American Strategy Program

Archives: American Strategy Program Policy Papers

Al-Qaeda Central and the Internet

  • By Daniel Kimmage, Homeland Security Policy Institute
March 16, 2010

Executive Summary

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Should Americans Be Free to Visit Cuba?

  • By
  • Tom Garofalo,
  • New America Foundation
March 4, 2010

Summary

The Congress of the United States is currently deliberating a variety of legislative initiatives that would reform our policy toward Cuba. One striking aspect of that policy, as House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman has pointed out, stands out because it has more to do with us than with Cuba:  the longstanding prohibition on travel by Americans to the island. The travel ban is the only aspect of the broader embargo that infringes on the fundamental rights of U.S. citizens.  It should be ended.

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The Militant Pipeline

  • By Paul Cruickshank
February 25, 2010

Executive Summary

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Al-Qaeda Central

  • By Barbara Sude
February 25, 2010

A U.S.

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Lashkar-e-Taiba in Perspective

  • By Stephen Tankel
February 25, 2010

In 2006, the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba entered the Afghan theater, necessitating its increased presence in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The group is often mentioned during discussions of the Punjabi Taliban, militants from Punjabi jihadi groups, who arrived in large numbers at approximately the same time. But these militants follow the Deobandi school of Islam and are close to the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban.

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The Year of the Drone

  • By
  • Peter Bergen,
  • Katherine Tiedemann,
  • New America Foundation
February 24, 2010

The bomber, a Jordanian doctor linked to al Qaeda, detonated his explosives on December 30, 2009, at an American base in Khost in eastern Afghanistan, killing himself and seven CIA officers and contractors who were operating at the heart of the covert program overseeing U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan’s volatile northwestern tribal regions.

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Yemen on the Brink?

  • By Barak Barfi
January 25, 2010

Executive Summary

Status of al Qaeda in Yemen. Yemen is dominated by powerful tribes, some members of which shelter al Qaeda in order to leverage their power vis-à-vis other political actors. Tribal support for al Qaeda is thus political rather than ideological in nature. But despite this support, the relationship between al Qaeda and the tribes is sometimes strained, and al Qaeda is unpopular with the Yemeni people.

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For Security and Peace: Ratify START

  • By
  • William D. Hartung,
  • Frida Berrigan,
  • New America Foundation
January 13, 2010

This backgrounder makes the case for a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (“New START”) between the United States and Russia and rebuts the key arguments from critics of the agreement. Specifically, it responds to nine assertions made by the Senate Republican Policy Committee (SRPC) in a report entitled “START Follow-on Do’s and Don’ts.” This report has been chosen because it is representative of the key arguments being made by New START critics.

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Revenge of the Drones

  • By
  • Peter Bergen,
  • Katherine Tiedemann,
  • New America Foundation
October 19, 2009

As a result of the unprecedented 41 drone strikes into Pakistan authorized by the Obama administration, aimed at Taliban and al Qaeda networks based there, about a half-dozen leaders of militant organizations have been killed--including two heads of Uzbek terrorist groups allied with al Qaeda, and Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban--in addition to hundreds of lower-level militants and civilians, according to our analysis.[1]

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Pakistani Capabilities for a Counterinsurgency Campaign: A Net Assessment

  • By
  • Sameer Lalwani,
  • New America Foundation
September 17, 2009

Executive Summary

As a more effective Taliban steps up its operations along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Western observers increasingly are calling on Pakistan to implement a strategy of population-security counterinsurgency, or COIN. This paper will offer a net assessment of Pakistan's military capabilities to conduct such a campaign based on clearly stated assumptions, an analysis of open-source materials, and textbook COIN doctrine and best practices.

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