Slate - How worried should we be about the military’s takeover of American foreign policy?

Isaac Chotiner at Slate ("a daily magazine on the web") interviewed a military scholar.

Money quote(s):

"The sort of substantive throughline is that we barely have a foreign policy. This gets closer to my book’s themes. We essentially have a military policy. The military policy is being carried out with reasonable consistency and coherence in a sort of technocratic sense.

But we don’t have much other than military policy because the State Department under Trump and Secretary Tillerson is all but paralyzed by a combination of hiring freezes, threatened budget cuts, lack of personnel in key positions, and the fact that the White House fairly consistently shuts them out of anything important. Much of the sort of traditional U.S. diplomacy is either on hold or has sort of pulled back."

This is certainly what one would understand from major media reporting; from the inside it's not quite so drastic although there is at least partial truths for each of these listed factors.

"I think there’s a really strong sense in the Defense Department that, in an ideal world, the State Department is a vital counterpart to the military. I think there’s an equally strong sense in the military at the moment that there is nobody home in the State Department, and that’s been to some extent true for the last decade or more but now dramatically exacerbated in the Trump–Tillerson era.

I think you will continue to hear people like Jim Mattis and the service chiefs say very strongly that diplomacy is important. Development is important. Our job, you know, we can’t do our job without those things. I think you’ll continue to hear that, but there’s only a limited degree to which the actors at the Pentagon have any ability to create that out of thin air or to get Donald Trump to create it."

The "nobody home in the State Department" seems more true nowadays due to the number of "acting" officials throughout the Department, but the interviewee conflates this lower-level rudderlessness with the previous Administrations focus on international irrelevancies.

"The oft-cited line that there are more members in the military marching bands than there are foreign service officers is in fact true, even though I always thought it had to be apocryphal. This was a huge issue in Afghanistan during the Obama years, that the constant promises of a civilian surge just never materialized because the personnel just weren’t there."

There simply is not and has never been deployment-ready diplomatic brigade sitting on a stateside base awaiting orders to go nation-build somewhere.  Sec. Powell tried to bake some surge-capacity into the cake with the Diplomatic Readiness Initiative (DRI) but increases in worldwide workload have eaten away at that for years.  And with the continuing hiring-freeze, hollowing-out, and possible 30 percent downsizing, it only gets worse going forward.

"It’s also important to remember that Mattis and Kelly have retired. They are civilians now. They are not active. McMaster is the exception. He is obviously still active-duty military, but I don’t quite get the fixation on oh my God the military has taken over."

Foreign Service Family

The latest figures I’ve seen show State Dept. as having 16,631 Civil Service (i.e., GS or “General Schedule” and Senior Executive Service or SES) employees, 44,764 Locally-Engaged Staff (i.e., what used to be called “Foreign Service Nationals,”) who are predominantly foreign nationals but also FS family members employed at our missions overseas, and only 13,636 Foreign Service staff members, including both Foreign Service Specialists (FSS) and “Generalists.”

The Foreign Service is a very small corps, overall.  It’s been said, truthfully, in this and other fora that there are more Army bandsmen than U.S. diplomats, more military lawyers in the Pentagon, &tc.

Looked at through the other end of the telescope, it’s also something of a very large extended family.  We’re pretty spread out, it’s true, but we get our orientation, language, and professional training in the same place, through the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) at Arlington Hall.  Then we work in widely dispersed locations around the world or across the country, oftentimes living in the same buildings or on the same residential compounds with our co-workers (with your kids going to the same schools) before winging back to D.C. to work at “Main State” in Foggy Bottom (near the GWU campus) or one of the various State Annex facilities scattered around Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

After awhile, the “degrees of separation” narrow down pretty far, so that if you don’t know someone in the Foreign Service personally, from having worked or trained with them, chances are pretty good that someone you have worked or trained with has worked or trained with them.  Or your spouse has.

So when something like Benghazi happens, where a senior foreign service officer/ambassador like Chris Stevens is killed, along with a long-time Information Management Officer (IMO) like Sean Smith and two of our contract employees, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, it hits home.  It’s like four of your fellow citizens in small hometown were suddenly murdered.

There’s a sudden and visceral impact, something like hearing of casualties from another military unit within the same division.  You might not have known them yourself, but you know you’ve walked the same hallways, sat in the same classrooms, and have similar missions facing similar dangers.

