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 More…
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, More…
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 More…
Jonathan Stray, an energetic blogger, has constructed a social-network chart detailing the connections between the so-called Counterinsurgents. It has some errors — I’m assuming ‘Nathniel Flick’ is Nate Fick of the Center for a New American Security — and as Abu Muqawama says, “a better graph than More…
Remember the Center for a New American Security, the counterinsurgent-heavy defense think tank that used to be run by Michele Flournoy and Kurt Campbell before they became, respectively, undersecretary of defense for policy and assistant secretary of state for East Asia? Several other scholars at the think More…
While I don’t want to step on my colleagues’ coverage of Eric Holder’s hearings, I’m at the Dirksen building for the joint confirmation hearings of Detp. of Defense subcabinet officials-designate Bill Lynn (deputy secretary), Robert Hale (comptroller), Michele Flournoy (undersecretary for policy), and Jeh Charles Johnson (general counsel).
The More…
I’m reliably informed that imminently — possibly as early as today — President-elect Barack Obama will announce that former Pentagon comptroller and Raytheon official Bill Lynn will be nominated to become deputy secretary of defense and Michele Flournoy, a co-founder of the Center for a New American More…
I ask, Mike Allen answers. So long, Eric Edelman:
EXCLUSIVE: Secretary Gates’ deputy at the Pentagon is slated to be Richard Danzig, who was Navy secretary under President Clinton. The #3 (policy) will PROBABLY be Michelle Flournoy, a Clinton administration veteran who was dual-hatted as principal deputy assistant
Dear Yochi,
Would it have killed you to acknowledge my piece about Obama and the Center for a New American Security in your piece almost a week later about Obama and the Center for a New American Security? Small Wars Journal picked it up and everything.
Spencer
Just as my piece on Saturday predicted, look who the Obama people just announced would help lead their Pentagon headhunting team. From an Obama press release:
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