In "Dirty Wars," Jeremy Scahill, author of the "New York Times" best-seller "Blackwater," takes us inside America's new covert wars. As he reveals, the foot soldiers in these battles operate daily across the globe and inside the United States with orders from the White House to do whatever is necessary to hunt down, capture, or kill individuals designated by the president as enemies of America.

An explosive account of the resentments American policies are sowing around the world and of the payback that will be our harvest in the twenty-first century. Blowback, a term invented by the CIA, refers to the united consequences of American policies. In this sure-to-be-controversial book, Chalmers Johnson lays out in vivid detail the dangers faced by our overextended empire, which insists on projecting its military power to every corner of the...

"Speak softly and carry a big stick" Theodore Roosevelt famously said in 1901, when the United States was emerging as a great power. It was the right sentiment, perhaps, in an age of imperial rivalry but today many Americans doubt the utility of their global military presence, thinking it outdated, unnecessary or even dangerous. In The Big Stick, Eliot A. Cohen-a scholar and practitioner of international relations-disagrees. He argues that hard power...

This is the final report of the bipartisan CSIS Task Force on Reforming and Reorganizing U.S. Foreign Assistance. As the Trump administration attempts to curb government spending, particularly in foreign assistance, this study reviews past attempts at reorganizing the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Department of State, and it provides recommendations for the new administration. The task force consisted of former civil...

Following the 9/11 attacks, a war against al Qaeda by the U.S. and its liberal democratic allies was next to inevitable. But what kind of war would it be, how would it be fought, for how long, and what would it cost in lives and money? None of this was known at the time. What came to be known was that the old ways of war must change-but how? Now, with over a decade of political decision-making and warfighting to analyze, How 9/11 Changed Our Ways...

Global Responses to Maritime Violence is a full discussion of maritime security short of war that goes beyond the current literature in both scope and perspective. The chapters in this volume examine terrorism, piracy, armed robbery at sea, illegal maritime trafficking, illegal fishing, and other maritime crimes. Contributors uncover both threats and responses as a complex ecosystem that challenges even the strongest national and regional institutions....

Economics scholars and policymakers have rung alarm bells about the increasing threat of consolidation within industrial sectors. This paper examines the importance of industrial concentration in U.S. defense acquisition in two ways: first, a direct relationship between concentration and performance outcomes; and second, a mediating relationship, where concentration influences performance through reduced competition for defense acquisition. The study...

"Analysis of the FY 2019 Defense Budget" from the CSIS Defense Budget Analysis program provides an in-depth assessment of the Trump administration's request for national defense funding in FY 2019. In addition to analyzing the request for the upcoming fiscal year and the Department of Defense's projections for the future, the report assesses long-term trends in defense funding levels by spending title and Service as well as changes in the military's...

Powerful countries like the United States regularly employ economic sanctions as a tool for promoting their foreign policy interests. Yet this foreign policy tool has an uninspiring track record of success, with economic sanctions achieving their goals less than a third of the time they are imposed. The costs of these failed sanctions policies can be significant for the states that impose them, their targets, and the other countries they affect. Explaining...

The United States faces a complex and rapidly shifting international security landscape. Forces of ethnic and religious extremism, diffusion of information technologies, proliferation of mass destruction weapons, and newly empowered non-state actors are just some of the trends whose complex interplay will produce unanticipated threats. Yet, while the future is more uncertain today than during the Cold War, we currently have a window of opportunity...