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The Taliban, Pakistan, and India: Towards a New U.S. Policy
Tweet Share on Facebook December 3, 2012 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.
A daring assault by Taliban forces this week in Afghanistan on Camp Bastion, a heavily fortified U.S. military base in Helmand Province, killed two Marines and destroyed six Marine AV-8B Harrier jets. The attack's remarkable sophistication suggests it was not the work of a few Afghan insurgents using homemade weapons, but of trained military tacticians. U.S. military sources revealed this week that one of the Taliban fighters, who survived the U.S. counterattack, admitted that his unit had organized, prepared, and trained for the attack over several months in Pakistan. The incident should focus Washington's attention on the failing U.S. policy in the region: not in Afghanistan where the attack took place, but in Pakistan where it appears to have been planned and organized.
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How U.S. Business Can Grow Its Investment in Africa's Economy
Tweet Share on Facebook December 3, 2012 CommentStephen Hayes is president and CEO of the Corporate Council on Africa.
A lot has been written about American business and American policy losing Africa. I, for one, have often said in my speeches that African countries will necessarily gravitate to those countries who are investing in their respective economies. I believe that to be largely true. Granted that there are other factors than only business investment in a country that determine relationships, including culture, language, religion, geopolitics, and even geography, but in developing countries especially, those countries who become the largest investors in developing economies will have a major advantage in future political alliances and the economic directions of the nations. Notice, for instance, how we often temper any criticism of China policy, which just also happens to be our largest creditor. Courage is being unafraid of your banker, or as Colin Powell was so fond of saying, "Money is a coward."
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The Army Will Be a Challenge for Obama's Defense Spending Cuts
Tweet Share on Facebook November 30, 2012 CommentMichael P. Noonan is the director of the Program on National Security at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
This week, as previously threatened, I am returning to focus on the issue of the Army in the broader context of the defense budget challenges for the Obama administration. The conventional wisdom these days seems to be that end of the war in Afghanistan will reduce the demand/need for a large U.S. Army. As the New York Times reported the current seems to be that the United States will keep 66,000 troops in Afghanistan until the end of the fighting season in fall 2013 and then begin the drawdown to a much smaller ground footprint by 2014. Coupled with this, of course, are the budget cutbacks that will also reduce the size of the Army from 551,000 to roughly 470,000 over the next decade, but if sequestration hits, triggering 12-14 percent cuts across the board cuts, that number could drop Army personnel totals to as few as 400,000 over the same period.
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Morsi's Egypt Looks a Lot Like Mubarak's Egypt
Tweet Share on Facebook November 29, 2012 CommentRobert Nolan is an editor at the Foreign Policy Association and producer of the Great Decisions in Foreign Policy television series on PBS.
The new Egypt, for better or worse, is beginning to look a lot like the old Egypt. In the past two weeks, both regional and domestic events have proven that despite American fears to the contrary, the status quo is likely to prevail in Cairo, albeit in a rocky fashion.
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U.S. Can't Sanction Countries Supporting Palestine in U.N. Vote
Tweet Share on Facebook November 29, 2012 CommentHeather Hurlburt is the executive director of the National Security Network in Washington, D.C. Heather previously served in the Clinton administration as speechwriter to the president, and as speechwriter and policy planning staff for Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Warren Christopher. Follow her on Twitter at @NatSecHeather.
Today the United Nations General Assembly will vote overwhelmingly to give Palestine nonvoting observer status, a step up from its current position. The United States will be almost alone in voting "No," joined by Canada, Palau, and the Solomon Islands. Having succeeded in blocking the measure at the Security Council last year, the United States now has the pleasure of voting in splendid isolation in the General Assembly, where no state has a veto. Relatively few of our allies, and Israel's other close friends, will even abstain, in what Haaretz. Barak Ravid calls "a full-on landslide."
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America Is Souring on Bloated Federal Defense Spending
Tweet Share on Facebook November 29, 2012 CommentChristopher Preble is the vice president for defense and foreign policy studies.
In a recent paper, economists Christopher Coyne and Thomas Duncan paint a dire picture of the harmful effects of the permanent war economy. Most studies focus on total military spending (measured in either real or nominal dollars) to show the enormous growth in such outlays over the past 15 years. A few studies focus on the size of the Pentagon's budget relative to total federal spending, or to the economy as a whole, and claim that such costs are, in fact, quite modest.
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Morsi's Power Grab Doesn't Mean Egypt Is Doomed
Tweet Share on Facebook November 28, 2012 CommentLaurel Miller is a senior political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and co-author of the recently published monograph Democratization in the Arab World: Prospects and Lessons from Around the Globe.
A pall hangs over the Egyptian political transition, with apparent presidential power grabs, the judiciary up in arms, and new protests filling the public squares. But the latest tumult does not mean the transition is doomed to failure.
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U.S. Sanctions Push Iran to Foreign Meddling
Tweet Share on Facebook November 27, 2012 CommentIlan Berman is vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, D.C.
There's a tried-and-true rule in politics that, when there's trouble at home, it's time to look abroad. The Iranian regime is proving to be no exception to this axiom; as its economic fortunes have dimmed as a result of widening Western sanctions, the Iranian regime has ramped up its interference throughout the Middle East.
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The Real Problem With a Secretary of State Susan Rice
Tweet Share on Facebook November 27, 2012 CommentBenjamin H. Friedman is a research fellow in defense and homeland security studies at the Cato Institute
The problem with making Susan Rice secretary of state isn't Benghazi. It's war. Rice, like her "mentor," former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, and the current secretary, Hillary Clinton, has supported just about every proposed U.S. military intervention over the two decades. The president should nominate someone that occasionally opposes a war.
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Brazil Will Only Be a Regional Economic Superpower
Tweet Share on Facebook November 27, 2012 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.
Brazil's meteoric rise has left many wondering what happens after the 2014 World Cup and 2016 XXXI Olympiad. Let me get two thoughts out of the way before we begin the discussion of Brazil possibly becoming the first Latin American superpower. First, we are only talking about an economic superpower and not a conventional superpower (i.e. military, political, and other soft powers.) Second, Brazil's prowess is in all probability destined to be contained to Latin America—a regional juggernaut.
