Show Notes
David Sterman, senior policy analyst at New America’s Future Security Program, tracks U.S. counter-terrorism airstrikes, particularly with drones. He discusses the history of drone strikes in post-9/11 U.S. counter-terrorism policy from Bush to Biden, the issue of civilian casualties, Biden’s quiet use of drone strikes in Yemen and Somalia, the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the problems of threat inflation and secrecy in covert strikes, defining endless war, and reform proposals for how to rein in America’s unachievable objectives and make U.S. counter-terrorism operations more transparent.
Show Notes David Sterman, “How Many People Does the US Assess it Killed in Somalia in 2023?,” NewAmerica.org, April 2, 2024 David Sterman, “The United States Should Provide a Detailed Accounting of its Operations in Yemen,” NewAmerica.org, August 3, 2023 David Sterman, “Endless War Challenges Analysis of Drone Strike Effectiveness,” Journal of National Security Law and Policy, May 6, 2023 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Power Problems
Emma Ashford, Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center, discusses her book First Among Equals: U.S. Foreign Policy in a Multipolar World, forthcoming from Yale University Press. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Dartmouth College's Daryl Press and George Washington University's Nicholas Anderson discuss their modeling of an outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula, assess the balance of power between the North and South, and explore the implications for the US military alliance with South Korea.
Rosemary Kelanic, Director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities, discusses the Israel-Iran war, U.S. involvement, whether regime change is the objective, and the risks of escalation.
Samuel Seitz, a fellow at MIT’s Security Studies Program, explores so-called “madman behavior” in international politics and whether it’s effective in gaining leverage in international confrontations. He explains why problems of signaling, credibility, and reassurance tend to make madman tactics ineffective and he discusses examples from the Cold War to Trump’s first and second administrations.
Christopher Chivvis and Lauren Morganbesser of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace discuss the foreign policy attitudes of Gen Z, the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy, and the increasing salience of transnational issues, among other topics.