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.

Why Strategies Fail

Washington, D.C. is a town that loves strategies.  When I was at the Office of National Drug Control Policy, we devoted lots of resources to drafting a Congressionally mandated "Annual Strategy" (even though my boss, Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey noted that anything done annually cannot be a strategy.  In the Pentagon, I participated in lots of strategic exercises.  As Rand's Raphael S. Cohen (a former Army officer) notes, these exercises are almost very disappointing in a must read post at Lawfare. 

So why do so many strategies disappoint? As Cohen explains, they disappoint because they fail to make tough choices--which is the very point of any strategy:

Finally, good strategies need to be substantive. Somewhat ironically, given how much criticism it received at the time, two decades later, the 1993 Bottom-Up Review is the strategy that is most often used as a baseline for subsequent major defense reviews. There are plenty of reasons for this, but one of them is its analytic transparency. Of all the attempts at national security strategy over the past quarter century, the Bottom-Up Review perhaps makes the clearest argument about linking threats to a force-sizing construct and to procurement decisions—in other words, linking ends, ways, and means together in a transparent fashion. Too often strategies instead devolve into platitudes, leaving strategy’s three major components disconnected and, at times, incoherent.

More often than not, the lack of succinctness, sharpness, and substance in strategies is just a symptom of the deeper reason why the strategy-making process so often yields lackluster results. They fail because leaders are unwilling to make difficult decisions—to focus on one threat as opposed to another, prioritize resources accordingly, and then explain their decisions publicly—at risk of being wrong. Instead, they prefer to delegate the process to the bureaucracy, which lacks the institutional power and the incentive to make decisions.

This may be why so many congressional attempts to reform national security strategies have come up short over the years: The real problem is not process; it is the aversion to making decisive and perhaps irrevocable choices. What makes this aversion all the more vexing is that, from the standpoint of some, it is entirely logical. Decisive choices can make enemies within the bureaucracies, lead to congressional scrutiny, and, perhaps most importantly, risk assuming blame for potential catastrophes when decisions prove wrong. Moreover, the benefits of getting strategy “right” are sometimes only visible long after the policymaker leaves office. Far better to settle for mediocrity and play it safe.

Read it all here. A strategy is a document that guides the tough choices we will make given the constraints in the environment.  If it fails to even recognize that there are choices to be made, it will fail.

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?

Trump's Budget Reflects a Policy of Deliberate Ignorance

There is a great deal that can be said about Trump's "skinny budget" released earlier this week.  (I joked with a friend that the cuts in anti-poverty programs looks like it was drafted by a teenager living in an upper middle class suburb who just finished reading Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. )  I think, however, that the real headline is this:  Trump's budget displays that his Administration does not merely deny climate change, but instead simply doesn't care if it is true.  Instead, the budget displays a policy of deliberate ignorance by zeroing out all scientific research on the topic.

The most stunning example of this is how the budget deals with NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR).  This is satellite that is already in space (at a cost of $141 million).  It has two sets of sensors: one focused on the Sun to detect space weather events (such as solar flares).  The second set of sensors focus on the earth, and includes a camera that takes images of the earth across 10 different parts of the visual spectrum and  a radiometer that measures how much sunlight is reflected and emitted from earth.  These sensors monitor changes in the Earth's climate and weather patterns.  This data can constitute a barometer for the process of global warming.

The Trump budget keeps the program that involves the solar weather sensors, but simply turns off the sensors  from the earth-viewing instruments.  Cost savings can't be a reason for turning off the Earth-facing sensors because NASA spends just a bit more than $1 million to operate the satellite and process its data--most of which it will continue to spend on the space weather mission.

In other words, while we have already spent over $140 million dollars to put these sensors in space, the Trump budget demands that we stop collecting the data.   This is the very definition of deliberate ignorance.  Simply put, they don't care to know the truth, and are taking steps to actively prevent us from learning the truth.  This seems to reflect the view that if we stop doing science on climate change, we no longer have to do anything about it.

This policy of deliberate ignorance permeates the budget.  In addition to DSCOVR, the budget three other NASA missions that would have observed the Earth from Space:  PACE, OCO-3, and the CLARREO Pathfinder.  It eliminates all funding for EPA's climate research.  As I noted in a previous post, it drastically cuts NOAA weather satellite program, likely leading to the elimination of a critical polar satellite.

