Im-Politic: Out of the Mouths of Globalists – A Case for the Wall

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Afghanistan, America First, border security, border wall, foreign policy, globalism, government shutdown, Im-Politic, Immigration, jihadism, Middle East, State of the Union, terrorism, The New York Times, Trump

With the possibility of another Border Wall-related government shutdown hanging over tonight’s State of the Union – and all of American politics – it’s pretty astonishing to recognize that The New York Times editorial board, which strongly opposes the wall, and which has long championed a globalist approach to foreign policy issues, has just unwittingly endorsed a Trump-ian, America First-style approach to border security.

The endorsement came in The Times‘ recent editorial calling for a prompt U.S. military pullout from Afghanistan – a position that’s also decidedly Trump-ian.

According to Times editorial writers, the main rationale originally cited for fighting in Afghanistan was flawed from the start. It focused too tightly on

“the idea that war abroad could prevent bloodshed at home. As [then President George W. Bush] explained in 2004: ‘We are fighting these terrorists with our military in Afghanistan and Iraq and beyond so we do not have to face them in the streets of our own cities.’”

Globalists well to the left of Bush endorsed this rationale as well, notably former President Barack Obama. His first bid for the White House stressed that Afghanistan was a “good war” and a conflict that “had to be won” in order to “take the fight to the terrorists” – in stark contrast to Mr. Bush’s “dumb” war in Iraq.

But The Times – which admirably recognizes that it bought this line as well – now suggests that this argument never made much sense. Although acknowledging that “since 9/11, no foreign terrorist group has conducted a deadly attack inside the United States,” it adds that

“there have been more than 200 deadly terrorist attacks during that period, most often at the hands of Americans radicalized by ideologies that such groups spread. Half of those attacks were motivated by radical Islam, while 86 came at the hands of far-right extremists.”

The Times doesn’t draw the obvious implication, but it couldn’t be clearer even to a minimally perceptive observer: The kinds of terrorist threats the paper spotlights have appeared in the United States in large measure because border security has been so shoddy for so long. In particular, American immigration authorities have never adequately screened newcomers from countries where radical Islam has taken root, and who are therefore unusually vulnerable to radicalization.

It’s conceivable that border security could effectively address these challenges without the kind of physical barriers now sought by President Trump – and demonized by most of Congress’ Democrats. But at the least, The Times‘ rationale strongly militates for other Trump-ian, America First-style border security measures, like applying travel bans against countries that are known hotbeds of terrorism and strict limits on admitting refugees and asylum-seekers from these same points of origin.

And barriers look especially important given the extensive legal/due process protections now automatically awarded to anyone who sets foot on American soil, including from countries whose threadbare (at best) governments lack the capacity to document the identity of their residents satisfactorily. Therefore, adequate vetting by the U.S. government will be excruciatingly difficult, to put it mildly.

But if The Times wants to clinch the case for withdrawing promptly from Afghanistan, it should make a point I’ve made repeatedly: It will be far easier to protect against terrorist threats by relying mainly on border security because access to the country is something Washington can reasonably hope to control. Protecting against terrorist threats mainly by chasing jihadists around a completely dysfunctional region of the world whose greatest strength is spawning extremism would base American strategy on something Washington can’t reasonably hope to control.

And of course, connecting an end to massive American military involvement in the Middle East with the need for more secure borders could only bolster President Trump’s position, too.

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Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Afghanistan Opportunity Trump Has Missed

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Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Barry Posen, border security, George W. Bush, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, Middle East, nation-building, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, refugees, Russia, September 11, Syria, Taliban, terrorism, The Atlantic, travel ban, Trump

Although I usually oppose U.S. overseas military interventions, I can understand President Trump’s decision this week to keep significant numbers of American troops in Afghanistan and even expand the presence (to some unannounced extent). What I do find disappointing is Mr. Trump’s apparent neglect of more promising alternatives that couldn’t possibly be called “defeat” or “retreat,” and his failure to describe realistically what may be the biggest fundamental choice the nation still faces in Afghanistan.

I shouldn’t have to remind anyone that Afghanistan under Taliban rule provided the base for the Al Qaeda terrorists responsible for the September 11 attack and so many other atrocities (on top of those that they have inspired by supportive groups and individuals). So clearly conditions inside that country (a problematic term, to be sure, as will be explained below) matter for U.S. national security. And it’s hard to imagine that even most Americans who are terribly – and understandably – frustrated with the sixteen-year U.S.-dominated military operation that has followed would disagree. The main question has always been how best to defend American interests.

After the Taliban were overthrown by a (highly successful) U.S.-led military campaign in the fall of 2001, Presidents Bush and Obama tragically opted for a standard American counter-insurgency effort to keep the Taliban out of power that combined continued military pressure on their remaining forces and strongholds with programs to promote Afghan economic, social, and political reform.

As critics (including me) predicted, this strategy of “nation-building” failed mainly because Afghanistan lacked the crucial prerequisites for nation-hood to begin with. So several years ago, as the Taliban began mounting a comeback largely as a result, I began supporting a fundamentally different approach: abandoning reform efforts and focusing on securing the United States’ essential aim in Afghanistan – preventing the Taliban or similar groups from consolidating control in enough territory to reestablish a safe haven capable of generating more terrorism.

This strategy would still involve U.S. military forces. But their top priority by far would not be supporting whatever Afghan government military exists, or training such forces (unless some especially promising units can be identified). Instead, the main American mission would be harassing the Taliban and its allies sufficiently to prevent that territorial consolidation, and the main instruments would be special forces and air strikes. And I argued that such operations could prevent ISIS in Iraq and Syria from posing a similar threat. Finally, I recommended that this approach be supplemented – and eventually superseded – by strengthening the security of America’s borders, to reduce greatly the likelihood that terrorists that still might originate from Afghanistan or anywhere else could actually reach the U.S. homeland.

