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Nawaz Offers Views on Changing Pakistani Perceptions of U.S.
Shuja Nawaz, Director of the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center, was interviewed on The Takeaway morning radio news program on the Pakistan flood situation. The discussion focused on the U.S. being the single largest donor of aid, and the potential for Pakistanis to shift their perceptions of America. Nawaz insists that the U.S. should stay the course with aid to Pakistan, but warns of the long-term effects of America's goodwill, stating that "changing image takes a long time."
Nancy Walker Addresses U.S. Africa Command Conference
Dr. Nancy J. Walker, Director of the Ansari Africa Center, gave the keynote address at Africa Command’s Senior Leader Offsite Conference in Starnberg, Germany on August 26, 2010.
South Asia Center's Shikha Bhatnagar Spotlighted
Shikha Bhatnagar's recent appointment as Associate Director of the South Asia Center of the Atlantic Council, is yet another manifestation of a growing trend of second generation Indian Americans' advent into leading Washington, DC think tanks as senior policy analysts and associates.
Chuck Hagel Discusses START Ratification on RussiaToday
Atlantic Council Chairman Chuck Hagel was interviewed for RussiaToday on delays in ratification of the START treaty in both the U.S. and Russia.
FEATURED ISSUE
In August the sunny calm and quiet that is a Swedish summer will be shattered by the impact of Joint Direct Attack Munitions dropped by F-16CM Fighting Falcons from US Air Force Europe.
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.
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