What President Trump Gets Wrong About NATO

 I never imagined that the President of the United States would display basic ignorance about NATO, a cornerstone of our national security.  But let's use this as a teachable moment.  One of the purposes of this blog, after all,  is to offer some explanations about national security issues for my friends and family.  Sort of a "National Security for Really Smart People."

Saturday, President Trump tweeted the following about Germany and NATO:

Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS, I had a GREAT meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Nevertheless, Germany owes.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2017

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...vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2017

Trump fundamentally  misunderstands how NATO works.  NATO is not some club with some membership fee, and Germany owes the United States nothing for having troops in Europe.

So here is your primer (which is based on a great series of tweets by Ivo Daalder, the former U.S. Ambassador to NATO) :  A few years back, in response to the rise of Russian aggression in Ukraine, the NATO members pledged that they would all spend at least two percent of their Gross Domestic Product on defense by 2024.  Two observations here: (1) the commitment was to a target defense budget, not some payment to NATO or the U.S., and (2) the commitment was to meet this commitment by 2024, not right away.

As of this year, 5 of the 28 NATO countries have met this obligation , but most of the other NATO countries (including Germany) are increasing their defense budgets with an eye toward meeting this commitment.  Remember that the 2024 target date is still seven years away.  Trump's notion that Germany "owes" NATO money is a complete fabrication--or a profound misunderstanding of NATO.

A second point also needs to be made.  The United States benefits greatly from its military presence in Europe.  Europe is critically important to the U.S. economy, and a peaceful and stable Europe is in our national interest.  While, the focus is on the defense of NATO against Russian aggression (and Soviet aggression during the Cold War), there is an often unstated additional benefit--our military presence in Europe and the NATO alliance itself, solidify peace among these allies as well,

Moreover, the troops in Europe also provide easy access to Africa and the Middle East during moments of crisis.  Our rapid intervention in Libya and Mali were only possible because of our forces in Europe.

Finally, it is important to remember, that Article 5 of the NATO Charter--which calls for the collective defense of any NATO member attacked--has only been invoked one time in the entire history of  NATO:  when the U.S. was attacked on September 11, 2001.  This was not merely symbolic.  Within weeks, NATO AWACS planes were flying over the U.S. providing air defense support.

Our NATO allies should pay more for their own defense, and a little jawboning by the United States is certainly fair game--Obama and Bush both did this as well.  As you can see from the chart above, several countries (including Germany) have lots of work to do to meet the 2024 commitment.  The problem with Trump's comments is that it displays a profound lack of knowledge about how NATO works.

Unilateral Disarmament: Why Trump's "Skinny Budget" Would Make the United States Less Powerful

Despite the $54 billion increase in defense spending, the Trump budget as disclosed last week will make the United States less powerful in world affairs. As a practical matter, this would mean that we are less likely to get our way in the world, and our adversaries, including China, Russia, and Iran, will become relatively more powerful.

But how can this be?  With more F-35's , a larger Army, and more ships, won't we be more powerful?  Not at all.  Military Power is only one element of national power, and the Trump budget is effectively unilateral disarmament when it comes to the other key elements of national power.

First, a quick look at what the budget proposes. It cuts the Department of State budget by a huge 29%.  This means that the entire State Department budget ($39 billion after the cuts) would be smaller than simply the increase in the Defense budget.  While not detailed, we know that these cuts translate to much smaller aid programs, fewer diplomats, and a dramatic cut in our participation in international organizations. The budget will also cut funding for multilateral development banks (like the World Bank) by $650 million over three years.

So who cares?  We have more starving children in Africa, less diplomats living the good life overseas, and fewer bureaucrats at the U.N. Wants the big deal?

Any one who has worked in the Department of Defense knows that while military power is very important, it is of limited usefulness in many circumstances.  And in other circumstances, diplomacy and foreign aid can be more effective and cheaper (both in terms of dollars and lives) than military power.

