Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From Daniel Byman
The threat of terrorism has faded from the minds of Americans as the unemployment soars and our IRAs shrink. Even though I specialize on counterterrorism, this is a welcome corrective: terrorism remains an important issue, but it should not always be the top priority for policymakers.
Yet as the Obama administration and American allies [...]

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MESH invites selected authors to offer original first-person statements on their new books—why and how they wrote them, and what impact they hope and expect to achieve. David L. Phillips is visiting scholar at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Human Rights, adjunct associate professor in New York University’s Department of Politics, and senior [...]

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MESH invites selected authors to offer original first-person statements on their new books—why and how they wrote them, and what impact they hope and expect to achieve. Ami Pedahzur is associate professor of government at the University of Texas, Austin. His new book is The Israeli Secret Services and the Struggle against Terrorism.
From Ami Pedahzur
One [...]

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From J. Scott Carpenter
This past Friday, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy released its report, “Rewriting the Narrative: An Integrated Strategy for Counterradicalization” (download here). The report offers important policy recommendations for continuing the fight against radical extremism, making a clarion call for a conceptual leap away from a primary focus on violent counterterrorism [...]

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From Matthew Levitt
Even under geographic siege and financial sanction, Hamas was still able to smuggle some 80 tons of explosives, roadside bombs and longer-range rockets into Gaza over the course of the past ceasefire. Were it not for that success, Hamas would not have been able to continue firing rockets at southern Israeli communities, let [...]

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From Walter Reich
What’s the meaning of the offer last week by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantánamo detainees to plead guilty to the charge that they coordinated the attacks of 9/11 that murdered nearly 3,000 Americans?
That meaning is revealed by the fact that they withdrew their offer as soon as they learned that procedural [...]

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MESH invites selected authors to offer original first-person statements on their new books—why and how they wrote them, and what impact they hope and expect to achieve. Assaf Moghadam is a research fellow at the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, and a member of MESH. His new book is The [...]

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