Blog Posts

This compilation of articles; Professors in the Trenches: Deployed Soldiers and Social Science Academics, edited by Rob W. Kurz of the Foreign Military Studies Office; originally appeared as a five-part series in Small Wars Journal. Each article was co-authored by one Army soldier / civilian and one university professor / academic as part of a joint research project.

David Kilcullen at the Pritzker Military Library - Video from Tuesday's presentation on his book The Accidental Guerilla and other issues concerning fighting small wars in the midst of a big one. Also see Lexington Green's take on the event at Chicago Boyz.

While I'm on the subject of the day job -- kudos to John Robb -- he presented a very informative and well delivered briefing (Global Guerrillas -- go figure) today at the conference I'm attending. It's a non-attribution affair -- but he delivered the goods in terms of what we really need to be thinking about as we meander down the road we're currently on. Had several great aside conversations with John on breaks -- indeed -- his insights are well worth pondering. I hope to have more later -- or more desirable -- John will post something on his web page...

To what extent is Iran's current political upheaval catalyzed, or even instigated, by sharply deteriorating economic and financial conditions inside the country? I pose the question but have no way of answering it.

Some observers believe the two earth-shaking political upheavals that occurred two decades ago -- the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Tiananmen Square revolt in China -- were closely tied to financial crises. Yegor Gaidar, who was Russia's economics minister and acting prime minister in the immediate post-Soviet period, asserted in an essay he wrote for the American Enterprise Institute that Soviet financial mismanagement related to grain purchases and fluctuating global oil prices led to the Soviet Union's (literal) bankruptcy. In China, some analysts have linked the countrywide uprising in the spring of 1989 to rapidly accelerating consumer price inflation.

What about Iran today?

General McChrystal's New Way of War - Max Boot, Wall Street Journal opinion.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal was appointed commander in Afghanistan to shake up a troubled war effort. But one of his first initiatives could wind up changing how the entire military does business.

Gen. McChrystal's decision to set up a Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell means creating a corps of roughly 400 officers who will spend years focused on Afghanistan, shuttling in and out of the country and working on those issues even while they are stateside.

Today, units typically spend six to 12 months in a war zone, and officers typically spend only a couple years in command before getting a new assignment. This undermines the continuity needed to prevail in complex environments like Afghanistan or Iraq. Too often, just when soldiers figure out what's going on they are shipped back home and neophytes arrive to take their place. Units suffer a disproportionate share of casualties when they first arrive because they don't have a grip on local conditions...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

The Pentagon's public affairs office has a new monthly report: a tally of the Army's suicides.

This new report, issued on June 11, listed Army suicides (confirmed and potential) by soldiers on active duty and reservists not on active duty for May, April, and for 2008 and 2009 year-to-date. By implication, the Army intends to release monthly updates of its suicide statistics, joining other regular statistical releases such recruiting and retention and mobilized reservists.

The Army's leadership appears to have succumbed to pressure to do something" about its suicide problem." All of the military services should vigorously fund and implement suicide prevention programs. Commanders at all levels should give sincere attention to the issue. And as a general matter, the Congress should fully fund Secretary Gates's priorities to improve the welfare of the troops and their families. Gates is right to express his concern about the potential fragility of the all-volunteer force and the imperative of preserving it. Attention to suicide, its causes and prevention, is part of this.

The Army's response is typical for any bureaucracy: collect the statistics, slice them up, and tabulate them in a recurring report. Regrettably, on the matter of suicides the Army's bureaucratic response is misguided.

The Anatomy of the Long War's Failings - Frank G. Hoffman, Foreign Policy Research Institute.

What we now sometimes refer to as the Long War began much earlier than the 9/11 attacks on America. But that day was seared into our collective national consciousness and animated our collective response. That sunny morning in Manhattan marked the second most violent day in U.S. history, exceeding Pearl Harbor and even D-Day in fatalities. Only Antietam's bloody wheat fields have witnessed more carnage in a single day. Since then, our country has mobilized for a global conflict against extremism with a multidimensional approach that has relied heavily on our military forces.

