A new dynamic duo: can they match the ratings? Posted by Heather Hurlburt

It'll be well worth checking out the language and body language over at CNN's forum with Secretaries of State and Defense Clinton and Panetta this morning, streaming shortly at www.state.gov and www.defense.gov.  The reaction to this likely-to-be-underreported event in the August doldrums, post-debt ceiling stupor that is Washington will give tea leaves on several important things for the fall:

State of the State-Defense Partnership:  in a world where challenges of economy and state craft are second to none, but our political system gives priority to military hardware, this partnership is critical -- for Democratic administrations averse to charges of weakness in particular -- to getting resources and oomph to get anything done, from Afghanistan and Pakistan to peacekeeping in Congo to treaties on Law of the Sea and violence against women.  Clinton and Gates worked together near-seamlessly.  Gates being far, far too masterful to be Charlie Sheen, can Panetta nonetheless be Ashton Kutcher?  Is he the latter-day Darren on Bewitched?  Or, in fact, does the Pentagon play that show's lead character and just wrinkle its nose, even in these parlous times?

Super-Posturing for the Super-Committee:  The Obama Administration's right-minded effort to portray the seamless reality of "security" spending encompassing military and civilian activities has resulted in much of clinton's writ being thrown into the same budget pt as (and dwarfed by) Panetta's.  With pressure for more cuts to avoid mandatory sequestration by the super-Congress, foreign asisstance, UN dues and even basic diplomatic operations overseas are perceived to be under severe threat -- on top of the shellacking they took in the House version of the 2012 budget.  Clinton kept Gates very close, and Gates was more than willingto speak strongly on behalf of civilian spending -- will Panetta follow suit, and what can he deliver, given the pressure he is under in his own shop?  What case can the Administration use to push back on a Congress calling for unrivaled american primacy even as it slashes the infrastructure and dismisses the institutions where US leadership is exercised?

Making News:  While Washington was whipping itself into a frenzy of foolishness, a lot has gone on in the world:  Eurozone debt, UK riots, progress by Libyan rebels, Iraq violence, Afghanistan violence, Pakistan violence, allegations that Pakistan let Chinese military officers look at the remains of a "stealth" US helicopter, North Korean threats to test, Chinese trash-talking the US economy.  Will the dynamic duo make news on any of the above, and which will they choose?

Panetta Live:  There have been, let's say, quite a few spontaneous moments so far.  How does this live appearance in front of a friendly hometown crowd go?

The Real Legacy of David Petraeus Posted by Michael Cohen

In a few weeks from now David Petraeus will leave the US military to take on his new responsibilities as Director of Central Intelligence. I look forward to this happening because then hopefully I will no longer have to read valentines to Petraeus like the one Joe Klein just published in Time magazine titled "David Petraeus Brilliant Career." I like Joe and we've broken bread a few times, but I enjoyed this piece better when David Ignatius first wrote it.

Klein relies on the tired notion that Petraeus revolutionized the armed forces:

In truth, the general's most important legacy may lie in the role he has played in transforming the Army from a blunt instrument, designed to fight tank battles on the plains of Europe, into a "learning institution" that trains its troops for the flexibility and creativity necessary to fight guerrilla wars in the information age.

Really? Do people really believe that until David Petraeus showed up the Army had not evolved much since it was preparing for tank battles in the Fulda Gap? My friend Gian Gentile has long, and correctly, disputed the narrative that Petraeus dramatically shifted US tactics in Iraq when he became theater commander in 2007. (Of course, the very idea that it was US tactics that led to increased stability in Iraq is, and should be, a greatly discredited notion).

Indeed, what is perhaps most striking about what happened under Petraeus command is the extent to which he relied on traditional methods of war-fighting. (Ironically, it was the period in 2009 to mid-2010 when Petraeus wasn't in charge in Afghanistan that the US military more assiduously adopted creative and flexible, though ultimately failed, tactics in line like restricted rules of engagement to prevent civilian casualties.) Petraeus's methods, on the other hand, relied on a very different set of operational tools. In Iraq for example, while there was a nominal nod to "hearts and minds" what was far more decisive was the ramping up the use of airstrikes and support for Sunni militias that didn't necessarily adhere to all the precepts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

There is a similar pattern visible in Afghanistan where, as Noah Schactman has well-documented at Danger Room, after taking command Petraeus greatly increased the use of air power (and has also relied on dubious local militias). As in Iraq, civilian casualties in Afghanistan have increased at the same time. The notion put forward by counter-insurgency advocates that COIN fights are somehow more humane and protective of civilians is belied by basic data.  Quite simply, there is nothing kinder or gentler about the methods used by Petraeus to fight America's wars - that's merely the spin pushed to gullible reporters and promoted by COIN acolytes. It's just war as its always been known.

