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Looking for Sequestration Defense Cuts? Try Military Aid to Egypt
Tweet Share on Facebook February 28, 2013 CommentMalou Innocent is a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute.
It's almost impossible to escape the Washington establishment's hysteria over sequestration—the $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts, a less than 2.3 percent reduction of the $3.64 trillion federal budget. Despite all the overwrought rhetoric about what the sequester will mean for military spending—described as "devastating," a "doomsday scenario," and even a "hollowing out of the force"—few Americans know where their hard-earned tax dollars are going, and whether or not such spending is absolutely necessary. Among the many spendthrift federal programs is the American taxpayers' multidecade subsidy to Egypt's military.
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Sequestration Could Take Our Army Back to 1940
Tweet Share on Facebook February 28, 2013 CommentMichael P. Noonan is the director of the Program on National Security at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, and a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Rep. Adam Smith, a Democrat of Washington and the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, has floated a plan on Fox News that would transform sequestration from a hatchet to a more precise cutting knife. Under his plan the budget cuts—which would still occur—would be targeted under a more common sense approach rather than across the board cuts. He noted, for instance, that you can't buy two thirds of a submarine. Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, in a rare showing of recent bipartisanship, commended Smith for this proposal even though the two agreed to disagree as to whether taxes needed to be raised to help reduce the ongoing budget deficits. One would hope such a reasonable approach can take hold while cooler heads eventually (and hopefully) prevail, but both sides seem to be more inclined on grandstanding and scoring political points at the moment.
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Don't Let Sequestration Cut Foreign Aid
Tweet Share on Facebook February 27, 2013 CommentPatrick Christy and Evan Moore are senior policy analysts at the Foreign Policy Initiative.
Much attention has focused on how looming sequestration cuts will harm national defense, but few people understand how sequestration's March 2013 onset will also hurt U.S. foreign assistance programs that advance America's security, prosperity, and global leadership. Under sequestration, spending on international affairs (a major component of which is U.S. foreign assistance) will be slashed not only by roughly 5.3 percent in fiscal year 2013, but also by as much as $50 billion over the next decade—roughly what the United States spends on diplomacy and development in a single year.
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Hillary Clinton's Unfinished Business at the Broadcasting Board of Governors
Tweet Share on Facebook February 26, 2013 CommentRobert Schadler is senior fellow for Public Diplomacy at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC.
Since her departure from Foggy Bottom on February 1, Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state has received extensive attention—and accolades—from the press. Most assessments have focused on Ms. Clinton's diligence as America's top diplomat, as well as her extensive travel (a total of 956,733 miles in 401 days in visits to 112 countries).
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Italy Must Vote for the Future, Not the Past, in Today's Election
Tweet Share on Facebook February 25, 2013 CommentScheherazade S. Rehman is a professor of international finance/business and international affairs at The George Washington University. You can visit her homepage here and follow her on Twitter @Prof_Rehman.
Today, in part, Europe's future will be decided. The Western world is waiting for the outcome of the Italian elections. This is the modern moment of truth for the Italians. If they miss this golden opportunity to fully jump on board the European Union integration project goals of development, competitiveness, and sustainability, the Italians will be left behind in a southern state of slow decline as they face the worst recession in two decades. They are sliding backwards on development with declining competitiveness, deteriorating fiscal health, one third of their youth unemployed, and being slowly locked out of the global capital markets i.e. access to cheap money. This moment of truth is very similar to the decision the Greeks faced when they were joining the euro i.e. "business as usual" or "time to grow up" as a country. The Greeks choose "business as usual" and we know what happened with that. Only this time it is Italy. Italy is much more significant and the third largest economy in the European Union. Italians can either get "real" this time or slide back into self-delusion. The Italian desire to return to the past is a pipedream; the world has radically shifted, and staying still and daydreaming will swiftly put any country (developed or developing) into an uncompetitive state. Essentially if the new Italian government is not credible and cannot forge through very difficult institutional and systemic reforms, the aging Italian voters have kicked the proverbial can down the road for their children to carry.
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Al Qaeda's Current Status: Inept, Weakened, But Dangerous
Tweet Share on Facebook February 25, 2013 CommentAndy Liepman, former principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center, is a senior policy analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.
The casual observer can be excused for being confused after reading news headlines on al Qaeda over the past few weeks. On one hand, the organization is portrayed as coming back with a vengeance as the new jihadi hydra, with assertions that the group has become a far greater threat than the Obama administration admits. On the other hand, recent events have been described as the acts of a desperate and dying cause.
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As Sudan and South Sudan Inch to War, the U.S. Can't Remain Neutral
Tweet Share on Facebook February 25, 2013 CommentAndrew S. Natsios is an executive professor at the George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and the author of Sudan, South Sudan and Darfur: What Everyone Needs to Know. Natsios served as administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development and as President George W. Bush's special envoy to Sudan.
This past week Salva Kiir, president of the Republic of South Sudan, announced that he had ordered units of the Sudan People's Liberation Army to deploy south of the border between his country and its northern neighbor, the Republic of Sudan, in response to the buildup of military forces north of the same border. While the north-south border area has been militarized for several years, this ominous military buildup by both countries brings them one step closer to war. A year ago the Southern government stopped all oil production (70 percent of historic Sudan's known oil reserves are in the South) when it discovered the Khartoum government was diverting oil, selling it on the spot market, and taking all of the revenue.
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Don't Prosecute CEOs in Front of the International Criminal Court
Tweet Share on Facebook February 22, 2013 CommentStephen Hayes is president and CEO of the Corporate Council on Africa.
Not very long ago, Kamari Clark, an anthropology professor at Yale University, wrote an op-ed piece that appeared in the New York Times calling for corporate CEOs involved in illicit activities to be brought before the International Criminal Court for the exploitation of Africa's resources and peoples. Never mind that in 10 years the International Criminal Court has successfully prosecuted exactly one crime, and that the court's usefulness should be seriously questioned. Rather one should look at the merits of her argument and those merits should be very seriously questioned.
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Papandreou's Three Myths About the Greek Financial Crisis
Tweet Share on Facebook February 22, 2013 CommentHannah Gais is assistant editor at the Foreign Policy Association. You can follow her on Twitter @axi0nestin. Robert Nolan is an editor at the Foreign Policy Association and producer of the Great Decisions television series on PBS. You can follow him on Twitter @robert_nolan
Former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has caused a bit of a stir in Athens over a recent series of paid lectures at American Ivy League institutions, including this week at Columbia University, where he will also lead a spring seminar series at the School of International and Public Affairs. According to news reports, Papandreou will be housed by the university in a luxury New York City apartment building where his neighbors will include the likes of Lady Gaga, Matt Damon, and Sarah Jessica Parker. But it's not just the perceived luxuries on Papandreou's lecture circuit that has some Greek and American critics riling, it's the subject matter of his professorship: the European financial crisis for which many hold him responsible.
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Remembering Theodore Hamerow
Tweet Share on Facebook February 22, 2013 CommentDr. Lamont Colucci is an associate professor of politics at Ripon College, recent Fulbright Scholar to the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, and author of The National Security Doctrines of the American Presidency: How they Shape our Present and Future, among other books. You can find out more at lamontcolucci.com.
A nation's destiny is determined by its past; its present is protected by its historians. America sits along the threshold of past and future, more comfortable in the present as a political culture. It must rely on its historians to remind her of prior obligations and responsibilities. In rare circumstances individual Americans combine all of this into a single life.
