Despite the Karzai government's failures, a majority of Afghans continue to support democracy and the current system over the insurgent groups. But these achievements are fragile and reversible. A premature withdrawal from Afghanistan is a recipe for failure with disastrous consequences for the United States and world security.

Much of China policy is also underpinned by belief in the fantastical like unicorns. But unlike unicorns, our China policy excursions into the realm of make believe could be dangerous.

Even if the trigger isn't enacted, I am concerned that guidance from the White House would direct cuts beyond what the Defense Department is prepared to absorb. It's time to focus our fiscal restraint on the driver of our debt, not the protector of our prosperity.

Congressman Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, will deliver a keynote address that reflects upon on the experience of America’s armed forces since the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

For the past ten years, pollsters have tracked the opinions of Americans as they have wrestled with the difficult questions associated with the post-9/11 world. They have probed opinions on preemptive warfare, profiling, torture, assassination, domestic surveillance, and of course, the war itself. More than a thousand of these questions have been reviewed for a new AEI Public Opinion Study.

AEI’s Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies will host Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter for a timely discussion of U.S. defense budgets, of the changing strategic landscape in the U.S. and the force that this landscape demands.

The European Union (EU) has announced plans to levy a tax on airline emissions for all planes landing and taking off from EU airports. This tax would be calculated not only based on mileage flown in EU airspace but also for the entire length of the flight (thus, Chinese and Japanese airlines would be taxed for an entire journey from Beijing or Tokyo).