Im-Politic: Has Biden Bet Right Politically on Afghanistan?

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Afghanistan, Biden, border security, Charles Lane, crime, Donald Trump, election 2022, election 2024, Europe, hostages, Im-Politic, Immigration, Jimmy Carter, Lloyd J. Austin III, Open Borders, politics, refugees, Taliban, terrorism, Washington Post

Even if he didn’t peevishly block me on Twitter, I’d consider Washington Post columnist Charles Lane’s Tuesday piece on – how President Biden can “contain” Afghanistan-related damage to his presidency and historical legacy – pretty silly. For it completely ignores some screamingly obvious ways that this debacle can greatly worsen and keep degrading his image far into the future – and of course through the midterm 2022 elections and the 2024 presidential campaign.

Not that it’s out of the question that the domestic political calculation on which Mr. Biden is widely reported to have based his Afghan withdrawal will prove correct. The American public’s attention span can be pretty short and, as the President has rightly noted, who controls that remote “country” has no bearing on U.S. national security. (I use quotes because American policy has been led astray largely because there’s so little evidence that Afghanistan is a country in any meaningful sense of the word.)

Moreover, in case you haven’t noticed, the national news cycle has sped up considerably in recent years. Therefore, any public anger over the withdrawal botch could quickly evaporate once the next crisis or Biden failure, or Biden triumph that comes barreling down the pike. And the twenty-plus year Forever War remains unpopular. (See, e.g., here and here.  For an interesting exception, see here.) As a result, Afghanistan could indeed become yesterday’s meat loaf as far as U.S. voters are concerned, and even surprisingly quickly. 

Even so, it’s easy to imagine how fallout from the withdrawal could pose genuine threats to America and keep Mr. Biden “in the woods” politically.

For example, the odds seem good that the Biden administration will not be able to pull all American citizens out of Afghanistan during the partially open window the Taliban victors seem willing to provide – for now. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has already admitted that the U.S. military can’t guarantee Americans not already at the Kabul airport safe passage to the airport, and the State Department has advised these individuals to “shelter in place.” Many could be widely scatttered throughout Afghanistan’s Texas-sized territory.

The Taliban might agree to allow the United States to keep troops in the country beyond the August 31 total military withdrawal deadline set by the President – which Mr. Biden now says may be necessary to complete the evacuation. Or it might not. And if its leaders (whoever they really are) do decide to play nice with the United States, some groups in its jihadist ranks might not.

It’s plausible to believe that those Taliban leaders would want the American military completely gone as soon as possible, and therefore have strong incentives to play ball with Washington. But it seems to me just as plausible to believe that they’d find hostages very useful – say, as leverage to prompt the United States to release large amounts of the ousted Afghan government’s funds (which are currently held at the U.S. Federal Reserve), and the International Monetary Fund to release the smaller but not negligible amount of economic credits (called Special Drawing Rights or SDRs) that the previous regime was scheduled to receive about now. (See here for the details.)

If a hostage situation does emerge, then Mr. Biden could find himself with a problem at least as bad as former President Jimmy Carter suffered after the Iranian revolution in 1979. But even if hostages aren’t taken, a Biden administration decision to keep American troops on the ground in the country in defiance of  Taliban wishes in order to find U.S. personnel and escort them to the airport, or even increase the deployment to carry out these missions, could trigger renewed fighting and American casualties. And this fighting could last for weeks and even months.

Afghan refugees admitted into the United States could vex President Biden for years to come as well – and in two ways. First, as noted, if his administration casts too wide a net (and it’s widened already), any number of Taliban or Al Qaeda members or other jihadists could wind up resettling here. Few question the desire to protect Afghans directly employed by the U.S. military or other government agencies – and I don’t, either.

But calls are being issued to extend visas to still other categories of Afghans, and as always, it’s difficult to imagine that all of them could have been adequately vetted in peacetime given that the previous Afghan government wasn’t exactly the gold standard for efficiency or honesty. Now of course, conditions in the country are utterly chaotic, so the vetting challenge looks that much greater.

If any of those resettled in the United States wind up committing terrorist acts, there’ll surely be political hell to pay for the President. In fact, although, as I’ve argued repeatedly (e.g. here) the key to preventing Middle East-spawned terror strikes on America was never sending U.S. forces to chase around that terminally dysfunctional region every new jihadist group it would inevitably spawn. Instead, it was always securing America’s borders.

