Last month, Secretary of Defense James Mattis urged Congress to allow the Pentagon to reduce its excess overhead. Mattis has requested this authority before — as have at least four of his predecessors (Carter, Panetta, Hagel and Gates) — but the latest request accompanies a new Pentagon report that assesses the military’s infrastructure needs based on a much larger force structure than the one it has today. Even if the military, and especially the Army, were to grow back to the levels seen when the United States was actively fighting wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq (2012), the DoD is carrying 19 percent excess capacity. Such waste clearly impacts military effectiveness. As Mattis explained in a letter accompanying the report, “every unnecessary facility we maintain requires us to cut capabilities elsewhere.” Although the leading Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith (D‑WA), and a handful of other lawmakers, agree with Mattis’s assessment, and would allow the Pentagon to cut such obviously wasteful spending, many others in Congress remain opposed to a new round of base closures. Kay Granger (R‑TX), chairwoman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense said in May that she had “never seen [BRAC] save much money.” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R‑OK) called plans for base closure “disappointing” and “dangerous.” “Clearly, base closure rounds,” Inhofe wrote in September, “cost the American taxpayers an exorbitant amount of money upfront and take years to recoup the initial investment.” This is incorrect. The closure of hundreds of unnecessary military bases in five successive BRAC rounds have saved American taxpayers billions of dollars. Even the much-maligned fifth and final BRAC round, initiated in 2005, is expected to deliver net savings in 2018. Secretary Mattis explained in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in June that a “properly focused base closure effort” could generate $2 billion or more annually. But we shouldn’t assess the benefits of base closures solely on the basis of possible savings to the Department of Defense; that amounts to looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Although BRAC does generate real savings, the greater economic benefits accrue to communities near affected bases when they put underutilized facilities to more productive uses. In that sense, military bases aren’t closed, they’re opened. I visited such a place on Wednesday: the former Glenview Naval Air Station, about 20 miles northwest of Chicago. During World War II, the Navy trained pilots to land on aircraft carriers, in this case two converted passenger steamers on Lake Michigan. The Navy didn’t have actual aircraft carriers to spare. More than 17,000 naval aviators underwent training at Glenview, including George H.W. Bush. But the naval air station was included in the 1993 BRAC list, and Glenview took charge of clearing some 1100 acres, funded infrastructure improvements, and subdivided and sold parcels to private developers. About 400 acres were preserved as open space and parkland. To the untrained eye, few would realize that there was ever a naval base here. I’ve been aware of Glenview for years, even though I had never visited before. I knew what to look for. The street names betray the area’s storied past. Independence and Constitution Avenues are pretty common, and one even encounters the occasional Patriot Boulevard. But one doesn’t often find Nimitz Drive, Kitty Hawk Lane, or Admiral Court in a typical American subdivision. The beautiful homes, many with three-car garages, and backing to golf courses and open space, command top dollar on the real estate market. A review of a few of the listings for the houses with For Sale signs on their front lawns found asking prices between $760,000 and $875,000. Phoebe Co, a realtor with Berkshire Hathaway, explained that condos in the area go for as low as $300,000, but some of the newer townhomes sell for $800,000 or more. Single family homes selling for more than $1 million are not atypical. Glenview is a coveted location not merely for its pleasant neighborhoods, and ample green space with bike and walking paths. It is also in close proximity to the headquarters of a number of Fortune 500 companies (we drove past Allstate’s sprawling campus on the way back to O’Hare), and an easy commute to downtown Chicago — about 40 minutes by train during rush hour. The centerpiece of Glenview’s redevelopment of the former base property is The Glen Town Center, which includes retail shops at street level, and apartments above them for rent. These properties are ringed by attractive brick rowhomes. Here one finds the most visible remaining remnant of the former base: the air station’s control tower is now home to a Dick’s Sporting Goods, a Carter’s children clothing store, and a Von Maur department store. Three statues – a pilot, a sailor, and a ground crewman – stand around a fountain across the street. Painted plaques by the store fronts celebrate the many units that served at the base. Jeanne Fields, assistant property manager for the Aloft apartments, explained that renters value the convenience of living so close to shopping and dining. The Glen is “very unique,” Fields said. “You don’t usually have urban style living in the suburbs.” People who want city living without the city can get it at The Glen. And they’re willing to pay: rentals start at $1600 for a 1 bedroom, and go as high as $5000 for the largest two-bedroom unit. Fields reported that more than 90 percent of the units are currently occupied. I strolled around The Glen with my colleague Harrison Moar, stopped in at the ubiquitous Starbucks, and ate lunch at the Yard House (allegedly home of the “World’s Largest Selection of Draft Beers”). The sprawling restaurant can accommodate 250 diners, and seemed surprisingly busy for a Tuesday at Noon. The many families with young children probably weren’t there for the 100+ beers on tap, but Harrison and I might have tried one. Alex at the front told us that this was a pretty typical lunchtime crowd, and that the restaurant was even busier later in the week, and on weekends. Those who believe that base closures will devastate a local economy need to be aware of cases like Glenview (and Philadelphia, and San Francisco, and San Antonio, and Brunswick). To be sure, some places will take longer to recover (e.g. Brooklyn), and a few might never see economic activity comparable to when the nearby bases boomed (e.g. Limestone, Maine). But those who would keep unnecessary military bases open in order to shield local communities from the possible negative economic impacts are saying, in effect, that their parochial concerns should outweigh the needs of the nation. And elected officials who doubt that their base will ever be successfully converted betray a curious lack of faith in their own constituents’ ability to make productive use of valuable real estate.

