On Iran deal, Trump courts another fiasco like repealing Obamacare, CNN.com

On Iran deal, Trump courts another fiasco like repealing Obamacare

By Peter Bergen

Two years of Trump panning the Iran deal 01:31
Story highlights

Peter Bergen: Trump has blasted the Iran deal while his defense secretary says it’s in the US national interest
This effort could end up looking a lot like the failed attempts to repeal Obamacare, he writes

“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and the author of “United States of Jihad: Who Are America’s Homegrown Terrorists and How Do We Stop Them?” The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.”

(CNN)On the campaign trail, Donald Trump was clear about his view of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which delays the Islamic state from acquiring nuclear weapons for more than a decade in exchange for the lifting of draconian US-led sanctions on Iran.
Trump told CNN in the summer of 2015, “[The Iranians] are laughing at the stupidity of the deal we’re making on nuclear. We should double up and triple up the sanctions and have them come to us. They are making an amazing deal.”
As president, Trump has carried on the drumbeat of criticism of the deal and hinted that he is about to take a major step on it. Trump can try to rip up the deal by “decertifying” that Iran is compliant within the terms of the agreement and have the Republican-controlled Congress act on it, for instance, by imposing new sanctions on Iran.
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Trump reportedly plans to decertify the agreement by October 15, which is one of the regular deadlines for the continued certification of the nuclear deal.
But this move may be the foreign policy equivalent of trying to repeal and replace Obamacare, another key campaign Trump promise that ultimately he has not been able to deliver. In February of 2016, Trump tweeted, “We will immediately repeal and replace ObamaCare – and nobody can do that like me. We will save $’s and have much better healthcare!”
Just before the election, Trump promised the repeal would come “very, very quickly.”
Iran should call Trump's bluff on nuclear deal
Iran should call Trump’s bluff on nuclear deal
Trump has since encountered the reality that Obamacare is now supported by a slim majority of Americans, according to a poll released in June, while the various Republican alternatives to the Affordable Care Act that emerged during recent months are generally unpopular.
Similarly, with the Iran nuclear deal — which Trump has called “terrible” and “the worst deal ever negotiated” — the facts aren’t going along with the President’s promises. Secretary of Defense James Mattis testified just this past week that it is in America’s national security interest to remain in the agreement.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has also repeatedly found that Iran is complying with the nuclear deal.
So if it’s hard to make the case that the deal isn’t working, why else would you tear up this agreement?
This is reminiscent of the fix that Trump and many of his fellow Republicans got themselves into when they kept saying that Obamacare was disastrous, but had no better plan to proffer.
Of course, Iran operates in other ways outside of the nuclear deal that are inimical to American interests, and indeed the interests of other countries, for instance, by propping up the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria and supplying weapons to the Houthi rebels in Yemen. But the nuclear deal wasn’t meant to fix Iran’s regional meddling, irritating as that may be. Its goal, rather, was to ensure that Iran doesn’t acquire nuclear weapons, which would then set off a regional nuclear arms race in the Middle East where Saudi Arabia would quickly follow suit.
Also, wouldn’t an Iran armed with nuclear weapons behave worse than a non-nuclear-armed Iran? Just take a look at the behavior of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, whose antics on the world stage only get attention because he has nukes. Without nukes, Kim would simply be irrelevant. (North Korean GDP is $16 billion, which is considerably less than that of Vermont, which at $30 billion GDP is ranked last out of the 50 American states in terms of economic output.)
Trump and his Cabinet are stuck in an awkward embrace
Trump and his Cabinet are stuck in an awkward embrace
New sanctions?
Sure, the United States could try to unilaterally impose new sanctions on Iran. These wouldn’t be nearly as effective as the previous US-led sanctions that involved many other countries and forced Iran to the negotiating table to ink the nuclear deal. This time around, the US would not have the support of other major Western powers to sanction Iran.
Trump's self-defeating war
Trump’s self-defeating war
And to what end would the new sanctions be aimed, since critics of the deal haven’t explained what would replace the current agreement? Then there is the inconvenient fact that Iran will not renegotiate the nuclear agreement. Similarly, Britain, France, Germany and Russia, which also negotiated the deal alongside the United States, have made clear that they want the deal to remain in place.
Finally, in Congress there may not be the 51 votes needed to overturn the agreement by imposing new sanctions on Iran. Republican Sens. Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona, and Susan Collins of Maine, for instance, all might vote against sanctions that would effectively end the agreement.

