The Baines Report
In 2001, on the 10th day of July, the New York Times published an op-ed titled “The Declining Terrorist Threat.” The author argued that terrorism reached its zenith in the 1980s, so it was not a serious security challenge confronting the United States. Two months later — nearly to the day — the 9/11 terrorist […]
Last December, I was offered my dream internship — working with the U.S. Department of State — after a two-month application and interview process. As a master’s student in global policy studies, the opportunity to work for a summer at the U.S. Mission to the UN in Geneva would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It would […]
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 […]
Photo: Pexels (CC) On October 22 Japan will hold a snap election, over a year in advance of the regularly scheduled date, December 2018. This decision, made by current Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, has been met with mixed reactions at home and abroad. Abe’s potential motives are being debated, but several factors may play […]
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 […]
Photo: Yuri Samoilov At 11:48pm on April 7, 2017, every tornado siren in Dallas went off at the same time. The sky was clear, but the shrieks from 156 sirens wrenched residents from their slumber. As the sirens blared on for 95 minutes, terrified callers flooded 911 phone lines, leaving people experiencing real emergencies waiting […]
Two recent events – one in the public sector, one in the private sector – have helped to engage millions of Americans in a debate on privacy rights and information security: the debate over SOPA & Facebook employer hacking. These actions have led to robust debates, not just about what we as individuals can reasonably […]
Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was fond of saying that the Department of Defense has “more people in military bands than (the State Department has) in the Foreign Service.” His observation reveals a discomfiting inequality in national priorities which has been thrown into sharp relief by battles over the upcoming budget. Far from […]
Ten years ago George W. Bush was sitting in a Florida classroom with a 51 percent approval rating. When the dust had cleared at the end of the day, three buildings had collapsed into rubble and 3,000 Americans were dead. American foreign policy would never be the same. America needed a leader, and Bush was it. […]
Reflecting on September 11 has become a sort of tradition over the past 10 years, an opportunity to consider how American policy and society has transformed since this shocking event which has become a sort of landmark in U.S. history. I suggest that, on this 10-year anniversary and in light of the so-called Arab Spring, we […]