There aren't too many legitimate parallels between Nazi Germany and modern America...

...but I'd argue that one can be drawn here:

However successful the first two years of the war, the Third Reich never came close to escaping the dilemma posed by the fact that the political and military-strategic costs of expansion continuously outran the benefits of a newly gained hegemonic position.

(Thats from Michael Geyer's "German Strategy in the Age of Machine Warfare, 1914-1945.")

I'll grant you that the parallel to the U.S. strategic position in 2011 may not be staggeringly obvious. But take a second to think about it: immediate and overwhelming operational success in the military manifestations of the "War on Terror" have in time given way to the creeping realization that the implementation of our new national security paradigm -- defense through offense; counterterrorism through the elimination of uncooperative regimes and strengthening of incapable governments -- likely creates unsustainable burdens for the American military, government, and society at large.

Germany's strategic challenge at the outset of the Second World War was to reconcile bad geography, inadequate economy, and destructive social pressures with the manifold negative consequences of any attempt to forcibly alter these circumstances through conquest. The effort failed largely because Hitler's ideological and social objectives forced destabilizing military action before the Reichswehr could strengthen sufficiently to ensure quick and decisive victory. Operational success could not overcome strategic difficulties.

The modern American security establishment has convinced itself of the necessity of creating and sustaining certain conditions that will ostensibly lead to perfect security. Isn't it time we consider whether the political and military-strategic costs of a security policy based on opportunistic intervention and unconstrained global freedom of action are justified by the alleged benefits of global primacy?

There is no new thing under the sun

Over the last decade or so, a number of DoD and national strategic documents have asserted the unprecedented security challenges of a world wracked by potentially destabilizing trends: globalization, urbanization, rapid demographic change, and so on. The language of last year's National Security Strategy (pdf) will no doubt be familiar to you:

The convergence of wealth and living standards among developed and emerging economies holds out the promise of more balanced global growth, but dramatic inequality persists within and among nations. Profound cultural and demographic tensions, rising demand for resources, and rapid urbanization could reshape single countries and entire regions. As the world grows more interconnected, more individuals are gaining awareness of their universal rights and have the capacity to pursue them. Democracies that respect the rights of their people remain successful states and America’s most steadfast allies. Yet the advance of democracy and human rights has stalled in many parts of the world.

Such features of the global strategic environment have been noted by military leaders, as well. Here's a portion of what GEN George Casey, soon-to-retire Chief of Staff of the Army, wrote in October 2009's Army Magazine, to describe what he calls the "era of persistent conflict":

Globalization can spread prosperity by accelerating the transfer of trade, technology and ideas, but it can also propagate destabilizing influences. While globalization has brought prosperity to people around the world, its benefits are unequally distributed, creating “have” and “have not” conditions that can spawn conflict.

Now check out this passage from another (less recent) assessment of the strategic environment:

Social patterns and institutions in most underdeveloped nations are extremely malleable. They are often a legacy of shapeless, frequently illogical political units which are derived, in part, from a colonial past. The disturbance of man’s mind and environment caused by the last World War  still lingers on in the Cold War. Concurrently a concept is spreading that society is manipulable. These characteristics act to diminish respect for public order, and encourage initiatives which easily cross the line into disorder and violence.

Intensifying and exaggerating these factors, and sweeping on with a momentum of its own, a social and economic revolution of great force has been spreading throughout much of the world. Purposefully or otherwise societies are gearing themselves to higher levels of economic and social activity. The necessary substructures inevitably cut into traditions and habits fostered by rural isolation. Rural people crowd into the strange environment of cities that lack for them a satisfactory pattern of living. Social action, like land reform, manifestly alters accustomed social and often political relationships. These are but examples of the manifold ways in which the revolution of modernization can disturb, uproot, and daze a traditional society. While the institutions required for modernization are in process of being created, this revolution contributes to arousing pressures, anxieties, and hopes which seem to justify violent action.

Looks familiar, I'd imagine, but I'm guessing you've never seen it before. Maybe I'm late to the game on this one -- and you should probably take away my COINdinista card for this -- but I'd never seen it before, either. The blacked-out sections above read "the last World War" and "in the Cold War." The passage is from the U.S. Overseas Internal Defense Policy (pdf), approved by President Kennedy in 1962 and promulgated via National Security Action Memorandum No. 182. The OIDP represented America's first run at national counterinsurgency policy, and served as the foundation for what would eventually develop into DoD's joint doctrine on foreign internal defense (pdf).

The worry in 1962, of course, was that weakened "transitional" societies would be vulnerable to communist subversion and insurgency. Today, our concern over weak and failing states stems from the threat of ungoverned spaces, violent extremism, destabilizing refugee flows and other humanitarian disasters, and so on.

A great irony of the present moment is the way that we've rhetorically (and in at least one case, materially)supported movements that seek to destabilize at least marginally capable state governments at a time when the very core of our foreign and security policy is reorienting in a Nixonian direction -- "the foreign policy equivalent of outsourcing," Peter Beinart once quipped. More to the point: we've spent the last ten years or so behaving in ways that suggested to the rest of the world that with the limited exception of certain well-known and agreed-upon poleis non gratae (the Irans and North Koreas of the world), handling your own anti-violent-extremist business was basically the way to satisfy America. (Viz. esp. Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, etc.) Perhaps the best example of this is the case of Libya: the rapprochement with Tripoli since 2003 need not be recounted here (see this CRS report (pdf) if you're interested), but it's worth noting.

Also worth noting is this section of the same 1962 COIN policy document excerpted above:

The U.S. does not wish to assume a stance against revolution, per se, as an historical means of change. The right of peoples to change their governments, economic systems and social structures by revolution is recognized in international law. Moreover, the use of force to overthrow certain types of government is not always contrary to U.S. interests. A change brought about through force by noncommunist elements may be preferable to prolonged deterioration of governmental effectiveness or to a continuation of a situation where increasing discontent and repression interact, thus building toward a more dangerous climax. Each case of latent, incipient, or active noncommunist insurgency must therefore be examined on its merits in the light of U.S. interests.

I suppose President Obama and other advocates of the Libyan intervention would feel similarly about anti-authoritarian movements in the Middle East, however hostile to al-Qaeda their despotic targets may be. Qaddafi surely banked on American restraint when hinting at the specter of terrorism; he obviously miscalculated. But it may be worth asking ourselves, after the expensive intervention that has resulted from this miscalculation, whether it's America's responsibility to more clearly enunciate just exacly how "each case of latent, incipient, or active" anti-authoritarian agitation will be evaluated.

Obama and the world at the halfway point: An Ink Spots narrative report card

Two years ago today, Barack Obama was inaugurated as president. With the full extent of the economic downturn still somewhat obscure, there were high hopes for an era of American resurgence and a reconsideration of the indispensable nation's posture to the world.

Many of those hopes have been dashed as the dual shocks of a decade of war and a crumbling economy pull our focus inward. But foreign and security policy still matter, even if no one's paying attention. We here at Ink Spots wanted to take a look at the successes and failures of the Obama administration's first two years out in the world, to do a sort of mid-term report card. A few of us took a crack at the subject by answering a dozen questions about where we've been and where we're going.

1. What's been the biggest surprise to you about U.S. foreign policy over the last two years? Any pleasant surprises? Any significant disappointments?

Lil: The biggest surprise? I really don’t know. Pleasant surprises (in no particular order): the lifting of the peacekeeping cap, the passage of new START, increased attention to conflict/crisis in Africa. Significant disappointment: continued failure to adequately fund and staff State and USAID.

Alma: I was surprised that transatlantic relations did not warm up more. President Obama came to office with high popularity ratings on the part of Europeans—and their political leaders. “Old Europe” was hoping for a drastic change in attitude on the part of the United States after the eight years of the Bush presidency. However, the relations have remained oddly distant. There has been a similar disappointment with Africa. The rest of the world expected Obama to bring to the U.S. presidency a more internationalist view, based on his multicultural background and education. But the United States did not want a President who devotes too much time to foreign policy while there is a crisis at home. And President Obama himself had an ambitious political agenda, in the pursuit of which he needed to make major strides very quickly after his election. As a result, he focused—understandingly—on gathering domestic support and downplayed what the rest of the world saw as his value added. An illustration of this is President Obama’s facial expressions when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2009 (“for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”). Maybe I am reading too much into this, but I felt that in addition to the “Why, but why?” puzzled look, his uneasy smile hinted at a more daunting: “What is the backlash going to be at home?”