The main advantages of this approach were, initially, concentrating American efforts on overseas goals that seemed both vital and attainable, as opposed to desirable for non-essential; and recognizing that the U.S. government ultimately is much likelier to succeed in controlling access to the United States than in comprehensively manipulating events in far-off lands.

In his speech this week, President Trump did a good job in describing the urgency of continuing to deny terrorists a safe haven in Afghanistan. But although he (once again) disparaged nation-building, he also paid it enough lip service to make clear that the basic goal remains in place. For example, he argued that “Military power alone will not bring peace to Afghanistan or stop the terrorist threat arising in that country” and asked India (and possibly America’s European allies) to “help us more with Afghanistan, especially in the area of economic assistance and development.” Surprisingly, moreover, he never connected his Afghanistan strategy with his so-far successful efforts to control American borders more effectively. Indeed, Mr. Trump didn’t even mention his proposed suspension of travel from terrorist-wracked countries (a list that, oddly, never included Afghanistan itself).

And the picture drawn by the President of his ultimate objective(s) was confusing, at best. Notably, on the one hand, he insisted that “From now on, victory will have a clear definition:  attacking our enemies, obliterating ISIS, crushing al Qaeda, preventing the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan, and stopping mass terror attacks against America before they emerge.” On the other, he stated that the “strategically applied force” his administration will apply in Afghanistan “aims to create the conditions for a political process to achieve a lasting peace.” Still more puzzlingly, he allowed that a political settlement could include “elements of the Taliban.” To be sure, in a technical sense, these objectives aren’t mutually exclusive. But they sure don’t coexist easily, at least not at this point.

One especially worrisome consequence of this Presidential rhetoric is its suggestion, however cautious, that there’s an ultimate, satisfactory solution in Afghanistan that results from continuing U.S. involvement, at least in the foreseeable future. Much skepticism is warranted, mainly because the chances of Afghanistan becoming something politically cohesive enough to “take ownership of their future, to govern their society,” in Mr. Trump’s words, flies in the face of so much of this area’s history.

But that doesn’t mean that the United States should simply pull up stakes, either now, or somewhere down the road – because of that safe haven threat. My own preferred strategy would have resulted in America’s leaders acknowledging that Afghanistan is not a problem to be solved but, as if often true in world affairs, a condition that requires continual management – and then explaining that some forms of management are vastly more realistic, and cheaper, than others.

Nonetheless, an even more appealing alternative has emerged over the last week. In an August 18 article in The Atlantic, MIT political scientist Barry Posen made the case for a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan based on the intriguing observation that the countries neighbors, Russia and Iran, both have compelling interests in ensuring that the Taliban and similar groups don’t return to power. In the words of the piece’s title, the aim would be “to make Afghanistan someone else’s problem.”

Of course, I couldn’t help but notice that this proposal strongly resembles my recommendation for handling the challenge of increasingly powerful North Korean nuclear weapons. I’m also impressed, though, by Posen’s observation that both Russia (which is vulnerable to Islamic extremism infecting its own sizable Muslim population) and Iran (a Shia Muslim-dominated country theologically opposed to Sunni groups like the Taliban and Al Qaeda) have compelling reasons to frustrate America’s enemies in Afghanistan.

Posen also intriguingly responds to fears that a combined Russian-Iranian success would strengthen those anti-American countries’ efforts to dominate the entire Middle East. As he points out, Pakistan and China both would find this prospect alarming, too, and would seek to check Russian and Iranian influence.

Is Posen’s scheme fool-proof? Of course not. But it looks at least as promising as Mr. Trump’s plan, and it’s discouraging that this supremely, if Machiavellian, America-First strategy apparently wasn’t even considered by the Trump administration in its efforts to fix a badly broken U.S. Afghanistan policy.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: A New Phase for Global Terrorism?

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Afghanistan, American Muslims, border security, Iraq, ISIS, Middle East, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, September 11, Syria, terrorism

Another day, another terrorist bombing – or three of them, as is the case with Saudi Arabia today. And oddly, they persist, and even multiply, at the same time that the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization, ISIS, continues to lose ground militarily in Iraq and Syria, where it had seized control over a scary amount of territory in recent years. I suspect that this seeming paradox both might become an appalling New Normal, and is telling both supporters and critics of America’s counter-terrorism strategy – including yours truly – that they need to question some of their major assumptions.

As I’ve written repeatedly, major U.S. leaders across the political spectrum have it backward in claiming that America’s top ISIS-related priority needs to be to defeat the group militarily on the battlefield. Though they often differ as to the mix of American, other free world, and local Middle Eastern forces that will be needed to accomplish this mission, they all insist that in this era of free global travel and nearly instantaneous global communication, it’s folly to believe that the United States can protect itself from ISIS and similar terrorism by tightening border control.

These voices add that neglecting ISIS’ self-styled caliphate would enable the group to consolidate a sizable, Afghanistan-type base for planning the launching big September 11-like attacks on U.S. and other targets; jeopardize other American interests in the Middle East, like ensuring access to oil; and keep ISIS’ main recruitment pitch intact – including for U.S. “lone wolves” – by reinforcing its claim to be successfully defying the infidel world and riding the wave of history.

