James Jay Carafano, Assistant Director, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies and Senior Research Fellow, Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, Heritage Foundation
James Carafano is the Assistant Director of The Heritage Foundation's Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, and a Senior Research Fellow for defense and homeland security issues. Before joining Heritage he served 25 years in the U.S. Army, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and was head speechwriter for the Army Chief of Staff, the service's highest-ranking officer. He has also served as an Assistant Professor at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, and is currently a visiting professor at the National Defense University and Georgetown University. He is the author of numerous books, the latest of which is Private Sector/Public Wars: Contracting in Combat-Iraq, Afghanistan and Future Conflicts, a rigorous study of the role of contractors on the battlefield. Carafano testifies regularly before the U.S. Congress on defense, intelligence, and homeland security issues, and has been published in newspapers nationwide, including The Baltimore Sun, The Boston Globe, The New York Post, and The Washington Times. He has provided commentary for ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, National Public Radio, and Al Jazeera, as well as numerous international stations.
In response to your question: What is the alternative to having people who understand the country and people of where they are serving? "Ugly" and "quiet" Americans don't work out so well. … Read more
We should start with what we know. Do we have a domestic threat? Sure we do. That is beyond debate. At least 27 terrorist attacks aimed at America have been foiled since 9/11. Most of these attacks were domestic in origin. Some of them were hatched by American citizens. Some of these individuals were "radicalized" overseas. Some became extremists here. All we know for sure is that there is a terror threat on the homeland. (There is a reason why when the Bush administration updated the national homeland security strategy before it left office that it included a section on… Read more
The Ghost of FDR Maybe, it’s a little to close to Halloween, but you have to wonder if Secretary Clinton is channeling Cordell Hull and Sumner Wells. As we learn more and more about the emergent leadership style of the Obama White House, it more and more appears to resemble that of Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt once famously declared “I never let my left hand know what my right hand is doing.” You could not tell who was taking the lead in administration decisions by looking at the organization chart. Roosevelt had confidence in one individual…Roosevelt…and he distributed divided, competed, and segmented… Read more
Iran Under the Gun There is little question that powers in Tehran feel under siege and need the boogeyman of American power more than ever to justify repression. That said, the US has little to hope by engaging Iran’s extremist government…and everything to lose. By kowtowing to Iran and offering talks without preconditions, the US makes the regime look stronger and gains nothing. On the other hand, the government uses every opportunity to “demonize” America. It blamed the US for post-election violence. Then it was quick to claim that the bombing this weekend was a Western plot as well. Most troubling… Read more
Sydney Freedberg raises a great point. Are there issues where the pressure of the Nobel or more accurately the pressure to be successful put US interests in jeopardy? I think the answer is yes and we’ve already seen some examples of that in the arms control arena. There is a story out this week that the administration has rushed to agree to give the Russians unprecedented access to US nuclear facilities. That’s a problem. While the description reported in the press of what has been agreed to is way too vague to know whether there would be a significant security… Read more
The Labors of Obama-celes The award committee did not do the president any favors. First, really, who wants an award where the first question at the press conference is “do you think you really you deserve this?” It is huge distraction for the White House as they try to make hard decisions on Afghanistan and deal with a plethora of domestic issues. Second, I think they make the president’s sale job overseas tougher. Basically, the committee knighted him for his willingness to negotiate and cooperate. But, cooperation is a two-sided coin and the decision may have the perverse effect… Read more
Wrong Question, Right Problem The issue is not whether or not that there should be an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. The US has no interest in this course of action- period. Seymour Hersh was just dead wrong when he claimed the Bush administration was seriously thinking about attacking Iran. The Obama White House has even less interest in the idea. The real issue is what will we do after Israel attacks Iran? The Israeli calculus on this decision could be changing. The Iranian elections have put the hardliners who want a weapons program in a more powerful position. The… Read more
Know Your Enemy Since 9/11, 23 terrorist plots or conspiracies that would have killed Americans on American soil have been thwarted. This number only includes cases where individuals have been arrested and charged with a crime. This count does not include threats that have been squelched by covert intelligence and military operations. I am told that number would substantially add to the total. What does that tell us? It says there are terrorists out there trying to kill us and we have to stop them. So far, counterterrorism operations have proven good enough. What works is operations and intelligence sharing… Read more
