CNAS

After initially promising to come up with benchmarks for judging the success or shortcomings of its Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy — the term preferred by the administration, I understand, is “metrics,” which I’m cool with — the Obama administration has yet to come up with any, and has resisted Congressional efforts to put them in the recent [...]

Two new Obama administration senior officials got sent up for nomination today: Phil Mudd, undersecretary-designate for intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security; and Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary-designate for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the State Department.

As predicted/foretold, Defense Secretary Bob Gates had quite a lot to say during the rollout of his budget request about the concept of “full spectrum” operations in the context of getting the counterinsurgents a foot into the budgetary door. Taking questions from reporters, Gates broke his budget down “crudely” by saying that he was devoting [...]

Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak spoke at a forum last month organized by the Center for a New American Security. He wanted sustained American support for the Afghan National Army, which, he noted, was growing its end-strength ahead of schedule. “We will reach 86,000 by March 21,” Wardak said, a mile marker along the [...]

Some new (and continuity-filled!) Pentagon appointments from the White House today: first, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy’s deputy will be — surprise, surprise — someone from the Center for a New American Security, the think tank she co-founded. That’s Jim Miller, a CNAS vice president and director of studies. Laura Rozen reported this [...]

We still seem to be a ways off from the Sons of Afghanistan. At a forum sponsored by the Center for a New American Security, I asked Abdul Rahim Wardak, the Afghan defense minister, to give some detail about how a controversial new auxiliary security force is different from a government (or U.S.-) supported tribal [...]

Speaking at the Center for American Progress, Afghanistan’s foreign minister, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, made a full-throated plea for the United States not to back away from supporting Afghan democracy. “In recent weeks and months, we have heard some views here and elsewhere that we need to reduce our expectations from Afghanistan, and instead pursue ‘realistic’ [...]

While President Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy review gets underway in earnest, several Afghan ministers are on their way to Washington for meetings with the Obama administration and Congress. Practically the entire Karzai government is headed in: Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta and his top adviser Davood Moradian; Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak; Interior Minister Mohammad Hanif [...]

Here’s another dimension to the Pakistani government’s public-denouncement-but-private-cooperation with U.S. military attacks on extremists in the tribal areas. The New York Times reports that Army Special Operators are training elite Pakistani forces to do the job for them. Pakistani Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, the Army chief of staff, prefers the training to the fusillade of [...]

In November, I pointed out that the irregular warfare-heavy think tank known as the Center for a New American Security was basically President Obama’s shadow Pentagon. Well, it’s pretty much entirely out of the shadows. One of its co-founders, Michele Flournoy, was confirmed Monday as undersecretary of defense for policy. Now, Laura Rozen reports, the [...]