Even if one had the stomach for more prognostication after last night, when it comes to Trump foreign policy looking ahead seems like a fool’s errand (see my last op-ed if you don’t believe me). As Max Fisher notes in the New York Times today, Donald Trump has been so inconsistent on foreign policy specifics that no one feels confident in making bold predictions. Uncertainty, at home and abroad, rules the day.

However, even though the election can’t tell us much about what might happen in the future, Trump’s victory does reveal a great deal about how Americans think about politics in general and foreign policy in particular.

One thing we have learned is that the divide in Americans’ foreign policy views now mirrors the broader political fault lines in the nation. As I wrote after the final presidential debate, in the absence of a compelling external threat, Americans have become more polarized as the “national interest” has devolved into an array of competing interests. The foreign policy debate is no longer about how to keep America safe; it’s a clash over competing conceptions of America and its role in the world.

In one corner are the previous champions, the liberal internationalists, who enjoyed a long, bipartisan run after the end of the Cold War. The liberal internationalists have seen globalization as a boon for the U.S. and the world. In this vein they have pursued free trade, an expansive network of alliances, and meddled a great deal in the affairs of other nations for a wide range of often dubious but usually well-intentioned reasons. In the other corner we have Trump’s surging nativists and nationalists—much more pessimistic about the benefits of globalization, much less supportive of free trade, far less interested in engaging the world, and far more concerned about what immigration might do to the United States.

Trump’s election last night might have been a shock, but the growing divide on foreign policy has been clear for some time. A great deal of polling data from the past several years has revealed that the public has lost much of its appetite for the liberal internationalist cause. Recent polling has discovered that record numbers of Americans think the United States should “mind its own business” internationally and fully 70% of Americans want the next president to focus on domestic policy. When you add to that the widespread concerns about Obama’s trade deals and U.S. policies in the Middle East, it becomes clear that much of the nation is ready to rethink the Beltway Consensus on foreign policy.

The implications of this emerging foreign policy tribalism are profound. Without existential national security concerns to ground the debate, foreign policy has become just another arena for cultural and identity politics. Trump’s foreign policy, whatever it turns out to be, will not be constrained by broad-based public and elite support for a single strategic vision. Instead, Trump is free to pursue foreign policies that please his base.

Though I won’t dare to make predictions about which issues Trump will take up in earnest next year, a quick comparison of his supporters to Democrats on key issues is potentially revealing. 80% of Trump’s supporters see immigrants and refugees as a critical threat, for example, compared to just 27% of Democrats. 92% of Trump’s supporters support his proposal for a wall on the Mexican border while just 29% of Democrats do. Whereas 68% of Democrats believe international trade is good for the U.S. economy, just 42% of Trump supporters do.

I will boldly end with one prediction: Regardless of which way Trump goes on foreign policy, the divisions revealed during this campaign will not go away any time soon.

Has the United States reached peak incoherence in foreign policy?

President Obama spent seven years expanding the war on terror and intervening inconsistently and incoherently in the Middle East, only to acknowledge in recent interviews that Libya was his greatest mistake. The frontrunners in the presidential campaign are no better. Hillary Clinton supported the Iraq War before she later opposed it, and promoted the TTP and TTIP while Secretary of State but now says they’re a bad idea. Donald Trump’s foreign policy views have doubled back on themselves so often it’s hard to tell where he stands.

Observers on both the right and the left agree that the United States has lost its vision of how to succeed in the international arena. This makes it impossible to craft sound strategy or to build any sort of public consensus around it. What the United States needs is a new paradigm to help cut through the many conundrums that currently have the United States flummoxed. This new vision must clarify the primary goals of American foreign policy and identify the appropriate means for achieving those goals.

Crafting consensus around such a vision will be challenging, however, and in the meantime we need strategies to save us from our worst tendencies towards threat inflation, overspending, and excessive military intervention around the world.

Today I would like to propose a mechanism for doing just that. I call it the Switzerland Test. Applying the test is simple. When assessing threats, making decisions about defense budgets, or thinking about whether to intervene in another civil war, our political leaders should just ask: What would Switzerland do?

