President Trump has begun to shift U.S. counterterrorism policies toward an extreme paradigm that departs from both liberal and conservative orthodoxy. In his first weeks in office, Trump recast the enem...

The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing today starting at 10am on the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Earlier in 2016, Lawfare, in conjunction with the Hoov...

This evening, President Donald Trump is delivering his first address before Congress. Below, we have aggregated the portions of his prepared remarks that are relevant to Lawfare readers. We will update t...

Editor's Note: A full version of this paper, complete with citations, can be found here. ***

U.S. policy in Syria has failed, but it’s not clear if the new Trump administration can make things better—and some of the options officials are considering would clearly make things worse.

Russia Tries to Balance Turkey and Assad Regime in al-Bab and Geneva

Momentum is building for a major bipartisan independent

I’m not a fan of sunsets. I don’t mean the glorious sprays of color caused by the setting sun. I’m referring to expiration dates, particularly those attached to intelligence-gathering laws. I’ve long bel...

The White House said on Monday that President Trump will propose a $54 billion increase in military spending, to be financed primarily by cuts in the budgets of other agencies, including the State Depart...

Now that he has established a firm foothold in Syria following 18 months of direct military intervention, Russia’s strongman, Vladimir Putin, has to politically safeguard his gains in order to ensure the...

President Trump’s appointment of Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster to succeed Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor has generally been lauded, whether in recognition of McMaster’s strengths, his predecessor’s ...

To date, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and congressional Republican leaders have resisted calls for an independent investigation of the scandals concerning Russia and Donald Trump and his circle—the mos...

Last week, CNN reported that the Trump Administration, in the wake of the Ninth Circuit’s ruling on the administration’s immigration order, asked the Department of Homeland Security for assistance in jus...

Few stories have depressed me as much as this report from earlier this month in the Washington Post. It looks to be normal fare -- a news report about an IG report that finds some aspects of a Federal a...

We just entered the second year of a purported “era of persistent conflict” forecasted to extend to 2028. In that context, does it really matter if we can tell that a particular war has definitively conc...

Editor’s Note: The Trump administration is turning many things on their heads, not least the role religion is playing in society. But what is happening is also shaping U.S. policy overseas. Jacques Berli...