Month: December 2016
Jihad and the next administration
USIP’s discussion today of “Getting Ahead of the Curve: the evolving threat of violent extremism” was a study in contrasts. The first panel, of experts who contributed to The Jihadi Threat: ISIS, Al Qaeda and Beyond was devoted to hard-nosed analysis. The second, which discussed both CSIS’ Turning Point and Communities First: A Blueprint for Organizing and Sustaining a Global Movement Against Violent Extremism, was devoted to right-minded but airier policy propositions, at least until I left about 45 minutes before it ended.
The analysis panel, ably chaired by Robin Wright of USIP and the Woodrow Wilson Center, offered a gloomy picture: each generation of jihadis is larger than the last, mobilizes faster, draws on more diversified sources of foreign fighters, gets more extreme, and spreads to more locations and causes.
That said, Brookings’ Will McCants noted that ISIS has lost perhaps half its territory as well as 50,000 killed, Raqqa and Mosul are under attack, and its finances are under pressure. It won’t disappear but will return, as it did during the near-defeat in Iraq in 2008/10, to terrorist tactics and prison breaks. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies concurred that the ISIS star has fallen, because of its brutal tactics and readiness to make enemies of too many people. But Al Qaeda is reviving and spreading, especially in Syria, Yemen, Libya, Mali and Somalia. It is even controlling territory, it financing has become more open, and it is embedding Al Qaeda Central cadres, like the Khorasan Group, with its franchisees.
The franchises are increasingly important, Carnegie Endowment’s Fred Wehrey concurred. Al Qaeda has been more successful than ISIS in establishing durable franchises, partly because it focuses on “Dawa” (proselytizing), is relatively “moderate” in behavior towards the local population, and integrates more effectively with local forces. Egypt is particularly fertile ground, as is Yemen.
Hassan Hassan of the Tahrir Institue for Middle East Policy underlined that jihadism is not going away any time soon. Its narrative and appeal are increasingly entrenched. Al Qaeda and ISIS share the objective of creating a caliphate, but Al Qaeda is the more dangerous as it often works quietly and is more successful at “marbling” (interweaving) local and global strategies.
McCants views state failure as fuel for the protean diversified jihadist resurgence we are witnessing. The diversification and rapidly shifting organizational landscape are big problems, as they make prioritization difficult. Gartenstein-Ross believes the Middle East states will continue to weaken, as they face dramatic challenges like lack of water and parlous finances. Internet penetration in the region is still low, so jihadi mobilization is likely to become more effective and quicker as it expands. Social media are particularly adapted to boost secret identities across boundary lines. Hassan concurred, noting that ISIS in defeat will retreat into the desert, as it did in Iraq in 2008, leaving sleeper cells who will kill its enemies in newly liberated areas. Sunni disenfranchisement, alienation, and lack of leadership make ISIS a viable political option.
Wehrey concluded the first panel by underlining that terrorism is a political strategy and requires in part a political response. Jihadism is not really about religion but about the need for reform. Governance issues are central, vastly compounded by population displacement and Western intervention.
The second panel chaired by USIP’s Georgia Holmer focused, far less decisively, on non-military responses to jihadism.
The National Security Council’s Amy Pope underlined that countering violent extremism (CVE) is now established as an important part of the response to terrorism focused on its root causes in particular communities. She and State Department Under Secretary Sarah Sewall were confident that this community-focused approach, based on civil society and holistic investments, is the right one. We need to be able to tell this story across the security and human rights communities.
Shannon Green of CSIS cited the “measured security response” advocated in Turning Point, noting that anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment reinforces extremism. So too have some of America’s traditional partners in the Gulf, who have financed extremists. We need to be able to levy punitive sanctions in response, undertake a global educational partnership to ensure that extremism has no place in curricula, and review assistance to oppressive governments. She also thought an assistant to the president for CVE would help the cause.
The Prevention Project’s Eric Rosand emphasized community-level engagement that recognizes communities have many problems other than violent extremism and offers them incentives to engage locally in CVE. Law enforcement should have a limited, not a dominant, role.
Asked about what they would advise the incoming Trump Administration, Sewall emphasized the need to coordinate military and intelligence counter-terrorism with civilian CVE and the relative lack of resources for the latter (amounting to no more than .1% of the total). Pope also thought the balance out of whack. CVE needs to grow much bigger. There is lots of evidence that democracy and inclusion work and that alienation and exclusion don’t.