Gulliver: Frankly, I’m surprised the administration has spent so much time and effort on a subject that seems basically irrelevant to the president’s political fortunes: Afghanistan. Considering the state of the economy, it’s hard to imagine the mid-term elections having gone any worse for the Democrats if the White House had deemphasized the war effort and drawn down our overseas presence. The Woodward book gave me the strong sense that the president has a realistic view about OEF’s uncertain (and perhaps even damaging) relationship to genuine national security, so I’m shocked he lacked the conviction to stand up to senior military advice.

2. What do you think are Obama's, Clinton's, and Gates' biggest accomplishments and biggest disappointments in these two years?

Lil: I think one clear accomplishment is the improvement of relations with some of our key allies. Some of these relationships had been badly damaged during the Bush Administration and it seems to me that many of these problems, particularly in Western Europe have been resolved. Things have also improved at the UN, both with other Permanent Missions and in the Secretariat. I think a disappointment on that front has been the inability (or perhaps the unwillingness) to get the UN Secretary General to grow a spine and show some leadership. I really hope that the US doesn’t support Ban Ki-Moon running for re-election. His tenure has been disastrous.

Another, and I don’t know who the credit goes to on this one, maybe all three is the clear improvement in policy-making processes and dialogue at the most senior levels. It’s clear that the President, Clinton and Gates work together very well. That’s a good change. I think that the mutual support that Gates and Clinton provide each other has had clear positive repercussions.

I think one accomplishment for Gates has been his work to trim the defense budget. He’s been foiled by Congress at times but I think this is very important, along with his support for more capacity at State and USAID. It’s disappointing that he hasn’t been more successful so I guess a disappointment is the inability to work with Congress—though the passing of new START during the lame duck session was an accomplishment for sure.

Gulliver: I wrote this question, but I still have a hell of a time answering it. I think the president did great work to keep Bob Gates at the Pentagon longer than most people expected, and the level of coordination and collaboration – at least in the public eye – across the entire national-security team has to be considered as an accomplishment for all three. Avoiding a major political fight on the evolution of our missile-defense construct toward the Phased Adaptive Approach was another big highlight.

On the negative side of the ledger, I’m discouraged by the collective failure to take steps in the direction of major national security reform despite apparent (or at least expressed) unity of purpose across State and Defense. Without that, the QDDR doesn’t mean much of anything. And then, obviously, there’s Afghanistan: I wish one of these three would go beyond the boilerplate talking points and try to make a reasoned case for how the war will make Americans safer, but instead we’re treated to Bushian no-safe-havens rationales and appeals to the grievous threat of terrorism.

3. What do you think about the decisions the president has made about Afghanistan? Were you surprised about the escalation?

Lil: I think the civilian surge makes sense and I can’t remember whether I was surprised about it, more relieved I suppose. I was just at an event yesterday where PRT commanders complained (again) that they basically had four civilians on their team (though those numbers are growing). I think there are still huge problems with the amount of money we are spending in Afghanistan, mostly because Afghanistan lacks the capacity to absorb the money in a transparent and effective way. I haven’t yet seen the new US anticorruption strategy, which McClatchy said recently would instruct focus on low level corruption and avoid the political disasters of going after Karzai and senior Afghan officials. Of course, I think it’s disappointing that our leaders aren’t willing to go after officials whose corruption is so blindingly obvious that it makes us look like naïve children for not noticing (either that or hypocrites, depending on your perspective). I was shocked to discover that fighting corruption was not a focus on the Bush Administration and that efforts had basically begun just months after Obama took office.

Similarly, I think the troop surge also makes sense. I don’t feel like I know enough about how operations are being conducted to say how much it will help but it seems that if you say you’re doing population centric COIN and you want to secure the population, then you’ll need more troops to do it (so long as they’re not razing villages for obscure reasons).

Alma: Democrat presidents are rarely at ease with the military. They have to fight two common beliefs: that they do not know much about military issues and that they will make decisions that are generally adverse to the military. President Obama was aware of these pitfalls and accordingly refrained from micro-managing the conduct of the war in Afghanistan. He also gave a large amount of initiative to his top commanders there. And when is the last time a general asked for less troops rather than more? So: no, I am not surprised about the escalation.

Gulliver: I’ve already touched on this, but I think they’ve been almost universally terrible. “Obama’s Wars” probably made me feel even worse about this, because it reinforced earlier suggestions – contrary to campaign rhetoric – that the president is actually a thoughtful skeptic of the war-as-counterterrorism approach. So I suppose I’m retroactively surprised about the escalation, though it seemed basically preordained and unavoidable in December of 2009. There’s a lot of blame to go around on this one – the coordinated McChrystal/Petraeus/Mullen pitch for escalation, however inevitable and effective, was a real disappointment for me – but it comes back to the president giving strong guidance and having the confidence to make unpopular decisions. On this, he failed.

4. What's your expectation for what will happen to troop numbers in Afghanistan over the course of this year? How about by 2014?

Lil: I think there will be a small decrease this year and probably another in 2012 (basically for domestic consumption during the campaign). I think Administration have been steadily walking back the 2011 deadline and they’ll continue to do so. As for numbers by 2014, I think that will depend on how things go between now and then. The decision last week to push for a large increase in the size of the ANSF to me suggests that things aren’t going as well as military leadership would like and that increasing the nominal size of the forces will be the only way to ensure that there are enough forces, eventually, to guarantee some security. I don’t have much evidence to back to that but really the Pentagon’s quarterly reports on the state of the ANSF don’t give me much confidence.

Alma: Some U.S. troops will withdraw over the Summer, but most likely in very small numbers. The ¨surge¨ of troops has only now completely arrived to Afghanistan, and there will be pressure to use these big numbers to the fullest before they go back home—in other words, give the surge a chance. Also, since withdrawal has repeatedly been made conditional to improved security conditions on the ground, the whole process is likely to take years—probably extending beyond 2014. As for non-U.S. troops, the answer is easier: there will be fewer and fewer of them. There is no other country committed as deeply as the United States, and there is no other country that feels its credibility, where it to withdraw, would suffer as much as the United States’. This credibility issue has led U.S. presence in Vietnam or even Lebanon to last much longer than the interests they pursued and their chances of success warranted. Countries who do not have this credibility issue and public opinions hostile to the Afghanistan intervention will call it quits.

Gulliver: I think the numbers will remain basically static through the end of 2012, and that ISAF, the Pentagon, and the White House will juke the numbers by withdrawing support troops. I don’t envision widespread transfer of battlespace-ownership to the ANSF (maybe some in RC-West), though I don’t have nearly the detailed knowledge of operational geography to pass anywhere close to conclusive judgment on this. As for 2014… NATO’s on the record on that one, and I don’t see it slipping. Whoever’s in the White House will rationalize and justify, conclude that our work there has been productive and meaningful to national security, and we’ll keep a few thousand SOF and aviation assets at Bagram and Kandahar into the indefinite future.

5. Do you think the "Global War on Terror" still means anything? How about the Struggle Against Violent Extremism? Where do you think we are with AQ – do they still matter? Is terrorism the primary threat to the U.S., or should we be focused elsewhere?

Lil: Well, I don’t think either meant much in the first place. I think AQ (in its various regional incarnations) still matters but I don’t think that terrorism is the primary threat to the US. I don’t think I buy the argument that our focus on terrorism has been the reason why we haven’t been attacked again, I think we’ve just been lucky (and would-be terrorists were thwarted by their own incompetence). I think that rather than focus on AQ, we should be focused on what makes people want to join AQ. I know that varies from place to place but that’s what foreign policy is for. I’m not sure that we’ve yet achieved that balance in terms of either human or financial resources that are being spent on diplomacy and foreign assistance.

Alma: Did GWOT ever mean anything? It was a catchphrase whose reach and grandeur was a good match for the shock people felt after 9/11. As a political and military concept, it is empty of meaning and useless (and I feel like I am beating a dead horse here—so many people smarter than me have made that demonstration before me that I would not know where to start). Law enforcement is usually the appropriate response to terrorism—war is not. I am not denying the usefulness of a few well-targeted air strikes from time to time. But overhauling the entire political (and social) landscape of a country? This fulfills other aims: hubris, posturing, you name it. But not counter-terrorism.

