The memo proposed six strategies the U.S. “should consider to achieve Asad’s overthrow”:
The memo stressed that no one strategy was going to be endorsed, although the memo clearly indicates preferences, especially when it comes to evaluating the probability each particular strategy has to achieve the stated policy goal of ousting the Assad regime.
- Removing the Assad regime via diplomacy;
- Coercing the regime via sanctions and diplomatic isolation;
- Arming the Syrian opposition to overthrow the regime;
- Engaging in a Libya-like air campaign to help an opposition army gain victory;
- Invading Syria with U.S.-led forces and toppling the regime directly; and
- Participating in a multilateral, NATO-led effort to oust Assad and rebuild Syria.
The diplomatic option is discounted as having a low probability of success, because Russia’s protection of the Assad regime makes it unlikely the U.S. could pass a U.N. Security Council resolution in any way critical of Assad.
The effort to coerce the Assad regime by sanctions and diplomatic isolation is also regarded as a strategy with a low probability of success, because it would most likely create a stalemate in Syria between government and rebel forces, which would benefit Iran and Russia.
...In conclusion, the Brookings Institution memo cautioned against inaction: “As a final thought, it is always important to keep in mind that failing to act – even failing to decide – is an action and a decision.”
“Heritage Action is opposed to punitive missile strikes on the Syrian regime. Yesterday’s hearing made it clear there is not a vital U.S. interest at stake. Further, there is not a clear, achievable, realistic purpose to the use of force being contemplated by the Obama administration and officials offered little evidence such action would prevent further abuses.”Here is an article from Heritage scholar James Carafano on the top five reasons not to use missile strikes in Syria.
Heritage Action jumped into the foreign policy arena Wednesday when it declared there was “not a vital U.S. interest at stake” in attacking Syria for its alleged use of chemical weapons. That stands in sharp contrast with recent statements from Heritage analysts, including several who called for urgent action on Syria last November and said the United States should “work closely with allies to accelerate the fall of the Assad regime.”The Heritage Foundation was recently ranked as the 18th best think tank in the world by the annual University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings. It was rated the 9th best think tank in the US. It was also rated as the #1 think tank in the world in terms of best use of social media and the Internet. Heritage was also rated as the 10th best think tank in the world in terms of most significant impact on public policy.
The shift toward political activism has dismayed some longtime Heritage scholars; more than half a dozen have left in recent months.
The group has experienced a wave of departures to Capitol Hill and rival think tanks in recent months, losing its top statistician, its chief lobbyist, a senior tax analyst, a key retirement expert and a Latin America expert. Heritage Vice President Matthew Spalding announced last month that he was decamping for conservative Hillsdale College, where he will become vice president and dean of educational programs in Washington.
Truluck said that the think tank’s rate of turnover is consistent with past years and that DeMint fully supports independent analysis. “There has been no change in our policy direction,” he said. “Zero.”The Heritage Foundation was recently ranked as the 18th best think tank in the world by the annual University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings. It was rated the 9th best think tank in the US. It was also rated as the #1 think tank in the world in terms of best use of social media and the Internet. Heritage was also rated as the 10th best think tank in the world in terms of most significant impact on public policy.
When he was in the Senate, Jim DeMint wasn’t shy about trying to recruit conservatives he thought would buck the Republican Party establishment and gum up the collegial workings of the legislative process.
Now on the outside, running the Heritage Foundation, the former senator from South Carolina may have even more levers to pull as he puts the full weight of the conservative think tank behind the effort to defund President Obama’s health care law — and in the process becoming a tremendous headache for many fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill.
“Some people love him, some people hate him,” said John Feehery, a Republican Party strategist. “He has never been someone who wanted to be a deal-cutter. Jim DeMint is someone who wants to push the party to the right. He seems to want to spend most of his attention going after Republicans.”Here is what the article says on DeMint possibly losing clout:
His hardball tactics even might have led to friction with the strongly conservative House Republican caucus. The National Journal reported last week that Heritage officials were disinvited from attending private strategy sessions of the conservative House Republican Study Group after the think tank harshly criticized the farm bill passed by the House.
The defund Obamacare tour, which started in Arkansas in mid-August, put Mr. DeMint at odds with a number his former Republican colleagues in the Senate, including fellow South Carolinian Sen. Lindsey Graham.The entire article can be read here.
The annual Chatham House Prize is awarded to the statesperson who is deemed by Chatham House members to have made the most significant contribution to the improvement of international relations in the previous year.
The selection process draws on the expertise of Chatham House's research teams and three presidents, who nominate candidates. Our members are then invited to vote for the winner in a ballot.
The winner is presented with a crystal award and a scroll signed by our patron, Her Majesty The Queen. The award is presented at a ceremony and dinner at a central London venue with keynote speeches by leading figures in international affairs. The recipient of the prize will also often address a members event at Chatham House on or around the day of the award.