I’ve responded that defeating ISIS would at best simply create a breathing spell until the utterly dysfunctional Middle East spawned a successor, and that however difficult it is to control visitors’ access to the United States, it’s much easier than shaping the evolution of the Middle East in more favorable, constructive ways.

At the same time, I’ve recognized that because better border security won’t happen overnight, military pressure needs to continue on the caliphate to impede its consolidation, and keep its leaders too busy defending themselves to be plotting future global strikes. My preferred instrument has been a combination of air strikes and special forces harassment. I’ve also emphasized that, because of the domestic U.S. energy production revolution, the Middle East has become much less strategically and economically important, and that Washington can now afford to focus narrowly on terrorist threats.

But the proliferation of foreign ISIS or ISIS-inspired attacks as the so-called caliphate shrinks – especially in Iraq – raises doubts about all these analyses. As I see it right now, here are the likeliest implications:

>ISIS’ prowess with internet-style recruiting is now so formidable that it can spark major terrorist threats to the United States even without a significant territorial base. So significant U.S. military involvement in the Middle East no longer matters much anymore.

>ISIS is lashing out globally precisely because it’s failing on the ground in the Middle East. (Contributor BJ Bethel made that argument on RealityChek in April.) So staying the current policy course makes the most sense.

>Territorial bases are no longer essential for fostering large-scale terrorism, but their potential to generate these attacks must still be minded. As a result, preventing their consolidation is a necessary but not sufficient response.

>Territorial control remains vital for ISIS’ power and global strike capabilities, and the United States and its allies simply haven’t undermined ISIS’ thoroughly enough.

Right now, I’m leaning toward Number Three – along with my ongoing conviction that better border security (including more monitoring of the U.S. Muslim community) will provide the most effective protection for Americans. But the latest twist in the struggle against terrorism should be reminding everyone that these forces remain impressively agile and adaptive. Consequently, both supporters and opponents of U.S. strategy need to display these characteristics, too.

Following Up: Glimmers of Progress on ISIS and on Covering Trump

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2016 election, Afghanistan, airstrikes, Al Qaeda, amnesty, Ashton Carter, boots on the ground, Cheap Labor Lobby, Donald Trump, Following Up, Immigration, ISIS, Middle East, offshoring, offshoring lobby, Republicans, Ross Douthat, special forces, terrorism, The New York Times, Trade

Since I have no evidence that either anyone with President Obama’s ear or New York Times columnist Ross Douthat reads RealityChek, I can’t take credit for important insights each one has arrived at in recent days. Even so, it’s gratifying that both America’s latest decision on tactics for fighting ISIS, and Douthat’s new column on dealing with the rise of Donald Trump in American politics, both echo points I’ve been making here for many months.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced that the Obama administration would send to Iraq American commandos from a unit whose mission has been capturing or killing top terrorist leaders overseas. Carter euphemistically called the commando team a “specialized expeditionary targeting force.” But its deployment represents the most important and useful escalation of the fight against ISIS that the president has approved – and potentially a move toward a strategy I’ve long described as America’s best hope for neutralizing this and similar terror threats.

The conventional wisdom is correct in observing that airstrikes alone are no lasting solution against ISIS and comparable groups. In order to defeat the terrorists on foreign battlefields – thereby preventing them from striking the American homeland – terrorist-held territory will need to be recaptured and then secured, and only significant ground troops can achieve that objective. The conventional wisdom is also correct in observing that the more these boots on the ground are dominated by troops from Middle Eastern countries, the less likely it is to provoke a backlash from local populations.

But as I’ve noted, the conventional wisdom is completely loopy in assigning any chance that Middle Eastern countries will rise to this occasion. For local conflicts pit so many religious and ethnic forces against each other, and thus have so many dimensions, that each local power invariably has numerous other agendas than defeating ISIS – including those they consider more important.

So the beginning of wisdom in countering ISIS begins with realizing that no major locally dominated ground campaign is in the offing, and then searching for substitutes. The best that I can think of is focusing not on decisively defeating terrorists on the battlefield, but on keeping them off balance enough to deny them the secure control of territory needed to create bases for planning strikes on the United States, and to prevent their leaders from spending significant time for planning – as opposed to running for their lives.

In conjunction with strengthening border security, such an approach would concentrate on interests that are truly vital to America – protecting the homeland, as opposed to the pipe dream of pacifying or reforming the Middle East. And unlike those aims, it has the added virtue of being achievable at acceptable cost and risk. And as I’ve also noted, this very strategy showed real promise in Afghanistan, where it long neutralized and actually did “degrade” Al Qaeda, to use a favorite Obama term.

Mr. Obama’s decision to send commandos after ISIS leaders means that one leg of my preferred strategy is being put in place – though their numbers may not be adequate. Intensified airstrikes could represent the second leg – though their intensity may still not suffice. If only genuine resolve to secure America’s borders wasn’t still sorely lacking.

This morning, The New York Times‘ Douthat provided more reinforcement for recent RealityChek posts on the presidential campaign. He wrote compellingly (and it’s worth quoting in full) that:

“[F]reaking out over Trump-the-fascist is a good way for the political class to ignore the legitimate reasons he’s gotten this far — the deep disaffection with the Republican Party’s economic policies among working-class conservatives, the reasonable skepticism about the bipartisan consensus favoring ever more mass low-skilled immigration, the accurate sense that the American elite has misgoverned the country at home and abroad.

“If Republicans don’t want Trump the phenomenon to turn into an actual movement, if they don’t want the intimations of fascism in his appeal to cohere into something programmatically dangerous, then tarring his supporters with the brush of Mussolini and Der Führer right now seems like a shortsighted step — a way to repress the problem rather than dealing with it, to dismiss discontents and have them return, stronger and deadlier, further down the road.

