ahead in Afghanistan. Both leaders stated that the Afghan people wanted peace and that efforts are being made to reach out to Taliban. While the importance of peace cannot be undermined as women have suffered the most due to violence and insecurity over decades, how peace is pursued is a different matter... READ MORE »

Last week charges of Desertion and Misbehavior Before the Enemy were recommended against Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. Tragically, Sergeant Bergdahl was once again crucified, without evidence or trial, throughout mainstream, alternative and social media... READ MORE »

Current levels of Pentagon spending may not be able to support current defense strategy. The answer to this problem is right before our eyes: cut the money and change the strategy. That would be acting in the name of a conception of national security that was truly strategic... READ MORE »

The Pentagon wants more money. But the politics of Pentagon spending have gotten so contorted that it's hard to know who the important players are, much less how much money the department is likely to get when this year's budget wrangling is finally over. The final number will probably have less to do with partisan divisions than with resolving the split on the issue that exists inside the Republican Party... READ MORE »

In his latest attempt to make the case for higher Pentagon spending, McCain joined his House counterpart, House Armed Services Committee Chair Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), on the pages of the Wall Street Journal to decry "The Pentagon's Dangerous Defense Cuts." The piece trots out the usual arguments for throwing more money at the Pentagon, but it is no more persuasive than McCain's prior pleas for higher spending... READ MORE »

It is very bewildering, albeit horrifyingly fascinating, to watch American politicians jockey and posture for war with Iran. With the announcement last week that years of negotiations have yielded a framework agreement that will arrest any Iranian nuclear weapons program, not that one actually exists, while starting the much needed process of bringing Iran back into the world community, many members of Congress seem not just reluctant, but hostile, to the prospects of averting a war with Iran... READ MORE »

With the end of the Obama presidency just around the corner, discussions of his administration’s foreign policy legacy are already well under way. But one central element of that policy has received little attention: the Obama administration’s dramatic acceleration of U.S. weapons exports... READ MORE »

The "Biden Plan" for Central America treats refugee children as a national security threat... READ MORE »

The security threat to Iran posed by "regime changers" in Washington was made abundantly clear by the invasion of Iraq in 2003. If Iran was inclined to develop a nuclear weapons option (i.e. achieve a breakout capability) in 2002, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 made such a program appear to be a well-advised national security priority for Tehran... READ MORE »

It's an open secret that the Pentagon has routinely been using the war budget - known in Washington-ese as the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account - as a slush fund to pay for items that don't fit within the caps on its base budget that are currently the law of the land... READ MORE »

Security assistance – the arming and training of foreign military and police forces – is a crucial tool of U.S. foreign policy. The goal of this type of assistance is to foster stability, bolster allies, and promote human rights and good governance. Done well, these programs can make all of us safer by preventing or reducing armed conflict. Done poorly, they can be used to undermine human rights, fuel conflict, and enable corruption on the part of recipient governments... READ MORE »