This piece originally appeared in Politico. Effective security cooperation means responsibilities for both sides. The Mexican government has the bulk of the work when it comes to fighting the drug runners threatening their country. They look to be taking this seriously. U.S. policymakers need to match that seriousness: both by following through on past commitments and by laying the groundwork for a successful bilateral relationship with Mexico in the future.

This piece originally appeared in Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel: Recent polls showing pessimism about U.S. prospects in Afghanistan seem to suggest that Barack Obama has lost the United States’ support for the war there. However, general exhaustion from years of war and specific support for Obama’s Afghanistan strategy should not be so easily conflated. A careful reading of the polling data on Afghanistan shows that while the public is weary, they haven’t yet given up on the mission or Obama’s redefined strategy…yet. The U.S. public has significant doubts about...

I talked to Voice of America’s Urdu-language program a couple weeks ago about Pakistan and terrorism. You can check it out here, but its all in Urdu. I start at around...

A new memo I co-authored defends Obama’s nuclear doctrine and outlines the security-focused aspects of the Nuclear Security Summit, the Nuclear Posture Review, and the New START treaty with Russia: From the introduction: The Obama administration’s nuclear doctrine, defined by New START, the Nuclear Security Summit, and the Nuclear Posture Review, is a responsible approach to improving US security. It builds on a long, bipartisan history of seeking to contain and reduce the prevalence of nuclear weapons around the world. It properly places the threat of nuclear terrorism as a top security...

Last year -- in stories from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times -- we saw the emergence of a narrative that Palestinians in the West Bank are living through an economic miracle. One very important missing piece of this puzzling story is Gaza and its desperate state of affairs. While this may seem like a small story in the context of much larger conflict, the economic well-being of West Bank residents has taken on increasing importance as leaders on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide are banking on economic growth as a route to a viable two-state solution, while simultaneously ignoring the situation in Gaza. If there is one thing the Palestinians certainly aren't buying, it's this "West Bank economic miracle" narrative.

I’m back this week from two weeks in Israel and the West Bank. I was there doing research on the economic situation in the West Bank, trying to understand the role of the private sector in development. The end result of the research should be available in about a month and a half. In the meantime, though, you can check out some pictures from the trip.

Take a more belligerent posture on Iran and give up on Israeli-Palestinian peace. Those are the two policy prescriptions Ephraim Karsh gives us in a New York Times op-ed today called “Muslims won’t play together.” I’m not going to take the time to argue with his policy prescriptions (I argued here for continued engagement with Iran, and I believe the US has a fundamental role to play in promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace). I do think the way in which Karsh arrived at his conclusions, though, gives us a great introduction to how to do bad Middle East analysis. Here are a few...

It’s a strange time for national security politics. Right now, US forces are waging a difficult counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan and a special forces war against Taliban leaders in Pakistan, American troops are drawing down from Iraq, Chinese hackers are launching cyber attacks in the US, and Iran is increasingly belligerent on the nuclear issue. With all that, the only thing conservatives want to talk about on national security is whether terrorists should be arrested, held, and tried in the criminal civilian court system. This should be a simple legal question. If a terrorist breaks a US...

There’s no denying it: Iran-related security challenges are extremely complex, and any progress will require time, patience, and determination. Anyone who argues that there is a quick fix to long-simmering disagreements with Iran is at best uninformed and at worst willfully foolish. The Obama administration seems to understand these fundamental facts and has continued with its dual-track policy of engagement and pressure even in the face of critics who portray engagement as weak or naïve. In a memo I co-authored for Third Way, we argue that engagement has shown concrete results and continues to...

New in 2010 is a new site for KyleSpector.com. Although this site is technically a blog, I doubt I’ll be treating it as such. Instead, I’ve been needing an online repository for the work I do elsewhere, such as some of the writing I do on national security policy and politics at Third Way, and Middle East related thoughts and writings around the web. However, we’ll see where this project goes. I also wanted to provide an easy way for people to contact and connect with me. So, this website is just as much about my work as it is about others commenting and interacting whether here or on...