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Not content with driving America into bankruptcy the president is set to announce a new US policy on nuclear weapons that will severely reduce the conditions the United States would consider using nuclear weapons, even in self defense. Obama sat down with the NY Times and laid out his plans. Discussing his approach to nuclear security the day before formally releasing his new strategy, Mr. Obama described his policy as part of a broader effort to edge the world toward making nuclear weapons obsolete, and to create incentives for countries to give up any nuclear ambitions. To set an example,...

SNIP Obama said last month the new plan, delayed by months of internal deliberations, would "reduce the number and role of nuclear weapons in our National Security Strategy, even as we maintain a safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent." He now faces the challenge of lending credibility to his arms control push while not alarming allies under the U.S. defense umbrella or limiting room to maneuver in dealing with emerging nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea. SNIP

President Obama took the unusual step Wednesday afternoon of issuing a special denunciation of Cuba's human rights policies, after a year of advocating improved relations after nearly a half-century of political estrangement with the island neighbor. "Instead of embracing an opportunity to enter a new era," Obama said (full text below), "Cuban authorities continue to respond to the aspirations of the Cuban people with a clenched fist." As recently as last summer at a Caribbean summit, Obama and Raul Castro talked separately of opening discussions on a wide range of issues including human rights. The country's semi-retired revolutionary leader, brother...

-SNIP- This pattern of comparatively low scores for the handling of signature domestic policy priorities and higher scores for the handling of foreign policy may be due to several factors. -snip- If I were in the White House, however, I would be concerned about yet another possible explanation: perhaps the more the president talks about an issue the more he drives his own numbers on that issue down. I would worry about that because as a national security policy person, I do not want the president's political advisors to have a perverse incentive to avoid talking about the war. -snip-...

The custom is for every American president to put together a working paper that re-examines the government's stance on nuclear weapons. The document is in effect a summary of the main principles of the incoming administration's nuclear policy and a statement of the new president's intentions on the future of America's nuclear stockpile. Two presidents have produced such documents since the end of the Cold War: Bill Clinton in 1994 and George W. Bush in 2002. Now it's Barack Obama's turn to publish a statement that will set out his nuclear policy. Expectations are especially high this time around. Since...

Spencer Ackerman has offered a thoughtful response to my earlier post on the lack of strategic thinking emanating from the Obama Administration and his comments give me an opportunity to clarify my thoughts. Spencer, perhaps in a glass half full sort of way, sees a method to the Obama Administration's madness, but I think he tends to place far too much on emphasis on words rather than actions. One can certainly argue that Bob Gates has talked about re-calibrating civilian and military elements of national security, but if you read between the lines what you might actually see is a...

There was a pretty interesting article in the Washington Post today about Hillary Clinton's tenure at State Department and it pretty much confirmed my suspicions about our Secretary of State - she's a great public diplomat and administrator, but not much of a strategic thinker. As Stewart Patrick noted, she struggles with priorities and questioned whether she has a "grand strategic vision." This was basically part of the deal when Obama picked her; Hillary would serve as a great "face" for America to the world; she would invest time and energy in public diplomacy, something that was critically important after...

The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire by Edward N. Luttwak Belknap Harvard, 498 pp. Civilization in the city of Rome was extinguished by the year 476, but scholars today recognize that the Roman Empire continued to thrive in its eastern capital of Constantinople, in what we call the Byzantine Empire. As Edward Luttwak notes, the Byzantines did not use the word "Byzantine." They called themselves Romans, and their enemies called them Romans as well. The Byzantine Empire carried on Roman traditions of civilization, commerce, law, and education for nearly a thousand years until they met a heroic end...

President Obama's top national security advisers will within days present him with an agonizing choice on how to guide U.S. nuclear weapons policy for the rest of his term. Does he substantially advance his bold pledge to seek a world free of nuclear weapons by declaring that the "sole purpose" of the U.S. arsenal is to deter other nations from using them? Or does he embrace a more modest option, supported by some senior military officials, that deterrence is the "primary purpose"? The difference may seem semantic, but such words, which will be contained in a document known as the...

Washington's review of US nuclear doctrine has been delayed yet again awaiting the president's final say, but the existing draft falls well short of the expectations Obama raised last year in Prague The much-delayed Nuclear Posture Review was due out today. It had previously been expected on December 1, and then February 1. Now the talk is of late March or even early April - perhaps April 5, to mark the first anniversary of Barack Obama's landmark speech last year in Prague. That speech is one of the reasons for the delay. Obama pledged America would work towards a "world...