It was on the 16th anniversary of the 9–11 terrorist attack, as it happens, that the Government Accountability Office posted its reply to a request by six members of Congress to review the Transportation Security Commission’s aviation security measures.


The GAO was none too happy with what it found. In particular, it faulted the TSA for failing to set up a coherent system to analyze the cost and effectiveness of its various counterterrorism measures—many of them quite expensive. And it was specifically critical of TSA’s inability to evaluate the degree to which its layers of security deter attacks.


The following day, Elsevier published a book Mark Stewart and I have written, titled Are We Safe Enough? Measuring and Assessing Aviation Security. Among other things, the book tries (successfully, we think) to do exactly what the GAO asked for. A free Google preview of portions of the book is available at the publisher’s website, and further information about the book is posted here.


The TSA, says GAO, has put together a (secret) tool called RTSPA (you don’t want to know what that stands for) to analyze the effectiveness of its security layers. However, the tool only applies to a subset of the layers and is, according to GAO, “resource intensive.”

Ours, by contrast, has a full model of the security system mainly constructed by my co-author, a civil engineer and risk analyst at the University of Newcastle in Australia. It describes the effectiveness, risk reduction, and cost of each layer of security (including a few the TSA doesn’t include), from policing and intelligence, to checkpoint passenger screening, to armed pilots on the flight deck. It is also fully transparent and can be varied and sized-up with just a hand calculator.


Put into action, the model concludes that it is entirely possible to attain the same degree of safety at far lower cost by shifting expenditures from measures that provide little security at high cost to ones that provide more security at lower cost. One modest proposal, for example, would increase security while saving both the taxpayers and the airlines hundreds of millions of dollars every year.


In addition, the model strongly suggests that the PreCheck program not only generates a hundred million dollars a year in efficiency improvement, but billions of dollars of value in passenger satisfaction—all this while actually increasing security slightly.


And the model proves to be extremely robust: you can change the assumptions that make it up substantially without materially altering the conclusions it comes up with.


The book also tackles the deterrence issue—indeed, it is central to the model.


In general, the model is biased to favor the terrorist chances of success. For example, we do not include terrorist amateurishness and incompetence as a security layer—though we do discuss that issue extensively both in this book and in our previous one, Chasing Ghosts: The Policing of Terrorism. But even with that bias in place, a terrorist group’s chance of pulling off a successful on-board bombing is one in 50, while its chances of a successful hijacking are around one in 150.


That is likely to be an effective deterrent—pretty much taking airlines off the terrorists’ target list.


However, it is also important to consider whether there are actually many terrorists out there to deter. As both the GAO and the TSA recognize, terrorists deterred from attacking a hard target like an airliner can only too readily transfer their attention to any one of a nearly infinite number of other potential targets that are anything but secure—congregations of people in restaurants, in offices, at sporting events, or standing in security lines at the airport.


Yet terrorism, however tragic and newsworthy, remains a remarkably rare phenomenon in the United States and in the rest of the developed world—Islamist terrorists have killed a total of six people a year since 9/11 in the United States. If security measures were deterring large numbers of people from attacking airliners we would expect far more mayhem in other places.