More generally, the budget reflects not merely a policy of deliberate ignorance toward climate research, but a disregard of science in general.  It includes cuts in science spending of at least $7 billion, including an 18% cut in medical research at the National Institutes of Health, and the elimination of the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency.

When I think about what has made "America Great", our scientific and technological achievements certainly come to the top of the list.  By not merely cutting science research, but by displaying a policy of deliberate ignorance to critical climate research, this budget will not make American Great.

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.

Overselling Cyberwar

With most of us still smarting about the Russian hacking of the emails of the DNC and John Podesta, and today's stunning announcement of the indictment of two Russian intelligence officials for the huge hack of Yahoo, cyber issues are very much in the forefront.  This is a big issue for our country, and we need to take it seriously.

One problem, however: the news media too often directs us from the real issues.  While some cyber espionage uses highly sophisticated tools, in most cases, the biggest hacks involve very simple and quite unsophisticated tools to get into our systems.  The best analogy is that we are leaving our doors and windows open.  The bad guys don't need to (and often can't) pick locks.

Evan Osnos had a piece in the New Yorker today (with the great title "How Not To Freak Out About Cyber War") that does a good job making this point:

Almost always, journalists and analysts describe the latest cyber attack as a “sophisticated” operation, even when technical experts describe them as ordinary and preventable. Ben Buchanan, a Harvard researcher and the author of a new book called “The Cybersecurity Dilemma,” wrote this week on the Cipher Brief, a security blog, that “when every case is described as unprecedented and every threat actor billed as nearly unstoppable, it fuels what I call ‘the legend of sophistication.’ The effect of such a legend is to paint a picture of a world with so many talented adversaries that practical cybersecurity is out of reach.”

In some cases, the costliest attacks are relatively low-tech. Hackers accused of working for Russian intelligence breached the Gmail account of John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, using an old-fashioned technique called “spear-phishing”: sending an e-mail under false pretenses to garner personal information, such as a password. Thomas Rid, a scholar at King’s College, in London, told me, “It’s like an I.E.D. In the nineties, leading up to Afghanistan, you had this expectation that the future of warfare would be very high tech, and that America would be leading because the American Armed Forces were spending so much money on network-centric platforms. But then what happened is the I.E.D. improvisation. If you drive with a vehicle that has wheels, it can be attacked. If you have an e-mail account, it can be hacked.”

 As Osnos notes, while policymakers spend a great deal of time and attention devoted to applying Cold War deterrence thinking to cybersecurity, what we really ought to be thinking about is "why don’t accounts like Podesta’s have two-factor authentication by default?”  You can read the entire piece here.

More on Closing Guantanamo

On Monday, I posted about the call by Bush Administration top national security lawyer, John Bellinger, to close the detention facility at Guantanamo.  Today, Paul Lewis, the former Special Envoy for Guantanamo Detention at the Department of Defense, has an excellent post making the same argument.  Paul, by the way, served in both the Bush and Obama Administrations.  The most interesting point he makes is that virtually every Defense Department official who has lived with the issue has come to the same conclusion:

We are all familiar with the primary arguments to close GTMO: it costs too much, it is a recruiting tool and propaganda tool for terrorists (a conclusion reached by both President Bush and President Obama), and it is disdained by the international community. But beyond these individual factors, it is crucially important that the national security leadership of both the Bush and Obama Administration reached the same conclusion. In the best judgement of both Administrations, GTMO hurt us more than it helped us. Both presidents, five secretaries of Defense (Rumsfeld, Gates, Panetta, Hagel, and Carter), and four secretaries of State (Powell, Rice, Clinton, and Kerry) reached the same conclusion. (Yes, even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ultimately concluded GTMO should be closed—if an alternative location were selected.)

I urge the new Administration to reach the same conclusion. As John states, before bringing new detainees to GTMO, the new Administration would be wise to consult with the bipartisan national security experts from both previous Administrations. This list of experts includes a long list of retired military leaders, including former Marine Commandant, Gen. Charles Krulak and former CENTCOM Commander General Joseph Hoar.

As Lewis explains, this does not mean that we release all of the remaining 41 detainee.  He advocates moving them to a federal detention facility in the United States, continuing to securely place those who have approved for transfer, and continuing to use the Periodic Review Board process to evaluate whether others can be safely transferred as well.

Read the entire article here.

