Defense Chiefs of Russia and U.S. to Meet, Each Tilting at Bureaucracy

 

It has been almost six years since a Russian defense minister set foot inside the Pentagon, and when Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates devotes Wednesday to hosting his Kremlin counterpart, Anatoly E. Serdyukov, they are expected to find common ground on a topic that would have been unimaginable during the cold war.

In parallel, Mr. Gates and Mr. Serdyukov have declared war on their expensive, inefficient bureaucracies, to the frustration of their respective defense industries, civilian employees and some members of their officer corps.

Mr. Gates is trying to cut Defense Department spending on overhead to scrounge up more money for troops in the field and investment in new weapons.

The Challenge of a Nuclear North Korea: Dark Clouds, Only One Silver Lining

Even before his election, Barack Obama had signaled his willingness to meet at a high level with officials of governments like the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), a stance that caused great anxiety on the part of America’s South Korean and Japanese allies. Specialists advising his campaign, some of whom would later join the new government, had conducted diplomacy with Pyongyang during the late Clinton Administration, perhaps the least acrimonious period in U.S.-DPRK relations. As it came into office, the new administration sent private reaffirmation of its intent to engage.