Gulliver: I don’t think either of the terms have ever had any analytical or operational utility, but they’ve certainly informed the strategic context in which the military conceives of and explains its plans. There are other people who can speak in a far more informed way about the ongoing campaign against al-Qaeda, but I’d just say that I think we do a tremendous disservice to our national sense of self when we build our approach to the world around the one specific anti-globalist, rejectionist element that’s proven most capable of doing violence to our citizens. I don’t mean to suggest at all that 9/11 and terrorism aren’t a big deal, but I’d urge perspective: the reason AQAM are relevant is for their opposition to the global system of commerce and relationships that we’ve helped to create in our own image and still largely lead. Let’s not forget about the rest of it, and about how important it is to maintain that system and manage our place in it to positive effect.

6. Do you think "reset" with Russia is "working"? What does that mean to you? Do you foresee any further expansion of NATO during Obama's tenure? If so, which countries?

Lil: I really don’t have anything intelligent to say on Russia. So I’ll skip that. NATO expansion, something else I know next to nothing about so I’ll leave that to Gulliver and others. I do think though that it’s good that France came back.

Gulliver: I’m a Russia skeptic. I lived in a country that’s been partitioned and occupied by Russia four times. I wrote my master’s thesis about expanding NATO to hedge against Russian recidivism. I don’t believe Russia can be meaningfully deflected from the pursuit of its own interests. That said: yes, it’s working. A stable international system can only be maintained by taking Russia into account; this doesn’t mean we’re always going to win Moscow’s support, but Russian influence needs to be managed. Sometimes we’re just hoping they’ll clear a very low bar: continue to negotiate arms agreements, don’t escalate aggression in the Caucasus, don’t reflexively oppose U.S. interests in the Security Council. At other times, we’re looking for more meaningful and significant action: help crack down on piracy, line up with the rest of the world on Iranian nuclear progress, don’t sell sophisticated weapons to pariah states, take action to ease tensions with NATO. Sending the message that we view our relationship with Russia in a pragmatic, reasonable way – that we take their interests into account and don’t press for meaningless advantage – will pay off in the future, and we’re already seeing benefits.

I think NATO’s done growing, and that’s as it should be. There’s no one else the U.S. ought to commit to defending, no matter the circumstances – the Georgia troubles in 2008 underlined that – and such a pledge at this point could only be taken as a symbolic gesture of aggression (e.g. we’re going to protect Georgia because we like their political system better than yours, not because it serves our material interests). There could be meaningful progress with Ukraine, but their national politics have taken a turn over the last several years that makes that seem unlikely.

7. Can you envision a scenario where U.S. troops would be sent to the African continent in the next two years? Where might they go next, if anywhere?

Lil: I have to say, I really don’t see this happening, or at least not in very large numbers. Don’t get me wrong, I think that it would be great if the US sent more staff officers to work in UN missions. I’m not saying a US general should take command of a UN operation but really, after seeing for myself how the military parts of some missions suffer from lack of good staff, I think even a few US O-4s to O-6s could do a lot of good on jobs ranging from logistics, to operational planning, to intelligence.

US troops are doing things like training African militaries (for example in Congo) or providing support to operations in Uganda elsewhere. I don’t see US troops going into Côte d’Ivoire, I really hope there’s no need to go into Liberia Liberia and I just don’t see the US sending troops to Zimbabwe or Sudan, even if Mugabe’s regime collapses and Sudan implodes. I think the US should support another western country going in to help (say if the French increased their presence in Côte d’Ivoire or the UK went into Zimbabwe post Mugabe) but I really don’t see the US leading any kind of mission. As we’ve discussed before, I think the US could do a lot of good by helping to go after the LRA but since MK previously outlined how that would work, I won’t rehash it here.

Alma: US troops are already on the African continent, where they train numerous local armies. This “quiet intervention” should remain as quiet as possible to be effective, and I have no doubt it will continue in the next two years. But if we are thinking big deployment Somalia-style, then I very much doubt this will be happening.

Gulliver: I’ll let the others speak to possible African hot-spots, but I think the enthusiasm for deployments that could involve casualties is really, really waning. (One curious effect of the Bush Doctrine and the COIN revolution is that Americans are probably now even MORE opposed to overseas intervention in the absence of a strong self-interested rationale. “Counterterrorism” is the vestigial exception.) We’ll still do security cooperation and capacity-building, but the uniformed U.S. footprint for these missions is much, much smaller than most people think. (“U.S.-trained” Ugandan AMISOM peacekeepers mostly get their instruction from State-contracted DynCorp and MPRI folks in baseball caps, not green-suiters.)

8. Do you see isolationist/anti-engagement sentiment playing a significant part in the 2012 election? Or foreign policy at all?

Lil: Yes, I think this could play a big part, combined with concern over budget deficits, high unemployment at home, and a desire to appease the electorate here. I think that this could be a big problem because it could cause us to ignore problems or simply abandon challenging places and that this could later come back to haunt us.

Alma: Isolationism was already very present in the run-up to the 2010 elections. U.S. presidents are expected to focus on America first, and this is even more true in times of economic (and, inevitably social) turmoil. The President’s contenders are expected to show how the country’s leader really does not have his constituents’ interests at heart, and prefers to get busy with larger issues than help the average Joe get a job or keep his house. So yes, the 2012 election will be played largely on domestic themes, and with an isolationist mindset.

Gulliver: Perhaps surprisingly, I don’t. There might be some talk of restraint, retrenchment, or even isolationism among early Republican pretenders, but there’s simply no chance a Republican nominee will come at Obama talking national security as a fiscal responsibility issue. Eric Cantor and John McCain may make some noise about how defense spending is on the table for budget cuts, but no mainstream Republicans are prepared to reconsider firmly-entrenched ideas about American exceptionalism and global primacy, and the establishment is too afraid of tea-party extremism to propel an isolationist libertarian to the nomination.

The president, for his part, has spent the last two years insulating himself from traditional accusations of weak-kneed liberalism; the only way his opponents make any ground is by emphasizing alleged humiliations like “reset”, China’s rise, and “failure” on Iran. Foreign and security policy just doesn’t look like a useful campaign tool this time around, particularly with the economy in the tank. Engagement is here to stay, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, that means that interventionist mistakes like Afghanistan will probably stick around, too.

9. Any guesses on the next SECDEF? How long do you think Gates will stay?

Lil: Umm, I hope it’s not Joe Lieberman. Gates staying, I don’t know.

Gulliver: I keep hearing Danzig, and Flournoy’s an intriguing option, but I don’t think my guesses are better than anybody else’s. The fact of the matter is that the next guy (or gal) will 100%, ironclad, stone-cold, for certain not be as effective as Gates. And that’s a shame. Fingers crossed that he’ll stick around through the next election cycle, but I’m not even sure he knows the plan at this point.

10. Do you see a realistic possibility of significant cuts to the defense budget, significant increases of the State/foreign aid budget, or any combination of the two? Is a pooled resources proposal still alive? Do you think there's a chance of significant national security reform during the Obama administration? If so what should it (or will it) look like?

Lil: I think that budgets are going to be cut across the board but I hope that the cuts will be less significant at State and USAID. I think actually that rationalizing the Defense budget (or trying to) is one of Gates’ greatest accomplishments.

I haven’t heard about the pooled resources thing in a while. I wonder if it died with the UK budget cuts (my understanding is that was the model).

As for national security reform, I don’t know what the chances are (Congress) but I do hope we’ll end up sometime with some kind of national security career in the government that makes doing this job attractive and of course positive for our policies.

Gulliver: As I noted before, I consider it a massive disappointment that this isn’t already happening (at least not with any great alacrity) with a national security team in place that is perhaps more amenable to sweeping reform than any other ever has been or will be. We could use a root-and-branch reexamination of the fundamental roles and missions of our various departments and agencies, but I don’t think that’s going to happen: we’ll use the ongoing wars as an excuse (“you can’t drive and rebuild the engine at the same time!”), but that argument ignores the fact that in our new “security” paradigm, we’re always driving. Congress poses some pretty serious roadblocks to an effort like this, too, what with the impact on oversight and what could reasonably be seen as a consolidation of power in an Executive Branch optimally organized for operations. My great fear is that a failure to examine these important questions – what is the difference between foreign policy and security policy? Who should decide which partners we’ll build the capacity of? How do our security objectives nest within our broader foreign policy objectives… or have we unconsciously flipped the two? – will result in the accumulation of more authority, responsibility, and influence in the Pentagon: the much-feared “militarization of foreign policy” (a term that I really dislike despite its literal descriptive accuracy).

