GEN McCaffrey on Strategic Challenges

[MikeF]

Attached is an overview of GEN McCaffrey's analysis of Strategic Challenges facing the Obama Administration.

Nine insights:

•Homeland Security (Secretary Janet Napolitano) is enormously improved since 9-11. Zero US strikes. Huge losses UK, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Spain.

•The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been bitter (40,199 US killed and wounded).

•The forty-four international terrorist organizations threatening the US are badly damaged, penetrated, losing international stature.

•Continuing proliferation of WMD nation states and technology arethe principle threat to the American people and regional stability. (Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, India –possible Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, etc.)

•The war in Iraq has taken a dramatic turn for the better. We will largely withdraw in the coming 36 months. (50,000 troops by the summer of 2010). Violence is down from 1,250 attacks/week in 2003 to 100 attacks/week in 2009. The civil war will be decided 2010-2012.

•The war in Afghanistan will go to high-order violence in 2009-2011. Our NATO allies are essential –and weak. The Afghan Government is both a modern miracle –and astonishingly corrupt and ineffective. The Afghan Army is the “schwerpunkt”of the 25 year campaign.

•The extremely capable and experienced Obama Administration national security team (Secretary Bob Gates, Secretary Hillary Clinton, General Dave Petraeus, General Ray Odierno, General Stan McChrystal, NSC Advisor Jim Jones, Special Envoy Dick Holbrook, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, Ambassador Ann Patterson) must create a foreign policy that takes into account a failing US economy, disenchantment with the Bush/Rumsfeld misjudgments, and enormous animosity to perceived US arrogance and unilateralism.

•Mexico (our second largest global economic partner) is facing severe economic failure and an internal violent struggle with a 100,000 person narco-criminal force. This struggle is central to both Mexican and US Security.

•US Military forces are grievously over tasked, too small, and under resourced for the former Bush international security strategy. Domestic security institutions (Customs and Border Protection, Public Health Service, US Coast Guard, USMarshall Service, DEA, FBI) are an order-of-magnitude too anemic for the dangerous challenge at hand

v/r

Mike