Military Operations

“The Uses of Force,” Economist, November 23, 2013. “It’s too easy to use force,” says Admiral Mike Mullen, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “It’s almost the first choice.” “Security and Defense Cooperation Agreement Between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan,” Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, November 20, 2013. Desiring to continue to foster close cooperation concerning defense and security arrangements in order to strengthen security and stability in Afghanistan, contribute to regional and international peace and stability, combat terrorism, achieve a region which is no longer a safe haven for al-Qaida and its affiliates, and enhance the ability of Afghanistan to deter threats against its sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity; and noting that the United States does not seek permanent military facilities in Afghanistan, or a presence that is a threat to Afghanistan’s neighbors, and has pledged not to use Afghan territory or facilities as a launching point for attacks against other countries. (3PA: Revisit my blog post, from earlier this week, on the bilateral agreement: “Will Afghanistan Allow U.S. Drone Strikes into Pakistan?”) Haq Nawaz Khan and Greg Miller, “Suspected U.S. Drone Kills Six; U.S. Denies Pakistan’s Claim That Seminary Was Target,” Washington Post, November 21, 2013. According to Pakistani officials, three missiles were fired into a compound in Khyber ­Pakhtunkhwa province about 5 a.m. local time Thursday, a rare strike outside the Pakistani tribal areas near the Afghan border that are usually targeted by U.S drones. Pakistani officials say the drone hit a madrassa, or Islamic seminary, killing six people, including two teachers. The dead included Maulvi Ahmad Jan and Maulvi Hameedullah, who were top surrogates for Sirajuddin Haqqani, the second in command of the Haqqani militant group, which has ties to al-Qaeda. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that a madrassa was in the vicinity but said it was not damaged. U.S. officials have seen no indication of civilian casualties, he said. (3PA: This drone strike had several characteristics of a signature strike. What was remarkable is how quickly an anonymous U.S. official came forward to deny there were any civilian casualties.) John Kerry, Remarks at the Overseas Security Advisory Council’s 28th Annual Briefing, U.S. Department of State, November 20, 2013. Believe it or not, notwithstanding the prominence of these events and the way that they do exactly what they’re meant to do, send terror down the spines of people everywhere, the fact remains we lose far less lives today to conflict and there is far less loss of life in war or violence anywhere in the world today than there was in the last century, even in the last half century. That’s a fact. We’re not seeing the kinds of wars and confrontations where millions of people are thrown at each other across the trenches or there’s firebombing of whole cities and we’re engaged in these larger kinds of conflicts. That doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous, obviously, but it means that there’s a transformation taking place. More and more countries are gaining middle class populations, more and more people are traveling, more and more tourists, more and more people going to school, more and more people engaged. (3PA: This is a rare and laudable example of threat deflation by a U.S. official.) Kate Parrish, “Socom Planning Ahead for Future Missions, McRaven Says,” American Forces Press Service, November 18, 2013. He pointed out that 12 years of war have exacted a high price from his troops. “We have had more suicides this year than [at] any point … in the history of special operations forces,” Admiral William H. McRaven said. While that “single data point” can’t capture the overall health of his force, the admiral said, it is important. Awad Mustafa, “With Adcom Drone, UAE Makes Big Export Push,” Defense News, November 18, 2013. But the biggest deal yet to be struck by a UAE weapons manufacturer is the sale of two Yabhon United 40 medium-altitude, long-endurance UAVs to the Russian military, made by Adcom Systems. According to Ali al Dhaheri, the chief designer of the drone and chairman of Adcom Systems, the Yabhon United 40 can carry up to 10 air-to-ground missiles with a delivery range of 60 kilometers each, while flying for up to 120 hours. Jim Garamone, “Dempsey: Military Battles Against Fiscal Uncertainty,” American Forces Press Service, November 16, 2013. “There is hubris in the belief that war can be controlled,” Gen. Martin Dempsey said. “War punishes hubris and that is worth remembering.”

  “Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and Relevant Provisions of Security Council Resolutions in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” International Atomic Energy Agency, November 14, 2013. Since Iran began enriching uranium at its declared facilities, it has produced at those facilities: 10 356 kg (+653 kg since the Director General’s previous report) of UF6 enriched up to 5% U-235, of which 7154.3 kg (+380.3 kg since the Director General’s previous report) remain in the form of UF6 enriched up to 5% U-235 and the rest has been further processed (as detailed in paragraphs 22,28 and 41 below) Hon. Matthew G. Olsen, “The Homeland Threat Landscape and U.S. Response,” Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, November 14, 2013. Despite core al-Qaida’s diminished leadership cadre, remaining members will continue to pose a threat to Western interests in South Asia and will attempt to strike the Homeland should an opportunity arise…Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) remains the affiliate most likely to attempt transnational attacks against the United States… Homegrown Violent Extremists (HVEs) remain the most likely global jihadist threat to the Homeland. While the threat posed by HVEs probably will broaden through at least 2015, the overall level of HVE activity is likely to remain the same: a handful of uncoordinated and unsophisticated plots emanating from a pool of up to a few hundred individuals. Lone actors or insular groups who act autonomously pose the most serious HVE threat. United States of America v. Tarek Mehanna, United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, November 13, 2013. Terrorism is the modern-day equivalent of the bubonic plague: it is an existential threat. “Air Force to ‘Add More Rigor’ to Screening of Candidates for Nuclear Commander Jobs,” Washington Post, November 13, 2013. The review will include a Google search, a simple task that hadn’t been done before. “What pops up when you type somebody’s name into Google?” Welsh said. “It might be worth knowing that before you nominate somebody for a key job. Some of this is common sense.” Brian Bennett and Michael A. Memoli, “No Partisan Divide on Obama’s Homeland Security Nominee,” Los Angeles Times, November 13, 2013. As American warplanes dropped bombs on Libya in June 2011, lawmakers accused the Obama administration of usurping Congress and violating the War Powers Resolution. From his office in the Pentagon’s E-Ring, Jeh Johnson, then general counsel at the Defense Department, penned advice to the president: Go to Congress for approval… But Johnson’s dissent may pay off now: It won him some fans among Republicans in Congress, and they haven’t forgotten. “Department of Defense Press Briefing with George Little from the Pentagon,” U.S. Department of Defense, November 12, 2013. George Little: One of the reasons that we in the Department of Defense, the U.S. military, have a very high approval rating with the American people is because we are transparent. Even when it’s bad news, quite frankly, we tend to come forward quickly and own up to it and talk about the measures we’re taking to ensure that the problem doesn’t occur again. Steven Aftergood, “Pentagon Drone Programs Taper Off (and New Military Doctrine),” Secrecy News, November 12, 2013. The Department of Defense budget for research and procurement of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), or drones, is on a distinctly downward slope. The FY 2014 budget request included $2.3 billion for research, development, and procurement of unmanned aerial systems, a decrease of $1.1 billion from the request for the fiscal year 2013. “Annual procurement of UAS has gone from 1,211 in fiscal 2012 to 288 last year to just 54 in the proposed FY14 budget,” according to a recently published congressional hearing volume. Guy Taylor, “U.S. Intelligence Warily Watches for Threats to U.S. National Security Now That 87 Nations Possess Drones,” Washington Times, November 10, 2013. This matters because of the roughly 20,000 drones now in existence, only about 350 are large enough to carry the slate of weapons on the current market.

