The United States National Security Council (NSC) is the principal forum used by the president of the United States for consideration of national security, military, and foreign policy matters. Based in the White House, it is part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, and composed of senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials.
Counterterrorism, also known as anti-terrorism, relates to the practices, military tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, law enforcement, businesses, and intelligence agencies use to combat or eliminate terrorism.
George Edward Pickett was a career United States Army officer who became a major general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He is best remembered for being one of the commanders at Pickett's Charge, the futile and bloody Confederate offensive on the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg that bears his name.
Allen Welsh Dulles was the first civilian director of central intelligence (DCI), and its longest serving director to date. As head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the early Cold War, he oversaw the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, the Lockheed U-2 aircraft program, the Project MKUltra mind control program and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. He was fired by John F. Kennedy over the latter fiasco.
An insurgency is a violent, armed rebellion by small, lightly armed bands who practice guerrilla warfare from primarily rural base areas against a larger authority. The key descriptive feature of insurgency is its asymmetric nature: small irregular forces face a large, well-equipped, regular military force state adversary. Due to this asymmetry, insurgents avoid large-scale direct battles, opting instead to blend in with the civilian population where they gradually expand territorial control and military forces. Insurgency frequently hinges on control of and collaboration with local populations.
Carla Anne Robbins is an American journalist, national security expert, and the former deputy editorial page editor of The New York Times. Prior to her career at The New York Times, Robbins worked for BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report, and The Wall Street Journal. During her thirteen-year career at The Wall Street Journal, she won multiple awards and was a member of two Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting teams.
Ashton Baldwin Carter was an American government official and academic who served as the 25th United States Secretary of Defense from February 2015 to January 2017. He later served as director of the Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.
Mihai S. Radu was a Romanian American political scientist and journalist who grew up in Romania. He was Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Co-Chairman of FPRI's Center on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, and Homeland Security.
K. A. (Kim) Taipale is an investor, legal scholar, and social theorist specializing in information, technology, and national security policy. He is a partner in Stilwell Holding, a private investment firm, and the former chairman of the executive committee of Kobra International Ltd. He is also the founder and executive director of the Stilwell Center for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology Policy, a private, nonpartisan research organization, and a director of the Stilwell Charitable Fund. He was previously an investment banker at Lazard Freres & Co. and a lawyer at Davis Polk & Wardwell.
Seth G. Jones is an academic, political scientist and author. Jones is most renowned for his work on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism; much of his published material and media presence relates to US strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and in confronting al-Qāʿida. He is currently a senior vice president, Harold Brown Chair, director of the International Security Program, and director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Albert "Al" Santoli is an American writer and Founder as well as President of the Asia America Initiative. He served in combat as a rifleman for the 25th Infantry Division during the Vietnam War. He is currently an adjunct professor of the Institute of World Politics and teaches a course entitled "Counterterrorism through Cultural Engagement and Development."
The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is a global counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks and is also the most recent global conflict spanning multiple wars. The main targets of the campaign were militant Islamist and Salafi jihadist armed organisations such as al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and their international affiliates, which were waging military insurgencies to overthrow governments of various Muslim-majority countries. Other major targets included the Ba'athist regime in Iraq, which was deposed in an invasion in 2003, and various militant factions that fought during the ensuing insurgency.
Irregular warfare (IW) is defined in United States joint doctrine as "a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations." In practice, control of institutions and infrastructure is also important. Concepts associated with irregular warfare are older than the term itself.
Richard L. Kugler is an American thinker and writer on U.S. national security policy and defense strategy.
Bruce R. Hoffman is an American political analyst. He specializes in the study of terrorism, counter-terrorism, insurgency, and counter-insurgency. Hoffman serves as the Shelby Cullom and Kathryn W. Davis Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security on the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a professor at the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University, where he directs its Center for Jewish Civilization. In addition, he is the Professor Emeritus and Honorary Professor of Terrorism Studies at the University of St Andrews, and is the George H. Gilmore Senior Fellow at the U.S. Military Academy's Combating Terrorism Center.
Bruce Gentry Blair was an American nuclear security expert, research scholar, national security expert, the author of articles and books on nuclear topics, and a television show producer.
Christopher C. Harmon is an American author, editor and independent scholar. He is a Distinguished Fellow at the Brute Krulak Center, Marine Corps University, and Professor at the Institute for World Politics. Dr. Harmon directed the counterterrorism course at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. From 2007-2010 he was director of studies for the program on Terrorism and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. His expertise is in the fields of terrorism and counterterrorism, insurgency and revolutionary warfare, counter-insurgency, and international relations. Starting in 2003, Harmon lectured extensively on "how terrorist groups end," as at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars ; his publications in this arena date 2004 - 2014. He inaugurated the Kim T. Adamson Chair in Insurgency and Terrorism at the Marine Corps University, was for four years Horner Chair of Military Theory, and served for twelve years at Quantico as a full professor teaching subjects such as international relations, the theory and nature of war and strategy and policy. For many years he has taught at The Institute of World Politics, a graduate school of national security and international affairs, in Washington, D.C.
Danny Edward Sebright is the president of the U.S.-U.A.E. Business Council, a Washington, D.C.-based business advocacy organization committed to fostering stronger trade and commercial ties between the United States and the United Arab Emirates.
Frederick J. Chiaventone, also known as Fred Chiaventone, is a novelist, screenwriter, military historian, consultant, commentator, and retired cavalry officer. His novel A Road We Do Not Know: A Novel of Custer at the Little Bighorn won the 1999 Ambassador William E. Colby Award.
Michael Patrick Mulroy is the former United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for the Middle East, serving under Secretary James N. Mattis and Secretary Mark T. Esper. He was responsible for representing the United States Department of Defense (DoD) for defense policy and for Middle East policy in the interagency. He is also a retired CIA Paramilitary Operations Officer and a United States Marine.
