A telling headline: Defense and foreign policy

There's a profile of Michele Flournoy, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, in today's Washington Post. Reaction to the piece on Twitter has been universally positive, at least among the people I follow, and it's little surprise: Flournoy is a great defense policy mind and an effective leader, and her success sets a great example for the next generation of women in the field. I think she's generally done a good job, though I could come up with some inside-baseball complaints that wouldn't hold much significance for people outside the Pentagon.

But you know me: there's always a down-side. For this piece, it's the headline:

Michele Flournoy, Pentagon's highest-ranking woman, is making her mark on foreign policy

No one could quibble with the accuracy of the statement. But it may be worth reflecting for a moment on the fact that we've grown so accustomed to the modern Defense Department's coequal if not primary role in the formulation and execution of foreign policy that there's scarcely a mention of the fact that this isn't the way our government is designed to work.

This isn't a shot at Flournoy -- if she hadn't "made her mark on foreign policy," she'd probably have been fired by now for failing to do her job. No, it's but a wistful recollection of the days when the men and women who wanted to direct foreign policy -- the Nitzes and Kennans and Achesons -- did so at the State Department, when our national leaders recognized that armed force and the plentiful resources that backed it were but one of several tools that the country used to assure its interests around the world.

Want to see what the quotidian militarization of foreign policy looks like?

It's simple to look back over time and recognize broad, somewhat vague policy trends like "the militarization of foreign policy." You can look at the way we budget for international affairs versus defense; you can point to the myriad wars and other interventions in which we've engaged in recent years; you can even complain, if you like, that our international humanitarian and disaster relief efforts are primarily channeled through the military. But when you think about that trend, you're not imagining a decision-maker waking up one morning, sitting down at his desk, and saying "I'm going to militarize our foreign policy today!" -- it's just the way we label a whole bunch of aggreggated effects of seemingly reasonable decisions, right?

Well, yeah. Most of the time. And sometimes it's a little less honest, and a little less accidental.

In 2009, the administration included in its emergency war supplemental a request for $400 million to assist Pakistan in the development of its counterinsurgency capabilities. Breaking with the traditional custom for military aid, whereby grant funds are appropriated to the State Department for dispersal to the partner nation, the president instead requested that this money be appropriated to the Defense Department as part of what he called the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund (PCCF).

While report language authored by House appropriators noted that "the Committee believes that the PCCF should be considered within the context of the Department of State appropriations" and expressed the sense that "such a request for training for Pakistan, or any other nation where we have a national security interest, must be considered within the context of Department of State policy guidance, applicable governing authorities and appropriations," the appropriators went one better: they not only established the $400M PCCF account within State's appropriation, but sent another $400M to DoD as the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund.

Yep, you've got that right: the 2009 supplemental (pdf) established a Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund in the Defense appropriation, satisfying the administration's exact request (but under a different name) in spite of expressed reservations about the appropriateness of DoD control over such a fund, and to soften the blow, appropriators also established a Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund in the State appropriation. That's PCF and PCCF: two different funds, two different money-owners, same general purpose.

So what's the difference? DoD's $400M was available upon passage of the bill (June 24, 2009) until the end of FY10, when the program's authority would also expire. The appropriated funds for State's PCCF would only become available on the last day of FY09, and both the funds and the program authority wouldn't expire until the end of FY11. If you're keeping score at home, that means that DoD had from June 2009 until the end of September 2010 to spend its $400M, while State had from October 2009 until the end of September 2011. Presumably this reflected Congress' desire to channel foreign military assistance through the State Department over the long term, while recognizing the Defense Department's unique ability to satisfy urgent Pakistani requirements in an expeditious fashion. What I mean by that is that the Pentagon has the capacity and the expertise to identify what the Pakistanis needed, put the equipment on contract, and deliver it to our partners ASAP -- which State simply wasn't yet suited to do.

That's sort of a funny way to look at things, though, considering how PCCF actually played out: as a simple pass-through fund from Congress to State to DoD, which executed the program. (The establishing legislation allowed for both PCF and PCCF funds to be transferred from one department to the other -- that is, combined with one another -- if the transferring Secretary saw fit.) Ironically (and hilariously), this procedure turns out to have made the State funds even more useful than the ones directly appropriated to DoD, as the State-to-Defense transfer constituted obligation of funds; once State "spent" its $400M with DoD, those funds could no longer expire, so the cash originally appropriated to PCCF (State) didn't have the same calendrical axe hanging over it as the DoD-appropriated funds. The pressure to spend that State money before it expired ceased to exist, while DoD had to scramble around getting equipment on contract with its own PCF cash before it disappeared at the end of September. But I digress...

