You can criticize Barack Obama—and fear not, I’m about to—but he has been a consequential president. Obamacare, his signature domestic accomplishment, is a substantial step toward the government-run health care program that Democrats have long desired. It may be hard to get rid of, even with a Republican president and congressional majorities. Undoing the effects of Obama foreign and defense policy won’t be any easier. Beginning with the Libya intervention, the president has been charting a new direction for American strategy and acting with great energy to create a fait accompli that will make it difficult for a successor to reverse course. The leading-from-behind Obama Doctrine consists of three main tenets: a smaller, secret, and “silent” approach to the Long War in the greater Middle East; a “Pacific pivot” that would deter China from the temptations of aggression but ask allies to carry much of the burden; and a restructuring of the U.S. military to forestall any future return to a more ambitious—and more traditional—form of American leadership.

The silent war

Embarking on the campaign that would make him president, Barack Obama began with a stinging criticism of George W. Bush’s Iraq war, which he charged was a “dangerous distraction” from the war on al Qaeda and in Afghanistan. It “should have been apparent to President Bush and Sen. [John] McCain, the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was.” Thus, Obama wrote in a July 2008 New York Times op-ed, “Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and al Qaeda has a safe haven.”

Obama has been resolute in viewing the post-9/11 wars narrowly as antiterror campaigns rather than in the larger context of traditional U.S. strategy across the greater Middle East. A more comprehensive view would consider the 2003 Iraq war as an extension of a trend that can be traced to 1979—the year of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, of the Iranian hostage crisis, of the seizure of the Grand Mosque by a band of Sunni extremists, and of Saddam Hussein’s rise to power in Baghdad. From that time on, the downward spiral of events across the region has made it increasingly difficult for the United States to preserve its previous posture as an “offshore balancer,” working through local regimes and using military force only to tip the scales to preserve “stability” and the flow of oil. After the Cold War, when the prime directive was no longer to limit Soviet influence, the local regimes themselves were the biggest threat to stability; our “partners” became the problem.

With Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the U.S.-led response in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, the offshore balancer came ashore. We had “no opinion” on Arab-on-Arab disputes, “such as your dispute with Kuwait,” as Ambassador April Glaspie unfortunately told Saddam Hussein before he sent his army across the border. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney promised the Saudi king that once Saddam’s army was expelled from Iraq’s “19th province,” U.S. troops would return home. But having leapt over the fence, the United States could not go back, even as it was reluctant to go forward. The contradictions of this half-in, half-out posture played out for a dozen years. Even before 9/11, the Clinton-era effort to “keep Saddam in his box” appeared to be in tatters. After 9/11, George W. Bush decided that “pursuing stability at the expense of liberty does not lead to peace,” and that the United States had no better choice than to try to provoke a deeper transformation of the political order in the Middle East.

If Bush saw the global war on terror as a way to expand American involvement in the Middle East, Barack Obama’s focus on terror is an attempt to limit it. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen sees this “radical shift from President Bush’s war on terror” and dubs Obama’s way of war the “doctrine of silence.” Cohen rightly argues that “there has seldom been so big a change in approach to U.S. strategic policy with so little explanation.”

The signature instruments of the silent war are remotely piloted aircraft—“drones,” as the headline writers love to call them—covert action and special operations forces, and computer or “cyber” attacks. With the withdrawal from Iraq and the drawdown in Afghanistan, U.S. conventional forces will no longer be in the “regime change” or counterinsurgency business but will man an increasingly “offshore” framework with limited strike capability and, if needed, the ability to patrol contested waterways like the Strait of Hormuz.

The administration’s love affair with drones has gotten the lion’s share of attention. In late December, the Washington Post’s Greg Miller sketched Obama’s “emerging global apparatus for drone killing”:

In the space of three years, the administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other adversaries. The apparatus involves dozens of secret facilities, including two operational hubs on the East Coast, virtual Air Force cockpits in the Southwest and clandestine bases in at least six countries on two continents.

