Since it is hard to keep up with developments regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I thought it might be useful to share several links that readers with interest may benefit from.

The WSJ had a useful roundup of the sanctions the Biden administration and EU have implemented in the last day.

From the “Studies in Bravery” file, “Prominent Russians join protests against Ukraine war amid 1,800 arrests.” One emblematic quote:

“Our future is being taken from us,” said Yuri Shevchuk, the frontman of classic Soviet rock band DDT and a veteran anti-war campaigner, who went to Chechnya in 1995 as part of a peace tour. “We’re being pulled like through an ice hole into the past, into the 19th, 18th, 17th centuries. And people refuse to accept it.”

The Charlemagne columnist at the Economist sounds as if he or she works at the Cato Institute, authoring a column entitled “Europe is the free-rider continent”:

Europe is the free-rider continent. For decades its defence has been underpinned by America—leaving it in a supporting role even as war breaks out on its own borders. Economically it has piggybacked on innovation from elsewhere, keeping up with rivals, not forging ahead. Even the feel-good environmental ambitions crafted in Brussels are made possible in part by importing from afar the products once made in carbon-spewing factories Europe shut down long ago. How clever it seems to some. All this money saved and effort outsourced has made it possible to live a fine life while working 35-hour weeks and retiring in one’s prime…

The Spectator’s Owen Matthews voices a concern that has arisen in the last week: “Has Putin lost the plot?”

As Putin’s hour-long address announcing official recognition of the breakaway republics of Donbas went out on Monday, a producer on Kremlin-controlled TV texted me: ‘Boss okhuyel [the boss has wigged out].’

Indeed. Putin’s rambling and uncharacteristically emotional address to the nation and the bizarrely staged Security Council meeting that preceded it carried the distinct whiff of the dying days of the USSR. The ministers standing by to publicly agree (some more convincingly than others) with the boss; the formulaic tropes about protecting Russian-speaking people from ‘genocide’; the clichés about the ‘illegitimate’ government in Kiev. The spectacle resembled nothing so much as Leonid Brezhnev’s slurred 1979 announcement that the Soviet Union had to fulfil its ‘internationalist duty’ to protect the people of Afghanistan.

How did Putin, the three-dimensional chess player whose cynical but often brilliant opportunism leveraged Russia from a middling regional power to world player, come to this?

Finally, I had a piece in Inkstick Media, echoing Matthews’ worries about Putin’s isolation and mental state and pointing out that there was no U.S. military solution that would have rescued Ukraine at an acceptable cost and risk:

President Joe Biden is right to make clear that US troops will not defend Ukraine. The amount of US firepower that would be required to overwhelm more than 150,000 Russian troops around and now inside Ukraine would be immense, and that says nothing of the risk of nuclear escalation inherent in such a war. More generally, the US military exists to defend the US and its citizens, not to repel aggression across the world. Ukraine is not a member of NATO, not covered by Article 5 provisions, and Biden has made clear that US troops would not protect it from Russia.

Much has been made about global democracy by President Joe Biden and his administration. Promoting democracy abroad has been a key pillar of the administration’s foreign policy, best exemplified by the Summit for Democracy, which focused on three key themes: defending against authoritarianism, addressing and fighting corruption, and promoting respect for human rights. These are all commendable initiatives; however vague they may be. It is curious, then, why the Biden Administration recently designated Qatar as a Major Non-NATO Ally (MNNA). Qatar, a country ruled by an absolute monarch partially based on sharia law, is now slated to become an official military and economic ally of the United States, the self-styled defender of global democracy. One does not usually associate Qatar with any of the three key themes espoused by the host of the Summit for Democracy. In fact, Qatar ranks 114th in the Economist Intelligence’s Democracy Index 2021, ranks even worse in Cato’s Human Freedom Index at 128, and is decidedly “not free” according to Freedom House. Simply put, Qatar has very little in common with liberal democracy.

