Center for a New American Security

CNAS Podcast: CNAS Pivot Point Conference — Lunch Keynote by Dr. Richard Danzig

noemail@cnas.org — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:00:00 GMT

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This is a Center for a New American Security (CNAS) Podcast. CNAS is an independent and nonpartisan 501c(3) research institution that develops strong, pragmatic and principled national security and defense policies that promote and protect American interests and values.

12-Jun-08 2:00 PM

CNAS Podcast: CNAS Pivot Point Conference — Afternoon Keynote by Senator Lindsey O. Graham (R-SC)

noemail@cnas.org — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:00:00 GMT

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12-Jun-08 2:00 PM

CNAS Podcast: CNAS Pivot Point Conference — Session One: A New U.S. Grand Strategy

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:30:00 GMT

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11-Jun-08 11:30 AM

CNAS Podcast: CNAS Pivot Point Conference — Session Two: Inheriting Iraq

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:00:00 GMT

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11-Jun-08 11:00 AM

CNAS Podcast: CNAS Pivot Point Conference — Session Three: Iran: U.S. Strategic Options

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:00:00 GMT

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11-Jun-08 11:00 AM

CNAS Podcast: CNAS Pivot Point Conference — Session Four: Energry Security and Climate Change

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:00:00 GMT

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11-Jun-08 11:00 AM

CNAS Podcast: CNAS Pivot Point Conference — Session Five: Asia

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:00:00 GMT

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11-Jun-08 11:00 AM

CNAS Podcast: CNAS Pivot Point Conference — Introduction & Opening Remarks

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:00:00 GMT

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CNAS Podcast: CNAS Press Briefing by Michèle A. Flournoy: Consolidating Security Gains in Iraq

noemail@cnas.org — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Event Description:

On March 12, 2008, Michèle A. Flournoy, President and Co-Founder of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), held a press briefing to recap and analyze her recent trip to Iraq. Ms. Flournoy returned from a two week trip to Iraq on February 12, 2008, where she visited ten Iraqi provinces and ten U.S. Army and Marine Corps units.

Ms. Flournoy's briefing focused on how to consolidate security gains in Iraq. She also offered recommendations for a new American political strategy toward Iraq.

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16-Mar-08 3:00 PM

CNAS Podcast: American Grand Strategy Solarium Part 1

noemail@cnas.org — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Event Description: Part 1

The American Grand Strategy Solarium is a small conference hosted by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) that aims to explore and debate what America's grand strategy should be. This conference was held on February 20, 2008.

This conference is part of the Solarium II initiative at CNAS, which draws its inspiration from President Eisenhower's original Solarium exercise that brought together many of the country's top strategic thinkers in order to help formulate an American grand strategy for the Cold War. More than six years after the 9/11 attacks and in the midst of an intense election cycle, it is time to revisit the essential debate over America's vital interests and purpose in the world.

CNAS has launched several "Solarium" initiatives, the first dealing with strategy for combating terrorism and another with energy security. For the effort on grand strategy, we have commissioned papers from several prominent thinkers to provide the basis for a robust and productive discussion.

This podcast contains the audio presentations from Shawn Brimley (an introduction to the project), and Dr. Barry Posen.

Barry R. Posen is Ford International Professor of Political Science at MIT, Director of the MIT Security Studies Program, and serves on the Executive Committee of Seminar XXI, an educational program for senior military officers, government officials and business executives in the national security policy community. He has written two books, Inadvertent Escalation: Conventional War and Nuclear Risks and The Sources of Military Doctrine, which won two awards: The American Political Science Association's Woodrow Wilson Foundation Book Award, and Ohio State University's Edward J. Furniss Jr. Book Award. He is also the author of numerous articles, including "The Case for Restraint," (The American Interest, November/December 2007) and “Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony,” (International Security, Summer, 2003.) He has been a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow; Rockefeller Foundation International Affairs Fellow; Guest Scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow; and most recently, Transatlantic Fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Dr. Posen's current research interests include U.S. national security policy, the security policy of the European Union, the organization and employment of military force, great power intervention into civil conflicts, and innovation in the U.S. Army, 1970-1980.

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29-Feb-08 3:00 PM

CNAS Podcast: American Grand Strategy Solarium Part 2

noemail@cnas.org — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Event Description: Part 2

This podcast contains the audio presentations from Frederick Kagan.