Perhaps we are already safe enough.

Later this week the Communist Party of China (CPC) will hold the 19^th Party Congress, a major political event that happens just once every five years. Domestic issues will take center stage at the Party Congress, and China watchers will watch closely for news on the composition of a new Politburo Standing Committee, the likely inclusion of Xi Jinping Thought into the CPC’s constitution, and the future of economic development.

International relations will take a back seat to internal issues during the 19^th Party Congress, but it will not disappear from the agenda entirely. Three important issue areas to follow are the progress of China’s military reforms, Taiwan, and North Korea. All three could come up during the congress, and all have important implications for U.S. strategy in East Asia and the U.S.-China relationship.

Military Reforms

Xi Jinping kicked off a massive reform of the Chinese military in late 2015 by cutting 300,000 personnel from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and changing its command and control system. Additional notable reforms over the past two years include changing from military regions to theater commands, the creation of a Strategic Support Force for space, cyber, and electronic warfare, and the growing prominence of the PLA Air Force and PLA Navy relative to the army. The overarching goal of Xi’s military reforms is to turn the PLA into a lean, mean fighting machine capable of winning wars on the modern battlefield. 

Some general information about military reform should be mentioned in the work report produced at the beginning of the 19^th Party Congress, but before the report is released congress-watchers should pay attention to promotions and demotions within the PLA and Central Military Commission (CMC). In the weeks and months leading up to the Party Congress, Xi removed several high-ranking PLA generals from their posts and replaced them with new commanders. Changes to the CMC could include a reduction in the number of individuals on the commission and new members that are loyal to Xi and want to improve the PLA’s joint warfare capabilities.

The PLA reforms have two important and competing implications for the United States. On the one hand, once the reforms are completed and internalized the PLA should be a much more effective fighting force, which in turn raises the costs of U.S. military commitments in East Asia. On the other hand, these reforms are a massive and difficult undertaking that will take many years to fully implement. American policymakers should not inflate the threat posed by China in the short term, but it would be unwise to ignore the long-term political implications of a more capable PLA.

Taiwan

Relations across the Taiwan Strait have been relatively stable since the election of Tsai Ing-wen as president of Taiwan in January 2016. China is steadily applying pressure on Taiwan in response to Tsai’s “incomplete answer” on the 1992 Consensus, but the pressure has not been unusually onerous and it has not significantly escalated since Tsai’s election almost two years ago. Taiwan will be mentioned in the 19^th Party Congress’s work report, but this will likely amount to a restatement of long-held CPC positions on eventual reunification and opposition to Taiwanese independence. The work report’s language could end up being more aggressive and it deserves close observation, but Taiwan is a relatively low priority for the Chinese leadership at the moment.

If the Party Congress produces a “steady as she goes” approach to Taiwan, it would behoove the United States to avoid taking high-profile actions that would damage the US-China relationship. One example of a counterproductive U.S. action is language in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act allowing U.S. Navy ships to make port calls in Taiwan. Advocates for the port calls, which haven’t happened in Taiwan since 1979, argue that the action is essential for shoring up the U.S.-Taiwan relationship and preventing China from coercing Taiwan. However, Beijing will likely see this break with decades of past practice as a major event that worsens U.S.-China relations.

There are better ways to preserve peace in the Taiwan Strait than adopting a high-profile, precedence-breaking policy of restarting U.S. Navy port calls. For example, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan may lead to angry Chinese press statements, but because they are a continuation of long-standing U.S. policy they reinforce the status quo. Restarting port calls to Taiwan would be a high-profile departure from past U.S. policy, which represents a break in status quo behavior that is worse for the U.S.-China relationship than continuing arms sales.

North Korea

The final major international relations issue that may come up at the 19^th Party Congress is the ongoing nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula. The growing tension between the United States and North Korea is China’s most pressing foreign policy problem. A war would prompt a massive influx of refugees into China and have serious implications for the security order in East Asia. Moreover, the Trump administration appears convinced that China needs to do more to pressure North Korea and has levied secondary sanctions against Chinese companies to convince Beijing to do more.

