CNAS Senior Fellow Mira Rapp-Hooper has authored a first-rate take-down of the illogic of supposedly limited strikes (aka the “bloody nose” option) against North Korea at The Atlantic. Here are a few choice passages:

it makes little sense for American war planners to assume a “limited” strike like this would stay limited. A U.S. operation may not achieve its objectives, and even if it does, it would still leave the decision of whether or not to retaliate up to Kim. The North Korean leader would make that decision based on his own beliefs about the strike once it took place, not based on American wishes for his response. If he did decide to hit back, the result could be the most calamitous U.S. conflict since World War II.

[…]

If Kim is irrational on matters concerning his nuclear weapons and missiles, it’s reasonable to assume he’d be similarly irrational across the board. If he cannot be stopped from trying to reunify the two Koreas, further U.S. or UN sanctions are also unlikely to alter his cost calculations. Why would a first strike by America restrain him? Irrational actors are irrational in all domains—Washington does not have the luxury of picking and choosing where deterrence prevails.

The belief that Kim can’t be deterred from conquest but can be deterred once the United States has brought force against him demonstrates a highly selective strategic understanding. What form retaliation would take, again, is up to Kim. Yet [Trump national security advisor H.R.] McMaster seems to hold an erratic view of strategic dynamics that conveniently supports a use of force by the United States against North Korea, and privileges this path over all other options.

Under normal circumstances, these sorts of arguments against preventive war should rule the day. The case against the United States initiating force against any country, especially a nuclear-armed North Korea, is strong. Indeed, Korea expert Victor Cha made a similar case last week. Cha, no dove, concluded:

the United States must continue to prepare military options. Force will be necessary to deal with North Korea if it attacks first, but not through a preventive strike that could start a nuclear war.

And, while we’re on the subject of preventive war (i.e. premeditated aggression), former Colin Powell advisor Lawrence Wilkerson weighed in on the 15^th anniversary of Powell’s speech to the United Nations regarding Iraq’s supposed WMD program. Wilkerson, a retired army colonel, noted the similarities between the Bush administration’s shoddy case for that war, and the Trump administration’s attempts to create a casus belli against Iran. These steps include, Wilkerson writes:

the president’s decertification ultimatum in January that Congress must “fix” the Iran nuclear deal, despite the reality of Iran’s compliance; the White House’s pressure on the intelligence community to cook up evidence of Iran’s noncompliance; and the administration’s choosing to view the recent protests in Iran as the beginning of regime change. Like the Bush administration before, these seemingly disconnected events serve to create a narrative in which war with Iran is the only viable policy.

These claims are false, these policies are flawed, and the implications are dangerous. The case for the JCPOA is strong, and the case against war with Iran is even stronger. 

Most Americans have learned from our unhappy post‑9/​11 wars. They are skeptical about starting new ones (and cool to expanding the existing ones). Once bitten, twice shy.

Alas, in the case of senior U.S. national security officials, it seems they are many times bitten, still not shy.

Neatly defining President Trump’s foreign policy has never been easy, characterized as it is by contradictory impulses, fragmentary ideas, and strains of paradox. However, on the two most arresting national security issues at the top of Trump’s agenda—Iran and North Korea—his approach is plain: aggressive confrontation is good; diplomacy is bad.

The problem is that, even if Trump himself is not determined to go to war with either of these countries, he is making it far more likely.

Last month, Trump once again waived nuclear-related sanctions on Iran, consistent with our obligations under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 agreement that provided economic sanctions relief in exchange for Iran significantly rolling back its nuclear program and subjecting it to an intrusive international inspections regime. However, Trump vowed it would be the last time he acts to uphold the deal.

The president’s antipathy toward the JCPOA is not rational. Indeed, there is a virtual consensus—including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), our European allies, China, Russia, and the U.S. military and intelligence community—that Iran is complying with the terms of the deal and that it is working as designed. If Trump’s effort to upend the JCPOA leads to its collapse, it would unburden Iran from the deal’s restrictions and rob the international community of unprecedented visibility into Iran’s program.

