Canada and Golden Dome: A Trump Trap

Trump is putting his most expensive fantasy into the 51st state bullshit machine.  This is quite predictable, even as the US Ambassador to Canada is doing his best to alienate Canadians by portraying the US as a victim in all of this.  Why is the Golden Dome a trap for Canada?

To be clear, this is no longer about being pro or anti ballistic missile defense.*  Canada didn't join ABM in the early 2000s because George Bush Jr. was violating an international agreement, and Canadian leaders didn't want to be on the side of tearing down the international order.  This meant that NORAD became a difficult place, as the binational arrangement meant that Canada was providing sensor data to the Americans but couldn't be in the room where the defense stuff was being planned/operated.  The political salience of ABM has declined, and the treaty is now mostly dead.  So, it is no longer as much of a constraint on Canadian policy-making, nor does the Canadian public care that much.

But Golden Dome?  Oh my.  I had been suggesting it was a trap before Trump issued his social media blast that it would cost $61b if Canada didn't become a 51st state.  Why is it a trap?  Because Golden Dome is incredibly expensive and, yes, it is a fantasy.  It won't stop the US or Canada from being devastated in a first strike by China or Russia.  It probably won't be able to stop a North Korean attack either, and that has long been the default excuse for missile defense fans when it becomes obvious that their magical thinking hits reality--that a big nuclear power can always get enough nukes through in a first strike.   

But the trap really snaps when the US demands that Canada pays its fair share of this incredibly expensive, doomed to fail project.  Lo and behold, Trump has randomly decided on $61b as the price tag.  Canada has already committed to spending nearly $40b on modernizing its share of NORAD--mostly the sensors that would detect all kinds of attacks coming mostly from across the Arctic.  This is over a long time frame.  Is the Trump demand of $61b over the long run or a payment up front?  Canada and PM Carney can probably convince Trump that their already planned $38b or so is their contribution, that it is new money (Trump can't do math, isn't very aware of anything anyway) aimed at Golden Dome. An additional $20b?  Canada could say that it will be increasing the investment in these sensors by 50% in the long run--we are quite accustomed to cost overruns on major defense projects (see the ships).  In the long run, Trump will be gone and the promise can be broken.

But if Trump wants Canada to spend fast, to spend $61b now?  That is not going to happen.  That would crowd out all of the other defense spending, the stuff that is really needed right now to have a functional military.  Plus Trump is toxic and Carney came to power by promising to resist Trump.  Carney's first statement on this was: we will do what is in our best interests and we will look into this.  So, he is not going to realign Canadian defence spending to satisfy Trump.

One more thing: imagine a world where Trump gets his magic shield, do you think Canadians would be sure that Trump would use it to protect Canada?  No, not with this 51st state bullshit.

So, the trap has been set--Canada is screwed either way. Comply with Trump and distort the economy and the military spending or refuse to comply and kiss NORAD goodbye.  Waiting out Trump and hoping he gets distracted is probably the best bet.  That, or just lie to him while assuring Canadians (say it in French) that we won't be complying. 

* I try to be consistent and spell it defense when it is about the US, defence when it is about Canada, but when it is US-Canadian defense/defence stuff, I just go wherever my fingers tell me.

If Only the Golden Dome Were Just a Corrupt Grift

 The Golden Dome scheme is going to be such a disaster on so many levels that I am compelled to listicle:

1. It won't work.  That is, there can be no shield blocking all missiles.  So, what's the point?  How many nukes getting through would ruin your day?  The challenge of knocking down hypersonics is huge, and, yes, it is not like the US had solved the problem of shooting down the ballistic missiles of yore.  And, yes, the adversaries would invest in ways to fool the sensors, to evade the counter-fire, or just break the system via cyber attacks or anti-satellite attacks.
2. The good news is that having a partial shield is incredibly destabilizing.  Oh wait, that is bad news.  Deterrence in the nuclear age requires the major players to each have enough forces that can survive a first strike to heaps of   damage to their adversaries.  A partial shield might be handy for blocking someone's second strike--hit the other side first, take out enough of their weapons that their second strike is small enough that the defenses block most of the response.  This strategic situation would encourage each side to pre-empt rather than wait, so that an accident or a false alarm or a crisis might lead to a nuclear war.
3. It will be incredibly expensive.  The estimates are probably way too low, as the adversaries get a vote, and they would be responding imaginatively and intensely.  Which means that the US would then have to invest even more in countering their counter-measures.  Arms races are really, really expensive.  
4. It would be awful for the environment. Lots of space launches burning fuel in the atmosphere, occasional accidents in space creating yet more debris (does that count as an environmental disaster?).
5. It would fuck over Canada in a huge way.  Why?  Because Trump expects Canada to join and then pay how much?  At a time where Canadians detest Trump and find him to be thoroughly unreliable.  Would he protect Canada?  Probably not.  So, Canada is screwed either way.  Participate and spend a shit ton of money on stuff that won't work and won't be used for your defense OR don't participate and face Trump's increased wrath.  Lovely. 
6. What is it with demented Republicans imagining magic space shields? This is the Strategic Defense Initiative all over again.  The billions spent on SDI led to what exactly?  Definitely not a sound nuclear defense system protecting the US.  If you want to argue that it helped spend the Soviet Union into oblivion, who is the Soviet Union now?  And, yes, this President is the same guy who thought stealth planes are as invisible as Wonder Woman's jet.
7. Would divert defense spending from areas where it is needed, like developing local defenses against drones.   

It sucks that there really is not a good solution for replacing mutual assured destruction, but wishing it away through massive defense spending on magical thinking is not the way to go.

 

A Nearly Great Day in American Civil-Military Relations

There have been few good days in American civil-military relations lately, so we ought to celebrate them when they happen.  Yesterday was a very good day.   General Mark Milley, along with SecDef Lloyd Austin and General Ken McKenzie, testified about the end stages of the Afghanistan mission.  While senior military officers and the SecDef testifying should not be all that notable, both my current research project and recent events have made this one worthy not just of a blog post but heaps of news coverage.