By now you're probably wondering what the hell this has to do with the militarization of foreign policy, so let's get back to the point. Last week when the details of the shutdown-averting budget compromise started coming out, Colin Cookman noticed that there was $800M in there for PCF (Defense). This is interesting not only because of everything you've read above, Congressional intent to transfer responsibility to the State Department, expiration of PCF's program authority, etc etc, but because the White House didn't actually ask for any PCF money for FY11 -- they asked for $1.2B for PCCF, which (as CRS notes on p.18 of this pdf) "moves ongoing activities to increase the capabilities of Pakistan's security forces from DOD control to the purview of the Secretary of State."

In the words of the immortal Lee Corso: not so fast, my friends. As Josh Rogin predictably sniffed out before it had even occurred to me to look, there it is in the legislation signed last week:

For the `Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund', $800,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2012: Provided, That such funds shall be available to the Secretary of Defense, with the concurrence of the Secretary of State, notwithstanding any other provision of law, for the purpose of allowing the Secretary of Defense, or the Secretary's designee, to provide assistance to Pakistan's security forces.

But wait, there's more! Section 2112(b):

The authorities contained under the heading `International Security Assistance, Funds Appropriated to the President, Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund' in title XI of Public Law 111-32 shall remain in effect until September 30, 2012.

So the law extends the authorization for both PCF and PCCF until the end of FY12, but only appropriates money ($800M) to PCF... the program that was supposed to go away this year. Sure, it's a $400M cut to what had been requested, but that's not the real story here. (Only $700M was appropriated across the two programs in FY10, so nearly doubling that amount for FY11 would've been a stretch in any politico-fiscal environment.) No, the real story is the way so many players in government colluded to hoodwink the taxpayer and extend the Pentagon's control of a fund that nearly everyone agrees is the legitimate prerogative of the Secretary of State.

1. Congressional Republicans cynically refused to fund through the State Department's budget an account that most of them would agree is important to national security, choosing instead to hide nearly a billion dollars under DoD's topline (notwithstanding the inarguable reality that the program constitutes foreign assistance), secure in the knowledge that such scheming will burnish their collective reputation as supporters of the troops, advocates for a strong defense, and opponents of namby-pamby hand-holding foreign aid.

2. The White House and Congressional Democrats rolled over for this deal, knowing as they did that it would continue DoD control of an element of U.S. foreign policy and increase the likelihood that training and equipping decisions would diverge from the broader context of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, all without saving a single dollar in the overall topline.

3. The State Department, however minimal its say in the final budgetary wrangling, almost certainly breathed a sigh of relief at being able to throw Republicans a $1.2B bone without actually cutting anything. As Rogin noted, State was likely able to save several other programs under threat by satisfying 10% of its total topline cut through what amounts to a transfer to another department's budgetary bin.

4. Department of Defense senior leaders have consistently called for an increase in resources for the diplomacy and development legs of the 3D stool, but just as consistently fight against the normalization of military assistance programs currently being conducted under special Title 10 (Defense) authority and mutely accept the two-year continuance of their control over a program that should rightfully belong to those statutorily charged with the conduct of our foreign affairs.

No big deal, you might say: we need to help the Pakistanis, the money got appropriated, so who cares where program authority lands -- especially when State's been passing money and execution responsibilities through to the Pentagon anyway? Here's why it's a big deal: every single bit of institutional momentum, bureaucratic inertia, and political pressure will continue to facilitate "minor" compromises and symbolic switches like this until a forward-looking, reform-minded government takes a stand.

Next time you hear the president, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, or Congressional leaders bemoaning the militarization of U.S. foreign policy, just think back and remember how they've all got a hand in it.

A couple of notes on arming Libyan rebels

Josh Rogin is reporting this morning that P.J. Crowley has dismissed proposals to arm Libyan rebels as "not a legal option." Here's more:

"It's very simple. In the U.N. Security Council resolution passed on Libya, there is an arms embargo that affects Libya, which means it's a violation for any country to provide arms to anyone in Libya," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said on Monday.

Crowley denied reports that the United States had asked Saudi Arabia to provide weapons to the Libyan opposition, and also denied that the United States would arm opposition groups absent explicit international authorization.

Pressed by reporters to clarify whether the Obama administration had any plans to give arms to any of the rebel groups in Libya, Crowley said no.

"It would be illegal for the United States to do that," he said. "It's not a legal option."

Crowley's blanket statement seemed to go further than comments on Monday by White House spokesman Jay Carney, who said, "On the issue of ... arming, providing weapons, it is one of the range of options that is being considered."

