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The longer he lasts, the weaker we get

I spent yesterday getting home from Baghdad, so missed the opportunity to say anything quick and trenchant about the Administration’s National Security Strategy. The main takeaways are these:

1. It is closer to establishment thinking than anticipated given the predilections of the President for upsetting the apple cart;
2. Still, it is more hostile to China and less realistic about Russia than many of us might like;
3. It bears little resemblance to what the President has been saying and doing.

He wasn’t even able to read from the Teleprompter “principled realism” and converted it to “our new strategy is based on a principle, realism.” Credit to @PeterBeinart for that observation.

As in most documents of this sort, what was left out is as interesting as what is included.

Everyone is noticing the absence of climate change, which the Administration continues to deny despite the obvious and devastating hurricanes that hit Texas and Puerto Rico this year as well as the current fires burning in California. Sure it could all be random variation, but we know that isn’t likely because of the long secular record scientists have been able to construct. The planet is detectably warming–witness the melting of sea ice in the Arctic–with serious implications for US national security, whether or not human activity is the cause. The Administration is ignoring the problem because it would cost more money than the Republicans want to spend and block the dismantling of Obama’s energy-related regulatory actions.

Other things missing, as Max Boot notes, are free trade, democracy promotion, and international  cooperation, in particular in the form of expanding the rules-based international order.

More immediately concerning in my view is any serious consideration to what happens after the defeat of the Islamic State. There is reference to helping fragile states to avoid threats to the US homeland, but that could mean simply strengthening their security forces and ignoring governance, economic and social issues that lie at the root of extremism. Dictatorship is no cure for what ails the weak states of the Middle East. It is what brought about the Islamic State and we won’t be able to eradicate it using only force.

But in the end, the main problem with this document is that it doesn’t jibe with what the President himself says and believes, as Max documents in some detail. Last week in Baghdad, I found this divergence between the Administration and the President the single biggest concern among Middle Easterners (including Iraqis, Saudis, Iranians, and Emiratis). Their consternation about the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem was no greater. The world is used to clear US positions. Their absence creates an enormous vulnerability, one that even the Russians and Chinese find unsettling. When other countries cannot count on what the President says, they hedge in ways that weaken the US.

A well-crafted national security strategy won’t fix that problem. Nor will any amount of adult guidance from Generals McMaster, Mattis, and Kelly. The President can’t get it right even from a Teleprompter. He lacks the mental discipline and depth of experience to understand the implications outside the US of what he says and does not say. Even if the national security strategy were 100% on target, the longer this presidency lasts, the weaker the US will get.