American Security Project

On Wednesday and Thursday, June 11 and 12, representatives of the American Security Project visited Las Vegas, Nevada for a series of meetings, public events, and briefings on how climate change is affecting security, and how institutions in the region are planning for it.

Attending were BGen Stephen Cheney, USMC (ret.), ASP’s CEO and Lt. General Norman Seip, USAF (Retired). Cheney is the CEO of the American Security Project, and a 30 year veteran of the Marine Corps. Seip currently serves as an advisor to the Air Force. His most recent operational assignment was as the Commander of 12th Air Force (Air Forces Southern), Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz. As the Deputy Combined Forces Air Component Commander for U.S. Central Command, General Seip had a direct impact in supporting combat operations in operations Iraqi Freedom. Both are members of ASP’s Consensus for American Security. Andrew Holland, ASP’s Senior Fellow for Energy and Climate, and Porter Brockway, ASP’s events manager, rounded out the delegation.

Nellis Air Force Base Array

The first stop on the tour was Nellis Air Force Base, north of the “Strip.” While there, ASP toured the Nellis Solar Array. Taking up approaximately 140 acres of land, the array contains about 70,000 photovoltaic solar panels, with a peak power capacity of about 13 megawatts. When first installed in 2007, this was the largest solar array in the country, and one of the largest in the world. As a testament to how far solar has advanced in the last seven years, it is not even in the top 50 – it is not even the largest on a military base, with facilities in the Army’s Fort Huachuca and the Air Force’s Davis-Monthan in Arizona overtaking it. Only the week before, SunPower and NV Energy had announced a new plan to more than double the capacity of Nellis’ solar system.

The Nellis Array provides about 25% of the electricity used by the base, and it has shown itself to be an example for the rest of the military in how to effectively reduce fossil fuel dependence while saving money and not harming operational effectiveness.

 

Las Vegas World Affairs Council

That evening, ASP presented to an expert audience put together by the Las Vegas Council on Foreign Affairs at the Spanish Trail Country Club. After an introduction from Stacy Standley, the former director of the WWF (Worldwide Fund for Nature) Living Planet Campaign, ASP presented to an audience of about 40 people a presentation about how climate change interacts with America’s security. It started with an outline of the science of climate change, then Generals Cheney and Seip noted how climate change is already affecting global security. Finally, General Cheney discussed how Las Vegas is clearly threatened by climate change, noting how drought and heat in the desert city were causing harm already. There were a number of questions focused on how climate change would impact America’s military force posture and our ability to intervene around the world.

After the presentation, Vinny Spotleson, a staff member for Senator Harry Reid, gave a certificate of recognition to ASP for their work on this issue.

On Monday and Tuesday, June 2 and 3, representatives of the American Security Project visited Dallas, Texas for a series of meetings, public events, and briefings on how climate change is affecting security, and how institutions in the region are planning for it.

Attending were BGen Stephen Cheney, USMC (ret.), ASP’s CEO and Maj. General Paul Eaton, USA (Retired). Cheney is the CEO of the American Security Project, and a 30 year veteran of the Marine Corps. Eaton currently serves as Senior Advisor to the National Security Network. His most recent operational assignment was Commanding General of the command charged with reestablishing Iraqi Security Forces 2003-2004. Both are members of ASP’s Consensus for American Security. Andrew Holland, ASP’s Senior Fellow for Energy and Climate, and Porter Brockway, ASP’s events manager, rounded out the delegation.

The first appointment was an event cosponsored with the Dallas Committee on Foreign Relations. Hosted at the Rosewood Crescent Hotel in downtown Dallas, the event was an expert-level roundtable that featured an informed discussion of the impacts climate change will have on national security. The roundtable included Cynthia Connor, representing the United Kingdom’s Texas consulate, representatives from the private sector, academia, and a number of retired military.

General Eaton characterized the military planning process as looking at what counts for “vital national interests” – and made clear that climate change is impacting vital interests. He talked about risk management, saying that the military is very good at asking “what if” and then asking the crucial follow-up, “what next?”