Crowley maintained that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1970, which imposed international sanctions on Libya that included an arms embargo, applied to both the Qaddafi regime and the rebel groups.

"It's not on the government of Libya: It's on Libya," he said.

First: I don't know anything about U.N. Security Council Resolutions. I don't know on whom they're binding, I don't know the definitions they're operating under, and I don't know to whom the terms refer. That said, the language of the resolution (pdf) seems pretty clear:

Decides that all Member States shall immediately take the necessary measures to prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, from or through their territories or by their nationals, or using their flag vessels or aircraft, of arms and related materiel of all types, including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary equipment, and spare parts for the aforementioned, and technical assistance, training, financial or other assistance, related to military activities or the provision, maintenance or use of any arms and related materiel, including the provision of armed mercenary personnel whether or not originating in their territories, and decides further that this measure shall not apply to:

(a) Supplies of non-lethal military equipment intended solely for humanitarian or protective use, and related technical assistance or training, as approved in advance by the Committee established pursuant to paragraph 24 below;

(b) Protective clothing, including flak jackets and military helmets, temporarily exported to the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya by United Nations personnel, representatives of the media and humanitarian and development works and associated personnel, for their personal use only; or

(c) Other sales or supply of arms and related materiel, or provision of assistance or personnel, as approved in advance by the Committee;

Furthermore: what I do know is U.S. arms transfer regulations. And in those, unless otherwise specified, embargoes and other limitations on the transfer of defense articles pertain to all persons, corporations, business associations, partnerships, societies, trusts, or other entities, organizations, or groups, including governmental entities. (This according to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, which are published by the Department of State and govern the transfer of defense articles and services to non-U.S. parties.) Particular end-users can be subject to certain specific transfer restrictions, but the ITAR elaborates policy determinations and embargoes on export to particular countries. Export, in this case, means transfer or disclosure to a foreign person. So if you show some documents containing technical data to a foreign national at your office in DC, that constitutes an export. All of which is a long way of saying that U.S. arms transfer restrictions on Libya pertain to all of Libya and all Libyan persons, not just the Libyan government.

And here's what Crowley didn't mention: UNSCR 1970 didn't impact the U.S. position on arms exports to Libya one whit. Here's ITAR 126.1(k) (click here for Part 126 in pdf form):

Libya. It is the policy of the United Sates [sic] to deny licenses, other approvals, exports or imports of defense articles and defense services destined for or originating in Libya except, on a case-by-case basis, for:

(1) Non-lethal defense articles and defense services,

(2) Non-lethal safety-of-use defense articls (e.g., cartridge actuated devices, propellant actuated devices and technical manals for military aircraft for purposes of enhancing the safety of the aircrew) as spare parts for lethal end-items.

For non-lethal defense end-items, no distinction will be made between Libya's existing and new inventory.

The short version? U.S. arms exports to Libya were already blocked by U.S. policy and regulation. These can be changed in exigent circumstances, of course, but they've now been bolstered (or one could even say obviated) by the provisions of the UNSCR.

(A P.S. while we're on the subject: Josh is one of what seems to me to be a vanishingly small number of national security journalists who takes the time not only to at least briefly research the law and policy issues that underpin his reporting, but to cursorily address them in his stories. Presumably the journalistic convention of not doing this derives from the assumption that the average reader is either disinterested in trivia or too stupid to understand the details of the background; as a result, I particularly appreciate those who go a little deeper.)

Why "drafting the U.S. civil service for counterinsurgencies" is either a really dumb idea or an awesome piece of satire

Yesterday Small Wars Journal published a piece by one Michael A. Clauser entitled "Not Just a Job, an Adventure: Drafting the U.S. Civil Service for Counterinsurgencies." In it, the author -- a Congressional staffer -- demonstrates a staggering misunderstanding of the fundamental roles and missions of the U.S. government, draws mistaken conclusions about the commitment made by and compensation provided to U.S. civil servants, and offers an ineffective "cure" that would carry with it side effects far more damaging than the imagined "disease." Viewed as a piece of Swiftian satire, it is excellent. Considered as a serious policy proposal, it is colossally, catastrophically bad.

