When we worked on Homeland Security 3.0 (September 2008) with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Heritage Foundation, we took a long look at everything that has been done since 9/11 and we found a lot of good with each individual effort but we concluded something was still fundamentally lacking. Here is the problem as we saw it in the report and the answer.

The Problem:

An adequate national framework for implementing domestic intelligence is lacking. New intelligence missions have emerged following the 2001 attacks—at the Pentagon for homeland defense, at the Department of Homeland Security, as well as the creation of new institutions to include the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counter Terrorism Center.  The FBI, too, is transforming from focusing primarily on criminal prosecution to terrorism prevention today.  From the threat side, an increase in radicalization and recruitment of radicalized individuals presents a distinct threat—with individuals unconnected operationally with al-Qaeda’s leadership, or from known linkages to international terrorist networks. This is a worsening global problem, to which the United States is not immune. What intelligence is required, who is responsible for collection, what methods are permitted, and how that intelligence can be used or shared, are all questions that have at best been addressed in a piecemeal and incoherent fashion .  

The Answer

The president should issue an executive order for establishing a national domestic intelligence framework that clearly articulates how intelligence operations at all levels should function to combat terrorism while keeping citizens safe, free, and prosperous. This framework must articulate how the homeland security and counterterrorism community, particularly local law enforcement will conduct counter-radicalization efforts.  In particular, such a framework must establish who can collect domestically and why, what can be collected and how, and how the government will coordinate and oversee this process.  Most important, this doctrine must clearly articulate how all activities will support the dual priorities of enhancing security and protecting the liberties of a free society.  

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Barak Obama’s first test will not come from this nation’s enemies, adversaries or competitors. It will come from our allies, coalition partners and friends. These are the ones who will feel they have a claim on the attention of the new President and the resources of the United States. They will be concerned about shaping the new leader’s views and policies as soon as possible. In some cases, they are likely to believe, rightly or wrongly, that they share with him an agenda or world view. In other cases, they will be concerned that their views will differ with his. The latter, if born out, could be a cause of great concern for them.

Here are some examples of the tests he is likely to face.

Old NATO will try and control and contain the United States through its new President. They will want to subordinate his power in the pursuit of their own interests. They will want America to expend its resources and avoid spending theirs. So, for example, most of the nations of old NATO will refuse to do more in Afghanistan. The test will be whether Obama allows them to lead or he assumes the mantle of NATO leadership. They will want him to reassure Russia even if it comes at the expense of new NATO members of U.S. interests elsewhere.

New NATO will want to ensure that America is committed to their security needs, specifically opposing Russian aggression. The will want him to take a harder line with Russia than may be his natural inclination or that of Old NATO. We have already seen the prime Minister of Poland test the president-elect over the deployment of a U.S. missile defense site in his country. They could act recklessly, as did Georgia, in order to force his hand.

Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki believes that he helped President Obama win the election by agreeing to a 16 month withdrawal of U.S. forces. He will want the new President to stand aside as he consolidates power and, possibly, represses the Shia. The test will be whether or not the new President will continue to require proper behavior by the Iraqi government or will cave in the interest of a rapid withdrawal.

Israel will want to know if Obama’s campaign promises will hold now that he is in office. In particular, Israel will want to know that if Iran goes over the line in its nuclear weapon ns program that America will act to secure Israel’s safety. If they are not made to feel secure, the likelihood of preemptive action by the Israelis becomes a near certainty.

India will want America to deal with the threat to it posed by Pakistan. It will demand that the America put pressure on Pakistan to deal with its terrorist problem. If there is another attack on India, it may want clearance from the President to attack Pakistan. The test will be how Obama manages two allies in the war on terror with hostile intent towards one another. The fact that the Indian Air Force has gone on alert and that India is reported to have put its nuclear weapons into mobile deployments should be a worrisome sign for the new President.

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President-elect Obama already failed the test, which was simply to read the words of our Islamist opponents. By appointing inveterate interventionists like Biden, Rice, and Clinton; surrounding himself with U.S. citizens more loyal to Israel than America -- Rahm Emanuel, Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk, etc.; and by believeing that two more brigades will "fix" Afghanistan, the President-elect has shown that he -- like Mr. Bush and his colleagues -- is going to do nothing to disturb the Islamists main motivation and only indispensible ally, status quo U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. We can contain Russia, unless we want war over a two-bit country like Georgia, and Iran is a serious problem for the United States only because the new Obama administration is not sure what its Muslim-hating masters in Israel are going to do.

In immediate future, I concur with Pat Lang that we all ought to be a bit more aware that the wheels are coming off the Afghan wagon. Seven years on, our genius generals have their main supply routes running through enemy-dominate territory -- 15 more trucks were burned this morning (12/13/08) -- and the manageable Islamist enemy we were once figthing has now been joined by the Pashtun nationalists on both sides of the Durand Line to make a force far larger than we can cope with. Before long President-elect Obama will face a choice between loosing Afghanistan and loosing both Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is no real choice, he will have to cut Afghanistan loose.

