Month: December 2019
Stevenson’s army, December 17
Last week I noted how many foreign policy matters are in the NDAA. Today, look at some of the extraneous measures added to the two omnibus appropriations bills. Lesson: must-pass bills turn into Christmas trees.
Saudi Arabia is making nice toward Iran, with geopolitical consequences.
The anti-Muslim citizenship bill in India is sparking widespread protests.
Morale is improving at State — except among those closest to Pompeo.
A Texas law professor has found, in the new NDAA, a provision codifying a requirement for notification of the Armed Services Committees when significant offensive cyber operations are conducted. Hooray! For several years I have been calling for a “Title 60” provision modeled after the Hughes-Ryan provision for CIA covert actions to deal with offensive cyber operations and lethal drone strikes. This is a welcome development.
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).
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Stevenson’s army, December 16
– An official with long Afghanistan experience disputes WaPo’s claim that senior officials regularly lied to the public about progress there. Key quote:
My personal observations during the roughly 12 years I have been working on assessments of the Afghanistan war are that U.S. officials have not generally engaged in a deliberate campaign of lies and deceit of the American public when it came to progress in the war. Rather, what I’ve observed is shifting (and often unclear or arguably unachievable) strategic and policy objectives combined with aggressive optimism and an overwhelming “can do” attitude on the part of U.S. government officials — especially within the military given its rigid hierarchy, and culture of following orders and vertical appeasement (as described here). In addition, the U.S. government — and particularly the Department of Defense — has consistently struggled with its own doctrine, processes, approaches, and “bureaucracy doing its thing” type challenges to assessing these non-conventional wars, as I have endeavored to show along with a host of other authors such as Ben Connable and Stephen Downes-Martin. I also agree with his point that these personal citations will make it harder for future IGs to get honest answers.
– SecDef Esper says he wants 50% expansion of IMET in next 5 years.
– New NDAA authorizes coastal defense and antiship missiles for Ukraine.
– OMB has a mostly nonpartisan professional staff, only 5 political appointees. But those people are acting aggressively to promote presidential ideas, according to a report by Axios.
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).
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Little England
The Curator Emerita of the Smithsonian and I spent last week in London. You’d think we would have something interesting to say about the election and Brexit.
We don’t.
The fact is no one we spoke to mentioned the election or Brexit without prompting. When prompted, the people we were talking with made it clear they would not vote for Boris Johnson and opposed Brexit, but their preferences varied. This, in a nutshell, is a major reason for the Conservative landslide, which gave Prime Minister Johnson control of parliament. The Brexiteers remained overwhelmingly united within the Conservative fold, disappointing the Brexit Party. The anti-Brexit vote got split up among Labour, Lib Dems, Greens, Scottish Nationalists, and others. And Labour managed to put forward the worst candidate ever: manifesto thumping Jeremy Corbyn.
The most overt political voice we heard all week was a demonstration heading up Haymarket to Piccadilly Circus chanting “Boris Johnson is not our prime minister!” It was mostly younger people shouting with real passion, but not enough votes.
Others we spoke with just wanted it all over. They seemed tired of talking about it. Unlike Americans, whose daily conversation in the capital is all about Donald Trump, many in London seemed to want to ignore Boris Johnson. Life, and even politics, has so much more to offer.
That said, no one should underestimate the impact of what the Brits have done. I’ll be surprised if it takes their economy less than a generation to recover, as companies that once used the United Kingdom as their base for European operations are moving out, any trade deal with the EU will not be as advantageous as membership, and the UK’s government budget will need to expand to make up for the functions the EU used to perform and for the 4.5 billion-pound abatement the UK received in 2018 as a member state.
Perhaps just as significant: the Kingdom is unlikely to remain united. Both Northern Ireland and Scotland want to stay in the EU. Scotland is on track for a second referendum on secession, sooner rather than later. Northern Ireland is bound to be disappointed with whatever Brexit brings, as it will increase either the trade barriers with the rest of Ireland or with Britain.
