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 »

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 »

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 »

Claudette Roulo, “Dempsey Arrives in Afghanistan to Assess Progress,” American Forces Press Service, April 6, 2013.

“Any conflict in history, when it is resolved, is resolved through some form of reconciliation,” [Gen. Martin Dempsey chairman of the joint chiefs of staff] said. “I support the effort to try … through the Afghans to encourage them to take reconciliation as an important line of effort.” Read more »

Although the United States has been killing suspected terrorists with drone strikes in nonbattlefield settings for over ten years, public opinion polling of the controversial tactic began only a year and a half ago. Averaged together, the polls demonstrate that 65 percent of Americans support the targeted killing of suspected terrorists, and 51 percent approve killing U.S. citizens who are suspected of terrorism. Read more »

Christopher P. Cavas, “Stennis’ Long Haul,” Navy Times, March 18, 2013.

REAR ADM. MIKE SHOEMAKER: We pay very close attention to Iran. In the gulf it is almost a daily interaction with the Iranian forces. Over the time I’ve been here, they have depressurized a little, or have given us a bit more standoff room both in the straits and the [Persian] Gulf. Read more »

An article today in the New York Times offered a new piece of evidence in the CIA’s nine-year drone strikes campaign in Pakistan. Declan Walsh reported that anonymous officials—“two senior U.S. officials” and a “third official”—claimed that airstrikes on February 6 and 8, reported by Pakistani and international media as drone strikes, were not actually conducted by the United States. According to one of the sources: “They were not ours. We haven’t had any kinetic activity since January.” An official is also quoted as assigning responsibility to the “Pakistani military…the Taliban fighting among themselves. Or it could have been simply bad reporting.” Read more »

On August 4, 2011, six weeks into his tenure as secretary of defense, Leon Panetta gave his first press briefing at the Pentagon. After briefly commenting on the impressive civilian and military leadership in the Department of Defense (DOD), he got right to the point: Read more »

Last March, in a House hearing, Representative  Tom Graves asked FBI director Robert Mueller: “Does the federal government have the ability to kill a U.S. citizen on United States soil, or just overseas?” Mueller responded, “I am going to defer that to others in the Department of Justice.” In light of the leaked Department of Justice white paper that provided some of the Obama administration’s legal rationale for the targeted killing of U.S. citizens, the question has been raised again. In an effort to find an answer, Senator Rand Paul placed a hold on John Brennan’s nomination to become the director of central intelligence, declaring in a statement yesterday: “I have placed a hold on the nomination of John Brennan to serve as director of the CIA until he answers the question of whether or not the President can kill American citizens through the drone strike program on U.S. soil.” Read more »