tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18748696499069537182024-03-13T09:30:22.277-07:00A Guy in the WorldChuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.comBlogger123125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-48910784861087624242020-03-01T10:15:00.000-08:002017-03-28T10:06:55.820-07:00This Blog<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Thanks to University of London Law Professor Kevin Jon Heller's kind post about this blog at <a href="http://opiniojuris.org/2017/02/18/welcome-to-the-blogosphere-a-guy-in-the-world/">Opinio Juris</a> (which is a big deal in international law circles), I am getting far more traffic than I had anticipated. I thought that it might be useful to explain what this blog is all about. This is not my first blog. For years I wrote on faith issues at my "<a href="http://aguyinthepew.blogspot.com/">Guy in the Pew" blog</a>, and was also the "weekend corespondent at the Episcopal Cafe's "<a href="https://www.episcopalcafe.com/category/thelead/">The Lead" news blog</a>. I also had an Office blog when I was the Air Force General Counsel (which sadly folded after I left that office). While in private practice, however, I did not feel I had time to go back to blogging. After finding myself doing several long posts on Facebook that were very well received, I thought I should give this blogging thing another try.<br />
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My intended audience for this blog is not for other national security practitioners. There are plenty of existing blogs and websites that already do a good job of reaching that audience. Instead, this blog will be written for the same audience as my Facebook posts: people like my friends and family who have never had a national security job, but are curious about what is happening in the world. I certainly hope that true experts like Kevin Jon Heller come join the conversation (and correct my inevitable errors), but my blog will be successful if I help explain the often surreal world of national security and foreign policy to the curious folks like my Facebook friends.<br />
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I do allow comments, so please join the conversation.<br />
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(And by the way, that is me in the back seat of the F-15E you see above--one of the coolest experiences as Air Force General Counsel)Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-56407160270920097332018-08-18T11:25:00.002-07:002018-08-18T11:25:10.675-07:00The Real Danger in Trump's Threats About Security Clearances<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In 1980 spent six months as a college student studying in then Communist controlled Poland. It was an eye-opening experience in any ways, but the biggest lesson I learned was that authoritarian regimes do not need secret police to get their way. To the contrary, the most effective tool was to control access to schooling and employment, and then deny access to school and jobs to political enemies.<br />
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While for most Americans a security clearance is not essential to employment, that is simply not the case for millions of Americans who work in the national security field. Want to work for DoD, the FBI or the CIA? You need a clearance. Want to work for a defense contractor? You need a clearance. While I don't "need" my clearance to do my job as a national security lawyer, I have no doubt that my income would drop significantly if my clearance was taken away.<br />
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It is for this reason that since our current security clearance system was created after World War II, we as a Nation have worked hard to protect our security clearance system free from politics. The only relevant factors were whether a person would treat classified information appropriately and whether they had a need to know. Indeed, we have a long and storied history of individuals with high clearances being quite vocal about their opposition to the actions of the Administration in power. Some of the harshest critics of our involvement in the Vietnam War had clearances. During the Carter Administration, outsiders with clearances were sharply critical of the failure to confront the Soviet Union. This has been true of every Administration. Dick Cheney and John Bolton were harshly critical of the Obama Administration, and they could do so without any fear that their security clearances could be taken away.<br />
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Until now. The decision of President Trump to take away John Brennan's security clearance by the stroke of a pen, without due process, and for the stated reason that he didn't like Brennan's exercise of First Amendment Rights, is unprecedented and remarkable. The fact that there are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/former-intelligence-officials-rebuke-trump-for-pulling-brennans-security-clearance/2018/08/17/ea8382f2-a20d-11e8-8e87-c869fe70a721_story.html">orders prepared to do the same to at least ten other critics</a> of the Trump Administration is stunning. President Trump has politicized the security clearance process, and turned it into a loyalty test for the current Administration. John Brennan, and those on the hit list, probably won't be affected much by this. Many do consult regularly on issues faced by their former agencies, but do so for free as Patriots. My main concern, however, is not about them--it is about the chilling affect on those to whom the security clearance really is financially important. It is their speech that will be chilled, and they are the real targets of Trump's petty and vindictive actions.<br />
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To make this quite personal, I must admit that I now wonder whether I am putting my own likelihood at risk for being so outspoken against this Administration.<br />
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To be clear, there is a legitimate issue of whether former senior government officials should automatically keep their clearance. (For the record, my clearances are solely because of work I now do. I did not keep my clearances when I left government). While there may be value to the government in keeping the clearances alive for former senior officials, perhaps we should end this practice. If President had done so, I would not be critical. But that is not what he did. Instead, he is going after only former officials that have been sharply critical of him. Perhaps he realized that the "no security clearances merely for being a former senior official rule" would harm many of the friendly commentators who support the Trump Administration on Fox News.<br />
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I am heartened that even died-in-the wool Republicans like former CIA Directors Robert Gates, George Tenet and Robert Gates have joined their forces with dozens of former national security professionals to denounce Trump's actions to politicize the security clearance process. While some of these professionals have been critical of Trump in the past, the large majority have kept silent--until now. The fact that they have spoken up should be a wake up call to those who love our country.<br />
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So here is my plea--even if you otherwise like President Trump, and support his policies--speak up and denounce this un-American enemies list. Be like the Democrats during the New Deal who opposed Roosevelt's court packing scheme. They put their country first. You should too.Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-73915520999015346282018-07-25T10:24:00.001-07:002018-07-25T10:24:53.525-07:00Trump and His Critics' Security Clearances: A Primer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Say what you will about the Trump Presidency (and I have said quite a bit), he is certainly creating lots of opportunity for my friends to learn about national security topics. Thanks to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sander's announcement that President Trump is considering revoking the security clearances of former Intelligence Community leaders who have been sharply critical of him, I have an opportunity to focus on security clearances.<br />
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Given that they play such an important role in protecting our national security clearances, one odd fact is that our entire system of security clearances is largely the creation of Executive Orders, and not statutes. The basic set-up of our systems is as follows: in order to have access to protected information, you need to have both (1) the appropriate level of clearance (Confidential, Secret, Top Secret or Top Secret/Special Compartmentalized Information), and (2) a need to know the information (idle curiosity isn't enough). For certain highly sensitive information, you must also be "read on" to a Special Access Program", which has a sharply limited set of people who can have access. Getting a clearance is a ling and expensive process that usually involves an extensive field investigation where agents knock on the doors of your neighbors.<br />
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In the usual case, when you leave government service you lose the clearance. I lost my clearance when I left my job as Air Force General Counsel, and my current clearances are the result of my service on the Aerospace Corporation Board of Trustees and my representation of a Guantanamo detainee (ironically, only the most loyal Americans are allowed to represent detainees). There is one exception to this rule--senior leaders in the Intelligence Community agencies are usually allowed to keep the clearance so that their successors can ask them questions about activities during their tenure.<br />
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Because the President created the entire system, his authority in this area is plenary, and the courts have largely held that they will not, and cannot, review substantive decisions about who has a clearance. Instead, the only authority that courts have over security clearances is to review claims of procedural due process. The key cases are <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/484/518/">Department of the Navy v. Egan</a> (holding that courts do not have the authority to review the substance of security clearance decisions) and <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/486/592/">Webster v. Doe</a> (holding that courts do have authority to review procedural due process claims). The Webster decision also seems to keep open the possibility that it would entertain other constitutional claims as well.<br />
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So what does this mean? I think that if the President revokes the security clearances without due process, this would be subject to a procedural due process challenge. Even if due process is provided, I also think that if the justification is that the IC leaders are saying bad things about Trump, there may also be a viable First Amendment challenge (but this is still a bit unclear). If instead, Trump were simply to announce that former IC leaders would no longer be allowed to keep their security clearances, I think that this decision would stand given the President's plenary power over security clearances. This, however, would be bad for national security--the current CIA Director would not be able to talk to her predecessors even in a crisis. My prediction is that Trump's pettiness will be more important than what is best for national security and this will be the option he will choose.<br />
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(A practice point here: in predicting Trump's future behavior, focus on what best advances his pettiness)<br />
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If you want to learn more, check out this <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/can-president-revoke-former-officials-security-clearances">LawFare pos</a>t.Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-75168709880745719302018-07-10T08:07:00.002-07:002018-07-10T08:07:35.697-07:00Artificial Intelligence and the Survaillance State<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Nicholas Wright has a very <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2018-07-10/how-artificial-intelligence-will-reshape-global-order">sobering article </a>at Foreign Affairs (sadly behind a pay wall) about how developments in artificial intelligence will make authoritarian governments much more effective in controlling behavior. Here is a sample:<br />
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As well as retroactively censoring speech, AI and big data will allow predictive control of potential dissenters. This will resemble Amazon or Google’s consumer targeting but will be much more effective, as authoritarian governments will be able to draw on data in ways that are not allowed in liberal democracies. Amazon and Google have access only to data from some accounts and devices; an AI designed for social control will draw data from the multiplicity of devices someone interacts with during their daily life. And even more important, authoritarian regimes will have no compunction about combining such data with information from tax returns, medical records, criminal records, sexual-health clinics, bank statements, genetic screenings, physical information (such as location, biometrics, and CCTV monitoring using facial recognition software), and information gleaned from family and friends. AI is as good as the data it has access to. Unfortunately, the quantity and quality of data available to governments on every citizen will prove excellent for training AI systems. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Even the mere existence of this kind of predictive control will help authoritarians. Self-censorship was perhaps the East German Stasi’s most important disciplinary mechanism. AI will make the tactic dramatically more effective. People will know that the omnipresent monitoring of their physical and digital activities will be used to predict undesired behavior, even actions they are merely contemplating. From a technical perspective, such predictions are no different from using AI health-care systems to predict diseases in seemingly healthy people before their symptoms show. </blockquote>
Sadly, China is already building such a digital authoritarian state, and countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Iran, Russia, Zambia and Zimbabwe are beginning to use chines surveillance technology. <br />
