NATO’s Future
I've been busy at the Atlantic Council today covering two huge events. First, Senator Richard Lugar delivered a speech on the Future of NATO. In addition to the usual niceties about the important of transatlantic cooperation, Lugar argued that we need "boots on the ground" in Eastern Europe to assuage their fears about Alliance commitment and that NATO should consider unconventional ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 28, 2009 16:49
Obama Lowering Afghanistan Ambitions?
Obama administration officials are now admitting what has been apparent for weeks: that they are giving serious consideration to radically downsizing the Afghanistan mission. Peter Baker and Elisabeth Bumiller break the story in this morning's NYT, noting that a combination of factors have President Obama strongly reconsidering the Biden Plan, which he rejected as recently as March, which calls for ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 23, 2009 14:11
Why “Befuddled”?
Leslie Gelb, distinguished diplomat, journalist, and scholar, professes befuddlement over President Obama's strategy with respect to Afghanistan: I'm lost on President Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy—along with most of Congress and the U.S. military. Not quite eight months ago, Mr. Obama pledged to "defeat" al Qaeda in Afghanistan by transforming that country's political and economic infrastructure, training Afghan forces and adding 21,000 ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 22, 2009 11:11
Does Foreign Policy Community Love War?
Glenn Greenwald revisits an old debate, arguing that "Our war-loving Foreign Policy Community hasn't gone anywhere." Building off of Marc Lynch's blog post yesterday pointing out that General McCrystal's strategic review calling for more troops in Afghanistan was written by "a dozen smart (mostly) think-tankers," Greenwald writes,"What would a group of people like that ever recommend other than continued and escalated ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 22, 2009 09:39
Debating Afghanistan
An interesting sidebar to the debate sparked by the leak of General McChrystal's Afghanistan strategy review is the question of how such debates should take place to begin with. Peter Feaver complains that the president has been rushed by leaks. Pat Lang is irked by the fact that the likely leaker wore a military uniform, possibly even a general's stars. Meanwhile, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 21, 2009 15:36
In Which I Disagree with Brent Scowcroft
General Brent Scowcroft issued a statement through the Atlantic Council at noon: "I strongly approve of President Obama's decision regarding missile defense deployments in Europe. I believe it advances U.S. national security interests, supports our allies, and better meets the threats we face." Given that I work at the Atlantic Council and have blogged on its site taking a different view, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 18, 2009 14:34
Poland and Czech Republic Don’t Feel “Abandoned”
Via Steven Taylor, we note that neither Poland nor the Czech Republic feel "abandoned" by Obama's decision to scrap missile defense replace an expensive, ineffective boondoggle "missile defense system" with a less expensive, mobile, effective land and sea-based SM-3 interceptor force. Here's the Polish Prime Minister: Tusk said that Obama's "proposal of an alternative strategy should not affect the security ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 18, 2009 12:40
Did Obama Break Promise on Missiles?
I've been critical of the optics of President Obama's decision to abandon missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic on the 70th anniversary of the Russian invasion of Poland. But I disagree with Jim Geraghty's assertion that it also represents breaking a promise made in April. Here's what he said in Prague: So let me be clear: Iran's ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 18, 2009 10:21
Obama Abandons Poland
On the 70th Anniversary of Russia's invasion of Poland, Barack Obama announced that he was abandoning Bush era plans to install ballistic missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, pleasing Moscow and igniting fear among our Eastern European allies. In my New Atlanticist essay "Obama Abandons Poland and Czech Missile Defense," I take exception to the strategic rationale offered ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 17, 2009 12:06
Qaddafi Son’s Dissertation
Saif Qaddafi, son of Libyan dictator Muammar, has completed a doctoral dissertation bemoaning the lack of democracy in the world. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said the current system of global governance was "highly undemocratic". He hit out at undemocratic states whose governments were "authoritarian, abusive and unrepresentative". His father Muammar Gaddafi came to power in a coup in 1969 and has ruled ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 16, 2009 12:32
Old Europe, New Europe
Back in 2003, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously noted that while "Old Europe" (particularly France and Germany) was hard to work with, America could count on "New Europe." Fast forward to 2009 and we may have reversed polarity. My latest New Atlanticist essay, "Losing New Europe, Too?" explores this evolution, including why Western Europe is back in the fold and why ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 15, 2009 09:29
NATO Can Survive Afghanistan Failure
In my latest for The National Interest, I argue that, despite the constant urging otherwise by former Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO can survive failing in Afghanistan. [T]he fact of the matter is that NATO went to war in Afghanistan, invoking Article V’s declaration that an “attack against one” shall be “considered an attack against them all” in the ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 10, 2009 09:44
Thomas Friedman Extols the Virtues of Communism
Thomas Friedman's latest column, in which he argues Communist China's system is preferable to ours because it "can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century," has quite naturally generated a heated response in the blogosphere, with everyone from Reason editor Matt Welch to National Review's Jonah Goldberg to ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 9, 2009 15:33
Why We Drive on the Right – And Others Don’t
Monday, Samoa will switch to driving on the left side of the road in order to benefit from cheap used cars from Australia and New Zealand. This gave Time's Randy James to explain, "Why Don't We All Drive on the Same Side of the Road?" It's especially odd that two-thirds of the world drives on the right, since most of ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 4, 2009 08:15
Profound Changes in U.S. Foreign Policy?
Author David Rothkopf (who served as a deputy undersecretary of commerce under Bill Clinton) argues in the Sunday Washington Post that, while the commentariet is distracted by Hillary Clinton's celebrity, the new secretary of state is "overseeing what may be the most profound changes in U.S. foreign policy in two decades -- a transformation that may render the presidencies of ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 24, 2009 08:59
