For the first time, the Department of Defense has established an office to guide policy on emerging non-traditional military activities like compliance with the rule of law, humanitarian emergencies and human rights. It’s a bureaucratic change that effectively frames international legitimacy as a security issue, a reflection of the legacy More…
Haaretz reports on comments the undersecretary of defense for policy, Michele Flournoy, made in Singapore about Iran:
The U.S. has ruled out a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program any time soon, hoping instead negotiations and United Nations sanctions will prevent the Middle East nation from developing nuclear weapons,
I covered Eric Holder’s Senate Judiciary Committee testimony yesterday, so I was unable to cover a fascinating and near-simultaneous hearing on Iran in the Armed Services committee. A host of senior military officers, Pentagon officials and intelligence analysts testified, and from this New York Times write-up, it sounds More…
Just as the U.S. government’s Iraq reconstruction watchdog formally unveils a proposal to revamp the integration of civilian and military activities in combat zones, opposition from the State Department and the Pentagon threatens to scotch the whole effort.
[Security1]When he testifies Monday before the congressionally created Commission on Wartime More…
Whatever’s happening with the Baradar capture, President Obama convenes his national security team today for what I think is the first all-hands meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan since the December West Point speech. The (very long) guest list:
President Obama announced in his State of the Union address that national security programs would not be subject to his proposed spending freeze. But that hasn’t stopped Pentagon officials from placing what they consider to be outdated military programs in the budgetary icebox.
In its master planning document for More…
Apropos of my story today about the consistently-ballooning defense budget, Defense News has a leak of the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon’s big planning document that, among other things, is supposed to shape the budget. This is just a leak of a draft, and not the final document. More…
If it doesn’t make any sense to you to spare defense programs from the spending freeze, pay attention to next Tuesday. At 8:30 a.m., Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy heads to the Council on Foreign Relations to explain the results of the forthcoming Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon’s master planning More…
After prominent Obama administration officials publicly praise the ministers of Defense, Interior, Agriculture and Rural Rehabilitation and Development, all of those guys keep their jobs. Two egregiously corrupt officials got sacked.
The House Armed Services Committee hearing with Gen. McChrystal and Amb. Eikenberry is wrapping up. Two things that we still don’t know, exactly: first, which southern and eastern Afghan population centers will be protected by U.S. and allied forces and which won’t be; and secondly, the ultimate aspirational size of More…
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