From director to actor | Can-kicking. Face-saving? | Caliphate progress report

The last combat brigade to leave Iraq. (Army)

Gordon Adams says the U.S. is no longer the undisputed director of the global play: “The most disconcerting part of this accelerating movement on the world stage is that we cannot predict at this point where or how the new balance will emerge. What we do know is this: for all the American ambition to “police the global commons,” we can no longer assume that a global U.S. military, diplomatic, and intelligence net will be able to direct the action…It is critically important to recognize that this rebalancing cannot be corrected by vocal assertions of American power.” (Foreign Policy)

“Why Are We Still in Afghanistan?” asks Stephen Walt. “[T]his whole enterprise looks like a can-kicking, face-saving operation, precisely the sort of long, drawn-out end that [Fred] Ikle and others have described.” (Foreign Policy)

David Petraeus advises Iraq’s leaders, confronted with renewed violence, to perform their own Surge. (Foreign Policy)

Mark Stout lays out a level-headed way to judge the progress of the grand strategists among al Qaeda and its ilk. (War On The Rocks)

Peter W. Singer argues that closing the Office of Net Assessment would be the latest of several really bad choices by DoD. (War On The Rocks)

A reminder: “Climate: The Greatest Global Security Threat.” (American Security Project)

Warlord’s Quote

“All enterprises that are entered into with indiscreet zeal may be pursued with great vigor at first, but are sure to collapse in the end.” — Publius Cornelius Tacitus

Contributed by Lt. Col. (ret.) Charles Krohn, a former Deputy Chief of Army Public Affairs and Deputy Director of Public Affairs, American Battle Monuments Commission. From a list compiled by the Warlord Loop, a private email forum for national security experts.

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