Center for a New American Security

National security analysts will immediately note the ways in which the massive U.S. arms sale to Saudi Arabia is part of the administration's strategy to reassure Gulf allies of a continued U.S. commitment to the region as the nation shifts its focus to Asia while dealing with the Iranian nuclear weapons program. This is also, though, about U.S. jobs. Boeing* had been manufacturing F-15s on its St. Louis assembly line for the past few years without a firm assurance those aircraft would ever be sold. Cancelling the deal with Saudi Arabia would have been a tremendous blow to both Boeing and the people of St. Louis. I am not among those who argue we should keep U.S. defense spending high in order to support the U.S. economy, but in this case, I think it is naive to assume U.S. domestic politics did not play at least a small role in this sale. I'm sure the congressional delegation of Missouri, for example, is enjoying a late Christmas present today.

Note: the president barely lost Missouri in 2008.

*Continuing a tradition of transparency on the blog and at CNAS in general, I should note that Boeing was a corporate sponsor of CNAS in 2011. A full list of CNAS donors can be found here. (I do not understand why all think tanks do not similarly publish a list of their donors so that consumers of their products can make more informed judgments.)

A favorite Republican pastime is comparing Democratic presidents and presidential wannabes with Jimmy Carter, who, fairly or not, is remembered by many as having been both hapless in terms of foreign policy and weak toward the enemies of the United States.

Theoretically, that should be really difficult to do with President Obama. Most Americans have a tough time taking seriously those who would call "weak" the guy who a) gave the order to thwack Osama bin Laden, b) surged in Afghanistan, and c) successfully directed the air campaign that removed Qadhdhafi from power.

But now those Jimmy Carter comparisons are a lot easier to make in practice. In an eerie echo of Carter's decision to allow the embattled Shah of Iran to travel to the United States to undergo medical treatment, hastening the Islamic Revolution, President Obama has allowed the equally embattled leader of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to do the same.

That sound you subsequently heard this evening was America's Yemen experts (all three of them!) banging their heads on their desks in frustration. What kind of message does it send to the people of Yemen and the greater region when the United States allows an abusive autocrat to take refuge in a New York hospital while his people demonstrate in support of democracy in the face of bullets from his security forces? Just whose side is the United States on in the Arab Spring? If Bashar al-Asad gets pancreatic cancer, should we expect for him to be treated at Johns Hopkins?

How, you might ask, did this golf foxtrot come to pass? An aforementioned strength of this administration -- its ruthless and successful campaign to decimate al-Qaeda and its affiliates -- is also a weakness in that it overshadows everything else and causes the administration to see entire regions of the globe through a CT-shaped soda straw. The United States does not have a Middle East policy or even a Yemen policy. It has a counterterrorism policy, and all things Yemen are viewed through that prism. It is telling that the lead administration official responsible for the decision to admit Saleh to the United States was not the Secretary of State but rather the president's chief counterterrorism advisor, John Brennan.

The Obama Administration is making the same mistakes many Gulf regimes are making: thinking, to paraphrase Toby Jones, that it can continue into 2012 with 2010's assumptions -- as if 2011 never happened. Does the Arab Spring matter or does it not? If it does not, the United States can continue its relationships with Gulf states dominated solely by issues related to counterterrorism and oil. If it does, though, the United States has to think more broadly -- both in terms of its bilateral relationships in the region as well as how what it does in one country will be seen elsewhere in the region.

I know the administration will say they have a plan to use this time Saleh is out of the country to shepherd him from power, to which I say the administration is being too clever by half. As Gregory Johnsen noted, the Saudis did not manage to keep Saleh in Saudi Arabia, so what hope do we have to keep Saleh here? And will any clever backroom negotiations to end Saleh's rule matter to millions who will not see beyond the United States offering refuge to a brutal dictator? The administration will also argue that it understands the comparison with the Shah and the attending risks -- but I think knowing and then ignoring the lessons of history is even worse than being ignorant of them to begin with.

I'll just conclude by noting that the administration has yet to name a successor to Colin Kahl at the Department of Defense, so as all of this takes place, the United States does not have anyone behind the wheel of U.S. defense policy in the region. Merry Christmas!

I woke up this morning to the terrible news that John Redwine had died while climbing in Lebanon. Missing since the weekend, his body was found this morning. I first met John in 2004, in a bank in Beirut. We were both new graduate students at the American University of Beirut and were trying to set up bank accounts in order to pay our tuition -- me in English, and he, hilariously, in the classical Arabic he had perfected over years of study in Fez. When John had made the journey from Morocco to Lebanon a few days earlier, he had done so in romantic fashion: overland, in a beat up, wheezing Renault he finally abandoned at the border with Syria.

John met his wife Irina while they were both graduate students at AUB. Their marriage was a source of delight for their many friends. The most fun I have ever had at a party was surely at their wedding celebration, which took place in the hills overlooking Tangier. The party itself, which would have made Rabelais blush, lasted three days. On the last evening, the 30 or so of us who remained standing danced to Thriller at four in the morning. (Which would not have been remarkable were it not for the fact that a) we were all in a pool at the time and b) we were all still fully clothed.)

I will remember those times, and many quieter nights spent sipping beers and trading stories. Many Americans moved to the Middle East after the September 11th attacks, but John embodied the best values of his native country and his home state of Iowa. John was unfailingly polite and generous toward others. He spoke softly and with humility. He had real intellectual curiosity about the peoples of the Middle East. He was quick to laugh at jokes -- especially those told at his expense. He was a fine student of the Arabic language and had mastered it in both its classical and Levantine forms. He would have made a fine ambassador one day.

John and Irina were recently blessed with a son. My thoughts and prayers are with them this morning.

Update: John's family has released the following obituary.

John Newland Redwine, II, age 33, of Beirut, Lebanon, formerly from Sioux City, IA died Sunday, December 18 doing what he loved, alpine climbing in the Lebanon Mountains.

John was born on June 13, 1978 in Kansas City, MO to Dr. John and Barbara Redwine when his father was in his senior year of medical school. The family moved to Sioux City, IA where his father completed a residency in family medicine and established a family practice in Morningside. John attended Clark Grade School, Hoover Middle School, and he graduated from Sioux City North High School in 1996. Between earning two bachelor’s degrees at the University of Montana and a masters degree at the American University of Beirut, he studied for two years at the Arabic Language Institute in Fez, Morocco and was fluent in both spoken and written Arabic.

John served in many capacities as an independent public relations and communications professional. At the time of his death, he was the communications officer and editor on a regional cooperation project on water issues for the United Nations Regional Economic and Social Development Commission in Western Asia and the German Federal Institute for Geo-Science and Natural Resources in Beirut. He also had served as a freelance producer and journalist at Fox News, project director at Albany Associates, managing editor at Executive Magazine, Analyst and Copy Editor at The Middle East Reporter, and desk editor at ABC News. He recently helped organize the very successful Banff Mountain Film Festival Beirut.

John had many publications in political, governmental, and professional journals and was well respected by his peers. In their leisure time, John and his wife, Irina enjoyed mountain climbing, motorcycling, camping, and entertaining their many friends across the Middle East and the world. He was a skilled alpinist and big-wall climber. He climbed extensively in Yosemite and Zion National Parks, climbed the nose on El Capitan, 6 of the 7 Grand Tetons in one day, on-sited classic routes in Stanage, Mont Blanc and Wadi Rum and established new routes in Morocco, Lebanon and many other countries. John took great pride in introducing others to climbing and worked at building the capacity of the climbing community in Lebanon.

Two months ago, John and Irina welcomed their first child into the world, Winston Prentice Redwine. Irina and he survive, as do John’s parents, Dr. John and Barbara Redwine of Rogers, AR, his two brothers William Redwine and his wife Brooke of Sioux City, IA, and Adam Redwine and his close friend Aliya Gordon of Augusta, GA, and many aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews.

Services will be in held Beirut, Lebanon on Friday, December 23 and in Sioux City, IA on Tuesday, December 27. Burial will be at Memorial Park Cemetery in Sioux City.

Distinguished scholar and strategist Steve Metz complained earlier today on his Twitter account that he had cancelled a presentation he was scheduled to give at the British International Studies Association conference in Edinburgh, Scotland because EUCOM regulations stipulate he must first ... wait for it ... go through SERE training before traveling to western Europe. (Now, I know some of you possibly think it prudent that civilian scholars at U.S. military colleges go through Survival Evasion Resistance Escape training before wandering into some neighborhoods in Glasgow, but this is Edinburgh we're talking about.) 

Although the SERE training in question is not the hellish full two-week course but rather the one-day course, this is absurd nonetheless. Just yesterday, I met with a collection of junior U.S. Army officers, and we all agreed that U.S. military personnel -- and officers in particular, because they are often de facto ambassadors for the United States -- were better at their jobs if they had traveled widely or, even better, had lived abroad. But it can be a nightmare for U.S. military personnel to travel internationally, such have we elevated force protection to ridiculous importance. (One U.S. Navy officer related that six of his fellow officers were traveling on a trip to India with a U.S. university and needed signatures from four separate flag officers to do so!)

The bottom line here is that if we are willing to send young men and women to fight and die in Helmand Province, we should go out of our way to be accomodating when U.S. military personnel want to broaden their experiences by traveling to countries with which we are not at war. Stupid regulations designed to cover someone's fourth point of contact do not serve the broader interests of the United States.