“Allegation of U.S. Spying on Merkel Puts Obama at Crossroads,” New York Times, October 24, 2013. “This was colossally bad judgment — doing something because you can, instead of asking if you should,” said one career American official with long experience in Europe. A senior administration official declined to say what Mr. Obama knew or did not know about monitoring of Ms. Merkel’s phone, but said the president “doesn’t think we are in the right place.” “Rep. Smith: Armed Drones ‘No Perfect Instrument,’ but Welcomes DoD Shift,” Military Times, October 24, 2013. “Whenever we do a targeted strike…we need to, at least, explain why. We can reveal what we want to reveal,” Smith said bluntly. “We can reveal enough to say, ‘This is why we hit this person, and it was self-defense’.” “The administration—every administration—seems to think it should share nothing,” Smith said. “I think the administration believes…we gave a speech, we explained it…and now leave us alone, we’re going to go back to work,” “Former Defense Secretary Gates Warns Against Lure of Drone Warfare,” Washington Post, October 23, 2013. “Remarkable advances in precision munitions, sensors, information and satellite technology and more can make us overly enamored with the ability of technology to transform the traditional laws and limits of war,” Gates said in a speech to a group of current and former soldiers, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. “A button is pushed in Nevada and seconds later a pickup truck explodes in Kandahar.” Too often, Gates said, U.S. defense experts have come to view war as a “kind of video game or action movie. . . . In reality, war is inevitably tragic, inefficient and uncertain.” “Army Lets Air Out of Battlefield Spyship Project,” Los Angeles Times, October 22, 2013. Near the height of the Afghanistan war, the Pentagon spent $297 million on a seven-story blimp-like aircraft—as long as a football field—that would hover over the war zone for weeks at a time, beaming back crucial intelligence. Last month, the Pentagon quietly decided to sell back the sophisticated spyship to the British company that built it for $301,000 — a fraction of its investment. “Obama’s Uncertain Path Amid Syria Bloodshed,” New York Times, October 22, 2013. Jordanian officials were even offering to allow the C.I.A. to use the country as a base for drone strikes in Syria — offers that the Obama administration repeatedly declined. President Obama had signed a secret order in April—months earlier than previously reported—authorizing a C.I.A. plan to begin arming the Syrian rebels. But the arms had not been shipped, and the collapse of rebel positions in western Syria fueled the atmosphere of crisis that hung over the June meeting. Yet after hours of debate in which top advisers considered a range of options, including military strikes and increased support to the rebels, the meeting ended the way so many attempts to define a Syrian strategy had ended in the past, with the president’s aides deeply divided over how to respond to a civil war that had already claimed 100,000 lives. “Between a Drone and Al-Qaeda,” Human Rights Watch, October 22, 2013. The US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are estimated by research groups to have carried out 81 targeted killing operations in Yemen: one in 2002 and the rest since 2009. The strikes by drones, warplanes or cruise missiles by various counts have killed at least 473 combatants and civilians. These attacks, one from 2009 and the rest from 2012-13, killed 82 people, at least 57 of them civilians. At least four of the strikes were carried out by drones, a fifth strike by either drones or warplanes, and a sixth one by cruise missiles releasing cluster munitions, indiscriminate weapons that pose unacceptable dangers to civilians. (3PA: Amnesty International also published a report on the same day. The HRW and AI reports are invaluable, but the policy window in DC for reforming drone strike policies is closed. The Senate and House intelligence committees should invite HRW and AI to brief them on their drone strike investigations.) “USAF Leader: QDR Process Helps DoD See Vulnerabilities,” Defense News, October 19, 2013. Maj. Gen. Steven Kwast: The facts are that it costs more money to put up a CAP [24-hour combat air patrol] than it does to have a squadron of F-16s. It costs more people to man a CAP than it does to man a full squadron. The data link is vulnerable. The machine is vulnerable. The command and control is vulnerable. So we have built into it the one thing you don’t want to build into any military approach, and that is vulnerability. Right now, we’re on a path that you want to be able to see everything, anywhere, all the time. Can we really afford to be able to watch every nook and cranny of the globe 24/7? We can’t even process the information, let alone distill it into decision-quality data. “Technology and Innovation Enablers for Superiority in 2030,” The Defense Science Board, October 2013. In the future, increasingly technically capable and economically strong adversaries are likely to develop counters to some or all of the foundation technologies on which the U.S. has come to rely. The advantages provided by capabilities such as GPS, internet-based network communications, satellite reconnaissance, and stealth aircraft will be diminished, and in many cases, eliminated. To maintain superiority, it will be necessary for the military to develop new capabilities or tactics, techniques, and procedures to continue to be effective…(pg. viii) With more capable adversaries, the unfettered access to their homeland that the U.S. has exploited in its recent wars may no longer be achievable. This concern is the motivation for much of the Department’s interest in anti-access and area denial capability. Existing bomber and missile systems that can penetrate adversary defenses from long range are expensive, limited in fleet size, and may need to be reserved to achieve vital strategic effects…(pg. xv) Bespoke Materials A substantial expansion of research could produce meaningful playoffs in the design and fabrication of custom materials for a variety of Department of Defense applications. Examples include lasting materials that can generate any wavelength, detector array materials and associated optics for sensing from ultraviolent through infrared, structurally embedded radio antennae, high-strength lightweight materials, ultra-efficient solar cells, biocompatible materials, and cost-effective nanostructures for microelectronics, to name a few. Thought-based Machine Control Research is in its infancy on devices and systems for facile human-machine interfaces without physical contact, either exclusively via transmitted thoughts or aided by microelectronic implants. Systems currently exist to control computer curosrs and joysticks via concentrated thought. Portable Compact Fission to Provide Megawatt Power Levels Power availability is an essential enabler for a variety of defense missions. Portable fission reactor concepts are being considered or developed today that are designed to operate with low-enrichment fuel to minimize proliferation concerns. The negative thermal coefficient in this design means that neutron moderation decreases with increasing system temperature, leading to an inherently safe design without potential for thermal runaway or meltdown. (appendix B)

