Center for a New American Security

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank established in 2007 by co-founders Michèle Flournoy and Kurt M. Campbell. It specializes in United States national security issues. CNAS focuses on terrorism, irregular warfare, the future of the U.S. military, the emergence of Asia as a global power center, and the national security implications of natural resource consumption.

Center for a New American Security
AbbreviationCNAS
Formation2007 (2007)
TypePublic policy think tank
20-8084828
Headquarters1152 15th St., Ste. 950
Location
CEO
Richard Fontaine[1]
Budget
Revenue: $8,789,410
Expenses: $7,228,402
(FYE September 2015)[2]
WebsiteCNAS.org
GEN David Petraeus at CNAS's annual conference, June 2009

The administration of President Barack Obama hired several CNAS employees for key jobs.[3] Founders Michèle Flournoy and Kurt Campbell formerly served as the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, respectively. In June 2009 The Washington Post suggested, "In the era of Obama... the Center for a New American Security may emerge as Washington's go-to think tank on military affairs."[3] CNAS scholars have included John Nagl,[4] David Kilcullen, Andrew Exum, Thomas E. Ricks, Robert D. Kaplan,[5] and Marc Lynch. CNAS is led by CEO Victoria Nuland, who served as the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs under Secretary of State John Kerry.

CNAS has around 30 employees and a budget under $6 million.[6] The organizations top donors include Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, Open Society Foundations, Airbus Group, The Boeing Company, Chevron Corporation, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Raytheon Company, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, the United States government, BAE Systems, BP America and Exxon Mobil Corporation.[7]

In a speech to the United States Military Academy at West Point on February 25, 2011, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates quoted CNAS President John Nagl and Senior Advisor and Senior Fellow Lieutenant General David Barno, (Ret.) for their recommendations on improving promotion policies in the military.[8]

CNAS experts have been quoted in numerous national media outlets, including Foreign Policy,[9] The New York Times,[10] The Washington Post,[11] The Wall Street Journal,[12] The National Interest,[13] The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,[14] C-SPAN,[15] NBC and MSNBC,[16] Fox News,[17] NPR,[18] CNN,[19] and PBS.[20]

Research and initiatives
Hillary Clinton speaks at CNAS's rollout event, June 2007

CNAS has released extensive reports on terrorism, irregular warfare, and regional security challenges.

Before joining CNAS, John Nagl served as an active-duty officer in both the first Gulf War and in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He then was part of the team that wrote FM 3-24, the Army’s counter-insurgency field manual that changed the way the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were conducted. Since joining CNAS first as a Senior Fellow and then as President, Nagl has continued to delve into counterinsurgency while also publishing papers on other topics, including the need for a permanent corps of Army advisers[21] and strategies for confronting Islamic extremism.[22]

CNAS has also staked out the terrain in studying the emergence of Asia as a center of global power, particularly with regards to China. One of the main stated goals of CNAS’s Asia-Pacific Security program is to “devise a future path for America’s engagement of China that can expand bilateral cooperation in areas of shared strategic interest and encourage increasing accountability from the Chinese regime.” [23]

In 2008-2009, CNAS pushed environmental security, especially on climate change and energy. The organization released a report in 2009 called "Natural Security" by Senior Fellow Sharon Burke, which looked at the national security context for natural resources, including energy, critical minerals, land, water, biodiversity, and climate change. CNAS continues to lead on such research with Elizabeth Rosenberg, a former Treasury Department official who runs the Energy, Economics, and Security Program.

The CNAS U.S.-India Initiative is co-chaired by CNAS Board of Directors members Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State, and Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. The stated goal of the Initiative is to help advance growing bilateral ties in areas of mutual interest, including security, economics, energy, climate change, democracy, and human rights.[24] On October 27, 2010, at the White House Press Gaggle on the President's Upcoming Trip to India, the CNAS report Natural Allies: A Blueprint for the Future of U.S.-India Relations was referenced in a reporter's question to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.[25]

