Center for Strategic Communication

Arms Shipments Seen From Sudan to Syria Rebels

C. J. Chivers and Eric Schmitt / The Wall Street Journal 

Syrian rebels, frustrated by the West’s reluctance to provide arms, have found a supplier in an unlikely source: Sudan, a country that has been under international arms embargoes and maintains close ties with a stalwart backer of the Syrian government, Iran.

Top 6 Energy Policy Priorities After the August Recess

Irwin Conway / Breaking Energy

US energy policy is on hold for now, but several top-tier energy issues issues will be front and center when the House and Senate return to Capitol Hill after the August recess … Energy watchers should be on the lookout for the following issues.

Mexico Moves to Overhaul Oil Industry

Laurence Iliff and Juan Montes / the Wall Street Journal

Mexico moved to end the country’s 75-year-old monopoly on oil and gas production, potentially opening up some of the world’s biggest remaining untapped oil reserves to private companies and setting the stage for a new energy boom on the U.S. doorstep.

Last War Standing

John Arquilla / Foreign Policy

The three tools of security strategy most heavily relied upon for the past 70 years — deterrence, prevention, and preemption — have never worked very well. Today they are on life support, sustained because of their appeal to civilian policymakers’ and military strategists’ habits of mind and institutional interests. There is no more pressing need today than to rethink these concepts, perhaps even to jettison long-accepted practices associated with them.

Why the World Bank is Taking on Climate Change

Coral Davenport / National Journal

The organization believes that increased drought, extreme storms, and rising sea levels are significant threats to economies worldwide.

The Wrong Way to Punish Putin

Daniel Treisman / Foreign Affairs

Punishing Russia is all the rage these days. After Moscow gave temporary asylum to the NSA leaker Edward Snowden, U.S. Senator John McCain proposed extending the “Magnistky List” of Russian officials barred from entering the United States, speeding deployment of missile defenses in Europe, and rapidly expanding NATO to include Georgia.

Nuke Unit Fails Key Security Test

Robert Burns / ABC News

An Air Force unit that operates one-third of the nation’s land-based nuclear missile force has failed a safety and security inspection, marking the second major setback this year for a force charged with the military’s most sensitive mission, the general in charge of the Air Force’s nuclear force told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

9 Things I learned Crossing the Last Three Feet

James Snyder / Small Wars Journal

To borrow a phrase from Edward R. Murrow, the former head of the US Information Agency, I crossed “the last three feet” almost every week while I was at NATO, speaking to about 12,000 people from more than three dozen countries in total. This is public diplomacy’s commanding heights. I came away with some principles that would benefit both practitioners and policy-makers of US public diplomacy. Here are nine points that are worth sharing

ASP Recent Publications

FACT SHEET- American Competitiveness and National Security

The security of our nation inherently depends upon the strength of our ability to compete in the global market place while simultaneously raising living standards at home.

U.S. Public Diplomacy Towards Iran

This report explores several types of public diplomacy aimed towards Iran, and looks into some of the challenges and potential of these programs as part of an overall strategy for addressing U.S. national security interests.

On Our Flashpoint Blog

Loss of Louisiana Wetlands Increases Vulnerability to Climate Change

Nicholas Cunningham

Louisiana has experience its fair share of severe storms, but the loss of wetlands means the Gulf Coast is losing one of its key insurance policies against climate change.

Bay of Bengal- A Hotspot for Climate Insecurity

Andrew Holland

On the Bay of Bengal’s coast these problems of a changing climate combine with already existing social problems like religious strife, poverty, political uncertainty, high population density and rapid urbanization to create a very dangerous cocktail of already security threats.

ASP in the News

ASP’s Andrew Holland Cited in Washington Post

Brad Plumer, of The Washington Post’s WonkBlog wrote an interesting article on the ongoing academic research on the link between climate change and violence, and linked to a blog post written by ASP’s Andrew Holland.

Paul Rockower in the Huffington Post: The Public Diplomacy of Free France During WWII

ASP Adjunct Fellow Paul Rockower’s piece on Free France’s public diplomacy during WWII has subsequently appeared in the Huffington Post.