Derek Chollet Quoted in Washington Post
Assistant Secretary of Defense Derek Chollet, who came and talked to CIW students this semester, was quoted in today’s Washington Post:
Derek Chollet, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, who appeared along with McRaven, told McCain, “We don’t have a very big footprint in the country right now . . . for security reasons, so some of the good programs that we were doing, for example to try to build up their Ministry of Defense, some of the mentoring that we were doing on the civilian side, have stopped dead in their tracks.”
McCain then turned to Mali and asked Chollet if he had confidence that when the French leave, “the situation will not deteriorate back to a situation that basically is the same as before the French intervened?”
Chollet said the United States would work through the United Nations to get peacekeepers there that would train a new African force, but added, “I think we have a shot, but I wouldn’t say that it’s high confidence.”
Chollet is an alum of CIW (’92).
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