Arms and influence

Small is beautiful...but still small

For years, I've been skeptical about the preponderance of "big ticket items" in the US military budget, such as carriers and main battle tanks. Sure, the United States needs some of them...But how many, really? Especially when they contributed very little to the "little wars" the US was actually fighting? With the end of the Cold War, the justification collapsed even further.

Still, there are limits. William Lind cross the line in this recent post (and thanks to The Strategist for the pointer). In the 1990s, the "peace dividend" sparked a discussion about shrinking the military budget. Now, the catalyst is the ailments of the American economy. Lind's recommends grand strategic adjustments to this new situation:

First, adopt a defensive rather than an offensive grand strategy. America followed a defensive grand strategy through most of her history. We only went to war if someone attacked us. That defensive grand strategy kept defense costs down and allowed our economy to prosper. We do not have to be party to every quarrel in the world.

Unfortunately, the days of "we'll keep the sword sheathed unless we're attacked" are long over...If they ever existed in the first place. I'll assume for the moment that Lind is describing the United States before Pearl Harbor--before WWII made Americans into energetic internationalists.

The pre-WWII United States was hardly pacific. The embargo on Japan that triggered the Pearl Harbor raid might not have been a military action, but it was hardly isolationist. The US objected to Japanese imperialism in China and Korea--hardly a policy based strictly on direct threats to the United States. In fact, it was a preface of American internationalism to come. The United States was worried about markets and resources in East Asia; the "special relationship" made it easier for the United States to respond to Japanese moves against these markets and resources.

Decades earlier, the United States had sent expeditionary forces to China. During the Boxer Rebellion, the United States fought alongside Europeans and Japanese to maintain their collective grip on China. And China was hardly the only place where the United States was willing to send its armed forces. While Americans might not have been part of the race for Africa, they did defend their great power supremacy in the Western Hemisphere from both external and internal threats. Nicaragua, Haiti, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Panama...While these might not have been major wars, they were hardly defensive.

Therefore, WWII wasn't the first time that Americans were willing to use force to defend interests outside the territorial United States. American isolationism slowed down the grand strategic logic that led countries like Britain to see their interests threatened in every corner of the world (if we're worried about India, we have to be worried about Afghanistan...). However, the pull persisted, in spite of recessions and depressions.

Second, scrap virtually all the big ticket weapons programs such as new fighter-bombers, more Aegis ships, and the Army’s Rube Goldbergian Future Combat System. They are irrelevant to where war is going.

No argument here, as long as there's an actual review, not a stampede. The US still needs to project power in a lot of places, if not everywhere. If some new weapons systems or upgrades to existing ones can help, let's still pursue them.

Third, as we cut, preserve combat units. That means, above all, Army and Marine Corps infantry battalions. Cut the vast superstructure above those battalions, but keep the battalions. Infantry battalions are what we need most for Fourth Generation wars, which we should do our utmost to avoid but which we will sometimes be drawn into, even with a defensive grand strategy.

This may be the bitterest pill of all for the services to swallow. The Air Force and Navy would have to accept the primacy of ground forces. The Army would have to reform its structure and culture even further from the centrality of the divisional organization. Giving up a new weapons might be annoying; changing the way the Army operates will be agonizing.

In the Navy, keep the submarines. Submarines are today’s and tomorrow’s capital ships, and geography dictates we must remain a maritime power. Keep the carriers, too, though there is little need to build more of them. Carriers are big, empty boxes, which can carry many things besides aircraft. Mothball most of the cruisers and destroyers. Build lots of small, cheap ships useful for controlling coastal and inland waters, and create strategically mobile and sustainable “packages” of such ships. Being able to control waters around and within stateless regions can be important in 4GW.

Now we're in the outskirts of Cloud Cuckoo-land. Submarines can't handle all the missions that missile-armed surface ships or carrier-based aircraft perform. Sure, we might be fighting more little wars than big ones, but we do need, on occasion, to fight something like Operation DESERT STORM, threaten to use air and missile strikes to achieve foreign policy goals. Plus, a littoral navy that Lind is describing can't deploy across the globe--they're littoral.

I'm all for reducing the overall size of the Navy, but a Navy of submarines and modernized PT boats couldn't handle all the critical missions.

Fighter-bombers are largely useless in Fourth Generation wars, where their main role is to create collateral damage that benefits our enemies. Keep the air transport squadrons and the A-10s, and move them all to the Air National Guard, which flies and maintains aircraft as well as or better than the regular Air Force at a fraction of the cost. Reduce the regular Air Force to strategic nuclear forces and a training base.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to downtown Cloud Cuckoo-Land. Not every war the United States will fight will be a counterinsurgency war. People killed by American bombs in a conventional war might still appear on the evening news, often as a tool of "fourth generation war" used against us. But is this an argument for not fighting conventional wars, in which bombers and fighter-bombers play an important role?

If I have to shoot down enemy fighters, or deliver a "bunker-busting" payload against a highly reinforced enemy HQ, I'd rather not depend on A-10s, thank you. And if we're giving the A-10s to someone, why not the Army, to improve close air support coordination and better protect their budget?

There's a lot of merit in some of Lind's recommendations, and we've had decades of inattention to the real needs of fighting wars that were smaller and wholly unlike the hypothetical NATO/Warsaw Pact clash over Central Europe. However, you can go too far in the other direction.

Spokesmodel update

According to her bio on Wikipedia, Dana Perrino--who finds military affairs baffling, and didn't know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was--majored in political science and communications at Colorado State University-Pueblo. No information about her GPA is available.

(P.S. A minor semantic point, but the United States does not launch a destroyer into a war zone.)

Meanwhile, back in the rest of the world...

The rest of the world is not on hold while the United States continues to dump more of its blood and treasure in Iraq. In the Balkans, angry Serbs attacked UN and NATO forces. Beyond the Secretary of State's obligatory tut-tutting ("very concerned"), what else could the US do in the Balkans?