No More Vietnams I agree with every leftist, isolationist, and anti-war activist who ever chanted “no more Vietnams.” Where we part company is the battle cry (ironic term) of ‘bring the boys home.” That’s because we read the lessons of the Vietnam War very differently. They see the war as a tragic mistake, a wrongheaded unwinnable conflict. They think the anti-war movement saved the nation. They think the right lesson learned is to walk away. They think that is the right answer for Afghanistan too. I disagree. Here is what I think history really has to say about Vietnam.… Read more
How Government Thinks Stinks Here is America’s problem in a nutshell. Washington does not think very well. The last quarter century has seen an explosion in the human capacity to create and manipulate new knowledge. Despite that fact, the instruments used to inform public policy choices are as creaky as ever. Washington makes policy largely by intuition. I don’t even blame politics. People are so overwhelmed they just go with their gut. So I have spent a lot of thinking about how do you make high quality decisions fitting the right question, to the right data set to answer the question, to… Read more
Idiot’s Delight All this talk about “global” hegemon and “imperial” strategy is absent reality. First, to be an imperial power you have to have sovereignty. The US does not have sovereignty over the world. This was a problem for William Appleman Williams and largely led to his work being tossed into the dustbin of history along with all the other stuff in the dustbin. No one who has picked up that line of argument since has squared the circle any better. Other than torturing the word ”imperial” into submission there is no credible way to describe America as an empire.… Read more
Here is the root of the problem. We often fail to distinguish between "national strategy" and "grand strategy." National strategy is organizing and using (ways and means) the instruments of national power to achieve national goals (ends). Every president has their own strategy. Grand strategy is the collective set of norms of national behavior (ends, ways, and means) that transcends administrations and represents a nation's general approach to providing for its security. Grand strategy changes infrequently, usually only after a major shift in the geo-strategic environment. The two most notable examples of American grand strategies were the 19th century Monroe… Read more
Abiding Biden The Vice President aside, it is becoming clear that there is “one” foreign policy in this administration and its being made by the president—period. There is clearly an emerging “Obama Doctrine” and its not just talk. There is meat on the bones. Here are rules. #1. Everybody gets to play. Biden is a player. So are a lot of others. The president is listening to lots of people. #2. Foreign policy matters. The notion that the president wants to concentrate on domestic policy is just not true. Obama sees foreign policy as an extension of domestic policy. That’s… Read more
Winds Blow Colder at Pentagon What we’ve learned in the last few months about this administration’s approach to defense policy is that it is determined to warp back to the way we did defense planning during the Cold War. George Orwell might as well have been Secretary of Defense Gates’ head speechwriter. While Gates rejects “next-war-itis” and demands defunding “Cold War” weapons, his policies seem driven to achieve the opposite impact on long-term defense planning. During the Cold War, military planners picked the wars they wanted to plan against. Hello, that is exactly what Secretary Gates is doing. The Secretary… Read more
Wrong Question, Right Answer This question skirts the real debate. The real argument should be over whether it is appropriate to use CIA operations as a political football to advance partisan agendas. Speaker Pelosi got in a bind for claiming she was lied to by the CIA…that left her defenders scrambling to prove the CIA lies--hence the outrage over the most recent revelations. Add to that the desire of some to run against Vice President Cheney in every future election. Arguably this all started not after 9/11 when the program was first conceived but on April 16, 2009 when the… Read more
Long Telegram Redux Eight thousand words scribbled in the drafty apartments of the U.S. embassy in Moscow could be the secret to dealing with both Iran and North Korea. Their author was George F. Kennan, an ambitious, erudite Foreign Service officer with Victorian principles and a penchant for controversy. Kennan’s Long Telegram became the touchstone for US “containment” strategy during the Cold War—but good strategy, is good strategy, and if it will work now why not use it. First, Kennan’s strategy was not really about “containing” Soviet power. Indeed, we never really contained the Soviets. What we did do is… Read more
Wars to End All Wars Democracies argue about when, where, and how to fight wars before, during, and for generations after. That is how we fight. Mostly, this debate makes for full employment for historians like me—so we like that. The answer to the question is often rooted in Western just war theory, which holds to the concept of proportionality that engaging in and fighting the wars themselves the use of force should be proportional to the task and the good to be gained from the conflict exceed the inevitable evils caused by engaging in a violent struggle. This question… Read more
