The Long Silence is hereby officially broken: CNAS conference and H1N1

Haven't had a chance to blog for the past month, but I'm back. So much has gone on, it's hard to know where to start.

First, congratulations to Chris Albon for passing his oral exams, and now being ABD. Chris writes the War and Health blog.

H1N1
Second, the H1N1 epidemic. Guess who exported it to Kuwait via the war in Iraq? We did, apparently. Here's a report from Reuters: (URL http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE54M1G720090524)

KUWAIT (Reuters) - Eighteen U.S. soldiers in Kuwait have H1N1 flu, the first cases in the Gulf Arab oil-exporting region, a government official said on Sunday.

"(The soldiers) were confirmed with the virus upon their arrival from their country to the military base (in Kuwait)," Ibrahim al-Abdulhadi told Reuters.

Kuwait is a logistics base for the U.S. army for neighboring Iraq, where the U.S. military said there were no known cases yet of H1N1.

What are the implications of this? Obviously there are diplomatic issues, issues relating to quarantine, sovereignty and the war. Not insignificant.

CNAS

Next, I had the good fortune to attend the Center for New American Security's day-long conference on the counter-insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, the problems with North Korea, and a session tossed in about the security implications of natural resources. Kind of an odd mix. The session on natural resources completely bogged down and became dangerously close to sounding like a self-licking-ice-cream-cone argument. Senator Warner moderated the panel and was pleased to describe his previous legislation that demanded that DoD address resource issues in terms of security. The CNAS staffer leading the discussion, Sharon Burke, claimed that it was DoD's responsibility to both fight the nation's wars as well as mitigate potential future wars. (Oh, really? I didn't see that in the Constitution...I'll have to go look again). The panel consisted of two academics and one Navy Commander who is responding to the good Senator's legislation by addressing the security issues relating to resources for the upcoming QDR. Nobody else from DoE or EPA was present apparently. Is DoD really the answer to resource issues? While I don't think it's irrelevant for DoD to be engaged in the discussion, sticking a Navy commander up on the panel with no other USG representative potentially skews the argument. Obviously this problem would require a whole of government approach, but where was the rest of the government?

Quite in contrast to the resource discussion was a panel all about the North Korea problem. The panel consisted of CNAS staff and diplomats with nary a military member present. Really? So, DoD should focus on resources, but not North Korea? I asked about this at the really swell post-conference cocktail party and was told that CNAS had asked for a DoD rep, but the timing was short and none had been proffered. Too bad.

The lunch speaker was the Honorable Judith McHale who gave a terrible speech, reading in a soft voice from her notes, about public diplomacy. It was disappointing to me that when someone from the audience asked about the distinction between Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communications she couldn't answer the question. Oh oh. Obviously she has only been in the position for a couple of weeks, but I would have thought her staff might have briefed her up on what it is that her agency is supposed to do--public diplomacy. I've heard that staffs don't do that in the other governmental agencies.

Look to CNAS to enter the military health/military readiness arena shortly. The basic premise is that if you have a military force with PTSD and TBI and other health issues, readiness is declinated. The 'mavricky' team at CNAS (to borrow a term from the Palin SNL skits) has reached out to an officer who has been severely wounded and become an advocate for soldier's health while remaining in the military. He himself is somewhat mavricky and I look forward to seeing what comes of the effort.

I have much more to post--stay tuned. First I have to write a paper for Command and General Staff College.