Experts in the News

Topic
Washington Post

Edith Wilson: The first lady who fooled D.C. and ran the White House

Unless readers are aficionados of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, they may possess only vague knowledge that a debilitating stroke incapacitated him in his administration’s final year and that his wife Edith became the unofficial “acting president.” This intriguing tale of how a first lady, with minimal formal education and no government experience, effectively took the reins from the partially paralyzed chief executive and guided his White House, from October 1919 to March 1921, is as riveting as it is improbable.
Barbara Perry
MC Presents

The U.S. invasion of Iraq: 20 years later

A panel of foreign policy experts marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq by discussing Melvyn P. Leffler’s new book, Confronting Saddam Hussein: George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq. Looking back, what does this highly consequential foreign policy decision reveal about presidential leadership and decision making? How did Saddam Hussein's record as a brutal dictator influence the decisions made by George W. Bush? Leffler's extensive interviews with top Bush administration policymakers document the war's conflicting objectives and costly aftermath.
Philip Zelikow
MC Presents

The U.S. invasion of Iraq: 20 years later

A panel of foreign policy experts marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq by discussing Melvyn P. Leffler’s new book, Confronting Saddam Hussein: George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq. Looking back, what does this highly consequential foreign policy decision reveal about presidential leadership and decision making? How did Saddam Hussein's record as a brutal dictator influence the decisions made by George W. Bush? Leffler's extensive interviews with top Bush administration policymakers document the war's conflicting objectives and costly aftermath.
Ashley Deeks
MC Presents

The U.S. invasion of Iraq: 20 years later

A panel of foreign policy experts marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq by discussing Melvyn P. Leffler’s new book, Confronting Saddam Hussein: George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq. Looking back, what does this highly consequential foreign policy decision reveal about presidential leadership and decision making? How did Saddam Hussein's record as a brutal dictator influence the decisions made by George W. Bush? Leffler's extensive interviews with top Bush administration policymakers document the war's conflicting objectives and costly aftermath.
Eric Edelman
Lawfare

National Security AI and the Hurdles to International Regulation

States are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence systems to enhance their national security decision-making. The real risks that states will deploy unlawful or unreliable national security AI (NSAI) make international regulations seem appealing, but approaches built on nuclear analogies are deeply flawed. Instead, and as I argue in this paper, regulation of NSAI is more likely to follow the path of hostile cyber operations (HCOs).
Ashley Deeks
The Dispatch

Grasping at Nuclear Straws

President for life Vladimir Putin’s latest attempt to unsettle the West and hint at nuclear escalation—announcing the intended movement of Russian tactical nuclear warheads into Belarus at the request of his Mussolini-like ally Alexander Lukashenko—is risible. It represents a continuation of Putin’s efforts to manipulate Western fears (and the well-documented concerns of the Biden administration) about the escalation risks of continued military assistance to Ukraine. It is deeply unserious but nevertheless has gained some resonance in mainstream media and on Twitter. Let’s be clear about this farce.
Eric Edelman