American Strategy Program
 

Transnational Issues

The prominence of transnational issues in the first part of the 21st century cannot be understated. Energy politics, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and the substantial shift of power from the West to Asia--all are changing the parameters in which policy and investment decisions are formed and executed.

Emerging in the vacuum of sustained and disciplined global leadership, what once were secondary symptoms of international neglect are now driving forces on the international scene and must be addressed both as cause and effect. The great test of American leadership in the coming decades will be whether the United States can move beyond the vicious cycles of reaction to transnational crises and address the root causes that make them so potent.

The American Strategy Program's Transnational Issues cluster of initiatives seeks to understand, demystify, and provide solutions for the critical transnational threats and trends confronting the United States and the international order.

For more on our work on transnational issues, please click on the initiatives below:

Articles

Energizing Peace

The lessons of geography appear to be ignored by policymakers in Washington D.C. these days. The Obama administration is pursuing tenuous negotiations with Iran regarding its supply of low-enriched uranium, in the hopes of taking the first step to erase the longstanding animosity between the two countries. It is also rethinking its Afghanistan and Pakistan policy to emphasize reconstruction and economic development. These two strategies are unfortunately disconnected -- despite the fact that Afghanistan shares a 600-mile-long strategic border with Iran.

Parag Khanna | ForeignPolicy.com | November 5, 2009

What Serious Diplomacy Looks Like -- in Turkey

Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was expected to come to the White House on Thursday for a meeting with President Barack Obama. Erdogan's visit has now been postponed, and the decision to postpone comes on the heels of the Turkish leader's high-profile visit to Iran this week.

Flynt Leverett | Politico | October 29, 2009

Pakistan Drone War Takes a Toll on Militants -- and Civilians

The Obama administration has dramatically ratcheted up the American drone warfare program in Pakistan. Since President Obama took office, U.S. drone strikes have killed about a half-dozen militant leaders along with hundreds of other people, a quarter of whom were civilians.

As a result of the unprecedented 42 strikes by drone aircraft into Pakistan authorized by the Obama administration, aimed at Taliban and al Qaeda networks based there, about a half-dozen leaders of militant organizations have been killed.

Peter Bergen, Katherine Tiedemann | CNN.com | October 29, 2009

U.S. Is Losing Afghan War on Two Fronts

We are losing in Afghanistan, on two fronts. The most important center of gravity of the conflict -- as the Taliban well recognizes -- is the American public. And now, most Americans are opposed to the war.

For years, Afghanistan was "the forgotten war," and when Americans started paying attention again -- roughly around the time of President Obama's inauguration -- what they saw was not a pretty sight: a corrupt Afghan government, a world-class drug trade, a resurgent Taliban and steadily rising U.S. casualties.

Peter Bergen | CNN.com | October 26, 2009

War and Politics

Over the summer, the Afghan Taliban's military committee distributed "A Book of Rules," in Pashto, to its fighters. The book's eleven chapters seem to draw from the population-centric principles of F.M. 3-24, the U.S. Army's much publicized counter-insurgency field manual, released in 2006. Henceforth, the Taliban guide declares, suicide bombers must take "the utmost steps . . . to avoid civilian human loss." Commanders should generally insure the "safety and security of the civilian's life and property." Also, lest

Steve Coll | The New Yorker | October 19, 2009

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Policy Papers

Revenge of the Drones

As a result of the unprecedented 41 drone strikes into Pakistan authorized by the Obama administration, aimed at Taliban and al Qaeda networks based there, about a half-dozen leaders of militant organizations have been killed--including two heads of Uzbek terrorist groups allied with al Qaeda, and Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban--in addition to hundreds of lower-level militants and civilians, according to our analysis.[1]

Peter Bergen, Katherine Tiedemann | October 19, 2009

Pakistani Capabilities for a Counterinsurgency Campaign: A Net Assessment

Executive Summary

Sameer Lalwani | September 2009

Guantanamo: Who Really 'Returned to the Battlefield'?

As President Obama receives formal recommendations in the coming months on issues surrounding the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, it is crucial that policymakers and the public have an accurate picture of the threat to the United States posed by those detainees already released. Contrary to recent assertions that one in seven, or 14 percent, of the former prisoners had "returned to the battlefield," our analysis of Pentagon reports, news stories, and other public records indicates that the number who were confirmed or suspected to… more

Peter Bergen, Katherine Tiedemann | July 20, 2009

How Not to Lose Afghanistan (and Pakistan)

In late May, some 40 Pakistani journalists received a summons to an unusual press conference held by Baitullah Mehsud, the rarely photographed leader of the Pakistani Taliban, who is accused of orchestrating the 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto, sending suicide bombers to Spain earlier this year, and dispatching an army of fighters into Afghanistan to attack U.S. and NATO forces in recent months. Surrounded by a posse of heavily armed Taliban guards, Mehsud boasted that he had hundreds of trained suicide bombers ready for martyrdom.

It was… more

Peter Bergen | October 10, 2008

Time for a U.S.-Iranian 'Grand Bargain'

The next U.S. president, whether it is John McCain or Barack Obama, should reorient American policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran as fundamentally as President Nixon reoriented American policy toward the People's Republic of China in the early 1970s. Nearly three decades of U.S. policy toward Iran emphasizing diplomatic isolation, escalating economic pressure, and thinly veiled support for regime change have damaged the interests of the United States and its allies in the Middle East. U.S.-Iranian tensions have been… more

Flynt Leverett | October 7, 2008 |

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Events

Outside the Law

Join the New America Foundation for a special screening of a powerful new documentary film directed by filmmaker Polly Nash and journalist Andy Worthington called "Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo," which follows the stories of three current or former detainees from Guantanamo Bay and tells the story of Guantanamo, including segments on extraordinary renditions and secret prisons. With just over two months until President Obama's deadline for the closure of Guantánamo, and with the administration set to
11/09/2009 - 4:00pm
11/09/2009 - 6:00pm

Al- Qaeda and Its Allies: The Endgame

This conference examined the civilian dimensions of counterterrorism, and took place on October 21, 2009, at the Mayflower Hotel. A full program agenda is below, as are video recordings from the webcasts of each discussion.

Higher resolution video and an MP3 audio recording will be added here as they become available.

10/21/2009 - 8:15am
10/21/2009 - 4:45pm

In Afghanistan

David Loyn, developing world correspondent for the BBC and author of In Afghanistan: Two Hundred Years of British, Russian, and American Occupation, expounded upon 200 years of Afghan history as being useful in understanding the problems the U.S. and NATO currently face there. After declaring that clear thinking is needed on Afghanistan, and apparently not currently forthcoming from the Obama Administration, Loyn described his own ten points the U.S. must consider when planning its next move in the country. The two primary

10/02/2009 - 3:30pm
10/02/2009 - 5:00pm

Covering Afghanistan

At today's launch event for the AfPak Channel, a joint project between the New America Foundation and Foreign Policy magazine, a panel of journalists who have often traveled to the region that U.S. President Barack Obama has made the focal point of his foreign policy shared their experiences reporting from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

09/17/2009 - 12:15pm
09/17/2009 - 1:45pm

In the Graveyard of Empires

On July 23 Seth Jones, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation, joined the New America Foundation and Peter Bergen, senior fellow and co-director of the New America Foundation's Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative, to discuss Afghanistan and Jones' recently published book, In The Graveyard of Empires.  
07/23/2009 - 12:15pm
07/23/2009 - 1:45pm

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