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- Five Things to Watch Around Afghan
Elections, Brian Katulis
- Clear-Eyed Engagement with Iran, William
Cohen
- Blueprint for Defense Transformation,
Lawrence Korb and Laura Conley
- The United States and Egypt: A Common
Cause in Sudan, Colin Thomas-Jensen and Maggie Fick
- Time For A New National Security
Strategy?, Lawrence Korb
- Hillary Clinton Misses the Maghreb, Laura
Conley
- Uncertainty on Afghanistan
Post-Elections High, Brian Katulis
- Continued Civilian Shortfalls, Reuben
Brigety
- Administration Needs to Shore Up Public
Case on Afghanistan and Pakistan Efforts, Brian Katulis
- Planning for Withdrawal from Iraq, Brian
Katulis
- Consumers Increasingly Taking Notice of
Conflict Mineral Issue, Colin Thomas-Jensen
- Narrow Window of Opportunity on
Israel-Palestine, Brian Katulis
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Brian Katulis, "Five Things to
Watch Around Afghan Elections," Foreign
Policy, August 17, 2009
With three days until ballots are cast in presidential and
provincial elections here, an air of uncertainty hangs over a process
that U.S.
President Barack Obama has called the most important event of the year
in Afghanistan. Threats of violence along with worries about
the potential for electoral fraud and possible post-election political
violence
loom, and no one knows what quite to expect in the coming days and
weeks here. I'm here in the country as part of one of the
international
delegations to observe the elections, with Democracy International, an
organization that has gathered together a group of election specialists
and Afghanistan experts and sent them around the country, including
Kandahar, Helmand, Herat, and Paktika, among other places .
Click here to
read the full article.
William Cohen,
"Clear-Eyed Engagement," Middle East Bulletin interview, August
18, 2009
The
administration is waiting to see how things evolve in Iran. At the same
time there is a countdown taking place. President Obama has indicated
that patience is a virtue, but it’s not eternal, and
there’s a fairly definitive timeframe in which the Iranians have
to respond to diplomatic initiatives. If Iran fails to respond, I think
the administration will seek to intensify the sanctions imposed against
Iran. It will have to persuade both Russia and China that if the UN
resolutions imposing sanctions are to have any meaning, then they have
to stand behind them. … Under the circumstances such a policy
involves both risks and opportunities. The risk is that more sanctions
may serve to consolidate Iranian public support for the current regime,
which is now in doubt, or at least there’s great dissent over it.
... On the other hand, if those sanctions are imposed in a selective
and discrete way, that hit certain industries which intensify the
economic distress that Iran will suffer, that could cause even greater
discontent within the Iranian population, which could pose a threat to
the regime.
Click here to
read the full interview.
Lawrence Korb and
Laura Conley, "Blueprint for Defense Transformation," The American Interest, August 18, 2009
This
past March
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that the spigot of
increasingly large defense budgets had been turned off—as he
proposed a
FY2010 baseline budget of “only” $534 billion. The
momentousness of
that announcement, however, did not seem to match the number. While
it’s true that the Joint Chiefs prepared a budget for the
incoming
Obama Administration calling for $584 billion in FY2010—$50
billion
more than the Gates proposal and some $60 billion more than the Bush
Administration had projected for that year—last year’s
budget had been
$518 billion, $16 billion less than the proposed FY2010 baseline.
Click here to
read the full article.
Colin Thomas-Jensen
and Maggie Fick, "The United States and Egypt: A Common Cause in
Sudan," Huffington
Post, August 18, 2009
The top agenda items for today's
White House meeting between President
Obama and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak are not a surprise; Middle
East peace and combating extremism are the shared preoccupations that
define U.S.-Egyptian relations. Yet a less obvious but no less urgent
national security concern for Egypt is the situation in neighboring
Sudan. President Mubarak shares President Obama's stated goal of
lasting peace and stability in Sudan, and President Obama must seize
this opportunity to leverage the United States' close relationship with
Egypt into a genuine partnership to achieve this mutually desirable
outcome.
Click here to
read the full article.
Lawrence Korb,
"Containment Succeeded, Pre-emption Failed - Time For A New National
Security Strategy?," The National Journal, August 18, 2009
From the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989
to the fall of the Twin Towers
in 2001, and even now, after the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the
United States has not had a consistent national security strategy that
enjoyed the support of the American people and our allies. This
situation is markedly different from the Cold War era, when our nation
had a clear, coherent, widely supported strategy that focused on
containing and deterring Soviet communist expansion. The tragic events
of September 11, the increase in terrorism, threats from countries such
as North Korea and Iraq, and the advent of a new administration create
an imperative once again to fashion and implement a coherent national
security strategy that will safeguard our national interests.
Click here to
read the full article.
Laura Conley,
"Hillary Clinton Misses the Maghreb," The Guardian, August 11, 2009
As Hillary Clinton tours Africa, one
region of the continent is noticeably absent from her itinerary:
northwest Africa, often known as the Maghreb, which stretches from
Mauritania and Morocco across Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Clinton's
11-day, seven-nation trip to Africa is a marathon of diplomacy by any
measure, and the US secretary of state cannot be faulted for not
visiting every state that would receive her. Yet at least one of the
Maghreb nations should have made the cut.
Click here to
read the full article.
Washington Independent
- Brian Katulis, on an election monitoring team in Afghanistan, says
that uncertainy over the outcome is high: "You ask what’s going
to happen and they don’t have a strong theory of the case. ... at
the same time [there's] a hopeful political debate that’s
happening in certain parts
of the country and people seem pretty interested in the election.”
USA Today - Reuben Brigety notes the
continued shortfall of civilian diplomatic and development personnel
available for the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan: "It is a travesty that
we don't have the capacity to send more people out in the field as
needed."
Reuters - Brian Katulis warns about rising
public concerns over the Afghanistan mission: "[The administration
hasn't] fully developed exactly how they are going to demonstrate to
the American people and Congress that they're using the money and
resources effectively to achieve progress."
USIP - Brian Katulis discusses a new report
by the RAND Corporation analyzing the potential impacts of three
different draw-down schedules for U.S. forces in Iraq: "Our overall
debate in Washington has really shifted beyond timelines ... to how do
we actually manage this eventual drawdown. ... Mitigating the risks and
the focus on that I think is really important."
PRI -
Colin Thomas-Jensen discusses the trade in conflict minerals from the
Congo and what consumers can do about it: "The best way to put pressure
on any industry is through consumers and I
think what we’re starting to see, and it’s early yet, what
we’re
starting to see in the United States is a growing number of people who
are aware of the situation in eastern Congo, appalled by it and who are
learning about this connection between the trade and conflict minerals
and consumer electronics."
BloggingHeads
- Brian Katulis discusses prospects for peace process negotiations in
the Middle East and the administration approach: "It's not going to be
easy by any means. ... I'm disconcerted by some of the conservative
voices that want to just freeze things into place, when I see this a
window to move forward on the Israeli-Palestinian front."
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