The Seventh Annual CSIS South China Sea Conference on July 18 brought together security, legal, and environmental experts to review events of the past year. The participants had a lot of...

North Korea’s determination to acquire an intercontinental missile capability continues to alarm US officials and experts. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson noted that last week’s missile test – now acknowledged to be an ICBM – “represents a new escalation of...

Venezuela is in the midst of a severe political, economic, and humanitarian crisis that threatens the collapse of the country’s polity and economy. Internationally, the Venezuelan crisis is viewed as one of the most serious cases of a collapsing middle-income...

In this episode, Bob sits down with prominent political scientist and professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School, Graham Allison. Allison discusses his recent book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?, the culture of...

Major overhauls may indeed be necessary to optimize outcomes in our defense acquisition system. However, if we’re not using all of the authorities at our disposal now, what evidence do we have that such reorganizations will result in anything more than a reconstitution of...

On July 20, 2017, the Lebanese Shi’a militant group Hezbollah confirmed that it had put in motion a plan to dislodge Jabhat al-Nusra (JAN) militants from Lebanon. The commencement of Hezbollah military operations preempted the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) from putting...

Criminologist Simon Cottee explains how recent, low-level Islamic State terror attacks do not create anger-inducing theatrical spectacles like 9/11 and are “distinctly half-assed affairs, featuring a cast of B-movie wannabe thespians.” Cottee believes that these attacks...

Two years ago CSIS launched “The Modi Government’s Reform Program: A Scorecard.” The Scorecard pulled together the 30 biggest reforms pending the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office. This allows a broad, nonbiased way to measure progress on specific,...

It's our pleasure to send you the July Edition of the ISP Brief, the monthly newsletter of the CSIS International Security Program. ISP Brief features articles and commentary written by our scholars, their analysis as published in various media sources (including video and...

Participants at this year’s conference discussed China’s artificial island bases in the Spratlys more for their potential long-term effects than for any use over the past year. The balance between military and civilian activities planned for these dual-use facilities is...

First, let’s examine the costs related to providing medical care for transgender service members. Though some argue that allowing transgender individuals to serve could “make the military a magnet for people seeking ‘gender reassignment’ procedures at taxpayer...

Adam Klein explains how some members of congress are proposing to amend Section 702, a law passed in 2008, that allows the intelligence community to collect information on foreign targets without a warrant when their communications touch U.S. internet infrastructure....