During the George W. Bush administration, Zalmay Khalilzad headed the National Security Council portfolio on the Islamic world and served as US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations.

(Outgoing National Security Advisor General Jim Jones, President Barack Obama, and newly named National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon; photo credit: Talk Radio News) Recently I met with David Rothkopf, Foreign Policy blogger and one of Washington’s premier chroniclers of American national security personalities and architecture, for lunch and discussed with him who President Obama’s next…

(photo credit: Andrew Lebovich) My colleague and right hand Andrew Lebovich sent the following pic to me a moment ago after I emailed him asking if he wanted to chat today (Saturday) about all of the major events we have coming up this next week.

In Beijing today I woke up to the news that Deputy National Secrurity Adviser Thomas Donilon will succeed General Jim Jones as President Obama’s National Security Adviser. This is really tremendous news — and a very smart choice by the President.

If you’re going to be in Washington next Tuesday, October 12, the New America Foundation and the University of Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism (CPOST) are hosting an important, all-day conference on Capitol Hill.

Panda stretching at Beijing Zoo; photo credit: Andrew Oros; click image for larger version Thanks to everyone for patience during the last couple of weeks. I’ve been engaged in two huge conferences back to back with trips to Beijing and Moscow in the few days between them.

This is a guest post written by Matthew M. Reed, a research intern with the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program. Iran’s arsenal is familiar by now. It includes the “oil weapon,” armies, proxies, and ultimately nuclear weapons. Each tool of leverage is seriously flawed but that does not prevent alarmists from overstating their effect.

Can it be that American military bases abroad, usually thought of as “stabilizers” in tough neighborhoods, are really the primary cause of radical terrorism against the US and its allies? That is what Robert Pape and James K.

Growing concern about specific terrorist threats targeting Europe in the past few weeks, with the focus on Britain, France, and Germany, led the State Department yesterday to issue a “travel alert” related to Europe. Here is the key portion of the alert: The State Department alerts U.S.

Wow. President Obama’s new Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors Austan Goolsbee has gone “TED-ish” in his economic commentary. Goolsbee’s talk is coherent, straightforward and doesn’t talk down to folks. And the production style is more modern than virtually anything I have seen from the White House. Excellent job Austan.