Peter Feaver is a political scientist at Duke University specializing in civil-military relations, national security, and American foreign policy. He served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. He contributed essays and analysis to The Weekly Standard on defense policy, the Iraq War, and international relations.
IN HIS FINE ADDRESS to Congress, President Bush committed America to "our war on terror." But what should we call this war and how should we think of it? Already the Pentagon’s initial name for the war, "Operation Infinite Justice," has been discarded. That unfortunate moniker called to mind a…
On the night that John McCain secured the Republican nomination, he said about Iraq that "it is of little use to Americans for their candidates to avoid the many complex challenges of these struggles by re-litigating decisions of the past."
Rumsfeld
WARFARE IS ABOUT balancing three goals. On the one hand, you must accomplish military objectives, like seizing territory or destroying enemy forces. On the other hand, you must accomplish political objectives, the larger geopolitical goals that the combat is meant to serve, like stability in the…
WASHINGTON PUNDITS are focused on the difficult challenge of winning the hearts and minds of the Arab world. We would be well advised to spend some time thinking about how to win some hearts and minds in Europe. The situation in Britain is not as favorable as one might think if you looked only at…
CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND President Bush's "axis of evil" speech has provoked an extraordinary degree of vitriol from our European allies. The yowling from the press and intellectuals is predictable and returns those cosseted elites to their familiar habit, interrupted ever so briefly after September11,…
Cambridge, England THE TERRORISTS wanted a war with America and they will get one, though they erred if they thought it would be the kind of pin-prick, slap-on-the-wrist war the United States has waged of late. Rather it will be the sustained, root-and-branch kind of war the United States tends to…
Chinese premier Zhu Rongji's visit to America was not supposed to end this way. Leading up to the summit on April 7-9, administration aides had proudly announced that trade negotiators had agreed to double the air traffic between China and the United States. But in the end, that modest step --…