In a New York Times op-ed marking 15 years since Colin Powell’s United Nations speech making the case for war with Iraq, retired Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who helped draft the speech as Powell’s chief of staff, warns, “the Trump administration is using much the same playbook [as the Bush administration did with Iraq] to create a false choice that war is the only way to address the challenges presented by Iran.”

Though Wilkerson uses the phrase “Trump administration,” it is important to note that most of the president’s own cabinet is not with him on this. Indeed, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford, and Commander of U.S. Strategic Command Gen. John Hyten, among others, all believe that staying in the deal is in the U.S. national interest, while undermining it presents unnecessary risks. Indeed, these voices have successfully dissuaded Trump from withdrawing from the deal thus far.

Still, the president has other allies, including UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and CIA Director Mike Pompeo—and Wilkerson is right that they are employing familiar tactics. The Guardian reported in August that “U.S. intelligence officials are under pressure from the White House to produce a justification to declare Iran in violation of a 2015 nuclear agreement, in an echo of the politicization of intelligence that led up to the Iraq invasion.” In November, Pompeo selectively released documents from the Bin Laden raid meant to suggest an operational connection between Iran and al-Qaeda, not unlike the efforts of some Bush administration officials in the lead up to Iraq. Haley’s theatrical speech in December, complete with a Hollywood-worthy backdrop of Iranian missiles, was short on evidence, didn’t stand up to scrutiny, and was reminiscent of Powell’s dramatic UN presentation, with vials of anthrax as visual aids.

To a certain extent, the real value of the JCPOA is not the technical limitations it imposes on Iran’s nuclear program. Rather, the real value of the deal is that it erects a psychological barrier to the United States going to war with Iran for utterly deficient reasons. This barrier seems to frustrate Trump, who despises limitations on his authority.

Whether the president has such designs or not, there should be no doubt that he is making war more likely—a war that Wilkerson rightly points out, “would be 10 to 15 times worse than the Iraq war in terms of casualties and costs.”

The approach to North Korea is perhaps even more troubling. Last week, President Trump decided to revoke his planned nomination of Victor Cha as Ambassador to South Korea. Why? Because Cha voiced concerns about the prospect of a limited U.S. military strike against Pyongyang on the grounds that it would escalate uncontrollably to full-scale war in Northeast Asia, likely featuring tit-for-tat nuclear strikes, killing millions in short order.

These objections, which Cha later spelled out in a Washington Post op-ed, were enough to banish him from the Trump administration. Until this incident, most observers assessed the administration’s loose talk of war with North Korea was merely a bluff intended to frighten Pyongyang into capitulation or pressure China to do more to rein in its churlish client. But the dismissal of Cha suggested otherwise.

Adding to the concern, “the White House has grown frustrated,” the New York Times reported Thursday, over “the Pentagon’s reluctance to provide President Trump with options for a military strike against North Korea.” The Pentagon “is worried that the White House is moving too hastily toward military action on the Korean Peninsula that could escalate catastrophically,” the Times added. “Giving the president too many options, the officials said, could increase the odds that he will act.”

Congress, too, is beginning to try to check the president on this: a group of Democratic senators sent a letter to Trump reminding him that he lacks legal authority to attack North Korea (though this hasn’t deterred the president in the past).

It is deeply worrisome that both Congress and the executive branch feel the need to actively contain Trump’s aggressive inclinations on these fronts. Unfortunately, the president is as much a product as he is a driver of America’s political and media zeitgeist, which has inflated the threat from Iran and North Korea to pathological proportions. In reality, neither regime poses a clear and present danger to the security of the United States, certainly not one requiring military action. The fever pitch surrounding each is more of our own making than anything else and Trump’s hawkish approach is by no means imposed on him by circumstances.

The question is whether the president can be convinced of this before his bombast begets a war nobody wants to fight.

