For the Admirals' and Ambassador's plan to work it would take trust.  The Administration would have to trust the people doing the executing.  You can only be fast and agile if you have trust throughout the system - from the strategic through the operational to the tactical levels.

The problem is that the Administration only trusts those who have been through the "crucible" of the presidential election campaign that elected the sitting president. These are the people who are trusted by the president and his closest advisers (who were also in that "crucible.")

The military and foreign service officers who have to execute cannot be "trusted" because they do not have the insight of  election campaign politics and thus by definition are not true believers in the current administration.  I am making a generalized observation here and not one only focused on the current administration.  I think this cuts across party lines.  I do not mean to imply that military and foreign service officers are not trusted at all because they are, it is just that they cannot be trusted with with decisions that impact partisan politics and in today's political environment foreign policy and military operations are very much governed by partisan politics (as they most always have been but seemingly more so today with the global information environment).  It is because of this that our military operations and foreign policy will always be centralized for planning and for execution (we are fond of saying centralized planning and decentralized execution but that just does not work in partisan politics - though the irony is that if we did adhere to that the politicians might be better off in the long run).  I view this as a different issue than civilian control of the military.  I am in no way advocating giving up civilian control of the military (or the foreign service) but I think partisan politics creates the demand for central control despite the fact that foreign affairs and military operations may be too complex for the level of central control demanded by partisan politics.

This is a long way of saying that I fear that the Admirals' and Ambassador's recommendations would likely be dead on arrival in any administration, regardless of party.

Conclusion:

This is the only way to resolve the continual cross-cutting issues that arise in complex civil-military operations in a fluid, rapidly changing security situation. Coordination alone will absolutely not achieve timely, sensitive and effective decision-making. In the absence of one authority decisions will languish, be compromised or move to Washington for endless debate. Split authority will invite Iraqi politicians to play the seams in our decision making-structure. The resulting slowness and likelihood of inconsistent decisions will not only undercut results on the ground, but will confuse our policy message to regional powers and western allies alike, and reinforce the existing regional suspicions of our competence. This, in turn, will weaken regional and allied support that is essential if we are not to carry the full burden of war alone.

This proposal turns upside-down how we routinely do business. The president, acting through the National Security Council and the interagency process (including Gen. John Allen in his new role as envoy to the crisis) must approve an overall strategy and plan for Iraq and monitor the successful implementation of that plan. But tight Washington tactical control of decisions in the field of the sort so beloved by bureaucratic Washington departments and power centers will cripple effective conduct of the policy and reaching American goals. It is time for better way. We believe we have one.   

A New Plan: Make U.S. Foreign Policy Swifter, Stronger and More Agile

By Ronald E. Neumann, Dennis Blair , and Eric Olson

September 20, 2014

http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2014/09/new-plan-make-us-foreign-policy-swifter-stronger-and-more-agile/94658/print/

Putting troops on the ground in the Middle East is the easy part. It’s the forces in Washington that need to be beaten first.

President Barack Obama’s declaration of America’s intention to confront the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant left unexplained the complicated diplomacy that will be required to make the policy actually work. The immense complexity of what is required demands a radically changed approach to how the United States handles decision making abroad.

President Obama noted the need to work with a more inclusive government of Iraq. The Iraqi government must, as Obama said, share real power with Sunnis, Kurds and other minorities to confront the Islamic State. This will require constant, on-the-ground effective American diplomacy and international pressure to achieve a more tolerant and inclusive governance. Any number of factions, many of them suspicious and heavily armed, will strive to tilt the balance to their own groups and block or undermine the inclusion of rivals. If they succeed, the partisan actions of the Iraqi government will extend the debacle of the Malaki government, creating recruits for the Islamic State group faster than we can kill them. Even worse, we would end up being partisan in an Iraqi civil war.

Our diplomacy to achieve an inclusive Iraqi government must control and be integrated with other actions, especially military training, supply and combat support including the use of air power. Sometimes strikes or supply by the U.S. military will need to be held up to leverage political decisions. It will require constant, difficult decision making. Too much withholding of military support may give ISIL the battlefield gains that we should not risk. Too forward-leading a military posture will allow the Iraqi government to freeload, ignore our pressures and govern by tribal and political allegiance.

