Summary: The economic crisis has trumped bullets and bombs in the intelligence agencies’ latest assessment of threats to the United States. Sounding more like an economist than the war-fighting Navy commander he once was, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair told a Senate panel that if the economic crisis lasts more than two years, it could cause some nations’ governments to collapse. “The longer it takes for the recovery to begin, the greater the likelihood of serious damage to U.S. strategic interests,” he told the Senate Intelligence Committee, as Congress prepares to vote on a $789 billion stimulus package.

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Summary: Defense contractor KBR Inc. has been awarded a $35 million Pentagon contract involving major electrical work, even as it is under criminal investigation in the electrocution deaths of at least two U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The announcement of the new KBR contract came just months after the Pentagon rejected the company’s explanation of serious mistakes in Iraq and its proposed improvements.

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Summary: To battle a growing suicide rate, the Army may have to start teaching soldiers how to handle stress from the first day they take their service oath, says Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, which operates 33 schools and training centers at 16 Army installations.

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Summary: The Army is investigating an unexplained and stunning spike in suicides in January 2009. The count is likely to surpass the number of combat deaths during the same period reported by all branches of the armed forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the fight against terrorism. “In January, we lost more soldiers to suicide than to al-Qaida,” said Paul Rieckhoff, director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

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Summary: A classified Pentagon report urges President Barack Obama to shift U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan, de-emphasizing democracy-building and concentrating more on targeting Taliban and al-Qaida sanctuaries inside Pakistan with the aid of Pakistani military forces.

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Summary: Provincial election results in northern Iraq could heighten ethnic tensions between Sunnis and Kurds.

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Summary: Why North Korea could become one of President Obama’s most vexing foreign-policy challenges: For the moment, the Obama White House has bigger priorities than North Korea. Still, the new U.S. president would do well to keep in mind that Pyongyang is continuing to tweak its nuclear-weapons program. It already has an arsenal of ballistic missiles capable of hitting all of Japan and potentially parts of the United States. For all its paranoia, North Korea insists it’s still under the threat of “American and Japanese imperialists,” and says that it has every right to possess a “nuclear deterrent” to defend itself. Appeasing them with money and oil won’t be enough.

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Summary: Counterterrorism officials and the FBI are investigating whether al-Shabab or other Somali Islamic groups are actively recruiting in the United States. Officials say as many as 20 Somali-Americans between the ages of 17 and 27 have left their Minneapolis homes since 2007, apparently bound for Somalia.

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Summary: Iraqis vote Jan. 31, 2009 in the first nationwide election in three years, choosing provincial leaders in what amounts to a test of Iraq’s stability as the U.S. plans to remove its troops. A credible election without significant violence would show that the security improvements of the past 18 months are taking hold. The outcome will also show which parties stand the best chance of success in parliamentary elections a year later.

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Summary: The upcoming January 2009 provincial elections will be Iraqis’ fourth national ballot since the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime. … David Enders of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting examines the power struggle among competing Shiite factions in Iraq.

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