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Senator Biden is correct, of course, the tests will come; and if Russian statements are any indication, they will come quickly, and perhaps in bunches. The challenge for the new Administration is to respond in a way that does not deflect it from its overall strategic priorities. The buureacracy creates inter-agency "task forces" that are fundamentally tactical. The objective is always to "get past" the crisis. The system certainly can work--as in the US-Chinese collision over Hainana Island in 2001, when matters did not spin out of control and the relationship between the two powers was restored to one of cautious, but practical, interaction. But an outbreak of Indo-Pakistani warfare along the Kashmir Line of Control (which could take place as soon as the snows begin to melt), could come at the same time as a Taliban spring offensive, which could come at the same time as some major incident in Iraq, which could come at the same time as some outrageous behavior by North Korea, or, for that matter, Kim Jong Il's death and a succession crisis. Creating four task forces would not be enough; strong coordination from the NSC will be a sine qua non for ensuring that the Amdinistration maintains its strategic balance while putting out multiple tactical fires.  

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 All this talk about the new national security strategy worries me. There is a real danger that the concept of national security is going to be hijacked and become just another tool of constituent politics. Increasingly everyone wants to classify every global challenge as their “security” issue.

We all agree that the elements of national power (political, economic, diplomatic, etc.) have to work together to keep Americans safe, free and prosperous. We also agree that nations compete on more than battlefields and against enemies that are not other nations. Enemies have to be confronted in the marketplace and minds of peoples as well.

Increasingly, however, common wisdom contends that national security means protecting the nation from all kinds of ills. Thus, whatever the danger of the day, it became a “national security” problem. Everything from potential pandemics to recessions apparently requires the same treatment as enemies of the state.

In the last year, alone we added energy, environmental, and economic security to the list.

To make matters more confusing, international organizations such as the U.N. have created terms such as “human security,” arguing for a collective responsibility to keep people free from want and fear.

Human security suggests international organizations have the right to order states to intervene when the collective wisdom of these unelected bodies considers it appropriate to meddle in a nation's internal affairs.

The upshot is that, increasingly, everything centers on security. The problem with that approach is the tendency, in dealing with security interests, to centralize power and decision-making, and restrain individual freedoms and free markets.

The centralization of power is worrisome enough in time of war (remember the hyperbole over the Patriot Act.) Now at the same time folks who cried foul over creating a Department of Homeland Security to fight terrorists that want to kill us want to make their pet projects security issues, too.

Dealing with the world's challenges as a threat to national security often produces destructive results that may be more of a threat than the ills allegedly being addressed. It turns out abandoning the checks and balances that govern free societies often wind up depriving people of liberty and making their material condition worse, not better.

Making every global challenge a security issue trumps free markets and limits personal freedoms. The concept of national security needs to be put back in the box, reserved for moments of peril in dealing with people (either states or non-states) who threaten through the use of violence to take away the political freedoms that governments are supposed to protect.

Security shouldn't become an excuse to take away the power of individuals and communities to decide how best to cope with the challenges of life.

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 One thing that no one has addressed thus far is the challenge posed by cyberterrorism. In this day and age, terrorists have begun using increasingly sophisticated means to perform their attacks. Take, for example, the recent Mumbai attacks, where terrorists relied almost entirely upon modern technology such as GPS, cellular phones, and even media response, to conduct their attack and manipulate the situation. Also, consider the Russian cyber attack on Georgia, which targeted and shut down many government websites. An attack such as this would inhibit the flow of information across our largest channel of communication, and in addition to compromising sensitive data and critical intelligence, would likely cause major outbreaks of panic. Imagine a public who receives the vast majority of their daily communications from the web (email, news websites, commercial and government sites) and who stores there a great deal of personal information (banking, social security and credit card numbers, etc.) suddenly struck with a crisis situation where they can no longer trust these systems. They don't know whether their information is safe. Thus a disastrous breach of security and a major panic attack are both accomplished in one act of terror.

That said, I think one of the most likely security threats to face the Obama administration in the coming months is the possibility of a cyber attack. And since Al-Qaeda in particular has a history of striking around federal election cycles when countries are in transition and their vulnerability increases, I believe this attack may come sooner rather than later.

To prevent a cyber attack that would prove debilitating to our nation's electronic infrastructure, there are several steps we can take now. The first is obvious: back up all sensitive information to secure servers and take extra caution when transmitting data and communications across an open network.

Secondly, we need to closely examine where our weaknesses lie and make concrete, rapid improvements. Any attack, such as a cyber incursion into our social security system or within the financial sector, could prove devastating to our already shaky economic state.

