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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).