Apologies to all for my absentee blogging.  I'd like to come up with a detailed and sophisticated explanation, but quite simply finals are kicking my ass and I have no free time to sleep, let along blog.

I have quite a list of topics to tackle, starting with my long-overdue response to Mike Wilkerson about the LRA and some thoughts on the latest RAND study.  With any luck I'll be back in the flow next week. 

Until there, here are is a bizarre, insane, and utterly fascinating Vanity Fair story about a born-again American Hells Angel, roaming Sudan and trying to kill Joseph Kony.

(A belated analysis of the Obama Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, released on April 5, 2010)

The Obama Nuclear Posture Review is a profoundly political document whose main effect is diplomatic. It makes no major strategic changes to US nuclear doctrine, and the changes it does make are hedged by reservations. The document’s major departure from its predecessor, the Bush Administration’s 2002 NPR, is that of tone. As one reviewer noted, President Obama is no longer brandishing “a nuclear sword in every direction," which is the main legacy of this review.

First to the details. The review eschews a policy that the “sole use” of nuclear weapons is for deterrence, instead declaring that

“The fundamental role of U.S. nuclear weapons, which will continue as long as nuclear weapons exist, is to deter nuclear attack on the United States, our allies, and partners.

The NPR sends a message to North Korea and Iran, declaring that

"the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations."

While the US will not use nuclear weapons to counter a chemical weapons attack, the review includes an exception for biological weapons, stating that

"the United States reserves the right to make any adjustment in the assurance that may be warranted by the evolution and proliferation of the biological weapons threat and U.S. capacities to counter that threat."

Regarding the contentious issue of the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, the NPR states that

"The United States will consult with our allies regarding the future basing of nuclear weapons in Europe, and is committed to making consensus decisions through NATO processes."

In essence, although abandoning the bluster of the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration still maintains the right to use nuclear weapons outside of the context of a nuclear attack on the United States, and clearly describes North Korea and Iran as countries for which any assurances do not apply. Although this represents a shift in tone from the Bush years, its strategic impact is minimal. In fact, Stephen Walt has gone so far as to declare that “from a purely strategic perspective, this new statement is largely meaningless.”

Now to the politics. (more after the jump)

Beka Feathers
Demagogues and Dictators Afghanistan Parliamentary Analyst

As the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated over the past two years, the public narrative has increasingly resembled a litany of failure: the central government is full of corrupt warlords who are tied to the drug trade, violate human rights with impunity, and are interested in the idea of governance only insofar as they can profit from it. The Afghan National Police are brutal, biased and uninterested in upholding the rule of law. Corrupt officials are becoming more prevalent than opium poppies. As a result, establishing legitimate government has become critical to success in all other areas of the mission in Afghanistan.

In all the fuss about the failures of the central government, however, a surprising success story is being overlooked. The Afghan National Assembly, the country’s highest representative institution, has begun, quietly, to govern. This is a surprise not only because the parliament has long been the forgotten stepchild of the Bonn Process, but also because Karzai and his international allies have done everything possible to prevent the parliament from becoming a strong check to the presidency.

Afghanistan is one of the most centralized countries in the world, and almost everything leads back to Karzai sooner or later. Consider: In Afghanistan, the President has the power to make the budget, pass decrees, hire governors and police chiefs, even to appoint teachers to local schools. Electoral law makes it almost impossible for political parties to operate by forbidding them to organize along any of the nationally recognized identity lines. The international community has largely supported Karzai’s attempts to further consolidate power in his person. The parliament, meanwhile, has lagged behind other government institutions in funding, resources, and capacity.

But starting this year, the parliament seems to have found its feet. Since January, it has challenged Karzai to appoint qualified ministers instead of warlords and cronies, rejected his attempted takeover of the independent Electoral Complaints Commission (the same body that found a third of his votes fraudulent in the election last fall), and refused to serve as a rubber stamp for decrees. In fact, it's been doing what so many outside observers have said is necessary to keep the government from collapsing entirely: serving as a legitimate, Afghan-led check on Karzai's administration.

I have just returned from an exhausting weekend in the woods as a participant in the 2010 Harvard Humanitarian Initiative field simulation.  It was quite a weekend, and between conducting rapid assessments on refugee camps and being ambushed by "militia" I didn't have much time for anything else.

In the next few I days I hope to catch up on the news (and my sleep), and I'm starting with a new report from RAND - How Insurgencies End.  I'll check back in when finished.  Anybody out there with thoughts on this study?

A few months back, we reported here at D&D on the crisis surrounding artillery barrages fired by North and South Korean forces into the highly contested maritime zone along the Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the Western Sea.

That escalation has continued, though our coverage of it has not. I have been hesitant to speculate on the swirling crisis around the suspicious sinking of the South Korean Corvette Cheonan on March 26, that claimed the lives of 46 sailors.

I was hesitant, mainly because there was little more than speculation around the causality of the Cheonan's sinking. Tonight, it appears that our wait may be over.

Whispers have been leaking from the South Korean defense establishment all day today, as the South Korean navy raised the sunken half of the Cheonan from the bottom of the Western Sea -- looking for answers.

Yonhap news has begun publishing, and then removing, some of these whispers:

"It is the military intelligence's assessment that the North attacked with a heavy torpedo."

Chosun Ibo, a South Korean Daily, has run with the story.

The inference is that the North Koreans have made the first combat-effective use of their rumored suicide torpedo units. The units have been, to this point, mythic -- a boogie man brought out in the debriefings of high-value North Korean defectors, who describe a unit of 13 specially trained special forces members, and modified midget submarines. The Telegraph reports now that sources claim these men were responsible for the sinking of the Cheonan.


(more after the jump)

The Treasury Department finally has an Undersecretary for International Affairs. Lael Brainard, was confirmed yesterday by the full Senate by an overwhelming majority after a wait of more than a year.

Let's take this step-by-step. Brainard was nominated on March 24, 2009. Her nomination was held up by Senate Republicans because of problems with her tax returns, specifically a problem with her "home-office tax deduction." However, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona was also worried about the expansion of internet gambling. On April 19, 2010 (two days ago), the Senate voted 84-10 for cloture on Brainard's nomination. The next day (yesterday), the Senate voted 78-19 to confirm Brainard.

This is a problem.

I understand that in the US political system, the US Senate's role is to "advice and consent" to the President's nomination. I understand that the minority party must exercise its power in creative ways to foil the efforts of the majority party. I also understand that you have limited options when the opposing party holds the presidency and large majorities in the House and Senate.

But really?

Brainard is nothing if not qualified. Her resume includes Deputy National Economic Advisor for President Bill Clinton; Vice President and Founding Director of the Brookings Institution's Global Economy and Development Program; Associate Professor of Applied Economics at MIT Sloan School; a White House Fellow; and a National Science Foundation Fellow. She isn't crazy, or a criminal. For the record, her husband, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell, was confirmed in June 2009, so the tax issues were not the reason. And finally, when you're confirmed by 78-19, there clearly wasn't that much worry over your nomination.

Thoughts on the LRA from Louisa Seferis,  
Demagogues and Dictators Sudan Region Analyst

I'd like to point out 2 things: