Month: September 2019
Ends and means after the caliphate
On September 10 the Brookings Institution hosted a panel discussion entitled “The Counter-ISIS Coalition: Diplomacy and Security in Action.” The panel featured two former special presidential envoys to the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL: General John Allen, current President of Brookings, and Brett McGurk, a nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Lise Grande, who served as Deputy Special Representative of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq during the height of the campaign against ISIS, joined the panel through a video link from Amman. The New Yorker’s Susan B. Glasser moderated.
Allen emphasized that ISIS remains a threat through its residual forces in Syria, the presence of its affiliates in countries like Nigeria, Libya, and the Philippines, and its online influence. McGurk also pointed to the danger of the next generation of jihadi fighters coming from Syria’s al-Hol camp, where 73,000 ISIS women and children are held. Neither the Syrian Democratic Forces who administer the camp nor the US have sufficient resources to manage the threat.
America’s objectives in Syria have broadened under the Trump administration to include countering the remaining ISIS threat, promoting regime change, and removing Iranian forces from the country. Simultaneously, America has reduced the number US troops to around 1000. McGurk stressed that this widening gap between America’s goals in Syria and the resources it has in the country will make it hard to respond to the next crisis. The Turkish-US joint patrols of the safe zone in northern Syria that began last weekend will further draw these limited resources away from managing critical threats like al-Hol.
Both McGurk and Allen attributed the coalition’s successes to three factors: strong American leadership, commitment from an unusually large number of allies, and working by, with, and through local partners that America had previously developed in Iraq. Both argued that in the event of a crisis it would be harder to create a coalition now due to some allies’ loss of trust in American leadership. McGurk also speculated that John Bolton’s departure from the White House will not change these conditions, stating that the Trump administration lacked a functional communication process between the President and the national security adviser prior to Bolton’s tenure.
Grande noted that while UN stabilization usually begins by trying to fixing entire systems, in Iraq they took a bottom-up approach to repairing electricity, water, and sanitation grids. During the stabilization of Ramadi, UN workers coordinated with Iraqi forces to enter cities as soon as they were liberated and set up mobile electricity grids consisting of generators on trucks. They hired local engineers to connect each house to the generators as families returned to them. While past stabilization programs have taken 2 years to reconnect electricity grids, in Ramadi families had power within 2 hours of returning home. Grande described this as both the largest and most successful stabilization effort in the UN’s history, which she said was possible due to the strength of the Iraqi government’s commitment, an Iraqi private sector with great engineering capabilities, and support from the coalition and the United States.
Grande also credits the success the UN had in stabilizing these cities to the premium Iraqi forces placed on protecting civilians and keeping them in their homes when possible. Each morning during the liberation of Mosul, the UN sent the number of empty beds available in their camps to the Iraqi commanders, who structured their battle plan to ensure only that number of civilians were evacuated from their homes. The Iraqi security forces escorted these families across the front lines, checked them for weapons, and delivered them to aid workers, who got them into temporary housing by nightfall.
Grande contrasted this to the average of four weeks it takes civilians to get humanitarian assistance in most active conflict zones. The Iraqi security forces were also able to protect 90% of the residents of East Mosul in their homes, limiting the number of evacuees needing immediate assistance. She concluded that the commitment of the Iraqi government to protecting civilians, support from the Iraqi private sector, and the strength of America’s coalition leadership were critical to the UN’s success in stabilizing newly liberated cities. Without those conditions the UN will not be able to recreate this success in stabilizing future conflict zones.
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Stevenson’s army, September 11
John Bolton is out. The consensus of major reporting is that, despite numerous disagreements between the adviser and the president, the impetus for his firing was the suspicion of self-serving leaks about the Afghanistan talks.
Several questions come to mind: Does this mean that Trump will run as the peace candidate? Will America be spared major conflict until after the 2020 elections? That’s my guess. Will Bolton’s successor revive the moribund interagency process? [Even if the president doesn’t want it — “I consulted myself” — the rest of the government does.] Will Bolton’s acolytes already placed throughout the government as a kind of neocon deep state be empowered or fired? Will this really make a difference in American foreign policy? {Dubious. It’s still Trump’s whims] Will congressional Republicans with Boltonesque views rise up or mute their views? [I bet they continue to be what Jim Fallows calls Vichy Republicans.]
Could you guess that Israel has elections next week? Netanyahu promises annexations of most of the West Bank settlements, says his views were “coordinated” with the Trump administration.
On this anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Amy Zegart, who wrote a scathing study of the bureaucratic failures of the US government, says even more reforms are needed in the intelligence community.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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The tide is turning
I hope I’m right: the tide is turning. President Trump, Prime Minister Johnson, President Putin, and President Erdogan are all being taken out to sea. I won’t miss any that drown in the polluted waters they have created.
- Donald Trump
He has had a terrible summer on many fronts, not just his prediction that Hurricane Dorian would make a beeline for Alabama. The G7 treated him like a pariah. The North Koreans continue to launch missiles. The Iranians are amping up their enrichment of uranium. He has suspended the Afghanistan negotiations he hoped would allow a drawdown of American troops and canceled primaries in states where he feared facing an opponent. He is misappropriating money from the military to build a border wall that won’t prevent most illegal immigration. The economy is slowing and the deficit is ballooning. China is still absorbing trade war blows without yielding at the negotiating table.