Just what have we accomplished to date in the Long War? Any ledger is going to identify some clear gains. Our campaign in Afghanistan quickly toppled the Taliban, and as a result al Qaeda no longer enjoys any sanctuary in Afghanistan. A major multinational invasion of Iraq led by the United States sliced though the remnants of the Iraqi Army and destroyed Saddam Hussein's regime. We have generated and exploited a degree of international cooperation and intelligence sharing—much of it very discrete—to foil several plots against ourselves or our partners. We have substantially reduced al Qaeda's infrastructure around the world, including its leadership, training facilities, and financial networks. And the nation has begun to shore up our home defenses. Notably, no similar attacks have occurred here at home.

But the ledger has both black and red ink. Bin Laden is alive and apparently well, although al Qaeda is a more diffuse organization. The core leadership of al Qaeda itself has probably been weakened, but its cause has been amplified and a generation of Muslims has been mobilized if not radicalized.

Afghanistan remains a key campaign in this war. Our initial campaign was brilliantly conceived by the CIA. An American force of CIA operatives and special forces aided no more than 15,000 Afghan troops to drive out some 50,000 Taliban and foreign fighters in late 2001. But six years later, Afghanistan remains a troubled land. The Taliban, once vanquished, is resurging.

Like the early phases in Afghanistan, the early military operations in Iraq were also conducted in accord with the U.S. military's preferred style and exploited its overwhelming conventional military superiority. The early successes were ephemeral and temporary. The early occupation of Iraq went well for six months, but then turned sour as political enemies vied for national and local control. What Tom Ricks has called perhaps the worst war plan in American history" failed to secure victory as defined by our political leaders. The planning shortfalls helped create the conditions for the difficult occupation that followed. For two years, American commanders and diplomats looked for a way out, and tried to nurture along a weak government in Baghdad and shift the fight to the slowly developing Iraqi Army.

The cost for what has been accomplished to date is completely disproportionate to the limited gains. How did we get to this point?

Much more at FPRI.

From Wings Over Iraq - Starbuck finally gets his copy of Rolling Stone's 2009 Hot List...

Near the end of his presentation last Thursday at the annual CNAS conference, General David Petraeus contrasted the 2008 battle for Sadr City with the 2004 battles for Fallujah. General Petraeus left the impression that if a U.S. commander is given a sufficient quantity of enablers," especially in the form of overhead surveillance assets, the U.S. will dominate urban terrain nearly as easily as it dominates open terrain.

Small Wars Journal grew out of work Dave and Bill did early this decade on the problems posed by military operations in urban terrain (MOUT). A decade ago U.S. ground forces realized that they could no longer ignore urban terrain as had been doctrine during the Cold War -- irregular adversaries had displaced to cities for concealment.

But is General Petraeus's implied assertion correct? Has the U.S. solved the urban combat problem, thus denying irregular adversaries perhaps their best redoubt? If so, how will these adversaries adjust?

Readers, please give your views in the comments.

Small Wars Journal is very happy and proud to welcome aboard Robert Haddick. Robert joins SWJ as a regular blogger -- he already has 20 Small Wars Journal This Week at War posts at Foreign Policy under his belt -- and as our managing editor.

From 1988 to 2006 Robert was Director of Research, investment portfolio manager, and later a consultant to The Fremont Group, a large private investment firm and an affiliate of Bechtel Corporation. He established the firm's global proprietary investment operation; led a research and trading network spanning the United States, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Australia; and was president of one of Fremont's overseas investment subsidiaries. Robert frequently advised the Board of Directors and other top level committees on geopolitical, macro-economic, and investment market trends.

Robert was an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. He served in the 3rd Marine Regiment, deployed with a Marine Amphibious Unit, and participated in numerous exercises with host nation military forces in Asia and Africa. He was a staff officer in 1st Battalion, 12th Marines and later commanded a rifle company in the 23rd Marine Regiment.

Robert's writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The American, New York Post, and TCS Daily. He started the blog Westhawk in 2005. He has been interviewed on CNBC and NPR.

AFRICOM Building Research Center - John Vandiver, Stars and Stripes.

A social science research center is under development at US Africa Command headquarters, where researchers from the academic world are being recruited to help map the complicated human terrain on the African continent.

