john nagl

If this came in any other context except the aftermath of a dispiriting, fraud-filled election, this statement from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would be a mundane discussion of how U.S. interests in a given country have to go beyond a dialogue with that country’s leaders. But since we’re talking about Afghanistan and the [...]

If you saw me on al-Jazeera fifteen minutes ago making this point, sorry for repeating myself. But if not: Robert Gibbs said in his White House press conference today that the Obama strategy review for Afghanistan will go on — a troop decision is apparently still weeks away — and will continue to look at [...]

Ah, the Friedman unit, that beloved Internet tradition denoting the six-month increment many pundits believe will prove decisive in any war, only to be subject to an endless addition of … Friedman units. In the course of this very good New York Times piece outlining the stakes for President Obama now that Afghan President Hamid [...]

I had some concerns that a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed from Richard Fontaine and John Nagl of the Center for a New American Security treated the fraudulent Afghan presidential election too blithely, proposing to simply work around Kabul and deal directly with the provinces. But if this Washington Post story is correct, the Obama [...]

Politico’s Laura Rozen obtained a formal dissent filed by a senior USAID development economist, C. Stuart Callison, against the development approach for Afghanistan and (mostly) Pakistan imposed by the Obama administration’s special representative, Richard Holbrooke. Holbrooke pledged in August that he would be phasing out costly U.S. contractors in favor of working through both local [...]

An eclectic group of experts assessed the nuances of counterinsurgency and troop increases at a panel on Wednesday.

That’s the real question, isn’t it? Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) asks it of the witnesses at today’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
John Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security: “An Afghan state able to secure itself against internal threat with minimal external help”; one that “does not serve as a … base [...]

Rory Stewart, the Afghanistan-war skeptic who heads the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard, has one advantage over his fellow witnesses at this Senate panel: he’s better with quips. Stewart compares the Obama administration’s twinning of Afghanistan and Pakistan policy to a policy of dealing with “an angry cat and a tiger,” after [...]

As I reported today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ thoughts on the proper U.S. force posture in Afghanistan “is a work in progress,” according to Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. If there’s a Senate hearing that stands a chance of tipping the undecided — or even changing minds — it’s tomorrow’s Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
The witness [...]

The president of the Obama administration’s shadow Pentagon lends support to Sen. Carl Levin’s (D-Mich.) proposal this morning to bolster the Afghan security forces instead of ordering a second U.S. troop deployment to Afghanistan this year. While John Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security, said the Afghan troops/U.S. troops dynamic isn’t [...]