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We hope you had a great Mother’s Day! In news about mothers, First Lady Michelle Obama

took to the airwaves in her husband’s stead on Saturday to rail against Islamist terrorist group

Boko Haram’s kidnapping of almost 300 girls in Nigeria. Mrs. Obama’s previous forays into

foreign policy matters have included expressing wariness about the possibility of the president

using force in Syria because of the country’s use of chemical weapons...that killed almost 500

children.

Wishing everyone a good week,

Your AEI Foreign and Defense Policy Studies team

Tweet of the Week

Sadanand Dhume @dhume Congrats @dennisrodman! Looking sharp in the billboards for T-Trounce English-speaking classes plastered all over Varanasi.

In the News

Terrorism

A Boko Haram video emerged Monday that purportedly shows some of the kidnapped Nigerian girls in

Muslim headdresses and the terror group's leader declaring they have converted to Islam.

The recent kidnapping of hundreds of schoolgirls in Nigeria is a dramatic and potentially tragic example of

the fanaticism of Boko Haram and other Islamic militants operating along the seam between Saharan and

Sub-Saharan Africa. But how are these particular 300 girls different from the 10,000 children killed in Syria?

Fifty-nine children were killed in Aleppo last week alone. And what about the rape epidemic in Syria?

Danielle Pletka writes, “The real problem here is that Islamist extremism is growing. Boko Haram and its

leader Aboubakar Shekau...are part of the epidemic of al Qaeda linked and related groups that are

sweeping Africa and the Middle East...while [the #BringBackOurGirls effort is] laudable, let’s face reality: the

campaign is nothing more than an effort by unserious people to latch onto the terrible plight of a tiny

proportion of victims of terrorism in order to make themselves feel good about...you got it...themselves.”

ICYMI: John Bolton writes for FoxNews.com, “Simply put, the United States needs an effective

counterterrorism strategy in North Africa, and we do not have one. Despite having created a separate

African Command at the Pentagon, separating it from the European Command, inadequate attention has

been given to the North African terrorist threat.”

Also check out Michael Rubin's Commentary Magazine piece on addressing, not denying, the religious

component to Boko Haram.

Last Friday, gunmen opened fire on the Yemeni defense minister’s convoy while he, along with senior

security officials, toured through Shabwah Governorate. All survived the attack. The defense minister arrived

in Azzan to celebrate the Yemeni military’s victory over al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) militants

there. Yemen’s government continues to announce the military’s progress against AQAP in the south and

counterterrorism raids in Sana’a. But have we seen this before? Katherine Zimmerman writes that to

some degree we have: “When Sana’a announces once more that it has driven AQAP from its stronghold,

the U.S. should not applaud. We should, instead, think about what we need to do differently to help the

Yemenis hold and expand the ground they’ve taken.”

President Obama claims he was only repeating what the intelligence community told him when his

administration asserted that the attack in Benghazi began with a spontaneous protest inspired by an Internet

video. Marc Thiessen pens: “If that’s the case, there is a simple way to prove it: Give the new congressional

select committee investigating Benghazi his daily intelligence briefings that show exactly what he was told.”

Read more here.

American Internationalism Project

GOP Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, suggested Sunday that the

Obama administration is taking a light, Twitter-style approach to foreign policy instead of a more substantial

one that might have flagged the Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram long before members abducted

hundreds of girls.

There is no escaping the impression that the Obama administration has weakened America’s standing on

the world stage. Considering the commitments Obama made to restoring the nation’s stature against a

backdrop of escalating crises across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, fewer and fewer

Americans now judge the president’s foreign policy a success. But are the latest debacles doing lasting

damage to US credibility? Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) argues in the affirmative and brings fresh ideas to

the table for renewed American leadership. Please join us on Wednesday for a conversation with Senator

Cornyn as we discuss foreign policy challenges and the role of Congress.

Defense and Acquisition

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is "not pleased" with House lawmakers who this week attempted to undo

much of the Pentagon's efforts to tighten its own budgetary belt by restoring funding that the Pentagon had

proposed to cut from programs ranging from the U-2 spy plane to the military's supermarket system.

Regardless of political persuasion, few who ever visited or tried to use HealthCare.gov would argue that the

Obamacare website was anything other than a colossal acquisition failure. The site wasn’t openly bid and

was limited to companies “prequalified” to do IT business for the feds. But the HealthCare.gov fiasco is only

the visible tip of the iceberg that is federal government procurement, and notwithstanding the titanic disaster

of that experience, neither Congress nor the administration is trying to fix it. William Greenwalt's latest

WIRED magazine piece examines the standard for federal information technology procurement and argues

that we need to build a new acquisition system from scratch. Read more here.