The research center, which falls under AFRICOM's knowledge development division, will be designed to focus on the long-term with an eye toward forecasting potential flashpoints and preventing them from developing into conflicts.

But mixing military and social science has long been a source of controversy, going all the way back to the Vietnam era when information collected by researchers was used for targeting people.

More recently, the Army's Human Terrain System, used in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been met with resistance from groups such as the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, made up of social scientists opposed to the mingling of academia and the military.

Though defenders of the Human Terrain System argue that social scientists are providing information to commanders that potentially can reduce levels of violence, opponents say human terrain mapping benefits the US military, not local populations...

More at Stars and Stripes.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cObama Orders Stephen's Haircut - Ray Odiernowww.colbertnation.comColbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorStephen Colbert in Iraq

Under direct orders from Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama, General Ray Odierno shaves Stephen Colbert's head.

More videos clips of Operation Iraqi Stephen: Going Commando at Comedy Central.

'Mindless' Basic Training Gets Some Smarts - David Wood, Politics Daily.

When seasoned combat soldiers began returning from the war to help train new recruits here, the first thing they did was to stop training for what the Army called "convoy live fire.''

Nobody actually does that in Iraq or Afghanistan, they explained.

In fact, they said, much of what the Army was teaching its new recruits at this premier training center was wrong or irrelevant to actual combat...

That it took five years to get this stopped says something about the Army.

It also provides a glimpse into a struggle inside the Army and, indeed, across the entire U.S. military. Let's call it the combat military versus the "garrison'' or "headquarters'' or "always done it this way'' military.

This is the dynamic behind Defense Secretary Robert Gates' effort to refocus the gigantic defense budget on real combat needs for today's wars -- and the resistance from the bureaucracies and defense contractors entrenched around lower priority budget programs...

Much more at Politics Daily.

Iran Declares Ahmadinejad Victor - Robert F. Worth, New York Times.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won Iran's presidential election in a landslide, officials of Iran's election commission said Saturday morning. But his main rival, Mir Hussein Moussavi, had already announced defiantly just two hours after the polls closed on Friday night that he had won and charged that there had been voting irregularities."

I am the absolute winner of the election by a very large margin," Mr. Moussavi said during a news conference with reporters just after 11 p.m. Friday, adding: It is our duty to defend people's votes. There is no turning back."

More at The New York Times.

Iran Election In Dispute as 2 Candidates Claim Victory - Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post.

A pivotal presidential election in Iran ended in confusion and confrontation early Saturday as both sides claimed victory and plainclothes officers fired tear gas to disperse a cheering crowd outside the campaign headquarters of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.

With votes still being counted in many cities, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was leading by a 2-1 ratio in early returns, according to Iranian Interior Ministry officials. But Mousavi's supporters dismissed those numbers, saying the ministry was effectively under Ahmadinejad's control.

"I am the winner of these elections," Mousavi declared late Friday, after heavy turnout resulted in a two-hour extension of voting across the Islamic republic. "The people have voted for me."

More at The Washington Post.

Ahmadinejad Takes Big Lead, Opposition Media Wing Shut - Farnaz Fassihi and Roshanak Taghavi, Wall Street Journal.

Iranian state media reported a big lead in election results for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Saturday morning, but by noon hadn't yet released a final, official tally.

Meanwhile, campaign officials for his top challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, said the communications wing of their candidate's election operation had been shut down early Saturday by court order. Eye witnesses reported violence around Mr. Mousavi's campaign headquarters and the interior ministry, saying riot police were beating some people near the buildings. It was unclear how extensive the violence was and who the victims were.

Midmorning Saturday, Iran's interior ministry, responsible for running elections and counting ballots, had announced partial results showing Mr. Ahmadinejad as the projected winner of the race, with a landslide lead.

More at The Wall Street Journal.

Ahmadinejad Poised to Win Reelection in Iran - Borzou Daragahi and Ramin Mostaghim, Los Angeles Times.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad holds a decisive lead in his reelection bid, Iran's Interior Ministry said this morning, while his main rival claimed victory and alleged election irregularities.