“The best way to stop a proto-fascist, in the long run, is not to scream ‘Hitler!’ on a crowded debate stage. It’s to make sure that he never has a point.”

I made similar arguments last Saturday, and can only say “Amen.” Here’s hoping that Douthat’s good sense will start spreading to his fellow journalists (including at The New York Times) – and more important, to both other Republicans and Democrats. But I have my doubt, since the corporate Offshoring and pro-amnesty Cheap Labor Lobbies remain so influential over both parties, and since many Democrats and liberals in particular seem to value ever greater immigration inflows over the interests of native-born workers. So you can expect me to keep calling out those who prioritize Trump demonization over ensuring that America’s economy starts working for the great majority of Americans once again.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Obama’s Dangerously Mixed Message on Afghanistan

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Afghanistan, chemical weapons, credibility, Middle East, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, red line, Syria, Taliban, Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt, one of my favorite presidents (though not beyond criticism), made one of his lodestars, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” President Obama really needs to take heed, even though his presidency ends in less than a year-and-a-half. For he repeatedly follows exactly the opposite course, and in the process raised big questions about his own credibility in international affairs and his country’s.

You’d think the president would have learned this lesson following his humiliating decision to declare Syria’s use of chemical weapons in suppressing its ongoing, metastasizing rebellion to be a “red line” that would trigger American military retaliation – and his failure to pull the trigger. Yet you’d be wrong, at least judging from his announcement that he’s scrapped his plans to cut the U.S. troop deployment in Afghanistan roughly in half by late 2016, and will keep the deployment at just under 10,000.

Instances of the president “speaking loudly”? In his remarks, Mr. Obama insisted that he would “not allow Afghanistan to be used as safe haven for terrorists to attack our nation again” as was the case leading up to the September 11 strikes. He added that “Afghanistan is a key piece of the network of counterterrorism partnerships that we need, from South Asia to Africa, to deal more broadly with terrorist threats quickly and prevent attacks against our homeland.” In other words, the stakes of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan couldn’t be higher – they involve directly protecting the security of the American homeland.

And then came the small stick – or at least that’s the impression the president unavoidably conveyed to domestic and foreign audiences, allies and enemies alike – especially elsewhere in the Middle East. For Mr. Obama several times emphasized that American soldiers were engaged only in two “narrow” missions – training Afghan forces and “counterterrorism” efforts against Al Qaeda “remnants.”

Moreover, in a completely befuddling statement, the president reminded assembled reporters, “As you are well aware, I do not support the idea of endless war, and I have repeatedly argued against marching into open-ended military conflicts that do not serve our core security interests.” But if protecting America itself against large-scale terrorist attacks isn’t a “core security interest,” what is?

And if despite the Mr. Obama’s hint, keeping terrorists in Afghanistan at least incapable of launching such attacks is part of American security’s core, why raise the specter of open-ended conflicts in the first place? If anything, defending a vital interest would logically lead a president to prepare the nation for even more protracted involvement – especially given his acknowledgment that “in key areas of the country, the security situation is still very fragile, and in some places there is risk of deterioration.”

Near the end of his statement, President Obama made clear that he hopes to square this circle by fostering a political settlement to the Afghanistan war that would stem from talks between the current government in Kabul and “the Taliban and all who oppose Afghanistan’s progress….” But even here, the incentive he dangled most prominently before these extremists was “the full drawdown of U.S. and foreign troops from Afghanistan.”

What Mr. Obama apparently hasn’t asked himself is why they would seek to achieve that goal through a give-and-take process of negotiation when he’s all but told them they can eliminate this obstacle to their victory simply by waiting him out?

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: What to Do About Russia in Syria

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Afghanistan, Donald Trump, energy, Iran, ISIS, Middle East, national interests, Obama, oil, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Persian Gulf, Putin, Russia, Shah of Iran, Soviet Union, Syria, terrorism, Vietnam

During the Cold War, American leaders got into two bad habits that often wound up costing the country dearly. First, the Soviet Union, or some of its surrogates (like Cuban military advisors), or some local forces calling themselves Communists would show up or emerge in a place that rigorous thinking made clear had no important strategic or economic value to the United States. And all of a sudden, Washington would act like the fate of this place would make or break that of Western civilization. Second, a major setback would be incurred in a region of genuine importance, and since no viable countermeasures were available, the United States would simply assume that things would turn out OK eventually.

Worrisomely, variations of both bad habits are evident in the foreign policy world’s reactions to Russia’s recent burst of military intervention in the Syrian civil war. They demonstrate that if Washington’s response – either under President Obama or whoever succeeds him – winds up enhancing American security and prosperity, U.S. leaders will have to focus like the proverbial laser beam on American interests.

Vietnam of course was the prime example of the first pattern. As most surely remember, it showed the disasters that can result from massive conflicts not remotely justified by the tangible stakes. Iran and Afghanistan were great, though more obscure, examples of the second. After the pro-Western Shah was thrown off his throne in Tehran in 1979, and after Soviet forces plunged into Afghanistan later that year to try keeping their stooges in power, all manner of rationalizations for U.S. inaction popped up – even though America and the world desperately needed the Persian Gulf’s oil. Even though the worst case never unfolded and the flow of crude has continued pretty much uninterrupted, America’s ongoing exposure to the region’s turmoil indicates that hope isn’t an acceptable foundation for policy.