In reality, Petraeus's greatest legacy is not that he ended America's wars, but rather extended them. It was the positive and self-serving spin put out by Petraeus and his merry band of COINdinistas that convinced policy-makers what had supposedly worked in Iraq could work in Afghanistan. If not for the surge narrative, loyally fostered here by Klein, would Obama have ever agreed to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan in December 2009? I seriously doubt it.

Petraeus certainly deserves credit for taking advantage of changes taking place in Iraqi society in 2007 and 2008 (although it must be fairly noted that the preponderance of responsibility for these advances belongs with Iraqis themselves). This is clearly an important part of his legacy. However, there is also a fairly pungent criticism of Petraeus's legacy - namely that he advocated for escalation in Afghanistan, under the rubric of counter-insurgency, and it has met few of its goals since then and instead mired the US more deeply in the conflict.

Civilian casualties have increased, relations with Pakistan have grown worse, the Afghan government has not stood up, there is precious little indication that the Afghan people has swung in support of US objectives, and - as has been documented repeatedly -- Petraeus's confident assurance to President Obama that within 18 months of increasing troop levels in Afghanistan the US would be able to turn over security to the Afghan security forces did not happen. Moreover, it is very difficult to argue that the United States is any closer to a peaceful resolution of the war in Afghanistan than it was in 2009 or, for that matter, has significantly furthered its national interests there.

David Petraeus deserves enormous praise for his service to the country - and I salute it. But his legacy as a general, and its impact on US national security, merits an honest appraisal of his actions in both Iraq and Afghanistan. 

On Afghanistan, Should Obama Have Deferred to the Generals? Posted by Jacob Stokes

A narrative is brewing among the GOP candidates that the president made a mistake in announcing a modest drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan last June. Herman Cain has the latest version of it. His electoral chances are slim, but his comments are likely be echoed throughout the campaign. Over the weekend Cain told an Iowa TV station, “The surge was working. Why not let it continue to work?  The president didn't listen to his experts, his generals.  That would be the difference between a Herman Cain and a President Obama, is that I will listen to my experts.”

First, let’s be clear about what the military leadership said about the policy. The two leaders whose advice Obama didn’t follow to the letter were Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen and then-ISAF Commander David Petraeus. The words of those two men are where this criticism stems from.

Mullens words were, "The president's decisions are more aggressive and incur more risk than I was originally prepared to accept.” Fair enough, but if one reads the next in the story, it’s clear Mullen’s objections aren’t deep-seated. The Reuters story on the testimony continued, “Pressed by lawmakers, Mullen later added that he had concluded that the risks were manageable.” (My emphasis.)

The story went on to note the Joint Chiefs Chairman’s recognition that political incentives for Afghan leadership matter in a counterinsurgency campaign: “Mullen said bringing home troops offered some benefits, including reinforcing the goal of putting Afghans in control of their own security by the end of 2014. ‘The truth is, we would have run other kinds of risks by keeping more forces in Afghanistan longer. We would have made it easier for the Karzai administration to increase their dependency on us,’ Mullen said.”

Petraeus, for his part, expressed his view that the decision was “aggressive,” but not enough to warrant any real protest:  "It is again a more aggressive approach than (top commanders) and I would have indeed certainly put forward, but this is not something I think where one hangs up the uniform in protest, or something like that.” Petraeus is duty-bound to resign if he believes a decision made by the president is reckless or puts troops in extreme and unnecessary danger. He didn’t.

In short, while the military might have been hesitant about Obama’s plan, it’s neither reckless nor strategically misguided. Even if the military held that view though, there are three reasons why, ultimately, the president has to have final say on decisions like this. 