Clauser kicks off his modest proposal with the curiously-punctuated truism "[i]t's become trite to state that the solution for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is 'political,' and not solely 'military,' in nature." If that's the case, we're meant to wonder, why has the approach of successive administrations focused on the infusion of more combat troops? Well, it's the fault of those diplomats and engineers and urban planners and food safety experts safely ensconsed in comfortable D.C. offices and lavish embassies abroad, obviously: "neither President [sic] could find adequate numbers of willing foreign and civil servants to accompany our men and women in uniform." And this, quite obviously, is a problem. Michael Clauser thinks it's basically a supply problem -- not, apparently, that America lacks sufficient supply of qualified civilian experts, but rather that our system of laws and the general fecklessness, laziness, and/or cowardice of our non-DoD civilians combine to sabotage the government's efforts to apply this ready supply of expertise to important missions in combat zones and post-conflict environments. So our man has a drastic solution:

If the U.S. is serious about winning the war in Afghanistan through a political solution, Congress should change current law and begin to draft civil servants with the right skill sets and training for national objectives abroad.

Serious indeed.

There are a number of very significant problems with both Clauser's assessment of the situation and his proposed solution. The most troubling of these is that he seems to misunderstand the very purpose of the United States government and the fundamental roles and missions of its various component parts. Simply put, the organizing principle of the USG is not overseas warfighting, or even war-winning. The Departments of Justice, Transportation, and Agriculture do not base their organizational priorities on those of the Pentagon (or even State), and those departments do not plan, organize, hire, train, educate, or incentivize personnel to support foreign contingencies. Simply put, it's not their job, and it's not what their people signed up for.

One can reasonably argue that our national security apparatus ought to be reformed and restructured to better operate in a world where "defense" and "security" cannot be so cleanly separated from the other functions of the state. Many have made this case, and the current Secretaries of State and Defense have both indicated support for a proposal to pool resources and authorities so as to streamline U.S. efforts to build the security and governance capacity of foreign partners. One may go even further and assert that the work of those departments and agencies not traditionally understood to be focused on international concerns -- the USDOTs, the USDAs, the DOJs -- should by dint of philosophical fealty to some Constitutionally-derived idea of the "proper role of government" be suborned to the imperatives of national security. That the Department of Agriculture should first and foremost understand its mission as one of support to the defense of the American people, subject to the judgments and determinations of the Commander-in-Chief. One can certainly offer these arguments, which span from the reasonable but somewhat frought to the frankly absurd, and discussion of the consequences of which would expand this post beyond all get-out and really just kill the rhetorical force of the whole thing. But let's be clear: that's not the argument Michael Clauser is making.

(As an aside, Clauser works for a guy who has been reasonably forward-thinking on this issue; Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX) introduced legislation (pdf) in March of 2001 that expressed the following in its findings section:

(1) The security of the United States homeland from nontraditional and emerging threats must be a primary national security mission of the United States Government. Attacks against United States citizens on United States soil, possibly causing heavy casualties, are likely during the next quarter century, as both the technical means for carrying out such attacks, and the array of actors who might use such means, are proliferating despite the best efforts of United States diplomacy.

(2) Attacks on United States soil may involve weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass disruption. As porous as United States physical borders are in an age of burgeoning trade and travel, its cyber borders are even more vulnerable, and the critical infrastructure upon which so much of the United States economy depends can now be targeted by governments as well as individuals. The preeminence of the United States makes it more appealing as a target, while its openness and freedoms make it more vulnerable.

The bill would have united the various agencies dedicated to border security, infrastructure protection, and emergency management under a new Homeland Security Agency; it would provide the broad outlines, several months later, for the establishment of DHS. If Michael Clauser wants to make a thoughtful argument about the way the government can be reorganized or repurposed to deal with a nontraditional threat environment, he should have a conversation with his boss.)

Back to the main effort here: the argument that Clauser is making is that the government does have the personnel, resources, and expertise to perform the necessary mission -- which he sums up by writing that "the U.S. must make it the top priority to train, advise, and equip Afghan officials to build their capacity to govern effectively and honestly" -- but that it merely lacks the authority to compel those people to show up and do the job. And that's simply just not true. The USG's efforts to build Afghan civilian governance capacity, which Clauser describes as "at best haphazard and improvised," are summed up like this:

Currently, undertrained Foreign Service officers and uniformed military personnel are left as the principal advisors to Afghan officials across all sectors of government such as education, transportation, public works, law enforcement, environmental protection, and agriculture. These U.S. personnel are supported by a host of contractors to augment their expertise--but at great taxpayer expense.

He goes on to assert that

[t]he U.S. needs to leverage the taxpayer-funded expertise of civil servants resident in federal departments like Education, Justice, Commerce, Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and Human Services. It takes a U.S. Department of Agriculture employee to effectively train his counterpart at the Afghan Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation, and Livestock, not a diplomat and certainly not a soldier.

