John Vandiver, “US-trained Congolese Battalion Among Units Accused of Rape,” Stars and Stripes, May 10, 2013. Read more »
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Six members of the U.S. House of Representatives, including Mac Thornberry (R-TX) who stands at the podium, hold a press briefing at the Pentagon on November 6, 2003 (Ward/Courtesy Department of Defense).
On Friday, Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), vice chairman of the house armed services committee (HASC), introduced a bi-partisan bill with twenty-nine co-sponsors. The full text of the bill (H.R. 1914) was only made available today by the Library of Congress. The “Oversight of Sensitive Military Operations Act” essentially formalizes into law existing oversight procedures for non-battlefield capture or targeted killing operations conducted by Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) forces. As Thornberry acknowledged last week, “We’ve been doing a lot of this oversight anyway,” with the military briefing the HASC’s subcommittee on intelligence, emerging threats, and capabilities within “hours or days” after drone strikes or other “lethal targeting actions.” This is much faster reporting than required under current law—a “global update on activity within each geographic combatant command” every three months. Read more »
Leon Panetta, former secretary of defense, during his final visit to the CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia, on February 14, 2013. (Fawcett/Courtesy U.S. Department of Defense)
Leon Panetta had unique and unprecedented access into U.S. targeted killing programs as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) (February 2009–June 2011) and secretary of defense (June 2011–February 2013). As Daniel Klaidman revealed last year, one procedural change implemented early in the Obama administration was that “the CIA director would no longer be allowed to have his deputy or the head of the counterterrorism division act as his proxy in signing off on strikes. Only the DCI would have sign-off authority.” While he was the director of the CIA, Panetta personally approved roughly two hundred drone strikes in Pakistan. Read more »
Former secretary of defense Robert Gates is a self-described foreign policy “realist”—in his last major policy address in office, given at the American Enterprise Institute, he noted, “As I am fond of saying, we live in the real world.” However, he also contended that the United States should promote democratic governments—through diplomacy and soft-power—and admitted his “fundamental belief: that America does have a special position and set of responsibilities on this planet.” Gates most notably expressed skepticism about using military power for contingencies that were poorly conceived, impractical to execute, or not in support of vital national interests. As secretary of defense he also opposed bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities until diplomacy was exhausted, supporting Israel’s airstrikes against a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria, and intervening in Libya’s civil war —though he justified America’s military role in Libya as necessary since it was in the national interest of U.S. allies, and their troops were needed in Afghanistan. Read more »
Witnesses Mark Thompson, Gregory Hicks, and Eric Nordstrom are sworn in at the May 8, 2013, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya (Gripas/Courtesy Reuters).
Olga Khazan, “Interview: NATO Supreme Allied Commander on Syria and Soft Power,” The Atlantic, May 9, 2013. Read more »
U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel speaks with reporters after reading a statement on chemical weapon use in Syria during a news conference in Abu Dhabi. (Jim Watson/Courtesy Reuters).
Nussaibah Younis, “Why Maliki Must Go,” New York Times, May 2, 2013.
Given the two-year-old Syrian civil war escalating next door, a sectarian crisis and political collapse in Iraq would be a disaster at the worst possible time. It would blur the boundaries between the two conflicts, bring additional misery to Iraq and pose enormous challenges for Iraq’s neighbors and the United States. Read more »
In the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2012, Congress included a routine reporting requirement, “The Secretary of Defense shall commission an independent assessment of the overseas basing presence of United States forces.” That report—with twelve authors—was published yesterday by RAND: “Overseas Basing of U.S. Military Forces: An Assessment of the Relative Costs and Strategic Benefits.” It is, by far, the most impressive and comprehensive study of the scope, benefits, risks, costs, and consequences of America’s global military presence. Many citizens and policymakers are unaware of the number of troops stationed overseas to execute U.S. defense strategy: recent Pentagon data lists over 172,000 U.S. servicemembers on permanent or rotational deployments around the world (not including the 66,000 troops in Afghanistan). Read more »
The littoral combat ship USS Freedom (LCS 1) departs for a deployment to the Asia-Pacific region, in San Diego Bay, California. (Christine Walker-Singh/Courtesy Reuters).
David C. Gompert, “Sea Power and American Interests in the Western Pacific,” Rand Corportation, to be published June 3, 2013, pp. 160-162.
If we are indeed in for a change in the basic premise of sea power, the main reason would be that globalization is making cooperative maritime security more attractive and even compelling. But why would globalization favor cooperation over confrontation at sea? This is a legitimate question: After all, economic interdependence did not prevent naval rivalry or, for that matter, world war a century ago. More to the point at hand, why would the common economic interests of China and the United States, including secure trade, foster maritime cooperation when such an approach was not pursued by Great Britain and Germany, also major trading partners when they became rival sea powers? The answer is complex but worth examining. Read more »
An aerial view shows Japan Coast Guard patrol ship, fishing boats from Taiwan and Taiwan's Coast Guard vessel sailing side by side near the disputed islands in the East China Sea. (Kyodo/Courtesy Reuters).
CFR’s Senior Fellow for Japan studies, Sheila A. Smith, published a new CFR Contingency Planning Memo (CPM), “A Sino-Japanese Clash in the East China Sea.” In it, she argues that the United States should encourage peaceful dispute resolution to the avoid further escalation in tension between China and Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Below, CPA staff write a guest post about this aspect of the CPM. Read more »
In February, President Obama declared during a Google+ Fireside Hangout: “This is the most transparent administration in history, and I can document how that is the case.” Obama did acknowledge: “When it comes to how we conduct counterterrorism there are legitimate questions there, and we should have that debate.” One way the White House could cement its purported legacy as the most transparent administration ever, and contribute to counterterrorism debates would be to participate in congressional hearings on drone strikes. Read more »
Politics, Power, and Preventive Action shares perspectives related to U.S. national security policy, international security, and conflict prevention.
For more conflict prevention analysis, visit CFR's Center for Preventive Action.
John Vandiver, “US-trained Congolese Battalion Among Units Accused of Rape,” Stars and Stripes, May 10, 2013.
For U.S. diplomats and military officials who were involved in training a Congolese army unit, a troubling question loomed: Would the 391st Commando Battalion serve as protectors of the population or would they revert to acts of sexual violence once on the battlefield?
A United Nations report released this week indicates that their worst fears have been realized and that efforts at building up a Congolese unit of benevolent soldiers has failed. The report, issued Wednesday by the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office, accused members of the 391st Commando Battalion — which was trained by special forces troops assigned to U.S. Africa Command — and other Democratic Republic of Congo troops of engaging in a range of atrocities, including the mass rape of women and young girls in eastern Congo.
On Friday, Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), vice chairman of the house armed services committee (HASC), introduced a bi-partisan bill with…
Leon Panetta had unique and unprecedented access into U.S. targeted killing programs as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency…
Former secretary of defense Robert Gates is a self-described foreign policy “realist”—in his last major policy address in office, given…
Olga Khazan, “Interview: NATO Supreme Allied Commander on Syria and Soft Power,” The Atlantic, May 9, 2013.