Here are just a few examples.  We are battling  al Qaeda spin offs throughout many parts of Africa.  We have found that even modest amounts of security assistance can be an effective alternative to American boots on the ground.  Our assistance to Colombia starting in the 1990's as part of Plan Colombia greatly stabilized the security situation in that country and led to the final peace deal with the FARC.  And our humanitarian assistance goes a long way to shaping attitudes in receiving countries about the United States.

Finally, the most influential tools of influence on our most important allies (who also happen to be the world's leading economies) is the hard work of diplomacy and our participation in international organizations.  We aren't going to prevail in our important ( but friendly) dispute with Canada over border issues in the Artic by the threat of military force, but instead by careful diplomacy.

Many European states are deeply invested in international organizations such as the World Bank and the United States.  As frustrating as it may be at times to deal with the U.N., our active participation is important as a tool of influence over the policies of many countries.

As any reader of this blog will know, I am a bit of a hawk when it comes to a strong military.  But, I am just as much of a "hawk" when it comes to other forms of American power.

Don't take my word for it.  As I noted in a previous post, Defense Secretary Mattis made the same point when he was the Commander of Central Command. Mattis said “If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately. So I think it’s a cost benefit ratio. The more that we put into the State Department’s diplomacy, hopefully the less we have to put into a military budget as we deal with the outcome of an apparent American withdrawal from the international scene.” And Secretary of Defense Bob Gates said “Development is a lot cheaper than sending soldiers."

So the question is simple:  why does the Trump Administration want to unilaterally disarm these important tools of American power?

When and How Should We Use Military Force to Fight Terrorism?

Several days ago, Charlie Savage had an important article in the New York Times  that reported that the Trump Administration is "exploring how to dismantle or bypass Obama-era constraints intended to prevent civilian deaths from  drone attacks, commando raids and other counterterrorism missions outside conventional war zones like Afghanistan."  As Charlie reported, the President had already declared three provinces of Yemen to be  an "area of active hostilities" where less restrictive policies should apply.  The first use of this policy was the Special Operations raid in Yemen, which killed several civilians.  He is also expected to make a similar decision with regard to Somalia.

So what's the big deal?  Why shouldn't we "unleash" our military?  That is a question that I and 34 other former national security officials tried to explain in a set of principles that we sent to Defense Secretary Mattis.  As we explained in this principles, civilian casualties are not merely a human right problem.  They also hurt us in our fight against terrorist groups:

The United States has always put a strong premium on minimizing civilian harm in armed conflicts, both because it is the right thing to do and because doing so is strategically beneficial. However, even small numbers of unintentional civilian deaths or injuries—whether or not legally permitted—can cause significant strategic setbacks. For example, civilian deaths from U.S. operations can cause partners and allies to reduce operational collaboration, withdraw consent, and limit intelligence-sharing; increase violence from militant groups; and foster distrust among local populations that are crucial to accomplishing the mission. As a result, reducing civilian harm and appropriately responding to harm that does occur play an important role in helping the United States achieve its mission objectives.

We noted that attacks in countries outside the battlefield (in Yemen and Somalia) require special caution:

The use of force outside traditional war zones, particularly using drone and other air strikes, raises complex legal, strategic, diplomatic, and humanitarian considerations that warrant continued use of heightened standards and procedures. To ensure that such operations are both strategically effective and lawful, the executive branch should, absent extraordinary circumstances . [u]se lethal force only when there is a near certainty—or a similarly high standard—that no civilian harm will occur; this standard has proven useful for maintaining support for kinetic operations among foreign governments and populations, and for minimizing the downsides and unintended consequences that occur when the United States accidentally kills or harms civilians.  

The letter was  signed by an impressive list of former national security professionals, all of whom had to make tough life and death decisions in the fight against terrorism, and all of whom learned from the experience.  We hope that the Trump Administration will recognize that while military power is an important tool against terrorism, it needs to be used with great care.

You can read the entire letter here.

Foreign Aid As a Tool For National Security

There are reports that President Trumps will propose a huge 37% cut to the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development ("AID").   Understandably, much of the discussion about the cut in foreign aid has been on the devastating impact on the poorest of the poor.  Simply put, more people will starve; fewer of the poor will leave poverty, and more people will die of disease.  There is, however, another consequence of the proposed cut.  Using a very "America First" view of the matter, the cuts in foreign aid will make us less safe at home and less effective abroad.