Another of those factoids that comes up from time to time is how there have been more ambassadors killed in the line of duty, since World War II, than general officers or admirals.  That remains true.

(One columnist or commenter, I forget where, voiced the criticism that if, in a decade of warfare, not a single general has been killed, our senior military leaders are leading from too far behind.)

Much of Main State emptied out, apparently, in order to be bused to Andrews AFB for attendance at a sort of ceremonial or memorial reception of the four caskets containing our fallen diplomats.   It was pretty well-attended, by all accounts, although marred somewhat by the behavior of those who simply had, in contravention of their instructions, to raise their arms in a sort of fascist salute as they took cell phone pictures.

(And don’t quibble with about whether our two ex-SEAL colleagues count as diplomats.  If they were part of our diplomatic mission in Libya, that’s good enough for me.)

re: "The exit is the strategy"

Kori Schake at Shadow Government ("Notes From The Loyal Opposition") judged by actions, not words.

Money quote(s):

"(B)oth the White House and Pentagon had been repeatedly emphasizing that negotiations with Iraq were ongoing, that no decision had been made. In truth, the decision was made even before Barack Obama was president: he got elected campaigning that Iraq was the wrong war, not worth the lives and money.

He did what he said he was going to do. He set an end date for combat operations so that he could show "progress" before the midterm elections. Progress not toward consolidating our gains in Iraq, but toward being out of Iraq. Having appointed special envoys for every problem he considered important, there was no special envoy for Iraq, to help build fostering regional relationships and coordinate our policies. He appointed an ambassador who knew nothing about Iraq."

Knowing "nothing about Iraq" is quite an achievement in itself, given the circumstances.

"(T)he withdrawal of troops is a lagging, not a leading indicator of the administration's indifference.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continues to affirm our commitment to Iraq. The QDDR says "in Iraq, we are in the midst of the largest military-to-civilian transition since the Marshall Plan. Our civilian presence is prepared to take the lead, secure the military's gains, and build the institutions necessary for long-term stability." State grandiosely imagines a wholly civilian mission of 17,000 personnel most of whom will be "third country nationals" supporting 1,750 diplomats and other USG government personnel. Eighty percent of the mission will be contractors. Current plans call for them to operate at five consulates around the country, costing $6 billion a year.

The Commission on Wartime Contracting (including Shadow Government colleague Dov Zakheim), the Government Accountability Office and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee all take a dim view of State's plans for Iraq. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee assessed that "fundamental questions remain unanswered," including whether the scope of the mission in Iraq is compatible with the resources available, including State Department capacity. They question whether the State Department can sustain its proposed presence without military support and the cost effectiveness of consulates requiring 1,400 security and support personnel for only 120 diplomats. They recommended that if a complete withdrawal occurred, "given the prohibitive costs of security and the capacity limitations of the State Department, the United States should consider a less ambitious diplomatic presence in Iraq." This is likely to end badly."

CAA's formula for right-sizing the U.S. diplomatic presence in Iraq is akin to what most after-action-reviews of the RMS Titanic's sinking would include: only have as many passengers and crew as you have lifeboat capacity for.

"Members of Congress could be forgiven for wondering why should we provide $5 billion to Iraq in a time of austerity when the Iraqis are so ungrateful. The Wartime Contracting Commission's conclusion that "significant additional waste -- and mission degradation to the point of failure -- can be expected as State continues with the daunting task of transition in Iraq," will also tighten Congressional purse-strings, as it should."

10/22

re: "The Definition of Insanity"

Deebow at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") found fault with the latest iteration of the "peace dividend."

Money quote(s):

"We did this after WWI, WWII and during the decade of Slick Willie and the Peace Dividend. Resurgent China, collapsing Norks, Nuclear Iran, unfinished Afghanistan; really, I probably could go on and on with people who would wish us ill."

&

"(D)id anyone consult any random first sergeant out in the motor pool or Infantry branch officer on what they learned at West Point?, I mean, besides the mandatory attendance at presidential speeches and diversity classes? You know, the strategy and tactics part, theatre logistics, air land battle? Have any of those mental midgets heard of being there "firstest with the mostest" to win the battle? The 82nd Airborne is built around the idea that we are not going to spend time in the mutual circle jerk of international diplomacy, we are going to put men on the ground to influence our enemies decision making process and get inside their OODA Loop. Ships and airplanes driven and flown by men can still not own the ground that young men in the mud will be forced to wrest from our nation's foes. We owe it to them to give them enough comrades to ensure it can be done.