After much publicly acrimony and week-long speculation about its contents, the “Nunes Memo” (named for GOP House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) chairman Devin Nunes of California) was finally made public today. In reality, the document was authored by thus-far unidentified GOP HPSCI staffers and does not represent a genuine, bipartisan committee product. It is thus, by definition, a purely partisan document.

But what of its substance, if any? Is there anything truly new or genuinely important in the document that is worthy of follow up by Special Counsel Robert Mueller? Unlikely. Should the memo serve as an opportunity for Congress to revisit its anemic surveillance oversight and reform record? Absolutely. First, let’s deal with the memo.

The memo itself is concerned with FBI Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) surveillance requests targeting then-former Trump campaign aide Carter Page in 2016. The core Nunes Memo allegation is that material that would’ve cast doubt on the credibility of the so-called “Steele Dossier”–a piece of campaign opposition research on the Trump campaign compiled by former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele, portions of which were allegedly used in the October 2016 FISA application on Page submitted to the FISA Court (FISC) by the FBI. In essence, the Nunes Memo alleges that a piece of political campaign material was used in an effort to target Trump and his campaign staff, and that the FBI failed to disclose Steele’s political connection to the DNC and Clinton campaigns to the FISC. 

What the Nunes Memo fails to note is that Page was clearly a “person of interest” to the FBI as early as 2013 in connection with a counterintelligence investigation involving Russian spies–agents who were apparently attempting to recruit Page as a source. As a former intelligence officer myself, its very easy for me to see why the Bureau would be interested in Page and his ongoing contacts with Russians. That Nunes and his staff apparently don’t see the problem presented by Page’s Russian contacts should be of concern to anyone who cares about preventing hostile intelligence services from gaining access to Americans with potential political influence and access to sensitive government information via their friends in government.

The Nunes Memo also implies that the FBI deliberately lied to the FISC about what it knew about Steele’s opposition research target and clients. From p. 2 of the Nunes Memo:

Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/​campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DoJ and FBI officials.

Did the FBI have a statutory requirement to disclose that information? The specifc legal requirements for an application for electronic surveillance do not mandate that explicitly political/campaign-related conflicts of interest or similar politically sensitive information be included in the application. Should it? Absolutely. But in releasing the memo, neither Nunes, House Speaker Paul Ryan, or President Trump have called upon Congress to address this loophole. Neither have their Democratic Party counterparts.

What House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland has called for is Nunes’ head. Speaker Ryan is unlikely to accomodate the request, though one could make a very credible argument that he should.

Nunes’ tenure as HPSCI chairman has been a poltical and oversight disaster. Nunes and his GOP colleagues have made much about alleged surveillance violations against white businessmen while ignoring far more credible allegations of surveillance abuse against politically active people of color. The memo on alleged violations of Page’s rights rings quite hollow when you consider that the House GOP-controlled HPSCI conducted no investigation into documents released by Edward Snowden showing clear evidence that Arab- and Muslim-American leaders had been the target of unjustified–and likely unconstitutional–surveillance. The targets included a then-Republican Muslim-American Virginia House of Delegates candidate, Faisal Gill.

Nor has the House GOP-controlled HPSCI shown the slightest interest in investigating the near-complete breakdown of internal Intelligence Community (IC) watchdog. Indeed, I have heard credible reports about whistleblower retaliation problems at multiple IGs across the IC. But instead of investigating these and other genuine IC oversight challenges, the House GOP leadership–and their Democratic counterparts–have spent their time and energy arguing over a political “nothingburger” for weeks…ensuring that the FISA Follies continue.

