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
The number of active-duty and veteran troops in Trump's National Security Council isn't the issue, it's whether they can account for their biases and adapt to their new institutional roles.
Foreign law-enforcement officers are on the frontlines of the counterterrorism fight. The United States can help them help themselves.
International NGOs campaigning against preventative approaches to violent extremism should be careful what they wish for.
Editor’s Note: When the United States invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003, it found itself woefully unprepared for the insurgency that followed. It took years—and many lives lost—for the U.S. military to relearn how to fight insurgents, but the results were stunning. By the end of the decade, al-Qaeda in Iraq and other violent groups were on the run, and it looked like Iraq was on the path to stability. Zach Abels at the National Interest, however, warns that much of this valuable knowledge is being lost.
There is an opportunity to resolve some of the rivalry's thorniest issues if the two sides are just willing to sit down and talk.
Canada has managed to keep relations cordial with the Trump administration. Their secret: a whole-of-government, bipartisan strategy.
The Islamic State funded its rise to power through oil smuggling and taxation, but now it's losing control of the resources and populations on which it has relied.
In a country like Libya, it's easy to play six degrees of al-Qaeda. How close is is too close for the United States?
In three books last year, a realist, a liberal interventionist, and a constructivist agree that the global order is approaching a crisis. But what are we supposed to do about it?
With its role in Syria, Russia has presented itself as an alternative security manager in the Middle East—but Moscow is discovering that getting into the region is far easier than getting out.