Tag: Foreign Policy
Stevenson’s army, February 8
George Shultz, who served in 4 senior cabinet positions in the Nixon and Reagan administrations, including Secretary of State, died on Saturday. Dan Drezner has a fine appreciation, including links to other good articles.
Over the years, I’ve found several teaching points from Shultz’s career.
1. He explained how the policy process is never-ending, with fights recurring even after presidential decisions. Nothing ever gets settled in this town, a seething debating society in which the debate never stops, in which people never give up, including me.
2. He threatened to resign 14 times to gain leverage for his proposals — but never had to follow through.
3. The toxic relationship between him and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger pervaded State and DOD, making interagency cooperation nearly impossible for years. It was even worse than the Powell-Rumsfeld fights in the early 2000s. Reagan refused to choose between his two friends, so both continued to push contradictory policies. Weinberger, for example, wanted to limit the use of force to strategic enemies; Shultz insisted on fighting terrorists, calling Weinberger’s tests “the codification of the Vietnam syndrome.”
In other news, WSJ notes that China is winning the war of setting technical standards for new technologies.
– NYT sees a pattern in Biden’s trade appointments
-FP reviews a book about centrist diplomacy.
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, February 6
– Bloomberg says Biden administration wants to give economic incentives to Iran without lifting sanctions.
-SecDef Austin announces global review.
– FP deconstructs Biden foreign policy speech.
-Lawfare reviews Biden’s history on war powers.
– NYT reports “muddled intelligence” hindered police response to Capitol attack. See also their reporting on organized groups involved.
Ya gotta love the Senate [as I do]. It takes unanimous consent in order for Senators and staff to use electronic devices in the chamber. Hence this UC, which was adopted: Congressional Budget Resolution–Agreement: A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that for the duration of the Senate’s consideration of S. Con. Res. 5, setting forth the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2021 and setting forth the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2022 through 2030, the Majority and Republican managers of the concurrent resolution, while seated or standing at the managers’ desks, be permitted to deliver floor remarks, retrieve, review, and edit documents, and send email and other data communications from text displayed on wireless personal digital assistant devices and tablet devices; provided further that the use of calculators be permitted on the floor during consideration of the resolution; and that the staff be permitted to make technical and conforming changes to the resolution, if necessary, consistent with the amendments adopted during Senate consideration, including calculating the associated change in the net interest function, and incorporating the effect of such adopted amendments on the budgetary aggregates for Federal revenues, the amount by which the Federal revenues should be changed, new budget authority, budget outlays, deficits, public debt, and debt held by the public
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Stevenson’s army, February 5
The WH website now has the presidential order setting up the Biden administration’s NSC system. Notable is the number of people now regularly allowed to attend,including “as appropriate” people from mostly domestic agencies and the Special Envoy for Climate [John Kerry]. The new administration will call its national security documents “National Security Memorandum” and its assistant secretary working groups “Interagency Policy Committees” [IPC]
NSA Jake Sullivan answered questions at a WH briefing before the president’s speech.
The WH promised additional NSMs on other issues, including the national security workforce sent around earlier.
Charlie put this out earlier:
The NSC system is busy although the organizing order has yet tp be released. Axios reports that a Principals Committee [cabinet level but without the president] will hold a meeting today on Iran policy. They’ll consider a paper from Thursday’s meeting of the Deputies Committee. [I wonder who attended, since most departments still lack confirmed deputies.]
President Biden gave his first major foreign policy address at the State Department. It was basically “I’m not Trump,” reversing many positions of the previous administration. He also issued a formal order to review personnel policies for the “national security workforce.” That could hopefully lead to revised rules for recruitment, training, and promotion of careerists.
Biden also gave a morale-boosting talk to State employees, but got pushback in the NYT from people who complain the administration is hiring too many political appointees for jobs often filled by careerists in the past.
FP sees the big speech, not surprisingly, as reflecting Jake Sullivan them of a populist “foreign policy for the middle class.”
The Senate this morning approved the budget resolution that opens the way for a filibuster-avoiding reconciliation bill for Covid relief. There were 15 hours of votes that were symbolic since the measure never goes to the president or becomes law. House has to pass the measure again because of minor amendments.
FYI, there’s an S-400 problem with India.
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, February 4
– President Biden makes major foreign pol;icy speech this afternoon during visit to State Dept.
-Politico reports how he spends his days.
– WSJ notes that his China advisers are a “team of rivals.”
– The Axios weekly China report summarizes the many proposed approaches to China.
Last year Congress created an Afghanistan Study Group, probably with the intent or expectation that outside experts would question the Trump policy of rapid withdrawal. That’s how it worked out. The full report is here.
And the troop withdrawals from Germany are now on hold.
The Senate has approved a power-sharing arrangement much like what was done in 2001. Democrats now control the committee agendas. Here’s the new list of Democratic members.
New resource on congressional redistricting.
CNAS has a bunch of reports on Iran.
National Security Archive has compiled declassified report on Rumsfeld’s notorious snowflakes.
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, January 28
– SecState Blinken covers many topics.
Here’s DOS transcript.
Freeze on arms sales to UAE, Saudi Arabia. Review of US troop shift from Germany. New team on arms control.
Rapid ouster of Trump loyalists. Controversy over new official handling Iran.DHS warns of domestic extremists.
Last week I praised new book on stealth technology, which raised issue of how much to disclose publicly. SAIS prof Tom Mahnken has ideas on how to handle such problems.
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, January 16
DOJ backtracks on “capture and assassinate” charge.
Scientists doubt hypersonic weapons will work as hoped.
Officials waited months to approve vaccine distribution plan.
Fred Kaplan calls Pompeo worst SecState ever. I think Tillerson is also in the running.
I have a piece in The Hill calling for Biden to name a lot of temporary officials.
Jonathan Swan details Haspel threat to quit over political appointee.
Jamelle Bouie chronicles the 2-decade campaign against “voter fraud.”
Warning ignored: Capitol Police warned 3 days before attack. Attackers included trained military.
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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