While North Korea looms large for China, it probably won’t get much attention in the 19^th Party Congress’s work report. Domestic issues will take precedence at the Party Congress, and while military reforms and cross-strait relations have international implications the CPC views both as domestic concerns. However, a dramatic action by Pyongyang during the Party Congress, such as an ICBM test or an above-ground nuclear detonation, could prompt the CPC to issue a statement on North Korea.

Discussion on the North Korea problem will probably happen during the Party Congress, but absent a significant escalation on the peninsula North Korea will likely not be featured prominently in the official documents produced by the congress. Instead, Xi and the Chinese leadership will likely wait until Trump’s visit to Asia in early November to issue any adjustments to China’s policy toward North Korea.

In Sunday’s episode of “Reality-Show Presidency,” we found out what happens when the president and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee “stop being polite… and start getting real.” After President Trump blasted him in a series of tweets early Sunday, Sen. Bob Corker (R‑TN) shot back:

Senator Corker is hardly the only highly placed Republican to express grave doubts about Trump’s stability and competence. Daniel Drezner has assembled a list—now at 115 items and counting—of news stories in which the president’s own aides or political allies talk about him as if he’s a “toddler.” But since Corker’s not running for reelection, he felt free to go on the record: Trump “concerns me,” Corker said in an interview later that day, “he would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation.” His recklessness and lack of emotional discipline could, Corker said, put us “on the path to World War III.”

In Corker’s account, it’s an open secret that our 45th president is a walking constitutional crisis. Is there a constitutional remedy?

The conventional wisdom says no: we have impeachment if the president turns out to be a crook, and the 25th Amendment if he falls into a coma—but for anything in between “felon” and “vegetable,” tough luck. When he introduced his article of impeachment against President Trump this summer, Rep. Brad Sherman (D‑CA) explained that he’d focused on obstruction of justice because, sadly, “the Constitution does not provide for the removal of a President for impulsive, ignorant incompetence.” 

But when it comes to “the most powerful office in the world,” impulsive, ignorant incompetence can be as damaging as willful criminality. Did the Framers really leave us defenseless against it?

Actually, no: impeachment’s structure, purpose, and history suggest a remedy broad enough to protect the body politic from federal officers whose lack of stability and competence might cause serious harm. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, there’s no constitutional barrier to impeaching a president whose public conduct makes reasonable people worry about his access to nuclear weapons.

We tend to think of presidential impeachments in terms of the paradigmatic case: a corrupt, criminal president who abuses his power. Richard Nixon quit before he was actually impeached, but his case rightfully looms large in the public understanding of what the mechanism is for. As Cass Sunstein writes in his forthcoming book Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide, “If a president uses the apparatus of government in an unlawful way, to compromise democratic processes and invade constitutional rights, we come to the heart of what the impeachment provision is all about.”

But that’s not all impeachment is about. During the Philadelphia Convention’s most extensive period of debate on the remedy’s purpose, James Madison declared it “indispensable that some provision should be made for defending the community against the incapacity, negligence, or perfidy of the Chief Magistrate.” Those faults might be survivable when they afflict individual legislators, Madison argued, because “the soundness of the remaining members would maintain the integrity and fidelity” of the branch as a whole. But “the Executive magistracy… was to be administered by a single man,” and “loss of capacity” there “might be fatal to the Republic.”

In practice, impeachment has never been limited to cases of “perfidy” alone. In its comprehensive report on the “Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment,” the Nixon-era House Judiciary Committee staff identified three categories of misconduct held to be impeachable offenses in American constitutional history: abuse of power, using one’s post for “personal gain,” and, most important here, “behaving in a manner grossly incompatible with the proper function and purpose of the office.” The House has the power to impeach, and the Senate to remove, a federal officer whose conduct “seriously undermine[s] public confidence in his ability to perform his official functions.”

One of our earliest impeachments—the first to result in a federal officer’s removal—fell into that category. It involved federal judge John Pickering, a man “of loose morals and intemperate habits,” per the charges against him. Pickering had committed no crime, but was removed by the Senate in 1804 for the “high misdemeanor” of showing up to work drunk and ranting like a maniac in court. Such conduct was “disgraceful to his own character as a judge, and degrading to the honor and dignity of the United States.”

