Rachel Kleinfeld is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Truman National Security Project. She previously consulted with the Center for Security and International Studies, where she worked with the Hon. Richard Danzig on bioterrorism response. She has also served as a Senior Consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton working on information-sharing across the military, intelligence, and law enforcement communities, homeland security, and trade and security issues.
Rachel maintains a strong interest in efforts to improve the rule of law within other countries, to buttress human rights, security, and development. She has consulted for the World Bank, the Open Society Institute, the Culture of Lawfulness Project, and other private and nonprofit organizations regarding building strong police, judicial, and legal structures in weak states.
Rachel has appeared as a commentator on radio and television, and has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. Her writings have appeared in multiple books, including: Promoting the Rule of Law Abroad (2005); With All Our Might (2006); and The Future of Human Rights (2008). Her work on U.S. and EU strategies to build the rule of law in Indonesia will appear in an upcoming Palgrave publication in 2009. Rachel has also served on the Board of Trustees for the Blue Fund, a progressive mutual fund, and has served on the Rhodes Scholarship Committee for the 6th District.
A Rhodes Scholar and a Truman Scholar, Rachel received her B.A. from Yale University and her M. Phil in International Relations from St. Antony's College, Oxford.
What will Obama have to do in America's national interest that will disappoint Europe? What if we flip that question around? Europe sees Iran as a market as much as a threat--that's going to cause quite a bit of tension. Europe, unlike America, does not have the world's reserve currency--and so they can't print money and go into deep debt without immediate consequences (neither can America, of course--something we are going to find out soon enough). So they have to make tough choices on what to spend. One thing on the chopping block is going to be defense--meaning they won't… Read more
Obama has picked up the pieces of the Af-Pak war after 8 years of utter neglect from President Bush. This is the war we needed to fight, to keep al Qaeda from rooting itself in Pakistan—a nuclear state with good enough infrastructure to allow international planning for more attacks on the U.S. and Europe – and from using Afghanistan as a big backyard in which to train. After 8 years of neglect, the situation is much, much worse than it would have been if Bush had done the job right. Bush squandered the window of opportunity we had when… Read more
So here's my deep, dark secret: I HATE summer. As an Alaskan, I basically lay under the bed and pant from when the cherry blossoms depart until the dog days are past. So while I'm sitting in the dark counting dust bunnies, I really do read national security tomes. Right now, I'm reading two. The fun one is Wired for War, Peter Singer's fantastic romp through the robotics revolution: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594201986/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=2711155971&ref=pd_sl_13yemlz14d_e. Ranging from the scientific advances that are bringing us robots integrated into military units, to a future in which robots might largely fight on their own guided by a few simple principals of complexity theory, Peter… Read more
As a non-Latin America expert myself, I hate to throw my hat in the ring here--but the level of debate is declining. I disagree with the seriousness of national security import Bob puts on Chavez; it clearly falls in priority below the issues we face in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, Iran, and China. But look: Chavez clearly allowed the FARC safe haven and arms--that threatens our partnership with Columbia, our effort to eradicate drugs, and supports a terrorist group that had spent decades destroying the lives of Colombians. As a progressive, the human rights aspect of Chavez's meddling should cause real… Read more
The popular press likes its protagonists to don black hats and white ones: the evil defense-industrial-complex, the honest civilian bureaucracy, the self-interested Congress and so on. But the Pentagon procurement mess is caused less by good and evil, and more by the cascade of reasonable decisions building into unreasonable outcomes--and those are much more difficult to unravel. Yes, defense companies like to be paid more, rather than less, for their systems. But the wild cost overruns of recent systems are equally caused by civilian acquisition bureaucrats, who change their mind about system requirements a few years into development--at times based on perfectly reasonable lessons learned in the battlefield, or… Read more
The economic crisis is a huge foreign policy issue, though I have to agree that it is not necessarily a national security crisis--the fact is, the economic implosion points in too many different directions. On the up side: Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, puffed up paper tigers that they were, are now less emboldened without huge oil revenues flowing into their coffers. Moreover, given the economic decline around the world, America might end up in a relatively stronger position vis-a-vis former large players. And China's economic bluff to pull its purchases of our treasuries has been called, to some extent: China's leaders now understand,… Read more
I was in Afghanistan in May, walking past mined hills and the skeletons of weapons left by Taliban, Russian, and other armies--back to Genghis Khan. Afghanistan has been the graveyard of empires--it is not terrain we are going to "win" by military strategy alone. But if we care about our own security, we also cannot abandon it again. We tried that once, when the Soviet threat disintegrated. It didn't go so well. There's no need to outsmart ourselves here. Clearly, Pakistan and Afghanistan are connected: irregular forces living in Pakistan are crossing the border, killing our troops in Afghanistan, then crossing back… Read more
For eight years, the Bush Administration has presided over a spending spree that has left our economy in shambles -- and weakened the economic engine that powers our national security. To repair the damage, the new Administration can't throw money at every problem. Secretary Gates must instead engage in strategic thinking: matching our resources to our end goals. What are the goals we should be working towards? 1) A military designed to win the wars we are likely to fight. We must maintain our ability to fight a peer competitor--having the ability to fight is the best deterrent to ensure… Read more
I don't know about you, but I'm finding it really interesting to see what all the other commentators are reading. As for me, I mostly spend my holidays cooking--but in this case, I am en route to Bangladesh to help monitor their elections. As for what I am reading on the 44 hour trip from home in Alaska to Dhaka... I'm just finishing www.amazon.com/Sacred-Willow-Generations-Vietnamese-Family/dp/0195137876 Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family, a fascinating account of a family moving from mandarins at the top of the Confucian hierarchy, through French colonialism to the aftermath of the Vietnam War. From the… Read more
Withdrawal is a dangerous occupation, and it is likely that Obama's pragmatism will lead him to withdraw troops based on a triangulation of events on the ground, his own campaign promises, and the Status of Forces Agreement which, by Iraqi law, mandates troops leaving by 2011. It is equally likely that the U.S. works with Iraq to find a method by which some residual force can remain to fight guerilla remnants and extremists. However, leaving the timeline solely up to events on the ground as some other commentators here suggest allows Iraqi politicians and extremists to hold U.S. troops… Read more
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