Search Results for "Tom Donnelly"
The Constitution and the Roots of American Strategic Conduct
The First Rule of Bloggery: when you’re out of ideas, comment on another blog. Indeed, that’s one of the delights of the blogosphere. You can have a long-distance, seemingly familiar but safely distant conversation.
And so I’ve been meaning to point out a recent Tom Ricks’ Best Defense post. Tom, in turn, cites Mark Lewis in tracing many of the sources of American conduct to the Constitution. “What if — just what if — our grand strategy is internally focused, not externally focused?” Ricks quotes Lewis as asking.
“What if it’s the Constitution and every effort since then to remain consistent with those founding principles is our strategy? Some of those efforts manifest themselves in the way we engage the rest of the world. The Preamble describes the end state, and the Articles and Amendments describe how to organize the elements of national power to achieve it. I think the key is the enduring principles, but the ability to adapt over time as conditions change.”
This Constitutional connection is, I think, profoundly on point, although I think Lewis and Ricks draw a very different conclusion than did the men who wrote the Constitution. Indeed, the first order of business for them was, as laid out in the first four numbers (after the general introduction) of The Federalist, “concerning dangers from foreign force and influence.”
The more perfect union was a means, not just an end in itself, as John Jay put it in Federalist No. 3 (capitals in the original):
“Among the many objects to which a wise and free people find it necessary to direct their attention, that of providing for their SAFETY seems to be the first. The SAFETY of the people doubtless has relation to a great variety of circumstances and considerations, and consequently affords great latitude to those who wish to define it precisely and comprehensively.
At present I mean only to consider it as it respects security for the preservation of peace and tranquility, as well as against dangers from FOREIGN ARMS AND INFLUENCE, as from dangers of the LIKE KIND arising from domestic causes. As the former of these comes first in order, it is proper it should be the first discussed. Let us therefore proceed to examine whether the people are not right in their opinion that a cordial Union, under an efficient national government, affords them the best security that can be devised against HOSTILITIES from abroad.”
A Modest Strategy Proposal
Peter Feaver, the thinking-man’s political scientist, veteran of both Bush 43 and Clinton National Security Councils, and one of the handful of people (this author included) who pays attention to the these things, has a post up on Shadow Government (which he also co-edits) suggesting that the Obama Administration’s formal National Security Strategy is soon to be released. It’s not a moment too soon.
Indeed, it is rather too late to have informed the spate of strategy and force-planning reviews that the Pentagon has issued: the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Nuclear Posture Review, the Ballistic Missile Defense Review and, although it hasn’t been released either, the Space Policy Review. Basing the QDR on the Bush Administration’s 2008 National Defense Strategy (or at least pretending to) was especially egregious, not to mention a technical violation of law.
What we’ll see in the Obama NSS is anyone’s guess. Will he be the one-world visionary of his April 2009 speech in Prague? Will he assume the exceptionally American persona of his Nobel Prize speech? Or will he split the difference? Alas, over the past two administrations the document has become a marketing tool and the purview of speechwriters rather than strategists, with the critical effect that the document does not serve its purpose as a guide to the rest of the U.S. government, and the Defense Department in particular. This tendency is, if anything, likely to be exacerbated in the Obama Administration, if for no other reason than its cult of personality is so strong: the White House contends that the president immersed himself in the details of Afghanistan tribal rivalries to develop his surge strategy, that he is our “first Pacific president,” that he is single-handedly restoring the dignity of the United States around the world and so forth — when he can spare some time from transforming American society here at home.
As Feaver points out, such pride almost certainly goeth before a fall; no human can fulfill such hype. Feaver, ever the professor, offers a way to grade the NSS (and, being also ever the social scientist, he insists upon calling it a “rubric;” at least he didn’t try to tell us how to “code” the Obama Doctrine). It’s a good set of benchmarks, beginning with the most critical test of all: Will the Obama NSS genuinely be a strategy — a set of priorities — as opposed to a set of vague aspirations? If the NSS declares that it is America’s job to “prepare for an uncertain future,” as the Clinton NSS did, or “engage the opportunities and confront the challenges of globalization” as the Bush NSS did, then the document will have no disciplining effect on any government agency. And the effect of strategic indiscipline, over the 20 years of the post-Cold War period, has been a set of very nasty strategic surprises, reactive policies, and institutions adrift.
A Glimpse of the Next Army
Recently, I participated in a seminar to help the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment prepare to deploy to Afghanistan. It was a remarkable experience, one of those head-on collisions with a surprising reality, an “a-ha!” moment.