Nor was Pickering the only federal official to lose his post for erratic behavior demonstrating unfitness for high office. Others include judges Mark Delahay (1873), “intoxicated off the bench as well as on the bench,” and George W. English (1926), whose bizarre conduct included, among other things, summoning “several state and local officials to appear before him in an imaginary case,” and haranguing them “in a loud, angry voice, using improper, profane, and indecent language.” “By his decisions and orders he inspired fear and distrust” Article V summed up, “to the scandal and disrepute of said court.” 

Do precedents from judicial impeachments count when it comes to the presidency, an office with vastly greater powers and responsibilities? No doubt the attempted removal of an elected president is more serious and potentially disruptive than impeachment of one of hundreds of federal judges. But the argument that presidents are singularly important cuts both ways: it’s far more dangerous to leave an unfit president in office than an unfit judge. Judges don’t have the federal law enforcement apparatus or the massive destructive capacity of the US military at their disposal.

In any event, there’s presidential precedent available as well, from the 1868 impeachment of Andrew Johnson, whom Princeton political scientist Keith Whittington has called “the pre-modern Trump.” The 10th article of impeachment against Johnson charged the president with “a high misdemeanor in office” based on a series of “intemperate, inflammatory, and scandalous harangues” he’d delivered in an 1866 speaking tour. Those speeches, according to Article X, were “peculiarly indecent and becoming in the Chief Magistrate” and brought his office “into contempt, ridicule, and disgrace.”

Johnson, who’d been blotto for his maiden speech as vice president, was supposedly sober during the “Swing Around the Circle” tour, during which he accused Congress of, among other things, “undertak[ing] to poison the minds of the American people” and having “substantially planned” a race riot in New Orleans that July.

Much of the offending rhetoric cited in Article X wouldn’t be considered particularly shocking today, but at the time, it was a radical departure from prevailing norms of presidential conduct. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, dragged along on the tour, wrote to his wife that “I have never been so tired of anything before as I have been with the political stump speeches of Mr. Johnson. I look upon them as a national disgrace.”

Article X never came to a vote in the Senate, having been abandoned after failure to convict on what were believed to be the strongest charges against Johnson. Nor was it uncontroversial at the time.

But according to Rep. Benjamin Butler (R‑MA), a key impeachment manager in the Johnson case, the backlash against the president’s speeches made impeachment possible: “they disgusted everybody.” As Jeffrey Tulis explained in his seminal work The Rhetorical Presidency, “Johnson’s popular rhetoric violated virtually all of the nineteenth-century norms” surrounding presidential popular communication: “he stands as the stark exception to general practice in that century, so demagogic in his appeals to the people” that he resembled “a parody of popular leadership.”

Johnson’s behavior was, you might say, “not normal,” and what is “not normal” can sometimes be impeachable. On a number of occasions, the House has deployed that “indispensable” remedy against federal officers who, by their acts, revealed defects of intellect, character, and temperament “grossly incompatible with the proper function and purpose of the office.” Deliberate, criminal abuse of power may be “the heart of impeachment,” but our constitutional history suggests that the remedy is broad enough to reach “impulsive, ignorant incompetence” in an extreme case—should one happen to crop up.

Through all the chatter about Emoluments and Russian plots, “not normal” is at the heart of the fears evoked by the Trump presidency. That recurring lament, heard even from Republican Senators, often involves the president’s Twitter feed, his outlet for tantrums about bad restaurant reviews, Saturday Night Live skits,  “so-called judges” who should be blamed for future terrorist attacks, and the United States’ nuclear-armed rivals. 

In public appearances, Trump is equally incontinent. Whether he’s addressing CIA officers in front of the “Memorial Wall” at Langley or a gaggle of Webelos at the National Boy Scout Jamboree in West Virginia, the president rants about “fake news,” blasts his political enemies, and brags about the size of his Inaugural crowd. It’s a strange feeling when you find yourself almost relieved he didn’t take the opportunity to tell 30,000 Boy Scouts: “check out sex tape.”

Fans of the president’s speechifying praise him for “shaking things up” and “telling it like it is”—as if it’s only hypocritical Beltway pieties he’s skewering. Just as often, Trump tramples the sort of tacit norms that separate us from banana republic status, like: a president shouldn’t tell active-duty military to “call those senators” on behalf of his agenda, suggest that his political opponents should be put in jail, or make off-the-cuff threats of nuclear annihilation.