So Far So Good on Cyber All praise to the White House for what they have done so far on addressing the future of US cyber security. The recently released report has all the right kind of words—and most important (despite the inaccuracies in the press) the administration has correctly not appointed a “cyber czar.” Why anyone would want to mimic a century long defunct political oligarchy is beyond me, yet Czar-mania is all the rage these days. A czar for cyber is particularly stupid—as there are few challenges that are more complex, decentralized, and dynamic than dealing with cyber… Read more
Who is really to blame here? The president stated when he released the CIA memos that started the whole affair that his hope was to address the issue without “political rancor.” Well—he failed. Indeed, many interpreted the release of the memos as a political act. It was a poor decision on the part of the president, one that started this whole mess—and now the congressional leadership is under siege because of the White House. At a time when Congress should be focused on some of the most pressing and vital issues of the day leaders are distracted by dealing… Read more
One of Our Policies is Missing Last month, North Korea made real progress in both its ballistic weapons program and its saber-rattling diplomacy, even though the missile it fired failed to put a payload in orbit. In 2006, their missile flew 43 seconds. This one flew over 15 minutes and 2,500 miles. That means that the separation of three stages performed well enough and that the first two stages achieved their performance levels. That by any measure is substantial progress. By publicly ignoring the strides forward made by North Korea and barely responding to the fact that Pyongyang brushed-off White… Read more
Gates Guts Defense The secretary’s announcement on Monday demonstrates his approach to procurement reform is pretty straight-forward—cut anything that is expensive or hard to do. This eliminates risk…except the risk of being totally unprepared for future threats and the risk to destroying the readiness of the current and future force. I believe the secretary when he said that he would have made these changes without regard to the “top line of the defense budget.” That, however, is irrelevant. The fact is that there is no clear apparent strategic rationale behind the cuts other than serving as bill payers for operations… Read more
Saving NATO from Itself NATO could last another sixty years and be worth the effort of keeping it around, but it is badly in need of spring cleaning. Here is a “to do” list that would keep the alliance strong and relevant. Agree to a Declaration on Allied Security that makes sense for the 21st century--include a new threat perception including new dangers like cyber-terrorism and ballistic missile attack--and make concrete recommendations on how to address each threat. Keep an open-door policy and that includes Georgia and Ukraine and wild cards, like Israel. Don’t let Russia drive the membership agenda.… Read more
North of the Border We can do a lot on our side of the border to help Mexico deal with cartels. First, and most important, is to continue to support, extend, and expand the Merida Initiative, which provides assistance to Mexico in building up its capacity to battle the drug lords. Second, on the US side of the border we can do a much better job of not just battling the drugs and people being smuggled north, but the guns and money being smuggled south. On the US side the answer is not to send the National Guard to the… Read more
Al Qaeda-Coming and Going Al Qaeda has waxed and waned in its war against the United States. The debate over whether its stock is currently rising or falling is not nearly as important as ensuring al Qaeda gets dumped in the waste bin of history. There is more than enough evidence to suggest that as long as al Qaeda has a sanctuary it will figure out a way to fight to get back in the game. Indeed, Iraq proved that al Qaeda really is a problem. Despite the crushing defeat that ejected Bin Laden out of Afghanistan, he set up… Read more
In Sydney Freedberg’s summary of the discussion so far he suggested that “conservatives” Kit Bond and Dov Zakheim took opposite sides regarding my concern over the over proliferation of “national security” as an excuse to address everything from bad actors to bad breath. I beg to differ. Certainly, I think Senator Bond is spot on when he argues national security ought to focus on the people who are actively trying to kill us and destroy our way of life. These are living, thinking, breathing foes engaged in a contest of action and counteraction—when we try to do something to deliberately… Read more
Security Gone Wild Sure the economic troubles have “implications” for national security. After all, the world gets less not more safe in troubled times. Right before World War I, tariffs were sky-high and open trade was under assault on every front. The economic woes of the 1930s precipitated and accelerated the political developments that led to World War II. On the other hand, and it’s a big hand, labeling everything from a bad day at the stock market to bad mortgages a “national security” issue…let alone a crisis, is a really, really bad idea. Making every global challenge a security… Read more
While the way forward is easy to describe, it is not clear this administration can get there. They are already losing the support in their party for the war effort....Democrats are war weary and it doesn't matter which war. Where will Obama get his support…from the Republicans? What has he done for them lately? The President seems to be trying to run a middle course making the war as least painless as possible...only 17,000 more troops, less than the Pentagon wanted...if things don't get better maybe he'll send a few more. This is beginning to sound a little like Johnson… Read more
