A few weeks ago, I was riding my bike home past the White House. Out front, a group of activists gathered to protest a US troop increase in Afghanistan. I stopped to read the signs and was encouraged by one held aloft by an older, white-haired gentleman. It said: "No...

I'm not a religious person in the institutional sense -- but I am still waking up every day sending a thank you into the sky because the United States elected this President. Maybe it's because I work on national security issues in DC and was on Capitol Hill after the...

It has long been lamented that national security no longer stops at the water's edge. This expression derives from a Cold War consensus that pitted democratic capitalism against communism. It bound elected leaders and most of the American public together in a common cause. It disappeared in 1991, and has...

I've often used this space to describe our weary and frayed democratic institutions. Our electoral dysfunction, our antique Congress. Yet there is no doubt that American democracy today is healthier than ever at the individual level. Opportunities for participation -- spurred on by the internet -- have created innumerable possibilities...

Two years ago, I sat in a DC boardroom discussing conflict resolution tactics with other wonks and federal employees. Iraq and Afghanistan came up, along with many other places that the United States had committed resources--military, economic and civilian (i.e. the people not wearing uniforms). I kept referring to the...

If the United Nations were in Vegas, and policy geeks were gamblers, this would be a match made for the MGM Grand. In one corner we'd have a bright young voice in the ring, fighting for a renewed American dream--where nuclear weapons are seen as obsolete liabilities in the face...

Joe Wilson of South Carolina -- the guy who blurted "you lie!" during the President's speech last week in Congress. Institutionally speaking, he is Newt Gingrich's love-child.

Let me explain: Gingrich might be everyone's favorite climate change convert, a mellowed pol with a gay daughter, but remember the Contract with...

For months, I've been hollering to my friends and colleagues about how progressives must not simply reboot the language and tactics for protesting the Iraq war to protesting U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. "No protest without a policy alternative" I've lectured... "If you want "out now" and you still feel obligated...

September is upon us. By the end of this month, mid-October at the latest, U.S. policy in Afghanistan will have fundamentally shifted. From what I've been hearing, everyone who works on this issue expects to not come up for air until Christmas. We are at a pivotal time. Reports from...

Today I read a Wall Street Journal opinion piece criticizing President Obama for "rewriting the Cold War." A friend sent it with FYI in the subject line and without looking at the author's name, sentences like "Global battle between tyranny and freedom" and "dragging people off to gulags" caught my...

Anybody who has lived with an addict knows about denial. So it goes with Congress and defense spending. Case in point this week is the F-22, a gold-plated Cold War barnacle that has been stuck to American taxpayers for decades. Addicts are so comforted by their hazy worldview that they...

"When all other means of communication fail, try words." I walked by this anonymous quotation every day in grad school -- stuck on a cork bulletin board. Now it makes sense. For the past eight years, our bad attitude made us really unpopular. Unappeasable, we became like the schoolyard bully...

In Congress and across the country, progressives are nervous about the increased troop commitments in Afghanistan. They see a degenerating, no-win situation. Some of them wish we could just get out now, and cut our losses, both in blood and money, perhaps politically as well.

But we can't abandon Afghanistan...

If we kill people, we lose the war. The most significant achievement of the Obama Administration thus far is a consistent and systematic understanding that security as we know it has fundamentally changed. Today, legitimacy (having the moral authority to lead) is getting as much attention as containment (dominate, isolate,...

When President Obama reaches Prague this Sunday, he'll be riding the wake of an eventful week. While most of the world followed the G-20, Russian-US rapprochement and our dreamy First Lady, here in DC we were preoccupied with budgets and the President's new policy for defeating terrorism and Al Qaeda...

Now that America's exit from Iraq is on the horizon -- we need to begin the long overdue conversation about how we got ourselves into this war. Beyond blaming the Bush administration and the neo-cons. Fingering them is the easy part. We need to talk about the civic and cultural...

Hope and change are a lot to ask for. How about a sign of cautious optimism instead?
Like fiscal accountability across all the government -- including the Defense Department. America's economic crisis demands that every federal agency cut back and sacrifice. The Pentagon is the most undisciplined of...

A behavior is strategic if it influences others by affecting their expectations. This principle of conflict resolution is one that is particularly relevant to the threats in today's world. Neatly defined and bounded states like the ones on political maps don't matter so much anymore. It's people that count. The...

Mumbai. Pirates. Civilian protection. This is what national security looks like today. What will happen with the defense budget in 2009 and beyond is a parlor game for DC wonks at the moment. Still, it is important for everyone who pays taxes to take note of any national security conversation--because...

Last summer, a friend of mine who is a Marine Corps Reservist shipped out for his second tour in Iraq. He sent a moving email the night he boarded his flight out of the USA--detailing the crowds of well wishers from the community; tearful thank yous and hands clasping his...