A third course of action would be to heighten our education regarding cyber and electronic systems writ large. Anyone who has access to a computer and a web connection can teach themselves highly technical skills. That also includes terrorists. We need to stay one step ahead of the people who wish to use our cyber infrastructure against us.

Lastly, I would recommend either reviewing existing or establishing new continuity of operations planning. Make sure, if your plan exists, that it includes a cyber component. If you do not have a plan at all, I strongly suggest that you get one. Good continuity of operations planning and preparedness will not prevent a cyber attack, but it can go a long way towards mitigating the consequences should one occur.

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 The Obama Administration's main challenge to any foreign policy decisions anywhere in the world will be its new team's dynamics and lack of coherent process.  History has taught us that the most dangerous time in any Administration -- no matter how qualified the foreign policy team -- is in the first year of an Administration.   

The Obama team is filled with strong, independent players who will be jockeying for position and searching to define roles.  Certainly VP Biden will have something to say that will put him athwart SecState Clinton.   And National Security Advisor Jones will likely be searching for a good team underneath him and be feeling out his interactions with an ever fractious Intelligence Community. Its remains unclear what position SecDef Gates will be in as a declared lame duck with new staff being placed underneath him.

The main player is always the President.  He must decide early what his managerial style is and stick to it.  In this fast moving age, consensus building may not be an option -- either with his national security team or with the Congress.  Still, President Obama must balance this tendency with the understanding that he no doubt has gained from the failures of the "go-it alone" Bush Adminstration.

Finally, one of the President's toughest challenges, will be learning to understand and to trust (up to a point) the intelligence he is being given.  The Community has not covered itself with glory over the past few years.  However, an understanding of the uses and limits of US intelligence should give him the power to use it effectively.  

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A note to the group from your moderator. A tally of our experts shows that the looming crises are:

Iran: 4 votes

India-Pakistan: 3 votes

Homeland Security, domestic terrorism: 2 votes

Lack of coherent national strategy: 2 votes

Iraq: 2 votes

Mideastern instability broadly: 1 vote

Somali piracy: 1 vote

I must disagree with the comments here that President Obama will face his first crisis the day he is inaugurated or soon thereafter.  I also disagree that it will come from some alien culture or some erstwhile foreign ally, such as Israel.  President-elect Obama already faces his first national security crisis; the gauntlet was thrown down to him before the election, and it was hurdled by his selection for Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates.  The crisis is the Pentagon's budget, including the additional bloat and blunting of the sharp end added by Secretary Gates in the draft 2010 DOD budget he has handed to the Obama transition team. 

The mess, nay disaster, in the Pentagon budget is the fact that it is now, and has been for a few years, the largest in today's dollars since the end of World War II, coupled with the fact that our forces are now smaller than at any time since 1946, major equipment is - on average - older, and key combat units are less ready to fight than at any point in recent history.  I will be happy to supply the details for any who are interested.  The draft 2010 budget - together with its $57 billion "plus-up" - make all those trends worse.  None of the virtual salad of low hanging fruit of bad ideas has been dealt with - not even the painfully irrlevant, underperforming, ultra-high cost F-22.

Such is the "continuity" we have and seem to be in store for, unless there is a radical shift away from the way decisions are made in the Gates Pentagon - and were made in the Clinton era when many of today's aspirants for high DoD office presided over a series of decisions to make our forces smaller, older, and less ready - a long term trend that the Rumsfeld-Gates era certainly did not invent.

Secretary Gates has definitely taken some shots at business as usual, such as with a few high visibility and richly deserved firings and with his insistence on heavier armor and more surveillance in Iraq, but he has barely tickled the surface.  He clearly knows that.  His article in Foreign Affairs, "A Balanced Strategy: Reprogramming the Pentagon for a New Age," lays down the marker.  Surely, intended for his successor when it was written in the fall, the criteria Secretary Gates laid down now apply to him.  The "baroque" weapons, the broken acquisition system, the military services' disinterest in weapons for the conflicts we are fighting provide the test that President Obama can apply next year to determine if his "new" Pentagon team is cutting the mustard.

There is no more profound national security crisis than a defense budget that brings us weaker forces at higher cost, especially in the midst of two wars, both of them going poorly.  (Yes, both.)

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The Iranians have already chimed in on this question, welcoming the Obama Administration's proffered carrots but rejecting the prospect that they recant their nuclear ambitions to achieve them.  Given that Iran crossing the nuclear threshold will likely occur on the same timeline as the Administration's draw down in Iraq, dealing with the consequences of Iranian assertiveness in the Middle East would be my top pick for the test.  I don't see any reason the Iranians wouldn't try and impose on us the kind of humiliation their proxies served up to Israel during it's withdrawal from occupied territories.  It would maximize the value to them of crossing the nuclear threshold and reinforce their claims to determine security in the region.  In addition to the practical problems of dealing with this, the Obama Administration will have the political problem of having campaigned on the idea that talking to Iran will make this problem go away.  If the problem seems to worsen as a result of a policy of engagement, that will likely trap the Administration into a hard line policy.

