re: "Spy problems"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") critiqued how America collects intelligence.

Money quote(s):

"One of the biggest flaws in our national security is the lack of any serious human intelligence capabilities. I do not mean to demean those who do practice this most dangerous craft, but to point out our lack of focus on this area."

We do have folks whose (dangerous) business this is; CAA has had the privilege of working with some of them in the past.

"I am saddened by the amateur nature of it. We decided back in the days of Jimmy Carter that spying was too nasty a game for a civilized nation to play and consequently we have blundered about like Mr. Magoo since then. We rely on signal intercepts to learn what is going on, and while this is valuable, absent the context and reality check of human intelligence it is guess work. Sadly all too often our guesses have turned out to be wrong."

Within the IC, the "science is settled" on this; the post-Vietnam focus on technical intelligence and severe cuts our human intelligence capabilities were a mistake.

Post-9/11, much time, effort, and money has gone to re-building our human collection capabilities but this isn't something that can simply be achieved, it's a moving target.

"If we want to avoid big wars, then we need a true intelligence gathering capability. That means spies, real spies, spying on people. We can scarf up all the data we want, but the value of an insider telling us what is really going on trumps all that. So let's thaw out some of the Cold War tactics that kept us safe. It may not be Boris & Natasha (or it might) but we need to keep an eye on all kinds of folks."

11/21

re: "The Obama Foreign Policy (Part I)"

The DiploMad ("Wracked with angst over the fate of our beloved and
horribly misgoverned Republic, the DiploMad returns to do battle on the world
wide web, swearing death to political correctness, and pulling no
punches.") began a valedictory series of posts about our foreign policy apparatus.

Money quote(s):

"My career in the Foreign Service began when Jimmy "Wear a Sweater" Carter was President; the Shah sat on the Peacock Throne; the Soviets and their Cuban servants were all over Africa, Central and South America, and the Caribbean; our economy was in the sewer; our cities drug and race-fueled combat zones; our military, a hollowed out racially divided horror; and CIA and State, under appalling leadership, could do nothing right internationally. And things only got worse: the Shah fell to the Muslim crazies; the Soviets invaded Afghanistan; Communism, Socialism, and Liberation were on the march around the world. The bon pensant knew the future belonged to the Soviets and the Japanese, while we sat in the dark, shivering in our cardigan sweaters, suffering "malaise," and praying Moloch would eat us last.

Since those dark "Carter on Mars" days, thanks to Ronald Reagan, with his optimism and ability to see through mainstream cant, our country underwent a massive social, economic, and political renovation that showcased an unmatched American ability to regroup, reinvent, and implement. Our economy came roaring back; our military reaffirmed its unequaled status; the Soviets, unable to compete with the American economy and technical wizardry, came crashing down; and mighty ten-foot-tall Japan could not match the United States for innovation and the
ability to put it to work at a dazzling speed. Even Bill Clinton learned not to fix a working model; he went along with GOP efforts to reform welfare, and poured money into sustaining and expanding the world's best special forces--as the Taliban and al Qaeda soon discovered. The confused waning days of the Bush administration, alas, pried opened the Gates of Hell once more; the inept McCain campaign couldn't close them, allowing the malevolent Obama misadministration to escape the Depths, and take over the White House--immediately making us nostalgic for Carter. We are in crisis mode, again." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Persons quibbling with the above summary of those several decades will reveal far more about themselves than they might wish.

