The future of NATO - that is, does it have one?

Stephen Walt has been on a roll lately. One of his particularly interesting items is Gates to NATO: Drop dead? Foreign Policy 06/13/2011. It's Walt's commentary on outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' recent challenge to our NATO allies, as reported here by the PBS Newshour 06/10/2011:



As Walt explains, he's surprised that NATO is still alive and as active as it is. Because he thinks it's fundamentally a moribund alliance:

Well, duh. NATO has been on borrowed time ever since the Soviet Union collapsed, because military alliances form primarily to deal with external threats and they are hard to hold together once the threat is gone. In a sense it is remarkable that NATO has persisted as long as it has, but that was mostly because the United States could afford to subsidize European security and because Washington saw NATO as a useful tool for maximizing U.S. influence in Europe.

The problems the alliance faces today have little to do with European fecklessness, American militarism, or the particular errors of individual leaders. The central problem here is structural: there's just not much of a case for a tightly integrated military alliance anymore, and not much reason for Europe to be armed to the teeth. Although both European and American defense intellectuals have worked tirelessly to invent new rationales for the alliance, none of them have been especially convincing. [italics in original; my emphasis in bold]

In other words, he's suggesting that NATO is kind of a zombie alliance. Unconventional in terms of the mainstream discussion. But Walt is one of the über-Realists, after all.

Tags: nato, robert gates, stephen walt

Ray McGovern on Robert Gates' newfound agnosticism about the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

Ray McGovern has weighed in on the speech by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on February 25 that I discussed in a previous post in How to Read Gates's Shift on the Wars Consortium News 03/02/2011. This was the speech in which the SecDef warned against getting involved in more wars like those in Iraq and Afghanistan in the future.

McGovern, who was once Gates' supervisor at the CIA, looks at the statement in the context of Gates' career ambitions. The SecDef's skepticism about the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars certainly seems on the face of it to be a recent revelation:

In his first months at the Pentagon, Gates certainly didn't seem like a hesitant skeptic about the war policies. He played a key role in helping President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney escalate the war in Iraq and thus make their escape into the sunset without having lost a war on their watch.

That was 90 percent of what the celebrated "surge" of troops into Iraq was about, staving off an obvious defeat, even if it cost the lives of an additional 1,000 or so U.S. soldiers and many more Iraqis. ...

Then, after he was kept on by Obama, Gates supported a similar "surge" in Afghanistan, pushing for a 40,000-troop increase in late 2009. Obama groused that Gates and the generals wouldn’t provide a meaningful set of alternative options to the escalation, but Obama finally relented and sent 30,000 more troops.

McGovern concedes that one cannot rule out such a dawning of revelation. But he thinks it's more likely that Gates is playing the career game as follows:

Yet, I would venture to suggest that – more likely – the timing of Gates’s conversion can be pinned on two other factors, a typically windsock reaction to recent polling on Afghanistan and an attempt to burnish his future wise-man reputation:

--U.S. public opinion has swung dramatically against the war in Afghanistan, with some polls showing that as many as 86 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of Republicans want a speedier U.S. pullout from the war.

--Gates has announced he will retire in the coming months. By abandoning his post on the bridge of the sinking pro-war ship now, Gates will let the next secretary of defense take the blame when the U.S. does not "prevail" in Afghanistan. Gates can point to his echoing of MacArthur's warning [against ground wars in Asia].

Gates' career is a reminder of how previous official misconduct can haunt policy for decades to come:

More serious still was Gates's denial of any awareness of Oliver North's illegal activities in support of the Contra attacks in Nicaragua, despite the fact that senior CIA officials testified that they had informed Gates that they suspected North had diverted funds from the Iranian arms sales for the benefit of the Contras.

Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel for the Iran-Contra investigation (1986-93), later wrote in frustration that, despite Gates’s highly touted memory, he "denied recollection of facts thirty-three times."

Gates's dubious explanations about the Iran-Contra scandal forced the withdrawal of his first nomination to be CIA director when he was supposed to replace Casey who died in May 1987. Gates's career appeared to be at a dead end, but in 1989, President George H.W. Bush gave him a spot as deputy national security adviser.