On Saturday, January 20, six men disguised in army uniforms launched an attack within Kabul’s InterContinental Hotel, holding it under siege for over 12 hours and killing 22 people, including Americans. Harrowing accounts of survivors are emerging, with many saying that the attackers were looking for foreigners specifically and killing them on the spot. Some survivors jumped out of windows while most were rescued by Afghan security forces, who acted swiftly.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, though Javid Faisal, the deputy spokesman for Afghanistan’s executive office blamed the Haqqani Network, a militant group that fights Afghan and U.S. security forces in Afghanistan and has close ties with Pakistan. In fact, the Trump administration has called on Pakistan to end its support of militants and eradicate domestic safe havens as a myriad of D.C.-based analysts dissect Pakistan’s leverage over the Taliban and Haqqanis. 

While the United States and India both denounced the attack and praised the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces for their bravery, Pakistan’s condemnation seemed to be conditional. Mohammad Faisal, a spokesman for Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, tweeted “We reject the knee jerk allegations by some Afghan circles to point the finger at Pakistan” and instead, urged for a credible investigation into the attack. 

The attack highlights three important—and troubling—aspects of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and its deteriorating relationship with Pakistan.

First, violence in Kabul has not only been on the rise these last few years, but has also become predictable. For example, just a few days before the attack, the U.S. State Department had issued a warning about the increased likelihood of hotels in Kabul being targeted by extremist groups, and urged all to remain alert at all times, keep a low profile, and ensure that cells phones were fully charged. In 2017, in their quarterly report to Congress, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction reported that civilian casualties and targeted attacks on Afghan military, police, and Special Forces have been the highest since 2009. This latest attacks shows that the trend may continue in 2018 regardless of an increased U.S. presence in Afghanistan.

Second, even though the Taliban took responsibility for this attack, there are two more powerful insurgent groups that could have easily orchestrated an attack: the Haqqani Network and the ISIS–Khorasan (ISIS–K) group. The Haqqani Network, along with the Taliban, have been an ongoing source of tension between the United States and Pakistan, while ISIS–K’s expansion along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border poses a new set of counterinsurgency challenges for all three states: the U.S., Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

The third, and most significant, aspect of the Kabul Hotel attack is that it highlights the urgent need for a reassessment—or rather reopening—of realistic and pragmatic diplomatic avenues. The Taliban and Haqqani Network both have been growing stronger: while they may not be able to militarily defeat U.S. and NATO forces, they have proven time and time again that they can’t be defeated. As of September 2017, the Taliban controls over 40% of Afghanistan’s territory—the most since the onset of the Global War on Terror.

Pakistan is currently pursuing a strategy that consists of a combination of persuasion (i.e. trying to convince the United States that all safe havens have been eliminated), tough talk (i.e., threats to stop intelligence-sharing and suspend NATO supply routes), and restraint (i.e., measured response to Trump tweet). At the forefront of this strategy is Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Aizaz Chaudhry, who has spoken at Carnegie, Georgetown University, and George Washington University, explaining Pakistan’s position and its relationship with the United states. This week, at CSIS, he said that Pakistan’s relationship with United States must be “preserved and strengthened” with a focus on resettling Afghan refugees currently residing in Pakistan back to Afghanistan—even by force. 

In the aftermath of this recent attack in Kabul, Pakistan’s leverage on the Taliban and the Haqqani Network is irrelevant—and useless—for U.S. interests in the region. Instead, this attack should serve as an opening for the United States, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to come to the table to ensure that this does not mark a renewal of violence in Kabul and beyond. For Pakistan, this attack puts it at a crossroads: Pakistan can either continue to lend its support to the Taliban and Haqqanis despite experiencing a decrease in leverage or it can shift its domestic counterinsurgency to target both groups. The latter will require Pakistan to be more transparent and the United States to be more open to dialogue. 

In advance of the January 30 conference here at Cato—The Trump Doctrine at One Year—I review public attitudes toward Trump’s “America First” vision and his foreign policy handling over his first year in office. Join us for a what will undoubtedly be a spirited conversation with a fantastic group of experts.