11. What's the national security/foreign policy story from the last two years that nobody knows, but everybody should?

Lil: No clue. I think we as Americans need to become better at educating ourselves about what other countries are like, what lives people have in countries we care about, and also what life is like in countries that have long suffered from conflict, violence, lack of resources, and the absence of democracy. I don’t think Americans should just be discovering that Ben Ali ruled Tunisia with an iron fist or that we care about Guinea because of tin (and of course pervasive human rights violations). I think though that this is a question of education. Maybe that’s the big story: how are problems in our educational system going to affect our ability to interact with the world and do so in a way that promotes peace, trade, development, and democracy. More generally, how is educational system going to help ensure that the next time we decide to intervene somewhere, we’re better prepared, we have more people available with language skills, cultural knowledge etc.

Gulliver: We’re spending billions of dollars a year trying to stand up and increase the capacity and capabilities of foreign security forces, and we really, fundamentally have no idea what we’re doing. The U.S. military knows how to translate weapon systems into capabilities with concepts, doctrine, training, TTPs, and so on, and then how to translate those capabilities into operational effectiveness; we don’t know how to teach a foreign partner to do this with any degree of consistency or effectiveness, and often the obstacles will be obscure and inaccessible to us. What’s worse is that we talk like we can do this in our sleep, and our senior leaders seem snowed enough by it to imagine that security force assistance is more about the sculptor than it is the clay. We’re a blind guy with four broken fingers trying to build the David out of tin foil and pebbles.

12. What's the most meaningful and effective foreign/security policy action Obama could take before 2012?

Lil: I think probably starting to increase capacity at State and USAID.

Gulliver: Predictable, but: withdraw the vast majority of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. It’s a shit sandwich, I know, but it’s one you’re gonna have to eat – letting it get cold isn’t going to make it taste better.

Overall F/SP Grade at mid-term?

Alma: There were some disappointments, but diplomatic efforts were made towards Muslims, the President handled well the McChrystal affair, and no outrageously wrong-headed foreign policy decision was made so far--a drastic change from the previous administration. So I think Obama's self-attributed grade of B+ is, overall, a rather fair one.

Gulliver: The president’s encouragingly pragmatic approach to our most important relationships and obvious willingness to manage the rise of global competitors have been outweighed by the lost promise of major national security reform and the disappointing cave-in on Afghanistan. I give the administration a D+.

The military-industrial complex, the scientific-technological elite, and the almost universal securitization of policy and politics

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Dwight Eisenhower's most memorable speech, one which -- I am compelled to report by overwhelming journalistic consensus -- "became, arguably, the most famous farewell address since George Washington's" (/"...has become, with the possible exception of George Washington's departing speech, the best-known presidential farewell address in U.S. history"/"...next to George Washington's farewell address, [is] perhaps the most significant valedictory in presidential history"/"...ranks, as Eisenhower intended it to, with Washington's Farewell Address as a masterpiece of American rhetoric, of balance, and of prudent far-seeking counsel." One wonders why, amidst this remarkably consistent precedent, commentators continue to assert their agnosticism on the matter with possibles and perhapses and arguablys. If only Eisenhower had foreseen this [arguably] entirely valueless and yet [perhaps] apparently unavoidable comparison, he may have [possibly] chosen to deliver the message in some other venue!). A mere 1,800 words, the address provides ample fodder to this day for the sort of prescriptive critical analysis of the type represented above. We all remember the "military-industrial complex," of course, but what of the "scientific-technological elite"? And did Eisenhower really mean that a cabal of militarist interests threatened control of the government, or did he simply want to balance the books?

I don't intend to adjudicate among the various interpretations of the speech. Meaning matters, of course, but it matters differently to different audiences and it's unsurprising that those with differing political ideologies would emphasize different angles on it. (If you want to have a conversation about whether or not the author's intent should matter, whether a passage can be considered as a self-referential formal object with objective meaning, etc., go get a grad degree in lit-crit. Or read this essay in this book.) But there are some bits of Ike's address worth noting for the insight they can provide on the way we deal with defense in our modern political discourse, and for the way they prod us to think about what it is that "defense" is defending -- and how well.

"Our military organization today," Eisenhower contended in 1961, "bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peace time, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea." He went on to both bemoan and justify the necessity of a "permanent armaments industry of vast proportions," but the re-organization of the federal government to meet a changed threat environment was perhaps even more consequential. The Department of Defense had replaced the poorly-structured (and even more poorly-named) National Military Establishment (huh huh, get it, Ehn-Ehm-Ee?), which was created when the Departments of War and the Navy were agglomerated. There's evidence that Ike's attitude towards the Soviet threat changed signficantly between his inauguration in 1953 and his farewell address eight years later, but by 1961 his assessment of the nature of the nascent Cold War was basically uncontroversial:

We face a hostile ideology-global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle-with liberty at stake.

These words were meant to prepare the American people for what might today be called an "era of persistent conflict" (pdf): a future where the threat of violence and even war was not episodic but constant. Though he would -- later in the very same speech -- warn against "the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex," Eisenhower seeded the ground for just such a future by recognizing a "conflict now engulfing the world," one that "commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings." The specter of Soviet aggression, waxing and waning though it might over the ensuing decades, facilitated a transformation of our national dialogue to one in which constant vigilance was emphasized. Every aspect of national life was a matter of national security -- of national existence. How then could he have hoped to avoid the subversion of other national priorities to the defense of America? Does it not now seem ludicrous to imagine that mere warnings could prevent this?

And so we've arrived at a time when a social ill like childhood obesity -- worthy enough of public attention simply for its pernicious social consequences -- is viewed as a security threat (pdf). When the Constitutional guarantee of religious freedom is viewed as a security threat. When climate change -- an issue that will literally impact the quality of life of billions of people -- is viewed as a security threat. When the American tradition of multiculturalism and immigration is viewed a security threat. When our very fiscal solvency is viewed as a security threat. That's how we end up with a garbage "National Security Strategy" that isn't really a strategy at all, and that does next to nothing to make Americans safer or better off.

I don't disagree that each of these issues has a security component; this seems indisputable. But when a range of disparate subjects, matters that are relevant and even fundamental to our national identity and our social health, can only be made to impact the public consciousness when they're described as matters of national security -- it's distressing. In many ways it's unavoidable. Consider 1) the philosophical justification for the state's writ and monopoly of violence, the social compact, the Leviathan angle, etc.; 2) the Constitutional emphasis on national defense as a prerogative of limited government (which flows from 1); and 3) the natural human tendency to entrust responsibility for the defense of one's own person to a higher authority so as not to concern oneself with violence and conflict. Taken together, it's easy to understand why programs justified on security grounds are far more likely to be funded and supported by the public than those that aren't (just look at the ease which with development aid for OEF-facilitator and erstwhile anti-extremist counterinsurgent Pakistan has recently sailed through Congress, while non-military aid is typically a struggle to justify on the Hill). It's also easy to see why many libertarians and fiscal conservatives have no problem treating the defense budget as untouchable, and why defense budget bloat is so common and predictable.

But it doesn't bode well. This isn't just a matter of messaging, either: the way we talk about problems informs the choice of tool we use to solve them, and the rhetoric of persistent conflict and multifarious threat mitigates in favor of the military instrument. That's how we end up with joint doctrine that perceives the "spectrum of conflict" and the "range of military operations" as including everything from stable peace to general war -- not to mention "Phase 0," which includes all "steady-state" activities along the continuum. It's how we end up with the military doing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, and so on. (It's also how we end up with an unexamined belief in the utility of force to produce predictable constructive effects.)

This is not a new idea. In an important if slightly breathless piece in this month's Atlantic, Andrew Bacevich cites words written, fittingly enough, during the Eisenhower administration:

In his 1956 book, The Power Elite, C. Wright Mills, a professor of sociology at Columbia, dubbed this perspective “military metaphysics,” which he characterized as “the cast of mind that defines international reality as basically military.” Those embracing this mind-set no longer considered genuine, lasting peace to be plausible. Rather, peace was at best a transitory condition, “a prelude to war or an interlude between wars.”

