Publications by CPASS Scholars and Faculty
The scholars and faculty affiliated with the Center for Peace and Security Studies (CPASS) have authored many books, journal articles, opinion pieces, and congressional testimonies, as well as having conducted numerous interviews. Their work presents clear, pragmatic policy solutions to the world's leading security challenges - counterinsurgency, terrorism, intelligence reform, nuclear program development and homeland security.
Op-Eds
- "The threat of homegrown terrorism"
- Graduate Lydia Khalil on terrorism in the U.S.
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Articles
- "The United States and Mexico: Mutual Problems, Joint Solutions"
- Upon assuming the presidency in December 2006, Felipe Calderon engaged in an all-out war against organized crime. His strategy is to use the military as the centerpiece of national security policy.
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- "Mind Fitness: Improving Operational Effectiveness and Building Warrior Resilience"
- "Today’s complex, fluid, and unpredictable operational environment both demands more from the military in terms of mission requirements and exposes troops to more stressors and potential trauma than ever before."
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- "The Equifinality of War Termination: Multiple Paths to Ending War"
- Our theory contributes an alternative domestic politics pathway to traditional bargaining models of war termination. In bargaining models, the rational updating process that produces an overlapping bargaining space can develop a significant lag that extends the war beyond a logical ending point. We posit that a change in the domestic governing coalition is often necessary to kick-start this updating process once it has become bogged down through preference, information, and entrapment obstacles. We demonstrate that domestic coalition shifts are a critical path to peace, using survival analysis techniques on Bennett and Stam’s (1996) war-level dataset of wars (1862-1990) and a new belligerent-level dataset of wars (1945-2006). These tests show that because war policies can become institutionalized over time, there is a very strong link between coalition shifts and war termination.
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- "Ending the Korean War: The Role of Domestic Coalition Shifts in Overcoming Obstacles to Peace"
- Bargaining models of war suggest that war ends after two sides develop an overlapping bargaining space. Domestic mechanisms—domestic governing coalitions, a state’s elite foreign policy decisionmaking group, and their role in ending interstate war—are critical in explaining how, when, and why that bargaining space develops. Through preference, information, and entrapment obstacles, wars can become “stuck” and require a change in expectations to produce a war-terminating bargaining space. A major source of such change is a shift in belligerents’ governing coalitions. Events in the United States, China, and the Soviet Union during the Korean War illustrate the dynamics of these obstacles and the need for domestic coalition shifts in overcoming them before the conflict could be brought to an end.
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- "Do Targeted Killings Work?"
Daniel Byman comments on the use of drone strikes against al Qaeda and the Taliban.
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- "Is Iran Ripe for Revolution?"
Are the demonstrations today the beginning of a velvet revolution comparable to those that swept dictators from power in Eastern Europe, or will June 2009 be remembered like June 1989, when Chinese troops quashed pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square?
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- "The Bully Wins"
The impact of Iran’s presidential election may have as much to do with the dispute over the result as with who was officially declared the winner.
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- "The Drone War"
"Daniel Byman, who runs the Security Studies program at Georgetown, has studied the effects that targeted assassinations have on terrorist groups."
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- "Parthian Shot"
Paul Pillar reviews two books on Iran, including SSP alumnus Steve Ward's book Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces.
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- "Japanese Counterinsurgency in the Philippines: 1942-45"
SSP student Brian Hardesty's article on Japanese counterinsurgency is published in the Small Wars Journal.
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- "Less is Not More in Aghanistan"
SSP student Seth Rosen's opinion piece is published in the World Politics Review.
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- "Beyond Waterboarding: What Interrogators Will Be Allowed to Do"
Paul Pillar comments on the status of interrogation techniques under the Obama administration.
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- "Talking with Insurgents: A Guide for the Perplexed"
Talking with insurgents is often a necessary first step toward defeating them or reaching an acceptable compromise. These talks must often be done even as insurgents shoot at U.S. soldiers, and they in turn, shoot at them. Daniel Byman offers a guide on engaging with insurgents.
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- "Taliban vs. Predator: Are Targeted Killings Inside of Pakistan a Good Idea?"
