The Senate is due to vote this afternoon on a short-term Continuing Resolution (CR) that will extend funding for the federal government until March 4.  This morning, a procedural motion to move forward with the CR passed the Senate 82-14.  The CR will fund the International Affairs Budget at $52.9 billion, 10% lower than the President’s FY11 request. The House could also take up the measure if the Senate passes it.  The current CR expires at midnight tonight.

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The Ambassadors-as-CEOs Model (John Norris, Foreign Policy)

The QDDR’s answer is to suggest thinking of ambassadors “as CEOs,” which would mean giving them a stronger voice in decision-making in Washington and more muscle in coordinating the inter-agency activities that are run out of embassies. The ambassador-as-CEO model has an appealing logic. There desperately needs to be greater order and coherence between all the different arms of the U.S. government operating on foreign soil; often the programs of different agencies seem to have been designed with little in the way of common strategy or purpose. Yet, understanding the dynamics of why U.S. ambassadors have lost much of their authority over recent decades also reveals the central challenges in bringing the vision of the QDDR to life.

Bitter Pill for Aid Reform (Siddhartha Mahanta, Mother Jones)

For better or for worse, soldiers tend to serve as the first responders to major crises in places where the United States has vested interests—i.e., pretty much everywhere. But Clinton is selling the QDDR as a first step towards restoring balance in the defense/diplomacy relationship. The document calls for hiring 5,500 new foreign and civil service officers and granting expanded authority to current officers. But before civilians can win back territory from the military, State and USAID probably need to improve their own operations with better coordination and smarter management—if only to overcome the skepticism of foreign aid critics on Capitol Hill, such as incoming House foreign affairs committee chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), who has called for cuts in foreign assistance overseen by the State Department.

Politics/Foreign Policy

Obama woos senators on Russia treaty vote (Olivier Knox , AFP)

A landmark US-Russia nuclear arms control treaty faced a key test vote in the US Senate as early as Tuesday as President Barack Obama ramped up pressure on wary lawmakers to back the accord.Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wooed Republicans by telephone, lawmakers said Monday, as the top US uniformed officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, wrote a letter unreservedly backing the pact.

Sources: DoD Officials Preparing Smaller 2012 Budget (John Bennett, Defense News)

The Pentagon in February likely will send Congress a fiscal 2012 budget blueprint seeking about $15 billion less than the $678 billion sought for 2011 – and some Obama administration officials want even deeper cuts, defense and industry sources say. Since lawmakers and administration officials earlier this year began mulling ways to right Washington’s fiscal ship, it has become increasingly clear that the defense budget will shrink. Senate appropriators this year trimmed the administration’s 2011 defense request by $8 billion, with their House counterparts proposing a $7.2 billion reduction. Several high-profile debt-reduction panels called for Pentagon cuts as large as $100 billion. The White House has ruled out a $100 billion cut for the Pentagon in 2012, sources say. White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Pentagon officials late last week were using the defense topline figure for 2011 included in a now-dead Senate omnibus appropriations bill as a foundation for the 2012 mark. That massive spending measure would have provided the Pentagon with $667.7 billion for 2011, including war funding – some $10 billion below the Pentagon’s request.

Gauging the price tag for Afghanistan’s security (Walter Pincus, Washington Post)

As the United States begins to look closely at reducing future spending, it may be time to put a dollar figure on President Obama’s commitment, restated last week, to the long-term security of Afghanistan.  Let’s start with the cost of maintaining Afghan security forces after they reach their planned goal by October – 171,000 in the military and 134,000 police. John Ferrari, deputy commander for programs for the NATO training mission in Afghanistan told reporters last week that the estimate is that $6 billion per year would be needed to sustain that overall force.

Waste in U.S. Afghan aid seen at billions of dollars (Reuters)

Waste and fraud in U.S. efforts to rebuild Afghanistan while fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban may have cost taxpayers billions of dollars, a special investigator said on Monday. Arnold Fields, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said the cost of U.S. assistance funding diverted or squandered since 2002 could reach “well into the millions, if not billions, of dollars.” “There are no controls in place sufficient enough to ensure taxpayers’ money is used for the (intended) purpose,” said Fields, whose independent office was created in 2008 to energize oversight of what U.S. auditors have described as a giant, poorly coordinated aid effort that has sunk some $56 billion into Afghanistan since 2002.

Aid groups say they, not Hamas, are thwarted by Israeli restrictions on Gaza (Janine Zacharia, Washington Post) Despite recent moves by Israel to ease construction in the Gaza Strip, restrictions on building materials are hampering international humanitarian efforts while doing little to impede the Hamas-led government they are designed to weaken, aid and nongovernmental groups say.