This "cast of mind" has evolved yet further in the modern age, as peace is neither a prelude or an interlude, but rather a point along the spectrum of conflict: the venue for Phase 0 shaping operations. Indeed, this "military metaphysics" informs recent emphasis on capacity-building and the "indirect approach"; security policy as foreign policy, war without war: boosting the capacity of partner nations' forces to secure their own territory and contain conflict without costly and dangerous U.S. involvement. (Note the way that debate over the Iraq and Afghanistan escalations tended to hinge along one issue: whether to increase Western presence and operational tempo or to increase emphasis on training and equipping host nation forces.) Surely this is better than getting Americans killed, but it betrays questionable optimism in the ability of U.S. policymakers to meaningfully influence outcomes through indirect action.

And what of using the military to effect foreign policy? Something our forebears knew and that we've forgotten is that the military instrument is a blunt one. (Afghans seem to realize this better than we do: fighting, it's often said, is viewed there as a stage in a continuum of negotiation. When terms change, you change sides.) It is tremendously effective for shaping choices when the adversary's options are to move or to be destroyed. Armor is the "combat arm of decision" because it combines firepower and mobility in such a way as to make the tanker's definition of "victory" a viable one. (Ask Jason about this. The polite version would be something like "victory is when your tank is parked on the enemy's position and you're performing unsavory acts on his personal possessions.") Force is less useful, as both Rupert Smith and Gian Gentile would tell you, when the object is to change the minds of men: violence and coercion unmoored from broader strategy will be especially impotent. In a sense, our philosophies of war and our technologies of war are developing at cross-purposes: man has never been possessed of greater destructive power over his enemies, nor has he ever been more desirous of influencing his adversaries' behavior in a calibrated way, with minimal violence. We seek a way not simply to destroy the enemy but to control him, and yet the tools at our disposal are, as ever, still suited more to destruction than control.

Some think the answer is to highlight the nefarious relationship between the makers of our destructive tools and the drivers of our policy. To be sure, the influence of industry on government is troubling, and we ought to be mindful of war profiteers enriching themselves to the detriment of the Republic. But Eisenhower's speech wasn't about arms dealers' holding the budget hostage -- after all, he "recognize[d] the imperative need for" a vast and influential military establishment, while warning against a "fail[ure] to comprehend its grave implications" -- it was about his fear of the country becoming something it ought not to be in the service of what seemed to be reasonable defensive concerns. The "national welfare of the future," he warned, should not be imperiled by the "action of the moment." Basic research and development risked being overwhelmed by a profusion of government and military contracts, Ike said -- the influence not of the military-industrial complex, but of the scientific-technological elite -- again foretelling the subversion of civil aims to the imperatives of security. In the dystopian future of Eisenhower's nightmare, civil society would serve the needs of defense science just as our politics served the needs of our military establishment.

The size and diversity of our economy may have prevented the first of these fears, but is it not obvious that our rhetoric has set the stage for the second to come to pass? Influence may be "sought or unsought," we were reminded, and I take pains here to emphasize that I'm no conspiracy theorist. The elements and actors that have "conspired" to create this reality are mostly unthinking. (I don't believe Lockheed Martin is subtle or smart enough to try to increase its own profit margins by encouraging retired generals to advocate for a campaign to end childhood obesity on national security grounds, thus encouraging an over-securitized national dialogue.) But it's where we are today: each and every national issue is described as having a security component, at the very least, and many are described bluntly as "threats to national security." We're in a time of budgetary austerity, but it's still relatively easy to ensure hundreds of billions of dollars for defense and other initiatives that are justified under the guise of "security." The military takes advantage of this rhetorical climate to ensure its own budget share, piling on more and more missions and asserting that somebody in government needs to be able to do them. And our political leaders are complicit in all of this, knowing that it's easier to lock up votes by showing "support for the troops" through a big defense topline and an expensive new weapon system than by trying to move the national conversation about security to a more rational place.

We can spout pious irrelevancies about the relative size of the defense budget as a share of GDP. We can harp on a one-eyed interpretation of Eisenhower that blames our national malady on the plotting of eminences grises looking to make a buck. We can talk about how the guys in the other party don't really understand what Eisenhower meant. We can even argue that in a time of record deficits, the three-quarters of a billion dollars that gets spent on defense "is not the problem." But if we listen to Ike, what we cannot do is to simply ignore the pernicious effects of this new paradigm... one that Eisenhower himself, I'm afraid to say, helped to create.

Next you're gonna tell me the Pakistanis aren't planning to use those F-16s for COIN

Spencer Ackerman reports that he's shocked, SHOCKED to find that the Saudis are using military materiel provided by U.S. -- ostensibly for counterterrorism purposes -- to wage war against Shi'ite rebels on the Yemeni border. Similarly surprising is the U.S. ambassador's assessment that the Saudi campaign "was poorly planned and executed" and "embarrassingly long," despite a "massively disproportionate" array of forces and equipment. But wait -- there's more! In a startling turn of events that could never have been predicted, the Yemenis are also taking advantage of U.S. assistance to prosecute a CREB campaign (the French term -- contre-rebellion, usually translated as counterinsurgency so as to avoid doctrinal confusion -- seems more appropriate here, not to mention having that je ne sais quoi...) against the same Houthis rebels the Saudis are using our shit to kill. Foreign Policy's Ellen Knickmeyer reports that Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh assured Dave Petraeus that U.S.-provided helos wouldn't be used against the Houthis just months before insisting to John Brennan that "the Houthis are your enemies too" -- all while preparing to send his U.S. trained "counterterrorist" commandos to quell the northern insurgency. Oh, and just in case you forgot: we're about to ship $1.2 billion in hardware and training to Yemen... better to fight al-Qaeda with.

How 'bout the Saudis? Well, they're fighting the hell out of terrorists... or at least the guys that are terrorizing their border with Yemen. The USG seems to have pretty well given up the ghost on this one; here's Spencer again:

“Based on these assurances, the [U.S.] ambassador [in Riyadh] has approved… the provision of [U.S. government] imagery of the Yemeni border area to the Saudi Government,” the February cable reads. Although the war on the Houthis was petering out, the imagery could enhance “Saudi capabilities against Al-Qaeda activities in this area.”

This would be hilarious if it weren't so sad. If I had more technical ability, I'd do one of those hilarious parodies of "Downfall" in which Hitler's disappointed words at the close of the scene were captioned with "...well, maybe the Saudis will use that IMINT against al-Qaeda."

What's the moral of the story? Despite the U.S. military's persistent use of the term "capability" as a synonym for a weapon system -- a semantic manifestation of wishful thinking wherein the provision of a piece of gear is the same as transfer of the tactical and operational competencies that equipment is meant to enable -- we all need to come to grips with the fact that absent the elaboration of very specific consequences for "bad behavior," partner nations are going to use the stuff we sell or give them for "counterterrorism operations" to do pretty much whatever the hell they want. There's two ways to handle this: 1) we can just figure out a way to have less heartburn about this disappointing reality, recognizing that some sovereign states are going to get theirs so long as we're asking them to take care of some housekeeping on our behalf, or 2) we can find a different way to execute a worldwide counterterrorism campaign than rushing materiel and training to every third-world backwater where al-Qaeda pops its collective head up, imagining as we do that the knock-on negative effects of this decision can't possibly outweigh whatever near-term operational and PR benefits we might gain.  Right now we're basically taking Option 1, which would be fine with me if it actually made for effective counterterrorism. But... well... you know (pdf), it's, uh... it's not (pdf). I'm sure it'll be better next time. Or we could be a little more patient, a little more comprehensive, a little less direct, and do a little more of Option 2. Just sayin'.

Election '10: Defense doesn't give a damn what you think you are entitled to!

Not sure if you've heard, but there's an election in the United States today. Predictions are dire for the governing Democrats. In Nate Silver's Wednesday morning hypothetical, "Pundits are running out of metaphors to describe what just happened."

Not a wave, a hurricane. Not a hurricane, a tsunami! Not a tsunami; a tsunami from a magnitude 9.5 earthquake. Or by a meteor strike!

There's going to be change; this much we know. So what does that mean for defense? For major acquisition programs? For topline budgets?

Well, I'm gonna tell you: not very much. And now I'm gonna tell you why.

Fiscal restraint and budget tightening are not issues that break cleanly along party lines -- even when it comes to defense. Republicans and their shills in the punditocracy have made and will make a lot of noise about how defense budgets are more secure with a conservative majority. See here:

“If Republicans take over the House, I’m certainly less worried about major defense spending cuts,” said Mackenzie Eaglen, research fellow for national security studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “We’ll still see efforts to rein in wasteful spending, but they’ll want to reinvest some of those savings back into other defense programs.”