Ministry officials said that with more than 75% of ballots counted, the incumbent had received nearly two-thirds of the vote. More than 46 million people were eligible to vote, officials said.

Official results are expected today, but news outlets loyal to the president claimed that he had scored a decisive victory over moderate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who had received about a third of the votes counted. This morning, security forces shut down Mousavi's offices, his campaign said.

More at The Los Angeles Times.

This Week at War is now posted at Foreign Policy. Topics include Is the U.S. Army the Slowest Student in Afghanistan? and How to Recover from Failure.

By His Own Rules: The Story of Donald Rumsfeld

By Bradley Graham

Book Description

A penetrating political biography of the controversial Defense Secretary, by a longtime military affairs correspondent for the Washington Post.

Once considered among the best and brightest of his generation, Donald Rumsfeld was exceptionally prepared to assume the Pentagon's top job in 2001. Yet six years later, he left office as the most controversial Defense Secretary since Robert McNamara, widely criticized for his management of the Iraq war and for his difficult relationships with Congress, administration colleagues, and military officers. Was he really the arrogant, errant, over-controlling Pentagon leader frequently portrayed--or as his supporters contend, a brilliant, hard-charging visionary caught in a whirl of polarized Washington politics, dysfunctional federal bureaucracy, and bad luck?

Bradley Graham, who closely covered Rumsfeld's challenging tenure at the Pentagon, offers an insightful biography of a complex and immensely influential personality. What emerges is a layered and revealing portrait of a man whose impact on U.S. national security affairs will long out-live him.

Decline and Fall

By Bradley Graham, Washington Post

Face time with the president is political gold in Washington, so Donald Rumsfeld moved quickly after taking charge at the Pentagon to secure weekly private meetings with President George W. Bush. Now, nearly six years and many meetings later, the defense secretary arrived in the Oval Office prepared to raise a delicate, and personal, matter.

His opportunity came as the talk that day, in September 2006, turned to Iraq. The conflict there was going badly. Violence had metastasized into a civil war. Plans to begin a major drawdown of U.S. troops had stalled. Iraqi forces still appeared unready to assume charge of security, and the Iraqi government, riven by sectarian strife, was doing little to unite the nation. In Washington, much of the responsibility for the mess in Iraq had fallen on Rumsfeld. He had failed to plan adequately for the occupation, was slow to develop a counterinsurgency campaign and had alienated too many people with his combative, domineering personality...

Much more at The Washington Post.

Bradley Graham will be online Monday, June 15 at 12 noon ET to take your questions and comments about "Decline and Fall," his Washington Post Magazine cover story about the dramatic end of the former defense secretary's tenure. The article is adapted from his book, By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld, published this month by PublicAffairs, a member of the Perseus Books Group.

Graham served as Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post for more than a decade.

Inside the Surge: One Commander's Lessons in Counterinsurgency - Lieutenant Colonel Jim Crider, USA, and Thomas E. Ricks (Foreword), Center for a New American Security.

When Lieutenant Colonel Jim Crider arrived in the Doura neighborhood of Baghdad in February of 2007 as the commander of 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment out of Fort Riley, Kansas the Sunni neighborhood appeared beyond hope. The streets were largely empty of life and the air was filled with the foul smell of burning trash and open sewage. Improvised explosive devices, small arms fire, hand grenades, and dead bodies were a normal part of every 1-4 CAV patrol in the spring and early summer of 2007. However, through the ruthless implementation of the counterinsurgency principles outlined in Army Field Manual 3-24 and several pragmatic decisions along the way, the neighborhood began to turn in July of 2007. By the end of September, the unit had seen the last attack on its forces. Businesses reopened, the streets were full of people, and there was hope. This paper contains some of the primary lessons learned during their 14 month combat tour. In his foreword to the paper, CNAS Senior Fellow and author of the New York Times best-seller Fiasco Tom Ricks calls Crider's work the first in-depth review offered by an American battalion commander about post-invasion operations in Iraq."

More at CNAS.