Targeted killings of enemy leaders have high costs, high risks, and limited benefits -- but are still a sensible way to combat al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan. Article Link
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- "The Threshold Test Ban Treaty"
Edward Ifft writes on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
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- "How to Discourage the Speaking of Truth to Power"
Paul Pillar writes on the damage done by the Freeman saga in Foreign Policy magazine: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4754
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- "The Age of Woman"
Bruce Hoffman reviews the changing roles of women in national security and counterterrorism.
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- "Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President"
Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President is the final product of an eighteen month Saban Center at Brookings-Council on Foreign Relations project, including the contribution of Bruce Reidel.
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- "Security First: U.S. Priorities in Israeli-Palestinian Peacemaking"
Montgomery Meigs contributes to commentary and recommendations on the Dayton Mission
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- "An Autopsy of the Iraq Debacle: Policy Failure or Bridge Too Far?"
This article examines whether the outbreak of an insurgency after the U.S. invasion of Iraq was an avoidable policy failure or whether the structural conditions surrounding the occupation made such an outbreak inevitable.
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- "The Anbar Awakening: An Alliance of Incentives"
SSP graduate John McCary writes on "The Anbar Awakening: An Alliance of Incentives" in January 2009 issue of The Washington Quarterly.
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- "The Tao of the Arab Center"
Paul Pillar reviews possibilities for the new U.S. admnistrations' policies in the Middle East for the National Interest.
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- "Changing Defense Industrial Base Not Easy"
Barry Watts comments on reshaping the defense industry in "Changing Defense Industrial Base Not Easy"
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- "Are We Winning?"
SSP adjunct professor Bernard Finel and SSP student Holly Gell co-author a New American Security Project Report showing that the US is not winning the “War on Terror.”
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- "Characteristics of troop Contributors to Peace Operations and Implications for Global Capacity"
Donald C.F. Daniel and Leigh C. Caraher. "Characteristics of troop Contributors to Peace Operations and Implications for Global Capacity." International Peacekeeping 13.3 (2006): 297-315.
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- "Al Qaida at 20: Is the Movement Destined To Fail?"
On Aug. 11, 1988, al-Qaida was founded. Yesterday, Daniel Byman examined Osama Bin Laden's impressive successes; today he explains why Bin Laden's movement may fail and fragment in the years to come on Slate.com.
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- "Rogue Operators"
In "Rogue Operators," Daniel Byman takes a closer look at how government passivity to terrorism rather than active support poses the greatest danger.
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- "Cell Phones in the Hindu Kush"
Photos taken by Bruce Hoffman and Seth Jones during their trip to Afghanistan. Click here to read their article in the National Interest, "Cellphones in the Hindu Kush."
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- "Cell Phones in the Hindu Kush"
Photos taken by Bruce Hoffman and Seth Jones during their trip to Afghanistan. Click here to read their article in the National Interest, "Cellphones in the Hindu Kush."
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- "When to Leave Iraq: Today, Tomorrow, or Yesterday?"
- Dr. Colin Kahl and Dr. William Odom analyze the implications of continued U.S. presence in Iraq as opposed to withdrawal from it.
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- "No More. No Torture. No Exceptions."
SSP Faculty, Paul Pillar contributes to a series of articles on the use of torture.
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- "The Changing Nature of State Sponsorship Terrorism"
CPASS Director, Daniel Byman writes on "The Changing Nature of State Sponsorship Terrorism," Brookings Institution.
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- ""No Torture. No Exceptions" Series"
Paul Pillar contributes to the debate on the use of torture.
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- "Iran, Terrorism, and Weapons of Mass Destruction"
This article reviews Iran's past and current use of terrorism and assesses why U.S. attempts to halt Iran's efforts have met with little success.
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- "Intelligent Design? The Unending Saga of Intelligence Reform"
Paul R. Pillar reviews books on intelligence reform - two new books, Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes and Amy Zegart's Spying Blind, distort the historical record. A third, by Richard Betts, rightly observes that no matter how good the spies, failures are inevitable.