Asked to adduce some concrete examples of CVE that has worked, Pope cited a roundtable in The Hague, Sewall an ongoing project pilot project in East Africa and an AID project in Pakistan. Rosand noted that all too often autocrats readily take up the anti-messaging banner, as it enables them to crack down on dissident voices. That, he suggested, does not work.
My bottom line: Little in this discussion gave me any reason to believe that the incoming Trump Administration will take up the cause of CVE, which would require it to drop its anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric, agree to support reformist and more democratic states rather than autocratic ones, invest in aid that is difficult to distinguish from conventional development assistance, accept evidence-based indications of effectiveness, and increase funding for civilian rather than military efforts. #fatchance
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Trump’s bromance
Of Trump’s many vices, his bromance with Putin is arguably the worst, at least from a foreign policy perspective. Putin has not only restored autocracy to Russia, he has invaded Ukraine, annexed Crimea, and intervened ferociously against the non-extremist opposition in Syria, not to mention his sponsorship of a foiled coup in Montenegro, his threats to Baltic and Scandinavian states, and his continued occupation of Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia. Let’s not forget his exploitation of Wikileaks to intervene in the US election on Trump’s behalf.
Trump’s response so far has been to propose we make common cause with Putin, in particular against ISIS in Syria. The President-elect refuses to acknowledge Russian hacking, despite what the firm consensus of American intelligence agencies, whose briefings he has been refusing to listen to. He now seems intent on appointing as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon and one of Putin’s favorite Americans. He will unquestionably want to lift sanctions on Moscow. John Bolton, a skeptic of Russia, is apparently slated for the often powerless number 2 job, where he will be subordinate to Tillerson’s russophilia.
Trump seems blissfully unaware of Russia’s decline, which is apparent in many different dimensions. Its economy and government revenue are largely dependent on hydrocarbons, whose price collapse in 2014/15 left it in a severe recession. Its private sector is shrinking. Its large companies are increasingly controlled by Moscow. Its health and life expectancy are declining. Its once-vaunted athletes have been reduced to massive, state-sponsored doping. Only its military, nurtured with big doses of funding, appears in good shape, but that is true only for its elite forces.
So why would the president-elect choose to align himself with Putin? Trump says the Russians are needed to defeat the Islamic State in Syria. The difficulty with that point of view is that Russia has never expended much ordnance against the Islamic State but has instead concentrated its fire on non-jihadi fighters, whose destruction has strengthened rather than weakened the extremists. The main Islamic State stronghold in Syria today is Raqqa, which the Russian air force has only occasionally targeted.
I think it far more likely that Trump views Putin as an effective and admirable leader, one who does the things the president-elect would like to do: control the media, enforce draconian law and order, shut down dissent, vaunt nationalist pride, crack down on Muslims, and run a foreign policy committed exclusively to enhancing his own country’s gains without regard to any international norms or multilateral constraints. The bromance really is a bromance, at least on Trump’s part.
This spells peril, not only for the Syrian opposition but also for all those whose interests the US has supported during the past 10 years or so of Russian aggression. Ukraine can kiss Crimea good-bye. Trump is unlikely even to support reintegration of Donbas. The Baltics, Finland and Sweden, Montenegro, and others in Putin’s crosshairs are going to find little solace in Washington. At best, Trump will give them a hand if they pay for it.
Trump’s admiration for Putin will embolden the latter and whet his appetite for more successes with which to stave off the inevitable realization among the Russian people that they have been driven down a cul-de-sac. Putin is running a Ponzi scheme of foreign policy aggression, with each “success” enabling the next.
If Trump wants to try to do business with Putin, the deals he strikes should be judged on the transactional basis the President-elect prefers with everyone else: what does he get in exchange or what he gives? If he gets a serious political transition away from Bashar al Assad in Syria, full implementation of the Minsk II agreement in Ukraine, and an end to harassment of Russia’s neighbors, I’ll be the first to applaud. Until then, I’ll sit on my hands.