Seems simple enough, right? After all, we've heard plenty of people arguing against the inefficient use of military personnel to perform inherently civilian functions, criticism of the inappropriate militarization of our reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so on. And it may be correct to say that it's not a soldier's job, nor even a diplomat's. But here's a news flash: the U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn't have a massive, ready supply of ministerial trainers on hand. They have a whole bunch of ag-oriented bureaucrats. They don't have a whole bunch of people whose day job involves teaching other people how to be ag-oriented bureaucrats.

We're really talking about two different things here: 1) performing quick-win, high-visibility development functions as part of a campaign plan to secure control of territory in a counterinsurgency effort; and 2) building ministerial and institutional capacity in the host-nation government to take care of longer-term sustained development and governance activities. The first of those mission sets can be performed by military personnel, and in many (even most) cases the security situation will demand it. (I'm reminded of what Dag Hammarskjold said about peacekeeping: "it's not a soldier's job, but only a soldier can do it." There's some other content directly related to this subject at that link, too.) The second task is the one that ought not be done by folks in uniform, but the dirty little secret is that this expertise just simply does not exist in the quantity most people talking about a "civilian surge" imagine it to. Here's an even dirtier little secret to illustrate the difficulty of what we're talking about here: the military, which is experienced operating overseas, trained to support civil authorities, and operationally organized -- that is, set up to do stuff, not just as a staff -- basically has no idea how to support the requirement to provide ministerial and flag-level training and mentoring... to foreign DEFENSE ESTABLISHMENTS. Let me make this more clear: the Defense Department is not good at teaching foreign ministries of defense how to perform the same functions that the DoD accomplishes for the U.S. It's just not something we're set up to do. So you shouldn't be surprised if you find out that there aren't a whole bunch of people sitting in the HHS building over on the Mall with the necessary expertise to help a foreign government set up a health system. There is a difference between knowing how to do something and knowing how to establish, train, staff, and incentivize an organization in another country to do that same thing.

Now that we've established that the government isn't really set up to do this, that the necessary expertise may not exist, and that the stuff Clauser wants civil servants to do isn't really their job at all, let's forget about all that for a minute. Imagine we decide this is the number one national priority, that this is absolutely necessary, that we have the people to do it and we just need to get them there. How about this draft idea? Well, it's a really, really bad one. Put simply, Clauser makes the dubious argument that the extant legal requirement for U.S. males to register for Selective Service upon turning 18 somehow grants Congress the moral authority and justifying precedent to enact legislation impressing into involuntary foreign duty all U.S. civil servants who aspire to senior (non-political) leadership in government. I'll let him elaborate:

In the absence of adequate volunteers at time of war, this legal requirement provides a massive recruitment pool of U.S. citizens who either felt it their duty to make themselves available for uniformed service to their nation in dangerous places or sought some public benefit from the government and must make themselves available to the needs of the State accordingly.

The same principal [sic] can and should be transferred to the civil service. Title 5 of U.S. Code should be amended to require that career U.S. federal employees, as a pre-requisite for non-political appointment into the Senior Executive Services (SES), “register” with the Civilian Response Corps. Non-political employment within or promotion to the SES should be terminated for those who refuse to register or if having registered and called to service refuse to deploy. The legislation should authorize the Director of the Office of Personnel Management and the Secretary of State to jointly prescribe regulations to carry out this mandate. Waivers should be available for those with disabilities or other appropriate medical or family disqualifications. Not everyone who registers would deploy within their career. The legislation could be less than two pages in length—far shorter than this article.

After all, those in the career SES are the top-earners in federal government. They hold prominent titles that include words like “Administrator,” “Director,” and even “Secretary.” Is it unreasonable to ask that those interested in the highest levels of management, power, and pay in the civil service make themselves available to the full range of national needs?

The reader will note repeated use of words and phrases that suggest an antiquated, statist, borderline un-American view on the relationship of a citizen to his government. Those who fill out a selective service card with their drivers' license renewal form do so, in Clauser's telling, because they "[feel] it [is] their duty to make themselves available for uniformed service to their nation in dangerous places" or because they "[seek] some public benefit from the government" and choose to "make themselves available to the needs of the state." (Never mind the fact that registration for selective service is not precisely the same thing as declaring draft eligibility -- only documenting that one is in a draftable demographic -- and that it's REQUIRED BY LAW.) This is no more true than when Clauser writes of government employees, referencing their "taxpayer-funded expertise" and compensation as if to suggest that civil servants owe some debt to the nation beyond that which they are contracted and compensated to provide. If you get a government paycheck, it's apparently not enough to provide fair value for money, to do the work that's expected of you, to be a professional. One must "make [him or herself] available to the full range of national needs."