None of these day-to-day, often hour-to-hour decisions will be easy or clear cut. They cannot be made effectively by a committee 10,000 kilometers and eight time zones away from the action. Our current decision-making framework is an ineffective, stove piped diplomatic, military and intelligence chain of command relying on complex Washington decision-making procedures that operate by committee. It often produces confusion, mixed signals and slow reactions. This is the antithesis of effective implementation of the president’s policy.

We propose a solution: a complete reorganization of the structure of how we conduct foreign policy in ‘fragile states’ such as Iraq. In the nations where a United States diplomatic presence exists, we recommend increased authorities in the field for a veteran ambassador. The ambassador must have the experience and the staff to understand both the political and the military issues that must be confronted. He or she and the staff must write and submit the comprehensive plan for interagency debate and presidential approval in Washington. The ambassador must be able to obtain unfiltered counsel from the military’s four-star regional combatant commander. Once this plan is approved, the ambassador must have the authority to approve the timing and extent of all diplomatic, military, intelligence and other actions in the country. He or she must also be willing and prepared to take responsibility for the intensely difficult decisions that will be required and the results they achieve. 

This is the only way to resolve the continual cross-cutting issues that arise in complex civil-military operations in a fluid, rapidly changing security situation. Coordination alone will absolutely not achieve timely, sensitive and effective decision-making. In the absence of one authority decisions will languish, be compromised or move to Washington for endless debate. Split authority will invite Iraqi politicians to play the seams in our decision making-structure. The resulting slowness and likelihood of inconsistent decisions will not only undercut results on the ground, but will confuse our policy message to regional powers and western allies alike, and reinforce the existing regional suspicions of our competence. This, in turn, will weaken regional and allied support that is essential if we are not to carry the full burden of war alone.

This proposal turns upside-down how we routinely do business. The president, acting through the National Security Council and the interagency process (including Gen. John Allen in his new role as envoy to the crisis) must approve an overall strategy and plan for Iraq and monitor the successful implementation of that plan. But tight Washington tactical control of decisions in the field of the sort so beloved by bureaucratic Washington departments and power centers will cripple effective conduct of the policy and reaching American goals. It is time for better way. We believe we have one.   

Ronald Neumann is president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, former deputy assistant secretary of state and former ambassador to Algeria, Bahrain and Afghanistan. Retired Adm. Dennis Blair is chairman of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, USA, former director of national intelligence and former commander of U.S. Pacific Command. Retired Adm. Eric Olson is an adjunct faculty member at Columbia University and the former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command. They are the authors of "Fixing Fragile States" in this month's the National Interest.

---

By Ronald E. Neumann, Dennis Blair , and Eric Olson // Ronald Neumann is president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, former deputy secretary of state and former ambassador to Algeria, Bahrain and Afghanistan. // Retired Adm. Dennis Blair is the former director of national intelligence and former commander of U.S. Pacific Command. // Eric Olson is the former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command.

September 20, 2014

http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2014/09/new-plan-make-us-foreign-policy-swifter-stronger-and-more-agile/94658/

From Small Unit Leaders to Rugged Diplomats

On the one hand I am heartened to read a former Armor officer calling for Foreign Internal Defense.  Had this logic been applied years ago we might never had to kill so many trees developing the nearly redundant mission of Security Force Assistance.

The model that American policy makers should look to for appropriate engagement of foreign governments in conflict zones is the Foreign Internal Defense and irregular warfare conducted by American special operations forces. The ability to gain the trust of local leaders, build their capability and capacity, and provide them with the tools to govern their own spaces with a modicum of justice is the hallmark of American Special Forces. Unfortunately, SOF operates on a limited scope and scale. And American policymakers too often assume that once American conventional forces are deployed en masse, the arrival Jeffersonian democracy is simply a matter of time. Rather, it requires living day-to-day under conditions of significant hardship to forge relationships of trust in order to influence the governance and development models of war-torn nations. This is the kind of mission small unit leaders from Afghanistan and Iraq are well-suited to carry out.