Treaties and obligations

The White House and Defense Department have, for the last several years, been trying to "explore a new formula for our overseas presence." That's polite language for a permanent presence in the Middle East, based on "status of force agreements" (SOFAs) with countries like Pakistan. A recent diplomatic exchange between the United States and Pakistan provides a window into this campaign.

The United States has learned a hard lesson about democracy and constitutionalism. No declaration of war sanctioned the Iraq war. No Constitutional principle justified the warrantless wiretaps. No American law or treaty allowed Guantanamo Bay. All of these mistakes have hurt, not helped, the real fight against domestic and international terror.

There's another word for a SOFA: treaty. According to the US Constitution, the Senate must ratify any treaty. Using a different word than "treaty" does not change that obligation. The United States is asking Pakistan for permission to operate militarily inside Pakistan, while granting immunity to US personnel for any of their actions during these ventures.

Robots don't enforce the Constitution; people do. Those people--in Congress and the Supreme Court--are ultimately responsible for both any failure to uphold the Constitution, and any consequences that follow.

US nuclear strategy: an enemy, to be named

[I'm picking up where i left off with the posts on nuclear strategy--or lack thereof--that I started a couple of weeks ago. Click here and here for the first two posts.]

During some public discussions of US nuclear strategy, you'll hear US officials justify the maintenance and modernization of the American nuclear arsenal, based on fears of a future enemy. Clearly, we don't have a great power or superpower competitor that matches the bad old Soviet Union...But who knows what the future will bring?

Nasty surprises
While that might sound like a thin, alarmist rational for expensive, dangerous weapons, American officials have a point. It's not cheap, easy, or quick to rebuild a nuclear arsenal. The entire "supply chain," from the manufacture of the weapons through their testing and deployment, is an expensive, time-consuming process. Without the retention of some nuclear threat, a new rival could surprise us in two ways, new intentions or capabilities:

• A country already armed with nuclear weapons might suddenly turn them on us. Russia, of course, is the country that is most capable of delivering this kind of grand strategic surprise.
• A country with modest or no nuclear capabilities might suddenly acquire weapons that could be used against US targets. For example, China's energetic modernization program might conclude with a sizeable number of  nuclear-tipped missiles that could strike American cities. Iran might develop nuclear warheads delivered by courier, not missile.

A quick aside: you can see the risk the United States has taken in neglecting the program of locking down and eliminating Russian nuclear weapons that started after the end of the Cold War. Once the Bush Administration lost interest, the risk that Russia might pull either kind of surprise--a change in intentions, or an increase in capabilities--increased substantially.

The hidden elephant
If you think that the "placeholder enemy" rationale doesn't have a prayer of flying with the American public, think again. From WWI to today, American voters has had practically no awareness of the size or nature of the US government's chemical and biological weapons programs. How many Americans today know that, in 1993, the US government agreed to the destruction of all chemical weapons by 2012? Who, outside a small group of specialists in this area, knows how much progress the US government has made?

The obvious question, of course, is why the US government was developing and storing tons of VX, sarin, and mustard gas in the first place. Against whom were we going to use chemical weapons? During the Cold War, you might imagine a temporary deployment of chemical weapons to stall a Soviet assault into Western Europe. However, if the situation ever got that bad, a far more horrible nuclear exchange might be in the offing anyway. After the Cold War, who would be the target of 31,000 metric tons of chemical weapons? And how many Americans knew their government had them?

If the US government can hide capabilities in plain sight, so too can it continue to develop war plans that don't make sense in light of the current world situation. Between the World Wars, American military strategists developed the "Rainbow plans," designed to respond to practically any threat from beyond American's borders. While War Plan Black, aimed at thwarting German aggression, in hindsight seems like justiifed caution,  how much sense did the premise of War Plan Red, a major war against Great Britain, make? War Plan Red envisioned a war across the US-Canadian border, with the possibility (as described in War Plan Emerald) of supporting an uprising in Ireland.

The real obstacle
In other words, the US government can maintain all sorts of plans and capabilities without the knowledge or assent of the American electorate. The biggest obstacle today, however, is cost.

Since 2001, the strains on the military budget aren't confined to the Army and the Marines. For example, the Navy's next-generation destroyer, code-named DDX, faced opposition based on justification (why this weapons program, instead of something that might help the wars we're actually fighting?) and cost ($2.6 billion for the first two destroyers).

However weird it might seem to be buying destroyers while improvised roadside bombs continue to kill American soldiers, the chance that these destroyers might be used, in actual war or just a show of force, is much higher than the use of nuclear weapons. While we might still be living in the waking dream where funding for the Iraq war (approximately $2 billion per week) appears from thin air, we're soon going to wake up to some hard budgetary realities. (Perhaps, conveniently, right after the 2008 election.) Nuclear weapons programs are going to face some minor public scrutiny, and even tougher resistance from within the US government itself.

Who knows, there may be some future, nuclear-armed enemy worth our concern. However, we won't have the luxury of such concerns, as long as the US military continues to bleed in Iraq, and the US economy begins to sputter.

US nuclear strategy: counter-proliferation

[For the first post on this topic, click here.]

Another potential use of the American nuclear arsenal that appears to be off the table is counter-proliferation. In other words, US leaders are not willing to use nuclear weapons to stop even the worst adversaries from acquiring nuclear technology, despite the high stakes involved.

That situation is not unique to the post-Cold War era. In the early days of the US-USSR confrontation, the United States had substantial nuclear superiority. While many practical considerations restrained US decision-makers--for example, the high risk of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe--other constraints overshadowed any cold-blooded calculations about what it might take to stop the Soviets from expanding their nuclear arsenal. Americans feared the nuclear cataclysms that the future might bring if the USSR were to acquire hydrogen bombs, submarine-launched nuclear missiles, or MIRVed warheads. However, under no circumstances did US leaders think that the prevention of hypothetical carnage, however great it might be, justified the actual carnage that a disarming first strike would create.

The horror of any nuclear attack, even if it were limited to Soviet military targets, overruled any argument for a disarming strike. American leaders did not want to be the executioners of millions of people, even if it might prevent an even greater cataclysm in the future. No one wanted to argue the merits of one apocalypse over another.

