Trump’s way: Treating allies like enemies and enemies like allies, CNN.com
Trump’s way: Treating allies like enemies and enemies like allies
By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author; view more opinion articles on CNN.
(CNN) British soldier Lance Corporal Jamie Webb, 24, died from the blast of a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan in March, 2013.
Canadian Master Corporal Byron Greff, 28, died in a suicide bombing in Kabul in 2011.
Those are just two of the names of the many hundreds of dead soldiers from NATO countries who have fought in Afghanistan to defend the United States.
It is the first and only war waged under NATO’s Article 5 collective defense obligation that an attack on one member country is an attack on all its members. That war was, of course, triggered by an attack on President Donald Trump’s hometown of New York on September 11, 2001.
The total number of dead soldiers in Afghanistan from the United Kingdom is 455, from Canada, it is 158, from France, 86 and from Germany, 54.
Yet Trump is constantly berating NATO allies for not paying enough for their own defense, as if their blood spilled on the battlefield is meaningless.
The contrast of NATO allies’ support for the United States in Afghanistan and the behavior of Russia is both striking and telling. In March, the top US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, told the BBC that Russian weapons were being smuggled to the Taliban and that they “provide some degree of support to the Taliban.” (Russia has denied these allegations).
Yet Trump continues to treat Russian President Vladimir Putin like a peer, rather than a pariah who controls a gangster state that orders the assassinations of enemies in countries that are close American allies such as the United Kingdom. Just this week, a woman in England died from exposure to Novichok, a nerve agent, which is only produced by Russia.
Departing for his trip to the NATO summit and then on to the UK, Trump on Tuesday said, “I have NATO. I have the UK, which is in, somewhat, turmoil. And I have Putin. Frankly, Putin may be the easiest of them all. Who would think?” Who would have thunk, indeed.
Yup, it’s just so much easier to deal with Putin, who invades neighboring countries at the drop of a hat, attempts to swing American elections as a matter of routine, and has political opponents jailed and even killed.
At the same time that he is bromancing Putin, Trump is dumping on America’s closest allies. Last month he called Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “very dishonest” and “weak.”
]
On Wednesday at the opening of the NATO summit in Brussels, Trump made the absurd claim that “Germany is totally controlled by Russia.”
There was, of course, a time when that was true, when the Soviet Union lorded it over communist East Germany. It’s precisely because of the NATO alliance that stood up to the Soviet Union that, today, East and West Germany are a unified liberal democracy.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was raised in East Germany, jabbed back at Trump on Wednesday, saying, “I have witnessed this myself, that a part of Germany was controlled by the Soviet Union. And I am very happy that we are today unified in freedom as the Federal Republic of Germany.”
Trump’s berating of allies and embrace of enemies might make sense if there were some kind of grand strategic plan behind it, but it’s hard to discern one. Trump has slapped tariffs on European imports such as steel and aluminum, and the Europeans are increasing their own retaliatory tariffs on American products such as motorcycles and orange juice.
Is a trade war with the EU really a smart idea? Hardly, since the EU is the world’s largest trading bloc, considerably larger than the United States or China.
And is attacking America’s NATO allies smart? If anyone can supply a meaningful rationale for this, I’d like to hear it.
Finally, is embracing Putin smart? That question kinda answers itself.
Future Security Forum ASU/New America DC
Proxy warfare conference, Global SOF, New America, ASU, New America DC
Special Operations Policy Forum 2018
Washington, D.C. / November 13, 2018
Special Operations Policy Forum 2018
Register for the Forum
New America, the Center on the Future of War and the McCain Institute of Arizona State University (ASU), the Global SOF Foundation, and the Daniel Morgan Graduate School of National Security are pleased to extend to you an invitation to attend the Special Operations Policy Forum, to be held at New America’s offices in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, November 13, 2018 beginning at 11:45AM. Our focus in 2018 is on “U.S. Policy for Proxy Warfare.”