Russia’s entry is certainly a new factor not only in the Syrian conflict but into the entire Middle East/Persian Gulf equation. And it’s one I didn’t expect. But even though it greatly increases the chance of some kind of dangerous mishap involving U.S. and Russian forces operating in an uncoordinated manner in a relatively confined theater of action, Moscow’s move doesn’t change the fundamental situation, which consists of three main components.

First, the Middle East, because of its energy resources and its potential as a platform for terrorist strikes against the United States, remains a vital concern for Americans. Second, as a result, and equally important, Washington can’t afford to depend on optimistic predictions about the so-called foreseeable future. And third, Putin’s venture has no bearing on the inability of the United States – whether acting alone or multilaterally – to turn Syria or the Middle East into a substantially more stable, less dangerous region from America’s standpoint.

In other words, President Obama is wrong to be confident that whatever energy or terrorism threats will eventually fade because Vladimir Putin will get bogged down militarily, or because Russia’s economy can’t sustain prolonged military ventures, or because Moscow will ultimately turn the Sunni Muslim world against him. Other dovish voices are wrong to oppose a stronger U.S. response simply because past interventions have flopped and arguably worsened the region’s instability, and to suggest that standing aloof per se will somehow produce better results.

Donald Trump is wrong as well to assume that simply because Russian leaders also oppose Islamic terrorism that Washington should simply count on their military conveniently doing the dirty and dangerous work of defeating ISIS – and bogging themselves down in the Middle East. And both Democratic and Republican hawks are wrong to believe that the Russian gambit strengthens their case for deeper U.S. armed involvement in Syria and the region as a whole, whether to create no-fly zones to protect civilian populations or to start sending American troops into the fray whether in “advisory” or more active roles.

Therefore, the best American approach to the Middle East post-Putin remains exactly the same as it was pre-Putin – transitioning from a strategy of countering threats emanating from the region by trying to transform it into something better, to one of dealing with these threats through domestic policy measures like accelerating efforts to marginalize the Gulf in the national and global energy pictures, and preventing terrorist attacks by securing America’s borders.

As I’ve written, because the second goal in particular remains far from achievement, the United States can’t simply pick up militarily from the Middle East and go home. But its operations need to be linked tightly to the transition strategy, which means air and some ground activity (e.g., special forces) to keep ISIS and similar groups off balance enough to prevent them from consolidating control over areas large enough to become training centers for overseas attacks. These operations, however, need not and should not continue for one additional minute once the U.S. government has reliable systems in place for keeping terrorists away from its frontiers.

Defeating ISIS may actually entail actively cooperating with the Russian military until the mission is accomplished, and in fact the greater the burden on Russian forces, the better for Americans. But realizing longer term benefits from such efforts – either for relations between Washington and Moscow, or for the Middle East – is as unrealistic as expecting American shows of force to drive the Russians out.

And it’s as unnecessary. The root problem posed for the United States by the Middle East stems not from the specific activity or designs of hostile or potentially hostile local or outside forces, but from the fact that this terminally dysfunctional, and thus easily exploitable region matters to America at all. Washington’s top priority still should be ending this importance, and becoming indifferent to the Middle East’s future no matter how it evolves or who’s (supposedly) in control.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Desperately Seeking Real Retrenchment

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Afghanistan, American exceptionalism, Asia-Pacific, Baltic states, Bashir Al-Assad, boots on the ground, Charles Lanes, chemical weapons, defense budget, defense spending, Earl Ravenal, George W. Bush, international law, Iraq, ISIS, isolationism, Middle East, multilateralism, national interests, NATO, Nixon Doctrine, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, pivot, Poland, Richard Nixon, Russia, sequestration, Soviet Union, Stephen Sestanovich, Syria, Ukraine, Vietnam War, vital interests, Vladimir Putin, Washington Post

Washington Post columnist Charles Lane has just done an excellent job of demonstrating how powerfully universalist America’s bipartisan foreign policy establishment remains – even as powerful reasons keep multiplying for climbing down from this wildly ambitious approach.

According to Lane, a new book by former American diplomat and Columbia University political scientist Stephen Sestanovich bears out President Obama’s claim to be a kindred spirit with Richard M. Nixon as a “retrenchment” president – one of the chief executives who has sought to “correct the perceived overreaching of their predecessors and free up U.S. resources for domestic concerns.” In fact, says Lane, Sestanovich has written that post-World War II U.S. foreign policy has been marked by a “constant pendulum-swing between administrations that aggressively pursued U.S. goals abroad” (who the author calls “maximalists”) and those Nixon- and Obama-style retrenchers.

I hate to comment on books I haven’t yet read. But Lane’s description of Mr. Nixon and Mr. Obama both qualify as retrenchers reveals a mindset so enthusiastic about massive and potentially open-ended U.S. involvement in literally every corner of the world if necessary that it sees even talk about a more discriminating approach as a major departure.

Judging by the record, it hasn’t been. In fact, both the Nixon talk and the Obama talk about retrenchment have been overwhelmingly that – talk. Just as important, and closely related, what have arguably looked at least superficially like exercises in retrenchment have in fact been exercises in wishful thinking. Both presidents have actually agreed that the security, stability, and even prosperity of the entire world are U.S. vital interests. They’ve simply differed with the maximalists in insisting that these interests can be defended through means that are less dangerous and violent, and more globally popular, than the unilateral U.S. use of military force.

To cite the leading historical example, the ballyhooed Nixon Doctrine of 1970 was never a decision to cross Vietnam or any part of Asia off the list of vital U.S. interests – those whose defense was thought essential for maintaining America’s own security and prosperity. As explained initially by Earl C. Ravenal shortly after the Doctrine’s declaration, Mr. Nixon had decided, in the absence of any evidence, that this vital set of objectives could be defended without an early resort to U.S. military involvement – chiefly, by the militaries of America’s regional allies.