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Read it all <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2018-07-10/how-artificial-intelligence-will-reshape-global-order">here</a>. What can be done?Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-76717867788551316182018-07-09T08:40:00.002-07:002018-07-09T08:40:19.194-07:00Three Things You Should Know About NATO Before the NATO Summit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Later this week, NATO, our most important alliance, is having a summit. In light of President Trump's disastrous behavior at the G-7 Summit--and the fact that Trump will be meeting with Putin right after the NATO Summit--there are growing concern in national security circles that Trump will use this as an opportunity to weaken the U.S. commitment to NATO. The good news is that there are noises coming out of the White House and the department of Defense that all will be well. We will see.<br />
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In the meantime, here are three things you should know before next week's summit.<br />
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1. <b>NATO Has Been a Tremendously Successful Alliance</b>. NATO is without doubt the most successful defense alliance in history. It was created when a devastated and weak Western Europe was facing a strong Soviet Army. The threat was real: the Soviet Union subverted a democratic government in Czechoslovakia, supported civil war in Greece, and supported emerging Communist political parties in France and Italy. There was another problem as well--how to allow Germany reemerge as a normal nation without endangering the rest of Europe.<br />
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Looking back almost 70 years later, NATO can declare mission accomplished. The Soviet Union collapsed of its own weight, and there has been no war among European nations in over 70 years. This is the longest period of peace in European history. This success resulted virtually every former Warsaw Pact country now freed from tyranny seeking to join NATO. They knew that collective security had worked for Western Europe, and they wanted assurance that their new independence would remain intact.<br />
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The people of Europe (both East and West) were obviously the beneficiaries of the peace and prosperity created the the stability created by this security alliance, but it also greatly benefited the United States. The huge success of the U.S. economy after World War II is in large measure the result of increasing trade with the increasingly prosperous European economy. In addition the peace meant that U.S. servicemembers did not need to fight and die in European conflicts. <br />
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Moreover, our NATO allies came to our defense in the wake of September 11th attacks. Indeed, the only time that NATO ever invoked the NATO Charter Article V collective defense agreement was to come to the aid of the United State after September 11th. The assistance was real--NATO AWACS aircraft with NATO crews helped secure U.S. airspace. This assistance continued NATO providing forces to the fight in Afghanistan.<br />
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<b>2. NATO Remains Vital to the U.S. National Security Interests Today.</b><br />
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NATO was created to deter a strong and assertive Soviet Union i the wake of World War II. After the Cold War, many thought that NATO would become irrelevant, or at least would need to redefine its mission. Indeed, in the early 1990's NATO began to change its focus from a deterrence mission to one focused on stability in Europe. There was even talk of having Russia join NATO.<br />
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Alas, the old mission returns. While Russia is not as powerful as the old Soviet Union, it remains a nuclear power with large military forces. Moreover, in recent years it has been modernizing its military. Even more disturbing, with Putin in power, it has become clear that Russia now has as a strategic aim the goal of "recapturing" the power in Europe that it lost when the Soviet Union collapsed. So far, these efforts have been focused on the former Soviet states that are not in the European Union or NATO. Russia has used military power in Georgia. It used military power to seize Crimea from the Ukraine, and is providing military assistance to pro-Russian separatist in Eastern Ukraine.<br />
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While it has taken some hostile acts against NATO states--most notably an attack on Estonia's internet access-- so far it has declined to take aggressive action against NATO states. But in light of its rhetoric about regaining what it lost, and its assertion of a right to protect Russian speaking peoples wherever they may live, many national security experts expect that Russia would take aggressive action (first against the Baltic States, but then elsewhere) should NATO be disbanded or the U.S. walk away from a firm commitment to collective defense.<br />
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Simply put, if we want a peaceful, stable, and democratic Europe, we need NATO. As I argued in a <a href="http://aguyintheworld.blogspot.com/2017/06/why-trumps-policy-toward-nato-makes-war.html">previous post</a>, any uncertainty about whether we will keep our commitment to defend NATO countries will increase the likelihood of war. History is full of examples that prove the point that deterrence only works if a potential adversary is persuaded that the political will exists to take action in response to aggression. The years before the beginning of World War II show Hitler testing the will of the world to respond to his aggression, and he acted to invade Poland when he calculated that there was no will to come to Poland's defense. In January 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson gave a speech at the National Press Club in which he publicly declared a defensive containment line against the "Communist menace" in Asia. South Korea was outside that line. Soon thereafter, North Korea invaded South Korea. And more recently, it appears that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait when the U.S. sent signals that it would not come to Kuwait's defense. In each case, uncertainty resulted in miscalculation, and miscalculation leads to war.<br />
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One further point is also worth making about the value of NATO. NATO is organized as a security alliance, but in effect it has resulted in much more. The daily discussions about the military alliance and military cooperation have almost inevitably resulted in discussions about cooperation on other national security issues as well. The result has been deep and lasting relationships of the member states on issues such as intelligence, terrorism, law enforcement and foreign affairs. While we gripe whenever our European allies disagree with us on foreign policy issues, to a remarkable degree, these nations have acted with one voice on significant issues--sanctions on Iran and North Korea, support for Afghanistan, the fight against ISIS, transportation security, and protection of the Internet. These countries share our values, and their cooperation has been vital<br />
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<b>3. Our NATO Allies Are Increasing Their Defense Spending.</b><br />
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As the Russian threat reemerged in recent years, both Republican and Democratic Administrations have told Europe that it was time for them to step up their own defense spending. President Trump has rightly continued this insistence that our NATO allies step up their defense spending. What needs to be recognized, however, is that most NATO countries are in fact stepping up their commitment and progress has been made.<br />
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In 2014, the NATO countries have pledged to work toward a goal of spending two percent of GDP on defense by 2024. As you can imagine, a shift in national budgets from other priorities to defense is not something that nations can do overnight. This is why the goal was stated as being met in a decade. Instead, meeting this target will take several years if the defense spending is to really accomplish the goal of buying effective military capability. The key factor therefore is to see if progress is being made. It is. After years of reductions in defense spending in Europe, defense spending is now increasing and at an accelerating rate. this chart shows the annual real change in European and Canadian defense spending :<br />
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Second, while only three members of NATO spent 2% or more of GDP on defense in 2104, NATO now expects that eight nations will meet this target in 2018. In 2014, only the U.S., U,K. and Greece met the 2% target. In 2018, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania will meet this target as well. A majority of NATO members have firm plans in place to meet the 2% target by 2014.<br />
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Did you notice something about the list of countries meeting the target? Almost all of countries with Russian borders are on the list of countries meeting the 2% goal. These countries have the greatest need for NATO's collective defense. The countries with the most at stake are the ones stepping up most quickly. We ought not reward their efforts by reneging on our Treaty obligation for collective defense.<br />
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It is also worth pointing out (as I did <a href="http://aguyintheworld.blogspot.com/2017/05/how-should-we-measure-burden-sharing.html">here</a>) that these budget numbers don't really capture the value of our Allies' true contribution. Some allies--such as Denmark--have low budget percentages, but quite effective and useful military capabilities that they have contributed to the fight. In addition, while we like to tout the fact that the U.S. spends 3.57% of its GDP on defense, not all of this defense spending is focused on Europe. Indeed, only about a quarter of our defense spending is focused on European defense. <br />
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At the end of the day, our NATO allies need to increase their own defense response to the new Russian threat. But too much is at stake to risk weakening this vital and successful alliance.<br />
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<br />Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-534270629681487932018-07-04T08:30:00.003-07:002018-07-04T10:44:08.994-07:00Some Thoughts on the 4th of July<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Independence Day, it seems to me, is a good day to step back from the controversies of the moment and reflect on the larger 242 year history of our nation. There are some great op-eds that attempt to do so in today's newspapers,but I thought I would do my own bit as well.<br />
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What is perhaps most remarkable about the United States is how short a time we have been in existence. Two hundred forty two years may seem like a long time, but let's put this in perspective. When my father died at 84, he had lived over one-third of the entire U.S. history. One-third! I am 59, which means that I have lived nearly one-forth of the entire history of the United States. One-fourth! What does this mean? It means that each of us, over our lifetime, have an incredible opportunity to be a big part of our nation's history.<br />
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Of course, we celebrate the lives of Americans who made an unusually important impact on U.S. history. While social, economic and technological trends help drive history, there can be little doubt that individuals make a difference as well--for good and for ill. Think of how different American would have been had Lincoln not had the steely resolve to reunite the Union Think as well how history might have been different if Lincoln's successor, President AndrewJohnson, had not been a racist Southerner, but instead a leader who would have put his heart and soul into a true Reconstruction focused on equal rights for the newly freed slaves.<br />
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You don't need to one of the celebrated heroes (or villains!) to make a difference in our Nation's history. I have a family tree that has its notables--Benjamin Franklin and Nathaniel Hawthorne among them--but they were only distant cousins. My direct ancestors were quite ordinary people--farmers, seamen, laborers and oil workers--who over the course of several generations moved west to find opportunity. But even these quite ordinary people made a difference. My early Nantucket ancestors helped create the whaling industry (and one of the family names--Starbuck--even appears as a character in Moby Dick). My Quaker ancestors left North Carolina because of slavery and were occasional helpers on the Underground Railroad in Indiana. <br />
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My grandfather was a beloved high school coach. Almost all of my ancestors lived in small towns and their mark can still be seen today in the civil institutions that they help create--churches, banks, libraries and schools. And my family's story is likely that of yours as well. Seemingly ordinary people, doing ordinary things, but nonetheless making a difference in the community--and country--in which they lived.<br />
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The fact is that the history of our nation is not just about its leaders, but many other Americans who played a vital role as well. The success of the labor movement is as much the result of the fortitude and determination of its ordinary workers than the wisdom of its leaders--perhaps more so. And the Civil Rights Movement was only successful because of the steely resolve, courage and determination of tens of thousands of African-Americans who took on the blows, dogs and water cannons. Indeed, name any of today's great movements and the same is true as well--whether it be the current Resistance to Trump, the Tea Party, LGBT rights activists or Pro-Life and Pro-Choice advocates.<br />