1. The President, as commander-in-chief, must see the whole strategic picture. As Rob Farley put it yesterday, the war has created its own constituency which has a great stake in seeing a “victory.” Military leaders who have advocated for the “surge” and counterinsurgency are deeply invested in the success of their efforts. Farley writes, “the overriding institutional interest of the U.S. military -- again, particularly the Army and Marine Corps -- relatively simple: Avoid defeat.” On the whole, that’s good—we want militaries who will do what it takes to win—as long as we have civilian and political control over the military. The president, in this sense, is the chief strategic integrator of policy. He has to look at all the parts, and therefore his call should carry the day.

2. As for Cain’s contention that we should look to the experts, there are scores of experts who have argued that huge U.S. military effort, and the resource demands that come with that effort, aren’t proportional to the threat emanating from Afghanistan—especially given the degradation of al Qaeda that America and its allies have achieved in recent years. If you don’t know who these people are, here’s a list.

3. Finally, the surge won military gains, but failed in governance and politics. From a military perspective, yes, ISAF occupied/cleared terrority and we were holding it, but it takes political will from Afghans to “build.” That requires a durable political settlement and accountable government. Those don’t currently exist in Afghanistan, and a huge, indefinite military presence wasn’t and isn’t going to fix those problems. As Steve Coll put it in his seminal article reporting talks with the Taliban, “It is past time for the United States to shift some of its capacity for risk-taking in the war off the battlefield and into diplomacy aimed at reinforcing Afghan political unity, neutrality, civil rights, and social cohesion.”

Next time someone running for president says they’d listen to their generals blindly, the question on everyone’s mind should be: Are they really ready to lead?

Photo: U.S. Army via Flickr

China’s Wary Communists Posted by Jacob Stokes

The Atlantic’s James Fallows has a piece out in this month examining whether the Chinese public is less happy with the Communist Party and more combustible than it seems. Not much of the content is groundbreaking for anyone who follows China, but it’s interesting to note a series of questions Fallows raises. After listing all the usual reasons used to explain why China’s authoritarian government hasn’t suffered the same fate as many in the Arab world – economic growth, regular transfers of power within the party, relatively few young people in need of work – Fallows notes the Party’s strong response to the “Jasmine” protests and asks:

Why, then, has the government reacted as if the country were on the brink of revolt? Do the Chinese authorities know something about their country’s realities that groups like Pew have missed, and therefore understand that they are hanging by a thread? Or, out of reflex and paranoia, are they responding far more harshly than circumstances really require, in ways that could backfire in the long run?

The piece is notable because it clearly went to press before last month’s high-speed rail crash. That accident seems to have justified the Party’s response to the Jasmine Protest (not in humanitarian terms of course, but rather in their estimation that much discontent lurks under the surface). David Pilling explains that Beijing’s leaders are worried because they see cracks in the so-called Beijing Consensus. Those cracks have widened significantly in the wake of the rail disaster, especially with the middle class, which the Party has done much to co-opt in recent years. 

China’s high-speed rail network, built in less than a decade, is the world’s longest. Its trains were supposed to travel at speeds that would put Japanese technology to shame. Instead, the crash has exposed hubris, incompetence and corruption in a single, tragic crunching of metal. Perhaps not since Tiananmen Square more than 20 years ago has the Communist party looked so naked in the face of public contempt….

A middle class revolt is particularly dangerous for the Chinese leadership. It undermines a recent truism of Chinese analysis, sometimes referred to as the Beijing consensus. This contends, among other things, that people don’t worry too much about democracy, freedom of expression and free markets so long as they have a technocratic leadership capable of delivering economic progress… China’s middle class wants a leadership that can contain corruption, ensure safety and not put pride above engineering principles. It wants, in the arresting words of a commentary in the People’s Daily – of all places – economic growth that is not “smeared in blood”.

As we look at Chinese power moving forward, it’s important to understand the fragility of the political system the power rests on.