Eaglen fails to mention that the SECDEF's ongoing "efficiencies initiative" is based on precisely that sort of anti-waste approach, complete with a promise that services will be free to "keep what they catch" and reinvest the savings they've identified into their own modernization accounts.

“The aim is not to reduce the defense budget but to put its funds to better use”, Gates said. He stressed that: "the services will be able to keep the savings they generate to reinvest in higher priority warfighting needs and modernization programs….It is important that we not repeat the mistakes of the past, where tough economic times or the winding down of a military campaign leads to steep and unwise reductions in defense."

And what of these feared "major defense cuts," the ones that have mysteriously failed to happen in the last four years of Democratic control (two of those with a Democratic administration, which -- lest we forget -- Secretary Gates serves)? Presumably we'll have nothing to worry about in a Republican Congress, as these cuts would be championed by the sort of liberal Democrat who views fiscal solvency as a national security priority, and who believes that defense spending should not be immune to the sort of austerity measures that will be applied to nearly every other form of discretionary federal spending. Liberal Democrats like these folks:

• Sen. Tom Coburn (pdf), Republican of Oklahoma: "I appreciate that some of these thoughts [about "serious problems in our defense budget"] are controversial – even to the point that I have some reluctance in suggesting them. However, if we are to fulfill our mandate, we must make some difficult choices, not just recommend that others do so... Despite the sacrifice, heroism, and professionalism that our military personnel have shown in Iraq and Afghanistan, America‟s defenses have been decaying, despite – perhaps even because of - increasing budgets."
• Sen. Thad Cochran, Republican of Mississippi, who "echoed the point made by President Obama and Democratic leaders like House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-MD, that the national debt and national security are intimately related."
• Sen. Jeff Sessions, who co-sponsored an amendment that would have placed a firm cap on discretionary spending (pdf), including defense, and the 38 other Republican Senators who joined him in supporting the amendment.
• Kori Schake, foreign policy advisor to Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin during the 2008 campaign: "Conservatives need to hearken back to our Eisenhower heritage, and develop a defense leadership that understands military power is fundamentally premised on the solvency of the American government and the vibrancy of the U.S. economy."

Oh -- those aren't liberal Democrats at all!

The defense industry knows this: they don't care if you're a Republican or a Democrat, only that you're loyal and predictable. Which is to say, an incumbent. Like I said, philosophies on belt-tightening aren't necessarily consistent across caucus or conference. But you know what is consistent across both caucus and conference, on both sides of the aisle and around the 50 states? Commitment to pork. And ain't no pork like defense pork.

When Secretary Gates announced his intention to shutter Joint Forces Command as one part of his efficiencies initiative, making the sort of defense budget cut that Mackenzie Eaglen so fears, Congressional Republicans sure did flip their shit! Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) accused the administration of "selling off our military at auction to pay for its social programs." And Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA, minority whip) thought the cut should be examined with "the heaviest scrutiny." In what can surely only be called a very, very strange coincidence, Democrats also opposed the cut: Democrats... from Virginia! Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) saw "no rational basis" for the closure, while Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) complained that the proposal would be "harmful to the capabilities of the finest military in the world" and is holding up DOD nominations until he gets some answers. And then there's Rep. Glenn Nye (D-VA), in whose district JFCOM is based (and whose opponent in today's election is blaming him for the closure): he introduced legislation telling the SECDEF to get stuffed. On second thought, maybe I should revise my earlier statement: When the SECDEF decided to close JFCOM, Congressional Virginians sure did flip their shit!

When it comes to keeping frivolous, duplicative, unwanted, and unnecessary weapon systems in the budget, industry knows who to count on: Mackenzie Eaglen, Loren Thompson, and every single member of Congress -- from either party -- whose district stands to materially benefit from the survival or continuation of the program. Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) loves the Boeing KC-X tanker entrant -- which would bring 7,500 jobs to Wichita -- and so does Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS). Democratic Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, both from Boeing's home state of Washington, also have very good, well-developed ideas about which entrant best serves the Air Force's refueling requirements. Who loves the F136 (GE's alternate F-22 engine, to be produced in Cincinnati)? Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH), Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH), and Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) do, you can bet on that! So too does Driehaus' opponent, former Republican congressman Steve Chabot (duh, also OH).

According to Driehaus, he’s defending 1,000 jobs in his district at GE’s Evendale plant near Cincinnati. And he’s painting Chabot as an opponent in [the alternate engine] case — since Chabot wins plaudits from the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste, which opposes the second engine.

“The real question for voters is who’s answering to the voters of Cincinnati, and who’s answering to outside groups?” Driehaus asked.

That’s disingenuous, according to Chabot. “I supported the alternate engine program when I was in Congress for 14 years,” he told POLITICO. But he’s unapologetic that the anti-spending group has given him one of the highest lifetime scores on opposing wasteful spending — 97 percent.

“I think my support for the GE alternate engine is one of the reasons my score is 97 percent and not 100 percent,” he said, noting Driehaus’s score is just 11 percent.

Now how awesome is this?! You have a candidate for office bragging about being accused of facilitating government waste, while his opponent tries to suggest that the first guy's failure to vocally support a wasteful program should count against him! Is it any wonder that defense companies shower incumbents on Defense Approps and Armed Services with money when Congressional wannabes run around trumpeting their success at using time in elected office to wastefully channel money to programs run by the same companies they hope will jam their pockets full of campaign contributions?? Is it any wonder that these companies don't give a damn which party these candidates are going to caucus with?

Now ask yourself something else: if these incumbents somehow fail to return to Congress, do you think the Lockheeds, Boeings, Raytheons, and GEs of the world will have any compunction about shifting their financial support to the chumps who replace them?

So let's put it this way: short of a literal tidal wave or tsunami or meteor strike, Congressional support for expensive weapon systems of dubious necessity is simply not going to dry up, and it doesn't matter a tinker's damn whether Democrats or Republicans are running the show. (Loren Thompson, in a lucid moment, agrees.)

I could spend a lot of time analyzing the way this is going to impact national security policy writ large, and speculating about whether the war in Afghanistan or possible contingency operations elsewhere will go different under our new Republican overlords, but really, it would just be more of the same: if you're expecting major change in a field of governance that's primarily shaped by executive prerogatives and furthermore subject to the substantial influence of entrenched interests in government and industry, then you're probably wrong. (And really, for Republicans in Congress to take foreign/security policy down a different path, wouldn't they first need to get on the same page with one another?)

So here's my ballsy prediction for the next two years of security policy: Republicans will say that Democratic priorities are passive, stupid, and dangerous. Democrats will say that Republican priorities are aggressive, stupid, and dangerous. We'll figure out a way to leave Afghanistan that will be alternatingly criticized as too hasty and too slow. Defense contractors will continue to turn a profit. And then we'll do this all over again in 2012.

My life, around, alongside, and up against the Iraq war

I feel a bit mean-spirited doing so, but I've got to respond to Elizabeth Dickinson's post on Foreign Policy, "My life, under the Iraq war." Dickinson's essay is all about the ways that 9/11 and the U.S. intervention in Iraq have influenced our generation (she's writing about people in their late 20s, and I'm 30, but I think the generation is big enough for both of us) and more specifically our thinking on foreign policy and security. There's been some buzz about the subject of generational thinking lately, most of which sprang out of Dan Drezner's recent post entitled "How do millenials think about international relations?" Here's the gist:

I wonder whether the current generation of millennial twentysomethings will develop a worldview about international relations that transcends party and clique. If that happened, it would profoundly shape the contours of American foreign policy starting next decade.

As I think about it, here are the Millennials' foundational foreign policy experiences:

1) An early childhood of peace and prosperity -- a.k.a., the Nineties;
2) The September 11th attacks;
3) Two Very Long Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq;
4) One Financial Panic/Great Recession;
5) The ascent of China under the shadow of U.S. hegemony.

From these experiences, I would have to conclude that this generation should be anti-interventionist to the point of isolationism.

Then again, I'm looking at this through my own irony-drenched Gen-X eyes.

I've got a few problems with the argument being made, not least of which the general assumption that global political and economic events have impacted all (or event most) members of a specific age cohort in a similar way. It's hard enough to make this argument about a particular ethno-linguistic group, or a socio-economic segment, or even holders of the same nationality. For me, it seems totally unwarranted to assume that "twentysomethings" have taken a set of stock lessons from the events of the last decade on account of the fact that we had a similar number of years behind us when we experienced them.

