One of the great benefits of democracy is that politics impacts policy, even national security policy. Elections, confirmation battles, and legislative fights all affect the way the United States balances its competing priorities, interests and values as it conducts foreign and security affairs. National security professionals would therefore be wise to keep an eye on what candidates are saying about national security matters, how they are faring in the polls, and on which way the winds in Congress seem to be blowing the national security issues of the day.
Latest in Politics & National Security
Recent polling data on the Russia investigation underscores the degree to which partisanship taints Americans’ assessment of security politics.
Merrick Garland may not want to be FBI Director, but the right candidate looks a whole lot like him.
Through the looking glass: Former CIA analysts approximate what a foreign intelligence assessment of the United States might currently look like.
A look at the principle of "militant democracy" embodied in art. 21 sec. 2 of Germany's Basic Law, which provides that the Federal Constitutional Court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht, must declare the dissolution of any political party that seeks to undermine or abolish the free and democratic order of Germany or to endanger its existence.
Is Edward Price’s dramatic departure from CIA the first crack in a dam of intelligence professionals flooding toward the exits under Trump? Or can Price be viewed as a theatrical, but statistically insignificant, blip on the radar of service at CIA?
How much do we know about this separate domain of privately funded congressional foreign travel? Has reliance on private sources become more or less common over time? Which members of Congress have participated? Where did they go? And who paid for it?
Steve Bannon isn’t an arch-villain. And he’s not the guy who’s going to destroy American democracy. Instead, as I’ll explain, he’s just an internet troll.
While there is a growing consensus among certain segments of the population that the Trump travel ban is counterproductive and un-American, the nation as a whole remains deeply divided on the question of its merits.
An overview of the Strengthening Oversight of National Security Act of 2017.
Separate from the concerns that some have expressed regarding Bannon’s ideology or his qualifications to serve in his new role, the decision to install the White House’s chief political strategist as a key decision maker within the NSC policy process is an ill-conceived decision that threatens to politicize the NSC policy-making process from top to bottom.