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- Our Pakistan Problem, Brian Katulis and
Caroline Wadhams
- Steps in the Right Direction,
Middle East Progress
- The Cost of 10 Years in Iraq,
Lawrence Korb and Rand Beers
- Spliced Video and the Hormuz Incident,
Joseph Cirincione
- Iraq's Four Ticking Time Bombs, Brian
Katulis and Peter Juul
- Military Reform: A Reference Handbook,
Lawrence J. Korb and Winslow T. Wheeler
- Our Ally in Islamabad, Brian Katulis
- Can a Dictator Oversee an Election? Brian
Katulis
- Hyperinflating the Threat: Hormuz, Joseph
Cirincione
- Bush's Middle East Efforts, P.J. Crowley
- U.S.-Pakistan Relations, Brian Katulis
- Iranian Naval Vessels in Hormuz, Joseph
Cirincione
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Brian Katulis and Caroline Wadhams, "Our Pakistan
Problem: Turmoil Requires a Shift in U.S. Policy," Center for American
Progress, January 11, 2008
A suicide bombing
that claimed nearly two dozen lives earlier this week in
Pakistan’s
second largest city, Lahore, is part of a growing trend of violence
that claimed thousands of lives in the past year, including former
Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. In the wake of this growing violence,
the United States and other countries should resist the impulse to
offer unconditional support to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf,
who has portrayed himself as a last bastion against the terrorists.
Click here to read the full article.
Moran Banai, "Steps
in the Right Direction," Middle East
Bulletin, January 14, 2008
President George W. Bush’s words in Jerusalem and Ramallah
suggested
that he at long last is beginning to connect the dots between and among
the challenges facing the region and the United States.
The first three days of his visit revealed a much more pragmatic
president than in previous years of his presidency. Bush spoke about
the tough road ahead and the difficult choices that must be made by
leaders to move forward on resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. He left
the door open for future direct engagement, announcing that he would be
returning to Israel in May. His administration seems focused at last on
rebuilding the tattered framework of international support necessary to
advance the peace process.
Click here to
read the full article.
Lawrence Korb and Rand Beers, "The Cost of the Next 10
Years in Iraq," Center for American Progress Press Call, January 15,
2008
The Iraqi defense minister last night indicated that U.S. forces
would need to assist Iraqi security forces in defending Iraq’s
borders
from external threats until at least 2018 or 2020. This news comes as
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise trip to Baghdad
to congratulate officials on de-Baathification
legislation—legislation
that is subject to varying interpretations and was passed with barely
half the parliament present.
Both Gen. David Petraeus and President Bush have indicated a
willingness to keep American troops in Iraq
for at least 10 years without regard to the costs in both human lives
and dollars and to our overall national security. The Center for
American Progress calculated cost projections for a 10-year troop
presence in Iraq last September.
Click here to listen to the press conference.
Joseph
Cirincione, "Tangled Tapes: Spliced Video Gives False View of Hormuz
Incident," Center for American Progress, January 11, 2008
They say that if you have only heard one side of a divorce case, you
have no idea what actually happened. The same is true of international
disputes. The tape
released by the Pentagon on Monday of an encounter between five Iranian
Revolutionary Guard patrol boats and three American warships in the
Straits of Hormuz appears to have given a highly misleading impression
of the seriousness of the incident.
Click here to
read the full report.
Brian
Katulis and Peter Juul, "Four Ticking Time Bombs," Center for American
Progress, January 10, 2008
President Bush this week marks the first anniversary of his speech
announcing his 2007 escalation of U.S.
forces to Iraq by
traveling to the Middle East in an
effort to salvage the damage done to the region by his policies over
the past seven years. Iraq
will dominate the diplomatic discussions even though the Arab-Israeli
conflict and containing Iran’s
influence in the region are the focus of the president’s trip.
And here
at home, the public continues to debate whether the decline from record
levels of violence in Iraq
over the past three months has strengthened or weakened U.S.
national security.
Click here to
read the full article.
Lawrence J. Korb and Winslow T. Wheeler, Military Reform: A Reference Handbook,
Prager Security International, January 16, 2008
This volume will help the reader understand fundamental strengths and
weaknesses in America's military forces, thereby leading to a
comprehension of what genuine military reform is, and is not, and what
remains to be done. Ideas will be presented to compare genuine reform
to cosmetic dabbling, which fundamentally improves nothing and which
sometimes arrives as ill-conceived fads that promise only to burden US
combat forces to the point of mental and physical immobility.
