Articles

182 Items

President George W. Bush thanks U.S. troops in Al Asad, Iraq, Sept. 3, 2007. He stands at a podium in front of rows of troops in uniform.

Staff Sgt. D. Myles Cullen/U.S. Air Force

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Bargaining with the Military: How Presidents Manage the Political Costs of Civilian Control

    Author:
  • Andrew Payne
| Summer 2023

Dominant normative theories of civil-military relations focus on ideal-type scenarios that do not reflect the messy, inherently political character of elite decision-making. A case study of civil-military dynamics during the Iraq War identifies four decision-making strategies that George W. Bush and Barack Obama used to avoid incurring a domestic political penalty for rejecting the military’s preferences.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan talks to members of the media

Presidential Press Service via AP, Pool

Journal Article - Contemporary Security Policy

Coercive Disclosure: The Weaponization of Public Intelligence Revelation in International Relations

| 2023

Can intelligence serve as a coercive instrument in international relations? While coercion literature mostly addresses military and economic means, this article argues that coercion can also include the deliberate public disclosure of intelligence. Intelligence can be employed to threaten adversaries, reduce their latitude, and force them to adjust their plans and operations

Tel Aviv Coastline seen from Jaffa

Wikimedia Commons/ Kallerna

Journal Article - Elsevier Inc.

The ecological tradeoffs of desalination in land-constrained countries seeking to mitigate climate change

| Feb. 18, 2022

The global demand for desalinated water is increasing at a remarkable rate. In a future with increasing demand for water and low-carbon electricity, an interesting ecological dilemma emerges. In a decarbonized world, providing desalinated water for domestic use and aquatic ecological restoration could increasingly come at the expense of open space lost to renewables such as solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind turbines. In this article we examine the environmental tradeoffs of providing freshwater from desalination under a solar photovoltaic-based decarbonization strategy, using Israel as an example.

 The U.N., left, and Iraqi flags sit on the table of the conference hall prior to the talks on details for a return of the U.N weapons inspectors to Iraq at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, Monday, Sept. 30, 2002.

AP Photo/Diether Endlicher

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Cheater’s Dilemma: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Path to War

| Summer 2020

From 1991 to 2003, the Iraqi leadership faced a cheater’s dilemma —specifically, how much it should disclose about its past weapons of mass destruction capabilities and cover-up efforts. An examination of the Iraqi leadership’s handling of this key policy dilemma reveals how pervasive principle-agent problems shaped Iraqi behavior.

President Donald Trump, joined by from left, Gen. David Berger, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, and Gen. Joseph M. Martin, pauses as he speaks to media during a briefing with senior military leaders in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. 7, 2019.

(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Paradoxes of Professionalism: Rethinking Civil-Military Relations in the United States

| Spring 2020

The U.S. military’s prevailing norms of military professionalism are poorly suited to meet today’s civil-military challenges. They undermine the military’s nonpartisan and apolitical ethos, weaken civilian leaders' control of military activity, and undercut the country’s strategic effectiveness in armed conflict.

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Journal Article

Lines, Flows and Transnational Crime: Toward a Revised Approach to Countering the Underworld of Globalization

| Dec. 16, 2019

In this article, we develop a new framework for combating transnational criminal activity. We argue that global illicit flows, perpetrated by organized crime, in the interstices of lawful trade and travel, embody a critical and debilitating non-state security threat in today’s world, one that the Westphalian international system of sovereign states remains ill-equipped to confront. Accordingly, we seek to generate a wider discussion in the field regarding a revised approach to this threat that is situated within a global framework of collaborative law enforcement which incorporates, in appropriate fashion, certain military and counter-terrorist strategies.

The propositions we advance in support of a revised approach to countering transnational crime and its globalized web-enabled criminals include: (a) terrorism is one species of transnational crime; (b) the criminal justice model of arrest, prosecution, conviction and incarceration is a partial and insufficient response to transnational crime; (c) national security and law enforcement functions should be viewed analytically as a “public security” continuum rather than disciplines separated by bright lines; (d) countering transnational criminal organizations effectively may require development of a hybrid law enforcement/military capacity and new strategic and tactical doctrines, including safeguards against abuse, to govern its deployment; (e) joint border management within nations and between them, coordinated with the private sector, is required and inter-agency cooperation and multilateral institutions must be strengthened in accordance with new international norms and (f) North America, a region construed as extending from Colombia to the Arctic and from Bermuda to Hawaii, could develop in the future, together with the European Union, as an initial site for a model pilot of the new approach.

an intelligence officer, helps provide security while Afghan and coalition security force leaders speak with village elders

U.S. Army/Sgt. Joseph Watson

Journal Article - Terrorism and Political Violence

In The Warlords' Shadow: Special Operations Forces, the Afghans, and Their Fight Against the Taliban

| Nov. 25, 2019

Nathaniel L. Moir reviews In The Warlords' Shadow: Special Operations Forces, the Afghans, and Their Fight Against the Taliban by Daniel R. Green  (Naval Institute Press, 2017).

Soldiers marching with national flags in parade

AP Photo/Ron Edmonds

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Buying Allies: Payment Practices in Multilateral Military Coalition-Building

    Author:
  • Marina E. Henke
| Spring 2019

Many states have been paid to join multilateral military coalitions. These payments are largely covered by “pivotal states”—those that care the most about an operation’s success—and take the form of deployment subsidies and political side deals to attract critical contributors to the mission.