Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland

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Author: search.filters.author.Daalder, Ivo H.

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    A Last Chance for Saddam Hussein
    (2002-03-24) Harris, Elisa D.; Daalder, Ivo H.; CISSM
    As the Bush administration considers how to proceed on Iraq, it has to confront a growing contradiction in its public pronouncements. For months, President Bush has insisted that Baghdad allow United Nations inspectors complete and unfettered access to sites where they suspect weapons are being stored or produced. At the same time, American officials have made clear that Mr. Hussein's regime represents an unacceptable threat that must be removed, by force if necessary. But what if Mr. Hussein lets United Nations inspectors back in and gives them complete access? Would the administration still insist on his removal? Yes, according to Secretary of State Colin Powell. "Even then," he told CNN last month, "the United States believes the Iraqi people would still be better off with a new kind of leadership that is not trying to hide this sort of development activity on weapons of mass destruction and is not of the despotic nature that the Saddam Hussein regime is." Recently, President Bush was even more direct in putting the focus on Saddam Hussein himself, rather than on his weapons. "He is a problem," Mr. Bush said, "and we're going to deal with him." Elisa D. Harris is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland. Ivo H. Daalder is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
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    The Nixon Administration
    (1998-12-08) Daalder, Ivo H.; Destler, I.M.; CISSM
    The Nixon administration brought far-reaching changes to the National Security Council. Building on a strong mandate from (and a strong policy relationship with) the President, National Security Assistant Henry A. Kissinger achieved operational policy dominance greater than any predecessor or successor. His role and methods generated enormous controversy. They were also tied to substantial policy achievements: an opening to China, arms control agreements with the Soviet Union, and eventually an historic, albeit flawed, Vietnam peace accord. One means of gaining insight into how the Nixon NSC actually worked is to ask those who were there. This was the purpose of the Nixon NSC Oral History Roundtable, conducted on December 8, 1998, at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Thirty years almost to the day after Kissinger and other Nixon transition planners developed a blueprint for a new system, we brought together a group of ten veteran practitioners and observers of American foreign policy who were directly involved in the Nixon process to share their recollections with us. The participants drew on their experiences as advisers in the Nixon transition; as members of President Nixon"s NSC staff; and as officials who dealt with the Nixon NSC from important vantage points in other agencies. For over three hours, they spoke informally about how and why the new system was established, how it operated, and how it evolved over time. The discussion confirmed much that is already in the public domain, but it also brought to light new facts and insights. We hope students of the Nixon administration and of the modern foreign policy process and its institutions will find it useful. I.M. "Mac" Destler is a Senior Fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland. Ivo Daalder is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
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    What's Missing?
    (2003-10-05) Harris, Elisa D.; Daalder, Ivo H.; CISSM
    Last week, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq reported that, like his U.N counterparts before the war, he had not uncovered Iraqi stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction or active weapons production efforts inside the country. David Kay and the 1,400 members of his investigative team may yet find the weapons stocks the Bush administration said were sure to be there. But such discoveries are increasingly unlikely. The gap between President Bush's warnings and Kay's preliminary findings raises at least three important questions as the United States shapes its policy toward the weapons programs of North Korea, Iran and other countries: How reliable is U.S. intelligence on foreign weapons programs? Can sanctions and inspections play a useful role in containing the threat from such programs? And are pre-emptive attacks the most effective way to deal with such threats? Elisa D. Harris is a senior research scholar at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland. Ivo H. Daalder was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is co-author of the just-released "America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy."