Situation Report Day One

Welcome to the first edition of Situation Report, FP’s weekday briefing on national security. It’s part of today’s launch of FP’s national security channel, which will include a raft of new, smart pieces on U.S. and global security issues in what Editor-in-Chief Susan Glasser calls a daily "array of original reporting, insight and analysis — with the same sharp sensibility you’re used to on the rest of Foreignpolicy.com, but with a deeper dive on all things national security, from nukes to spooks, cyberwar to the Pentagon’s budget wars." http://bit.ly/RjAXjn  

Situation Report will be a mix of our best reporting on the national security establishment in Washington and around the world. We’ll interview newsmakers, and the people behind the scenes whose views should be making the news. We’ll give you insight into the people, process, and politics that connect you to big ideas. And we’ll ask you, dear readers, to help us keep tabs on the trends, the muscle movements, and changes in hue that keep this the most fascinating beat to cover. Follow me @glubold or e-mail me anytime at gordon.lubold@foreignpolicy.com

First up, FP sits down with Gen. John Allen, ISAF commander, in Kabul. For months, the lack of a clearly defined narrative about Afghanistan, combined with election noise and economic worries here, has pushed the war out of the public mind. The spate of insider attacks has put it back into the media’s map, temporarily. But the next several months will in many ways define the American exit between now and December 2014. Soon, we’ll learn how many troops will remain in the country and when they’ll leave. We’ll learn what impact attacks on militants may have on the battlefield. We’ll see if the ANSF can truly stand on its own. And most interesting to me, we’ll know if a series of disconnected local uprisings against the Taliban could become something bigger. A few takeaways from Gen. Allen:

Violence across Afghanistan: "squeezing it and squeezing it." As you might expect, Allen says he feels pretty good about the way things stand. Many of the once-violent provinces are now quiet. More than 50 percent of the violence across the entire country, Allen says, is found among about 8 percent of the population. "It’s a very small amount of the population, but what’s happened is the enemy’s been pushed out of the principal population centers and pushed into these districts," he said. "And we’re squeezing it, and we’re squeezing it, and we’re squeezing it." 

How long will he get to keep his 68,000 troops? Soon, the redeployment of the Afghan surge will be complete, and by Oct. 1 the American force in Afghanistan will settle at 68,000. In March testimony, Allen said that 68,000 is a good "going in number" for 2013 and it is widely believed that he’d like to keep the force at that level as far into the fighting season next year as possible. He didn’t say what he will recommend. But he explained the factors he’ll use to provide the analysis by November.

"When you’ve seen one, you’ve seen one." Allen cut his teeth as a one-star in Anbar Province in Iraq, where he played a key role, with others, in what became known as the Anbar Awakening. Today in Afghanistan, he is looking at what has been called the "Andar Awakening," named after a district in Ghazni province in the East where one of the first uprisings against the Taliban occurred. The uprising presents an appealing narrative. And it has a catchy name. "This is a really important moment for this campaign because the brutality of the Taliban and the desire for local communities to have security has become so, so prominent — as it was in Anbar — that they’re willing to take the situation into their own hands to do this," Allen said in the most in-depth public comments he’s made on the uprisings yet.

But there are sticky questions for a series of uprisings so disconnected that commanders in Afghanistan joke that "once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen one:" How do the uprisings connect to the government of Afghanistan? What role can or should the coalition play to nurture them? Are there ominous motivations behind some of the uprisings, but perhaps not all? Allen takes a stab at the answers here: http://bit.ly/OWQ1Hv

The Institute for the Study of War’s Jeff Dressler, who is studying the uprisings, said it’s hard to ignore their potential. "I’m somewhat optimistic we could see a growing movement," he told us. Dressler said he was in Afghanistan when one of the first ones, in Ghazni, began. "They are not connected with the Afghan government, but the Afghan government is inclined to support them," he said. He, like ISAF, is looking for commonalities across the various uprisings. "It’s important because it could potentially turn into a broader movement, and it shows people can turn against the Taliban."

Classified? Or Sensitive? The question is under review as the Pentagon studies the bin Laden book. After a series of questions on just what is contained in the new book out on the bin Laden raid, "No Easy Day," Pentagon Press Secretary George Little at the Pentagon Tuesday finally acknowledged that they think it might contain classified information: "We are, of course, continuing to review the book, but at this stage, let me put it this way.  We do think that — that sensitive and classified information is probably contained in the book," he told reporters.

