Winning the Un-War

In his first book, Charles Pena, Senior Fellow at the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy and Terrorism Analyst for MSNBC, re-examines the U.S. national security strategy, tackling key questions such as: What is the best way to restructure homeland security to prevent future attacks? How should the U.S. dismantle the al Qaeda terrorist network? Should this be a top priority? And how can we construct a foreign policy that will tamper down, rather than assist recruitment for, al Qaeda and other terrorist groups?

Pena, former Director of Defense Policy Studies at Cato Institute, argues that the so-called “global war on terrorism“ has been steered off course by falsely defining our enemy as a global, amorphous group of terrorists or a contrived "axis of evil," thus obscuring the very real and very specific threat posed by, for example, Al-Qaeda. He offers concrete solutions that would improve our national security strategy, including restructuring U.S. forces and ending Cold War–era commitments that distract from the current, pressing threat. He discusses how to ameliorate the negative consequences of an interventionist U.S. foreign policy, which Pena believes only breeds further resentments that assist in terrorist network recruitment.

Please join us as Pena discusses his conclusions and terrorism expert Peter Bergen and international relations luminary Chris Preble provide comments and response.

Participants

• Charles Pena
  Senior Fellow, Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy; Terrorism Analyst, MSNBC
• Peter Bergen
  Schwartz Senior Fellow, New America Foundation
• Christopher Preble
  Director, Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute
• Jerry Irvine
  Director, Communications, New America Foundation