Instead, US decision-makers focused on how to reduce the risk of any nuclear war. Crisis management and diplomacy, not pre-emptive strikes, became the tools of choice.

Since the Cold War, the United States has had several opportunities to prevent enemies--Iran, North Korea, and Libya--from gaining nuclear technology, through the most brutally direct methods possible. Regimes that described the United States as the central engine of all evil in the world were apparently eager to acquire the most dangerous weapons in the world. Still, American leaders did not see any justification for a pre-emptive nuclear strike, even if these regimes were powerless to respond.

In other words, humanity operates at some threshold in US foreign policy. A suitcase bomb, built by the Iranian government and smuggled into an American city, is almost too horrifying to envision. Nevertheless, to prevent that scenario, American leaders were not willing to kill millions of Iranians.

The US might credibly threaten conventional war, as the Clinton Administration did in 1994 against North Korea. Nuclear weapons, on the other hand, seem to be a poor tool for counter-proliferation. Not even the threat appears to be useful.

US nuclear strategy: compellence

Cheryl of Whirled View kindly indicated that continued posts on the future of US nuclear strategy from national security bloggers were still welcome. Therefore, I'll throw in a couple of my own observations on this topic, starting with a few words about compellence.

In a widely-cited Harvard Business Review article, Michael Porter pointed out that strategy includes explicit choices about what you don't do. While not everything in Porter's article applies equally to corporations and governments, that statement certainly does. When the choice involves nuclear weapons, the consequences of what you do and don't do are, of course, potentially cataclysmic.

Early questions about compellence
For the first two or three decades that the United States possessed a nuclear arsenal, American nuclear strategists tried to figure out whether these fearsome weapons could be used not just for deterrence, but compellence. In less academic terms, you might summarize the question as, "Hey, if we have nuclear weapons, and lots of other countries don't, can't we use the nuclear threat to bully them?" Surprisingly, the answer appears to be, "No."

Thomas Schelling, whose landmark book Arms and Influence is the inspiration for the name of this blog, was one of many strategists who approached this question in the abstract. Sometimes, the tools of inquiry were analogies, such as Schelling's famous metaphor of the game of chicken. At other times, the tools were more quantitative, such as the complex mathematical projections of missiles, megatons, and mass casualties, to think as objectively and precisely as possible about, as Herman Kahn called it, "the unthinkable."

The analysts at the RAND Corporation and the Defense Department engaged in this research found many ways to deter a Soviet nuclear attack. They did not, however, find any sure-fire ways to use the US nuclear arsenal to blackmail the Soviets, Chinese, or even the many countries that lacked nuclear weapons of their own into taking actions they might otherwise resist. In other words, nuclear weapons could stop the other superpower from doing something; it was much, much harder to devise techniques to compel other governments to acquiesce to American wishes.

History belies theory
Historical experience also indicated that compellence was, perhaps, a pipe dream. The United States chose not to use nuclear weapons against the North Koreans and North Vietnamese. Just as importantly, the US did not make serious, consistent threats of nuclear attack, if these two adversaries did not halt their aggression against their southern neighbors. In other Cold War confrontations in which the other side lacked nuclear weapons--for example, the Arab-Israeli wars--US leaders largely kept the nuclear threat in its sheath.

The exceptions looked more like deterrence, but on a smaller scale. For example, the US went to a high degree of nuclear alert in 1973 to make it clear to the USSR that any Soviet military intervention in the Yom Kippur war. The Eisenhower gave the People's Republic of China a clear glimpse of the American nuclear threat during the Quemoy-Matsu crisis. Again, the goal was more deterrence--stopping the Chinese from expanding the conflict beyond the two disputed islands to Taiwan--and less compellence.

Why did compellence turn out to be a mirage? Only part of the answer depended on the unique balance of power mechanics of the Cold War. Both superpowers were wary of nuclear threats, for fear that the other superpower might get involved in the conflict, raising both the stakes and unpredictability of any conflict. The WWI-like escalation spiral, from regional crisis to global war, haunted both theorists and practitioners of nuclear diplomacy.

Credibility
However, the fear of escalation was hardly the only reason why compellence practically disappeared from US national security policy. The credibility of the threat was questionable whenever US cities were not directly at stake. Just as Hitler once wondered, "Who would die for Danzig?" American leaders asked, "Who would believe us if we threatened nuclear attack over the Soviet repression of Hungarian independence?"

The credibility of nuclear threats is always the most valuable part of having a nuclear arsenal. Otherwise, nuclear weapons are only useful by actually using them, which is the worst of all possible scenarios. Compellence, on the other hand, degrades the currency of US nuclear threats, since the stakes are far lower for the United States than the "nightmare scenario" of classic deterrence.

Humiliation
The psychology of international relations creates additional obstacles to successful compellence. Deterrence normally stops actions that have not been started at all. The other side loses practically nothing for backing down, since nothing has happened. In many situations, such as the Clinton Administration's threats against North Korea, no one outside the two governments involved might be aware that a crisis has been happening at all.

The threat, in these less dire circumstances, is not credible because no one believes that US leaders are either immoral or irrational enough to unleash mass carnage. That, too, is an important part of the credibility of US power and influence.

Compellence, on the other hand, often requires the embarrassment or humiliation of the other side. Not only do the scenarios often start with public statements or actions (for example, "Disarm immediately, or else"), but the adversary may want to publicize US nuclear threats, to make its cause more sympathetic in the face of American bullying.

Nuclear power, but no leverage
The end of the Cold War, therefore, has not improved the opportunities for nuclear compellence. No modern-day John Foster Dulles will find an updated version of the "massive retaliation" doctrine any more successful than it was in the 1950s.

The blogosphere on US nuclear strategy

WhirledView sponsored an excellent discussion of US nuclear strategy among various national security blogs. Very, very good reading. Click here for a summary of the discussion so far.

[The timing was bad, or else I would have gladly contributed.]

