The New National Security Council

Friends have asked me about my take on the announcement this weekend that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is not going to be a regular member of the National Security Council's Principal Committee and that Steve Bannon will be. My first reaction is: 

To be honest, I am more freaked out by Steve Bannon's presence than the Chairman's absence.  Why?
Steve Bannon wants to burn stuff down, so I have little doubt that he will foster crises, rather than manage or mitigate them.  Oh, and he's a white supremacist and abets anti-semitism.  People are criticizing his spot on the NSC because it should be a body focused on the national interest rather than the domestic political interest of the President, and rightly so.  But Bannon is no David Alexrod, or even, dare I say it, Karl Rove.  He is more than a political operative--he is an arsonist.

Ok, enough about that, what about the Chairman and the Joint Staff's role in foreign policy-making?  In theory, having the Chairman only appear when military issues are raised does not seem so problematic for a couple of reasons.  First, for damn near most national security issues, there will be some "military equities" in play, so it is hard to imagine many meetings where the Chairman is not present.  Second, given how close the SecDef and the Chairman are (both are Marines and all that), as long as the SecDef is present, then the Chairman's views are likely to be represented (one of the jobs of the Chairman is to advise the SecDef).  Third, if a meeting starts without a military representative and then strays into military issues, then it would probably lead to a delay the Chairman or the Vice-Chairman can get there.  And with this administration, delay is probably a good thing.

Of course, in reality, given Trump's respect for folks in uniform (we have to take the advantages we can get), having the Chairman present and having him present reality-based views, including the benefits of multilateralism, is important.   And symbolism is important, so diminishing the role of the Chairman and of the Director of National Intelligence is very bad.  Sure, we can National Security decisions without getting the best military advice and, no, we don't need to have the best intelligence either.  I have long sat on an article which argues that bureaucratic politics is a good thing as competition among agencies leads to vetting.  This government is likely to produce half-assed policies that damage American interests.

What does this mean for the DC's and the other meetings down the chain of command?  Damned if I know.  In my year in the Pentagon, the Principals Committee--National Security Adviser, Sec State, SecDef, Chairman, etc--met to deal with specific issues that needed the attention of those at the top of the various chains of command.  They used to meet quite regularly on the Balkans with my crew quite busy preparing for a PC my first week in the Pentagon.  Thanks to 9/11, we didn't have another one of those until April of 2002.  Deputies Committee--Deputy NSA, DepSecState, DepSecDef, Vice Chairman--meet to work out issues that are significant but don't need the attention and scare time of the Principals.  Below were all kinds of working groups with various initials that I forget.  Much of Balkan policy was made at these lower levels in 2001-2002 after 9/11, and I think we did ok.  Indeed, when we briefed the Chairman in April in prep for that next PC on the Balkans, he complimented the lower ranking generals and colonels for doing a good job without "us".

The key is that US military, represented by the Joint Staff, was in the room for all kinds of stuff even when the use of force was not being considered.  For the Balkans, this meant stuff like how to deal with downsizing the Bosnia armed forces, how to improve the justice system, and so on. The Joint Staff had the chance to "chop", give its take, on guidance cables, papers and other stuff that were relevant to the military.  Given a keen awareness of how much military stuff is political and how much political stuff has implications for the military, having the Joint Staff involved made sense.  And, from my perspective, a good thing since the US military tends to be conservative (small c) in that it cares about risks, it wants to leverage resources via alliances and other multilateral forms of cooperation, and is sensitive to second and third order effects.

What does the removal of the Chairman from the PC mean for these lower level working groups? I have no idea.  The Trump Administraiton is making shit up as they go along, and no commitment, no process, no promise is binding.  The willingness to issue executive orders without getting input from DoD and DHS is suggestive--that on the things this administration cares about, everyone else will be cut out of the process.  So, the NSC organizational stuff represents rather well the future of US foreign policy making--and it will be a shitshow.