The lack of real legal accountability for high-level officials breaking the law is a very bad tradition - and it really has become a tradition in American politics and government. Although the Republicans will surely make an exception if they think they can pin some real or imagined crime on Barack Obama, just as they did in Clinton's impeachment. There are many reasons that Obama's Look Forward Not Backward policy on Cheney-Bush Administration crimes is a bad one.

Keeping Gates on as SecDef from the previous Administration was one more aspect of the larger Democratic willingness to not hold the previous Administration responsible in even the political sense for misconduct and failures.

Tags: ray mcgovern, robert gates

SecDef Robert Gates on war: what's old is new

Andrew Bacevich is his various books has joined others in documenting how the Pentagon just kept on fighting the Cold War, long after the "Iron Curtain" had fallen and the Soviet Union had dissolved. The Iraq War and the Afghanistan War brought a new fashionability to counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN). But on closer inspection it largely comes down to using conventional forces to shoot up villages, with hit squads and mercenaries thrown into the mix.

The Cold War ended, but the Long War continues. And the military prefers to keep right on preparing to fight the Soviet Union. Republican Secretary Robert Gates, who Obama kept on as his on Secretary of Defense, expressed the Pentagon's Long War preferences in a speech at West Point today: Thom Shanker reports on it for the New York Times in Gates Warns Against Any More Wars Like Iraq or Afghanistan 02/25/2011; I say "reports", if you can call stenography reporting. The Department of Defense (DOD) Web site has its own article on it: Jim Garamone (American Forces Press Service), Gates Challenges Cadets to Change Army Culture 02/25/2011. The full text is available at Speech, United States Military Academy (West Point, NY) 02/25/2011. From the DOD text:

Which leads to the first major challenge I see facing the Army: How will it structure itself – how will it train and equip – for the extraordinarily diverse range of missions it will face in the future? ...

The need for heavy armor and firepower to survive, close with, and destroy the enemy will always be there, as veterans of Sadr City and Fallujah can no doubt attest. And one of the benefits of the drawdown in Iraq is the opportunity to conduct the kind of full-spectrum training – including mechanized combined arms exercises – that was neglected to meet the demands of the current wars. Looking ahead, though, in the competition for tight defense dollars within and between the services, the Army also must confront the reality that the most plausible, high-end scenarios for the U.S. military are primarily naval and air engagements – whether in Asia, the Persian Gulf, or elsewhere. The strategic rationale for swift-moving expeditionary forces, be they Army or Marines, airborne infantry or special operations, is self-evident given the likelihood of counterterrorism, rapid reaction, disaster response, or stability or security force assistance missions. But in my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should "have his head examined," as General MacArthur so delicately put it.

By no means am I suggesting that the U.S. Army will – or should – turn into a Victorian nation-building constabulary – designed to chase guerrillas, build schools, or sip tea. But as the prospects for another head-on clash of large mechanized land armies seem less likely, the Army will be increasingly challenged to justify the number, size, and cost of its heavy formations to those in the leadership of the Pentagon, and on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, who ultimately make policy and set budgets.

The "swift-moving expeditionary forces" sounds an awful lot like the now-officially-defunct "revolution in military affairs" (RMA) and the related "transformation" to which Rummy, Gates' predecessor as SecDef, embraced as his way of relying on a massive army set to fight the long-since-defunct Soviet Union but handling interventions on the side with small, technologically-sophisticated forces relying on the "networked battlefield". It was this notion that led him to insist on minimizing the number of forces assembled for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, with consequences that are all-too-well known.

