August 2009 Archives

The dog days of summer are a natural time to get caught up on reading, so we'd like to reprise a question we posed during the winter holidays and ask what's on your current reading list. Histories, biographies, reports and novels are welcome. Please explain their relevance to national security and why you think they're important and interesting. Shorter posts and links are encouraged. Keeping with the slower pace of the season, we'll again leave the site open for commentary for two weeks. We'll resume weekly topical discussions after Labor Day.

To kick things off, your moderator notes that he's been reading "Joint Publication 3-13: Information Operations," which includes the military's guidebook for cyber war. The entire report is significant because it reflects the military's experience with counterinsurgency operations in Iraq. The doctrine envisions the "information environment" as equally important to the physical world when it comes to fighting, and defeating, adversaries.

20 responses: Shane Harris, Michael Vlahos, Adm. Thad Allen, Stewart Verdery, Evelyn N. Farkas, Shane Harris, Ron Marks, James R. Locher III, Eric Farnsworth, Daniel Byman, Shane Harris, Col. W. Patrick Lang, Steven Metz, James Jay Carafano, Loren Thompson, Rachel Kleinfeld, Daniel Serwer, Daniel Serwer, Dov S. Zakheim, Michael Brenner

Starting with the first day of discussion on this blog, contributors such as House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., have argued that the United States lacks a coherent national strategy -- a missing piece in the foundation of security policy that undercuts our response to every specific problem from Iraq to North Korea to the Pentagon budget.

For five decades during the Cold War, there was a rough consensus around a strategy of containing communism, resisting regional advances by the Soviets without escalating to a world war. But since the Soviet Union fell in 1991, a blizzard of buzzwords and white papers has never added up to a new national strategy. After 9/11, George W. Bush offered a "global war on terrorism" including pre-emptive attacks on potential threats such as Iraq -- a strategy that Barack Obama has repudiated but not replaced.

So what should America's new national strategy look like, at least in outline? Has anyone in or out of office already put forward principles that the nation should adopt? Is there already an unspoken consensus emerging that simply needs someone to give it a name? Or was containment a fluke, and is a formal, explicit national strategy something that most nations throughout history have happily done without?

A note to our contributors: Given the scope of this question and Washington's usual August slowdown, we will proceed at an appropriately stately pace and keep the discussion open for two weeks instead of the normal one, with the next topic not launching until Monday the 24th.

28 responses: Chris Seiple, Richard Hart Sinnreich, Bing West, Winslow T. Wheeler, Larry Korb, Col. W. Patrick Lang, Col. Douglas Macgregor, Richard Hart Sinnreich, James R. Locher III, Steven Metz, Michael Brenner, James Jay Carafano, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., Daniel Serwer, Joseph J. Collins, Richard Hart Sinnreich, Michael Brenner, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., Col. W. Patrick Lang, Ron Marks, Dov S. Zakheim, Loren Thompson, Steven Metz, Paul R. Pillar, Richard Hart Sinnreich, Michael Brenner, James Jay Carafano, Andrew Bacevich

Is the Obama administration speaking with too many voices on U.S. foreign policy these days -- with Vice President Joe Biden an especially acute problem?

The White House is doing a lot of walking back of public comments lately -- of Biden's assertion that Russia is a has-been global power; of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's suggestion that the U.S. might want to create a "defense umbrella" over the Middle East to counter Iran's ambitions in the region; of Biden's earlier remark that Israel might have a green light from the U.S. on militarily taking out Iran's nuclear program. Some analysts have welcomed Biden's candor on Russia, for example, as a refreshing glint of truth -- he said that "they're in a situation where the world is changing before them and they're clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable." But others say Biden is only complicating President Obama's efforts to "reset" the U.S-Russia relationship on friendlier and more pragmatic ground.

Should Obama muzzle Biden and others on his team? Is part of the problem the president's "special envoy" approach to hot-button regions, and do the mixed messages point to a wider confusion in the administration's foreign policy approach?

13 responses: Michael F. Scheuer, Evelyn N. Farkas, Michael Brenner, Richard Hart Sinnreich, Paul Starobin, Col. W. Patrick Lang, Michael Brenner, Joseph J. Collins, James Jay Carafano, Steven Metz, Michael Vlahos, Col. W. Patrick Lang, Ron Marks