Our current defense and diplomatic budget allocation does not reflect the dual implementation of military operations and civilian capacity, set out both in COIN and in the NSS.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s April 8 address the University of Chicago this past week emphasized burden-sharing in the war in Afghanistan and the lessons learned from NATO’s involvement. His “lessons learned” are informative in getting a sense of NATO perspective.

Braving the inquisition that passes as passport control, I told the guard for the third time, phrased differently from my previous two attempts, that I was coming to Israel to study environmental policy in an exchange program between Harris and Tel Aviv University. You know, water and stuff?
At that, he laughed skeptically and waved me through the gates. Environmental policy in Israel is relatively new; the Ministry of Environment was created only ten years earlier and in some ways, skepticism is warranted. Transparency is lacking in national level policy. …