Section: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (USA)
Russian Propaganda: Ways and Means
Thank you Mr. Chairman.First, a disclaimer: the testimony I am about to give will be given in my capacity as a private expert and not as a Governor of the Broadcasting Board of Governors.Mr. Chairman, the Ranking Member, Members of the Committee:The aggressive, often sophisticated and Internet-savvy propaganda campaign, underwritten by the...
NATO’s future structure: From ‘A Hard Look at Hard Power’
The Strategic Studies Institute recently published A Hard Look at Hard Power: Assessing the Defense Capabilities of Key U.S. Allies and Security Partners. Edited by Gary J. Schmitt, codirector of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at AEI, and featuring contributions from him, AEI scholar Michael Mazza, and others, it fills critical gaps...
‘It could have been worse’
That’s what many defense experts are saying about the two-year budget deal that’s being cut by congressional leaders and the White House. Byron Callan, longtime analyst for Capital Alpha Partners, which provides research to financial firms, rates the prospective deal as “defense positive.”But this is the soft bigotry of low...
Obama just fell for a classic Russian ruse
Recent Russian efforts to magnify its Middle East influence have been accompanied by a seeming surge in Kremlin “reasonableness.” In fact, Russian calls for new Syrian elections and sharing intelligence with Western powers are nothing more than exercises in “maskirovka,” Russia’s classic technique for disguising its real...
Defense takes another hit
President Obama has vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), extinguishing the one real opportunity this year – and possibility for the rest of his administration – to reverse the decline in American power that is undermining the foreign policy of the United States throughout the world.Four years ago, the president signed the Budget...
A solution to the Ukraine-Russia bond standoff
Shutterstock.A two-step solution — if enacted — would allow Ukraine and Russia to end a multi-year deadlock and recognize the needs of all involved:Ukraine and Russia are at a stalemate over the US$3 billion bonds due in December 2015 that were purchased by the Russian government in 2013. Russia believes the bonds are an official concessional...
New Europe’s return to the Dark Ages
The widely expected victory of Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice Party (PiS) in the upcoming parliamentary elections in Poland Sunday (25 October) will mark the end of an era in the history of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia – or “New Europe”, to use a term coined by former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.After...
What is – and isn’t – at stake in the Polish parliamentary election
The widely expected victory of the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party in Poland’s parliamentary election on Sunday matters not just for Poland, but for the entire European Union. Because it comes at a time when the continent is at several important crossroads, it might be the most consequential parliamentary election in the region in a...
Obama’s back-footed response to Putin’s embrace of Syria
Confusion reigns inside the Obama administration regarding Russia’s military campaign to bolster President Bashar Assad’s endangered Syrian regime. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intervention clearly caught President Obama flat-footed, and so far there is no sign Mr. Obama knows how to respond. His public defensiveness...
This is how to rebuild America’s mighty military
The Obama Administration has pronounced itself shocked and surprised by Vladimir Putin’s Syrian gambit, just as they did when Russian troops and proxies annexed Crimea. Just as the George W. Bush Administration did when Putin moved into two provinces of Georgia in 2008.Indeed, much of the history of the post-Cold War world can be told in...