Listen to the Audio here:

AUDIO OF DALLAS COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS EVENT

That evening, ASP hosted a VIP dinner to discuss in an off-the-record format various threats to national security with a high-level group of speakers. The group heard serious questions about how climate change was altering the operating environment for the military.

Using Dallas’ Waste to Power a City

On Tuesday morning, the ASP delegation drove to the McCommas Bluff landfill, operated by the city of Dallas. The city claims to be adding about 6400 tons of waste per day to the landfill.

That waste is digested by bacteria into a combination of gases that can be harvested for fuel.  A bit more than half of the gas that is vented from typical landfills is methane – natural gas: a clean-burning fuel that also is a potent greenhouse gas if emitted directly into the atmosphere.

Throughout McCommas Bluff, the company Clean Energy Fuels has sunk over 450 pipes into landfill to harvest that gas before it escapes into the atmosphere. They pipe it from the landfill over to a processing facility that separates the gas into its constituent parts: sulfur dioxide (the source of that characteristic smell), carbon dioxide, nitrogen, trace contaminants, and methane. They process the methane until it is pure enough and concentrated enough to connect to the nearby interstate ...

On June 24th, the American Security Project hosted an opportunity for Congressional engagement on the upcoming Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review with Deputy Secretary of State Heather Higginbottom, Special Representative Tom Perriello, and Assistant to the Administrator of USAID Alex Thier.

The event was introduced and moderated by American Security Project CEO Brigadier General Steven Cheney. Nelson Cunningham, President of McClarty & Associates, introduced Deputy Secretary Higginbottom.A video of the speakers and photographs from the event can be seen at the end of this post.

Deputy Secretary Higginbottom spoke about the goals of the QDDR and the State department’s sincere desire to engage with Congress, NGOs, thought-leaders, and other stakeholders to answer the key questions of the Review- 1) how can State and USAID modernize and become more efficient and agile 2) what diplomatic and developmental successes can be built upon and 3) what are the global trends and how can the Department best address them in the next two decades?

The Deputy Secretary’s remarks also underscored the vital role of smart power in the future of American foreign policy, the need to stay ahead of global trends, the undeniable impact of climate change and the need to recalibrate diplomacy and development in an era of diffuse rather than hierarchical power structures. She noted that the QDDR is largely about prioritizing. “The QDDR cannot be everything to everyone, and it is not going to try to be. But it will be relevant to the work that we do and the work that we do going forward. We want to focused the QDDR on a few big challenges and a few big opportunities- the issues that are most central to building a successful platform for foreign policy in the decades ahead.”  Only recommendations that fit into the strategic framework of the Review will be published, though appropriate recommendations outside the scope will also be implemented.

Alex Thier of USAID’s Policy, Planning, and Learning (PPL) Bureau articulated that the Review does not consider diplomacy and development separately but rather diplomacy and development as two necessarily interconnected aspects of foreign policy and affairs- a view cemented in the Presidential decision directive on development. “The world in which America will thrive in the next two decades is one where America can enjoy, take advantage of, and promote some of the most important global trends in human development.”

Thier notes that the success of the Millennium Development Goals to alleviate 50% of extreme poverty four years ahead of schedule means over 700 million people are now engaged in the market, and the information age and are able to hold their governments accountable in a way those unable to meet their most basic needs cannot.

According to Thier, this newly engaged global citizenry supports American values and national interests and successful development projects increase the size of this population everyday. “Our ability to take advantage of and accelerate those trends is fundamentally in the core American interest.” As the upcoming QDDR comes less than a year before the selection of the next Millennium Development Goals, it provides a unique opportunity for America to participate in that process with a clear strategic vision and a more comprehensive understanding of its strengths, successes, and areas for growth.

Former Congressman Tom Perriello, Special Representative to the QDDR who has met with more than 25 embassies and over 100 stakeholder groups seeking input on the Review, followed Thier and reiterated the Deputy Secretary’s emphasis on partnership between USAID and State.