So why exactly has the Biden Administration, the same administration that touts democracy as paramount to its foreign policy, decided to establish closer ties to a country that is so clearly at odds with democratic values? The answer is that in Washington, dubious “security interests” will always trump other interests, including global democracy and human rights.

While it does not guarantee a security commitment, being an MNNA is not a distinction without a difference. Among the many benefits, the most significant are access to U.S.-owned war reserve stockpiles, eligibility for priority delivery of U.S.-owned Excess Defense Articles, the ability to purchase uranium ammunition, and the ability to bid for non‑U.S. supplied maintenance of U.S. defense articles.

From a capability perspective, Qatar gaining MNNA status ensures that it will have access to higher quality weapons for lower prices. Qatar, already the 20th largest recipient of U.S. weapons since 2009, will now have even greater access to America’s military technology. This is especially problematic when considering Qatar’s participation in the Yemen conflict, previous support for Hamas and the Taliban, and its close ties with Iran, Russia, and the Assad regime in Syria – all things in direct conflict with U.S. security interests.

Beyond the security benefits, there is also a diplomatic benefit for Qatar. Receiving MNNA status signals that the U.S., at the very least, tolerates Doha’s problematic practices. Among them are the country’s previous support for terrorist organizations and rampant human rights violations in the form of forced labor.

Qatar’s track record of supporting terrorist and terrorist-harboring groups includes Hamas, the Taliban, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and the al-Nusra Front in Syria. These facts have not deterred the U.S. from sending weapons to Qatar in recent history. In 2012, the Obama Administration authorized secret shipments of weapons to Doha intended to support the NATO mission in Libya. As the war developed, the administration learned that these weapons were given to terrorists. Despite that, the U.S. continued to authorize over $10 billion in sales to Qatar in the following two years.

It is true that there is no historical evidence of these weapons being used in terrorist attacks against the U.S. Yet, this signals that Washington tolerates its partners’ support for organizations that actively fight U.S. interests so long as that partner is willing to line the pockets of U.S. weapons manufacturers.

This boost to international recognition is even more problematic when considering Qatar’s record with slavery. While the practice of slavery is technically illegal in Qatar, practices eerily similar to slavery, including servitude, are not. Indeed, they are practiced quite regularly, especially with foreign nationals. Migrant workers’ passports are reportedly confiscated, allowing employers to entirely control a worker’s ability to stay in and leave the country. They often work 14-hour shifts, seven days a week, and are frequently paid late, if ever at all. While technically not legally endorsed slavery, the practice of trapping workers in a country and forcing them to work in inhumane conditions is about as close as one can get to it.

The consequences of these practices are best demonstrated by the 2022 FIFA World Cup. In December 2010, Qatar was awarded the opportunity to host the tournament – the largest sporting event in the world – in scandalous fashion. As of February 2021, nearly 7,000 migrant workers have perished in infrastructure projects for the tournament. Given that a full year has passed since that statistic has been updated, the number is undoubtedly higher. Making matters worse, prior to President Biden’s designation of Qatar as an MNNA, Washington agreed to support Qatar’s security prior to and during the tournament. Despite all these affronts to global democracy and human rights, the U.S. is doubling down on its relationship with Qatar.

The United States’ recent declaration making Qatar a Major Non-NATO Ally is simply confounding. Washington is allowing a country that supports terrorists and engages in blatant human rights abuses to have access to some of the best U.S.-made weapons available. For a country that has criticized and opted to diplomatically boycott the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, the U.S. is contradicting itself and the supposed values of the Biden Administration’s foreign policy.

Last Friday the Biden administration quietly released its Indo-Pacific Strategy, which will set the tempo for U.S. policies in a critical region. For supporters of a grand strategy of restraint, the Indo-Pacific Strategy is a mix of good and bad that echoes many of the aspects of the March 2021 Interim National Security Strategic Guidance. Both documents show signs of smart tactical adjustments to U.S. policy, but these adjustments are in the service of broader strategic goals that are overly ambitious and will be difficult to achieve even if the tactical tweaks are successful.

