Dr. Mark Pomar, a senior national security fellow at the Clements Center for National Security, moderated a discussion with Alexander Podrabinek, a Soviet and Russian human rights activist, journalist, and writer. The conversation explored the drivers of the return of totalitarian rule in Russia. The two also discussed the role of propaganda in shaping...

In June, Republican lawmakers adopted an amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act to develop a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile and recently included funding in appropriations legislation for the Department of Energy. This would override the Joseph R. Biden administration’s decision to cancel the program, announced in the 2022 Nuclear...

In yet another curious twist in its long history, the Monroe Doctrine, which turned 200 on Saturday, is making an unexpected political comeback in the United States. “I think it’s as relevant today as it was the day it was written,” declared Rex Tillerson, Donald Trump’s first secretary of state, in Mexico City in 2018. More recently, contestants for...

Twenty-three years after the U.N. Security Council passed the Women, Peace, and Security framework and six years after the United States became the only country to legislatively mandate its implementation, widespread misunderstanding remains about why it matters to national security. Contrary to what is sometimes heard among U.S. security practitioners...

Welcome to Mid-Afternoon Map, our exclusive members-only newsletter that provides a cartographic perspective on current events, geopolitics, and history from the Caucasus to the Carolinas. Subscribers can look forward to interesting takes on good maps and bad maps, beautiful maps and ugly ones — and bizarre maps whenever possible. *** Several people...

Since the launch of the Belt and Road initiative in 2013, Chinese private military companies envisioned working with U.S. firms like Blackwater. They sought to replicate Blackwater’s role in Iraq, safeguarding China’s Belt and Road initiative against criminal and militant violence. In doing so, they also sought to benefit from the newfound legitimacy...