Monthly Archives: January 2020

Listening to the Impeachment Hearings.

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First, there is no doubt that President Trump extorted the President of Ukraine to announce an investigation of Joe Biden.  He did so, apparently, to besmirch a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Second, there is no doubt that the Republican majority in the Senate is going to acquit Trump of both counts.  There seems to be a shrinking likelihood that enough Republican “moderates” will join the Democrats to even call witnesses.

Third, the obstruction of Congress charge seems ridiculous because the Democrats on the Intelligence and Judiciary committees never made any serious appeal to the courts.   The Trump administration has been sued many times.  They have fought it out in the courts.  Whenever they have lost, they have complied.

Fourth, once Trump has been acquitted, do the Republicans have any plan to keep him from doing some other outrageous thing?  Throw Mike Pence overboard at the convention and impose some really serious person as Trump’s second vice president?  Grit their teeth until Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been replaced with a conservative.  Behind these actions would be the implicit threat that “Next time, you dumb son-of-a-bitch, we will impeach you.”

Fifth, Trump’s defense has argued that many, perhaps most, political acts combine a legitimate policy interest with a politician’s selfish or self-absorbed personal interest.  Hence, these decisions can not be described as “corrupt.”  Democrats have countered that, under the law, any “corrupt” purpose overwhelms any legitimate purpose.  It renders the whole action “corrupt.”  Well, the Democrats have been bug-eyed with fear and rage since November 2016.  They talked a lot about “collusion” (their term, not Trump’s before they started using it on talk shows).  They raised high expectations that the Mueller investigation would prove that Trump had committed crimes that merited impeachment.  They tried to make a case for obstruction of justice after the Mueller investigation “failed to establish” (i.e. couldn’t find any proof of) such “collusion.”  They wanted Trump removed for political reasons that would advantage the Democrats and disgrace the Republicans.  By their own standards, that would seem to meet the definition of “corruption.”

The Next President of the United States of America.

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“What’s troubling you is the nature of my game.”–The Rolling Stones, “Sympathy for the Devil.”

There is the coincidence of the Democratic primaries for the November 2020 presidential election and the current impeachment trial of Donald Trump.  This has created a great deal of uncertainty.

First, there seems to be a good chance that Donald Trump will be re-elected president if he is not removed from office and barred from all future elective office.  There is no guarantee, but if you look at the past election and the current polling data, trump seems to have a shot–at the least.

Second, if Trump is removed, then the Republicans will lose the White House.  Mike Pence is a joke as vice-president and could not mount a credible presidential campaign.  John McCain has died.  The future possible Republican presidential candidates–take Nikkie Haley as one example–are nowhere near ready to run and would not want to run just to get creamed.

Third, Donald Trump will not be removed from office.  It would take 67 votes in the Senate.  The Democrats have 47 votes at the moment.  They might have swung 4 votes on admitting witnesses and documents before Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler worked their oratorical magic during the hearings, but they were never going to swing 20 votes.

Fourth, the current Democrat presidential candidate mix “moderates” (Biden, Bloomberg) with some “radicals” (Warren, Sanders), and a bunch of munchkins.

Fifth, the Caucasian Caucuses in Iowa haven’t occurred yet.  It’s hard to tell who will win there.  It is even more difficult to tell who will win the actual primaries to follow.  Sure, it seems likely that Joe Biden will win the nomination, but “count no man happy until he is dead.”

Sixth, the uncertainty about which Democratic Party will actually show up in the presidential election colors my thinking about impeachment.

Seventh, in 2016 I held my nose and voted for Hillary Clinton in order to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.

Eighth, in 2020 I will not vote for Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders in order to keep Trump out of the White House.  Both, but especially Warren, are threats to my middle-class life and retirement savings.  A President Sanders might appoint Warren Secretary of the Treasury, so neither one is an acceptable presidential candidate.

Ninth, until I know that the Democratic presidential candidate will be someone reasonably sane and practical, then I’m in favor of keeping Trump available as an insurance policy.   The trial in the Senate is now, while the Democratic nomination is in the future.  So I support letting Trump go.  That doesn’t guarantee that I’ll vote for him next time.  That’s up to my Democratic friends.