On the other hand I am discouraged in the belief that any US military force, SOF or conventional forces, can bring Jeffersonian democracy to another country.  This is our fundamental problem in that we think we can impose our way of life or values or system of government on another country.  If we truly understand our ideals we would realize that a fundamental American value is respect for self determination of government and we should support that rather than trying to create another country in our image.  This is why the FID mission is a good model: US government (military and civilian) provide advice and assistance to friends, partners, or allies in support of their internal defense and development programs so they can defend themselves against  lawlessness, subversion, insurgency, and terrorism.  We have to cease believing that we can build nations and instead provide support (perhaps stability operations which is one of the five activities of  US irregular warfare operations in accordance with DODI 3000.07) to allow  indigenous people to build their own nation.

But I do like the Elvis Presley theory of foreign policy:

As former Army Sergeant Elvis Presley once said: “We’re caught in a trap. I can’t walk out, because I love you too much baby.” Strategic thinkers and tactical implementers need each other in order to successfully address thorny American foreign policy issues with feasible recommendations from a holistic perspective.

June 3, 2014

From Small Unit Leaders to Rugged Diplomats

http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2014/06/03/overcoming_the_tactical-strategic_divide_107252.html

Overcoming the Tactical-Strategic Divide in U.S. Foreign Policy

By Steve Thomas

American foreign policy and its current generation of practitioners suffer from an almost complete lack of understanding of the critical concept of “feasibility” as it relates to statecraft in conflict zones. Broadly speaking, the people who shape foreign policy are highly educated, can speak the languages associated with their area of expertise, and have spent many years living abroad. Unfortunately, in state-building scenarios such as Iraq and Afghanistan, the professional experience of most policymakers is limited to brief tours in the Green Zone or Bagram. These places, while technically in-country, have absolutely no resemblance to the larger situation on the ground.

The problem, stated simply, is a massive disconnect between the tactical reality and the strategic objective. From my perspective in Afghanistan in 2010, there were some really fine foreign policy ideas being promulgated down to the tactical level. Unfortunately, no one had bothered to ask about the feasibility of implementation.

An example of such an effort is the District Reinforcement Program in Khost Province, Afghanistan. This is a great idea in theory: place USAID and State Department representatives on the ground for 72 hours to walk local Afghan officials through bureaucratic processes in order to facilitate governance and development. Setting aside the fact that the processes put in place were opaque and wholly alien to most sub-governors and district officials, the program was doomed because State and USAID weren’t invested in its success at the tactical level. With only one State Department and one USAID representative, the onus for conducting these operations was left to the person who has become the face of American statecraft the last ten years: the 23-year old platoon leader.

The platoon leader is not formally trained in international development, except for perhaps a short brief on Commanders Emergency Relief Program (CERP) funds. Unless his degree is in political science, he’s not initially prepared to have in-depth conversations about any of the governmental challenges facing the district either. Yet, for a decade or more, local officials in Iraq and Afghanistan have looked to these leaders and their experienced platoon sergeants for justice, arbitration, and advice on how to rule in lawless lands. Company Commanders have hosted large shuras and met with sheikhs to resolve disputes. Through a brief evolution, Fire Support Officers became the de facto non-lethal targeting gurus of the military, seeking opportunities to exploit development projects to win the loyalty of the local populace. With the formal training to marry with their experiences, junior officers and senior NCOs can be formidable allies for established policymakers, providing real on-ground insight into questions of feasibility.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have produced a small cohort of men and women who have spent their professional lives immersed in the practice of statecraft. Lacking advanced degrees and or political appointments, this cadre has practiced and enforced American foreign policy in a way few others have.

Now is the time for policymakers to try to really understand their value and put them to work solving problems that demand a stringent test of feasibility.

