Tomorrow, according to the Associated Press, the Commission on Wartime Contracting will present a bleak assessment of how tens of billions of dollars have been spent since 2001. The 111-page report, according to AP, documents poor management, weak oversight, and a failure to learn from past mistakes as recurring themes in wartime contracting.

The commission’s report is scheduled to be made public Wednesday at a hearing held by the House Oversight and Government Reform’s national security subcommittee.

While this is hardly the first report to document failings of oversight on private contractors it is nevertheless significant, as supposedly the U.S. government has taken significant steps in the past couple of years to improve its management of contractors. Yet apparently, to paraphrase the poet Robert Frost, contractors have numerous promises to keep and the government has years to go before it can sleep comfortably.

Having written a book on this subject I’m sure that much of what the commission will report will sound familiar. U.S. reliance on private sector employees has grown to “unprecedented proportions,” yet the government has no central database of who all these contractors are, what they do or how much they’re paid, the bipartisan commission found.

That is ironic, to say the least, considering the government has devoted much effort the past few years trying to do exactly that. It even created the Synchronized Pre-deployment and Operational Tracker database to track contractors. I know, I know; I’m picturing a government auditor calling, “Here SPOT, here boy.”

Humor aside though this is grim news. Regardless of what one thinks about the pros and cons of using private contractors on the battlefields and in conflict zones one thing is clear, they are not going away.

The Obama administration seems to recognize that contractors are now the American Express card; one does not go to war or do “contingency operations,” to use the favored government euphemism, without them. And if it doesn’t, it will certainly realize it as it conducts its own surge of U.S. military forces to Afghanistan.

This is why the Obama administration is worth watching. It has launched a campaign to change government contracting. In February it introduced a set of “reforms” designed to reduce state spending on private-sector providers of military security, intelligence and other critical services and return certain outsourced work back to government.

It also pledged to improve the quality of the acquisition workforce — the government employees who are supposed to be supervising and auditing the billions of dollars spent monthly on the contracts. If there is one single thing that is needed to make contracting work, that is it.

On the other hand, the White House has also promised to decide what work should stay in government and what’s acceptable to outsource. The introduction to Obama’s budget for 2010 noted, “The administration also will clarify what is inherently a governmental function and what is a commercial one; critical government functions will not be performed by the private sector for purely ideological reasons.”

Good luck with that. Many others have tried and failed. (more…)

Two recent blog posts by John Pomfret over at the Washington Post got me thinking about how much more complicated China’s position on North Korea has become since the beginning of the Obama Administration.

As Pomfret points out in his May 27 post, for many years the U.S. has been waiting for China to solve the North Korea problem without realizing that our goals are not aligned.

First, there’s a silly assumption in Washington that our interests (no nukes in North Korea) are the same as China’s. But they’re not. China’s first interest in North Korea is making sure the Kim regime doesn’t collapse. China’s second interest? Making sure the Kim regime doesn’t collapse. From Beijing’s perspective, nukes in North Korea rank somewhere around 10th.

Pomfret goes on to give a great explanation about why regime change is the real threat to China.  At the end of the day, as long as the DPRK could be coaxed to the negotiating table, China was satisfied that it was not falling apart.

Then, a few days later, in a June 6 post, we get the following from Pomfret:

There are surprising noises coming from China these days about North Korea. One influential Chinese academic thinks China’s policy — long supportive of the hermit kingdom — might be changing.

So, what happened in less than a week?  Has China finally realized that no nukes is their number one priority?  Not exactly.  Turns out China, as evidenced by the Zhu Feng article that Pomfret is referring to,  may be realizing that the regime in Pyongyang is not interested in negotiations and doesn’t care what Beijing thinks.

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I am a late addition to the bandwagon of blogosphere praise for the President’s speech delivered in Cairo yesterday. He hit all the right notes on Israeli-Palestinian peace, US engagement with the Muslim world, democracy building, and science and economic engagement. But it was, at the end of the day, just a speech.

That’s why I was interested to read Tom Friedman’s New York Times column yesterday, which opened with a joke about “Goldberg the Jew.” Per Friedman, the joke goes like this:

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In an interesting turn of events, the Russian envoy to the UN Mr. Churkin recently issued a statement condemning Western overtures toward more moderate elements within the Taliban and calling for an end to any contacts with this fundamentalist group.

Equally interesting was a recent Russian decision to invite the leadership of Hamas to Moscow to hold talks at the same Ministry of Foreign Affairs which called for boycotting the Taliban. In The New York Times we read about Western criticism of Russia for its prosecution of several members of yet another Islamic group, Hizbut-Tahrir, that is considered a terrorist organization in Russia, but not so in the West.

There was a popular phrase about “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” It looks like now one man’s terrorist is another man’s negotiations partner. It seems that one has to be careful deciding which terrorists to talk to, and which to fight against. And if the US and Russia are to work together to fight terrorism, a common approach to identifying potential interlocutors seems necessary.

