Pompeo rallies G7 to counter Chinese Communist Party disinformation

J Michael Waller / Center for Security Policy / March 28, 2020 – For the first time in a generation, an American secretary of state has worked with foreign leaders to aggressively coordinate a strategy against foreign state-sponsored disinformation. Secretary Mike Pompeo worked with six of America’s closest allies and economic partners to counter Communist China’s … Read more

What Trump should tell Putin in Helsinki

by J Michael Waller / Fox News / July 15, 2018 President Trump can have a successful summit Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Finland and outwit his critics if he takes a tough-love approach to his seeming bromance with the Russian leader. Putin’s hold on power is weaker than it seems. He takes … Read more

Making the world safe for prosperity: State Department needs overhaul to become business-friendly

by J Michael Waller, PhD / Georgetown Research Summary. The State Department’s shift toward building “civil society” abroad has clashed with the mission to promote traditional US national interests. Occasionally it has harmed legitimate American business interests abroad. To illustrate the problem, this paper describes how international NGOs operated in a single country to target … Read more

Foreign service undermines business while Tillerson promotes prosperity

by J Michael Waller / The Daily Caller / September 12, 2017. International community organizers are targeting American companies worldwide for shutdown. Those companies can no longer presume the State Department will help. In some cases, American diplomats are actively allied with local anti-business movements. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s reforms can’t come quickly enough. … Read more

America’s ‘provocative weakness’

by J Michael Waller / inFOCUS / Winter 2014 As it continues its spiraling, across-the-board decline, the Russian Federation is becoming more relevant as a world power. This development became most visible when President Barack Obama effectively placed Vladimir Putin in the driver’s seat to resolve the crisis in Syria. The Russian strongman quickly used … Read more

Heritage venue: Getting the word out for global opinion advantage

The Heritage Foundation sponsored a great talk on January 24, in which we discussed the international public opinion battlespace and how to operate within it. Helle Dale was our host, who invited Dr Amy Zalman, Department of Defense Chair of Information Integration at the National War College; Dr Ariel Cohen, of Heritage, Dean Cheng of Heritage, … Read more

Strategic global influence for the United States (House, 2010)

Testimony of J. Michael Waller, Ph.D. Annenberg Professor of International Security Affairs, Institute of World Politics; Vice President for Information Operations, Center for Security Policy Before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight March 4, 2010 Introduction Chairman Carnahan, Congressman Rohrabacher and other members of the panel, I … Read more

What to do about Venezuela: The case for political & psychological strategy

by J. Michael Waller / Occasional Paper Series No. 6 / Center for Security Policy, May 2005. Among the more troubling legacies Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has inherited is one of neglect towards the Western Hemisphere, a legacy that has seriously diminished the United States’ stature and influence in most of the Americas This is due, in … Read more

Introduction to dismantling a secret police state

Ilan Berman of the American Foreign Policy Council and J. Michael Waller edited a series of articles on the legacies of totalitarian secret police systems. Those articles were published in August, 2004, in Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization. Berman and Waller co-wrote the following introduction to the series: When a totalitarian group seizes power, whether by parliamentary maneuver or … Read more