Brookings: Experts - John McLaughlin

Brookings Launches the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence (21CSI)

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:40:00 -0400

Washington, D.C. — The Brookings Institution announced today the establishment of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence (21CSI). The new center will be unique in addressing defense, cybersecurity, arms control and intelligence challenges in a comprehensive manner, seeking not just to explore key emerging security issues, but also how they cross traditional fields and domains.

“With the launch of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, Brookings will be at the forefront of research and public debate on the critical security issues of our time,” said Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution. "21CSI will bring together the extraordinary array of scholars already working on defense and security issues at Brookings, along with adding new experts in fields that range from cyber to intelligence policy."

The Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence will be housed in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings and Peter W. Singer will serve as its founding director. One of the world’s leading experts on modern warfare and author of the New York Times bestseller, Wired for War (Penguin, 2009), Singer has founded and managed two previous projects at Brookings, the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World and the 21st Century Defense Initiative.

The center will encompass four key focal points of policy research on security and defense issues:

A Defense Policy team will be led by Michael O'Hanlon, one of the most influential and widely published defense scholars in the world, who also serves as director of research in the Foreign Policy program. He will be joined by other resident and nonresident scholars including Senior Fellow Vanda Felbab-Brown, a leading expert on counterinsurgency and illicit networks, and Senior Fellow Stephen Cohen, a pre-eminent expert in South Asian security issues. The team will also comprise the Federal Executive Fellows (FEFs), career officers from each military service and the Coast Guard, who spend a year in residence researching and writing on defense topics.
The new Intelligence Project, focusing on the nexus of intelligence and policymaking, will be led by Senior Fellow Bruce Riedel, a 30-year veteran of the intelligence community who also served on the National Security Council staff for three presidents. Riedel will be supported by a team of resident and nonresident scholars, including Paul Pillar and John McLaughlin, as well as career officers seconded from the intelligence community, and an advisory group of distinguished former senior intelligence officials and policymakers. The Intelligence Project is the first of its kind to be established at a major research institution.
The Arms Control Initiative will combine a focus on existing challenges of nuclear and conventional disarmament with new policy research on the Iranian and North Korean challenges to the nuclear nonproliferation regime. It is led by Senior Fellow Steven Pifer, a former special assistant to the president with substantial arms control experience. Robert Einhorn, currently the State Department’s special adviser for Nonproliferation and Arms Control, is expected to join later this spring as a Senior Fellow. The Initiative will also house a new program designed to cultivate and mentor the next generation of arms control and nonproliferation scholars.
The new Cybersecurity project will bring together the work of Visiting Fellow Ian Wallace, a former senior official at the British Ministry of Defence, who helped develop British cyber strategy, as well as its cyber-relationship with the United States, and a team of nonresident fellows, including Noah Shachtman, national security editor at Wired magazine, recently named one of the top 10 cybersecurity writers in the world; Ben Hammersley, a war journalist, noted technology writer, and author of the upcoming book Approaching the Future: 64 Things You Need to Know Now for Then; and Ralph Langner, the cybersecurity expert credited with “decoding” Stuxnet.

21CSI will focus on cutting-edge, in-depth, policy-relevant research and programming, designed to help shape the public policy debate and inform policy-makers. Bringing together a diverse group of experts and scholars, it will seek to promote collaboration across the various policy domains, in order to better understand the rapidly evolving, increasingly complex 21st century battlefield.

“We’ve created 21CSI in response to the enormous changes playing out in the global security environment,” said Martin Indyk, vice president and director of the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. “To address the diverse range of issues in this field, we’ve assembled a world-class team of researchers, who are some of the leading voices on the current challenges driving security policy today, as well as how we should think about tomorrow.”

Around the Halls: Remembering Richard Holbrooke

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 09:40:00 -0500

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who helped shape American foreign policy from the Vietnam War to the conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including brokering the 1995 accord that ended the war in Yugoslavia, passed away on December 13 in Washington. Strobe Talbott, John McLaughlin, Martin Indyk, Roberta Cohen and Francis Deng offer tributes to one of America's great public servants and diplomats.

Remembering Richard Holbrooke
Strobe Talbott, President, The Brookings Institution

Richard Holbrooke's legacy goes well beyond the critical role he played in bringing a decade of fragile peace in the Balkans, welcoming a reunified Germany in an expanding NATO and normalizing relations with China. He also leaves a vast, multigenerational, intercontinental network of friends.

Read Strobe Talbott's full tribute from The Washington Post »

Richard Holbrooke: An Appreciation
John McLaughlin, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy

I did not work with Richard Holbrooke intimately for protracted periods, but my work as an intelligence officer brought me into contact with him periodically on issues ranging from the Balkans to the former Soviet Union.