The Russia Thing Again 18 January 2020.

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Cyber-attacks are now common.  As a result, governments have developed defensive capabilities.  Holland’s General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) is chiefly concerned with domestic political and security issues, but it does maintain a cyber-defense section.  In 2014, this section of AIVD found a way to tap the communications and activities of one group of hackers linked to Russian intelligence.  The group is nick-named “Cozy Bear.”[1]  The access allowed the Dutch a continuing view of “Cozy Bear” activities.

As a NATO member, AIVD would naturally share information with its allies, particularly the United States.  American partners would include the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  The cyber-attacks by “Cozy Bear” included ones against the State Department and the White House (begun in 2014), the Pentagon (2015), and the Democratic National Committee (2016).

At some point, AIVD provided the Americans with a document stolen from “Cozy Bear.”  The document analyzed a purported e-mail exchange between Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL and then the Chair of the Democratic National Committee)[2] and Leonard Benado, a vice president of the Open Society Institute.[3]  The document referred to the then-ongoing FBI investigation, begun in Summer 2015, into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server during her time as Secretary of State.

In the message being analyzed by the Russians, Schultz told Benado that Attorney General Loretta Lynch would make sure that no criminal charges would be filed against Clinton in the server investigation.[4]

“Is it live or is it Memorex?”[5]  Is the Russian document real or is it disinformation?  The Dutch kept the interception operation going because it provided valuable continuing intelligence.  This supposed that the Russians would not become aware of the interception at some point.  If they did become aware, then they would have a choice between closing the security breach or using it as a conduit to funnel false information to Western intelligence.

Wasserman Schultz and Benado have denied ever having had the e-mail exchange.  Reportedly, American officials didn’t believe that Attorney General Lynch would interfere in the investigation.  However, in late June 2016, it was reported that Lynch had met privately with former President Bill Clinton at the Phoenix airport.

FBI Director James Comey reportedly believed that the Russians would release the “document”—whether real or false—if Lynch played any role in clearing Clinton.  So, in July 2016, he acted on his own initiative.

News of the document first became public in an April 2017 article in the New York Times.  A May 2017 article in the Washington Post elaborated on the story.  Now the Justice Department is probing the leaks to the Times and the Post.  Was the Dutch operation still producing intelligence at that time or had it been closed down?

[1] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cozy_Bear  It has been active since about 2008.

[2] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debbie_Wasserman_Schultz

[3] See: https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/who-we-are/staff/leonard-benardo

[4] Adam Goldman, “A Leak Inquiry May Put Focus Back on Comey,” NYT, 17 January 2020.

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhfugTnXJV4

Foreign Legions 13 January 2020.

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A bunch of historical examples can be offered of peoples hiring foreigners to do their fighting for them.  The Roman Empire came to rely upon foreigners to fill up the ranks of the army once citizenship became de-linked from soldiering.  The Arabs recruited large numbers of Turks driven off the steppe by the Mongols.  The little Crusader states in the Holy Land depended upon the military religious orders to aggregate individual European Christian volunteers into formidable props to their survival.  The Englishmen John Smith and Guy Fawkes fought for foreign rulers.  The French and Spanish armies included regiments of Irish Catholic refugees from English Protestant oppression.  In the 19th Century both France and Spain created “Foreign Legions,” while Britain came to prize the Gurkhas.  During the Spanish Civil War, the Comintern created the “International Brigades” to fight against the Nationalists.  Muslims from many countries fought against the Soviet in Afghanistan.  Most recently, the Islamic State marshalled thousands of foreign volunteers under its black flag.[1]

The death of Qassim Suleimani brought some peripheral notice of his reliance upon “foreign legions” to fight as Iranian proxies.[2]  Suleimani adroitly used both Shi’ite and—less frequently–Sunni militias on behalf of his government’s long-term effort to expand Iran’s influence in the Middle East.  Suleimani deployed these militias in the civil wars in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, while Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza are closely linked to Iran.  This policy brought so much success that Iran is unlikely to abandon it just because its original architect is dead.