America the lethal, CNN.com

America the lethal
Peter Bergen

By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

Peter Bergen: America is exceptional in many ways — including its rate of gun violence
But until Americans work to change lenient gun laws, tragedies like the one in Las Vegas will remain a serious risk, writes Bergen

“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.” This commentary has been updated from an earlier version.”

(CNN)Americans often think of themselves as belonging to an exceptional nation, and in many ways they do. They belong to a tolerant, multicultural society that has led the world toward a more innovative and more inclusive future through new technologies and a unique embrace of diverse cultures.
But the United States also leads the world in other ways that don’t match the often complacent self-conception that many Americans have of their own country. The United States locks up more of its population proportionally than any other country in the world, including authoritarian regimes such as Russia and China, according to the International Centre for Prison Studies. It also leads in another dubious statistic: More Americans are killed by fellow citizens armed with guns than in any other advanced country, according to the Small Arms Survey.
In 2011 alone, according to FBI statistics, more than 11,000 Americans were killed by firearms in the United States (a figure that excludes suicides).

Despite all the reasonable concerns in the United States about jihadist terrorism, in any given year Americans are almost 2,000 times more likely to be killed by a fellow American armed with a gun than by a jihadist terrorist. Since the 9/11 attacks, 95 Americans have been killed by jihadist terrorists, on average about six Americans a year, according to data collected by New America.
Pulse nightclub survivor: Orlando loves you, Las Vegas
Pulse nightclub survivor: Orlando loves you, Las Vegas
By contrast, in the United Kingdom, a country which is similar to the United States in terms of its laws and culture, Britain suffers around 50-60 gun deaths a year in a country where the population is around a fifth the size of the United States. In other words, you are about 40 times more likely to be killed by an assailant with a gun in the United States than you are in the United Kingdom.
To be sure there are occasional mass-casualty attacks in Europe by murderers armed with guns, such as the assaults by the neo-Nazi Anders Breivik who killed 77 in Norway in 2011 and the attack in Dunblane, Scotland at a school where 16 children were killed in 1996, but these are exceptions to the rule.
We still don’t know the motivations of Stephen Paddock, who on Sunday night carried out the worst mass shooting in modern American history, killing at least 59 and injuring more than 500, but what we do know, so far, is that he had 23 rifles in the room from which he launched his rampage.
Paddock also hailed from Nevada, a state that allows “open carry,” which enables its residents to openly display weapons in public. Which other civilized country allows its citizens to show up, say, at a Starbucks carrying semi-automatic guns?
The Second Amendment, of course, is the Second Amendment, so certainly American laws allow the possession of weapons by its citizens. But it’s unlikely that the Founders’ intention was to let troubled American citizens acquire arsenals to kill as many as their fellow citizens as possible.
With each new outrage — from the Sandy Hook massacre to the attack on the gay nightclub in Orlando — there follows a certain amount of soul-searching by the American public and policy makers about the distinctive American gun culture that has developed in recent years, where pretty much anyone can acquire an arsenal of weapons. But each time the moment of self-reflection seems to pass.
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This is a tribute to the political muscle of the National Rifle Association which embraces a Second Amendment absolutism that allows even the dangerous number of less than 1,000 Americans who are on the “no fly” list to legally purchase semi-automatic weapons.
One can only hope that the tragic events in Las Vegas may change this. However, given that previous tragedies have not changed this deadly equation, there is really little reason for hope.
That resigns us to a dystopian future where Americans attending something as innocuous as an office holiday party in San Bernardino in 2015, or partying at a nightclub in Orlando the following year, or attending a country music concert on Sunday in Las Vegas have to live with the lethal reality that they may become the innocent targets of their well-armed fellow citizens.

Correction: This piece originally misstated the name of the shooter in Norway as Andres Breivik.