This strange limbo of improving the details of policy but pursuing questionable strategic goals reflects broader changes in the global balance of power. As other great powers like China rise, the United States enjoys a less dominant position. In such a world, the limits of U.S. power, and especially military power, are more pronounced. The Indo-Pacific Strategy’s emphasis on leaning more on regional partners and improving non-military tools of foreign policy indicate that the Biden administration is aware of the changing balance of power. However, the set of strategic objectives laid out in the strategy also suggests that the administration is loath to accept a more limited or less ambitious set of U.S. goals.

While the Indo-Pacific Strategy is not without shortcomings, it would be a mistake to gloss over its positive aspects. First and foremost among these is the strategy is an actual strategy as opposed to a buzzword. In Washington, “great power competition” with China has been the go-to explanation for U.S. actions in the Indo-Pacific, but competition is not a strategy. The Indo-Pacific Strategy clearly lays out strategic goals and ends and explains the ways and means that will be used to achieve those ends. Even if one disagrees with the particulars of the strategy, having this “ends, ways, means” formula provides a much better starting point for assessing the effectiveness of U.S. policies than “great power competition.”

The other major positive aspect of the Indo-Pacific Strategy is the attention it pays to the non-military aspects of U.S. engagement with the region. Security is one component of the strategy, and thus far in the Biden administration’s tenure it has been the predominant form of U.S. engagement, but the strategy recognizes that the United States needs to do more in the economic and diplomatic domains. Moreover, the Indo-Pacific Strategy repeatedly emphasizes that the United States will work closely with regional partners in many areas, which should help shift some of the burden away from Washington and produce greater buy in for policies. In general, enhancing the non-military tools of U.S. foreign policy is a positive step. However, turning the Indo-Pacific Strategy from words into reality will be a challenge given the many years of Washington’s overemphasis on military power as foreign policy tool.

Tactical adjustments are well and good, but the chief problem of the Indo-Pacific Strategy is its adherence to lofty strategic goals. It is not surprising that the Biden administration wants to aim high, but it may be setting itself up for over promising and under delivering by not interrogating the assumptions undergirding the goals it is setting.

The Indo-Pacific Strategy’s (very short) section on North Korea is a good example of this problem. The strategy contains good things about a willingness to negotiate with North Korea, but it maintains the U.S. goal of denuclearization. This ship has long since sailed. There is no realistic path to the denuclearization of North Korea that does not entail another crisis at best or a war at worst. A more realistic way to advance regional stability would be to refocus U.S. efforts on building a peace regime on the Korean peninsula and emphasizing arms control instead of denuclearization.

A similar issue exists throughout the rest of the Indo-Pacific Strategy. The United States mentions a free and open Indo-Pacific as its first of five objectives, and this is defined as having a region wherein countries can make decisions free of external coercion. The problem with this strategic goal is that coercion can come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes ranging from comparatively minor economic actions to threats of military action. Some forms of coercion are easier to prevent than others, but the United States makes no fine-grained distinctions in its strategy.

The Indo-Pacific Strategy is an actual strategy with ends that can be debated, and ways and means that can be judged for their success or failure. For a supporter of grand strategic restraint, the strategy is a conflicted document. On the one hand it provides a tacit recognition of the limits of U.S. power as China rises and the importance of thinking about foreign policy in more ways than military might. But on the other hand it does not seriously interrogate the assumptions or sustainability of broader U.S. strategic goals.

Senator Patty Murray (D – WA) recently re-introduced legislation called the Values in Arms Export Act. This legislation would amend the Arms Export Control Act – originally passed in 1976 – to include the evaluation of “responsible behavior and compliance with human rights and law of war the U.S. demands of states purchasing U.S. weapons.”

