Center for a New American Security

The Obama Administration's 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and the Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 budget request sent to Congress today illustrate the challenge of matching vision to reality, according to a new CNAS policy brief released today titled Vision Meets Reality: 2010 QDR and 2011 Defense Budget.

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is pleased to announce that its President, Dr. John Nagl, has been named to the independent panel to review the Department of Defense’s 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). 

As the Department of Defense (DOD) prepares to send the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) to Congress, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) today released a working paper by Christine Parthemore and Will Rogers, Promoting the Dialogue: Climate Change and the Quadrennial Defense Review, examining how DOD considered the effects of climate change during the QDR process.

CNAS released today a major report on American power in the sea, air, space and cyberspace: Contested Commons: The Future of American Power in a Multipolar World. The authors advocate a renewed commitment to the global commons by pursuing three objectives: build global regimes that preserve the openness of the commons; engage pivotal actors that have the will and ability to protect and sustain them; and develop the hard-power tools and capabilities necessary for the United States to defend the global commons.

CNAS is pleased to announce the launch of the U.S.-India Initiative co-chaired by Richard Armitage and Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns.  The project will lay a blueprint for the next phase of the U.S.-India relationship and advance growing bilateral ties in areas including security, economics, energy and climate change, and democracy and human rights.

To help inform the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) the Center for a New American Security launched today its project on Reinvigorating American Diplomacy and Development with the release of two policy briefs on the QDDR, Engaging the Private Sector for the Public Good: The Power of Network Diplomacy by CNAS Vice President Dr. Kristin Lord and Learning from Experience: Lessons from the QDR for the QDDR by CNAS Research Associate Brian Burton.

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) released today a report that critically examines the relevance of the U.S. intelligence community to the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan titled Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan. The authors, including Major General Michael T. Flynn, Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence in Afghanistan, argue that the United States' intelligence apparatus still finds itself unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which U.S. and allied forces operate in and the people they are trying to protect and persuade.

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) released today two important working papers, Contractors in Conflicts: Adapting to a New Reality and Time for Action: Redefining SOF Missions and Activities, as part of its ongoing work on the future of the U.S. military, which focuses on improving capabilities to confront future threats to our national security.

President Obama’s recent visit to Beijing highlighted several issues of mutual interest and concern for the U.S.-China relationship, and the fact that Taiwan was not a major issue of contention highlights the rapidly changing dynamics of the cross-Strait environment. The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) released today a new policy brief, Taiwan’s Gamble: The Cross-Strait Rapprochement and its Implications for U.S. Policy, which details the risks and rewards associated with this evolving cross-Strait environment and lays out several policy recommendations for the United States.  

The demands of rapidly evolving conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan coupled with intense fiscal pressure at home underscore the need to reform U.S. defense acquisition. The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) released today a new policy brief, Smart Defense Acquisition: Learning from French Procurement Reform, which examines the French defense reform process and draws recommendations for how to apply their best practices to our own.