Consequently, Mr. Biden can now be fairly accused of failure on both these fronts.Thanks to his Afghan pullout, the Taliban might indeed permit jihadists from re-establishing a terrorist base benefiting from the protection of a sovereign state. And it’s reasonable to conclude that Islamic extremists in other countries and regions will be emboldened as well. At the same time, his Open Borders-friendly immigration policies were making it harder to keep them out even before Kabul fell. Talk about the worst of all possible worlds.

There’s a third refugee-related problem that could stain the Biden record long-term also: crime. Europe’s naive admission of literally millions of Afghans and other Middle Easterners fleeing their war-torn lands greatly undermined public safety in countries like Austria, Germany, and Sweden. No comparable problem has yet appeared in the United States. But so far, U.S. refugee admissions have been much more limited – largely, but not exclusively, because of the Trump administration’s more restrictive policies. If their numbers greatly increase during the Biden years, either because of more indulgent policies or failure to secure U.S. borders, all bets are off.

The 2020 U.S. presidential election showed that it’s dangerous to count Mr. Biden out. After all, until his primary victory in South Carolina, he was derided as a political “dead man walking.” In that contest, however, he benefited from powerful political allies like longtime South Carolina Democratic Congressman James Clyburn. I’m straining to see any similar saviors on the ground in Afghanistan or over the horizon. 

Im-Politic: Biden’s Big George Floyd Fail

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African Americans, Biden, Chauvin trial, criminal justice, Derek Chauvin, George Floyd, Im-Politic, Jimmy Carter, law enforcement, police, police brutality, Soviet Union, systemic racism

Back in 1978, President Jimmy Carter felt he had a big problem. He wanted to use an upcoming speech to send a major message to Moscow about the future of his policy toward the Soviet Union, but his main foreign policy advisers were split. His White House national security chief urged him to take a tougher line across-the-board, but his Secretary of State backed a more nuanced approach.

According to some of his aides, he finally dealt with the problem by taking the preparatory memos each of them wrote, stapling them together, and using the resulting contradictory document as the basis of the address. Not surprisngly, Carter simply succeeded in sowing confusion throughout the nation and around the world, and reinforcing a growing perception that he was a fatally indecisive leader.

What really happened is still up in the air. (See here for the background and a good description of some of the major conflicting accounts). But I dredge up this episode because President Biden’s remarks yesterday about the verdict in the “George Floyd trial” struck me as equally incoherent and troubling – at best.

It seems clear that the President was trying to walk an unquestionably fine line. On the one hand, he was trying to make the case that although former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering Floyd during an arrest, serious racial problems still plagued American law enforcement. On the other hand, he obviously recognized the dangers of describing all or even most or even lots of policemen and women as disgraceful racists in whom the nation – and especially minority Americans – should place no trust.

But it should also be clear that Mr. Biden’s apparent balancing act merited a solid “F.” He did state that “most men and women who wear the badge serve their communities honorably” and even that exceptions were “few.”

Those contentions, though, were exceptions themselves, for much more of the text consisted of a description of American law enforcement that not only included the systemic racism charge, but that accused the system literally of waging war on minorities.

What else can be concluded from his contentions about “the fear so many people of color live with every day when they go to sleep at night and pray for the safety of themselves and their loved ones”?

And about the need to “ensure that Black and brown people or anyone…don’t fear the interactions with law enforcement, that they don’t have to wake up knowing that they can lose their very life in the course of just living their life. They don’t have to worry about whether their sons or daughters will come home after a grocery store run or just walking down the street or driving their car or playing in the park or just sleeping at home”?

And about the imperative of “acknowledging and confronting, head on, systemic racism and the racial disparities that exist in policing and in our criminal justice system more broadly”?

Let’s leave aside for now the strong evidence that African Americans “want police to spend same amount of or more time in their area” – a share that stood at 81 percent according to a Gallup survey last summer. (For some other polling data powerfully challenging the systemic racism narrative, see this post.)

The most charitable conclusion possible is that Mr. Biden believes that this criminal justice system is systemically (meaning “deliberately?” “pervasively”? Both?) racist even though most of its foot soldiers – who interact with minorities the most often by far – somehow aren’t. That’s not exactly a resounding testament to his reasoning or analytical skills, or to his common sense.

Cynics could understandably decide that the President chose to pay a bit of lip service to cops before aggressively embracing the systemic racism school of thought in hopes of making everyone from politically moderate voters to his own party’s far Left happy.