How This Legislation Would Work:

This bill comes in the wake of increasing violence around the world involving U.S. weapons – whether it be in Yemen, the Philippines, Mexico, or Central America. To address this problem Sen. Murray’s legislation would create an Oversight Board made up of a full-time chairperson and four additional members, all of whom would be appointed by the president with consent of the Senate.

This board would then evaluate the human rights principles and adherence to the law of conflict and ensure that these are considered before authorizing a sale. The board would issue recommendations based on this analysis and provide it to Congress, the president, or the head of any executive branch agency.

This assessment would then be submitted when a sale is notified to Congress. The board would also make its reports available to the public and hold public hearings. After this, the offending country would be unable to receive defense articles and services for a ten-year period. Finally, the president may waive this recommendation if the transfer is for assistance or training provided by any U.S. Government agency and carried out by U.S. personnel.

What Would Its Impact Be?

It is unlikely this bill becomes law due to the politics of restricting weapons sales. Moreover, the presidential waiver and the fact that members of the oversight board would be appointed by the president would theoretically mute much of its potential positive impact. Nonetheless, this legislation could substantially reduce the risk of sales and create a more humanitarian foreign policy for the United States.

In the Cato Institute’s 2021 Arms Sales Risk Index, my colleague Trevor Thrall and I examine the impact of weapons sales. Two of our six components are directly related to human rights (“freedom” and “state violence”) and two are directly related to conflict (“state fragility” and “conflict intensity”). These vectors are correlated with U.S. weapons being used against a country’s population, dispersion of U.S. weapons, and greater anti-American sentiment. The cases of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Guinea, the UAE, and the Philippines demonstrate this risk.

Selling weapons to human rights abusers does not help the United States. Rather, it creates a self-licking ice cream cone whereby Washington provides more weapons and assistance to offset the problems that U.S. arms transfers created.

To that end, Senator Murray’s legislation could reduce these risks. Incorporating human rights into evaluation of weapons sales makes sense, and while the future and exact impact of the legislation should be debated, its proposal is a positive step towards this end.

Late last night, Senators Ron Wyden (D‑OR) and Martin Heinrich (D‑NM) announced that they had pressured the CIA into releasing a previously (and still largely) classified Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) report about an Agency program targeting potential ISIS money sources with alleged or actual U.S. Person (USP) connections. The PCLOB report raises concerns, usually obliquely, about the potential privacy and civil liberties threat the CIA program represents to the financial records (and thus identities) of American citizens.

So what does the report tell us?

The report covers staff-level discussions between PCLOB and CIA in 2015–2016. There is no evidence PCLOB staff had independent access to raw CIA data on the program in question, in contrast to Senate Intelligence Committee staff who worked on the mammoth Torture Report. The report provides no information on when the program began, who authorized it (Bush 43 or Obama), to what extent White House officials were aware of and/​or briefed on the program, etc.

The PCLOB report is strictly about CIA’s acquisition, processing and dissemination of financial data, obtained from both open and classified sources, regarding potential USP-ISIS connections. While there are many alarming aspects about potential CIA intelligence activities designed to collect USP data under this program, a few stand out.

The CIA unit responsible for intake and data processing “runs the automated [redacted] algorithm that identifies records containing presumed USP identifying information [redacted sentence/​paragraph].” (p. 45)

There is no evidence in the unredacted portions of the PCLOB report to indicate that the code underlying the algorithm in question was evaluated by PCLOB staff or any other non-CIA entity to determine its validity, reliability, etc.

The report also notes that requests by CIA and non-CIA elements for the unmasking of USP data or identities is common and seemingly on a large scale:

[redacted] attorney’s rough estimate was [redacted] receives [redacted] unmasking requests in a year. (p. 45)

If you look at the redacted portion on the number of unmasking request, the redaction encompasses at least 8 and perhaps as many as 10 numeric characters–potentially a huge number.

The declassified portions of the report make clear that there’s no real outside, consistent oversight of the CIA program; with the exception of some still-classified Attorney General guidelines, all the controls over the program are overseen by CIA staff and management…which brings me to the “Congressional oversight failure” aspect of this episode.

