Scowcroft Center Commentary, Analysis, & Reports

Applying American Power in the 21st Century

As recent events have shown, the United States must find a more effective way to operate in the 21st century. War roils in the Middle East; trade talks are faltering or reaching intractable sticking points; and fiscal uncertainty erodes America’s economic and military power. The issues of today, as well as developments that are meeting […]

Toward Shared Prosperity

By Christopher Colford

With an Urgent New Focus on Overcoming Inequality The challenge of promoting shared prosperity was one of the unifying themes throughout the recent Spring Meetings at the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund – the whirlwind of diplomacy and scholarship that sweeps through Washington every April and October. A remarkable new factor, however, energized […]

Rebalancing Socioeconomic Asymmetry in a Data-Driven Economy

By Peter Haynes

As the global economy becomes increasingly grounded in the exchange of data, the ways in which those data are collected and analyzed will become even more opaque to individuals, and the value exchange that is taking place even harder to discern. Although an individual may receive something in return for their information, the real values […]

Working Group on a New US Defense Strategy and Posture in the Gulf

For more than four decades, the United States has had a robust web of partnerships with the states comprising the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This system has helped to achieve common strategic goals, including securing the free and constant flow of oil from the region to the world at large; preventing the rise of a […]

Beyond Network Feudalism

By John Hanacek

Our civilization has a new reality. Computers meshed together by digital networks have transcended the system that built them becoming a new reality, a place where duplicating and moving information has near zero marginal cost. This alone has changed the nature of the world; we have a virtual playground where the reality of scarcity we […]

NATO’s Framework Nations: Capabilities for an Unpredictable World

By Franklin D. Kramer

At the upcoming summit in September 2014, the NATO nations are very likely to approve a concept of “framework nations” around which to build integrated capabilities. As yet, however, there has been relatively little discussion about how best to organize the framework nation approach so as to support NATO objectives. In the latest issue brief […]

Leidos CEO Gen. John Jumper Discusses Defense Industry Evolution

In September last year, the Virginia-based government contracting company SAIC split into two. The government-services wing maintained the SAIC name and the newly-created Leidos was created to focus on national security, commercial health, and the engineering sectors. Gen. John P. Jumper, the first chairman and CEO of Leidos, joined the Atlantic Council to discuss this […]

The Promise of Human Space Exploration

Space exploration captured Americans’ imaginations in the 1960s and became a significant cultural touchstone in American history due to the Apollo programs and that iconic moment when man first walked on the moon in 1969. Lately, this sense of wonder seems to be fading as NASA gets less funding, private industry steps in to fill […]