Pena, Charles

views updated

Pena, Charles

(Charles V. Pena)

PERSONAL:

Education: Claremont Men's College, B.A., George Washington University, M.A.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Independent Institute, 100 Swan Way, Oakland, CA 94621-1428.

CAREER:

Cato Institute, Washington, DC, director of defense policy; worked for numerous governmental agencies, including the Office of the Secretary of Defense Program Analysis and Evaluation, Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Department of Homeland Security, and Federal Emergency Management Agency. Independent Institute, senior fellow; also senior fellow with Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute, adviser to Starus Military Reform Project. Television analyst for MSNBC-TV, Global TV (Canada), and Channel One News. Guest on television and radio programs, including Hardball, The O'Reilly Factor, News Night with Aaron Brown, and Morning Edition.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

(With others) Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the War against al Qaeda, Cato Institute (Washington, DC), 2004.

$400 Billion Defense Budget Unnecessary to Fight War on Terrorism (electronic resource), Cato Institute (Washington, DC), 2005.

Flying the Unfriendly Skies: Defending against the Threat of Shoulder-Fired Missiles (electronic resource), Cato Institute (Washington, DC), 2005.

Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy for the War on Terrorism, Potomac Books (Washington, DC), 2006.

(Coauthor) The Search for WMD: Non-Proliferation, Intelligence and Pre-emption in the New Security Environment, Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Wall Street Journal, and Chicago Tribune.

SIDELIGHTS:

Charles Pena has had a long career as a defense policy and program expert, advising many different government clients, including the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Programs analyzed and managed by Pena include missile defense, arms control, emergency preparedness, use of strategic nuclear weapons, and the future of air power. As a member of the Cato Institute Special Task Force, he contributed to the book Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the War against al Qaeda. In his book Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy for the War on Terrorism, Pena again outlines his case against the United States' military occupation of Iraq. His central thesis is ‘both simple and powerfully valid,’ stated David Isenberg in a review for the Asia Times. Noting that terrorism is a fighting tactic, not a specific enemy, he suggests that a ‘war on terror’ is useless. He illustrates his point by drawing a parallel to World War II, noting that after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, war was declared on the Japanese, not on dive-bombing airplanes.

Pena then goes on to illustrate the ways in which the ‘war on terror’ has put the United States in greater danger than it ever was previously. According to Isenberg, Pena presents ‘an arsenal of evidence’ to support his contention that the war in Iraq has decreased, rather than increased, domestic safety in the United States. Isenberg notes that while not all of Pena's facts and insights are new, the author has a way of making previously stated material seem fresh, and for bringing new insight to it. For example, Pena relates that the ratio of troops to inhabitants traditionally regarded as necessary for successful occupation is twenty troops for each 1,000 inhabitants; with the population of Iraq at twenty-five million, that ratio translates into 500, 000 troops, to be in place for approximately a decade.

In one chapter of his book, Pena gives a detailed accounting of how the Pentagon is spending money in its war on terror. ‘This is both an educational and a sad chapter,’ stated Isenberg. It suggests that the war on terror will not be won by military force, yet states that the United States government continues to proceed as though military action is the only answer to the problems.

In Chapter Six, Pena sketches his own ideas for what could be successful policy. He contends that the actions of the United States, rather than its philosophies, are what win it friends or enemies in the real world.

He feels that al Qaeda, the militant Islamic terrorist network, must be attacked and dismantled, rather than simply striking out against all terrorism. The other key move to successfully increasing safety in the United States would require the creation and implementation of a foreign policy that would not encourage new growth and action from al Qaeda. He argues that even if Iraq had truly possessed chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, as long as they had no system of delivering them to the United States, there was no direct threat, and thus, U.S. armed forces should not have come into play.

Reviewing Winning the Un-War for National Interest, J. Peter Pham was pleased by the even-handedness of the book. He stated: ‘Pena's work is characterized by neither a militant anti-Americanism nor a reflexive pacifism.’ Yet Pham did not feel that Pena's suggestions for drawing the American military presence out of Iraq were helpful. He stated that here ‘Pena's artfully constructed case not only begins to fray, it also diverges from the principles of realism."