Tag: Saudi Arabia
Stevenson’s army, October 5
Bloomberg reports [sorry, there’s a limited paywall] that WH has ordered a “substantial” cut in the NSC staff. Article says current number is 310, but that includes support and Sit Room staff, since Congress has already limited professional staff to 200 by law. Goal is to limit leaks. Good luck.
Already leaking, former officials “horrified” by many presidential calls to foreign leaders. POTUS doesn’t follow the script.
Saudis and Iranians seem to be moving toward peace talks.
Spotlight on Sondland. The US Ambassador to EU inserted himself into Ukraine matters
In Brussels, Sondland garnered a reputation for his truculent manner and fondness for the trappings of privilege. He peppered closed-door negotiations with four-letter words. He carried a wireless buzzer into meetings at the U.S. Mission that enabled him to silently summon support staff to refill his teacup.
Sondland seemed to chafe at the constraints of his assignment. He traveled for meetings in Israel, Romania and other countries with little or no coordination with other officials. He acquired a reputation for being indiscreet, and was chastised for using his personal phone for state business, officials said.
Sondland also shuttled repeatedly back to Washington, often seeking face time with Trump. When he couldn’t gain entry to the Oval Office, officials said, he would meet instead with White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, preferring someone closer to Trump’s inner circle than national security officials responsible for Europe.
“He always seemed to be in D.C.,” a former White House official said. “People would say, ‘Does he spend any time in Brussels?’ ”
Trump’s man
Sondland’s approach to the job was seen more as a source of irritation than trouble until May, when he moved to stake his claim to the U.S.-Ukraine relationship.
After Zelensky’s election, White House officials began making plans for who would take part in the U.S. delegation to attend Zelensky’s inauguration.
National security adviser John Bolton removed Sondland’s name from the list, only to see it reinserted, a clear indication that Bolton had been overruled by the Oval Office.
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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Imbalanced Region
On September 20 the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) hosted a panel discussion entitled “Red Sea Rivalries: Middle East Competition in the Horn of Africa” to introduce and discuss a new report from the International Crisis Group (ICG) on the influence of Gulf Countries on the Horn of Africa. Opening remarks were delivered by Ambassador Johnnie Carson and Robert Malley, President of ICG. Elizabeth Dickinson, ICG’s Arabian peninsula analyst and Dino Mahtani, ICG’s Africa program deputy director outlined the report’s findings. UN advisor Nicholas Haysom, African Union Chief of Staff to the High-Level Implementation Panel Abdul Mohammad, and former Egyptian Ambassador Hesham Youssef provided commentary.
Malley described three key findings: first, the Gulf must stop exporting its conflicts to the Red Sea region; second, the Red Sea countries should negotiate collectively with the Gulf; and third, Western countries have a role to play in these conflicts but have only recently begun to do so.
Dickinson argued that Gulf competition in the Red Sea region is part of wider strategy throughout North Africa and the Sahel. Qatar and the UAE-Saudi alliance’s interventions in Sudan are related to its actions in Chad and Niger, the three countries bordering the stronghold of the UAE’s Libya proxy General Haftar. She also argued that the Gulf countries do not consider the Horn of Africa part of a different continent in which they are foreign meddlers. Rather, they think of the Red Sea as part of their region and their role in it as a natural extension of longstanding historical ties.
Mahtani emphasized that he is cautiously optimistic about the prospect of a stable dynamic between Gulf countries and domestic actors in Sudan. The killing of 120 people in Khartoum in June by General Hemeti’s forces pushed his Emirati and Saudi backers to show contrition. In July, an attempted coup by Qatar-backed members of Sudan’s military showed that Hemeti faced strong enough opposition to prevent him from ruling through coercion alone. Mahtani argued that this reality may push the UAE to compromise with Qatar on Sudan. This could lay the groundwork for future cooperation between the two countries on their overall plans for Sudan’s post-Bashir development.
Mahtani contrasted this to the situation in Somalia, where the federal government in Mogadishu is aligned with Qatar while regional political leaders receive support from the UAE and Saudi Arabia. He also described the UAE’s indirect support of al-Shabab through purchases of Somali charcoal, a significant source of funding for the militant group. In exchange, al-Shabab has increased the number of their attacks this summer and targeted a delegation of Qataris and Somali federal government employees, acting as “subcontractors for political violence.” Several panelists agreed that the Gulf rivalries have contributed to political fragmentation and violence in Somalia and will likely continue to do so indefinitely.
Both Dickinson and Mahtani emphasized the role that multilateralism can play in addressing the power asymmetry between the Gulf countries and those in the Horn of Africa. They argued that Horn of Africa countries can increase their bargaining power by negotiating jointly with the Gulf through regional multilateral organizations like the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) or the African Union. The United States rarely involves itself but when it does it can make a big difference to the effectiveness of these multilateral discussions. In Sudan, the Quad talks among the United States, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE facilitated the power sharing compromise.
Mohammad agreed that Africa’s strong tradition of multilateralism could benefit the countries of the Horn of Africa and added that it could provide an example of positive multilateral relations to the Gulf countries. He argued that while Gulf countries have weaponized the GCC against each other in recent years, adopting an African-inspired culture of multilateralism could provide a means to transcend conflict in the Middle East. Hesham agreed that multilateralism in this part of the world is important but argued that it will not solve the problem of asymmetry in the bilateral relationships between Gulf states and Horn of Africa countries.
