That would be incredible. Now that I know I'll be in DC, I'll be there.

Thanks for bringing this up. Seems like a bit of a feedback loop- seeing as stable jobs come from development and development is made possible through security (there's a reason companies aren't lining up to build factories in, say, Somalia), then security leads to development and then more security, and the converse is also true- instability results in de-development and more instability.

Nice Catch, fixed

amo003, it sounds like what you "applaud" is whistle-blowing but disapprove of revealing secrets for no reason, or secrets that harm a person or organization without helping anyone. Whistle-blowing has been around for a while, with journalists doing it responsibly. That's how most scandals have been exposed. Most of the content on Wikileaks is NOT whistle-blowing or investigative journalism. It's a secret-dump. Lots of information on the military, for example, says little about the ethics of out practices and instead just gives a good idea of how best to kill our soldiers. The only reason to support WikiLeaks is a desire for a truly transparent world where no secrets are safe, not those of the government, military, foreign service, private sector, and yes, the Greek system.

I think this mixed approach is important. Historically, it seems that soft power works best with some pressure to sweeten the deal, and some sort of concession, even to extremists, facilitates surrenders and truces by allowing the loser to save face. Pirates aren't a unified group to bargain with, but even negotiations over single boats tend to work best with this "good cop, bad cop" style, which was exactly what the Navy was doing before negotiations fell apart. As for restoring fisheries, that may help but, as Jay-Z said about selling crack, "9 to 5 is how you survive, but I ain't tryin' to survive/ I'm tryin' to live it to the limit and love it a lot." These pirates are doing much better than fishermen. More money, more fame, more women. But offering an alternative may work if international forces manage to raise the price of piracy by making it harder to get away with.

Not a theory, at least not yet, just a hypothesis based on increased terrorist activity in the region coinciding with what looks to be a global recruiting drive, and a suspicion that Central Asia and the Caucasus will remain important for international security. That's why the title of the post ends in a question mark- I think it's a question worth considering for far-sighted security and intelligence policy.

You could have said much the same thing about the likelihood of a Joint Special Operations Command ever being created from the perspective, of say, 1976. Funding for all special operations was way down, jointness had not yet come into fashion, and in general the need for an institutionalized, all-military, special operations command was not yet perceived.

It is to be mentioned that Yemen is not a new area of interest to U.S. policy. American military trainers have been active there since the beginning of the decade. Why then does it seem that "it will take time to develop and grow that capability (information access.)?

The key point here is the disconnect between the resources invested in Afghanistan and those in the many other places where Al Qaeda is located (often in similar numbers.) Why?

Some have suggested that the solution is a large project of expanding nation-state control into the many lawless regions of the world. I am doubtful. We can barely (if that) afford large scale COIN in one country, so an international COIN effort is unrealistic. A more practical strategy is improving our operational capacity in lawless areas against hostile non-state actors. The problem is not one of geographical access, given JSOC and the drone programs, but (predictably), one of information access.