Christmas in California

Unless you spend your holiday in a mountain retreat like Lake Tahoe or Idyllwild, Christmas in California does not resemble the familiar yuletide imagery.  The Christmas landscape in the mythic, frozen moment of suburban American Godtime is smothered by snow, sheeted in ice. In the suburban reality of most of California, Christmas is a season of water. Rain makes its infrequent and therefore welcome visits to Southern California, delivering the gifts of added moisture to the irrigated desert and chaparral. Rain stays much longer in Northern California, as dreary by spring as the neighbor who leaves his Christmas lights hanging through Easter.

Of course, Christmas is the time when we embrace the world as we wish it would be, instead of the way it is, so Californians resolutely surround themselves with the iconography of Christmas for the 19th century British yeoman, or the 18th century New England townsperson. While focused on these snowy images, Californians try to ignore the rain. On the freeway, drivers either continue with the same speed and ferocity they use on sunnier days, or they slow down far more than practically necessary, but enough to silence their fears of what might happen to them during these unusual deluges.

Californians are not the only breed of Americans who either ignore the reality of December altogether, or become overwhelmed by it. Without the snow, we're just a bit more obvious in our habits. Elsewhere, Americans work hard at making the Christmas moment exactly right--whether that moment occurs when the children awaken on Christmas morning, or when the visiting relatives arrive from the airport, or when  loved ones have just the reaction for which you had hoped when you bought them the presents they're just unwrapping. Americans have a determined vision of how their Christmases should be.

Some people are good at making these moments happen. They're the people who have empathy with and  insight into the other people involved in these rituals. You have to know that Christmas morning is for the children. You learn to accept the accidental breaking of a $50 toy, or the year when your child is too old for Santa. You understand why relatives might want to visit, other than a flinty sense of obligation. You give gifts freely, without imposing another kind of obligation, the insistence that the recipients tell you exactly why they love their presents, whether or not they actually do.

The people who are bad at the Christmas moments are the ones who try to force everyone into the correct posture, words, and feelings. While the Godtime version of Christmas may provide important lessons about generosity, love, mirth, and renewal, these are exactly the things that cannot be compelled. Gifts become reciprocal duties, for the giver to give, and the receiver to receive, each in the proper way. In staged photos of families, friends, or co-workers, a rictus grin belies the real emotion of the moment. The fallacy of the statement, "It's Christmas, why can't you enjoy yourself?" is lost on the speaker.

Still, there are people who try, year after year, to enforce Christmas correctness. A dominating parent or an overbearing boss may have the skill to coax, bribe, whine, or intimidate people around them into assuming their place and pose in the Christmas tableau, as fixed and unlovely as the plastic Nativity figures that used to decorate the lawns of many Americans.

What does all this have to do with the usual topic of this blog? Everything.

In December 2007, many Americans are baffled that other countries don't want to take their places in our political tableau. We insist that we are loving, and we only want the best for them. Why then all this strife?

Perhaps if, during the rest of the year, we can't understand the reasons for resentment of the US occupation of Iraq, or the outrage over secret prisons, or the willingness to work with authoritarian leaders like Pakistan's Musharraf, or Uzbekistan's Karimov, Christmas lift the collective veil from our eyes. The American political vision is both moral and beautiful--much like the American imagery of the holiday season. It may not, however, ever completely resemble what exists in other countries. Even if the Framers had devised the perfect political system, it's not something that we can dictate to other societies. Allowing them to embrace it, or some version of it, is far better than insisting on it.

In other words, we have to be deft, not merely willful. Willfulness alone inspires resentment, not respect. Iraqis are neither children nor savages; therefore, it's unfair to them to suggest that democracy and the rule of law were doomed from the beginning. However, a constitution handed to the Iraqis by an occupying power was, unsurprisingly, not welcomed; looking for an alternate political identity, many Iraqis retreated into the factionalism that was both familiar and, as the violence increased, practical.

I don't mean to trivialize the war in Iraq by comparing it to a strained family gathering at Christmas. Far from it: I hope that, by recognizing the discomfort or pain some feel during the holidays, they can understand what a small fraction of unhappiness that is, compared to the plight of the average Iraqi or Afghan. In both cases, the insistence on a vision, even the most lovely or humane one, can have unlovely and inhumane results.

Enjoy the holidays, but don't be forced to enjoy them. Use the opportunity to make your friends and family, plus the people you hardly know, feel loved for who they are.

Root and executive branch

Armchair Generalist draws our attention to the minor melee over the chairmanship of the Defense Policy Board. The Board was created to be a semi-official advisory panel of national security sages who advise the Secretary of Defense. In theory, it gives the sort of detached, balanced perspective that decision-makers need, in much the same capacity that Lyndon Johnson's "Wise Men" about Vietnam and other matters.

During George W. Bush's first term, the Defense Policy Board, under the chairmanship of Richard Perle, was one of the pulpits from which the neoconservatives made their policy pitches. While supposedly beyond politics, the Board, and other bodies like it, are often just as subject to political forces as any other part of the federal government. In fact, one might make the argument that, the more an organization like the Defense Policy Board proclaims its independence from party politics, the easier it is for interest groups to manipulate its members. How dare you suggest that Henry Kissinger and Newt Gingrich have axes to grind!

In truth, you can be too cynical about these sorts of institutions. After all, for decades, people from Republican and Democratic circles have compared notes, across party lines, about their experiences in national security posts. Top Cabinet officials do need neutral advice, and it would be better to try fixing the DPB than just discarding it altogether.

That's why arguments over whether the new chairman, John Hamre, is conservative enough for the post, are worse than pointless: they're poisonous. The whole country needs to discard the Red versus Blue, hawks versus doves, stay-the-coursers versus cut-and-runners nonsense, faux divisions that serve party over nation.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world...

While headlines from Iraq, such as the latest clash in Ramadi, continue to dominate the headlines in American news outlets, here are some events of note in the rest of the world:

• Pakistan's military struck at Islamist figherrs in Waziristan, killing three.
• Russian strategic bombers have resumed patrolling beyond Russia's borders, an obvious, intentional reminder of the old Soviet nuclear threat.
• A suicide bomber in Afghanistan killed 15.
• In an interview, the head of the British army acknowledged that UK forces in Afghanistan are holding their ground, but are substantially overstretched.
• Internecine violence among Palestinian spread to a refugee camp in Lebanon.