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There have been 56 Presidential elections in the United States. My father voted in 17, and I have voted in 10 . Even in this seemingly small way, we both helped determine the arc of our history. We live in a nation that offers the ability to make a difference in even an ordinary life. This can mean politics, but it can also mean much more--the arts, civic life and business. We all have the opportunity to have a life with meaning and we ought to seize that opportunity. That is what we ought to remember on the 4th of July.<br />
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<br />Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-14152096921348351172018-07-01T13:44:00.001-07:002018-07-01T18:42:13.651-07:00A Broader Look at Refugee and Asylum<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In the late 1980's there was a flood of refugees from Central America--largely fleeing civil war in Nicaragua and El Salvador. As is true today, there was lots of controversy about how to respond. As a border state, Arizona was at the center of this controversy, and it was the home of the Sanctuary Movement, a church-based effort to help these refugees. I was a young lawyer in Arizona at the time, and my pastor asked me to take on two asylum cases for recent immigrants from El Salvador in deportation proceedings.<br />
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Thus began some of the most fulfilling legal cases in my career. I represented a conservative Nicaraguan family fleeing persecution from the leftist government. I represented an El Salvadoran family from a small rural community terrorized by right wing death squads. I represented a Jehovah's Witness adherent fleeing persecution in Cuba.<br />
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Perhaps my most memorable client was an El Salvadoran who was the leader of a "Base Community"--an intentional Christian community of peasants. His work led to death threats from a local death squad. What was most memorable about his case was not our efforts to get asylum--as these matters go, it was an easy case. Instead, what was most memorable was a visit to my law firm six years later by his son, who came by the office to show me his brand-new degree in engineering from ASU.<br />
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In each of these cases, my clients came across the border illegally. They really had no other option--you can only seek asylum in the United States, and at the time the Reagan Administration refused to allow Central Americans to come in the refuge program. In each case, the trip to the U.S. was harrowing and dangerous. My clients risked the dangers of travel to the US only because harm seemed certain if they stayed in El Salvador or Nicaragua.<br />
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I thought of these clients over the last few weeks as Central American asylum seekers are once again in the news. Sadly, much of the rhetoric we are hearing from the Trump Administration and supporters of its harsh border policies displays either a fundamental misunderstanding of what asylum is all about--or a frontal attack on the very concept that we ought to take in refugees. My aim here is to explain what asylum is all about, and also make the case that taking in refugees is very much in our national interest.<br />
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First, I have heard lots of rhetoric that these asylum seekers are to be blamed because they aren't "doing it the right way." The simple answer is that there is no "other way." You can't seek asylum in El Salvador, and if you have a death threat, waiting several months even for a tourist visa or entry as a refugee to the US is really not an option if the threat is imminent. It is for this reason that both international law (in a Senate-ratified treaty known as the <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/3b66c2aa10">Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees</a>) and U.S. immigration law expressly state that asylum is available even if asylum seekers do not present themselves at a port of entry. They can do so at ports of entry, but <b>they need not do so</b>. U.S. law is very clear that <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1158">even individuals who enter the U.S. without going through ports of entry are eligible to apply for asylum</a>. The Convention (which, as a Treaty, has the same legal effect as a statute) goes even further. It provides that no nation can impose any penalty on refugees "on account of their illegal entry or presence . . . without authorization" as long as the refugee present themselves without delay to the authorities. It is for this reason that previous Administrations never criminally prosecuted asylum seekers. It is inconsistent with our obligations under international law to punish refugees.<br />
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Second, in several tweets, President Trump has argued that we should get rid of immigration courts and judges and simply deport all who are caught at the border without any hearing or process. He may not care that this would violate our international obligations, but since he took an oath to defend the Constitution, he ought to care that this violates the U.S. Constitution, which requires due process not merely to citizens, but all persons.<br />
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Make no mistake, an asylum claim is hard to prove--particularly for a non-English speaking El Salvadoran without legal assistance. Still, about <a href="http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/491/include/table2.html">20% of Central Americans making asylum claims are able to meet this burden</a>. (And as the linked chart shows, the difference between the success rate of those without lawyers versus those with lawyers is stark). If President Trump got his way (and the courts allowed him to violate the Constitution), this would mean that thousands of Central Americans who can prove that they face imprisonment or death will be deported without any right to prove their case.<br />
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Behind all of this, of course, is something deeper: an apparent belief by many that we should end our asylum policy. For some, this may simply come from a lack of understanding of the conditions that cause so many to leave their homes to flee to the U.S. For others, there seems to be a belief that the burden of accepting Central American refugees is simply more than our country can bear.<br />
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I would suggest that the answer to those who think the burden is too high is best found in our history. It is instructive to ask ourselves: When we review our nation's history of treatment of refugees, what do we regret--when we shut the door to refugees or when we left them open? Of course, the answer is obvious. To our eternal shame, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/27/14412082/refugees-history-holocaust">we had the chance to save thousands of Jews from the Nazis, but did not</a>.<br />
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On the other hand, our openness to refugees after World War II is both a source of pride, and evidence that refugees can greatly benefit the United States. The Cuban-American community that resulted from our acceptance of Cuban refugees after Castro took power in 1959 has been tremendously successful. The same is true of the 1.6 million refugees from Vietnam that came to the United States after the fall of Saigon. We forget that at the time polling showed very large majorities of Americans opposed the high number of Vietnamese refugees. Yet, in a relatively short time, <a href="ehttps://qz.com/670921/forty-one-years-ago-the-us-took-a-big-gamble-on-vietnamese-refugees/">the Vietnamese community became quite successful</a>.<br />
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The standard for asylum is not an easy one to meet. It is only available if the person has a well-founded fear of persecution based on past persecution or risk of persecution in the future because of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. Economic hardship (unless directed as a form of persecution) is not enough. The fact that you are fleeing violence in a war zone is not even enough unless you can show that the violence is likely to be directed at you. There must instead be a reasonable fear of persecution linked to the list of specific causes.<br />
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Perhaps it should be no surprise that those who can meet this standard do well in America. These are people who stand up for themselves and their families. We ought to continue to welcome them to America.<br />
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Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-67467375914990832772018-06-29T11:38:00.001-07:002018-06-29T11:38:20.946-07:00"National Security" As A Talisman to Ward Off Inconvenient Claims<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Loren DeJonge Schulman, a former Pentagon and NSC staffer, now at the Center for a New American Security, has a a <a href="https://inkstickmedia.com/national-security-experts-helped-hand-trump-his-travel-ban/">must read essay</a> about how those of us in the national security establishment have created an environment in which Trump is allowed to use claims of "national security" as a magic word to avoid scrutiny on questionable actions. The most recent example, is the Supreme Court's upholding of the Trump Travel Ban in <i>Trump. v. Hawaii</i>. Despite the fact that "a long list of bipartisan national security, intelligence, and military officials agree" that there is no national security justification for the travel ban, the Supreme Court upheld it:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s just bigotry disguised as
national security, the Twitter-verse <a href="https://twitter.com/_ElizabethRB/status/1011657119765057536">said</a> Monday.
How could the Supreme Court endorse it?<o:p></o:p></div>
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And there’s the rub. The Supreme Court goes out of its way
to <i>not</i> rule on the boundaries on the president’s national
security prerogatives; Justice Roberts notes, in his majority opinion, that
“our inquiry into matters of entry and national security is highly constrained”
and its expertise is limited. What constitutes a national security
justification for deference to the executive is historically out of the hands
of the judiciary and instead the remit of the national security community
itself. While the despicable policies of the Trump administration are on its
own conscience, its path was partly cleared by the good intentions of national
security professionals, themselves.</div>
</blockquote>
Why does the national security community need to take responsibility? According to Loren, our own actions have created an environment in which these claims can't be questioned:<br />
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Natsec professionals never meant to build a smirking priesthood
that avoids questioning of its actions, but we did. Every conversation we
halted with an “I know more than you, national security, you realize” laid the
groundwork for avoiding close scrutiny of our actions. Every email we <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/the-top-secret-nunes-memo-illustrates-abuse-of-our-intelligence-classification-system.html">overclassified</a> for
convenience. Every policy we didn’t trust to the general public. Every
airstrike we refused to acknowledge. Every security theater we performed at
airports. Every <a href="https://www.ice.gov/">new agency</a> we
mustered some half-hearted excuse to create. Every covert program we developed
to avoid the absence or inconvenience of congressional authority. Every detainee
we kept from receiving basic rights. Every former servicemember or official who
parlayed their rank into a gig as a cable news national security or military
analyst despite lacking any experience or training in analysis. Every partial
release of intelligence to support our preferred narratives. Since 9/11 we’ve
made everything about national security and national security about everything,
a well-intentioned impulse to close ourselves off from threats and the smallest
risks. Yes, we worked hard to protect the Constitution from all enemies foreign
and domestic, but weren’t quite clever enough to prophecy someone like Trump
would take our precedents and stretch them to the max.<br /><o:p> </o:p>We drank our own Kool-Aid, believing toughness meant
inscrutability and the American people didn’t deserve to know what we knew. We
claimed “national security” as a means to avoid explanation and transparency,
believing that even a minor check weakened the credibility of our profession,
until the parameters of national security became so flabby and insecure as to
absorb Trump’s “religious animus.” We share the blame for this.<br /><o:p> </o:p>President Trump has made national security justifications a
staple of his practice of policy, a craven sort of politics that makes us less
safe and demands loud condemnation. But the national security community created
the environment in which such arguments would be heard with a straight face.</blockquote>
Read it all <a href="https://inkstickmedia.com/national-security-experts-helped-hand-trump-his-travel-ban/">here</a>. <br />
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Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-35684670048378589892018-06-26T09:12:00.001-07:002018-06-26T09:12:09.809-07:00America's Unique Experience With War<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Franz-Stefan Gady wrote an <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2018/04/is-the-us-suffering-a-war-gap/">essay</a> a few months ago that I think merits careful consideration. His point is that Americans have experience war very differently than other countries around the world. As a result, this makes us perhaps too eager to use armed force:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
True to George W. Bush’s mantra “We’ll fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here,” U.S. troops have fought in the faraway mountains of North Korea, the rice paddies of South Vietnam, the rolling hills of Bosnia, the snowy tops of the Hindukush, and the urban jungle of Baghdad, places foreign and far away to most Americans. During that time period, not a single American battlefield defeat, and there were a few, resulted in American civilians taken prisoner or American towns razed.