Mona Yacoubian, a former AID official in the Middle East Bureau, explains, cuts in foreign aid will endanger the United States:

While the soft power aspect of U.S. development assistance is important, increasingly the work performed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and others must be recognized as a strategic asset that is no less powerful than the military in confronting multifaceted challenges, and for a fraction of the cost — less than one percent of the total federal budget. Indeed, in a letter to Congress last month, more than 120 retired military leaders underscored their “strong conviction that elevating and strengthening diplomacy and development are critical to keeping America safe.” Recognizing the complexity of crises in the 21st century world, they noted that these problems “do not have military solutions alone.” Nowhere is this more apparent than the Arab world, which suffers from the Islamic State’s barbaric extremism; wrenching conflicts in Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen; and massive refugee flows to Lebanon, Jordan, and beyond. Youth unemployment, poverty, corruption, and unaccountable governance add to the region’s volatility.

The U.S. military has spearheaded the counter-Islamic State campaign, but it is USAID, together with the U.N. and other international partners, that plays a key role in stabilizing areas liberated from the Islamic State. In his March 9 testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Joseph Votel, Commander of U.S. Central Command, underscored that military might alone is not sufficient to defeat the Islamic State:

The military can help to create the necessary conditions; however, there must be concomitant progress in other complementary areas (e.g., reconstruction, humanitarian aid, stabilization, political reconciliation). There are a variety of interagency programs and efforts underway that are essential to translating military gains into actual achievement of stated goals and objectives. Support for these endeavors is vital to our success.

This is where USAID and its partners come in. Beyond providing critically needed humanitarian assistance and insuring access to essential services such as water, electricity, and health care, U.S. assistance helps strengthen local governance and ideally will facilitate the sustainable return of those who have been displaced from their homes. Successful stabilization of these areas will help prevent the emergence of dangerous power vacuums that can lead to renewed conflict, vastly diminishing the prospects that the United States will need to return to battle the Islamic State 2.0.

Read it all here.

Why Does Trump Want to Cut National Weather Satellites?

We take lots of things for granted, and perhaps one of the best examples is the highly accurate weather reports we get on the local news every night.  This is not a small thing.  Businesses and people all make critical decisions based on the forecasts that come from complicated computer models run by the National Weather Service.  Billions of dollars and thousands of lives are saved every year as a result of these weather models.

And why am I talking about weather on a national security blog?  Because accurate weather forecasting is critical to the success of military operations.

Critical to the success of these forecasts is a constellation of several billion dollar satellites that are operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ("NOAA").  Indeed, ninety percent of the data used to make weather forecasts come from satellites.

I was stunned to learn, therefore, that the Trump Administration has targeted NOAA's weather satellite program with a mission-killing 22% budget cut.  In a "pass-back" instruction to NOAA, the Trump Administration's Office of Management and Budget has requested this steep cut.  Weather satellites?  Really? Why?

By way of background, meteorologists rely on two types of NOAA satellites for the data used to make weather forecasts.  One set of satellites sit in geostationary orbit collecting data on a fixed location on the earth.  The other set of satellites orbit the two poles collecting critical data used to predict storms.  Unfortunately, NOAA's satellites are getting old, and we will soon need to replace them.  The polar satellites are actually already in crisis.  They are already beginning to fail, and are well past their expected life.  If they are not replaced very soon, our national weather forecasting capability will be seriously degraded.

Fortunately, NOAA is working on a replacement polar satellite, known as the Joint Polar Satellite System  ("JPSS").  JPSS-1 will be launched this year, and JPSS-2 will be launched in 2021.
The  JPSS program is not cheap (most satellites are not).  NOAA has budgeted $800 million for JPSS this year alone, and NOAA will need hundreds of millions of dollars for the JPSS program until the mid-2020's.

But now the Trump Administration has instructed Commerce to cut $513 million from the NOAA satellite program-- a cut of 22%.  The folks I talk to who are familiar with the NOAA budget think that the only way to make this cut is to cancel the JPSS program.  It will also mean that plans to replace the other weather satellites will be scraped as well.

