The Baines Report
Featured Photo: Callie Richmond On Jan. 30, 2018, the LBJ School of Public Affairs welcomed U.S. Army Lieutenant General Sean MacFarland. His talk was part of the Dean’s Distinguished Leaders Series, which brings the best and brightest of the public world straight to LBJ. MacFarland, a three-star general slated to retire soon, spoke about his […]
On Oct. 17, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, ISIS) was finally defeated in Raqqa, a stronghold of the group and the largest city under its control. Images of Syrian Democratic Forces replacing ISIS flags with their own spread hope across the world, and the defeat of ISIS appeared imminent. But the […]
Photo: European Commission One million children die each year from hunger. This statistic is staggering, but it is about to get much worse. Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N (FAO) Director-General Jose Graziano De Silva warns that without emergency food aid over the next 6 months, “20 million people will starve to death in […]
Originally published by the Weekly Standard. Exit polls from last week’s midterm elections challenged the conventional “it’s the economy, stupid” wisdom, as the number of voters who said the economy was the most important issue fell to just four in 10. The dark horse issue of the 2014 election was foreign policy. Our experience campaigning […]
President Obama’s current strategy in Syria, to arm and train moderate rebels and execute airstrikes on the Islamic State, is problematic. The U.S. will have difficulty stabilizing Syria because the Syrian Civil War is a fractured hotbed of violent extremism and radical ideology. Instead, the U.S. must seek a threefold approach of militarily attacking the […]
Originally published by the U.S. News & World Report. As the Obama administration ramped up its war against the Islamic State group last week, I was visiting Israel with a bipartisan group of 12 leaders from Washington think tanks. During meetings with a variety of current and former Israeli government and military officials, as well […]