Here is how Gates put it, apparently reincarnating Rummy's perspective while claiming to have learned from the recent past:

What we can expect in the future is that potential adversaries – be they terrorists, insurgents, militia groups, rogue states, or emerging powers – will seek to frustrate America’s traditional advantages, in particular our ability to shoot, move and communicate with speed and precision. From the look of things, the Army will not repeat the mistakes of the past, where irregular warfare was shunted to the side after Vietnam. The odds of repeating another Afghanistan or Iraq – invading, pacifying, and administering a large third world country – may be low. But in what General Casey has called "an era of persistent conflict," those unconventional capabilities will still be needed at various levels and in various locations. Most critically to prevent festering problems from growing into full-blown crises which require costly – and controversial – large-scale American military intervention. [my emphasis]

In other words, our we-don't-call-them-RMAed-any-more forces will handle these little constabulary actions like Iraq and Afghanistan but do so in a quick and efficient way so we won't have these big ole wars that make anyone actually watching wonder whether our mega-expensive armed forces can actually win a war larger than, say, invading the island Grenada back in the glory days of St. Reagan.

This is great:

A second challenge that I believe faces today’s and tomorrow’s Army – your Army – is whether and how the Army can adapt its practices and culture to these strategic realities. From the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our soldiers and junior- and mid-level leaders down range have been adjusting and improvising to the complex and evolving challenges on the ground – in many cases using the Internet, especially tools of social media, to share tactical lessons learned in real time with their colleagues at the front or preparing to deploy back here in the United States.

Notice that he doesn't include in adapting the Army's "practices and culture" any frivolous stuff like learning Arabic. Or Pashto or Dari or Persian or Urdu or other languages spoken in places that are or might be the scene of US wars.

Tags: long war, robert gates, us military

Air war and the military budget

Anthony Cordesman and Hans Ulrich Kaeser look at the prospects for the military budget for air power in a working paper for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), America's Self-Destroying Airpower: Becoming Your Own Peer Threat 12/16/08.

The somewhat puzzling title refers to the fact that, to put it briefly, the fight between different services and even priorities within those services is intensifying beyond what it is even in the fat years. Because while Dick Cheney's and George Bush's "global war on terror" opened the spigot for all kinds of military projects and equipment, whether they were related to combating anti-American terrorism or not.

Cordesman and Kaeser seem to have a heavy preference for large-scale spending on "strategic" air power. You know, to defend us against the Soviet Union, the 20th anniversary of whose demise will be here before we know it.

But they've put their finger on a real problem here, even if that wasn't the aspect of the problem they intended to highlight. The "military-industrial complex" isn't a conspiracy - it's way too big to be a conspiracy - but it does exist. And it operates powerfully to encourage threat inflation, expansive definitions of American security and lots and lots and lots of spending on expensive weapons systems. And it has threat effect even without the ill will of people like Dick Cheney. And we can't really afford to pretend people like Dick Cheney don't exist.

The military budget needs to be "right-sized" (to borrow a corporate term for cutting back) based on a coherent strategy for the post-Cold War world. Unless this gets plenty of public and Congressional scrutiny and public pressure of various kinds to do just that, the result is likely to be a compromise that winds up increasing the size of the armed forces, building up a counterinsurgency component (which will look an awful lot like a small variation on conventional warfare if anyone looks closely) and still promotes a conventional military capacity to stop the Soviet Red Army from overrunning Europe.

Cordesman and Kaeser give us a glimpse of the jockeying going on here:

The current focus on the counterinsurgency wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Secretary Gate's [sic] emphasis on irregular warfare and increased intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (IS&R) capability, either requires major trade-offs within current aircraft and other procurement programs or major increases in the size of the entire defense budget and future year defense program.

Secretary Gates has issued a new "strategy" that emphasizes irregular warfare, and has given the improvement of IS&R capabilities high priority to meet current warfighting needs and serve immediate mission requirements in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, like his predecessor's QDRs, and the strategy of each of the military services, his "strategy" is not yet a strategy at all. It is still a mix of concepts and doctrines which is not defined in a clearly delineated force plan, in a modernization and procurement plan, in any form of program budget and cost analysis, or in any measures of time and effectiveness.

