Tag: United States
Stevenson’s army, January 13, 2nd edition
– NYT has long article on Joe Biden’s 2002 vote for war in Iraq. It’s not wrong, but it overlooks some important contextual facts. In class I told the story of how the bipartisan Senate leadership in 2001 rejected the White House proposed language for an AUMF because it seemed like a blank check for a war on terror.Instead, the Senate passed a bill limited to those connected to the 9/11 attacks, and then adjourned. The House felt sandbagged, forced to accept the Senate language in order to avoid a long delay. A year later, seeking the AUMF for war in Iraq, the WH cut a deal with the House Democratic leader to act before the Senate, thus preventing Senators Biden and Lugar from winning support for their conditional AUMF. In voting for the Iraq war, ambitious politicians like Biden, Kerry, & Hilary Clinton also remembered the purgatory 47 Senate Democrats faced in 1992 after voting against the 1991 Gulf War. They chose toughness over caution.
-Jim Steinberg, who was a senior official during many of the decisions he recounts in a new article, looks at US-China policy since 1989.
– WaPo says Trump has talked of killing Suleimani since the early weeks of his administration. NBC says Trump gave conditional authorization for the killing last summer.
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, January 13
Too good to wait until tomorrow: Prof. Karlin and two other national security professionals have co-authored an article criticizing the interagency staff work (or whatever there was) to producing the option of killing Suleimani. I strongly agree with their call for a regular, disciplined process to improve policymaking.
A group of former press secretaries have co-signed a call for regular news conferences at the White House and other departments as necessary for democracy. I share their dismay at Trump administration avoidance of the nonpartisan news media.
The Hill reports that Congress is struggling to sort out rules for cyber warfare.
Already lawmakers have done good work in creating the bipartisan Cyberspace Solarium Commission. CFR had a good conference on cyber issues last week.
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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US-Iran tensions in Iraq
The US assassination of Qasem Soleimani coupled with the Iranian missile retaliation against US bases in Iraq served as the underlying framework for the Atlantic Council’s event: US-Iran Tensions Rising with Iraq in the Middle: Analysis of Future Scenarios and Policy Implications. The event took place on Thursday January 9 and was divided into two segments: a panel discussion and two keynote speeches. The panel featured three regional experts: Atlantic Council Iraq Initiative Director Abbas Kadhim, Future of Iran Initiative Director Barbara Slavin, and Nonresident Senior Fellow Thomas S. Warrick. The panel was moderated by William F. Wechsler, the Director of Atlantic Council Middle East Programs.
Below are the highlights from the panel portion of the event:
Iraq: from bad to worse
While moderator Wechsler proclaimed that the US and Iran had walked back from the precipice of war, the panelists emphasized the precarious and dire situation the US, Iran, and Iraq are all currently in. Kadhim bluntly proclaimed that these attacks “could not have come at a worse time for Iraq.” Reports indicate that over 300 Iraqis have been killed and hundreds wounded from state violence responding to last fall’s protests. This caused disenchantment with the government, resulting in its resignation. Kadhim emphasized that this was the first time post-2003 that an Iraqi Prime Minister has resigned, plunging the nation into uncharted territory.
Kadhim provided two profound insights on the recent missile strike in Iraq and the Iraqi vote to expel US troops. To the first point he professed, “there is no such thing as US bases in Iraq — they are all Iraqi bases now,” underlining how detrimental the relationship between the US and Iran is for Iraq, particularly in terms of military development, economic rebuilding, and the creation of a new government. Secondly, Kadhim underlined Iraq’s energy dependence on Iran. He added that he believes the Iraqi government is reluctantly trying to get American troops out of Iraq because these troops are at risk. Kadhim emphasized many times that this is not in fact a hostile move on Iraq’s part, but more a security concern.
The panelists all noted that the attack occurred at a moment when Shia radicals can easily be mobilized, which could subsequently lead to the marginalization of Sunnis. This would provide ISIS with an ideal political climate to grow and multiply in.
Iran: hardliners strengthened
Wechler noted the incredibly quick ‘successes’ that Iran achieved in the region. Hours prior to the assassination of Soleimani, Iran was struggling to have a foothold in Iraq, even within Shia communities, but immediately after, Iran entirely reversed this situation. Iran has effectively accomplished its larger goal of expelling the US from Iraq while also uniting Iranians, with Soleimani revered as a martyr.
Slavin highlighted the nationalistic mourning process that is still continuing in Iran today, a week after Soleimani’s death. She cautioned that this sudden Iranian unification and the intense vilification of the US will carry a lot of weight in the upcoming February parliamentary elections. Iranian hardliners who oppose the US will be stronger candidates than ever. Warrick warned that Iran will ramp up covert intelligence within Iraq and will play a considerable role in intimidating and forcing the selection of new Iraqi leaders. There is little the United States can now do, but the possibility of a true Iraqi democracy is now in jeopardy.
Warrick succinctly presented the four possible attack vectors that Iran could utilize. The first vector is the symmetrical one. Iran is much more predictable than the media portrays it to be and theories of Iran performing recklessly are unfounded. Warrick noted that Iran has not chosen state-sponsored terrorism as a primary way to change US policy since 2011, when the IRGC initiated an attack in Saudi Arabia. The second vector is cyber threats. Iran has become versatile and quick in utilizing cyber warfare. Thirdly, Iran will mount disinformation operations . Lastly, Warrick fears Iran’s ability to influence operations, as referenced in this 2018 Wired Article. Slavin noted that regardless of which approach Iran takes, it should be assumed there will be continued Iranian covert actions in the region.
