"After over a year of intensive talks, press reports indicate that an official agreement between the U.S. and Taliban is imminent. The agreement reportedly begins with an immediate reduction in violence by all sides, followed by the signing of a U.S.-Taliban agreement. This would lead to intra-Afghan peace negotiations, accompanied by a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops. Implementing and verifying each step in this process will require meticulous diplomacy, but this reported agreement could mark a major turning point in the [...]

"Former Undersecretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy shares insights from her experience putting together defense transition teams for President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Flournoy also discusses the challenges associated with transitioning during an ongoing conflict, and the underrepresentation of women in national security..." Listen to the full podcast here: Full Podcast

"The immediate crisis may be over, but Iran is likely to 'resume provocations' unless it gets some relief from the United States' maximum pressure campaign, said Michèle Flournoy, who served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from February 2009 to February 2012. "'I think those are most likely to be either covert or clandestine or through proxies or directed at others in the region,' said Flournoy, now managing partner of WestExec Advisors, a strategic advisory firm in Washington, D.C. 'I [...]

"Michèle Flournoy, former Under Secretary of Defense of Policy, reflects on recent escalations between U.S. and Iran with former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers and Roger Ferguson, TIAA chief executive officer..." Watch the full interview here: Full Interview

"'From one tweet to the next, from one day to the next, you never know what he's going to say or what his approach will be. And I think for adversaries who are trying to figure out where the line is, it's very difficult to establish deterrence for them. For allies, it makes them very uncertain.' "... Flournoy says Trump's approach isn't strategic—it's tactical, transactional, impulsive. "'I actually think [Trump's] an interesting mix of, on the one hand, wanting to appear [...]

"'The fact that there were no casualties gives President Trump the opportunity to throw the circuit breaker on this particular cycle of escalation,' ex-Under Sec. of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy says after Iran attacked Iraqi bases housing US troops..." Watch the full interview here: Full Interview

“‘The whole question of are we leaving Iraq or not speaks to absence of a normal, rigorous [National Security Council] co-ordination process [and] lack of any consideration of the second or third order effects,’ said Michèle Flournoy, a former senior Pentagon official under Barack Obama, now at WestExec, an advisory firm in Washington...” Read the full article here: Full Article

"Michèle A. Flournoy, a former under secretary of defense under President Barack Obama who turned down a chance to serve as deputy defense secretary for Mr. Trump, said the chaotic nature of the current foreign policy stemmed from an 'impulsive, inconsistent' president without a functional national security process that would ensure that 'second- and third-order consequences' were fully considered. "There is 'no real strategy or shared framework,' she said, 'so tactical decisions are made in a vacuum or untethered from broader [...]