Frederick W. Kagan is a Resident Scholar with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. A military historian, Kagan taught courses on grand strategy, military art, and diplomatic history at the United States Military Academy at West Point for ten years. At AEI, Dr. Kagan specializes in defense issues and the American military. In particular he studies defense transformation, the defense budget, and defense strategy and warfare. He has also written about Russian and European military history, and received his PhD in Russian and Soviet military history from Yale University. His most recent book is entitled Finding the Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy. He is also the author of The End of the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe, 1801-1805 and was co-editor of Leaders in War: West Point Remembers the Gulf War. He is published in numerous defense and policy journals, including Foreign Affairs, Armed Forces Journal, Policy Review, and The Weekly Standard.

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29-Feb-08 3:00 PM

CNAS Podcast: American Grand Strategy Solarium Part 3

noemail@cnas.org — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Event Description: Part 3

This podcast contains the audio presentations from Janine Davidson (on behalf of Sarah Sewall) and Robert Art.

Sarah Sewall is the Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where her current research focuses on counterinsurgency and terrorism. She also runs the Carr Center's National Security and Human Rights Program, which facilitates dialogue between the humanitarian and military perspectives. During the Clinton Administration, Sewall served in the Department of Defense as the first Deputy Assistant Secretary for Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Assistance. From 1987-1993, she served as Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell, delegate to the Senate Arms Control Observer Group, and on the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. Sewall has also worked at a variety of defense research organizations and as Associate Director of the Committee on International Security Studies at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was lead editor of The United States and the International Criminal Court: National Security and International Law (2000) and has written widely on U.S. foreign policy, national security, and military intervention. She is a member of the Center for Naval Analyses Defense Advisory Committee, the National Academies Committee on Offensive Information Warfare, and founder of the White House Project’s National Security Boot Camp. She is writing a book about civilian harm in war. Sewall graduated from Harvard College and Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

Robert J. Art is Christian A. Herter Professor of International Relations at Brandeis University, where he teaches and studies international relations and specializes in national security affairs and American foreign policy. Dr. Art earned his PhD at Harvard University, holding a Woodrow Wilson Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship and completing a postdoctoral fellowship with the Center for International Affairs at Harvard. Art has authored, co-authored, and edited several works on grand strategy and military history in recent years, including A Grand Strategy for America, The Use of Force, and Democracy and Counterterrorism: Lessons from the Past. He was the recipient of the International Studies Association 2006 Distinguished Scholar Award and a finalist for the Council on Foreign Relations' Arthur B. Ross Award for A Grand Strategy for America. He has received numerous grants from the nation’s major foundations and research institutions, including the United States Institute of Peace, the Century Foundation, and the Ford Foundation.

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29-Feb-08 3:00 PM

CNAS Podcast: American Grand Strategy Solarium Part 4

noemail@cnas.org — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Event Description: Part 4

This podcast contains the audio presentation from Alice Hunt, on behalf of G. John Ikenberry.

G. John Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Dr. Ikenberry received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1985. He has also held posts at the State Department, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Georgetown University and the University of Pennsylvania. Ikenberry has held fellowships at a variety of institutions, including the Brookings Institution, the German Marshall Fund, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author and editor of many books, including After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars, State Power and the World Economy, and America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power. He has published in all the major academic journals of international relations, written widely in policy journals, and is currently writing a book entitled: “Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American System,” forthcoming from Princeton Press. A collection of his essays, entitled Liberal Order and Imperial Ambition: American Power and International Order, will be published next year by Polity Press.

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29-Feb-08 3:00 PM

CNAS Podcast: Discussion with Fred Kaplan and his new book: “Daydream Believers – How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power"

noemail@cnas.org — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Event Description:

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) hosted a lunchtime speech with celebrated Slate columnist Fred Kaplan on February 29, 2008 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington,DC. Mr. Kaplan led a discussion on his new book, “Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power.” Derek Chollet, a Senior Fellow at CNAS, addressed and analyzed Fred’s assessment of the next administration, Republican or Democrat, and what they are likely to inherit on January 20, 2009.

Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column in Slate. Prior to this, Kaplan was a correspondent at the Boston Globe, reporting from Washington, D.C., Moscow, and New York City. He was a member of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for a special Sunday Boston Globe Magazine on the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race. He authored the classic book, The Wizards of Armageddon, which won The Washington Monthly Political Book of the Year award. Fred Kaplan has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, and other publications. He earned a Ph.D. in political science from MIT and worked on Capitol Hill as a foreign and defense policy advisor to Congressman Les Aspin. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, NPR journalist Brooke Gladstone.