Remember it was a big deal when a new President Obama got his own secure BlackBerry? Now, our own John Reed, master of our new "Killer Apps" blog, reports, there is "a growing cadre of soldiers, spies, and top government officials" who will soon have access to smart phones and tablets that can send intelligence information. He calls it the NSA’s "Hot Christmas Item." Some folks could have them by the end of the year. http://bit.ly/OSwCE7

And from our own Kevin Baron, host and ringleader of his new blog, the E-Ring, which promises to bring even those with a Pentagon pass a glimpse into the halls of power: "GOP vs. the generals…again? The more that Republicans complain Democrats don’t ‘listen to the generals,’ the more it seems they only get themselves into trouble. Last week, in a little-noticed nugget, Gen. James Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps, gave a full-throated endorsement to the Navy’s pursuit of biofuel technology. That flies in the face of efforts by Republicans to kill the program. In May, conservatives in Congress attached riders to the House and Senate versions of the defense authorization bill that in effect would shut down Pentagon purchases of biofuels. So far, conservatives have pitted biofuels and the Navy’s ‘Great Green Fleet’ as a wasteful ‘experiment’ led by President Obama’s politically appointed Navy secretary, Ray Mabus, with scant reference to the brass. Who would you listen to?" http://bit.ly/OX1zJd

From Dad with Love: Dave Barno writes his two sons, both Army captains, after watching "Restrepo" in a piece out on FP today. Barno writes: "Troops in rifle platoons and infantry companies forever have been given muddy, dangerous, and seemingly senseless tactical objectives — take that hill, storm that beach, attack and seize that city — that young soldiers and junior officers swallow hard and press on to execute with pure strength of will and the hazy confidence that someone, somewhere has the big picture right. It will ever be so. We owe them a lot of focus to ensure the leaders up top actually do have it right. And we devote little organizational energy to ensure that happens." http://bit.ly/UqHyg6

Memo to Mitt: the U.S. isn’t the only one cool to the idea of another large-scale war. Dmitri Trenin is out today with a piece on the Kremlin’s military reforms that show – for the first time in a century – that Russia is abandoning the idea of fighting a large-scale war. Instead, Russia is gearing its military to focus on its own back yard. This may be news to Romney, who thinks Russia is America’s number one foe, and a not-so-soothing reminder to Russia’s neighbors that the bear is refocusing. It’s Tbilisi that should be anxious, he writes, not the GOP. http://bit.ly/Q4b9NK

Modernization Love: FP’s Jeffrey Lewis on the B-61 and how its upgrade will cost more than its weight in gold. Lewis writes: "There is now a furious debate about whether the United States needs to modernize the B61, which dates to Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration, making it the oldest design left in the stockpile. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, recently revealed that the cost of the program to extend the bomb’s life has more than doubled: Modernizing the approximately 400 B61 gravity bombs in the stockpile will cost $10 billion. That is billions with a "B." In case you were wondering, it would be less expensive to build solid-gold replicas of each of the 700-pound B61s, even at near-record gold prices." http://bit.ly/OWe7Rc

Opened secrets: how the CIA got Saddam wrong on WMD. Formerly classified documents obtained by the National Security Archive, and published for the first time by FP, show why intelligence analysts failed to consider how Saddam saw the world. "Analysts tended to focus on what was most important to us — the hunt for WMD — and less on what would be most important for a paranoid dictatorship to protect. Viewed through an Iraqi prism, their reputation, their security, their overall technological capabilities, and their status needed to be preserved. Deceptions were perpetrated and detected, but the reasons for those deceptions were misread."  http://bit.ly/OWQ6L8

BUDGET MATTERS

Our own Josh Rogin is in Charlotte this week and reporting how the Obama camp is warning folks that the Romney people are telling lies about sequestration. Rogin writes: "‘We are under attack. Romney will try to hang sequestration around the president’s neck,’ said Robert Diamond, the Obama campaign’s national veterans and military families vote director, at a reception hosted by the Truman National Security Project here on Monday. Diamond’s speech was a call to arms for Democrats to mount a grassroots campaign to defend President Barack Obama’s record on defense spending." http://bit.ly/JyqV

TAKING NOTICE

NYT: Iran using Iraqi air space to re-supply Syria. The NYT’s Michael Gordon has this bit today about Iran: "The Obama administration pressed Iraq to shut down the air corridor that Iran had been using earlier this year, raising the issue with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq. But as Syrian rebels gained ground and Mr. Assad’s government was rocked by a bombing that killed several high officials, Iran doubled down in supporting the Syrian leader. The flights started up again in July and, to the frustration of American officials, have continued ever since." http://nyti.ms/Q5lBz0