"In its defense, let me say that to call it a policy designed for America's defeat gives it too much credit. My experience at State and the NSC, has shown me that most Obamaistas are not knowledgable enough to design anything. Foreign policy for the Obama crew is an afterthought. They really have little interest in it; many key jobs went vacant for months at State, DOD, CIA, and the NSC. The Obama foreign policy team is peopled by the "well-educated," i.e., they have college degrees, and as befits the "well educated" in today's America, they are stunningly ignorant and arrogant leftists, but mostly just idiots. They do not make plans; they tend to fly by the seat of their pants using a deeply ingrained anti-US default setting for navigation. They react to the Beltway crowd of NGOs, "activists" of various stripes, NPR, the Washington Post and the New York Times. Relying on what they "know," they ensure the US does not appear as a bully, or an interventionist when it comes to our enemies: after all, we did something to make them not like us. Long-term US allies, e.g., Canada, UK, Israel, Japan, Honduras, Colombia, on the other hand, they view as anti-poor, anti-Third World, and retrograde Cold Warriors. Why else would somebody befriend the US? Obama's NSC and State are staffed with people who do not know the history of the United States, and, simply, do not understand or appreciate the importance of the United States in and to the world. They are embarrassed by and, above all, do not like the United States. They look down on the average American, and openly detest any GOP Congressman or Congresswoman, especially
Representative Ros-Lehtinen and Senator DeMint, who dares question their wisdom. They have no problem with anti-American regimes and personages because overwhelmingly they are anti-American themselves (Note: I exempt Hillary Clinton from the anti-American tag; she is just ignorant--more on that in my next posting)." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Bear in mind that Rep. Ros-Lehtinen is the Chairman of the House Committee of Foreign Affairs. For anyone who is a staff member at NSC or State to ignore her is about as stupid as ignoring gravity.

"Our foreign policy is not made in any real sense. It slithers out from this foggy fetid leftist primeval mire and "evolves" into the weird amorphous "policy" we now have. It is guided by The Anointed One's long-standing Triple AAA motto: Apologize. Appease. Accommodate. There is no understanding of the relationship between military power and diplomacy, between expending the blood and treasure of America and our interests. For the Obamaistas the topics of burning interest tend to be those far removed from the core national interests of the United States, e.g., treatment of prostitutes in Sri Lanka, gay rights around the world, the status of women in Africa, beating up the inconsequential junta in Burma, helping overthrow U.S. ally Mubarak, but doing nothing about the Iran-Venezuela alliance, the imprisonment of an American AID contractor in Cuba, the growing anti-Americanism spreading throughout Latin
America, the disintegration of the few remaining moderate Muslim states, and on and on. This leftist, anti-American disease is contagious. Just look at the recent statements by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, once a moderate middle of the road politician, now spouting rubbish about needing "international permission" to deploy US military power, undermining over two centuries of US defense doctrine, not to mention the Constitution. " (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

This stuff ("There is no understanding of the relationship between military power and diplomacy, between expending the blood and treasure of America and our interests.") is actually taught in (at least some of) our senior military schools, the war colleges and such. DIMEFILS, for the initiate. Strategy and Grand Strategy. The up-and-coming majors and lieutenant commanders, the lieutenant colonels and commanders, and the colonels and captains, the ones from among tomorrow's generals and admirals will be selected, are at least exposed to the concepts that can mean life or death for entire nations and alliances of nations.

These field-grade ("mid-grade, in State Dept. parlance) officers will have already proven themselves tactically and operationally proficient (or at least not criminally inept) by the time they are selected for these schools and colleges, where their studies will be at least nominally at the graduate and post-graduate levels.

And what do we have on the diplomatic side of the house?

The Institute for Peace? Not quite sure what they do, but has anyone else who's worked in Foggy Bottom ever noticed how often they seem to be having big parties and receptions over there across "C" Street at their post-modern building?

(The big catering trucks and the blocked lanes of traffic are kind of a giveaway. As are the hispanic waiters, bartenders, and waitresses coming and going from the Metro Station by GWU.)

Well, there's the Foreign Service Institute, which has a nice campus on the former Arlington Hall Station site (a.k.a. "the George P. Shultz National Foreign Affairs Training Center").

"The Foreign Service Institute is organized like a university and
consists of five schools:
The School of Language Studies
The School of Applied Information Technology
The School of Leadership and Management
The School of Professional and Area Studies
The Transition Center "

The key word in that passage is "like." FSI has deans, t-shirts, a registrar, and an attractive coat-of-arms, but it's not a university, not a college, not really a center of advanced or even (for the most part) undergraduate-level education. NFATC is what it says it is in the name, a "Training Center." It's the equivalent of a corporate training center.

Don't get me wrong, FSI training is in fact essential for preparing our employees to accomplish their missions when they deploy abroad to our more than 260 embassies and consulates. The language school alone would be worth the investment of staffing hours and funding. And I hasten to say good things about the FS and CS orientation programs as well as the consular training. Couldn't have done it without you guys!