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This unique American experience of war is first and foremost the result of a combination of geographical distance — the United States is protected from any threats of land invasion by two oceans — and the preponderance of American military might — the United States was and remains the world’s strongest military power. The most salient feature of what one may call the American Way of War is not only superior technology or massive firepower but geographic distance. America’s wars for the past hundred years have been fought thousands of miles away from American soil, scarcely exposing American territory to danger (with the exception of the ever-looming nuclear threat) and shielding Americans from many of the terrible consequences of war.</blockquote>
He points to several specific aspects of the American experience of war: American civilians has shielded American civilians from the horrors of military conflict, our military and civilian infrastructure has not been destroyed, we have a "snapshot" view of deployments "where men
and women are exposed to war for short time periods and rotate in and out of a
combat zone without developing an understanding of the specific nature of the
unfolding conflict, and our decisionmakers "often emphasize the changing character of warfare (how wars
are fought) over the “constant” nature of war (chaotic, unamenable to human
control, bloody, and catastrophic)."<br />
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This, Gady argues has consequences for our decisions to use force:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
As a result of the four distinctions outlined above, American policymakers and military leaders, despite continuously waging war, paradoxically have a more “benign” and “cleaner” understanding of war, contributing to what I call the “War Gap.” Almost by definition, war for Americans now denotes conflict in a faraway country where only American troops and foreign combatants and civilians are killed. No American homes are ransacked or bombed and no foreign occupational regime (if only temporarily) is imposed. American citizens remain physically removed from mayhem and death. This is in stark contrast to the European, African, Asian, and Middle Eastern experience of war in the same context.</blockquote>
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. . . </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A pernicious effect is that war, without an adequate understanding of its closely lived complexity and horror, appears more manageable to U.S. policymakers. As a result, American decision-makers are more prone to advancing military solutions over other options than leaders in other advanced democracies. Additionally, a more technological prosecution of war offers the illusion that policymakers have more choices during a military conflict than they actually obtain. Lost is the insight that the only real freedom to devise policy pertaining to a military conflict is before the outbreak of any hostilities.</blockquote>
Read it all <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2018/04/is-the-us-suffering-a-war-gap/">here</a>. Clearly, we have had some attacks on our homland--Pearl Harbor and 9/11 being the best examples, but it is certainly true that our experience of war differs qualitatively from those in other countries. What do you think? Do we use military power as a result? <br />
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<br />Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-47103581700947970182018-06-23T11:33:00.001-07:002018-06-25T06:18:34.059-07:00A Primer on the Proposed "Space Force"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last week, President Trump spoke to the Space Council and <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-space-force-pentagon-create-military-space-force-national-space-council-meeting-2018-06-18/">announced his direction</a> to the Department of Defense to create a new military service--a "Space Force"--to join the current Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force. In reading lots of commentary on this proposal, it was clear to me that most Americans are really not understanding what this is all about. The purpose of this post is to offer a primer on the idea, and to express my own views. (By way of background, I was involved with our Nation's Space military operations while serving as Air Force General Counsel, and currently serve on the Board of the <a href="http://www.aerospace.org/">Aerospace Corporation</a>, a non-profit federally funded research and development corporation that advises the Air Force and Intelligence Community on technical issues involving operations in space.)<br />
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The most important thing to understand about President Trump's announcement is that he is not proposing to "militarize" space--instead, the proposal is to reorganize how the Department of Defense organizes existing (and future) space operations, The United States military is already heavily dependent on space operations. We use satellites to detect missile launches and thereby provide early warning of nuclear attacks. The GPS satellite constellation provides essential position information for military forces (and many of our our weapons). Communications, which are essential for command and control of our global military forces, largely occurs over satellites. And spy satellites provides critical intelligence information that is used for both strategic and tactical decisions. It is safe to say that neither our intelligence community nor our military could do their job without our space assets.<br />
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And it is also worth emphasizing that our Nation also relies heavily on space for many non-military applications as well--GPS, weather, entertainment and communications. Most of our point-of-sale payment systems would not work without space.<br />
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For many years, space was not really a contested environment. We launched our highly sophisticated (and stunningly expensive) satellites into orbit (low earth orbit, high elliptical orbits, and geostationary equatorial orbits) with little concern that an adversary could take them out. That is no longer the case. And it the fact that space is now a contested environment that has led to proposals to create a separate space force.<br />
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While all of the services have at least part of the Department of Defense Space mission, the Air Force has the lion share of the responsibility. Through its Space Command, the Air Force is responsible for developing the architecture for the satellite constellations, acquiring satellites and their ground-based communication systems, launching the satellites, and then operating the satellites while in orbit. A newly arising mission is the make sure that our space assets are resilient, and capable of surviving in a wartime environment against emerging Russian and Chinese capabilities. And because space is also an increasingly crowded environment, the Air Force Space Command is also responsible for keeping track of every item in space near Earth.<br />
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Several members of Congress, most notably, Mike Rogers of Alabama and Jim Cooper of Tennessee, have argued that the Air Force is not paying sufficient attention to the space mission. And by not "paying attention," I think they really mean that the Air Force is not allocating enough resources to the space mission. The concern is that the Air Force prioritizes aircraft such as the F-35 and the new bomber over needed investments in space. The New York Times has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/us/politics/trump-space-force-military.html">a good article</a> today that describes this argument. President Trump has apparently agreed with Rogers and Cooper, despite the fact that Congress itself resoundingly rejected the argument earlier this year.<br />
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So what do I think? While I think our nation needs a new and more innovative focus on the problem of providing resilient space operations in a contested environment, I don't think that a separate space force will help us get there.<br />
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First, I was deeply involved in Air Force and Department of Defense budgeting decisions from 2009 to 2013, and I did not see an Air Force that ignored the space mission in order to fund the space mission. It simply did not happen. In addition, during my tenure at the Air Force, I saw leaders of the Air Force Space Command, such as General Willie Shelton, raise the concerns about a contested space environment only to see their proposals rejected as too expensive by the Department of Defense leadership (not Air Force leadership) and by the General Accountability Office space experts. While the Department of Defense has changed its tune since 2014, in my view, the Air Force is not the reason we now play catch up to the Chinese and Russians.<br />
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Second, while the space mission is vitally important, from a manpower point of view, it is really too small to justify an entirely new military service. Air Force Space Command, for example, has about 22,000 military members and 9,000 civilians. A new Space Force would likely have no more than 30,000 military members and perhaps 10,000 civilians. Given the entirely new infrastructure that would need to be created--a recruiting command, a training command, a space staff and a civilian secretariat (not to mention the inevitable Space Academy and Space Band)--this seems too small a force to justify an entirely new military service.<br />
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So what should we do instead? Quite frankly, much of what needs to be done seems to be underway: we need to change how we design and deploy satellites so they are more resilient, we need to reform the acquisition process so we can respond more rapidly to emerging threats, and we need to train airmen, soldiers, marines and seamen to fight through interruptions in space assets. While I don't think a new Space Force necessarily makes sense, it may make sense to create a new Combatant Command devoted to space military operations just as we created a separate Cybersecurity Combatant Command. (My caveat here is that Strategic Command now has the joint space mission and General John Hyten, the former Commander of Space Command, is the best strategic thinker we have ever had on space issues).<br />
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In short, when you think "Space Command", don't think of manned and armed space craft of science fiction lore. And don't even think about Death Stars or weapons in space directed at targets on Earth. It is instead simply a proposal about how we best organize how the military organizes space assets. While there are certainly ways we can improve how we organize this mission, a "Space Force" is the wrong approach.Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-1859795936411326602017-10-12T12:42:00.001-07:002017-10-12T12:42:08.957-07:00Measuring the Real Contributions of Our NATO Allies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The Spring, the world was aghast when Trump attacked our NATO allies and questioned the value of the NATO alliance. I explained why Trump was wrong in this <a href="http://aguyintheworld.blogspot.com/2017/03/what-president-trump-gets-wrong-about.html">long pos</a>t.<br />
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The focus of the debate is on whether our NATO allies are carrying their weight--are they spending enough on defense. In particular, Trump focused on those countries that were not meeting their target of military spending at two percent of GDP. The problem with this focus on the two percent target is that it really doesn't do a good job of accurately reflecting the real contribution of each ally. Greece, for example, more than meets this target with 2.46% of GDP, but this is largely a reflection of a grossly inefficient operations and not its military value. Other countries spend far less, but their real contributions in overseas operations has been far more.<br />
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My favorite example is little Denmark (at only 1.17%), which has been a major contributor to NATO operations worldwide. Elizabeth Braw has a very good analysis of the true contributions of our NATO allies at <a href="http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2017/10/benchmark-blinding-us-nato-members-contributions/141736/">Defense One</a>:<br />
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Take a glance at NATO’s defense spending statistics, and Denmark looks like a mediocre member. Last year, the Scandinavian country spent 1.17 percent of GDP on defense, far below NATO’s 2-percent benchmark. But a closer look at the country’s military deployments reveals a rather different picture: Denmark is, in fact, a NATO starlet. Members’ contributions to alliance missions matter as much as their defense spending. We should encourage them to be more like Denmark.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In Mali, the Danish armed forces have a 62-troop C-130 Hercules detachment. They have 199 troops in Iraq and have smaller groups elsewhere, including Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base and Kosovo. Next year, Denmark will boost its contribution to NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence in Estonia from five troops to 200, and it’s about to increase its Afghanistan force to 150 men and women. Currently, 702 Danish troops are on foreign deployment, 389 of them on NATO missions.</blockquote>
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Or look at Norway, which similarly does not qualify for NATO’s Two Percent Club: it spends 1.56 percent of its GDP on defense. But Norwegian special forces played a crucial role in Afghanistan and are now involved in the fight against ISIS. Norway also has 200 troops in NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence in Lithuania, and troops in, among other places, Kosovo, Bosnia and Afghanistan.</blockquote>
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Yes, the U.S. goes the extra mile for Europe, for example, by stationing some 30,000 Army soldiers here. But farther from the spotlight, so do countries like Italy, Denmark and Norway. Such overachievers should get credit for their efforts just as two percent spenders do. But praise is not enough. NATO shouldn’t have to rely on a few overachievers to assemble and run its missions. Much like the residents of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, all NATO members should be above-average contributors.</blockquote>
Read it all <a href="http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2017/10/benchmark-blinding-us-nato-members-contributions/141736/">here</a>. Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-42356925090597592602017-09-26T07:01:00.002-07:002017-09-26T07:01:39.413-07:00Time for a Little Humility about Military Intervention<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I have been watching the Ken Burns series on the Vietnam War with great interest. One of the themes of the series is that many of the initial decisions to escalate the War were made in good faith, but were disastrous just the same. One of the lessons of Vietnam is that we need to be much more humble about what military power can achieve.<br />
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To be clear, we can point to many successful uses of military power--even when judged many years later. Our intervention in Kosovo seems to have stabilized the Balkans. Our defense of Kuwait in the first Gulf War achieved its objective of restoring Kuwait to power. Heck, even the intervention in Mali to defeat the Islamist forces who took over that nation seems to be a success.<br />
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Why were these engagements successful? Perhaps it was because our political objectives could be satisfied by military lessons, and we did not need to engage in hubris about changing "hearts and minds." Our other recent interventions, however, have not been as successful. Indeed, most of been unmitigated disasters that made the world a less safe place.<br />
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Robert Kaplan has an interesting post at the National Interest blog about this issues:<br />
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The people I know who supported the Iraq War genuinely intended the human-rights situation in Iraq to be improved by the removal of Saddam Hussein, not made worse through war and chaos. The group of policymakers who supported the Libya campaign genuinely thought that by toppling the regime of Muammar el-Qaddafi a humanitarian catastrophe in Benghazi would be averted and the country as a whole would benefit. Instead, Libya collapsed into anarchy with many more thousands of casualties the consequence. The people who supported an early intervention to topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad, or at least limit the suffering in Syria, genuinely thought they were in both the moral and strategic right. And they might actually have been correct. Since there was no intervention in this case, the results of one remain an unknowable.
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. . .. In all three cases, both sides have had at least some claim on our sympathies, however partial, even if we have disagreed with them. There were the interests of the state and its many limitations on one hand, and the interests of humanity on the other. Of course, the interests of humanity can in quite a few circumstances coincide with the interests of state. But it cannot do so all the time, or else we would be intervening everywhere, and that would not be sustainable. And yet just because you cannot intervene everywhere does not mean you cannot intervene, consistent with your interests, somewhere.
