Month: August 2013
Peace picks August 5-9
Summer doldrums, but some good pickings:
1. Dissecting the Pentagon’s Strategic Choices and Management Review, Brookings Institution, Tuesday, August 6, 2013 / 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Venue: Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036
Speakers: Marvin Kalb, Michael E. O’hanlon, Mackenzie Eaglen
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel recently summarized the results of his Strategic Choices and Management Review (SCMR), an internal Pentagon process designed to assist the Department of Defense as it plans for a future period of uncertain and significantly constrained defense spending. Deputy Secretary Ashton Carter also provided Congressional testimony on the subject. The review explored how the Pentagon might deal with at least two possible budget scenarios: the president’s own long-term plan, which calls for another $150 billion in ten-year defense savings beyond those mandated initially in the 2011 Budget Control Act, and the possibility that sequestration will stay in effect for a decade, requiring a full $500 billion in additional defense cuts relative to the same baseline.
On August 6, the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at Brookings will host a discussion on the usefulness of the SCMR as an analytical product which clarifies the kinds of changes that will be needed in the future, while also examining plans within it that may not be prudent. Panelists, among others, will include Mackenzie Eaglen of the American Enterprise Institute and Brookings Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon, author of Healing the Wounded Giant: Maintaining Military Preeminence While Cutting the Defense Budget (Brookings, 2013). Marvin Kalb, nonresident senior fellow at Brookings, will moderate the event.
After discussion, the panelists will take audience questions.
Register for the event here:
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Whining narcissist
The interview excerpts published in this morning’s Washington Post dash any hope that Egypt might get lucky and find a serious democrat in General Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, the July 3 coup leader and still Defense Minister. Normally I would gripe that the Post failed to publish the entire text, but it would be hard to read much more.
It’s not that Sissi doesn’t say interesting things. His annoyance at President Morsi’s disrespect for the Mubarak-appointed judiciary and other state institutions (read Egyptian army) and his disdain for the Brotherhood’s anti-nationalist, pan-Islamist political program confirm that the coup represents in part the revenge of the Mubarak deep state, which Morsi did relatively little to dismantle during his year in power.
But the whining screeches through:
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Forget the terrorism advice
How will you react to a State Department warning of a possible terrorist attack at an unspecified location sometime in the next 30 days? Your options are basically two:
- cancel your travel plans and hunker down in what you think is a safe place;
- ignore the warning and go about your business.
Before you decide, consider this: on the order of a dozen Americans are killed in terrorist acts each year, out of 300 million or so. Most die in Kabul and other far away places where the risks are higher. Even in 2001, when almost 3000 Americans were killed on 9/11, your odds were very good: less than 1 in 100,000 of being a victim. You and I take risks on that order every day: the odds of being killed in an automobile accident in any given year are at least 10 times higher. Read more
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
I wouldn’t want to start from here
Senators McCain and Graham are packing their bags for Cairo, reportedly having been asked to go by President Obama. EU High Representative Catherine Ashton has visited already, including a meeting at an undisclosed location with former President Morsi. The question is this: what should all these luminaries be telling the military-backed government and its Muslim Brotherhood opponents?
Abdul Rahman al Rashed, editor-in-chief of Asharq Al- Awsat, suggests:
Everything can be negotiated, except Mursi’s return to the presidency—a demand that the Brotherhood knows will be impossible to fulfil. Thus, the solution can be as follows: a consensual cabinet, a short-term interim government and internationally supervised elections in which the Brotherhood participates. Then, everyone can return home claiming that they have got what they wanted.
My guess is that the senators will be taking a line close to this, insisting on a timetable for elections and as broad a government as possible to prepare for it. In his less than articulate way, Lindsay Graham has suggested as much: Read more
RSS - Posts