When manifesto and CV posting ends here, perhaps we could consider a few real world problems like the NATO logistical problem in the Afghanistan theater of war?

 #1 Obama’s first test will likely come from the greatest threat to national security—the Congress. Increasingly, in recent years the Congress has demonstrated it does not take homeland security all that seriously—ignoring a key 9/11 Commission recommendation to consolidate the committees that have jurisdiction over the department; holding hearings to trumpet political causes rather than exercise serious oversight; and imposing ridiculous and unnecessary mandates that cost a lot of money and add little, if any security. Likely as not, one of the first initiatives in the new Congress will be an effort to rip the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) out of the department. This effort has nothing to do with improving security. FEMA does not need to be moved to run better. That’s been proved. The agency has just finished one of its most challenging and successful years—ever. FEMA is fixed. Trying to take FEMA “out” is an exercise in old-fashioned constituent politics. If the administration and the new secretary let the Congress get away with this there will be a feeding frenzy on the department, with Congress and not the new leadership calling the shots. Instead of a national security agency, Homeland Security will become the highway trust fund, little more than a place to launder pork-barrel spending (just as the 9/11 Commission warned)—that is until the next terrorist attack. 

#2. Russia is already baiting Obama. Moscow is playing a double game of aggressive posturing on one hand—haranguing about missile defense; threatening to sell nuclear technology to Chavez and holding joint maneuvers with his navy, while partying in Havana. On the other hand, Moscow says there is a need for serious negotiations. What that means is Moscow will offer to back-off strategically meaningless, but aggressive acts in our backyard if Obama makes serious concessions in Europe and Central Asia, recognizing a Russian sphere of influence. Putin hopes he can sucker Obama into practicing soft power diplomacy (just like the candidate promised during the election) and jump at a bad bargain, handing Moscow something for nothing. If Obama takes the deal, dumping missile defense in Western Europe and backing off NATO membership for the Ukraine and Georgia, he will fail a key foreign policy. He might as well don a duped hat.

#3. Iran might do, rather than just think about, the unthinkable. Tehran just might test a nuclear weapon. That would be a “game changer” that would leave the new administration gasping.

On the flip side I think there will be some tests that don’t take place.

#1 China will behave. China is more worried about its economy right now than playing gotcha with the United States. Rather then see the United States flounder in the short-term they would rather see long lines at Target pumping up the demand for Chinese manufactured goods.

#2 Al Qaeda will sit on the sidelines. If al Qaeda could get here they would. If they have a plan in the works it is not because they want to test Obama, it is because they want kill our children and humiliate America. Against Al Qaeda the best defense is a good offense, get them before they get us.

#3  North Korea plays chess not checkers. Kim will want to take stock of Obama before he plots his next move. He will watch others test Obama first. 

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Obama's big challenge, one that he will face on day one, will be to avoid having his administration hijacked by the succession of "crises" demanding his attention.  There will be no "change" -- at least none on the scale that his most fervent supporters look to him to achieve -- unless Obama jettisons the conceptual framework received from his predecessors.  A necessary first step will be to repudiate the global war on terror, stating plainly what has become all but self-evident over the past half-dozen years:  open-ended global war as a response to violent Islamic radicalism is a dumb idea that won't work and will eventually bankrupt this country.  A useful second step would be to acknowledge that foreign policy and domestic policies don't inhabit two separate worlds but are intimately connected.  To make the point more simply:  our economy is screwed up in considerable part because our foreign policy is screwed up.  Fixing the latter will go far toward fixing the former.  Fixing implies abandoning all of the bloated claims to which the end of the Cold War and then 9/11 gave rise.  Say goodbye to benign global hegemony.  We need to live within our means and pay more attention to cultivating our own garden.  

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I still believe that we are our own worst enemy, an enemy defined by a mindset that is less than holistic in its engagement of the world as it is…a world that includes religion, for worse, and for better. To the question: President-elect Obama will first be tested along the “I-axis:” Israel-Iraq-Iran-India. The most fundamental and common denominator to this interrelated super-region is religion. The challenge for our national security establishment is to allow for the proper place of religion in its analytical worldview…even as this establishment simultaneously understands that the majority of people in this part of the world—especially our (potential) enemies—see the components of their analysis through the worldview of their religion.

 Since the enlightenment we have separated church and state for the sake of good governance, and with good result. But analysis has been the casualty. Unfortunately, our national security establishment—civilian and military—has not been educated or trained to understand another’s worldview that includes religion. Being more comprehensive in our global engagement requires a new mindset, and that can only come through education. A new national security act’s cornerstone must be the provision of “joint” education across the interagency such that a common worldview results…a worldview where religion is not dismissed out of ignorant omission or arrogant commission, but a worldview that gives balanced consideration to the potential impact of religion—both negative and positive—on our national security.  

