|
- Electronics Companies and Consumers Can
Help Stop Congolese Bloodshed, John Prendergast and Sasha Lezhnev
- The View from the Ground, Taghreed El-Khodary
- The SE&Ds of Change, Nina Hachigian
- Time for Obama to Follow Truman's
Example, Lawrence Korb and Laura Conley
- Chad's Domestic Crisis: The Achilles Heel
for Darfur Peacemaking, Enough Project
- Clinton's Defense Umbrella, Peter Juul
- Applying Human Rights Standards 101,
Center for American Progress
- Leaders of Pakistan's Militant Groups,
Caroline Wadhams and Colin Cookman
- Previewing Next Steps in Administration
Iran Strategy, Brian Katulis
- Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Unglamorous But
Increasingly Important, Lawrence Korb
- Abyei Agreement Only a First Step, Colin
Thomas-Jensen
|
|
|
John Prendergast and Sasha Lezhnev, "Electronics
Companies and Consumers Can Help Stop Congolese Bloodshed," Mercury News, July 28, 2009
Have
a cell phone or laptop computer? The conflict in eastern Congo, which has killed five times as many
people as the war in Iraq,
affects you. Fresh attacks last month caused 100,000 people to lose
their homes, the latest in a war in which tens of thousands of women
have been raped by violent armed groups.
Click here to
read the full article.
Taghreed El-Khodary,
"A View from the Ground," Middle East Bulletin
interview, July 28,
2009
This new informal economy
doesn’t benefit everyone. There is no construction, so you are
talking about unemployment that keeps getting higher and higher. You
have money laundering, which is also an issue. But, the private sector
is dead. Many businessmen left Gaza for good or are planning to leave
for good. So in the long term this will lead to the weakening of
independent voices in society.
Click here to
read the full interview.
Nina Hachigian, "The SE&Ds of Change," The New Republic, July 27, 2009
China has arrived ... again. Beijing is
growing confident enough in its
own power and position in the world that it is increasingly and
actively influencing world events. It can choose--and has chosen, in
many cases--to play a helpful role in tackling shared threats. But
China has also been standing its ground on disagreements with the
United States. The two-day "Strategic & Economic Dialogue," which
begins this morning in Washington, led by Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and their Chinese
counterparts, is the first extended sit-down the two sides have had
during the Obama administration. And it will set the tone for
Sino-American relations in the coming years.
Click here to
read the full article.
Also by
Nina Hachigian: "He SED, She SED", Center for American Progress,
July 27, 2009.
Lawrence Korb and Laura Conley, "It's Time for Obama
to Follow Truman's Example," Center for American Progress, July 27, 2009
On the 61st anniversary of [Truman's
decision], nobody disputes that
Americans from all racial and ethnic backgrounds have the right to
serve their country in uniform. Yet we still have not achieved full
equality for our service members. The discriminatory policy known as
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” forbids gay, lesbian,
and bisexual Americans
from serving openly in the armed forces, and mandates that they be
dismissed if their sexual orientation is discovered. The military has
discharged some 13,000 men and women since DADT was enacted 16 years
ago, an estimated 1,000 of which worked in critical occupations such as
interpreters and engineers. An estimated 30,000 more men and women have
left the service voluntarily because of the policy.
Click here to
read the full article.
"Chad's Domestic Crisis: The Achilles Heel for
Peacemaking in Darfur," Enough Project, July 27, 2009
While international
efforts to address Sudan’s internal
crisis are ongoing, parallel efforts in Chad are virtually
nonexistent. A comprehensive approach to peace in the region by
definition must deal aggressively with the persistent internal turmoil
in Chad, where the precedent of armed rebellion as the sole vehicle for
political opposition has been established through decades of brutal
governance and violent regime change. Ad hoc efforts by the
European
Union and others to drive a process of political reform have not made
effective use of significant available leverage. The United States has
largely steered clear of Chad’s internal crisis, opting to focus
on
counterterrorism cooperation and humanitarian assistance. But the
inadequacies of crisis management in Chad will continue to negatively
impact the situation in Sudan, where the United States has invested
heavily in peace.
