Freedom National

In the wake of the September 11 terror attacks, the American government implemented a wave of overt policies to fight the nation's enemies. Unseen and undetected by the public, however, another set of tools were brought to bear on the domestic front. One of today's leading experts on the US security state shows how these "subtle tools" imperiled the very foundations of democracy, from the separation of powers and transparency in government to adherence to the Constitution. Karen Greenberg describes the subtle tools that were forged under George W. Bush in the name of security.

China's strategic capabilities and doctrine have historically differed from the United States' and Russia's. China has continued to modernize and expand its arsenal despite its policy of no first use, while the United States and Russia have decreased deployed weapons stocks. This volume brings together an international group of distinguished scholars to provide a fresh assessment of China's strategic military capabilities, doctrines, and political perceptions in light of rapidly advancing technologies.

In Spymaster's Prism, the legendary former spymaster Jack Devine details the unending struggle with Russia and its intelligence agencies as it works against our national security. Devine tells this story through the unique perspective of a seasoned CIA professional who served more than three decades, some at the highest levels of the agency.

Over the last decade, the center of world power has been quietly shifting from Europe to Asia. With oil reserves of several billion barrels, an estimated 900 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and several centuries' worth of competing territorial claims, the South China Sea in particular is a simmering pot of potential conflict. The underreported military buildup in the area where the Western Pacific meets the Indian Ocean means that it will likely be a hinge point for global war and peace for the foreseeable future.

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's books are events. They stir passionate public debate among political and civic leaders, scholars, and the general public because they compel people to rethink the most powerful conventional wisdoms and stubborn moral problems of the day. Worse Than War gets to the heart of the phenomenon of genocide, which has caused more deaths in the modern world than military conflict. In doing so, it challenges our fundamental beliefs about human beings, society, and politics.

In addition to Hamas, which provoked the recent war, and Gaza with its rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, Alan Dershowitz argues that Israel's most dangerous enemies include Jimmy Carter and other western leaders who would delegitimize Israel as an apartheid regime subject to the same fate as white South Africans; Israel's academic enemies, led by professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, who would accuse supporters of Israel of dual loyalty and indeed disloyalty to America.

In The Drone Age, Michael J. Boyle addresses some of the biggest questions surrounding the impact of drones on our world today and the risks that we might face tomorrow. Will drones produce a safer world because they reduce risk to pilots, or will the prospect of clean, remote warfare lead governments to engage in more conflicts? Will drones begin to replace humans on the battlefield? Will they empower soldiers and peacekeepers to act more precisely and humanely in crisis zones? How will terrorist organizations turn this technology back on the governments that fight them?

On December 16, 2019, Jerrold Nadler, Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary House of Representatives, and the full Committee on the Judiciary released an updated version of the Impeachment Report. Now officially titled Impeachment of Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, Report of the Committee on the Judiciary House of Representatives, this document serves as the latest government-issued report from the Democrat-led House.

In a world where oil-rich states are more likely to start war than their oil-dependent counterparts, it's surprising how little attention is still paid to these so-called petrostates. These states' wealth props up the global arms trade, provides diplomatic leverage, and allows them to support violent and nonviolent proxies. In Oil, the State, and War, Emma Ashford explores the many potential links between domestic oil production and foreign policy behavior and how oil production influences global politics.

Defense expert Seth Jones argues that the US is woefully unprepared for the future of global competition. While America has focused on building fighter jets, missiles, and conventional warfighting capabilities, its three principal rivals - Russia, Iran, and China - have increasingly adopted irregular warfare: cyber attacks, the use of proxy forces, propaganda, espionage, and disinformation to undermine American power. Jones details the key steps the United States must take to alter how it thinks about - and engages in - competition before it is too late.

Bob Woodward examines how the Bush administration avoided telling the truth about Iraq to the public, to the Congress, and often to themselves in State of Denial. Woodward's third book on President Bush is a sweeping narrative from the first days George W. Bush thought seriously about running for president, through the recruitment of his national security team, the war in Afghanistan, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the struggle for political survival in the second term.

The Iran Wars is an absorbing account of a battle waged on many levels - military, financial, and covert. Jay Solomon’s book is the product of extensive in-depth reporting and interviews with all the key players in the conflict - from high-ranking Iranian officials to Secretary of State John Kerry and his negotiating team. With a reporter’s masterly investigative eye and the narrative dexterity of a great historian, Solomon shows how Iran’s nuclear development went unnoticed for years by the international community only to become its top security concern.

Our national security increasingly depends on access to the most sophisticated and advanced technology. Yet the next time we set out to capture a terrorist leader, we may fail. Why? The answer lies in a conflict between two worlds. One is the dynamic, global, commercial world with its thriving innovations. The other is the world of national security, in which innovation is a matter of life or death. The conflict is about secrecy. Innovating in a Secret World is a detailed examination of the current trends in often secret national security-related research and development (R&D).

With unprecedented access to more than a dozen individuals who have made the life-and-death decisions that come with running the world’s most powerful and influential intelligence service, Chris Whipple tells the story of an agency that answers to the United States president alone, but whose activities — spying, espionage, and covert action — take place on every continent. At pivotal moments, the CIA acts as a counterforce against rogue presidents, starting in the mid-70s with DCI Richard Helms’s refusal to conceal Richard Nixon’s criminality.

Why would the normally buttoned-down national security state imagine lurid future scenarios like a zombie apocalypse? In Training for Catastrophe, author Lindsay Thomas shows how our security regime reimagines plausibility to focus on unlikely and even unreal events rather than probable ones. With an in-depth focus on preparedness (a pivotal, emergent national security paradigm since 9/11) she explores how fiction shapes national security.

Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus distill their remarkable firsthand experiences of political and military interventions into a potent examination of what we can and cannot achieve in a new era of "nation building." As they delve into the massive, military-driven efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans, the expansion of the EU, and the bloodless "color" revolutions in the former Soviet states, they reveal each effort's consequences for international relations, human rights, and our understanding of state building.

The national security and civil liberties tensions of the World War II mass incarceration link 9/11 and the 2015 Paris-San Bernardino attacks to the Trump era in America - an era darkened by accelerating discrimination against and intimidation of those asserting rights of freedom of religion, association and speech, and an era marked by increasingly volatile protests. This book discusses the broad civil liberties challenges posed by these past-into-the-future linkages.

The UFO enigma has been part of our culture since the 1940s and is building to a worldwide explosion of acceptance today. Now, as governments around the world open their files and records on internal UFO investigations, the US remains steadfast in its denial of interest in the UFO issue. As more of the world's population accepts the possibility of an extraterrestrial presence, the demand is building for disclosure from the United States.

Terrorist leaders are not benevolent men inclined to make peace but vicious bullies. The IRA was the Islamic State of its day. Northern Ireland, Iraq, and Afghanistan are similar wars. In these, an insurgency like the IRA/Sinn Fein mix is the main problem. A proven solution is the rule of law, where police intelligence dominates because investigative practices fail. The approach - widely misrepresented and commonly misunderstood - devastated the IRA. Some terrorists were killed, most were in prison, and many were on the run.

This second edition of The National Security Enterprise provides practitioners' insights into the operation, missions, and organizational cultures of the principal national security agencies and other institutions that shape the US national security decision-making process. Unlike some textbooks on American foreign policy, it offers analysis from insiders who have worked at the National Security Council, the State and Defense Departments, the intelligence community, and the other critical government entities.