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28-Feb-08 1:00 PM

CNAS Podcast: COIN Manual Discussion with LTC John Nagl and Sarah Sewall

noemail@cnas.org — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:00:00 GMT

Event Description:

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) was honored to hold a panel discussion with Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, United States Army, and Sarah Sewall, Harvard University, on the new U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency (COIN) Field Manual. The panel took place on November 13 at the Willard InterContinental Hotel in Washington, DC.

Sarah Sewall who is currently director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University, worked for the Clinton Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Assistance. Prior to that, she served as a senior policy advisor to Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell. Sarah did her undergraduate work at Harvard and her graduate work at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, who is currently commander of the 1st Battalion, 34th Armor at Fort Riley, Kansas, manages the training of combat advisors who train the Iraqi military. He also has experience in both Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. LTC Nagl is a graduate of West Point, and a Rhodes Scholar. Prior to his contributions to the COIN manual, he wrote "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife," which encapsulates America’s experiences with counterinsurgency based on his study of cases from Vietnam through more recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sarah Sewall eloquently addressed the audience first by framing the COIN manual in a larger strategic context. Ms. Sewall described the COIN manual as both “radical and essential” in thinking about the role of the United States military power in the 21st century and the struggle between the west and its enemies. She stated, on the other hand, that there is an uncertain future facing both the manual and the principles embodied in it because of political and institutional challenges. Some of these challenges include application of COIN manual elements, like reducing US Government/ US Military profile in foreign engagements, the importance of restraint and compromise and the need to moderate political rhetoric. Lastly, Ms. Sewall touched on challenges facing the US Army in the absence of political leadership and especially an overarching strategy.

LTC John Nagl addressed the audience next with his unique analysis of the COIN manual as an Army Lieutenant Colonel, a co-author of the manual, and a self proclaimed “project mascot.” LTC Nagl highlighted the Army’s rejection of unconventional warfare after the Vietnam War and the residual organizational weaknesses that they are now trying to overcome. He also discussed the evolution of the security environment and how the COIN manual will help address modern threats. LTC Nagl emphasized that not only the military, but civilian agencies, are needed to fill a crucial role in our modern security environment.

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13-Nov-07 12:00 PM

CNAS Podcast: The Age of Consequences: CSIS-CNAS Report Release Event

noemail@cnas.org — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Event Description:

For the past year a diverse group of experts, under the direction and leadership of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), met regularly to start a new conversation to consider the potential future foreign policy and national security implications of climate change.

The group consisted of nationally recognized leaders in the fields of climate science, foreign policy, political science, oceanography, history, and national security, including Nobel Laureate Thomas Schelling, Pew Center Senior Scientist Jay Gulledge, National Academy of Sciences President Ralph Cicerone, American Meteorological Society Fellow Bob Correll, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Senior Scientist Terrence Joyce and former Vice President Richard Pittenger, Climate Institute Chief Scientist Mike MacCracken, Georgetown University Professor John McNeill, former CIA Director James Woolsey, former Chief of Staff to the President John Podesta, and former National Security Advisor to the Vice President Leon Fuerth.

The mandate of the exercise was, on its face, very straightforward: employ the best available evidence and climate models, and imagine three future worlds that fall within the range of scientific plausibility.

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7-Nov-07 1:00 PM

CNAS Podcast: First Public Address by Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

noemail@cnas.org — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:00:00 GMT

Event Description:

Admiral Mullen was appointed on October 1, 2007, as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He takes over leadership of the most powerful and influential military in the world at a perilous moment in US history. With our men and women in uniform engaged in war in Iraq and Afghanistan and playing an increasingly vital role in critical humanitarian and natural disaster relief operations, Admiral Mullen’s leadership will prove invaluable in the months and years to come.

Admiral Mullen’s first keynote address at the Center for a New American Security’s National Security Leadership Forum offered guidance and a path forward. Admiral Mullen identified three realities and priorities for his time as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His remarks provide a blueprint for how America’s military will respond to threats in the coming years. Admiral Mullen noted the military complications of a world where conflict will be persistent and will require persistent engagement. Improving the health of America’s military will be an imperative priority for Admiral Mullen and he is extremely concerned with the current stresses on wellbeing and family life. Finally, Admiral Mullen emphasized the importance of balancing traditional and non-traditional security operations.

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26-Oct-07 9:00 AM