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Kazakhstan and the United States: Twenty Years of Ambiguous Partnership
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US Lessons for the Eurozone Restoring Confidence through Transparency
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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
Obama: Need to Refocus on Al Qaeda
James Joyner | March 30, 2009
President Obama told CBS' "Face the Nation" that the Bush administration had lost its focus in Afghanistan and that his team will "refocus attention on al Qaeda." Michael Shear for WaPo:
President Obama said yesterday that his predecessor's administration had lost its "focus" on the war in Afghanistan, forcing the creation of a new strategy that is aimed narrowly at defeating the terrorists who run their operations from there and Pakistan.
"What we want to do is refocus attention on al-Qaeda. We are going to root out their networks, their bases," he said on CBS's "Face the Nation" on the eve of his first overseas trip. He added: "We have to ensure that neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan can serve as a safe haven for al-Qaeda."
Obama said last week that he would boost the reinforcements heading to Afghanistan this summer to 21,000 troops, bringing total U.S. forces there to more than 60,000. At that level, he said yesterday, "we now have resourced properly this strategy. It's not going to be an open-ended commitment of infinite resources. We've just got to make sure that we are focused on achieving what we need to achieve with the resources we have."
Except — and I hate to sound like a broken record here — the administration has no exit strategy for Afghanistan. It claims to have milestones but has not actually articulated any.
As to the idea that the mission previously lacked a focus on the al Qaeda threat, we are already beating al Qaeda, with senior U.S. officials saying the terrorist group's leadership has been "decimated" and saying a "complete al Qaeda defeat" is in the offing.
I've been asking since Friday's release of the new plan: What's so new about it? Now, Thomas Barnett is wondering the same thing.
Obama spent two years campaigning for president and promising to double down on Afghanistan. Arguably, at least, his criticism of the Bush policy was quite apt when he began that mantra. But it's rather silly to make a big show of unveiling a new plan that's essentially the old plan.
James Joyner is managing editor of the Atlantic Council. AP Photo by CBS.
