Category: Security and Strategy (page 2)

The SMU Tower Center held its eighth annual National Security Symposium titled, “National Defense: Budgets, Resources and Readiness,” featuring two panels each comprised of three experts and a moderator April 11. With the recent release of the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, and the budget for fiscal year 2018, the panelists had plenty to dissect in their presentations. Here’s what we learned from the discussions.

Paul B. Stares, director of the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations, presented ideas from his new book in a talk at the Tower Center “America’s Next War and How to Prevent It.”

Stares argues that there’s been a reversal of post-Cold War trends. Growing friction among great power countries and increasing organized violence in unstable regions of the world make the case that the United States is facing a growing risk of conflict.

With President Trump’s increasingly provocative tweets directed at North Korea and Kim Jong-un, people have becoming increasingly concerned with the seemingly unquestioned power the president has to order nuclear strikes. SMU Professor of Law Anthony Colangelo was no different. He drafted a paper on why there is a duty to disobey illegal nuclear strike orders, believing that in most scenarios, but not all, the use of such weapons would constitute a war crime.