Saudi women driving a sign bigger change is coming, CNN.com

Saudi women driving a sign bigger change is coming Live TV Search »

Bergen: Saudi women driving a sign bigger change is coming
By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
Updated 4:36 PM ET, Wed September 27, 2017
Saudi activist hails end of ban on women driving

Now Playing Saudi activist hails end…
Source: CNN

Saudi activist hails end of ban on women driving 04:42
Story highlights
Peter Bergen: It’s hard to underestimate the symbolic power of the royal decree allowing Saudi women to drive
The decision is also an indicator of greater social and economic change underway in Saudi Arabia, he writes

Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.”

(CNN)Saudi Arabia announced Tuesday that women will finally be allowed to drive, starting in June of next year.

It’s hard to underestimate the symbolic power of this royal decree. The issue of women driving has long been a cultural litmus test in Saudi Arabia, which is among the most religiously conservative Islamic countries in the world. Allowing women to drive has divided its conservative religious establishment, which controls pretty much every aspect of Saudi society, from more liberal Saudi elites, including a good chunk of the vast royal family.
Women driving themselves aren’t just symbolic — they’re also part of a larger social transformation going on in Saudi society that is arguably the most important in almost half a century. Mina Al-Oraibi, the editor in chief of The National, a leading English language newspaper in the Middle East, explains, “This decision tips the balance for Saudi women and there is no going back. Of course, other issues remain, but this was the most evident and impacted everyday life for all women, from mothers wanting to take their kids to school, to women considering entering the workforce.”
Nadia Oweidat, an assistant professor at Kansas State University and fellow at New America who tracks social media in the Arab world, says that within minutes of the news on Tuesday, “the Arabic hashtag #The_King_Supports_Women_Driving was trending. Not long after though, the hashtag #The_People_Refuse_Women_Driving also appeared … full of Wahhabi sheikhs predicting [that] this is the end of Saudi.”

The decision to let women drive marks an important reversal of decades of policies that took Saudi Arabia in a more conservative direction culturally. As a result of observing Shiite militants overthrowing the secularist Shah of Iran in 1979 and also Sunni ultrafundamentalists assaulting the holy mosque in Mecca the same year, the Saudi monarchy embraced even more tightly the Saudi religious establishment, closing, for instance, the few movie theaters in the kingdom.
Since then Saudi Arabia has been ruled by a series of elderly kings who have maintained tight relations with the Wahhabi religious establishment that has defined Arabia since the first Saudi kingdom, which was established in 1744.
Now it looks like there’s growing potential for change. There is a new Sharif in town and he is Crown Prince Mohammed Salman, the 32-year old son of the 81-year old King Salman. The time is ripe for such changes because Saudi Arabia is a very young country right now; 70% of the population is under 30.
MBS, as Mohammed bin Salman is universally known in the Saudi kingdom, and his father have already clipped the wings of the feared religious police who long patrolled the streets looking for supposed malefactors. Since 2016 the religious police no longer have the power to arrest suspects and can only report them to regular police units.
The Saudi monarchy has also allowed some music concerts to happen in the kingdom, the first in decades.
Earlier this month, hundreds of women mingled with men for the first time at a stadium in the capital Riyadh, celebrating the anniversary of the founding of the Saudi kingdom. There were even impromptu parties later that night where men danced on the street in proximity to women. This would be tame stuff in Manhattan, but it is very dramatic for Riyadh.
These social changes show that MBS and King Salman are “signaling that they are determined to reform society and drag it kicking and screaming into the 21st century,” says Ali Shihabi, the executive director of the Washington-based think tank Arabia Foundation, who is close to Saudi officials.
Power politics
MBS has proven to be a formidable player of bare-knuckle politics. He and his father removed his cousin, the previous Crown Prince, Mohamed bin Nayef, as the Saudi heir apparent in a bloodless coup in June.
It is widely believed that the octogenarian King Salman will step down relatively soon, allowing the 32-year-old MBS to become absolute monarch.
Betting on MBS is one of the few clear wins that Jared Kushner, and by extension his father-in law, President Trump, have had in the foreign policy sphere. Kushner cultivated MBS and invited him to the White House early in the Trump presidency. Together they organized President Trump’s first foreign trip as President to Saudi Arabia in May, where Trump was given the most royal of welcomes.
An economic revolution?
MBS is also attempting to revolutionize the Saudi economy. Given the decline in oil prices and the fact that the Saudi economy is almost totally dependent on oil, something clearly needed to be done.
MBS has proposed what is known as “Vision 2030,” which is an ambitious effort to wean Saudis off oil and their almost total dependence on government (by which 70% of the population is employed). They pay no taxes and also receive free education and health care as well as receiving subsidies for water, gas and electricity.
This model is unsustainable and if it keeps up, the International Monetary Fund estimated in 2015 that the Saudi economy would run out of financial reserves in five years, which is why MBS has been moving so quickly to try to change things.
He faces some formidable obstacles, however. Taxing Saudis is a nonstarter and cutting bonuses and benefits for government officials proved deeply unpopular and was reversed in April.