The model that American policy makers should look to for appropriate engagement of foreign governments in conflict zones is the Foreign Internal Defense and irregular warfare conducted by American special operations forces. The ability to gain the trust of local leaders, build their capability and capacity, and provide them with the tools to govern their own spaces with a modicum of justice is the hallmark of American Special Forces. Unfortunately, SOF operates on a limited scope and scale. And American policymakers too often assume that once American conventional forces are deployed en masse, the arrival Jeffersonian democracy is simply a matter of time. Rather, it requires living day-to-day under conditions of significant hardship to forge relationships of trust in order to influence the governance and development models of war-torn nations. This is the kind of mission small unit leaders from Afghanistan and Iraq are well-suited to carry out.

A typical response to these thoughts is that small unit leaders only have a soda-straw view of the world, myopic and perhaps simplistic. They are not experts because they have not studied the topics of governance and development, and because they have not defended a thesis they cannot be trusted to provide sound advice on complex issues. They have, perhaps, negotiated with local leaders to ensure a successful harvest in return for security concessions on the border with Waziristan, but they’ve never published in the Wall Street Journal. To this view, I respond that we need those smart folks with extra letters after their names to guide, to interpret data and ask hard questions. They have a wealth of cultural, historical and political expertise that the local executor of policy does not possess.

But they need to be aware of their own limitations – their own soda-straw. Namely, they typically won’t step foot on the ground that they ask other Americans to secure. Think tanks, policymakers, and professors need the tactical practitioner of American foreign policy – the small unit leader – to tell them with candor whether or not their policy recommendations can be successful in light of the situation on the ground.

As former Army Sergeant Elvis Presley once said: “We’re caught in a trap. I can’t walk out, because I love you too much baby.” Strategic thinkers and tactical implementers need each other in order to successfully address thorny American foreign policy issues with feasible recommendations from a holistic perspective.

Experts in Washington profess to know what’s best in Syria, Crimea, and Somalia. But they don’t seem to understand the actual, visceral consequences to of their policy. At times, it seems they don’t really understand that someone will be sent out at four in the morning to secure a police station, set up a polling station, and try to bring free and fair elections to a place that has never known much freedom or much fairness.

But there is a small group of junior officers and senior NCOs who realize what American foreign policy looks like on the ground. They’re proficient in building relationships, making deals, and incorporating them into a larger operational picture. And it’s time to give these men and women a new assignment.

If the world we live in is one that requires American presence around the globe, we will need civilians in the State Department and USAID who understand the full spectrum of operations, from the strategic to the tactical and who are not afraid to gather ground truth themselves. It is time to build corps of rugged diplomats composed of those with actual experience in wartime statecraft alongside those who have spent their lives in the academic study of these topics. They can form a cohesive team that can link reality and theory, which will result in well-reasoned and rigorously debated policy decisions.

If we can’t overcome the divide between those who write policy and those who execute it, we will forever have a foreign policy that reflects the world as we would like to see it rather than as it really is.

Steve Thomas served as an Armor officer in the 101st Airborne for four years, including a deployment to Khost Province, Afghanistan from 2010-2011 as a Scout Platoon Leader. He is currently a consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton.

Excerpt:

The blueprint drawn up on those summer weekends at the White House is a model of pragmatism — eschewing the use of force, except to respond to acts of aggression against the United States or its allies, disruption of oil supplies, terrorist networks or weapons of mass destruction. Tellingly, it does not designate the spread of democracy as a core interest.

It appears that the Administration is shifting the dominant position on American Exceptionalism from the "crusader" to the "exemplar" (per Thomas Jefferson)or more specifically the shift is from a Jacksonian foreign policy model to a Wilsonian/Jeffersonian alignment.

But I think this may be illustrative of the way the Administration is operating this term and may indicate that the President feels he was burned by past collaborative efforts involving DoD, DoS, and CIA. 

It was a tight group that included no one outside the White House, a stark contrast to Mr. Obama’s Afghanistan review in 2009, which involved dozens of officials from the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency. Ms. Rice said she briefed Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel over weekly lunches.

I suspect that this will be the foreign policy and strategy model for the remainder of this term and we should consider what that means for the US and the future.

