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Speech
Difficult Transitions: The Pitfalls of Managing National Security During a President's First Year in Office
Friends of the LBJ Library - March 24, 2008
The next President will take office at an extraordinarily delicate and dangerous time in American history. He or she will face an ongoing conflict in Iraq with US troops still engaged, our ground forces over-extended, and few good options on how to stabilize the situation there and prevent wider conflict. There remain active nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea which threaten to destabilize their regions and undermine the global non-proliferation regime. Our nation faces a continued high level terrorist threat, fueled by the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, and social, cultural and religious divisions from Europe to South East Asia.
We see an intensification of instability in Pakistan, which contributes to the terrorist threat and risks an internal meltdown in a nuclear armed state. Behind these immediate headlines are the longer-term challenges of an increasingly assertive Russia, an economically and militarily more powerful China, and grave long term dangers like climate change, energy security, and pandemic disease.
