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 More…
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, More…
So: $25 billion, five years and 17,000 U.S. trainer troops to yield 400,000 total Afghan soldiers and cops. That’s Center for a New American Security president John Nagl’s estimate of what it’ll cost to double the size of Afghan security forces, Bloomberg’s Indira A.R. Lakshmanan reports. Next week, Gen. More…
Another year, another position paper from the Center for a New American Security on Iraq. The previous bunch of CNAS Iraq position papers were authored by Michele Flournoy, now the undersecretary of defense for policy; Jim Miller, now the principle deputy undersecretary of defense for policy; Colin Kahl, now More…
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 More…
It’s official:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the Obama administration has stopped using “war on terror,” breaking with the Bush administration’s terminology in describing the conflict with al Qaeda and militant Islam.
“The administration has stopped using the phrase, and I think that speaks for itself,” Mrs. Clinton
At the neoconservative Foreign Policy Initiative conference, Retired Lt. Col. John Nagl took a question on whether the United States has a horse in the Afghan presidential election. Nagl offered that Afghan voters had “good options” including and apart from President Hamid Karzai. Two important factors were that the president 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…
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…
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