The purpose of the invitation-only forum is to convene senior U.S. government leaders, leading academics, and national security policy professionals on how to confront the unconventional threats facing Special Operations Forces and how the U.S. military and U.S. government should respond to these threats. These questions extend beyond the purely hard-power and kinetic contexts and into the use of soft-power and the provision of SOF in support of foreign nations’ forces. Sessions this year include:
The Use of Proxy Forces in Modern Warfare
Introduction: Colonel Dennis Wille, U.S. Army Fellow at New America
Moderator: Peter Bergen, Vice President for Global Studies & Fellows at New America, Professor of Practice at Arizona State University and Chairman of the Board of the Global Special Operations Foundation
Nicholas Rasmussen, Senior Director of the McCain Institute’s Counterterrorism Program and former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC)
Vasile Toader, Deputy Chief of Defence Staff for Operations and Training, Romanian Ministry of National Defense
Kelly Magsamen, Vice President for National Security and International Policy at Center for American Progress and former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs
Artificial Intelligence in the Gray Space
Moderator: Peter Singer, Senior Fellow at New America
Erik Grant, Technical Director for the Mission Support and Modernization (MSM), Intelligence, Information, and Services, Raytheon
Wendy Anderson, General Manager of Defense and International and National Security at SparkCognition
Kara Frederick, Research Associate for the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for New American Security (CNAS)
Iran’s Proxy Warfare Strategy
Introduction: Daniel Rothenberg, Co-Director, Center on the Future of War and Professor of Practice, School of Politics and Global Studies, Arizona State University
Moderator: Lieutenant General Ben Freakley, Professor of Practice of Leadership for Arizona State University and former Commanding General, U.S. Army Accessions Command
Norman Roule, former National Intelligence Manager for Iran, Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Karim Sadjadpour, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Candace Rondeaux, Professor of Practice in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University and a Senior Fellow with the Center on the Future of War
New America, ASU, the Global SOF Foundation, and the Daniel Morgan Graduate School are privileged to work together on this project and see this as a first step in advancing U.S. SOF policy for the future. For more information, please visit our website.
Sponsored by:
Raytheon (1)
Special Operations Policy Forum 2018
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
11:45 AM – 5:00 PM EST
740 15th Street NW, Suite 900
Washington, DC 20005
Follow the conversation online using #SOFPolicy and following @GlobalSOF and @NewAmericaISP.
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July Fourth terror plot has a back-to-the-future feel, CNN.com
July Fourth terror plot has a back-to-the-future feel
Peter Bergen
By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
Updated 5:31 PM ET, Mon July 2, 2018
Peter Bergen is a CNN national security analyst, a vice president at New America, a professor of practice at Arizona State University and the author of “United States of Jihad: Who Are America’s Homegrown Terrorists and How Do We Stop Them?”
(CNN)The July Fourth terror plot in Cleveland has a back-to-the future feel because the suspect, Demetrius Pitts, “expressed interest in joining al Qaeda,” and wanted to carry out an operation on behalf of the terror organization, according to the FBI complaint about the case that was made public Monday.
Al Qaeda was founded three decades ago in Pakistan in August 1988 and, of course, carried out the 9/11 attacks nearly 17 years ago.
Pitts’ case underlines how the potential threats to the United States by individuals motivated by the ideology of al Qaeda, as well as its spinoff organization, ISIS, continue to come overwhelmingly from American citizens, rather than from the immigrants covered by the Trump travel ban that was upheld last week by the US Supreme Court.
Yet even that threat has, at least for the moment, receded from its height three years ago when ISIS incited dozens of Americans to join or attempt to join the organization or to carry out terrorist operations on its behalf.
With the recent collapse of the ISIS geographical “caliphate” that once was the size of the United Kingdom in the heart of the Middle East, the shine seems to be off the ISIS “brand.”
In 2015, when ISIS was at the height of its power, 80 individuals in the United States were charged with some kind of jihadist terrorist crime, almost all of them inspired by ISIS, according to data collected by New America, a research institution.
By contrast, so far in 2018 only five individuals have been charged with a terrorism crime. including Pitts, according to the New America data.
With ISIS largely out of business, we may see alleged terrorists such as Pitts turning back to al Qaeda as a source of inspiration. Al Qaeda has affiliates in North Africa, Syria and Yemen, all of which continue to have varying degrees of strength.
Like the vast majority of terrorism suspects since 9/11, Pitts, age 48, is a US citizen who allegedly radicalized in the United States. Of the 422 terrorism cases tracked by New America since 9/11, 85% involved US citizens or permanent residents.