Photo: Fox News

What is Leon Panetta Thinking? Posted by Michael Cohen

So on Friday, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who is both a Democrat and a political hire of the President of the United States posted his thoughts on the Pentagon web site regarding the possibility of significant spending cuts for the Pentagon in the just signed debt limit deal:

I will do everything I can to ensure that further reductions in defense spending are not pursued in a hasty, ill-conceived way that would undermine the military’s ability to protect America and its vital interests around the globe. For example, the debt ceiling agreement contains a sequester mechanism that would take effect if Congress fails to enact further deficit reduction. If that happens, it could trigger a round of dangerous across-the-board defense cuts that would do real damage to our security, our troops and their families, and our ability to protect the nation.

This argument was followed up by Marc Thiessen and Max Boot whose default position is of course that the US can never ever reduce defense spending. But why is Panetta making a similar argument to these two and describing reductions in the DoD's bloated budget as some sort of existential threat to American power?

Now I understand that Panetta is new at the Pentagon and he wants to be seen as standing up for his agency. Fair enough, I get that. But this statement is, from both a political and policy perspective, decidedly unhelpful.

1) I completely agree with Panetta that across-the-board defense cuts - divorced from a larger national security strategy - are generally a bad idea. But the notion that it would do real damage to US security or hinder the military's ability to protect our nation is an argument based on fear rather than facts. (Did, for example, the far larger reductions that happened in the early 1990s put America at greater national security risk?)

The United States faces no existential threats to the continental United States - and no serious, near-term, great power rival. The threat of terrorism, which is a low-level challenge to the United States, could amply be defended against with a far smaller military than what we currently possess (it is Panetta himself who has said that al Qaeda is "within reach" of being defeated and is now down to a handful of core members). Indeed, after demands from the GOP, the across-the-board cuts that are part of the debt deal would include reductions to the Department of Homeland Security, which is actually the primary agency tasked with protecting against terrorist threats on US soil. This isn't to say that across the board cuts would cause some near-term dislocation, but the idea that it would do real damage to America's security or the ability of the military to protect the nation is fallacious.

2) Panetta seems to be arguing that cuts in defense spending would harm national security . . . without making any identification of what those would actually look like? 

Any observer of the Pentagon understands that DoD's budget is bloated - and indeed the money that we are talking about, over a ten-year time frame, is peanuts. According to Bill Hartung, the immediate cuts would reduce projected Pentagon spending by less than one percent. And here's a rather informative report that lays out $1 trillion in defense cuts over ten years that wouldn't harm US security and would represent real budget savings.

And as Gordon Adams points out, $900 billion in defense reductions (which would combine immediate cuts with the potential trigger) is "only 14% of the currently projected defense budgets over the decade, a more moderate build down than the one Secretary Panetta helped execute (though Secretary Cheney and Chairman Powell began it) in the 1990s."

Under Panetta's logic substantial reductions in the US defense budget would put the country at risk. It's one thing to argue this is bad policy (it is) it's quite another to use the politically convenient tool that such cuts will put Americans at risk. It's a risible argument.

3) Ignoring the substance of Panetta's comments, the political timing of them is terrible. The defense cuts in the debt limit deal was supposed to be a "win" for the left - an opportunity to ensure that the budget ax doesn't just fall on the poor and elderly, but affects the entire budgetary picture. 

But with Panetta arguing that they will weaken national security - and with the knowledge that Republicans on the so-called Super Committee will likely oppose any and all tax increases - guess where that ax will inevitably fall? To follow Panetta's argument to its logical end, Medicare and Medicaid recipients should bear the burden of deficit reduction.

And beyond that, Panetta's statement has fundamentally weakened the Democratic negotiating position in the Super-Committee. If the committee fails to reach an agreement and across-the-board defense cuts are immediately put into effect Republicans can use a Democratic Secretary of Defense's own words to argue that Congressional Democrats have weakened national security. Do you think this might put pressure on them to make concessions to entitlements in order to avoid those cuts? The pressure should be on Republicans if defense cuts are enacted, not Democrats. 

You know when Panetta bizarrely said a few weeks back that the US was in Iraq because of al Qaeda I was willing to cut him some slack, but this latest gaffe is far worse - it undercuts his own President and relies on discredited neo-con arguments to do so. I'm beginning to wonder if this post from a few months ago about the dangers of making Panetta Secretary of Defense were perhaps prescient. 