The government did reduce subsidies for gas and water and also plans to raise funds from the sale of the giant oil company, Aramco, which could be worth as much as a trillion dollars.
MBS’ plans for both Saudi society and its economy are quite ambitious and the decree allowing women to drive, while many are questioning what its full impact will be, is still a hugely symbolic part of this effort.

The Trade: The Labyrinth of Political Kidnapping, New America DC

The Trade: My Journey Into The Labyrinth of Political Kidnapping
RSVP
When

October 12, 2017
2:00 pm – 4:30 pm
Where

New America
740 15th St NW #900
Washington, D.C. 20005
In 2008, Jere Van Dyk traveled to Afghanistan to research and write a book on the Taliban. While doing so, he was taken hostage and held for 45 days by people he believed at the time to be the Taliban. Van Dyk was told little about his kidnapping by his employer, the FBI, and various private contractors. Haunted by the secrecy, he chose to return to Afghanistan in 2014 to find the truth of who took him and why.

In his new book The Trade: My Journey into the Labyrinth of Political Kidnapping, Van Dyk explores not only the story of his kidnapping and release, but the larger story of the “Trade,” the business that has emerged around kidnapping in which terrorists and governments negotiate with no formal lines of communication.

Jere Van Dyk is a journalist and the author of The Trade: My Journey Into the Labyrinth of Political Kidnapping, Captive, in which he tells the story of his capture and imprisonment by the Taliban in 2008, and In Afghanistan: An American Odyssey. Van Dyk has written for many publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and National Geographic and has traveled in Afghanistan since the 1970s.

Follow the discussion online using #TheTrade and following @NewAmericaISP.

Copies of the book will be available for sale by credit or check.

Participant:

Jere Van Dyk
Author, The Trade: My Journey Into the Labyrinth of Political Kidnapping

Moderator:

Peter Bergen, @PeterBergenCNN
Vice President, New America

Trump’s new travel ban still doesn’t fly, CNN.com

Trump’s new travel ban still doesn’t fly
Peter Bergen

By David Sterman and Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

Story highlights

David Sterman and Peter Bergen: Revised ban is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist
Homegrown terrorism, not immigration, is the source of the problem in the US, authors say

“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.” David Sterman is a policy analyst at New America’s International Security Program.”

(CNN)On Sunday, President Donald Trump issued a proclamation updating his administration’s travel ban policy to apply American travel restrictions to citizens of eight countries: Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.
As with two earlier versions of the travel ban, this most recent version would not have prevented a single death from jihadist terrorism in the United States since 9/11.
According to research by New America, 13 militants have committed an act of deadly violence inspired by jihadist ideology in the United States since 9/11. None of them came from any of the total of 10 countries that have been included in the three iterations of the Trump administration’s travel ban.

Of the 13 lethal terrorists, eight were born in the United States, and all 13 were citizens or legal permanent residents of the United States at the times of their attacks.
Nor would the travel ban, in any of its forms, have prevented the 9/11 attacks, which were carried out by 15 Saudis, two Emiratis, an Egyptian and a Lebanese citizen. None of those countries are among those listed in the travel ban.
Sunday’s order added Chad, North Korea and Venezuela to the list of countries facing travel restrictions while dropping Sudan, which had been covered by a previous version of the ban.
The ‘homegrown’ threat
The terrorist threat in the United States is an overwhelmingly homegrown phenomenon. Eighty-five percent of the 418 militants charged with terrorism-related crimes in the United States since 9/11 are citizens or legal permanent residents, and just under half were born American citizens.
A US Department of Homeland Security report leaked earlier this year shows that the department itself came to the same conclusion when it considered which citizens of which countries posed a threat. The report stated that citizens of the original travel ban countries were “rarely implicated in U.S.-based terrorism,” an assessment that’s quite unlikely to be changed by the inclusion of Chad, North Korea and Venezuela.