Switzerland provides a compelling vision for American foreign policy for several reasons. First, the Swiss assess security threats rationally. The Swiss are lucky, surrounded by mountains as they are, which has allowed them to fend off would-be invaders and occupiers for most of their history. Even Hitler didn’t bother. And today, the Swiss share borders with friendly neighbors. As a result, the Swiss waste little time or money on unnecessary national security initiatives. The most heated security debate in Switzerland recently has been whether or not even to have an army.

The United States will surely keep its army, but notice the parallels here. The United States, like Switzerland, is surrounded by imposing natural obstacles and friendly, militarily weak allies. Beyond this the United States also enjoys the safety of a secure nuclear deterrent. Unlike Switzerland, unfortunately, the United States sees threats everywhere and thus the legacy military-industrial complex from the Cold War continues to rumble along, sucking up trillions of dollars that the private sector economy could put to far better use.

Second, Swiss foreign policy is mostly geared toward improving its economic well being by expanding international trade through the development of cooperative agreements. And because it is so tiny, Switzerland has had to become competitive economically through investments in its people, its educational infrastructure, and its physical infrastructure.

The United States could learn a lot from this effort as well. Rather than focus on military power, which costs a lot but does little to advance the nation’s economic interests, the United States should focus on improving its economic power. Rather than flirt with protectionism like Clinton and Trump have done throughout the campaign, the United States should embrace the cause of free trade much more fully.

Third, Switzerland accepts the world as it is and does not seek to change it or to control it, only to make money by working with it. Unlike the United States, Switzerland does not seek to control the behavior of other nations, to resolve other nations’ internal conflicts through force, or to reshape the world to make it safe for democracy.

To be sure, as a tiny country with zero ability to project military power, Switzerland has little choice in this regard. But the benefits to Switzerland are many. In the United States pundits decry the turmoil in the Middle East and worry about which group of moderate rebels to support in Syria, Yemen, Libya, or Iraq. Does anyone think Switzerland won’t end up making money by trading with whichever government winds up emerging? There is simply no reason for the United States to struggle so hard against what is. Instead, like Switzerland the United States should accept the world as it is and work to get rich and happy by working with the world.

Finally, Switzerland ensures that it will not wind up doing stupid things by staying neutral and maintaining its strategic independence. Rather than entangling themselves in the EU or in NATO, the Swiss stay neutral in most things but remain willing to cooperate to solve problems on a situational basis.

The United States would benefit from the Swiss example here as well. Though the threat of Soviet attack justified American participation in NATO during the Cold War, today there is no reason for the United States to hitch its wagon to Europe’s security. Today, neither Russia nor the Islamic State poses the sort of military threat that requires American assistance. Likewise, though China certainly scares its neighbors in the Pacific, but many of them can take care of themselves and none of them are worth the United States risking major military conflict with China. The United States has more to gain by trading with China than confronting China.

The Switzerland Test is simple, clear, and easy to apply. The primary goals of U.S. foreign policy are national security and prosperity. Since the security angle is almost entirely taken care of by geography and nuclear weapons, most U.S. foreign policy should be focused on expanding America’s economic connections with the rest of the world and enabling those efforts with the appropriate investments in education and infrastructure.

When confronting a foreign policy question, the United States just needs to ask: What would Switzerland do?

The German Marshall Fund has just published an essay that I wrote in conjunction with a conference convened in Berlin six weeks ago. For a few hours in September, as Donald J. Trump’s poll numbers hovered around parity with Hillary Clinton’s (that is, before they fell and rose again), an array of American and European scholars contemplated Trump’s emergence as the de facto leader of one of the United States’ two major political parties.

What, if anything, did Trump’s rise portend for the future of transatlantic relations?