It seems like Dickinson has accepted Drezner's thesis (or perhaps I should say "hypothesis") that common experience of the same historical era should result in a reasonably consistent or homogenous worldview across an age group. But we don't expect Baby Boomers or Gen Xers to share a worldview, do we? Is it only our youth that makes people believe the so-called "millenials" are too unsophisticated to cobble together a worldview from a priori philosophical positions (or theory) rather than some formative experience? I don't know, maybe I'm taking this a little too personally.

It's only fair to give you Dickinson's disclaimer (with which she closes the essay) up front:

Of course, I am but a subset of my demographic group, and no one authorized me to speak on behalf of my peers. But like the generation that grew up in Vietnam, we will be the Iraq generation. What that means is not yet clear, but it begins now. It's day one of life with no Iraq War.

I suppose this means that we're not supposed to take this effort to summarize the thinking of a generation as an effort to summarize the thinking of a generation. I think it's nonsense, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention her having asked. Let's take a look at what it is, exactly, that our generation is meant to have learned from the war.

1) We are starry-eyed multilateralists. For those of us who were just learning what activism meant when the war was launched, the lead-up to the Iraq War in the U.N. Security Council was front and center. . . as a result, my generation has grown up respecting the United Nations, seeing it (and institutions like it) as offering a more just world. . . We are a generation of idealistic multilateralists -- and despite its flaws, we want our country to work with the U.N.

Except when we're not, and we don't.

For a great many American young people, Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated the comparative advantage of leading a "coalition of the willing" in which one country directs operations and others fill in niche capabilities over a UN or NATO intervention in which U.S. priorities are subverted to the bureaucratic nightmare of alliance politics and national caveats. The Iraq War could also be taken as the ultimate repudiation of multilateral diplomatic pressure, seeing as the American invasion was pitched by our government as a matter of last resort after the failure of a series of UNSC resolutions. Iran and North Korea, too, underline the UN's fundamental impotence.

Dickinson can argue that the Iraq experience has molded young Americans into "idealistic multilateralists," but I can just as easily point her to the many aggressive unilateralists whose presumptions about limitations on American power have only been confirmed in their own minds by the events of the last eight years.

2) We care about civilian casualties. Credit this one to the countless scholars, journalists, and writers who have chronicled what it meant to be an Iraqi living through the Iraq war. But credit it also to Abu Ghraib prison, where we all saw the worst of war. And to the renewed emphasis on winning hearts and minds that American learned the hard way when Iraq and Afghanistan took turns for the worst.

If this observation is right, my generation could reshape public perception of warfare. For most of history, conflicts have been judged by the toll taken on one's own force with less regard for the local population.

Except when we don't.

Sure, our generation is sensitive to human suffering. So too have been past generations, and I'd be surprised if they weren't a bit offended by the suggestion that twentysomethings are more interested in sparing the lives of innocents.

Dickinson would no doubt point to the Counterinsurgency Field Manual and its emphasis on winning hearts and minds, on non-kinetic actions and the importance of development, essential services, and legitimate governance. I'd respond that the early days of the COIN-oriented Surge in Iraq saw a significant jump in civilian deaths (to correspond with a major uptick in the amount of ordnance delivered on targets in urban areas, both from airborne platforms and artillery), and that tactical directives intended to curb collateral damage in Afghanistan have gone into effect at a time when combined civilian casualties (at coalition and insurgent hands) are at a wartime high.

The COIN debate is swinging back in the direction of those who argue that effective counterinsurgents have historically made use of significant amounts of targeted violence, along with often brutal resettlement and population-control measures that in other circumstances would be considered human rights violations.

Sure, we care about civilian casualties, but so what?

3) We don't like haters. September 11 showed us for the first time that there are people who hate America. But the aftermath has also taught us that aggression can make more trouble than it solves. And as such, we want leaders who take the high road -- who speak calmly and understand the diversity of both our country and our world. But speaking isn't enough; we want activist presidents who go out into the world to seek change -- and aren't afraid to admit if and where they were wrong.

But who does, really?

And why did it take 'til September 11th? What about the USS Cole? What about Nairobi and Dar es Salaam? What about Mogadishu in 1993, when 18 U.S. soldiers came home in coffins, something I distinctly remember (as a 13-year old) seeing on the front cover of TIME?

And what of this "aggression can make more trouble than it solves"? If this is the case, why is support still so strong for the war in Afghanistan, a conflict with uncertain goals and an unclear linkage between operations and desired effects?

4) We are used to thinking of America on the decline. My generation is in many ways the "rise of the rest" generation. The splits in the Security Council were just the beginnings of the decline of American hegemony in the world. Now there are economic signs (a whopping unemployment rate), military signs (we finished in Iraq but didn't really win), and moral signs (granted I haven't been around Washington for terribly long, but do you remember the last time Congress was so divided?) But more than that, my generation has watched the rise of China and India. We've been abroad and we've seen the momentum that a country like Poland or Chile or Brazil has captured. And when we come home, that's missing.

I'll be honest and say that I don't have a huge problem with this one, though -- having lived in Poland for two years -- I would absolutely dispute the contention that these so-called rising regional powers have any kind of "momentum" that the U.S. fails to replicate. But yeah, most of us who have come of age in the dreaded "post-Cold War period" have some sense of what I'd call eroding unipolarity. Having said that, we also realize that the financial crisis is wreaking havoc around the globe, not just here at home, and that our economic and military competitors suffer similarly from scarcity and difficult resource choices. The "unipolar moment" may have passed, but that's no reason to believe that the U.S. must return to "normal" nationhood. The process has been a bit melancholy, even tragic, but the last decade has demonstrated the limits of military intervention and more generally of American power, and that may turn out to be a good thing.

You know what else has limits? The explanatory power of age-based demographic binning. Let's give it up. Stuff like this is tired, and it doesn't teach us anything. Are some of us going to draw the same lessons as Elizabeth Dickinson? Sure. Are some of us going to draw the same lessons as Duncan Hunter, Jr., who is 33 and probably doesn't agree with a single damned thing Elizabeth Dickinson wrote? Sure. We're not "the Iraq war generation." That generation may exist in the Army and Marine Corps -- a limited, more experientially and culturally homogenous grouping, and one that's been directly shaped by personal experience with that war -- but it doesn't exist in society. One of the great "lessons of Iraq" is this: people in a society as broad and rich and disparate as the U.S. will always find ways to disagree about what's best for the country and its security. Let's not contribute to polarization and acrimony by suggesting that there's one appropriate way to have experienced the last decade.

One of the stupidest things you'll read about Iraq this week

Max Bergmann of the Center for American Progress has a post up at the WonkRoom blog about how the Iraq drawdown actually validates CAP's 2005 proposals for a rapid and agressive end to American involvement in that war. No, seriously. The post is actually entitled "Obama Implemented CAP's Progressive Plan For Ending Iraq War -- Chaos Didn't Ensue." What incredible balls, right?

So let's talk about why this is so dumb. First, the most glaring reason: CAP's 2005 report "Strategic Reengagement," authored by Larry Korb and Brian Katulis (who happily echo Bergmann's insistence of their centrality to the war's end in their own op-ed on Foreign Policy), called for the withdrawal of 80,000 U.S. troops... IN 2006! That's prior to the Surge; prior to the Sahwa; prior to the JAM stand-down; prior to the Samarra mosque bombing; prior to the conclusion of ethno-sectarian cleansing across the neighborhoods of Baghdad; prior to the formation of the Maliki government; prior to the Iraqi offensive against Shia militias; prior to the conclusion of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA); and so on and so on. All of this seems so obvious as to not even need saying. In short, it's patently absurd to suggest that a massive troop withdrawal in 2006 would have gone as smoothly and produced similar results to the one currently taking place without the change in the security situation that took place in the intervening four years.

Bergmann argues that the real importance of the CAP report was the suggestion "that the US should set a date certain to prompt Iraqis to take control of their security and should withdraw its forces deliberately but responsibly in that period." Katulis and Korb echo this point:

Deadlines for a strategic redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq -- initially proposed in 2005 by leaders like former Representative Jack Murtha, championed by Democrats in Congress and candidates in the 2006 midterm elections, and outlined by the 2006 bipartisan Iraq Study Group ["and by US!", they modestly avoid noting] -- all sent the important signal that Iraqis needed to take greater responsibility and ownership of their own affairs. The message that America's commitment to Iraq was not open-ended motivated forces such as the Sunni Awakenings in Anbar province to partner with the U.S. to combat Al Qaeda in 2006, a movement that began long before the 2007 surge of U.S. forces.