And the last time I walked the battlefield, the only dude who owned the ground was not the pilot in the B-1B I invited to the party after I kicked it off with my own fireworks; it was me, and all the other dudes on the bad-ass list I brought with me; standing on the earth I wanted to own and kicking the stinking jihadis off of it in the nastiest, most lethal and final fashion I could come up with moment to moment."

These are serious subjects studied seriously by serious people. I'm not sure they fit in with the narrative.

"Wars are not something you can fight with a coupon or try to duck out on the cheap and my bet is that we could afford a poop ton more troops and equipment if we weren't making loans/campaign contributions to outfits like Solyndra and putting our debt at 100.3 percent of our GDP, along with all of the other Marxist crap that the OinC has decided is good for America.

This is bad voodoo and the sooner the amateurs in Foggy Bottom and the Puzzle Palace that are entertaining the whisperings of the Good Idea Fairy are on the rocket sled to irrelevance, the better."

&

"(T)his is the worst idea this administration has ever had, and the Libturds that thought this up better start studying up on their Chinese and getting familiar with the 12th Imam, because there may test questions at the re-education camp later."

This presumes that their new overlords will bother trying to re-educate them.

1/5

re: "Nuke the News: Iowa!"

Frank J. at IMAO ("Unfair. Unbalanced. Unmedicated.") demonstrated his proven knack for humor.

Money quote(s):

"The Pentagon is abandoning the idea they should be able to wage two wars at once. So if we’re already in one war and you try to war against us, you’re going to be put on hold."

1/4

re: "International Relations Graduate School Pros and Cons"

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway ("an online journal of politics and foreign affairs analysis") offered advice to international relations students.

Money quote(s):

"If you want to go into the Foreign Service, Intelligence community, or the Pentagon, a PhD is desirable but probably not worth the tradeoff in delayed earnings and entry into the workforce." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Mr. Joyner excerpted a passage than explains that in greater detail.

There are plenty of Ph.D folks who do enter the Foreign Service; there's certainly no bar to it, but the point about delayed earnings impacting lifetime earnings is valid enough. IIRC, entering FSOs with Ph.Ds come in at pay grade (actually "class") FS-04, the highest of the three entry level pay grades. Which is nice, but since they're ineligible for promotion to FS-03 until they complete their probationary period (approx. 3-5 years) and receive their permanent "commissioning and tenure," their less-credentialed entering classmates will have caught up with them (due to administrative time-in-grade promotions) by the time any of them can enter the mid-grade FSO ranks.*

" Presidential Management Fellowship. The PMF is the Golden Ticket in government service, shooting you all the way to the GS-13 level in a very short period and opening the path to the Senior Executive/Intelligence/Foreign Service as a relative kid. By comparison, it took David Petraeus 11 years to make lieutenant colonel (GS-13 equivalent) and 26 years to make brigadier general (the lowest SES equivalent). And he’s a West Pointer with a Princeton PhD!

Even without the PMF, a public policy masters will get you in the door and give you both the training and credentials to enable you to move up through the ranks expeditiously. Theoretically, the government doesn’t really care where you went to school–a degree from University of Phoenix is as good as one from Harvard to the personnel department. But a good brand name will matter later in your career.

Many government types actually manage to get a PhD in mid-career. (It’s especially common for military officers, since the Pentagon has a relationship with a handful of schools, most notably Princeton, that allows them to rush people through the program in a mere three years.) This comes with the twin benefits of the degree being paid for and being paid while in school.

Additionally, government service provides another route to being a think tanker or even a professor. While several of us at the director level at the think tank where I work have PhDs, most have MAs and very valuable experience at senior levels of government–ambassadors, assistant secretaries, National Security Council staffers, and such. And many of the elite universities around the country will hire people with that sort of experience as professors (especially in the public policy schools). The war colleges and other professional military education schools vastly prefer them to career academics." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

For those entering the Foreign Service without a masters degree, once you get to the mid-grade ranks there are opportunities for long-term training assignments outside of the Department, even outside of the federal government. They have the advantage, as Mr. Joyner correctly notes, of "the twin benefits of the degree being paid for and being paid while in school." You just can't beat a scholarship like that.