“Not much,” would be the safe, short and simple answer. After all, quite a number of GOP national security officials have raised the #NeverTrump banner. One group openly doubts that Trump has the “qualifications, the judgment or the temperament” to be president. Others bristle at his claim that U.S. allies are feckless free-riders, and reject his call for making them pay for the protection that they receive under the U.S. security umbrella. Hillary Clinton is even more adamant that NATO and other Cold War-era alliances should never be subject to scrutiny. As she said several years ago, American global leadership, which manifests in such alliances, “is in our DNA.”

In short, if Trump loses next week, it isn’t obvious that his ideas will outlast his unconventional campaign. The reigning transatlantic consensus, in which U.S. taxpayers subsidize European countries that might otherwise be inclined to spend slightly more on defense, will survive, and foreign policy elites in both the Democratic and Republican parties will work hard to ensure that no one like Trump ever emerges to challenge them.

However, as I note in the piece:

The mere possibility that America’s obligation within the NATO alliance might be open to interpretation should…serve as a powerful incentive for European countries to hedge their bets and get serious about developing a credible defense capability, one that is capable of acting without the United States in the lead.

Regardless of whether that occurs, it was probably unwise for Europeans to have relied so much on a U.S. political system over which they had no control. The fact that a bipartisan consensus among U.S. foreign policy elites sustained the transatlantic bargain for decades didn’t mean that that consensus was permanent.

Defenders of the status quo, whether they call it primacy, deep engagement, or simply American leadership, often claim that our dominant position in the world order will never be challenged because the United States is uniquely poised to reassure others. Core classical liberal principles, such as the importance of the rule of law, and governmental transparency and accountability, make Uncle Sam a reliable partner. Checks and balances between competing branches supposedly ensure that no one individual is able to effect dramatic changes in the way that the United States conducts its affairs.

Over the course of his campaign, Trump has torched these ideas. But he didn’t start the fire. Trump and Clinton both score poorly on transparency. Meanwhile, the Clintons’ critics often complain that they operate under a different set of rules than everyone else. Others worry that the president’s powers are not constrained by Congress or the courts. 

America’s so-called liberal hegemony lacks another key feature of liberalism: self-determination.

individuals must have a say in who governs them and how they are governed. Yet, the vast majority of people that fall under the dominion of the United States will have no role in selecting its next leader. They can’t vote in U.S. elections. And the awkward realization that they have entrusted their security to another government, liberal though it may be, over which they have no control, is crashing down hard on them.

I conclude:

Trump’s emergence provides an opportunity for leaders of all countries to reconsider how much trust they wish to place in the United States as the guarantor of global security. Some, perhaps many, will…revisit their decision to sub-contract governance to an unpredictable partner…

Without intending to do so, or even realizing that he’d done so, the mercurial Mr. Trump may be responsible for a welcome change in global security policy. If the reaction against him creates a more resilient international order, one that is less dependent on the military power of a single country, that would be a silver lining to Trump’s otherwise dark cloud.

You can read the whole essay here.

It’s been a little over a year since Bernie Sanders assured America that the public was “sick of hearing” about Hillary Clinton’s “damn e‑mails,” and to put it mildly, the claim has not aged well. Even before Friday’s announcement that the FBI had uncovered an additional cache of e‑mails from Clinton’s personal assistant Huma Abedin—and the inevitable media feeding frenzy that followed—Clinton’s use of a private e‑mail server during her tenure as Secretary of State had remained a central campaign issue. If anything, the controversy had metastasized: The FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s server, culminating in a recommendation that no criminal charges be brought, was received by many as evidence of a corrupt cover-up even more disturbing the underlying offense, a clear-cut case of a Beltway elite getting a pass for conduct that would have seen a normal schlub clapped in irons. It’s this, probably more than any other alleged misdeeds, that has made “lock her up!” a popular refrain at Donald Trump’s rowdy rallies.