“Drop the Pilot,” Economist, October 19, 2013. A 2009 poll in three of the tribal agencies found 52% of respondents believed drone strikes were accurate and 60% said they weakened militant groups. Other surveys have found much lower percentages in favour. But interviews by The Economist with twenty residents of the tribal areas confirmed that many see individual drone strikes as preferable to the artillery barrages of the Pakistani military. They also insisted that the drones do not kill many civilians—a view starkly at odds with mainstream Pakistani opinion. “No one dares tell the real picture,” says an elder from North Waziristan. “Drone attacks are killing the militants who are killing innocent people.” “Trouble at the Lab,” Economist, October 19, 2013. Fraud is very likely second to incompetence in generating erroneous results, though it is hard to tell for certain. Dr Fanelli has looked at 21 different surveys of academics (mostly in the biomedical sciences but also in civil engineering, chemistry and economics) carried out between 1987 and 2008. Only 2% of respondents admitted falsifying or fabricating data, but 28% of respondents claimed to know of colleagues who engaged in questionable research practices. Jane Mayer, “Top C.I.A. Lawyer Sides with Senate Torture Report,” The New Yorker, October 17, 2013. The C.I.A. has defended its record on keeping Congress informed. In contrast, Preston, in his answers to Udall, concedes that, during the Bush years, the C.I.A. “fell well short” of current standards for keeping the congressional oversight committees informed of covert actions, as is required under the 1947 National Security Act. In fact, Preston admits outright that, contrary to the C.I.A.’s insistence that it did not actively impede congressional oversight of its detention and interrogation program, “briefings to the Committees included inaccurate information related to aspects of the program of express interest to Members.” “Afghans Fend Off Taliban Threat in Pivitol Year,” New York Times, October 16, 2013. “You’re looking at these people, you listen to them and you hear them out and you talk, and you realize that these are the Taliban,” said an American Army officer who served in rural areas thick with insurgents outside Kandahar, the main city in southern Afghanistan. “It’s not that each one of them is an active insurgent — these are old men, a lot of them. It’s that they are the reason the Taliban exists. It came from where they live,” the officer said. “I think, when we take the long view here, we should be cognizant of the context. Maybe the best outcome would be Taliban in the villages and the government in the district centers.” Matt Viser, “Obama’s Vision of Unity Led Only to a Wider Gap,” the Boston Globe, October 14, 2013. Overall during his presidency, Obama has spent an average of less than four days in each of the red states he lost in 2012, while he has spent an average of 23 days in each of the blue states he won, according to an analysis of data compiled by Mark Knoller of CBS News. He’s made 428 visits to blue states and 75 visits to red states. Mohamed Younis, “Iranians Mixed on Nuclear Capabilities,” Gallup, October 14, 2013. Though a majority of Iranians approve of their government developing nuclear capabilities for non-military use, fewer approve of their country developing these capabilities for military use, which Iran has repeatedly denied doing. A plurality of Iranians disapprove of developing nuclear abilities for military use. (3PA: In February 2012, only 21 percent of Iranians opposed developing nuclear power capabilited for military use.) “Conflict in Syria: Respondents in 15 Countries Assess the Conflict in Syria for a Global Perspective,” Ipsos, September 2013. (3PA: This poll has two notable findings. First: 28 percent of the world supported U.S. military-led action in Syria, compared to only 27 percent of Americans. Second: While 62 percent of respondents believe the Syrian government used chemical weapons, fully 34 percent believe the opposition used them.)

Hearing to consider the nominations of Mr. Michael D. Lumpkin, Honorable Jamie M. Morin, and Honorable Jo Ann Rooney, U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, October 10, 2013. Lumpkin: We’re not going to be able to kill our way to victory. One at a time, doing one-eaches… I would argue [al-Qaeda is] less capable to attack the homeland directly but U.S. interests – it still has the capability. McCain: Al-Qaeda is gaining strength in the ungoverned regions of northern and eastern Syria. Washington Post reports that fewer than one thousand Syrian rebels have been trained. Do you think the training cited by the Washington Post is capable of altering any balance of power in Syria? Lumpkin: As it sits right now, I don’t see a significant balance change based on that… (3PA: Note that the person that Lumpkin is scheduled to replace, Michael Sheehan, seemed to champion an eliminationist counterterrorism approach: “Whack-a-Mole, in my view, works -- because terrorists aren’t plastic things that pop up again. When you kill them, they don’t come back. Yes, somebody else may come back, but that guy is probably less effective, less trained, and by the way, knows his buddy before him got ... killed.") “White House Top Priority on Raids: Go After Those Who ‘Seek To Do Us Harm’,” PBS Newshour, October 8, 2013. LISA MONACO: I think these determinations are always made with great care, but also with the appreciation for the incredible precision and dedication that our armed forces and, in fact, our entire national security and intelligence community brings to these operations. And the standard is one to go after those who would seek to do us harm. And what you saw in the case of the al-Libi raid was, frankly, the unrelenting focus of the United States government to go after and to not forget, no matter how long it takes, to go after those who would seek to do us harm. David Pearson, “European Defense Firms’ Drone Push Remains Elusive,” Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2013. But a tally of unmanned aircraft owned by various European air forces tells a different story: all the large and advanced drones in service in Europe were imported from the U.S. or Israel. Mark Hosenball and Phil Stewart, “Elite Interrogators Question Seized al-Qaeda Leader at Sea,” Chicago Tribune, October 6, 2013. A U.S. official, said the two commando operations did not represent a change in counterterrorism strategy - even though Obama insisted in a speech in May that he wanted to scale back the used of armed drones, a tactic that he has controversially used against militants in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. Elizabeth Williamson, “Skateboarders See a (Kick) Flip Side to the Government Shutdown,” Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2013. Where most people see ornate, neo-Classical federal buildings and sweeping stone plazas in this city, skaters see something else: opportunity, in the form of sturdy railings, low stone benches, ramps—ideal "obstacles" for skateboarding stunts. And now, after years of ducking the national park police that patrol these plazas, this week’s closure of public buildings and easing of surveillance offered skaters hope of revisiting their favorite spots. It was, said one, "on." “Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition,” Open Society Foundations, 2013. To date, owing to the extraordinary secrecy surrounding CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations, there is no precise estimate of the total number of detainees subjected to these operations. By 2005, the United States had reportedly extraordinarily rendered 100 to 150 suspects to foreign countries. (3PA: Since 9/11, the United States has killed an estimated 3,700 people outside of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.) Christopher Paul, Colin P. Clarke, Beth Grill, and Molly Dunigan, “Counterinsurgency Scorecard: Afghanistan in Early 2013 Relative to Insurgencies Since World War II,” Rand Corporation, 2013. In the 2011 Afghanistan scoring, the scorecard result was found to be in that gap between historical wins and losses. In the 2013 scoring reported here, the result has crossed that gap and now, at +2, is among the historical COIN winners.