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The Aleppo defeat
You can always tell when a cause is lost: the UN General Assembly passes a resolution to stop the bombing, allow in aid, and protect civilians. This was the clear signal this week that Syrian opposition forces in Aleppo are on the verge of defeat at the hands of multinational Shia militias as well as Iranian, Russian and Syrian government forces. Russian efforts to arrange a ceasefire for evacuation of civilians have failed, so far. Fighting age men are reportedly disappearing, likely some of them into prisons from which they will never emerge.
Assad is crowing. For good reason: victory in Aleppo will allow him to concentrate his forces against Idlib, which is the last remaining bit of what he has termed “useful Syria” that he doesn’t control. It runs from Damascus north to Aleppo and west to Lebanon and the Mediterranean. If he doesn’t already, Assad will soon control about one-third of the country’s territory and tw0-thirds of its population.
But the war will still not be over. The opposition will have some territory in the south along the Jordanian border and some in the north (west of the Euphrates), while the Kurds will control the rest of the border with Turkey and the Islamic State will control Raqqa and much of the relatively unpopulated east. The defeat at Aleppo and the impending defeat at Idlib will drive more opposition fighters into the arms of extremist jihadis, strengthening both Jabhat al Sham (the erstwhile Al Qaeda affiliate) and the Islamic State.
Assad now seems likely to survive, if only because the Americans will continue to pursue Jabhat al Sham and the Islamic State, which now represent by far the largest threat to his hold on power. This will make life easy for Trump. In order to ally with Russia as he says he wants to do, he’ll need only to cut American assistance to those few non-jihadi opposition who are still fighting Assad and provide support only to those willing to join the campaign against the Islamic State at Raqqa.
How Trump and National Security Adviser Flynn will square this de facto alignment with Iran I don’t know, but who’s watching? Like George W. Bush before him, Trump is likely to open still another door to Iranian power projection to the west.
Assad’s survival is not however the end of the story. Syria is a shambles. It needs hundreds of billions in aid. The Americans have already provided billions, but that has been overwhelmingly humanitarian assistance, much of which went to regime-controlled areas. I doubt however that the Americans will be interested in providing reconstruction assistance to the Assad regime. Even for a Trump administration, that might be a bit much, and in any event Congress likely wouldn’t go along.
The Europeans will be under a lot pressure to provide aid, since Assad will provide them with some minimal reason to hope that refugees will return if the Syrian economy revives. That however will be a false promise, as he doesn’t want them to return and restart the rebellion against him. He prefers to provide homes and livelihoods to non-Syrians, mainly Shia, who have fought on his behalf.
The people who should ante up are the Russians and Iranians, who have caused much of the damage and are coming out on the winning side. That entails obligations that the Washington and Brussels recognize, but Moscow and Tehran don’t. They aren’t likely to do more than minimal assistance calculated to help Assad regain and maintain control over strategically important turf.
Without a significant influx of resources, Syria will remain a fragmented basket case for many years to come. Even after Raqqa and Deir Azzour fall (precisely to whom is not yet clear), Islamist insurgency is likely to continue. Turkey and its Arab and Turkmen allies will control part of the north, with the Syrian Kurdish PYD controlling the rest. A bit of the south will remain in opposition control.
The Aleppo defeat may be the beginning of the end, but it is not yet the end.
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The anti-cabinet
I’ve already noted that Donald Trump’s cabinet picks are not moderates. Since then he has added to his radical menagerie several who have clear and compelling records of opposition to the departments they are being asked to lead:
- Tom Price at Health and Human Services is a diehard opponent of Obamacare and advocate of its immediate repeal, as well as a proponent of privatizing Medicare.
- Ben Carson at Housing and Urban Development is an opponent of government programs in general and dislikes HUD’s mission.
- Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t believe in taking action to prevent climate change.
- Andy Puzder at Labor opposes the minimum wage.
- Wilbur Ross at Commerce is an investor who has benefited from protectionist steel tariffs and from moving plants abroad.
- McMorris Rodgers at Interior wants to open Federal lands to greater mining and energy development.
The only departments that have gotten people who are committed to their missions as currently understood are Defense (James Mattis) and Homeland Security (John Kelly). Pretty much everywhere else you’ve got people more committed to dismantling than in building. This is a cabinet that makes Ronald Reagan look like a RINO (that’s a Republican in name only).
There is nothing surprising in this. While Trump has feigned occasional interest in climate change or in helping American workers, he was open and blunt in his campaign about his disdain for much of what the US government aims to do. Americans are getting what they were promised: radical change.
