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: 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: Our Crimped Terrorism Debate is Taking a Dangerous Toll

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boots on the ground, Iraq, ISIS, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, polls, public opinion, Syria, terrorism

If you doubt the damage being done by the brain-dead debate over fighting terrorism being conducted by America’s leadership and chattering classes, just look at the newest poll findings on the public’s stated support for using U.S. ground troops against ISIS.

Ever since this radical Islamist group’s stunning military advances began attracting broad attention last year, the Obama administration and its allies and critics in Congress, the think tank world, and the punditocracy have squabbled over alternatives that are equally loony and likely counter-productive. They have ranged from ranging from idolatry of (allegedly antiseptic) strikes to fairy tales about diplomatic solutions and Cold War-style alliances (in a region where few if any genuine nation-states exist) to blather about attacking terrorism’s supposed roots in poverty or historic injustices to full-throated calls for using large-scale American ground forces. Actually, most supposed strategic geniuses nowadays favor some combination of these delusional cure-alls.  (See this recent post for a noteworthy example.)

The latest NBC News/Marist poll shows that months of videos and news reports of ISIS’ atrocities and spreading influence, along with the narrow range of commentary served up in the media, have significantly boosted public backing for using U.S. ground troops – an option that for better or worse has been a third rail of American politics and policy since the previous Iraq War went south.

According to the survey, 26 percent of Americans back sending in “a large number of U.S. ground forces” to “combat ISIS,” and 40 percent favor deploying “a limited number.” Only 26 percent opposing use any ground troops, and seven percent are “unsure.”

We don’t have exact apples-to-apples data revealing trends over time. And foreign policy polls are often incompetently designed. But there seems little doubt that support for the ground option has grown significantly since the fall. A Marist survey released October 2 showed only 47 percent backing sending an unspecified number of ground troops to Syria “to fight ISIS if airstrikes are unsuccessful.” Forty-eight percent opposed this proposal. At that time, a large 6 percent majority approved of those airstrikes, with only 19 percent disapproving.

Readers of RealityChek know that there’s a much more promising option: Using special forces and airstrikes to harass ISIS and keep the group off balance wherever it operates, but not with the idea of defeating or even “degrading” these barbarians. Instead, the aim would be to prevent ISIS from consolidating its power sufficiently to create a terrorist haven and base for planning and launching September 11-style attacks against the United States while Washington devotes most of its anti-terror resources and attention to securing America’s borders.

No anti-terror strategy will be perfect, but the greatest degree of success is surely likelier by focusing most on something the United States can reasonably hope to control (its own borders) than by focusing on something that plainly can’t be controlled (a thoroughly diseased and in fact dysfunctional region like the Middle East). But until the media starts reporting and presenting these options, expect the nation’s strategy to reflect the disastrously false choices that have dominated the terrorism debate so far. And expect the public quite understandably to follow along until another debacle unfolds.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Obama Not Patient Enough Re ISIS in One Crucial Respect

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Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, boots on the ground, Iraq, ISIS, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, terrorism

By now it’s clear that, though a gifted speaker generally, President Obama can be pretty inarticulate talking about foreign policy. That’s why it was a little surprising that, in his interview yesterday on Meet the Press, the President usefully clarified some of his own thinking on defeating the ISIS threat in the Middle East – though in the process, he also showed how worrisomely hidebound it remains.

What the interview transcript told us is that Mr. Obama’s “Iraq-ophobia” stems from concerns much more specific, and genuinely pragmatic, than a general opposition to preemptive war or a philosophical reluctance to use major, continuous doses of force in world affairs (as opposed to discrete applications like drone strikes). Nor is he mainly worried that “boots on the ground” as such are likelier to result in many more casualties than airstrikes – though obviously that’s a worry.

Instead, President Obama seems to think that a major, long-term ground campaign inevitably means pursuing a strategy that he considers completely unsustainable for the United States, and ultimately futile – sending tens and even hundreds of thousands of American soldiers to restage the bloody, costly conflict launched by George W. Bush.

As he emphasized yesterday morning, “[Y]ou…cannot, over the long term or even the medium term, deal with this problem by having the United States serially occupy various countries all around the Middle East. We don’t have the resources. It puts enormous strains on our military.” And repeating a point he’s made before: “And at some point, we leave. And then things blow up again.”

Conservative critics have hit Obama hard on the second point, arguing that American forces have had stabilizing effects on Europe and the Far East for decades. In my opinion, the U.S. military has remained in Germany, Japan, and Korea far too long, but today it’s more important to point out that the President has overlooked a third role for U.S. forces in Iraq – and one much more promising than Iraq-scale invasion or almost exclusive reliance on air power.

As per a post of mine last week, the United States should use heavy air and drone strikes in tandem with Special Forces and other small-scale ground units to disrupt ISIS’ main military units and then keep them on the run. This approach would work best of course with larger ground forces from regional countries’ militaries adding to the pressure, too (assuming they wouldn’t crumble like Iraq’s army and hand ISIS a treasure trove of advanced U.S. weaponry). But even if such regional forces weren’t available, there’s no reason to think that the disrupt-and-harass strategy wouldn’t be just as successful as it’s been in Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda has been reduced to insignificance.

Here’s the rub, though – disrupt and harass may need to be carried out for years. It will require patience and persistence – not because the strategy fails to recognize how quickly an ISIS threat to the American homeland might develop, but because unconventional, non-state adversaries can have many lives, and reemerge in many different forms. And nowhere is this truer than in a region like the Middle East, which is likely to remain politically and socially dysfunctional for decades.

The President’s stated opposition to measures that don’t contribute to lasting victory over ISIS and other extremists (“And things blow up again.”) strongly suggests that its inconclusiveness would be his main objection to disrupt and harass. That of course doesn’t sound like a leader who’s truly patient. It sounds like one who’s making the perfect the enemy of the good.