Gitmo In the Rear View Mirror

I tweeted this morning the following:

.@JimmySky just curious.  While on Joint Staff, I was involved in the process that sent 6 Algerians from Bosnia yo Gitmo.
— Stephen Saideman (@smsaideman) July 29, 2013

It got picked up and discussed at Political Science Rumors while I was at a NPSIA retreat so I could not really put things into context.  So, let me try now.*

* I can talk about this because it has been discussed in the media elsewhere.  Indeed, it was the cover story for a Bosnian magazine in the aftermath (that is Uncle Sam pissing on the Bosnian constitution and the European Charter of Rights--or its equivalent. and then in Time and eventually the Washington Post.  Oh, and apparently Wikipedia

In the late fall of 2001 (a month or two after 9/11), the US got some intel that six Algerians were planning on engaging in terrorist attacks against US/NATO targets in Bosnia.  The US was still participating in the NATO Stabilization Force [SFOR] at the time.  The Americans informed the government of Bosnia, which then arrested these Algerians.  Two months or so later, the Bosnian government indicated that the Algerians would have be released because they did not have enough evidence, given the US's unwillingness to share intel.  The US had been trying to get Algeria to take these guys, but Algeria had refused, also citing the lack of intel.

So, in late January, the issue suddenly appeared in the US interagency.  The American commanders in Europe were seeking guidance from the interagency about what to do.  The choices were: let the Bosnians release the six suspected terrorists; give the Bosnians/Algerian the intel (actually, this was never discusssed as far as I can remember),* or have the Americans pick them up and hold them someplace.  At this point in time, the only people that had been sent to Guantanamo were those picked up in Afghanistan.

* One of the fundamental problems for the US in its war on terror was its refusal to share intel.  Like the tendency to over-classify stuff, the reluctance to reveal key bits of evidence cut against American interests.  But the intel folks fought hard to restrict access, citing the fear that it would reveal American "means and capabilities"--how the US gets its info.

The guidance cable that eventually went out (it was slowed by a day or so because the folks under Rumsfeld did not want to bother him after 7pm and also because the Office of the Secretary of Defense's lawyer was pondering whether this was good policy--which was not his job--and this gave the folks in Bosnia some time to organize a protest that could have turned into something far worse) that had the consent of State, National Security Council, OSD and the Joint Staff.  It gave the US military orders to act on their own and not part of NATO (the double hatted folks essentially took one hat off for the night) to pick up the six Algerians and drive them to Tuzla, where they could be put on a plane and flown to Guantanamo. 

At the time, sending these guys to Gitmo did not seem to be a horrible idea.  Yes, it did not help Bosnia's efforts to build a robust rule of law.  Nor did it play well among the Bosnian Muslims, but those folks still had a favorable position towards the US (they hated UN, liked NATO in general).  On Poli Sci Rumors, I tried to clarify that I was involved but not at the table.  This was not meant to indicate that I had no responsibility because I was just following orders but to clarify that I was not a decision-maker. Had I been one, knowing only what I knew in January 2002, I would have supported the decision that was made.  In fact, I did support the decision at the time.

What I did not know in 2002 was that detention without trial would be the norm.  I also did not know at the time about the rules that Rummy and others were sending out to detention facilities that essentially gave the green light for torture.  So, the relatively straightforward tradeoffs of 2002 were less straightforward with more information.  If I knew in January 2002 what I know now, I might not have been as supportive of the decision.  But given the tradeoffs, releasing six guys who we had good reason to believe were terrorists (I didn't see the actual intelligence since I had a Top Secret clearance which was not high enough to see the signals stuff--NSA stuff) seemed to be really problematic.