So why would the Trump Administration want to destroy our weather forecasting capability?  My theory is that these cuts can only be explained by ignorance about the NOAA satellite program combined  with an ideological hostility to climate change research.  Trump's team apparently thinks that NOAA is doing liberal research about climate change, and doesn't understand that the data from these satellites is largely used for weather forecasting and not climate research.

In the end, I suspect that the NOAA weather satellite program will be restored once Trump's team gets a clue about what they are proposing.  This is because there is a strong constituency for accurate weather forecasts--led by the Department of Defense.  It makes we wonder, however, what other boneheaded, and ill-informed budget cuts are in the OBM pass-backs for programs that don't have such a constituency.

Trump Tweets and Guantanamo Recidivism

I don't want to turn this blog into yet another fact-checking site, but the following tweet by President Trump struck me as a "teachable moment" on an important topic:

122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 7, 2017

Is this true?  Not really. The source of this tweet is a report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence  that was released yesterday.  It provides the following chart:

Even a cursory review of the chart shows that Trump's tweet is false.  Of the 122 released detainees "confirmed of reengaging", the vast majority--113--were released during the Bush Administration and NOT by President Obama.  This is not  a small mistake, by the way--it is Huge.  Sad.

I think the real story here is the large drop in recidivism after January 2009--from 17.6% to 5.6%.  This is no accident.  The Obama Administration and Congress together created a far more rigorous process for reviewing whether Guantanamo detainees still presented a threat to our national security.  A Periodic Review Board, made of of senior officials from every national security agency now carefully reviews each detainee.  Once they agree that the detainee is releasable, both the State Department and the Defense Department work with the country where the detainee will go to ensure safeguards are in place.  Finally, the Secretary of Defense must personally determine that the safeguards are sufficient to ensure no recidivism.

This process was actually put in place in 2011, and it would interesting to see if the recidivism post-2011 dropped even further.  Sadly, ODNI did not do this analysis.

Steve Vladeck of the University of Texas Law School has a very good post explaining why even these ODNI numbers inflate actual recidivism:

In the above-referenced report, ODNI counted a detainee as engaging in recidivism whenever there was “A preponderance of information which identifies a specific former GTMO detainee as directly involved in terrorist or insurgent activities.” And ODNI’s basis for suspicions involve “plausible but unverified or single-source reporting indicating a specific former GTMO detainee is directly involved in terrorist or insurgent activities.” There are lots of problems with this definition, but here are three: First, it assumes, contra what we now know, that every Guantánamo detainee had previously been engaged in terrorist or insurgent activities (hence the “re” in recidivism). Second, it treats as “recidivism” involvement in amorphous “activities,” without any necessary connection to combat or battlefield activities (or, frankly, the United States)–such that one can be “confirmed of reengaging” through information that places them in the wrong place at the wrong time, without any clearer connection to hostilities or any evidence whatsoever that they “returned to the battlefield,” or did so in the context of the conflict between the United States and al Qaeda and its affiliates. Third, there’s no way to test these numbers, since they’re based upon classified intelligence and “a preponderance of information.” In other words, an unsubstantiated intelligence report that places a former detainee in the wrong part of Yemen at the wrong time can, by itself, apparently be the basis for a determination that the detainee is “confirmed of reengaging.” Intelligence reports have value, but we ought to be careful not to place too much weight on them when reaching broader conclusions about sensitive topics like recidivism.

Read it all here.

By way of full disclosure, I represent one of the Guantanamo detainees now in the Periodic Review Process.

More Thoughts About Trump's Tweets About Alleged Wiretapping

Wow, what a wild ride caused by our Tweeter-in-chief.  In the last day, I have had more time to reflect, and also have received questions about law surrounding national security wiretapping that I thought I should answer here.