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In ancient tragedy, as Hegel notes, the truth always emerges. What, then, is the truth about humanitarian intervention in the Muslim Middle East? The truth is that American power can do many things, but fixing complex and populous Muslim societies on the ground is not one of them: witness Iraq and Libya. But in the case of Syria, where a humanitarian and strategic nightmare has ensued without our intervention, it behooves us to treat each crisis individually, as sui generis. For intervening in one country might be the right thing to do, while it may be the wrong thing in other countries.</blockquote>
Read it all <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-problem-the-best-intentions-foreign-policy-22462">here</a>. I remain skeptical that intervention in Syria would have been a wise decision, but Kaplan's larger issue rings true--we need to judge each situation individually before using military force. And in doing so we must be more humble about what military intervention will accomplish. At the very least, we need to consider what we must do after we win the initial battles.Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-79760419783150899372017-09-23T06:00:00.000-07:002017-09-23T06:00:26.077-07:00Was the Vietnam War Winnable?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A few months back Mark Moyar, the director of the Center for Military and Diplomatic History, wrote an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/opinion/was-vietnam-winnable.html">op-ed</a> in the <i>New York Times</i>, arguing that the U.S. and its South Vietnamese allies could have won the war. He actually makes a strong case. The best response, however is from Robert Farley. While agreeing with much of Moyar's analysis, Farley makes a fundamental point: while the war might indeed have been winnable, the benefits of continuing the fight were not worth the cost:<br />
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In 1972, American political leadership made the overdue
decision that any benefit of further contribution to Vietnam was outweighed by
costs in material, in national dissensus and in international reputation. This
leadership came to the conclusion that maintaining the U.S. commitment to
Europe, North Asia and the Middle East was vastly more important to the
struggle against the Soviet Union than continued fighting in Southeast Asia<o:p></o:p></div>
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Continuing the war would have incurred other costs. Hanoi’s
conquest of South Vietnam was violent and brutal, killing thousands and forcing
many others to flee as refugees. But continuing the fight against the North
surely would also have been brutal, especially if it had involved direct
coercive measures against Hanoi. Efforts to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail would
have led to heavier fighting in Cambodia and Laos.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Finally, it’s worth putting the broader strategic context on
the table. The Sino-Soviet split demonstrated conclusively that the “socialist
bloc” was nothing of the kind; communist states could disagree with one another
in violent ways. Ho Chi Minh and his successors may have been, as Moyar points
out, “doctrinaire Communists,” but Vietnam itself invaded another communist
state in 1977, and went to war with one of its erstwhile patrons in 1979. The
U.S. “loss” of Southeast Asia had no noticeable effect on the broader strategic
balance between Moscow and Washington, a conclusion to which the Europeans had
come at some point in the late 1960s.</div>
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Read it all<a href="http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-vietnam-war-was-there-anyway-america-could-have-won-22393"> here</a>. What do you think?Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-45568423758619888832017-09-22T07:00:00.001-07:002017-09-22T07:10:17.081-07:00Letting Weapons Make The Decision to Kill<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We are living in an age of machine autonomy. We have autonomous cars on our highways already, and there are some who believe that driverless cars will be the rule, and not the exception, within the decade. As machine learning grows in sophistication, many are asking some fundamental questions about autonomous weapons: Should they be allowed? Should they be developed? Should we support an international treaty to ban them?<br />
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These are all great questions, but by and large, the discussions about them ignore some subtle, but important distinctions. For example, should our answer be different if the weapon at issue is purely defensive? Our Aegis (ship-based) and Patriot (land-based) anti-missile defense systems must react quite quickly to missiles fired against US targets, and therefore have a fully autonomous mode. In most cases, this would mean only that a machine killed another machine (and saved human lives in doing so), but they could also kill incoming enemy fighter planes as well. Acceptable? What about "smart missiles" that are programmed to only hit a particular type of enemy ship--are we uncomfortable when they are sent into the battlefield to make the actual kill decisions? The next generation of ship-to-ship missiles will likely have this capacity.<br />
<br />
Marine JAG officer Lt. Col. Alan Schuller has an outstanding post at Just Security that takes all of these issues to a new level. He looks at the issue of autonomous weapon systems through the prism of international law, but drill downs on a real fundamental point--at what point are machines really making kill decisions:<br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>But consider the hypothetical case of
an unmanned submarine that was granted the authority to attack hostile warships
after spending days, weeks, or even months without human interaction. Suppose
the submarine was programmed to independently learn how to more accurately
identify potential targets. The link between human decision-making
and lethal kinetic action gives us pause because it is attenuated.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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As such, when some commentators <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3647006/Killer-robots-quickly-moving-reality-humanity-YEAR-ban-expert-warns.html">speculate</a> about
future AWS equipped with sophisticated AI, they ascribe decisions to machines. But
even advanced machines do not decide anything in the human sense. The
hypothetical submarine above, for example, was granted a significant degree of
autonomy in its authority and capability to attack targets. Even if
the system <a href="http://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/issuances/dodd/300009p.pdf">selects
and engages</a> targets without human intervention, however, it has not
made a decision. Humans programmed it to achieve a certain goal and
provided it some latitude in accomplishing that goal. Rather than
focusing on human interactions with autonomous weapons, commentators’ inquiries
should center on whether we can reasonably predict the effects of an AWS.</div>
</blockquote>
He argues that allowing autonomous weapons on the battlefield whose decisions we do not guide in such a way that they are predictable is an abrogation of the responsibilities of military commanders under international law. But he also argues, that as long as the weapons are guided by humans and that the weapon will, with some certainty, operate under the decisions made by humans, we should not be concerned if the human actions are temporally removed from the final kill decision:<br />
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Let’s explore why a blanket requirement of human input that
is temporally proximate to lethal kinetic action is unnecessary from an IHL
standpoint. An anti-tank land mine may remain in place for an
extended period without activating. Yet, such systems are not
indiscriminate <i>per se</i>. Indeed, if future land mines were
equipped with learning capacity that somehow increased their ability to
positively identify valid military objectives, this could potentially enhance
the lawfulness of the system. As such, the analysis of the legality
of an AWS will turn in large part on whether its possible to reasonably predict
the target or class of targets the system will attack. The
determination will depend on the specific authorities and capabilities granted
to the AWS. If the lethal consequences of an AWS’ actions are
unpredictable, the decision to kill may have been unlawfully delegated to a
machine.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Moreover, future military commanders may need to address
threats that are too numerous and erratic for humans to respond. For
example, China is <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/03/14/report-chinese-drone-swarms-designed-to-attack-american-aircraft-carriers">allegedly
developing unmanned systems</a> that could operate in swarms to rapidly
overwhelm a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group. In order to address
such threats, <a href="https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/20yy-preparing-for-war-in-the-robotic-age">future
forces</a> will likely need scalable options to fight at “<a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/628154/work-human-machine-teaming-representsdefense-technology-future/">machine
speed</a>.” If a commander is forced to rely on affirmative human
input in order to use force against each individual threat, the battle may be
over before it has begun.</div>
</blockquote>
Read it all <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/45164/autonomous-weapon-systems-decision-kill/">here</a>. You can read some of my earlier posts on autonomous weapon systems <a href="http://aguyintheworld.blogspot.com/2017/05/killer-robots-real-challenge-to-using.html">here</a>, <a href="http://aguyintheworld.blogspot.com/2014/03/autonomous-weapons-is-arms-race-really.html">here</a> and <a href="http://aguyintheworld.blogspot.com/2014/03/should-we-ban-autonomous-weapons.html">here</a>.Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-31751156514283647462017-08-04T12:11:00.000-07:002017-08-04T12:11:54.648-07:00How to Handle a National Security Crisis<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia1uuLC5Wd1bWm-noF20SxUZD1dzutpNdtmfmpiwhtWBtx9nv3Zfbx_B22sKtLEBu4i0FaDPw_erkenEPN0J5azVwvjoc6rf2MToV3O6BrpLpSkZNyZbeNwmgLXxRGRGDR7D0iAoc9NPg/s1600/situation+room.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia1uuLC5Wd1bWm-noF20SxUZD1dzutpNdtmfmpiwhtWBtx9nv3Zfbx_B22sKtLEBu4i0FaDPw_erkenEPN0J5azVwvjoc6rf2MToV3O6BrpLpSkZNyZbeNwmgLXxRGRGDR7D0iAoc9NPg/s320/situation+room.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Loren DeJonge Schulman, who spent much time in the Situation Room while on the NSC staff, has a wonderful and often funny piece at Defense One that gives advice to the current NSC staff about what they need to do in a crisis. Aside from quite practical advice (get some sleep, eat more than M&Ms, and the classic "no fighting in the war room"), Loren offers some true insights. Here is a sampling:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Think, patiently. The most chaotic, unplanned NSC meetings can feel like a good midwestern family trying to decide on a restaurant for dinner: “What do you want to do? I dunno, what do you want to do?” National-security demi-god Phil Zelikow laments the decline of sophisticated policy development with the kind of nostalgia usually associated with first loves, wistfully recalling a time when “Arguments and choices were carefully noted and clearly communicated to those who needed to know. Relevant factual assumptions—about foreigners or our own side—were rigorously tracked.” Without such preparation, and the effort to get it on paper, meetings—even urgent meetings—are totally pointless. But quality staffwork does not spring fully formed from the heads of the folks in charge. Analysis takes time, and thoughtful analysis takes more time, requiring a trust in experts echelons below the bigwigs at the table—and all of this is a good thing. Critics have rightfully noted that there can be too much of a good thing; extensive “problem admiration” in the Obama administration launched a thousand frustrated op-eds and Cabinet tell-alls. But Zelikow reminds that policy options are generally matters of life and death and deserve slow and deliberate attention</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Especially in the war room. Prayers for patience are most needed when turning toward the Pentagon. Seeking military options from the Department of Defense is a delicate dance involving a sea of acronyms, a continuous escalation ladder of “your boss will need to call my boss,” and a civil-military philosophical battle that sounds like a chicken-and-egg debate conducted solely in acronyms. Even with an abundance of former and current senior military officials in senior national-security roles, marriage counseling advice is needed to at least smooth the relationship between White House and DOD officials. Open communication, being straight about needs and limitations, and giving one another time (as military planning takes about three months more than the two hours you are anticipating) are key to minimizing mutual feelings of mutiny. As is giving CENTCOM a heads up when you’re considering a strike on Syria.</blockquote>
You really need to read the <a href="http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2017/08/analysis-can-national-security-council-handle-real-crisis/140009/">entire article</a>. It is a fun read, and the essay is quite insightful.Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-10719992214610443382017-06-28T06:41:00.002-07:002017-06-28T06:41:45.032-07:00On the Realities of Drone Warfare<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsN4mvWWbiJrYqc9rhqH6KMGXP2XeHKgQquh-psMRSvn06t-bmVjfet0sLNRmX72BeD58vvndMlhX8UXXvHMfYL5h4jR0vRPpqfLAhDdl6mLmT77ZAMmB0xaOp36OpJYLEEZNrydV0oZw/s1600/reaper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="630" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsN4mvWWbiJrYqc9rhqH6KMGXP2XeHKgQquh-psMRSvn06t-bmVjfet0sLNRmX72BeD58vvndMlhX8UXXvHMfYL5h4jR0vRPpqfLAhDdl6mLmT77ZAMmB0xaOp36OpJYLEEZNrydV0oZw/s400/reaper.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
One of my frustrations has been the grossly distorted dialogue on the use of drones, or remotely piloted aircraft. Much of the public discussion is grossly misleading. I even wrote a chapter in a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Drone-Wars-Transforming-Conflict-Policy/dp/1107663385">book</a> making the point that remotely piloted aircraft are just a different platform for military action and that the ethical and legal issues are really no different than that of piloted aircraft.<br />
<br />
I was therefore pleased to see an excellent description of the reasons for the public disconnect by U.S. Air Force Major Joe Chapa at the <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2017/06/drone-ethics-and-the-civil-military-gap/">War on the Rocks blog</a>. Chapa's main point is that those who write about drones really don't know what they are talking about, and that those who have actual experience with drones don't speak out. The article is rich with examples of how incorrect information about drones has perpetuated as a result. He gives many examples, but I especially appreciated that he addressed one of my pet peeves:<br />