(For those suspecting that this is a boondoggle at the taxpayer's expense, I would counter that students in this sort of program are already in government service, so the advantages to the government of providing professional development to its career officers is that the benefits of having a better professionally-developed officer start paying off as soon as the student returns to the Department.)

_____

While no particular formal educational credential is required to be selected as a probationary FSO, far and away the vast majority (99 percent?) of newly-hired FSO have an undergraduate degree when they are hired.

Without a university-level (or better) education, the chances of successfully completing the Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT) aren't all that good.

The Foreign Service is something of a meritocratic mandarinate that way. It's not prejudice so much as the level of intellectual preparation that it requires. In fact, my sense is that the majority of entering FSOs have graduate (or equivalent) degrees. Its hiring process is extremely competitive and that level of academic preparation gives FS candidates a distinct edge.

The same goes for professional work experience as well, including military service. There are some things that very few schools teach, after all, but can nonetheless be learned by the willing.

(I should mention that there is a Veterans Preference factored into the selection process, which is why, like in the Civil Service, prior military and naval folks are more highly represented in the Foreign Service than in the general population.)

"The better your credentials and contacts, the better. Going to Harvard or Stanford or Chicago simply gives you more options than going to a less prestigious institution because it stands out on a resume. Additionally, as Farley notes, some schools do a much better job than others of providing institutional support in networking and finding jobs. And, of course, having spent your 20s working for the Deputy Secretary of Defense or the Ambassador to the United Kingdom is going to open more doors than having spent them in an archive somewhere working on a giant book few will ever read." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Quite a few FSOs went to big "name" schools, but frankly the largest cohort seems to come into the Foreign Service with graduate (or undergraduate) degrees from Foggy Bottom's neighboring George Washington University (GWU) campus. It's an excellent school whose proximity apparently facilitates recruitment.

Vanishingly few come from elite "name" programs such as Georgetown University's (GU) Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service or Harvard's Kennedy School. Instead, I've met quite a few Tufts and Thunderbird graduates in the Foreign Service.

_____

* - FS pay grades or "classes" work differently from civil service ("General Schedule" ("GS") pay grades in that the lower the FS number, the higher the rank. That is, the higher the number, the lower the rank. Something like that.

FSOs enter at either FS-06, -05, or -04. Over the last decade or so, these have been variously called Junior Officer ("JO"), Entry Level Officer (ELO), and First-And-Second-Tour (FAST) officer ranks. They're equivalent to Civil Service GS-8, -9, and -10 or to the Army's "company grade" officer ranks of Second Lieutenant (O-1), First Lieutenant (O-2), and Captain (O-3).

Mid-grade FSO ranks are FS-03, -02, and -01. They are the equivalent of military "field grade" commissioned officer ranks (i.e., major/lieutenant commander/O-4, lieutenant colonel/commander/O-5, and colonel/captain/O-6) or Civil Service GS-13, -14, and -15.

Above FS-01 are several Senior Foreign Service (SFS) ranks with names like Counselor (OC), Minister-Counselor (MC) and Career-Minister (CM) equivalent to the Civil Service's "Senior Executive Service" (SFS) or to military/naval "general officer" (GO) or "flag" ranks (i.e., admirals).

There's also the SFS rank of "Career Ambassador" (CA) which, while a great honor and quite a rare cap to a FS career, doesn't actually come with a pay bump beyond what is earned by a Career-Minister.

8/11

re: "Obama Overruled Lawyers at DoD and DoJ Over Libya and War Powers Act - BUMPED"

Dave In Texas at Ace of Spades HQ opines upon advice of counsel.

Money quote(s):

"(O)ur military operations are not hostilities. Or something like that. Even though Pentagon general counsel and acting head of the DoJ Office of Legal Counsel advised otherwise." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Our air crews are getting combat or hazardous duty pay, so this reasoning appears fairly specious. Granted, sometimes hazardous duty means only the serious threat of combat or hostilities. But delivering explosive payloads in a kenetic fashion sounds pretty combatty to me.

"The White House counsel, State Dept counsel, .... argued Obama was not bound by the Act."