A Conversation with Hassan Rouhani, Council on Foreign Relations, September 26, 2013. ROUHANI: …While interdependence and competitive cooperative approach, and not enmity, is the order of the day, zero-sum game and win-lose approaches in international relations has already lost ground when it comes to international ties, as no country could pursue its interests at expense of others… We are committed not to work towards developing and producing nuclear bomb. As enunciated in the fatwa issued by the leader of the Islamic revolution, we strongly believe that the development, production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are contrary to the Islamic norms. I also should reiterate that we never contemplated the option of acquiring nuclear weapons. We believe that such weapons could undermine our national security interests. …Having done so, let me reiterate that we will never forgo our inherent right to benefit from peaceful nuclear technology, including nuclear enrichment, under any circumstances. Afghanistan, for next year, is something that we are concerned about in terms of its peace and stability for various reasons. One reason being the one you just referred to, that the international forces aim to leave Afghanistan, and another reason being that, unfortunately, American -- the U.S. forces intend to say in some basis in Afghanistan. And this could become an excuse for Taliban and other extremist groups to continue resorting to, you know, acts that -- actively insecurity (ph) of that country, because one aspect here that contributes to the activity of these groups is the presence of foreign forces in the region… If we can settle the nuclear debate, it will most certainly be an important step and a good beginning for a better future, which I hope this future will benefit everyone. SHEERAN:  You’ve been very generous with your time. I think we’ve been able to cover most of the questions that have come in, not only from this room, but throughout the world. I don’t know if we can hear a brief update on the [P5+1] meeting? ROUHANI: Please. ZARIF: Good evening, Mr. President. I had a good meeting with P3-plus-three, or as it’s known here, 5-plus-one, very good and substantive meeting. We agreed to jump-start the process so that we could move forward with a view to agree, first, on the parameters of the end game, how we want to proceed Iran’s nuclear program in a year’s time, and also to think about steps, starting with a first step, that should be implemented in order to address the immediate concerns of two sides, and move towards finalizing it hopefully within a year’s time. I thought I was too ambitious bordering naivete, but I saw that some of my colleagues were even more ambitious and wanted to do it faster, so we could go ahead… ROUHANI: Well, you asked for the first step. They took it. Craig Whitlock and Greg Miller, “U.S. Moves Drone Fleet from Camp Lemonnier to Ease Djibouti’s Safety Concerns,” Washington Post, September 24, 2013. Air Force drones ceased flying this month from Camp Lemonnier, a U.S. installation in Djibouti, after local officials expressed alarm about several drone accidents and mishaps in recent years. The base serves as the combat hub for counterterrorism operations in Yemen and Somalia, playing a critical role in U.S. operations against al-Shabab…The Pentagon has temporarily moved the unmanned aircraft from the U.S. base in Djibouti’s capital to a makeshift airstrip in a more remote part of the country At least five drones based at Camp Lemonnier have crashed since January 2011, Air Force records show, including one that plowed into the ground next to a neighborhood in Djibouti’s capital, which goes by the same name as the country. Choe Sang-Hun, “North Korea Learning to Make Crucial Nuclear Parts, Study Finds,” New York Times, September 23, 2013. The new study focuses on production of advanced centrifuges, a technically difficult feat that the United States and others have tried to make harder for the North with a network of sanctions and bans on the export of sophisticated parts and metals. If the North Koreans are successfully making their own parts, they would essentially invalidate much of the international strategy to force them to denuclearize and make it more difficult to monitor their production progress. “That means, unfortunately, that we won’t be in a good position to spot them expanding the program through foreign shopping expeditions, and that policies based on export controls, sanctions and interdiction won’t get much traction, either,” said Joshua Pollack, one of the experts presenting the findings this week. “The deeper implication, if they are able to expand the program unchecked, is that we’ll never be too confident that we know where all the centrifuges are. And that in turn could put a verifiable denuclearization deal out of reach.” Remi Brulin, “From Reagan to Obama: Secrecy and Covert Operations in the Fight Against ‘Terrorism’,” Jadaliyya, September 23, 2013. Ronald Reagan was the first American president to put “terrorism” at the heart of his foreign policy discourse… These debates highlight the difficulties involved in defining “terrorism” not in the abstract, but as applied to a specific conflict, especially one about which, as was the case with Nicaragua, Democrats and Republicans were deeply divided. They also bear striking similarities to contemporary debates on the Obama administration’s policies of “targeted killings” or the provision of aid to the Syrian rebels. Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the United States’ “war on terrorism” has, to a great extent, been waged in the shadows. And it has, all too often, borne a close resemblance to some of its most troubling Cold War policies. Bill Roggio, “U.S. Drones Kill 7 in North Waziristan,” Long War Journal, September 22, 2013. The US killed seven suspected militants in a drone strike in Pakistan’s Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan. Today’s strike is just the second in Pakistan this month. (3PA: The drone strike conducted on September 22, 2013 was President Obama’s 400th targeted killing, which is roughly eight times the number of drone strikes conducted by former President George W. Bush.) Peggy Noonan, “Noonan: A New Kind of ‘Credibility’ Gap,” Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2013. When America does not move militarily as some people wish it to, they say, "This is another Munich"—appeasement that in the end will summon greater violence and broader war. When America moves militarily as some people do not wish it to, they say, "This is Vietnam"—jumping in where we do not belong and cannot win. What I am saying is that the old, Washington definition of credibility, which involves the projection of force in pursuit of ends it thinks necessary, and the American people’s definition of credibility, which is to become stronger and allow the world, and the young, to understand you are getting stronger, are at variance. And that will have implications down the road. Christopher Paul, Colin P. Clarke, Beth Grill, and Molly Dunigan, “Paths to Victory: Detailed Insurgency Case Studies,” RAND Corporation, 2013. Countering insurgents, or supporting the efforts of allies and partners as they did so, became the primary focus of U.S. operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. While debates continue to rage over how and even if the United States should be involved in future campaigns against insurgents, no one predicts that the future will be free of insurgencies…When a country is threatened by an insurgency, what strategies and approaches give the government the best chance of prevailing? The findings show that external or externally supported COIN forces win almost as often as wholly indigenous COIN forces…The historical cases primarily followed one of two paths: The “iron fist” path, with a focus preponderantly (and often almost exclusively) on eliminating the insurgent threat, or the motive-focused path, with primary or at least balanced attention to addressing the motives for beginning and sustaining the insurgency. While both paths can lead to success, historically, COIN forces following the iron fist path won only 32 percent of the time, while those on the motive-focused or mixed path won 73 percent of the time. Not only have iron fist COIN efforts failed more often than they have succeeded, but they have almost always involved atrocities or other COIN force behaviors that are considered “beyond the pale” by contemporary American ethical standards Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, “Global Nuclear Weapons Inventories, 1945-2013,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 2013. We estimate that, combined, the nine nations with nuclear weapons possess more than 10,000 nuclear warheads in their military stockpiles. Estimated Nuclear Warheads

