In his column featured in this month’s Armed Forces Journal, American Security Project (ASP) Senior Fellow Bernard Finel makes a convincing argument for the use of conventional military operations over counterinsurgency (COIN) operations to defeat threats. For a military designed to enact quick, decisive military operations, Finel explains that counterinsurgency operations do not reflect the [...]

ASP Board Member Senator John Kerry (D-MA) was recently featured in the Huffington Post in an op-ed addressing the national security implications of climate change.
In the piece, Senator Kerry writes about the urgency of the issue, and the need for Congress to address solutions now:
Facts, as John Adams said, are stubborn things. Here are a [...]

ASP Senior Fellow Dr. Bernard Finel recently wrote a piece for Foreign Policy posing 10 questions that must be answered if the United States is to justify further involvement in Afghanistan.
A sampling of Dr. Finel’s questions:
(1) Why does the possibility that al Qaeda might establish a sanctuary in Afghanistan justify a multi-year commitment of American [...]

According to an Associated Press article, Yemen could become the next significant terrorist staging ground as Al-Qaida’s operatives in Yemen and Saudi Arabia merged earlier this year to become al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP.
According to the article, “as insurgent attacks have spiked in the embattled Middle East nation over the past year, the [...]

There is an interesting editorial in the Washington Post today, highlighting the indignities of the previous administration’s torture policies laid out in the recently released 2004 report from the CIA inspector general, and explaining the predicament the current administration finds itself in assessing whether or not to prosecute:
The line between authorized interrogation techniques and those [...]

An interesting article is out on the AP Wire today about the effect of climate change on world water supplies, and what experts at the World Water Week conference in Stockholm are saying. From the article:
“Thousands of scientists and experts urged world leaders Friday to include strategies for global water management in the planned Copenhagen [...]

International Law And U.S. Courts
By: Peter Charles Choharis
 This week the United States Senate will vote on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.  Although few doubt she’ll be confirmed, among the more curious charges raised by her opponents is that she will rely too much [...]

An editorial in yesterday’s Washington Post states:
“We reject the distorted interpretations that underpin the OLC memos and that serve as legal justification for harsh interrogation techniques that either border on or constitute torture. But those who relied on the memos and shaped their behavior in the good-faith belief that they were following the law should [...]

Former Representative Heather Wilson (R-NM) penned a column today for the Washington Post on cybersecurity and the rising need for investment in technologies and initiatives to combat new national security threats in cyberspace. She writes:
“Our cyber-defense capabilities must be inherently dynamic, with a close connection between system operators, intelligence analysts, and the researchers who can [...]

The Wall Street Journal ran a short but thorough summary today on the ongoing situation in Somalia, with foreign insurgents apparently threatening to topple the remnants of the country’s already feeble government. The Journal’s Sarah Childress writes, from Nairobi:
“Somalia’s government requested immediate military assistance from regional powers over the weekend to help combat foreign fighters [...]