Perriello went on to point out that the decision to complete a second QDDR de...

ASP was recently joined by Paul Rockower and DJ 2-Tone Jones to discuss their recent cultural diplomacy tour of India.

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Next Level uses hip hop and dance to build relationships with foreign audiences overseas.

In this podcast, Rockower and 2-Tone explain the value of hip hop as a form of cultural diplomacy, and give first person accounts of their experiences in India. This is a rare glimpse at some of the creative work the United States is doing overseas, complete with audio samples of 2-Tone’s work. Listen in!

Check out Next Level at:

http://www.nextlevel-usa.org/

https://www.facebook.com/NextLevelUSA

https://twitter.com/NextLevel_USA

And DJ 2-Tone Jones at:

http://www.twitter.com/dj2tonejones

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On Wednesday June 5th, the American Security Project (ASP) hosted Said Temsamani, Zack Gold, and Timothy Fairbank in a talk titled, “Al Qaeda 3.0: Three Responses to the Changing Nature of Al Qaeda.”

The speakers considered the threat that the new “Al Qaeda 3.0” poses to Morocco, Egypt, and Yemen, and what both the U.S. and its partners are doing to counter it.

As President Obama declared during his May 28th speech at West Point, “the landscape has changed” for American foreign-policy going forward into the 21st century. At this critical juncture, it is important to examine al Qaeda’s newly fluid, decentralized structure and how the U.S. and its international partners can adapt to meet the challenge through initiatives like the proposed Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund.

Morocco

At the beginning of his presentation, the first speaker Said Temsamani emphasized that, while many Moroccans believe that only 100 citizens have gone to fight in jihadist conflicts, the number is actually much closer to 2,000. The levels of Moroccan participation in international jihad, while smaller than those present in other countries, warrants policies to understand citizens feel duty to engage in international jihad, how the state can discourage or prevent them from doing so, and how to reintegrate them into Moroccan society. At the same time, Morocco faces the threat of domestic unrest and violence, as occurred during the 2003 Casablanca bombings that killed 15 civilians.

When Moroccan nationals arrive in Syria, they receive training and indoctrination in the virtues of the international islamic struggle. Whereas, initially, most Moroccan recruits joined indigenous organizations like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), in 2012, Brahim Benchekroun (a.k.a. Ibrahim Bin Shakaran), a former Guantanamo detainee, organized the first majority-Moroccan jihadist group in Syria named Sham al-Islam.

After becoming disenchanted with the islamist movement in Syria, many Moroccan jihadists have attempted to return to Morocco, but face imprisonment if they do so. Thus, in Morocco, the government is pursuing two soft-alternatives that are proving very effective in combating ideologies that support and encourage violence .

The Moroccan government supports:

1) religious scholarship and education that emphasize moderate voices and the role of women in islamic religious life

2) rehabilitation designed to reintegrate former terrorists and jihadists into Moroccan society

Morocco’s program has received international acclaim across the Arab world for its success in cultivating moderate, inter-sectional voices and perspectives. Governments across the region are seeking aid from Morocco in developing their own models for rehabilitation.

Egypt

The second speaker Zack Gold began his presentation by arguing that while al Qaeda does not formally exist in Egypt, islamist, al Qaeda-affiliated, and al Qaeda aspirational groups pose a threat to the stability of the country and the region.

One of the major flashpoints of strife in Egypt has been the Sinai peninsula. In January 2011, Egyptian security forces retreated from the Sinai and the local population responded by looting and vandalizing nearly every police station in the region. Citizens took these actions, in a major part, because the state had used the army to oppress and control the region’s population and any dissent it raised.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, April 29 and 30, representatives of the American Security Project visited Chicago for a series of meetings, public events, and briefings on how climate change is affecting security, and how institutions in the region are planning for it. They partnered with the Chicago Council on Science & Technology (C2ST) to highlight the issue across the city.

