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Shanghai Academy acts as a front for Chinese spy recruitment, according to FBI The Brookings Institution, a prominent Washington, D.C., think tank, partnered with a Shanghai policy center that the FBI has described as a front for China’s intelligence and spy recruitment operations, according to public records and federal court documents. The Brookings Doha Center, the think tank’s hub in Qatar, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in January 2018, the institution said. The academy is a policy center funded by the Shanghai municipal government that has raised flags within the FBI. The partnership...

Michael O’Hanlon — an appointee to the Central Intelligence Agency External Advisory Board under the Obama-Biden administration — visited a Chinese Communist Party-run think tank identified by the U.S. government as conducting “undercover intelligence gathering” operations and seeking to coerce foreign actors into backing the Chinese Communist Party’s “preferred policies.” Also at the Director of the Brooking Institute’s Foreign Policy Research Team and adjunct professor at Georgetown and Columbia Universities, O’Hanlon visited the China Association for International Friendly Contact (CAIFC) on August 23rd, 2012 – the same year his Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) External Advisory Board stint ended. Under President...

Syria’s civil war seems unstoppable. In four years, it has killed 250,000, displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million, and given birth to the Islamic State, which promises to conquer the region and inspire lone-wolf terrorist attacks throughout the Western world. The Obama administration has managed to keep the United States from a third major conflict in the broader Middle East, but its Syria policy has otherwise struggled. President Bashar al-Assad did not, as expected, tumble from power as his money ran out and his army collapsed. Efforts to create a moderate military opposition have generally failed. The...

IRAQ remains a violent country plagued by high unemployment, raw wounds from sectarian conflict, extremist militias aided by Iran, more than four million people still displaced by violence, and very limited government capacity to meet the country’s core needs. There has, however, been major progress this spring on two fronts. Together they give reason for hope that the major improvement in security resulting from the surge of American forces may endure even as the surge itself ends this July. First, the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki showed real backbone by undertaking major military operations that ultimately reclaimed Iraq’s...

Senior Brookings fellows Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack gave a report today and entertained questions at a Brookings briefing on Iraq. It was the single most illuminating presentation I have witnessed on the status of Iraq and the potential way forward. Neither man can be accused of shilling for either the administration or John McCain for numerous reasons: both have been strong critics of the war and O’Hanlon opposed the war and still believes on balance it has not made us safer. I understand from Brookings that the entire transcript will be posted, but I offer some highlights below. O’Hanlon...

AS 2007 comes to close, how should we understand the situation in Iraq? Are we witnessing the greatest American military comeback late in a war since Sherman’s march to the sea in 1864? Or is Iraq still a weakly governed and very violent place where sectarian reconciliation is starkly absent? The problem for American policymakers, troops and voters is that both these situations are simultaneously real. Iraq’s security environment is considerably improved, with security at its best levels since early 2004. This is largely thanks to the surge-based strategy of Gen. David Petraeus and the heroic efforts — and sacrifice...

How can one gather and assess information about Iraq -- collected on a trip or from any other source? Information from a war zone is difficult to attain and interpretation is open to many views. Unfortunately, much of the blogosphere and other media outlets have emphasized the wrong question, challenging the integrity of anyone who dares to express politically incorrect views about Iraq. Last week, Jonathan Finer criticized on this page [" Green Zone Blinders," Aug. 18] a New York Times essay that Ken Pollack and I wrote, as well as the comments of several senators, for claiming too much...

After months of surreality, the Iraq debate has quite abruptly acquired a relationship to reality. Following the Democratic victory last November, panicked Republican senators began rifling the thesaurus to find exactly the right phrase to express exactly the right nuance to establish exactly the right distance from the president's Iraq policy, while Murtha Democrats searched for exactly the right legislative ruse to force a retreat from Iraq without appearing to do so. In the last month, however, as a consensus has emerged about realities on the ground in Iraq, a reasoned debate has begun. A number of fair-minded observers, both...

Democrats demonised for backing Bush in Iraq By Alex Spillius in Washington Last Updated: 2:19am BST 25/08/2007 A US military patrol guards a street corner during a weapons search in Baghdad Two of the Democratic party’s most influential strategists have been transformed into hate figures of the American Left after daring to support President George W. Bush’s tactics in Iraq. Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, military analysts at Washington’s liberal Brookings Institution, declared themselves as unlikely allies of Mr Bush when they wrote an article in the New York Times titled “A War We Might Just Win". The article was...