As a frequent critic of the FBI’s routine demands for broadened surveillance powers, it’s heartening to see people recognizing that the Bureau is not somehow immune to improper political influence. Moreover, given the Obama DOJ’s unprecedented use of the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers (rather than spies)—his administration has pursued more cases under that law than all his predecessors’ combined—it’s hard not to feel a twinge of schadenfreude when the public concludes that Clinton’s “extreme carelessness” with classified information (as FBI director James Comey characterized it) must surely be criminal too. But in large part because I’m uneasy about normalizing this aggressive approach to the Espionage Act, I think it’s necessary to explain why this widespread perception is wrong, and Comey’s conclusion that “no reasonable prosecutor” would have pursued charges against Clinton on the available facts was pretty clearly right. While it’s impossible to know what other damaging revelations the newly discovered tranche of e‑mails may contain, it seems unlikely they will materially alter that basic legal conclusion.

One thing to get out of the way up front: None of what follows is ultimately a defense of Clinton. Beyond the poor judgement implied by her sloppy approach to classified information, the effect (and probable intent) of Clinton’s use of a private server was to hamper government transparency by giving her improper de facto control over correspondence that should be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests—which is to my mind perhaps the most troubling aspect of her conduct. (Much as this former reporter might wish otherwise, circumventing FOIA is not a criminal offense.) This post is narrowly concerned with whether she ought to have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act, specifically 18 USC §793(f). which reads:

(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

I’m focusing on this clause because it’s the one the FBI itself seems to have considered the only plausible basis for bringing charges. There are other statutes that apply to mishandling of classified information by military personnel or other Defense Department employees, which obviously wouldn’t apply to Clinton. And there are other clauses of the Espionage Act that criminalize “willfully” providing classified information to uncleared persons, or obtaining the same “with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States.” Nobody has seriously suggested that Clinton was deliberately trying to make classified information available to the adversaries of the United States. But what about 793(f), which requires not “willfulness” but only “gross negligence”?

There are three main obstacles to prosecution under that clause in this case: One factual, one statutory, and one constitutional. I’ll take them in turn.

The factual problem becomes clear when you ask what specific actions a prosecutor would charge—actions that could be laid at Clinton’s feet, as opposed to those of her staff. Setting up a private e‑mail server, or using it to carry on professional correspondence? That surely wouldn’t fly: Having a private e‑mail account doesn’t in itself constitute “mishandling” of classified information, and plenty of officials with high security clearances have done and continue to do the same. That it was Clinton’s own server, as opposed to a Gmail account, makes no difference. Indeed, while it’s certainly relevant to one’s judgment of whether Clinton was seeking to keep her e‑mails beyond the reach of FOIA requests, the private server is largely a red herring when it comes to the charge of mishandling classified information. What’s of potential legal relevance is that the server was not an appropriate “place of custody” for whatever classified material ended up there: A personal server is, in that respect, no different from a commercial e‑mail account or even an official but unclassified State​.gov account. Moreover, being in receipt of classified information on an insecure channel would not, in itself, satisfy the elements of an offense under the statute: A classified document sent to Clinton’s account might constitute a violation by the sender, but it would by definition have to be “removed” and “delivered” by the sender—not the recipient. So the factual obstacle here is that, once we recognize that “setting up a server” is a red herring, it’s not at all clear whether the FBI found instances of Clinton, as opposed to her staff, removing or “permitting the removal” of documents stored in classified systems. (The second prong might conceivably apply if it was sufficiently clear to Clinton that classified material had been illegally removed, though we’d then be left wondering what “superior officer” the Secretary of State is obligated to notify. The president?)

The reference above to the removal of documents is deliberate, and that brings us to the statutory obstacle to prosecution. While several sections of the Espionage Act that apply a “willfulness” standard cover any inappropriate communication of classified information, §793(f) really appears to be about the exfiltration of files or documents, not the mere discussion of classified matters. As Prof. Steve Vladeck, an expert on the Espionage Act, has observed, discussing classified subjects on an insecure channel might be grounds for a reprimand or revocation of clearance, but it has not traditionally been viewed as a criminal offense—and the language and structure of the statute, as well as the history of prosecution, bear out that interpretation.

