The tragedy of G. F. Kennan

I've just started reading John Lewis Gaddis's new biography of George Kennan, who I suppose I've spent the last 15 years or so thinking of as a personal hero (I would have done, anyway, if I were the sort of fellow who had personal heroes). It will likely be a great while before I finish it, though, so don't hold your breath for a review; the book is 800 pages, I'm an extremely slow reader, and I'm always working my way through five or six books at a time. You're more likely to get another Pentagonese lesson in the meantime.

For now, you really ought to read Todd Purdum's piece in the forthcoming issue of Vanity Fair. It's called "One Nation, Under Arms." Purdum artfully splices brief reflections from his exploration of Kennan's collected papers with a pessimistic assessment of our collective capacity to halt the campaign of national disfigurement foisted on us by the unfortunate Kennan and his fellow architects of the national security state. Here's my favorite bit:

A theme that runs through page after page of Kennan’s writings—from his astonishment at the leisure culture that thrived in Southern California during his first visits there, in the post–World War II period, to his mordant commentaries on the Reagan era—is a profound love of country tempered by deep disappointment at the ways in which the modern United States has so often been willing to settle for the wasteful, the trivial, the second-rate. In Box 286, one finds a speech to the National Defense University, in 1985, in which Kennan sounded just these themes as he reflected on the broader meaning of containment.

“There is much in our own life, here in this country,” Kennan said, “that needs early containment. It could in fact be said that the first thing we Americans need to learn to contain is, in some ways, ourselves: our own environmental destructiveness; our tendency to live beyond our means and to borrow ourselves into disaster; our apparent inability to reduce a devastating budgetary deficit.”

The old diplomat lived long enough to see another two decades where such tendencies escaped containment; he'd find little to surprise him among the depths we've plumbed in recent months. It's tough to look back over Kennan's diaries and letters in the last decades of his life, to see his disappointment and powerlessness in the face of the un-killable multi-trillion dollar mutant his ideas helped to feed. If that guy spent 101 years feeling frustrated, what's left for the rest of us to do?

Almost makes you want to retire from this business, pack up your books, and move to a place that's never heard of Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Buck McKeon, "bomb power," or extraordinary rendition. Almost.

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.

Chinese military power and America's future in the western Pacific

Just yesterday I read Mike Few's interview in Small Wars Journal of Stephen Glain (pdf), author of the new (and rather unfortunately-titled) book State vs. Defense. I've not yet read the book, but portions of it have been published in adapted form in various places around the internet over the last several weeks. Glain makes a provocative argument, and one that I think has a solid and troubling basis in truth: that American foreign policy is overly militarized and securitized, that this trend is a near-inevitable result of the way our political system produces foreign and defense policies, and that the problem is most clearly manifest in the dramatic disparity in resources devoted to the Pentagon and the State Department.

This is a book that needed to be written and needs to be read, particularly when it's juxtaposed with pollyannaish tracts trumpeting the achievements of the modern cooperative military, like Derek Reveron's dire apologia entitled Exporting Security. But having already seen a very little reaction to Glain's work, I fear that his outsider perspective and occasionally overstated claims may detract from the overall impact of his argument; many military officers and defense analysts who would otherwise be sympathetic to his conclusions will be put off by his aspersions and won't recognize the Manichean struggle he describes.

I bring this up now because I very much enjoyed Glain's insights on China as expressed in the SWJ interview, and I wanted to share them here.

China was not our largest creditor ten years ago and, most significantly, it is unlikely to be our largest creditor in ten years’ time. The Chinese know the U.S. dollar is a diminishing asset and it is likely to continue depreciating along with the credibility of our lawmakers in Washington. No doubt Beijing, like Wall Street, is gaming out ways of reducing its exposure to the dollar without destabilizing the world’s $4 trillion foreign exchange market. If there are only so many Swiss francs China can buy for dollars it can convert its reserves into tangible assets like real estate. Either way, we console ourselves with the MAD theory of Sino-U.S. economic relations at our peril.

Strategically, there is nothing in three thousand years of recorded history to suggest China will assert itself militarily worldwide, particularly given how successful it has been wooing resource-rich developing states through commercial means. China clearly regards itself as the once-and-future overlord of Asia, however, which puts it on a collision course with the Pentagon. Here, Washington and Beijing are talking past each other in a rather ominous way. The Americans say they welcome China’s peaceful ascent while refusing to concede its authority over the Asian littoral, to say nothing of its deep-water seaways. The Chinese, meanwhile, claim dominion over the South China Seas and other disputed waters while implying they expect nothing less than the kind of regional hegemony Washington carved out for itself in the Americas throughout the nineteenth century. Absent a vigorous diplomatic effort to reconcile these discordant positions, I fear some kind of Sino-American conflict is inevitable. [...]

Washington must also know that China, as the world’s second-largest economy with three millennia of history as a regional power, will seek to impose its own Monroe Doctrine in Asia and it must acknowledge its limits in opposing this. Attempts to "contain" China would result in a decidedly asymmetrical contest that would exhaust America’s already depleted accounts but which Beijing could sustain at relatively low cost to itself.

I am more sanguine than Glain about the prospects for peaceful management of the U.S.-China relationship in the future. It seems certain that this is a result of my greater confindence in the U.S. foreign and security policy establishment to think strategically and behave rationally, a confidence that's inexplicable in light of my tendency to offer near-constant criticism of America's strategic failures. But I'd like to believe that we'll develop a somewhat more sophisticated understanding of our economic and security interests in the future, an understanding that will allow us to perceive and react to the legitimate interests of others in cool-headed and even-handed fashion, one that will help us move past the current fad for primacy everywhere and at all times.

A guy can dream, right?

Relatedly, the Defense Department's annual report (pdf) on "the current and probable future course of military-technological development of the People's Liberation Army and the tenets and probable development of Chinese security strategy and military strategy" -- mandated by Congress since the FY 2000 NDAA -- was published today. (In a week, it would've been six months late.) Kate Brannen summarizes and excerpts the report's contents here for Defense News.

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.