Donald Trump’s America First rhetoric during the 2016 presidential campaign marked a sharp departure from the fundamental tenets of liberal internationalism that have guided U.S. foreign policy since World War II. Trump’s tirades against free trade, NATO allies, immigrants (legal and otherwise), and his general disinterest in engaging with the world unless there was money in it for the United States horrified the foreign policy establishment of both parties.

Beyond concerns about Trump, many observers worried that his success reflected the demise of public support for internationalism. Though the public supported robust internationalist policies after World War II and during the Cold War, Trump’s emergence coincided with rising economic insecurity and inequality, intense political polarization, and dropping confidence in government to solve the problems facing the nation. Had the public perhaps decided that internationalism’s time had come and gone? Would Trump’s presidency usher in rising support for nativist and protectionist policies and calls to turn inward, away from the international arena?

A wide array of poll data from Trump’s first year in office strongly suggests the answer is no. A large majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of foreign policy and his America First policies are among the most unpopular elements of his foreign policy.

Trump’s fiery attacks on unfair trading practices by China and Japan and his criticism of NAFTA as “the worst deal ever made” may have energized his base during the campaign, but since taking office Trump’s course on trade has not been a popular one. Though Trump pulled the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership as soon as he took office and appears likely to pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Americans remain committed to free trade. A June 2017 survey from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that 72% of the public thinks international trade is good for the United States. An October 2017 poll from the Pew Research Center echoed this result, finding that Americans are more likely to believe NAFTA is good for the United States by 56–33%. 

Trump is also clearly in the minority camp when it comes to immigration, another key pillar of the America First vision. Only 39% approved of Trump’s handling of immigration as of November 2017. Most Americans simply don’t share the president’s dim view of immigrants. Trump began his campaign in 2015 complaining of Mexican immigrants that “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

Last week in a meeting about immigration at the White House, Trump’s views again stirred debate after he complained about people coming from “shitholes” like Haiti and Africa and asked why the United States didn’t get more people from Norway. But according to a June 2017 Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll, just 37% of Americans see immigrants and refugees as a critical threat to U.S. interests. Seventy-one percent say that immigration is a good thing for the country today. Poll after poll finds that a majority of Americans think that even illegal immigrants should have the opportunity to stay in the United States—68% in a recent Quinnipiac poll say they should be able to apply for citizenship. Unsurprisingly, Trump and the Republicans face the same political headwinds in the debate over DACA reform. Seventy-nine percent thinks the “Dreamers”—undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children—should be allowed to stay and become citizens.

Despite the disconnect on immigration, Trump has found somewhat more support on issues where Americans do sense security threats. During the campaign, Trump argued that refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria should not be allowed to enter the United States, a view that receives majority support. Two-thirds of Americans supported preventing Syrian refugees from coming to the United States in a June 2017 poll, for example. And though poll results have varied widely, it appears that a majority of Americans approves Trump’s “travel ban” temporarily restricting visa applicants from six Muslim-majority countries to those who can show a close family relationship. The most recent poll by Politico/​Morning Consult in July 2017 found that 60% of Americans support Trump’s “travel ban.”

On the other hand, most Americans have never been keen on Trump’s favorite construction project. Despite his non-stop efforts to frame the southern border wall as a critical security issue, support for building it has remained below 40% since the month after Trump took office and a poll released last week found that Americans oppose building a wall on the Mexican border by 63–34%.

When it comes to dealing with the ultimate threat—nuclear weapons—Trump’s approach is again clearly at odds with a majority. Trump’s hard-line opposition to the Iran nuclear deal, for example, contrasts with the 67% of Americans who think the United States should not withdraw from the deal.

And though Trump’s approach to North Korea has involved a good deal of saber rattling, tough talk on Twitter, and warnings that “time is running out,” a majority of the public believes diplomacy needs more time. Fifty-nine percent of the public believes the U.S. can solve the situation with diplomacy compared to just 27% who think force will be necessary. Further, 54% think it is more important to avoid war with North Korea than to remove its nuclear arsenal, while 39% think the opposite. Overall just 36% of Americans have confidence in Trump to handle the North Korea situation.

