8 Items

The amphibious transport dock ships USS San Antonio (LPD 17) and USS New York (LPD 21) are underway together in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Virginia, June 9, 2011. Suspected terrorists have been held aboard both of these ships.

USMC Photo

Analysis & Opinions - The Atlantic

America's Floating Prisons

| June 27, 2014

"The U.S. government has also embraced the approach because it has limited options for holding and interrogating men like Abu Khattala after capture. The Obama administration remains committed to ending detention operations at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. While the facility is still home to almost 150 alleged terrorists, the United States has not sent any new detainees there since March 2008. Detaining suspected terrorists at other overseas facilities is likewise not an option."

U.S. Airmen with the 451st Expeditionary Operations Group participate in a Memorial Day ceremony at Kandahar Airfield in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, May 27, 2013.

DoD Photo

Analysis & Opinions - New Yorker

Memorial Day, at War

| May 24, 2014

"For most of Kabul, it was a mundane Monday. For soldiers on a small base in the city’s center, it was another day at war, another day planning a response to the Taliban spring offensive. For the Americans in that group, it was also Memorial Day."

News - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Marisa Porges on Syria, Russia, the U.S. and the Rebels

| September 18, 2013

Did the U.S. threat of force push Bashar Assad's regime to relinquish its chemical weapons? International Security Program Fellow Marisa Porges isn't so sure. Porges dives into the complicated situation in Syria, analyzing the interests of various players including the Russians, the United States, and the hundreds of individual groups that comprise the Syrian resistance

First stage in the Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, 20 October 1986.

Wikimedia Commons

Report - International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence

Talking to the Taliban: Hope over History?

| July 2013

Talking to the Taliban: Hope over History? provides a history of attempts to talk to the Taliban. The publication of the report coincides with the announcement that the United States will begin direct negotiations with the Taliban within days. The report charts the history of talks with the Taliban and their forebears. It explains that such talks are nothing new and that contacts have existed between the Taliban and the West for many years and argues that attempts to negotiate with the Taliban since 2001 have been characterised by wishful thinking, bad timing, poor management and the 'chaos of good intentions'.

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center Newsletter

Marisa Porges' Journey from Naval Flight Officer to Counterterror Expert

    Author:
  • Wesley Nord
| Summer 2013

"Belfer Center Fellow Marisa Porges' career has already spanned the worlds of academia and policymaking, the government and the military. As an undergraduate at Harvard, Porges earned honors with a degree in geophysics and, during senior year, commanded her Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps unit. After graduation, she commissioned as a naval flight officer in the U.S. Navy and managed the weapons systems aboard EA-6B Prowlers, a carrier-based electronic warfare jet.... [now] as a doctoral candidate in the Department of War Studies at King's College London and a research fellow with the Belfer Center's International Security Program, she now combines scholarship and practice."

Analysis & Opinions - Philadelphia Inquirer

Nation's Challenge: Terrorist Next Door

| April 21, 2013

"Active support from and cooperation with American Muslims will be one of the most effective ways to thwart future terrorist attacks. As Saudi counterterrorism officials continually remind me, the friends and family of potential jihadists are the best form of defense against radicalization. This approach works in America, too."

President Barack Obama and moderator Bob Schieffer, right, listen to Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, left, during the third presidential debate at Lynn University, Oct. 22, 2012, in Boca Raton, Fla.

AP Photo

Analysis & Opinions - The New York Times

Shopping List Foreign Policy

| October 23, 2012

"...[T]onight's debate didn't change many (any?) voters' opinions about either candidate. And it left national security wonks I know banging their heads against the table, still wondering how the election will affect America's foreign policies in the years ahead. But at least we're now certain the military has fewer bayonets than it did in 1916."

Mar. 23, 2011: Afghan detainees are seen through mesh wire fence inside the Parwan detention facility near Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan. Oversight of the main U.S. detention center in Afghanistan has been transfered to the Afghan government.

AP Photo

Analysis & Opinions - The New York Times

Dead Men Share No Secrets

| September 25, 2012

"But this one-sided approach — always opting to kill instead of capture — is a major weakness of America's current approach to counterterrorism. It deprives us of significant amounts of intelligence about what Al Qaeda is thinking and planning, and information that could help find other senior terrorists. After all, it was intelligence from a detainee that helped American forces track down Bin Laden."