Anyhow for a better example of Steve just following orders: in the summer of 2002, the Bush Administration was trying to get all of the mandates of the US missions in the world, including the Bosnian mission, revised to exclude the US troops from being vulnerable to being tried by the International Criminal Court.  I was strongly opposed to this stance, not so much because I believed in the ICC, but because I knew that American allies really cared about ICC.  Given that a new war was on the horizon (Iraq), it seemed foolish to antagonize American allies in Europe over a symbolic issue (the ICC rules give the country of the troops the first chance to handle any suspicion of war crimes, so the Americans could always handle the cases themselves).  I argued with my superior officers and then went ahead and did the paperwork--that I was just following orders.  In the Gitmo case, I believed that the course of action was the best of a set of lousy alternatives--so I was not just following orders.

So, there you have it: my role in the sending of some suspected terrorists to Guantanamo.  I am not proud of it, and that is why I asked the question on twitter: to find out whether any of these guys were still left in Gitmo. 

Merit Badges R Us

Andrew Exum, former Ranger and current CNAS blogger/twitter/man about town, posted today about medal inflation in the military.  James Joyner argues that such medals matter, perhaps more in peacetime when there is greater need to recognize minor service.  My first thoughts on this are: if I get a medal for one year's work on the Joint Staff, then you know that the standards for service for some of these things are mighty low.  I mean, I am proud of what I did in that year, and working with the military did make me think of such things as service, but I do have some perspective--that what I did was just ordinary desk-work. 

On the other, I am not above adding a line or two to my CV for such service medals.  I am still more proud of my departing gift, a picture of the Pentagon signed by my fellow JS dwellers, than of the medal, but I cannot squeeze that on to my cv.

Joint Staff Memories

I was reading a blog post by Peter Munson when I was amused to see him mention a certain Brigadier General.  Why?  Because this officer who served as the spokeman for the coalition in Iraq in 2004 had previously served in an office where I had to interact with him over the phone.  I will always remember him saying: you are not stupid, just your ideas.  What an incredibly stupid thing to say.  And the funny thing was that I was calling him about a set of proposed stances the Joint Staff was examining--not my ideas.  Oh, and, by the way, the ideas were not stupid at all--how to reduce American troops in Kosovo by sharing responsibility in a sector.

But to have this ace communicator, well known as a dick as one tweeter put it today, be the public face of the US military in Iraq in 2004 when everything else was going wrong, well, that was perfect.

Not that my year (exactly ten years ago) was one of Steve brilliance.  I remember the consternation folks would have when I would have to spell out my name on the phone: Saideman--S as in Sam, A as in Apple, ...  instead of Sierra Alpha Indigo Delta ....

Ah, good times.  The funny thing was that I was always told that the best and brightest folks in the military were those who were on the Joint Staff.  I would tease back, saying that these are the only folks I know, so I cannot be sure.  And then officers like the one Munson and I have both encountered tended to prove the generalization true.  Those who got their "Joint" qualification elsewhere were not so stunningly bright--Tommy Franks would be another such genius (actually, hard to tell from his bio where he got his Joint qualification).

All I can say is I am glad I have tenure.  It buys me heaps of insurance from the Kimmits and Franks of the academic world, folks who have been promoted far beyond their capability.

Up or Out

I just got an email from one of my friends from my year in the Joint Staff.  He is retiring from the US military tomorrow.  I think that means that there are no officers remaining in the US military from the 2001-2002 Central and Eastern European Division [CEED] of the Strategic Planning and Policy Directorate J-5].  I could be wrong but the guy who was my immediate superior for my first month or two stepped down as commander of the 3rd infantry division last spring.  The Colonel who was responsible for placing me in the Balkan pit of despair in the CEED is now a Lieutenant General and perhaps the "last man standing."

I am kind of surprised by this reality but should not be.  As ten years is a long time in the US military--half a career.  The US military is very much up or out, even before the budget cuts ahead. 

The officers I worked with were very sharp, thoughtful, dedicated, engaged, engaging people.  They committed at least 20 years of their lives to public service.  I guess it would be unfair to ask to them to do more--very long hours, very challenging lives with heaps of moves and other dislocations. 