The setup artfully combines military and CIA assets to maximize operational effectiveness and mask the size and scope of the effort. Strikes are “increasingly assembled à la carte,” reports Miller, “piecing together personnel and equipment in ways that allow the White House to toggle between separate legal authorities that govern the use of lethal force.”

The article’s account of the September 30 killing of Anwar al-Awlaki reveals the intricacy of this “toggling” campaign. As the CIA went hunting the American-born cleric whose Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula organization in Yemen had sponsored a number of attempted terrorist attacks, including that by “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on Christmas Day 2009, it assembled a fleet of its own Predator and Reaper drones reinforced by those of the Joint Special Operations Command. So seamless was the Awlaki strike that it remains unclear whether a CIA or JSOC aircraft actually delivered the lethal missile, though the administration justified the killing under CIA legal authority. When Awlaki’s son was similarly killed two weeks later, however, it was done under authority granted to the Defense Department by post-9/11 legislation.

While the administration’s toggling legal posture has provoked criticism from both the liberal left and the libertarian right, Obama’s use of drones is generally praised. “What this does is it takes a lot of Americans out of harm’s way .  .  . without having to send in a special ops team or drop a 500-pound bomb,” says Sen. Dianne Feinstein, head of the Select Committee on Intelligence. The Bush administration had increasingly employed drones, conducting about 44 strikes in Pakistan and killing as many as 300 Taliban and al Qaeda operatives, according to the New America Foundation. But the Obama administration has become positively addicted to the drone war, having conducted nearly 250 strikes and widening operations to Yemen, Somalia, and surveillance of Iran, as the recent crash there of the larger and more sophisticated RQ-170 Sentinel indicates.

Obama’s successes—most spectacularly, the killing of Osama bin Laden—have given him great leeway to continue and expand the silent war, even among liberals looking for an alternative to out-and-out weakness. “Why do I approve of all this?” Roger Cohen asked himself.

Because the alternative—the immense cost in blood and treasure and reputation of the Bush administration’s war on terror—was so appalling. In just the same way, the results of a conventional bombing war against Iran would be appalling whether undertaken by Israel, the United States or a combination of the two.

Andrew Cummings of the Guardian seconds Cohen’s loud cheers for silent war when it comes to Iran. While allowing that a “covert campaign” would be “rife with physical, diplomatic and legal risks, [it] is the lesser of many evils.” Because he acknowledges that sanctions are unlikely to prevent Iran from deploying nuclear weapons, but finds a real war equally unappetizing, Cummings hopes that silent war will encourage Iran to reopen the “dialogue” on its nuke program. “Covert action creates the time and space for pressure to build, while”—presto!—“reducing the need for military action.”

Even the occasionally sensible David Ignatius of the Washington Post can go ga-ga for drones. After the Awlaki killing, he saw a “hint of deterrence” in the Obama way of war. Especially praiseworthy is that the drone war “recognizes the need for limits”:

We don’t have enough drones to kill all the enemies we will make if we turn the world into a free-fire zone. And there’s something important in the hint of a deterrence strategy: This is how wars end in the part of the world where al Qaeda arose—through a balance of mutual restraint that makes a de facto truce possible, even between the most bitter enemies.

The Asia pivot

The corollary to walking softly and carrying a silent stick in the greater Middle East is the equally bally-hooed strategic “pivot” to Asia—Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s term—that’s been a centerpiece of Obama administration rhetoric for the past six months. Prefacing his new “defense guidance,” the “first Pacific president” declared that “as we end today’s wars, we will focus on a broader range of challenges and opportunities, including the security and prosperity of the Asia Pacific.”