First, as I am currently interviewing Canadian parliamentarians about legislative oversight, I can't help but notice a big, big difference: Milley and McKenzie were asked about their advice to the President.  While I don't expect the President to do everything the senior officers advise (in fact, I don't want the President just to do what they say all the time), we can better understand the President's decisions if we know what advice he got.  It also helps us evaluate the military if they give bad advice.  It also allows us to see the different mindsets.  McKenzie said something that all decisions to depart should be conditions-based, which is not how politics works--time matters.  

This reminds me of my time in the Joint Staff twenty years ago when officers tried to ensure that organized crime as a target (a key military task) would be kept out of the various plans for the Balkans since one could never satisfy that condition of eliminating organized crime AND the objective the US military at the time was getting out of the Balkans.

In Canada, the advice the Chief of Defence Staff gives to the Prime Minister is a cabinet confidence.  We can't know the input into the PM's decisions.  Sure, we can hold the PM accountable (sort of) via question period and all that, but if we don't know the inputs, it is hard to evaluate. 

Second, and more obviously, it was a very good day for civil-military relations as Milley made it clear to Senator Tom Cotton (more on that in a minute) that Milley sees his job as giving advice to the President, and, as long as he receives legal orders, Milley's job is to then obey even if the President doesn't follow his advice:

Gen Milley stuff Tom Cotton in a locker today, after Cotton asks him why he didn’t resign over Afghanistan. This is one of the best answers I’ve ever heard a military officer give before Congress. pic.twitter.com/NAqbloa29w

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 28, 2021

Milley made it clear that civilian control of the military is foundational, not something that can be challenged because the President does something he doesn't like.  This is not what Cotton wanted to hear (unless he was mostly setting up a Fox newsbite).

Milley also made it clear he was not acting outside of the chain of command when he told the Chinese military not to sweat things too much--that the US had no intentions to engage in a conflict during Trump's tantrum filled last days. 

Milley clearly has spent much time thinking about civilian control and the norms of civil-military relations since his mistakes in June 2020 during the protests in DC.  He is far from perfect, and his conversations with Bob Woodward could have been either sharper or non-existent.

The only real problem was that Tom Cotton exists.  That he has ridden his military experience to suggest he is an expert and that he is, alas, seen as a candidate for President or SecDef (his name was mentioned when Trump was looking for a SecDef).  Cotton is a fascist wannabe who has a Senate seat--which is not good for American governance.  

On the other hand, I was glad that Elizabeth Warren asked whether things would have been different if the US had left a year later.  I would have liked to have a question asked of McKenzie, who pushed the "2,500 could have stayed longer": ""General, say we kept 2,500 in Afghanistan despite our commitment to leave, do you think the Taliban would have just accepted that?" 

So, not a perfect day, but far better than what we have been used to.  If only these Senators grilled the officers and SecDef when Trump had made the Doha deal last year.

Deterrence 101: Not Applicable to Big Brothers

Lots of talk about "re-establishing deterrence" with Iran right now.  One can argue about whether it was good or bad to hit Suleimani, but this ain't about deterrence.  The shorthand is: deterrence is about threats, not about the actual use of force.  The longhand is the Big Brother problem.

Let me explain (I am not a deterrence theorist, but I play one on TV):
The basics of deterrence are: if you do x, I will harm you and harm you in ways that are greater than the benefits of you doing x AND (here what is often ignored) I will harm you in ways that are worse than either the current status quo or where you think the status quo is shifting.  The US, for instance, sanctioned Japan in response to its aggression (cutting off oil sales, if I remember correctly) so that the situation was worsening for Japan.  This undercut deterrence because the "doing x" seemed to be more attractive, not less, compared to the shifting status quo.

Much of the focus of deterrence is on the credibility of the threat--will you do the costly thing to create harm for the target (which often creates harm for the deterring country)--but there is the other side of the question--what I call the Big Brother problem.*

For deterrence to work, one has to threaten harm if the target does something you don't want AND one has to assure the target that they will not be harmed if they do something you want.  You have to be able credibly to accept yes as an answer.  Can this administration do that, especially from the Iranian standpoint?  Iran agreed to the nuclear deal which limited its nuclear aspirations (we can argue all day about whether it was good enough, whether it complied fully), and then the Trump Administration said it was not good enough and dropped out of it, threatening maximum pressure. 

For the Iranians, it seems like the US could not take "yes, we agree" as an answer.  For the Trumpers, they can say that they cared more about other behavior, and, yes, other behavior--supporting Hezbollah, doing all other kinds of awful stuff--was problematic.  But in a bargaining situation, when you say, nope, we are not going to take yes for an answer, it changes the dynamic quite a bit.  And, yes, to engage in bargaining, you have to think not just about what you are thinking but what the other side is thinking and preferring.  The whole idea of "strategic" is about getting inside the head of the other dog adversary.

Coming back to the shorthand, to use violence is an admission that deterrence is not working.  It is still coercive diplomacy, but a harder, less successful form: compellence.  Compellence is mostly about using force to get others to change their behavior (see these handy lecture notes from Branislav L. Slantchev).  The Kosovo bombing campaign is a successful example, and there is a lot of regret about that one.  That is much harder for all kinds of reasons:

• It tends to require the other side to make a visible change in policy, losing face, whereas deterrence simply requires the other side to keep not doing something.
• It is not just about losing face--the other side had a reason to be doing what they were doing, so altering their preference structure or changing the costs they face is harder than maintaining the status quo.
• I forget the rest....

While Thomas Schelling was not always right, his classic works about coercive diplomacy remind us that threats vary in how easy/complicated they are (compellence is hard), and that restraint and empathy are required.  Given that this administration is utterly devoid of empathy, is not known for restraint, is also devoid of credibility, and is not very coherent or competent, it is hard to imagine how they can make a compellent strategy work.  This is one of the places where the uncertainty engine comes home to roost--that lying about much stuff and flip flopping a lot has consequences for persuading the Iranians not to escalate. 

