Dear readers: It seems that everything these days centers around the ongoing economic crisis, even national security issues. Will the American public have the patience for the inevitable costs of the president’s new strategy in Afghanistan? Will billions of dollars in aid in Iraq suddenly seem intolerable? How much must the Defense Department cut its one-time burgeoning budget in the current climate? And on and on.

As such, we started asking what effect GM and Chrysler potentially filing bankruptcy could have on national security. Those images of Detroit car production halting so that workers could build vehicles for the troops serving in battle was somehow seared in my mind. The auto industry and the military are inevitable linked, I thought.

So if they file for bankruptcy, will it cost more for the military to acquire tanks and armored vehicles? And could that hold up affect the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

It turns out the answer is no. The American automakers largely started getting out of the military vehicle business as early as the 80s and again in the late 90s/early 00s, when the economy was booming. Government contracting rules limited profit – and the cost of building such specialized vehicles was relatively high – so the thinking was the better return on investment was in the commercial market. (I wonder if anyone in my beloved Detroit, my adopted hometown, is kicking himself now.)

Through that, a niche defense contracting market emerged, complete with its own suppliers that focus almost exclusively on military vehicles. Indeed, General Motors was awarded a mere $10 million dollars in DoD contracts in FY 08. By contrast, General Dynamics, its one-time subsidiary dedicated to military vehicles, was awarded nearly $74 million during the same period. That is, there is a whole industry completely separate from the Big Three.  The Pentagon is even issuing a statement these days that essentially says no one is sweating it if two of the Big Three file for bankruptcy because they depend so little on them for their equipment. “The domestic automotive giants had basically exited the defense business in the 1980s and 1990s,” the statement read.

That is not to say that the potential collapse of GM and Chrysler does not pose a national security threat. Certainly millions losing their job is a threat to everyone. But the military will still have its vehicles.

There's been a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing in the news media recently about whether the Obama administration has dropped the Bush-era phrase "Global War on Terror" from its lexicon. First, we read it was dead. Then, we read maybe not.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seemed to put the matter to rest Monday, telling reporters on her plane to the Netherlands (where she is attending an international conference on Afghanistan, center of the GWOT) that the phrase is no longer being used.

"I haven't heard it used. I haven't gotten any directive about using it or not using it, it's just not being used," Clinton said, according to the Associated Press.

As the AP dispatch notes, many Europeans (and a fair # of U.S. counter-terrorism specialists) objected to the phrase, which they felt reflected an overly militaristic approach to fighting terrorism, and encapsulated perceived abuses, such as the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. 

Kind of a shame, all the same. We like that GWOT acronym.

  I've been fortunate (or foolish) enough to have covered and traveled with five secretaries of state over the last almost 20 years (yikes!): James A. Baker III, Warren Christopher, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and now Hillary Rodham Clinton.

((First Secretary of State trip: July 1989 with Baker to Paris, France, for the Cambodia peace conference)).

So I'm always fascinated to encounter a new chief diplomat, to see his or her style, diplomatic approach, and strategy for handling the media. Public diplomacy is a more important part of the secretary of state's job than that of any other senior U.S. official except the president. 

Here's a first take on Hillary, with whom I traveled to Mexico City and Monterrey, Mexico, on March 25 and 26. (That little red dot up there is Clinton, taking a tour Thursday morning of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Star photojournalist I'm not.

The following isn't mean to be an analysis or opinion on Clinton's success as secretary of state. It's early days, and we've yet to see how the Obama administration will deal with a major crisis, or whether its big personalities and big egos in the foreign policy sphere can operate together effectively when the times get stressful.

That said, here goes:

_ Hillary speaks bluntly. Baker and Christopher, lawyers that they are, spoke cautiously, in lawyerly constructions. Powell liked to talk plainly, but whenever he got a little "forward in his skis," as he once put it, the White House (Dick Cheney mostly) yanked him back. Rice managed to be both charming and numbingly robotic at the same time. She used phrases like "status quo ante."

Maybe it's her years on the political stage, or her Midwestern upbringing, but Clinton--at least so far--tends to say what she thinks. She briefed reporters on our flight from Andrews Air Force Base to Mexico City and said two things that, whle they may be stunningly obvious to most, other officials have rarely acknowledged: the United States is equally as responsible as Mexico for the drug trade/drug wars, and U.S. anti-drug strategy has failed. "How could anybody conclude any differently?" she said.