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President Obama is liable to be tested in his first months in office but not just in the way that Vice President Biden anticipated. A big test will come from some in the bureaucracy, who will try to slow walk his plan to remove all of the combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months, or about one combat brigade per month. Many civilian and military experts will no doubt argue that the drawdown should be postponed until Iraq gets through its two big rounds of elections in 2009, namely the provincial and follow-on national elections, so that the security gains achieved over the last year will not be jeopardized.

President Obama should resist these calls because delaying the start of the withdrawal will enhance the Al-Qaeda narrative that the U.S. is waging a war on Islam, reinforce the perception of many Iraqi people that the U.S. intends to occupy Iraq permanently, and decrease the prospects of the Iraqi people ratifying the SOFA. Moreover, delaying the withdrawal of forces from Iraq will make it more difficult to send more troops to Afghanistan, the real central front of the war on terrorism, without overstretching the ground forces even more and also weaken the incentives for the Iraqi political leaders to undertake meaningful political reconciliation. Finally, if President Obama backs down on his Iraq withdrawal plan, it will embolden the bureaucracy to resist some of his other controversial policies, for example joining the International Criminal Court or ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

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As I noted in a column not long after Sen. Biden's comment, Mr. Obama really doesn't need to anticipate another crisis. He has more than enough problems on his plate already.

As Rep. Skelton pointed out in the list to which his post refers, what the nation most requires from its new president is a convincing strategic framework from which to address the current and potential foreign and defense policy challenges with which we already are confronted. America can't reasonably expect to lead if neither friends, nor enemies, nor the uncommitted can figure out where we're leading. Neither can we expect to persuade other nations of the reasonableness of our intentions while a sigificant majority of our own people remain unconvinced of the rightness of our international behavior.

We don't need another crisis. We need a sensible strategy.

I would agree with Hilary Leveritt that the need for serious diplomatic engagement with Iran is the most important of the foreign policy issues facing BO, but the chance that Israel might actually seek to engage the Iranians militarily is of IMMEDIATE concern.

I'll focus on the impending crisis that Obama's advisers will bring us closer to the brink of conflict with Iran by failing to seek genuine strategic rapprochement with the Islamic Republic.  Obama's public call for talks with Iran has again heightened expectations in Tehran that strategic change is possible with a new U.S. administration. But Obama's initial, and apparently strategic, call for engagement with Iran has been walked back by his advisers towards the already tried and failed "carrots and sticks" tactical approach taken by both the Bush and Clinton Administrations late in their second terms.  The basic flaw in this approach is the idea that economic goodies and increased sanctions are going to simultaneously induce and intimidate Tehran into unilaterally standing down from its core national security strategy. 

This approach ignores the uncomfortable reality that Iran has legitimate security concerns for which it has historically been willing to pay a very high price.  The increasingly conventional wisdom in Washington that the drop in oil prices and continuing problems in Iran's economy will make Iranian decsionmakers more suseptible to "carrots and sticks" again ignores the historical record that Iran withstood considerably more economic privation and real military pressure during its 8 year war with Iraq and an even lower price for oil during the 1990s. 

An even bigger problem with such a policy is that the proposed sticks -- more sanctions and, if necessary, military strikes-- serve to undermine the goal of a strategic reallignment of relations where American and Iranian security concerns are genuinely dealt with.  Threatening more sanctions against Iran is like threatening the Palestinians with more Israeli settlements: the sanctions and the settlements, themselves, undemine each sides' ability to believe a comprehensive solution is possible.  Trying to ratchet up sanctions against Iran while also sweetening (at least from a U.S. perspective) the "carrots" on the table for Tehran will fundamentally affirm already strong suspicions in Iranian leadership circles that it does not matter whether Democrats or Republicans are in power in Washington, or who occupies the White House--at the end of the day, the United States is not prepared to live with the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Bush 41 understood this dynamic in the Israeli-Palestinian arena and changed US policy in ways that ushered in several years of a constructive peace process.  These changes included convening the Madrid peace conference to promote a comprehensive resolution of the Arabi-Israeli conflict and, especially, opposing the construction of new Israeli settlements and suspending U.S. loan guarantees that might have supported further settlement activity, because such activitiy undermined the goal of a comprehensive solution. 

We need a U.S. administration that will take a similarly strategic view of the U.S.-Iranian relationship--much like the Nixon Administration redrew 25 years of dysfunctional U.S. policy toward China in the early 1970s.  But Obama's advisers have pushed instead for a policy of "carrots and sticks."