V/R
Dave

October 26, 2013

Rice Offers a More Modest Strategy for Mideast

By MARK LANDLER

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/world/middleeast/rice-offers-a-more-modest-strategy-for-mideast.html?hp&_r=0&pagewanted=print

WASHINGTON — Each Saturday morning in July and August, Susan E. Rice, President Obama’s new national security adviser, gathered half a dozen aides in her corner office in the White House to plot America’s future in the Middle East. The policy review, a kind of midcourse correction, has set the United States on a new heading in the world’s most turbulent region.

At the United Nations last month, Mr. Obama laid out the priorities he has adopted as a result of the review. The United States, he declared, would focus on negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, brokering peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians and mitigating the strife in Syria. Everything else would take a back seat.

That includes Egypt, which was once a central pillar of American foreign policy. Mr. Obama, who hailed the crowds on the streets of Cairo in 2011 and pledged to heed the cries for change across the region, made clear that there were limits to what the United States would do to nurture democracy, whether there, or in Bahrain, Libya, Tunisia or Yemen.

The president’s goal, said Ms. Rice, who discussed the review for the first time in an interview last week, is to avoid having events in the Middle East swallow his foreign policy agenda, as it had those of presidents before him.

“We can’t just be consumed 24/7 by one region, important as it is,” she said, adding, “He thought it was a good time to step back and reassess, in a very critical and kind of no-holds-barred way, how we conceive the region.”

Not only does the new approach have little in common with the “freedom agenda” of George W. Bush, but it is also a scaling back of the more expansive American role that Mr. Obama himself articulated two years ago, before the Arab Spring mutated into sectarian violence, extremism and brutal repression.

The blueprint drawn up on those summer weekends at the White House is a model of pragmatism — eschewing the use of force, except to respond to acts of aggression against the United States or its allies, disruption of oil supplies, terrorist networks or weapons of mass destruction. Tellingly, it does not designate the spread of democracy as a core interest.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/world/middleeast/rice-offers-a-more-modest-strategy-for-mideast.html?hp&_r=0&pagewanted=print

Foreign Policy by Whisper and Nudge By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Unfortunately this is true:

But what we’ve learned in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Egypt and Syria is that it is very hard to change another country’s internal behavior — especially at a cost and in a time frame that the American public will tolerate — because it requires changing a country’s political culture and getting age-old adversaries to reconcile.

But I fear we are going to get sucked into another rathole in Syria if we execute the first part of the statement below and then think (and hope – despite there being no hope) that we can accomplish the second part.

For instance, if it is proved that Syria has used chemical weapons, American officials are rightly considering using cruise missiles to punish Syria. But we have no hope of making Syria united, democratic and inclusive without a much bigger involvement and without the will of a majority of Syrians.

V/R
Dave 

August 24, 2013

Foreign Policy by Whisper and Nudge

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/opinion/sunday/friedman-foreign-policy-by-whisper-and-nudge.html?emc=eta1&_r=0&pagewanted=print

IF you follow the commentary on American foreign policy toward Egypt and the broader Middle East today, several themes stand out: People in the region argue: “Whatever went wrong, the United States is to blame.” Foreign policy experts argue: “Whatever President Obama did, he got it wrong.” And the American public is saying: “We’re totally fed up with that part of the world and can’t wait for the start of the N.F.L. season. How do you like those 49ers?”

There is actually a logic to all three positions.

It starts with the huge difference between cold-war and post-cold-war foreign policy. During the cold war, American foreign policy “was all about how we affect the external behavior of states,” said Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins University foreign affairs expert. We were ready to overlook the internal behavior of states, both because we needed them as allies in the cold war and because, with the Russians poised on the other side, any intervention could escalate into a superpower confrontation.

Post-cold-war foreign policy today is largely about “affecting the internal composition and governance of states,” added Mandelbaum, many of which in the Middle East are failing and threaten us more by their collapse into ungoverned regions — not by their strength or ability to project power.