Still, in the current debate over impeachment, the conventional wisdom reigns. Even those who desperately want to repeal and replace the Trump presidency are convinced removal would be constitutionally illegitimate unless it can be shown that the president is a crook or a certifiable loon. 

As a result, they’re engaged in an awkward effort to shoehorn Trump’s ignominies into either a criminal or a clinical model. Impeachment advocates, like Rep. Sherman, emphasize obstruction of justice and tales of Kremlin conspiracies. Supporters of the “25th Amendment Solution,” like Ross Douthat and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D‑MD) strain to categorize Trump’s verbal incontinence as some sort of mental disorder.

My guess is, if you put Sherman, Douthat, Raskin et al on the couch for a word-association test (“say the first thing that comes to your mind…”), “Trump” might elicit responses like “crooked” or “insane,” but you’d probably get a lot more along the lines of “reckless,” “juvenile,” “incompetent,” “clownish”—and perhaps a few unprintable epithets. 

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson used an epithet of his own, if you believe the recent reports. The original NBC News story had Tillerson referring to his boss as a “moron” at a Pentagon meeting this summer; one of the reporters, later said that according to her source, it was actually  “[expletive deleted] moron.”

Like they say, there really is “a tweet for everything.” After the Tillerson story broke, internet sleuths went hunting, and someone dug up this gem from Trump’s feed, when he was subtweeting then-president Obama in October 2014.

The Framers are gathered at the Philadelphia Convention and one says: “I keep thinking we should include something in the Constitution in case the people elect a [expletive deleted] moron.”

Zing! But—just maybe—they did include something.

Late on Thursday afternoon, the Washington Post reported that President Trump plans to undermine American involvement in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) by “decertifying” Iranian compliance with the deal and kicking the issue to Congress.

This move is hardly unexpected: when he last certified Iranian compliance with the deal 90 days ago, President Trump reportedly told staff “he wants to be in a place to decertify 90 days from now and it’s their job to put him there.” Yet as that quote suggests, the President’s decision is not based on any reality-based assessment of the deal. Iran is in fact complying with the deal, a fact verified repeatedly by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Many of Trump’s own advisors disagree with his decision. On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense James Mattis told Congress that he believed it was in the U.S. national interest to remain in the deal. They are undoubtedly aware that the President’s choice will most likely undermine or end U.S. participation in the nuclear deal, split us from our European allies, reduce the constraints on Iran’s nuclear program, and reduce America’s global credibility and negotiating power.

In a newly published Cato Policy Analysis, my colleague John Glaser and I examine the grounds for retaining the nuclear deal, and explore the alternatives that the Trump administration could decide to pursue. Our analysis suggests that the prospects for a better approach are bleak.

We examine four key alternatives to the JCPOA:

1. Increased or Renewed Sanctions: Though the United States possesses an impressive and far-reaching sanctions infrastructure – including so-called ‘secondary sanctions’ – it is highly unlikely that new sanctions will force further concessions from Tehran. European allies will push back strongly against any new sanctions, and neither Russia nor China is likely to cooperate in creating a new sanctions regime when the United States is responsible for destroying the current deal.
2. Challenging Iranian Influence in the Region: The United States could instead choose to push back against Iranian proxies across the Middle East, such as Hezbollah. But there are few groups or states that are practical partners for such a strategy, meaning the burden would fall most heavily on U.S. troops. The risk of blowback – endangering the lives of U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere – is a serious concern. This option also does nothing to prevent Iranian proliferation.
3. Regime Change “from Within”: A popular idea among some anti-Iran hawks, this strategy would see the United States use sanctions and funding for pro-democracy groups inside Iran to destabilize the regime. The lack of any good group to support is one key problem with this strategy. Yet the bigger problem is simply that research shows that regime change rarely works, and even when it does, it tends to produce worse outcomes.
4. Direct Military Action: Targeted strikes on Iranian nuclear or military facilities is perhaps the most extreme option we examine. Put simply, there are no good options for a military strike on Iran; this was a key aspect of the Bush and Obama administration’s decisions to pursue diplomacy. Any military strike would likely escalate to a costly, large-scale war, further destabilizing the region and ironically most likely encouraging other states to seek a nuclear deterrent.