 

Why American Politics Is So Dysfunctional Posted by Michael Cohen

Over at the the Guardian I have a new piece up on the debt limit and what it says about the rot that lies at the heart of the American political system:

Even with poll results suggesting that Americans prize compromise and are tired of overt partisanship, the level of division and acrimony in Washington has grown exponentially since Obama took office. The recent debt limit debate is the apogee of Washington's dysfunction: and indicative of a political system that is seemingly incapable of dealing with national challenges. Indeed, whatever one may think of Standard & Poor's recent downgrade of US debt, the ratings agency view that "the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policy-making and political institutions have weakened" seems almost self-evident.

How has America been reduced to one party holding a gun to the US economy and the other trading away its political principles to stop the trigger from being pulled? The problem is that the US today has one party intent on utilising government resources as a force for social good and another that rejects any significant role for the public sector. Compounding this collision of ideologies is a populace so indifferent to the workings of their own government that they are unable to choose which model they prefer.

I don't focus too much on this issue in the piece, but America's increasingly dysfunctional political system is the surest reason to look at the United States and come to the conclusion that we are a nation in decline. Quite simply, we lack the basic ability to deal with serious national challenges that affect our economic competitiveness and our longer-term national security interests. A country that has a bottom-tier educational system, crumbling infrastructure and a strikingly non-innovative national energy policy is not a country that is prepared to "win the future."

Read the whole thing here

Defense Reductions Done Right Posted by Jacob Stokes

This week has seen a good deal of commentary about looming defense budget reductions, enough that a round-up of salient points is warranted. Any defense spending reductions discussion needs to start with strategy. Joe Nye’s piece in the Times today gets at that point. He proposes a move away from the oft-cited “lands wars in Asia”:

We also need to rethink how we use our military power... Opponents of defense cuts are raising the specter of isolationism and the weakening of American power. But there is a middle way…Counterinsurgency is attractive as a military tactic but it should not lead us into a strategy of nation-building in places where we do not have the capacity to engineer change. The maxim of avoiding major land wars in poor countries does not mean withdrawing our military presence from places like Japan and South Korea, or ending military assistance to countries like Pakistan and Egypt. Some analysts call this “off-shore balancing,” but that term must mean more than just naval and air force activity. For example, in Japan and South Korea, our allies pay a significant portion of the cost for basing American troops there because they want an insurance policy in a region faced with a rising China and a volatile North Korea.

The “roles and missions” review going on at Defense right now is set to address this, although I wouldn’t leave the burden of making tough choices on Defense to DoD—they have only a small interest in slimming their role.

Looking at strategy doesn’t mean we have to execute a radical change though. Even the largest cuts being discussed aren’t draconian by historical standards , writes Gordon Adams over on Battleland.

[Defense] can live with the roughly $400 billion in lower budgets than they planned over the decade. After all, that would be the savings from the current budget plan if Congress simply provided DOD with inflation growth every year over the next decade. But from where I sit, the Department can also live with $900 billion in budget discipline. It is, after all, only 14% of the currently projected defense budgets over the decade, a more moderate build down than the one Secretary Panetta helped execute (though Secretary Cheney and Chairman Powell began it) in the 1990s… In fact, from 1985 to 1998, defense spending (outlays) fell more than 35% in constant dollars. The force that remained, which was smaller, was also organized, coherent, and lethal. It was globally dominant and used Saddam Hussein as a speed bump in 2003. That was one of the best managed build-downs we have ever done; and it was the third one since 1950.

This is not to say the biggest budget reductions in wouldn’t demand hard choices; it’s just that those choices are possible to make without endangering American security. Reductions could even force a much-needed rebalancing of American power, writes Fareed Zakaria.

The Best and Worst Foreign Policy Presidents UPDATED Posted by Michael Cohen

 
Over at the Atlantic I have a new piece up that looks at the best and worst foreign policy presidents of the last 100 years. (Sorry Heather, the Big Man didn't make the best list).

