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Defense and Foreign Policy
#Russiagate Update: Winner Leak Implications
Megyn Kelly is probably kicking herself for not delaying her interview of Vladimir Putin. Had she waited just a few days, she could’ve brought a leaked copy of the latest NSA estimate of the timeline, motivations, and targets of alleged Russian hackers during the 2016 election cycle to her chat with Putin and asked a lot of pointed questions about it. Even though that opportunity never materialized, she and other journalists still have the chance to ask some equally important questions of American officials about this rather interesting document and the young woman responsible for sharing it with the world. What follows are some of my suggested lines of inquiry for our friends in the Fourth Estate.
The Leaker: Reality Leigh Winner
As I read The Intercept’s story, I kept asking myself one question, over and over: did this young woman learn nothing from Ed Snowden?
This extract from the arrest warrant affidavit contains details that, if accurate, speak to a total lack of awareness of or concern for the kind of “insider threat” detection measures that now exist in most, if not all, Intelligence Community components:
![Extract of arrest warrant affidavit in the case of Reality Leigh Winner](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/wp-content/uploads/winner_arrest_warrant_affidavit_extract.png?itok=oQdqOkRV)
Why did Winner not use a truly secure means of contacting The Intercept? Why did she select this particular document? Why did she not contact a whistleblower advocacy organization for legal advice before even contemplating such a rash act?
The Media Outlet: The Intercept
In a statement published a short time ago, The Intercept claimed that
On June 5 The Intercept published a story about a top‐secret NSA document that was provided to us completely anonymously. Shortly after the article was posted, the Justice Department announced the arrest of Reality Leigh Winner, a 25‐year‐old government contractor in Augusta, Georgia, for transmitting defense information under the Espionage Act. Although we have no knowledge of the identity of the person who provided us with the document, the U.S. government has told news organizations that Winner was that individual.
That statement is at odds with the search warrant affidavit quoted above, which claims that Winner was in “email contact” with the “News Outlet” (The Intercept).
Who’s telling the truth here vis a vis Winner’s alleged email contact with The Intercept–the Department of Justice or the paper? Could Winner have emailed the wrong reporter at The Intercept, and the actual story authors were in the dark that she’d contacted the paper? Did Winner’s email bounce? And why did Intercept staff share an exact copy of the purloined document with NSA officials in the first place? Why didn’t they simply read key passages of the document over the phone, or include extracts in an email to NSA officials?
Given the fact that Winner printed the document and thus left investigators a digital trace of her actions, perhaps The Intercept’s decision to share a scanned version of the document wouldn’t have mattered–but maybe it would have, and why endanger a source (annonymous or otherwise) by behaving in such an irresponsible way with the document?
Was the Rise of ISIS Inevitable?
In the latest issue of Survival, Hal Brands and Peter Feaver address an important debate in American foreign policy circles. Was the rise of ISIS inevitable, or was it the result of misguided U.S. policies? Most agree it is the latter, but the dispute gets fraught on the question of whether it was U.S. military interventionism or inaction that deserves the blame. Some say it was the invasion of Iraq that led to the rise of ISIS. Others insist it was Obama’s decision to withdraw from Iraq in 2011.
Brands and Feaver use counterfactual analysis to assess whether different U.S. policy decisions at four “inflection points” could have nipped the rise of ISIS in the bud. The first of these points was the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003. The other three occurred during the Obama administration and include the decision not to press Iraq to allow the United States to leave behind a significant number of U.S. troops, the decision not to intervene aggressively early on in the Syrian civil war, and the decision not to intervene more forcefully to help the government of Iraq defeat ISIS before it took the city of Mosul.
The authors take a middle road, arguing that, “the rise of ISIS was indeed an avertable tragedy,” but that both restraint and activism share the blame. Had U.S. policymakers not invaded Iraq in 2003, or been more aggressive in Iraq and Syria from 2011–2014, they argue, “ISIS might not have emerged at all.”
