re: "Your masters are not in Brussels, Gen. Dempsey"

Pundita ("US foreign policy for the 21st Century") cautioned the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Money quote(s):

"If you think a person is crazy, what use is it to attempt to reason with him? However, I don't know whether the chairman is actually crazy, or just doing a good imitation whenever he discusses Pakistan -- a mental blip that seems to manifest in all ranking members of the U.S. military who hold forth on Pakistan whenever they get in front of a microphone.

But despite my discomfort I should like to point out that while the U.S. military is under civilian control, this doesn't mean it's supposed to be under the control of civilians in foreign nations, even NATO ones." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

And yet.... going all the way back to World War I, the U.S. has had to learn to work within alliances, with its allies, even when it's leading said alliances.

Having said that, prior to NATO, all of the United State's alliances were fairly short-term ones.

Perhaps such long-term familiarity blurs our own clarity of mission.

"I can't find a sound rationale for U.S. commanders basing their war planning on the geopolitical machinations and business concerns of European, Turkish and Canadian governments. This, in my view, is taking the 'You gotta have a gang' mentality too far.

I confess I've been particularly concerned about the gang mentality since February 2010, when AFP reported that NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasumssen had floated the idea of NATO becoming "the hub of a network of security partnerships and a centre for consultation on international security issues -- even issues on which the alliance might never take action." "

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"(Y)ou know how it is, when people seek to assure you about something that hadn't even occurred to you before. Not to be unkind, but NATO demonstrated in Afghanistan that it can't fight its way out of a paper bag. All that NATO seems to excel at in the military sphere is carpet bombing. So I certainly hope it's not entertaining the idea of becoming a global constabulary -- one that takes its political guidance from Brussels, no less."

7/30

re: "For God's sake Amb. Munter, don't Go Native on us now"

Pundita ("US foreign policy for the 21st Century") has some sharp criticism of the Department.

Money quote(s):

"In yet another sign that the U.S. Department of State should relocate to Brussels U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter advised White House officials that President Obama should deliver a "formal video statement," according to White House officials interviewed by the New York Times, regarding the NATO air strike inside Pakistan on November 26."

Amb. Munter is a career professional diplomat who gave, from his in-country vantage point, foreign policy advice tempered by knowledge of local politics, sentiment, and conditions.

That's kinda/sorta his job.

(Disclaimer: CAA met, briefly and in passing, the aforementioned ambassador a few years ago.)

He was notably one of the senior FSOs who, fairly early, volunteered for service in Iraq, where he lead the first PRT in Mosul in 2006; he also served at the Baghdad embassy in 2009-2010.

I recall him stating publicly (paraphrase follows) that if senior leadership was going to ask FSOs to volunteer for service in war zones it would behoove them to lead by example. Or word to that effect.

"As to how Munter's highly sensitive discussion with White House officials came to be made public, I'd say that the U.S. Department of State is the prime suspect."

Leaking to the press is simply outside of CAA's area of competency. I got nothing.

"As to how State arrived at the idea that any advice they could give on Pakistan would be helpful to the United States is beyond me. State's track record on Pakistan since the Afghan War heated up has been awful"

Frankly, the United States' track record on Pakistan is something that needs to be examined holistically, from top-down decisions down to our working level relationships. The State Dept. doesn't set policy. It implements it, it provides advice beforehand and feedback as implementation proceeds.

"Moving along, Munter's advice was given on the 28th, just two days after the NATO air strike, when the U.S. Department of Defense was still trying untangle how the strike came about and exactly what had happened during the strike. So it's almost beyond belief that a career diplomat of Munter's experience would ask the President of the United States for a formal apology before the strike had been properly investigated.

Yet when it comes to State not much is beyond belief anymore. State officials have come to think of themselves as 'policymakers' even though State is only supposed to advise the White House on policy."

See my comments above. That being said, at a certain level and above, senior officials are not only implementers and advice-givers, they are policy-makers. This is just as true at DoD, the CIA, and the DoJ as it is in Foggy Bottom.

"This is no way to run foreign policy; this is no way to conduct any kind of policy and certainly not the way to run a war. This is headless horseman thinking, which means there is no real thinking at all; there is just a bureaucracy's obsession with expanding its turf by attempting to please scores of competing factions."

Part of the problem is the pretense that Pakistan is not part of a.) the larger campaign in Afghanistan; and b.) the larger "war on terror."

That being said, while we do send our honorable diplomats abroad to lie for their country, they must always take care to tell only the truth when reporting back to Washington, whether that is to the Department or to the White House.

12/1

re: "Greece's Dangerous Gamble"

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway ("an online journal of politics and foreign affairs analysis") looked at the Greek financial crisis.

Money quote(s):

"As much as the Germans and French resent having to bail out profligate Greece, the Greeks resent having their core political decisions dictated from Paris and Berlin even more."

Likewise for Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Iceland. To name a few.

"European integration has been achieved through stealth and technocratic maneuvering on the part of elites, quite frequently bypassing the clear preferences of the ostensibly democratic populations in various countries. The passing of so much authority to the European Central Bank and to appointed officials in Brussels has been inexorable, with little input from the European publics and often against the expressed wishes demonstrated via referenda."

This is not a bug in the European experiment: it's a feature.

11/1