Wall Street Journal senior national security correspondent Peter Spiegel dishes about his interview with the new US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal - the first interview with Gen. McChrystal since he was named to the job

Commander Maps New Course in Afghan War - Peter Spiegel, Wall Street Journal.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, in his first interview since being named the US commander in Afghanistan, said his front-row seat for the wars there and in Iraq has altered the view of combat he has held since training as a Green Beret to kill enemies quickly and stealthily.

After watching the US try and fail for years to put down insurgencies in both countries, Gen. McChrystal said he believes that to win in Afghanistan, "You're going to have to convince people, not kill them.

"Since 9/11, I have watched as America tried to first put out this fire with a hammer, and it doesn't work," he said last week at his home at Fort McNair in Washington. "Decapitation strategies don't work."

In the interview, Gen. McChrystal noted he's unsure whether the planned troop levels for the job he envisions will be adequate - despite the Obama administration's commitment to raise the US presence to 68,000 by year's end, to go along with 35,000 allied forces. Iraq surge commanders had more than 170,000 US forces...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

Just a quick note of congratulations to the folks at the Center for a New American Security on one outstanding conference today. A great line-up of speakers and panelists -- with a wide range of observations and opinions - made fighting the traffic on the I-95 parking lot well worth the trip. Job well done.

The Tactical Excuse

By Mike Innes (Cross-Post with CT Lab)

Two posts on strategic focus helped crystalize a major criticism I've had of the kind of work done in the puzzle palace... natch, make that the kind of work required of the big thinkers sitting in the puzzle palace, who are ultimately responsible for answering the requirements laid out by the stars and bars who run the place.

Drew Conway, picking up on Robert Haddick's weekly This Week at War report at the Foreign Policy website, writes about stated military interest in developing decentralized, autonomous fighting units. I disagree with some of Drew's observations. "From my experience," he writes, "most terrorist networks are organized as highly clustered layers, with central leadership forming the center, pushing orders downrange to the periphery." OK. "Terrorist foot soldiers are rarely, if ever, allowed to act without explicit consent from agents connect to the leadership." Here I think Drew overgeneralizes, since there are few givens linking intent and implementation - a.k.a. command and control - and outcomes vary considerably.

Drew goes on to make some excellent points in his discussion of network specialization and niche expertise, which makes for a useful basis for comparison of terrorist networks and proposed military networks. A point not made, and that I would add to this, is that deliberately enabling and accepting real tactical unit autonomy is a catch-22. Modern technology enables very senior people to focus on very very granular issues. Many have argued that that's a recipe for nano-management and inhibits strategic thinking - producing a peculiar counterpart to the proverbial strategic corporal: the tactical flag officer.

This is at the heart, I think, of what the other Drew - Andrew Exum - asks at Abu Muqawama. Citing Nir Rosen, Ex asks whether mass casualty events like yesterday's truck bombing in Iraq have any strategic significance. Rosen's analysis is worth revisiting...

Just a quick note - SWJ will be attending the Center for New American Security's Third Annual Conference today. For those who can't attend, the conference will be streamed live on the CNAS website starting at 0830. For a full agenda and more details on the event, please visit WWW.CNAS.ORG/JUNE2009.

Carte Blanche for New US Commander in Afghanistan - Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt, New York Times.

The new American commander in Afghanistan has been given carte blanche to hand pick a dream team of subordinates, including many Special Operations veterans, as he moves to carry out an ambitious new strategy that envisions stepped-up attacks on Taliban fighters and narcotics networks.

The extraordinary leeway granted the commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, underscores a view within the administration that the war in Afghanistan has for too long been given low priority, and needs to be the focus of a sustained, high-level effort.

General McChrystal is assembling a corps of 400 officers and soldiers who will rotate between the United States and Afghanistan for a minimum of three years. That kind of commitment to one theater of combat is unknown in the military today outside the Special Operations community, but reflects an approach being imported by General McChrystal, who spent five years in charge of secret commando teams in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With his promotion approved by the Senate late on Wednesday, General McChrystal and senior members of his command team were scheduled to fly from Washington within hours of the vote, stopping in two European capitals to confer with allies before landing in Kabul...

More at The New York Times.