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For instance, in her 2013 book, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ZsDmHZvzWW4C&pg=PA157&lpg=PA157&dq=benjamin+a+good+bug+splat&source=bl&ots=CANFYEk7AD&sig=1JfNMeE217PuvQPEc-MBPQT71-I&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjju5qViqrUAhUD8WMKHWPyDL4Q6AEIUTAI"><i>Drone
Warfare</i></a>, Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin claims:</div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In 2003, the Defense Department developed a new computer
program… The dead show up as blob-like images resembling squashed insects,
which is why the program was called “Bugsplat.” Bugsplat also became the
“in-house” slang referring to drone deaths.</blockquote>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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. . .<o:p></o:p></div>
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Only a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=g0sCBAAAQBAJ&pg=PR4&dq=the+american+way+of+bombing+shue+evangelista&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjg-YLalarUAhUO3mMKHUK7AXQQ6wEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=the%20american%20way%20of%20bombing%20shue%20evangelista&f=false">few</a> <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=XlTHBwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=zenko+foreign+policy+report+65&ots=u5LLNDCzoF&sig=9O5lNF72c-GBMwvHzoUVEUhTSmM#v=onepage&q&f=false">authors</a> have
gotten it right. Bugsplat <i>was</i> software that depicted the
expected blast and fragmentation pattern of the various air-to-surface weapons
in the U.S. inventory. But it wasn’t that “the dead” were depicted as squished
bugs. People were not depicted at all. The software was developed to show how
urban terrain would impact the blast and fragmentation pattern of a given
weapon on a given target. The “splat” was about patterns, not people. To take
one simple example, dropping a 500-lb, GPS-guided <a href="https://youtu.be/7fGbpHyMz2E">GBU-38</a> onto an open field would
generate a significantly different blast and fragmentation pattern than
dropping a GBU-38 onto a house with some windows and an open door. This
software can incorporate diverse structural elements and produces a graphic
image of the pattern in which some rays would protrude further from the center
(e.g., where an open door stood) than others (e.g., where the windows were) and
others would be even more stifled (e.g., by the concrete walls with no
windows). The resulting image looks like a bug splat on a windshield.
Benjamin’s interpretation is believable but not accurate. And each time her
description is reflected and propagated in the literature, the accuracy and
legitimacy of the ethics debate suffers another blow and the divide between
military practitioners and the interested citizens for whom they fight gets a
little wider.<o:p></o:p></div>
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. . .<o:p></o:p></div>
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A sociologist, anthropologist, or social psychologists
might, even with this better understanding of the software’s purpose, contend
that the insensitive name belies animosity toward the enemy, suggesting that
one wants to crush one’s enemies like bugs. Whether, or the degree to which,
military members (and their civilian counterparts) view enemy fighters and the
foreign citizens among whom they hide in this way is a discussion worth having,
but not under the dim light of an incorrect etymology. There are two facts that
are almost never cited alongside the “bugsplat” references. First, the purpose
of the software has always been to better understand the precise effects of the
weapons <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=g0sCBAAAQBAJ&pg=PR4&dq=the+american+way+of+bombing+shue+evangelista&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjg-YLalarUAhUO3mMKHUK7AXQQ6wEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=the%20american%20way%20of%20bombing%20shue%20evangelista&f=false">in
order to reduce collateral damage and civilian casualties</a>. Second, this
“Bugsplat” software was renamed “Fast Assessment Strike Tool-Collateral Damage
(FAST-CD)” more than a dozen years ago (2003). Filtering one’s view of how
military personnel approach war through the outdated naming conventions of
software engineers sidesteps the important questions that ought to be the
subject of serious investigation. And yet, the misconception persists and has
become endemic in the public mind.</div>
</blockquote>
Read the entire article <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2017/06/drone-ethics-and-the-civil-military-gap/">here</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-63360911730479608852017-06-19T13:01:00.001-07:002017-06-19T13:04:07.999-07:00A Centrist Blowout in France: What is Next?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid3d2lbB96ZNKhhqmhe7Ity1Ch-T5xeCAsT1WV5fhA1abbYNIacdU_C-97B9ftuwz6XYgqqp5zl2y2RrBlnsZaHJ13tJft__ju7kTv4949va3tdc65se9atuCAHIAzE6JI0lARzLZHCVs/s1600/Macron.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="853" data-original-width="1280" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid3d2lbB96ZNKhhqmhe7Ity1Ch-T5xeCAsT1WV5fhA1abbYNIacdU_C-97B9ftuwz6XYgqqp5zl2y2RrBlnsZaHJ13tJft__ju7kTv4949va3tdc65se9atuCAHIAzE6JI0lARzLZHCVs/s320/Macron.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
The electoral phase of the French Centrist Resolution is now over, and the victory is pronounced. A party that did not even exist a year ago has not only taken the Presidency, but has also taken at least 355 of the 577 seats in the French Assembly. About half of the new majority are total newcomers to politics. The other half are former members of the two traditional parties--Socialists and Republicans.<br />
<br />
So what comes next for President Macron and his large Assembly majority? The first clear priority will be labor reform. France has a traditionally inflexible labor law in which large labor unions negotiate wages and conditions for an entire sector of the the economy. This means that a brand new start up is stuck with the deal negotiated with its dominant competitors. This is in contrast to the German and Scandinavian (and US model) where labor negotiations are done on a company-by-company model. Macron want to move to the German and Scandinavian model. He is already in negotiations with the major French labor unions, and the large majority will give him leverage to move in this direction--particularly since some French unions favor this new model. Nonetheless, expect a season of strikes on this issue. Macron's success in the elections, however, will help him weather the inevitable strikes and street demonstrations.<br />
<br />
Other reforms include an attention to the French budget (some cuts and tax cuts are likely in the works), while some enhancements to some social services.<br />
<br />
Longer on the horizon, Macron wants to reform the EU itself. This will include proposals that have met with significant German resistance in the past--such as a common budget and a common Finance Minister--and will require success on the domestic front first.<br />
<br />
Probably the most interesting question is whether we could ever see such a political revolution in the United States. I think not. There are numerous features in the French political systems that helped pushed this result: a Parliamentary system that has long had more than two parties, and the use of a runoff system that allowed Macron to turn 40% support in the voting public into 60% share of the Assembly. Finally, this result would never have happened with the extraordinary (and surprising) political talent of Emmanuel Macron himself.<br />
<br />
What do you think?Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-70572185962575688922017-06-15T07:13:00.002-07:002017-06-15T07:13:44.082-07:00A History Lesson: The Post World War II Transformation of U.S. Foreign PolicyProfessor Francis Gavin of SAIS-John Hopkins University, has a wonderful essay about the transformation of U.S. foreign policy after World War II. His main theme is that the transformation occurred because of the need to defend Europe against the Soviet Union, while preventing the re-emergence of an aggressive Germany:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the United States faced a
variety of interlocking challenges. First, it needed to help Western
Europe recover, but to do so, it had to allow the traditional engine of Europe
growth — Germany, or in this case, West Germany — to flourish. This was a hard
pill for the rest of Europe, including the Soviet Union, to swallow, so soon
after the horrors of World War II. European integration was one part of the
answer, first through the Marshall plan and then support for the European Coal
and Steel Community. This did not, however, take care of the security angle.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
. . .<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The real transformation, however, was seen in alliances and
military arrangements, especially in Europe. The North Atlantic Treaty was
signed in 1949, but there was little actual military planning or coordinated
strategy. Nor had the thorny question of how to both include West Germany and
its impressive military assets in this alliance without provoking World War III
been figured out. For many, perhaps most in Europe — and not just the Soviets —
a remilitarized Germany was perhaps the greatest threat to European peace and
security. Yet Western Europe could not be defended without exploiting West
German economic, and yes, military capabilities.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
. . .<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This was only possible with active American engagement — a
commitment that went against every long-held tradition the United States had
followed for a year and a half. Hammered out in political agreements in <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-man-who-saved-europe-the-last-time-1493417446">Paris
in 1954</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=19dzJhtpTAkC&pg=PA142&lpg=PA142&dq=he+Making+of+the+Western+Defense+System:+France,+the+United+States,+and+MC+48&source=bl&ots=_L04EJihLi&sig=BnZaNNWxrz5ovegkli90JYRhctY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjG6enb0b3UAhVFGz4KHTGsDXoQ6AEINjAC#v=onepage&q=he%20Making%20of%20the%20Western%20Defense%20System%3A%20France%2C%20the%20United%20States%2C%20and%20MC%2048&f=false">military
arrangements in NATO through the document MC-48</a>, the United States
committed to a large forward military presence in West Germany to back a
pre-emptive nuclear strategy where decisions about war and peace for a whole
alliance would have to be made quickly by a super-empowered president.</div>
</blockquote>
Read it all <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2017/06/whats-in-a-name-the-genius-of-eisenhower/">here</a>.Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-20973397723219228242017-06-11T15:15:00.001-07:002017-06-11T17:55:30.686-07:00Did James Comey's "Leaking" of His Memos Violate the Law?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieldYM5cm2sPlw1RTD2Al9lKChQwRsdJxh_pKSOGAJtctnNCq5Xx8mBIDhWOYUzAGz2vQHolrSMMbGwipkAT56BfhNZaKKQRUciFEEtenHmbauGKjzUnGd7_v4vsV4XXBHupJ7JCxtqac/s1600/Comey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1500" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieldYM5cm2sPlw1RTD2Al9lKChQwRsdJxh_pKSOGAJtctnNCq5Xx8mBIDhWOYUzAGz2vQHolrSMMbGwipkAT56BfhNZaKKQRUciFEEtenHmbauGKjzUnGd7_v4vsV4XXBHupJ7JCxtqac/s320/Comey.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
One of my more thoughtful Facebook friends (who is far more conservative than me) asked some very interesting questions about the leak of former FBI Director James Comey's memos to the New York Times. In particular, he asked an interesting question: Are the memos federal records? Since others have gone even further to argue that the leak was a federal crime, I thought that it might be useful to discuss the issue here.<br />
<br />
A key place to start is with guidance from the agency that is responsible for the laws governing federal records--the National Archives. They have a very interesting discussion of the issue <a href="https://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/publications/disposition-of-federal-records/chapter-2.html">here</a>. As it discusses, writings about even work-related issues (such as diaries, memos etc.) that are intended for private use are not federal records:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Work-related materials, such as diaries, journals, notes, personal calendars, and appointment schedules, that are not prepared, received, or used in the process of transacting agency business. Although these materials contain work-related information, they are personal papers if they are claimed as such and serve only the individual's own purpose (e.g., as reminders and personal observations about work-related and other topics). This category is the most difficult to distinguish from agency records because of its work-related content.</blockquote>
It is not uncommon for senior officials to record their work-related activities (either for use in a future book or simply to help them personally recall what was said during a meeting the previous weeks). It is also not uncommon for employees worried about a personnel action to do memos recording their meetings with their managers.. These are generally not federal records.<br />
<br />
As the NARA document, discusses, however, these personal papers can be found to be federal records in certain circumstances. For example, if an official gave an employee a copy of a diary entry, and asked them to follow-up on the action items discussed in the diary, at least that part of the diary could become part of the public record. The NARA document does a good job laying out some of the factors. Some of the critical factors include purpose, distribution and use::<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Purpose.</b> Was the document created to facilitate agency business? If so, then it may be an agency record, depending on its distribution and use by other agency employees. Or was it created solely for the employee's personal convenience? If so, it is unlikely to be an agency record. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Distribution</b>. Was the document distributed to other employees for an official purpose? If so, it may be an agency record. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Use</b>. Did this employee or others actually use the document to conduct agency business? Materials brought into the agency for reference use do not become agency records merely because they relate to official matters or influence the employee's work. However, if the employee relies on such materials to conduct agency business or if other employees use them for agency purposes, then the materials are more likely to be agency records.