WASHINGTON — U.S. troops are still in Iraq. More are headed into Afghanistan. Defense spending is up. Gay troops still can’t serve openly in the military. So where is the dramatically overhauled Pentagon that President Barack Obama’s opponents — and supporters — predicted not long ago? Just over a year after Obama took the reins as commander in chief, the most sweeping changes expected of the new president’s military policy haven’t taken hold. Despite two wars overseas, Obama’s focus has remained on domestic issues, such as the health care reform fight and the still-struggling economy. Military topics, while hardly an...

Why do the United States and its military/political leaders and strategists still languish in failed strategies from World War II to the present? Fact: Jihadists with small arms and IEDS in faraway places cannot harm the United States so there is no reason to order massive armies that require large and extensive bases and massive logistical support to fight them on their home turf. But that is the essence of failed “counterinsurgency” (COIN) strategies that have bewitched US military political leaders. Yes, we have made great and innovative technological advances in weapons systems in the air, sea, and ground, in...

Abstract: The Obama Administration has proposed an FY 2011 defense budget that is inconsistent with U.S. security commitments and the Administration's own Quadrennial Defense Review. Under the Administration's current budget outline, total defense spending would decline from $722.1 billion (4.9 percent of GDP) in FY 2010 to $698.2 billion (3.6 percent) in FY 2015. Inadequate funding will lead to shortfalls in manpower levels, modernization, operational capacity, strategy, and/or force structure, thereby exposing the American people and U.S. friends and allies to an unacceptable level of risk. On February 1, 2010, the Obama Administration released its defense budget proposal as part...

The nation’s main counterterrorism center, created in response to the intelligence failures in the years before Sept. 11, is struggling because of flawed staffing and internal cultural clashes, according to a new study financed by Congress. The result, the study concludes, is a lack of coordination and communication among the agencies that are supposed to take the lead in planning the fight against terrorism, including the C.I.A. and the State Department. The findings come just weeks after the National Counterterrorism Center was criticized for missing clear warning signs that a 23-year-old Nigerian man was said to be plotting to blow...

The facts do not suggest that America is any less safe under the leadership of President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday. Powell said that a number of security programs set up under former President George W. Bush, including the Transportation Security Administration, are working well and the U.S. troops are aggressively pursuing the enemy. “I don’t know where that claim comes from,” Powell said. “The bottom line answer is that the nation is still at risk..but to suggest that somehow we’ve become much less safer because of the administration isn’t born out by the facts.”...

The politics of national security has become more volatile lately. Republicans are increasingly emphasizing national security in hopes of electoral gains in 2010. Their push has raised fears that existentially important security issues have become too political for the nation's good. Whether or not that's true, Democrats will have to push back, and liberals are worried that they are struggling. GOP Splitting Congressional Dems from Obama Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent writes, "Congressional Dems have no message or strategy on national security, and they’re getting badly outworked by the GOP on the issue." Republicans have a "very specific strategy" with...

The Pentagon's long-awaited Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) is out. By law, the major defense strategy must look forward 20 years and delineate how the U.S. will structure its armed forces. The QDR is supposed to outline the Pentagon's threat assessments, military strategy, force structure, and budgetary plans, and it should establish a road map for defense programs that will prepare for an uncertain future. Because defense policy is subordinate to foreign policy, the strategy must take its cue from the President's National Security Strategy (NSS). The President's foreign policy strategy must follow from the nation's vital interests rather than vice...

Earlier this weekend, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin told Chris Wallace in a Fox News interview that the Obama administration’s position on dissent is that detractors should “sit down and shut up.” The Huffington Post crowd immediately jumped on the statement, saying it couldn’t be supported. Well, 24 hours later, White House homeland-security adviser John Brennan put this argument to rest by publishing a blog in USA Today that not only tells Americans to sit down and shut up but also accuses them of “serv[ing] the goals of al-Qaeda” if they question the president’s national-security strategy — as if two-sided...

John Brennan, the deputy national security adviser and top counterterrorism aide to President Obama, has come under increasing fire recently over the government’s handling of Umar Abdulmutallab. Republican critics have complained that the Detroit bomber was read his Miranda rights too quickly, meaning vital intelligence could not be extracted from him, and called for him to be treated as an enemy combatant and therefore subejct to military tribunal. Both Brennan and the White House said Republicans were ‘playing politics’, with Brennan claiming that ‘unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda’ (as opposed to the founded fear-mongering that Brennan would...

Scene: The White House Situation Room. Event: A massive cyber attack has turned the cellphones and computers of tens of millions of Americans into weapons to shut down the Internet. A cascading series of events then knocks out power for most of the East Coast amid hurricanes and a heat wave. Is the assault on cellphones an armed attack? In a crisis, what power does the government have to order phone and Internet carriers to allow monitoring of their networks? What level of privacy can Americans expect? A war game, sponsored by a nonprofit group and attended by former top-ranking...