The report covers the 2015–2016 period. It seems clear that Wyden and Heinrich knew about this program, and had concerns about it long before yesterday. Why was this program and its implications not surfaced until now?

Of further concern is the fact that Wyden and Heinrich’s April 13, 2021 letter to DNI Avril Haines asked the DNI to declassify a report written not by the ODNI, not by CIA, but by the PCLOB–an entity that touts itself as “an independent agency within the Executive branch.” The Wyden-Heinrich approach is the exact opposite of that employed by the late Senator Frank Church (D‑ID) and the committee he led in the 1970s.

The Church Committee consulted with, but did not seek the permission of, the Ford administration in making decisions about what IC documents it included in its final report. The rules of the House and Senate give both bodies the authority, derived from Article I, Section V of the Constitution, to make public or keep secret matters under their deliberation and oversight. Wyden and Heinrich could’ve sought a vote to make the PCLOB report public on their own.

Perhaps they did in secret session and were defeated. If that’s the case, they should’ve revealed that their colleagues were keeping the American public in the dark about a potentially problematic CIA financial records snooping operation. If they made no such effort, their approach to Haines is even more problematic, as it legitimizes the precedent set by CIA in this case–that it (and by extension, perhaps every other IC agency) has the power to veto the release of PCLOB reports that are critical of its programs and activities.

As I’ve previously noted, a month before Wyden and Heinrich sent their letter to Haines, the Cato Institute initiated a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to force into the open, among other things, any PCLOB reports on Intelligence Community (IC) activities undertaken pursuant to Executive Order 12333–the day-to-day operating instructions for IC operations abroad. In September 2021, the PCLOB released to Cato a heavily redacted NSA Inspector General report on potential electronic surveillance non-compliance incidents under Sections 704 and 705 of the FISA Amendments Act.

That document, and a number of heavily redacted and related emails, were produced in response to Cato’s request for “Any correspondence in any form to or from the Board regarding alleged or actual violations of laws, regulations, or executive orders by any federal department or agency under the purview of the Board.” The NSA IG report Cato is making public today has never been publicly discussed by the PCLOB. The Cato FOIA lawsuit is ongoing.

As a former serving CIA intelligence officer, I understand well the need to “follow the money” when it comes to terrorism financing. What none of us should countenance is the typical, inside-the-Beltway, Washington political theater version of oversight of IC elements, especially the CIA.

This CIA program in question, and no doubt many others, require a far deeper and more serious level of scrutiny than the PCLOB has thus far provided. Moreover, if the PCLOB is going to continue to allow its reports to be censored or held back entirely by the agencies it investigates, it should be abolished and its oversight mission given to a professional government watchdog–the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

As for House and Senate members on the respective Intelligence Committees, we need less “oversight by press release” and more hammer-dropping on IC elements that engage in activities that clearly threaten the constitutional rights of Americans. 

Alongside its promotion of freedom across the world, the Cato Institute has long argued for a U.S. foreign policy of restraint. War and elevated national security concerns have always and everywhere promoted the growth of the state. Military intervention should only be used to counter true security threats to the nation, while restraint is critical to maintaining a free society in the United States and to avoiding reckless and costly foreign entanglements. Frequent military interventions by the United States in recent decades have constrained liberty at home, while thousands of young American servicemembers and a larger number of overseas civilians have paid a terrible price with their bodies and lives.

Consistent with this history, as the crisis in Ukraine raises the possibility of a military invasion by Russia, Cato Institute experts have argued against military intervention by the United States in any conflict in Ukraine. Such a conflict, while tragic, would not represent a national security threat to the United States.

Advocating for military restraint, of course, does not weaken our support for liberty nor our opposition to tyranny everywhere. The Cato Institute reaffirms its steadfast support for the liberty, human rights, and self-determination of the people of Ukraine—and indeed of people in Russia and around the world. Cato has long promoted these ideals internationally, including through the sponsorship of major conferences in Kyiv, Moscow, and St. Petersburg beginning in the early 1990s.