Art Swift, “For First Time, American’s Views of Russia Turn Negative,” Gallup, September 18, 2013. (3PA: More Americans, 74%, have an unfavorable view of Congress: http://bit.ly/18dXgS1.) Admiral James Winnefeld, remarks at the AUSA General Bernard Rogers Lecture Series, Arlington, Virginia, September 18, 2013. WINNEFELD: Then there are the highly insecure authoritarian states, such as Iran, North Korea, and of course, Syria, including those who murder their own people on a large scale and those who have concluded that obtaining deliverable nuclear weapons are the best insurance policy for their regime. Cheryl Pellerin, “U.S. Foreign Military Sales Promote Security Cooperation,” American Forces Press Service, September 18, 2013. Foreign military sales represent the largest percentage of DSCA funds, with $69.1 billion in fiscal 2012, Gilman said, “but $29 billion of that is from the sale of 84 F-15s to Saudi Arabia, along with weapons and training and basing.” He said that going forward, the agency expects about $30 billion a year, with about $25 billion in 2013 sales. Patt Morrison, “For ‘Buck’ McKeon, It’s Syria or the Sequester,” Los Angeles Times, September 18, 2013. Q: You believe the U.S. has a "special role" in the world, to "enforce the peace it seeks." How does that relate to the sequester? A: The sequester is doing a lot of damage to national security — the readiness of our troops, our men and women in uniform not getting the training they have in the past. Eventually that translates into lives lost. It happened when we entered World War II. Our people weren’t sufficiently prepared, and moving across North Africa, they were like cannon fodder. Korea — we were almost pushed into the ocean before we were able to gear back up, because after every war, we tend to cut back our military. Q: Shouldn’t we cut back military spending after wars? A: Yes, but not to the point where we weaken ourselves to invite further aggression. People said we should listen to Eisenhower and beware the military/industrial complex. Eisenhower also said we should always be so strong that nobody dares take us on for fear of annihilation. Ronald Reagan talked about peace through strength. When you cut back to the point where you’re not able to protect yourself and your allies, they have to start creating other alliances. An ambassador from the Mideast just walked out of here [his office]. He was very concerned. He said when you draw a red line and don’t follow through, then your friends suffer, and I have to agree. Michael Hoffman, “SOCOM Wants to Deploy MQ-9 Drones to Remote Areas,” Military.com, September 16, 2013. Air Force Special Operations Command wants to pack up an MQ-9 Reaper in less than eight hours, fly it anywhere in the world aboard a C-17, and then unpack it and have it ready to fly in another eight hours… Special Operations Command wanted to deliver large drones to places without any infrastructure to offer special operations teams additional intelligences, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) coverage, Elton explained to a crowd at the 2013 Air Force Association’s Conference and Technology Exposition here on Monday. Interview of Admiral Michael Mullen, U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, June 19, 2013. Q:…Do you agree, Admiral, that it would be inaccurate to say that the four-man team was told to stand down? A: Yes, they are not told to stand down. Q: …Mr. Hicks also testified that he was frustrated that a fast-mover, such as an F-16, could not have been sent to Benghazi to either engage militarily or do fast flyovers to perhaps scare adversaries. Obviously I think we’re all sympathetic with that. I think both sides of the committee certainly understood that we wanted jets there yesterday, I think as our ranking member said. Admiral Mullen, as part of the ARB, did you investigate whether the military could have sent fast-mover assets, such as F-16s, to Benghazi on the night of the attack? And, if so, what did you conclude? A: We did investigate that. And consistent with what I said previously, it was not realistic to think that we could task fast movers, jets, notionally in Aviano, Italy, 2 to 3 hours’ flying time away, without tankers, which were a minimum of 4 hours away in the middle of the night with no previous tasking…The physics of it, the reality of it, it just wasn’t going to happen for 12 to 20 hours. And I validated that in my review when I went to the Pentagon to look at every single asset that was postured in theater, including those jets in Aviano. Q: At a hearing on February 7th, 2013, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Martin Dempsey, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked whether we could have deployed F-16s from Aviano Air Base in Italy…Admiral Mullen, do you agree with General Dempsey’s explanation that there was simply not enough time to deploy those assets? A: There was not enough time to deploy the assets, to provide the refueling they would have needed probably twice en route, given once while they are going, and if they’re going to have any on-station time, twice, those assets, those refueling assets were further out of reach than the jets in Italy -- meaning in Aviano specifically. So it just wasn’t realistic. The line of questioning and approach here, for those of us in the military, that we would consider for a second not doing everything we possibly could, it just -- it stirs us to our bones, because that’s who we are. We don’t leave anybody behind. We do support them under all circumstances. That night, middle of the night, it just wasn’t -- for those assets that may have been able to get there in someone’s view, it just wasn’t very realistic. What is also unsaid in this is for those kinds of assets, the significant, though administrative issue of asking a country like Libya to come into their air space with combat forces. And those are decisions that have to be made. Obviously, if we had assets available. And the significance of either that being granted or not granted or the ability to even have it granted that night with everything else that was going on in Libya… Q: …Admiral Mullen, Secretary Gates said that one reason he would not have approved sending an aircraft to Benghazi on the night of the attacks was due to a potential threat from surface-to-air missiles that may have disappeared from Colonel Qadhafi’s arsenal. Do you agree that that could be a possible reason why you wouldn’t want to send an asset over Benghazi? A: If I were to send an asset over Benghazi I’d want to know what the threat is. I -- from a standpoint of in particular this is focused -- at least from my perspective it’s been focused on the second attack, which the event that -- the mortar attack which killed two great Americans, Mr. Doherty and Mr. Wood. The reality is the likelihood at 2:00 in the morning or at 5:00 in the morning in the middle of the night under the cover of darkness, the likelihood that we could have had any effect on very accurate mortar fire set up in a very short period of time for -- to be able to deter or take that out is from my perspective near zero. So I think Secretary Gates’ comment about the whole idea, and I think Secretary Panetta said the same thing another way, which is trying to understand the threat base which is what we always do when we send people in. That doesn’t imply from my perspective that we would have to wait. It’s just you need to understand it. And you need to understand the risks. And there are risks where from my perspective I would -- when I was in a position of responsibility I would have taken the risk to send somebody in when there was a surface to air threat I thought I might be able to mitigate and there are times when I wouldn’t. Q: …Admiral, do you agree with Secretary Gates that sending in Special Forces would have been very difficult and risky without knowing much more about the threat conditions? A: I agree completely with what he said. Q: Do you care to elaborate further on that? A: I think what caught me in his statement there that I think is really important is his comment on "cartoonish." As if it’s almost like a PowerPoint slide, you can go from a situation that is very calm to all of a sudden they’re all there. There’s an extraordinary amount of work that goes into planning and preparation and understanding what you’re doing. And going into very risky environments. Not that they wouldn’t do that. But that you can somehow do that instantly when you really are completely surprised, that you could generate a force to have that kind of impact is -- it’s just not reasonable. And it’s not my experience in some pretty difficult circumstances over the last several years in two wars plus the war against al Qaeda. Charles Wolf, Jr., Xiao Wang, and Eric Warner, “China’s Foreign Aid and Government-Sponsored Investment Activities,” Rand National Defense Research Institute, 2013. (3PA: China only delivers a fraction of foreign aid that it pledges.)