2. Boris Johnson
It is hard to recount all of the new prime minister’s comeuppances in the past few weeks (his mandate began only on July 24!), but suffice it to say he has lost his majority in parliament (including his brother), lost his bid for a very snap election, and lost the legal means of crashing the UK out of the the European Union while suspending parliament in a way that has generated widespread protest. None of this seems to phase him or his supporters, but I think there is a pretty good chance his party will do poorly in the election when it happens sometime in the next couple of months. Only Labour’s weak leadership is helping the Conservatives at this point. It is now completely unclear whether or when the UK will exit the EU.
3. Vladimir Putin
His losses in the Moscow municipal election are not enormously consequential to running the city, but Putin made concerted efforts to prevent them so they matter nevertheless. The opposition is learning how to challenge him successfully, even if only symbolically so far. But as one Russian put it to me: “we love our czars until we don’t. Then we string them up.” The Russian economy and Putin’s popularity are both sinking fast, as did a Russian nuclear missile under development that Putin had boasted of.
4. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Turkey’s economy is also in big trouble, along with its president. Erdogan’s party has lost mayoral elections in both Ankara and Istanbul, even if it did well in other places. He has the Turkish Army stuck in several dicey situations inside Syria, where the Russians, the regime, and the Kurds are all taking pot shots at Turkish soldiers and their Turkoman and Arab allies while Ankara tries to force Syrians back. Erdogan has strained relations with the US and much of the rest of NATO almost to the breaking point by buying Russian air defenses. He is still campaigning ineffectually for extradition of his arch-nemesis and alleged coup-plotter Fetullah Gulen from the US but hasn’t been able to convince an American court to send him to Turkey.
All four of these leaders are wannabe autocrats who come from a common political perspective: they are ethno-nationalists who respectively seek to protect the interests of dominant ethnicities at the expense of other citizens of their countries. They have all denigrated foreigners and minorities as well as immigration and liberal democracy while trying to maintain their own dominant ethnic group in power.
But they also all govern in nominal, if illiberal, electoral democracies. We’ll have to wait a while to see how far the tide has turned. Johnson faces an early election, likely within the next few months. The US will go to the polls in November of next year. Erdogan is relatively safe, with presidential elections required only in 2023. Putin is in principle term-limited, though he may seek to change that, but in any event safe from electoral challenge until 2024. All will do their best to bias the media and the electoral systems in their favor, but I think there is a pretty good chance we’ll see the backs of all of them. The sooner the better.
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Stevenson’s army, September 10
At last some worthwhile stories about Congress, just back from its 6 week recess.
– RollCall says departing members will find it hard to get K St lobbying jobs.
– Another story notes that bipartisanship still works in actually passing bills.
– Guess where one in seven Representatives traveled during the recess. [Israel].
– NYT has more detailed story on extraction of spy close to Putin. Unlike the original CNN story, the Times links the action to concerns about discovery in 2016, not Trump behavior with classified information.
What next in Afghanistan? Central Command leader says more US military activities.
– On civil-military relations, I agree with this piece by Prof Karlin and others praising SecDef Esper’s efforts to reassert civilian control of DOD.
– But I’m not persuaded by this piece arguing turning most paramilitary operations from CIA to SOCOM. But it’s worth debating.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, September 9
Several threads run through all the major stories on the Afghan peace talks: the president wanted a US troop withdrawal and a Camp David meeting where he could appear the dealmaker; Bolton favored only a partial withdrawal; Pompeo wanted the agreement and agreed to the meeting. The actual position of the Taliban and the Afghan government is disputed. NYT has the best tick-tock. WaPo has a good analysis of the internal dissent.
FT reports analysis by European economists that over one third of all foreign direct investment [FDI] is phantom transactions for tax avoidance.
SAIS grad John Gans notes how Henry Kissinger got back in Nixon’s good graces after a Bolton-like exclusion.
Defense News outlines the NDAA issues in conference.
Lawfare has an ingenious — and, in my view, too clever by half — proposal to allow the House unilaterally to cut off funds for unauthorized military operations.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Charade
President Trump claims to have cancelled a “summit” at Camp David next weekend with the Taliban, in response to an attack in Kabul that killed one American soldier. That’s unlikely to be the real story. There is no indication that the Taliban, who have refused to accept a ceasefire during the negotiations with the United States, had agreed to the meeting. As Barney Rubin, who knows Afghanistan as well as any American, put it on Twitter:
My tentative suggestions: whatever just happened, it’s about Trump, not Afghanistan. He wanted a photo op and a high-ratings TV show, and when it didn’t work out, he canceled it.
There are a few lessons here:
- A ceasefire during negotiations is important. I doubt it was wise to talk with the Taliban without one.
- Trump’s need for personal involvement is a hindrance, not a help to negotiations. We’ve seen this in both Afghanistan and North Korea.
- If the Taliban will agree, as Kim Jong-un did, Trump may turn the meeting on again as suddenly as he turned it off.
- Trump has repeatedly telegraphed his desperate political need to remove a big slice of US troops from Afghanistan before the US election. The Taliban need do nothing to get a part of what they want.
- In the end, it’s all about TV for Trump. He doesn’t give a hoot about Afghanistan or the US soldiers killed there.
The guy at real risk these days is Afghanistan President Ghani. The Americans were about to conclude an agreement with the Taliban from which he was excluded and after which he was expected to reach some sort of powersharing agreement with them. Collapse of the negotiations may make that unnecessary, but the US withdrawal is likely to take place anyway. Ghani needs to figure out how he can survive in a military situation that is already tilting heavily against him.
Trump is a master of creating impressions that are far from reality and sticking with them despite the facts. His “cancellation” of a non-existent meeting is a fine example, much more credible than his prediction of Dorian’s storm track. But every example of this showmanship undermines US credibility abroad, even if 40% of the American people seem to be ready to swallow the charade.
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