The Pitts case is a reminder that the jihadist terrorist threat is almost entirely “homegrown.” While the Supreme Court, traditionally deferential to the executive power of the president when it comes to national security, has upheld the “travel ban” from a number of Muslim-majority countries, the ban is a solution in search of a problem that doesn’t exist, because jihadist terrorism impacting the United States is largely caused by terrorists long resident in the country.
Pitt’s case also underlines the importance to the FBI of undercover agents and informants. According to the FBI complaint, Pitts came to the attention of the agency in 2015 because of threatening comments he had made on Facebook. An undercover agent was put on the case. Pitts made a number of threats to the agent about carrying out a terrorist attack in Cleveland this July Fourth.
According to New America data, just under half of the more than 400 post-9/11 jihadist terrorism cases used informants or undercover FBI agents.
In the FBI affidavit in Pitts’ case, he comes across as a wannabe spouting off his mouth to the informant about his plans to wreak mayhem in Cleveland during the upcoming July Fourth holiday, but the FBI clearly felt it had enough to arrest Pitts before he might become a danger to others.
Seven years after Obama’s ‘worst mistake,’ Libya killing is rampant, CNN.com
Seven years after Obama’s ‘worst mistake,’ Libya killing is rampant
By Peter Bergen and Alyssa Sims
“Peter Bergen is a CNN national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is writing a book for Penguin Random House about the national security decision-making of the Trump administration. Alyssa Sims is a policy analyst with the International Security Program at New America. The opinions expressed in this commentary are their own.”
(CNN)Years after then President Barack Obama made what he has described as his worst mistake by not adequately planning for the fall of Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, Libya remains in chaos. In the past seven years, four nations have conducted air strikes in Libya and hundreds of civilians have died in those strikes.
As the protests of the Arab Spring swept through Libya, Gadhafi mounted a war of attrition against his own people describing those who were protesting his rule as “rats.”
The Obama administration helped steer a UN resolution to take military action to protect Libyan civilians, which resulted in a US-led NATO intervention in Libya. Gadhafi was eventually killed by rebels.
However, the lack of planning for the “day after” the regime’s collapse helped set the stage for a civil war. Today that civil war grinds on. Taking advantage of the chaos in Libya, ISIS and al Qaeda have also taken root in the country.
A feature of the continuing conflict in Libya is the use of airstrikes by a number of foreign countries and local groups, spurred by the rise in militant organizations in the country as well as the ongoing civil war.
Since the NATO intervention officially ended on Oct. 31, 2011, there have been 2,158 reported airstrikes in Libya documented by the research organizations Airwars and New America in a new study released Wednesday. (This piece is partially adapted from that report.)
Four countries — Egypt, France, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the United States — as well as three local Libyan groups, including the Libyan government, known as the GNA, and a rival group led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, carried out those air strikes.
Since 2014, Libya has increasingly become an arena for warfare by multiple states. The GNA is supported by the United States, which also carries out strikes against ISIS and al-Qaeda.
Egypt and the UAE are carrying out their own strikes either in support of Field Marshal Haftar or against Islamist militias.
France is also striking Islamist militant targets in Libya.
According to news reports and accounts on social media, at least 242 civilians were killed in these strikes, taking the lowest estimate, and as many as 395 killed, by the highest estimate, according to the Airwars/New America study.
No nation or local group has admitted responsibility for any of these civilian deaths.
The Airwars/New America study is the first overall accounting of these civilian deaths.
Officials from Egypt, France, and the United Arab Emirates and the three local Libyan groups didn’t respond when asked for comment about their air strikes.
According to the Airwars/New America study, the US has conducted at least 524 strikes on militant targets in Libya since the NATO intervention, primarily against ISIS in the city of Sirte during 2016, which according to Libyan reports, resulted in between 10 to 20 civilian fatalities.
Asked for comment on the allegations of civilian deaths, US Major Karl Wiest said that AFRICOM, which is in charge of US military operations in Libya, conducted “post-strike assessments” of all American military actions in the region and has investigated two allegations of civilian casualties in Libya, and found both to be not credible.