So, yes, I am reminded of 2003 in that these are the wrong people seemingly planning the wrong war at the wrong time (the time thing is about how all of this undercutting the ISIS fight).  Any pleasant callbacks or analogies that I am forgetting?


*  No, my big brother didn't abuse me.  Just thinking about a well known kind of dynamic.

The State of American Allies in the Age of Trump

I continue to think that the big change in the departure of SecDef Mattis is not that Trump has lost his guardrails but that it has caused others to lose their ability to engage in wishful thinking.  Macron's "brain death" comment might be read as self-serving since France, including under Macron, has generally sought to build up a European replacement to NATO.  However, the basic statement--that there is no one in the US engaging in the thinking that is required to lead NATO--is on target.

How so?  Each NATO summit is preceded by a series of Ministerials--meetings of Foreign Ministers (North Atlantic Council FM or NAC/FM) and Defense Ministers (NAC/D).  In between those, there are plenty of meetings within DC and between those in DC in the Pentagon and State and their counter-parts in Canada and Europe.  These meetings push agendas--items to be considered and ultimately some reaching a state of consensus.  But what happens when there are few people at State and the Pentagon staffing those desks?  What happens when the Secretary of State is more interested in promoting the next apocalypse as part of his vision for the rapture and also focused on Kansan politics?  When the SecDef is distracted by other alliance messes (see below)?  Well, we might have counted on the Brits to game the system in the old days, but Brexit has caused a fair amount of brain damage and distraction in London.  So, the alliance is not moving forwards and figuring out how to adapt to the various changing dynamics, including Turkey becoming more aligned with Russia.

The funny thing is that NATO is, compared to other places, a good news story.  The moves made in the past to create deterrence and deny Putin a fait accompli in the Baltics are in place, are working, and have yet to be undone.  How about elsewhere?

Things are looking awful in East Asia, where folks were worried before about being abandoned and being drawn into a war at the same time (rarely does one get gored by both horns of the alliance dilemma at the same time, but that is Trump's gift).  Now, they are mostly worried about abandonment.

First, let's focus on "diplomacy"

#Breaking: Defense Secretary Esper announces the U.S. and South Korea have decided to postpone the “Combined Flying Training Event,” to facilitate diplomacy with North Korea.

— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) November 17, 2019

What has diplomacy gotten the US and its allies from North Korea?  Kim Jong Un has gotten heaps of recognition and pats on the back, in addition to the US cutting back on exercises in the region, and he has given up what?  Nothing.  Diplomacy is about give and take, and thus far KJU has taken and not given, and Mr. Art of the Deal has given and not taken.

Second, let's focus on "burden-sharing."  Trump's focus on all allies has been on getting paid, not on how the allies are helping the US pursue its interests.  Because as we know from Ukraine, what matters is Trump's interests, not America's.  The latest salvo is Trump demanding Japan and South Korea pay 4x or 5x more than they are currently paying for the basing of US troops.  As a reminder, these troops are not there because of American altruism but because of American interests:

1. Conflict in these regions would be bad for the US economy in a huge way
2. Keeping Europe and East Asia free has long been seen as important for American security--also, better to prevent a war than have to enter one halfway through, a lesson learned after a couple of world wars.
3.  If the US wants to contain China, these bases and these countries are damned handy.  Threatening to pull out unless these countries pay up, protection-racket style, is good for China, bad for the US. 

Back in 2016, one reason I got the election wrong is that it was so obvious that Trump would be bad for US alliances, and I thought there were enough Republicans who cared about US national security that it would tip the balance.  I was wrong about that.  NeverTrumpers may be a thing, but they are small and not a relevant voting bloc.  The question is now the 2020 election because the damage to American alliances is severe but may be somewhat (not entirely) reversible.  After eight years of Trump?  Not so much.

The New Syrian Mission: Let's Enumerate the Stupidity

This morning, twitter got distracted from the Nationals winning the World Series (which is what happens when the crowd boos Trump) by the announcement that the armored unit going to Syria is a National Guard unit. The basic conversation is between those saying WTF to those saying it is normal since the NG and Reserves have been rotating units to be the one squatting Kuwait, and they are the closest to the area.  Of course, this simply invokes the classic question of just because you can do something does not mean you should do it.

So, I recalled that when I was on the Joint Staff in 2001-2002, the first Reserve unit had just been deployed to Bosnia, and there was much reluctance to do the same in Kosovo since things were far less settled there.  Of course, the next 15 years of forever wars meant that the US had to send National Guard and Reserve units to Iraq and Afghanistan, but as wise folks pointed out, our current OPTEMPO (pace of operations) is not so high that we need to use reservists for this kind of stuff.

I said this was the seventh dumbest thing about this mission, so let's see if I can find six dumber aspects

1. Most obviously, what is the mission here?  Why is the US deploying forces, particularly an armored unit to Syria?  What are the rules of engagement?  Who is to be engaged?
2. To protect oil fields?  That is the claim, but that is just how the military folks manipulated Trump, as Syria's oil fields are hardly consequential in the grand scheme of things.
3. That the military rolled Trump on this is also incredibly dumb.  It is problematic from a civ-mil perspective (the civilians should be controlling the military, not the other way around).  And if one is going to break the norms, do it for something that is really important, like not being used for domestic grand-standing (border troops?), not for refusing to leave an ill-conceived mission.
4. What is the authority to do this?  The Authorization to Use Military Force from after 9/11 was not for protecting oil fields.
5. What are the requirements to make this work?  Will the US need to threaten to shoot down Russian planes if they get too close?  There is a real risk of escalation here that no one seems to be thinking about.
6. Is anyone in Congress asking these questions and related ones?  Any oversight deficit here is incredibly dumb since this is exactly why Congress has a role in asking pesky questions of the President, his Defense Secretary, and the senior officers.  
7. Using reservists for such a high risk, cockamamie mission.