Start with the language: Discussing classified facts known to you is not, on any ordinary use of English, an instance of “removing” information from a “place of custody,” except perhaps on the strained reading that makes the cleared individual’s brain such a “place.” For confirmation, we can look to differences in the language found in other parts of the statute, as under traditional rules of legal interpretation, differences in otherwise parallel phrases should be construed as corresponding to a difference in legal effect. Whereas §793(f) applies to a person “being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of” classified documents, it omits the language “access to” found in §793(e). Similarly, §783(f) covers allowing the materials to be “removed… delivered… lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed” but not “communicated” as in (e). The reading that most naturally makes sense of those differences is that (f) is about permitting the wholesale abstraction of files & documents, not merely communicating information someone may have gleaned from having access to them (or from access to classified briefings).

Structural considerations support the same conclusion. Consider: If §793(f) covers the same conduct as the rest of the statute, with the same penalties, with the only difference being the standard of “gross negligence” as opposed to “willfullness,” the structure of the whole becomes rather puzzling. Why have a separate clause to prohibit the same conduct under two standards, rather than having a unified prohibition on doing the same thing either “negligently” or “willfully”? Why, for that matter, would it make sense to penalize communication of classified information to uncleared individuals only with a strong intent requirement if communication of the same information even to cleared persons on an insecure channel would be subject to exactly the same penalties under a lower standard of negligence? Such a reading makes the statute into a patchwork quilt riddled with redundancies rather than a coherent whole.

Finally, the history of prosecutions under the law tends to support this understanding. Again, if discussing classified matters with other cleared persons on an insecure channel—as opposed to “removing” and transmitting classified documents—were understood to be a federal crime, you’d expect it wouldn’t be hard to find instances of that crime being prosecuted. But in fact, there don’t seem to be any such cases. As Ben Wittes, a former national security reporter turned think tank scholar, wrote this summer:

People simply don’t get indicted for accidental, non-malicious mishandling of classified material. I have followed leak cases for a very long time, both at the Washington Post and since starting Lawfare. I have never seen a criminal matter proceed without even an allegation of something more than mere mishandling of senstive information. Hillary Clinton is not above the law, but to indict her on these facts, she’d have to be significantly below the law.

A common refrain in discussions of the Clinton case has been that “anyone else” would have been charged in similar circumstances. Yet if you look closely at the supposedly parallel cases where lower-ranking individuals have been prosecuted for mishandling, you find that invariably the circumstances aren’t similar. You’ll find prosecutions involving classified material knowingly and intentionally provided to uncleared persons (as in the case of Gen. David Petraeus), or where large quantities of documents were literally removed from secure facilities, but I haven’t turned up any cases where conversations about classified subjects on an insecure line have been treated as a criminal matter. In a country where literally millions of individuals hold top secret clearances, we may safely assume this is not because such indiscretions never occur, but because they had not been understood to be criminal acts, and were dealt with as matters of administrative discipline.

There are, it’s worth noting, a small number of e‑mail threads in which a small portion of an actual classified document does appear to have been sent to Clinton’s private account. These were apparently marked (C) for confidential, though Clinton told the FBI that, at least in the context of an e‑mail (as opposed to a classified document with appropriate headers), she did not recognize that marking as a classification marking. Many have found that claim dubious, but if she testified in court that she either failed to notice it or interpreted it as a section marker (as in, text copied from a document in which it had been preceded by paragraphs A and B), I’m not sure how one would prove otherwise beyond reasonable doubt. At best, then, one would be left with a potential, albeit unprecedented, case against the staffer rather than Clinton.

At last we come to the constitutional barriers to prosecution. As Comey made clear in his testimony to Congress, while the statutory standard in §793(f) is “gross negligence,” the Justice Department has historically been reluctant to prosecute—indictments under §793(f) are vanishingly rare—without something at least approaching evidence of intent. One reason for that may be that the Supreme Court’s opinion in Gorin v. United States (1941), which suggests that the Espionage Act’s intent requirements are an important feature that save it from unconstitutional vagueness. Due process requires that the law give citizens clear notice of what conduct is criminally prohibited, and in a country that (in large part for First Amendment reasons) has never had a British-style Official Secrets Act, there would be real reason to fear it would be too easy to unwittingly commit a crime absent relatively strict intent requirements. After all, classified information is routinely (and lawfully) printed on the front pages of newspapers—it would be perverse if forwarding a New York Times article were an indictable offense—and the sheer volume of classified material means it’s often difficult for officials to keep track of whether a particular fact is classified at a given time. Add in the historical paucity of prosecutions for mere insecure discussion of classified facts and it’s easy to imagine Clinton’s attorneys successfully sinking any case with a due process argument.

