Lamont Colucci, associate professor of politics and government, has several works published

Lamont Colucci, associate professor of politics and government, has had several recent published works with major news sources.

• A peer-reviewed, long academic essay published by Praeger Security International is a major work that took 11 months for research, writing, peer review, editing and finalization.

  In “Cyber Attacks Should Be Treated as an Act of War,” Colucci asserts, “It is surprising that it has taken about 20 years to openly discuss cyber attacks against the United States committed by other nations,” from the first major attack in 1998 to today.

  He says the staggering cost to the American economy, jobs, national security, infrastructure or population demands a clear and decisive policy about how to respond to cyber attacks. “The United States must have a clear policy that cyber attacks will be treated as an act of aggression and war viewed no differently than a kinetic attack, or an attack that results in tangible physical damage and or human casualties,” Colucci writes.

  “ … A declared policy that cyber attacks by national actors will be considered an act of war will inject a needed seriousness on all sides of the equation. It sends a powerful message not only to our own intelligence community but toward potential adversaries that this issue has left the ethereal feelings surrounding the internet and has entered the domain of hard power national security.”

Colucci also has published three recent opinion pieces.

• “America Played a Big Role in the Decisive End of WWI” was published Sept. 25 on AMI (American Media Institute) Newswire, which has a circulation of 60 million.

  It examines the largest offensive attack in American military history as well as the impact of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, which “resulted in over 122,000 American casualties including 26,277 deaths.” He says America’s involvement in the First World War was the decisive end to “years of stalemate and trench warfare” and examines the role of American soldiers in the Meuse-Argonne offensive, one of the most intense battles in which American soldiers partook in historically.

• In “The Cost of Appeasement,” published Sept. 30 on AMI Newswire, Colucci makes a historical and contemporary case against the policy of appeasement, accommodating a hostile nation or group by making concessions to avoid war. He details past attempts at that policy and applies that to a modern context with references to terrorist groups, North Korea and Iran.
• On Oct. 23, “The conservative fallacy” was published in The Washington Times.

  “The past few weeks have highlighted one of the most problematic aspects of the modern conservative movement, namely that it has endorsed modernity,” Colucci writes. “There is nothing modern about conservatism. Conservatism is based on a belief in the organic and unchanging nature of man. At its core are traditions, obligations, responsibilities, faith, reason and duty. These virtues are immutable, unchanging and eternal.”

  He says, “There are five illustrations where conservatives, in a futile attempt to appear modern, have brought about strategic failure,” including issues related to the Electoral College, Iraq, the Second Amendment, gridlock and “great men.”

  “Conservatives have always warned of the tyranny of the one, the few, and the many,” he says. “This is one of the fundamental values, and it does no good to anyone, especially the American electorate, when those that pride themselves on guarding the truth of the past do not themselves hold it as sacred.”