Stevenson’s army, January 9

Iran and the US seem to be backing down the escalation ladder. Good. But enormous risks and opportunities for miscalculation remain. Prof. Edelman says maybe the US attacks have helped restore deterrence.

No one should be surprised if I find fault with many of Pres. Trump’s policies. But his behavior on Wednesday was deeply offensive.  It has long been said that in war, truth is the first casualty. But on Wednesday the president decided to make a formal speech to the American people on a mater of great gravity, truly a matter of war and peace. He surrounded himself with senior national security officials, including many uniformed officers. And he lied and  dissembled and misled us,the American people. His remarks were so far from honest and accurate that both the Washington Post and New York Times had “fact checker” articles pointing out the flaws. Over the years I’ve known several White House speech writers from both parties. All told me how hard they worked to guarantee that anything the president said in a formal address was carefully fact-checked and defensible. That’s obviously not the case in the Trump White House. It’s especially bad to use senior military officers as political props — enough to spark a backlash in the Pentagon

Two can play this game: Iran’s parliament has designated the US military as terrorists.
On other matters, WSJ says US is outmaneuvering Russia in the Balkans.
An the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, long a source of studies and recommendations critical of the PRC, has issued its latest annual report.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).