The Chatham House Prize was conceived in 2004, under the directorship of Professor Victor Bulmer-Thomas. The concept and crucial early support came from Raj Loomba, founder of the Loomba Trust and a Chatham House council member. Together they supervised the first award in 2005, presented to Victor Yushchenko, and set the template that has ensured its ongoing success.Here is a press release with some more details. Previous recipients include Myanmar politician/activist Aung San Suu Kyi (2011), and former President of Brazil Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (2009).
Before coming to the Wilson Center, Daly was director of the Maryland China Initiative at the University of Maryland, a position he held since 2007. From 2001 to 2007 he was American Director of the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies, in Nanjing, China. He began work in U.S.-China relations as a diplomat with the United States Information Agency from 1989 to 1991, after which he taught Chinese at Cornell.
From 1992 to 1999 he worked on television projects in China as a host, actor, and writer, and helped to produce Chinese-language versions of Sesame Street and other Children's Television Workshop programs. During that same period he directed the Syracuse University China seminar and served as a commentator on U.S.-China relations and Chinese affairs for several U.S. and Chinese media outlets. In 2000 and 2001 he served as American Director of the U.S.-China Housing Initiative. He is a regular commentator on current affairs for the Chinese service of the Voice of America.The Wilson Center was recently ranked as the 11th best think tank in the world by the annual University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings. It was also ranked as the 6th best think tank in the United States.
With exquisite materials and classic detailing, The Executive Building is refined and welcoming. The 332,000 square-foot building's high-performance facade of energy-efficient metal panels and low-E glass projects confidence and sophistication, and its limestone and black granite portals create a human scale at the street–level elevation. In the evening, spotlighting dramatically highlights the building’s contemporary architecture, including its exceptional corner balconies on the top two floors. Structural glass canopies signal the major points of entry at 15th Street and L Street, and graciously welcome tenants and visitors into the stunning main lobby.
This honorary role was created by RUSI's trustees and advisory council in recognition of General Petraeus' long association with the Institute and his distinguished contribution to the study and development of defence and international security concepts, as well as his implementation of those concepts in operations in the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Earlier this year, General Petraeus was conferred RUSI's Chesney Gold Medal for his lifetime service to the field of security studies and operations.As the press release says, Petraeus was awarded RUSI's Chesney Gold Medal on June 10, 2013. In late 2012 the think tank had postponed the presentation of the award after he was involved in a sex scandal.
Required by Congress, the QDR is a review of Department of Defense (DoD) strategy and priorities and sets a long-term course for DoD as it assesses the threats and challenges faced by the U.S. In turn, Congress directed that members of the National Defense Panel review the QDR, assess the assumptions, strategy, findings, and risks in the report, conduct an independent assessment of a variety of possible force structures, review the resource requirements, and provide recommendations to Congress and the secretary of Defense.USIP President and CEO Jim Marshall, a former Member of Congress, and board member Eric Edelman were appointed earlier to serve as members of the NDP. Edelman is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment (CSBA), and a Senior Associate of the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.
As the self-proclaimed “only Washington, DC-based think tank that actively promotes bipartisanship,” it says it “drives principled solutions through rigorous analysis, reasoned negotiation and respectful dialogue.”
Over the past month, the center faced attacks for perhaps being not nearly so principled as it claims. The Nation magazine dinged the center for its role in shepherding a plan for major U.S. retailers to improve conditions at Bangladeshi garment factories, when it had received funding from Walmart and several of its affiliated scholars had worked or lobbied for some of the other companies involved. Investigative journalist Ken Silverstein, in a piece for Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics, outlined how the BPC takes money from oil and gas interests while promoting expanded drilling in a report overseen by a lobbyist who’d done work for ExxonMobil.
This week, the BPC is the subject of a scathing report from Ralph Nader’s consumer advocacy group, Public Citizen. The authors charge that, soon after receiving funding from the American Banking Association and Citigroup, the center convened a project on financial regulatory reform stacked with industry advocates meant to examine what could be improved in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act as implementation got underway.
Public Citizen’s worries were bolstered by the resignation of John Coffee, a Columbia University law professor who was among the few on the task force who was not affiliated with industry.Here is a link to Public Citizen's full report on BPC which is titled "Made in the Shade: An Examination of Whether the Bipartisan Policy Center is Truly Neutral."
He has lampooned the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, the debt ceiling, Jay Z and Beyoncé’s Cuban vacation, and, most recently, Anthony Weiner’s sexting scandal. One of his catchier spoofs, “Tap It: The NSA Slow Jam,” satirizes the National Security Agency’s electronic-surveillance program.Here is the debt ceiling rap video mentioned in the article above, and here is the one on Anthony Weiner. Here is one called the TSA Pokey Pokey. Here is one called Why They Fought. Here is one called The Equality Song. Here is the one called Jay-Z's Cuba State of Mind.
The hackers who penetrated the computer network of The New York Times last year have resurfaced with an attack on “an organization involved in shaping economic policy,” experts warned Monday.
The security firm FireEye said the original perpetrators “appear to be mounting fresh assaults that leverage new and improved versions of malware.”
FireEye said it had detected “a retooling of what security researchers believe is a massive spying operation based in China.”
“The new campaigns mark the first significant stirrings from the group since it went silent in January in the wake of a detailed expose of the group and its exploits,” FireEye researchers Ned Moran and Nart Villeneuve said in a blog post.