Click here to
read the full report.
Peter Juul,
"Clinton's Defense Umbrella," The Guardian Comment is
Free, July 24, 2009
In the wake of the Iranian elections, the Obama administration has
probably downgraded its own internal estimates of the prospects for the
success of talks with Iran on the nuclear issue. After all, if the
Iranian government can't obey its own internal rules, how can the US
trust it to hold to an international agreement? Still, the
administration wants to give talks with Tehran a shot at success. As
Clinton herself put it: "We will still hold the door open."
Click here to
read the full article.
"Applying Human Rights Standards 101", Center for
American Progress, July 23, 2009
The United States has arguably been the
most influential country in
developing the international human rights regime, but it is also the
most reluctant of any democratic country to apply these same standards
at home. Since signing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in
1948, the United States has failed to ratify key human rights treaties,
and declared those it has signed to not be legally enforceable without
enabling legislation.
Click here to
read the full article.
Caroline Wadhams and Colin Cookman, "Interactive Map:
Leaders of Pakistan's Militant Groups," Center for American Progress,
July 22, 2009
Pakistan faces a formidable array of
militant groups concentrated in
the semi-governed Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA, and
Northwest Frontier Province, or NWFP, along the country’s Afghan
border. This map, based on a survey of available, open-source
reporting, displays major leaders of different militant groups and
coalitions attacking into Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Click here to
view the map and accompany in-depth biographies.
CTV
- Brian Katulis interprets recent
remarks by Secretary of State Clinton on Iranian nuclear
ambitions: "Perhaps what she was previewing was the next step in
what would be the Obama administration's strategy on Iran... which
would be tighter economic sanctions and then some sort of umbrella, and
continued effort to contain Iran's military and terrorist influence
inside the Middle East."
Arizona Daily Star - Lawrence Korb suggests that
despite the growing importance of unmanned drone aircraft, the U.S. Air
Force may have difficulty finding enough operators to accomodate the
expanding fleet: "To fly
a plane twice the speed of sound and come in for attack with
missiles flying, there's a certain amount of glamor to that ... there's
not much glamor to sitting in Arizona or Nevada pushing buttons, even
though it's just as important."
TIME - The Enough Project's Colin
Thomas-Jensen cautions that the recent agreement on the borders of the
disputed Abyei region in Sudan, remains one small step out of many
needed: "It's only one of a host of contentious issues that the parties
are facing, not least of which is the demarcation of the entire
north-south border, which has many other oil fields. ... We've seen a
lot of rhetoric and commitments on both sides, and that's
positive. But there's a history in this region of saying one thing and
doing another."
|
|
|
Counterinsurgency
Operations in Afghanistan
July 30, 2009, 9:00 AM -10:30 AM
Violence in Afghanistan continues to escalate,
with July being the
deadliest month for U.S. troops since the U.S. invasion in 2001.
General Stanley McChrystal formally assumed command of NATO-ISAF in
early June 2009 and has begun to change the emphasis and direction of
military operations in Afghanistan. He is currently conducting a 60-day
strategic review of operations in Afghanistan.
Please join the Center for American Progress and
Sarah Chayes for a
conversation on General McChrystal's strategic shift and the challenges
in Afghanistan, including the renewed emphasis on a population-focused
campaign, civilian capacity-building, and the expansion of the Afghan
National Army. Ms. Chayes will also share her on-the-ground insights
into military operations in Helmand and challenges in the NATO alliance.
Moderated by:
Rudy deLeon,
Senior Vice President for National Security and International Policy,
Center for American Progress
Featured Panelists:
Sarah Chayes,
Special
Advisor to GEN Stanley McChrystal, Commander of the International
Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan
Caroline
Wadhams, Senior National Security Policy Analyst, Center for
American Progress
Reuben
Brigety, Director, Sustainable Security Program, Center for
American Progress
To RSVP and for more information on
this event, please
click here.
Sign
up:
Policy
e-newsletters
The
Progress Report
To
unsubscribe, click here
Support
the Center for American Progress
Comments, questions:
Email
Us
National
Security Policy Weekly
is a product of the Center for American Progress |
|
|
