The weekend’s big news was the late-night negotiations that led to a six-month deal that, essentially, relaxes sanctions on Iran in exchange for a six-month moratorium on uranium enrichment. The deal drew immediate criticism from Israel’s prime minister and some of his U.S. supporters (and that criticism drew its own fire), but the consensus view among foreign policy watchers was represented pretty well by Anthony Cordesman’s “The Best Deal with Iran That We Can Get.” (CSIS) And Dan Drezner found wisdom in the 1980s romcom Say Anything.
China Watch: Lt. Cmdr. Jeff W. Benson explores Beijing’s multifaceted campaign in claimed territorial waters, while Patrick Cronin dubs the strategy one of “tailored coersion.”
Are DoD’s leaders unfairly blaming personnel costs for squeezing the military budget? Military Times’ Andrew Tilghman says maybe. AFJ has explored this topic as well: see “Reforms don’t go far enough” and “Curing military health care” (May 2012) and “The people problem” (September 2009).
Noted: The Pentagon released its new Arctic strategy on Friday.
Warlord’s Quote
“Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger real or pretended from abroad.” — President James Madison to Thomas Jefferson
Contributed by Chris Preble, a former Navy Surface Warfare Officer, now Vice President for Defense & Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. From a list compiled by the Warlord Loop, a private email forum for national security experts.
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