Kori Schake, Hoover Fellow and Distinguished Chair in International Security Studies, West Point
Biography provided by participant
Kori Schake has held positions on the National Security Council staff, the Joint Staff, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and in the State Department's Policy Planning Staff. She has been on the faculties of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, the University of Maryland's School of Public Affairs, and the National Defense University. Her book Managing American Hegemony: Essays on Power In a Time of Dominance was published in December.
I think the place to start is to ask ourselves why we don’t already have a peace agreement. Is it really – as suggested in the questions – because settlements aren’t frozen, the Netanyahu government is in power or we’re not talking to Hamas? Perhaps, but that suggests a tractability to the problem its history belies. And absent from that list is the one political actor that has the greatest ability to advance peace: the Abbas government in Palestine. Also absent are the other governments in the region that could be supporting Abbas in building a de facto Palestinian state… Read more
That Congresswoman Pelosi was deferential to the Executive branch on a national security issue in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks is not surprising -- it was a frightening time for the country and many of the checks and balances in our governmental system were not exercised as vigorously as they might have been. What makes the Speaker of the House fair game for the trouble she's experiencing is her punitive stance toward the hard choices others were making, and her self-righteousness about her own role. Democrats probably believed there was no down-side to threatening Bush Administration officials and… Read more
I actually don't think NATO's 60th anniversary raises existential questions. The fundamental bargain is sound; and while it's often frustrating that Europeans won't do more, without NATO they would do much less. Moreover, NATO's no more in crisis now than it was in 1950 (when North Korea invaded South Korea, precipitating the creation of NATO's military structures), in 1953 (when Europeans rejected German rearmament in the EC despite John Foster Dulles' threat of "an agonizing reappraisal" of American involvement if they did), 1956 (the US refusing assistance to Britain and France in Suez), etc. These are our best friends in the world,… Read more
The economic crisis has five important risks for the United States: limiting U.S. resources available for national security tasks; U.S. debt sparking a second round of crisis through default fears; calling into question soft power foreign policy; discrediting capitalism; and destabilizing governments, especially new democracies. First, the exhorbitant debt the Bush and Obama Administrations are shoveling toward stanching the collapse of markets and bailing out preferred industries will dramatically limit the money available for the baseline defense budget, for increasing investment in non-military national security departments (State, Treasury), for foreign and reconstruction assistance, and for fighting wars. I suspect it… Read more
I like it that you’ve asked the question as what should the discussion be, not whether there should be a discussion. We should talk to the Iranian government, and the Iranian people, for the simple reason that the course we’re proceeding on hasn’t demonstrated the results we want: the Iranian government continues to move aggressively in violation of their Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations, despite IAEA, UN Security Council, and increasing international sanctions. Moreover, the Iranian people are apparently supportive of their government’s choices on this (one of the few areas the government seems to have popular support). By refusing to talk… Read more
"Unleash Bob Gates?" I hardly think that's the agenda Barack Obama campaigned on or will govern on the basis of. Gates has been a terrific Secretary of War, and that was the right priority when he came into DOD. He's going to need to continue to be a terrific Secretary of War to figure out how to bring Obama's commitment to be out of Iraq in 16 months into alignment with an end state that advances American interests and to lower the bar enough in Afghanistan that even with 30,000 more troops we can secure our interests within the parameters of… Read more
I agree with Bruce Hoffmann: Israel is not the reason our enemies are anti-American. They are opposed to the United States for many of the same reasons they are opposed to Israel, and it's a dangerous illusion to believe that opposition would cease if we no longer took an interest in defending Israel's judgments because we would make the same judgments if we were in their difficult position. Egypt's position on Hamas is perhaps the one we should be keying off. The Mubarak government blames Hamas for bringing this about by attacking Israel, is disappointed Palestinians have made so little of… Read more
What a great professional reading list you folks furnished -- thanks! When I get back to work, I'll get busy on those. In the meantime, I just finished reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Not a happy book, not a holiday book, but a magnificent imagining of a post-apocalyptic world (meat animals extinct, crops incapable of growing, people scavenging and migrating toward the equator in hopes of warmth). As you all probably know, McCarthy specializes in stark and unforgiving moral landscapes (All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men) and he reflects on the question of if the present is… Read more
I don't see any reason not to take the Obama Administration at its word that they'll be out of Iraq in 16 months. They've said it's the wrong war, that fighting in Iraq actually increased the risk to the US, they need the troops for Afghanistan, and they need the money for his domestic programs. Gates and Jones have given him the political cover to claim he's doing it sensibly, the Iraqis look more and more ungrateful, 70% of the country wats this over..what's in it for reversing himself? They understanably think they have a mandate to do this. Obama… Read more
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… Read more
Biography provided by participant