Therefore, Ravenal wrote:

“the Administration’s new policies and decision processes do not bring about the proposed balance [between the country’s foreign policy ends and the means to be used to attain them]; in fact, they create a more serious imbalance. Essentially we are to support the same level of potential involvement with smaller conventional forces. The specter of intervention will remain, but the risk of defeat or stalemate will be greater; or the nuclear threshold will be lower.”

President Obama has given us a different version of such dangerous wishful thinking. More accurately, he’s given us several different versions. His original 2008 candidacy for the White House was largely motivated by a conviction that the overly unilateralist and militaristic tendencies of George W. Bush had produced disaster in Iraq, and were actually undermining U.S. security by damaging America’s international image.

That’s why Mr. Obama focused so much attention on repairing that image. He never indicated that he would scale back that list of U.S. vital interests. He simply suggested that they could be better defended if need be by acting multilaterally, with international approval, rather than by going it alone. And he conveyed the clear impression that challenges could be prevented in the first place if only America became more popular in regions like the Middle East.

Once in office, Mr. Obama did try to establish a hierarchy of U.S. worldwide interests that would have operational impact. He decided that the nation had been so preoccupied with Middle East wars that it had been neglected the Asia-Pacific region, which he considered at least as important. So he launched a “pivot” that would transfer some American forces from the former to the latter.

But the president never apparently judged the Middle East to be less important to America’s fate. He simply concluded that, with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars supposedly winding down, it had become less dangerous. Having been proven wrong by the rise of ISIS. in Afghanistan, he’s (gradually) boosting the American military presence in region again. The president is claiming, moreover – based on as little evidence as Mr. Nixon required – that any remaining capabilities gap can be filled by the armed forces of regional countries. Worse, many of his Republican critics, who are just as reluctant to deploy many more U.S. “boots on the ground,” agree with Mr. Obama’s fundamental assessment.

Further, the president has actually expanded the list of circumstances in the Middle East (and presumably elsewhere) that should justify American military responses – the kinds of chemical weapons attacks launched by Bashir Al-Assad against Syrians revolting against his dictatorship, along with similar major violations of international law.  (This effort, so far, has not yet won over the public.)

Nor does that exhaust Mr. Obama’s efforts to lengthen the list of U.S. vital interests. He has understandably responded to Russia’s recent provocations against allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by strengthening U.S. forces and deploying them more conspicuously in new NATO members like Poland and the Baltic states, former Soviet satellites clearly in Moscow’s line of fire. Less understandable have been the Obama administration’s numerous suggestions that the security of Ukraine, too, is a matter of urgent American concern – even though this country was actually part of the old Soviet Union for decades with no apparent effects on U.S. safety or well-being.

Yet like the debate over countering ISIS, that over dealing with Vladimir Putin spotlights one major difference between President Obama and his (mainly) Republican foreign policy critics: Many of them have strongly backed big boosts in the U.S. military budget (if not always using these forces), including aggressive moves to circumvent spending caps established by the sequestration process. Mr. Obama has not sought comparable increases.

The president unquestionably has often spoken in terms that seem to support a smaller U.S. role in the world – e.g., his remarks suggesting that America’s exceptionalism isn’t all that exceptional, and reminding that much of the world has legitimate historical grievances against the West, and in some cases against the United States specifically. But his strategic walk has never matched this talk, and the continuing flood of contentions to the contrary in the punditocracy and even academe (if Lane’s Post column is accurate) plainly are serving their (partly) intended purpose of preventing searching debate on foreign policy fundamentals.

Given the nation’s resulting over-extension militarily, therefore, when the chattering class powers-that-be start labeling presidents or most other politicians as retrenchers or minimalists (an improvement to be sure over the hackneyed charge of “isolatonism”), the only legitimate reaction is a thoroughly exasperated, “If only.”

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Finally, Some Establishment Smarts on ISIS

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Afghanistan, air power, air strikes, border security, Bosnia, collateral damage, David Deptula, energy security, foreign policy establishment, Iraq, ISIS, Kosovo, LIbya, Middle East, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, strategy, Syria, Taliban, terrorism

Here’s a classic good news/bad news story to start off the weekend. The good news: Someone associated with the U.S. national security establishment is showing signs of cognition. The bad news: He’s no longer on active duty.

Retired Air Force general David A. Deptula’s op-ed in today’s Washington Post isn’t a perfect blueprint for eliminating the threats to American national security emanating from the terminally dysfunctional Middle East. But it’s by far the best published article I’ve read yet on dealing with ISIS and the broader challenge of terrorism.

Deptula contributes two key insights to the raging but so far largely brain-dead national debate about fighting ISIS. First, he convincingly argues that Washington should stop wasting so much time and effort in bolstering the Iraqi state – or what’s left of it. The author doesn’t completely dismiss the hope that it might ultimately survive in something like the form it’s taken since its current official borders were first drawn. But he rightly points out that destroying ISIS is a higher and separate priority.

Second, he makes the vital point that ISIS is no longer simply the terrorist movement or insurgency assumed by current U.S. approach. It’s a “self-declared sovereign state” and thus Washington “must stop trying to fight the last war [i.e., its latest Afghanistan effort and current Iraq approach] and develop a new strategy.”