And what’s to be made of a President who demonstrates absolutely no awareness that the views he’s expressing have little grounding in reality?

Near the end of his talk, Mr. Biden rightly warned about the threat posed by “those who will seek to exploit the raw emotions of the moment — agitators and extremists who have no interest in social justice; who seek to carry out violence, destroy property, to fan the flames of hate and division; who will do everything in their power to stop this country’s march toward racial justice. We can’t let them succeed.”

No sane person could accuse the President of supporting or fostering most of these outrages. But when it comes to “fanning the flames of hate and division,” his George Floyd remarks came uncomfortably close.

Im-Politic: Why Trump-ism Could Have Staying Power

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2016 election, America First, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, foreign policy, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, internationalism, Jimmy Carter, John Kerry, national interests, national security, Obama, Peggy Noonan, Richard Nixon, rule of law, The Wall Street Journal, Trade

Welcome to the Age of Trump!

Since ages these days come and go a lot faster than previously in history, this one could well end in November, if he loses the presidency. Who, though, can doubt that, until then, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee will dominate the news cycle with his outsiders’ instincts and his matchless flair for publicity, and keep his presumptive rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, the quintessential insider, continually on the defensive?

At the same time, the reasons for supposing that what might be called “Trump-ism” in American policy (and yes, I’m aware of all the contradictory views he still needs to resolve) is no flash in the pan are much stronger than widely realized.

Even given the implacable hostility he’s generated throughout the Mainstream Media, because of all the of digital ink spilled already on Trump’s remarkable rise, it’s hard to imagine anyone recently coming up with something fundamentally new – including me. But the Wall Street Journal‘s Peggy Noonan (who gained fame as a star speechwriter for Ronald Reagan) achieved just that objective in her April 28 column, when she wrote that the key to Trump’s appeal has been his supporters’ conviction that “he is on America’s side.”

Moreover, before you say, “Duh,” Noonan’s basic analysis ultimately also explains why Trump is so detested by the nation’s policy establishment across the political spectrum, along with the establishment journalists that flack for them – and why his approach to America’s challenges and opportunities holds much more promise than the reigning framework, especially in world affairs.

As you’ll see if you read the article, Noonan’s definition of “pro-American” entails much more than an avowed determination to defend and advance the nation’s interests. Of course, all public officials will call that their goal, and nearly all will sincerely mean it. What Noonan emphasizes, however, is the tendency of mainstream liberal, conservative, and centrist politicians alike to dilute that goal with numerous other considerations. These often are compatible with what’s best for America, or could be. But they’re not necessarily or intrinsically “pro-American” and can easily – and often have – compromised U.S. security or prosperity.

Noonan’s writes that Trump’s literal America First outlook “comes as a great relief to [his backers] because they believe that for 16 years Presidents Bush and Obama were largely about ideologies. They seemed not so much on America’s side as on the side of abstract notions about justice and the needs of the world. Mr. Obama’s ideological notions are leftist, and indeed he is a hero of the international left. He is about international climate-change agreements, and leftist views of gender, race and income equality. Mr. Bush’s White House was driven by a different ideology—neoconservatism, democratizing, nation building, defeating evil in the world, privatizing Social Security.

“But it was all ideology.

“Then Mr. Trump comes and in his statements radiate the idea that he’s not at all interested in ideology, only in making America great again—through border security and tough trade policy, etc. He’s saying he’s on America’s side, period.

I’d elaborate with two points. First, there’s a fundamental, bipartisan worldview and approach to world affairs underlying all these disparate positions. As I’ve explained, it’s called internationalism, and its bedrock tenet holds that America’s best bet for security and prosperity is pursuing what political scientists call milieu goals – literally trying to shape the world to make it safe for America.

As a result, especially since Pearl Harbor, this strategy has led the nation’s leaders on what I’ve called (especially in writing about national security and international economic policy) a search for abstract (a word Noonan uses in passing) standards to guide policy rather than simply asking what makes America and its people safer or wealthier. In fairness to the policy gurus and their acolytes, they insist that they’re simply taking a broader, more complex (sophisticated, etc.) and indeed more realistic view of U.S. interests. In particular, they claim to understand that the long run is more important than instant gratification.