Again, by way of full disclosure, I represent one of the detainees at Guantanamo.

There is Less to the Wikileaks CIA Disclosures Than You Have Been Lead to Believe

There has been breathless coverage by the media about the CIA data dump by Wikileaks.  There is certainly a big story here.  How did Wikileaks get these classified documents?  Was it an insider? A State Actor?  But much of the coverage about the content of the dump itself is, on closer examination, less impressive than you would have thought had you simply believed Wikileaks own comments about the data dump.

Nicholas Weaver, a senior staff researcher at the International Computer Science Institute, has an interesting post at the Lawfare blog about how the media got duped by Wikileaks into exaggerating the story:

There are two real stories involving the CIA data dump by Wikileaks, neither of which is about the actual documents themselves. The first is that somebody managed to exfiltrate the data from the CIA in the first place, but the second still seems unappreciated:  Wikileaks once again successfully hacked the media, shaping discussions into deliberately deceptive ways. 

How many articles did you read about the CIA “hoarding zero days”, with “24 Android exploits”?  How many breathless pieces about how the “CIA will frame others by recycling their malcode”? That the CIA is “breaking Signal”?  Or that CIA can “spy on you through your Samsung TV”?   

How many of those stories mentioned that most of the Android “zero days” referenced were anything but, instead documentation on old exploits for out of date devices?  Or that the CIA malcode reuse is not about a “false flag” operation but instead lazyefficient programmers taking advantage of existing code?  Or that the “breaking” of Signal is equivalent to saying “I broke Signal” when I look over your shoulder as you type?  Or that the CIA’s TV bug requires physical access?  These critical caveats change the stories completely.

The problem, as Weaver notes is that many journalists don't have the technical background to evaluate Wikileaks claims, and they rushed to print before talking to real experts.  Still, there is good news here:  my Samsung TV is not spying on me.

Read the full post here.

Defense Spending 101: Part 4: Sizing the Force To Meet the Threat

As I said in my first post in this series, the analysis that should be used is to determine our vital national interests, determine the capabilities of those that threaten those interests, and then determine the appropriate force structure necessary to defeat, if necessary, these potential enemies.  In the last two posts (this post and this post), I focused on the determination of our vital national interests and the assessment of the threat to those interests.  In this post, I will focus on the final step--sizing the force needed to combat the threat.

This is the step that requires the most military expertise.  In the Department of Defense, this is done by developing operational plans to prevail in various scenarios (such as defend South Korea against a North Korean attack), and then determining the force (people and weapons) needed to carry out this plan.  The Combatant Commands develop and update the operational plans, and various parts of the Pentagon do detailed, deep dive analysis to determine the force structure necessary to execute the operational plan.

This is not a mechanical exercise.  There is a great deal of judgment involved in doing this analysis, and there is quite often sharp disagreement among different parts of  the Pentagon about the assumptions used to determine the force.  To give, but one example, the operational plan will tell you how many fighter and bomber sorties there needs to be during each phase of the plan.  In order to determine how this translates into the number of fighters and bombers, other assumptions come into play: how many fighters and bombers will be disabled by the enemy?  How many sorties per week can each airplane do given the need for maintenance?  Will air refueling be required?  If so, how many fighters need to be devoted to protecting the refuelers.  AS you can imagine, different analysts can come up with wildly different numbers of aircraft needed for each operational plan.

There are two other important considerations that come into play here in creating the defense budget.  

First, in determining the force structure that we will pay for in the defense budget, how many operations do we assume we need to execute at the same time.  Armed conflict is rare enough--particularly the operations needed against a peer or near peer foe--that an argument could be made that we only need to assume one operation at a time.  For example, we only need a force large enough to fight North Korea OR Iran, and not both at the same time.  The problem with this approach is that our enemies have a say in the matter.  If we are engaged in a military operation against North Korea, and only have the forces sufficient to fight one war at a time, there is a danger that Iran or China will take this as an opportunity for aggressive action.  For this reason, until recently, our military strategy was built on the assumption that we could be fighting two wars at a time.  As you might imagine, this could be rather expensive. The chart above shows the large difference in force structure that results from different assumptions about how many wars we fight at once.   In the Obama Administration, this was revised to a strategy of being able to deter and hold off another potential enemy, and not a full fledged engagement.  The military "must be capable of deterring and defeating aggression ... in one region even when our forces are committed to a large-scale operation elsewhere," the strategy states. It will be interesting to see the construct developed by the Trump Administration.