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- "Veterans and Colleges Have a Lot to Offer Each Other"
Sens. James H. Webb Jr. and Chuck Hagel, in their eloquent call for a new GI Bill for today's veterans, convincingly argue that our troops deserve more educational support than our government provides. The senators, both Vietnam veterans themselves, point out that today's educational benefits cover only 13 percent of the cost of attending Columbia University and 11 percent for Harvard Law School, effectively excluding many deserving veterans from attending elite institutions.
As a citizen I can only agree. And as an educator who runs a large master's-level program dedicated to security studies, I believe that the benefits of such an effort would go well beyond the individual soldiers who would receive a better education. Civilians, future administrations, and society as a whole would benefit greatly if more retired and active-duty soldiers went to civilian educational institutions.
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- "Informed Decisions: Process Before Policy"
Paul Pillar, SSP Core Faculty, writes the initial essay in a weekly series that the American Security Project recently launched on "Iraq: Lessons Learned".
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- "U.S. Counter-terrorism Options: A Taxonomy"
CPASS Director Daniel Byman authors "U.S. Counter-terrorism Options: A Taxonomy" in Survival, Autumn 2007, vol.49. no. 3
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- "Opium Licensing in Afghanistan: Its Desirability and Feasibility"
The licensing of opium for medical purposes in Afghanistan, most prominently advocated by the Senlis Council,1 would reduce some of the negative effects of unmitigated illicit drug production. It would also eliminate several important negative side-effects of standard counternarcotics policies.
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- "Measuring Progress in Iraq"
Nobody seems to know how to talk about and evaluate “progress” in Iraq, or the lack thereof. In the context of the confusion, progress should be evaluated along several dimensions: type, location, causal direction, and possibilities for aggregation and sustainability.
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- "The Sorcerer’s Apprentice"
When the two most powerful Americans in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, testify before Congress next week, expect a lot of debate over whether Iraq has met Congress’s benchmarks for success. But don’t be fooled. The most important improvements in Iraq have little to do with the U.S. troop surge and even less to do with the central government.
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- "Al-Qaeda: Beginning of the End, or Grasping at Straws?"
Since early September, there has been a flurry of media reports and commentaries suggesting that the Saudi religious establishment has turned against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda; that a split has occurred among the Taliban, Ayman al-Zawahiri and bin Laden; and that al-Zawahiri has pushed bin Laden aside, sidelined him, and seized control of al-Qaeda. Hopefully this troika of al-Qaeda disasters is deadly accurate, but each merits consumption with a large grain of salt.
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- "Salute and Disobey?"
- Did the Bush administration disregard military expertise before the Iraq war? Should military leaders have done more to protest in response?
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- "Intelligence, Policy and the War in Iraq"
During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community's former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the community's expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.
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Books
- Paths to Peace: Domestic Coalition Shifts, War Termination and the Korean War
- Elizabeth A. Stanley. Paths to Peace: Domestic Coalition Shifts, War Termination and the Korean War. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009.
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- Vaults, Mirrors, and Masks Rediscovering U.S. Counterintelligence
In one indispensable volume, top practitioners and scholars in the field explain the importance of counterintelligence today and explore the causes of—and practical solutions for—U.S. counterintelligence weaknesses.
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- Peace Operations: Trends, Progress, and Prospects
This groundbreaking volume will help policymakers and academics understand better the regional and national factors shaping the prospects for peace operations into the next decade.
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- Occupational Hazards: Success and Failure in Military Occupation
In Occupational Hazards, David M. Edelstein elucidates the occasional successes of military occupations and their more frequent failures.
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- Analyzing Intelligence
Drawing on the individual and collective experience of recognized intelligence experts and scholars in the field, Analyzing Intelligence provides the first comprehensive assessment of the state of intelligence analysis since 9/11.
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- Transforming U.S. Intelligence
Transforming U.S. Intelligence supports the mandate of the new director of national intelligence by offering both careful analysis of existing strengths and weaknesses in U.S. intelligence and specific recommendations on how to fix its problems without harming its strengths. These recommendations, based on intimate knowledge of the way U.S. intelligence actually works, include suggestions for the creative mixing of technologies with new missions to bring about the transformation of U.S. intelligence without incurring unnecessary harm or expense. The goal is the creation of an intelligence community that can rapidly respond to developments in international politics, such as the emergence of nimble terrorist networks while reconciling national security requirements with the rights and liberties of American citizens.
