The American Security Project recently released the mid-year update to their annual “Are We Winning?” Report, which showed a marked decrease in Islamist terrorism in the last two quarters of 2009 outside of the on-going conflict theaters of Iraq and Afghanistan. Even though Islamist terrorist incidents still remain at historically high levels, the decrease at the end of 2009 was the largest since 2004, when National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) started tracking Islamist terrorist incidents. The report, authored by ASP Senior Fellow Bernard Finel and Researcher Germain Difo measures America’s progress in the fight against terrorism according to metrics that are designed to be both reproducible and objective. Click here to view the full report.Read more...

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An American Security Project mid-year update to their annual report on global terrorism trends today showed several trends that raise serious concerns about U.S. counterterrorism policy, including a dramatic increase in Islamic violence in the Middle East, a worsening situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, new “hot spots” of violence in Somalia and Russia, as well as a dampening of the initial “Obama effect” in the Muslim world.

The American Security Project today released a new report, authored by ASP Adjunct Fellow James Blaker, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Senior Advisor to the Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, outlining the need to reassess US-China relations. The paper, entitled “Avoiding Another Cold War: The Case for Collaboration with China,” is part of a longer series of reports and perspectives being issued by the American Security Project on important issues confronting the incoming Administration.

Specific findings include:

The American Security Project today announced a new report detailing the need for the next President and Congress to restore the rule of law to our nation’s foreign policy and national security. The paper, authored by Damon A. Terrill, a former Attorney-Adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State, calls restoring recognition of the American commitment to the rule of law one of the most pressing challenges facing our next Administration, and calls for an ambitious public diplomacy effort to accompany this new commitment.

The Pentagon has unveiled a base $515.4 billion defense budget for fiscal year 2009. As mind-boggling as this number may seem to many, this amount of spending will consume less of the American economy-roughly 3.4 percent–than during the Vietnam and Korean War eras, when military spending represented over nine percent of the national economy.

This level of spending is unsustainable. Some, such as Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, and several prominent analysts from the Heritage Foundation, argue that a floor for defense spending should be set at 4 percent.

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The National Guard and Reserves (collectively, the Reserve Components) are under-manned, under-funded, and under-equipped for the demands we are making of them. The men and women who make up the Reserves continue to carry on, accomplishing the missions the nation asks of them. But to keep faith with America’s citizen-soldiers will require leadership from the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the United States Congress to advance an agenda that keeps the Reserves ready and relevant.

This report makes the case that fixing the challenges faced by the Reserve Components will require several initiatives. Because the Reserve Components now constitute an operational force rather than a strategic reserve, these forces require additional training on an on-going basis. In addition, Congress ought to pass legislation that limits the percentage of National Guard force that can be committed to operations at any one time in order to ensure that a sufficient force remains in the United States to respond to local disasters. Congress should also provide additional benefits to members of the Reserve Components as well at to their employers to ensure shared sacrifice by all of society.