PSA would like to congratulate Ambassador Anthony Lake on his appointment as the Executive Director of UNICEF.  We firmly believe that Amb. Lake will bring both wisdom and compassion to the challenge of protecting vulnerable children, while also helping to stabilize and support societies around the world. Unfortunately, Amb. Lake’s new position at UNICEF necessitates that he stepped down from his position as a member of PSA’s Advisory Board. While we will miss Amb. Lake’s leadership and support, we are encouraged to see his formidable experience and ability at work at UNICEF.

After over a year of rollercoaster US-Russia talks on a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), it appears the two sides have finally reached a deal. Securing a new US-Russia nuclear agreement has been central to the Administration’s broader nuclear nonproliferation and arms control agenda from day one, and has, over the past year, become a key litmus test of Obama’s ability to deliver on big promises, especially the US-Russia “reset” policy, and its implications for forging a united front against Iranian nuclear proliferation.

For nuclear weapons watchers, the months since December 5, 2009, when the original START treaty expired but no new agreement was in sight, were especially tense. Yet it appears the deal has come in just under the wire before three (at least rhetorically) important 2010 milestones: First, the anniversary of Obama’s April 5, 2009 speech on nuclear disarmament in Prague; second, the April 12-13 nuclear materials security summit to be hosted by President Obama in Washington, DC; and third, the May 2010 Review Conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which will convene 189 nations in New York. Each of these events presents a major opportunity for the Administration to make political hay in the glow of the new agreement, and potentially to add momentum to its broader nuclear policy agenda.

So is the new treaty a triumph for the Administration? Not yet. (more…)

If you had been watching the historic debate on health care reform this past weekend, it wouldn’t be hard to believe that bipartisanship was dead.  The process could not have been more vitriolic.  It degenerated to the point of racial and homophobic slurs being yelled at Congressmen.  And that was before Congressman Randy Neugebauer yelled “baby killer” from the floor of the House.  Fox News served as the mouthpiece of the Republican party as did MSNBC for the Democrats.  There were protests and counter protests.  The Chamber of Commerce attacked the bill arguing that it would cost jobs while Catholic nuns rose up in its defense.

In the end, it passed. And I’m glad it did.  At the same time, I was deeply disappointed by how the debate sank to such a low level.  However, I don’t think that this is a necessarily a harbinger of things to come, particularly when it comes to foreign policy.  Here’s why:  the health care debate was framed (incorrectly in my view) in terms of the deep philosophical differences between the parties.   Republicans portrayed the bill as a government takeover of health care.  Democrats portrayed the bill as addressing a fundamental human right – affordable health care for all Americans.  At the root of this debate is one’s view of the role that government should have in society.  Getting bipartisan agreement on such deep philosophical differences is going to be difficult indeed!  Considering how the bill was framed by both sides, the intensity of the debate does not altogether surprise me.  Democrats and Republicans clearly have very different philosophical views about the role of government and the health care debate was the framework in which that debate played out.  What is most disconcerting is the name calling and deeply offensive language used by some in the process.  (more…)

For the past four years, I have served on the Task Force on a Unified Security Budget for the United States, with specific responsibility for developing the homeland security component of the group’s annual report. That report attempts to bring together all of the major components of national security spending (including “offense,” mostly composed of Department of Defense military programs; “prevention,” primarily diplomatic, foreign assistance and non-proliferation activities; and “defense,” which is where homeland security efforts are placed) into one “budget,” where consideration can be given to the optimal mix of tools for achieving our national security goals.

In the homeland security arena, our attention has shifted over the years from primarily focusing on areas that we felt needed additional resources (for example, in the FY 2008 report, we recommended approximately $15 billion in additions to the Bush Administration’s request for homeland security programs, with most of the proposed additions coming in the areas of public health, first responder grants and rail and transit security) to, in our most recent analysis, calling for improvements in priority-setting and accountability.  As was noted in the FY 2010 Unified Security Budget, “The consensus judgment on the country’s homeland security mission has been clear for several years: that this new, urgent priority, thrust upon the government and cobbled together in an atmosphere of post-9/11 anxiety has become a sprawling, poorly coordinated set of tasks and bureaucracies in dire need of clear priorities and targeted funding increases.” (more…)

Last Friday, Reps. Howard Berman (D- CA) and Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) introduced the Global Science Program for Security, Competitiveness, and Diplomacy Act, which proposes an increase in the application of science and scientific engagement in America’s foreign policy.  This follows the recent appointment of U.S. Science Envoys by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and according to its authors, “formalizes the Obama Administration’s intention to enhance international science cooperation.”

Science and technology (S&T) remain among the most admired aspects of American society, even among nations without a wholly favorable opinion of the U.S.  Science has the power to inform decisions and serve as a core instrument of diplomacy.  Science cooperation is critical to America’s ability to win worldwide respect and support and can help build bridges for peace and prosperity worldwide. (more…)

A very unique sort of blood drive is currently underway in Bangkok. Outside Government House, hundreds of Thais have lined up to donate their blood to the cause- the political cause, that is. The bags of blood are not intended for medical use, but are instead being ceremoniously splattered on the gates and pavement of Government House, a visceral and highly visible symbol of anger with the Thai government.