</blockquote>
I think we need to get more information before coming to a conclusion, but I suspect that the classic CYA nature of the memos put them in the personal papers category. Here the purpose is quite consistent with that of a subordinate concerned about a meeting with his boss. Moreover, while Comey may have distributed the memo to others in the FBI, it does not appear that they were used for FBI business. <br />
<br />
The more interesting issue, is what are the consequences if they are federal records. Generally, the focus of federal records law is on the maintenance of records and their disclosure to the public (FOIA). There is no general prohibition against disclosure. There may be FBI policies that were violated, but as a former employee, they are of no consequence to Comey.<br />
<br />
There is a potentially relevant criminal statute that has gotten some attention on conservative blogs (18 U.S.C 641), but it has proved to be a wholly inadequate tool for the prosecution of leakers. Indeed, the U.S. Attorney Manual pretty much dismisses the statute as useless against leakers (stating that the statue "Fails to protect the Government's interest" in protecting records) . The main problem is that a felony conviction requires that the intrinsic value of the purloined record (the cost of the paper and toner) be over $1000. This is hardly ever the case, and certainly not the case here. Other problems include that the document seems to requires stealing of the actual "record" and under the federal records law, copies are not records--only the official original.<br />
<br />
In short, I doubt that the Comey memos qualify as federal records. As such, they really cannot be said to have been leaked at all. Any even if they do qualify as federal records, an argument that Comey violated federal law in providing the contents (indirectly) to the<i> New York Times</i> is dubious at best.Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-63748075878329634162017-06-06T11:00:00.000-07:002017-06-06T11:35:13.340-07:00President Trump Uses Twitter to Throw a Vital Ally Under the Bus<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
In my last post, I lamented that some important developments were getting lost because of our tendency to discuss the latest bright shiny object brought into the room by President Trump. My last post was on the French elections. I next planned to discuss the actions taken by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, Egypt and other Middle East governments against Qatar. Little did I know that the next bright shiny object that Trump would tweet into the room would be Qatar.<br />
<br />
By way of background, earlier this week, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and UAE (together with some others) all announced that they were ending diplomatic relations with Qatar, and they blocked all land and air access to Qatar. Given that Qatar's only land border is with Saudi Arabia, and it imports almost all of its food, this is a big deal. The reasons of the move are complicated. Qatar has been an irritant to the other Gulf monarchies because of its support of the Muslim Brotherhood and its hosting of Al Jazerra. The U.S. also has had its own issues with Qatar, but it is an important ally in the region. Perhaps most critically, it hosts Al Udeid Air Force Base, which is probably the most important U.S. Air Force base in the region. <br />
<br />
Truth be told, none of the Middle East monarchies are perfect allies. Saudi Arabia adopts a very hardline conservative form of Islam that they have actively (and sadly effectively) promoted in many countries. All of these countries have serious human rights issues. .Yet, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states are vital to the U.S. interests in the region. The only reason the U.S. is able to project power in the region at all is because of our numerous bases in these countries.<br />
<br />
Given this background, an Administration looking out for U.S. interests would be taking steps to mediate the dispute, and taking steps to find a solution to the problems that have brought us to where we are today. Indeed, I strongly suspect that this is exactly what Secretary Mattis and Secretary Tillerson have been trying to do over the past few days. Our interests are assuredly not advanced by picking sides in a despite between important allies over largely regional issues. Throwing an ally under the bus for any reason rarely works out for the U.S.<br />
<br />
Sadly, that is not what President Trump decided to do. In a series of tweets this morning, President Trump has taken sides in this dispute and has not merely supported the actions against Qatar, but has even taken credit for them. I would be shocked if Trump's senior national security advisers were consulted by the President. Indeed, I suspect that they are horrified.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!</div>
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/872062159789985792">June 6, 2017</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
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So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding...</div>
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/872084870620520448">June 6, 2017</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
...extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!</div>
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/872086906804240384">June 6, 2017</a></blockquote>
In my experience, Qatar is rather sensitive (one would say prickly) about Al Udeid Air Force Base. I would not be surprised to see significant problems for the United States because of this morning's tweets.<br />
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UPDATE: Some other reactions<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
Just informed Senate Foreign Relations Chair Corker of what Trump tweeted about Qatar and was met with about 8 seconds of stunned silence</div>
— Matt Laslo (@MattLaslo) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattLaslo/status/872130756063186944">June 6, 2017</a></blockquote>
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<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
Trump tweet-slams Qatar, saying Saudi rift w/ that country is because of him. Does he not know Qatar is home of forward US Central Command?</div>
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) <a href="https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/872137784638746625">June 6, 2017</a></blockquote>
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<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump">@realDonaldTrump</a> just dragged us into Gulf dispute & trashed Qatar, which hosts 11,000 U.S. troops. He better have a plan for their safety.</div>
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) <a href="https://twitter.com/RepSwalwell/status/872122498015531009">June 6, 2017</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
The president has decided that Qatar, home of U.S. forces in the Middle East, is a U.S. enemy. <a href="https://t.co/kvlhMh6eTM">https://t.co/kvlhMh6eTM</a></div>
— Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffreyGoldberg/status/872119659222454272">June 6, 2017</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
Trump Dumps Qatar Alliance Via Twitter, Takes Credit For Gulf States Cutting Ties <a href="https://t.co/nSQiafAsIx">https://t.co/nSQiafAsIx</a> via <a href="https://twitter.com/TPM">@TPM</a></div>
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) <a href="https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/872115322437988355">June 6, 2017</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
Apparent ease with which Trump dropped Qatar, with no show of trying to solve problems with them directly, sends a scary message to allies</div>
— Max Fisher (@Max_Fisher) <a href="https://twitter.com/Max_Fisher/status/872089969862619136">June 6, 2017</a></blockquote>
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<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
Apparent ease with which Trump dropped Qatar, with no show of trying to solve problems with them directly, sends a scary message to allies</div>
— Max Fisher (@Max_Fisher) <a href="https://twitter.com/Max_Fisher/status/872089969862619136">June 6, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-63484046853565536402017-06-06T08:14:00.003-07:002017-06-06T09:31:04.425-07:00The Centrist Revolution Now Occurring in France <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
With President Trump providing all of us a bright shiny object to focus on each day, some pretty profound developments in the world are not getting the attention they deserve. Probably the biggest story here is fact that French President Macron's centrist party is about to take the largest majority in the French Assembly since the days of Charles DeGaulle. To get a sense of the magnitude of what is occurring in France, imagine the shock if Tim Geithner had formed a brand new party that not only elected him to the Presidency, but elected massive super-majorities in the House and Senate. That is pretty much what is occurring in France today.<br />
<br />
Here is some background. Politicians in France have been talking about major reform of France's rigid labor laws for years. In the past 12 years, France has seen both parties of the Right and Left fail to achieve any meaningful reform. The result has been rising unemployment (particularly among younger workers). Part of the problem in both cases is that because both parties largely ignored these reform ideas in their campaigns (fearing that they were unpopular), neither party had a mandate for change.<br />
<br />
Macron is different. He has centered his movement on two main objectives: reform of France's labor laws, and a reform of how the European Union operates. When he announced his candidacy for President under a brand new party, conventional wisdom was that he would be lucky to get out of single digits. Of course, he won the Presidency in a landslide. Once he won the Presidency, the conventional wisdom was that Macron would not be able to achieve his goals because his new party could not possibly get a majority in the French Assembly. <br />
<br />
Polling now show Macron's party, La République En Marche, achieving a huge majority in Sunday's elections. In the most recent Reuters poll, Macron's party (shown in yellow in the graphic below) is winning 395 to 425 seats in the 577 person Assembly. This would be the largest Parlimentary majority for any party since Charles DeGaulle's victory in 1968.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMZgNxasLKaGIEPyZ4QH6alDGh4zguZkqBSMXk1xm2CHDLieg-lvMi-xdtrXx7W5f8xWxgGDFEmqOmkGmzfyP_TO2TA29Z9sEOq8cXTKPL5CqdCazRfTe2qgnaAijYQJKbs8cJVPsgIxo/s1600/France.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="390" data-original-width="534" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMZgNxasLKaGIEPyZ4QH6alDGh4zguZkqBSMXk1xm2CHDLieg-lvMi-xdtrXx7W5f8xWxgGDFEmqOmkGmzfyP_TO2TA29Z9sEOq8cXTKPL5CqdCazRfTe2qgnaAijYQJKbs8cJVPsgIxo/s400/France.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />
So what does this mean? It means that Macron has the majority he needs (and an electoral mandate) to make the changes to campaigned on. What explains this stunning result? In my view this is a combination of a surprising degree of political talent in this newcomers, and a French people ready for change. <br />
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<br />Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-57717609027605672792017-06-05T07:18:00.001-07:002017-06-05T08:04:07.261-07:00After Trump's NATO Speech Why Do Mattis, McMaster and Tillerson Continue to Serve?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I posted last week about how President Trump's refusal to give an express affirmation of the U.S. commitment to defend its NATO allies under Article 5 increases the likelihood of a Russian miscalculation and war. It now turns out that Trump deleted a section of the speech that would have made this affirmation at the last minute, and his national security advisers were not even informed of the change:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
[T]he president also disappointed—and surprised—his own top
national security officials by failing to include the language reaffirming the
so-called Article 5 provision in his speech. National security adviser H.R.