The new travel ban portrays the selection of banned countries as the result of a review process around the world that identified these countries as having insufficient security measures or that are unwilling or unable to cooperate with the United States on security.
However, the Trump administration has given little reason to trust its review process or assessments when it comes to the travel ban and immigration policy.
The first travel ban in late January was rolled out in a rush that met with legal challenges and caused disruptions at airports.
Since that first rollout, key White House policy adviser Stephen Miller has cited misleading statistics on the number of terrorists from travel ban countries in which he included non-terrorism cases and individuals who had never set foot inside the United States before their extradition for trial on terrorism charges.
When the administration rolled out its second version of the travel ban, the Department of Homeland Security provided as justification the case of Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who was convicted of plotting to attack a Christmas tree lighting in Portland, Oregon, in 2010.
While Mohamud was born in Somalia, his case does not support the travel ban. He came to the United States as a young child more than a decade before he became radicalized here and carried out his plot — and it was his father who provided the tip to police regarding his militant activity.
It is possible that the DHS review revealed real insufficiencies in the listed countries’ security measures that required reforms. However, given the administration’s rushed efforts to implement previous versions of the ban and its misleading defenses of the ban, it seems plausible that the administration crafted a process to add two non-Muslim majority countries to the ban so as to shore up its legal defense when the US Supreme Court takes up the question next month of the president’s authority to issue such a ban.
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The two non-Muslim countries were easy additions to the travel ban. After all the number of North Korean visitors to the United States is negligible. Similarly, the Venezuelan ban only affects a number of the country’s diplomats and their families.
The travel ban, in short, is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, and rather than originating with a well-thought-out review process of security measures, regardless of religion, it began with Trump calling during his campaign for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
Try as his advisers might, the shadow of that initial motivation hangs over their attempts to craft a ban that meets legal scrutiny.

The ‘Legion of Brothers’ that routed the Taliban, CNN.com

The ‘Legion of Brothers’ that routed the Taliban
Peter Bergen

By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

New documentary tells story of Special Forces group that went into Afghanistan post-9/11 and overthrew Taliban regime
Peter Bergen says film raises serious questions about how much America is asking from these forces

“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.” Bergen is a producer of CNN Films’ “Legion of Brothers,” which airs on CNN Sunday, September 24 at 9 p.m. ET. ”

(CNN)The documentary feature film “Legion of Brothers” tells the stories of the handful of US Special Forces soldiers who, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, went into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and within a matter of weeks overthrew the Taliban regime.
In the public’s mind, Special Forces are often confused with the “door kickers” of Special Operations Forces — such as SEAL Team 6 and Delta Force — who are the United States’ elite counterterrorism operators.
In fact, the primary mission of Special Forces, in particular the Army’s Green Berets, who are profiled in the film, is to work “by, with and through” local forces on the ground to act as force multipliers. That means that Special Forces embed with local forces and work with them to achieve their common goals.

The Green Berets of US Special Forces 5th Group — known as “the Legion” — who led the anti-Taliban campaign represent a textbook case of a successful Special Forces campaign.
Five weeks after the 9/11 attacks, a 12-man Green Beret team led by Capt. Mark Nutsch was dropped into Afghanistan where they attached themselves to the army of the Uzbek warlord Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum.
Green Berets explain why they fought: 'Send me'

Green Berets explain why they fought: ‘Send me’ 01:03
Riding horses into battle — in a scene that could have played out during the American Civil War — Nutsch and his team helped lead Dostum’s forces to victory against the Taliban forces in the north of Afghanistan. Together, they rode into the key northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif on November 10 where they were greeted as liberators.
Meanwhile, in southern Afghanistan, Capt. Jason Amerine and his 12-man Green Beret team linked up with an obscure Afghan diplomat named Hamid Karzai.
In mid-November 2001, as they moved toward the city of Kandahar, the Taliban’s de facto capital in southern Afghanistan, Amerine’s team called in airstrikes against advancing Taliban units and more or less obliterated a Taliban column of a thousand men that had been dispatched from Kandahar. It was the Taliban’s final play to remain in power.
The Taliban surrendered Kandahar on December 5 and the same day, Karzai was appointed to be the next leader of Afghanistan.
Few saw then that the United States would still be fighting wars of various kinds a decade and a half later, not only in Afghanistan, but also in Iraq and Syria.