&

"Obama is dancing on the head of a pin if he thinks he can sell drone-launched missiles as some kind of NATO logistical support (what, our "our explosives are transporting large amounts of concrete and steel to thousands of different locations within the proximity of the boom"?)"

re: "re: "This Week at War: Rise of the Irregulars" "

Robert Haddick at Small Wars Journal ("facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field") turns a frequent criticism on its head.

Money quote(s):

"Last week, the Washington Post's David Ignatius discussed how the line between the Central Intelligence Agency's covert intelligence activities and the Pentagon's military operations began blurring as George W. Bush's administration ramped up its war on terrorism. In his column, Ignatius took some swipes at former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for exceeding his authority by encroaching on turf legally reserved to the CIA. The Defense Department also was criticized for taking on too many diplomatic and foreign aid responsibilities as well. Ignatius expressed concern that without clearer boundaries separating covert intelligence-gathering from military operations, "people at home and abroad may worry about a possible 'militarization' of U.S. intelligence."

Ignatius missed the larger and far more significant change that continues to this day. In order to survive and compete against the military power enjoyed by national armies, modern irregular adversaries -- such as the Viet Cong, Iraq's insurgents, the Taliban, and virtually all other modern revolutionaries -- "civilianized" their military operations."

Read the whole thing here.

re: "Obama, Libya Bombing and the UCMJ"

Sean Osborne, Associate Director at the Northeast Intelligence Network ("Investigating threats to our homeland") follows the logical consequences.

Money quote(s):

"President Obama fully and intentionally skirted the U.S. Constitution in illegally ordering the Pentagon to commence acts of war against Libya. In light of this fact President Obama’s orders to the U.S. military to execute these attacks in Libya constitutes an illegal order under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

Members of the US Armed Forces who obey illegal orders are subject to criminal prosecution." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA)

A similar thought had crossed my mind. We're really in uncharted waters here; up until now presidents have been pretty careful about following the forms of, for instance, the War Powers Act, even if they've denied its Constitutionality.

"The UCMJ allows for the disobedience of illegal orders because such orders constitute a crime, or be part of a criminal conspiracy, either under military, civilian or international law."

Will we see a sequel to H.R. McMasters' classic "Dereliction of Duty" that addresses this someday? Given the current over-lawyered condition of our military and naval forces, it approaches undeniable implausibility that some staff judge advocate hasn't looked at their principal's legal exposure in this regard.

S&S - Flight surgeon threatens to refuse deployment over Obama birth certificate flap

From my archive of press clippings:

Stars and Stripes

Flight surgeon threatens to refuse deployment over Obama birth certificate flap

By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes

Mideast edition, Saturday, April 3, 2010

WASHINGTON — An Army flight surgeon could face reprimand or dismissal from the service after stating in an online video that he’ll refuse deployment to Afghanistan because of concerns he has about President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, chief of primary care for the Pentagon’s health clinic, released a statement through the American Patriot Foundation saying his decision is based on “pursuit of the truth about the president’s eligibility under the constitution to hold office.”

Army officials said Lakin has not yet violated any direct orders, but his statements have been brought to commanders’ attention for review."

&

"Lakin, an 18-year soldier, last served overseas in 2005 during a tour with the 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry Squadron, 25th Infantry Division in Afghanistan.

Questions surrounding Obama’s birth certificate surfaced during the 2008 election, but were largely put to rest after Hawaii officials confirmed his American citizenship and the campaign released a copy of the document."

Guys, he was nominated, he ran, he won. The only way he's leaving office now short of completing his term is if he resigns or is impeached.

This is not a hill to die on, a sword to fall upon, career-wise.

_____
(Yeah, I know there're at least two other ways but spelling them out will only encourage the unruly.)

re: "50 military "good ole boys" support shifting money to the State Department"

Josh Rogin at The Cable ("Reporting Inside The Foreign Policy Machine") highlights some support from a somewhat unexpected quarter.

Money quote(s):

"(T)he development community has rounded up 50 senior retired military officers to support its drive to shift money and authorities from the Pentagon to Foggy Bottom."

"The group is trying to protect the president's $58.5 billion fiscal 2011 budget request as it winds its way through the legislative process. That's the biggest request ever for foreign operations and international assistance, but in this time of fiscal peril, lawmakers are expected to try to use that part of the budget request to fund other priorities."

&

"Hagee said the letter is remarkable because it represents the opinions of "50 retired three-and-four-star good-old boys," who have seen first-hand the military's encroachment upon traditional development issues, which was unavoidable but now needs to be addressed.