Of the four countries conducting air strikes in Libya, the United States is the most transparent about its operations, reporting publicly, for instance, on the 495 air and drone strikes it conducted against ISIS in Sirte.
The airstrikes by the four nations and the competing Libyan factions are intensifying the conflict in an already fragile country.
Egypt has defended its airstrikes in Libya using a self-defense argument that these strikes are aimed at terrorist groups that threaten their security; this is the same kind of argument the United States has made since 9/11 to defend its covert drone program aimed at suspected terrorists in the tribal areas of Pakistan along its border with Afghanistan and its counterterrorism operations in Somalia and Yemen.
The fact that four foreign countries are conducting airstrikes in Libya underscores the chaos and instability in the country, while battles between the two main competing Libyan factions have contributed to the conflict that prompted Obama to describe the post-Gadhafi conflict in Libya as his worst mistake.
Solving the conflict will not be easy. The US-led campaign against ISIS in Libya greatly reduced, but did not end the presence of the terrorist army there, so keeping up the pressure on both ISIS and al Qaeda in Libya is important for US national security interests.
Key to bringing peace to Libya is to end the civil war between the central government and the forces of Field Marshal Haftar, a civil war that is amplified by states such as Egypt and the UAE that are waging proxy warfare to support Haftar. Western countries should put additional effort into supporting an ongoing UN-led peace effort and urge Haftar to lay down his arms.
The Beltway and the Ivory Tower: Bridging the Gap, New America DC
The Beltway and the Ivory Tower: Bridging the Gap
Event
The gap between policy and academic research has bedeviled national security policy for years. What are the roots of this challenge and how can it be addressed? What kind of research do foreign policymakers want? How should we evaluate policy relevance and can it be ranked? Can blogs help bridge the gap? These questions are critical not only for policymakers but for the academic fields of research as well.
To discuss these issues, New America is pleased to welcome Dr. Paul Avey, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Virginia Tech; Dr. Michael Desch, a professor and Director of the International Security Center at the University of Notre Dame; Dr. Peter Campbell, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Baylor University; and Dr. Susan Peterson, Professor of Government at The College of William and Mary. The panel members are part of the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Bridging the Gap project.
Join the conversation online using #BridgingtheGap and following @NewAmericaISP.
Panelists:
Paul Avey
Assistant Professor of Political Science, Virginia Tech
Peter Campbell
Assistant Professor of Political Science, Baylor University
Michael Desch, @mcdesch
Professor and Director, International Security Center at the University of Notre Dame
Susan Peterson
Professor and Director, Institute for the Theory and Practice of International Relations at William and Mary
Moderator:
Peter Bergen, @peterbergencnn
Vice President, New America
“Why Terrorist Groups Form International Alliances.” New America DC
The Washington Daybook
June 21, 2018
New America holds a book discussion on “Why Terrorist Groups Form International Alliances.”
SECTION: BOOK DISCUSSION; ||STATE/SECURITY/BOOK|| Foreign Affairs
LENGTH: 65 words
TIME: 2 p.m.
PARTICIPANTS: author Tricia Bacon, assistant professor at American University; and Peter Bergen, vice president of New America
LOCATION: New America, 740 15th Street NW, Suite 900, Washington, D.C.
How Obama’s team lost its innocence, CNN.com
How Obama’s team lost its innocence
By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
June 12, 2018
“Peter Bergen is a CNN national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is writing a book for Penguin Random House about the national security decision-making of the Trump administration. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.”
(CNN)Way back in the 20th century, America’s foreign policy principles were described with genteel phrases like the “Truman Doctrine,” “containment” and the “Pottery Barn rule.” In today’s cruder world, the policy of the Obama administration was summed up by its leader as “don’t do stupid shit.” And now, we learn from Jeffrey Goldberg’s conversation with a “senior White House official with direct access to the president and his thinking” that the Trump doctrine is “We’re America, bitch.”
But once you get past the fulminating rhetoric coming from today’s White House, it’s possible to see how President Donald Trump and President Barack Obama actually have a similar view about American military interventions — that a more modest US role in the world is desirable.