With suitable analytic humility, however, the authors warn against overconfidence that any of the alternatives would have made a decisive difference to the eventual outcome:
We find, for instance, that limited intervention in Syria in 2011–13 might have had benefits, but it probably would not have shifted the course of the conflict so fundamentally as to head of ISIS’s rise. Likewise, not invading Iraq in 2003 would have left the United States saddled with the costs of continuing to contain that country, whereas striking ISIS militarily in late 2013 or early 2014 might have weakened that organization militarily while exacerbating the political conditions that were fueling its rise. Intervening more heavily in Iraqi politics in 2010 in order to bring about a less sectarian government than that which ultimately emerged, and leaving a stay‐behind force in Iraq after 2011, represent a fairly compelling counterfactual in the sense that such policies could have had numerous constructive effects. But even here, choosing a different path from the one actually taken would have meant courting non‐trivial costs, liabilities, uncertainties and limitations (p. 10).
We applaud Brands and Feaver, who served in the Obama and George W. Bush administrations, respectively, for their attempt to “move away from polemical and polarized assessments focused on assigning blame, and toward more granular, balanced analysis based on a fairer‐minded view of what went wrong (p. 10).” At the same time, there is plenty of room for disagreement over their interpretation of the “what ifs” of such a complex historical question.
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The Paris Agreement and the Future of Nuclear Nonproliferation Efforts
President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord was the latest in a steadily expanding list of actions that highlight his contempt for multilateral diplomacy in U.S. foreign policy. This does not mean that Trump is an isolationist. He clearly favors bilateral engagement with other countries and doesn’t mind using American military power to wage war in the Middle East and apply pressure to North Korea. The question is, what does Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement mean for other areas of multilateral engagement?
A preference for bilateral over multilateral diplomacy may be appropriate in some cases, but the bilateral approach is not ideal for combating, for example, nuclear proliferation. Trump’s disdain for multilateral diplomacy is especially worrisome when combined with the deepening militarization of U.S. foreign policy. These two emerging trends simultaneously endanger the Iran nuclear deal, a major success for multilateral diplomacy and nuclear nonproliferation, while increasing the probability of armed conflict should the deal fail.
The Iran deal is a triumph of multilateral diplomacy, involving the United Nations’ Permanent Five (United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China), Germany, and the European Union. This level of international involvement enhances both the legitimacy and strength of the agreement, which Iran has complied with since implementation began in January 2016. If the Trump administration wants to successfully renegotiate the deal, it would need the buy‐in of the partner countries, a condition that becomes harder to achieve as Trump alienates many of our Iran deal partners with actions such as withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord.
If Trump truly wants to renegotiate the Iran deal (and not just unilaterally withdraw from it), then he will need the support of the very countries that he is repeatedly frustrating with his characteristically undiplomatic actions on the world stage.
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Dual‐Capable Cruise Missiles: Past Performance No Guarantee of Future Results
Earlier this week I attended a very thoughtful and stimulating debate on the modernization of U.S. nuclear missiles hosted by the Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) at CSIS. The debate addressed the merits and downsides of two planned U.S. nuclear delivery system recapitalization efforts: the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent intended to replace the Minuteman III ballistic missile system, and the Long‐Range Stand‐Off (LRSO) cruise missile that is supposed to replace the AGM-86 air‐launched cruise missile (ALCM). The ALCM is a dual‐capable missile, meaning it can carry either a nuclear or conventional payload. While the LRSO is planned to be only used for nuclear missions, in a conflict scenario it would be hard to discern between it and a conventionally‐armed cruise missile until the moment of impact.
One topic raised during the debate was the effect of the LRSO on strategic stability, an important and hotly debated issue. The advocates of the LRSO downplayed the destabilizing potential of the system by pointing out that the United States has used dual‐capable cruise missiles in past conflicts. Concerns about strategic stability should be kept in mind, they argued, but the United States has a track record of using dual‐capable cruise missiles while safely navigating such concerns.
