The Foreign Service Journal, April 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2019 15 The statement will be entered into the Congressional Record. The bipartisan group of former U.S. officials included many who worked for the State Department such as former Secretaries of State Madeline Albright and John Kerry; former Deputy Secretary of State and former Deputy National Security Adviser to the President Antony Blinken; former Deputy Secretaries of State Bill Burns and Strobe Talbott; former Under Secretaries of State for Political Affairs Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns, Thomas Pickering and Wendy Sherman; former Assistant Secretaries of State Johnnie Carson, Eric Schwartz, Andrew Shapiro, LindaThomas-Greenfield and Arturo Valenzuela; and Ambassadors (ret.) Ryan Crocker, John Feeley, Roberta Jacobson, Anne Patterson and Dana Shell Smith. They wrote: “We have lived and worked through national emergencies, and we support the president’s power tomobilize the Executive Branch to respond quickly in genuine national emergencies. But under no plausible assessment of the evidence is there a national emergency today.” The statement goes on to explain that there is “no documented terrorist or national security emergency at the southern border,” where “illegal border crossings are near forty-year lows.” They point to the administration’s own recent Country Report on Terrorism, which found “no credible evidence” that any international terrorist groups had established bases in Mexico, and they note that since 1975, there “has been only one reported incident in which immi- grants who had crossed the southern border illegally attempted to commit a terrorist act.” In fact, they explain, between October 2017 and March 2018, 41 foreign immi- grants on the terrorist watchlist were inter- cepted at the northern border, while only six were stopped at the southern border. There is no human or drug traffick- ing emergency at the southern border, the statement continues, and redirecting funds for a claimed emergency will under- mine U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. Lastly, they write, “there is no factual basis for the declaration of a national emergency for the purpose of circum- venting the appropriations process.” I t’s NATO’s 70th anniversary and you just can’t get enough of NATO? Policy wonks, historians, photographers and students alike will get a kick out of “NATO Declassified,” a section of NATO’s own website that bills itself as the place to “discover the untold stories of NATO, from its birth onward.” The site is a bit confusing to navi- gate, but your patience will be rewarded by numerous historical photos from the NATO archives, a video timeline of significant events in the history of the alliance, links to speeches given at NATO headquarters over the years and stories specific to the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the post-9/11 period. One section, “The Cold War,” has a subsection that focuses on espionage against NATO, including a video about what motivated people to spy against the alliance. This section also includes images of security posters distributed by the alliance over the years, and information about how NATO has been pictured in popular movies and books. SITE OF THE MONTH – NATO DECLASSIFIED: HTTPS://WWW.NATO.INT/CPS/EN/NATOHQ/DECLASSIFIED.HTM Another section, “NATO Lead- ers,” gives a short biography of each NATO leader, from General Eisenhower (1950-1952) to Anders Fogh Rasmussen (2009-2014). Still another section showcases the vari- ous symbols that have been used by NATO in the past and explains their significance. This section covers everything from NATO’s mobile infor- mation center to the “NATO strap,” a watch band first produced by the British Ministry of Defence in 1973. “Experts’ Corner” posts declassified NATO documents broken down by subject (e.g., the founding treaty, the fall of the Berlin Wall) and provides lists of recommended reading on each specific topic. Be sure to check out the section “A Short History of NATO.” In addition to the history lesson, this section is sprinkled with photos that span the entire history of the organization. The rich visuals alone make “NATO Declassified” a site worth visiting.