Obviously, that one year in the Pentagon was a very formative experience for me, and it had as much or more to do with the people I worked with as much as it was the stuff that I was doing (just as college or grad school is as much/more about one's peers as it is about the profs).  To them, I say thanks for not just giving me heaps of stories and improving my ability to resist incoming fire (I took a lot of friendly teasing that year), but for everything else.

Public Diplomacy Indeed

I have recently been following the tweets of Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.  It turns out he has a blog as well.  This is what he says after a visit to the Middle East about addressing the threat of Iran and nuclear proliferation.

we owe the Secretary and the President a range of options for this threat. We owe the American people our readiness. But as I have said many times, I worry a lot about the unintended consequences of any sort of military action. For now, the diplomatic and economic levers of international power ought to be the levers first pulled. Indeed, I would hope they are always and consistently pulled.
No strike, however effective, will be in and of itself decisive.

 Too bad he did not have the big seat in 2003.  Of course, Rumsfeld selected the CJCS and being independent and skeptical of the use of force and thinking about unintended consequences would have disqualified Mullen. 

I was originally posting about his tweet and his blog just to note that he has both (along with facebook and other linkslisted in his blog!) and then found this opinion on Iran.  I really like the Gates/Mullen team.  What can I say?  I am a sucker for pragmatism by the folks who are responsible for the military.  Ideology or bureaucratic gamesmanship (depending on your view of Rummy) is so yesterday..

A Year That Has Stuck With Me

It has been seven years since I spent a year at the Pentagon, but I was reminded yesterday how much that year has stuck with me. I was talking to a colleague and I said I would "ping" someone. This is a term I picked up from the folks in the pit (office space) I shared in 2001-2002. To ping someone is to send a message and hope to get a response, as in using sonar to send out a sound and then when the wave of sound its something, you get a return sound.

How else has that year affected me?

• I use the word "sir" far more often than I used to do so. Of course, using it once a year would be far more often.
  
• I will occasionally complement a student or my daughter by saying "very professional!"
• I have a knee jerk response whenever anyone refers to the US Dept. of Defense or the Pentagon when they really mean the Secretary of Defense. This is less severe with Gates than it was when Rumsfeld was still screwing everything up.
• I still occasionally say "we" when referring to US military guys.
• And, of course, my current research agenda on NATO and civil-military relations directly flows from some of the things I saw and experienced during that year.

I will probably be revising this list as more lingering effects come to mind.

Are Military Officers Romantic?

In my experiences during my time on the Joint Staff and since, I have been frequently struck with how sensitive, sentimental, and, dare I say it, sweet, members of modern militaries are. Yes, these officers [almost all of my interactions have been with officers and not enlisted men and women] who are trained to lead their soldiers into battle--to kill and perhaps to be killed seem to be softies!

First, during my time in the Pentagon, I saw a great number of ceremonies and ate a great deal of cake (one of the key reasons my year had the same impact as freshman year in college--about 15 pounds--notice the guinea pig cheeks in the picture) celebrating a variety of events, but the essence of each was the showering of affection on those who had achieved and those who were moving on to other assignments. One can be cynical and suggest the darker sources of these traditions, but the reality was lots of heartfelt appreciation. When someone asked on the political science job rumors blog about whether the granting of tenure is accompanied by ceremonies, I snorted.

Second, recently, I have contacted my old partner on the Bosnia Desk of the Joint Staff to ask for his help for my upcoming trip to Europe since he is a defense attache in one of the countries I am visiting. His response, getting his aides to help an "old and dear friend," will make the trip quite successful and far easier than I have a right to expect.

Third, today, I interviewed a Canadian general about his experiences in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and he emphasized, like others but perhaps more clearly, that the military is in the people business. He was referring not to the killing of people, but of relationships--that officers need to build relationships with officers from other countries, with those back home, with civilians in the field, etc. The project I am researching focuses on how countries control their forces engaged in multilateral military operations, and the stress has very much been on the points of tension among allies about who is willing to do what on the ground. This conversation, like others, emphasized how building relationships among commanders in theatre can mitigate some of the challenges presented by domestic politics on the home front.

