NSN Update

Hyperbole is not a Strategy December 18, 2015 While all the candidates on the Republican debate stage in Las Vegas criticized Democrats on national security issues, very few of them presented anything resembling a clear strategy for tackling the threats facing the United States. Instead, they substituted tough talk, threats, and fearmongering for strategy, showing that they know how to scare people, not solve problems. Jeb Bush thinks we need “to destroy ISIS before it destroys us.” By saying that, Jeb Bush showed that he has no idea what kind of threat ISIS is or how to combat it. If every ISIS combatant assembled in one place, their roughly 30,000 fighters would be fewer than the total number of soldiers in a two U.S. Army… Read More ›

NSN 2016 Update: Disqualified – It’s Not Just Trump December 11, 2015 While the media has churned over Donald Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States, they’ve neglected the extent to which his rivals have advocated similarly unconstitutional, irresponsible policies. If Donald Trump’s remarks disqualify him from the presidency, his rivals are similarly disqualified. Donald Trump’s latest Islamophobic salvo—calling for a blanket ban on Muslims entering the United States—was so awful that the White House said it “disqualifies him from being president.” But despite their frantic attempts to distance themselves from Trump after his comments, his fellow candidates espouse the same ideas using only slightly less appalling rhetoric. So if Trump is disqualified for saying “no Muslims allowed,” why doesn’t Jeb’s “Christians… Read More ›

NSN 2016 Update: Return to the Dark Side December 4, 2015 In recent days, conservative candidates for president have revived the rhetoric of the immediate post 9-11 period and have seemed almost eager to play into the hands of ISIS, campaigning on policies that reinforce ISIS’s claims that the West is engaged in religiously-motivated warfare against all Muslims. Ben Carson, Chris Christie, and Donald Trump all want to bring back waterboarding. While these candidates agree that the United States should start torturing people again, none of them have provided any reason to believe that torture gathers information that could not be gathered by lawful methods. There are, however, strong reasons not to bring back waterboarding: not only is it torture, and therefore a war crime,… Read More ›

NSN 2016 Update: Clash of Civilizations November 13, 2015 Over the last few days, Republicans have engaged in a spirited competition over who can say the most horrible things about Syrian refugees, and a few went further, calling for unconstitutional religious tests that threaten the core freedoms this country was founded to protect. Marco Rubio is reading straight from the ISIS playbook when he calls the conflict in the Middle East a “clash of civilizations.” “ISIS wants to make this a clash of civilizations,” says Rand Beers, former Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and founder of NSN. “Why should we be helping them make their case? Why should we be turning on our own values?” By feeding the ISIS narrative and comparing… Read More ›

NSN 2016 Update: Week of 11/8/2015 November 13, 2015 Today, NSN debuts a new offering—a roundup of conservative candidate statements on foreign policy and quick rebuttals to them. This week’s theme: conservative candidates don’t understand the Middle East, past or present, but still think they can chart its future.  “It wasn’t that long ago that Russia had no influence in the region at all.” – Jeb Bush on the Middle East Jeb Bush’s comments show that he doesn’t understand Russia’s history in Syria, so how can he get the policy right? Actually, Russia’s influence in Syria dates back to Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, who invited Brezhnev’s USSR to lease the Tartus naval facility back in the 1970s. In fact, Jeb Bush gets it precisely backwards: Russia is not fighting… Read More ›

Corker Bill Goes Forward Despite Deal-Killing Efforts May 4, 2015 The Senate is expected to move toward voting on legislation put forward by Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) that would allow Congress a greater role in approving the international agreement being negotiated by the United States and its P5+1 partners with Iran. Previous iterations of the contentious bill contained provisions that would have placed impossible expectations on the deal, including on issues outside the scope of the negotiations, but a compromise brokered by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) stripped those provisions. The compromise has allowed bipartisan support for the bill to coalesce and the Obama Administration says it will not veto it if it passes in its current form. That hasn’t stopped dead-ender conservatives including Sen. Tom… Read More ›

An Updated NDAA Falls Short of Real Reform May 1, 2015 This week, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was marked up in the House Armed Services Committee and now waits to head to the floor for additional work. While the bill takes the important step of modernizing the outdated military retirement system, it stops well short of the kind of reforms and choices needed to sustain American military power efficiently and effectively. Overdue cost-savings reforms like paring down the Pentagon’s bloated civilian work force or closing excess bases were either not tackled or explicitly prohibited in the bill. Meanwhile, Congress is keeping its Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO) funding $38 billion above the president’s request, ensuring that the war fund actually serves as a slush… Read More ›

Defense Bill Creates Needless New Obstacles for Guantanamo Transfers April 29, 2015 The House Armed Services Committee is reviewing the proposed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) today. The legislation, which covers a range of subjects, would authorize new restrictions on the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo Bay, including the 57 individuals who have been cleared for release by all relevant government agencies. The NDAA would also impose new reporting requirements on released detainees and recidivism rates based on concerns that have been inflated by misleading statistics. These new, unwarranted restrictions are a step away from President Obama’s stated goal of closing the detention facility, which remains a threat to U.S. national security. The Guantanamo provisions in the NDAA would hinder or prevent the transfer of… Read More ›

The U.S.-Japan Alliance Gets an Upgrade April 27, 2015 This week, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is in Washington to address a joint session of Congress. This is the first time any Japanese prime minister has addressed both chambers of Congress. The historic event stands as a stiff rebuke to conservatives who charge that the United States has allowed its system of global alliances to decay. On the contrary, the U.S.-Japan alliance – the cornerstone of America’s network of friends in the Asia-Pacific – is becoming stronger and more central to Tokyo and Washington’s mutual interest in a peaceful and prosperous Asia-Pacific region. During Abe’s trip, the United States and Japan are poised to finalize a long-negotiated upgrade to the military alliance between the two… Read More ›

Deaths of Hostages Demonstrate Need for Reform of Drone Strikes April 24, 2015 The Obama Administration’s admission yesterday that it killed two hostages in a drone strike in Pakistan, as well as other al-Qaeda operatives it was not intentionally targeting, underscores the hazards of  permissive polices for the CIA’s targeted killing program and the need for reform. Yesterday, unnamed U.S. officials confirmed to the Washington Post that the attack had been a “signature strike,” a controversial category of strikes in which the target is identified based on a pattern of observed behaviors without specific intelligence about who the targets are or their affiliation with a terrorist group. Despite such extremely limited intelligence, the Administration authorized the strike. These strikes – which are not limited to… Read More ›