That’s why even long before President Obama entered the White House, American leaders have been talking about strengthening peaceful global norms of behavior and the international institutions that should be administering them; about preserving relationships; about submitting to a “global test” before going to war (Secretary of State John Kerry’s words as the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate); about creating New World Orders and balances of power and “global structures of peace” (a Richard Nixon favorite); about freeing global trade and commerce to the greatest possible extent; about winning foreign “hearts and minds” (a Vietnam War campaign); about figuring out who’s on the “right side of history” (a big bone of contention during Jimmy Carter’s presidency); about eradicating global poverty; about controlling arms; about demonstrating credibility; about exercising or maintaining “global leadership.”

Of course, America and the world as a whole would indeed likely be much better off if much of this substantive progress (i.e., disarmament, trade liberalization) came to pass. But the main question facing policy-makers is rarely, “What would be advantageous” but “What is achievable at acceptable cost and risk?” Just as important is the question, “Compared to what?” For countries without alternatives, questing for a more congenial world environment is arguably the policy to follow – even though, paradoxically, however, their very lack of alternatives logically reflects a weakness that places this goal far out of reach.

As I’ve argued, however, the United States is in a different, and much more favorable, situation entirely, thanks to its geographically isolated location, its still dynamic social system, its sheer size, and its consequent economic power and potential for self-sufficiency. And logically, a policy of relying on variables that are relatively easy to control (i.e., a country’s own capabilities and actions) makes much more sense than a policy relying on variables that are relatively difficult to control (i.e., the capabilities and actions of others).

The arguments for pursuing the procedural aims of internationalism (those institutional goals) are even weaker for the United States. Given its military and economic superpower status and potential, yoking America to internationally agreed on standards of behavior seems likeliest to crimp valuable freedom of action, and hand influence over America’s fate over to powers that are either indifferent or hostile, without contributing on net to national security or well-being.

Also worth fretting about are time-frames (which are closely related to cost and risk issues). Let’s assume that even all of the above goals would benefit America sufficiently to warrant their pursuit. That still leaves the matter of how long the nation is supposed to wait for the benefits to start flowing. And nowhere is this question more important than in the international trade field, where Americans have repeatedly been told either (a) that their jobs and incomes should be sacrificed for the greater good by decisions to win and keep allies by handing them chunks of U.S. markets; and (b) that whatever economic pain liberalized trade is inflicting will eventually be more than offset by greater efficiencies or wider consumer choices or even more employment opportunities and higher wages (when foreign countries finally decide to open their markets).

It’s important to note that a “Trump-ian” crockery-breaking pursuit of greater and quicker policy benefits has no place in domestic politics. At home, Americans have developed a strong consensus on acceptable standards of behavior that justifies the supremacy of rule of law and its consequent proceduralism.  Nothing close to such a consensus is visible internationally.

But here’s something that’s at least as important to note: Even though it’s by no means certain that internationalism’s assumptions have been discredited, or that its promises have been broken, what is certain from the success this year of Trump as well as Democrat Bernie Sanders – another staunch critic of U.S. trade policy – is that Americans increasingly are out of patience. They’re demanding policies that safeguard their livelihoods and raise their wages now. And they’re in no mood to be told that such measures might violate World Trade Organization rules or antagonize allies whose own free trade bona fides are dubious at best – or offend populations in a dysfunctional Middle East that hasn’t exactly been showering Americans with affection lately.

Finally, the politics of the divide between Trump supporters and policy elites has been positively inflamed by the latter’s ability to avoid most of the costs and risks of glittering, quasi-utopian visions still all too far from panning out. Precisely because these electoral considerations dovetail so neatly with a policy shift strongly grounded in geopolitical and economic realities, unless U.S. security and international economic policies start delivering concretely for many more Americans very soon, the Age of Trump could have real legs.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Another Poorly Thought Out Obama Doctrine

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9-11, Ali Khamenei, Carter Doctrine, Congress, Cuba, F. Scott Fitzgerald, foreign policy, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Iran, Iran deal, Jimmy Carter, New York Times, nucler weapons, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Persian Gulf, preemption, Putin, Russia, sanctions, stupid stuff, Thomas Friedman

Well, it seems that the previous Obama foreign policy doctrine sure didn’t last long. Starting last summer, the president’s diplomatic thinking made waves when a series of Mainstream Media reports, plus his own former Secretary of State, all seemed to agree that Mr. Obama’s strategic lodestar was “Don’t do stupid stuff” overseas. (You can read my critique here.) This week, however, the president appeared to unveil a strikingly new approach, which could be summarized as “Take Big Risks.” In addition, in an interview with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Mr. Obama displayed other signs of greater foreign policy ambition, along with some incoherence, that didn’t attract nearly enough attention.