I always thought of Richard as a force of nature. As someone providing intelligence to Richard, you always knew exactly where you stood: if he thought you were not helping much he told you bluntly and if he found what you provided useful, he could be lavish in his appreciation. In other words, he would engage you with all the vigor that he attacked diplomatic problems—the kind of person I’ve always thought of as the ideal intelligence “consumer.”

Most of all I appreciated Richard’s passion for ideas. His “bulldozer” image led some people to think he was closed to some lines of thought. I never found that to be the case. In fact, he was an excellent listener who inspired intense loyalty among those who worked closely with him—people he invariably referred to as his “team.”

My fondest memory of Richard comes from a time when he invited a State Department colleague and me to stay at his residence in Germany for a couple days during his tour as ambassador. Spending a late night bull session with Richard Holbrooke amounted to a tour of many worlds, ranging from politics, art, literature, foreign policy, and Washington gossip—with books on all of these slid across to you accompanied by a “you really must read this!” Richard was a cornucopia of passions about almost everything. As I said, a force of nature.

Richard Holbrooke: May His Memory Be Blessed
Martin Indyk, Vice President and Director, Foreign Policy

As Richard Holbrooke's friends and colleagues gathered in the entrance to George Washington Hospital last night to console each other and begin the vigil for his soul, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came down from saying goodbye to her friend and adviser. Richard's staff gathered around her. As she exhorted them to keep up his vital work and then read out to them the condolence statement she had just issued, my heart broke at the sight. Young American diplomats with grim faces, tears rolling down their cheeks—one from India, another from Pakistan, a third from Iran, a fourth with Italian forefathers, a fifth the son of a legendary actress, the sixth a bald-headed Brit, and on and on. Each of them brilliant in their own way. All of them Richard's disciples. He had yet again handpicked the best and the brightest of a new generation to support his latest, most complex and difficult diplomatic mission. And now their captain had been taken from them.

At that moment, I felt envious. They at least had the immense privilege of working for Richard, and learning from him. He taught them the vital importance of diplomacy in ending conflicts, saving lives, and improving the world. He taught them to be passionate about their work and compassionate to their fellow human beings. He taught them to be intolerant of bureaucracy, but respectful of serious people and their ideas. He taught them to be mindful of their role in history, and therefore never to give up in their efforts to help shape it—if the door was closed, he would urge them to try the window, for theirs was a noble cause. Of course they also had to put up with his occasional impatience and insensitivity. But that price was easily paid because beneath the apparent imperviousness, they came to know that he carried a fierce and abiding loyalty to them all.

I was a latecomer to Richard's vast circle of friends. He had steered clear of the Middle East morass, instinctively understanding that his diplomatic talents were better suited to more tractable if no less complicated conflicts. It was instead through my love Gahl Burt that I came to know the other side of Richard: the builder of institutions to do the people-to-people work that could buttress American diplomatic efforts around the world. He had chosen Gahl as his partner in establishing the American Academy in Berlin, an extraordinary institution which brings the very best American writers, artists, musicians, scholars, and policy experts to Berlin to cement the cultural ties between the United States and Germany. The Asia Society and Refugees International were similar beneficiaries of his boundless determination. How many ambassadors after leaving their posts would imagine, let alone have the energy to construct, such enduring mechanisms of a civil society. They are but one shining part of the Holbrooke legacy.

Richard Holbrooke was a diplomatic bulldozer with a seemingly limitless supply of fuel. Inevitably, the resentments of those in Washington who felt pushed aside accumulated. They almost did him in last year. Some of his close friends advised him to give up; told him it wasn't worth it. But of course Richard refused. He was never one to leave the arena in mid-fight. And just as his fortunes in Washington began to improve so too did the Afghanistan/Pakistan situation start a slow turn toward a political endgame where his talents would be most needed. Tragically, the fuel ran out last night.

The Hebrew sage, Rabbi Tarfon, once wrote, "It is not up to you to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it." That was Richard's motto. We will honor the memory of this great American diplomat if we too do not desist.

In Appreciation of Richard Holbrooke
Roberta Cohen, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy
Francis Deng, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy

Richard Holbrooke will always be remembered for his relentless pursuit of peace in the Balkans, his political prescriptions for Afghanistan and Pakistan and his observations on Vietnam and other thorny international problems.