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Actually Vice President-elect Biden was on solid historical ground.  He was not implying that there is a band of bad guys hiding in some cellar conjuring up a crisis specifically to take on Obama.  It is simply that, many new American presidents have confronted major foreign policy crises within their first year in office.  Six of the nine most recent American presidents confronted foreign policy crises during their first year in the White House—actually eight, if we take into account that Presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Ford inherited on-going wars, as will President Obama.  Broadening our historical horizon underscores the drama of presidents’ first years.  Atomic bombs were dropped on Japan.  World War II ended.  Cuba, Panama and Afghanistan were invaded.  American combat forces were sent into Vietnam, an island off Cambodia and Somalia.  Baghdad was bombed during a new president’s first year in office.  And of course September 11.

Any worthwhile pundit can catalogue the perils that President Obama will face: a still determined and dangerous Al Qaeda, the fragility of the security gains in Iraq, escalating violence in Afghanistan, potential chaos in Pakistan, the continuing vortex of Palestine, North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the spectre of nuclear terrorism, biological or radiological attacks, a resurgent Russia.

The catalogue of flash points, worrisome scenarios and potential crises facing new presidents has grown increasingly complex over the past twenty years.  The array can be paralyzing.  Uncertainty is the only certainty.

Surprises are likely.  New presidents often have been ambushed by foreign policy "meteor strikes”—dangerous events probably not currently in the presidential briefings.

The Iranian revolution was not anticipated when Jimmy Carter took office in 1977.  President Reagan was prepared to do battle with the Evil Soviet Empire, not navigate a series of terrorist crises.  No briefing in January 1989 warned President George H.W. Bush to expect the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union or of the need to invade Panama--both occurred during his first year in office.  President Clinton entered office looking for a peace dividend from the end of the Cold War, not military intervention in the Balkans.  Al Qaeda was a recognized threat on January 20, 2001, but not as the likely author of a domestic attack on the scale of 9/11--an event which defined George W. Bush’s presidency.

It would be a depressing exercise for any new president to review the transition briefings of his predecessors, to realize how many subsequent events had not been included, how much the leader of the most powerful nation on earth remains a hostage to fate.

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Our new president will face a multitude of problems.  Some of the most important have already been mentioned here;  the economy, the danger of nuclear war on the sub-continent.  These things must be high on his list of priorities.  There are other, less obvious possibilities.  There are new articles in the Israeli press concerning the possibility of Israeli miltary action against Iran with or without US cooperation.   Are such musings truly reflective of Israeli strategic thinking?  The truth of that must be high on the new administration's agenda.  There are pirates in the Arabian Sea.  Pirates!   They are seizing ships and prisoners for ransom.   Whose vessels and citizens will they attack next? Ours?  Those of our allies and trading partners?  Pirates may not have the existential impact of the disintegration of our economy but it would be difficult to ignore American prisoners in pirate hands.

I don't think at the Presidential level scenarios matter all that much.  But the two most urgent problems for him to work on assuming office will be:

1.  India-Pakistan-Afghanistan, especially India-Pak.  Clearly, the nexus of terrorism has moved away from the Middle East, following its defeat in Iraq, and to the Indian subcontinent.  Pakistan is a weak state with weak and rogue security services and a deeply embedded Pashtun population.  The U.S. is going to have to exert all its influence to keep the Indian-Pak relationship peaceful, and to help the Paks stabilize their government and refocus their security services, including the army.

2.  Iran, from many points of view.  The nuclear problem, of course, but also confronting the wide reach of Iranian-sponsored terrorism, which reaches globally.  This is a complex problem with many players, not least the Europeans and the Russians.

If I were offered a third priority, it would be Russia.  Putin is going to be around for a long time, and the U.S. has to exert all the influence it can to attempt to make his reign transitory and to see Russia stabilze in a post-Putin era.  Tough. 

Bob Killebrew

The history of crises that confronted new Presidents is well known but predicting the specific test to be presented Barack  Obama is uncertain. The festering problems are mostly understood  but the conflict between two nuclear armed countries, India and Pakistan,  over the question of support to terrorists is the paramount problem.  Others can point out other serious problems in the Middle East and Homeland Security questions, but the possibility of war between these two nations that are both antagonistic and well armed is the most serious if it uncontained.

The President-elect's greatest challenge will be the economy.  While he will likely have enough money to do the right thing in Iraq and Afghanistan for the next few years, the scarcity of revenue and the explosion in new government spending will put tremendous pressure on the defense department, especially in the field of procurement.  While thinning or delaying programs will be an initial response, cutting those in development will become a key part of defense policy in the years ahead.  Major systems in development are today all in jeopardy.  Major systems in development that have a flawed or checkered development history will become just that: history.  Recent manpower additions to the Army and Marine Corps are safe for the near term, but not for the mid- or long-term.  Finally, the crushing weight of the coming defense cut backs will discipline our national appetite for new commitments, especially at the low end of the conflict spectrum.   The good news here is that we will have to get smart and re-learn how to teach fishing, as opposed to providing huge quantities of fish to our international partners.  Advising and training will replace expeditionary force deployments.  We may also begin to rationalize our foreign and security assistance programs, eliminating things like the billions of dollars provided yearly to the relatively well-off Israeli government.   