Trump has followed the Obama playbook of avoiding large-scale conventional wars and instead has relied on Special Forces, drones and cyberwarfare that were the hallmarks of Obama’s tenure as commander in chief. Trump is even pursuing diplomacy with the North Koreans, which is looking more and more like the diplomatic dance that Obama’s team engaged in with the Iranians.
Indeed, Trump has gone even further to curry favor with an adversary than Obama ever did with the Iranians by personally meeting with North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong Un, on Tuesday in Singapore, where Trump declared, “We both want to do something. We both are going to do something. And we have developed a very special bond.”
For insight on that Obama playbook, it makes sense to consult Ben Rhodes’ fine new memoir of the Obama years. Rhodes, who began his career in Washington working for retired Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton, the former vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, signed on in 2007 as a 29-year-old speechwriter for the Democratic primary candidate, Barack Obama, who was then mounting what seemed like a quixotic campaign against the Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton.
Rhodes went on to be one of Obama’s deputy national security advisers. As a result, Rhodes was “in the room” for almost every foreign policy decision of significance that Obama made during his eight years in office and in a privileged position to chronicle how the idealism of the early Obama administration faded as it confronted the realities of an often-Hobbesian world.
High drama
Rhodes clearly kept good notes during his time in the West Wing, and he has written a fascinating account of the Obama administration, which began with the high drama of Obama’s speech in Cairo in 2009 and the hoped-for reset with the Muslim world and ended with the high drama of the election of President Trump, who has now largely undone Obama’s key foreign policy accomplishments, such as the Iranian nuclear deal, the Paris climate agreement and his rapprochement with Cuba.
Rhodes explains well the toll that a constantly demanding White House job took on his closest relationships. At one point, he hid in a closet in his apartment to check his BlackBerry so his long-suffering wife wouldn’t see him reading his messages for the millionth time, a scene that any workaholic will recognize with a dry chuckle.
Rhodes, whose mother’s family is Jewish, also paints a dispiriting picture of what it’s like to work in a highly polarized political environment where far-right media outlets simultaneously painted him as “part of a global Jewish conspiracy” and also as a “virulent anti-Semite, covering for the Muslim Brotherhood.”
As the pressure mounts, Rhodes smokes more and, succumbing to insomnia, watches every episode of Anthony Bourdain’s show, “Parts Unknown,” on CNN. It is Rhodes who engineers the dim sum dinner in Vietnam between Obama and Bourdain in 2016.
Rhodes spent a great deal of time with Obama, and there are sharp portraits of how the President thinks and acts interspersed throughout the memoir. Regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin, Rhodes writes, Obama “neither liked nor loathed Putin, nor did he subscribe to the view that Putin was all that tough. ‘If he was that sure of himself,’ Obama said, ‘he wouldn’t have his picture taken riding around with his shirt off.'”
In another scene, as Obama is close to ending his second term, the President jumps into “the Beast,” the heavily armored limo in which the president always rides, and takes out his iPad to play the rap song, “Thrift Shop,” by Macklemore. The President starts bopping and dancing to the beat, along with his usually ultrasober national security adviser, Susan Rice. The Secret Service agents in front of the limo continue to stare off into the distance, impassively.
Obama and American interventionism
Rhodes covers a lot of waterfront in his book, including his own leadership of the negotiations with the Cubans to normalize relations with the United States, which was achieved with considerable sotto voce help from the Vatican.
He also writes in some detail about the decision-making around the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the opening that Obama made to the military regime in Burma and also about the Iran deal.
The title of Rhodes’ memoir, “The World As It Is,” suggests a certain pragmatism about the world, but that was not the state of mind that Rhodes and the other younger members of Obama’s newly minted national security team had when they first came into office in early 2009.
During the Rwandan genocide, Rice, who would become Obama’s first United Nations ambassador, was an official in the Clinton administration working on Africa.
Samantha Power, a senior director on Obama’s National Security Council (who later became UN ambassador), had literally written the book on genocide, the Pulitzer-winning, “A Problem from Hell,” and as a journalist, she had reported on Serbian atrocities during the civil wars in Yugoslavia.
For Rice and Power, “Never Again” was more than just a slogan, and the emerging liberal doctrine of the “Responsibility to Protect” civilians from the predations of dictators was an article of faith.