Needs of the state. Full range of national needs. Why not just put all federal employees on orders and deploy them as befits the "needs of the service"? After all, "America needs its best and brightest today to win the wars we're in." Leave aside the fact that the "best and brightest" that "America needs" in this context are the people most capable of going abroad to perform a teaching and mentoring function with international partners, and that those best suited for this job will almost certainly not hold SES rank (and many, if not most, will not care to pursue it). Leave aside the fact that aspirants for SES rank or departmental leadership in HHS, for example, may never have been abroad, may have absolutely no international component to their jobs, may not serve in a teaching or mentoring role at any point in their careers, and may find the suggestion that they ought to involuntarily serve abroad in wartime to earn their spurs in a government agency dedicated to American public health to be flatly ludicrous and insulting enough to force their resignation and departure from government. Leave aside the fact that many of these people, if they were to go, would perform the job no more effectively than the soldiers or diplomats or contractors that have been doing it in their stead, and the consideration that perhaps the "best and brightest" in our nation's public health system should be performing jobs that are dedicated to the public health mission, not national security.

Now: Just think for a moment about this one question: do we want to undertake the sort of philosophical reimagining of what we are as a country that's implied by our granting the state explicit authority to assign each and every citizen who aspires to leadership in public service -- oh! Except political appointees! -- to whatever corner of the globe it chooses, in order to perform whatever function the state deems that person best suited for? Because I know what I'd say to that question: GFY.

There's nothing I'd like more than for Michael Clauser to show up and say "nyah nyah! Gotcha! The original title of this essay was A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Civil Servants of America From Being a Burden to Their Government or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Nation, but then I thought it would be too obvious! Thanks for taking the bait!" But I don't think that's going to happen. (But if it does: Dude, brilliant!)

Dick Holbrooke, a dedicated servant of his country, dead at 69

Whatever else you want to say about the man, Dick Holbrooke gave more of his life to America than almost anyone. He entered the foreign service in 1962 and went almost immediately to Vietnam, serving in austere conditions and with little supervision as a kid just barely out of college. During the Carter administration, he became the youngest Assistant Secretary of State ever. He missed out on the Republican 80s, then performed the same role (this time for Europe; the first for East Asia) during the Clinton Administration. He was twice a special envoy -- to Cyprus and to Kosovo -- and was the chief negotiator of the accord that ended the Bosnian war. And he capped off his career as the Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the position he held until his death earlier this evening.

Five decades of service. It's a hell of a thing.

If you need a reminder of just what Holbrooke has done for this country, read this profile by George Packer in the New Yorker last September. Think about what it means to spend 48 years in that business.

So RIP to a great public servant, and may his family know peace in their difficult time.

Wikileaks: So boring I have to either write about it or take a month-long nap (UPDATED)

It is frankly impossible that you would've missed this if you have access to a computer, but just so we're all on the same page: WikiLeaks released a quarter of a million classified U.S. diplomatic cables to the public on Sunday. This is intensely, insanely, almost overpoweringly boring. Here's the top ten reasons why.

10. Top __ Lists. God, I hate this device. Five Biggest Revelations! Ten Most Important Revelations! Top 10 Revelations! Jesus. Seriously, quit it.

9. The repeated insistence by members of the commentariat (and the even more offensive political ideo-idiotsphere) that "this isn't really news." Of course it's news. If I published the archives of your email, it would be news. Just because there's not a whole lot in the email that we didn't already expect -- you hate your mother-in-law, your wife gets on your nerves from time to time, you think your boss is stupid, and you still occasionally talk to a college flame -- doesn't mean we're not gonna squeal and wail when we actually see it in print. This is basically the archives of the State Department's email. (But come on, nobody's getting fired.)

8. The repeated insistence by members of the media that this is HUGE NEWS, that no matter what else you say about the whole thing, you can't say it's not news. Really, who could be happier than the guys who are relieved of the burden of actually having to run anything down or do any research for their stories, but can just do the fun part -- telling you what they think about why this should matter to you, complete with an explanation of how it confirms previous biases, suspicions, and assertions -- without the legwork of exposing the facts? (And then there's the curious case of the journalist who is outraged by the leak, but would have found the whole thing totally acceptable if WikiLeaks had had the good sense to release the information to trained journalists like himself for vetting, filtering, and analysis.) But seriously, there's nothing in there we didn't already know. It's not huge news, it's just a useful resource for you jokers who get paid to sit around and go through this stuff all day.

