Michele Flournoy

This was an extremely bad day for the Obama administration. Right after Obama’s “Meet The Press” declaration that he would not allow strategy to be driven by resources, the leaker of the the McChrystal strategy review attempted to do precisely that, even though McChrystal’s review itself states that such an outcome is undesirable even while [...]

An interview with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is slated to air on the NewsHour tonight and, according to an early transcript, here’s what she says in reaction to the McChrystal strategy review leak:
HILLARY CLINTON: I mean one of the points that the President has made continuously since taking office is that we’re [...]

At noon today. Laura Rozen reports:
Scheduled to brief members: Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy; Holbrooke deputy Paul Jones; the ODNI’s Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis and South Asia expert Dr. Peter Lavoy; NSC holdover “war czar” Ltn. Gen. Douglas Lute; and Joint Chiefs of Staff  Director for Strategic Plans and Policy [...]

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 [...]

Critics see retrenchment on Obama’s pledge to rebalance the foreign policy apparatus away from the military.

Michele Flournoy, undersecretary of defense for policy, testified that imprisoning some Guantanamo detainees in the United States would make it politically easier for European allies to take custody of some of the detainees. Robert Mueller, director of the FBI, testified to some concerns about holding Guantanamo detainees in America, out of fears that they’ll radicalize [...]

My understanding is that around 2:00 or 2:30 p.m. today, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) are going to introduce their bill providing aid to the civilian components of the Pakistani government. Recall that last week, Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy said the bill’s House counterpart is “too inflexible” in terms of providing [...]

Not necessarily from the Taliban, but from a military coup responding to the threat the Taliban poses to the viability of Pakistan. Fox News reports that Gen. David Petraeus is telling people privately that the next two weeks (!) are a test of the Zardari government’s survivability. Anonymous sources allegedly familiar with Petraeus’ talks with [...]

I don’t know what benchmarks the Obama administration wants to place on its aid and commitments to Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Well, more on that in a moment.) But I do know what benchmarks they don’t want. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy told the House Armed Services Committee yesterday that the Pakistan aid bill [...]

With a new Pakistani military response to Taliban advances underway, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy goes before the House Armed Services Committee this afternoon to discuss what military training and aid in counterinsurgency the United States is offering that the Pakistanis will accept. Working with a proud and powerful institution like the Pakistani [...]