Attending were BGen Stephen Cheney, USMC (ret.), ASP’s CEO and Brig. General Steven Anderson, USA (Retired). Cheney is the CEO of the American Security Project, and a 30 year veteran of the Marine Corps. Anderson is the Chief Marketing Officer of RELYANT LLC, a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business based in Knoxville, Tennessee, that provides key construction, logistics, munitions response, and information services to our troops deployed overseas in the combat zone. Both are members of ASP’s Consensus for American Security. Andrew Holland, ASP’s Senior Fellow for Energy and Climate, and Porter Brockway, ASP’s events manager, rounded out the delegation.

Pritzker Military Museum and Library

The first appointment was to meet with and tour the Pritzker Military Museum and Library on Michigan Avenue. ASP met with the leadership of the Pritzker library, including Kenneth Clarke, President & CEO, and toured their extensive collection of military memorabilia and their extensive library.

 

 

After the tour, ASP presented to a roundtable of veterans and national security experts about how climate change interacts with America’s security. Questions focused on how climate change would impact America’s  military force posture and our ability to intervene around the world.Click below to listen to the full audio of the event.

AUDIO OF PRITZKER ROUNDTABLE

Chicago Tonight

After the meeting, General Cheney and Andrew Holland traveled to the studios of WTTW, Chicago’s public television station for an appearance on “Chicago Tonight” with Dr. Elisabeth Moyer, a climate scientist from the University of Chicago. They talked about the threats of climate change to national security with host Phil Ponce.

 

Launch of the Argonne Center on Climate Change and Security

On Wednesday morning (4/30), ASP appeared with the Director of Argonne National Laboratory, Peter Littlewood, to discuss the creation of the Center for Integrated Resiliency Analyses, headed by John Hummel. This research center will be tasked with investigating how the changing global environment will affect our ability to respond properly to and mitigate damage from serious natural disasters and crises.

“The concept of national security has undergone very significant changes,” said John Hummel, director of the new center. “Now we recognize that national security can be impacted by economic factors and also environmental factors.”

American Security Project hosted Paul Adamson, Phillipe Maze-Sencier, and Geoffrey Harris for a discussion centering on the political, social, and economic implications of last weekend’s European Parliamentary elections. Victories for extremist parties across Europe on the left and the right, especially in the UK and France, have been described in the media as an “earthquake” and a “landslide” taking European politics by storm, but the panelists were not surprised by the results.

Maze-Sencier noted that anyone paying close attention to European politics over the last few years should not be surprised, calling the attention given to the rise in extremist parties a “media circus.” However, he also made it clear that the message sent by the voters cannot be ignored and the panelists agreed that “business as usual” in European politics is a dangerous course for an institution undergoing a serious identity crisis.

A major theme the panelists emphasized was the confusion and uncertainty surrounding the future of the EU and the viability of the “European Project” going forward. Adamson talked about the problem of complacency, claiming that the majority EPP and S&D parties need to take the shifting political landscape seriously and learn to adapt to a changing environment. Harris described the need to adapt to a “generational change” currently taking place within the EU, noting that “business as usual” and status quo policies no longer remain an option.

While the media narrative surrounding the Parliamentary elections focuses on the success of extremist parties, the panelists downplayed their ability to take hold of Parliament. Maze-Sencier believes that the rise in Eurosceptic parties may create a few legislative hurdles, but ultimately their lack of coherence will limit their ability to have a large impact within Parliament. Adamson agreed, calling parties such as France’s National Front and its offshoots “very noisy” but “disorganized.”

In regard to relations between the U.S. and EU, the panelists focused on cultural differences that need to be overcome in order to foster a more productive relationship. The NSA spying scandal has been met with a greater degree of public outrage in Europe than in the U.S., underscored by the fact that a divide over data privacy policy has been a tripping point in TTIP negotiations. As for the future of TTIP, Maze-Sencier noted that while the deal may face a few hurdles in Parliament, the more pressing danger to its future may be the U.S. Congress.

