Steven Simon

ISIS: The Dubious Paradise of Apocalypse Now

ISISs four principal manifestations – as a guerrilla army, Sunni political movement, millenarian cult and administrator of territory – suggest a strategy against it: aggressive containment.

Thinking straight and talking straight: Problems of intelligence analysis

‘global war on terror’ is threatened by a convergence of societal and governmental trends that make it extremely difficult to hire the right people, train them or allow them to collaborate effectively. Moreover, none of the current efforts to reform the US intelligence community addresses these virtually intractable pedagogical, cultural and organisational challenges. However, there are some possible, albeit partial, remedies to these weaknesses. Emerging information technology, already being adopted by commercial and non-governmental enterprises, has the potential to address key aspects of the structural problems plaguing the intelligence community. The emergence of the jihad confronts US intelligence services with multiple challenges. Many of these have been considered in substantial detail by the 9/11 Commission1 and the Robb/Silverman Commission2 as well as myriad commentators and policy analysts. For the most part, the problems and their proposed, or legislated, remedies have focused on the organisation of the intelligence community and how it collects information. Thus, the community now has a new chief, in the form of a director of national intelligence, who possesses a degree of budget authority over the diverse elements of the community that his predecessors never enjoyed. The community also now has another member, responsible for the coordination of intelligence relating to terrorism, called the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which grew out of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center. This was the organisation created in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks that was supposed to connect the dots that the Thinking Straight and Talking Straight: Problems of Intelligence Analysis

Afghanistan: How Much is Enough?

US President Barack Obamas current policy favours escalation in Afghanistan. The idea is that as the United States’ military presence in Iraq is drawn down, the use of force can be refocused on Afghanistan to forge a more viable state. The principal instruments of this policy are more American troops with better force protection (a customised version of the counter-insurgency ‘surge’ employed with ostensible success in Iraq) and firmer bilateral diplomacy with Pakistan. The administrations policy appears to be overdetermined. The premise of the policy is that the United States must ‘own’ Afghanistan in order to defend its strategic interests. But that premise begs the question of whether US strategic interests actually require the United States to assume the grand and onerous responsibility of rebuilding the Afghan state. They do not.

Obama's Dilemma: Iran, Israel and the Rumours of War

At the close of 2010, not much of the Obama administrations ambitious Middle East agenda had been accomplished. The most dangerous impasse was in the failure of the administrations attempt at engagement with Iran. Tehran was continuing, albeit with some technical setbacks, to progress towards a nuclear-weapons capability. There is every reason to worry that, in the coming years, Israel will conclude that it is cornered, with no choice but to launch a preventive war aimed at crippling Tehrans nuclear infrastructure. But the rise of the Green Movement in Iran and the events since the its 2009 elections suggest that some of the principles of Cold War containment are relevant to the developing confrontation with Iran. Build up strength and resilience in our allies rather than seeking recklessly to destroy our opponents. Keep the moral high ground and keep our nerve. Contain challenges against us ‘by the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force’ and be ready to follow up with diplomacy. Do not go off half-cocked into ill-considered wars without understanding whom we are fighting, or how. If these principles are applied with prudence and historical patience, it seems reasonable to look forward to a ‘mellowing’, if not the radical reform of, an Iranian regime that like the Soviet Union is riddled with contradiction.

Iran and President Trump: What Is the Endgame?

In Donald Trump, the United States may have finally found a president whose views on Iran are both unambiguous and immutable.

America and Iraq: The Case for Disengagement

also triggered the collapse of the Iraqi state, plunged the country into a civil war that brought about the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, wrecked the country’s already debilitated infrastructure, and spurred violent sectarian rivalries that threatened to spill over into the broader Middle East. The crisis has now moved beyond the capacity of Washington to control on its own. The results of the congressional midterm elections in November 2006 show that public support for the present course has buckled. The United States lacks the military resources and the domestic and international political support to master the situation. The number of US troops presently in Iraq as of January 2007, 134,000, allows commanders on the ground little room for manoeuvre. The disappointing results of Operation Together Forward in Baghdad in 2006 showed that while US forces can concentrate for a limited amount of time in a small number of targeted sectors, they lack the numbers to stabilise even those areas on a lasting basis. The 21,500 additional soldiers proposed by the Bush administration to fill the ’five brigade‘ gap in Baghdad fall far short of the total needed to tip the long-term balance toward peace within Baghdad, let alone the country as a whole. Assuming it were possible to restore order in Iraq, the task, according to the army’s new counter-insurgency manual drafted under then Lieutenant-General David Petraeus’s supervision, would require at least double the number of troops the United States will have on the ground once the latest surge has been implemented.1 A commitment this big would force the America and Iraq: The Case for Disengagement