At this point you may be asking the same question a conservative friend posed to me when I sketched this argument: If it’s so clear that Comey was correct, wouldn’t he and the Clinton campaign have been shouting all this from the rooftops? That did give me some pause, but there are reasons each might have incentives to be circumspect. If, as Vladeck argues in the piece linked above, the Espionage Act simply doesn’t cover a whole category of “mishandling” classified information, intelligence officials like Comey, who expect cleared persons to take their obligations seriously, might not want to advertise the fact too loudly—and may want to leave their options open for the sake of future prosecutions or threatened prosecutions. The Clinton campaign, on the other hand, probably understands that a lawyerly argument to the effect that her conduct was not technically illegal doesn’t sell terribly well on the campaign trail. Whatever the technicalities, this whole affair reflects terribly on her judgement, and they’ve likely concluded there’s no advantage to giving the issue any additional exposure, even if it’s to mount a defense. The old campaign adage “if you’re explaining, you’re losing” applies in spades here.

So do the additional e‑mails recovered from Huma Abedin’s laptop change any of this? It’s certainly possible to imagine scenarios in which it might: If those e‑mails contained clear evidence of intent to obstruct, or unambiguous instructions from Clinton that classified documents should be sent to her personal account. But then, one could as easily speculate about finding a confession to Vince Foster’s murder. If, instead, the e‑mails include more of the same sort of correspondence the FBI has already reviewed—even if it includes more threads in which classified topics were discussed—all of the above analysis would apply.

To sum up, there’s little question that, as Clinton herself now acknowledges, the use of a private e‑mail server to conduct official correspondence was a serious lapse in judgement. Individual voters can determine for themselves whether they find it disqualifying in a commander in chief. But we don’t need to resort to theorizing about political chicanery to explain why she wasn’t prosecuted for it: The simple answer is that—fortunately for all politicians—not every act of stupidity is a federal crime.

Obama administration officials were outraged when Russian and Syrian government planes recently attacked rebel positions in and near the city of Aleppo. Such raids were a humanitarian atrocity, President Obama charged, when they struck civilian targets. But Washington had little patience even for assaults directed against military targets. Those attacks, U.S. officials contended, played into the hands of ISIS by damaging insurgent elements opposed to that extremist group and even creating incentives for moderates to make common cause with ISIS. The regime of Bashar al-Assad and its Russian allies responded with the assertion that they were not targeting moderates, but were in fact attacking either ISIS units or other “terrorists.”

Whatever the merit of Washington’s criticism in that case, it has been severely undermined by the latest action of America’s “loose-cannon” NATO ally, Turkey. The Turkish military just launched attacks against forces of the YPG, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, in positions north of Aleppo. According to Turkish authorities, the raids killed some 200 Kurdish fighters. Ankara insists that the YPG is affiliated with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a violent separatist movement in Turkey itself. YPG leaders deny such a connection, and Washington continues to regard Kurdish forces as a crucial component of the anti-ISIS coalition.

This latest incident underscores three points. First, Turkey is an increasingly unreliable ally that pursues its own narrow agenda regardless of Washington’s wishes. Second, regardless of Ankara’s probable motive, which apparently was to stem growing Kurdish power in both Syria and Turkey, the attack objectively strengthened ISIS by damaging one of its most effective military adversaries. Third, the Syrian civil war is incredibly complex. It is not a simple melodrama featuring the evil Assad regime versus noble, freedom-seeking rebels. The insurgents themselves are extensively fragmented, with agendas ranging from genuine Western-style democracy to Saudi-style Islamic fundamentalism. Outside parties, especially Russia, Turkey, Iraqi Kurdistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, all back certain Syrian factions to advance their own geopolitical objectives. 

