As Barack Obama begins his second term as president of the United States, the nation faces a range of formidable challenges at the intersection of which are national security and law.

An episode of political violence in London a hundred years ago, featuring a cast of characters including revolutionaries from the Russian Empire, Winston Churchill, and the czarist secret police (the Okhrana) is in the news again, at least in Latvia, where the revolutionaries came from. The episode, known as the Siege of Sidney Street, has never completely disappeared from popular folklore in London, even figuring as part of the inspiration for an Alfred Hitchcock film (The Man Who Knew Too Much). Despite its notoriety, the incident has faded from history, eclipsed first by the outbreak of World War I and by much larger events such as the 1917 Russian revolution.

John Batchelor, host of the nationally syndicated John Batchelor Radio Show, which is broadcast by WABC radio in New York, took his program on the road to the Hoover Institution to tape an hour-long program in front of a live studio audience. A number of Hoover fellows, addressing a wide variety of topics, were featured on recent Batchelor Radio Show programs.

The Hoover Institution hosted its annual Spring Retreat beginning on Sunday, April 21, 2013, with before-dinner remarks by Kevin Warsh, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His speech, titled “The Economy over the Horizon: Unknown Knowns,” emphasized the importance of the state of the economy, which currently has a 2 percent growth rate, and understanding the concept of “unknown knowns,” a reference to former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld.

The Hoover Institution is pleased to announce the fourth issue of Strategika. This issue asks a significant, but often ignored question: What do the jihadists want? Max Boot analyzes the history of jihadism in Chechnya beginning in the 19th century, and elucidates the lessons we can learn from this historical example. In the featured commentary essays, Josef Joffe examines the contradictions in the stated aims of jihadi terrorism, while Peter R. Mansoor explores the activities of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

How has 9/11 affected our society today? Shortly after 9/11, Uncommon Knowledge host Peter Robinson interviewed Milton Friedman on the economic impact of the September 11 attacks. The recording is titled “Economics and War: The Economic Impact of the War on Terrorism.” The September 11 attacks in New York and Washington have already cost America thousands of lives and billions of dollars in damages. But those are only the direct costs. How severe and how lasting will the impact be on our economy as whole?

Acknowledging the long history of cooperation between the United State and Canada during times of armed conflict, the Honorable Peter MacKay, Canada’s minister of national defense, cited that cooperation in a roundtable meeting with Hoover fellows on Thursday, February 23, 2012, the culmination of the minister’s daylong meetings in Silicon Valley and at Stanford University.

The roundtable, hosted by Condoleezza Rice, the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow at Hoover, included discussions of the future of NATO, the conflict in Afghanistan and its implication for future conflicts, and the use of technology in intelligence gathering, all of which relate to the importance of international security and defense cooperation, Canada’s contributions to global security, and the strength of Canada’s long-standing defense and security relationship with the United States.

Hoover Institution fellow John B. Dunlop provides a historical context in which to understand the Russian invasion of Chechnya in December 1994, tracing events from 4,000 BC to the time of the invasion in his new book Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict, now available from Cambridge University Press ($54.95, hardback; $18.95, paperback).

Prince Andre Lobanov-Rostovsky was a specialist on Russo-Asian relations and a professor of Russian history at the University of Michigan and the University of California at Los Angeles. Several years ago his papers were donated to the Hoover Archives; that gift has now been followed by his library. Among the interesting and rare books received is a set of publications of the Russian Orthodox Mission in Peking (Beijing).