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  • Football and the Illusive Stability of Coalition Governments in the MENA States

    An Arab Spring political cycle is emerging. Single-party domination gives way to multi-party democracy which crumbles back into single-party domination. Football: An Introductory Anecdote Sitting with a group of western-educated, politically active Tunisians at a restaurant in Tunis, I commented on my surprise at the absence of soccer-playing children. I had been there for ten…

  • The Growing Threat of Maritime Terrorism

    Introduction The 21st century has seen large-scale, well-organized terrorist attacks by Islamist terrorists on nearly every continent. These same terrorists and terrorist organizations have leveraged the cyber domain to support recruitment, training, and attacks. The maritime frontier, however, is perhaps the one that has continued comparatively untouched throughout the history of modern Islamist terrorism. Attacks…

  • Frame Reflection:A Critical Review of US Military Approaches to Complex Situations

    We are pleased to present this monograph on frame reflection. As the authors note: “Our hope is that the insights gained from institutional barriers in the modern military may provide insights for designers in other walks – with ideas on framing messy situations. We have advocated that frame reflection is essential to design practice in…

  • Why “Cyberwar” Isn’t Happening

    “Cyberwar” is an imprecise and ugly term. Equal parts misleading and ambiguous, the term cyberwar has somehow battled its way into our modern lexicon and is used vaguely to describe acts of virtual aggression. Most often, cyberwar is used to describe an ill-defined and inevitable sate of computer-centric conflict between two nation states or groups.…

  • We’re only Human: Addressing the Cyber Threat Origin

    Private entities are pouring money and manpower into creating the best technologies to help mitigate a host of threats in the cyber realm. The US federal government is increasingly following this strategy. Yet, even cutting edge technology cannot determine one of the most critical and elusive intelligence questions: motivation. What drives the adversary? What does…

  • Destruction and Creation

    To comprehend and cope with our environment we develop mental patterns or concepts of meaning. The purpose of this paper is to sketch out how we destroy and create these patterns to permit us to both shape and be shaped by a changing environment. In this sense, the discussion also literally shows why we cannot…

  • Skid Row Terrorist

    The rubric of terrorism studies embeds terrorist TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures) within the overall context of motivations and intent that a terrorist are/is presumed to have. This is further fundamentally subordinate to the over-arching al-Qaeda framework. However, if we consider characters such as the ‘dishevelled or nihilist terrorist’ (Flaherty, 2012), then terrorist TTPs have…

  • The Cyber Moscow Rules: Trust no one. Trust no device.

    Lessons learned from US agents who operate in enemy territory have been captured for years and transformed into a code of conduct popularly known as “Moscow Rules.” Those old rules existed for a reason. Real-world experience proved their effectiveness when agents had to operate in the presence of adversaries. Since modern cyber defenders are also…

  • When Armies Divide: The Security of Nuclear Arsenals During Revolts, Coups, and Civil Wars

    In this brief volume Jenkins takes a detailed look at the General’s putsch, which was a 1961 coup attempt by a group of retired French Generals against President Charles de Gaulle. However, it is not the putsch itself that attracts Jenkins’ analytical attention, but the chaos surrounding the status of a nuclear device that was…

  • West Africa: Terrorism’s New Front Yard

    Introduction There is a new front in the global fight against terrorism and terrorists. Ethnic, religious, and political tensions in West Africa, simmering for the past few years, have boiled over into widespread violence and coordinated military efforts throughout the region. A recent attack at an oil facility in Algeria has highlighted the wealth of…


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