It was a enjoyable piece to write, but it's hardly declarative - and as several people have pointed out to me over the weekend I'm probably far too generous to John F. Kennedy, who makes the best list, and far too harsh to Richard Nixon, who makes the worst list. This is a pretty fair critique and if I had my druthers I'd put both men somewhere in the middle, but the need for editorial symmetry was too strong! Nonetheless, in my book JFK earns deservedly big points for effective crisis management during the Cuban Missile Crisis and Nixon is weighed down by his excesses in Southeast Asia. Others will disagree, but of course that's half of the fun - so let me know what you think DA readers.

Read the whole thing here

Update: I'm a bit getting back to this as I've been traveling on the West Coast and trying to have something resembling a vacation. I've gotten some interesting reactions to this piece, most of which, as I noted above, flay me for giving JFK too much credit and being too harsh on Nixon. All fair criticisms in my view.

Carl Prine has a pretty good take on this, along with a very nice shout out to my wife.

To my mind the most controversal argument I've made is putting Truman in the worst column of FP presidents. Indeed there are many good counter-arguments to my infatuation with Cold War revisionist history and my dislike of Truman . . . unfortunately in his response to me piece at FP Dan Drezner has not made it.

I have a number of quibbles with Drezner's take, but there is one that really jumps out to me.

Here's what I wrote on Truman:

Beyond Korea, the Truman Doctrine and its declaration that it was the "policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures" laid the groundwork for the limitless definition of US national interests that unfolded over the next 60 years. As Kennan would later note, it was one thing to contain Communism in Europe (a goal on which Truman succeeded). It was quite another to broaden that goal to the rest of the world. There is, as a result, a straight line between Truman's foreign policy choices and the war in Vietnam.

Responds Drezner: "Right, this is why Eisenhower felt compelled to intervene in Vietnam during Dien Bien Phu -- oh, wait, as Cohen points out in his Eisenhower write-up, he did the exact opposite of that.  I don't buy straight-line arguments that take two decades to play out."   

I don't understand this argument. According to Drezner, because Ike didn't send ground troops or utilize air power to save the French in Dien Bien Phu there is no connective thread between his foreign policy of containing Communism and Harry Truman's foreign policy of containing communism.

So the fact that Ike did fight plenty of anti-Communist wars on the periphery, which was consistent with the NSC-68 strategy of containing Communism everywhere and continued a pattern of behavior begun under Truman, is something he sort of dreamed up on his own? And what about the fact that while Ike didn't send troops to bail out the French . . he did send military advisors to assist South Vietnam, a move that laid the groundwork for the longer-term US intervention to come by making the protection of South Vietnam from Communist takeover a key US foreign policy objective? Or what about the fact that Eisenhower bizarrely recommened to Kennedy that he consider using military force in Laos when he left office in 1960?

Moreover, we know that JFK and certainly LBJ continued to escalate the US presence in Vietnam. They did so, in part because of the domestic anti-Communist consensus and NSC-68 doctrine ushered in by one Harry S Truman. In addition, because of the existential nature by which Truman promoted the Communist threat it put significant political pressure on all of his successors to show sufficient rigor in combatting the Red threat. As I noted in my original article the politicization of the Cold War and anti-Communism was one of Truman's worst legacies (and nothat's not the same thing as Ike using fears of Communism to push for new highways and educational programs. Cynical yes, but not necessarily malevolent).

To be honest, the idea that there is a connective thread between Harry Truman's expansive definition of US national interests, as laid out in the Truman Doctrine, and his policy of containing Communism everywhere and JFK and LBJ's escalation in Vietnam is perhaps one of the least controversial arguments I think I've ever made in print. So if Drezner doesn't think there is a straight line between Truman's Cold War policies and Vietnam (for better or for worse) does that mean our involvement in Vietnam simply materialized out of thin air?

On Rhetoric and Regime Change: This Is How I End Up Sucked In Posted by Eric Martin

A recent piece by Micah Zenko highlights an aspect of the interplay between rhetoric and regime change that I want to offer a general comment on. First, the relevant excerpt:

On July 11, when asked about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton answered: “From our perspective, he has lost legitimacy, he has failed to deliver on the promises he’s made,” adding that “we would like to see even more countries speaking out as forcefully as we have.”