Did I cheat?  Did I miss any?

Maybe Obama was overly risk-averse, but I still think the mantra of "Don't do stupid shit!" is a good one.  Obviously, it has been forgotten not just by this White House but also by this Pentagon.

Syria Retrospective

The invasion of Syria by Turkey is making some folks look backwards and blame Obama for not doing more.  And I have put forth a challenge on twitter: what exactly could Obama have done?

I ruled out bombing, as hitting Assad directly is harder than folks think.  And it got harder still after the Russians got more involved.  Oh, and it would be the US mostly alone since David Cameron could not get a vote through his parliament.  And as Ben Dennison reminded me, NATO was out of bombs after Libya.

I ruled out a massive intervention, as the US was still winding down Iraq and was still stuck in Afghanistan, and the army was near the breaking point after nearly a decade of two wars.  And, as those two wars remind us, once you are in, how do you get out?  Especially with the Russians, Iran, and Hezzbollah seriously involved?

I ruled out safe havens as they are neither safe nor havens (thanks Doug Benson, as I am stealing your take on Safe House).  Srebrenica anyone?  To create a safe haven requires an invasion of one kind or another, so that a space is created in which people can gather (which kind of makes them targets).  And that space has to be large enough that Assad's artillery would have been far enough away that it would not be able to hit the people in the safe haven.  Or have enough arty in place to counter-battery fire to deter such stuff.  Again, safe havens require war. 

As a scholar of international relations, I simply do not have any ideas of what the intervention could have looked like that was politically feasible.  Remember, this was with a very hostile Congress that was not willing to vote for a new authorization and budgets fights were constantly risking the closure of the government. 

The US has essentially tried everything--doing a lot (Iraq, Afghanistan), doing something (Libya), doing nothing (Syria)--which should tell us both about the limits of American power and how hard it is to intervene in civil wars.  Which is why I repeat my plea for some humility.  These things are really hard, that mistakes are inevitable (we rely on unreliable proxies on a regular basis because ... that is often all there is), they are very expensive, and there is no easy way to leave. 

The other regret folks have is Obama pulling US troops out of Iraq (something Bush had agreed to), but that points to the big problem--once you get in, it is hard to leave.  Rumsfeld wanted Afghanistan to be "break the Taliban and leave" situation, and he expected to hand over Iraq to some random Iraqi exiles (who happened to have been Iranian agents) and have the US forces leave quickly.  Obama understood that entering Syria meant staying for the long term, I believe.  And that was problematic. 

Sure, now it seems like intervening would have prevented the flow of millions of refugees to Europe, which has not helped Europe very much (although I still blame much of the problems European democracies have with the embracing of austerity measures after the 2008 crisis).  But if the US had intervened forcefully (again, how?), would Syrians have stuck around?  The US way of war does create a lot of collateral damage (civilian casualties), so I still think there would have been refugee flows.

Anyhow, again, the crowd of MOAR needs to tell us what more would have looked like and how it was politically feasible.  Which is kind of like the anti-JCPOA crowd--tell us another way to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons that Iran would have agreed to.  And don't tell me some bombing would have done the trick. Because bombing is wildly overrated.

So, instead of learning to blame Obama, I prefer to learn something else: humility.

Civil-Military Relations After Afghanistan

Jim Golby and Peter Feaver have a super-interesting piece at the Atlantic on what a deal with the Taliban might mean for US civil-military relations.  They were smart enough to ask questions in an experimental fashion this summer about attitudes about a potential end to the Afghanistan war--victory or defeat.  The timing is fantastic, as the US is currently working on a deal with the Taliban.  That deal may be quite problematic--a post for another day--so their survey is really quite prescient by asking different people similar questions but with additional info about a potential victory or defeat in Afghanistan.  For application to the current situation, one can imagine the deal going in either direction, selling out the Afghans to the Taliban in exchange for the US getting out or getting a peace deal with the Taliban share power with the Afghans we have supported and denying the place as a base for terrorism.

The basic findings are straightforward

• Americans doesn't see the Afghanistan war as a mistake (unlike the Iraq war)
• They want it to end.  Tis a forever war, and Americans don't like that.
• Support for withdrawal among civilians is pretty consistent, but among veterans, it matters whether the troops are coming home in victory or defeat, with support for withdrawal declining if it is in defeat.

The big punchline is that leaving in defeat has different impacts on civilian and veteran attitudes about the military and civilian leaders.  That a defeat would deepen the divide between civilians and military folks (vets and those in service).  In the experiments:

• veterans tended to give civilian leaders credit for a victory
• nonveteran civilians tended to give military leaders credit for a victory
• veterans tended to blame civilian leaders for a defeat
• nonveteran civilians tended to blame military leaders for a defeat.

Note the pattern--the veterans give more of the responsibility for victory or defeat to civilians, and civilians tend to give more of the credit/burden to the military. In either victory or defeat, there would be divisions about who gets credit or blame.  This opens up an interesting research agenda--why do military folks think the civvies are responsible and vice versa?  This article does not explore that finding, but perhaps their forthcoming book does. 

Of course, I had to raise a question about one key aspect: that 75% of civilians and 90% of the veterans expressed confidence in the military, sans experiment--is this too high?  In most democracies these days, the citizens have more confidence in the armed forces than other institutions, and this makes some sense.  Unlike most other institutions, such as the legislature, the executive, the courts increasingly, the media, the armed forces are not seen as partisan.  That is a good thing.  But the whole "support our troops" mantra may cause folks to be less critical of the armed forces than they should be. 

While much of the blame for the forever wars rightfully should go to the civilians that put the militaries into difficult spots, the various armed forces have not always performed brilliantly.  We saw the US military subvert the intent of the President who wanted population-centric war while the Marines went to Helmand instead.  We saw a German colonel order an airstrike despite not having eyes on the ground, which led to more than a hundred Afghan civilians getting killed.  Not one, but two prison breaks took place while the Canadians were in Kandahar.  I can go on, but the major point is this: the armed forces of the US and its allies have had mixed success in the forever wars.  Maybe we should not be quite as confidence in their competence?  Or at least, maybe we should be asking questions, even if the answers ultimately lead to a clearer understanding of how outstanding they were. 


