Defense and Foreign Policy

The world is more interconnected than ever before, as globalization has lowered economic barriers and increased the movement of people and goods across borders. At the same time, violence and instability plague countries across the globe. The need to ensure both international cooperation and national security has led to questions of how governments should approach this complex world. Independent Institute’s fellows have looked at defense and foreign-policy issues from perspectives that emphasize the importance of peace and commerce between people of all countries. Often, they have emphasized the need for military restraint. This approach has its roots in the foreign-policy vision of the American Founders, who viewed war making and military adventurism as precursors to higher taxes and reduced international trade. Independent fellows have found that military adventurism also reduces national security by unnecessarily provoking hostility abroad, erodes constitutional limitations on government power through a process of ideological drift, and leads to losses of civil liberties at home as military tools and techniques are brought back home for domestic law enforcement—a boomerang effect.

Books

How to Run Wars

A Confidential Playbook for the National Security Elite
Christopher Coyne, Abigail R. Hall
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The New American Anti-Semitism

The Left, the Right, and the Jews
Benjamin Ginsberg
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In Search of Monsters to Destroy

The Folly of American Empire and the Paths to Peace
Christopher Coyne
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April 8, 2025 | News Article
Security forces continue pattern of abductions and secret detentions with little global scrutiny
Alvaro Vargas Llosa
April 7, 2025 | News Article
In a multipolar age, having just one global policeman won’t cut it.
Ivan Eland
April 2, 2025 | News Article
In 1961, just one month after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, President John F. Kennedy made his first foreign trip to...
Francis Crescia
March 29, 2025 | News Article
Because the United States has a debt of almost $37 trillion...
Ivan Eland
March 24, 2025 | News Article
“Government” and “efficiency” should never appear in the same sentence, a truth that I...
William F. Shughart II
March 21, 2025 | News Article
During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised many things: streamlining...
Allen Gindler
March 18, 2025 | News Article
Hardly a day goes by without a policy announcement or public statement by President Trump that...
Alvaro Vargas Llosa
March 18, 2025 | News Article
Over the last two months the pace of U.S. foreign policy pronouncements...
Abigail R. Hall
March 15, 2025 | The Independent Review
Crisis, Leviathan, and Atomic Weapons
Abigail R. Hall, Christopher J. Coyne
March 15, 2025 | Book Review
The Degradation of Israel’s Politics, Economy and Military
Ivan Eland