The “Toujours Pret” regiment is back in Germany, at Vilseck. The seminar was in early February and Germany was Germany: grey, snowy, wet. And grey. The sessions were held in buildings that must have been motor pools; the cement floors were covered with linoleum and the maintenance bays had become classrooms. The troopers were wearing their black hats, braids, and spurs. They might have been preparing for 1985 REFORGER.
But the regiment long ago traded its M1s and Bradleys, first for Humvees and now for Strykers — hardly a Thunder-Run-style ride. And they were preparing for a counterinsurgency mission in southern Afghanistan rather than the clash of chariots with the 8th Guards Army.
The experience was a snapshot of an army in the throes of a real change of mission, not simply adapting to an unexpected contingency. And the biggest change of all may not be the shift from a service dominated by tankers to a service dominated by light, heliborne and airborne infantry, but a service dominated by medium-weight, mounted-but-not heavy forces and concepts of operations.
There are a number of trends pointing in this direction. Some are modern expressions of eternal ground-combat verities: tactical and operational mobility still matter, as does on-hand firepower (not simply close air support) and crew protection. But while fighting long wars in austere theaters, ease of sustainment is critical. Iraq’s infrastructure — particularly its highway network, built by Saddam to move his tanks around either to put down his own people or fight Iranians — is a Germany-like luxury that certainly doesn’t exist in Afghanistan and a lot of other hot-spots.
“Lessons” of the Korengal Valley
Not surprisingly, the withdrawal of U.S. outposts from the Korengal Valley in eastern Afghanistan, the spot of sporadic but hard fighting and where more than 40 Americans have lost their lives in the past five years, sparked not just a full round of press coverage but of press “analysis” of how things are going in the war.
The New York Times’ Alissa Rubin is a fine and brave reporter who’s been covering the region for a long time. But her story was almost in full-Vietnam mode: the Korengal was the “valley of death” where “there was not much worth winning.” Gen. Stanely McChrystal’s decision to reallocate forces – on the eve of a campaign to begin to drive the Taliban out of Kandahar – “is a tacit admission that putting the base there in the first place was a costly mistake.”
In the Washington Post, Greg Jaffe offered a similar conclusion, but was a bit more nuanced in his explication as to why what seemed like a good idea in 2005 seemed less good now. He also had a thought for what would happen next: the renewal of long-running feuds. He quoted U.S. Army Capt. Mark Moretti’s parting words to a Korengali elder: “I hope that when I am gone you will do what is best for your valley and the villagers.”
The most sophisticated discussion may have been a post by Robert Haddick on Small Wars Journal. He alone had the wit to ask: “What will the various players in Afghanistan’s drama learn from America’s experience in the Korengal Valley?” There’s much more to his piece, so I won’t attempt to summarize further. What Haddick recognizes is that this is a contingent decision, based upon different choices made by a new commander fighting a different war. The critical quote from Gen. Stanley McChrystal was not, as most frequently cited, that “you create a lot of opposition through operations” and that the U.S. presence always makes matter worse. Even within an Afghan context, Korengalis are uniquely isolated. More telling was McChrystal’s observation that “the battle changes, the war changes.”
Contributors
Michael Auslin, AEI’s director of Japan Studies, was an associate professor of history and senior research fellow at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University prior to joining AEI. He has been named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, a Marshall Memorial Fellow by the German Marshall Fund, and a Fulbright and Japan Foundation Scholar. His writings on Japan and Japanese diplomacy include the books Negotiating with Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of Japanese Diplomacy (Harvard University Press, 2006) and Japan Society: Celebrating a Century, 1907-2007 (Japan Society Gallery, 2007).
Dan Blumenthal is a current commissioner and former vice chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, where he directs efforts to monitor, investigate, and provide recommendations on the national security implications of the economic relationship between the two countries. Previously, he was senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia in the Secretary of Defense’s Office of International Security Affairs and practiced law in New York prior to his government service. At AEI, in addition to his work on the national security implications of U.S.-Sino relations, he coordinates the Tocqueville on China project, which examines the underlying civic culture of post-Mao China. Mr. Blumenthal also contributes to AEI’s Asian Outlook series.