What all three of these experiences share is that these folks who put others and themselves in harm's way have taken that obligations seriously and understand that equipment and ideas (ideologies, tactics, strategies) do not function too well if people do not trust either other. Band of Brothers, indeed! Of course, we should not idealize these guys too much. There are plenty of socially-unskilled, reckless, nasty, short-sighted, alienating officers out there as well (Tommy Franks, I am talking about you). I met a few while working on the Joint Staff*--although these guys happened (coincidentally or not) to be based elsewhere.

Of course, the resulting emotions from this realization are shame and embarassment. We academics with our small stakes and safe positions are quite able to brutalize each other due to rivalry, jealousy, incompetence, a total lack of self- and other-awarness, and/or arrogance (just to start the list). Of course, I could just be remembering the stuff that sticks out in my year there and in my life here and might be imposing more consistency and coherence to both experiences.



* During my year on the Joint Staff, it was constantly repeated that the folks who worked there were the best the US military had to offer. And while we occasionally argued about all things political, I think I would have to agree. Of course, they were not only affectionate, but also highly skilled in giving people friendly abuse. I fit in, as I could take their @#$# and dish it back out. Glad my smart-ass skills were up to the task.

McChrystal Clear?

Trying to figure out what any decision-maker will do before they start their new job is always a challenge, but ruthless speculation is hardly rare in the blogosphere. So, what are implications of choice of the new commander of the forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal?

First, he has been a Special Operator for much of his career, and ran Joint Special Ops Command. The stories thus far about his role are a mix--that he pushed his forces to seek out and kill the insurgent leadership, which I actually have little problem with in the abstract, but he also spent much time in theatre with an overly detailed knowledge of the actions. So, does he micromanage or is he just really smart and keen to have a good understanding of the battlespace?
The biggest concern from this experience is that much of the collateral damage in Afghanistan is caused by air strikes, particularly those called in to support Special Ops. In my conversations with Canadians and others who have worked in Afghanistan, it seems quite clear that the Special Ops side of the war has frequently undermined the rest of the counter-insurgency. On the other hand, Captain Counterinsurgency--Gen. Petraeus--seems to like the guy.

Second, his current posting is as Director of the Joint Staff [DJS]. This position puts the General at a key node between the Joint Staff and the Chairman of the Joint Staff, receiving the politico-military advice from all the various segments of the Joint Staff, including the one I inhabited seven years ago. And this position also requires a fair amount of interaction with the rest of the National Security bureaucracy. So, McChrystal probably has a better grasp of the interactions between military and civilian aspects of counter-insurgency and the larger diplomatic puzzle than most.
On the other hand, two past DJSs, John Abizaid and George Casey, did not do too well in Iraq. Clearly, they inherited a bad situation and had to deal with a Secretary of Defense (Rumsfeld) who inhibited any significant reforms. Still, Abizaid was Tommy Franks's deputy in 2003 and should have insisted on a realistic plan for the post-invasion situation. Again, because Franks slavishly followed Rumsfeld and ignored his subordinates, there was probably little that Abizaid could do, other than resign in protest.

The third bit of knowledge emerging is that McChrystal had a fellowship on the Council of Foreign Relations--the same kind that put me in the Pentagon. The idea is to give policy-makers a year to interact with thinkers and put scholars and others into a policy-making position to learn how it is done. So, McChrystal might have a broader imagination about the possibilities and may be more open to the thoughts of others. I think I am better scholar for that experience, but, then again, Condi Rice had the same fellowship and served in the Joint Staff in her day.
Indeed, one of the key lessons I learned during my year that personalities matter more than political scientists usually assert.

