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U.S. Drones, Iran Space Monkey Show Increase in Airborne Weaponry
Tweet Share on Facebook February 8, 2013 CommentNorth Korea's trippy space dream sequence ending in the destruction of New York City. Iran's launching of a monkey into outer space. And debate over the U.S. drone program that allows for the targeted killings of terrorists and American civilians suspected of colluding with them from far, far above. It was very much "eyes in the sky" this week when it came to global events.
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Are Special Operations Forces Safe From Sequestration?
Tweet Share on Facebook February 7, 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.
Pentagon officials are increasingly doubtful that sequestration will be avoided. While all elements of Department of Defense will suffer cuts under that scenario, some will suffer smaller cuts than others. Two areas that people have discussed as being less susceptible to cuts are in the areas of cybersecurity and special operations forces. Leaving aside cybersecurity, however, is it safe to assume that special operations forces are safe from such cuts?
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Afghanistan's Challenges Show the Limits of U.S. Military Power
Tweet Share on Facebook February 7, 2013 CommentMalou Innocent is a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute.
Foreign policy elites on both sides of the aisle continually advocate America's leadership role for the sake of spreading democracy. In doing so, they inflate their foresight and ignore the uncomfortable fact that despite the best efforts, America's military and civilian establishments have faced enormous difficulty repairing fragile states emerging from civil conflict. Bipartisan conventional wisdom has created a system that fails to appreciate the limits of America's power, as demonstrated in Afghanistan.
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Mali and Fighting al Qaeda in the Post-bin Laden Era
Tweet Share on Facebook February 5, 2013 CommentAki Peritz is the senior policy advisor for national security at Third Way.
It's welcome news to hear French and Malian troops have almost fully liberated northern Mali from al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, known as AQIM, and the other jihadists who turned much of the country into a neo-Taliban state. Let's take this opportunity to reflect on how to wage war against al Qaeda in the post-Osama bin Laden era.
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Iran Electoral Power Play Shows How Fragile Regime Actually Is
Tweet Share on Facebook February 5, 2013 CommentIlan Berman is vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC.
Iran's presidential election may still be some four months away, but the political machinations have already begun. Last week, Iran's Council of Guardians, the powerful governmental oversight body tasked with interpreting the country's constitution, passed a new law imposing additional curbs on the electoral process within the Islamic Republic—and adding a new layer of bureaucracy to its already-convoluted political process.
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Will Mali Become France's Afghanistan?
Tweet Share on Facebook February 5, 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.
What has happened in Africa? Africa was on the brink of being reborn. Africa was on its way to becoming the roadmap for humanity's future. Especially what is happening in North Africa? In Mali? The African continent has incubated and suffered some of mankind's most dreaded plagues. There is a new one…this time it's in the north of the continent—Islamic extremist groups, specifically al Qaeda.
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President Obama's Shifting Red Line on Syria
Tweet Share on Facebook February 4, 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.
The story out of antiquity shows a single Roman consul, Gaius Popillius Laenas, alone with his two clerks facing the might of the Seleucid Empire which was threatening the Roman protectorate of Egypt in 168 B.C. The old consul's mission was to force the king to return to Syria. The exchange between the two, as the story itself, has many variations. However, they all boil down to the following: The king, laughing at the diktat issued by the Roman asks the classic version of "you and what army" is going to force me back to Syria away from Egypt. The Roman responds by drawing a circle in the sand and saying that when he steps across the line, he had better be marching toward Syria and not Egypt. The king retreated, and the red line was born. The concept of a red line in international relations is now in-vogue to describe a situation where one nation or coalition sets up a tripwire, which if crossed, will result in dire consequence. It is being overused over the issue of Iran and is being brought up constantly regarding Syria; history comes full circle in the strangest ways.
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A President Hillary Clinton Would Pull Country Back to Center
Tweet Share on Facebook February 4, 2013 CommentDaniel Gallington is the senior policy and program adviser at the George C. Marshall Institute in Arlington, Va. He served in senior national security policy positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Department of Justice, and as bipartisan general counsel for the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
The most important thing to remember about Hillary Clinton—above all—is that she is a politician. By modern definition, this is someone who will say or do anything to be "relevant", avoid blame or responsibility, and appear wise—above all, to remain in the focus of the media. And, she needed all these "skills" during her most recent political gig as secretary of state. Good thing for her, because she was able to emerge mostly unscathed after a disastrous last few months in office.
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Economic Opportunity in Africa Beings With Agribusiness
Tweet Share on Facebook February 1, 2013 CommentStephen Hayes is president and CEO of the Corporate Council on Africa.
A recent trip to Berlin offered me a chance to reflect on an event that was to affect the future of Africa and current events today. It has been nearly 130 since the infamous Conference of Berlin, at which the European powers carved up Africa into territories that would eventually morph into the nations that now cover the map of the continent. Underlying that conference was the sense of permanent empires built on agriculture sufficient enough to fuel those illusory empires for centuries to come. The rubber from the Congo, the cotton from Nigeria and the Sahel, the cocoa from Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire, the ivory from Kenya, and the list goes on.
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Obama Needs a Second Term Course Correction on Russia
Tweet Share on Facebook February 1, 2013 CommentEvan Moore is a Senior Policy Analyst for the Foreign Policy Initiative.
One of President Obama's signature foreign policy initiatives was an attempt to engage the rogue and illiberal regimes in Tehran, Damascus, Beijing, and Moscow. These attempts at rapprochement generally met with little success, but the effort known as the "Russia Reset" yielded a few policy gains that the Obama administration could take credit for. However, Vladimir Putin's return to the Russian presidency effectively marked the end of this brief springtime in relations between Moscow and Washington. In his second term, President Obama should recognize that the Reset reaped few real results, was deeply misguided in some aspects, and take a harder line with Moscow in his second term.