7. The repeated insistence that this just goes to show you I've always been right.

6. The repeated insistence that this just goes to show you so-and-so has always been wrong.

5. Over-the-top bloviating about the cloak of secrecy under which government operates, and how the destruction of that cover is a worthwhile end that justifies nearly any means, etc. And more broadly, the way that one's analysis of whether WikiLeaks' actions are fundamentally good or fundamentally evil seems to depend not on some objective consideration of ethics or principles, but rather whether those actions facilitate or endanger one's personal ideological or geopolitical priorities.

4. The government's ceaseless argument that the release of diplomatic cables endangers lives and international security, and the handmaid to that argument: the assertion that countries and individuals who collaborate or cooperate with the U.S. in the service of their own interests will somehow find it prudent or plausible to refuse that cooperation entirely now that past instances of it have been made known. UPDATE: Secretary Gates apparently feels the same way, despite what Secretary Clinton has said.

3. The way that a widely-reported news story relating to diversion of classified information leads people who don't really know much about the purpose or function of government information management/protection mechanisms to declaim at length the failures of the system.

2. The hilarious-if-it-weren't-so-boring double-standard that permits journalists and commentators to say either A) that leaks are good and necessary, but this one "seems different" (perhaps because the leaking wasn't to professional journalists) or B) that war/imperialism/executive overreach/foreign policy position X is bad and unnecessary, but there's still something "fuzzy" or uncomfortable about WikiLeaks' actions.

1. This post will almost certainly drive more traffic to the blog than any other in a long while -- several of which were much more original, more thoughtful, better researched, and just generally more compelling, if I do say so myself -- simply on account of the fact that it mentions WikiLeaks.

Now here's why -- despite this story being so obviously boring -- people seem to care so much (and by "people," I especially mean journalists): because there's no story the media loves better than news about the news. This "news" isn't really about content or substance, but rather about the fact that the content and substance that everybody already knows got caught on paper somewhere. It's political theater. It's grandstanding. It's false surprise and false embarrassment. It's the sort of revelation-that's-not-a-revelation that drives political campaigns (Barack Obama probably really does believe that religious gun-owners are somehow mentally or spiritually less advanced; George Bush really did know that there was a difference of opinion about the intended end-use of Iraq's infamous aluminum tubes) and explains the existence of a media organ like POLITICO: inside-baseball coverage that allows the privileged intellectual elite to snicker at the naivete of those who don't understand the way the game is played in the big leagues.

It's a boring waste of time. It's a blank canvas for the sort of Greenwaldian, conspiracist metanarratives that constantly float through the ether, looking for "news" for which they can provide an "explanation." It's about words, not actions. It's the thoughts and feelings and analysis of American personnel abroad (with a few notable exceptions that hinge on the revelation of facts, not just impressions about facts), people who are necessarily offering their expertise and opinions in an effort to meaningfully shape policy. [As an editorial aside, this is actually one of the few really meaningful takeaways from the whole "cablegate" matter: the American diplomat seems far more thoughtful, analytical, and eloquent than his counterpart in the defense bureaucracy.] In some instances, there will be real impact. But the only way to understand that is through detailed examination of specific cables in the context of broader relationships, something that very few people offering thoughts on "what this all means" are willing or prepared to do. (One exception here is Blake Hounshell, who also deserves an exception to the "Top 10 lists are stupid" rule: I'll cut him some slack on his "10 Conversations That Just Got a Little More Awkward," which is the sort of tailored, context-rich, meaningful analysis that -- if it were more common -- could make this subject just a tiny bit less head-splittingly banal.)

So there I go spending a whole bunch of time decrying what a waste of time it is to think, talk, and read about WikiLeaks, and why you should probably be doing something else. I should've opted for the nap.

Look out, Afghanistan! Here come the Campaign Continuity Language Training Detachments!

In response to GEN McChrystal's November 2009 directive that each platoon-sized element in Afghanistan have "at least one leader that speaks Dari at least [sic] 0+ level, with a goal of level 1 in oral communications," the Defense Language Institute and the Army have collaborated to develop specialized language-training detachments to offer pre-deployment classes to troops at three major Army installations.

Soldiers at Fort Campbell, Ky., and Fort Carson, Colo., are now taking language courses that will better prepare them to meet the demands of operations in Afghanistan.

Since Feb.1, more than 70 Soldiers at Fort Campbell have studied either Dari or Pashto in advance of their upcoming deployments to Afghanistan. At Fort Carson, 270 Soldiers began learning Dari, March 8. It's expected some 70 Soldiers will begin Dari instruction in early April at Fort Drum, N.Y.