Deptula makes a strong case that the key to victory is “a comprehensive and robust air campaign designed to: (1) terminate its expansion; (2) paralyze and isolate its command-and-control capability; (3) undermine its ability to control the territory it occupies; and (4) eliminate its ability to export ­terror.” This air power, he specifies, must be applied “like a thunderstorm, not a drizzle.” He goes on to document how timid the air war being waged by the Obama administration and U.S. allies has been versus previous campaigns in the first and second Iraq wars, in Kosovo in 1999, in Bosnia earlier in the 1990s, in the ouster of the Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2001, and in Libya in 2011.

And if you’re worried about killing too many innocent civilians in the process, Deptula has a morally compelling answer: “The current gradualist approach is worsening the suffering and increasing the loss of innocent life. While unintended casualties of war are regrettable, those associated with airstrikes pale in comparison with the savage acts being carried out by the Islamic State. What is the logic of a policy that restricts the use of air power to avoid the possibility of collateral damage while allowing the certainty of the Islamic State’s crimes against humanity?”

To be sure, the author’s mentions of the Balkans, the second Iraq war, and Libya made me cringe a little. Some of my disquiet stems from my strong opposition to any U.S. military involvement in Bosnia and Kosovo to begin with – which isn’t the issue Deptula is addressing. I thought Libya was a closer call, but even so the U.S.-backed campaign to oust the dictatorship of Muammar el-Qaddafi wound up creating a power vacuum that’s being at least partly filled by Islamic extremists.

Again, you can quarrel with the original decision to act militarily in Libya, but that position raises the question of whether standing on the sidelines would simply have postponed the inevitable – the fall of a dictator and the inability of any moderate opposition to gain control. Incidentally, that’s my strongest reason for supporting the forced removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime. I don’t believe it was destined to last, and its demise was going to create a dangerous mess in Iraq anyway. But that still leaves us – and Deptula – with the problem that not even a massive air war alone is a long term solution for America’s Middle East problems, whether it had been waged in Libya four years ago, or in Iraq and Syria now.

Deptula and his strongest supporters could respond that his approach would buy valuable time, and that that’s often a major and worthwhile achievement in foreign policy-making. I emphatically agree – but most of all if the time is being bought in order to take measures that can bring more enduring benefits.

That’s why my own strategy for the Middle East adds to the mix crucial domestic policy measures – mainly genuinely securing the border, to keep terrorists out of the homeland, and maximizing the nation’s dramatically improving energy security, to minimize the economic fall-out for America and the rest of a still oil-dependent world of a Middle East collapse that seems all too inevitable.

This shortcoming, however, shouldn’t minimize the contribution made by Deptula’s article. Let’s hope at least a few influential Obama administration officials read their Washington Post this morning.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Real Tragedy of the American Military is Rooted in Foreign Policy

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Afghanistan, Iraq, ISIS, James Fallows, military, national interests, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, strategy, Taliban, terrorism

Even if James Fallows’ new Atlantic cover story about “The Tragedy of the American Military” wasn’t full of fascinating facts and figures about the armed forces’ relationship to the nation’s broader society today and throughout U.S. history, I’d wholeheartedly recommend it. It’s an absolutely terrific and absorbing read that spotlights an extraordinarily wide range of crucial issues too often left to so-called defense experts and the politicians they service to address.

Particularly effective are the darts it throws at today’s almost universal practice of treating the military “both too reverently and too cavalierly, as if regarding its members as heroes makes up for committing them to unending, unwinnable missions and denying them anything like the political mindshare we give to other major public undertakings, from medical care to public education to environmental rules.”

The one big-picture argument Fallows makes with which I disagree concerns the American military’s war-fighting record. As he puts it, “Ours is the best-equipped fighting force in history, and it is incomparably the most expensive. By all measures, today’s professionalized military is also better trained, motivated, and disciplined than during the draft-army years. No decent person who is exposed to today’s troops can be anything but respectful of them and grateful for what they do.

“Yet repeatedly this force has been defeated by less modern, worse-equipped, barely funded foes. Or it has won skirmishes and battles only to lose or get bogged down in a larger war.” He’s most insistent that the wars in Afghanistan and especially Iraq were strategic failures that “brought no lasting stability to, nor advance of U.S. interests in, that part of the world.”

Just one look at the Middle East today seems the most obvious proof. But this failure in my view stems overwhelmingly from civilian leaders who either saddle the military with “unending, unwinnable missions,” or who remain cluelessly determined to confuse the requirements of core American security with their own naive ambitions to nation-build.

Indeed, there’s a strong case to be made that the armed forces enhanced U.S. national security in Afghanistan and Iraq by completing the tasks they were rightly assigned – ousting the Taliban and Saddam Hussein from power. As a result, the odds dropped dramatically that Afghanistan would be used again as a terrorist base for planning 9-11-like attacks on the American homeland, and that Saddam would spend years more amassing the oil wealth and, yes, the advanced weapons that could produce decisive influence over the energy-rich Persian Gulf. (Remember – this was a decade before the recent U.S. energy boom and related oil price nosedive.)

As I’ve written these essential American interests in the region could have (and still can) be achieved through a combination of airstrikes and small-unit operations aimed at harassing and keeping sufficiently off-balance foes like ISIS and a potentially resurgent Taliban. This strategy could protect the United States long enough to enable the nation to create the domestic-focused defenses that are by far its best guarantee of adequate levels of security (e.g., genuine control of American borders). It’s certainly a much better bet than the current approach, which aims ultimately to stabilize the dysfunctional Middle East.