So, we really have no clue as to how this new guy is going to work out. It does show that SecDef Gates is setting the stage, and is not thinking in the short term. It does indicate that there is a better effort to build a team than in the past, where Rummy seemed to pick people who were good at taking orders (the passages in the Woodward books about choosing the Chairman of the Joint Staff were disturbing in the extreme).

So much for speculation.

Piling on Condi?

Condi Rice has been getting a fair amount of attention lately, including an embarrassing incident on her old home court--Stanford. She is currently trying to defend some indefensible behavior--particularly torture.

Before going on, I must admit a couple of things:

• on 9/11, I was in the Pentagon before and after the attack, but not during (for my 9/11 story, click here), so I do have a somewhat visceral action to that event, and wanted to see the people who were responsible put on a plane that would crash into a convenient ocean.
• during my fellowship on the Joint Staff, I did take part in a process through which terrorists were sent from Bosnia to Gitmo--the first non-Afghan combatants to be sent there.

So, I do understand only too well some of the pressures and difficult decisions that faced the Administration after 9/11. The problem is that President Bush, as advised by Rice, made pretty much every bad decision possible. Indeed, after my year in the Pentagon, I knew that Rumsfeld and his shop would screw up the Occupation (largely because of his fearsome, groupthink management style), but I didn't realize then that they would consider the list of things not to do as a checklist of things to do: fire the Army, get rid of the entire senior and middle level strata of the civil service, use only the fewest possible troops, keep all experts away from the process, etc.

[See Ricks, Fiasco; Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II; Packer, Assassin's Gate; Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in an Emerald City; among others. I read but do not recommend (except for those doing research or seeking to lose brain cells) Bremer, who seems to be lying to himself, and Franks, who was well-suited for interacting with Doug Feith, as both were the dumbest @#$#@$ers and makes me both curious and sad that the Army could allow him to rise so far. I do plan to read LtGen Sanchez's book this summer as he ran the military side of things while Bremer was running the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA was said to stand for Can't Produce Anything); and Rick's new book, The Gamble, on Gen. Petraeus and the surge.]

The best evidence, in my mind, for Rice's epic failure to serve as an adequate National Security Advisor is that Jerry Bremer fired the Iraqi Army despite the decisions taken by the President and others to choose a more reasonable course of action. The damning evidence is really the fact that we do not really know today whether Bremer or Rumsfeld really made this decision. Since Rice's job as NSA was to coordinate foreign policy, she should have put in place a process so that Bremer's big decisions would have to be vetted by the relevant agencies--State, NSC, the Office of the SecDef, and the Joint Staff. In my time in DC, nearly all decisions of any consequence in the Balkans went through each agency at the appropriate level (at a lower level after 9/11 when the Balkans moved to the back burner of US foreign policy) with lawyers for each agency "chopping", that is assessing their legality. That Bremer, Rumsfeld and others can point fingers at each other (see No End in Sight, a great and depressing documentary) for perhaps the single dumbest decision in US foreign policy since ..... supporting the French in 1945 when they wanted to get back into Vietnam.

One can debate whether invading Iraq was a good or bad idea, but firing several hundred thousand young men with guns and training and knowledge of the locations of arms/explosive caches, at a time where folks in the interagency (Joint Staff, State, etc) were trying to find ways to reduce the Bosnian militaries by a few thousand without creating a pool of resentful young men, was incredibly dumb. This single decision lead to many unnecessary deaths--Iraqi, American, British and others. And the blood is on the hands of Bremer, of Rumsfeld, of Bush, and of Rice. While the focus today is on torture, and deservedly so (see my friend Steve's blog for an on-going discussion of the torture discussion), if we calculate the numbers of people directly harmed (as opposed to the damage to American influence or values), the number of torture victims must pale in comparison to the casualties after June 2003 on all sides.

Of course, the best is yet to come as Rummy is apparently writing a book where he says he was against the war in Iraq.