Special Forces continue to play a key role in these wars, in part, because there is no demand signal today from the American public to send large conventional armies into the greater Middle East to fight wars against ISIS, al Qaeda and the Taliban.
This means American involvement in the wars in these countries must be conducted “by, with and through” the local forces on the ground, such as the Afghan army, Iraqi military and Syrian militias allied to the States. And that means a large role for US Special Forces, whose specialty is working with those local forces.
But this raises some serious questions about how much the American public is asking from its Special Forces, who are facing repeated deployments.
In “Legion of Brothers,” Scott Neil, a Green Beret who was part of a sniper team in Afghanistan in the months after 9/11, explains: “You used to go into a VFW and you had one guy who had one tour. You were like ‘Oh, wow.’ You hear one guy had two tours. You’re like ‘Oh, he’s a little crazy.’ Somebody had three tours — they’re out of their minds. And what you see now is people have five, seven, nine, 10 tours. And they’re still going.”

This not only puts pressure on Special Forces but also, of course, puts much strain on their families. As Nutsch’s wife, Amy, a special needs teacher and mother of four, puts it: “I’ve had some trying times at home, but managed to get through it. And then I yell at him later, going, ‘This is what I have to deal with’.”
There are no easy answers for how to reduce the pressures on the force and families in an era when there is a great demand for the skills that Special Forces bring to the battlefield.
Special Operations Command — first under Adm. Eric Olson and then under Adm. Bill McRaven, the architect of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden — put in place polices that emphasized more predictable deployments, allowing for more predictable blocks of time for servicemen to be with their families. They also started providing more support services for servicemen and their families.

The Future of Terrorism, Boston University, Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston MA

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The Future of Terrorism with CNN’s Peter Bergen

Starts:
2:30 pm on Monday, September 25, 2017
Location:
121 Bay State Road

“The Future of Terrorism,” Intelligence and Defense Seminar with Peter Bergen. Harvard Kennedy School

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“The Future of Terrorism,” Intelligence and Defense Seminar with Peter Bergen
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Mon., Sep. 25, 2017 | 12:15pm – 1:30pm

John F. Kennedy School of Government – Littauer Building, Belfer Center Library, Room L369
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The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs will host a Intelligence and Defense Seminar Lunch with Peter Bergen on “The Future of Terrorism” in the Belfer Center Library (L369).

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About

Peter Bergen is a journalist, documentary producer, vice president at New America, CNN national security analyst, professor of practice at Arizona State University, and the author or editor of seven books, three of which were New York Times bestsellers and four of which were named among the best non-fiction books of the year by The Washington Post. The books have been translated into twenty languages. Documentaries based on his books have been nominated for two Emmys and also won the Emmy for best documentary.

Bergen also serves as New America’s Director of the International Security, Future of War and Fellows Programs. He is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy and writes a weekly column for CNN.com. He is a member of the Aspen Homeland Security Group and a fellow at Fordham University’s Center on National Security. Bergen is on the editorial board of Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, a leading scholarly journal in the field. He has held teaching positions at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. For many years he was a fellow at New York University’s Center on Law and Security. He has testified on Capitol Hill seventeen times about national security issues.

In 2011 he published The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda. The book won the Washington Institute’s $30,000 Gold Prize for the best book on the Middle East. In 2012 he published Manhunt: The Ten Year Search for Bin Laden, from 9/11 to Abbottabad. It won the Overseas Press Club award for the best book on international affairs. HBO based the film “Manhunt” on the book, which won the 2013 Emmy for best documentary. In 2013 he published Talibanistan: Negotiating the Borders Between Terror, Politics and Religion, a collection of essays about the Taliban that Bergen co-edited. In 2014 he published Drone Wars, a collection of essays about drone warfare that Bergen co-edited. In 2016, he published United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists and HBO adapted the book for the documentary film “Homegrown: The Counter-Terror Dilemma.”