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While I'm reluctant to predict a particular crisis that might confront the new President and our country in the near future, we must expect and prepare for such challenges.  In my 32 years in Congress, the United States has been involved in 12 military contingencies, some of them major in scope, almost all unexpected. 

I recently assembled a list of the top defense challenges the next administration must address, which is posted on the House Armed ServicesCommittee website.

Aside from major setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, other possibilities for short-term grief are percolating the Middle East, where a struggle to fill perceived vacuum left by retreating U.S. and western influence is forming up. There may be sharp challenges by the “movements” to the Monarchy in Saudi Arabia and to the Mubarak dynasty in Egypt; these formerly dominate Arab powers now feel increasingly vulnerable and isolated. Don’t count on Jordan being calm, either.  These struggles will be compounded by the proxy contests for regional control between Sunni power centers with adversaries Syria and Iran, probably erupting in the Levant. An Obama administration will be tested by some variation of this "new" theme for crisis in the Middle East; it could head off some of these challenges by considering low-level official or unofficial probes in the “movements” -- Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Muslim brotherhood.  The Israelis can pull off moves like this, but we seem heretofore unwilling to take the chance.

This excellent question evoked dormant memories of a quiz game that I first experienced on an elementary school playground, now many decades past. Fertile imaginations yielded multiple variants, but the proposed victim would impishly be confronted with an option such as this: Would you rather be drowned in a vat of boiling-hot acid or run over repeatedly by a giant truck? The very question was intended to provoke chills.

It is regrettably easy to provoke chills today when discussing the many scenarios that could spark a national security crisis in the early days -- or in the months and years thereafter -- of any new Administration. Multiple foreign policy matters deserve and are getting attention by the very talented national security team that President-elect Obama has already assembled.

I would argue, however, that the most important national security issue that deserves immediate, systematic and disciplined focus by the Administration is this core homeland security matter: What must be done to prepare the new Administration to respond effectively to another mass casualty terrorist attack? This question requires a bit of unpacking.

It would be folly not to assume that there will be more days like 9/11 for the United States and our closest allies. Success is all about risk management. We have done much since 9/11 to mitigate the risk of terrorist attack and natural disasters, yet neither can be eliminated. Much more preparedness work lies ahead. The implicit lesson of today’s National Journal question, then, is this: prioritize ruthlessly, focus on risk.

Risk is measured as the aggregation of threat, vulnerability and consequences. As to threat, it is now clear that periods of top-level political transition globally introduce periods of heightened risk of terrorist attack. Terrorist doctrine holds that such moments present special opportunity.

It was a bipartisan, gutsy stroke of commonsense to create the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to consolidate in one all-hazard organization sufficient tools to strengthen decisively homeland security. But homeland security is, of course, not the responsibility just of this one Department. Every Cabinet department has its own vital role and responsibilities in defending the homeland, and for recovering from an attack.

For leaders of the new Administration, the senior White House, Cabinet and sub-cabinet teams urgently should plan together how they will to respond and recover from disaster. This should start prior to the inauguration, and continue with iterative depth and refinement in the weeks and months thereafter. It might best be done by selecting at least two different types of potentially catastrophic attack, and then stress-testing the team together around those issues. This will also yield a core of knowledge that could also be brought effectively to other types of disaster.

My suggestions for focus: (a) attacks against a category of vital infrastructure, such as simultaneous explosive attacks within underground subways or a coordinated take-down of several U.S. commercial airplanes by shoulder-fired missiles (so-called MANPADS); and (b) a large biological attack, such as a deliberate anthrax attack.

The critical starting point for this work is the compact but substantial corpus of required reading that comprises the post 9/11 federal preparedness toolkit. The first of these documents to examine should be the National Response Framework, which defines and explains the emergency management roles and responsibilities of federal agencies, and their relation to state, local and tribal governments and the private sector. Equally critical, is the modest-sized stack of Presidential directives that assign homeland security roles and responsibilities. Similarly, there are existing playbooks, and a string of others to follow, for particular attack scenarios.

I am convinced that the President should make mandatory for all senior appointees a common homeland security and emergency response curriculum. Tabletop exercises – for which there is significant expertise among career staff at the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense – should be based on the President’s response curriculum and begin prior to January 20. The exercises should explore in increasing depth the small number of particular scenarios.

Such exercises will help the new leadership team to gel faster, teach federal response doctrine and provide the common vocabulary and process needed by all for disaster management. It will allow for discussion, for example, of how best to manage the inevitable economic consequences of attack as they intersect with the ongoing economic crisis. Such discussion will undoubtedly surface numerous thorny policy issues, for which there will be multiple competing options. Better to assess these matters early, than during an unexpected attack.

