By Matt Fay, on November 23rd, 2012
Earlier this week, Max Boot responded to my post from Sunday night on the differences between Israel’s Iron Dome and U.S. missile defense efforts. Unfortunately Mr. Boot obscures the issue even further in his response than he did in his initial post. The new post misrepresents the history of missile defense, fails to properly address the errors in his initial post, continues to ignore the conceptual differences between Iron Dome and national missile defense, and erects a strawman argument as to the motives of those opposed to his views. Needless to say, I am less than impressed.
First things . . .
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By Matt Fay, on November 19th, 2012
Sure, Max Boot makes terrible historical analogies, but I’ve always just assumed that the disagreements I have with him are based on honest differences and not utter ignorance. After today, I’m no longer sure that’s the case. Writing at Commentary Magazine’s Contentions blog, Boot argues,
The latest Gaza war is only a few days old, but already one conclusion can be drawn: missile defense works. This is only the latest vindication for the vision of Ronald Reagan… who made missile defense a major priority for the U.S. and our allies.
Boot is referring to the Iron Dome system co-developed . . .
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By Matt Fay, on October 15th, 2012
Blogging has been slightly slower than my usual prolific pace lately due mostly to the soul crushing experience that is the first year of grad school the large amount of reading one encounters in their first year of graduate study. While I try to get caught up I thought I would indulge in some shameless self-promotion. In the latest edition of Cato Journal, a public policy journal published by the Cato Institute, I have a review* of Philip Taubman’s book The Partnership: Five Former Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb.
Taubman attempts to piggyback off the . . .
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By Matt Fay, on September 26th, 2012
There’s an intriguing new show premiering on ABC tomorrow night called Last Resort. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I will still eagerly watch the premiere tomorrow night because, if for no other reason, Last Resort seems to make an interesting case study in the logic of existential deterrence.
As far as the show’s premise, Marcus Chaplin, played by Andre Braugher, is the captain of the USS Colorado—a fictional ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) that is supposedly the most powerful of its kind. According to the show’s synopsis at IMDB.com, Colorado is ordered to launch nuclear weapons against targets . . .
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By Hans-Inge Langø, on September 24th, 2012
Earlier this month the now-notorious Haqqani Network was designed a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) by the U.S. State Department. In recent years the organization has become much more prevalent (or visible) in the Afghanistan conflict, and therefore a subject of the debate over U.S. South Asian policy. The Haqqanis have ties to the Pakistani military, enjoys a close relationship with the Afghan Taliban (though the two operate largely independently), and the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has even argued that the network has played an important role in international jihad through its relationship with al Qaeda. So, while . . .
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By Hans-Inge Langø, on September 13th, 2012
The study of cyber security varies in approach, but I find that perhaps the most helpful is thinking about it in terms of power. Instead of analyzing cyber security based on very limited empirical data and from there inferring some operational utility, it is more useful to approach cyberspace holistically, examining the environment and the many ways actors can utilize it for political gains. People like Joseph Nye, Jr. and David Betz and Tim Stevens have made good contributions to the concept of cyber power, and Martin Libicki’s work on deterrence in cyberspace is also closely related and relevant. . . .
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By Matt Fay, on August 31st, 2012
Mitt Romney delivered his long-awaited speech to the Republican National Convention last night accepting the party’s nomination for president. The foreign policy section of the speech ran through the usual litany of complaints about Obama—his non-existent “apology tour,” he doesn’t reference American exceptionalism a minimum of 75 times in every speech, etc.—and was notable for not mentioning the decade-plus war in Afghanistan at all. But one thing he did mention, Obama’s supposed betrayal of Poland by removing ten planned missile defense interceptors, reflects an odd, but infuriating habit among conservatives.
The offending sentence came toward the end of the . . .
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By Matt Fay, on August 7th, 2012
A former classmate of mine, Mira Rapp-Hooper, recently had an excellent post at The Diplomat laying out the case for why Japan is unlikely to pursue its own nuclear deterrent. Mira is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and her thoughts on matters of nuclear proliferation are always worth reading. That being said, a discussion of whether this country or that will go nuclear at some point always raises a simple question in my mind: should the United States really care?
This question is commonly answered in the affirmative, as the general assumption seems to be that . . .
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By Matt Fay, on July 27th, 2012
Updated below
Congressman Adam Smith of Washington is generally pretty sharp on a wide-range of defense and foreign policy issues. As the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, he has displayed an admirable for addressing policy, strategy, and legislation in a thoughtful manner. Many of the positions he holds are of debatable quality, but that’s largely the case for the overwhelming majority of congress. Still, he seems to approach policy with a wonkish dedication to understanding the issues his committee deals with each day. That’s why a recent statement of his about the foreign policy of a . . .
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By Hans-Inge Langø, on July 20th, 2012
We usually don’t comment on domestic politics here on the blog, but yours truly has been out of the blogging business for so long the best way back was to write up a short rant on Congress. I know, not exactly a challenging task, but today’s topic is actually important: sequestration.
When the Democrats and Republicans in Congress were negotiating the debt ceiling in 2011 most assumed there would be some kind of deal in place. And there was—though short-term and with an agreement to make another, bigger agreement later. That last part is key, because Congress in its . . .
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