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Stevenson’s army, September 23
– NYT has good story on cyber options against Iran.
– One of the features of Continuing Resolutions, which Congress is ready to approve to keep the government funded until November 21, is that they not only keep spending at the previous year’s level but also ban new starts. DOD is already noting which important programs will suffer delays.
– Congress has also discovered that the Saudis still haven’t paid $181 million owed US for air refueling operations.
– I commend Charlie Dunlap’s call for a apolitical 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. 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 21
Some things are clear and indisputable:
– President Trump spoke by phone with incoming Ukrainian President Zelensky on July 25.
– His private lawyer Rudy Giuliani has long been pressing Ukrainian officials to investigate activities of Joe Biden and his son Hunter in 2016.
– Someone submitted a whistleblower complaint to the Intelligence Community Inspector General on August12.
– US aid to Ukraine was not released until Sept 12, despite bipartisan pressure from Congress.
– Despite legal requirements for complaints to be shared with the intelligence committees, the administration has so far declined to do so.- It’s also worth noting that, despite Justice dept guidelines forbidding charging a sitting president with a crime, the Constitution lists “Bribery” as one of the justifications for impeachment.
What is unclear includes:
– What was said in the presidential phone conversation. Two unnamed sources are cited by the key media. WSJ, which says that Trump in that phone call said eight times that Zelensky should work with Giuliani on investigating Biden,also says Mr. Trump in the call didn’t mention a provision of U.S. aid to Ukraine, said this person, who didn’t believe Mr. Trump offered the Ukrainian president any quid pro quo for his cooperation on any investigation.
– How Congress can obtain the whistleblower complaint. Not all lawyers agree with Chairman Schiff.
While I deplore the administration’s stonewalling of this and many other requests for information, and I’m disgusted at the effort to use presidential national security authority for personal political gain, I doubt that the evidence of actual bribery will be clear and compelling, either on legal or political grounds.
In other news, the administration announced plans to send a fairly small contingent of military personnel to Saudi Arabia and UAE in response to the bombing of oil facilities. Trump called China “a threat to the world,” but labeled his trade war “a little spat” as he suggested no big deal would be made before the 2020 elections. Chinese officials also canceled their planned meetings with US farmers.
– CRS has an updated version of its report on Congress and Yemen.
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 18
– NYT details the analysis of the attack on Saudi oil facilities. DOD is preparing a report — but how much can be revealed without divulging intelligence sources and methods?
– David Sanger notes that Trump faces a credibility gap with much of the rest of the world.
– It’s significant that many Senate Republicans urge caution and diplomacy, not military action. Except for Lindsey Graham, who now has a tweet war with Trump.
– I like what I see in new CFR report on how to maintain our technological edge.
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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Today is a rainy day
This tidbit from the Washington Post about the weekend attack on Saudi oil facilities is both telling and appalling:
U.S. officials are working under the assumption that the strikes did not emanate from Yemen and do not believe they were launched from Iraq, either…
While I am open to believing that the attacks came from Iran once evidence to that effect is published and thoroughly analyzed, there should be no assumptions in the investigation at this early stage, especially as Yemen’s Houthis have claimed responsibility. Nor should a US response be up to the Saudis, as President Trump suggested in a foolish “locked and loaded” tweet in which he said he was waiting to take military action for the Saudi assessment of responsibility.
Certainly the attack is consistent with what the Iranians have said they would do: respond to US sanctions by interfering with global energy supplies. Most of us, including me, believed this referred to stopping shipping through the strait of Hormuz, but that is just because we lack imagination. Taking down half of Saudi production capacity with a few missiles is much more clever: it doesn’t bring Iran directly into conflict with the US or block a passageway that Tehran uses as much as its Gulf neighbors. It is entirely possible that Iran, perhaps acting through the Houthis, was responsible.
But there is a long history of American wars starting or escalating with blame that was mis-assigned, too often intentionally:
- the explosion of the Maine that precipitated the Spanish-American war,
- the Gulf of Tonkin attack on the US Navy and the escalation of the Vietnam war,
- the claim that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons that led the US into a decade of disastrous engagement in Iraq.
Especially with a president facing the threat of impeachment at home and with few friends abroad, we need to be exigent about assignment of responsibility.
We also need to ask what will happen after an attack on Iran. Will the US be better off, or will the Islamic Republic gain? Its road to nuclear weapons is now short, less than a year, due to Trump’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Do we really want to risk pushing Tehran to a crash nuclear weapons program with a calibrated attack? What kind of military intervention would be required to prevent that course of action?
Regardless of who initiated the attack on Saudi Arabia, Washington should also be asking how it was allowed to happen. Is it possible that the hundreds of billions of dollars in military equipment the US has sold to Saudi Arabia is incapable of preventing such an attack? Or were the Saudis asleep at the switch? Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is, among many other things, Minister of Defense. We know however how reluctant Trump is to assign responsibility for any failures to him.
Fortunately, the US has time to respond: if oil prices spike, I trust we’ll draw down on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which will limit the spike and provide time to evaluate and repair the damage in Saudi Arabia. Those who have advocated selling oil from the SPR at low prices should note: best to save it for a rainy day. That’s today.
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