The Obama administration came to office convinced that a failure to pay sufficient attention to the Asia-Pacific region was the other giant strategic blunder of its Bush predecessors. Harvard’s Joseph Nye recently captured the fundamentals of administration thinking: “Asia’s return to the center of world affairs is the great power shift of the twenty-first century,” he wrote. “But, rather than keeping an eye on that ball, the United States wasted the first decade of this century mired in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Nye also agreed with National Security Adviser Tom Donilon’s fawning praise of the president: “[B]y elevating this dynamic region to one of our top strategic priorities, Obama is showing his determination not to let our ship of state be pushed off course by prevailing crises.”

Never mind that the Democratic critique of the Bush administration after 9/11 was that it had been too concerned about great-power balances and had not paid enough attention to warnings about al Qaeda. Never mind, either, that until this year the White House had placed its hopes on a renewed effort to “engage” China, emphasizing issues such as trade and climate change that were supposed to be sources of cooperation rather than conflict. Never mind that it is in the nature of “prevailing crises” to, well, prevail—particularly those that involve a horrendous attack on American soil like 9/11. And, most of all, never mind that the Asia-Pacific region didn’t have to be “elevated” to “one of our top strategic priorities” for any previous president, at least from William McKinley onward; America’s actions through the 20th century transformed Asia as surely and as profoundly as Europe.

To the degree that the Obama pivot represents a new seriousness in responding to the security challenges of China’s rise as a global great power and its provocative military modernization, it’s a long overdue development. From the Clinton years onward, the United States has been hamstrung between the Scylla of “engagement” and the Charybdis of “containment,” at one point leading Zalmay Khalilzad, whose long career as a diplomat and strategist was capped by a tour as ambassador to Afghanistan, to coin the term “congagement.” In its defense guidance pledge to “rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region,” the Obama administration deserves credit for taking a more muscular rhetorical line than either Clinton or Bush. But its promise to “continue to make the necessary investments to ensure that we maintain regional access and the ability to operate freely” in places like the South China Sea where Beijing has become more bossy and intimidating is not borne out in the resources it would provide.

The peak of the pivot campaign came with Obama’s trip to Australia, where he announced that about 2,500 Marines would be based at Darwin, in northern Australia. “The United States is a Pacific power,” he told the Australian parliament, “and we are here to stay.” Indeed, for the 21st century, “the United States of America is ‘all in.’ ”

But Peter Beinart, contributor to the Daily Beast and often a channel for administration thinking, sees the Obama Asia pivot as more in line with the offshore balancing approach to the Middle East. “A token deployment of Marines in northern Australia notwithstanding,” he wrote, “the Obama administration’s strategy will be to buttress America’s naval presence in the Pacific and aid those nations on China’s periphery that fear its hegemonic ambitions.” Likewise, Kenneth Lieberthal, a former National Security Council official and longstanding China adviser to Democratic politicians, warns that an all-in approach runs “the longer-term risk that Asia will increasingly become a cost center for the United States (providing security is expensive), while the region will continue to serve as a growing profit center for China (due to its vast economic engagement).”

Cheap-suit superpower

The belief in American decline has become so deeply entrenched among the strategic smart set—which would probably construe the history of the 20th century as one giant “cost center”—that it has become a driving force. It represents much more than an analysis of events: It’s an opportunity to force the United States to shake off the sorrows of empire and snap back from imperial overstretch. The Obama administration doesn’t just seek a “rebalancing” of U.S. strategy, it intends to make a permanent retreat, by removing the military means of mischief. With a smaller force, we’ll resist the temptation to fight wars just because we can.

Tellingly, the commander in chief frames his new guidance to his troops as the strategy we can afford rather than as a strategy for peace (or, God forbid, victory). “We must put our fiscal house in order here at home,” says the third sentence of the president’s cover letter introducing his “Priorities for 21st Century Defense,” and “renew our long-term economic strength.” The touchstone is “the Budget Control Act of 2011, [which] mandates reductions in federal spending, including defense spending.” It is hardly surprising that Obama has promised to veto any legislation that would exempt the military from the draconian further cuts that sequestration would bring to future Pentagon budgets. Not going to let this crisis go to waste.

