In this feature, Brookings senior fellow and terrorism expert Daniel Byman and deputy foreign policy editor Dana Stuster curate a weekly essay on foreign and military affairs of interest to national security legal practitioners and scholars. Although not specifically dealing with legal matters, the feature offers context and perspective to many of the debates that go on at the site regularly. Lawfare has always conceived of national security law broadly, because to practice it well, one needs to draw on a diversity of expertise in technical fields like communications technologies, robotics and economics. With The Foreign Policy Essay, Dan and Dana provide us with a window into the worlds of strategy, military operations, geopolitics, and whatever else grabs their interest on any given week.
Latest in Foreign Policy Essay
There's room to improve in the upcoming midterm elections.
Bin Laden's successor steered the organization through a tumultuous decade and left it stagnated, but the next leader will have new opportunities for growth.
The hype about medium-altitude long-endurance drones pays too little attention to their vulnerability.
The U.S. military would probably fare better in a conventional conflict like Russia's war in Ukraine, but not all the lessons it learned in the war on terror would serve it well.
Ambitious national CVE policies are trapped in a vicious circle that restarts after every major terrorist attack.
As Biden heads to the Middle East, there are limits to the potential for diplomatic breakthroughs.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham's unusual request to be removed from the U.S. terrorism lists is unlikely to be fulfilled, but this reflects bureaucratic inertia and political incentives as much as the group's radical politics.
The Russian military's prioritization of dramatic public displays over exercises that simulate combat have left it ill-prepared for the war in Ukraine. But U.S. security force assistance programs often incentivize similar, superficial demonstrations.
Declining availability of abortion care will make it more difficult for women in uniform to keep their healthcare decisions private, and the military's policies may reinforce harmful stereotypes.
What does it mean when individuals and groups are included in U.N. terrorism reports but don't make the cut for sanctions?