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Can an arms embargo deter the Houthis? April 15, 2015 | Al Jazeera This interview is in Arabic.        The United Nations Security Council has passed a resolution banning arms sales to Houthis, who condemned the move. They described it as a move that supports “aggression”. At the same time, Iran said it will present a peace plan for Yemen. It involves a ceasefire, humanitarian assistance, a dialogue between Yemeni factions and a broad-based government. But can the UN resolution change things on the ground? And what is behind Tehran’s plan? Presenter Shiulie Ghosh Guests: Khaled Batarfi – senior columnist at the Saudi Gazette Mohammad Marandi – professor at the University of Tehran Dana Stuster – policy analyst at the National Security Network.… Read More ›

Rubio’s Platform is All Criticism, No Alternatives April 14, 2015 Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) punted on foreign policy and national security issues in his speech  announcing his candidacy for president,  limiting his discussion of these issues to a single paragraph. Still, his positions are as clear as they are familiar: Sen. Rubio espouses the same Cold War mentality that made Sen. John McCain such a troubling candidate for commander-in-chief in 2008. He is quick to criticize what he sees as American weakness, from the nuclear negotiations with Iran to U.S. policies toward Russia and China, but he fails to present credible alternatives. As he builds his platform in the months to come, he will need to make a compelling case for not just what’s wrong… Read More ›

Retired General Visits Cincinnati, Talks ISIS Huy Nguyen April 8, 2014 | The News Record As the global ISIS threat continues, Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton arrived in Cincinnati April 1 to address how exactly ISIS began and what America can do to stop it. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh, continues to rampage through the Middle East, dismantling families and government institutions. Within four months after its rise in June of 2014, ISIS had murdered over 5,500 people, according to Newsweek. Just this Tuesday, it was discovered that a mass grave in Tikrit exceeded 3,000 victims, Newsweek reported. Eaton attended a dinner in Xavier University’s Conaton Board Room led by the Foreign Policy Leadership Council in… Read More ›

Misunderstanding Wars in Yemen, Vietnam, and Yemen Once Again By J. Dana Stuster, NSN Policy Analyst April 6, 2015 | Foreign Policy There’s an moment in the 2003 documentary The Fog of War in which former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara lays out what he got wrong in Vietnam. “We saw Vietnam as an element of the Cold War,” he says. “Not what they [the Vietnamese] saw it as: a civil war.” I thought of that the other day as I listened to Adam Baron, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, talking about the Saudi intervention in Yemen. “This is treated as a sectarian battle between Iran-backed Shia and Saudi Arabia-backed Sunnis, but really when you look at the essence of Yemen’s… Read More ›

Sen. Corker’s Iran Legislation: A Bad Bill Beyond Repair April 13, 2015 Tomorrow, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to mark up the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, a bill proposed by Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ). The bill has been percolating in Congress for months and has been described as a reasonable alternative to sanctions legislation that would derail the P5+1 Iranian nuclear negotiations. However, Sen. Corker’s legislation contains a litany of provisions that would move the goalposts on an agreement and make any deal – even a good deal – almost impossible to implement. Some senators are expected to propose several amendments tomorrow to try to rectify some of these concerns, while Republican members plan on… Read More ›

Dr. Bruce Jentleson, NSN board member and Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Duke University, had this to say about the Corker-Menendez bill working its way through the Senate: But in the name of preventing a bad deal, the Corker-Menendez bill weaves a procedural spider web for congressional review and includes a poison pill provision that hinders, rather than helps, getting a good deal. The procedural web starts with a five-day initial reporting requirement for the June comprehensive agreement, including full analysis of its components and a verification assessment. Even for less complex international agreements, it usually takes at least a month for all elements to be analyzed and the reliability of verification to be assessed by State Department, intelligence community and other… Read More ›

The National Security Network (NSN) is pleased to announce that NSN Founder Rand Beers has rejoined the organization as a member of the Advisory Board. Rand founded NSN in 2006 and was most recently the Deputy Assistant to the President for Homeland Security after previously having served as acting Secretary of Homeland Security in 2013. Rand brings decades of government leadership and expertise in counter-terrorism issues to his new role as an NSN Advisory Board Member.     Read More ›

Recognizing Reality: Removing Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List April 10, 2015 Starting today, President Obama will attend the two-day Summit of the Americas held in Panama, where he is expected to interact with Cuba’s Raul Castro. The summit, which takes place every three years, comes as the Obama Administration’s policy of normalizing relations with Cuba is set to proceed. Most notably, the State Department has just recommended that Cuba be removed from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list on the grounds that the country has not practiced or aided terrorism for decades. President Obama is expected to act on the State Department’s recommendation, removing an obstacle to the normalization of ties between the United States and Cuba and opening the door to… Read More ›

What is Sen. Rand Paul Actually Advocating on Foreign Policy? April 8, 2015 Yesterday Sen. Rand Paul announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in a speech in Louisville, Kentucky. Sen. Paul has been an outlier among conservatives in the Senate and has set himself apart from the hawks within his party, particularly on civil liberties and foreign intervention issues. Last December, he cited the National Security Network while discussing the precedent for placing limitations on the U.S. intervention in Iraq and Syria during a Senate markup of a proposed authorization for use of military force (AUMF). But his speech yesterday showed a marked departure from his previous positions – arch-neoconservative Bill Kristol noted his policies were more hawkish. The result was a confusing… Read More ›

Five Myths about the Iran Framework Deal April 6, 2015 The framework for a comprehensive agreement reached by P5+1 negotiators at Lausanne, Switzerland, last week has established the overarching terms of a sustainable, peaceful solution to the Iranian nuclear issue. The terms are more favorable than many expected, and even skeptics of diplomacy – from experts like United Against Nuclear Iran’s Gary Samore to pundits like Bill O’Reilly – say it’s a credible deal worth pursuing. However, some people still aren’t convinced and have brought out many of the same arguments against the deal that were being made before there was a deal to criticize. Here are five of the top reasons critics say the United States should reject the deal, and why they’re wrong.… Read More ›