The administration certainly has profited from the Groundhog Day qualities of the debate about getting the government’s fiscal house in order: Washington wakes up to the horrors of the deficit and the debt and decides it’s time to make sure that “defense is on the table” along with domestic discretionary programs and that taxes shall not be raised nor entitlements restrained. If sequestration occurs this year, something like $1.3 trillion will have been chopped out of planned military spending during the Obama years—about $330 billion through 2010, $489 billion under the 2011 Budget Control Act, and at least another $500 billion under full sequestration. The landscape is littered with the corpses of procurement programs terminated early, like the F-22 Raptor, or killed in the womb, like the Army’s Future Combat Systems family of vehicles. The Obama administration has fulfilled Donald Rumsfeld’s dream of “skipping a generation” of modernization, but this is a second generation almost skipped.

While these are big numbers in the context of defense spending, they’re chicken feed when measured against the debt, the deficit, and the costs of baby boomer entitlements, which are only going to mount from here. The 2011 annual federal deficit was about $1.3 trillion, with total federal spending about $3.5 trillion. The 2011 defense budget, including the costs of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, was a little over $700 billion. The total federal debt has risen to $15 trillion, roughly the same as U.S. gross domestic product. According to the Congressional Budget Office’s June 2011 long-range budget forecast, a failure to tame -entitlement spending could double the debt again as the boomers retire en masse. Even eliminating the U.S. military entirely would have no serious effect on the government’s balance sheets.

To fully limn the extent of America’s defense decline would be a long and lugubrious task, so consider the strategic bottom line: The Obama administration has admitted that the U.S. military will no longer be large enough to fight two wars at once. This has been the standard of American global power since Franklin Roosevelt’s time, one observed and saluted by every president since. As Colin Powell put it in 1989, we had put a “shingle outside our door saying ‘Superpower Lives Here.’ ” And while it’s true that the active duty forces of the United States have often fallen short of this standard, “two” was the eternal answer to the classic question of defense planning: “How much is enough?”

In leaking this change to the press, an anonymous administration official described Obama’s strategy as “spoiling” any second-war act of aggression while fighting the first. And the defense guidance goes on at length about “reversibility” as a “key part of our decision calculus” when defense cuts have to be made. In other words, the Obama Pentagon knows this is a very bad idea to begin with.

Irreversible?

Unfortunately, reversing the effects of the Obama way of war will be extremely difficult. Suppose a new Republican commander in chief were determined to lead a resurgence of American power. Could he easily renegotiate a status-of-forces agreement in Iraq that would allow for the redeployment of U.S. troops to a level that would jump-start domestic reconciliation and diminish Iranian influence? Could he convince Hamid Karzai or his successor that this time we mean business? What would it take to genuinely change the calculus of the Pakistani army? Would the president have the military means to do more than delay or disrupt Iran’s drive to become a nuclear power? To really establish a military posture in the Asia-Pacific that would reassure the Japanese, South Koreans, Taiwanese, Filipinos, Indonesians, Australians, and Indians while deterring China? What defense investments could he make while expecting to see a tangible return in the course of a four-year term?

The Obama administration has been at pains to practice what it calls “smart power,” and there is undeniably a consistent and logically coherent narrative to the Obama way of war. On the other hand, history favors the constant more often than the clever. This is particularly the case for Americans; our most successful commanders have not been the most brilliant ones.

Obama’s way of war, his “rebalancing” of U.S. strategic priorities, and the damage done to American military power are already being felt in the world. The greater Middle East, never “stable” to begin with, is undergoing an epoch-defining political change—who knows where the Arab revolts will end, or what a nuclear Iran would mean?—while having its American security blanket ripped away. Our Asian allies, who have been begging for attention as China increasingly muscles its way around the region, may be cheered when the 2,500 Marines arrive in Australia, and be even happier if they pop up around the South China Sea on a regular basis, but they won’t see it as an “all in” commitment. And when the up-to-now sole superpower confesses it lacks the means to deter or fight simultaneous crises or conflicts, its assertions of leadership will ring hollow. The president vowed in his defense guidance that the American military will be the “best in the world.” That much is true. But the problem, since 9/11, has not been the quality of the force but its quantity.