Foreign volunteers have reasons for signing-up.  Some come for adventure; some are inspired by religious or ideological commitment; some are veteran soldier seeking something that civilian life can’t provide.  The motives for governments that recruit foreign volunteers are less varied.  Where military service has become socially undesirable or where the native population possesses skills too great to be wasted on the battlefield, foreign troops allow a country to punch above its weight.  Foreign soldiers cost only money.  No one cares if they die.

Only about one percent of Americans do military service.  Most of those who do serve come from the South and from military families living close to bases scattered through the South and West.[3]  Over three-quarters (79 percent) of Army enlistees have a family member who has served in the military; almost a third (30 percent) have a parent who has served.  Inevitably, that means that casualties are similarly distributed.  This trend has been developing ever since the military became All Volunteer in 1973.  There’s a political element to this as well.  Politically liberal areas often resist military recruiters in the schools and universities, while liberal parents rarely have done military service.  Young people have few models of military service.

Is this one reason for the “forever wars”?

No, I’ve never been a soldier.

[1] See: https://waroftheworldblog.com/2015/02/24/the-islamic-brigades-1/; https://waroftheworldblog.com/2015/05/08/the-islamic-brigades-ii/; and https://waroftheworldblog.com/2016/06/17/the-islamic-brigades-iii/

[2] Karim Sadjadpour, “The Sinister Genius of Soleimani,” WSJ, 11-12 January 2020; Dion Nissenbaum and Isabel Coles, “Iraqi Militias Remain a Wild Card,” WSJ, 10 January 2020.

[3] David Philipps and Tim Arango, “The Call to Serve Is Being Unevenly Embraced,” NYT, 11 January 2020.

The War with Iran 10 January 2020.

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The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 created both opportunities and dangers for Iran.  On the one hand, it toppled an enemy leader (Saddam Hussein) and liberated the fellow Shi’ites of Iraq to dominate a “democratic” government.  On the other hand, it put the powerful military of Iran’s American enemy right on the country’s door-step.[1]

An important role in developing the opportunities and confronting the dangers fell to General Qassim Suleimani.  Suleimani occupied a powerful position in Iran’s government.  The New York Times has described him as “an American vice president, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and C.I.A. director rolled into one.”[2]  Suleimani worked to increase the power of Iraq’s Shi’ite majority, extend Iranian influence over Iraq and into Syria, and push the Americans to pull out.  Some Americans and a good many Iraqis died in the ensuing violence.  Both the Bush II and Obama administrations had thought about killing him.  Both seem to have decided that killing Suleimani would not advance American strategic interests at those particular times.  Clearly, President Trump and his closest advisors made a different decision.  On 3 January 2020, an American drone fired two missiles that killed Suleimani and some of his myrmidons.

It is impossible at this early date to foresee the long-term consequences.  Still, it is possible to suggest some factors that will influence events.  First, the killing of Suleimani is unlikely to deepen the existing abyssal hostility between the two nations.[3]

Second, domestic factors will push Iran to retaliate for the assassination.  General Suleimani in the front rank of Iran’s leaders.  Trying to deter the United States from weeding-out other leaders could push Iran’s hardliners toward action.  The same is true of maintaining the regime’s legitimacy in the eyes of the public.  You can’t get out big crowds every year to chant “Death to America!” in the streets and then go “Never mind” when you get slapped in public.

Third, there is a huge imbalance of power between the United States and Iran.  American superiority in conventional weapons would probably preclude a real Iranian conventional attack on American forces.  The recent missile strike in Iraq both hit a remote facility with few Americans present and was telegraphed hours in advance to allow the Americans to take cover.  At the same time, President Trump claims to want to end the “endless wars” launched by the Bush II Administration.  That desire should bar any attack on Iran by American ground forces.

This reality could shape the behavior of both sides.  Iran can pursue an “asymmetrical” response.  Iran could use allies like Lebanon’s Hezbollah or Iraqi Shi’ites to attack American forces or American interests.  Those would not have to be limited to the Persian Gulf or even to the Middle East.  One key factor might be how robust are American defense and intelligence resources for dealing with such “asymmetrical” threats.

