Analysis

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Commentary
Why Putin Targets Minorities
December 21, 2018 | Suzanne Spaulding

The two recently released Senate-commissioned reports, prepared by New Knowledge and the Computational Propaganda Research Project, describe in detail how Russia targeted specific groups with disinformation campaigns.

Commentary
Building the Great Wall of Texas
December 21, 2018 | James Andrew Lewis We can’t expect to hermetically seal a border that is almost 2,000 miles long. And as long as Americans are willing to spend billions of dollars on illegal drugs, there will be incentives for people to cross illegally.

Commentary
Bad Idea: Conflating the Space Force with NASA
December 21, 2018 | Kaitlyn Johnson As the administration moves forward with establishing a new military service focused on space, leaders should keep their language clear and use this opportunity to educate the public about both civil and national security space.

Commentary
Bad Idea: Demanding Allies Spend Two Percent of GDP on Defense
December 21, 2018 | Todd Harrison, Seamus P. Daniels It’s time we ditch the 2 percent (or any percent) of GDP metric for allied defense spending and focus on what really matters—capability, capacity, readiness, and interoperability.

Commentary
Bad Idea: Scrapping the Federal Acquisition Regulation
December 21, 2018 | Andrew Philip Hunter The Federal Acquisition Regulation can and should be improved. But tossing it out and starting over will slow, not accelerate, acquisition in the near term. Worse, it will ultimately undermine the usefulness of the alternative pathways that we are currently developing.

Commentary
Bad Idea: Competing with China (without Knowing What Winning Looks Like)
December 21, 2018 | John Schaus Competing is not the problem. What is a problem is competing without a concept of what success in that competition would look like. If the United States is going to engage seriously in a competition with China, that effort will be long-term.

Commentary
Bad Idea: Sectored Air and Missile Defense Radars
December 21, 2018 | Thomas Karako In a world where unmanned aerial vehicles are plentiful, effective defenses require an air and missile defense sensor architecture that looks in all directions as well to address the realities of this environment.

Commentary
Into the Great Wide Open: How Millennials Look at Trade
December 21, 2018 | William Alan Reinsch

There is another aspect to demographic reality that deserves some comment, and that is how a changing population inside a country changes its politics and policy, as CSIS Scholl Chair William Reinsch writes in his commentary.

Commentary
Ceding Influence in the IMF and Hurting U.S. Interests
December 20, 2018 | Mark Sobel

To put America first, the Trump administration should secure a win-win deal with the IMF, as Mark Sobel, a non-resident adviser with the CSIS Simon Chair, writes in his commentary.

Commentary
Losing on All Fronts: The Mattis Resignation and Trump’s Failed Strategies for America’s Wars
December 20, 2018 | Anthony H. Cordesman

The President’s decision was based on a fundamentally wrong strategic assumption: ISIS is not defeated and still has a significant presence in Syria and Iraq.

Commentary
Trump, Erdogan, and the Surprise U.S. Troop Withdrawal from Syria
December 19, 2018 | Bulent Aliriza Beyond its impact on U.S.-Turkish relations, Trump’s move will have a profound impact on the U.S. relationship with the Syrian Kurds as well as on the U.S. factor in the complicated Syrian geopolitical equation, writes CSIS Turkey Project director Bulent Aliriza.

Commentary
U.S. Sanctions North Korean Officials for Human Rights Violations—How Significant?
December 18, 2018 | Robert R. King After a silence of several months on North Korea’s human rights record, the U.S. government is again calling attention to the issue, as Ambassador Robert R. King writes in his commentary.

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