Well, that's refreshing. It remains to be seen if the candor continues. Clinton has already received a bit of flack for publicly seeming to question the value of U.S. hectoring of China on human rights--the Chinese already know what we're going to say, she said--and for talking out loud about questions of succesion and stability in North Korea. As she increasingly assumes her diplomatic mantle, I wouldn't be surprised to see her retreat into caution and diplomatic code.

_ Clinton moves fast. All secretaries of state are required, by virture of foreign opinion and good taste, to do "events" that go beyond official meetings--touring local cultural sites, meeting youth groups, etc. Some embrace it more than others. I once accompanied Powell on a tour of a famous stupa, a Bhuddist shrine, in Nepal. He stayed for 15 minutes. Once, long ago, I saw Baker return from official meetings in Sofia, Bulgaria in the months of pro-American euphoria following the fall of the Berlin Wall. He walked right by a mob of pro-American celebrants, until top aide Margaret Tutwiler grabbed him by the arm and suggest he should interact with the crowd.

Clinton seems to genuinely enjoy these encounters. And she does A LOT of them. In our less than 36 hours in Mexico, along with the official meetings and press conferences, she did the following: met with indigenous students; held a dinner with women leaders; toured the basilica; paid a visit to a Mexican Federal Police base; gave a speech and took questions at a technology unviersity in Monterrey; and went to a renewable energy plant.

_ Consequently, Clinton sometimes runs ... a bit late. Not horribly, late, mind you, but events don't always come off quite when they are scheduled. That's change from Powell, who operated on a strict, military-style schedule, and Rice, who moved through events with the precision of the pianist she is and the ice skater she was.

I covered the White House from 1995 to 1998 and have painful memories of (Bill) Clinton Time, when the president would show up 45 minutes for an event, or linger at fundraisers or other social events long into the night, while the miserable press pool would rue the lost hours as we sat in a holding room or press van. It's not nearly that bad, at least not yet. In fact, Clinton's Air Force plane touched down outside Washington DC on Thursday night more than half an hour ... early.

First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting, the Kuwaiti company whose work on the massive new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad caused such a furor, is facing new problems.

The State Department earlier this month took the rare step of cancelling another U.S. embassy construction contract involving First Kuwaiti, this one in the West African nation of Gabon. The $54 million new embassy was supposed to be complete next month, but not a single permanent structure has been built, and the work was only 11 percent done.

The government's contract was actually with a U.S. firm, Rockville, Md.-based Aurora LLC. But First Kuwaiti was the major subcontractor and the financial muscle behind the all-but-dead deal.

The State Department's Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations said in a statement that the department "took this action as a last resort in the best interest of the American taxpayer and our personnel who need a safer more secure facility as quickly as possible and believed that Aurora LLC was not going to be able to complete this contract."

Cancelling such a contract -- "termination for default" is the legal phrase -- is an extremely infrequent event, and has happened just once before in the 8 years of a worldwide embassy replacement program.  

Maureen Britell, a senior official from Aurora, told McClatchy in an e-mailed statement that the company is in talks with the government and "we are hopeful that we will either complete the project or otherwise come to a mutually-acceptable resolution that will result in the default termination being withdrawn."

Could end up in court. Stay tuned on this one....

Dear readers: Thank you for some fantastic comments on the last blog. It clearly provoked a lot of thoughts from readers who may disagree on the threat, but are equally impassioned about protecting U.S. interests during this difficult economic period.  So many thanks for sharing your thoughts.

In the days ahead, we expect the administration to release its strategic review for Afghanistan/Pakistan, which many expect will guide the way ahead in that critical war. It’s being put together by a coterie of military and academic experts on the matter, and many who follow this issue have been anticipating its release for weeks.

But as we get closer, it appears that the report is far less prescriptive than expected. At least that is what I am hearing in quiet murmurs around the Pentagon. It’s not clear this report will spell out new strategy; instead I hear it will clarify what the U.S. objectives really are.

It has me wondering: Is strategic review an accurate way to describe this critical report?