On the other hand, American air power is there and ready to be used.  For example, Iran firing missiles at American ships in or around the Persian Gulf would trigger air strikes.  Those strikes might not be very restricted.  They would inflict still greater public humiliation on the regime.

So, future headlines may be full of car bombs and “smart” bombs.

[1] At the same time, the Americans were occupying Afghanistan on Iran’s eastern border.  You can see how Iranian leaders might get a little skittish.

[2] Max Fisher, “Is There a Chance Of a Wider War?” New York Times, 4 January 2020; Amanda Taub, “Will Strike Deter Attacks, Or Lead to Even More?” NYT, 5 January 2020.

[3] It is now impossible to know if the policy pursued by the Obama administration would have led to an actual improvement of Iranian-American relations or merely postponed the current confrontation.

The Attack on Iran 9 January 2020.

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“Trump did it, so it must be the wrong thing.”  Fair rule of thumb/heuristic device.  However, seen in a historical perspective, some further thought may be in order.

First, the military historian John Keegan dissected the liberal mindset with regard to international order on the eve of the Second Iraq War in 2003.  He called this mindset “Olympianism.”  According to Keegan, it “seeks to influence and eventually control the behavior of states not by the traditional means of resorting to force as a last resort but by supplanting force by rational procedures, exercised through a supranational bureaucracy and supranational legal systems and institutions.” Keegan regarded this view as delusional, but widespread.  He describes the “Olympian ethic” as “opposition to any form of international action lying outside the now commonly approved limits of legal disapproval and treaty condemnation.”[1]

European states weren’t the only ones touched by “Olympianism.”  The Report of the 9/11 Commission tells readers that the US Government struggled to respond to the early attacks by Al Qaeda.  These early attacks included the bombing of two embassies in East Africa, and the attack on the USS “Cole” during a port call in Yemen.  The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency doubted he had the authority to kill some foreign terrorist just because the terrorist was trying to kill Americans.  Much thought went into how to capture Osama bin Laden.  Many Republicans, but also Democrats, belabored President Bill Clinton over the missile attack on a suspected Al Qaeda site in Khartoum, Sudan.  The evidence in the 9/11 Report suggests that the Clinton administration then slow-walked the investigation of the “Cole” bombing so that it wouldn’t be forced to do something that would lead to a further tide of abuse.  Attempts to kill Bin Laden in Afghanistan with cruise missiles failed because the diplomatic proprieties required the US Government to inform the government of Pakistan that the US would be flying cruise missiles across its territory.  This in spite of the fact that Pakistani intelligence had close ties to the Taliban government that was sheltering Bin Laden.

The response to the killing of Qassim Soleimani suggests that “Olympianism” has taken hold elsewhere.

Second, the war correspondent-turned historian Thomas Ricks has sought to explain the poor performance of the US Army in recent wars.  In his explanation, during the Second World War, Chief of Staff George Marshall and ruthless subordinates like Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley, transformed a sleepy, gerontocratic peacetime army into a devastatingly effective instrument of war.  They did so, in part, by getting rid of any commander who didn’t cut the mustard.  After George Marshall and his followers had passed on, the Army reverted to a cautious, self-protective rather than self-critical, bureaucracy.[2]  Generals don’t get fired, except for egregious personal misconduct—when it comes to public attention.

If Ricks is correct in his analysis, how should we understand the apparent lack of enthusiasm in the Pentagon for the strike at an Iranian leader who has been asserting his country’s influence throughout the Middle East at the expense of the United States?

Third, it seems unlikely that President Trump’s order to kill General Soleimani is going to have a worse outcome than the decision by the Bush II administration to invade Iraq or the decision by the Obama administration to overthrow the government of Libya.

[1] John Keegan, The Iraq War (2005), pp. 109, 115.

[2] Thomas E. Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command From World War II to Today (2012).  See also: https://waroftheworldblog.com/2015/08/10/command-crisis/