Anyone who think the US will rush to the rescue with some fantastic deal on trade and investment is smoking our latest legalized substance. The UK has far less negotiating leverage without the rest of the EU than it will in a bilateral transaction.
What it boils down to is Little England, not the Global Britain the prime minister has promised.
I hasten to add that we spent a wonderful, even if rainy, day in Cambridge, where I had visited 55 years ago while hitchhiking around England and Wales. Great Saint Mary’s Church, which was open, and Trinity College Chapel, which was not, are reminders of how much England has endured and survived. Seeing The Backs again was a thrill, even in typical Cambridge weather:
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Stevenson’s army, December 14 and 15
December 15
NBC says Trump plans to pull 4,000 US troops from Afghanistan.
NYT says US secretly expelled two Chinese officials for spying at SOCOM base.
NYT says Chinese believe they just won the trade war with the US.
What goes around comes around: a judge has invoked a law passed by GOP Congress to limit Obama against Trump.
Trump campaign briefs press on its plans. Looks pretty good for them.
Dartmouth prof doubts effectiveness of various campaign reforms. Note especially the data on term limits.the evidence is at best equivocal on the effects of term limits. Some studies find they would actually enhance the power of special interest groups. The problem is that incumbents who lack a reelection incentive can reduce the effort they devote to their jobs, becoming less attentive to their constituents and working less on the legislative process. The political scientists Alexander Fouirnaies and Andrew B. Hall, for instance, use data from 1995 to 2016 to show that legislators facing term limits sponsor fewer bills and miss more votes. This shift can increase the influence of outside forces such as interest groups and lobbyists, who will happily fill the vacuum in expertise and effort created by term-limited legislators. These dynamics played out in California after term limits were enacted in 1990 that restricted members of the Assembly to three terms (six years) and state senators to two terms (eight years). Observers found that these short limits scrambled the legislative process, discouraging legislators from acquiring experience while in office and creating constant turnover in leadership positions. Lobbyists, staffers and other unelected figures seemed to gain power as a result. In response, good-government groups endorsed Proposition 28, which passed in 2012, reducing lifetime limits to 12 years but allowing legislators to serve all of that time in one chamber.
Prof. Brands and others say Trump has abandoned the Carter Doctrine of protecting oil fields.
December 14
– British expat Andrew Sullivan says Boris Johnson won with “Trumpism without Trump.”
– I look at the electoral maps and conclude that more and more people voted their amygdala instead of their pocketbooks. Same trend in the US.
– WSJ says USMCA sets a model for future trade agreements. I agree.
– There’s pushback on the Post’s Afghanistan series, from a Dartmouth prof and Michael O’Hanlon of Brookings.
– WaPo notes winners and losers from first US China trade deal.
– NYT says Ukraine is looking for a US lobbyist. [They all do eventually.]
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).
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Stevenson’s army, December 13
Along with agreement on the NDAA and USMCA, congressional leaders now have a deal on spending bills, avoiding both a government shutdown and another CR.
First time ever, the Senate unanimously approved a resolution condemning Armenian genocide.
Here’s the language.
The president seems to have a deal rolling back sanctions on China for some trade concessions.
How many wars are we in today? Still 19, according to the 6-monthly report to Congress under the war powers law.
Who loves us, hates us? Pew has a new international survey.
Politico’s London branch reviews UK election results.
The latest in the Post’s Afghanistan series,this time on the security forces. But former Amb.Ryan Crocker pushes back.
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).
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Stevenson’s army, December 12
– At Lawfare, a CIA lawyer complains about inaccuracies in the movie on the Senate “torture report.”
– At The Intercept, there’s an interview with the chief author of the report, Daniel Jones [starts a few pages in].
– Somalia may lose its international aid because of a US bureaucratic snafu.
– Here’s a list of cyber provisions in the new NDAA.
– The Hill lists the top lobbyists. Note how few are from defense — and even fewer on foreign policy.
– At last, administration drops plan to eliminate OPM.
– Latest Afghanistan article by the Post, this time on corruption.
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).
RSS - Posts