The EU is currently facing an identity crisis, an uncertain future, and dwindling public support for its larger goal of European integration. While the Parliamentary results might not pose an immediate threat to its existence, they should serve as a tough wake-up call to proponents of a more unified Europe who have thus far done very little to adapt. The future of the EU is hazier than ever, but one thing is for certain: “business as usual” needs to end.

You can watch and listen to the event by clicking below:

On Tuesday, April 15th, the American Security Project hosted a discussion about fusion power with Dan Clery, moderated by Andrew Holland, ASP’s Senior Fellow for Energy and Climate.

Daniel Clery has been a reporter for Science magazine for twenty one years, as the United Kingdom correspondent. He recently released his new book, A Piece of the Sun: The Quest for Fusion Energy, which talks about the history and future of fusion power.

Clery’s presentation shows that fusion has a great history filled with scientific challenges and politics. The idea of fusion started in the 1850s, with Herman von Helmholtz and William Thompson. They questioned the sun’s energy and realized that the current coal consumption was not a sustainable energy choice. Arthur Eddington was able to connect Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc2, to the sun and came to a conclusion that the sun’s energy was from the fusing of atoms.

The first person to start research towards a fusion power source, was Peter Thoneman, who created a detailed plan of a pinch device and was the first to attract attention to fusion. The problem with fusion was finding a structure that controlled the hot plasma. Igor Tamm and Andrei Sakharov were able to address this problem, to some extent, by inventing the tokamak, an idea inspired by Oleg Lavrentiev, which used a magnetic field to confine the plasma in a donut shape.

After the oil crisis, fusion energy became a higher priority. Fusion became an international project because Mikhail Gorhachev saw fusion energy as a solution for the “two nations to work together to develop fusion for all mankind.” Recently, ITER has been met with a lot of controversy and doubt but Daniel Clery believes that ITER is in a critical stage and has produced what has been supplied to the project. Clery states,

ITER project has a long history and is at a critical stage and it could go wrong. But hopefully the 500 staff in Cadarache can prove it can be done as long as we can support them long enough.

Politics plays a big role in science. ASP’s Andrew Holland posed a question,

You can never get politics out nor should you, so what you need to do is get politics involved and support. When has politics work in the 20 or 10 years you have looked at it and what are the lessons we can take from that?”

Daniel Clery believes that politics worked in favor of fusion in the 1970s during the oil crisis when energy became a top priority in government policy. He believes that because energy lacks a sense of urgency it has not been able to get political backing and funding, now.

A lot of people have told him where is the urgency; no one seems to think it is something we need and we need it now. Until there is a sense of urgency that fusion can solve this problem I don’t see politics will really get behind it. There needs to be something not connected to fusion that can make fusion the solution to it. Until we have that I don’t know if politicians will get behind it.

In the closing remarks, Daniel Clery believes that ITER will pass the point of break even power. However, because industries need simple machines, fusion will still face challenges. Andrew Holland also concludes that the U.S. has the funding capability it just lacks political will.

We have to move it from a science experiment to an engineering problem and start figuring out the solutions to the engineering problem. But that takes political will and some funding.

On Monday and Tuesday, April 7 and 8, representatives of the American Security Project visited Western and Central Tennessee for a series of meetings, public events, and briefings on how climate change is affecting security, and how businesses are planning for it.

Attending were LtGen John “Glad” Castellaw, USMC (ret.) and Brig. General John Adams, USA (Retired). Castellaw was a 36 year veteran of the Marine Corps and now serves as the Director of the Crockett Policy Insititute and a member of the ASP Board. Adams is a 30 year veteran of the Army, is completing his Doctorate in International Relations, and is the President of Guardian Six Consulting LLC. Both are members of ASP’s Consensus for American Security. Andrew Holland, ASP’s Senior Fellow for Energy and Climate, and Porter Brockway, ASP’s events manager, rounded out the delegation.

The first appointment of the tour was to meet with representatives of FedEx at Memphis Airport to discuss the energy and environmental challenges that the company faces, and efforts they are taking to mitigate those challenges. We agreed that a large portion of the event would be off the record in order to have a more open discussion, but there are certain parts that can be reported.