Many have expressed doubt that the State Department has the capacity to take on these missions, such as managing foreign military training or supervising crisis money disbursement.
"But you can't get the capability and the capacity unless you get the resources," Hagee explained."

Actually, this shouldn't really be all that unexpected. These guys understand that you need more in your toolbox than just a hammer.

S&S - Pentagon announces new Army, Air Force command assignments

Stars and Stripes

Pentagon announces new Army, Air Force command assignments


Stars and Stripes


Mideast edition, Saturday, April 18, 2009


The Pentagon has announced several general officer assignments affecting major Army and Air Force commands in Europe and the Middle East.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"The Army assignments include:


Brig. Gen. Ralph O. Baker, deputy director for Politico-Military Affairs (Middle East) at The Joint Staff in Washington, D.C., has been assigned as assistant division commander, 1st Armored Division, U.S. Army Europe and Seventh Army, Germany."

S&S - GAO: AFRICOM must end misperceptions. Report says agency must better convey its mission, focus.

Stars and Stripes



GAO: AFRICOM must end misperceptions


Report says agency must better convey its mission, focus


By Jennifer H. Svan, Stars and Stripes

Mideast edition, Friday, April 3, 2009

Matthew Bookwalter/Courtesy of U.S. Navy
Lt. Cmdr. Shay Razmi, a dental officer, examines the teeth of students from the Twin-City Special School for the Mentally Handicapped on March 5 during the USS Nashville’s 18-day port visit to Sekondi, Ghana, in support of Africa Partnership Station.

U.S. Africa Command needs to do a better job of conveying its mission and focus, if it is to overcome lingering concerns that the Defense Department is trying to militarize U.S. foreign policy in Africa, according to a government report issued last week.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"Combating those misperceptions about its role on the African continent is one of three hurdles to the ultimate success of the Pentagon’s newest combatant command, according to a Government Accountability Office report.

The GAO found problems with AFRICOM’s efforts to integrate its headquarters staff with personnel from other agencies, such as the State and Treasury departments. "

re: "Quote of the Day - Congress Edition"

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway ("an online journal of politics and foreign affairs analysis") explains how you sometimes get to the right answer in spite of yourself.

Money quote(s):

"Congress often winds up getting it right on weapons systems that the Pentagon opposed. The military bureaucracy naturally wants to prioritize both the wars it’s currently fighting and those it would prefer to fight."

&

"Congress, meanwhile, has an incentive to simply buy the best equipment they can. As a result, they frequently wind up buying the right toys, even if for the wrong reasons."

S&S - One man's journey from campus to combat

Stars and Stripes


One man's journey from campus to combat


By Adam Geller, The Associated PressMonday, March 9, 2009

Bhatia Family Photo/AP
In this undated image provided by the Bhatia family, Michael Bhatia, center, poses in front of a helicopter with two unidentified people.

Michael Bhatia, Bhatia Family Photo/AP
A street scene shows youths playing in Afghanistan. Michael Bhatia, who took this photograph, was killed in the area of Khost, Afghanistan in May of 2008 while working for the Human Terrain System program.

Bhatia Family Photo/AP
Michael Bhatia poses in rural Afghanistan. Bhatia, an academic, was killed in Afghanistan last May while working for the Human Terrain System program.


MEDWAY, Mass. — On the overcast New England morning Michael Bhatia came home, 400 of his colleagues, family and friends turned out to meet him.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"Seven months had passed since Bhatia, a 31-year-old scholar in international relations from Brown University, hefted his pack across the tarmac at Fort Benning, ready to begin his sixth journey to Afghanistan."

"Bhatia was joining the Human Terrain System, a Pentagon experiment to re-engineer battle against Afghan and Iraqi insurgents by teaming soldiers and scholars. Human Terrain set off a war of its own in academia: Critics, particularly anthropologists, argued that researchers risked betraying the people they studied by feeding information to the military."

&

"In 2006, the military ordered a new test, pairing military specialists and social scientists. The Human Terrain teams would work like anthropologists, interviewing Iraqi and Afghan tribal leaders and villagers to decipher the tensions and fears that might build support for enemy fighters.