At a more general level, many Americans worry about Trump’s temperament and his ability to handle crises. A recent poll, for example, found that 69% do not believe Trump is level-headed, while a Pew poll found that public confidence in Trump’s ability to handle an international crisis dropped from 48% in April to 39% by October 2017.

And more broadly, Americans are worried about Trump’s handling of foreign policy and the effect of the Trump Doctrine on the United States. Public support for Trump’s handling of foreign policy during his first year—at just 33% in November 2017—has been significantly lower than for other presidents at the same stage of their presidencies going back to Ronald Reagan. Furthermore, 66% of Americans think that Trump’s actions have damaged the United States’ reputation around the world, while 55% believe that Trump has weakened the country’s global leadership position compared to 31% who feel he has strengthened it.

For those who worried what Trump’s election meant about the public’s foreign policy attitudes, the polls provide a degree of solace. After a year in the White House with all the advantages conferred by his office and the bully pulpit, Donald Trump has utterly failed to increase support for the America First vision. Not only that, public confidence in Trump to manage international affairs has eroded significantly. 

At the same time, the fact that even this much support exists in the United States for the illiberal, counterproductive, and dangerous policies espoused by Trump signals to political leaders that public support is not a given. It also reveals that traditional justifications for American foreign policy no longer command such widespread support. To ensure that Trump’s combination of nativism and isolationism does not become the doctrine of the future, the United States will need other leaders to articulate a new foreign policy vision that acknowledges public concerns while doing a better job of explaining how and why the nation must engage the rest of the world.

This will not be an easy task. Globalization, automation, populism, and other powerful trends that are reshaping both international and domestic politics will not relent any time soon. To the extent that these forces help explain both Trump’s success and public attitudes, we should expect continued debate and division over the future of American foreign policy. If responsible politicians do not address these issues, Americans worried about economic competition from other nations or concerned about terrorism, immigration, and the influence of other cultures on their way of life may continue to look to leaders like Trump for answers.

Last night, POLITICO ran a FISA-related story with the lede,“Republicans authorize sharing of classified report on FBI, DOJ officials’ conduct.” These are the two opening paragraphs:

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have authorized their colleagues to access a highly classified report that they say details their concerns with the conduct of top FBI and Justice Department officials, as well as the agencies’ handling of a controversial surveillance program.

“We have concerns — FISA concerns — that all members of the body should know,” said Rep. Mike Conaway (R‑Texas), a member of the committee, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Some of President Donald Trump’s allies in the House have argued that the program was inappropriately used to surveil a foreign policy aide to the Trump campaign.

Since then, several other House GOP members have weighed in on Twitter about the memo in question: Rep. Matt Gaetz (R‑FL), Rep. Steve King (R‑IA), Rep. Lee Zeldin (R‑NY), and House Freedom Caucus chair Rep. Mark Meadows (R‑NC).

Of the seven members I’ve seen raise this issue either in the POLITICO story or on Twitter, only one–Meadows–voted against the FISA surveillance expansion bill (S. 139) when it was before the House last week. That fact certainly raises some interesting questions the other six who did vote for S. 139 should answer:

• When did the Representative learn of the HPSCI majority staff report in question—before or after the vote on S. 139? 
• If the Representative learned of the memo before the vote on S. 139, why did he not publicly push for its release to all House members prior to the vote on S. 139? 
• If the Representative learned of the memo before the vote on S. 139, why did the Representative vote in favor of a FISA bill that Fourth Amendment experts across the political spectrum argue would make such abuses more likely?
• Since Meadows voted against S. 139, does he believe the House leadership should allow a new FISA reform bill to be brought to the floor to address the alleged abuses detailed in the memo?

This morning, I contacted the offices of the House GOP members quoted by POLITICO or who’ve tweeted about this issue, seeking answers to the questions above. As of 12:30pm, none had responded.

