Over the last decade or so, the UN Security Council gave complex UN peace operations broader mandates in police development, followed by mandates to help restore criminal justice systems and eventually for advisory support to national prison systems. The UN's rule of law community recognizes that an emphasis on quality of people and plans, what the UN calls a "capability-based approach," has to replace a quantity-based approach to meeting the requirements of such mandates.
The Stimson Center's Future of Peace Operations Program responded to a request from the Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions (OROLSI) in DPKO, coordinating with its Police Division and Criminal Law and Judicial Advisory Service (CLJAS), to study the effects, or more specifically, the impact that police, justice and corrections components in UN peace operations have on the areas in which they work.
The study was set up to search for "minimum essential tasks" - those that 1) always seem needed in comparable ways across missions; and 2) seem to consistently have the desired effects on the host country's approach to police, justice and corrections. It found that while certain tasks may always be needed, their implementation is often dependent on characteristics of a mission's operational environment over which the mission cannot exert direct control. Missions face perhaps irresolvable dilemmas in being asked to deploy quickly into places where politics can prevent the quick actions that peacebuilding precepts dictate, or with resources inadequate to substitute for capacities that government lacks. That is, they often have resources sufficient to offer some security and stability but not sufficient for very much else. The study identifies areas where the imprints left by the police, justice and corrections components of UN missions are larger than those of other players and offers recommendations for those components.
http://www.stimson.org/images/uploads/research-pdfs/Stimson_Police_Justice_and_Corrections_Impact_Report_FW_small.pdf
American interests are increasingly at risk in the South China Sea due to the economic and military rise of China and concerns about its willingness to uphold existing legal norms. The United States and countries throughout the region have a deep and abiding interest in sea lines of communication that remain open to all, both for commerce and for peaceful military activity. China, however, continues to challenge that openness, both by questioning historical maritime norms and by developing military capabilities that allow it to threaten access to this maritime region.
America confronts a world in transition. Whatever the outcome of the November 2012 presidential election, America’s next president will face many challenges. To lead America wisely, the president and his administration must answer several questions: What kind of world does America face and how is the strategic landscape evolving? What are America’s core national interests? How should America pursue its interests and what threatens them? What opportunities exist and how can America seize them? How should America convey its purpose, both at home and globally? In America’s Path: Grand Strategy for the Next Administration, editors and CNAS experts Richard Fontaine and Dr. Kristin M. Lord bring together four strategists - Dr. Robert J. Art, Dr. Richard K. Betts, Dr. Peter Feaver and Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter - with diverse backgrounds and perspectives to advance a common mission of promoting informed debate about America’s role in the world and the best ways to fulfill it.
The upheaval that has shaken the Middle East since January 2011 has clearly demonstrated some of the faulty assumptions that have long underpinned U.S. policy in the region. In Strategic Adaptation: Toward a New U.S. Strategy in the Middle East, authors Dr. Bruce W. Jentleson, Dr. Andrew M. Exum, Melissa G. Dalton and J. Dana Stuster chart the fundamentals of a revised strategy for U.S. Middle East policy, starting with a reevaluation of U.S. interests and an assessment of the evolving strategic context. The approach they propose is one of “strategic adaptation” to meet immediate challenges while simultaneously responding to regional trends that will affect the region – and U.S. engagement – for decades to come.
As Iran's nuclear progress continues and negotiations fail to reach a breakthrough, the threat of an Israeli preventive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities grows. In Risk and Rivalry: Israel, Iran and the Bomb, authors Dr. Colin H. Kahl, Melissa G. Dalton and Matthew Irvine argue that despite the abhorrent threats by some Iranian leaders to "wipe Israel off the map," the actual behavior of the Islamic Republic over the past three decades indicates that the regime is not suicidal and is sufficiently rational for nuclear deterrence. The report finds that a nuclear-armed Iran would be a much more dangerous adversary but that Iran is unlikely to deliberately use nuclear weapons, or transfer a nuclear device to terrorists to use, against Israel. The authors recommend that while preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons should remain an urgent priority, rushing into preventive war would risk making the threat worse and force should be seen as a last resort. 
Almost three months since the Kofi Annan-brokered ceasefire
agreement went into effect in Syria, it has virtually collapsed. The
unarmed United Nations team has suspended its monitoring trips because
of fighting in most of the cities they were required to visit. 
Throughout their ten-month campaign to topple Colonel Qaddafi, Libya’s
opposition forces struggled to reconcile two competing streams. While
fighters fired with revolutionary zeal rushed off to the front,
politicians tried to establish a semblance of order in the territory
that these fighters had won. Since the fall of Tripoli in August 2011
tensions have escalated into a power struggle between the thuwar
, or militia forces, waving the banner of revolution, and the architects
of would-be reconstruction, seeking stability to give their designs
foundation. As elections approach in mid-June 2012, this rivalry is
coming to a head. Both sides view the ballot as the seminal event that
could break the deadlock and signal the transfer of power from
centrifugal revolutionary forces to a sober central authority.