Center for a New American Security
last updated: October 13, 2014
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Contact Information
Center for a New American Security
1301 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW | Suite 403
Washington, DC | 20004
Ph: 202-457-9400
Fax: 202-457-9401
Founded
2007
Board of Directors(as of 2014)
- Richard Fontaine, President
- Krut Campbell, Chairman
- John Allen
- Richard Armitage
- Norman Augustine
- Denis Bovin
- Richard Danzig
- Nathaniel Fick
- Michele Flournoy
- David Hogan
- Linda Hudson
- Lewis Kaden
- William Kennard
- Joseph Lieberman
- Leo Mackay
- Walter Parkes
- Mitchell Reiss
- Peter Schwartz
- Michael Zak
About CNAS (as of 2014)
“The mission of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is to develop strong, pragmatic and principled national security and defense policies. Building on the expertise and experience of its staff and advisors, CNAS engages policymakers, experts and the public with innovative, fact-based research, ideas and analysis to shape and elevate the national security debate. A key part of our mission is to inform and prepare the national security leaders of today and tomorrow.”
Founded in 2007, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is widely considered to be an important source of national security and military analysis for the Obama administration, particularly with respect to counterinsurgency strategy (COIN). Described by the Los Angeles Times as “a haven for hawkish Democrats,”[1] CNAS calls itself an “independent and nonpartisan research institution” that aims to engage “policymakers, experts, and the public with innovative fact-based research, ideas, and analysis to shape and elevate the national security debate.”[2]
CNAS’ leading role in Obama-era policy-making was highlighted when in 2009 the organization’s cofounders—Michele Flournoy and Kurt Campbell—as well as several other CNAS scholars were tapped to serve in the administration.[3] Flournoy became the undersecretary of defense for policy, the same post held by the controversial neoconservative figure Douglas Feith during the first George W. Bush administration. Campbell was tapped to serve as the State Department’s lead Asia expert.[4]
Several CNAS principals were also named to the Defense Policy Board,[5] the in-house Pentagonadvisory board which, under the leadership of former chair Richard Perle, played a role in promoting an expansive “war on terror” during the Bush administration.[6]
In October 2014, CNAS cofounder and CEO Michele Flournoy was named to the twelve-member President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB), an independent body with the task of advising the president on intelligence matters.[7]
Flournoy, who served as a foreign policy surrogate for Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign, was floated as a possible candidate for secretary of defense in the second Obama administration amid efforts by “pro-Israel” activists to scuttle the nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE). Writing for The New Republic, blogger Molly Redden—who called CNAS “a pipeline for the young and talented individuals who now populate the lower ranks of the Department of Defense”—described Flournoy as “the name that conservatives have floated as an alternative” to Hagel, although Redden argued that this was more out of neoconservative opposition to Hagel than support for Flournoy.[8]
Generally regarded as a politically centrist think tank with liberal-hawk tendencies,[9] CNAS’ leadership has included a range of Democratic and Republican leaders over the years, as well as several high-profile corporate leaders and policy wonks. As of 2014, CNAS’ president was Richard Fontaine, a State Department veteran, former National Security Council staffer, and a past adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).[10] Fontaine’s predecessor was John Nagl, whom the Inter Press Service described as “a poster boy for COIN enthusiasts, including influential neoconservatives who featured Nagl at the March kick-off of their newest think tank, the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI).”[11]
In October 2014, CNAS announced that it was hiring neoconservative academic Eliot Cohen, an important proponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as an adjunct senior fellow. Eliot, who is the program director at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, has been described as “the most influential neoconservative in academe” and is a vociferous critic of the Obama administration.[12] In a CNAS press release about the hiring, Flournoy claimed that Cohen “has a deep understanding of policy issues as well as the larger strategic and historical context in which policy decisions are made.”[13]
CNAS’ board of directors—led by former Clinton Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig—has included former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, retired Sen. Joseph Lieberman, former Bush Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, former Lockheed executive and Center for Security Policy adviser Norman Augustine, and Mitt Romney adviser Mitchell Reiss.[14] In addition to representatives from corporations like Boeing and JPMorgan, CNAS’ board of advisers has included well-known liberal hawks like Anne-Marie Slaughter and Michael O’Hanlon, as well as conservatives like Paula Dobrianksy and Julie Finley.[15]
Activities
Among its activities, the organization hosts conferences, publishes blogs, and runs dozens of projects devoted to U.S. security interests in various countries, as well as on security issues related to defense spending, climate change, and the Internet, among many others.
