NSN works with a broad network of experts, advocates and leaders to identify, develop and communicate innovative national security solutions that are both pragmatic and principled. Through rapid response operations, media outreach, policy task forces and other activities, the Network is bringing cohesion and strategic focus to the progressive national security community.

Policy Beliefs

We aim to meet the need for positive but pointed, user-friendly but not simplistic
backgrounders and talking points on key issues that interested specialists and non-specialists alike can use. The Policy Basics Project is developing materials that include both brief talking points and facts as well as longer backgrounders with policy proposals – “National Security 101” and “National Security 201.” We developed the papers with policy groups of progressive experts from think tanks, academia and the private sector, and they serve as the foundation for activists, policy professionals, non-specialists, media and political figures who want to talk, write or just think about core national security issues.

In the States: Progressive National Security Speakers Bureau

The Progressive National Security Speakers Bureau is designed to bring the foreign policy conversation to interested citizens throughout the country. Our state chapters organize national security and foreign policy forums; do outreach with local media, opinion leaders, political figures, educational and civic institutions; identify local foreign policy resources which they share with Washington; and conduct intense foreign policy debates and discussions around local and national issues. Our founding chapters in Iowa, Ohio, Florida, Connecticut and Pennsylvania are being joined by newly-emerging chapters in Colorado, New Mexico, Missouri and elsewhere. The chapter activities serve to bring local and national leaders together and spark partnerships among a wide range of local and national membership organizations, advocacy groups, and think tanks.

Who Owns Security

The American public has decisively rejected the national security frameworks of the Bush administration – but we understand very little about what it is looking for instead, or how Americans understand the globalized 21st-century world in which we now live. In partnership with the US in the World project of Demos, the Who Owns Security project will do in-depth qualitative and quantitative research into how the public currently views the parties on national security; why the public holds those attitudes and feelings; and where they do or don’t connect with specific national security issues. This project will consider both parties, providing information and hypotheses that will inform advocates of thoughtful US global engagement across party lines.

Democracy Arsenal

NSN hosts Democracy Arsenal – the pre-eminent foreign policy group blog. The Arsenal features foreign policy experts eager to engage in debate among their colleagues and within the blogosphere, and open and enhance the conversation about US national security. The independent blog has made itself a go-to source for both bloggers and foreign policy experts.

Policy Transition Project

NSN is working with the Gillman Foundation to bring together midcareer foreign policy experts, who would likely have important roles in a future progressive administration, develop cohesion and the habits of working through the toughest issues profoundly and collegially.

The War Room

NSN’s rapid response operation – building on a strong 2006 track record – assists advocates, elected leaders, candidates, national security surrogates, other organizations and the public in understanding and articulating the important national security issues affecting the United States. We act as a clearinghouse, echo chamber, and media-booking vehicle for the progressive expert community. To do this, NSN communicates actively with progressive members of Congress, campaigns and like-minded organizations, providing them with talking points, fact sheets and analyses of developing situations, holding press briefings with experts, booking experts on television and radio and putting ideas out through the blogosphere to promote progressive national security policies and counter the conservative spin machine. In addition, NSN provides advocates, not-for-profit organizations and candidates with briefings and rapid response, as well as assistance with policy support materials, on particular national security issues and priorities as they arise.