It is easy enough to describe the main points of the right strategy. It would: Have the Pakistanis deal with the terrorist threat in their tribal areas, while Coalition forces defeat them in Afghanistan. Work to lessen tensions between Pakistan and India, so that Pakistan focuses on the internal threat. Help the Pakistanis develop the capacity to conduct effective, full spectrum counter-insurgency campaign. Continue to rely on unilateral military action in the tribal areas to protect troops fighting across the border in Afghanistan as well as to prevent a potential future catastrophic international terrorist attack, but calibrate military action (recognizing… Read more
In response to Gordan Adams' comment, there is nothing wrong with White House reforming how it does business. The president should organize the place to fit how he governs. My only concern is if that includes turning the Presidency into a command post where an NSC staff tries to run the day-to-day world that is a big mistake. Even the Pentagon can't do that. I'm sure General Jones appreciates that."… Read more
Concentrating too much policy decision making in the White House is a really bad idea. Putting the White House in charge of running wars or disaster response is even a worse idea. The world is a large, complex place and the rule is, the larger and more complex the problem, the more the answer should be “decentralized” planning and execution. Focusing on restructuring the National Security Council to improve interagency is akin to the old joke of looking for car keys lost in the dark under a street light (because the light is better there). Arguably, when efforts have been… Read more
Talk. Don’t Talk. I don’t care. I would, however, remember the words of my friend Czech Ambassador Petr Kolar when he said, “I am a diplomat, but I feel much more comfortable negotiating when I know that I am safe.” In that regard dealing with Iran without having credible nuclear and non-nuclear deterrents as well as robust missile defenses makes no sense. Iran just successfully put a commercial satellite into space. If they can do that with a ballistic missile, they can conduct a missile attack (remember Sputnik). They have a nuclear program which no one really believes does not… Read more
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 Pentagon for homeland defense, at the Department of Homeland Security, as well as the creation… Read more
Want to stop doing something stupid. Here is a thought. Why has Congress mandated 100 percent scanning of every container coming into the United States, when every serious analyst thinks that is the stupidest idea ever. Sure, terrorists could build a "moveable" nuclear bomb and stick it in a container and send it to America without a return address. But while this sounds like a cool idea for a Tom Clancy novel (In Tom Clancy’s “The Sum of All Fears,” terrorists obtain a nuclear bomb, ship it to Baltimore and detonate it), in reality it would be a lot harder… Read more
Unleashed to do what? All this talk about “peace dividends,” and “smarter defense choices” is just delusional. First of all in order to take a peace dividend you have to have a war mobilization. We didn’t mobilize for the Long War, so any cuts will just be cutting into the baseline force established in the 1990s which we know was too small, undercapitalized, and not adequately modernized to begin with (remember all the wailing about not enough up-armored vehicles and body armor). When you start by cutting bone, it’s hard to go much deeper. Second, this ridiculous discussion about getting… Read more
It’s a blank slate. There is no history. God created the Middle East in seven days—starting on January 20, 2009. So who should Obama choose to make America’s key strategic ally in the region? That’s easy—Israel—no question. And here is why. Look at America’s Interests The Middle East is once again (harkening back to the days before the Age of Exploration) the center of the world—and its not just about pumping oil. This land is a key lynch-pin in contemporary global maritime trade and world finance. It is hard to imagine recovery from a planet-wide recession without the region’s participation.… Read more
Hardly happy holiday fare, but I'm reading Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe by Mark Mazower and Hitler's Bandit Hunters: The SS and Nazi Occupation of Europe by Philip W. Blood. With all the scholarship on World War II, it is remarkable how little has been written about how the Nazis tried to rule. There are some really powerful lessons here to remember during the season that we pray for peace and goodwill towards all. The first is that there really is evil out there that cannot be reasoned with, negotiated over, or simply pilloried with soft power. By… Read more
Obama’s plan for withdrawal may have placated a restive anti-war movement and solidified political support for his candidacy, but it had nothing to do with crafting a sensible plan for reducing the American military presence in Iraq. But that was then and now is now. Reality has caught-up with rhetoric and a drawdown of US forces is now sensible and desirable—because, thanks to the fact that the administration ignored proposals like those made by the president-elect, Iraqis are increasingly capable of looking after their own future. That said, it would still be stupid to follow a Lemming-like timeline. Presidents must… Read more
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… Read more
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… Read more
#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)… Read more
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