David Sanger and Daniel Klaidman on National Security
David E. Sanger and Daniel Klaidman join Jonathan Tepperman for a discussion about the Obama administration's national security policies and practices.
David E. Sanger, New York Times correspondent and author of Confront and Conceal, and Daniel Klaidman, Newsweek correspondent and author Kill or Capture, join Foreign Affairs Managing Editor Jonathan Tepperman for a discussion about the Obama administration's national security policies and practices.
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U.S. officials and national security experts chronically exaggerate foreign threats, suggesting that the world is scarier and more dangerous than ever. But that is just not true. From the U.S. perspective, at least, the world today is remarkably secure, and Washington needs a foreign policy that reflects that reality.
"The most fundamental method of work ... is to determine our working policies according to the actual conditions. When we study the causes of the mistakes we have made, we find that they all arose because we departed from the actual situation . . . and were subjective in determining our working policies."-"The Thoughts of Mao Tse-tung."
The recent revelations of abuses by all our intelligence agencies and the multitudinous investigations of the CIA in particular have raised serious questions as to whether the United States can and should continue to maintain a capability to conduct any clandestine operations. Most of the horror stories have related to what is known as covert action-i.e., operations to secretly influence foreign governments, groups or individuals, often by illegal means. The Chile case is the most highly publicized. Almost none have involved the collection of intelligence abroad, but many of the techniques used in foreign countries have been occasionally practiced at home where the CIA cannot legally carry out such operations and where the responsibility rests with the FBI. As a consequence of these activities, there is widespread belief that the CIA should halt all covert operations and disband that part of the organization which has been responsible for carrying them out.
