Showing posts for "U.S. Foreign Policy"
General Stanley McChrystal speaks at Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan on December 2, 2009 (Mustafa Quraishi/Courtesy Reuters).
Thomas Hegghammer, “Should I Stay or Should I Go? Explaining Variation in Western Jihadists’ Choice Between Domestic and Foreign Fighting,” American Political Science Review, February 2013. Read more »
Former U.S. senator Chuck Hagel testifies during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on his nomination to be defense secretary on January 31, 2013 (Kevin Lemarque/Courtesy Reuters).
Senator Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee was a protracted, repetitive, and disappointing affair. Rather than discuss the decisions for which the secretary of defense is empowered by U.S. law to make and implement as the “principal assistant to the President in all matters relating to the Department of Defense,” the hearing focused instead on forcing the former Nebraska senator to defend or deny his previous statements and positions. Read more »
A drone takes off from a U.S. base in Afghanistan (Handout/Courtesy Reuters).
Jill Lepore, “How Much Military is Enough?” New Yorker, January 28, 2013.
Veit Medick, “Germany Plans to Deploy Armed Drones,” Spiegel Online International, January 25, 2013. Read more »
A helicopter lands at Forward Operating Base Apache in the Zabul Province of Afghanistan (Tim Wimborne/Courtesy Reuters).
Tony Capaccio, “Iran’s Cyber Threat Potential Great, U.S. General Says,” Bloomberg News, January 17, 2013.
Iran’s developing ability to launch cyber attacks will make it “a force to be reckoned with,” the head of the U.S. Air Force Space Command said. Read more »
Kenyans walk past a destroyed house in the sprawling Kibera slums, which was one of the most affected areas during the post-election violence in 2007 (Antony Njuguna/Courtesy Reuters).
Since 2007, after a widely contested presidential election precipitated a descent in violence that killed over one thousand people, Kenya has taken steps to rebuild its political system through a power-sharing agreement and a new constitution. However, as tensions among rival ethnic groups rise ahead of the next elections, to be held in March 2013, continued stability in Kenya—already threatened by sporadic outbreaks of violence—remains uncertain. In a new Contingency Planning Memorandum “Electoral Violence in Kenya,” Joel Barkan warns that the March elections (with a potential run-off in April) are “arguably the most important and complex since the country’s return to multiparty politics two decades ago.” Events on the ground are further complicated by ongoing proceedings of the International Criminal Court, which has indicted one of the leading presidential candidates, Uhuru Kenyatta, for his role in perpetuating ethnic conflict in the aftermath of the 2007 elections. Read more »
Then-U.S. Army general David Petraeus at an event in the East Room of the White House (Larry Downing/Courtesy Reuters).
Several pundits have called for the confirmation hearing on John Brennan’s nomination to become the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to be used as the opportunity to debate the vast expansion of targeted killings under President Obama. From his position as the senior White House advisor to the president on all counterterrorism and intelligence issues, Brennan could clarify and answer many of the moral, legal, and operational questions regarding U.S. drone strikes. Read more »
President Obama listens after his announcement of Brennan as his nominee to be the new director of the CIA (Jason Reed/Courtesy Reuters).
Several news agencies are reporting that John Brennan, White House homeland security advisor and deputy national security advisor for counterterrorism, will be nominated to be the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Since David Petraeus resigned from the position on November 9, it has been rumored that the position is Brennan’s for the taking. Several people in the administration believed he would defer the move to Langley, since it would effectively be a demotion from his current position, which allows him to meet with President Obama constantly as—according to Obama administration officials—”a priest whose blessing has become indispensable to Obama.” Moreover, Brennan would at times call CIA officers directly from the White House, without clearance from Petraeus; a practice one suspects he will not appreciate if he occupies the director’s seventh floor office. Read more »
Camp Justice at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay (Pool New/Courtesy Reuters).
Iona Craig and Nico Hines, “Saudi Jets Join America’s Secret War in Yemen,” The Times, January 4, 2013.
The Times has learnt that up to 228 people were killed last year by covert attacks in Yemen, including Saudi airstrikes. “Some of the so-called drone missions are actually Saudi Air Force missions,” a U.S. intelligence official said. Read more »
In February, Eric Schmitt wrote in the New York Times about the Obama administration’s emerging Yemen strategy, whereby U.S. and Yemeni intelligence and military officials would “work together to kill or capture about two dozen of al Qaeda’s most dangerous operatives, who are focused on attacking America and its interests.” Like all previous objectives of America’s Long Third War of drone strikes, the scope of intended targets has expanded far beyond those two dozen individuals, who should have been killed at least nine times over by now. According to the Long Wars Journal database, there have been forty U.S. airstrikes (drone or fixed-wing) in Yemen this year, up from ten in 2011. These have killed 223 people, an estimated 19 percent of them were civilians. Read more »
DOD Decision Makers Need Additional Analyses to Determine Costs and Benefits of Returning Excess Equipment, Government Accountability Office, December 19, 2012.
In June 2011, the United States announced plans to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The remaining U.S. forces will work to support the U.S. objective of a transition to Afghan-led security by December 2014. The Department of Defense (DOD) has begun planning for this reduction and, as part of its planning, has identified more than 750,000 major end items–equipment important to operational readiness to support the combat forces, such as weapons and vehicles–that can be returned from Afghanistan (to DOD inventories), transferred to another U.S. government agency or another country, or destroyed in theater. According to DOD, this equipment, estimated to be worth more than $36 billion, has accumulated during a 10-year period. DOD officials also estimate that it could cost $5.7 billion to return or transfer equipment from Afghanistan. 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.
See below for the most important and alarming sections from Thursday’s Senate Armed Services Hearing with senior civilian and military…
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…
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