The program — which has deployed 27 teams — mirrored a shift in military thinking, reinforced by two prolonged wars. Fondacaro was hired to lead it, trying to win over academics and military leaders. McFate warned him."

re: "Leave the Non-Paper ... Take the Canoli"

TSB at The Skeptical Bureaucrat ("Giving my fellow Americans the view from my cubicle") explains "The Godfather Doctrine."

Money quote(s):

"(F)or lessons in wielding power, how could you go wrong with the greatest gangster film of all time? It's modern-day Machiavelli right down to the olive oil."

&

"On 9/11, when my co-workers and I were watching the Twin Towers fall on a TV screen, and then looked out of our Arlington office to see a column of smoke rising from the direction of the Pentagon, one of us - a long-time veteran Regional Security Officer - said: "this is the business we've chosen." It didn't seem at all inappropriate, and it expressed what we were all thinking at that moment about how our professional lives would be changed by the day's events. "

S&S - Analysis: Are Air Force firings about more than nuclear weapons?

From my archive of press clippings:

Stars and Stripes

Analysis: Are Air Force firings about more than nuclear weapons?

By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes

Mideast edition, Sunday, June 8, 2008

ARLINGTON, Va. — Defense Secretary Robert Gates forced the resignations of the Air Force secretary and its top general for reasons much deeper than nuclear accountability, ones that reflected his increasing displeasure with the direction the two were taking the service, according to reported comments from one military analyst and a senior military official.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"Gates said his decision to demand the resignations Thursday of Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne and Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley was based entirely on a classified Pentagon finding that cited what he called "a chain of failures" in the Air Force’s safeguarding of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

The decision marked the first time any secretary of defense had fired both the service secretary and top officer of any branch of the military at the same time."

re: "How to Regain the Public Diplomacy Initiative"

Patricia Lee Sharpe at WhirledView ("A Look at World Politics & Most Everything Else") has some great ideas about how to put public diplomacy back on track.

Money quote(s):

"The underfunded State Department, which absorbed the U.S. Information Agency in 1999, has misused to the point of destruction the professional resources it inherited. Nor, since 9/11, have the generously-funded Department of Defense and its over-compensated sub-contractors—hundreds of millions of dollars annually!—done any better. Together, the Pentagon and the State Department have not even been able to gain appreciation for President Bush’s laudable anti-AIDS initiative in Africa."

"For nearly fifty years the U.S. image and its influence were bolstered by an extraordinary and amazingly cost effective public diplomacy program executed by the U.S. Information Agency, whose activities and personnel were—I never ceased to wonder at this!—admired and trusted around the globe. U.S.I.A., an independent agency working in close cooperation with the State Department, told America’s story, explained America’s policy and presented America’s intellectual and cultural accomplishments in a thoroughly au courant, well-coordinated and cannily influential way. Attuned to local sensibilities and speaking local languages, U.S.IA. professionals called upon traditional as well as newly-invented media of communication to promote an understanding of America and Americans and to generate sympathy and support for U.S. policy. Above all, by insisting on impeccable intellectual honesty—the famed warts-and-all approach, U.S.I.A won the often grudging trust of critics and preserved the good will of carefully nurtured friends."

"Day in, day out, picking and choosing among an extraordinary array of wholly out-in–the-open intellectual and cultural tools, U.S.I.A. professionals laid the foundation on which global support for the entire range of U.S. policy initiatives could be—and was—built. Through press releases, lectures by distinguished professors, dancers, dramatists, pianists, libraries, English language institutes, scholarships or fellowships for promising students as well as established academics—and more, U.S.I.A officers presented the world with an engaging but accurate picture of the U.S., all the while feeding their uniquely intimate understanding of countries and cultures into the American foreign policy process."

"U.S.I.A. was not axed because its officers were incompetent or because its programs were ineffective. U.S.I.A. was a victim of success. When the Berlin Wall fell, the world loved America. During that crazy interlude of euphoria at the end of the Cold War, however, there were those who argued that full scale public diplomacy wouldn’t be needed any more. Tax dollars would be saved and nothing would be lost, they insisted, if U.S.I.A were merged into the State Department. Unfortunately, by the time it was all too clear that history was by no means over, U.S.I.A had been dismantled."

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"It’s time to rectify that naive post Cold War mistake and reconstitute an independent public diplomacy agency to serve as the voice of an open society and a democratic people. Only a single official public diplomacy agency can do the whole job, do it continuously, do it persuasively, do it cost-effectively."