Center for a New American Security

February 10, 2009 - CNAS Senior Fellow John Nagl discusses the need to change military tactics in Afghanistan, while initiating a "civilian surge." "Counter-insurgency campaigns have momentum. Like a football game when the crowd senses something before it happens. Right now the Taliban has that momentum," he says.

Sunday, February 8, 2009 - CNAS Senior fellow, Thomas E. Ricks, was interviewed on Sunday's Meet the Press.  Tom discussed presidential leadership in the context of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  His new book "The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008" was a main source of discussion.

February 4, 2009 - NPR's Neal Conan interviews CNAS Senior Fellow John Nagl on Talk of the Nation regarding Afghanistan. Nagl explains why a surge in Afghanistan is not enough, why there may be increased American casualties and why some of our best weapons are not always weapons.

January 2009 - CNAS Fellows John Nagl and Nathaniel Fick recommend a more creative and aggressive strategy in confronting the war in Afganistan: "The conventional wisdom about what to do in Afghanistan is now coalescing around two courses of action that mirror steps taken during the past 18 months in Iraq: a similar surge of more troops and a willingness to negotiate with at least some of the groups that oppose the coalition’s presence. "

January 5, 2009 -"The Greater Middle East hangs on a thread," CNAS Senior Fellow Robert Kaplan argues. "For the moment, now that Israel has launched a war, we need it to succeed, rather than be compromised by the kind of ceasefire that allows Hamas to regroup. But once Israel does succeed, then we will need to bear down on it hard, in the service of negotiations with both Arabs and Iranians."

January 5, 2009 - "On the start of 2009, the world seems dauntingly unstable," CNAS Senior Fellow Robert Kaplan opines. "For just as counterinsurgency is the art of getting local forces to do your fighting for you, foreign policy will likewise constitute the art of employing others to help in your international endeavors. Precisely because we can't control this world, American leadership now more than ever will depend upon how many bridges we can build to other nations."

December 19, 2008--"The protests of today are not about America" opines Senior Fellow Robert Kaplan in the latest edition of Atlantic Monthly. "The problem is that despite the probability of new elections, Greece seems destined to suffer through a period of weak governments, which will lack the political capital to do what’s necessary in the way of change."

December 17, 2008 -- "Of course we are entering a more multipolar world," argues Senior Fellow Robert Kaplan."But there are other realities, too. We should not underestimate the diplomatic and moral leverage created by the combination of the world's most expeditionary military and a new president who will boast high approval ratings at home and around the world."

December 16, 2008-- CNAS Senior Fellow Derek Chollet’s newest book, America Between the Wars, was chosen among Slate’s best books of 2008. Slate columnist David Greenberg reviews: “With expertise, literary facility, and a degree of narrative talent not normally found in policy wonks, they explicate all the key issues that emerged after the Cold War and with globalization: terrorism, rogue states, genocide, financial interdependence, and so on. It's a significant historical contribution.”

December 15, 2008-- David Kilcullen, a Senior Fellow at CNAS and counter-insurgency expert comments on the terrorist attacks in Mumbai: "It looks more like a classical special forces or commando operation than a terrorist one. No group linked to Al Qaeda and certainly not Lashkar has ever mounted a maritime attack of this complexity." Which would be worse: if the Pakistani military knew about this operation in advance, or if they didn't?