Tom Donnelly is the director of the Center for Defense Studies. He is the coauthor, with Frederick W. Kagan, of Lessons for a Long War: How America Can Win on New Battlefields (2010) and Ground Truth: The Future of U.S. Land Power (2008). Among his other recent books are Of Men and Materiel: The Crisis in Military Resources (2007), coedited with Gary J. Schmitt; The Military We Need (2005), and Operation Iraqi Freedom: A Strategic Assessment (2004). From 1995 to 1999, he was policy group director and a professional staff member for the House Committee on Armed Services. Mr. Donnelly also served as a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He is a former editor of Armed Forces Journal, Army Times, and Defense News.
Leslie Forgach is a research assistant in Asian Studies in the Foreign and Defense Policy Studies department at AEI. Ms. Forgach received a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Asian Studies from the University of Michigan. After receiving the Ito scholarship, she studied for two years at Waseda University Graduate School of Asia Pacific Studies in Tokyo, Japan. There she received a Master’s degree in International Relations, with a focus on U.S.-Japan relations. Ms. Forgach has previously worked at the Center for Global Partnership at the Japan Foundation’s Tokyo headquarters. She is fluent in Japanese.
Michael Mazza is a senior research associate in Asian Studies in the Foreign and Defense Policy Studies department at AEI. He has worked previously as a policy analyst assistant at SAIC and as an intern at Riskline Ltd., and he has lived and studied in China. He graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell University and has a Master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, where he studied strategic studies and international economics.
Gary Schmitt is a former staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He was executive director of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board during President Ronald Reagan’s second term. Mr. Schmitt’s work focuses on longer-term strategic issues that will affect America’s security at home and its ability to lead abroad. His books include The Rise of China: Essays on the Future Competition (Encounter Books, May 2009), of which he is editor and contributing author; Of Men and Materiel: The Crisis in Military Resources (AEI Press, 2007), to which he was a contributing author and editor with Tom Donnelly; Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence (Brassey’s, 2002), coauthored with Abram Shulsky and now in its third edition; and U.S. Intelligence at the Crossroads: Agendas for Reform (Brassey’s, 1995), a coedited volume to which he is a contributing author. His most recent book is Safety, Liberty, and Islamist Terrorism: American and European Approaches to Domestic Counterterrorism (AEI Press, 2010), of which he is editor and contributing author.
Tim Sullivan is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he manages AEI’s Center for Defense Studies. In addition to his work for the Center, he researches governance and security issues in Afghanistan. In his prior capacity as a research assistant in the AEI Foreign and Defense Policy Studies department, Mr. Sullivan contributed to studies on NATO’s efforts in Afghanistan, U.S. land force modernization, and U.S. security force assistance programs. He is a member of the Center for a New American Security’s Next Generation National Security Leaders Program.
Philipp Tomio is a research assistant in defense and strategic studies in the Foreign and Defense Policy Studies department at AEI. A Fulbright scholar, Mr. Tomio holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with highest honors in International Relations from Webster University and a Master of Arts degree in Security Policy Studies from the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University. In addition to his work for the Center for Defense Studies, Mr. Tomio is a researcher in AEI’s Program on Advanced Strategic Studies.
Central Asian Blues
One of the great things about this week’s “Nuclear Security Summit” is that, because the most important folks aren’t coming — either friend or foe — it gives us a chance to take stock of our relations with the lesser lights. Particularly if your country’s name ends in “stan.” (Though Hamid Karzai is one of the ones staying home; he must matter…)
Central Asia is always the next new thing, kind of like soccer (I write as a very frustrated D.C. United fan; all we’ve got left is bits of brilliance from Jaime Moreno). Thus over at Foreign Policy, Tom Malinowski complains that the need to supply U.S. forces in Afghanistan is militarizing our foreign policy, undercutting the State Department’s heroic efforts to “press Central Asian leaders on human rights.” The Pentagon only cares about (cue sinister music) its “Northern Distribution Network.” To prove that it’s all the military’s fault, FP illustrated the article with a photo of Gen. David Petraeus grinning like, well, an embarrassed general on an official visit as he dons colorful local garb.
At the same time, over at “The Cable,” FP decorates Josh Rogin’s blog with a picture of President Obama grinning like, well, an embarrassed host of a big summit with a very wooden Nursultan Nazarbayev, number one strongman in Kazakhstan. It fell to NSC director Michael McFaul to explain how Obama and Nazarbayev “had a very lengthy discussion of issues of democracy and human rights. Both presidents agreed that you don’t ever reach democracy; you always have to work at it. And in particular,” McFaul emphasized, “President Obama reminded his Kazakh counterpart that we, too, are working to improve our democracy.”
Good thing the civilians are in charge of policy toward Kazakhstan.