PS  I have a quibble--they state that Obama didn't talk about Afghanistan.  They cite a previous Feaver piece to support that, but that piece has no numbers to show Obama talked more or less about Afghanistan than Bush did, especially Bush after 2005.  I did count Harper talking about Afghanistan over time, which showed some interesting patterns in Adapting in the Dust.

Pardoning War Criminals is Criminal

Trump has decided to pardon not just one war criminal but perhaps many.  This is awful for many, many reasons.  I have written elsewhere (forthcoming?) about the impact on allies--not good.  Here, I just want to focus on the basics.  That barbarity happens in war, but it is not something you want to encourage.

War does indeed inflame the passions, giving rise to opportunities and pressures to do things that are truly horrible.  It might seem strange to say that it is ok to kill but not that way or not right now or not this person, but we have long had laws of war that defined many behaviors as criminal.  Aside from the morality of this stuff, these laws are also important for operating armed forces.  To have the many soldiers, marines, sailors and aviators do what is expected, they must face the possibility of being punished for behaving in undesirable ways.  That is what is meant by order and discipline being threatened by Trump's pardons--that American troops will not face consequences for disobeying lawful orders, at least in the judicial system, and this will create a permissive environment for those in the armed forces to do bad things.

Yes, some do bad things already--some American troops shot prisoners of war in cold blood even in the Good War while others raped their away across Europe, that massacres happened in Vietnam, and elsewhere.  And, yes, many American servicewomen and men will be restrained by their own moral code and by the disapproval of their peers.  BUT the American president is saying that it is ok to engage in war crimes.  Just like his use of racism and xenophobia in his speeches make it easier for those to come out and be racist and hateful in public and engage in violence against those targeted by the President, Trump's pardoning of war criminals will encourage some troops to engage in horrible acts. 

We should be trying to reduce, not increase, the likelihood that US troops will engage in awful behavior.  Trump, well, that's not what he does.  He makes it possible for people to do bad things.  His cabinet has been given the green light to engage in corruption.  His immigration officials, from John Kelly to Kirstjen Nielsen to whoever's next, have been given the greenlight to abuse immigrants.  Now, the US armed forces are being given the green light to engage in war crimes.

What will the senior military leadership do now?  Will they condone this massive shift in what is expected from their troops?  Will they worry about discipline?  Will they speak out against this?

Yes, this deepens the crisis we have in civilian-military relations in several ways:

1. The US military leadership may have to speak out against the President on this--which is not good.
2. The US military leadership may not speak out on this, in which case they will be seen by many civilians as being complicit.  Not good.
3. It may cause many within the US military who care a great deal about obeying the laws of war to have contempt for their president. Not good.  
4. Those thinking of joining the military might think twice because they may not want to be in a position where they are ordered to commit war crimes, which is now easier to imagine.  Not good.

Once again, Trump does unnecessary damage to American institutions and interests.  Remember that one reason why the US military supports the laws of war is so that their troops are not abused when taken prisoner.  Yes, some have faced such abuses anyway, but reciprocity is a thing.  Eroding these important restrictions on the conduct of war is not in US interests.  It may play well on Fox News, but it will not play well within much of the US military or the armed forces of those we fight alongside.

Trump swore an oath to faithfully execute the laws of the US.  Abusing the pardon power would seem to be a violation of this and would be, yes, an impeachable offense, would it not?

Foreign Relations vs Defense: A Quick Look at Some Interesting Patterns of Overseers

I saw this tweet

Interesting profile of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen - the only woman on the 22-member Senate Foreign Relations Committee https://t.co/xQnlPe2J7y

— Robbie Gramer (@RobbieGramer) February 25, 2019

and my first response was to consider the Senate Armed Services Committee:
 
 Nine women are on the SASC.  So, it clear is not that national security ain't too cool for women or women are too cool for international relations.  The same pattern, although less extreme applies in the House of Representatives with six women on the Foreign Relations committee and fifteen on the Armed Services committee.

Here's a quick couple of guesses:
1)  Follow the money.  DoD has a huge budget AND this committee (along the House Armed Services Committee) can move money in the budget (unlike damn near every democracy I am studying right now), and there are big electoral benefits to increasing defense spending in one's state and protecting the existing bases in one's state.
2) If one has Presidential aspirations, having experience on the Senate Foreign Relations may have been seen in the past as key to developing one's credentials (Obama, HRC), maybe one consequence of our forever wars is that it may be more important these days to be conversant on defense than on foreign policy (not great).  Notice Warren and Gillibrand choosing to be here and not on SFRC.
3) Who does the media cover?  Related to 1 and 2, one is more likely to be televised overseeing DoD and scrubbing the Acting Secretary of Defense and asking Generals/Admirals to contradict the President than asking State flunkies stuff.

The key assumption behind all of this is that committee service is a drain of time and effort and does not tend to get much votes back home, so Senators try to be strategic.  How much of a role does the party have in assigning people versus Senators choosing?  That is for one of my co-authors to figure out, but I do think this pattern is interesting--that women get assigned/prefer to be on the harder side of security.  Given that female Senators are still relatively scarce, that so many are on SASC and so few on SFRC, it says something about what we value these days.  Unless one thinks that serving on the Armed Services Committee is a punishment or lesser service, which it is most clearly not.

Anyhow, I am sure scholars will be pondering this pattern and others like it.

Pentagon Explainer: A Building With Many Pieces

Yesterday, twitter got fussed that the "Pentagon Chief of Staff" resigned his position.  This was very confusing--there is no such position.  Did this story refer to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dunford?  No, it referred to retired Rear Admiral Kevin Sweeney who served as the chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense.  People seemed to think this post is a big deal, that it might mean a hole in the chain of command.  Nope.  It is just the guy who runs the SecDef's office, who was chosen by Mattis because he was a friend and respected colleague of Mattis. 