But it's emphatically not the equivalent of any of the DoD's war colleges, or even the C&GS School.

Former SecState Colin Powell was a big believer in the notion of a training continuum, as befitted a career U.S. Army officer, and he led the Department of State long enough to make that notion part of the corporate culture. That's a good thing.

But there's still a lingering institutional prejudice against professional development education. As FSO blogger Two Crabs quoted from a recent article:

"The people who are successful in the State Department are people who
can be thrown in the deep end of the swimming pool and not drown; but the department never teaches them to swim, and the successful ones even come to discredit the value of swimming lessons, because they succeeded without them."

The FS Written Examination (now reflagged as the computer-based FS Officer Test) and the FS Oral Assessment do select for broadly- and highly-educated candidates. While eschewing the explicit requirement of a particular diploma or credential, the more years of formal education a bright FS candidate has completed, the more likely they are to be successful in the FSO accession process.

So our newest diplomats enter the Foreign Service already highly educated (graduate degrees or other post-undergraduate education such as law school, more often than not) unless they manage to wrangle a training assignment (or a sabbatical to take even higher education) away from the State Department they're never really going to get anything but training from FSI.

Training is not education. It's training. Nothing wrong with training; training is good. But training will only train students about how to do things or sets of things. It's a lot less likely to prepare diplomats to think about the why of things any more than their pre-State Dept. education already did.

Heretical statement: diplomats, like leaders, can be born to be diplomats or they can be educated to be diplomats. But even the born-diplomats can be educated to be better diplomats.

"The career Foreign Service is hapless. Many of the FSOs, especially the young ones, come from the same "educational" background as the political Obama types. Many have strong sympathies for the Obama view of the world because it is easy, it requires less work--thinking is hard. It is best to come up with long carefully nuanced memos regurgitating the most conventional of conventional left-of-center "wisdom," so that the powers above do not get displeased. Deny a
problem exists, then you do not have to do anything about it, "He is just an agricultural reformer . . .". " (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Hmm. My initial thought was the "agricultural reformer" line was just Castro, but it was used to label Mao as well.

(And it was "agrarian reformer" the way CAA learned it.)

At least I can't dismiss DiploMad's critique of career FSOs as more outdated stereotypical nonsense about striped-pants and passing cookies. That gets old, although, like Don Quixote, CAA will continue to tilt at that windmill until it finally falls like the skewered ogre it ought to be.

No, DiploMad's comments are up-to-date and Millenial. They encompass the transformational and (for those who can't avoid it) expeditionary diplomacy that currently encoils the Foreign Service.

3/15

re: "I remember Carter's Army"

Bill at Castle Argghhh! reminds us of the bad-old-days (before the Reagan build-up).

Money quote(s):

"We could probably scare the rest of you for hours with tales of how over 50% of our equipment was deadlined because there was no money in the budget for parts, maybe 30% of the remainder was parked in the Motor Pool because there was no money in the budget to pay for fuel for them, but it didn't matter much that we couldn't drive them to the training areas, because there was no money in the budget to pay for training ammo."

Yours Truly recalls how things improved as resources began to trickle down to the troop level during the early years of the Reagan administration, and as how things dried up again during the Clinton years.

"A reporter interviewing the commander of NATO's land forces asked him what equipment the Sovs would need to reach the English Channel if they decided to crash through Fulda, and he answered, "Shoes."

Carter's military, not just Carter's Army, was hollower than the Keebler elves' tree, and we all knew it. It still amazes me is that enough of us were yet willing to fight World War III if it happened..."

We happy few.

re: "Libya: Did Citizen Evacuations Stand in the Way of Better Policy?"

Peter Spiro at Opinio Juris ("a forum for informed discussion and lively debate about international law and international relations") is, as always, asking some of the right questions.

(Even if he is a lawyer.)

Money quote(s):

"It now seems to be the conventional wisdom (hard to shake once in place) that the U.S. has been slow off the mark on Libya. That may have consequences for U.S. standing in the region."