Nations, like markets, look at both fundamentals and trends. The world’s developed and developing democracies, (also known as America’s allies) have been and remain eager to invest in the security that the United States provides. It’s not a cost center but a profit center for them. It’s a profit center for us, too—part of the reason the world invests in America, even with our Greek-like debt-to-GDP ratios and unfunded government liabilities. Barack Obama is seeking to reverse a century-long trend in international affairs—the energetic exercise of American power. And he’s well on his way to solidifying this dubious achievement.

Cross-posted from the Weekly Standard.

(flickr/White House/Pete Souza)

One of the key, underpinning elements of President Barack Obama’s new defense strategy is, ostensibly, its “reversibility”: the idea that changes to the size and shape of the U.S. military can be undone in a time of crisis. This applies most of all to the Army and Marine Corps, the branches set to suffer force cuts under the new “strategic guidance.” Administration officials insist that, should events so require, the U.S. military will have retained the core expertise to restore itself in a timely fashion. The American experience in war — particularly in the past 10 years — tells another story: that the concept of “reversibility” is specious and threatens to leave our armed forces dangerously unprepared for future conflicts.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have subjected a shrunken, post-Cold War U.S. military to severe strains. The Pentagon entered the “Long War” hampered not only by successive force cuts and deferred and cancelled modernization programs, but also by the pervasive belief that U.S. high-end technology would permit us to wage conflicts on our terms, with limited “boots-on-the-ground.” As violence in Iraq increased, however, the full consequences of the post-Cold War changes to force structure came into clear view: the military that had been billed as “leaner and meaner” lacked the numbers to carry out crucial missions. In order to properly resource a counterinsurgency effort in Iraq, even before the 2007 “surge,” the Marine Corps had been converted to a mission-set far from its amphibious bread and butter, and reservists of all branches had been called up in increasingly larger numbers. And it was only after the success of the surge in Iraq, and the tamping down of the violence there, that the Pentagon could even begin to think about shifting ground to Afghanistan, where the last “surge” troops did not arrive until September 2010 — roughly nine years after U.S. Special Forces and CIA operatives first arrived in theater. The role of reservists in these wars, while a testament to the character and dedication of our citizen-soldiers, has also illustrated that they are not interchangeable with active-duty, combat troops. Meanwhile, soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors have found themselves deployed at increased rates, with an accompanying toll on them and their families.

These strains have not gone unnoticed. Decisions were made during the Bush years to augment the “end-strength” of both the Army and Marine Corps, although even these upward adjustments did not bring with them the capacity to conduct, as strategy dictated at the time, two major regional contingency operations simultaneously, and were slow to come in any case. The full psychological effects of high-pace deployments are also not yet understood, although, already, higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder have appeared among veterans, and military brass suggest that retention, insulated so far by a poor economy, will worsen.

In short, restoring the strength of the U.S. military after pre-9/11 force cuts has taken time, and has come at a high cost. A smaller and less capable force ceded the initiative to our enemies, placed an enormous burden on the backs of the less than 1% of Americans who serve in uniform and meant that an immense sacrifice in blood and treasure had to be made to regain the upper hand in Iraq and, later, Afghanistan. And, even after 10 years, we have yet to overcome the legacy of the 1990s “peace dividend.” By many standards of readiness, the Army and Marine Corps — and the Air Force and Navy as well — are worse for the wear after two overlapping conflicts.

