Politics & Polls #39: National Security with Gen. David Petraeus

Apr 13 2017
By B. Rose Kelly
Source Woodrow Wilson School

Last week, a chemical weapons attack killed dozens of Syrians, prompting President Donald Trump to launch 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles on a Syrian airbase. Meanwhile, concern about North Korea’s nuclear arsenal builds, with satellite images hinting at another detonation test.

Plus, there are ongoing national security issues: The scandal with Russian intervention in the 2016 election has loomed large over each decision the Trump administration makes in international relations, while President Trump’s Twitter habits and attacks on the intelligence community have generated tension in Washington.

How will such emerging and continued threats endanger national security?

Gen. David Petraeus (U.S. Army Ret.) joins Politics & Polls this week to discuss the national security challenges facing the Trump administration.

Gen. Petraeus is chairman of the KKR Global Institute. Prior to joining KKR, Gen. Petraeus served for more than 37 years in the U.S. military, including command of coalition forces in Iraq, command of U.S. Central Command, and command of coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Following his service in the military, Gen. Petraeus served as the director of the CIA. He graduated with distinction from the U.S. Military Academy and subsequently earned his MPA and Ph.D. degrees in international relations from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

ABOUT THE HOSTS

Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 
Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He has been one of the pioneers in the revival of American political history. He is the author of several books including, most recently, "The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society." Zelizer is a frequent commentator in the international and national media on political history and contemporary politics. He has published more than 600 hundred op-eds, including his weekly column on CNN.com

Wang is professor of neuroscience and molecular biology at Princeton University. He is known for his books "Welcome to Your Brain" and "Welcome to Your Child's Brain" and for his founding role at the Princeton Election Consortium, a blog providing U.S. election analyses. In 2004, Wang was one of the first to aggregate U.S. presidential polls using probabilistic methods. He has also developed new statistical standards for partisan gerrymandering. A neuroscientist, Wang's academic research focuses on the neuroscience of learning, the cerebellum and autism.