In the POLITICO story cited above, House Intelligence Committee ranking member Adam Schiff (D‑CA) made his own allegations, which also contained some possible answers to the questions I posed above:

The Majority voted today on a party-line basis to grant House Members access to a profoundly misleading set of talking points drafted by Republican staff attacking the FBI and its handling of the investigation. Rife with factual inaccuracies and referencing highly classified materials that most of Republican Intelligence Committee members were forced to acknowledge they had never read, this is meant only to give Republican House members a distorted view of the FBI.

I know from working for a HPSCI member for years that votes of the kind that Schiff referenced almost never happen on short notice. It seems extremely likely that the memo in question was written well before the vote on S. 139, a fact that Conaway and other HPSCI GOP members would almost certainly have known. 

The allegations made by Conaway, King, Zeldin and the other GOP House members who’ve read the memo are serious, and like Zeldin and some of the others, I certainly believe the memo and the underlying intelligence allegedly supporting it should be made public. But the timing of these latest allegations make them suspect–even more so given how most of those Members calling for the memo to be made public voted for a bill that this author (and many others) believes will make innocent Americans more vulnerable to federal surveillance. The same skepticism should be applied to many of the sensational allegations of Trump-Russia collusion Schiff and a host of other Democrats have offered over the past several months.

What neither GOP or Democratic House Intelligence Committee members appear prepared to do is invoke the Constitution’s Speech and Debate clause and make public the classified material that allegedly supports their respective positions.

If each side really believes what they allege (Republicans, that Trump’s campaign was spied upon; Democrats, that Trump colluded with the Russians to help him win in 2016), neither side is taking the serious measures necessary to make their full case public to the American people. Thus, the FISA Political Follies continue. 

We Washingtonians rightly get criticized for being hyper focused on politics. While D.C. natives gossip about the ups and downs of the powerful elite, most Americans are worrying about their marriages and mortgages. The disjuncture is even greater when it comes to foreign policy, an area in which public interest and knowledge are particularly limited. As many scholars have pointed out, to some degree this dynamic is the result of “rational ignorance” on the part of the public. Given the many other priorities citizens have in their private lives, the benefits of following policy debates closely is quite limited so long as people are generally confident that more knowledgeable people are paying attention. 

Taken too far, however, public apathy toward foreign affairs could become a problem for a democratic system. A central pillar of democratic politics is the ability of the marketplace of ideas to foster debate and produce sound policy. Without a certain level of public engagement, the marketplace of ideas cannot function effectively. If no one is paying attention, how can we have a meaningful debate over U.S. military operations in the Middle East and Africa, or what to do about North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, or China’s growing power? 

The traditional method for criticizing the public’s attentiveness to foreign policy is to note Americans’ astonishing lack of knowledge about the world. The June 2017 Pew Research “News IQ” survey finds, as usual, that most Americans know little even about events and people that have appeared regularly in the news. On the four questions most closely related to foreign policy, 60% of those surveyed knew that Britain is leaving the European Union, 47% could identify Robert Mueller as the person leading the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, 44% could name Rex Tillerson as the Secretary of State, and just 37% could identify Emmanuel Macron as the president of France.

The public also typically lacks key facts informing specific foreign policy issues. Even as the Trump administration calls for new kinds of nuclear warheads, polls have routinely found that few Americans are aware that the United States already possesses thousands of nuclear weapons. And though 67% of Americans in 2014 knew that the Islamic State controlled territory in Syria, only half could identify the nation of Syria when it was highlighted on a map. In 2009, fewer than 30% knew that the United States had 70,000 troops in Afghanistan.

Thanks to Google we have another way to measure America’s foreign policy attention deficit. Google Trends gives us the ability to track how often people searched for a given term over a particular time period. If public ignorance is due to lack of interest, search activity on the Internet is a good way to measure that.