The message that Americans were leaving also motivated Iraqis to sign up for the country's security forces in record numbers. The "surge" of U.S. troops to Iraq was only a modest increase of about 15 percent -- and smaller if one takes into account the reduced number of other foreign troops, which fell from 15,000 in 2006 to 5,000 by 2008. In Anbar province, the most violent area, only 2,000 troops were added.

This argument rests on the specious contention that promises of sustained American commitment to Iraq had a suppressive effect on Iraqis' enthusiasm to end the war that wracked their country. In a less charitable interpretation, one could conclude that Katulis and Korb think that sectarian violence and civil war drug out in Iraq simply because Iraqis weren't trying hard enough. (What else is there to believe, really, when you read the assertion that ISF recruiting numbers are causally related to vague assertions by opposition politicians and obscure think-tankers that the U.S. would not remain forever?)

Here's the thing, though: the U.S. was never going to "remain forever." You know how I know this? A SOFA mandating the removal of U.S. forces from Iraqi cities by July 2009 and from the entire country by the end of 2011 was NEGOTIATED AND SIGNED DURING THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION. That's right: the "Obama plan" is basically the Bush plan, with the addition of a couple of mid-course deadlines for the "removal of combat forces," an almost entirely meaningless milestone. Bergmann's claims that "there was no conservative withdrawal plan" seems a bit silly in light of this fact.

The WonkRoom post also takes a few shots at CNAS, suggesting that the perceived success of CAP's competitor in the so-called "think tank wars" was more attributable to good PR than substantive policy differences. "The CNAS approach was essentially an effort to find a centrist withdrawal strategy," Bergmann writes, so they concluded that redeployment should happen on a slower timeline, and with a more substantial residual force for advise and assist and counterterrorism missions. Uh, doesn't this sound a lot like what happened in 2008 and 2009?

And so here's the almost literally unbelievable conclusion:

There is little doubt that the Obama plan to set a date certain and to withdraw more than 120,000 troops in 16 months was essentially what CAP had been arguing for since the fall of 2005. In other words, Obama went with the progressive plan on Iraq. . . The reason there are just over 40,000 troops [in Iraq] is not because of the surge, it is because Obama decided to withdraw more than 100,000 troops.

When you look closely, Bergmann's argument should really go something more like this: U.S. strategy in Iraq in 2011 is basically exactly like what CAP advocated in 2005... except that the country executed a combination of the CNAS approach and the AEI approach in the meantime in order to make "CAP's progressive plan for ending [the] Iraq war" even remotely plausible.

If you didn't understand my post the other day about how partisan national security politics is destroying my will to live, hopefully now it makes a little more sense. "Think tank experts" shamelessly shilling for one side or another and engaging in embarrassing self-gratification over their imagined success in impacting policy just intensify my disaffection.

Making excuses (Or: How national security politics has killed the blog)

If you're a frequent reader, you'll surely have noticed the drop-off in posting frequency lately. There are a lot of reasons for that, and I could sit here and compile a list of excuses that would be alternatingly sensible and pathetic, but I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to highlight a trend that has certainly impacted the way that I think and write lately, one that's more worrying to me than my own personal laziness.

As Schmedlap has noted before (several times, probably), most of us don't read national security blogs or follow security analysts and commentators on Twitter in order to get our daily dose of partisan domestic politics. I completely agree with him on this one. I'm not particularly interested in what my dentist has to say about gay marriage, or how my rugby coach feels about constitutional interpretation, or really even what my colleagues in the office have to say about the stimulus bill. Domestic politics, as everyone knows, are right alongside religion as just one of those things you don't generally want to get into with people you don't know very well. Ideology, upbringing, socioeconomic class, ethno-linguistic group, etc etc -- there are a whole bunch of factors that impact an individual's politics and often make that class of beliefs entirely obscure to reason and rational argument, so it's usually best to just skip the whole thing.

Our present problem is that it's becoming increasingly difficult to talk about national security without brushing up against politics. The two subjects have never been entirely firewalled from one another, of course; the way people felt about the country's general approach to the Soviet Union during the Cold War was largely informed by questions of ideology, and a big chunk of the security issues that have sprung out of the stultifyingly-labeled "post-9/11 era" have broken along party or ideological lines. It's sort of the very nature of a world in which we view "homeland security" as an extension of national defense, really. We've had the luxury as Americans, in our relative geographic isolation, of viewing the physical security of our territory as almost an afterthought to the category of issues that we discuss under the heading of "national defense"; this latter subject mostly pertains to forward defense, or the defense and/or protection of American interests and installations abroad. September 11th changed that to some degree, but the politicization of terrorism and security in the intervening decade has done far more to bring down that wall of separation. Security demagoguery and the easy, thoughtless employment of scare tactics mean that every issue has a public safety component -- even immigration and the construction of houses of worship.

So why is this a big deal now, you're wondering? Well, hopefully you're not wondering, because it's pretty obvious. The Park51/"Ground Zero Mosque" controversy -- along with recent poll results showing that a significant chunk of Americans (and a near-majority of Republicans) are confused about the president's professed faith -- has offered an interesting window into the way that ethno-sectarian bias and amateur theology inform the politics of many, many putatively "scared" Americans. The way that so many national political leaders (on both sides of the aisle, I should note) have hewed to simple nativist narratives and trampled on the true meaning of the American political ideal has driven home for me just precisely how inextricable politics are from the national conversation about security and defense. Just this morning I had the unfortunate experience of overhearing half an hour of CSPAN Radio's "American Journal" on the subject of immigration and the border fence, and the ease with which so many callers are willing to declare an occasionally porous border to be a "national security issue" or a "problem for the military" or a "massive opportunity for terrorists" has helped to underline this fact.

While the blog has suffered, I'm spending a lot more time lately expressing my feelings about all of this on Twitter. That's not necessarily a good thing for the blog, because it keeps me from writing longer-form things on occasion, but it's allowed me to broaden the network of people with whom I interact and to get a two-way exchange going instead of just screaming into the wind. I've met a number of really interesting people and been exposed to issues, opinion, and analysis that I otherwise wouldn't have been. It also means that my thinking and writing have reached a slightly greater audience, and some of those people are really mostly politics people who just like a side of national security in the morning. (This has the added effect of sometimes delivering ego-boosting moments like the one I had on Friday, when Adam Serwer linked over here and called Ink Spots an "excellent national security blog you should be reading." Which is really cool, but sort of makes me point for me: Serwer blogs for the American Prospect -- a no-bones-about-it partisan publication -- on civil rights and criminal justice, two issues which now brush up against national security but are very definitely not a part of my area of so-called expertise.) That's fine, and I enjoy the exchange, but I'm not sure it's helped in the big picture. I also fear that the self-selection of blog reading exists at an accelerated, micro-level with Twitter, and so I'm hearing and seeing and talking with a whole lot of people with whom I already generally agree.

Anyway, this is long enough, so here's the tl;dr version of everything you see above: It's hard to talk about how to defend this country and advance its interests when it seems the very nature of what this country is and what it will be in the future is in question. More than any other excuses I can make about being busy at work or harried at home or travel or other priorities, I keep coming back to this: It's just not very fun right now.

BRIEFLY ADDED: Just after posting this, I read this column by E.J. Dionne. I was expecting to hate it, but it actually turned out to be pretty good. The most interesting part: in criticizing the president's disdain for "politicking," Dionne writes that "[i]n a democracy, separating governing from 'politicking' is impossible. 'Politicking' is nothing less than the ongoing effort to persuade free citizens of the merits of a set of ideas, policies and decisions."

Then I saw a tweet by Patrick Barry in response to this post: "Sadly, greatest near-term [national security] challenge may be moving past divisive shouting that prevents real debate on security." Which is a sentiment that I generally agree with.

But here's the problem: if Dionne is right (and I think he makes a compelling case), then partisanship and division is essential to the proper functioning of the American polity. But it just doesn't work for national security, and what seems to have been the tacit historical acceptance of that fact by all parties to the conversation is now being ignored.