The three installations now host "Campaign Continuity Language Training Detachments." The detachments are the result of a partnership between the operational Army and the Defense Language Institute. The pilot program is a direct response to requirements put forth by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan, to put more "language-enabled" Soldiers on the ground there.

"His goal is to have one leader in every platoon or platoon-sized element that will
interact with the Afghan population who is familiar enough with the Dari language to go beyond the 'hellos' and 'thank yous' and platitudes -- but to instead have rudimentary conversations," said Lt. Col. Stephen J. Maranian, executive officer for the Army training directorate, G-3/5/7.

The three detachments were built with funding from the Joint Staff from the overseas contingency operations budget. Maranian said money is allocated already for fiscal years 2011-2015 to expand the program to more installations.

The first class at Fort Carson is only seven weeks as a result of time constraints, but future courses will last 16 weeks. Here's what the article has to say about the relationship between course duration and desired end states:

Most students in the past who have taken a 16-week language course ended up with a "0+/0+" level of language capability -- a rating that refers both to speaking and listening capability -- but many have achieved the higher 1/1 goal.

Clare Bugary, the director of operations at DLI, said the 16-week course will meet the 0+ requirement set by McChrystal, but for Soldiers to exceed that and achieve the goal of a level 1 skill, they will need to push themselves."The key is motivation," she said. "If they want it, they can get there. And what we are seeing at Carson and Campbell now is a motivated group of Soldiers who are applying themselves."

Bugary said to guarantee higher levels of language proficiency, students will need to spend more time in class. The DLI's normal Pashto-basic course is 64 weeks long, for instance. "There's no way the Army can send everybody through that.""It's an issue of time really," she said. But she added that the 16 weeks the Army is committing "says a lot" about their willingness to have Soldiers learn both the language and the culture of Afghanistan. "It's a big commitment for the Army to do that, and it's very
encouraging that the Army takes the steps to incorporate language and cultural training. It's going to have a positive effect."

Bugary said the language skill levels, "0+", or "1", for instance, are defined by the Interagency Language Roundtable. On the scale, a level 0 learner has "no ability whatsoever," while a level 0+ learner is "able to satisfy immediate needs with learned utterances." A level 1 student is "able to satisfy basic survival needs and minimum courtesy requirements."

(Here's some more information about skill level descriptions from the Interagency Language Roundtable's website. And here's some related video from DLI.)

It may be that I'm not reading closely enough, but I don't see any mention of how many classroom hours this training entails. Courses on-site at DLI are intensive and take up the bulk of the day, so I'd assume that's the model they're transporting to these other installations. But if this is a one-hour-a-day deal, then that's an entirely different story. You can't really expect people to learn a complicated and very foreign language without a serious commitment to the process, commitment that involves not only time but also centrality of focus. This really can't be something that you're doing alongside your other duties and training modules.

That being said...

Sam G. Garzaniti, director of the Campaign Continuity Language Program at Fort Campbell, said the classes focus first on basic listening and speaking skills before moving on to more practical applications for Soldiers in theater. Maranian added that counterinsurgency doctrine makes it absolutely essential to be able to communicate with village elders about such things as governance, economics and security."After a month, they know alphabet and basic phrases," he said. "In the coming weeks, they will learn social, economic, and military vocabulary to assist them when partnering with and operating amongst the Afghan people."

...are you effin' kidding me? A month to learn the alphabet and basic phrases? That's about how long it took the language retards in my Persian class to learn the alphabet and basic phrases... except we had class one night a week for two hours, and all other study was self-directed (and not really expected)!

I'm not an expert in philology or anything, or in memory, or in syllabus design or human cognition or pretty much anything relevant to this subject (or in pretty much anything at all, now that we're right down to it), but this strikes me as a shockingly un-ambitious learning plan. If you're doing five hours a day, then the first month involves 100 hours of exposure to the language. The entire sixteen week course of study makes 400 hours! As far as I know, Pashto and Dari are both State Department Category II languages, which are meant to require 1100 classroom hours for "minimal proficiency." I see that designation as being considerably more advanced than "basic survival needs and minimum courtesy requirements," mastery of which is what's necessary to demonstrate Level 1 speaking ability.

Does anybody else know anything about this program (particularly the length of the class day)? Has anyone learned a Cat II or Cat III language at DLI or the Foreign Service Institute? How long do you think it should take to be 0+ or 1 in Dari or Pashto? I'd love it if Lil would chime in here, as she's actually taught a language to USG personnel. Maybe I'm being a bit over-ambitious here.