ConservativeHome's Big Ideas blog

A long term strategy for the future of NASA

Natalie Gonnella
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As NASA retires the US shuttle initiative after 30 years of space flight, Col. Walter Cunningham and Rep. Pete Olson this weekend on Politico weigh in on the growing discontent over the future of the US space program.

Critical of both the Obama administration's space policy and the rising uncertainty over the benefits of American space exploration, Cunningham and Olson offer an innovative strategy for the future of the program, calling for both the integration of private participation and commercial markets, as well as a wider commitment to more meaningful operations.  With Atlantis concluding the final shuttle mission on Friday, here's a quick look at their key ideas for the future of US space exploration:

By establishing a long-term strategy, with specific policies, led and endorsed by Congress, we can again make NASA and the human space program credible and beneficial. To this end, we must:

• Spell out a coherent HSF mission, goal and timeline for the next 20 years. Manned missions to the Moon, and then Mars, should be part of this timeline
• Return to the earlier NASA model of success: Adopt best practices to reform contracting, foster better communication between centers, eliminate activities not essential for space exploration and clear away bureaucracy.
• Assess the near-term potential and costs for commercial space companies to support both cargo and manned LEO missions to better understand the potential investment required by private investors, and the degree it may free NASA resources to focus on the deep-space mission
• Make a quick decision on a heavy launch system and the necessary related technologies;

In their new homes, Atlantis and her sister orbiters are likely to inspire little in the next generation of Americans if there is nothing for our children to aspire to. Let us hope that Atlantas’ return to Earth will be the harbinger of a new era of U.S. human space flight and American exceptionalism.

The full op-ed by Col. Cunningham and Rep. Olson is available to view here.

Nine non-military ways to show the Assad regime what the US government thinks of their phony excuses

Natalie Gonnella
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Despite the fact that nearly 1500 civilians have been killed in Syria and another 10,500 have fled, the Obama administration has remained conspicuously silent about the ongoing atrocities committed by the Assad government.

But while the White House continues to avoid the issue, at times even playing to the regime's propaganda, a growing number of foreign policy experts are urging immediate action.

One of those people is Richard Grenell, the longest serving US spokesman to the UN, who in in an op-ed last week in The Huffington Post outlined nine non-military actions that the US can immediately undertake to both isolate Assad and show support to those behind the opposition movement.

As the security crackdown in Syria continues, here's a look at Grenell's suggestions:

1. Order US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford home immediately, and shut down the Embassy.
2. Publicly call upon Assad to resign and ask other countries to do the same
3. Call upon the Europeans and others to pull their Ambassadors from Damascus too.
4. Restrict the movement of the Syrian Ambassador to Washington and the Syrian Ambassador to the UN to a small radius around their offices.
5. Ask European capitals to restrict the movement of Syrian Ambassadors in their countries too.
6. Force the UN resolution on Syria to a vote and dare the Russians to veto it.
7. Move USAid employees into southern Turkey to care for the Syrian refugees arriving daily.
8. Schedule an Al Jazeera TV interview with President Obama to explain our actions and why Assad must go. 
9. Demand the IAEA inspect Al Kibar and offer an immediate UN resolution authorizing it.

Grenell's original op-ed is available to read here.

Four points for Petraeus: Paul Miller's take on what's needed to fix the CIA

Natalie Gonnella
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As General David Petraeus prepares to take the reins at the Central Intelligence Agency, in a post via ForeignPolicy.com's Shadow Government blog, Paul Miller this week outlined four key tasks for the new Director's attention.

Having worked for the CIA for seven years himself, here's a quick look at Miller's views on what requires immediate adjustment:

1. Get the analysts out of the shadows:

The Directorate of Intelligence (DI) has the capability of being a leading foreign affairs think tank in the world. Instead, it has largely limited itself to being a massive, overpriced, secretive magazine staff for a readership of one, pouring most of its resources in to the President's Daily Brief (PDB)...Analysts can and should be open and regular participants in the world of academia, think tanks, and conferences, encouraged to publish and speak on their areas of expertise.

2. Get the National Clandestine Service (NCS, or, to any self-respecting intelligence professional, the DO) to report gray information:

The operations officers of the clandestine service are an invaluable tool of national security by collecting human intelligence. In non-spy lingo, that means they persuade foreigners to sell secrets. However, they focus exclusively on secrets. The service vets its reports to ensure that it is only reporting information that is sufficiently "clandestine"...There is also gray information, stuff that is important, not strictly a secret, but also very hard to get... In war zones and failed states, NCS officers are often the only people well-placed to observe and report this kind of information. They should be encouraged to do so, but that would require a profound cultural and institutional shift in what the NCS understands its mission to be.

3. Draw down the counterterrorism surge:

A huge proportion of the intelligence community's assets were rightly diverted to tracking terrorists after 2001. But terrorism is unlikely to be the U.S.'s principle foreign policy challenge in coming decades. The principle challenges probably will include, at one pole, China and Russia, and, at the other pole, widespread state failure and anarchy in much of the world. Islamism, of the political, radical, extremist, or violent variety (pick your modifier), may also be a long-term challenge...Our heavy focus on counterterrorism is too narrow.

4. Tackle clientitis:

Analysts and operatives can, on occasion, go native. They start to see the world through the perspective of the foreign country (Pakistan, to take a completely random example) on which they spend their careers. This destroys their objectivity and undermines their usefulness to U.S. policymakers...We need to encourage depth without sacrificing perspective. Petraeus should form a cross-directorate task force to study the problem, develop ways to identify and track clientitis, and find ways to prevent or cure it.

Miller's full post is available to view here.