Suppose the Iraq war never happened. Which of these events would appear more prominently in the news? Or, in other words, which of them deserve more attention now?

Experts, shut up!

This post from Atrios hit a nerve with several bloggers. For example, here are Armchair Generalist's comments about it.

In post-WWII history, we've never seen hostility in the White House to the "expertariat" like the Bush Administration's. Presidents have been willing to ignore the national security community's advice, or cut  the experts out of the decision-making process altogether. However, even Nixon had one foreign policy expert, Henry Kissinger, in which he trusted, even as he started building new relationships with the USSR and PRC, in secret from most of the executive branch (and of course, the American public).

However, I disagree with the argument that the anti-war opposition has been anti-expert, too. In fact, it's even hard to find pacifists among the critics of the Iraq war and the Global War On Something. Most people I've read or met seem fairly pragmatic, willing to accept the necessity of violence to achieve national security, but deeply disturbed about the ways in which the Administration has been using force. They're willing to admit that, as average citizens, they haven't studied the uses and misuses of force to the level that some scholars and practitioners have.

Experts are hardly the enemy for these critics; instead, they want to give the experts more respect and clout. One of the iconic moments, for critics of the war, was the dismissal of General Shinseki, punished, not rewarded, for his expert opinion of what occupying Iraq would require.

As I've argued before, the Administration's hostility to national security experts arises, in part, from a hostility to expertise. That animus, in turn, has deeper roots in an anti-scientific strain among many members and supporters of this presidency. There's no comparable anti-science faction within the ranks of the war's critics.

The public service crisis

The "starve the beast" wing of the Republican Party may be the only group happy with the following news:

• The State Department is facing a staffing crisis. At a time when the country needs a substantial number of foreign service professionals, it can neither retain nor hire enough of them.
• The US Army is losing far too many of its captains. While the quarterback analogy is clumsy, it's important to recognize the role that captains play, particularly in the small-unit operations that are the hallmark of counterinsurgency warfare.

Once the American public is focused less on the daily news from Iraq, it may notice that the national security bureaucracy has suffered grievous bodily harm over the last few years. A couple of years from now, if not sooner, expect to see a lot of news articles about the urgency of re-building the national security apparatus.

Official soundtrack: TV On The Radio

The "life intrudes" thing that has kept me from blogging for several days just kept on intruding. Before I return to the sound of my own words, I wanted to share someone else's. TV On The Radio, a group that only recently has caught my attention, released a song in 2005, "Dry Drunk Emperor," that deserves to join Warren Zevon and Bruce Springsteen as part of the official Arms and Influence soundtrack.

Here's a link to the song and lyrics. (Will someone explain why the iTunes store doesn't carry this song?) Thanks to General J.C. Christian for the pointer to this song.

The snarl begins in Colombia

Since I'm usually in a hurry to put away the Christmas decorations, I rarely do a good job of storing the lights. When I pull on the end of a cord, I'm usually dismayed to be holding a huge, messy tangle of lights, far bigger and more complicated than I had expected. Of course, I only have myself to blame--the snarl is purely the result of my own neglect.

While people in the US national security community have been spending all their time dealing with the Iraq problem, other issues keep getting haphazardly tossed into the closet. Eventually, when we start tugging on one of these problems, a lot of others emerge.

Case in point: Chiquita's admission that it was paying right-wing paramilitary groups to continue operations in Colombia. The story, as we learned today, won't stop there. A Colombian prosecutor is investigating other multinational corporations that may have made similar arrangements with irregular forces. It would be amazing if Chiquita were the only company who paid protection money, and it would be equally amazing if the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia were the only recipients. The FARC, certainly, have been in the extortion business for a long time.

Let's keep pulling this thread. Have corporations cut similar deals in other countries? Yes, undoubtedly. There are plenty of places in Latin America, Africa, and Asia where roving groups with guns can make all kinds of trouble. During the 1990s, when energy companies were trying to build Central Asian gas and oil pipelines as an alternative to Persian Gulf exports, companies like Unocal regularly paid bribes to Afghan warlords. In Nigeria, a small guerrilla group attacked oil platforms and kidnapped oil company workers. And, of course, in Iraq, various insurgent groups--ranging from genuine revolutionaries to criminal gangs with revolutionary names--have been extorting money from foreign corporations. (Which, of course, is where some of the reconstruction money disappeared.)

Keep pulling, and out pops another unwelcome detail: who is protecting these corporations? If you're going to mine diamonds in Western Africa, you won't count on the rebels or governments to stay bribed--particularly if the leaders of these factions have an uncertain grip on their own forces. The same "security firms" that are doing a brisk business with the US government today are making even more money from private corporations. Therefore, the lines between the public and private part of US national security is even more blurred, both in the means (these mercenary companies) and the ends (the employers demanding their services).

Yank harder, and out pop other questions. How does the revolving door between national militaries and the security companies work? Who is receiving campaign contributions from Blackwater, Dyncorp, and similar companies? How much does the United States have invested in Plan Colombia, and how well is it paying off? In other countries riven by inernal war, such as Colombia, are we investing too much, too little, or the wrong resources to handle the threat at hand?

These are all important issues. They're also the issues that Americans are largely ignoring, while Iraq consumes all available time, resources, and attention. Worst of all, we haven't even mentioned international terrorism yet.

Theme of the week

Mosts of my posts this week will follow the same line of argument:

• Iraq is not the only national security priority.
• In fact, it's not as important as the cumulative weight of other priorities.
• Iraq is blotting out these other priorities.
• Even if the US prevails in Iraq, the cost of ignoring nearly everything else is far greater than anything that can be gained in Iraq.

Why 2003 still matters

I'm in the middle of watching the Bill Moyers special, "Buying the War." Why do we keep returning to the events of 2002 and 2003?

• Because no one has paid. That's important because...
• Until someone pays, there's no reason to think something equally bad won't happen again.