But what we’ve learned in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Egypt and Syria is that it is very hard to change another country’s internal behavior — especially at a cost and in a time frame that the American public will tolerate — because it requires changing a country’s political culture and getting age-old adversaries to reconcile.

The primary foreign policy tools that served us so well in the cold war, said Mandelbaum, “guns, money, and rhetoric — simply don’t work for these new tasks. It is like trying to open a can with a sponge.”

To help another country change internally requires a mix of refereeing, policing, coaching, incentivizing, arm-twisting and modeling — but even all of that cannot accomplish the task and make a country’s transformation self-sustaining, unless the people themselves want to take charge of the process.

In Iraq, George W. Bush removed Saddam Hussein, who had been governing that country vertically, from the top-down, with an iron fist. Bush tried to create the conditions through which Iraqis could govern themselves horizontally, by having the different communities write their own social contract on how to live together. It worked, albeit imperfectly, as long as U.S. troops were there to referee. But once we left, no coterie of Iraqi leaders emerged to assume ownership of that process in an inclusive manner and thereby make it self-sustaining.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/opinion/sunday/friedman-foreign-policy-by-whisper-and-nudge.html?emc=eta1&_r=0&pagewanted=print

The Myths of America's Shadow War

Loch Johnson will be speaking at the Center for Security Studies Covert Action conference at Georgetown on FEB 7.
V/R
Dave

The Myths of America's Shadow War

Loch K. Johnson | Jan 31, 2013

http://m.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/01/the-myths-of-americas-shadow-war/272712/

Taking covert action is far less clean -- and much more complex -- than many assume.

Mohammad Ismail/Reuters

The United States faces a world of constantly shifting circumstances, as underscored by the Arab Spring uprisings. To shield the nation in a global setting where uncertainty and hostilities are commonplace, officials in Washington have crafted a range of responses to international events that includes diplomacy and the use of armed force. The most hidden and least understood of these responses is covert action -- a tightly held operational secret in the U.S. government. This secrecy has yielded several myths that have misled the American people about a controversial, and sometimes lethal, approach to foreign policy.

MYTH #1: The meaning of covert action is clearly delineated.

With the Intelligence Authorization Act of 1991, the government did craft a formal statutory definition of covert action as "an activity or activities of the United States government to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United State Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly." Put simply, covert action attempts to influence world events through the secret use of propaganda, political, economic, and paramilitary activities. The concept of "secret influence" is spongy, though, and can blur the distinction between activities carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or by the military. Take the training of foreign covert forces by U.S. Special Operations Forces. The SOF consists of soldiers out of uniform, acting on an unacknowledged basis -- precisely the kind of operation engaged in by the CIA. By calling such activities "traditional military operations," the Pentagon is able to sidestep the legal procedures for reporting covert actions to Congress.

MYTH #2: Covert action offers a quiet approach to America's foreign relations .

An appealing aspect of covert action is the promise that it may allow the United States to address vexing problems overseas in a quiet manner. Indeed, one of the euphemisms for covert action is "the quiet option." Yet consider such CIA operations as the failed attempt in 1961 to overthrow the Castro regime with an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs; or the use of mines to blow up shipping in Nicaraguan harbors during the Reagan administration. Nothing quiet about these "secret" activities. Today drones can fly silently, but there is nothing quiet about the explosions of Hellfire missiles as they strike targets on the ground.

MYTH #3: Covert action presents an attractive alternative to reliance on diplomats or Marines. 

In between diplomatic negotiations and sending in the Marines lies the "Third Option" -- another euphemism for covert action. As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once put it: "We need an intelligence community that, in certain complicated situations, can defend the American national interest in the gray areas where military operations are not suitable and diplomacy cannot operate." Framing foreign policy options in this tripartite manner, however, sets up a false set of options that too often carries the United States toward the use of covert action, while slighting other foreign policy approaches that might merit greater consideration -- such as the use of trade inducements or development assistance.

MYTH #4: Covert actions undergo rigorous government review before they are implemented.