Bergen has hosted, produced, or executive produced multiple documentaries for HBO, CNN, National Geographic, and Discovery. Bergen co-produced CNN Films’ Legion of Brothers, which premiered at Sundance in January 2017 and will be released theatrically in May 2017. Bergen produced the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997. The interview, which aired on CNN, marked the first time that bin Laden declared war against the United States to a Western audience.

Bergen has written for a wide range of newspapers and magazines around the world including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Time, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian, Prospect, La Repubblica, Die Welt and Der Spiegel. He has a degree in Modern History from New College, Oxford.

Bergen is married to the documentary director/producer Tresha Mabile. They have two children.
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16 years after 9/11: The state of the terrorist threat, CNN.com

16 years after 9/11: The state of the terrorist threat
Peter Bergen

By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

Updated 5:37 PM ET, Sat September 9, 2017

Story highlights

Peter Bergen: The threat of terrorism by foreigners is quite low in the United States
Attacks are by American citizens and permanent residents, inspired by ISIS but had no direct contact with the group

“Peter Bergen is CNN’s National Security Analyst, a vice president at New America and the author of “United States of Jihad: Who Are America’s Homegrown Terrorists and How Do We Stop Them?” ”

(CNN)Sixteen years after the 9/11 attacks, there is a fair amount of good news about the state of the battle against jihadist terrorists: The United States has not suffered a successful attack by a foreign terrorist organization since al Qaeda’s horrific attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Al Qaeda’s core group, based in Afghanistan and Pakistan, hasn’t launched a successful attack in the West since the suicide bombings on London’s transportation system more than a decade ago in 2005, which killed 52 commuters.

The terrorist group that sprang up in the wake of the setbacks suffered by al Qaeda, ISIS is itself now largely defeated, having lost the city of Mosul, its headquarters in Iraq, and much of the city of Raqqa, its headquarters in Syria.

The US-led coalition has also killed an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 ISIS fighters, according to US Special Operations Command’s Gen. Raymond “Tony” Thomas, speaking at the Aspen Security Forum in July.
A month later Brett McGurk, the US envoy to the anti-ISIS coalition, said ISIS had lost control of more than three-quarters of the territory that it had once held in Iraq and more than half of what it had once controlled in Syria.
The threat posed by American “foreign fighters” returning to the United States who were trained by ISIS or other jihadist groups in Iraq and Syria is quite low compared to European countries. According to public records, only seven American militants have returned from the Syrian and Iraqi battlefields and none has carried out an act of terrorism.
That’s the good news, but there are other troubling trends. Since 2014 there have been six lethal jihadist terrorist attacks in the United States, killing 74 people, according to New America’s research.

Those attacks were carried out by American citizens and legal permanent residents, not by foreign terrorists as was the case on 9/11.
These American terrorists were inspired by ISIS propaganda online, but had no direct contact with the group.
Jihadist terrorists in the United States today overwhelmingly radicalize online. Of the 129 militants from the United States who joined jihadist terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria, or attempted to do so, or helped others to do so, 101 of them downloaded and shared jihadist propaganda online and some conducted encrypted online discussions with ISIS militants based in the Middle East, according to New America research.
The Israeli counterterrorism expert Gabriel Weimann rightly points out that the “lone wolf” is now part of a virtual pack.
In the cases of the 129 militants drawn to the Syrian conflict, none appears to have been recruited in person by other militant operatives.

The Trump administration’s temporary travel ban from six Muslim majority countries does nothing to address this “homegrown” militant threat that is enabled by jihadist propaganda online. Travel bans, of course, have no impact on the Internet.
While the United States has seen no lethal attacks in which the perpetrators were trained and directed by foreign terrorist organizations since 9/11, there have been five ISIS-directed attacks in Europe since 2014 that killed 188 people, around twice the death toll of all deadly jihadist attacks in the United States since 9/11.
Meanwhile, the Taliban in Afghanistan are at their strongest point since their defeat by US forces shortly after 9/11.