Click here to read the full article.
Brian Katulis, "Our Ally in Islamabad," Los Angeles Times Debate, January
14, 2008
Dealing with global terrorist networks sometimes requires our
government's close coordination with the military, intelligence and law
enforcement agencies of regimes led by autocrats or dictators. Because
unilateral cruise missile strikes and conventional military tactics are
rarely effective in addressing terrorist threats, the United States
must partner with other countries — and at times our partners are
governments dominated by authoritarian rulers and lacking strong
institutions.
Click here to read the full article.
Brian Katulis, "Can a Dictator Oversee an Election?" Los Angeles Times Debate, January
15, 2008
Most Pakistanis doubt that free and fair elections can be held with
President Pervez Musharraf at the helm. He has squandered his
credibility over the last year, dismissing the country's Supreme Court
chief justice last March, imposing emergency rule in November and then
mishandling the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
(The Pakistani Interior Ministry initially claimed that Bhutto died
from a head fracture despite video footage that indicates she was
likely killed by a bullet.) If Musharraf further postpones the February
election, most Pakistanis will believe he has done so to prolong his
own grip on power.
Click here to read the full article.
AP- Joseph Cirincione discusses the Bush
administration's response to the Hormuz Incident. "We have to
take a step back and make sure we don't hyperinflate these
threats, to prevent a shooting war that nobody really wants."
PBS- Lawrence Korb assesses the impact of recent American troop offenses in
Iraq. "Well, I think this is more of the same, and it's
disconnected from the ultimate goal. When
you use military force, it has a political objective. The objective of
the surge and these increasing military operations was to give the
Iraqi national government the breathing space to make the political
compromises. If anything, they've gone backward in the last year."
Reuters - Lawrence Korb talks about U.S. Defense Secretary Gates' recent
recommendation to send additional troops into Afghanistan to reinforce
NATO. "It's a step in the right direction because we have not had
enough
troops in Afghanistan. But does it bode well for the alliance? No. The
way this was handled has made it more difficult to get NATO to do what
it needs to do," Korb said.
CNN - Joseph Cirincione analyzes the recent incident in the Strait of
Hormuz. “Clearly that was not a commonplace occurrence to
bring those however small patrol boats close to warships, but it
wasn’t at all clear that that threat was real, that that might
have been some prankster who made that comment from any of the radios
from anywhere in the area, that the U.S. Navy, then sliced that into
the tape."
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The Next American Century: How the US Can
Thrive as Others Rise
January 18, 2008
In their new
book, The Next American Century, Nina Hachigian and Mona Sutphen show
that the "pivotal powers" - China, Europe, India, Japan, and Russia -
seek greater influence, but each has an enormous stake in the world
economy and a keen desire to thwart common threats. India is a key ally
in the struggle against terrorism. China's help is essential to
containing pandemic disease. Russia is leading an effort to keep
nuclear devices out of terrorists' hands. Japan and Europe are critical
partners in tackling climate change. None of these countries is a
direct military or ideological challenger. In fact, their gains largely
help, rather than hurt, America's continuing prosperity, growth, and to
some extent, even its values. Will we have conflicts with these powers?
Definitely. Some will be serious. But, by and large, they want what we
want: a stable world and better lives for their citizens. We live in an
era of opportunity, not of loss.
Featuring the two
authors:
Nina Hachigian, Senior Vice
President at the Center for American Progress, Visiting Scholar of the
Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University
Mona Sutphen, Managing Director at Stonebridge
International LLC
Moderated by:
David Sanger, Chief Washington Correspondent, New York Times
Click here for more
information.
Military
Reform: A Reference Handbook
January 16, 2008
Just published, Military
Reform: A Reference Handbook, examines the successes and failures
of the recent military reform movement in Congress and the Pentagon.
The book presents the reader with a history of the various attempts to
reform the American armed forces - from both internal and external
sources - from the American Revolution to the present day. The authors
identify the serious yet poorly addressed challenges facing America's
defenses today, and focus on both the genuine and cosmetic efforts
taken to remedy the many remaining critical problems. They conclude
with lessons for how to reform our armed forces more effectively than
the ineffectual - and sometimes counterproductive - efforts that have
been attempted in recent years.
Featuring the authors:
Lawrence J. Korb,
Senior Fellow,
Center for American Progress and Senior Advisor to the Center for
Defense Information
Winslow T. Wheeler, Director of the
Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information
Discussion
Moderated by:
Bruce G. Blair, President, World Security Institute
Click here for more
information.
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