Second, while operation plans are focused on the fight we must be prepared for today, the defense budget must also make investments for the weapon systems we need in the future.  For example,, while our current fleet of F-18, F-15 and F-16 fighter aircraft might be adequate in executing an operational plan today, they may be too vulnerable against a more technologically able Chinese military in the future.  Accordingly, there also needs to be an assessment of the enemy 20-30 years from now in order to make sure that we still have the weapons need to defeat the enemy.  Accordingly, the defense budget includes research and development and investment accounts in order to ensure that the U.S. military can meet the threats in the future.  For the Air Force, this means replacing our satellite assets with more cable and robust satellites, building next generation fighter craft such as the F-35, and building a new bomber capable of operating against Russian and Chinese air defense systems of the future.  When I was at the Air Force, much of our attention was devoted to this part of the budget--deciding how to time and allocate this investment budget. The chart above shows the projected change in fighter air craft from the old to the new, with a future F-X fighter in the distant horizon.

Once again, this part of the analysis requires judgment calls that can result in quite different defense budgets.  Do we return to the two-wars-at-a-time construct? Adopt another construct?  Do we really need to invest in the super-expensive F-35 or will an upgraded F-18 suffice for at least some engagements? These are not easy questions, and the answers can drive big changes in defense spending.

Other Posts in this Series:

Defense Spending 101, Part 1: Don't Get Distracted By the Wrong Numbers
Defense Spending 101, Part 2: Determining Our National Interests
Defense Spending 101, Part 3: Evaluating the Threat

John Bellinger on Why Guantanamo Should Be Closed

My law school classmate and current law partner, John Bellinger,  was the Legal Adviser to the NSC during the Bush Administration during the time when the decision was made to open the detention center at Guantanamo.  On Sunday, he posted an important essay on the Lawfare Blog that explains why the Guantanamo Bay detention facility was opened, and why it now should be closed.  Here is how John explains why Guantanamo should be closed:

Although it may be politically popular with some of the Administration’s supporters, it would be a mistake for the Trump Administration to try to repopulate Guantanamo with new detainees from the Islamic State or Al Qaida-affiliated groups, as President Trump and Attorney General Sessions have said they want to do.   The Trump Administration should learn from the bitter legal and policy experiences of the Bush Administration: adding new detainees to Guantanamo will produce more (and more risky) lawsuits; difficult practical problems down the road as to what to do with the detainees; and unnecessary friction with allies.  Guantanamo detainees have prevailed in numerous challenges to their detention in federal courts (including four cases before the Supreme Court).   Any new ISIS detainees in Guantanamo would undoubtedly claim in habeas petitions that the 2001 AUMF detention does not authorize their detention.  As Jack Goldsmith has pointed out, “it is easy to imagine a habeas court ruling that the President does not have the authority to detain a member of ISIL because the 2001 AUMF does not extend to ISIL.”   And as I explained in my Lloyd Cutler lecture last fall, our allies are likely to cut back on intelligence, law enforcement, and military cooperation if they believe the United States is not acting consistent with international law and our shared democratic values.

President Trump and Attorney General Sessions should instead consider  a “Nixon to China” policy of seeking legislation that would allow the President to close Guantanamo and transfer the remaining detainees to their own governments and to one or more military and/or federal detention facilities in the United States for continued detention and potential prosecution.  It is highly unlikely that any detainee could escape from a maximum security prison in the United States.  Although it is possible that detainees held in the United States could bring additional legal challenges to their detention, detainees have already been successful in legal challenges while detained in Guantanamo; it will be difficult for the remaining detainees who have not been cleared for release to persuade a federal court that they should be released or given immigration rights.   President Trump, Attorney General Sessions, Secretaries Mattis and Kelly, CIA Director Pompeo and DNI-designate Coats should consult with the experienced lawyers and policy experts in their departments about the risks of costs and benefits of Guantanamo.  They are likely to find that repopulating Guantanamo will produce more costs and risks than benefits and that it would be both preferable, and possible, to achieve President Bush’s goal of closing Guantanamo without compromising security.

The entire post is well worth a read--particularly the history on why the detention facility was created in the first place.  You can read it here.

Again, by way of full disclosure, I represent one of the remaining detainees at Guantanamo.