Contracts: Air Force, U.S. Department of Defense, September 12, 2013. General Atomics - Aeronautical Systems Inc., Poway, Calif., has been awarded a $12,844,738 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for the MQ-9 stationary targeting improvements. This contract action is for the development and delivery of an improved targeting capability with the Lynx synthetic aperture radar (SAR) on the MQ-9 platform to allow for a more streamlined approach to targeting and quicker decision making by the crew. Gerald F. Seib, “McCain Passionately Defends Syrian Opposition,” Wall Street Journal, September 11, 2013. “The Syrian people are moderate,” [McCain] said. “The Syrians are not going to stand to be governed by al Nusra and foreign fighters. They’re not. They’re the most highly educated, most literate nation in the Middle East. And to somehow believe they are going to fall prey to al Qaeda and al Nusra is not a possibility.” (3PA: According to UNESCO and World Bank estimates, Israelis, Palestinians, and Jordanians, have higher literacy rates.) 6th Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, United Nations, September 11, 2013. Government and pro-government forces have continued to conduct widespread attacks on the civilian population, committing murder, torture, rape and enforced disappearance as crimes against humanity. They have laid siege to neighbourhoods and subjected them to indiscriminate shelling. Government forces have committed gross violations of human rights and the war crimes of torture, hostage-taking, murder, execution without due process, rape, attacking protected objects and pillage. Tony Perry, “If Ordered to Strike Syria, Navy is Ready, Admiral Tells Sailors,” Los Angeles Times, September 10, 2013. "My philosophy is: Don’t try to impress someone from China with Chinese food," [chief of naval operations Adm. Jonathan] Greenert said. Joel Achenbach, “Obama’s Syria Push Scrambles Hill Alliances,” Washington Post, September 10, 2013. He could use an “aye,” for example, from Rep. Trent Franks, the Arizona Republican and far-right conservative. But here’s Franks, in a subterranean corridor, emerging Monday night from a high-level briefing on Syria: “It just seems that everything the president touches in foreign policy, he injects it with chaos and death.” Karen DeYoung, “U.S. Officials Identify Extremist Groups in Benghazi Attack,” Washington Post, September 10, 2013. In the past four months, as crises have erupted and terrorist threats led the department to temporarily close embassies and consulates in 20 countries, the official said, military forces have been moved around to respond quickly “70 to 80 times.” Tom Vanden Brook, “Strike to Degrade Syrian Forces Would Still be Limited,” USA Today, September 8, 2013. A second senior official, who has seen the most recent planning, offered this metaphor to describe such a strike: If Assad is eating Cheerios, we’re going to take away his spoon and give him a fork. Will that degrade his ability to eat Cheerios? Yes. Will it deter him? Maybe. But he’ll still be able to eat Cheerios. New York Times/CBS News poll, September 6-8, 2013. (3PA: This is the highest recorded percent of Americans that believe the United States should not take a leading role in solving international conflicts.) Daniel Maliniak, Ryan Powers, and Barbara F. Walter, “The Gender Citation Gap in International Relations,” International Organization, August 2013. A look at our data reveals that women in IR do, in fact, cite their work significantly less than men…Among those single-authored articles, male-authored articles have 0+4 self-cites on average, while articles authored by one woman self-cite 0+25 articles+ Looking at only coauthored articles reveals a similar pattern, where those written by two or more men cite themselves more than women.

Colleen McCain Nelson, “Obama’s Curbs on Executive Power Draw Fire,” Wall Street Journal, September 5, 2013. A senior administration official said that while the new drone-strike policy does rein in executive authority, the NSA and Syria proposals weren’t a reduction of power but an effort to increase transparency and build public confidence. (3PA: The new drone strike policy doesn’t reign in executive authority, it ensures it in perpetuity, as I have previously wrote.) Dan Brown, “Graham: U.S. Must Address Syria Crisis Now,” Summerville Journal Scene, September 5, 2013. “Chemical weapons in Syria today means nuclear weapons in the U.S. tomorrow,” Graham said while addressing the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce Small Business Luncheon on Sept. 3. (3PA: Three days later and there is no sign of nukes yet, aside from the 5,000 maintained by the U.S. military.) Adam Entous and Julian E. Barnes, “U.S. Considers Stepping Up Rebel Support,” Wall Street Journal, September 3, 2013. The Obama administration is considering putting the Pentagon in charge of arming and training moderate rebel forces in Syria, a move that could help expand the effort significantly beyond the limited scope of the current Central Intelligence Agency program, U.S. officials said. U.S. officials said Tuesday that special-operations forces would be able to train and arm moderate Syrian rebels faster than the CIA and that they have a history of training both commando units and conventional military forces. Craig Whitlock and Barton Gellman, “U.S. Documents Detail al-Qaeda’s Efforts to Fight Back Against Drones,” Washington Post, September 3, 2013. Al-Qaeda’s leadership has assigned cells of engineers to find ways to shoot down, jam or remotely hijack U.S. drones, hoping to exploit the technological vulnerabilities of a weapons system that has inflicted huge losses upon the terrorist network, according to top-secret U.S. intelligence documents. Details of al-Qaeda’s attempts to fight back against the drone campaign are contained in a classified intelligence report provided to The Washington Post by Edward Snowden, the fugitive former National Security Agency contractor. The top-secret report, titled “Threats to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,” is a summary of dozens of intelligence assessments posted by U.S. spy agencies since 2006. “Public Opinion Runs Against Syrian Airstrikes,” Pew Research Center, September 3, 2013. Men are twice as likely as women to favor U.S. military airstrikes against Syria. Among men, nearly as many favor (39%) as oppose (46%) the proposed military action. Among women, just 19% support airstrikes, while 49% are opposed. Women are more uncertain about what to do at this point – 31% offer no opinion compared with just 15% of men. (3PA: As I’ve written before, men are always more likely to support using force then women.) Nick Cumming-Bruce, “Flow of Refugees Out of Syria Passes Two Million,” New York Times, September 3, 2013. The United Nations refugee agency says it has received $548 million, or less than half the $1.1 billion it had sought, to pay for relief for Syrian refugees in 2013. Most came from traditional Western donors, led by the United States, which contributed $228 million, or 40 percent of what the agency has received. European countries, Japan, Canada and Australia have together accounted for about 33 percent. Kuwait has contributed $112 million, or about 20 percent. By contrast, Russia, the Syrian government’s main ally, has given $10 million. China, which has helped Russia block any authorization of military action against Syria in the United Nations Security Council, has given $1 million. (3PA: The United States has provided forty percent of UNHCR funding for Syria and China has provided less than two percent, which begs the question, who is really “doing nothing”?) Mark Walker, “Former Seal: Transition to Private Contracting Made Sense,” U-T San Diego, August 31, 2013. Dan Cerrillo spent more than 13 years as a U.S. Navy SEAL and saw multiple combat assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan before leaving the elite force in 2005. Less than a year later, he was back in Iraq working as State Department private security contractor. “My (annual) paycheck as a SEAL was $68,000,” he said. “My biggest check as a contractor was for $34,000, and that was for 30 days of work.” David Enders, “Assad Backers Reportedly Make Up 43 Percent of Dead in Syria,” McClatchy, June 3, 2013. According to the new statistics, which the Syrian Observatory passed to McClatchy by phone, at least 96,431 people have lost their lives in the more than two years of violence that’s wracked Syria. Of those, Syrian soldiers and members of the government’s security forces account for 24,617, while members of pro-government militias make up 17,031. Taken together, those deaths account for 43.2 percent of the total recorded. Civilian noncombatants are the next largest group of the dead – 35,479, or 36.8 percent of the total, according to the human rights group. Deaths among anti-Assad fighters total 16,699, or 17.3 percent, according to the new numbers. Of those, 12,615 were Syrian civilians who’d picked up arms against the regime, 1,965 were rebel fighters who’d defected from the Syrian military and 2,119 were foreigners who were killed fighting on the Syrian rebels’ behalf.