Gen. Martin E. Dempsey speaking at CNAS, November 2014

In 2010, the Center developed its Cyber Security project, which is co-chaired by Bob Kahn, the co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocols used to transmit information over the Internet; Vice Admiral John Michael McConnell, USN (Ret.), former Director of National Intelligence; Joseph Nye, Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard University; and Peter Schwartz, a futurist and business strategist and member of the CNAS Board of Directors.[26] In February 2011, CNAS Vice President and Director of Studies Kristin Lord and Research Associate Travis Sharp argued in The Hill that "increased federal attention to cybersecurity makes good sense," but "lawmakers must ensure that the U.S. government does not spend aimlessly on cybersecurity."[27]

CNAS has suggested that one way to contain future military costs would be to move heavy army units into the Army National Guard and Army Reserve. Still, military officials have responded that the governors would rather have light units that are better suited to their emergency needs.[28]

Papers for the Next President Series

In May 2016, CNAS launched its Papers for the Next President series to assist the next president and his team in crafting a strong, pragmatic, and principled national security agenda. The series explores the critical regions and topics that the next president will need to address early in his tenure and includes actionable recommendations designed to be implemented during the first few months of 2017. Since its inception, CNAS has released 12 reports[29] on topics including U.S.-Russia Relations,[30] transatlantic security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific,[31] and U.S. strategy in the Middle East.[32]

Funding and controversy

Shortly after CNAS formed, it was noted by the Wall Street Journal and others that it was “rapidly emerging as a top farm team for the incoming Obama administration.”[33] This was concerning since nearly 30 defense contractors, including Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon; NATO; several foreign governments, including Taiwan and United Arab Emirates; the oil companies BP and Chevron; investment banks including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase; technology firms, such as Facebook, Google, and Microsoft; the U.S. Department of State, and two different Pentagon offices primarily fund the organization-creating a conflict of interest.[34]

When co-founder, Kurt Campbell, was questioned by Jim Webb before Congress about the potential for conflict, he replied, “We’ve kept a very clear line. Not one of our publications, not one of our public advocacies ever touches on anything that these companies worked on.”[35] However, CNAS frequently violates its own stated ethics policy and does so without acknowledging the violation.[36] For example, CNAS scholars did not disclose they received $100,000 to $249,999 in funding from Taiwan in the fiscal years proceeding a 2020 report to Washington on “Rising to the China Challenge," where they advised America should invest "considerable amounts of money, senior-level attention, and bureaucratic focus" to, among other things, "strengthen its diplomatic and security relationship with Taiwan" by doing things such as prioritizing "a bilateral investment treaty and free trade agreement with Taipei," changing "existing DoD policy to commence bilateral military exercises," and "supporting or partnering with Taiwan on efforts to counter China’s influence over local media."[37][38] The CNAS gets around ethical concerns by refusing to take responsibility for the materials it publishes and pushing that responsibility on the authors. Plus, it pools all donor money together into a general fund and claims since the money is not directly funding the reports, that removes the conflict.[39]

Further, CNAS has a board of advisors in addition to its board of directors that “actively contributes to the development of the Center’s research and expands [their] community of interest,” with members who “engage regularly with the intellectual power generated at CNAS, though they do not have official governance or fiduciary oversight responsibilities.” [40] The advisory board is not selected based on a diverse and impartial group of academic leaders, but rather the amount the "advisor" or his/her representative company donates to CNAS.[41]

In addition, many involved in CNAS go on to become government employees, who continue pushing for the goals of CNAS's funders. This raises pressing questions about the ethics of those officials.[42] For example Victoria Nuland, who was the former CEO of CNAS, is President Biden’s current Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs.[43] European diplomats dislike her aggressive approach toward US-Russian relations. One said, “She doesn’t engage like most diplomats. She comes off as rather ideological.”[44] The feeling seems to be mutual since in a leaked call, Nuland commented “@%$# the EU."[45] In one article she published after leaving the CNAS, she called for increased defense spending and weapons development, as well as to “establish permanent bases along NATO’s eastern border.”[46] The governments of two nations on NATO’s eastern border, Latvia and Lithuania, are recent contributors to CNAS.[47]

References
  1. "People". Center for a New American Security. Retrieved 5 July 2019.
  2. "Center for a New American Security" (PDF). Amazon Web Services. 30 September 2016. Retrieved 27 February 2017.
  3. "Carlos Lozada -- Setting Priorities for the Afghan War". The Washington Post. June 7, 2009. Retrieved April 28, 2010.
  4. Ricks, Thomas E. (January 16, 2008). "High-Profile Officer Nagl to Leave Army, Join Think Tank". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 28, 2010.
  5. Center for a New American Security, Robert Kaplan Archived 2011-03-15 at the Wayback Machine.
  6. Yochi J. Dreazen, "Obama dips into think tank for talent", The Wall Street Journal, 18 November 2008
  7. "CNAS Supporters". www.cnas.org.
  8. U.S. Department of Defense, "Speech: As Delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, West Point, NY Archived April 10, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, 25 February 2011.
  9. See, for example, Robert Kaplan 'Oman's Renaissance Man', Foreign Policy, 1 March 2011.
  10. "Room for Debate: A Logical, but Difficult, Step". The New York Times. March 22, 2011.
  11. Kaplan, Robert D. (February 27, 2011). "Arab democracy and the return of the Mediterranean world". The Washington Post.
  12. Kaplan, Robert D. (March 26, 2011). "The Middle East Crisis Has Just Begun". The Wall Street Journal.
  13. "America Primed". The National Interest.
  14. The Daily Show, Thomas Ricks, 10 February 2009.
  15. C-SPAN, U.S. Military Intervention in Libya, 23 March 2011.
  16. NBC News, Meet the Press transcripts, 27 March 2011.
  17. "President of CNAS Richard Fontaine". Fox News.
  18. Tom Gjelten, In Libyan Conflict, is Endgame a Stalemate?, NPR, 24 March 2011.
  19. "CNN.com". CNN.
  20. Center for a New American Security, United States, Arab Leaders Walk Fine Line as Egypt's Power Center Remains Uncertain Archived 2011-06-26 at the Wayback Machine, 4 February 2011.
  21. "The Pentagon's New Cyber Strategy". Archived from the original on 2010-05-07.
  22. "Cyberspace Threats Often Blur Government Agency Lines". Archived from the original on 2010-06-12.
  23. Center for a New American Security, Asia-Pacific Security Archived 2009-12-15 at the Wayback Machine
  24. Center for a New American Security India Initiative Archived 2011-05-03 at the Wayback Machine
  25. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, Press Gaggle on the President's Upcoming Trip to India, 27 October 2010.
  26. Center for a New American Security Cyber Security Archived 2011-05-01 at the Wayback Machine
  27. Kristin M. Lord and Travis Sharp, Cyber sanity, The Hill, 25 February 2011.
  28. Clark, Colin. "Romney Pledges Defense Boost; Analyst Predicts $1 Trillion in DoD Cuts." Archived 2012-04-25 at the Wayback Machine AOL Defense, 7 October 2011.
  29. "Preparing the President". www.cnas.org.
  30. "The Future of U.S.-Russia Relations". Center for a New American Security.
  31. "Transatlantic Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific". Center for a New American Security.
  32. "Reset, Negotiate, Institutionalize: A Phased Middle East Strategy for the Next President". Center for a New American Security.
  33. "Obama Dips Into Think Tank for Talent".
  34. "Web Archive Showing Past CNAS Supporters".
  35. "Archived Hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - The Nomination of Kurt Campbell to be Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs". Archived from the original on 8 February 2022.
  36. "The Military-Industrial-Think Tank Complex Conflicts of Interest at the Center for a New American Security" (PDF).
  37. "Rising to the China Challenge Renewing American Competitiveness in the Indo-Pacific".
  38. "Taiwan Funding of Think Tanks: Omnipresent and Rarely Disclosed".
  39. "The Military-Industrial-Think Tank Complex Conflicts of Interest at the Center for a New American Security" (PDF).
  40. "Archived list of advisory board members". Archived from the original on 9 April 2018.
  41. "Archived Corporate Partnership Program".
  42. "The Military-Industrial-Think Tank Complex Conflicts of Interest at the Center for a New American Security" (PDF).
  43. "CNAS Experts and Alumni Selected for Senior Leadership Positions in the Biden Administration".
  44. "The Undiplomatic Diplomat".
  45. "Ukraine crisis: Transcript of Leaked Nuland-Pyatt Call".
  46. "Pinning Down Putin How a Confident America Should Deal With Russia".
  47. "Web Archive Showing Past CNAS Supporters".
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.