Proponents of a low-cost regime change in Damascus seized upon Clinton’s use of the phrase “lost legitimacy” to press the case for the Obama administration to see through Assad’s removal. The Washington Post editorial board, in a piece titled “The U.S. has Gotten Tough with Syria; Now it Needs to Get Tougher,” noted that it was “good that the Obama administration has finally spoken that truth” but that “now it must act on its words.” [emphasis added]

As Blake Hounshell chronicles, in an article praising the Obama administration's more "cautious" approach, the calls for more forceful action have only grown louder since:

The latest example is Elliot Abrams, a former official in the administations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, who rips Washington's response to the uprising as "slow and unsteady" in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal. Danielle Pletka, in an overheated blog post Monday, argues that "finding ways to support the Syrian opposition, further isolate regime forces, cordon off Syria from the rest of the world, and begin the process of standing for freedom" in Syria is a "no brainer."

One of the problems with these entreaties is that, even if the Obama administration acted on them in earnest, they would still likely fall short of the desired goal - regime change.  As with the no-fly-zone imposed over Libya (a military operation that, thus far, exceeds what most are calling for in Syria), if these limited measures fail to bring about regime change, the Obama team would be confronted with the inevitable question: what next?

The options would be no more appealing than they are with respect to the stalled Libya campaign (boots on the ground? large scale arming of rebel factions?).  But that wouldn't silence the critics, or bring to a halt the impassioned pleas for greater US involvement, including the more robust use of military force.

This pattern of rhetorical escalation in response to the practical limitations of bringing about regime change from afar is a familiar dance, most deftly performed by those nclined to advocate for more and bigger US interventions abroad.  It can be mastered in five easy steps:



Step 1: How can the President not at least condemn [Regime X] publicly for its abhorrent actions?  A public condemnation is the very least the President can do.  It wouldn't cost much, but it would be an important show of our resolve and support for freedom!

Step 2 (with Regime X still in place): So what, the President condemned the regime publicly with some harsh words and called it "illegitimate."  Words are cheap and inconsequential.  We need sanctions and coordinated efforts to isolate the regime. That will do the trick!

Step 3 (with Regime X still in place): Sanctions? Regime isolation? Is that all the President is going to do in the face of Regime X's perfidy?  Those timid jabs will never work, and the President's dithering will make us look weak and lacking in resolve. Our enemies will be emboldened.  The President must use our military to deal a swift blow.  No one is advocating a prolonged occupation, just a decapitation maneuver, and then a rapid hand off to the indigenous forces for democratic change.

Step 4 (with Regime X toppled by our military):  Now that we've committed our military, and brought about regime change, we have a moral obligation to see the mission through to the end.  Besides, if we withdraw, chaos will erupt and our enemies will fill the vacuum.  We owe it to the locals, we can't afford to lose face, we can't show weakness and our credibility depends on staying until a relatively stable, friendly nation emerges from the rubble. 

Step 5 (repeat as needed): We've turned the corner, shifted the momentum and victory is within reach.  The next six months should prove decisive.

UPDATE:

Step 6: I was critical of the handling of this military action from the beginning. I would have conducted the operation differently.  Regardless, no one ever said it would be quick or easy. But the difficulties encountered don't discredit the policy!*

(Photo credit: AP)

*As suggested/authored by Matt Duss and Micah Zenko

The Era of Extortion Politics Posted by Michael Cohen

Over at Politico I have a new piece up arguing that the real consequence of the debt limit deal is to end the need for political compromise:

What we have seen over the past few weeks is the continuing erosion of the notion that political compromise, the linchpin of our democratic system, is the key to effective legislating and policymaking. Hostage-taking has replaced deal making in Washington with potentially devastating consequences for the political system.

From a political and even policy perspective, Republicans have discovered that stamping their feet and saying no is a uniquely effective strategy. Traditional efforts to brook compromise have been shunted aside in the bare-knuckled pursuit of political goals, using weapons that at one point would have seemed unimaginable.

All this risks ending the need for legitimate political deal making. Just refuse to concede your position or threaten a policy outcome that would do catastrophic damage — and you stand a pretty good chance of eventually getting your way.

For Republicans who, in general, prefer to see Washington do the bare minimum, this is basically the best of all worlds. And of course, the more they obstruct, the more they further the conservative narrative that the federal government is incapable of accomplishing anything.

Read the whole thing here