Conventional wisdom isn't always wrong. It just seems like it most of the time.

Still, perception influences reality, even if it does not (as some believe) equate to reality.

"The Administration got a defense out (on background) that it held off on more decisive action — such as imposing the sanctions that were finally put in place last night — pending the evacuation from Libya of U.S. citizens, U.S. diplomats in particular. As always, safety of U.S. citizens is said to be the highest priority in such unstable situations. Apparently, the U.S. embassy compound in Tripoli is poorly secured, with no Marine guards in place to defend."

No marines in Tripoli? Sounds like the inspiration for a Country & Western song, perhaps using the "Do They Know It's Christmas" tune from 1985.

But I digress.

"That’s a tough place to be. Obviously you don’t want to end up in a hostage situation (the politics of that would be horrific for Obama in addition to all the other reasons — the Carter comparison perfected). But does it have to be the case that U.S. policy itself is held hostage?

Perhaps the lesson here is to have contingency plans in place to pull U.S. officials out of such situations quickly (as of today, think Sanaa, Libreville, Yaounde, among others). That would have the downside of leaving other U.S. citizens without exit assistance, at least not in place. But many of them are taken care of by their corporate employers. Many others will be dual nationals, and only nominally American, and should be able to fend for themselves as well as locals."

There are contingency plans for lots of things. The Marine Corps has something of a sideline in NEOs (non-combatant evacuation operations), but some of the sketchier places tend to rather out-of-the-way and would need some assistance to get out and that assistance would take time getting there.

Recall that during the Rwandan genocide, our embassy folks had to convoy out of the country on their own, something that good RSOs and consular chiefs keep in the back of their minds as one of the nightmare scenarios to prepare against.

The argument about dual nationals has come up before, and The Onion recently did a piece lampooning the American practise of having to evacuate visitors to places nobody in their right mind should want to visit. I don't have an answer to either question, but it's nice to see people asking in public fora what consular officers sometimes ask each other quietly, where the public can't hear us.

(Don't get me wrong, we'll do everything we can to help, but think of us as firemen who can't help but wonder to one another just why you were playing with matches.)

re: "The Country’s In The Very Best Of Hands"

Rand Simberg at Transterrestrial Musings ("Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!") bundles some smart analysis and then brings the snark.

Money quote(s):

"It makes me long for the robust, intelligent foreign policy of Jimmy Carter."

re: "Honduras coup: Nice job, but here's how to do it better next time"

J Michael Waller at PoliticalWarfare.Org ("Words, images and ideas as tools of first resort.") had some suggestions for Honduras.

Money quote(s):

"How different modern Latin American history would be if the US had backed the brave Venezuelan officers and civilians who dared challenge the man who would abuse the democratic system to become an aggressive dictator.

Across Latin America, the Chavez model of political subversion of existing democratic and legal structures is taking root, with extremists taking power through Venezuelan petrodollar-funded covert operations to topple pro-western governments and create a Bolivarian "near abroad."

The US has done nothing to try to stem the trend. Nothing. Democrat or Republican - American leaders have handed the playing field over to Chavez and his Cuban and Iranian allies. It's been a pathetic show.

How refreshing it was to see that humble Honduras is the only country in the region not to lose its political cojones and that, to keep its Chavez-backed president from violating the constitution, its other institutions acted.

"It's all about process. As Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush proved in Venezuela, it's not really democracy that the US wants. It's legalistic process that matters. Just like the bureaucrat who doesn't care if you've really complied with a regulation, all that matters is the piece of paper that certifies that you did comply. Whether or not you really did. So Chavez can build his dictatorship simply by working through the democratic system and subverting it, and his model has been replicated again and again in the Americas. All to the cheer of do-gooders and demokracy-uber-alles fanatics alike.

And when the Good Guys step in to stop the nonsense, they are condemned because they are working outside The Process."

&

"Zelaya is a nut and illegal political agent of a foreign power who has alienated practically everyone in Honduras. He can hardly get TV time. His own party unanimously abandoned him, voting to agree to his resignation and the alleged "coup." The rest of the democratically elected congress called on the military to take action against him, too. So did the Supreme Court."