This article, co-authored by PSA Advisory Board member and former Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering and William Luers, former U.S. Ambassador and President of the United Nations Foundation from 1999 to 2009, originally appeared in the New York Times.

Envisioning a Deal With Iran

IF you deal in camels, make the doors high,” an Afghan proverb cautions. As the dangers mount in the confrontation between the United States and Iran, both sides will have to raise the doors high for diplomacy to work, and to avoid conflict.

A diplomatic strategy must begin with the United States’ setting its priorities and then defining a practical path to achieve them. To achieve its top priorities, it will have to learn what Iran needs. Since the United States will not get total surrender from Iran, it must decide what it can put on the table to assure that both sides can reach a deal that will be durable.

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PSA Advisory Board Co-Chair Lee Hamilton discusses why Americans have come to regard Congress so poorly, arguing that this mood is a result of a dysfunctional Washington mired in partisanship, secrecy, and a lack of accountability. This op-ed originally appeared in The Star Press.

The latest New York Times/CBS News poll had bad news for Congress, whose support is down to single digits. But it had even worse news for the Republic. Americans’ distrust of government, the pollsters found, is “at its highest level ever.”

A lot of this ire is focused on Congress, which an overwhelming majority believe is incapable of acting on behalf of the nation as a whole, but it has come to take in all of Washington. The poll’s findings can be summed up in the words of one respondent, a small-businesswoman from Arizona. “Probably the government in Washington could be trusted at one time,” she told the Times, “but now it seems like it’s all a game of who wins rather than what’s best for the people.”

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Last week, the highest level extra-governmental group ever convened to address any public policy challenge met in Washington, D.C. to announce the launch of their new organization – the United States Energy Security Council – formed to advance American energy security. This bipartisan group of 20 influential former cabinet officials, military personnel, retired Senators, and prominent business leaders, includes three PSA Advisory Board members – Robert C. McFarlane, former National Security Advisor, John Lehman, former Secretary of the Navy, and Gary Hart, former Senator (D – Colo.).

At their launch event, USESC founders emphasized the importance of finding solutions to the nation’s current energy dilemma and described the risk associated with America’s reliance on oil as a sole transportation fuel. Across the bipartisan panel, members agreed that, in the interest of national and economic security, America must pursue strategies to diversify the fuel sources used in transportation – eliminating the decades old monopoly that oil has enjoyed in the U.S. transportation sector and diminishing the strategic importance of this resource. McFarlane was certain to point out, however, that the group is not “anti-oil,” but more accurately “pro-fuel choice.”

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The announcement of the final result of the Referendum has marked the end of an era and today is the beginning of a new era in our history.  Today is a glorious day for all the sons and daughters of Southern Sudan.  It is a glorious day for the people of the Republic of the Sudan.  It is a glorious day for Africa and the world.  You have exercised your inalienable right to self-determination freely, fairly and peacefully.  You have expressed your freewill over your future.  By this official result of 98.83%, the whole world has heard your voice loud and clear!

-President Salva Kiir

Very few experience the kind of jubilation the Southern Sudanese felt when the results of the independence referendum were certified by the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission (SSRC) and President Omar al-Bashir this week. Despite the seemingly insurmountable odds, they went to the ballot box and at 98.83% of the vote walked away from a ruthless dictator with a knack for not only surviving, but thriving off his country’s misfortunes. The impromptu dance party in the capital of Juba said it all. On July 9^th, 2011 Southern Sudan will become the 193^rd country in the world and the 57^th independent country in Africa. (more…)

“Virtually all serious observers of national security affairs now recognize the current structure of the national security system militates against unified problem-solving when the problem is a multiagency issue. The question is what to do about it.”

Counter-proliferation, counterinsurgency, food security, energy policy – all examples of complex and multifaceted issues that increasingly dominate America’s security priorities and starkly highlight the chronic limitations of the U.S. national security structure. The Project on National Security Reform and others stress the critical need for a Goldwater-Nichols Act of national security to take on the colossal and outdated bureaucracy built around the security challenges of the post WWII period. (more…)

I have written before on this blog about the dangerous assumptions that currently haunt thinking in the beltway, and the State of the Union address made this apparition rise again.  Specifically, that we will start withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in July, by the end of this year we will leave a stable Iraq, and all troops will be home by 2015.

Wars are remarkably costly – about $1 trillion between Iraq and Afghanistan thus far, to say nothing of the human costs.  And those costs continue once everyone is home from Iraq and Afghanistan.  Equipment will have to be repaired, replaced, or modernized.  Health care costs don’t end for the wounded, including those with post traumatic stress or traumatic brain injuries, nor should our obligation to these heroes.  And the U.S. military will still be deployed around the world engaging partners, and even potentially engaged in wars unknown (when has the world ever stopped for us to catch our breath?). (more…)

It is highly fashionable to assume that the United States is in a period of rapid and irreversible decline. The evidence, after all, is ubiquitous and impossible to ignore. After a band of committed extremists were able to wage an attack on domestic soil that sent shock waves through the American psyche that can still be felt today, we lashed out against the Muslim world in ways that have been counterproductive to our long-term national security interests. The global financial crisis brought America to its knees. Beholden as we are to cutting-edge financial instruments and lifestyles we cannot afford, our fiscal sanity has long played second fiddle to decidedly decadent priorities. And, lest we forget, that nebulous thing called “American culture” is receiving a surprisingly cold reception these days in much of the world.

So, if we are incapable of efficiently protecting our own national security interests, if our economic system is in tatters, and if our cultural practices and values are degrading in the eyes of the rest of the world, isn’t the thesis of decline more fact than assumption?

The answer, as it happens, depends on what one means by decline. On the one hand, our relative standing to other players on the global stage appears to be changing at a brisk pace. The economic rise of China and India both provide sound reasons to think that America must do more to maintain its standing relative to its peers. In a comparative sense, then, we are in decline relative to the newfound growth of other members of the world community. (more…)

Kay King, Vice President of Washington Initiatives at the Council on Foreign Relations, recently released a report entitled Congress and National Security arguing Congress’s increasing inability to effectively address major domestic and international challenges has severe ramifications for U.S. national security.

King points to contributing factors which have led to a decline in Congressional effectiveness, including amplified partisanship, abuse of rules and procedures, outdated committee structures, decreased expertise, and competition with domestic programs. She specifically addresses how the toxic partisan atmosphere has contributed significantly to Congress’s mixed performance on its national security responsibilities:

…the nation’s political landscape has been realigning since the 1970’s, ushering in deep partisanship, severe polarization, a combative 24/7 media, and diminished civility. Over time, this environment has given lawmakers greater incentive to advance personal and partisan agendas by any means, including the manipulation of congressional rules and procedures. It has politicized the national security arena that, while never immune to partisanship, more often than not used to bring out the “country first” instincts in lawmakers. It has also driven foreign policy and defense matters, short of crises, off the national agenda, marginalizing important issues like trade. Combining this increasingly toxic political climate with an institutional stalemate in the face of mounting global challenges and it is not surprising that Congress has struggled for years to play a consistent and constructive role as a partner to as well as check and balance on the executive branch on international issues.

King then goes on to recommend reform in five critical areas: prompt and inclusive action on budgets and legislation, timely and knowledgeable advice and consent on treaties and nominees, realistic and effective oversight, closing the expertise gap, and bolstering the congressional-executive branch partnership on national security policy.

The entire report can be found here.

From my first visit in 1993, the latter days of the first intifada, I have had difficulty describing the people and environment in the Gaza strip.  As I wrote in 2009, “[D]espair, destruction, extremism and violence are terms easily at hand, but they do not do justice to life in Gaza today.” Writing from the balcony of the Al-Mathaf (the Museum), a brand new beachfront hotel with a fantastic museum housing an archeological treasure trove documenting the history of Gaza, I still feel incapable of accurately conveying the essence or details of life in Gaza today.

Thirty minutes after seemingly beaming (as if from one planet to another on Star Trek) from the developed to the underdeveloped worlds, a prominent Gaza attorney spoke of his daily challenges: “[W]e exist as people physically segregated from the rest of the world. We do not live in a country but have two governments [the Hamas-run administration in Gaza and the PLO – led Palestinian Authority from Ramallah]. But neither administration controls our borders. As a lawyer, I have to work through Israeli administrative regulations, British Mandate laws, and directives from our two governments. And, I want an independent judiciary system with no corruption.” (more…)

As one of the final priorities for the 111th Congress, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty has  the “unanimous support of the United States military” and enjoys strong, bipartisan support from our nation’s most respected national security experts.

New START is an urgent national security priority—and should be divorced from partisan bickering and the electoral process.  As Secretary Clinton reminded reporters yesterday, “When it comes to foreign policy, it is important to remember that politics stops at the water’s edge.”  Key Republicans and Democrats from the past seven administrations have strongly endorsed this treaty.   The Secretary of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, all of the service chiefs, the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, six former secretaries of state, five former secretaries of defense, the chair and vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, seven former heads of U.S. Strategic Command and Strategic Air Command—and countless others, all agree that the Senate must ratify New START.  The elections do not alter this support. (more…)