The Church Committee, led by Senator Frank Church (D, Idaho), discovered in 1975 that only about 14 percent of all covert actions from 1961 to 1975 had been authorized by the National Security Council. The Committee concluded that "these ambiguous arrangements were intentional, designed to protect the president and to blur accountability" -- the infamous doctrine of plausible deniability, whereby unelected bureaucrats decided when and where covert actions would occur, all in the name of keeping the president's hands clean. Today the review of covert action proposals is far more thorough. Nonetheless, full accountability is often lacking and one of the chief culprits is use of "generic findings." The word "finding" refers to the president's formal approval of a covert action. The expectation in Congress is that a finding will be reported to lawmakers with a reasonably fulsome statement about the operation, so that the oversight committees can evaluate its appropriateness. With generic findings, however, specificity is abandoned, say, by providing authority "to fight global terrorism." For CIA operatives, this broad language could be interpreted to mean almost anything.

MYTH #5: The covert action approval process is cumbersome and ineffective.

Some intelligence officials long for the days before the establishment of a findings process, as required by the Hughes-Ryan Act of 1974. Better the simple telephone call from the CIA Director to the national security adviser than the hurdles posed by presidential review and congressional notification. The end result of this "micromanagement," according to this nostalgic perspective, is to slow down the CIA as it tries to thwart dangers to the United States. "What we need is horsepower, not brakes!" said an exasperated senior CIA officer to me soon after the Church Committee recommended tighter supervision of covert actions. In fact, though, today's approval procedures can move with alacrity when necessary, thanks to a link-up of secure telephones that allows quick communication among the president, intelligence managers, and other key players responsible for green-lighting an operation.

MYTH #6: Covert action has the virtue of allowing the United States to act alone in foreign affairs.

Covert action seems to offer an opportunity for unilateral action: the United States moving with secrecy and dispatch. In reality, though, rarely can the CIA operate alone in carrying out covert actions of any consequence, particularly paramilitary endeavors. Indeed, a fundamental tenet of covert action success is having a competent ally within the target nation. One of the most successful covert actions was the routing of the Taliban and Al Qaeda from Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. A sine qua non for the victory was the internal assistance of the Northern Alliance, a tribe of Afghans who also opposed the Taliban. Covert actions require partnerships; they are rarely a quick and easy solution.

(Continued at the link below)

http://m.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/01/the-myths-of-americas-shadow-war/272712/

MEMORANDUM TO THE PRESIDENT: A Plastic Moment to Mold a Liberal Global Order

The 3.2 MB briefing book can be downloaded at this link (for my Korea friends Jonathan Pollack's Korea memo is on page 64): 

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2013/1/big%20bets%20black%20swans/big%20bets%20and%20black%20swans%20a%20presidential%20briefing%20book.pdf

V/R
Dave

MEMORANDUM TO THE PRESIDENT | January 17, 2013

A Plastic Moment to Mold a Liberal Global Order

By: Martin S. Indyk and Robert Kagan

http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2013/01/a-plastic-moment-to-mold-a-liberal-global-order

In the next four years, President Obama has a choice about whether to make democracy building and a liberal world order key tenets of his foreign policy plan. Martin Indyk and Robert Kagan wrote this memorandum to the President as part of the Big Bets and Black Swans: A Presidential Briefing Book. 

• Will America turn inward and away from an increasingly unstable world?
• How can American take advantage of this plastic moment to mold the emerging global order to best serve the United States and humankind?
• Will America launch a new effort to strengthen and extend the liberal world order?

Download Memorandum (pdf) | Download the Presidential Briefing Book (pdf)

TO: President Obama

FROM: Martin S. Indyk and Robert Kagan

As you enter your second term, the state of the world is remarkably unsettled. The leading powers are beset with economic crises or are in various states of political transition or gridlock. The Middle East is in a state of political upheaval. Tensions are rising in East Asia. The world’s institutions, whether the United Nations, the G-20, or the European Union, are weakened and dysfunctional, and seem to be pulling apart in the absence of concerted leadership. The liberal world order established after the Second World War — characterized by a free, open international economy, the spread of liberal democracy, and the deepening of liberal, peaceful norms of international behavior — is fraying at the edges.

