Tag: Afghanistan
Stevenson’s army, January 31
– George Packer has a 20,000 word critique of the Afghanistan withdrawal. Haven’t had time to read it yet, but expect lots of lessons to ponder.
-Politico explains interagency fights over China trade policy.
Tomorrow is the Lunar New Year. Happy year of the Tiger.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here. 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, January 17
– How many wars are we in today? I just discovered the latest Biden administration report to Congress under the war powers resolution, which was sent on Pearl Harbor Day. It say US troops equipped for combat have been sent to 16 countries, no longer counting Afghanistan.
– I also found on the White House news site a list of the extraordinary outreach the administration claims to have made to forestall Russian action in Ukraine.
– The WH also has a new briefing on cybersecurity matters.
– CBO has a new report questioning the accuracy of Pentagon reports on aircraft readiness. I worked on this issue myself in the 1970s and know the DOD tendency to define problems away.
– CRS has recent reports on the use of defense contractors, general and historically in Iraq and Afghanistan.
– Though I still support the Senate filibuster [and would like some changes to make its use harder and less frequent] I wanted to share Norm Ornstein’s latest article.
– Over the holidays, I delved into the question of why Hitler chose to declare on war with America on December 11, 1941. I read Klaus Schmider’s book, which argues that Hitler’s decision came in that short period before the attack on the USSR clearly had stalled, when Japan needed reassurance of the alliance, and when the naval conflict in the Atlantic seemed low cost. I see the NYT Book Review discusses the new Simms and Laderman book, saying it argues that Hitler acted preemptively, expecting the war to come anyway. I look forward to reading it, too. I think it’s always important to realize that major strategic decisions often are highly contingent on the particular circumstances at the particular time.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here. 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, January 5
– Cook Political Report says redistricting is a wash.
– Defense appropriations heading to higher figure.
– Austin & Blinken together testify on Afghanistan before SFRC next week, in closed session.
– DefenseOne criticizes US hypersonic missile program.
– Vox sees flaws in legal opinion on SEAL refusal to vaccinate.
Charlie also published this yesterday:
I’m always looking for good cases to illustrate the policy process. For diplomatic and military policies, the supply is vast. For foreign economic policy, however, I haven’t found many. Until this week, when I finally had a chance to read Edward S. Miller’s 2007 book for the Naval Institute Press, Bankrupting the Enemy: The U.S. Financial Siege of Japan before Pearl Harbor.
Miller also has a revealing summary of U.S. economic sanctions policies starting with World War I, showing how reluctant U.S. officials were to use sanctions for foreign policy purposes. The key law empowering the president for almost any economic sanctions, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act [IEEPA] of 1977, is actually based on a section of the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act. That law resulted from a bureaucratic fight between the Commerce Department, which historically ran export controls, and Treasury, which claimed jurisdiction over financial transactions laws. Treasury won that fight, not least because the assertive secretary was also President Wilson’s son in law.
A similar bureaucratic struggle occurred in 1940-41 over Japan.Secretary of State Cordell Hull, the key interlocutor with the Japanese, resisted harsh sanctions because he considered them too provocative. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, however, favored pressure but had only an advisory role on sanctions. In key meetings with FDR in July, 1941, the president decided on freezing Japanese assets in the United States and restricting exports of various commodities but not a full embargo. Roosevelt and his cabinet officers even expected to sell oil to Japan, but only after some delay and on a case-by-case basis.
At the sub-cabinet level, however, Dean Acheson dominated the interagency committee that wrote the rules implementing FDR’s executive order and did so to prevent any oil shipments to Japan, a red line that many historians argue made war inevitable. Hull was upset to learn of the impact of the rules when he returned from medical leave, but was reluctant to force a change that might be viewed as favorable to the Japanese. FDR himself was preoccupied with his meeting with Churchill in August and the growing naval conflict with Germany and did not force a change back to his original policy.
Miller cites a 1976 paper by a researcher at the National Archives which has even more details of the hawkish cabal in the bureaucracy on the broad range of export restrictions on Japan, including redefining “aviation gas” so as to prevent any oil exports.
The key lesson for me is the power of the sub-cabinet bureaucracy to shape policy by implementation rules, regardless of presidential-level decisions. It happens all the time. The formal policy was to deter Japan from greater conquest by limited but significant export restrictions, not a full embargo. The actual policy Japan faced was an existential threat.