Casting aside an ally
When the crowds began to gather in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in January 2011 to protest the authoritarian rule of Egypt’s president-for-life, Hosni Mubarak, there was little doubt which side Rhodes, Power and Rice were on. They were on the side of the crowds. They were on the side of history! And that is where Obama also came down. Obama publicly demanded that Mubarak had to go — and in doing so cast aside a longtime American ally.
After Obama’s demand, Egyptian military officers pushed Mubarak out of office, but ultimately this did not produce a more democratic Egyptian state; quite the reverse.
The older members of Obama’s national security team, such as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, had all cautioned against throwing Mubarak overboard on the basis that the devil you know is better than what may come next.
Their caution was merited. Flash forward seven years: after many years of unrest that has torpedoed Egypt’s vital tourism sector, today the country is ruled by another military strong man, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who is arguably even more repressive than Mubarak.
Obama’s intervention in Egypt to oust Mubarak seemed to make sense at the time, but in the longer sweep of history, the skeptics in Obama’s Cabinet look wiser than the Young Turks exemplified by Rhodes. At the end of his memoir, Rhodes acknowledges that he now sees “the world as it is” but still believes in “the world as it ought to be.”
Lessons of Libya
During the Obama administration, the disconnect between what the world actually is and how it ought to be was never clearer than in the case of Libya. As the protests of the Arab Spring swept through Libya, the Libyan dictator, Moammar Gadhafi, mounted a ferocious campaign against his own population.
At a meeting with Obama in the Situation Room to discuss Libya, Power passed Rhodes a note warning that this was going to be the “first mass atrocity to take place on our watch.”
Again the graybeards in the Situation Room argued for caution. Biden and Gates advised against embroiling the United States in Libya in yet another war in a Muslim country. Obama turned to Power and Rhodes for their advice. They both argued for American intervention to save civilians: the Responsibility to Protect.
Rice steered a strongly worded resolution through the United Nations that authorized a US-led NATO intervention to protect civilians. Gadhafi was subsequently killed by rebels, but there was scant American planning for the day after the fall of Gadhafi, and the country is now riven by a civil war. ISIS has also established itself there. Obama has described the lack of planning for post-Gadhafi Libya as his worst mistake.
Obama seemed to have overlearned the lessons of the post-Gadhafi chaos in Libya and opted to do little in Syria. One of the options Obama had in Syria was to order the bombing of the runways of Assad’s air force to stop the regime’s indiscriminate air strikes against civilians. Obama asked his national security team, “And what happens after we bomb the runways and Russia, Iran and Assad rebuild them?” The question wasn’t designed to elicit support for greater American intervention in the conflict.
Obama then famously/infamously drew his “red line” that the United States would take military action if the Syrian regime deployed chemical weapons. When it did so, Obama decided to seek congressional authorization for striking Syria. This decision was soon rendered moot by the Syrians, who said they would surrender their chemical weapons in a deal brokered by Putin.
However, it was only a partial surrender, as the Syrian regime continued to use such weapons during the Tramp administration. Trump responded with missile strikes on two separate occasions after the Syrians had used chemical weapons.
The US would largely stay out of the Syrian war, in which 12 million people have been forced out of their homes and some 500,000 have died.
Would greater American intervention have made the Syrian war less lethal? We can’t run the counterfactual, but the Syrian war is a graphic reminder that the United States doing too little overseas can be just as problematic as the United States doing too much.
In the grim calculus of war, however, greater American intervention in the Syrian conflict would surely have had real costs in American blood and treasure, as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate.
The United States is certainly capable of sins of commission: Overthrowing the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003 with no plan for the day after and overthrowing Gadhafi in 2011 with, again, no plan for the day after, helped to spark two civil wars in the Middle East.
The United States is also capable of sins of omission, such as doing nothing as the Rwandan genocide unfolded under President Bill Clinton. Obama also did little to stop Assad from waging a total war against many of his own people.
Any American president who makes the decision to intervene or not to intervene overseas is usually making this decision with a limited menu of unappealing options that all will likely have unintended second- and third-order effects.
The shock
We all know how Rhodes’ book is going to end: Americans will elect a president quite different from Obama who seems determined to roll back everything Obama had done in office. As Rhodes writes plaintively, “After all the work we’d done it was going to end like this.”