My only other important objection to Fallows’ article concerns its failure to identify clearly the main reason for what he rightly calls the emergence of a “Chickenhawk” culture, society, economy, and politics that treats the entire range of military issues so cavalierly. Although he comes awfully close in spots, he doesn’t explicitly tie both the nation’s inattention to military issues and its unwillingness to fund and use the armed forces intelligently to the gaping disconnect between the core American security requirements I mentioned above, and the stated goals of the nation’s security and broader foreign policy strategies.

As I’ve written previously, America today is and for so long has been so existentially secure that its citizens see little need to think rigorously about the relationship between military campaigns (and other aspects of foreign policy) and their own safety. And the nation remains so intrinsically wealthy that it simply hasn’t yet suffered debilitating, enduring losses even from its worst recent foreign policy misadventures. (Vietnam came closest to being an exception.) In other words, the country is too weak and/or intellectually lazy to achieve many of its foreign policy goals, but so far too strong for that to matter. Small wonder that military policy and the institution’s very structure have been shaped so significantly by glib pseudo-strategists and pork-barrel politics.

Fallows’ article offers many useful specific recommendations for ending the tragedy of the American military. But the sea change he rightly urges is unlikely to take place until the nation’s overarching global strategy is much better aligned with its real needs – or until Americans pay a price big enough to leave them no choice.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Initial Thoughts on the “Torture Report”

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"Torture Report", 9-11, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Barack Obama, CIA, Dianne Feinstein, George W. Bush, Iraq, ISIS, Leon Panetta, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Saddam Hussein, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Syria, Taliban, terrorism, torture

I admit it: My views on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Democratic staff’s new “torture report” are biased by my views on the Iraq War and the use of so-called harsh interrogation techniques themselves (whether they fall under some legal definition of torture or not). I was and still am in favor of the former and support the latter. I’m hoping that others who analyze and comment on it will be just as honest.

I can’t yet comment on any of the details or substance of the report, since I have not read either the Majority publication or the Republican staff response. (Hats off to you if you have already.) But I do feel able to write usefully about Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein’s decision to release itself, although admittedly the procedures and the content are not entirely separate issues. And I consider it to be a huge mistake.

The two preceding paragraphs may surprise many who know me either personally or through my writings. Re the former, yes, indeed, I was strongly opposed to the Vietnam War, and strongly supported the media’s publication of the Pentagon Papers and Congress’ exposure of CIA wrongdoing during the Cold War. Re the latter, I remain strongly opposed to most of America’s post-Cold War interventions abroad, including attacking Syria to punish its use of chemical weapons.

But I oppose publication of the new Senate report, and have supported the Iraq War and the torturing (from this point I’ll use this term for convenience’s sake, not as a moral or legal judgment) of prisoners in the war on terrorism for a reason that’s straightforward analytically: I never viewed preserving the western orientation of Vietnam or most of the other developing countries that became Cold War battlegrounds to have been vital interests of the United States, or even close. Because it never mattered who controlled Cuba or Vietnam or Guatemala or other poor and weak countries lacking important resources or any other assets, CIA assassination attempts and other misdeeds that supported broader such Cold War policies were in my view completely unnecessary.

By contrast, I consider the ouster of Saddam Hussein and the destruction of Al Qaeda to have been decidedly vital interests. You can read my Iraq views here. Regarding the anti-terror campaign, it involves preventing another 9-11 – a threat that’s also raised by the prospect of ISIS consolidating control over large chunks of Iraq and Syria, and turning this territory into the kind of terrorist haven that the Taliban offered Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. If keeping the American homeland safe from attack isn’t a vital interest, I don’t know what is.

So it shouldn’t be too surprising that I support extreme means of achieving this goal, including those used by the CIA to extract information from “detainees.” Would I back even harsher techniques? I still need to think this through – just as their opponents need to think through whether they would forego water-boarding etc to save American lives (or, more pointedly, to save the life of one of their own loved ones).

The empirical evidence would certainly and properly bear on my final judgment. A least according to President Obama’s former CIA director, Leon Panetta, no one’s idea of a Republican or neocon whacko, it’s far more supportive of torture than the Majority report apparently contends.

I’d also be influenced by the unavoidable reality that war inevitably entails agonizing moral dilemmas, tragic misjudgments, and the deaths of innocents. And don’t forget the frequent need to make life-and-death decisions in real time, without remotely perfect knowledge. (Can you imagine the pressure decision-makers felt in those early hours, days, and weeks following 9-11?) The outrage so strongly expressed by torture opponents indicates an equally strong determination to define these complications out of existence.

Lastly, on the matter of substance, I would need to know whether torture had been authorized by both the President and Congress. No representative system of government is worthy of the name unless elected authorities determine overarching policy and guidelines in an area like national security. In immediate post-crisis circumstances, as with 9-11, the executive branch needs to take the lead. But the legislature must be brought in before too long. Of course, in this case whether the CIA ignored or breached guidelines laid down by U.S. leaders is still being hotly debated.

Which brings us to the procedural question presented by the release, and here I don’t see much room for reasonable debate. Whether you agree with it or not, the United States is indisputably engaged in a global campaign against terrorism that’s been prosecuted vigorously now by two American presidents (including Mr. Obama). As a result, it’s been ratified by repeated presidential elections. This conflict is highly unconventional conflict, it’s waged against genuinely shadowy opponents, and American forces are serving in any manner of dangerous positions on many kinds of front lines.

As a result, the prospect that the report’s release at this time could expose them to further risk – as acknowledged by the Obama administration – makes Senator Feinstein’s green light completely unacceptable. When those dangers are past, America can air linen that was dirtied years ago, not smack in the middle of what is very much a shooting war.