The debate over seeking the most advanced systems possible to deter and defeat any peer threat versus giving priority to irregular warfare and IS&R has not been resolved, and is certain to be revived when a new Administration takes office. The Russian invasion of Georgia alone virtually ensures this, but inter and intra-service infighting alone would have ensured it in any case. [my emphasis]

The US currently spends something around half the military budgets of the whole world. It's too much. And Congress shouldn't be setting military budgets based on some notion that you can't spend too much on security. Spending too much can cause an avoidable arms race. And, yes, even though no politician right now seems to want to say such a thing out loud, having unnecessary capabilities creates a temptation to use them.

There has been some recognition of that in the debate over fighting terrorism. The temptation to look at terrorism as a military problem with primarily military solutions has prompted much use of the metaphor, "When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

Do we want to set our national security strategy around a mission of fighting counterinsurgency wars like in Iraq and Afghanistan? If we decide to do that, it should be in full knowledge of what that means. And a lot of it isn't pretty.

And there is and should be a trade-off between counterinsurgency preparedness and the kind of conventional-warfare emphasis that the military has had since the Vietnam War. Is it anyway anyhow in American interests to incorporate Georgia and Ukraine into NATO and be prepared to go to war against the Russians to do so? If it is, that might indicate that we need to be training our troops for long partisan warfare with people speaking Ukrainian, Georgian and Russian. And maybe invading countries when we feel like it in the Middle East and South Asia will have to be left to some other lucky world power.

But these decisions should be made by generals, military contractors and lobbyists, and nerds from Washington think-tanks funded by the defense industry or rightwing warmongers.

Noah Shachtman of the Danger Zone blog was writing back in June about how Obama and his team seemed to appreciate Bob Gates' ability to bring at least some rationality to the runaway Predator State approach practiced by Rummy and his cronies at the Defense Department (Barack's Defense Secretary: Bob Gates? 06/30/08). He's also been blogging about Gates' resistance to Air Force spending proposals and strategy perspectives: Ten More Reasons for the Air Force Purge 06/06/08; Air Force Purge Stemmed From Future War Fights 06/23/08; Pentagon Budget War About to Go From Cold to Hot? 12/10/08. (Cordesman and Kaeser don't seem to look favorably on that aspect of Gates' position on the budget battles.)

Shachtman also sums up the current dilemma much more succinctly than I could have in Jets vs. Grunts in Pentagon Spending Showdown 12/22/08:

Since the start of the century, America has been pouring money into fighting a pair of counterinsurgencies -- while spending countless billions to get ready for a potential face-off with China or Russia. But that was before we were broke. Now, it's decision time. ...

But which of these scenarios should be America's main focus? For the last eight years, America hasn't really had to make a choice between gearing up for a showdown with China and training for the next Iraq. Pentagon spending went up so high, so fast that the Defense Department could afford to pay for both. But in an era of economic collapse and trillion-dollar bailouts, that's no longer possible. So what percentage of our defense budget are we willing to devote to arming against Russia? How much are we ready to spend to get ready for Afghanistan II? What are the risks of under-investing in that scenario? Or spending too much? In other words: Where do our long-term national interests lie, really? Get those questions straight, and the choices about individual weapons systems will get a whole lot clearer. [my emphasis]

I have big worries about Gates staying on as Obama's Secretary of Defense. But part of his reason may well be that Obama and his team understand that some serious choices in defense have to be made. And the magic mirages of air power zealots add up to huge expenses that never quite deliver the promised results.

Tags: military budget, robert gates

Team of rivals?

Abe Lincoln: How the [Cheney] did the Confederates take over my Republican Party?

The boys and girls of our press corps have adopted the phrase "team of rivals" to describe Obama's Cabinet nominees. It comes from the title of a book by Big Pundit/popular historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.

This isn't the ideal description, for more than one reason. Joe Conason argues that it's Not a Team of Rivals at All New York Observer 12/02/08. Conason is more bullish on the prospects for Bob Gates to keep with Obama's program than I am. I'm also concerned that being head of Bush's Pentagon for the last two years, he may be implicated in criminal acts, or feel some incentive to cover up such acts. But in Gates' particular case, there's a general worry, not a specific one. Unlike Rummy, who definitely should be indicted and put on trial.

