![\"Woodward,](\"\/pardeeschool\/files\/2015\/09\/woodward_globe_congress_resized.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nJohn Woodward,<\/a> Professor of the Practice of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University,<\/a> said that a government shutdown, like the one currently threatened by Congressional Republicans over funding for Planned Parenthood, has the potential to harm national security interests.<\/p>\n Woodward made his case in a September 29 Op-Ed in the Boston Globe<\/em> entitled “A Former CIA Officer on How the Shutdown Hurts National Security.”<\/a><\/p>\n From the text of the Op-Ed:<\/p>\n Because Congress seems unable to carry out one of its fundamental responsibilities \u2014 approving an annual budget \u2014 the federal government could shut down on Oct. 1. Such shutdowns are costly \u2014 the Economist estimates that the 2013 shutdown cost the US economy $24 billion in lost output. Yet our lawmakers need to realize that such a drastic action can have adverse consequences beyond dollars and cents. Any shutdown could have serious deleterious effects on American national security.<\/p>\n To be clear, certain mission critical work will continue. Navy SEAL teams will be armed and on call. Nuclear missile silos will be staffed and at the ready. In less obvious ways, however, a government shutdown forces significant and underappreciated costs on national security.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n You can read the entire Op-Ed here.<\/a><\/p>\n Woodward\u00a0is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer.\u00a0During his twenty-year CIA career, he =\u00a0served as an operations officer in\u00a0the Clandestine Service and as a technical intelligence officer in the Directorate of Science and Technology, with assignments in Washington, DC,\u00a0East Asia, Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. He recently participated in the International Association for Intelligence Education’s (IAFIE) annual conference held at Marymount University in Arlington, VA from 22-25 June 2015.\u00a0Learn more about him here.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pardee School Professor John Woodward highlights a surprising consequence of the potential government shutdown – the harm it could do to national security. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2094,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8410],"tags":[8802,8569,8847,8859,8904,8574,8456,8903],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19024"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2094"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19024"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19027,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19024\/revisions\/19027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}