These have included a “National Security Leaders Forum,” which serves as “a platform for senior civilian and military leaders to address the Washington policy community and media on the most important national security issues of the day”; “war games” like the 2008 game “Clout and Climate Change,” described as a “future scenario exercise to explore the national security implications of global climate change”; and a “Next Generation National Security Leaders Program,” which aims to “gather future national security leaders to participate in a series of frank and open discussions on the foreign policy challenges of today and tomorrow.”[16]
CNAS has housed a number of blogs and online publications, including the “Natural Security Blog” and “Abu Muqawama,” a widely read blog on counterinsurgency that was run by former CNAS scholar Andrew Exum (the blog shut down in October 2013).[17] Exum is a retired U.S. army soldier and a former fellow at the hawkish, “pro-Israel” Washington Institute for Near East Policy.[18]
CNAS also maintains “Flashpoints,” an online publication devoted to chronicling developments in the South China Sea.
On Military Intervention
CNAS’ policy publications tend to take a technocratic, problem-solving approach to U.S. wars overseas. As blogger Daniel Luban has written, CNAS “did not make its name with outspoken denunciations of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; it made its name with pragmatic recommendations for how to wage the wars more effectively,” developing in particular “a niche as the think-tank of choice for proponents of counterinsurgency.”[19]
A set of December 2012 reports marking the one-year anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq illustrated these tendencies. One of the reports, entitled “Iraq in Hindsight” and authored by Emma Sky, criticized numerous aspects of the war’s execution and assessed that the Iraq war had “left over 100,000 Iraqis dead, enabled the resurgence of Iran and tarnished the reputation of U.S. democracy promotion.”
Yet rather than warning against future such incursions, the report concluded simply that U.S. policymakers should “internalize these lessons … when intervening elsewhere in the future.”[20] A contemporaneous CNAS report advocated increasing bilateral U.S.-Iraqi security ties while also warning Iraq’s government against crossing a number of “red lines” regarding its domestic and regional politics.[21]
On the other hand, CNAS scholars have also warned against military intervention in Iran or Syria.
In a February 2012 report on Syria, for example, Marc Lynch warned that while the United States should apply firm diplomatic pressure against the Assad regime, armed intervention would only exacerbate the conflict. “Military intervention will allow Americans to feel they are doing something,” he wrote. “But unleashing even more violence without a realistic prospect of changing the regime’s behavior or improving security is neither just nor wise.” Lynch also counseled against providing arms to Syria’s opposition, warning that it could prolong the conflict and lead to an eventual full-scale intervention.[22]
Similarly, a June 2012 report cautioned U.S. policymakers against limiting their diplomatic options with Iran. “All options, including preventive military action, should remain on the table, but policymakers should recognize that the potential risks and costs associated with using force are high,” its authors wrote. “Military action should remain a last resort, which should be contemplated only by the United States and only under stringent conditions”—namely, only if “Iran appears poised to weaponize its nuclear capability,” which it suggests is not currently the case.
The report also cautioned against drawing diplomatic “red lines”—especially regarding Iran’s domestic uranium enrichment—and also cautioned against a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, warning it would only have the effect of “increasing the risks to Israeli security and regional stability.”[23]
A May 2013 report by Colin Kahl, Raj Pattani, and Jacob Stokes built on this work, concluding that while "the commitment to use all instruments of national power, including the possible use of force, to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons should remain firm … this preference for prevention should not be used as an excuse to avoid thinking through the requirements for effective containment."