Conason reminds us how well the "team of rivals" narrative fits the media's gossipy, tabloid focus on personal quabbles. My favorite moment in Obama's press conference Tuesday was when he called the reporters on the fact that they were "having fun" by looking for Clinton gossip as opposed to focus on substantive foreign policy issues. Conason writes:

But as Mr. Obama learned many months ago, our leading media minds tend to be far less interested in real ideas and policies than in a fixed narrative about personalities. So his decision to nominate primary rival Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state, with all the friction that would supposedly generate, became the focus of the news. All his other appointees somehow had to be crammed into the same imaginary framework.

Conason also seems to have the same impression as I, that Obama grew very much more skeptical about the quality of our national press corps' work as the Presidential campaign went on.

Also, the "team of rivals" script has a bit of a problem in that it's not really a good description of Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet. He brought other Republicans into the Cabinet who largely shared his views of the most pressing issue of the day, the fact that his most serious rivals were getting up a civil war against the US government.

Kevin Levin at Civil War Memory links to several articles debunking various aspects of the notion of Lincoln's "team of rivals" in a memorable named post, The Use and Abuse of Popular History - Goodwin Style 11/21/08:

What’s So Special About a Team of Rivals? by James Oakes New York Times 11/19/08

Lincoln and the myth of 'Team of Rivals' by Matthew Pinsker New York Times 11/18/08

Seward, Clinton and the Team of Rivals by Brian Dirck, A. Lincoln Blog 11/19/08

Kevin writes:

We are being barraged by various commentators and so-called authorities who are either reflecting on or pushing Barack Obama to follow in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln in choosing a cabinet. Well, not quite. They are actually utilizing an interpretive theme that dominates Doris Kearns Goodwin’s best-selling book, Team of Rivals, which argues that Lincoln intentionally chose cabinet members who would both reflect very different political positions and challenge his policies. Almost no one is questioning whether this accurately reflects Lincoln’s approach, whether it was unusual, or whether it makes any sense at all in comparing our own political climate and party organization with the 1860s. No doubt, the pervasiveness of this line of thought is in part the result of Obama’s own continual references to the sixteenth president as well as his best-known speeches.

... Goodwin’s book deserves to be treated as a study of Lincoln and the politics of the 1860s. The pervasiveness of recent commentary surrounding this theme of cabinet rivals, however, is more about what we want to see in the past and much of the country’s frustrations and anger over the past few years.

But, you know, it would be too much for our overpaid pundits to both to do a few minutes research to find out whether the "team of rivals" script makes any sense at all.

So, other than the fact that it's a concept that would sloppily derived in the first place and in any case doesn't actually apply to Obama's team, the "team of rivals" is a great metaphor!

abraham lincoln, barack obama, robert gates

Obama's foreign policy

We don't have an Obama Doctrine yet. But I'm confident that the Bush Doctrine of preventive war is on the way out.

Obama's plans to escalate the war in Afghanistan is the biggest concern I have about his foreign policy right now. That's not to say it's the most important: nuclear nonproliferation is the most important. But escalating the Afghanistan War is inviting a new disaster. And whether Bob Gates maintains any credibility with Republicans or not, they will be happy to hang every problem that arises in Afghanistan on Obama's.

That's one of the problems in escalating the war. Once Obama outlines an escalation strategy, in a real sense that one becomes "Obama's War". The exception would be if there is a clearly temporary escalation in the number of troops as a part of a clear exit strategy.

But, it being a time of hope and all, I'm hoping his statement today announcing his foreign policy team means something good in this part:

As I said throughout the campaign, I will be giving Secretary Gates and our military a new mission as soon as I take office: responsibly ending the war in Iraq through a successful transition to Iraqi control. We will also ensure that we have the strategy - and resources - to succeed against al Qaeda and the Taliban. As Bob said not too long ago, Afghanistan is where the war on terror began, and it is where it must end. And going forward, we will continue to make the investments necessary to strengthen our military and increase our ground forces to defeat the threats of the 21st century. [my emphasis]

The most obvious meaning on the bolded passage in the context is that Obama wants to shift emphasis politically, financially and militarily away from Iraq into Afghanistan.