Both countries have extreme exposure to Islamic fundamentalism, and hence their common interest. The US is exposed directly and via its allies in almost the entire Middle East and Southeast Asia, most directly in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and so is Israel, a close US ally. Russia is exposed most directly in the North Caucasus (Chechnya, Dagestan, and other republics of the region) with a potential of it spreading to Tatarstan and other Muslim-populated regions, and via its allied regimes in Central Asia (Tajikistan, for one). (more…)

Some have been critical of President Obama’s choice to give his upcoming speech to the Muslim world in Egypt.  Critics point to Egypt’s history of autocratic rule.  They ask, won’t Obama’s speech just be validating a regime that for decades has silenced dissidents and has refused to embrace the type of democratic rule that is so needed throughout the Muslim world?  Wouldn’t the President have been better served by choosing a Muslim country such as Indonesia that has embraced democracy and espouses an exceptionally tolerant version of Islam.

Yes, if the purpose of this speech was to highlight a Muslim ideal of democratic governance, there certainly would be better candidates than Egypt.  That, however, would miss the point.  Just as candidate Obama argued during his campaign that we don’t get anywhere by refusing to talk to those who disagree with us, President Obama was right to make his address in a Muslim country that doesn’t necessarily meet the American ideal.  If you only talk with those who agree with you, it’s easy to make headway.  The real challenge is reaching out to those who are skeptical – those who might disagree.  Nixon going to China didn’t mean that Nixon approved of the Chinese form of government.  Looking at it from this vantage point – Egypt seems like a much better choice.

President Obama should, of course, use this speech to make it clear that Islam and democracy can peacefully coexist.  This will mean not tip toeing around the authoritarian practices of Egypt’s government.  Fortunately, President Obama’s past history of addressing difficult issues head on whether  speaking about abortion at a Catholic University or the issue of race and his controversial pastor is an encouraging sign for this important speech.  Hopefully, he’ll continue this tradition of addressing the difficult issues head on and not give the Egyptian leadership a pass. (more…)

President Obama’s much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world is just a few days away. We now know the location (Egypt) and the venue (Cairo University). We know that the president will also visit Saudi Arabia, another hugely important Muslim state. We know the context of his travels to the region: Obama enjoys relatively favorable ratings among Muslims, especially when contrasted with those of President George Bush, but many are reserving judgment, waiting to see if Obama will actually change U.S. foreign policy, or merely talk about doing so. The test case is the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian dispute. But the president will also want to talk about Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, he will hope that North Korea’s behavior doesn’t grow even more erratic at a time when his attention will be focused elsewhere.

The Peace Process: As I noted in January, no one ever said it was going to be easy to broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Last week reminds us that 1) that the essential issues are well understood, 2) the two parties are at an impasse, and 3) the United States is caught in the middle. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reaffirmed the U.S. government’s opposition to the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. “A stop to settlements,” she said emphatically, “not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions.” The next day, the Israeli government responded with equal clarity. Israeli Cabinet Minister Benny Begin said “natural growth” of existing West Bank settlements would continue. “The Israeli Jewish towns and villages should develop according to the natural development rate and this must not be stopped,” he said. And just in case anyone questioned the official Palestinian position, Rafiq Husseini spelled it out: “No peace can be reached with one settler remaining in Palestine.” The expansion of the settlements is the key stumbling bloc to a resumption of serious negotiations. What is President Obama prepared to do to stop them? What can he do?

Iraq: The war still isn’t over, there are still nearly 140,000 U.S. troops on the ground there, and they won’t all be out until 2012. Gen. Casey hinted that the Army is prepared to stay longer. That isn’t consistent with the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) negotiated between the outgoing Bush administration and the Maliki government in Baghdad, but Casey appears to be laying the groundwork for any last-minute change of plans. Regardless, the United States needs the cooperation of Iraq’s neighbors to prevent the country from falling back into sectarian chaos as U.S. troops do draw down, and to contain the violence if the worse-case scenario occurs.

Iran: With presidential elections less than three weeks away, President Obama is surely hoping that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s days in power are numbered. But there is little that the United States can do to hasten that end, and if Washington is perceived to be interfering in Iran’s internal politics, that will surely strengthen Ahmadinejad’s otherwise very weak hand. Obama was right to take a wait-and-see approach to Iran, and should urge other countries in the region to do the same until after June 12th.

Afghanistan/Pakistan: They aren’t Middle Eastern countries, but they are Muslim countries, and the conduct of military operations there clearly affects the United States’ global standing, and therefore on the level of support that we can expect going forward. President Obama should reiterate at every possible opportunity our essential goals, what we are prepared to do to achieve them, and what others can do to help us.

In general, during the course of his travels, President Obama is likely to adopt a conciliatory, even deferential tone. He will stress the need for cooperation over confrontation, and for problem-solving over trouble-making. But so long as the rejectionists and the extremists can dictate events on the ground, he will also need a strong dose of humility.
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