On Charlie Rose last week, Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, talked about the strategic review and described it this way: “Broadly, it addresses, as it needs to address, the concerns that many of us have expressed over a long period of time. A safe haven in Pakistan. Making sure that Afghanistan doesn`t provide a capability in the long run or an environment in which al Qaeda could return or the Taliban could return. To provide for the stability in that country, to put the country in a position to, in fact, develop its own armed forces, to provide for its own security would be another example, and to get the economy going and get governance moving in the right direction at all levels in Afghanistan -- national, provincial, as well as the district level. Those are all key points, although I think the strategy will be more comprehensive than just covering those things.”

Did the chairman describe a strategy or a goal, an end state? Do we already know the strategy– send more troops in the south and decrease U.S. support for Hamid Karzai and an Afghanistan led by a strong central government for a more bottom-up approach? Probably not, since sending more troops is a tactic, not a strategy.

So I ask you dear readers, what makes an idea a strategy? And what must the report say to truly be a strategy for the way ahead in Afghanistan?

Today, the House Armed Services Committee is holding a hearing entitled Security Challenges Arising from the Global Financial Crisis. I realize this sounds like a lot of jargon but I found the topic and Chairman Ike Skelton's opening statement fascinating. The hearing is basically trying to tackle how the world economic collapse could affect U.S. national security, but not in the way we have come to think of that threat in the past few years.

I have spent the last six years reporting on the national security threat from rogue elements, usually operating in unstable states. My pieces focus on insurgencies and asymmetric warfare. Indeed, when the U.S. military talks about preparing for the future, it talks about counterinsurgencies and the need to stop groups from rising and plotting attacks against the United States, not wars fought along proper battle lines. But the hearing raises the question: What threat could proper states now pose to the United States because of the economic crisis?

My editor, Roy, interestingly pointed out to me that tough economic times can lead to the rise of extreme nationalistic leaders. That kind of ideology can often lead to war on its own. After all, the argument goes, our country, economy and way of life is superior. Therefore the military will prevail. A weak economy can further fuel the march toward war. As Skelton is his opening statement: “Hyper inflation in Germany was a significant factor in the rise of Hitler.  The economic decay of the Soviet Union led to regime change across Eastern Europe  So we know that economic crises can have consequences for national security of the highest order.” Roy added that Slobodan Milosevic's rise to power in Yugoslavia, at a time Communism had run out of steam, and the economic prospects were sinking, was on a wave of extreme nationalism, which led almost directly to war.

Could Pakistan’s collapsing economy lead to a new government, one that whose interests strongly diverge from U.S. interests? Could the rapid drop in oil lead Hugo Chavez to start a war of some kind to jump start his economy, perhaps with a U.S. ally? Could Egypt’s economic strain lead to the rise of a government other than the U.S. friendly regime of Hosni Mubarak?

Could the United States or a key ally once again find itself fighting a traditional army because of this economic crisis?

I realize these issues seem years in the future. After all, new nationalist leaders usually don’t rise overnight. But this economic crisis could last long enough for that to happen. And that means, the U.S. military may have to start preparing for that kind of war now.

Hello everyone. This week, Rep. Ellen Tauscher, Democrat of California, proposed repealing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” ban on gays serving openly in the military. This is not the first such legislation to appear on Capitol Hill but it is the first under this administration. I am not an expert on this matter but from what I can tell there are two debates happening in Washington, one amongst politicians and the other with military circles. The pols, particularly those who support repealing the policy, are asking whether that position is politically viable. And the military is asking whether the armed forces are ready to embrace an open policy.

For whatever it's worth, in my cursory polling of the military, I have found that younger servicemen are quicker to embrace the repeal than the older superiors.

But where that leaves the future of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is a little unclear. In response to the proposed bill, White House spokesman Thomas Vietor said the following: “The President supports changing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. As part of a long standing pledge, he has also begun consulting closely with Secretary Gates and Chairman Mullen so that this change is done in a sensible way that strengthens our armed forces and our national security.”

And yet Geoff Morrell, Pentagon spokesman, said at a briefing today that he is not aware of any formal review: Here is the transcript of his comments:

Question: Earlier in the week, the White House, in responding to some queries about this new legislation to lift the ban on gays serving in the military said that the White House has been consulting with the secretary and the Joint Chiefs. Can you shed any more light on what that means? Has there been any formal direction to study the issue? Basically, it was a very general statement -- just -- (inaudible). What does that mean? 
 