To its credit, the Obama administration has refrained from full-scale involvement—a “big footprint” military intervention–in Syria’s civil war. But U.S. efforts to encourage Assad’s ouster helped create the ongoing tragedy, and even Obama’s “light footprint” strategy has entangled the United States far too deeply in a murky and ultimately unwinnable struggle. One hopes that the next president will have the wisdom to extricate the United States from this beckoning quagmire and let the Turks, Russians, Saudis, and others deal with the headache of the Syrian civil war. 

ATLANTA — Support may be building in Congress for another round of military base consolidation. Some believe that leaders will reach agreement with the incoming administration early next year. It’s overdue. The Pentagon says it will have 22 percent excess capacity by 2019. But, of course, for many communities, base closure is a frightening prospect.


Some communities in and around former bases have begun the process of repurposing these properties. At the Association of Defense Communities’ Installation Reuse meeting here in Atlanta, attendees had a chance to visit two such examples: former Army bases Fort Gillem and Fort McPherson. Both have a pathway toward a successful transition to non-defense use since winding up on the 2005 BRAC commission’s cut list, but they have opted for quite different approaches.


Fort Gillem, an Army logistics hub opened in 1941, is now Gillem Logistics Center. It is already home to a 1‑million square foot distribution center for Kroger, the popular food retailer. Proximity to a major highway, Interstate 285, proved a key selling point, and enabled Kroger to consolidate operations from five buildings into one. The new facility includes freezers and cold storage for everything from ice cream to fresh cut flowers, and employs about 1000 people. Kroger invested $243 million in the project, part of a 30-year commitment to the property, and they have room to expand.

There are other massive warehouses under construction elsewhere at the former Army base, including an 850,000 square foot facility that is nearing completion. Long-term plans call for 7–8 million square feet of warehouse space, plus another 1 million square feet of mixed-use and retail development. Atlanta boasts some of the lowest real estate costs of any major metropolitan area, and this makes it an attractive location for logistics hubs.


Fort McPherson is located about 11 miles away, northwest of Gillem, and situated between downtown Atlanta and the busy Hartsfield Jackson Airport. The base dates back to the late 19^th century, and struggled in the first few years after closure. But it now has a unique and creative future. Tyler Perry, the actor, writer, director, and producer of a string of Hollywood and television hits, paid $30 million for 330 acres at the former site in June last year. His company wasted no time in converting the property. The portion of Tyler Perry Studios now housed in a former army headquarters building includes a variety of sets, everything from hospital rooms to bars to the Oval Office. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, but the Los Angeles Times took readers on a virtual tour here. On our driving tour of the rest of the property, we saw a few single family homes that looked like any typical American subdivision, except that they were built in the span of a few weeks, and can be quickly modified to look like any other typical American neighborhood. There’s a massive yacht perched awkwardly on a rise of land near the entrance to the property. It doesn’t float in real life, but can be made to look like it’s in the middle of the ocean through the magic of movie making. Tyler Perry Studios’ plans for the rest of the sprawling property include sound stages as well as open space. Perry’s forthcoming film “Boo: A Madea Halloween” was filmed at Fort Mac, including in and around the old base’s parade grounds. One of the brick homes featured in the movie, Quarters 10, was the base commander’s home (Colin Powell, among others, once lived there).


A major movie studio could be a big draw for the rest of Fort Mac. The McPherson Implementing Local Redevelopment Authority, more popularly known as the Fort Mac LRA, retains 145 acres of the former base, with frontage along two major thoroughfares, Lee Street and Campbellton Road. They are in negotiations to construct a new facility for a charter school, which could be a key draw for area residents. Brian Hooker, executive director of the Fort Mac LRA, explained to me that there are 250 employees at a Veterans Administration medical clinic and they have plans to expand. The key for future development will be to attract a mix of retail and commercial activity that will make this property a destination for more than movie extra zombies and grips. But the possibilities for this attractive plot of land seem promising. 