America’s Air Force is quickly shrinking before the nation’s eyes. Optimistic aircraft-purchase quantities are

unlikely to materialize in the near-term, and the service’s upcoming bow wave of aircraft buys will come at

the worst possible time, in the early 2020s, when all other federal spending will squeeze defense budgets

further and faster. Mackenzie Eaglen writes for The National Interest, “In light of the latest budget

proposal, Congress must step back and look at the collective impact of recent capacity and capability cuts

on purchases of aircraft in particular. They will find that not only is there virtually no slack left in America’s

current Air Force to meet global peacetime and war plan demands, the historically most innovative service is

now left to incrementally upgrade existing capabilities while abandoning transformational and leap-ahead

investments.”

While policymakers have revisited military retirement reform several times over the past 60 years, the issue

has recently taken on increased urgency. At least three separate panels in the past decade have analyzed

the issue and advocated reform; most recently, the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act established an

independent Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission to review all military

compensation and benefits. In his recent paper for AEI, Patrick Mackin resents recommendations for

changes to the military retirement system, including key features of the proposed system and issues related

to transition and implementation.

Ukraine and Russia

On Monday, Ukraine’s interim president, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, dismissed weekend referendums in the

country’s restive east, calling them a farce with no legal basis, as the European Union prepared to announce

a relatively modest tightening of sanctions against Moscow and its allies.

History is full of instances where a rising power, aggrieved and dissatisfied, acts aggressively to obtain new

borders or other international concessions. In Russia today we see a much more unusual case: This

increasingly menacing and ambitious geopolitical actor is a state in decline. Nicholas Eberstadt examines

Russia’s human capital and its striking economic underdevelopment and weakness, for The Wall Street

Journal. Eberstadt points out, “For all Russia's oil and gas, the country's international sales of goods and

services last year only barely edged out Belgium's — and were positively dwarfed by the Netherlands'.

Remember, there has never been an ‘energy superpower’ — anywhere, ever. In the modern era, the

ultimate source of national wealth and power is not natural resources: It is human resources. And

unfortunately for Russia, its human-resource situation is almost unrelievedly dismal — with worse likely in

the years to come.”

Moscow’s military takeover of Crimea, its continuing threat to Ukraine, and its disdainful response to token

Western sanctions all bode poorly for other now-independent former Soviet republics and for European

peace and security. Moreover, as Russia successfully dismembers and re-annexes portions of a

neighboring country on Northern Europe’s great plain, the lessons are clear: The forces of global stability,

led by the United States, are weakening, and prospects for the predators are rising. John Bolton writes that

while “the West’s responses to Russia’s aggressiveness in Ukraine thus far have been weak and ineffectual,

there are many more-robust alternatives available, such as significantly expanding economic sanctions and

repositioning North Atlantic Treaty Organization military assets to Poland and the Baltic republics.” Read

Bolton’s latest National Review article for more about a foreign policy equipped to deal with the Putin

regime.

Asia

On Monday, Indians voted on the last day of a mammoth election as challenger Narendra Modi sought a

personal mandate in the holy city of Varanasi, crowning his campaign to rule the country with a mix of pro-

business policies and Hindu nationalism.

With results of India’s national election just two days away, an AEI Google Hangout will answer a hotly

debated question: Can Narenda Modi, India’s front-runner for prime minister, revive the country’s moribund

economy? Against a backdrop of sharply slowed economic growth, massive corruption scandals, and loss of

investor confidence, it remains to be seen whether Modi’s “Gujarat model”— symbolizing double-digit

economic growth, ease in doing business, and high-quality infrastructure — can solve India’s problems. Like

Great Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, Modi is attempting to use economic messaging about decentralization,

small government, and development to restore India’s economic standing and to court foreign investment.

Three experts will discuss whether comparisons between Modi and Thatcher are sensible or overblown.

Moderator Sadanand Dhume will be participating live from India, where he is observing the elections.

In little over a year, close to 60 Chinese officials have died of unnatural causes, with most being suicides.

The strong suspicion is that this epidemic of mysterious deaths among China’s elite is likely tied to the anti-

corruption campaign being led by Xi Jinping, China’s president and party general secretary. Gary Schmitt

writes that understanding what all this means is one of the US government’s most important strategic

intelligence tasks. He argues that “As the noose tightens, US intelligence ought to make clear to those

Chinese within the government elite that there are safe havens in the West — as long as they are willing to

cooperate.”

AEI on Campus

As part of AEI's on-campus leadership program, AEI foreign and defense policy scholars are talking to

hundreds of students every semester. If you know any exceptional student leaders, connect them to

Scott.Fyall@aei.org, and we'll tell them more about AEI on Campus Executive Council positions.

Executive Council members travel to DC for leadership conferences, network with business leaders and

scholars, and host influential thinkers on campus. Learn more here! The priority application deadline for

2014-15 is June 8, 2014.

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