NATOSource
Featured Publications
Kazakhstan and the United States: Twenty Years of Ambiguous Partnership
The Five Futures of Cyber Conflict and Cooperation
US Lessons for the Eurozone Restoring Confidence through Transparency
Prospects and Challenges for Increasing India-Pakistan Trade
A US-EU Action Plan for Supporting Democratization: Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia
Council News
Jonathan Paris Discusses Syrian Crisis with France 24
Jonathan Paris, nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center, appeared on France 24 to discuss Russia's support for the Assad regime and what it means for a possible UN resolution against Syria.
Damon Wilson US Senate Testimony: Ukraine at a Crossroads
On February 1, Atlantic Council executive vice president Damon Wilson testified at a hearing of the US Senate Committe on Foreign Relations on the topic: "Ukraine at a Crossroads: What's at Stake for the US and Europe?"
Michele Dunne on US-Egypt Relations for NPR's Morning Edition
Relations between the US and Egypt have taken a downturn since Egyptian authorities raided the offices of seventeen nongovernmental organizations in December - three of them US-funded. Michele Dunne, director of the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, spoke on NPR's Morning Edition about the situation and what it means for US aid to Egypt.
FEATURED ISSUE
The South Asia Center receives guidance and support from many experts throughout the world. Our senior fellows, guest-speakers, Center patrons, and visitors contribute heavily to the Center’s mission to “wage peace,” and engage the international community in the region. The Center asked our contributors the simple, but key question, “What you do expect in 2012?”
REGISTER
Casey: Current Tempo Unsustainable
James Joyner | May 28, 2009
General George Casey, speaking tonight at the Atlantic Council, clarified his widely quoted remarks that "we’re going to have 10 Army and Marine units deployed for a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan," insisting that he was not making policy but doing his job to "organize, train, and equip" the force for possible contingences. Indeed, he noted, his force rotation plan depends on getting out of Iraq by 2012.
In response to a question from Council president and CEO Fred Kempe, Casey noted that we had over 13,000 new cases of post-traumatic stress in the Army in 2008. While this is obviously a bad thing, the Chief of Staff noted that it also indicates that the Army has done a good job of destigmatizing the disorder and getting soldiers to come forward for treatment sooner.
Additionally, the Army is standing up a Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program which will train soldiers in "mental resilience," helping them acquire necessary coping skills. Casey noted that "while all soldiers who go to combat feel stress," the overwhelming number of them come out of it as stronger individuals for having met enormous difficulties successfully. The challenge, then, is to make that true for the rest of the force.
In the longer term, the general stated, the Army is working to adopt a regular rotational cycle such as those already in place in the Navy and Marine Corps. Having soldiers spend a year in the combat zone, come home for a year, and then go back a year later is "unsustainable in the long term." The goal is to have a "one year in, two years out" rotation "by 2011" and ultimately a "one year in, three years out" system. The latter, Casey asserted, "can be sustained indefinitely."
Casey added that the weakest point in the system is not the soldier but their families. In a force where 60 percent are married, taking care of families is more vital than ever. Because of the current operations tempo, "families are the most stressed part of the force." By instituting a predictable pattern that has the soldier at home with his family for three years for every year of deployment, Casey believes most of the current problems will be solved.
James Joyner is managing editor of the Atlantic Council.