The visit started with a tour through the FedEx sorting facility – a place that has about 10,000 employees per day. As we toured on Monday morning, we saw the facility the only time that it is quiet – as there is no pickup on Sundays and packages picked up from Monday had not yet arrived. Repeatedly throughout the meeting, we returned to this theme: greater investment in energy efficiency and reduced energy use has co-benefits to overall productivity and profits for FedEx. After the tour around the facility, ASP moved inside to meet with executives and leaders or FedEx’s “Practical Sustainability” initiatives. We went through their efforts on biofuels, flight fuel management, and ground transport efficiency. For a full discussion of FedEx’s work, see this (forthcoming) article. Overall, the theme was clear: as FedEx has invested in clean energy, its environmental footprint has gone down while revenues and profits have continued to climb.

After leaving FedEx, ASP drove to the West Tennessee Solar Farm, an initiative of the University of Tennessee to provide 5 MW of solar power to the electricity grid. Taking up more than 25 acres, the approximately 21,000 fixed photovoltaic solar panels provide electricity as one of the largest solar arrays in the Southeast. ASP met with Elliot Barnett, the facility manager, who discussed the history of the facility. While the facility provides important electrical power, its purpose is also as an educational destination. Built within easy view of Interstate 40, the Tennessee Department of Transportation is building an off-ramp and visitors center that will allow travelers to see and learn about solar power and renewable energy. There is room to expand, and the facility could one day host a variety of renewable energy production.

From there, ASP drove to Martin, TN for a public event at the

The last time that the mass media looked at national security and space, we were in a very different time. The United States was embroiled in the Cold War and the danger of nuclear annihilation was at the forefront of most people’s minds.

Although we have advanced from that point, technological developments in space beg the question: how is our current space technology tied to our national security needs? How has our reliance on Russian technology made us vulnerable? How can we enhance our national security and support American research and investment?

The American Security Project is working to help start this dialogue in order to help inform the public and create a consensus in regards to the issue of U.S. access in space.

On Tuesday April 1st, ASP hosted a kick-off event featuring Lt. General Norman Seip, former Commander of the 12th Air Force (Air Forces Southern), at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona and adjunct fellow at ASP, along with August Cole, a former Wall Street Journal reporter that writes about American competitiveness, military and intelligence spending and the defense industry. He is also an adjunct fellow at ASP that is helping lead our efforts to tackle the issue at hand.

Check out August’s new report here: National Security and America’s Space Challenge

In Lt. Gen Seip’s experience as a Commander of an Air Operation Center (AOC), he has observed that space has taken a forefront at all of the AOCs he has visited. He noted that space has become a priority in the eyes of other AOC Commanders, and that it is becoming a contested and competitive environment that the United States should be concerned with.

August mentioned the fact that the “front-burner” national security issues are what usually takes priority in Washington, and that it is easy to overlook space issues. It is not really part of our daily ritual to look up and imagine the types of operations are taking place in space, nor do we think about the critical components that allow those operations to take place.

So, what is the tie to national security you might say? For the past 12 or 15 years, the U.S. has had an unfair advantage when it comes to space. However, the Chinese have recently gotten involved. They are now operating in space and working on new missions that Lt. Gen Seip believes have been successful in “cluddering up” space in a way that could potentially impact the U.S.’s ability to conduct necessary military operations. Not only could this impact our business as usual in space, but he said that it could also take away our asymmetrical advantage. Another point he made is that non-state actors do not necessarily have to be in space to threaten our asymmetrical advantage, but could also affect our operations by carrying out attacks within the cyber-realm.

In Lt. General Seip’s words, national security is about options: the right options, along with choices: good choices. In regards to military access to space, when the U.S. has to rely on Russia for a “critical element” , such as the RD-180, the main engine used in one of the Pentagon’s key space launch vehicles, it is not a very good option, nor is it a very good choice to have. If the Russians decided to take away that component, then according to Lt. General Seip, the United States’ space operations would be severely impacted.

It does not take much digging within the news to look at our current U.