Into the Great Unknown in Afghanistan

by Judah Grunstein (Cross-Post with World Politics Review)

After flagging this very valuable post by Tim Lynch on conditions in the southeast of Afghanistan, Joshua Foust observes, "[T]here is a fundamental disconnect between what we are doing in Afghanistan and what we expect to happen." Lynch's post is a long but essential read, and I second Foust's assessment. The question is, Will the added troops and vaguely hinted-at shift in operational priorities be sufficient to recouple what we're doing with what we expect to happen?

With that question fresh in my mind, I clicked through to the new CNAS report (.pdf) on Afghanistan and Pakistan, which offers proposals for metrics and operational priorities on both sides of the border. In all fairness, the CNAS authors (David Kilcullen, Nathaniel Fick, Andrew Exum and Ahmed Humayan) chose to title the report "Triage," meaning they know that there's more job to do than resources to do it with. And between the principle authors and the analysts they got input from (Joshua Foust, Nicholas Schmidle and Christian Bleuer), it's a high-powered braintrust that is both well-informed and intellectually honest.

But there's something about the report that's vaguely un-nerving, especially after reading Lynch's narrative. Clearly Kilcullen and Exum are advocating for a particular approach to waging the war. They are, after all, proponents of COIN doctrine and tactics. But the report seems to paper over the fact that the very COIN methods they're advocating for do not suffer prioritizing on the cheap. As a result, though they acknowledge that progress is urgently needed, their proposals read as much like a recipe for creating a positive feedback loop for measuring it as they do a recipe for actually achieving it...

Washington Post - On Leadership in Combat: Craig Mullaney (Part 1)

Washington Post - On Leadership in Combat: Craig Mullaney (Part 2)

On Leadership is a new Washington Post section featuring a weekly video series and panel discussion hosted by former Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee and Pulitzer Prize-winning Post Columnist Steven Pearlstein. The section offers inspiration and practical advice on how to be an effective, successful leader in a political, financial and technological environment. Craig Mullaney, a West Point graduate, Rhodes Scholar, former Army Captain and author talks about the challenging experiences that made him a leader. In the first video. In the first video, Mullaney recalls his time in the dangerous mountains of Afghanistan and learning that true leadership grows out of hardship and a sense of duty. In the second video, he shares stories from his leadership training experiences; including what he calls his Army Ranger "Ph D in endurance."

The Center for New American Security has released several new reports and working papers that will be presented at its third annual conference, Striking a Balance: A New American Security" on Thursday, June 11. Topics include Iraq, Afghanistan-Pakistan, Natural Security, and combating violent extremism. Each report offers strong, principled and pragmatic recommendations on how to strike a balance between immediate and long-term national security challenges facing the United States.

After the Fire: Shaping the Future U.S. Relationship with Iraq by John A. Nagl and Brian M. Burton

Since 2003, debates about America's role in Iraq have focused on how to withdraw U.S. forces. Yet the search for an end game" emphasizes a short-term objective - getting out of Iraq - and sidesteps the strategic imperative of establishing an enduring relationship with a key country in a region of vital importance to the United States. It is time for America to take the long view. Neither Iraq nor America's stake in a stable, peaceful, secure Middle East will vanish when the last American combat brigade departs. American policymakers must advance U.S. interests in Iraq and the Middle East through a long-term, low-profile engagement to help resolve Iraq's internal challenges, strengthen its government and economic institutions, and integrate it as a constructive partner in the region.

Triage: The Next Twelve Months in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Andrew M. Exum, Nathaniel C. Fick, Ahmed A. Humayun and David J. Kilcullen

Eight years into the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, the situation is as perilous as ever and continuing to worsen. The campaign has been further complicated by a rapidly deteriorating security situation in Pakistan, where the center of gravity of the insurgency has now shifted. In counterinsurgency campaigns, momentum matters. Over the next 12 months, the United States and its allies must seize the initiative back from the Taliban and other hostile actors. This paper makes four operational recommendations and gives specific metrics by which the administration can gage its progress.