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- Six Decades of Guided Munitions and Battle Networks: Progress and Prospects
The research and analysis underlying this report began in 2003 and aimed at answering the following question. How has the maturation of non-nuclear guided munitions during the late 1980s and early 1990s affected the conduct of warfare by advanced militaries, especially by the various combat arms of the US armed forces?
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- Economic Instruments Of Security Policy
SSP Senior Fellow Gary Shiffman publishes his new book, Economic Instruments of Security Policy.
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- Global Power Knowledge. Science and Technology in International Affairs
- SSP Core Faculty member Kai-Henrik Barth publishes his co-edited book, Global Power Knowledge: Science and Technology in International Affairs.
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- Inside Terrorism
SSP Core Faculty member Bruce Hoffman publishes a new edition of his seminal work, Inside Terrorism.
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- Things Fall Apart: Containing the Spillover from an Iraqi Civil War
Iraq is rapidly descending into all-out civil war. Unfortunately, the United States probably will not be able to just walk away from the chaos. Even setting aside the humanitarian nightmare that will ensue, a full-scale civil war would likely consume more than Iraq: historically, such massive conflicts have often had highly deleterious effects on neighboring countries and other outside states. Spillover from an Iraq civil war could be disastrous.
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- The Five Front War: The Better Way to Fight Global Jihad
- CPASS Director Daniel Byman offers a new approach to fighting the war on terrorism. He convincingly argues that two of the main solutions to terrorism offered by politicians–military intervention and the democratization of the Arab world–shouldn’t even be our top priorities. Instead, he presents a fresh way to face intelligence and law enforcement challenges ahead: conduct counterinsurgency operations, undermine al-Qaeda’s ideology, selectively push for reforms, and build key lasting alliances.
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- Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism
- Thousands of people have died at the hands of terrorist groups who rely on state support for their activities. Iran and Syria are well known as sponsors of terrorism, while other countries, some with strong connections to the West, have enabled terrorist activity by turning a blind eye. Daniel Byman's book is the first to analyze this phenomenon...
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Other
- "Afghanistan and Iraq"
- SSP student Nancy Youssef on NPR's Diane Rehm show
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Testimony
- "The U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan: Impacts upon U.S. Interests in Pakistan"
- Testimony presented before the United States House of Representatives, Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on November 5, 2009.
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- "The Afghan Elections: Who Lost What?"
- SSP Assistant Professor Fair testifies before the Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia House Committee on Foreign Affairs on the elections in Afghanistan.
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- "Counterterrorism and Stability in Afghanistan"
- Professor Pillar testifies to the House Armed Services Committee on the war in Afghanistan.
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- "The F-22 Project In Retrospect"
- Professor Watts assesses the F-22 Program.
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- "Afghanistan and Pakistan: Understanding a Complex Threat EnvironmentAfghanistan and Pakistan: Understanding a Complex Threat Environment"
Paul Pillar provides testimony to the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on the conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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- "Recommendation for the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism"
Dr. Byman, CPASS Director, gives testimony on terrorist acquisition of WMDs and recommendations for countering this threat.
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- "The Capablility of Emergency Depts and Emergency Medical Systems in the U.S. to Respond to Mass Casualty Events Resulting from Terrorist Attacks"
SSP Core Faculty testifies on "The Capablility of Emergency Depts and Emergency Medical Systems in the U.S. to Respond to Mass Casualty Events Resulting from Terrorist Attacks" before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
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- "Six Years Later: Innovative Approaches to Defeating Al Qaeda"
CPASS Director, Daniel Byman, testified on innovative approaches to defeating Al Qaeda before the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs.
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- "Extraordinary Rendition, Extraterritorial Detention, and Treatment of Detainees: Restoring Our Moral Credibility and Strengthening Our Diplomatic Standing"
CPASS Director Daniel Byman testifies at a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on “Extraordinary Rendition, Extraterritorial Detention, and Treatment of Detainees.
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- "A Third Way: Alternatives for Iraq’s Future"
The House Armed Services Committee Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee met to receive testimony on “A Third Way: Alternatives for Iraq’s Future” (Part 2 of 3).
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