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.
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Trudeau campaigns for a U.N. Security Council seat, Canada responds to the coronavirus epidemic and other Canadian national security news.
Here are the excerpts most relevant to Lawfare readers, organized by topic, in the order in which they were mentioned.
The Trump administration’s high turnover in leadership is unprecedented and severely limits the role of the NSC.
On Tuesday, CNN and the Des Moines Register hosted the seventh debate of the 2020 Democratic Primary campaign. Wolf Blitzer, Abby Phillipand Brianne Pfannenstiel moderated the discussion. We’ve selected parts of the transcript relevant to national security. These excerpts are organized both thematically and chronologically.
A complete transcript is available through the Des Moines Register here.
On Thursday, PBS Newshour and Politico hosted the sixth debate of the 2020 Democratic primary campaign. We’ve combed through the transcript from the debate to present the national security-related exchanges.
In July 2017, we began a polling project to measure public confidence in government institutions on national security matters on an ongoing basis. This post provides our data for the third quarter of 2019 (June-September).
Amid the hubbub of L’Affaire Ukrainienne, you could be forgiven for overlooking another story that has emerged out of Congress over the past week. It’s a grubby, unpleasant story—so much so that it feels ugly to draw attention to it. But the times are ugly, after all, and the story is a concerning harbinger of what might be to come in the lead-up to 2020.
White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney made a stunning admission of a quid pro quo by confirming that President Donald Trump
On Tuesday, CNN and the New York Times hosted the fourth debate of the 2020 Democratic primary campaign, moderated by Anderson Cooper, Erin Burnett and Mark Lacey. We’ve combed through the transcript from the debate to present the national security-related exchanges. These excerpts are organized both thematically and chronologically.
A complete transcript of the debate can be found through the Washington Post.
Impeachment
On Thursday, ABC hosted the third debate of the 2020 Democratic primary campaign, moderated by Linsey Davis, David Muir, Jorge Ramos and George Stephanopoulos. We’ve combed through the transcript from the debate to present the national security-related exchanges. These excerpts are organized both thematically and chronologically.
A complete transcript of the debate can be found through the Washington Post.