But there's another reading that jumped out at me. He's talking about an end to the "war on terror". And not just a generations-from-now, after the end of a Long War to purge evil from the Earth, which is the only way the Bush administration and their cheerleaders ever described their GWOT (global war on terror). On the face of it, he's saying that satisfactorily resolving the war in Afghanistan would end the GWOT.

That's a good sign to me. The "war on terror" framework has turned out in practice to be a warped framework for dealing with the real existing terrorism threats. And the Cheney-Bush administration both conceived and implemented it as a continuation of the Cold War. Complete with Cold War levels of military expenditures.

It's also a good signal that Obama is upgrading the UN Ambassador's position back to Cabinet-level status. Bush had downgraded it to lower than Cabinet-level. That signals a return toward a normal relationship with the world.

I'm happy to see Clinton as Secretary of State. Since mainstream press coverage of her is consistently loopy (when it's not totally insane) it's probably worth taking special note of what Obama actually said about her:

I have known Hillary Clinton as a friend, a colleague, a source of counsel, and as a campaign opponent. She possesses an extraordinary intelligence and toughness, and a remarkable work ethic. I am proud that she will be our next Secretary of State. She is an American of tremendous stature who will have my complete confidence; who knows many of the world's leaders; who will command respect in every capitol; and who will clearly have the ability to advance our interests around the world.

Hillary's appointment is a sign to friend and foe of the seriousness of my commitment to renew American diplomacy and restore our alliances. There is much to do - from preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to Iran and North Korea, to seeking a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, to strengthening international institutions. I have no doubt that Hillary Clinton is the right person to lead our State Department, and to work with me in tackling this ambitious foreign policy agenda.

Even Sam Stein at the Huffington Post (Obama's National Security Team: Questions All About Clinton 12/01/08) seems more interested in hitting various favorite press corps script points than dealing with the substance of what Clinton's appointment is likely to mean. Again with the caveat that I know I'm reading some of my own hopes into Obama's statement, I think it's odd that Stein characterized the following as Obama making "a rightful poke at the press". From Stein's report:

During the course of the question and answer session, the President-elect was asked repeatedly to address how individuals who once criticized his gravitas (Peter Baker of the New York Times was the first to point specifically at Clinton) could now be relied upon to implement his agenda.

"This is fun for the press to try and stir up quotes that were generated from the campaign," replied Obama. "I understand, you are having fun and there is nothing wrong with that. I'm not faulting it. But if you look at the statements Hillary Clinton and I have made outside the heat of the campaign, we share a view that America has to be safe and secure and in order to do that we have to combine military power with strength and diplomacy. And we have to build and enforce stronger alliances around the world so we're not carrying the burdens and these challenges by ourselves." [my emphasis]

Stein goes on with the Hillary gossip.

But at least in (digital) print, Obama's comment reads more like a direct insult of their lack of professionalism, complete with the backhanded disclaimer, "there is nothing wrong with that. I'm not faulting it". And that's a sign to me that Obama knows the Establishment press for the most part aren't his friends or allies, despite the fact that Obama has never set out to overturn the political or social Establishment (in any meaningful sense of the word).

The press covering the announcement of Obama's national security team should be asking about Afghanistan, Iraq, nuclear proliferation, etc. Not trying to generate more brain-dead Clinton gossip to entertain themselves. But what Obama said was literally true. They're focused on having fun, not on reporting substantive news.

Bob Somerby says repeatedly that democracy can't survive with a press corps like this. James Galbraith makes a similar point in a more ironic way. He says that when dirty blogging hippie types criticize the political press for not being substantive, we're applying a standard that the national press doesn't observe or consider important. We're criticizing them for not doing a good job on reporting news. But what they focus on is providing entertainment.

And, yes, I believe the President-elect just said something like that at a major press conference.