It is a time of uncertainty and instability for the world, and for the United States; but it is also a moment of opportunity. Almost a century ago, when the United States entered the First World War, the philosopher John Dewey observed that the world was at a “plastic juncture.” He and many other progressives believed that the unsettled world of their day offered the United States and the other democratic powers a chance to remold the international system into something better. Americans walked away from that challenge and would embrace it only after a second catastrophic breakdown of world order. Today, we are at another “plastic juncture.” Will America turn inward and away from an increasingly messy world? Or will we launch a new effort to strengthen and extend, both geographically and temporally, the liberal world order from which Americans and so many others around the world have benefited?

The answer depends very much on how you choose to make use of your next four years in office. Unfortunately, there is not a lot to show for your first four years. In many respects, this is understandable. The economic crisis that you inherited made steady concentration on foreign policy more challenging. The two wars you inherited in the Greater Middle East had been bungled by your predecessor and cost the United States dearly, both materially and in terms of reputation. You began to restore that reputation through your own global appeal and the efforts of your Secretary of State.

You have done especially well in raising America’s profile and deepening our engagement in East Asia. However, so far it is hard to list many durable accomplishments. Most of the major challenges are much as you found them when you took office, or worse: from the stalled Middle East peace process and turmoil in the Arab world to Iran’s continuing march toward a nuclear weapons capability to China’s increasing assertiveness in East Asia. Your understandable preoccupation with reelection has left much of the world wondering: Where is the United States?

For all the talk of American decline from certain quarters, the United States is actually well-positioned for a new era of global leadership. If you can strike the difficult but necessary compromise with Congress that begins to address America’s fiscal crisis, the United States could well emerge as among the world’s most successful and dynamic economies. America enjoys unique advantages in the international economic system: a natural gas revolution that promises soon to make it a net-exporter of energy, a superior university education system and an open and innovative economy that continues to attract the world’s best and most creative young minds. On the international stage, the United States remains the only world power with global reach, uniquely capable of organizing concerted international action and serving as a source of security and stability to nations and peoples facing threatening neighbors.

Recommendations:

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http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2013/01/a-plastic-moment-to-mold-a-liberal-global-order

China's me-first foreign policy: The nation's behavior as a modern superpower is reminiscent of its imperial past.

What country doe not have a "me first" foreign policy?

Dave

OP-ED

China's me-first foreign policy

The nation's behavior as a modern superpower is reminiscent of its imperial past.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-westad-china-not-taking-over-20130120,0,3509988.story

By Odd Arne Westad

January 20, 2013

China's more assertive foreign policy over the last two years has played a key role in getting two arch-conservatives —Japan's Shinzo Abe and South Korea's Park Geun-hye — elected to lead their respective countries. Some Chinese observers believe that Abe and Park will be forced by China's inexorable rise to come to terms with their giant neighbor. Don't count on it. To much of its region, China's behavior as it is coming of age as a modern superpower is eerily reminiscent of its past policy as a regional hegemon.

For a very long time, imperial China dominated its wider region. The Chinese imperial court considered itself the indispensable center of a regional order in which China had the right and the duty to set international norms and standards, and to intervene if these were broken. It was an ideological system in which Chinese principles had to be the starting point for all things.

Although the Chinese elites' thinking was driven by ideas and cultural norms, their position came down to size, power and military strategy. And from the 16th to the mid-18th centuries, it worked. But from the 1780s on, China's regional role was in decline, it lost wars and unnecessary military engagements followed.

China's current leadership transition is taking place at a point when the country again has to reevaluate its regional and world engagements. The last couple of years have been disastrous in China's foreign policy. Its regional engagements have backfired, one after the other. Some of this comes from what historian Paul Kennedy calls imperial overstretch: to move faster and further than what material resources and political prowess allows for. It is quite possible to believe both that China is a rising power and that it has overstepped the mark on what it's able to achieve through pressure within its own region.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-westad-china-not-taking-over-20130120,0,3509988.story