To illustrate what Google Trends data look like, Figure 1 displays people’s search interest in North Korea over the past year. The first spike reflects a series of North Korean missiles tests in April. The high point for Google searches on North Korea came in August when Kim Jong Un, after claiming North Korea now had the ability to hit the American mainland with nuclear weapons, threatened to fire missiles at Guam. President Trump responded that any North Korean provocation would be met with “fire and fury.” 

Google Trends also gives us the ability to compare the popularity of different search terms across regions. Using Google Trends, I looked at people’s search interest in eleven important foreign policy topics during 2017. The exercise confirms the political junkie stereotype of Washington, D.C. but also provides a new way to measure the lack of public attention to foreign affairs elsewhere in the United States. 

Unsurprisingly, Washington D.C. ranked highest in search activity for eight of the 11 topics. The three issues Washingtonians searched for less often than their peers were refugees (2^nd, behind Vermont!), North Korea (10^th), and the border wall (43^rd). Table 1 introduces what I’m calling the “Beltway Index,” a simple measure of how much more attention people inside the Beltway pay to foreign policy than the rest of America.

Google Trends reports results on a 0 to 100 scale, with 100 pegged to the maximum level of search interest. Washington D.C. scored 100 in eight of 11 cases. A score of 50, on the other hand, means that a search term was half as popular as the maximum. Table 1 ranks the issues by what I call their Beltway Index – calculated by taking Washington’s search interest score and dividing it by the average score for the 50 states.

According to the Beltway Index, Washingtonians exhibit twice as much interest in foreign policy, on average, as Americans living outside the Beltway. The variations are illuminating. The highest index score is for the North American Free Trade Agreement. Despite NAFTA’s importance, and Trump’s promises to renegotiate a deal he has roundly criticized, trade policy makes for dull fodder. Trade negotiations unfurl slowly, behind closed doors without any compelling visuals, and the arcane details involved hold little interest for most Americans. On the other end of the spectrum, the only issue less popular in Washington than in the average state was Trump’s favorite construction project, the border wall. The three states most interested in the wall include Illinois (100) along with California (81) and Texas (77). Curiously, both Arizona (47) and New Mexico (41) are among the less interested states on the issue.

Table 1. Attention to Foreign Policy and the Beltway Index

Given the relatively low comparative level of interest in foreign policy shown by Americans outside of Washington D.C., we should not be shocked that public knowledge on these issues is so low. But given the low level of confidence in the government these days, and the high number of Americans who believe the nation is on the wrong track, it is surprising that so few people outside Washington D.C. feel the need to monitor events more closely. Leaving politics to the professionals only makes sense if citizens feel they can trust their political leaders. If there were ever a time when citizens might be expected to be paying more attention 2017 would seem like an excellent time do so.

Combining the Google Trends data with the 2016 popular vote for each state we can, in fact, find evidence of the connection between trust and attention. The 24 states that voted for Trump had an average search interest score of 45.8 while the 26 states (and Washington D.C.) that did not averaged 54.3 (or 52.9 excluding Washington, D.C.). This result is in line with the idea that people who trust Trump feel more comfortable paying less attention to foreign policy, while those who trust Trump less feel compelled to pay more attention. Table 2 provides data for the states with the strongest and weakest support for Trump. The ten states with the highest popular vote percentages for Trump averaged 44.3, while Washington D.C. and the nine other states with the lowest vote percentage for Trump averaged 60 (or 57 excluding Washington D.C.).

Table 2. Trump Support and Foreign Policy Interest by State

By most accounts Trump’s first year as president has been unusually turbulent. Every day holds the promise of another destabilizing tweet, a juicy revelation in the Russia interference investigation, or news about critical developments abroad. True, a lot of the day’s news turns out to be white noise – compelling for D.C. insiders but of little value most Americans. But on the other hand, when the president increases U.S. military presence in the Middle East by 33%, cranks up airstrikes in Afghanistan, announces that the U.S. will keep 2,000 troops in Syria indefinitely, and trades insults with North Korea on a weekly basis, paying more attention to the news starts to sound like a pretty good idea.