The Center for Strategic and International Studies new “Global Forecast” offers 17 essays on the potential top challenges with security implications for the US in 2008. Leading the pack are essays featuring Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, but the forecast also covers Asia, Europe, Africa, Cuba, and transnational threats. Concluding this forecast, which labels the upcoming US Presidential election as the “main event” for 2008 is an “afterword” in which Richard Armitage and Joseph Nye say the US should “become a smarter power by reinvesting in the global good.” Hmmm.
A new Air Force plan for how many fighters it needs in the next decade marks a sharp upturn from what it thought it needed just seven years ago. But analysts worry that the aspirational plan now in Congress' hands doesn’t make a tight enough connection to national strategy.