So, let me clear some brush here, as others are doing so.  The first thing to understand about the Pentagon is that it is not nearly as united or coherent as people think.  The building itself consists of five rings that are connected to each other and five wedges.  When they renovated the building--both before and after 9/11, they did that one wedge at a time.  The only truly Pentagon stuff are the souvenirs:

This architecture is nicely symbolic as there are no Pentagon posts except perhaps for Pentagon journalists.  Otherwise, if one works in the Pentagon, one belongs (and I do mean belongs) to either:

• the Office of the Secretary of Defense--those individuals, mostly civilian with some military folks sprinkled in, who serve under the SecDef to advise him (no women SecDefs yet), to execute the non-military decisions, etc.
• the Joint Staff--those individuals, mostly military with some civilians sprinkled in, who serve under the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who advise the Chairman and do heaps of coordination between the various pieces of the armed forces and the rest of the world.  This is where I served on a fellowship way back in 2001-2.  I was placed there because I "wanted to see the sausage get made" and the Joint Staff is a nexus between military and civilian words.
• the Army Staff--those individuals, mostly military, some civilian, who serve under the Army Chief of Staff, to do the advising, implementing, yada, yada
• the Navy Staff--those serving under the Chief of Naval Operations, yada, yada, including Marines.
• the Air Force Staff--those serving under the Air Force Chief of Staff.

I don't know where the Coast Guard fits since it is both in the Pentagon and within DHS, and the Reserves have some staff somewhere.  But let us ignore those for a moment--note the five pieces.  Who says that seven is the most magical number when everything in Arlington is divided into five?

Anyhow, the point here is that there is no Pentagon job.  Sometimes, there might be a Pentagon position--when the Joint Staff and the OSD agree on something.  That may have been common in the past, but was certainly an exception in my year as Rummy's people and the Joint Staff rarely agreed on stuff.  Maybe the past two years we have seen building positions, as Marines (ex or otherwise) have led both sides.

All this points to a larger dynamic--we tend to freak out too easily these days.  It is hard to tell which changes, which moves are normal and which are abnormal since Trump is destroying most norms and is causing chaos on daily (sometimes hourly) basis.

When it comes to the Pentagon, just keep in mind that it is a strange place with a variety of processes and procedures and acronyms that most people are unfamiliar with.  The saner experts (the Bombshell women are a good group of such folks) will let us know whether something is normal or offsides.  Or in other words, rather than hitting the panic button, ask yourself this:

 Even in the age of Trump, the answer is often no, not yet.

Mattis and Then What?

I have been criticizing the choice of Jim Mattis for SecDef since he was chosen.  I thought it was bad for civilian control of the military to have someone so recently retired from the armed forces to serve as primary overseer of the US military, especially with Congress doing a lousy job of late doing its job in this area.  Yes, he was more of an adult than anyone else, but that is why I called it the tyranny of low expectations--that with all the rest of Trump's choices sucking so very much, folks were enthused to accept a choice that, while bad for civilian control, would be better than what could have been.  And now we will see how right these folks may have been, sigh, as Tom Cotton or someone equally awful will now get the second most important position in the chain of command.

To be clear, Mattis's impact was always overrated.  Trump could and did ignore his advice and overruled him repeatedly.  People put a lot of weight on Mattis having much influence but only because of wishful thinking.  When Mattis would travel to Europe to reassure the folks there that the US would show up in a crisis, they should not have believed him since Trump is the key actor in whether the US supports or blocks the invoking of Article V of the NATO treaty--an attack upon one equals an attack upon is not automatic.

Trump decided to pull out troops out of Syria over Mattis's objections.  His next moves in Afghanistan were likely over Mattis's objections. Which means that Mattis objecting is not a huge impediment.  Mattis also didn't stop Trump from to kicking out/keeping out immigrants and trans people out of the armed forces.  The courts have played a much greater role.

As a SecDef, he was a general.  He didn't do many briefings, and the Pentagon restricted info.  So much so that when folks wondered this week what was achieved in Syria, there was little  news to build upon--keeping things quiet also meant keeping things confusing.  While I am a fan of the Joint Staff since they socialized me so very well in 2001-2002, ceding heaps of policy influence to them was probably not a great thing.  Which wars has the US de-escalated? Which wars have escalated?  Hint: most did the latter with more bombs dropped on Afghanistan the past two years and more civilian casualties.  While the Niger mess could have happened under any government, it does seem that delegating down has created a permissive environment for folks to push the limits and do more than they were supposed to, creating significant risks.

Yet Mattis will be missed by the example he set.  At the cabinet meeting where all of the secretaries offered up their compliments/sucking up to Trump, Mattis stood out by not doing so.  That did matter.  His resignation letter was quite clear on that score as well as on valuing allies, so he sent a clear message.

Will we miss Mattis?  Sure, but he was overrated.  I thought the Europeans lost their wishful thinking about his role last summer at the NATO summit.  Now, Americans and others are losing their illusions about his ability to restrain Trump.  What this really signals is that Trump is more willing than ever to rely on his "gut" than on the experts.  It was always thus, but more so now.  And that is not good, since Trump's instincts are always, always awful.  I did argue that leaving Syria was not entirely bad--that forever wars have to end and declaring defeat (calling it victory) is necessary.  Mattis was never going to stop Trump from doing something truly awful--he was only going to be resigning in protest.  And now we are here.

Folks have floated a bunch of names to replace Mattis, and they are all very bad.  The only hope we have is, alas, shirking.  DoD is the hardest agency to run, and the military is very good at slow rolling and doing other things to avoid doing what the civilians want.  We will see more of that, and we will see a sharper civ-mil divide if the new SecDef and the new people brought into the Office of Secretary of Defense try to impose their will on the US armed forces.  Which means we will be rooting for the military to avoid or deny civilian control--which is really bad.