Less well known are his accomplishments in the humanitarian area. Those of us long associated with the Brookings Project on Internal Displacement will remember him for the extraordinary boost he gave to our efforts to promote an international system for persons forcibly displaced inside their own countries. As U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and president of the Security Council, he invited us to attend a meeting of the Council, held up our book Masses in Flight before its members and called for international acceptance of internally displaced persons (IDPs) as a legitimate concern of governments and international organizations. These were not his instructions from Washington. On his own initiative, he issued the first presidential statement drawing attention to internal displacement and called on the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to expand the role of her office. It was a daring request, for at the time the UN relied on a “collaborative approach” of different agencies to help IDPs.

Holbrooke spoke from the heart, having witnessed international neglect of IDPs on a visit to Angola. “Co-heads are no-heads,” he insisted, in challenging the UN to set up a predictable and accountable system for addressing the protection and assistance needs of internally displaced people. Whereas refugees who crossed borders had an accountable system to protect them, IDPs were largely ignored, although “equally victims.” He appealed to the UN to “fix the responsibility more clearly” and “not fall back on one of the worst of all euphemisms: ‘We’re coordinating closely’.” His stinging words raised visibility to the problem and provoked a needed international debate ultimately leading to UN Humanitarian Reform in 2005 that enlarged UNHCR’s responsibilities toward IDPs and assigned lead responsibilities in emergencies to particular agencies. As the Washington Post observed more broadly on December 14, “he was unwilling to let bureaucratic niceties stand in the way when… lives were on the line.”

How many lives Richard Holbrooke saved we’ll never know. His efforts reached out worldwide to rescue many IDPs, refugees and other civilians caught up in devastating conflicts. He introduced us once as “Mr. and Mrs. IDP” and we admire how he challenged the international community to speak out when current systems are not working, to expand the mandates of organizations when need be and to keep one’s eye on the persons affected and how to help them. It was fitting that one of the final photographs displayed of Richard Holbrooke was of his visiting camps of internally displaced people in Swabi, Pakistan in 2009. May the memory of his work inspire all those involved in helping the world’s most disadvantaged.

Roberta Cohen and Francis M. Deng co-founded the Brookings Project on Internal Displacement; Deng was the UN Secretary-General’s first Representative on Internally Displaced Persons (1992-2004).

Authors

Image Source: Ralph Alswang

@ Brookings Podcast: The U.S. and the UK: A Special Relationship

Fiona Hill — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:32:00 -0400

Amid the BP oil spill, the global economic meltdown, and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the close bond between U.S. and the United Kingdom has been bruised and continues to be tested. Fiona Hill, senior fellow and director of the Center on the United States and Europe, takes a look at what lies ahead for these two nations. That’s this week @Brookings.

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@ Brookings Podcast: Russian Spy Ring Business as Usual

John McLaughlin — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:32:00 -0400

The ten spies the United States caught and traded for higher-value prisoners in Russia didn’t get their hands on any state secrets. Instead, expert John McLaughlin says they are the kind of worker bees that provide safe houses, launder money and support the “real” spies. The former CIA director says that’s business as usual for international espionage, and everybody does it.

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Prospects for the U.S. Intelligence Community: The Hayden Nomination, Electronic Surveillance, and the Question of Reform

Mon, 22 May 2006 10:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 22, 2006
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT

Saul/Zilkha Room
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036

As the Senate debates the nomination of Gen. Michael Hayden to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, new and difficult questions have arisen over a wide range of intelligence matters including the scope, purpose, and legality of the National Security Agency's electronic surveillance activities, Congressional oversight, and the role of the courts. President Bush argues that U.S. wiretapping "strictly targets Al Qaeda suspects only" and that the "privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected." But critics are questioning the legality of the NSA domestic surveillance program, and senators of both parties asked pointed questions during Gen. Hayden's confirmation hearings.

On May 22, Brookings convened a discussion on domestic surveillance, the roles of the CIA and NSA, and the effect on the Hayden nomination. Speakers included Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; John E. McLaughlin, Brookings nonresident senior fellow and former CIA acting director; John Podesta, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress and former chief of staff to President Clinton; George J. Terwilliger, partner, White & Case LLP and a former deputy attorney general under President George H.W. Bush; and Richard Falkenrath, the Stephen and Barbara Friedman Fellow at the Brookings Institution and former deputy homeland security advisor to President George W. Bush. CNN Senior Political Correspondent Candy Crowley moderated the discussion.

After remarks there was an audience question and answer session.

Participants

Moderator

Candy Crowley

Senior Political Correspondent, CNN

Panelists

George J. Terwilliger III

Partner, White & Case LLP

Jane Harman

U.S. Representative (D-Cal.)

John Podesta

President & CEO, Center for American Progress

Richard A. Falkenrath

Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies, Brookings Institution