McMaster, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
all supported Trump doing so and had worked in the weeks leading up to the trip
to make sure it was included in the speech, according to five sources familiar
with the episode. They thought it was, and a White House aide even told The <i>New
York Times</i> the day before the line was definitely included.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was not until the next day, Thursday, May 25, when Trump
started talking at an opening ceremony for NATO’s new Brussels headquarters,
that the president’s national security team realized their boss had made a
decision with major consequences—without consulting or even informing them in
advance of the change.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“They had the right speech and it was cleared through
McMaster,” said a source briefed by National Security Council officials in the
immediate aftermath of the NATO meeting. “As late as that same morning, it was
the right one.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Added a senior White House official, “There was a fully
coordinated other speech everybody else had worked on”—and it wasn’t the one
Trump gave. “They didn’t know it had been removed,” said a third source of the
Trump national security officials on hand for the ceremony. “It was only upon
delivery.”</div>
</blockquote>
Read it all <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/05/trump-nato-speech-national-security-team-215227">here</a>. The conventional wisdom was that the "grown-ups" (Secretaries Mattis and Tillerson, and National Security Adviser McMaster) would moderate President Trump more extrme challenges to American national security policy. After failing to prevail on the NATO speech, the Paris Treaty and President Trump's disgraceful tweet storm about the London terrorist attack, it is abundantly clear that the conventional wisdom was dangerously wrong.<br />
<br />Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-74584868038724853492017-06-02T08:12:00.002-07:002017-06-02T11:05:17.441-07:00Why Trump's Policy Toward NATO Makes War More Likely<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
History is full of examples that prove the point that deterrence only works if a potential adversary is persuaded that the political will exists to take action in response to aggression. The years before the beginning of World War II show Hitler testing the will of the world to respond to his aggression, and he acted to invade Poland when he calculated that there was no will to come to Poland's defense. In January 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson gave a speech at the National Press Club in which he publicly declared a defensive containment line against the "Communist menace" in Asia. South Korea was outside that line. Soon thereafter, North Korea invaded South Korea. And more recently, it appears that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait when the U.S. sent signals that it would not come to Kuwait's defense. In each case, uncertainty resulted in miscalculation, and miscalculation leads to war.<br />
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This, to me, is the most disturbing part of Trump's trip to Europe: At an event remembering the fact that NATO invoked the Article 5 Collective Defense obligation to defend the United States after September 11, 2001 (the only time in NATO history), Trump declined to state, as every President beginning with Truman has stated, that the United States will meet its commitment under Article 5, to defend its NATO allies. Most troublingly, this refusal to commit to defend our NATO allies came after several campaign speeches in which Trump pooh pooed NATO.<br />
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Simply put, Trump has now created uncertainty about the U.S. commitment to our NATO allies. This is dangerous. In recent years, Russia has been quite aggressive in military force against neighbors such as Ukraine (where it seized Crimea and assisted separatists in Eastern Ukraine) and Georgia (where it assisted separatists there as well). And Putin has made troubling remarks about coming to the aid of Russian speakers in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. To date, however, Russia has been careful to take military action only against non-NATO members.<br />
<br />
Sadly, Trump's refusal to commit to the common defense obligations to NATO allies, combined with his quite evident hostility to European leaders, has cast doubt on our willingness to come to the defense of the Baltic States (or other NATO nations for that matter). As history has shown, uncertain deterrence leads to miscalculation and war.<br />
<br />
Trump does not really have an "America First" policy. His policy is "America Alone", which means a weaker and less influential America--and a policy that has lead to devastating wars in the past. NATO has been a remarkably successful alliance for over 70 years that has greatly served U.S. interests.Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-41757349395629709602017-06-01T05:56:00.000-07:002017-06-01T06:18:24.112-07:00What Trump Gets Right About the German Trade Imbalance (And What He Gets Wrong)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I have been concerned that this blog has become a "what Trump gets wrong" blog. There is certainly a lot of material for such a blog, but I would like to take a broader view of national security. So I was pleased when Trump said something that I could kinda sorta agree with: that the U.S. trade imbalance with Germany is a problem.<br />
<br />
To be clear, I differ greatly from Trump on trade. I supported TPP (but largely because of its immensely vital geopolitical benefits in Asia). I generally agree with economists that a trade imbalance is not a per se bad thing, and largely reflects underlying economics, rather than unfair trade policies. And I also think that our trade deals have largely been of greater benefit than harm (but we do a bad job of addressing those hurt by beneficial trade deals).<br />
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But there is some merit to Trump's concern about the German trade imbalance. So what does Trump get right? As <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-time-trump-is-right-about-trade-1496223180">Greg Ip explains today in the <i>Wall Street Journal</i>,</a> Germany's trade imbalance as to the entire world is an artificial and harmful effect of the Euro:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
[A] country with a weak economy and a trade
deficit would expect its currency to fall to boost exports and
restrain imports. That can’t happen if exchange rates can’t move, as is
the case with China and Germany, though for different reasons.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
. . .<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Since adopting the euro in 1999, [Germany] hasn’t controlled
its own currency. However, it did win competitive advantage over its neighbors
in the currency union. Labor-market reforms restrained domestic wages. In
2007, a payroll tax cut, which made German labor more competitive, was financed
with an increase in the value-added tax, which exempted exports.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In previous eras, those reforms would have pushed the
deutsche mark higher, squeezing Germany’s trade surplus. Inside the
euro, though, the burden has fallen on Germany’s neighbors, including
France, to compete by grinding down domestic wages and prices through
high unemployment and fiscal austerity. That has kept the entire
region’s economy weak, forcing the European Central Bank to hold down interest
rates and thus the euro. That inflates the entire region’s trade surplus
with the world.</div>
</blockquote>
So what did Trump get wrong? He seems to suggest that the problem arises from "bad trade deals" with Germany. German car makers actually manufacture cars in the United States, and the U.S. trade deal is with the EU, which includes many countries with whom we enjoy a trade surplus. As Greg Ip explains, the problem is not that Germany is exporting too much. Rather, the problem is that Germany is importing too much.<br />
<br />
So what is the solution to German Euro problem? Most economists think that Germany needs to be less austere and encourage more domestic spending. The new French President, Emmanuel Macron, wants to move to a "fiscal union" in which European budgets are financed at the European level.<br />
<br />
Germany likely will not want to do either, but saving the Euro may require some movement on its part--which will help reduce the trade imbalance.<br />
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You can read the entire Greg Ip column <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-time-trump-is-right-about-trade-1496223180">here</a>. Greg Ip, by the way, is always worth reading.Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1874869649906953718.post-86734236786967560512017-05-25T08:39:00.000-07:002017-05-25T08:39:23.468-07:00NATO's Image Rising<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrRxmi43RZZQkdGYyqI3Z4mIj2tGaXz6TTXQT85mDDKFex4slFMPfB8bzMktcKOQnqay6MgZ-OpLO_xvv4WdoVoyDLgRqjQ8kZcE6x27JUBPBP6lobVNaQ2T2fZS5j7FlBCZl-C8CGReo/s1600/NATOPew.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="484" data-original-width="640" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrRxmi43RZZQkdGYyqI3Z4mIj2tGaXz6TTXQT85mDDKFex4slFMPfB8bzMktcKOQnqay6MgZ-OpLO_xvv4WdoVoyDLgRqjQ8kZcE6x27JUBPBP6lobVNaQ2T2fZS5j7FlBCZl-C8CGReo/s400/NATOPew.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Pew Research Center this week just released a <a href="http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/05/23/natos-image-improves-on-both-sides-of-atlantic/">very interesting poll</a> that shows that in both the North America and Europe, views of NATO have improved the past year. this is a bit of a surprise given hostile comments by then Candidate Trump about NATO, and the rise of nationalism in Europe. My best guess is that rising concerns about Russia account for the increased support of the NATO alliance. Notably, however, support of NATO by Republicans actually decreased during the past year. Pew offered this analysis:
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In both North America and Europe, views of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have generally improved over the past year. Today, roughly six-in-ten Americans hold a favorable opinion of the security alliance, up from just over half in 2016, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Majority support for NATO has also strengthened in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland. And after a steep decline a year ago, most French again express a favorable view of the security alliance.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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. .</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Behind the overall uptick in favorable views of NATO, there
are sharp political and partisan differences in how publics in member countries
perceive the alliance. In the U.S., for instance, liberals (81%) are much more
supportive of NATO than conservatives (48%). In fact, American liberals’
opinions of the alliance have improved 23 percentage points since 2016.
Conservatives’ views are unchanged.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<o:p> </o:p>In several European countries, those on the ideological
right are <i>more</i> likely than those on the left to support the
alliance. In Spain, the right and left are 27 percentage points apart – 59% vs.
32% respectively. In Sweden the ideological gap is 26 points, in France 14
points, and in Germany 13 points. The share of the French right with positive
views of NATO has grown 14 points in just the past year, while the opinion
among the German right is up 13 points over the same period.</blockquote>
Read it all <a href="http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/05/23/natos-image-improves-on-both-sides-of-atlantic/">here</a>. The partisan U.S. numbers are especially interesting, and do reflect the 2016 election:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi02LxlNBg_yG4cdg6RqZN1QwWGIHnwODaJq8eJjOcr0Upou_-BXKZTX9fxILFFNX2ddBkqY-fFaxCeAYcnjAt9TVPlSIE93LIv3Yj4NUBb-RN2ighAdFfXvbu0CttzpIBO8-qbDsCN9fQ/s1600/USNATO.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="421" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi02LxlNBg_yG4cdg6RqZN1QwWGIHnwODaJq8eJjOcr0Upou_-BXKZTX9fxILFFNX2ddBkqY-fFaxCeAYcnjAt9TVPlSIE93LIv3Yj4NUBb-RN2ighAdFfXvbu0CttzpIBO8-qbDsCN9fQ/s320/USNATO.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Chuck Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01417638725063186710noreply@blogger.com0