The congealed blood decorating Government House is simply the latest stunt of the latest protest against the latest government in Bangkok. Once again, tens of thousands of protestors clad in red have shut down parts of Thailand’s steaming capital in an attempt to force the current prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, to dissolve Parliament. Like the last few times the Red Shirts stormed Bangkok, the likely outcome of the protests will be a messy clean-up job, a handful of deaths- already, two soldiers were wounded when grenades were fired on a Bangkok military camp- and another blow to Thailand’s vital tourism industry, already shaken by the week-long takeover of Bangkok’s international airport in 2008.  What we are not likely to see, however, is any sort of meaningful political movement away from the vicious cycle of political in-fighting and corruption that has plagued Thailand’s government and effectively divided the country for the past several years.

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It is a good thing that that Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, never tried to enlist in the U.S. military. Judging by her recent actions it appears she would never be able to say the oath of enlistment with a straight face. I mean the part where one swears to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution, which includes little things like subsequent amendments, such as those in the Bill of Rights.

What I refer to is when she and Bill Kristol, via their “Keep America Safe“ campaign, accused nine lawyers in the Justice Department, who had represented Guantanamo detainees of being the “al-Qaida Seven,” of working in the “Department of Jihad,” Perhaps Cheney and Kristol are simply exercising their First Amendment right to say anything that gets them on a talk show. After all, the right to cynically accuse someone of being a terrorist is protected under the Constitution. Unfortunately, for the rest of us, in so doing they trample underfoot other Constitutional rights that benefit all of us.

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Ordinary Americans are, by and large, pragmatists about legal matters.  They tend to favor legal outcomes that deftly balance competing considerations.  Outcomes that achieve this balance do not do a disservice to broad swaths of people but instead aim to enhance or at the minimum preserve meaningful social policies.  Pragmatism about law, in other words, is really a product of thinking clearly about what the law is for:  the law serves the American people, not the other way around.

Unfortunately, the currently constituted Supreme Court, led by that fearless foe of pragmatism, John G. Roberts, does not care that most Americans loathe the notion that judges ought to carry out their duties without the interests of the citizenry in mind.  Constitutional law, as Roberts himself is keen to emphasize, has nothing to do with sound public policy and should not be tempered by any moral or social concerns, however relevant they may seem to the electorate.  Constitutional law is a free-floating, self-sustaining set of rules that answers to no one, not even the American public.

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Last week well-known neoconservative Robert Kagan had a column in the Washington Post and Foreign Policy magazine that argued that bipartisanship in foreign policy was alive and well in the Obama administration.  Although, I agree with Kagan’s central argument, I have issues with his rationale about why this came about and his prescriptions for the future.

Kagan writes,

Unnoticed amid the wailing about “broken government,” a broad bipartisan consensus is emerging in one unlikely area: foreign policy. On Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran — the most expensive and potentially dangerous foreign challenges facing the United States — little separates the Obama administration from most Republican leaders in and out of Congress.

Indeed, the fact that President Obama and many Republicans generally agree on the way forward in these major foreign policy challenges – despite sometimes sharp rhetoric to the contrary from both sides – is quite an achievement.  Or perhaps these bipartisan achievements appear noteworthy more so because the debate on domestic issues such as health care and the economy has become so caustic.

Why did this happen?  Kagan argues that it’s because Democrats now have the responsibility of governing and can’t just be critics.  That’s part of it.  The other part, though, is that the second term of the Bush administration was actually much more centrist than the first. This was in response to the dramatic overreach of the first term.  So, on many of the big issues, there was already much more consensus moving forward.

So, many conclude, in foreign policy, what’s the difference between having a Democrat or a Republican in charge?  I can’t say exactly how John McCain would have governed.  Perhaps the outcomes on these three big issues would have been similar.  My argument, however, is that it’s not just the outcomes that we should examine.  We also need to examine process.   In foreign policy, the process by which one reaches a policy decision is quite important and has tremendous ramifications for how the U.S. public and the world perceives that policy. (more…)

Recently, Dr. Victor Asal and Dr. R. Karl Rethemeyer from the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy located at the University of Albany, State University of New York presented their ongoing research project, Big Allied and Dangerous: The Behavior of Terrorist Organizations (BAAD).  The project, funded by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence, based at the University of Maryland, focuses on creating and maintaining a comprehensive database of terrorist organizational characteristics.  Currently, there is a plethora of event data (attacks) but very little data on the organizations that use violence themselves.  Understanding attacks is important in order to identify trends but understanding the organizations that commit the attacks has the greatest potential for the intelligence community.

The database has the potential to empirically demonstrate which characteristics and relationships make terrorist organizations lethal and effective at achieving its desired goals. The information could help inform homeland security, defense, and the intelligence communities on resource management decisions.  The findings may also offer a second opinion based on statistics as an additional layer of analysis in addition to the contributions of Subject Matter Experts (SME’s), which are widely used to develop policy.

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