Barton Gellman and Greg Miller, “U.S. spy network’s successes, failures and objectives detailed in ‘black budget’ summary,” Washington Post, August 29, 2013. The $52.6 billion “black budget” for fiscal 2013, obtained by The Washington Post from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, maps a bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny…Spending by the CIA has surged past that of every other spy agency, with $14.7 billion in requested funding for 2013… U.S. intelligence officials take an active interest in foes as well as friends. Pakistan is described in detail as an “intractable target,” and counterintelligence operations “are strategically focused against [the] priority targets of China, Russia, Iran, Cuba and Israel.” There is no specific entry for the CIA’s fleet of armed drones in the budget summary, but a broad line item hints at the dimensions of the agency’s expanded paramilitary role, providing more than $2.6 billion for “covert action programs” that would include drone operations in Pakistan and Yemen, payments to militias in Afghanistan and Africa, and attempts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. The black budget illuminates for the first time the intelligence burden of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. For 2013, U.S. spy agencies were projected to spend $4.9 billion on what are labeled “overseas contingency operations.” The CIA accounted for roughly half of that figure, a sum factored into its overall $14.7 billion budget… The CIA has deployed new biometric sensors to confirm the identities and locations of a-Qaeda operatives. The system has been used in the CIA’s drone campaign. Adam Entous, “U.S. Fears Aleppo is next for Chemical Weapons,” Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2013. Obama administration officials said they believe they must respond quickly to the Syrian government’s alleged use of chemical weapons, or else the regime will deploy them again in Syria’s largest city, now a key stronghold of the opposition. "Aleppo would probably be one of the likely targets," said a senior administration official. "What does it say to the world if a government can get away with using the most heinous weapon, chemical weapons, on its own people?" the official said. (3PA: Chemical weapons are not “the most heinous weapon”–read the classic 1979 Office of Technology Assessment primer on the effects of nuclear weapons.) James Blitz, “Concerns mount over risk of triggering deeper conflict in Syria,” Financial Times, August 28, 2013. “The idea that the west can neatly restrict any attack to a short duration punishment with the limits drawn exclusively by us is naive in the extreme,” says a senior British military commander, speaking privately. “Ultimately, one can’t help but think that these attack plans are more about restoring US authority than about helping to resolve a vicious civil war in Syria.” In the US, military analysts are expressing similar doubts. “The comments from anonymous senior officials that a potential strike against Syria would be “punitive” are alarming,” says Christopher Harmer of the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. “A strike taken to punish leaders does not constitute a strategy or even a sound military objective.” (3PA: In the New York Times this week, I discussed why a limited strike will lead to deeper intervention.) Thom Shanker, C. J. Chivers, and Michael R. Gordon, “Obama Weighs ‘Limited’ Strikes Against Syrian Forces,” New York Times, August 27, 2013. A wide range of officials characterized the action under consideration as “limited,” perhaps lasting no more than one or two days. The attacks, which are expected to involve scores of Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from American destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, would not be focused on chemical weapons storage sites, which would risk an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe and could open up the sites to raids by militants, officials said. The strikes would instead be aimed at military units that have carried out chemical attacks, the headquarters overseeing the effort and the rockets and artillery that have launched the attacks, according to the options being reviewed within the administration. An American official said that the initial target lists included fewer than 50 sites, including air bases where Syria’s Russian-made attack helicopters are deployed. The list includes command and control centers as well as a variety of conventional military targets. (3PA: Remember the last time we attacked Syria? If curious, I’ve also written a book on what limited air strikes and cruise missiles can achieve.) Jim Miklaszewski, Courtney Kube, and Eric McClam, “Military strikes on Syria ‘as early as Thursday,’ US officials say,” NBC News, August 27, 2013. Senior officials told NBC News that Defense Department planning had advanced to the point that three days of strikes were anticipated, after which strategists could run an assessment and target what was missed in further rounds. U.S. missile strikes would almost certainly be launched from Navy destroyers or submarines in the Mediterranean Sea. The U.S. in recent days has moved destroyers closer to Syria, which sits on the sea’s eastern edge, but that was mostly a symbolic move. U.S. Tomahawk missiles are so precise that they can hit not just buildings but also specific windows, and they could hit Syrian targets from far farther west in the Mediterranean. Secretary Hagel’s Remarks at Malaysia’s Institute of Defence and Security, U.S. Department of Defense, August 25, 2013. HAGEL: I think the world has had enough war.  And I think one of the things that we have learned over the years, regardless of the region of the world, is that wars can’t resolve differences, and not in the world that we live in today, especially, that is so interconnected and so interdependent.  It is a world where we must respect each other and each other’s rights. (3PA: The following day Hagel added: "I didn’t say, would never say, have never said, that no nation should ever go to war. I wish the world was such that nations didn’t go to war.")

CNN, "Transcript of President Obama’s Interview on ’New Day’," August 23, 2013. What I think the American people also expect me to do as president is to think through what we do from the perspective of, what is in our long-term national interests? You know, sometimes what we’ve seen is that folks will call for immediate action, jumping into stuff, that does not turn out well, gets us mired in very difficult situations, can result in us being drawn into very expensive, difficult, costly interventions that actually breed more resentment in the region. So, you know, we remain the one indispensable nation. There’s a reason why, when you listen to what’s happened around Egypt and Syria, that everybody asks what the U.S. is doing. It’s because the United States continues to be the one country that people expect can do more than just simply protect their borders. But that does not mean that we have to get involved with everything immediately. We have to think through strategically what’s going to be in our long-term national interests, even as we work cooperatively internationally to do everything we can to put pressure on those who would kill innocent civilians. John M. Doyle, “Teaming Up,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, August 19, 2013. This year, the Pentagon has firmed up plans to skim approximately 4,000 operational and intelligence experts from the uniformed services to field the now more than 100 teams that will play both digital offense and defense against enemies seeking to attack the U.S. and its vital computer networks. Some teams are already being fielded, although officials will not say exactly how many or where they are located. A Pentagon press officer said a number of teams are “prioritized” to be operational by the end of September. More will be added in the next few years. In all, 13 National Mission Teams will conduct “full-spectrum cyber operations” to defend against threats to the nation and its critical infrastructure; 27 Combat Mission Teams will provide support to the nine combatant commands, “and when authorized,” will offer cyber options and capabilities to consider. Commanders then will determine how best to integrate them into contingency plans as targets are assessed and determinations made on how to best defeat or neutralize, said Air Force Lt. Col. Damien Pickart. Letter from Gen. Martin Dempsey to Rep. Eliot Engel, Released by: U.S. House of Representative Foreign Affairs Committee, August 19, 2013. Syria today is not about choosing between two sides but rather about choosing one among many sides. It is my belief that the side we choose must be ready to promote their interests and ours when the balance shifts in their favor. Today, they are not. State of the Union with Candy Crowley, CNN, August 18, 2013. Sen. John McCain: “We do have influence, but when you don’t use that influence, then you do not have that influence.” Jim Michaels, “U.S. military needs Egypt for access to critical area,” USA Today, August 17, 2013. During the past year, more than 2,000 U.S. military aircraft flew through Egyptian airspace, supporting missions in Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East, according to U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the region. About 35 to 45 U.S. 5th Fleet naval ships pass through the Suez Canal annually, including carrier strike groups, according to the Bahrain-based fleet. Egypt has allowed U.S. warships to be expedited, which often means getting to the head of a very long line of ships waiting for access to the canal. Indira A. R. Lakshmanan, “Iraq Open to U.S. Drone Strikes on Terrorists,” Bloomberg, August 17, 2013. Al-Qaeda terror attacks have become such a deadly epidemic in Iraq that the government in Baghdad is seeking U.S. advisers, air surveillance or even drone strikes, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said yesterday. “We cannot fight these increasing terrorist” threats alone, Zebari said in an interview with reporters in Washington. Zebari credited the U.S. with “vast experience” breaking up al-Qaeda cells in Iraq, and said that expertise in intelligence, analysis and targeting was lost when U.S. forces pulled out of his country in December 2011. (3PA: In April, I argued that the Obama administration has made a good choice in deciding not to authorize drone strikes in Iraq at the previous request of Iraqi officials.) Barbara Opall-Rome, “Israel Seeks Increase in Annual US Aid,” Defense News, August 15, 2013. Israel is seeking a surge in future US Foreign Military Financing (FMF) grants not only to support its growing security requirements, but to offset the impact of increasingly advanced US arms sales to other countries in the volatile region.