First, some basic information about national security wiretapping.  The current law distinguishes two categories of electronic surveillance. If the target of our surveillance is a foreign target located overseas, there is no need for a warrant.  This should not be a surprise.  When no U.S. person is involved and we are listening to conversations overseas, there is no reason to insist on the protections of a court and warrant.  In most cases, we are not listening because of a counter-intelligence or counter-terrorism reason--we simply want to know what those darn foreigners are doing.  Under the law, no warrant is required for such surveillance as long as there is no substantial likelihood that it will acquire communications with a U.S. person.

If the surveillance is occurring in the US or is directed toward a U.S. person (or there is a substantial likelihood that conversations with a US person will be acquired), however, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires a warrant by the FISA Court.  The standard for issuing this warrant is that there is probable cause to believe that the target is a "foreign power" or an agent of a "foreign power." An Ambassador to the U.S. located in the Us would be monitored using such a warrant.

For both types of surveillance, U.S. persons that are not the target of the surveillance might, from time to time, have their communications acquired.  The law requires that these communications be "minimized."  In most cases, this means that the identity of the US person will be hidden from all further dissemination of the intelligence, but there is an exception:  the name can be used when it is necessary to understand the foreign intelligence information in the report.

So what does this mean here?  It is highly likely that the US uses these authorities to eavesdrop on communications made by the Russian Ambassador and other Russian officials.  If Trump campaign officials (such as Flynn) communicated with these officials, their conversations will be acquired as well despite the fact that none of these officials were targeted for surveillance.  Given that the counter-intelligence import of the communication was that the Russian officials were speaking to senior members of a Presidential campaign, their identities would not be hidden in any reporting.  David Kris, the former Assistant Attorney General for National Security explains this well in this post about Michael Flynn.

If any Trump officials were targeted for eavesdropping, a FISA warrant would have been required, and the existence of such a warrant suggests that a court was convinced that there was probable cause that these officials were acting as agents of a foreign government--which would be a big deal.  Huge, actually.

As I said in my previous post, I do not think there was such a warrant, and the accounts to the contrary in the press don't ring true.  Since that time, the New York Times is reporting that FBI Director James Comey asked the Department of Justice to publicly reject Trump's assertion that Presidnet Obama ordered the tapping of the phones at Trump Tower.

Second, here some further thoughts on this bizarre event.  It strikes me that these wild accusations need to put in the context of previously outrageously false assertions made by Donald Trump.  Examples of wild and false accusations made by Trump in the past include his claims that President Obama was born outside the U.S,  and that Senator Cruz's father was involved in the assassination of Robert Kennedy.  This is sadly, typical behavior by this man, and he seems not to have suffered any consequences for making such wild and false accusations.

I think there are two possibilities at play here: either Trump really believed each of these accusations based on the flimsiest of evidence, or he is cynically using these accusations to distract the American people and the media from matters Trump would rather not discuss.  After all, the tweet storm on wiretapping took place right after Attorney General Sessions was forced to recuse himself from the Russia matter.  What better way to change the narrative.

Both of these possibilities could be true, but I am most disturbed by the first possibility.  If Trump is willing to go public with wild accusations based on little evidence, how will he respond when a right wing commentator makes an accusation against a foreign government?   If he will act as impulsively as he has done here, I fear for our national security.

Some Thoughts About Trump's Tweeted Allegations About Wiretapping

Our tweeter-in-chief is at it again.  In a series of tweets this morning, President Trump alleged that President Obama "had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower."  Although the press have asked the White House for more elaboration, nothing has been forthcoming.  Indeed, it appears most of his staff were themselves surprised at the tweet storm.

It has been well over six hours, and the White House has still not elaborated on the allegations or offered any evidence that they are true.  If they fail to do so, this will only confirm the dangerously impulsive nature of this President.  It suggests that at 6 am on some future morning, he will impulsively order military action based on an article in Breitbart News.

I have no doubt that Trump made these accusations as a way to divert attention from the ever increasing evidence of contacts between Russian officials and his campaign.  His modis operandi (which has worked well up to now) is to deny, deceive and divert.  Ironically, however, if his allegations are true, they actually reinforce  the fact that there is a serious concern by counter-intelligence officials that members of the Trump Campaign were working as agents of the Russian State.

