Security Dilemma

This week on Security Dilemma, John Allen Gay and Patrick Carver Fox spoke with Dr. Paul R. Pillar, a 28-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005.

A Vietnam veteran, he rose to serve as the Executive Assistant to CIA Director William Webster, the Deputy Director of the CIA Counterterrorism Center and now is a valuable critic of U.S. foreign policy as a non-resident fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies.

Today, we’re going to talk about Israeli airstrikes on Iranian diplomatic facilities in Damascus, tensions with Hezbollah, the Biden Administration's approach to the offensive in Gaza, the prospect of Israeli elections and more.

This week on Security Dilemma, Patrick Carver Fox and A.J. Manuzzi interview Dr. Jon Hoffman, a policy analyst in defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute. He holds a PhD in political science from George Mason, part of the Middle East Policy Council’s “40 under 40” and he writes about Middle East geopolitics in publications like Foreign Policy, The Washington Post and The National Interest.

In this episode, we cover the state of the war in Gaza, the politics of surrounding countries like Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia and the future of U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Dr. Hoffman's most recent essay in Foreign Policy

This week on Security Dilemma, Patrick Carver Fox and John Allen Gay interview Dr. Dale Copeland, a professor at the University of Virginia. Dr. Copeland recently published a new book called A World Safe for Commerce: American Foreign Policy From The Revolution To The Rise of China. At UVA, Dr. Copeland studies the impact of the rise and decline of economic and military power on state behavior. He’s additionally authored Economic Interdependence and War (2015) and The Origins of Major War (2000).

You can order A World Safe For Commerce here.

This week on Security Dilemma, Patrick Carver Fox and John Allen Gay interview Murtaza Hussain, a writer at The Intercept. He's broken major stories about America's involvement in Pakistani politics and we talk about that along with humanitarian aid in Gaza, airstrikes on the Houthis, the Iranian dissident group MEK and the FBI's entrapment of teenagers.

You can check out Murtaza's reporting here.

The original report on the Pakistani "cypher".

The arrest of Humzah Mashkoor.

This week on Security Dilemma, Patrick Carver Fox and John Allen Gay interviewed James A. Siebens, a Fellow at the Stimson Center's Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy program. He leads Stimson's Defense Strategy and Planning project and he’s the editor of China’s Use of Armed Coercion, a 2023 study on China’s use of military and paramilitary forces. Our conversation covers the South China Sea and China’s use of “military operations other than war”.

This week on Security Dilemma, Patrick Carver Fox and A.J. Manuzzi interviewed Derek Davison of Foreign Exchanges and American Prestige. We talk about his analysis of American policy in the Middle East, from the true intentions of the Obama Administration in the Arab Spring to the current relationship between the United States and the Pakistani military.

This week on Security Dilemma, Patrick Carver Fox and A.J. Manuzzi interviewed John Ramming Chappell, an Advocacy and Legal Fellow at the Center for Civilians in Conflict's U.S. program. Our conversation today ranged from the laws that regulate arms sales and security assistance and how often the United States follows its own laws in practice.

This week on Security Dilemma, we spoke with Dr. Jon Askonas about the technology of warfare, the state of the defense industry and war in Eastern Europe. Dr. Askonas is a professor of Political Science at Catholic University of America and a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation.

Dr. Askonas's article on Secrecy and Government

This week on Security Dilemma, we spoke with Rep. Warren Davidson, a Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee representing Ohio's 8th District. Rep. Davidson is a veteran of the Army Rangers and the 101st Airborne. Our conversation today covered his perspective on aid to Israel, American strikes on Houthis in Yemen, the on-going conflict over aid to Ukraine and more.

This week on Security Dilemma, Patrick Carver Fox and AJ Manuzzi interview Dr. Aileen Teague, a professor at Texas A&M’s Bush School and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute about her work covering Mexico and its relationship with American national security. This conversation is based on her paper for the Quincy Institute - Responsibly Demilitarizing U.S.–Mexico Bilateral Security Relations.