Gregory D. Johnsen, “Did an 8-Year-Old Spy for America?” The Atlantic, August 14, 2013. At the time of the meeting, the boy didn’t know that the United States had decided to kill a man named Adnan al-Qadhi, and had turned to its allies in Yemen for assistance. Now the Yemeni government needed the child’s help. The Republican Guard officers told him what they wanted him to do: plant tiny electronic chips on the man he had come to think of as a surrogate father. The boy knew and trusted the officers; they were his biological father’s friends. He told them he would try. He would be their spy. “I climbed on the table where his coat was and put [a tracking chip] in his pocket,” Barq says…Neither the boy nor the man who had taken him in off the street could have known it yet, but by that point, Adnan al-Qadhi was effectively dead. All that was left was for a drone operator to push a button that would fire a missile. Andy Greenberg and Ryan Mac, “How a ‘Deviant’ Philosopher Built Palantir, a CIA-Funded Data-Mining Juggernaut,” Forbes, August 14, 2013. Palantir lives the realities of its customers: the NSA, the FBI and the CIA–an early investor through its In-Q-Tel venture fund–along with an alphabet soup of other U.S. counterterrorism and military agencies. In the last five years Palantir has become the go-to company for mining massive data sets for intelligence and law enforcement applications, with a slick software interface and coders who parachute into clients’ headquarters to customize its programs… The bottom line: A CIA-funded firm run by an eccentric philosopher has become one of the most valuable private companies in tech, priced at between $5 billion and $8 billion in a round of funding the company is currently pursuing… Eric Schmitt, “Embassies Open, but Yemen Stays on Terror Watch,” The New York Times, August 11, 2013. Mr. Obama also said in May that targeted killing operations needed to be tightly limited. The United States carries out strikes only against terrorists who pose a “continuing and imminent threat” to Americans, he said, and only when it is determined it would be impossible to detain them, rather than kill them. But the increased reliance on drones in Yemen suggests the limit of the resources the United States can employ in combating the new threats. A senior American official said over the weekend that the most recent terrorist threat “expanded the scope of people we could go after” in Yemen. “Before, we couldn’t necessarily go after a driver for the organization; it’d have to be an operations director,” said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss delicate intelligence issues. “Now that driver becomes fair game because he’s providing direct support to the plot.” Senior American intelligence officials said last week that none of the about three dozen militants killed so far in the drone strikes were “household names,” meaning top-tier leaders of the affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. But the American official said the strikes had targeted “rising stars” in the Yemen network, people who were more likely to be moving around and vulnerable to attack. (3PA: Lara Jakes and Adam Goldman also reported this week:  “Tracking and eliminating al-Qaida operatives in Yemen hasn’t been easy for the U.S....So frustrated was the CIA at one point, the spy agency considered killing the couriers passing messages in an attempt to disrupt the terrorist group’s plans, said a former senior U.S. official. The idea was dropped because the couriers were not involved in lethal operations.”) Bryan Bender, “Many D.C. Think Tanks Now Players in Partisan Wars,” The Boston Globe, August 11, 2013. It is a new and startlingly aggressive role for a leading Washington research institution, even one with the ideological underpinnings of Heritage, and emblematic of a larger trend. Not long ago, Washington’s think tanks constituted a rarefied world of policy-minded scholars supported by healthy endowments and quietly sought solutions to some of the nation’s biggest challenges. But now Congress and the executive branch are served a limitless feast of supposedly independent research from hundreds of nonprofit institutions that are pursuing fiercely partisan agendas and are funded by undisclosed corporations, wealthy individuals, or both… Some say Washington’s once-heralded “ideas industry” steadily looks like a “think tank-industrial complex.” (3PA: If you’re interested in how CFR is funded, please read our annual report.) Peter Wallsten, “Lawmakers Say Obstacles Limited Oversight of NSA’s Telephone Surveillance Program,” Washington Post, August 10, 2013. [House permanent select committee on intelligence chairman, Rep. Mike] Rogers said “very few members” take advantage of his invitations to receive quarterly staff briefings on counterterrorism operations, and others skipped briefings on the NSA bulk surveillance. (3PA: If true, this is yet another depressing example of lax congressional oversight of U.S. targeted killings policy, since it is during these quarterly briefings where drone strikes are reviewed. As Rogers stated on the House floor in December 2012:  “We never really did covert-action reviews, except for sporadically. Now we do regularly, quarterly, and monthly covert-action reviews on this committee to make sure that we get it right, that they get it right.” Apparently, “very few members” are attending these.) Jon R. Lindsay, "Stuxnet and the Limits of Cyber Warfare," Security Studies, August 2013. The emerging literature on the Cyber Revolution is uneven, but three widely held beliefs can be identified. Together these can be taken as a thesis that critical economic and military infrastructure is dangerously vulnerable because the internet gives military weaker actors asymmetric advantages, offense is becoming easier while defense is growing harder, and the difficulty of attributing the attacker’s identity undermines deterrence. However, the empirical facts of the only major, publicly known case of deliberate mechanical disruption via cyber means do not bear these assumptions out. Indeed, Stuxnet can be interpreted to support the opposite conclusions: cyber capabilities can marginally enhance the power of stronger actors over weaker actors, the complexity of weaponization makes cyber offense less easy and cyber defense more feasible than generally appreciated, and cyber options are most attractive when strategic deterrence is intact. There is reason to believe that the considerable social and technical uncertainties associated with cyber operations will significantly blunt their revolutionary potential. (369)