This argument may be technically true, but it ignores a critical fact: all past uses of dual‐capable cruise missiles were in conflicts with countries that did not have nuclear weapons—not between two nuclear‐armed countries. Policymakers should be wary of arguments that use historical evidence to dismiss or downplay the negative effects of LRSO on strategic stability because there are no adequate past cases to test such arguments against.
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Trump’s Missing Buildup
The biggest news about the Trump administration’s release yesterday of its $603 billion 2018 defense budget proposal is that there isn’t much. The anticlimax comes partly because most of the details were already out, thanks to the “skinny budget” plan for discretionary spending released in March and a recent leak. Moreover, the most newsworthy aspects of the proposal—its big cuts and chicaneries—came in non‐defense areas and through 10‐year projections that are little more than symbolic wish lists.
There’s a bigger reasons that Trump’s budget is historically unimportant: Congress is going to ignore it. Even the 2018 plan seems more statement than realistic attempt to guide appropriations. The breadth of the non‐defense cuts used to fund the $54 billion defense increase makes it easy for even vulnerable Democrats to oppose it. That, along with Trump’s declining public support, even among conservatives, is why Republican backers won’t stick up for his plan.
Even if the budget were less impolitic overall, its military spending increase would face long odds thanks to the cap on defense spending, which is $54 billion less than Trump wants. Under the Budget Control Act, if an annual defense appropriation exceeds its cap, the Treasury must “sequester” the excess, pulling proportionally from all accounts in that category. Contrary to much reporting, sequestration hasn’t occurred since 2013, when it resulted automatically from the failure of the congressional supercommittee to come up with a deficit reduction plan.
Instead, Congress has cut a series of deals that raised the annual cap. Democrats made sure that the cap on non‐defense discretionary spending went up by equal measure. The increases were paid for, in theory, by dubious future savings. Further Pentagon relief comes through abuse of the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budget, which is uncapped out of deference to the pretention that it is “emergency” spending for wars. The OCO budget is annually stuffed with non‐war funding—now at least $30 billion of it.
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The Case for Calling them Losers
President Trump made headlines with his impromptu remarks after he learned of the tragic attack in Manchester earlier this week.
President Donald Trump put the latest incident in perspective: “So many young beautiful innocent people living and enjoying their lives murdered by evil losers in life. I won’t call them monsters because they would like that term. They would think that’s a great name. I will call them from now on losers because that’s what they are.
“They’re losers, and we’ll have more of them, but they’re losers, just remember that,” he added.
He spoke from the heart, but there is wisdom in the President’s words, as I explain at The National Interest’s The Skeptics.
I note that “loser” is the same word that Ruslan Tsarni used to describe his nephews, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the two Boston Marathon bombers.
When asked what provoked the bombing suspects, the uncle stated: “Being losers, hatred to those who were able to settle themselves—these are the only reasons I can imagine.
“Anything else, anything else to do with religion, with Islam, is a fraud, is a fake,” Tsarni added.
Other words include nitwits and idiots. My colleague John Mueller, who has assembled a catalog of all the post‑9/11 terrorism cases in the United States—92 as of January 2017—characterizes most of these plots as bone‐headed. These words describe mostly instances in which the would‐be terrorists managed to kill and injure no one, not even themselves. But we should be equally dismissive of the losers that manage to detonate their bombs, or fire their weapons. Trump got it right.
I explain:
The word “loser” works because it doesn’t imply that there is anything particularly special about the individuals who perpetrate these heinous acts. They might wish to make a statement by indiscriminately killing and injuring helpless victims. They might fashion themselves as heroic, or uniquely evil, or superhuman. They are none of these things.
And I conclude:
I refuse to reward these losers. I refuse even to mention their names. Though we should never forget their victims, we shouldn’t allow [killers] to change the way that we live. They were sad and angry, and they lived unhappy lives. They wanted us all to be unhappy, too.
I’m not having it. I just cranked an Ariana Grande shuffle on my iPhone.
You can read the whole thing here.