Regardless of whether Congress authorizes a round of base closures in the coming year, or pushes it down the road, the issue of over-capacity will be addressed, one way or another. But a base closing can mean businesses opening, if local policymakers and communities let go of the past and embrace the future. Look no further than Fort Gillem and Fort Mac for evidence of that.

With support from American air strikes and special operations, Iraqi forces have launched the battle to retake Mosul from the Islamic State (ISIS). The fighting promises to be difficult. Though the Iraqis estimate that there are no more than about 5,000 ISIS fighters in the city, ISIS has had more than two years to dig after taking the city of in June 2014. American and Iraqi officials have warned it could take weeks or even months to liberate Mosul. The real danger for the United States, however, is what happens after Mosul.

Even in the best-case scenario – a quick defeat of ISIS and the destruction of its self-proclaimed caliphate – Iraq will face the monumental task of consolidating its hold on its territory, rebuilding its cities and critical infrastructure, and charting a course toward a healthier national politics, all while dealing with terrorism, sectarianism, and external intervention from both the United States and Iran.

The situation after Mosul will be like the situation after the Iraq war on steroids. Instead of looking ahead to the promise of democracy, Iraq will be grappling with more than a decade of political failure. Instead of tens of thousands of American forces to provide at least some semblance of stability, Iraq must look to its own troubled security forces. Instead of confronting an Al Qaeda in nascent form, Iraq must deal with an Islamic State that no one believes will wither with defeat in Mosul. In short, Iraq is a mess and unlikely to fix itself soon.

And therein lies the danger of Mosul for the United States. If the United States believed it was necessary to help rebuild Iraq after the 2003 war, how much more powerful will the temptation be to stick around this time given the situation? It is difficult to see President Trump or President Clinton making the decision to pull back once the primary fight against ISIS is won. Instead, the United States is likely to expand its presence in and support to Iraq in the years to come in the name of counterterrorism.

The past fifteen years, however, have made clear that long-term nation building projects like Afghanistan and Iraq are extremely costly and uncertain projects. In Afghanistan, after fifteen years and hundreds of billions spent in development and military aid, the country remains in shambles, terrorism and conflict are rampant, and only the continued presence of coalition military forces prevents the Taliban from retaking the country. In Iraq, of course, regime change provided the opportunity for ISIS to emerge, despite the presence of thousands of American troops and billions of dollars in assistance. And these failures occurred despite the fact that Afghanistan and Iraq were in many ways best-case scenarios given the level of influence and control the Untied States exerted in both places. So why, exactly, should the United States expect things to go better in Iraq after Mosul when the fundamentals on the ground are now so much worse than they were after the Iraq war?

The worst-case scenario after Mosul is that America’s next president decides that the only way to prevent the reemergence of ISIS is to reoccupy Iraq with U.S. troops to prop up the Iraqi government. The longer the United States military stays in Iraq, the more motivation it will give to ISIS, Al Qaeda and others who resent the American presence in the Middle East. In addition to making life dangerous for U.S. troops in Iraq, that resentment will inevitably lead to more terrorism, both in Iraq and in the United States and Europe. And even more frustratingly, those costs will compound year after year while their impact on what really matters, the security of Americans here at home, will be negligible. Killing terrorists abroad sounds comforting, but fifteen years of the war on terror has only served to increase the number of terrorists, while not lowering the number of attacks on the American homeland. Moreover, though ISIS is certainly a threat to Iraq and Syria, though it is on the run today. It is not and has never been, however, a major threat to the United States. Though every Islamist-inspired attack is a tragedy, the price the United States has paid for fifteen years of military intervention has been a self-inflicted wound far greater than any ISIS is capable of dishing out today.

It will be a great day in Iraq when government forces retake the nation’s second largest city back from ISIS. The United States should be happy for Iraq and take satisfaction from having helped make it possible. But the next president should resist the temptation to stick around and rebuild Iraq again.