The report argued that because Iran could likely develop a nuclear arsenal even if the United States and its allies tried to stop it, Washington should develop a strategy for containing and deterring that includes options in addition to the use of force. The authors recommended promoting political reform in the Gulf region, bolstering regional missile defense capabilities, adopting a "no-first-use" pledge and encouraging Israel to do the same, ramping up counterterrorism operations, and explicitly disavowing regime change as a goal of U.S. engagement with Iran in the event of a crisis. They wrote that the goals of U.S. policy should be deterrence of "Iranian nuclear use and aggression," defense of U.S. national interests, disruption of Iran's "destabilizing activities," de-escalation of regional crises, and denuclearization of the Gulf.[24]
The Inter Press Service (IPS) linked the report to an emerging elite consensus toward "calling for more emphasis on the diplomatic track" with respect to U.S.-Iranian relations. Alongside the CNAS report, IPS observed, "recent reports by blue-ribbon task forces of The Iran Project, the Atlantic Council, the Carnegie Endowment, and the Center for the National Interest have shown a developing elite consensus in favor of greater U.S. flexibility at the negotiating table."[25]
Rightist Connections
Despite its centrist reputation, CNAS has cultivated relations with a number high-profile right-wing politicians and neoconservative pundits and pressure groups. The hiring of Eliot Cohen in 2014, discussed above, is a case in point.
Also in 2014, CNAS invited potential Republican presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to its annual conference to discuss his foreign policy vision. Ryan used the opportunity to criticize President Obama, calling him “indecisive on the world stage” and claiming that he is putting U.S. “credibility at risk, and so with it our security.” Ryan called for increased military spending and urged the development of “new capabilities like directed-energy weapons—such as lasers and sonic weaponry—and advanced missile defense.”[26]
A few months after the CNAS annual convention, in September 2014, Michele Flournoy co-authored an op-ed published in the Washington Post that called for increased defense spending. Written with Eric Edelman, a Bush-era Pentagon official and board member of the Foreign Policy Initiative, the article argued that military spending should be increased to "sustain the rules-based international order that underpins U.S. security and prosperity" and called for an immediate repeal of the Budget Control Act, which provided for the "sequestration" cuts much loathed by foreign policy hawks, and a "return, at a minimum, to funding levels proposed by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his fiscal 2012 budget." Edelman and Flournoy also argued that "the U.S. military must be able to deter or stop aggression in multiple theaters, not just one, even when engaged in a large-scale war.”[27]
CNAS drew attention in early 2009 when its president at the time, John Nagl, participated in a conference hosted by an advocacy group founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan called the Foreign Policy Initiative, which is viewed by some observers as a successor to the Project for the New American Century.[28] The March 2009 conference, titled “Afghanistan: Planning for Success,” was striking for its support for President Obama, who had recently announced plans to send 21,000 new troops to Afghanistan. A bipartisan group of officials and policy wonks—including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Robert and Frederick Kagan, Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), and Nagl— praised Obama’s escalation policy.[29]
During his speech, Nagl argued that the new troops were “merely a down payment on the vastly expanded force needed to protect all 30 million Afghan people.” Offering bipartisan cover for the work of neoconservative groups like FPI, Nagl said, “There used to be a bipartisan consensus in this country on foreign policy, in particular when we have our sons and daughters at war. And I am hopeful that events like this will contribute to that.”[30]
Commenting on CNAS’s role in Washington discourse on security policy, Kelley Beaucar Vlahos wrote in The American Conservative, "COIN today is the realm of CNAS, as if Frederick Kagan and AEI had never existed. But it won’t do to deny the family resemblance, says retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor: ‘You will hear the same things at the Center for a New American Security as you will at the American Enterprise Institute. Nation-building at gunpoint, democracy at gunpoint. What’s the difference?’”[31]
Another commentator, Andrew Bacevich, a generally conservative scholar who was a vocal critic of neoconservative influence in the George W. Bush administration, also finds similarities between CNAS and groups like AEI. Wrote Vladhos, “Adherents of the old neoconservative vision and these new security policymakers all ‘drank the Kool-Aid,’ said Boston University Professor Andrew Bacevich. … Both groups, he added, see war as ‘a perpetual condition,’ employing massive firepower and boots on the ground, draining ‘billions, if not trillions of dollars,’ in pursuit of goals based on skewed assumptions about American interests abroad.”[32]