Let me explain.  Presidents do not have any authority to order a wiretap.  Instead, any domestic wiretap for counter-intelligence purposes requires (1) review and work by career prosecutors in the Department of Justice's National Security Division, (2) approval by the Attorney General, and (3) approval by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ("FISA") Court.  Approval of a FISA application requires the court find probable cause that the target of the surveillance be a "foreign power" or an "agent of a foreign power."  In other word, a court would only have ordered a wiretap at Trump Tower if there was probable cause that the folks at Trump Tower were agents of the Russian Government.

To be clear, I seriously doubt that there was such a wiretap.  Indeed, senior law enforcement officials in the Obama Administration deny that there was any such wiretap.  Most likely, Trump made these allegations after reading a post on the Breitbart News site. Indeed, some of the specific details alleged in that Breitbart News piece are repeated in Trump's tweets (such as the allegation that the FISA court had initially denied a wiretap), which strongly suggests that Trump's tweet storm was based on the article and not any formal briefing.  And the discussion of the FISA warrants in the article really don't ring true to any of us actually familiar with the process.  But if there was such a wiretap, it suggests that law enforcement and intelligence officials had probable cause that the Trump Campaign was acting as an agent of the Russian government.

Immigration, Demography and the Future of U.S. Economic Growth

While the current focus on immigration has been on illegal immigration (and national security limits on immigration from certain countries, there is also a larger debate now occurring on legal immigration.  Steve Bannon asserted last year that legal immigration was the "real problem." Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue have introduced a bill to cut legal immigration in half.   As Seattle Times columnist Jon Talton has argued, Trump voters are less concerned with the economic effect of immigration than with the fear that American will no longer be a majority white country, and this concern has as much to do with legal immigration as illegal.

Missing in all of this debate, however, has been the very real demographic consequences of cutting immigration to this country.  Simply put, immigration has allowed us to avoid a demographic challenge facing other countries.  In countries in Europe and Asia, the share of those over 65 is growing rapidly.  This is resulting in both slower growth, and increased costs in carry for the elderly.  As the Pew Research Center explains:

The aging of populations does raise concerns at many levels for governments around the world. There is concern over the possibility that a shrinking proportion of working-age people (ages 15 to 64) in the population may lead to an economic slowdown. The smaller working-age populations must also support growing numbers of older dependents, possibly creating financial stress for social insurance systems and dimming the economic outlook for the elderly.

Graying populations will also fuel demands for changes in public investments, such as the reallocation of resources from the needs of children to the needs of seniors. At the more personal level, longer life spans may strain household finances, cause people to extend their working lives or rearrange family structures. Perhaps not surprisingly, an aging China announced a relaxation of its one-child policy in November 2013.

 As Greg Ip explains quite well in today's Wall Street Journal, Trump can only achieve his economic growth goals if immigration levels are increased, or at least kept at the same levels:

Immigration’s economic significance is greater than even these numbers indicate for two reasons. First, immigrants are usually younger than the native born population: about 65% are working age, between 25 and 64, compared with 52% of the native-born. Also, among immigrants just 5% are over 65, compared with 15% of the native born. Second, immigrants will have children who will bolster the labor force in later decades. The contribution from the children of native-born parents “will simply be outnumbered by the flood of departing baby Boomers,” the NASEM study says.

Consider this: The working-age population grew on average 1.4% per year from 1965 through 2015, when economic growth averaged 3%. The Pew Research Center estimates that at current immigration rates, the working-age population will grow just 0.3% per year in the coming two decades. With half a million fewer immigrants per year it grows just 0.1%, and with 1 million fewer, the working-age population shrink by 0.1% per year.

.  .  . 

Second, they tend to bring skills that are in great demand. A recent National Bureau of Economic Research study by John Bound, Gaurav Khanna, and Nicolas Morales found that the influx of tech workers using the H-1B visa, a permit for skilled workers, during the late 1990s depressed the wages of U.S. computer workers and scientists by 3% to 10% but made the overall country better off by boosting innovation and reducing prices for consumers.