Natural Security by Sharon Burke

In the 21st century, the security of nations will increasingly depend on the security of natural resources, or natural security." The modern global economy depends on access to energy, minerals, potable water and arable land to meet the rising expectations of a growing world population, and that access is by no means assured. At the same time, increasing consumption of these resources has consequences, such as climate change and biodiversity loss, which will challenge the security of the United States and nations all over the world. Natural security ultimately means sufficient, reliable, affordable, and sustainable supplies of natural resources for the modern global economy. This will require the United States to both shape and respond to emerging natural resources challenges in a changing global strategic environment. This concept paper outlines a new program of study at the Center for a New American Security that will examine emerging natural resources challenges in six key areas of consumption and consequences -- energy, minerals, water, land, climate change, and biodiversity -- as well as the ways in which these challenges are linked together. Any solution to the country's energy insecurity is likely to involve water, non-fuel minerals, and land-use issues; climate change and biodiversity cut across all concerns, with broad effects on resource vulnerability. Without an integrated, national-level approach that links together natural security challenges, the United States runs the risk of trading one dependency for another and exacerbating the consequences.

The Obama Plan for Energy and Climate Security: Conference Proceedings and Final Recommendations by Christine Parthemore

On April 29, 2009, the Center for a New American Security convened a group of scientists, investors, business executives, academics, nonprofit representatives, defense professionals, and federal, state, and local officials to discuss how to implement President Obama's energy and climate security goals. The conference was the culmination of a year-long CNAS project, called the Big Energy Map, which examined the role the federal government is playing and can play in protecting and promoting the nation's energy security. This report is a compilation and analysis of the proceedings of the April 29 Big Energy Map conference. Drawing on the discussions and recommendations of the group of experts, CNAS has identified three main recommendations for the Obama Administration: draft a comprehensive national strategy; link that strategy to a major, systems-level demonstration project for a future, low-carbon energy economy; and create a scorecard to track progress and capture lessons learned from the historical level of federal investment in energy and climate security.

Beyond Bullets: Strategies for Countering Violent Extremism by Kristin M. Lord, John A. Nagl, Seth D. Rosen, David Kilcullen, Larry Diamond, Camille Pecastaing, Harvey M. Sapolsky, Daniel Benjamin, and Alice E. Hunt (editor)

To counter the threat from violent Islamist extremism more effectively, the Center for a New American Security launched a strategy development process modeled after President Eisenhower's Project Solarium. CNAS asked five experts to recast the effort to defeat al-Qaeda in sustainable terms consistent with American values. The result is a series of essays, produced in this report, that recommend a rich array of counterterrorism tools and strategies for the new administration.

Beyond Bullets: A Pragmatic Strategy to Combat Violent Islamist Extremism by Kristin M. Lord, John A. Nagl, and Seth Rosen

This paper, which is part of a larger edited volume, presents a pragmatic and comprehensive strategy to combat violent Islamist extremism, one that engages all appropriate instruments of national power in a cohesive vision for action. As other national security concerns proliferate, the authors argue, America must re-commit to countering violent extremism by employing an approach that is sustainable, properly resourced, grounded in bipartisan political support, and bolstered by a dense network of partnerships that engages actors both inside and outside of government. The authors establish a clear analysis of the threat, a realistic vision of success, and strategic principles to guide U.S. actions. They also offer specific ways and means" in order to accomplish U.S. strategic objectives.

Inside the Surge: One Commander's Lessons in Counterinsurgency by Lieutenant Colonel James R. Crider, Foreword: Thomas E. Ricks

When Lieutenant Colonel Jim Crider arrived in the Doura neighborhood of Baghdad in February of 2007 as the commander of 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment out of Fort Riley, Kansas, the Sunni neighborhood appeared beyond hope. The streets were largely empty of life and the air was filled with the foul smell of burning trash and open sewage. Improvised explosive devices, small arms fire, hand grenades, and dead bodies were a normal part of every 1-4 CAV patrol in the spring and early summer of 2007. However, through the ruthless implementation of the counterinsurgency principles outlined in Army Field Manual 3-24 and several pragmatic decisions along the way, the neighborhood began to turn in July of 2007. By the end of September, the unit had seen the last attack on its forces. Businesses reopened, the streets were full of people, and there was hope. This paper contains some of the primary lessons learned during their 14 month combat tour and has been called the first in-depth review offered by an American battalion commander about post-invasion operations in Iraq."