Contrary to the Trump administration’s statements, the nuclear deal with Iran is working. Though it has not solved – and was never intended to solve –every problem in the U.S.-Iranian relationship, the deal has halted Iranian proliferation and opened lines of communication and negotiation which can be exploited to defuse future tensions and improve relations over the long-term.

By decertifying Iran, President Trump is starting down a dangerous road towards a strategy which is far more uncertain, risky, and costly.

You can check out the whole report on alternatives to the JCPOA here.

The Atlantic Council has released a new report on a key Chinese effort to develop infrastructure in Asia and beyond which deserves the attention of policymakers in Washington. Entitled “Silk Road 2.0: US Strategy toward China’s Belt and Road Initiative,” the Gal Luft-authored paper highlights some of the direct economic benefits U.S.-based businesses may realize through the China-led project:

The Trump administration is deeply committed to the development and upgrade of US domestic infrastructure, but little attention has been paid to the benefits for the US economy offered by infrastructure development abroad. Increased prosperity in the developing world will enable more consumers to demand American goods and services. US engineering, construction, and equipment-manufacturing companies like Bechtel, Caterpillar, John Deere, Honeywell, and General Electric could win lucrative contracts, and US defense and cybersecurity companies can help protect critical infrastructure worldwide. 

With more energy terminals, pipelines, storage facilities, and free-trade zones constructed around the world, the US energy industry would enjoy more destinations for its oil, gas, and coal. And with 80 percent of the people in the developing world not connected to the Internet, American tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook can win numerous new users, as more people become connected to the World Wide Web via energy and communication infrastructure. In seeking new growth engines and job-creation opportunities, Washington would be remiss to ignore the benefits to US businesses offered by the [Belt and Road Initiative].

Such analysis comports with some of my own thinking expressed in a paper published this week. As the section focused on China’s infrastructure initiatives notes: 

U.S. businesses, workers, and consumers, bearing no direct financial risk from [One Belt, One Road] or the [Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank], stand to benefit from those initiatives to the extent that they succeed in spurring more trade and greater prosperity in the region…policymakers should recognize that, although China may not be operating directly out of the preferred U.S. playbook, its efforts could serve to advance the broader U.S. objectives of peace and prosperity in Asia.

During the Obama administration, the U.S. evinced concern over China’s effort to establish the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which is a key element in the country’s strategy to improve and expand the region’s infrastructure. The administration’s stance was viewed as a mistake by a variety of analysts, and President Obama later attempted to finesse the issue by claiming it was just a misunderstanding. President Trump, for all of his strident anti-China rhetoric on the campaign trail, dispatched a member of his National Security Council to attend China’s first Belt and Road Forum last May, and is reported to have made comments favorable towards China’s infrastructure push. 

Such developments provide encouragement that the U.S. is trending away from its initial skepticism, if not hostility, towards China’s infrastructure initiatives. If so, it is a welcome shift, and one that we should hope continues. These are yet early days, but China’s leadership on this and other economic initiatives in the region could help to literally pave the way towards expanded trade and prosperity.

Earlier this afternoon, the House Judiciary Committee circulated its draft FISA Sec. 702 reauthorization bill. This is a preliminary readout of the major problems I see with this legislation.

Mandatory Data Destruction Not Mandatory

One of the biggest vulnerabilities Americans face today is the growing volume of their personal data being stored on servers in the private sector and in government. In the government counterterrorism (CT) context—and CT intelligence collection was the original rationale for this authority—there is simply no reason for the government to continue the collection and storage of the information of innocent U.S. Persons (a legal definition that includes citizens and legal permanent residents).

The bill as drafted would allow the government to do exactly that for at least 90 days for “foreign intelligence purposes” and it allows the Director of the NSA (DIRNSA) to waive that requirement on an individual and specific basis if DIRNSA determines that such waivers are “necessary to protect the national security.” All this provision will do is create more paperwork for NSA, but the waiver process could no doubt be largely automated, rendering this alleged reform meaningless. A genuine reform would 1) explicitly prohibit the government from obtaining and maintaining the data of Americans unless said Americans were the actual target of an authorized criminal investigation, and 2) require mandatory external audits (read Government Accountability Office) to confirm said data destruction.

No Penalties for Lying to the FISA Court

In September 2017, Demand Progress issued a report highlighting the number of times the NSA and Department of Justice have been caught violating Sec. 702, FISA Court orders, or both. From the report’s executive summary: