Center for Strategic Communication

Time to think strategically about America’s message

Matthew Wallin/The Hill

In the midst of the London Olympics, currently the world’s biggest public diplomacy extravaganza, American athletes have performed phenomenally well. These athletes—diplomats in their own right—have set standards towards which people around the world aspire.

With Diplomacy Dead, US Banks On Syrian Rebel Win

Bradley Klapper /Associated Press

With Syrian diplomacy all but dead, the Obama administration is shifting its focus on the civil war away from political transition and toward helping the rebels defeat the Syrian regime on the battlefield.

Regional heads to confer on DR Congo conflict

Al Jazeera

Leaders from the 11-nation International Conference on the Great Lakes Region will meet to discuss the three-month old M-23 rebel uprising in the Democratic Republic Congo that has displaced approximately 280,000 people.

 

Yemen restructures army, limits Saleh son’s powers

Mohammed Ghobari/Reuters

Coincident to an air strike that killed two alleged al Qaeda militants, President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi restructured parts of the Yemeni army in a move seen to limit the power of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s son.

Guards replaced after Tennessee nuclear security breach

Mark Hosenball / Reuters

The Energy Department said on Monday it was replacing guards and supervisors on duty 10 days ago when three peace activists, including an 82 year-old nun, breached perimeter fences at the principal U.S. facility for storing weapons-grade enriched uranium.

New intelligence reveals Iranian military nuclear program advancing faster than previously thought

Barak Ravid / Haaretz

New intelligence information obtained by Israel and four Western countries indicates that Iran has made greater progress on developing components for its nuclear weapons program than the West had previously realized, according to Western diplomats and Israeli officials who are closely involved in efforts to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb.

U.S. Asia-Pacific Strategy’s Missing Link: How to Work With China

Sandra I. Erwin/National Defense Magazine

The Obama administration’s plan to shift military resources to Asia-Pacific has one major flaw: It fails to define how the United States intends to work with China or what type of relationship is envisioned between these two nations, military analysts warn.

‘Too Many Screens’: Why Drones Are So Hard To Fly – And So Easy To Crash

Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. / AOL Defense

The US military depends on drones. But amidst the justifiable excitement over the rise of the robots, it’s easy to overlook that today’s unmanned systems are not truly autonomous but rather require a lot of human guidance by remote control — and bad design often makes the human’s job needlessly awkward, to the point of causing crashes.

 More Syrians flee to Turkey as fighting spreads

BASSEM MROUE and ZEINA KARAM /Associated Press

More than 1,300 Syrians fled to Turkey overnight to escape the civil war as rebels tried to expand their hold inside Syria’s largest city despite two weeks of withering counterattacks by President Bashar Assad’s troops.

On Our Flashpoint Blog

The US, China, and Africa: Reframing Economics in the US Strategic Space

Ashley Boyle   

In Africa, the US is playing a game of catch up with China and arguably missing out on an enormous economic opportunity along the way.

We don’t want a weapons of mass destruction summer

Mary Kaszynski

A WMD disaster would ruin more than just our summer plans. As partisan squabbling and election year rhetoric heat up, let’s remember that there are serious threats out there that require our undivided – and non-partisan – attention.

In Congress, Growing Momentum for Nuclear Cuts

Mary Kaszynski

Last week’s House Armed Services Committee hearing on sequestration broke down into partisan congestion, but it was not without one small sign that strategic thinking may still be alive in Congress.

The Nuke Review: July 30 – August 5

Daniel Painter

The U.S. State Department released the Country Reports on Terrorism 2011. While the release notes “largely successful” multilateral programs to control the transfer of WMD materials, it states that “the illicit trafficking of these materials persists…”

About the American Security Project: The American Security Project is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy and research organization dedicated to fostering knowledge and understanding of a range of national security issues, promoting debate about the appropriate use of American power, and cultivating strategic responses to 21st century challenges.

 For more information, visit www.americansecurityproject.org