Other forms of political violence in the United States

Terrorism in the United States doesn’t emanate only from jihadists, who have killed 95 people in the States since 9/11.
Individuals motivated by far-right ideology have killed 68 people in the United States during the same period, while individuals motivated by black nationalist ideology have killed eight people, according to New America research.

The drivers of terrorism

Even though ISIS is largely defeated, the conditions that led to the group’s emergence largely remain, including the regional civil war in the Middle East between Sunni and Shia that has consumed Iraq, Syria and Yemen; the collapse of Arab governance around the region; the collapse of economies in war-torn Muslim states and the population bulge in the Middle East and North Africa.
This has precipitated a tidal wave of Muslim immigration into Europe. Those immigrants are arriving in countries where Muslims are often marginalized and this wave of Muslim immigration has helped fuel the recent rise of European ultranationalist parties. This is a combustible mix, which may help propel some European Muslims to subscribe to the tenets of militant jihadism.
These drivers of jihadism strongly suggest that a son of ISIS will form in coming years.
Even as ISIS suffers repeated setbacks, al Qaeda’s branch in Syria has shown surprising resiliency and it’s possible that a rump version of ISIS might merge with al Qaeda in Syria. The two groups split from each other in 2014.

Al Qaeda’s core group also seems to be grooming Hamza bin Laden, one of Osama bin Laden’s sons, as a next generation leader. Hamza bin Laden, who is in his late twenties, has appeared in a number of al Qaeda media productions in recent years.
The continued resilience of al Qaeda in Syria and the fact that the drivers of global jihadism are not going away anytime soon suggests that the long war that began on 9/11 more than a decade and half ago has many years left before it finally sputters out.

“Inside Terrorism, 3rd Edition”: Book Talk with Dr. Bruce Hoffman Georgetown Univ.

“Inside Terrorism, 3rd Edition”: Book Talk and Reception with Dr. Bruce Hoffman

Join the Center for Security Studies for a special event featuring the latest publication by director and core faculty member Bruce Hoffman—moderated by best-selling author and CNN analyst Peter Bergen, author of The United States of Jihad, Manhunt, and Holy War, Inc., among other books.

During the first part of the evening, Mr. Bergen will engage Dr. Hoffman in discussion about terrorism’s evolution from when the first edition of Inside Terrorism was published in 1998 until today. The majority of the program, however, will be devoted to question and answer and audience discussion. Light refreshments will be provided for all attendees before and after the event.

RSVP to reserve your spot!
Inside Terrorism: Book Talk and Reception with Dr. Bruce Hoffman
Tuesday, September 12
7:00 – 9:00 PM*
Bioethics Research Library
Healy Hall, 1st Floor
RSVP HERE

*Students with class until 7:30 are welcome to join us for the latter portion of the talk.

About the Book

Inside Terrorism has remained the seminal work for understanding the historical evolution of terrorism and the terrorist mindset. The revised edition of this classic book maps terrorism’s historical trajectory from its ancient origins through the 19th and 20th Centuries to the rise of ISIS and stubborn resilience of al Qaeda. It specifically explores the remarkably consistent demographic background of terrorists throughout the ages; the reasons behind the continued salience of suicide terrorism as a fixture of contemporary political violence; terrorism as an historically pernicious form of violent communication, continuing today with the exploitation of new communications media and social networking technologies; the global radicalization and foreign fighter phenomena; and potential future trends, including the repercussions of a post-caliphate ISIS and the potential resurgence of al Qaeda. Closer to home, Inside Terrorism also examines the resurgence in the United States of violent, anti-government militants, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and opponents of legalized abortion.

About the Author

Bruce Hoffman has been studying terrorism and insurgency for over four decades. He is a tenured professor in Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, where he is also the Director of both the Center for Security Studies and of the Security Studies Program. In addition, Professor Hoffman is visiting Professor of Terrorism Studies at St Andrews University, Scotland and has decades of experience in a variety of advisory roles. Professor Hoffman’s other books include the prize-winning Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947 (2015) and The Evolution of the Global Terrorist Threat: From 9/11 to Osama bin Laden’s Death (2014).