The Evening CSIS May 6 2015

Good Evening,

Welcome to The Evening CSIS—my daily guide to key insights CSIS brings to the events of the day plus HIGHLY RECOMMENDED content from around the world. To subscribe, please click here and if you want to view this in your browser, click here.

Kurdistan in Washington
President Masoud Barzani of Kurdistan met with President Obama and Vice President Biden today and remarked at USIP that Kurdistan’s involvement in a united Iraq is “voluntary, not compulsory.” Reuters has the story.

Dive Deeper: Dexter Filkins has thislong-form piece in the New Yorker that outlines Kurdistan’s political goals amid the pesh merga’s fight against ISIS.

To learn more about the Kurdish people, The Kurdish Project is an excellent online resource designed to educate people on Kurdish values, culture, and history.

CSIS’s Tony Cordesman wrote a critique of the latest report of the US inspector general on Operation Inherent Resolve, the coalition fight against ISIS.

UK Election
The UK’s general election campaign reaches its penultimate day in what looks to be one of the closest battles in years. Margaret Talev writes in Bloomberg on the stakes for the US in this historic election.

Dive Deeper: CSIS’s Heather Conley outlines the campaign so far, and its geopolitical implications, in this comprehensive commentary.

Data journalism site fivethirtyeight.com has this interactive to help predict tomorrow’s, likely complicated, outcome.

In that Number

5,560,000

The square miles of Arctic sea ice in March 2015, the smallest recorded since satellite technology was introduced.
Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Critical Question

Asked: What role does the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff play in the ongoing defense budget debate?

Answered: Kath Hicks, CSIS senior vice president and director of the International Security Program: The next chairman of the Joint Chiefs has a vital role to play in advocating for defense needs—and even broader national security requirements—in the federal budget. It is simply a fact that many members of Congress will pay more heed to readiness concerns raised by senior military leaders than by civilian leaders.

General Dunford will need to be front and center in the debate over the effects of sequestration-level spending on the military’s ability to play its role in protecting and advancing US interests in the world. Righteous indignation over the sequestration mechanism has given way over the past two years to a general resignation about the seemingly unresolvable political impasse in which the defense budget is ensnared. General Dunford should serve as a pivotal voice of reason in this debate.

He will be advantaged in making a case for easing cuts on defense spending by the increasing visibility of the Budget Control Act’s effects on readiness, which, as in all downturns, has lagged actual cuts by several years. As ships are unavailable to deploy to Asia or the Middle East, Army units are pulled back from Europe, and the Air Force copes with fewer trained pilots than required, the chairman can press lawmakers and the White House to either bring means into alignment with ends or propose a reexamination of ends to align with the more limited means available for defense.

Read the full analysis.

One to Watch

David Taylor is the US editor of The Times of London. Joining The Times after four years at The Guardian, Taylor has been helming the newspaper’s coverage of America, as well as its relationship with the UK. His unique insight as the UK enters a complex election makes him one to watch.

Optics
Check out this super-hot super-Earth, spotted by scientists 40 light-years away. Its temperatures swing from 1,800 to 4,900 degrees Fahrenheit; this artist’s depiction shows its molten surface, covered in gas and ash.

Highly Recommended

Our Global Health Program, in collaboration with the creative minds in the CSIS Ideas Lab, have produced an immersive and beautifully designed report microsite, based on research conducted in February. The site tells the story of maternal, newborn, and child health in Tanzania with the help of data-rich visuals, original imagery from the field, and up-to-the-minute research.

CSIS Today
CSIS launched a major new report in an event “ Enhancing U.S. Engagement on Maternal and Child Health ,” which examines U.S. policy options to advance maternal, neonatal, and child health in sub-Saharan Africa.

CSIS also hosted leading energy experts for a discussion on the future of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the global strategic stocks system.

This Town Tomorrow
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace will host a timely discussion on “A New Defense Technology Frontier in the U.S.-Japan Alliance” at 2:00 p.m.

CSIS on Demand
Yesterday, President Obama nominated General Joseph Dunford (USMC) to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. To learn more about General Dunford, be sure to watch him discuss the new “ Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower,” alongside Admirals Jonathan Greenert (USN) and Paul Zukunft (USCG) at CSIS.

Sounds
The Financial Times works through the permutations of a coalition government in the UK in this podcast out today.

I Like It Like That
Last week, Elon Musk announced the release of the Tesla Powerwall battery. Defense One ’s ​Patrick Tucker explores what the new battery means for the military.

Smiles
Everyone of a certain generation wanted to be Bruce Lee and tried to copy his amazing martial art and athletic abilities. He was a human superhero. It’s amazing what technology can now help the digital natives of today learn to do in perfect unison—even the smallest of the bunch. This is a smile!

Feedback

I always welcome and benefit from your feedback. Please drop me a line at aschwartz@csis.org.