The problem is it’s change in directions we don’t need. Despite what Trump’s supporters think, the American economy has been growing for more than 7 years now, with unemployment declining and the deficit shrinking. Trump has promised faster growth, but that will likely depend not on the cabinet but rather on massive infrastructure spending. President Obama proposed that as well, but Congressional Republicans never went along. Will they for Trump? Probably, as his proposal emphasizes not government spending but rather private investment in infrastructure, which means little of it will serve truly public purposes.
There are still a few more cabinet shoes to drop. Most important will be Secretary of State and US Trade Representative (USTR). I don’t believe it likely that with an already radical cabinet Trump will opt for moderation in either of these posts. Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon are going to be pressing hard for dyed-in-the-wool Trumpistas. Expect a NAFTA and TPP opponent at USTR and an anti-diplomat at State. There John Bolton, who despises the State Department, or Rex Tillerson, Exxon chief executive, would be my best guesses, though Bolton’s hostility to Russian President Putin makes him an odd fit for Trump.
Trump’s proposed cabinet is predominantly men, wealthy donors and Republican hardliners. But most importantly it is people who doubt the Federal government has a proper role in ensuring anything but hard security. For the rest, Trump’s appointees are going to try to slash and burn.
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I’m disappointed
In his valedictory address on counterterrorism yesterday at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, President Obama waxed poetic about diplomacy, development and the contributions civilians can make to US national security:
…alongside our outstanding military work, we have to draw upon the strength of our diplomacy. Terrorists would love to see us walk away from the type of work that builds international coalitions, and ends conflicts, and stops the spread of deadly weapons. It would make life easier for them; it would be a tragic mistake for us.
Just think about what we’ve done these last eight years without firing a shot. We’ve rolled back Iran’s nuclear program. That’s not just my assessment, that’s the assessment of Israeli intelligence, even though they were opposed to the deal. We’ve secured nuclear materials around the globe, reducing the risk that they fall into the hands of terrorists. We’ve eliminated Syria’s declared chemical weapons program. All of these steps have helped keep us safe and helped keep our troops safe. Those are the result of diplomacy. And sustained diplomatic efforts, no matter how frustrating or difficult they sometimes appear, are going to be required to resolve the conflicts roiling the in Middle East, from Yemen, to Syria, to Israel and Palestine. And if we don’t have strong efforts there, the more you will be called upon to clean up after the failure of diplomacy.
Similarly, any long-term strategy to reduce the threat of terrorism depends on investments that strengthen some of these fragile societies. Our generals, our commanders understand this. This is not charity. It’s fundamental to our national security. A dollar spent on development is worth a lot more than a dollar spent fighting a war. (Applause.)
This is how we prevent conflicts from starting in the first place. This is how we can ensure that peace is lasting — after we’ve fought. It’s how we stop people from falling prey to extremism — because children are going to school and they can think for themselves, and families can feed themselves and aren’t desperate, and communities are not ravaged by diseases, and countries are not devastated by climate changes.
As Americans, we have to see the value of empowering civil societies so that there are outlets for people’s frustrations, and we have to support entrepreneurs who want to build businesses instead of destroying. We have to invest in young people because the areas that are generating terrorists are typically having a huge youth bulge, which makes them more dangerous. And there are times where we need to help refugees who have escaped the horrors of war in search of a better life. Our military recognizes that these issues of governance and human dignity and development are vital to our security. It’s central to our plans in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Let’s make sure that this wisdom is reflected in our budgets, as well.
So, how well has this eloquent, and eminently logical, president done in ensuring his wisdom is reflected in his budgets?
Okay, but not great, would be my answer.
The ratio of Defense to International Affairs outlays has declined only marginally since the George W. Bush era, when Defense outlays were generally between 14 and 16 times the level of International Affairs expenditures, inflated in large part by the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Declines in this ratio have been pretty steady since FY 2009.
By FY 2015, it was down to 11.4 and projected in FY 2016 to decline to under 11. This has been achieved by a big bump up in International Affairs outlays in FY 2009, followed by years of declines in Defense outlays, largely due to sequestration. Here is the raw data, which I got here. I’m not vouching for the ratios, because I calculated them myself, but I think they are mostly correct.