So, the tyranny of low expectations has become more tyrannical.  And inevitable given that Mattis could not stop Trump from being Trump. 

US and Syria: WTF?

So, Trump is now pulling US troops out of Syria.  Yeah, the US had something like 2k troops there.  To do what?  Ah, there's the rub.  I will explain below as I respond to those who responded to my hottake:

My basic stance on Syria:
a) not all wars should be forever, so pulling troops out can be ok
b) I am squeamish about any Trump decision because he is an idiot
c) doing stuff that pleases Turkey and Russia is almost never good
d) but damn it, A.

1/2

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) December 19, 2018

Before responding to those who responded to this, why this take?  For several reasons, but most importantly, for the US to stay in some spot, there should be, like, an argument for that.  That is, the default should not be "stay" but go.  There should be a positive reason--that the troops are doing something that is important.  Even if they are not making progress, it might be ok to stay--holding the line, keeping an important commitment, etc can be reasonable reasons to stay.  I am not thrilled with the Afghanistan forever war, but it is easier to make claims about the virtues of sticking around.  The government there is one that the US and its friends have built and supported, that the government's policies may not be perfect but are better than what they would be without an American presence, that it gives the US some influence over the terms of the eventual negotiated settlement (that the presence of US troops makes far more likely).

In this US, we get the blob, the DC consensus, arguing folks need to stay (and do more, whatever more is) because they have intellectual investments in US intervention or they want to avoid being blamed when shit goes badly after we left (see Obama).  In Canada, I am convinced that it still has troops in Iraq mostly to defend the Liberals from the opposition accusing the Liberals of cutting and running (which is rich, given the Conservatives pulled Canada out of Kandahar three years before everyone else pulled out).  Again, the forever war machine is all about fear--of being blamed.

Ok, onto the questions/criticisms:

I agree that we need to assess what we are doing in Syria, but pulling out and letting Russia "win" seems very problematic to me.

— Sara Mitchell (@sbmitche) December 19, 2018

Sara is a pal and is super-smart, so I wade into twitter argument with her warily.  But, um, haven't the Russians already won?  That is, if their goal was to keep Assad in place, they have won.  If the joint goal is to reduce ISIS to an insurgency rather than a quasi-state, haven't we all won?

Exactly. I hear so much talk about how we care about the broader Iranian threat. But pulling out of Syria & withdrawing support from Yemen is not sending signals about credible US resolve in the Middle East. T's policies in the region are a joke/mess.

— Sara Mitchell (@sbmitche) December 19, 2018

My response:

A) The Iranian threat is overplayed
B) The Iranian threat is overplayed
C) What about the Saudi threat?
D) Having a reputation for resolve may be overrated.
E) If we have no strategy, the troops should be home where they are cheaper/safer.
F) The Iranian threat is overplayed.

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) December 19, 2018

Iran matters, Saudi Arabia matters, but what does withdrawal from Syria do to all of this?  My basic answer is not much.

Onto another smart scholar, one who I have never met but has become a regular twitter correspondent over the course of 2018:

Questions to ask re @smsaideman multiple choice:

Can doing the correct thing for the wrong reasons end well?

Which carries more weight in international relations, action or "message"? https://t.co/2s2kz3kBdc

— Dr. J. Sargent Russell (@jsargentr) December 19, 2018

Regarding the first question, sure, why not?  If it is an independent action--that it does not teach the doer to repeat doing similar things for the wrong reasons.  If the action does good or if it does not do much harm.  I am tempted to summon the evil god of Equifinality--that there are multiple causal pathways to an action--and what matters most is the outcome.

Which gets to the second question--what matters more--actions or messages?  Well, since I tend to drink from the waters of confirmation bias, I would argue that messages will always be read by the reader in ways that confirm their previous views, so the precedent set by the US leaving a place because the President is an ignoramus will be minimal.  Actions?  They matter although they get read in ways that confirm people's biases as well, but they have budgetary impacts (troops based in US are cheaper than in Syria) and impacts on people's lives (the soldiers will not be in harm's way at home).  What impact do the troops have in Syria?  Let me know what that is before suggesting that they stick around.

It seems like it'd be difficult for right actions for the wrong reasons to end well, as the actions would be divorced from the "right" end state.

— Herr Redlegmeister (@MikeTheRedleg) December 19, 2018

Again, what is the right end state?  A democratic Syria?  Two thousand troops are not going to get us there.  Assad gone?  Again, nope.  Save the Kurds from the Turks?  Hmmm, maybe, but not really an endstate.  Deny Russia an ally in the region?  See Assad sticking around.

Some other dynamics here that haven't been brought up:

• This is something Trump has wanted to do for some time, but he got slow-rolled by the Pentagon which now has to develop quickly policies to figure this out.  Folks have cheered this on, but, well, that sucks for civilian control of the military.  Many have been rooting for lots of shirking lately, and that ain't great.  So, back to Dr. J: which matters more--stopping a US departure or respecting the chain of command?
• Holy holes in government, Batman!!!  Apparently, there was a State Department press release about the long term US commitment to Syria.  Ooops.

Anyhow, these are tough questions and Syria is the land of bad policy options.  But sticking around to avoid making hard decisions is just a way to waste money and risk the lives of American troops unless there is a good reason to stick around.

A General View About Generals

I believe Kori Schake wrote that one benefit of Trump appointing so many retired (and one active) general to key positions in the administration is that it might cause the public to be a bit more critical of American military leadership--that they will no longer idealize military leaders.  Have we gotten there yet?

With John Kelly finally on his way out, maybe, some folks are saying how he and his reputation have been diminished by being a part of the Trump administration.  Because of how much awful stuff has happened since Kelly became Chief of Staff, people are forgetting what an enthusiastic xenophobe he was as head of Department of Homeland Security.  Remember how ICE and CBP behaved when the Muslim ban was originally instituted?  Yeah, that is on Kelly.  When Kelly was appointed, my friends in the national security community who knew of Kelly's reputation as a general were not pleased.  Kelly might have had more opportunities to do awful things as part of a Trump Administration, but he was picked because he was awful.