Through the Looking Glass
“Nuclear security” used to mean the use or possession of nuclear weapons to achieve the ends of American strategy. With this week’s Washington summit, Barack Obama wants to further redefine the way we think about all things nuclear: instead of nukes making our world safe, we are to make the world safe for nukes.
This was a reasonable worry, certainly, as the Soviet Union, armed to the teeth and with missiles and warheads scattered among its former “republics,” fell apart. And it is true that the prospect of a terror group in possession of a weapon or even nuclear material is nightmarish. “The central focus of this nuclear summit,” the president says, “is the fact that the single biggest threat to U.S. security, both short term, medium term and long term, would be the possibility of a terrorist organization obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
Is this so? Is “unbelievably scary” exactly the same thing as “biggest threat?” Could a terrorist nuke unravel the entire international system, the preservation of which is the United States prime security directive?
The president is making a large leap in strategic logic — you might even say he’s playing the politics of fear. Make no mistake, a nuclear terrorist event would be very, very bad, and the threat is real; it’s a clear and present danger, even if it isn’t the most important danger.
What could be wrong with trying to better secure loose nukes? Nothing, per se. As Time magazine’s Massimo Calabresi writes, everybody “in Washington agree[s] there’s little downside to the summit itself.” There is, however, an opportunity cost that comes with the Obama Administration’s thirst for the nuclear capillary: more important nuclear issues aren’t getting the attention they deserve.
The biggest nuclear issue is the shifting nuclear balance among states. Proliferation is giving small powers the kind of deterrence capabilities heretofore reserved to great powers; witness (as the rest of the world has) the difference between North Korea and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. More profoundly, we are on the brink of a shift in the great-power balance. The narrative of American relative decline and “the rise of the rest” is likely to be played out in the nuclear sphere as elsewhere, and will dramatically reinforce that narrative.
Donnelly v. Koppel on NPR
Last week on National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation,” CDS director Tom Donnelly, CSIS senior associate Sharon Squassoni, and legendary newsman Ted Koppel went head-to-head on the administration’s nuclear agenda. Listen to the program and the read the transcript HERE.
First Take: The NPR in Context
Today the Obama administration releases its long-awaited, much-anticipated Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). Early reports reveal that the review, not surprisingly, adopts a middle-way strategy — one which is unlikely to satisfy arms control advocates and will only further unsettle nuclear hawks. Although the NPR doesn’t implement an across-the-board “no first use” policy, it is being peddled as an effort to significantly reduce the range of circumstances in which the United States would employ nuclear weapons. A core purpose of the document is to redefine deterrence against a nuclear attack as the “sole objective” of the United States’ nuclear arsenal; thus, according to the NPR, American nuclear forces will no longer be intended to deter chemical or biological attacks. What’s more, the NPR report states “the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations.”
This is a very fine piece of scholastic reasoning — on par with Bill Clinton’s “it depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.” How would the Obama Doctrine apply to a case like that of Iraq in 1991, for example? On the eve of Operation Desert Storm, and after five months of warning Saddam Hussein not to use his weapons of mass destruction, then-Secretary of State James Baker met with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz. “God forbid chemical or biological weapons are used against our forces; the American people would demand revenge,” Baker said, implying that such attacks might provoke a nuclear response. Wrote Baker in his memoir: “I purposely left the impression that the use of chemical or biological agents by Iraq could invite tactical nuclear retaliation.”
Iraq was a party to the NPT. It had long ago violated those obligations, but it was not formally cited by the International Atomic Energy Agency for NPT “non-compliance” until September 1991 — that is, nine months after the start of Desert Storm. Unless the White House intends to reserve an American right to unilaterally find inconvenient enemies to be NPT violators, it appears that had Saddam and Tariq Aziz been facing off with the Obama Administration, they would have had less reason to worry about the Americans’ “calculated ambiguity.”
In effect, the NPR makes clear that the circumstances in which the United States might employ (or otherwise threaten to employ) nuclear weapons are so limited, that their value in American strategy-making becomes practically nil. When evaluated in the context of the other significant nuclear policy shifts underway — the deep cuts in nuclear forces proposed in the U.S.-Russia START follow-on agreement, and this weekend’s nuclear summit, which will be focused on nuclear terrorism — it’s hard not to see the NPR as a further step down the road to the diminution of American military power.
This morning, the Center for Defense Studies and the Heritage Foundation will host a public event on the administration’s nuclear agenda. Stream it online HERE.