Morrell: Yeah. I -- you know, Brian, I don't have anything particularly new for you on that. I noticed that the White House had a statement to that effect. I think I'd refer you to them in terms of what took place in that meeting. I wouldn't want to begin to speak for what the president did or did not ask of the secretary or the chairman. So I'm sorry, I just have to really refer you to the White House for additional questions on that. 
 
Question: Just to follow on that, is the DoD conducting any review of the issue? Or have they been tasked to do so? 
 
Morrell: Right now, Don't Ask, Don't Tell remains the law of the land, and we are following it. I am not aware of any internal review that's under way in this department. That's not to say that one won't be asked of us, or -- but I don't believe that there is one currently under way. 

So is change coming? I am not sure. But in his book, Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America, Nathaniel Frank writes that in other countries, such a change usually comes because military commanders are ordered by their civilian leadership to do so, not from the military institutions themselves. If that indeed holds up, we will have to turn to the White House to settle the debate.

Today, the Taliban claimed responsibility for an attack outside the largest U.S/coalition military installation in Afghanistan, which killed three contractors. It was the latest attack in what has already been a violent year against troops in Afghanistan.

It happened outside Bagram Air Base, which about 40 north of Kabul and is the capital of military operations. It was built by the Soviets during their time in Afghanistan and later the Taliban and the Northern Alliance fought for it during the civil war.  There were reportedly two explosions Wednesday – a car bomb followed by a suicide bomb.

At the Pentagon, commanders and civilian leaders alike had warned that 2009 would be a violent. The secretary said it; so did the top commander there, Gen. David McKiernan. There will be more troops they argued, and those troops will go into places that foreign forces have not been before.

So far 31 American troops have been killed this year, compared to 155 in all of 2008, which incidentally was the deadliest year for the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Another 21 coalition troops have also been killed, compared to 139 last year.

That the rise in attacks is happening so early, so quickly and before the 17,000 troops President Obama has committed to sending into new parts of Afghanistan is troubling commanders at the Pentagon. Some fret the numbers are rising because the U.S. military and its coalition partners are finding a more sophisticated Taliban that has finessed its attacks while the U.S. military was focused on Iraq. What the numbers portend once the troops arrived is a very violent year, they say.  Perhaps the strategy review under way in Washington on the way ahead in Afghanistan will find a way for the troops to do more without taking such a spike in fatal attacks.

Hello dear readers: Well, we here at Nukes & Spooks want to thank our loyal readers who have stuck with us through a pretty dull February, posting wise. But we promise an exciting March. There are big changes afoot at the Pentagon, for example, in response to the Obama administration announcements that it was 1. drawing down most U.S. forces in Iraq in 19 months, and 2. sending 17,000 more to Afghanistan. It now falls on the Pentagon to execute this major shift from Iraq to Afghanistan, and this month we expect to hear just how they plan to do that. How will it shift the training? Move the equipment? Adjust its resources? Change its focus for the past six years? All of that should lead to more interesting and frequent postings.

But I digress. Today’s posting is about the first of many changes we are hearing, literally, at the Pentagon. Anyone who has been around the military longer than a minute has almost certainly heard a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine turn a seemingly normal sentence into a string of acronyms. The newest jumble of letters these days is AFPAK, as in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This may seem small but it really reflects the shift in how military circles talk about the war in Afghanistan. The two countries – and how the U.S. deals with the terrorism link in that part of the world – are indelibly linked the military now recognizes.

Some believe Osama bin Laden is now hiding in Pakistan. Critics say that the U.S.’s botched effort in Afghanistan has done nothing more than push terrorism from Afghanistan, which has no nukes, to Pakistan, which does. Either way, everyone now agrees, one cannot talk about one country without the other.

It began nearly a year ago when Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified on Capitol Hill and linked the two countries. And the idea has been picking up steam since. Indeed, this past Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was asked about Afghanistan, and he answered by talking about Pakistan, saying military sanctuaries there pose the biggest threat to Afghanistan.

The threat is from “safe havens on the Pakistani side of the border, not just for al-Qaeda, but for the Taliban” and other groups “working together,” Gates said. “After all, 20 years ago I was on the other side of that border as deputy director of the CIA, fighting the Soviets. And we had the safe haven in Pakistan, and let me tell you, it made a big difference.”

That is, AFPAK is not just military speak, a maddening effort to make sure the rest of us have no idea what they are talking about. It reflects a whole new way the military is looking at the war in Afghanistan.