The real increase (in 2009 dollars) of International Affairs outlays is thus modest: maybe 10/12% over the eight years of the Obama administration. More disturbing is this: I don’t know many people who would argue that American civilian capabilities to do the things the President cites are much greater than they were when he took office. A lot of the increase has been chewed up in increased security expenditures for State and USAID , whose officers find it difficult to leave our fortress embassies, often located in the middle of nowhere. Another slice has gone to increased staff, to the point that all Foreign Service officers I talk with complain about the excessive numbers of people they now need to clear every lousy bit of press guidance with.
President-elect Trump seems determined to make things worse, perhaps much worse. He has promised a big military buildup and a ferocious attack on the Islamic State while pooh-poohing what he terms nation building, refusing to receive most intelligence briefings, and neglecting to consult with the State Department on his initial diplomatic moves. Expect a real slash and burn attitude in Foggy Bottom and at the Reagan building when the time comes.
President Obama deserves credit for some signal diplomatic achievements: the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate change agreement are the two most often cited, including by the President himself. Neither of those however really serves the counterterrorism objective that was the subject of this speech. It is building inclusive states more than anything else that helps counter terrorism. Obama has been allergic to that objective, not only in Syria and Libya but also in Yemen. Only in Iraq has he deigned to weigh in, when he supported the more ecumenical Haidar al Abadi to replace the hopelessly sectarian Nouri al Maliki as prime minister.
So Obama, who many hoped would be a transformational president when it comes to foreign policy, is more likely to represent not much more than a blip in an inexorable trend: putting America’s troops in the front line rather than its diplomats and aid workers. I’m disappointed.
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These are not moderates
Pizzagate is the misnomer we are using today to refer to entirely false reports of a pedophilic child-smuggling ring operating out of the back of Comet pizza, whose ping-pong tables attract a lot of youngsters and their families. I can personally testify that the pizza there is particularly good, if you like the “flat-bread” variety. Yesterday a North Carolinian with an assault rifle and another firearm decided to “self-investigate” the nonsense reports, which have been spread in part by recently designated National Security Adviser Flynn and his at least equally lame-brained son. The gunman appears to have shot once or twice but did not injure anyone.
This was clearly a dangerous situation that the DC police handled well and quickly. Props to them. But it bodes ill. We are used to recognizing attacks as ISIS-inspired. What we are facing now are attacks inspired by America’s very own conspiracy theorists, fake news inventors, and gun-toting defenders of virtue. This is the beginning of an alt_right rebellion against people of moderation.
The incoming Trump administration has taken the lid off the pot in which these characters normally find themselves contained. The Flynns are an extreme case, but Trump’s projected cabinet is full of other, marginally less demented, instances of delusion. Ben Carson, named today as Housing and Human Development Secretary, believes the theory of evolution is the work of the devil. Betsy DeVos, future Education Secretary, is a strong advocate of charter schools, despite their poor performance in her home state of Michigan. Steven Mnuchin, soon to be Treasury Secretary, has distinguished himself as a bottom feeding businessman with no apparent concern for the public welfare. He prepared Trump’s campaign tax proposal to sharply lower tax rates on the highest earners, though he now denies that will happen. Prospective Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a segregationist turned mere racist.
This cabinet is somehow being portrayed as relatively moderate, presumably compared to Trump’s campaign and his closest “strategic” adviser Steve Bannon. I suppose it is, but that’s only because Bannon is a true dyed-in-the-wool anti-Semite, misogynist, racist and conspiracy theorist. None of the cabinet appointees comes down even close to that low standard, but they are mostly just a step above. The early appointment of Nikki Haley as UN ambassador serves as a convenient fig leaf, one that will does little to hide the ugly truth. The only serious moderating influence likely so far will come from Defense Secretary-designate Mattis, who however has pretty extreme views on Iran and its relationship to ISIS.
The latest news is that Exxon CEO Tillerson as Secretary of State. From Trump’s perspective, he has the great virtue of a good relationship with Russian President Putin, whom Trump intends to befriend by surrendering US support for the Syrian rebels and for re-integration of Crimea and Donbas into Ukraine.
In short, we are looking at a White House and cabinet drawn from the margins of American politics, not its moderate center. President-elect Trump feels he owes his election to “out of the box” views, which he is prepared to pursue in office. Neither he nor his appointees will moderate until forced to do so by strong resistance. It is going to be a difficult four years.
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