Contra Contra Land Mines

Why Liberals Are Wrong About Land Mines, Daily Signal, December 23, 2015. "One of the progressive left’s favorite causes is campaigning against land mines. The Obama administration naturally has promised to stop producing or buying anti-personnel land mines (APL). In addition, the administration has said it will to stop using mines outside the Korean Peninsula, and – eventually – accede to the Ottawa Convention, which bans anti-personnel mines entirely. Although this might sound great to some, land mines actually cause few civilian casualties, and are an important weapon for the U.S. military."

The Best Kind of Charity

Lessons in Charity for Mark Zuckerberg, Newsday, December 14, 2015. "The best kind of charity doesn’t promise expensive solutions. It provides opportunities that allow us to learn for ourselves — guided by parents who set standards, and in a nation that respects business and charity alike."

Russia and U.S. Grand Strategy

U.S. Comprehensive Strategy Toward Russia, with James Jay Carafano and others, Heritage Foundation Special Report #173, December 9, 2015. "Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has not had a coherent, comprehensive strategy toward Russia. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine demonstrates, the U.S. has paid a price for this failure and, of course, many of Russia’s neighbors have paid far higher prices. At the core of the U.S. failure has been an unwillingness to assess the nature of the Russian regime realistically and to base its policy on that assessment. Too often, the U.S. has relied on wishful thinking."

The Myths of U.S. Strategy in Europe

Available in PDF only. U.S. Strategy in Europe: Advice to Policymakers, American Foreign Policy Council Defense Dossier, November 15, 2015."The fundamental problem confronting American strategy in Europe is that the United States has forgotten that it needs to have its own strategy in Europe. Since the end of the Cold War, and with the important exception of the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, the U.S. has regarded Europe as an area where power politics no longer operate, and thus as an area that is reliably stable, peaceful, and prosperous. As a result, it has ignored the broader implications of Europe’s worsening security environment, and outsourced the effort to care for the future of the European continent to the European Union. Both of these approaches are wrong."