It seems a bit silly to have to repeat the basic tenets of accountability in government, but that's where we are. Americans can be forgiving people. If a public servant thought a calculated risk was worthwhile, debated all the pros and cons, and made a straightforward case to the American public and our allies, the outcome may still be terrible. That's the nature of politics, and of foreign policy: every decision is a gamble made in the face of incomplete information and uncertain results.

Of course, that's not exactly the story of Iraq.  It was the story of the Iran-Contra scandal, which ended the government careers of scoundrels such as Eliott Abrams and John Poindexter...Temporarily. Of course, these two characters came back to work for an Administration where the word "accountability" is a foreign, incomprehensible word. The outrageous return of Abrams and Poindexter is evidence that, left to its own devices, the Administration will continue to reward, not punish, people responsible for foreign policy fiascoes.

Meanwhile, the same "patriotism police" work energetically to discredit people who scrutinize the invasion of Iraq. If for no other reason, the resistance to further investigation is a compelling reason to investigate further.

High Noon In The Shrubs

[This post was inspired by the accidental conjunction of (1) reading this analysis of the President's taste in cowboy art, and (2) watching High Noon, one of my all-time favorite movies, for the umpteenth time.]

INT. THE TOWN CHURCH - DAYTIME
The church is filled with townspeople. Reverend Hezekiah is leading them in a hymn, while the organist plays earnestly, if somewhat clumsily.

Suddenly, the MARSHAL bursts into the church. The organist immediately stops. The townspeople's hymn sputters out in surprise.

REVEREND
What can I do for you, Marshal?

MARSHAL
I need all the able-bodied men to follow me to Scorpion Gulch. We're going to deal
with these Mexican bandits once and for all!

A worried muttering begins among the parishioners.

BILL (the town doctor)
Uh, forgive me for being confused, Marshal, but what does that have to do
with the Apaches who attacked the Henderson farm and killed the whole family?
We were just praying for their souls.

MARSHAL
Bill, you fool! Don't you know that the Apaches and the banditos are in cahoots!

The muttering grows even louder.

REVEREND
Quiet, quiet! We don't want a panic here, do we?

A pregnant pause ensues, in which the REVEREND and the MARSHAL exchange a long stare. Suddenly, the REVEREND looks away.

REVEREND
Well, I guess, if the Marshal says that there's cause for concern...

MARSHAL
That's right! The Henderson massacre was just the beginning! Those Mexicans can't wait
to get the jump on one of you. Like you, Pete! {Points at PETE.] Or maybe Miss Purdy! The
schoolhouse is pretty darn vulnerable on the edge of town.

Miss Purdy clutches her hands to her chest and swoons.

JOE (the town dry goods merchant)
Something here doesn't make sense, Marshal. The Apaches and the bandits hate each
other. Plus, those Mexicans might have held up a couple of stages, but
they've never killed anyone.

MARSHAL
But they're our sworn enemies, Joe! You know that! And I have proof that the Indians
and the bandits have been meeting, figuring out ways to attack this town and kill all of us!

DAN (the editor of the town paper)
All right, Marshal, where's your proof.

MARSHAL (patting his coat pocket)
Right here.

DAN
Can I see it?

MARSHAL
No. If I showed it to you, you'd figure out how I got it, secret-like, and then we'd
never have any more information about the Apaches or the bandits.

DAN (shrugs)
OK, that makes sense. [Sits down.]

MARSHAL
Besides, if we don't get rid of the bandits, we'll never take care of those Apaches!

BOB (the town barber)
Now I'm lost. Why do we need to take care of the bandits first, if the
Apaches are the real threat.

The Marshal charges over to Bob's pew, grabs him by the lapels, and slaps him across the face.

MARSHAL
I've never seen such cowardice in all my life! Bob, why don't you go down to
the graveyard and spit on the Henderson family's newly-dug plots! I'm sure
they'll be happy to listen to your nonsense.

The townspeople around BOB shake their fists angrily at him, yelling curses. BOB slumps into his pew, defeated.

MARSHAL
Now, men, let's ride!

Every man between the ages of 17 and 70 rises from their seats and begins moving toward the door.

MARSHAL
Wait, wait, wait! Deputy Don tells me that we only need four men. [Points in quick
succession at four young men.] You, you, you, and you, come with me!

FADE OUT

The metaphor of disaster

Before I continue with the "Mr. Vietnam" series, I have just one word to say:

TSAR?!?!?

This penchant for appointing "tsars" goes back to the "drug tsar" idea from the 1980s, when the US government famously declared war on drugs. Who's winning? You decide.

The weird part of this story, of course, is the choice of the term "tsar." Why on earth would you choose a term connoting the following:

• The failure of European monarchy in general.
• The autocratic Romanov dynasty in particular.
• The authoritarian government that preceded the longest-lived totalitarian regime.
• The royal family that ended ignominiously, shot, burned, and covered in acid.

In no way, if I were President, would I want to call my new top-level official in charge of Iraq and Afghanistan a "tsar". From where does this penchant for applying the term "tsar" to important new officials come? It's largely a by-product of American business culture, where people are attracted to the muscular-sounding language behind terms like "tsar," with no awareness or interest in the sort of historical disasters they connote.

For example, I worked at a company, which shall remain nameless, that called an important marketing campaign "Rolling Thunder." Since I have a congenital defect that prevents me from keeping my big yap shut, I had to point out that Rolling Thunder not only implied the Vietnam War, but one of the least effective campaigns in that conflict. It was too late for anyone to change the name, however, since senior managers at this unnamed company already fell in love with the basso profundo sound of Rolling Thunder.

At the same company, a new project somehow got the codename Tsunami. Several people questioned the wisdom of naming something after a national disaster, but the moniker, once again, had already gathered momentum. However, in this case, the very real tsunami of 2004 forced an abrupt re-titling of this project. Ahem.

At least some people, such as Sean Penn, have the good sense to know when a metaphor doesn't work.

Bolton, come home

I don't know about you, but if John Bolton were my employee, I'd get him off the air, pronto. His appearance on The Daily Show, in which he lacked the good sense to stop snarling and snapping, was bad enough. On British television, where the gloves really come off, Bolton did even worse.