The Obama administration knows full well what the state of the military is. However, because it would rather shift the country’s spending priorities to domestic programs long favored by Democrats, it has willingly accepted, indeed gone beyond, what the 2011 Budget Control Act required in cuts to national security programs. To give this shift the patina of legitimacy, the administration has prepared a new “strategic guidance” that largely compounds the mistakes of the past. In the fiscal year 2013 budget, where the specific details of the president’s new strategy will be spelled out, we are likely to see deep end-strength cuts, a greater reliance on reserves and postponed modernization programs — all bolstered by the idea that, if anything goes wrong, we can quickly “regenerate” our military strength.

The new strategy comes both in the midst of a continuing war and with additional Pentagon budget cuts likely pending — the product of congressional “sequester” with the failed super committee. It is certain that President Obama’s decisions will leave his successor with constrained choices and greater risks in carrying out the country’s security commitments. Hoping that these constraints and risks can be mitigated by “reversibility” plans is a bet that history suggests is a long shot. Far better for Congress, and perhaps a new president, to challenge the administration’s assumptions and reverse course — a much sounder version of reversibility.

Cross-posted from the Daily Caller.

(flickr/U.S. Army/Spc. Kristina Truluck)

President Barack Obama yesterday unveiled a new national defense strategy creating a “leaner” force that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta allows will create “some level of additional but acceptable risk.” Moving away from the traditional two war strategy, and hinting at substantial reductions in Europe, the president presented a dramatic shift in global posture for the United States. We asked House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon for his thoughts on the president’s announcement:

This morning, the president and his military leaders announced they would jettison the United States’ long-held two war strategy. What do you see as the implications of this decision?

This is an unrealistic posture. It presumes that in the face of two existential challenges to American interests, the military would abrogate their responsibilities. In reality, our Armed Forces will fight to win on two fronts with insufficient manpower and resources. The president is clearly repeating the mistakes of the past – by providing a force far smaller than is sufficient to meet the threats we face. The possibility of two simultaneous contingency operations is real. One need only look at the current instability in North Korea and the threats coming from Iran, for an example.

The president also announced that tens of thousands of ground troops will be cut from the Force. What will that mean in reality for the United States in the world?

Quite simply, it puts us back on a pre-9/11 footing. It means that the next time we have to engage in a major ground operation, we won’t have the forces we need, just as we didn’t in Iraq and Afghanistan. We will go to war with the Army and Marine Corps we have, and that our forces will assume greater risks and suffer greater casualties to get the job done. Moreover, the president has announced these cuts before we have successfully concluded our mission in Afghanistan. It is not clear how these cuts will impact current operations or our contingency plans.

The Obama administration recently announced a “pivot” to Asia. When you look at the budget numbers, do you believe that such a “pivot” can realistically be supported?

I agree that the Asia Pacific is an under-resourced theater. But, it’s baffling that, in this fiscal environment, the president would be talking about a pivot to Asia before our work is done in the Middle East. The pivot East is realistic assuming we abandon our commitments and our allies elsewhere – it does not mean we will maintain our capabilities elsewhere and build up our presence in Asia. That’s the reality of these defense cuts. The president’s strategy, where he officially abandons America’s ability to fight two wars simultaneously, says this better than I could. We will be able to fight one war and “spoil” another. That’s political-speak for a one-dimensional force. The 21st century has grown into one of the most dynamic and challenging security landscapes in history, a time when our economy has never been more dependent on our military and our security. It’s astounding that the president still pays lip service to shrinking our “Cold War” military, as if the Soviet Union was the only justification for having a strong, capable defense that could react to the unforeseen, and protect our prosperity in globalized world.

What’s the take-away message for America’s adversaries in the world? What about our allies?