The new President will continue to strengthen the tools and the game-book for homeland security. But if, God forbid, there is an attack in early days, our leaders will have to come together reflexively as a single, integrated team. Amidst the well-earned optimism and celebration of the inauguration, there is a truly sobering responsibility that will also descend upon our new President and his leadership team. Thinking early and systematically about the worst will pay enormous dividends.

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President-elect Obama faces the greatest American and global economic crisis since 1929, and he must give priority to America’s economic recovery. Comments by Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee's emerging threats and capabilities subcommittee made on the November 30 edition of "This Week" on ABC reinforce the notion that the president-elect would prefer to consign the conduct of foreign and defense policy to others while focuses on the economy. Reed said President-elect Obama’s defense advisors were looking for a deputy secretary of defense who could make, “the trains run on time” inside the Pentagon rather than make significant change to the nation’s forces or the 700 billion dollar defense budget that funds them.

Reed’s comments are not surprising. In Washington, DC, despite talk of how the US has left the Cold War behind, Republicans and Democrats remain wedded to Cold War-era military commitments, alliances, and concepts of forward engagement. However, events on the Indian subcontinent may disrupt the train service inside the Pentagon as president-elect Obama confronts a crisis that could easily become a full-blown war.

In the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, India wants what Pakistan will not deliver, or cannot deliver: the extradition of Pakistanis involved in the latest terrorist incident. Pakistan’s new government may hand over some of the 20 or so terrorists sought by India if they are not Pakistani citizens, but it will draw the line on its own citizens and this may be the trigger for a larger conflict.

The reasons for Pakistani resistance to Indian demands are numerous. Many in Washington know that Pakistan's military and security services have been engaged for decades in delivering covert support to Islamist terrorist groups in Afghanistan and in Kashmir as part of a larger Pakistani strategy of asymmetric warfare aimed at India. What analysts in Washington overlook, however, is the rawness of historic grievances and rivalries that controls minds in Islamabad.

Pakistan has fought three wars against India. In Islamabad’s view, India was responsible for the breakup of Pakistan into the current Pakistani state and Bangladesh and the loss of two additional states that rightfully belong to Pakistan - Junagargh and Kashmir. According to Islamabad’s interpretation, India invaded Hyderabad using force and overthrew the Nawab, who at the time of independence from Britain was inclined to join Pakistan despite its Hindu majority. In recent years, India has actively encouraged Afghanistan to oppose Pakistan and has financed the Baluchi liberation front inside Southern Pakistan. Though not directly related to events in Mumbai, Islamabad also accuses India of starting the Tamil freedom movement in Sri Lanka and of taking Sikkin and Bhutan by force. The list goes on.

The view from New Dehli is naturally different. Viewed from the outside, soaring prices and food shortages inside Pakistan again are resulting in discontent that is finding its way on to Pakistan’s streets. With General Pervez Musharraf out of the picture, India’s leaders are deeply concerned. Whatever his faults, Musharraf was seen as a reliable partner in the effort to govern and control Pakisan’s unruly peoples. Now, Pakistan’s politicians exert little control over what happens inside the country. Given the Pakistani leaders’ weakness, the path of least resistance for Islamabad is to say Pakistan is negotiating with its warlike tribal constituents who, in any case have the upper hand politically. In a worst case scenario, an attempted Taliban/Islamist takeover of Pakistan’s government is not impossible. In fact, it could succeed because the Pakistani Army reportedly has no will to fight them.

Seen from this perspective, India’s current national leadership must seriously consider military action to deal with the problem in Pakistan. In fact, if India’s weak coalition government does not respond forcefully, it risks replacement internally by the Indian People's Party (BJP), a party that represents the country's majority Hindu community and that advocates a foreign policy driven by a nationalist agenda and strong national defense. The BJP is likely to be far less squeamish about military action than the current coalition government. Meanwhile, the popular sentiment for war in both countries is very, very strong.

Thus, a fourth Indo-Pakistani War could well occur. If it does, it may escalate rapidly to the nuclear level and inflict tens of millions of casualties. For the moment, the US intelligence community is split on whether such a horrific event could occur, but President-elect Obama must contemplate the possibility. While there is no reason for the United States to become engaged militarily, American forces on the ground in Afghanistan who depend on logistical support from Pakistan to survive will be at severe risk.

In fact, war on the subcontinent involving nuclear weapons will not only threaten US forces in Afghanistan, it would also produce a humanitarian crisis of massive proportions, one in which the US would be asked to lead recovery efforts that would pale in comparison to the tsunami relief effort of 06. The USN and AF would likely be asked to do the heavy lifting using every single airframe and ship that could haul cargo, plus all the civil air we could muster.

President-elect Obama’s defense team needs to think about this and ignore the purveyors of conventional wisdom in many quarters of the US intelligence community who are insisting nothing will happen. Almost no one in June 1914 believed a war would break out in August. Even then, most so-called military experts believed such a war would last for no longer than a few months and involve more than a few European states. Everyone was wrong.

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