Wrong Turn

I have been generally on board with much of Trump in matters of foreign policy.  I didn’t mind him calling out European leaders for not living up to their commitment on defense spending (just as they haven’t lived up to their Paris Accord commitments).  I was not adverse to pulling out of JPCOA—the idea of giving Iranians cash (to finance terror) and having sites off limits to inspectors was repulsive.  Inflicting some pain on the Chinese was appropriate (I will have more on that in a later post).  After 8 years of treating Israel like dirt, I was pleased to see Trump recognize Jerusalem as its capital.  His speech in Saudi Arabia on his vision for the Middle East and his speech in Poland were both visionary and magnificent.  While North Korea has not disarmed, I thought his efforts were worthwhile.  He was softer on Russia than I would like, but I see focusing on China as a more important long term strategic problem.

But events this week have caused me to re-examine my views.  The abrupt announcement that we are pulling forces out of Syria and Afghanistan along with General Mattis’s resignation are serious blunders in judgment—so serious that my entire view of Trump has been tainted.

My view of Trump has been as a Chief Restructuring Officer.  In business, when a company is failing, a chief restructuring officer (CRO) is sometimes appointed.  The job of the CRO is to shake things up, sometimes rather dramatically.  He or she is necessarily a transitory figure.  CRO’s are not good at managing things in a steady, happy state.  They either manage chaos or intentionally create it to reset the gameboard.  And everyone hates the CRO.  They are often brash and obnoxious, blunt and discourteous, because the company simply no longer has the luxury of business as usual.

I initially thought that my analogy to a CRO fit pretty well.

But now I see I may have been mistaken.

A better analogy might be that sexy, somewhat crazy boyfriend/girlfriend you dated just after college and before you got married (hopefully, you didn’t marry him or her).  He or she was fun for awhile, tremendously fun and exciting because their id overrode their superego a lot.   When you are 24, that’s fun for a bit, until about the 5^th time they go off and do something insane and/or betray you.   Then you decide you just can’t put up with it anymore.

Now, there is a case to be made for curtailing U.S. military involvement generally.  John Mersheimer makes a cogent case for a more realistic foreign policy in his recent book, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities.  In it, Mersheimer argues that we have been engaged militarily more or less constantly since the end of the Cold War with little to show for it.  Committing troops is especially counterproductive when we engage in nation building, which expensive in blood and treasure and almost never works.  He argues for a much more constrained foreign policy.  This point of view is adhered to by many libertarians, including Rand Paul, Deirdre McCloskey, and John Stossel.  That was the position that Obama actually campaigned on, yet failed to execute.  For all his carping about Bush in Iraq, he did exactly the same thing in Libya – regime change without adequate follow through (albeit at a lower cost).   And it was never made clear what the goals were in Afghanistan or Syria.  In Syria, U.S. troops were originally dispatched to liberate Raqqa from the Islamic State, and gradually troop strength increased to 4.000 and controlled about a third of the country.   There was increasing risk of engagement with Russian or Turkish troops, which could have dire consequences.

But Trump never made a strong case for withdrawal, at least not strong enough to convince General Mattis and others.  Of course, it is possible that the generals are wrong.  It certainly was the case in Vietnam, and General Mattis, while well respected, does not have perfect judgment.  He backed Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes and even served on Theranos’s board of directors.

But the weight of things weighs strongly against withdrawal in Syria.  If you have Jim Mattis, Victor Davis Hanson, Jack Keane and Daniel Pipes pushing back at you and Vladimir Putin cheering you on, you are probably doing it wrong.  As every Catholic knows, a practice of premature withdrawal does not always have the consequences that you expect.

As we learned to our chagrin in Afghanistan, Islamists don’t go away.  They disappear into the woodwork until the coast is clear and then they re-emerge.   Our intelligence agencies are telling us the same thing will happen in Syria.

Another compelling reason for maintaining some force in Syria is to support and protect the Kurds.  They have fought side by side with us against ISIS, and I understand U.S. forces are demoralized and sorrowful over leaving their allies in the lurch.  They are tough, brave and resourceful fighters and we have repeatedly turned our backs on them, beginning with the aftermath of the first Gulf War.  Abandoning them again to be cut up by Erdogan is immoral and sends a signal to any nation or group about our commitment to our allies.

The argument of Mersheimer and the libertarians has some appeal and some force to it.  The flaw in their argument is that technology coupled with our leaky borders means that nonstate actors and less powerful states can reach and hurt us.  9/11 proved that a handful of guys with limited technology can inflict tremendous casualties and North Korea has demonstrated ability to potentially kill millions of Americans.  Denying them territory and constantly harassing them may be a better path than leaving them to plan and operate operate unmolested.  As Ben Crenshaw stated (or restated George W. Bush), “We fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.”

In the ensuing Twitter explosion, the most common comment about Mattis is that “he made us feel safe.”  Given Trump’s lack of experience in government and foreign affairs, he very much needs to rely on the steady voices of experienced and reliable professionals.   Losing Mattis is a tremendous blow to an administration that badly needs credibility.   If you have lost Jim Mattis, you have probably lost me.