In Greg Barker’s film, “The Final Year,” which documents Obama’s foreign policy team in 2016, one of the last sequences in the film shows Rhodes early in the morning of Trump’s victory. Rhodes, the professional wordsmith and hyperarticulate speaker, tries to find the words to describe what he feels as he absorbs the full implications of what Trump’s victory means. Rhodes opens and closes his mouth several times, but he never finds the words to describe his shock. (Disclosure: I have worked on films with Barker and have spoken to Rhodes when he was in the White House.)
To understand the exact dimensions of how Obama absorbed the same shock, we will have to wait for his own forthcoming memoir. But for now, we have the next best thing, which is Rhodes’ gripping account of his decade working with Obama as he evolved from Obama’s amanuensis to his confidante and a key national security adviser.
Counternarcotics: Lessons from the U.S. Experience in Afghanistan, New America DC
Counternarcotics: Lessons from the U.S. Experience in Afghanistan
Event
Afghanistan’s drug trade presents a vexing challenge for policy makers in what has become America’s longest war. Despite the U.S. spending approximately $8.6 billion on counternarcotics in Afghanistan since 2002, the country is the world’s largest opium producer and opium poppy is the country’s largest cash crop. In a new lessons learned report, Counternarcotics: Lessons from the U.S. Experience in Afghanistan, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction examines counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2017, providing lessons and recommendations for the U.S. government.
New America welcomes John F. Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), for the launch of the new SIGAR report. New America also welcomes to discuss the report and counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan, Ambassador Ronald Neumann (ret.), President of the American Academy of Diplomacy and former U.S. Ambassador to Algeria, Bahrain, and Afghanistan; Harold D. “Doug” Wankel, former Chief of Operations and Chief of Intelligence for the Drug Enforcement Administration andformer Director of the Kabul Counter Narcotics Office, U.S. Embassy Kabul; and Kate Bateman, Project Lead for the SIGAR counternarcotics report.
Join the conversation online using #SIGARand following @NewAmericaISP.
Keynote Address:
John F. Sopko
Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction
Panelists:
Ambassador Ronald Neumann (Ret.)
President, American Academy of Diplomacy
Former U.S. Ambassador to Algeria, Bahrain, and Afghanistan
Harold D. “Doug” Wankel
Former Chief of Operations, Drug Enforcement Administration
Former Chief of Intelligence, Drug Enforcement Administration
Former Director, Kabul Counter Narcotics Office of U.S. Embassy Kabul (2004-2007)
Kate Bateman
Project Lead, Lessons Learned Program, SIGAR
Moderator:
Peter Bergen, @peterbergencnn
Vice President, New America
Countering Disinformation & Violent Extremism in the Digital Age, New America DC
Countering Disinformation & Violent Extremism in the Digital Age
Event
Hostile governments looking to influence foreign elections. Terrorists and terrorist groups communicating with each other and sharing extremist content. Unwitting consumption of fake news. These are just some of the many threats to individuals’ safety, security and privacy across social-media and online platforms. As the world becomes more networked, how are companies who manage the platforms on which so much of this divisive content exists managing to remove and stem its flow, protect their users, and ensure their users’ rights to freedom of expression?
To help address these and other issues, New America welcomes Monika Bickert, Facebook’s Vice President of Global Policy Management, who leads the team responsible for policies on what types of content can be shared on Facebook and how advertisers and developers can interact with the site. Prior to joining Facebook in 2012, Ms. Bickert was the resident legal advisor at the U.S. embassy in Bangkok and previously was an assistant United States attorney in Washington, D.C. and Chicago.
Participant:
Monika Bickert
Vice President of Global Policy Management, Facebook
Discussant:
Peter Bergen, @peterbergencnn
Vice President and Director, Global Studies and Fellows, New America
Moderator:
Mi-Ai Parrish, @publishorperish
Sue Clark-Johnson Professor in Media Innovation and Leadership, ASU
Follow the conversation online using #FacebookFightsExtremism and following @NewAmericaISP.
When
Jun. 6, 2018
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
Where
New America
740 15th St NW #900 Washington, D.C. 20005
RSVP
New America
740 15th Street NW, Suite 900
Washington, DC 20005
