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
- "Bashar the Gambler: Why is Syria taking so many strategic and political risks?"
- The whispered reports of the Sept. 6 Israeli raid on a Syrian nuclear cache are as disturbing as they are incomplete. Although verifying the extent, if any, of Syria's nuclear ambitions is difficult, such a risky move by Syria does fit our emerging picture of Bashar Assad, the nation's leader. Unlike his father and predecessor, Hafez, Bashar is a gambler. And he is rolling the dice in Iraq, in Lebanon, with Israel, and most dangerously at home in Syria.
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- "The Right Stuff"
WHAT COMES to mind when someone mentions intelligence and the Iraq War? Why, of course, the intelligence estimate on Iraqi unconventional weapons programs—excoriated in a 500-page report that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued with much fanfare in July 2004, further torn apart in another 500-page report by a White House–appointed commission, and scorned and vilified ever since.
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- "A War We Might Just Win"
Kenneth Pollack, Adjunct Faculty, co-authors op-ed article "A War We Might Just Win," The New York Times, July 30, 2007.
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Articles
- ""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
- 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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- Leveraging for Success in United Nations Peace Operations
In many peoples' minds the history of United Nations peace operations in the 1990s is one where failures so overshadowed successes that they threw a pall over the organization's 50th anniversary celebration in 1995. While numerous analyses have been done to derive lessons learned from the failures, far less attention has been paid to what could be learned from the successes. Utilizing both case studies and cross-cutting analyses, this book helps to fill that gap. It utilizes an organizing framework built around the concept of "leverage" to investigate how outside actors induced belligerents to stop fighting, accept intervention, and implement stabilizing measures. The book's authors include both practitioners and academics, and is intended to help advance both the theory and the practice of peace operations.
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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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Testimony
- "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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