Geopolitics:
The tense US-Iran relationship has profound global implications. Slavin suggested that Turkey, Russia, and China will all gain more unrestricted power in the region. This will not only alter the landscape in Iraq but also in Syria and possibly the Gulf. Slavin noted the possibility of China sending its navy to patrol the Persian Gulf, challenging the role of the US in the region.
Slavin maintained that the US and Iran will have to engage in multilateral diplomacy, as she believes there is no chance of Iran sitting at a bilateral table with President Trump. Slavin also noted that there is no way for peace discussions to occur without sanctions relief, which are already being employed as a weapon of war. Kadhim strongly disagreed. Regardless of the terminology used to classify the relationship between the US and Iran, Slavin noted that last week changed the rules of engagement on Iraqi soil.
Following the panel discussion were two keynote speeches from Senator Murphy and Congressman Moulton. Read the Atlantic Council’s recap of their conversation here.
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Stevenson’s army, January 12
– NYT has a long tick-tock on the days before and after the Suleimani killing. Most interesting to me are how strongly CIA Director Haspel pushed for the attack and how many officials admitted the lack of imminence of Iranian attacks.
– WSJ says US has threatened Iraq with loss of access to NY Fed accounts to handle oil sales if Iraq forces US troops to leave.
– Reuters says there is still no final text for US-China trade deal, due to be signed Wednesday.
– WaPo has article on Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy views.
– I’ve just finished reading an unsettling book detailing the history of xenophobia in America. I learned, for example, that Ben Franklin used Trumpian language against German immigrants — and then lost an election to the Pennsylvania assembly, leading him to move to Britain for a decade. Time and again, already arrived Americans demonized the newly arriving — Irish and Catholics and Italians and Jews and Eastern Europeans and Mexicans and now Muslims.
And once here, a NYT story tells us, even school history textbooks reflect regional prejudices.
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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It’s already war, announced or not
The equation looks like a simple one: the US assassinated Quds force commander Soleimani as he left Baghdad airport, and Iran responded with a missile attack on an Iraqi base housing US forces. Now de-escalation is said to have taken hold. Tit-for-tat, yes, but not really war.
It’s not that simple, or that limited. In addition to the drone attack on Soleimani, the US apparently tried the same day to kill another Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander in Yemen, and a couple of days later Iranian forces in eastern Syria were under aerial attack. Washington has also increased sanctions on Iran. Tehran meanwhile has focused on trying to get the Iraqi parliament and government to evict the Americans as well as on unilaterally lifting all the constraints on their nuclear activities under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, or nuclear deal).
This is a multi-front contest, complicated further today by the revelation that the IRGC shot down a Ukrainian airliner shortly after it took off from Tehran airport. That has generated explicitly anti-regime protests inside Iran and a brutal crackdown, which is just what the Trump administration would have ordered up if it could. The discomfort of your enemy in moments of crisis is always welcome.
There are lots of things that haven’t happened yet, so far as we know. It is unclear whether the threshold of one thousand battle deaths arbitrarily required by scholars to classify a conflict as a war has been reached. If we went back to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, that number might be breached in total US and Iranian casualties. We could still see more assassinations in both directions, cyber attacks, more attacks on Gulf oil shipping and facilities, protests and crackdowns in Lebanon and Iraq as well as Iran, attacks in Yemen, Bahrain, or Saudi Arabia, and attacks on or by Israel. We might also eventually see more salvos of cruise or ballistic missiles in one direction and the other.
It is already war, declared or not. President Trump knows the American people don’t support war against Iran and he won’t try to convince them otherwise. He intends simply to proceed, announcing only the good news (from the American perspective) and citing non-existent intelligence, like the plans for attacks on four embassies that no one in the intelligence community has confirmed. Maximum pressure, initiated with sanctions, now includes “kinetic” measures ordered by the President with no authorization from Congress to use military force.
Iranian maximum resistance will not be limited either. Iran will use its proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen to pressure America’s friends and allies even as it tries to keep the Europeans, Russians, and Chinese on board the nuclear deal, or what remains of it. Iran can also hit American assets again, not only in Iraq but also elsewhere in the Middle East and even in Latin America as well as inside the US. President Trump wanted to restore deterrence with the Soleimani assassination; there is no reason to believe he has succeeded.
The House Democrats effort to restrain the President will fail. Even if the “concurrent resolution” passes in the Senate, it will be non-binding. The President will veto any binding measure. So we are stuck with a war few Americans or Iranians want conducted by a President who doesn’t care and a Supreme Leader who doesn’t either. Each is concerned with preserving his own hold on power. We need better sense to prevail in both countries, before the de-escalation lull ends and disaster come ever closer.
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Stevenson’s army, January 9
Iran and the US seem to be backing down the escalation ladder. Good. But enormous risks and opportunities for miscalculation remain. Prof. Edelman says maybe the US attacks have helped restore deterrence.
No one should be surprised if I find fault with many of Pres. Trump’s policies. But his behavior on Wednesday was deeply offensive. It has long been said that in war, truth is the first casualty. But on Wednesday the president decided to make a formal speech to the American people on a mater of great gravity, truly a matter of war and peace. He surrounded himself with senior national security officials, including many uniformed officers. And he lied and dissembled and misled us,the American people. His remarks were so far from honest and accurate that both the Washington Post and New York Times had “fact checker” articles pointing out the flaws. Over the years I’ve known several White House speech writers from both parties. All told me how hard they worked to guarantee that anything the president said in a formal address was carefully fact-checked and defensible. That’s obviously not the case in the Trump White House. It’s especially bad to use senior military officers as political props — enough to spark a backlash in the Pentagon
Two can play this game: Iran’s parliament has designated the US military as terrorists.
On other matters, WSJ says US is outmaneuvering Russia in the Balkans.
An the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, long a source of studies and recommendations critical of the PRC, has issued its latest annual report.
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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