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. 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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We know for sure there will be surprises
The New Year doesn’t look all that happy: Russia is threatening to invade Ukraine, China is threatening Taiwan, Iran is progressing toward nuclear weapons, the Taliban are retrogressing, and ongoing conflicts in many parts of the world remain unresolved (Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Israel/Palestine…). COVID-19 is appearing in its most virulent version yet. Flights are being cancelled worldwide, school openings after the holidays are at risk, recovering economies are teetering, democracies are faltering, and autocracies are proclaiming victory.
I am still optimistic, partly because it is far easier to improve from a lousy situation than from a good one. This applies in particular to COVID. The Omicron version is far more in infectious than even its Delta predecessor, but it also appears to be less deadly. Evolution favors a mutant virus that spreads easily, not one that kills its host. That’s good news. COVID is on its way to becoming endemic and far less acute. Not quite the common cold, but closer to it than the disease we have seen ravage the world over the past two years, at least for those who get vaccinated and don’t have pre-existing conditions.
The Russian threat to Ukraine is looking like a negotiating ploy, albeit a dangerous one that could still lead to military action. Moscow wants Washington to agree that Ukraine and other former Soviet states will never join NATO but become instead Russian fiefdoms. It also wants NATO to withdraw forces from member states that border the Russian “near abroad.” The former is a non-starter. The latter is conceivable. Remember that Kennedy withdrew (obsolete) missiles from Turkey to get Soviet missiles out of Cuba. A full-scale invasion of Ukraine seems unlikely at this point, but President Putin could still opt to expand the area controlled by the insurgents he backs or to seize critical infrastructure he envies, if Washington is uncompromising.
A full-scale Chinese invasion of Taiwan is also unlikely. Cross-strait trade is enormous: $150 billion or so. Millions of Taiwanese visit China each year and millions more Chinese visit Taiwan. Taiwanese are big investors in China and Chinese are big investors in Taiwan. These economic relations do not preclude political tension, in particular over Taiwan’s status, but they will make Beijing hesitate to try to seize Taiwan by force. Taiwan is not Hong Kong. The US, Japan, and South Korea all have interests in ensuring its independence (not its sovereignty). China can make life hard for Taiwan and squeeze it for political concessions, but violating its air space is a long way from an amphibious assault on its coasts.
Iran’s nuclear progress is looking unstoppable. Turkey and Saudi Arabia are no doubt trying to match it, quietly so as not to arouse the US. A Middle East nuclear arms race is an ugly prospect, but it is not one that in the first instance threatens the US. We are going to have to learn to live with it, hoping that the Iranians decide not to go all the way but rather remain a “threshold” nuclear state. Actually making and deploying nuclear weapons would put all of Iran at risk of an Israeli nuclear strike, a scenario bad enough to make even hardliners in Tehran hesitate.
It is hard to be as sanguine about some of the other conflicts. Syrian President Bashar al Assad is not going anywhere, but the conflict there is no longer killing as many people as once it did. Nor are the Houthis and Taliban likely to stop oppressing Yemenis and Afghans, though there too the killing has likely passed its peak. Arab/Israeli relations have generally improved with the Abrahamic accords, but that has made peace with the Palestinians look even more distant. Why should Israel concede a state to Ramallah if the Gulf Arabs are willing to recognize Israel (either de facto or de jure) without insisting on it? In Somalia, DRC, Myanmar and some other states conflict and instability are now endemic. Like COVID-19, it is hard to see how they could get rid of its entirely.
So the world isn’t pretty on the first day of 2022. But like the domestic situation, I think it marginally more likely to improve than to deteriorate. Of course that assumes no surprises. The one thing we know for sure is that there will be surprises, which usually don’t bode well.
Happy New Year!
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Stevenson’s army, January 1
Best wishes for a happy one!
– WSJ says big winners in Afghanistan were private contractors.
– NYT says Kabul airport suicide bomber had recently been released from prison.
Many sites have “best of year” collections. Here’s WOTR’s. Here’s one from the Economist. FP has a future cast.
And here’s a search engine that doesn’t have ads in your results.
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. 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, December 31
– WaPo reports the Taliban are behaving like the Taliban.
– NYT reports what’s being said about Biden-Putin call.
– SAIS Prof Frank Gavin assesses Biden’s first year.
– Here’s the 2022 congressional calendar.
The NDAA is now public law 117-81. The 910 page measure is here.Three sections, totaling 68 pages, cover “Matters relating to other nations” — foreign policy in the defense policy bill. The law also contains 19 pages of what’s called a State Department Authorization Bill, but it’s pretty skinny. The Department of Homeland Security gets 24 pages of new laws. And cyber matters take up 52 pages. As I’ve often said in class, the NDAA is now the everything bill, and it gives the defense committee people a key role in all foreign policy legislation.
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