He stuck his foot in his mouth during a one-on-one interview. (Some choice quotes: "I would have given the Iraqis a copy of The Federalist Papers and wished them luck." "We never said that Iraq was an imminent threat.") On a different program, he looked like a cranky, distant representative of a cranky, distant government during a panel discussion.

The British media are far better at posing hard questions to public figures than their American counterparts. They can also smell a "Colonel Blimp" from a mile away.

Security? Just say no.

The US attorney imbroglio wouldn't normally be a topic for a blog about national security. However, at least one revelation in the last few days does have a serious national security dimension.

To avoid discovery, in the legal sense of the term, White House officials, including Karl Rove, have been using outside e-mail accounts, on mail servers maintained by the Republican National Committee. While that statement sinks in, here's a quote from a White House employee:

"We just got a bit lazy," said one aide. "We knew E-mails could be subpoenaed. We saw that with the Clintons but I don't think anybody saw that we were doing anything wrong."

Actually, I think they had the Iran-Contra scandal in mind, more than the Clintons. Remember when Oliver North et al. thought they had deleted messages from the internal mail system, only to discover that archived copies of them still existed?

Legal matters aside
There may be good legal reasons why people in the White House should never, never use outside e-mail to conduct government business. Some observers have cited the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which in a post-Watergate world, clearly intended to preserve even the most embarrassing content. If content is maintained outside US government systems, the risk of losing this information to posterity runs pretty high.

Unfortunately, there's a bit of wiggle room in the Act, which has exemptions for "personal records," which include "materials relating to private political associations, and having no relation to or direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President" and "materials relating exclusively to the President's own election to the office of the Presidency; and materials directly relating to the election of a particular individual or individuals to Federal, State, or local office, which have no relation to or direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President." It seems doubtful that these exemptions were intended to cover 95% of the communications from the President's Political Advisor, however, which fairly describes how often Karl Rove used these RNC e-mail accounts.

While there are other laws that the Administration may have broken here, the legal issues aren't necessarily the biggest problem with outside e-mail use. National security could be easily and severely compromised.

Communications insecurity
You don't have to be someone like me, working on the software business, to know the potential security risks with e-mail. Instead of getting into technical details, I'll tell you how information technology (IT) departments treat situations like this one. I've worked with hundreds of IT professionals who are very concerned that people in their organizations are using outside e-mail like Yahoo! and Gmail, outside file storage on services like XDrive, outside chat systems like AOL Instant Messaging, and outside web conferencing services like WebEx. (Here's a decent summary of the e-mail security problems, if you're interested.)

Without saying how secure these services are, they are definitely not designed for a high-security environment. There's also the problem of security "along the wire." An outside e-mail service might be very secure, but the connection between your PC or Blackberry might not be. (That statement definitely applies to text messages, which White House staffers were also using to communicate.)

Companies worry that trade secrets might be exposed, or they might be violating regulations about the confidentiality of financial information (see the SEC restrictions on what companies can communicate during quiet periods). HR departments, insurance companies, and health care providers can face serious legal penalties if they accidentally expose private medical information.

Need I go on? Let's just say, outside communication and collaboration services are a big source of anxiety in IT departments. Sure, there are companies in the security business who overstate the threats. However, the threats are quite real. If DoD employees can't install software on their own computers, why should White House staffers be using their Blackberries to read e-mail on the RNC's e-mail servers, with God only knows how good security on the server or on the wireless connection to it?

Multiple levels of information security
No one should have to make the argument that the White House needs to be at least as secure in its communications as an electronics retailer or a hospital chain. In fact, it needs to be more secure, in part because of the accidental ways people might divulge important secrets without realizing it. While most people focus on the first-order secrets, the direct documentation of decision-makers' statements or policies, the threat of indirect, second-order disclosure is just as dangerous.

Take, for example, the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. A number of indirect clues that the Japanese were going to take some kind of aggressive action existed. The negotiations between Japan and the United States had stopped. The bulk of the Japanese navy, most critically its carriers, were not in port. Japanese diplomats were destroying documents. As shown in the Russo-Japanese war and other conflicts, the Japanese pattern was to mobilize, strike, and then declare war. Scholars continue to debate whether the US government should have been better prepared for the attack because the warning signs were certainly there.

Flash forward to the present day, when White House staffers have their daily work perturbed by counterterrorism, the war in Iraq, and any number of other high-security questions. Even if someone eavesdropping on RNC e-mail accounts couldn't find a "smoking gun" document about (speaking hypothetically here) a secret understanding between the US and North Korean governments, someone could infer the existence of such a deal through these kinds of second-order clues. Which top officials were out of the office on particular days? Were White House officials sending lots of messages to anyone used as back channel conduit for discussions with the DPRK? Was anyone asking for a briefing on particular legal or diplomatic issues that might point towards a secret US-DPRK deal?

Of course, it's the height of absurdity and hypocrisy for the Justice Department to be using outside channels of communication. On the one hand, the DOJ is involved in highly secret counterterrorism investigations and prosecutions. On the other hand, some key DOJ officials may have been using text messaging and outside e-mail servers to communicate.

An obvious conclusion
We can spend the next several years tied up in knots over the legal issues involved. It can take less than five minutes of reflection to determine that someone in the White House needs to be fired for jeopardizing national security in this fashion.

You say uranium, I say plutonium...

Today, a lot of the national security-related news and commentary is dominated by a small but important detail about the Bush Administration's confrontation with North Korea. Here's the short version:

In 1994, the Clinton Administration very nearly took the United States to war over North Korea's nuclear weapons program, based on plutonium enrichment. Thankfully, the DPRK backed down. American and North Korean officials encapsulated their understanding in the Agreed Framework. The DPRK agreed to end its plutonium enrichment program and allow international inspectors to monitor their compliance; the United States agreed to some economic assistance (assistance with single-use nuclear power and fuel shipments). Of course, the United States didn't have to make clear the threat of future military action, if the DPRK tried to cheat on this arrangement.