Put simply, if we want to avoid the demographic crisis facing other countries, and we want to ensure an economy in the future for our children that will make social programs like Social  Security sustainable, we need to continue to be a nation of immigrants.

(Greg Ip, by the way has a very interesting report on how demographics drives economics here. And economist John Chilton pointed me to this interesting study that found that "locations with more historical immigration today have higher incomes, less poverty, less unemployment, higher rates of urbanization, and greater educational attainment.")

Why Any Immigration Barrier Directed At Muslims Is Counterproductive

In a letter that I signed, together with about 100 other former national security officials, we argued that the Trump Refugee Ban Executive Order, in addition to being unnecessary and wrong,  “will harm our national security” because  “it has already sent exactly the wrong message to the Muslim community here at home and all over the world: that the U.S. government is at war with them based on their religion.”  In my posts on Facebook about the Order, I made a similar point—that such a ban makes us less safe, not safer.

As you might expect, we have received pushback for this point.  Isn’t it better to take no risks?  Given the terrorist attacks in Europe, isn’t there at least a small risk that one person from this country intends us harm?  If, so, why take even this small risk?

Even apart from the obvious point that we accept far greater risks in our everyday lives, this question also fails to consider the possibility that imposing such a ban itself increases the risk of radicalization.

As explained in an interesting article in yesterday’s New York Times, there is actually some research that supports our fear that anti-Muslim actions and rhetoric will contribute to the radicalization process, and thereby increase the risk of developing home grown terrorists.  The academics of conducted this study, Sarah Lyons-Padilla of Stanford and Michael Gelfand of the University of Maryland explain their study:

We conducted a survey with nearly 200 American Muslims, half of whom were immigrants, half of whom were born in the United States. We asked them about their experiences as religious and cultural minorities, including their feelings of being discriminated against on the basis of their religion. We also asked how they managed their dual identities as Americans and Muslims, and how they felt toward fundamentalist Islamic groups and extremist causes.

Our findings were clear: The more our participants reported feeling culturally homeless — that is, fully belonging neither to American culture nor to that of another nation — and discriminated against on the basis of their religion, the more they said they experienced a lack of meaning in their lives. In turn, this loss of meaning was associated with greater support for fundamentalist groups and extremist causes.

This finding was consistent with research by the social psychologist Arie Kruglanski that showed that the psychological need for significance, not religion or ideology, is what propels people toward extremism. Extremist groups offer a sense of purpose, certainty and belonging to those who work on their behalf.

These groups go after Muslims who feel culturally homeless, leaning heavily on the claim that the West is anti-Islam. In this context, Mr. Trump’s original ban, which sent a strong message that Muslims were not welcome in this country and could not be “real” Americans, amounted to free propaganda for extremists. As one poster argued on a pro-Islamic State web channel, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the declared leader of the Islamic State, should consider Mr. Trump’s executive order a “blessed ban.”

You can find the article here.  The full study is also interesting and can be found here.  

While it appears the original Executive Order will be pulled back, it will replaced with an Executive Order that will still target immigrants from predominately Muslim countries.  It too will send a message that will hurt our efforts to prevent radicalization.

Immigrants and Crime

While the focus on attention lately has been on the link  (or the lack thereof) between terrorism and refugees, President Trump and other advocates of more restrictive immigration policies also contend that immigrants are responsible for an increase in crime.  I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the evidence.  Not surprisingly, the claim appears to be false.  Immigrants, actually, are less likely to commit crimes than native born Americans.

Scientific American offers a good summary of the evidence on this issue:

Immigration-crime research over the past 20 years has widely corroborated the conclusions of a number of early 20th-century presidential commissions that found no backing for the immigration-crime connection. Although there are always individual exceptions, the literature demonstrates that immigrants commit fewer crimes, on average, than native-born Americans.

Also, large cities with substantial immigrant populations have lower crime rates, on average, than those with minimal immigrant populations.
.  .  .
Across our studies, one finding remains clear: Cities and neighborhoods with greater concentrations of immigrants have lower rates of crime and violence, all else being equal.

Read the entire post  (which was written by the researchers themselves, and not filtered by journalists).