(Because it recently came up in one of my posts, I'll also note that Stein uses a stylistic construction that neocons apparently think is a signature Commie phrase, "It did not seem coincidental that ...". And, no, I don't agree with the neocon interpretation. Although apparently it was at one time a favorite literary device of American Marxists, for whatever reason.)

I'm not happy to see Bob Gates retained as Defense Secretary. He's like to try to impede withdrawal from Iraq and he's notorious for tailoring intelligence to political demands. And since he's a Republican, the political demands to which he responds may not be only Obama's. Most seriously, if torture and illegal kidnappings or other crimes took place under his authority, he could wind up being a major target of criminal investigations. And his judgment in going along with questionable attacks inside Pakistan and even more questionable ones inside Syria and Somalia isn't a good sign.

There may be some upsides to the Gates appointment. The San Francisco Chronicle's Zachary Coile writes that "having a Bush appointee preside over the withdrawal of U.S. troops could give Obama political cover from critics who derided his Iraq policy as "cut and run." (Obama likely to face foreign policy tests soon 11/30/08)

FlyOnTheWall provides some details on ways in which Gates has also worked on cutting down some of the waste in military procurement in Keeping Gates Signals Change 11/24/08. Joe Conason references that post with approval.

It hasn't received very prominent attention among our ever-vigilant puditocracy. But one very dramatic change that Obama can and hopefully will bring about is an improvement in US direct relations with Latin America. See on that topic:

U.S.-Latin America Relations: A New Direction for a New Reality by Shannon O'Neil CFR.org 11/25/08

Latin Americanists Urge Obama to Revamp Policies by Cynthia McClintock, Foreign Policy In Focus 11/13/08. Without giving specifics, McClintock writes that, in Bolivia, "the Bush administration has allied with government opponents, many of whom have not been committed to the democratic rules of the game."

Mexico's Spreading Drug Violence by Stephanie Hanson CFR.org 11/21/08

Obama has reached out early to Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero and Argentine President Cristina Fernández, signalling a desire to improve relations. One of Spain's pitches to the US for better relations is that Spain can help the US in Latin America.

Tags: barack obama, hillary clinton, military budget, robert gates

Cabinet picks

Glenn Greenwald and human rights attorney Scott Horton both have a high opinion of Eric Holder as a nominee for Attorney General. They think it's likely that he will enforce the rule of law and has sufficient integrity to avoid becoming a simple partisan in the job.

Surprisingly to me, Joe Conason makes The Case for Robert Gates New York Observer as Obama's first Secretary of Defense (New York Observer 11/18/08). I think it would be a bad, possibly disastrous pick. But Conason has a more benign view. Much of his favorable view has to do with Gates' participation with the Iraq Study Group (ISG). But the ISG recommended something different that what The Surge turned out to be. And Gates signed on with Bush to implement The Surge.

For less favorable views of the current Defense Secretary, see these pieces at CorsortiumNews.com: Robert Gates: As Bad as Rumsfeld? by Ray McGovern 11/19/08; The Danger of Keeping Robert Gates by Robert Parry 11/13/08; and a whole slew of others.

Tags: eric holder, robert gates

Robert Gates and the Troskyist theory of war

One more post today on the Summer 2008 Parameters. The lead article is by Defence Secretary and former CIA Director Robert Gates, Reflections on Leadership. I was struck in this passage in which he endorses the idea of the "Long War" on terrorism - essentially the Cheney-Bush administration's replacement for the Cold War - he mentions Leon Trotsky, who's thinking really did have a lasting influence on the neoconservatives:

A drawdown of American forces in Iraq is inevitable over time; the debate in Washington is largely about pacing. But the kind of enemy we face today - violent jihadist networks - will not allow us to remain at peace. What has been called the Long War is likely to be many years of persistent, engaged combat all around the world in differing degrees of size and intensity. This generational campaign cannot be wished away or put on a timetable. There are no exit strategies. To paraphrase the Bolshevik Leon Trotsky, we may not be interested in the Long War, but the Long War is interested in us. (my emphasis)

Tags: neoconservatives, robert gates, trotskyism