Flynn?  The Obama Administration got rid of Flynn because he was and is very, very flawed. It is not as if Flynn showed up in Trump world and was corrupted. No, he was corrupt (an agent of two governments) before he was named National Security Adviser.

HR McMaster was more widely respected, although I had heard from folks inside DC that he was not only poorly prepared to operate in the beltway but tended to have such strong beliefs about things that he would word-smith documents that disagreed with his point of view.

Mattis?  People still pour lots of wishful thinking into the SecDef, hoping that he will protect the country and the world from Trump's instincts.  Maybe he has, but he has also acted much less like a SecDef and much more like a Marine General--minimizing press access and delegating way too much power to the commanders.  One example of the latter: the US has dropped more bombs on Afghanistan in the past year apparently than in any other year since 2008 (thanks Bombshell podcast).  One of the truisms about the US military--they don't want to fight any new wars but want to escalate any war they are currently in--seems to be playing out.

People might think that the up-or-out competitive process within the US armed forces leads to the best people becoming generals and admirals.  That depends on whether that competitive process rewards functional or dysfunctional behavior and thinking.  Does kick down, kiss up strategy work?  If so, then you might just get very flawed senior leadership.  I don't think all generals and admirals are awful.  I don't think all generals and admirals are wonderful.  I think most are decent human beings, but indecent ones (Kelly, Flynn) are perhaps not as unique as people think. 

The question now is whether Americans will become more critical of their military leadership. What I mean by critical is to be open-minded and willing to assess the behavior and outcomes, rather than blindly accepting anyone with stars on their shoulders as brilliant and wise.  To be fair, the US military has been asked to do things that they do poorly--build governments and nations.  But the stuff they are supposed to do well--sail without running into other ships, for instance--is not so hot these days.  I can't blame American military leadership for all of the problems associated with the Forever Wars, but they do have some responsibility.  All I ask is that we as citizens take some responsibility, too, by taking seriously what each of these senior officers adds and/or subtracts. 

Memorial Day 2018

It has been about two years since I visited Arlington National Cemetery, and I have not visited any American memorials since then.  However, I did go to Seoul where the South Koreans mark not just their own dead but those who fought beside them long ago.

These panels and the day itself have a bit more meaning this year with a new war on the peninsula a bit more likely than a few years ago and with the US involved in so many wars.

Stories about Arlington filling up and new policies being developed so that not all vets can be buried there are more than just ironic--they are symbolic of America's forever wars.  Sure, the reality has more to do with the past wars and large militaries, but, at this moment in time, I can't help but notice that America is receiving war dead from multiple battlefields, including new ones such as Niger as well as old ones (Iraq, Afghanistan).  

On days like today, I feel like we need to embrace our humility--that the use of force is of questionable utility, that we can't accomplish as much as we'd like. So, perhaps we ought to be more cautious about deploying the armed forces.  How about we make sure that what our soldiers, sailors, marines, and aviators are doing are worth the risks they face and the damage they and their families incur?

The SecDef and US Civil-Military Relations

One of the things that drove me crazy during the first part of the Obama Administration was the complaint that he mismanaged American civil-military relations--the relationship between the government and the US armed forces.  Why did it drive me crazy?  Because Robert Gates tended to get little blame even though the most important job a Secretary of Defense has is managing this relationship.  While the President is the commander-in-chief, the Secretary of Defense is the one whose day job involves civilian control of the military.

What does that mean?  It means conveying not just the commands but the intent and the preferences of the President to the military AND to be the principal adviser on defense matters, along with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to the President. The Office of the Secretary of Defense is the primary overseer of the US military (Congress is a key overseer, but, again, not their focus), meeting with the military, especially the Joint Staff and those at the various combatant commands, every day to develop, implement and monitor policy. In doing so, OSD and its boss, the SecDef, deal with the friction that comes with having two distinct worlds collide every single day.

Why talk about this today?  Because this story seems to be more on Mattis than on Trump: that the Joint Chiefs were not briefed about the new transgender policy.  Sure, when Trump tweeted out last summer, that is on Trump.  But this policy stance?   The waffle or denial of responsibility in this article is that the Chiefs had reps on the panel advising Mattis, so they knew what might be in the memo.  Really?  No, not good enough.  No senior official likes to be surprised--providing situational awareness is something that one does to those immediately above you and, yes, to those below you who are key actors.

Mattis should have alerted the Chiefs, even if he was just giving advice and not giving Trump a clear policy to ratify (not sure which is the case) precisely because we have had a year of watching Trump, and Mattis should know by now.

I tended to overestimate Robert Gates since his predecessor was so very crappy (the tyranny of low expectations at work).  That changed when I realized he had failed to keep the military in line when they implemented Obama's surge--the Marines went to the wrong place if one wants to do population-centric warfare: Kandahar, not Helmand.  I read Gates's bio, and found it very frustrating as he blamed Obama much of the time and took responsibility for the state of civ-mil in only a page or two.

Well, I have been skeptical of Mattis since he was appointed because:
 (a) I don't think it is appropriate to have very recently retired generals serve as SecDef--they aren't civvie enough for me.  A lifetime in uniform creates a military mindset.  A few years out of uniform doesn't change that much.  So, Mattis still says things that are inappropriate for a SecDef "I am not kept awake at night by what others do, I keep others awake at night," he refused to engage the media the way past SecDefs have--which might be good at avoiding trouble with Trump but is bad for civilian control of the military.
(b) the whole cult of personality around this "warrior-monk" made me nervous.  It is either that or the aforementioned tyranny of low expectations that has allowed Mattis to go largely uncriticized.

So, yeah, Mattis is the only adult, he's the only restraint, he does seem opposed to a  new Korean war.  Woot! But he is also doing some damage to the norms governing civilian control of the military.  It may be worth it if he manages to steer Trump away from new wars BUT it is still a price we are paying now and will pay in the future.