Simple. America will do less with less – until the next contingency. At that point, our military will be forced to go to war without the forces or capabilities it needs, costing us in both blood and treasure. It means our ability to lead will be called into question. It disrupts a globalized world, already deeply sensitive to and intolerant of instability. Our allies could seek alliances elsewhere. Our enemies could be emboldened. And if we do abdicate our role as global leader, which is largely driven by our military and economic strength, the vacuum will either be filled by another power that doesn’t share our values or the global order will slip into the same dangerous multipolarity that landed us in World I and World II. Make no mistake, shrinking your force does nothing to enhance flexibility or agility, as the president has claimed. Having fewer ships, for example, does not increase your flexibility to respond to various crises, like the Libya operation and relief in Japan.

How is Congress going to react to this new “strategy” and to sequestration?

Congress is going to press forward with its highest constitutional responsibility in mind – to provide for the common defense. I have introduced legislation that will work to mitigate the effects of sequestration. The House Armed Services Committee conducted months of rigorous oversight in which Congress was repeatedly warned by Secretary Panetta and top military officials that the size and scope of the cuts entailed in President Obama’s new strategy would entail more risk. In my view, they are untenable and dangerous. However, the reality is the commander-in-chief chooses strategy, not the Congress. We will advocate for modifications to the strategy, insist that any new strategy should contain a substantive, not merely rhetorical response to the growing array of threats to the United States around the world – but ultimately the president owns it. What we can do is advance legislation to stop the “doomsday” effects of sequestration, so that defense is not forced to shoulder the load of our domestic fiscal profligacy.

Cross-posted from the Enterprise Blog, where the interview was conducted by Enterprise Blog Editors.

This morning, President Obama, Secretary Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Martin Dempsey unveiled a new defense strategy, based on the $450 billion cuts from this summer’s Budget Control Act, the product of the debt-ceiling deal.

Yahoo! News’ Laura Rozen covers the strategy and quotes CDS’ Tom Donnelly in a piece describing the strategy. Here’s an excerpt:

“You can pretend that the world will behave the way you want it to, or you can look at reality square in the face,” Donnelly said. “Or you can run from it, which is what this administration is doing–in Iraq, soon enough in Afghanistan, and, with these cuts, running from the future.”

To read the article in full, click here.

(DoD/Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo)

One year after Congress voted to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” elite universities such as Harvard, Yale and Columbia have ended Vietnam-era bans on the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) with highly publicized signing ceremonies among senior military officers and university leaders.

Yet for all the fanfare, Yale is the only university that will have cadets training on campus next fall. Columbia and Harvard have restored ties with the Navy, but the new partnerships are limited to a campus office. Stanford has requested its own naval unit (to save their students a 45-minute commute to UC-Berkeley), but the Navy appears unlikely to approve the request.

Stanford’s is a telling episode: The chief obstacle to ROTC’s expansion today is not antimilitary sentiment but a Pentagon that prefers to allocate its resources to surer recruiting prospects, primarily in the South and the Midwest. Last year the Ivy League had 54 students commissioned through ROTC, or 1% of total commissions, and the Defense Department is reluctant to launch new programs where student interest appears low.

Read the rest of the article on the Wall Street Journal website.

(flickr/user Tulane publications)

(flickr/user bisgovuk)

In an entry today in the Washington Post’s “Right Turn” blog, Jen Rubin considers whether the recent political unrest in Iraq, including most notably the call for arrest of the Sunni Vice President by Shi’ite President Nouri al-Maliki.  AEI experts Tom Donnelly, Gary Schmitt and Fred Kagan are quoted in Rubin’s article. Here is one excerpt:

Is Iraq unraveling just weeks after President Obama pulled all troops out of the country, against the advice of his military and in defiance of critics? Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute tells me this morning: “Indicting a vice president and killing his bodyguards is out there, even by Iraqi standards. Maliki must have had these moves in mind even while meeting with Obama last week and before. And the Kurds are protecting Hashemi, so there’s obviously broad-based Kurd-Sunni opposition to Maliki’s power-grab. Not yet a civil war, but a pretty brutal punctuation to the ‘end’ of the war.”

For the post in full, click here.