Some pro-liberty advocates have insisted that a non-interventionist foreign policy cannot be reconciled with U.S. obligations as a world power. Paradoxically, those same advocates, who are justifiably skeptical about the efficacy of government in domestic matters, are eager to embrace a more expansive role for government overseas, urging military responses to crises that do not threaten U.S. national security. The result has been imperial wars, lost American lives, squandered resources, and the erosion of civil liberties. Moreover, U.S. interventions have often been ineffective or even antithetical to security, stability, and democracy. That’s not a foreign policy a libertarian can support.

As John Quincy Adams wrote of the United States in 1821, “Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

A recent Wired article by Andy Greenberg has raised much interest in the cyber security field as it supports an idea many have been pushing for years, the ability to hack-back when countries target private entities and individuals. Much like a license for piracy and privateering, the idea of hunting forward on your own for retribution is more akin to a John Wick movie than the course of international politics.

Much like the mind of Donald Trump and his mythical 400-pound hacker, for Wired, a hacker is a “man in a T‑shirt, pajama pants, and slippers, sitting in his living room night after night, watching Alien movies and eating spicy corn snacks.” This line was literally in a professional article written about a foreign policy issue.

The man with the handle P4x accused North Korea of trying to steal his exploits, often unknown methods of invading opposing computer systems. When no action by the United States government was forthcoming, P4x took matters into his own hands and took down the entirety of North Korea’s internet. Literally “dozens” of sites, by shutting down routers for a few hours. The oxymoron of a term, North Korean cyber defenses, failed, mainly because there is really no need to defend what is not really there since North Korea does not have much of a normal internet.

The coverage contained in the Wired article is disappointing in that it fails to demonstrate the danger of letting a sole individual take foreign policy into their hands. While security researcher Dave Aitel does note that there is a danger of harming ongoing intelligence operations, the true danger is greater than that. Individuals do not make foreign policy, it’s even unclear if the president has a free role to make foreign policy given the clear oversight role of Congress for war powers and treaty ratification.

Even the Wall Street Journal suggests that allowing hack-backs is a “terrible idea.” The obvious problem is that individuals can step into the middle of an international conflict, one that is already managed by a portfolio controlled by the National Security Council, the State Department, and the Department of Defense. There is also the issue of mistakes, collateral damage, and spoiling ongoing law enforcement or intelligence operations. There are a complex set of calculations involved in taking foreign policy action and unfortunately for P4x, protecting his property is nowhere near the top of the list, especially since North Korea keeps testing missiles challenging ongoing diplomacy.

Sadly, many people have a misguided view of the role of the United States in protecting an individual, with one blue checkmark commentor remarking that “when a US citizen is physically attacked aboard, the US embassy gets involved.” Unaware of the limitations of the embassy who must involve local law enforcement rather than acting as Jason Bourne to hunt down those who have wronged them, retribution is the not the role of the US embassy, or the foreign policy community.

This is all just evidence of cyber road rage. Some are obviously dismayed that the United States does not go on the offensive in cyber security very often. This misguided view of the efficacy of offensive operations pervades the discourse and highlights the general misunderstanding of the role of cyber operations as a way to manage risk and complex international communications rather than as a new form of warfare.

All these themes come together nicely through the lens of a recent road rage incident, vividly captured on film. Eric Popper, a Florida man, cut another driver off and when that driver passed him, he opened fire with a sidearm because the person dared to honk at him. Popper, who a minute early was happily bopping along to a tune, fired wildly inside his own vehicle blowing out all his windshields. He is lucky he did not hurt anyone else or himself. These sorts of road rage incidents were once common but have declined. The fear is that cyber road rage will become a common fact of daily life, endangering the entire international system, not just a guy sitting in his car dancing to a bop.