FireEye said its researchers “spotted the malware when analyzing a recent attempted attack on an organization involved in shaping economic policy.”
The name of the organization was not disclosed.
There is nothing approaching the conservative thought or scholarship one would expect of a think tank. It’s pure politics, and the sort of amateur, unthinking brand that has gotten Republicans in trouble both in office and in campaigns. [Heritage President Jim] DeMint is hawking a series of town hall meetings, which I am sure will generate additions to the group’s e-mail list and hence to its funding base.
Heritage folks will announce that this is all under the guise of Heritage Action, a political entity, not the think tank per se. But who is kidding whom? DeMint speaks on behalf of both, and the latter has been entirely subsumed by the hard-knuckle political screeching for which Heritage Action is famous.
In sum, DeMint isn’t really trying to run a think tank. He’s running a political racket that takes the most extreme right-wing positions imaginable, decries those who won’t go along, wails when the stances they advocate fail and then uses the burning resentment it has stoked to generate headlines and donations. When do you suppose conservatives will realize they are being fleeced by this operation?
In academics, idea plagiarism is a sin of the first magnitude, whereas in business and politics, it is considered, well, academic - of no practical significance. Where do think tanks fit on that spectrum? Are they fish or fowl, or neither?The paper includes case studies from think tanks such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), New America Foundation (NAF), and the Cato Institute.
Compared to academic scholars, think tank scholars have a greater incentive to plagiarize ideas. The pressure to claim credit in both scholarly communities is great, but the pressure to give credit is relatively weak in think tanks. One reason is that the problem-solution structure of think tank work doesn’t include a contribution-to-literature section. Another reason is that think tanks don’t publish their work in peer-reviewed publications, which are well-designed for cost-effectively weeding out idea plagiarism.
Think tanks may claim to respect original work as much as universities. But that doesn’t mean it’s in their self-interest to act in accordance with those values. This paper provides eight case studies related to such behavior. The paper assumes that if think tank scholars, like academic scholars, claim to provide original work, then they should be held accountable for proving that they in fact do so. The author hopes that others will investigate the limitations of such an assumption.
Unfortunately, the two traditional approaches to discouraging idea theft, passing intellectual property law (primarily used in commerce) and relying on private institutions to cultivate social sanctions (primarily used in academics) are not well suited for think tanks. An alternative approach is a hybrid policy where law is used to strengthen social sanctions. For example, libel and transparency laws pertaining to think tanks could be reformed to encourage a more robust market in evaluations of public policy credit claims.
An example of the hidden reach of such [think tank] sponsorships arose in June, when [Defense Secretary Chuck] Hagel arrived in Singapore’s plush Shangri-La Hotel for one of his first major policy addresses to a large gathering of defense ministers and generals from across Asia. He outlined plans for a long-term — and costly — US security umbrella requiring a greater commitment of forces, warships, training, and foreign weapons sales.
Undisclosed to Hagel’s audience — or the public, for that matter — was the fact that his remarks were crafted with help from scholars at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, one of the most respected of Washington think tanks.
National security agencies increasingly rely on the center to help formulate strategy, even as the think tank receives its biggest share of tax-deductible contributions for research from arms manufacturers, energy companies, and other major corporations seeking to shape policy — nearly a third of its $33 million in revenues last year, according to think tank officials and public records.
Roughly 4 percent of annual revenue is raised from foreign governments, including the Canadian province of Alberta; Norway; and several Persian Gulf emirates.
CSIS is building a new 15,000-square foot, $100 million headquarters in Washington with money raised by a high-powered collection of former senior government officials and titans of industry representing defense giants Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon, along with pharmaceutical conglomerate Procter & Gamble, oil giant Chevron, and a top adviser to the Sultan of Oman, according to CSIS officers and documents.
CSIS maintains that it has rigorous internal procedures to prevent donors’ interests from infecting scholarship or its large volume of advice to the government.
“We have 130 projects right now, and I keep close track of them. I know who is funding each of them,” said John Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary who has been president of CSIS since 2000.
Its full-time researchers, meanwhile, must annually disclose any outside business clients to an internal management committee, he said. That applies to at least one member of the team whose assistance was sought by senior Pentagon officials on Hagel’s Asia speech: Ernest Bower, a leading Asia scholar at CSIS who also runs a large business consulting firm, Bower Group Asia, with offices in nine Asian countries.
Bower told the Globe he discloses all of his business clients to CSIS, but he says he cannot reveal their identities publicly, due to contractual agreements.
“We listened to ideas from experts at several think tanks,” said Pentagon press secretary George Little. He would not identify the think tanks, however.
“It’s perfectly appropriate for government officials to listen to ideas from nongovernment sources, including think tank experts,” he said. “This is America, after all, where compelling ideas don’t always originate inside government agencies and departments.’’
But Hagel's office acknowledged that it was not aware when it sought Bower's independent advice that he is also a paid consultant for unidentified companies with interests in Asia. It declined to respond to questions about whether Hagel or his aides believe they should have been made aware.