In 2002, the Bush Administration was convinced that the North Koreans were cheating. Specifically, US officials accused the DPRK of carrying out a clandestine uranium enrichment program. (Note the difference--uranium, not plutonium.) How North Korean officials responded is still under dispute. The US official who delivered the accusation, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, says that his North Korean counterpart confessed to the uranium enrichment program. The North Korean official, First Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju, says that he only admitted to the DPRK's right to develop nuclear weapons, and muddied the waters further by claiming a "neither  confirm nor deny" stance about any nuclear program.

Whatever anyone said or meant to say doesn't change the outcome, the Bush Administration's public confrontation with North Korea over the uranium enrichment program. Until the agreement a few days ago, the United States had effectively broken off all but a few minor channels of communications with the DPRK, and the North Koreans threw out the international inspectors.

With the new agreement now announced, US officials are obliged to give Congress some account of what's been happening. During one such briefing, another Assistant Secretary of State, Christopher Hill, admitted that, in hindsight, there was very little evidence that the DPRK had a uranium program at all. Certainly, the North Koreans still had the knowledge to build plutonium-enriched warheads, which is what they were doing during the time that the international inspectors were gone.

The North Korean nuclear test may have been one of North Korea's biggest miscalculations. China, which in other circumstances has defended the DPRK, turned on Kim Jong Il. While the DPRK can survive near-total isolation, it can't suffer total isolation. At the same time, the North Koreans still have a big bargaining chip, the dismantlement of their small nuclear arsenal and production facilities, that probably would not have existed, if the events of 2002 had gone differently.

Who's to blame? The North Koreans certainly share some culpability. Their diplomatic finesse is not what it should be, for the kind of brinksmanship they like to play. In fact, the DPRK seems incapable of anything but brinksmanship, threatening to build nuclear weapons, threatening to fire missiles at Japan, threatening to flatten Seoul... However, the Bush Administration certainly bears some responsibility, too. American culpability goes beyond the sneering at international arms control regimes that was all too fashionable in 2002 and 2003.

When the Bush team took office in 2001, they largely felt that the Clinton Administration had given the DPRK too much in the Agreed Framework. The economic assistance seemed unwarranted, particularly since "rogue states" like North Korea and Iran were, in the new President's worldview, the chief cause of national and international insecurities.

Aside from having a definite perspective on world events, the Bush team also had a clearly preferred approach. The United States needed to rattle its saber more often. Force was necessary to end Saddam Hussein's occupation of Kuwait; force (or the threat of it) was the only thing that the DPRK would understand. Economic assistance was equivalent to being conned by the trickster in charge in Pyongyang.

Clearly, the Administration measured its own success in dealing with the North Koreans by how effectively they "stood firm" against granting any concessions. With nothing to offer other than another day without an American attack on the DPRK, the two countries stood in deadlock. Meanwhile, the DPRK saw how consumed the United States was with the Iraq mess, and calculated that it would experience little or no backlash if it were to announce it had nuclear weapons.

The Bush Administration has also left itself open to criticism that, yet again, it was seeing WMD programs that weren't really there. In a sense, the US was conned twice about nuclear weapons: once, by Saddam Hussein's ambiguous statements about having them at all; and again, by the DPRK's vague statements about its uranium enrichment program.

You definitely can't say that the Administration was completely bamboozled by US intelligence agencies, who had not given a clear verdict that the DPRK was in the uranium enrichment program. At best, there was only circumstantial evidence of this program. Much of the case depended on centrifuge purchases and contacts with the A.Q. Khan "Nukes R Us" network. Doubts were big enough that, two years ago, this Foreign Affairs article argued that the North Koreans in 2002 may not have cheated on the Agreed Framework.

It's still too early to declare the final verdict on what really happened here. However, the information available today seems to point to an unfortunate conclusion: senior US officials confused means (confronting a rogue state) with ends (preventing the North Koreans from developing nuclear weapons).

Complete freedom of action

IN THE NEWS
The following sentence from a Washington Post op-ed piece (many thanks to Armchair Generalist for the link) got me thinking:

The Air Force's new doctrine and the Bush administration's refusal to discuss, let alone negotiate, anything that could limit U.S. freedom of action in space -- along with the traditional secrecy surrounding military space programs -- has gotten China's attention.

How much of US grand strategy depends on having enormous freedom of action? To date, there has been no serious threat to American access to space. The US government worries very little about free navigation of the high seas, or of choke points like the Persian Gulf and the Panama Canal. With the collapse of the USSR, Americans can travel directly to practically anywhere in the world, with a few minor exceptions. Where Americans can't travel, they still enjoy relatively easy and instantaneous communication. How many nations, including the most powerful empires in history, ever had this degree of latitude?

Freedom of action has become so ingrained in the American worldview, that a minor event such as the Chinese "painting" of US spy satellites with lasers makes Americans extremely edgy. However, it's not the Chinese that are the most salient threat to American freedom of action. The bigger problem is closer to home.

Freedom of communications depends on having phone lines and satellite communications connect to international locations. Freedom of the seas depends not only on alliance politics in places like the Persian Gulf, but also on the availability of port facilities for the US Navy. Freedom of travel depends on how readily countries welcome American travelers.

American relations with other countries have not sunk to a low where the Panamanians wont' let us through the Canal, or the German government is imposing high fees for making calls to German phone numbers. Still, the freedom of action that Americans enjoy is largely built on the good will that Americans have built up, piece by piece, since World War II.

The US government has not always been successful at convincing the governments and citizens of other countries of its good will. Fortunately, an even broader international audience has been willing to trust Americans while not necessarily extending trust to the American government.

That situation has eroded since 2001, when the United States started acting as though (a) no one else had ever been a victim of terrorism before, and (b) other countries had better just get the hell out of the United States' way. If Americans are worried about maintaining their unprecedented freedom of action in the world, they might look at the escalating struggle between Congress and the White House over foreign policy as a good thing. If Americans, not just the American government, seem OK with US foreign policy over the last few years, the United States will lose even more good will.

When it comes time to pressure the Chinese government to stop menacing American satellites, the United States should be able to call on other countries to help. The