According to major media, America's "surge in Iraq" is suddenly working. In an op-ed that appeared in The New York Times on July 30, Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the left-leaning Brookings Institution called Iraq "a war we just might win." A week later, Robert Burns, who covers military issues for The Associated Press, wrote: "The new U.S. military strategy in Iraq, unveiled six months ago to little acclaim, is working. In two weeks of observing the U.S. military on the ground ... it's apparent that the war has entered a new phase in its fifth year." Anthony Cordesman,...

The Iraq debate that we’ve been watching this year has been about two bets. After false starts and misplaced hopes in 2004, and 2005, and 2006, George W. Bush is betting his surge strategy will facilitate the political progress that could bring a semblance of stability to Iraq. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are betting the surge will fail. It’s as simple as that. If Bush wins his bet, Iraq will be a better place, the Middle East will be a better place, and America will be a safer place. But Reid and...

OIF: Good news is bad for surrender monkeys In our democratic republic, we charge our elected representatives with the conduct of vigorous debate about issues both foreign and domestic. In doing so, we expect them to uphold their oaths to protect and defend our Constitution. However, politicians often posture and pretend in order to line up constituencies that perpetuate their tenure in office, regardless of constitutional constraints. Such political posturing is a disingenuous breach of trust at best. When this deceit extends to matters of national security, especially when we are at war and continue to face formidable threats from...

Critics of the troop surge have been arguing that it isn’t making any difference on the ground—the only thing it’s doing, they claim, is driving up American casualties. The facts are starting to contradict their claims. I’ve recently posted a couple of items noting that reliable on-the-ground observers—namely Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of The Brookings Institution and John Burns of the New York Times—have found that violence against Iraqis is falling. Now comes news that the number of American casualties is also declining, at least temporarily. There were spikes in the number of Americans killed in action in April...

Brookings scholars Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack used the most established of platforms, the Op-Ed page of The New York Times, to offer the most politically incorrect of arguments on Monday: “We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms.” Their 1,343-word piece, “A War We Just Might Win,” instantly provoked a more furious ideological shootout than has been sparked by any recent development on the battleground or action by the Bush administration. O'Hanlon told The Politico in an e-mail that he and his co-author were espousing "just temporary optimism," but their article was treated...

The big story out there right now is how the Left has been completely blindsided by the success of the Iraq Surge under the leadership of General Petraeus. At the present moment they are in a state of shock and haven't yet come up with a way to react. Yes, the Left have completely invested themselves in DEFEAT and now the success of the surge is sawing off the limb they have climbed out on. One big indicator of the success of the surge is this New York Times Op-Ed ARTICLE titled, "A War We Just Might Win." Written...

VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place. Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the...

As I predicted earlier in the day, the left wing blogosphere has turned on the Brookings scholars who went to Iraq and noted the results of the surge. Glenn Greenwald, a.k.a. “The Lion of Jalalabad”, penned a characteristically windy attempt at character assassination. Thankfully, Matthew Yglesias showed more brevity. Characteristically, both pieces didn’t take issue with what Brookings-men Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon reported seeing in Iraq but instead attacked them personally. If you’ve studied the moonbats in their native habitats as I have the past several years, this comes as no surprise. After all, what is the chickenhawk meme...

An NRO Symposium The New York Times ran a piece Monday by two non-“neoconservatives” — Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack — arguing that the war in Iraq can be won. Is this indicative of some kind of mood change afoot? Could we really win this war? Could the rhetoric in Washington really change? National Review Online asked a group of experts.

There are many who cannot bear the suggestion that reenergized American military operations under Gen. David Petraeus are making headway, and yesterday they were shocked by Brookings Institution think-tankers who, writing in The New York Times, allow that Iraq is today "a war we just might win." Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack have been harshly critical of the war's prosecution in the past. But now, returned from eight days at the front, they point to the turnaround in Anbar Province, the plunging civilian fatality rates and the improving performance of Iraqi security forces as signs things may at last be...

Leading lawmaker dismisses US scholars' upbeat report on Iraq Jul 31 01:18 PM US/Eastern A top Democratic lawmaker Tuesday dismissed the findings of two longtime Iraq war critics, who cited a dramatic improvement in the situation there following the infusion of thousands of additional US troops. "I dismiss it at as rhetoric," said US Representative John Murtha, a former marine, congressional heavyweight on military matters, and outspoken Iraq War critic. "I don't know where they were staying. I don't know what they saw. But I know this: that it's not getting better," Murtha said on CNN television. "It's over-optimist. It's...