Friedman writes that the president’s own description of a new “Obama Doctrine”

“emerged when I asked if there was a common denominator to his decisions to break free from longstanding United States policies isolating Burma, Cuba and now Iran. Obama said his view was that ‘engagement,’ combined with meeting core strategic needs, could serve American interests vis-à-vis these three countries far better than endless sanctions and isolation. He added that America, with its overwhelming power, needs to have the self-confidence to take some calculated risks to open important new possibilities — like trying to forge a diplomatic deal with Iran that, while permitting it to keep some of its nuclear infrastructure, forestalls its ability to build a nuclear bomb for at least a decade, if not longer.”

This view, however, lumps together some risk-reward ratios that don’t seem to belong in the same category. It makes perfect sense to argue, as per the president, that

“You take a country like Cuba. For us to test the possibility that engagement leads to a better outcome for the Cuban people, there aren’t that many risks for us. It’s a tiny little country. It’s not one that threatens our core security interests, and so [there’s no reason not] to test the proposition. And if it turns out that it doesn’t lead to better outcomes, we can adjust our policies.”

But to contend that “The same is true with respect to Iran” is worrisome. Mr. Obama allowed that Iran is

“a larger country, a dangerous country, one that has engaged in activities that resulted in the death of U.S. citizens, but the truth of the matter is: Iran’s defense budget is $30 billion. Our defense budget is closer to $600 billion. Iran understands that they cannot fight us. … You asked about an Obama doctrine. The doctrine is: We will engage, but we preserve all our capabilities.”

This assessment, however, is coming from a president avowedly supremely aware of the difficulties America ran into in the last decade fighting in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq in post-9-11 Afghanistan. As with Vietnam decades before, these interventions show that crude indicators of military strength like budget levels can be dangerously misleading – all the more so when the adversary is halfway around the world, and convinced that it’s fighting for survival or for a fanatical cause. In addition, of course, the consequences of getting Cuba or Myanmar wrong are indeed negligible. Even if Washington avoids a new war, the consequences of getting Iran wrong could be catastrophic, not least because it could result in the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a government with expansionist aims in a region still crucial to the world’s energy supplies.

An Obama miscalculation on Iran becomes even scarier upon realizing that the president seems to have greatly expanded America’s defense commitments in the Persian Gulf. In 1980, President Carter’s doctrine declared that the United States would defend Gulf states from aggressors from outside the region – meaning the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of 9-11, George W. Bush’s administration signaled a determination to respond with force preemptively – before being attacked – to eliminate the threat of weapons-of-mass-destruction use by rogue states. In 200x, the president turned words into deeds with the invasion of Iraq.

Now, Mr. Obama states that he’s willing “to make the kinds of commitments that would give everybody in the neighborhood, including Iran, a clarity that if Israel were to be attacked by any state, that we would stand by them.”  

That could be a perfectly legitimate decision to make. But as a major ramp up of U.S. foreign defense obligations, it needs a thorough examination by Congress and the public. Intensive debate is all the more important given the squeeze on America’s defense budget, and given the crucial lesson that the president should have learned from dealing with Vladimir Putin: The line between the internal and external threats faced by states are anything but clear-cut. And Iran has been at least as active as Russia in using various non-state proxy groups to advance its interests.

Finally, the president’s views of what’s motivating Iran remain confusing.  On the one hand, Mr. Obama repeated his conviction that “that the sanctions regime that we put together was weakening Iran over the long term,” stated that the country’s supreme leader agreed; and claimed that Ayatollah ali Khamenei believed that “if in fact he wanted to see Iran re-enter the community of nations, then there were going to have to be changes.” On the other hand, he described Iran as “a country that withstood an eight-year war and a million people dead, they’ve shown themselves willing, I think, to endure hardship when they considered a point of national pride or, in some cases, national survival.”

In other words, President Obama views Iran both as a country that would not allow stronger sanctions to “stop its nuclear program” (as he said in announcing the deal last week), and as one that was so anxious for sanctions relief that the prospect led to talks that have rendered it toothless (by his account) for many years.

It’s true that F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously wrote that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” At the same time, he made this point in an essay titled “The Crack-Up.”