“Strategic Patience” has One Virtue
[by Mark Safranski, a.k.a. “zen“]
“Alas, poor Clausewitz….”
The Obama administration released its National Security Strategy last Friday, shepherded by the National Security Courtier, Susan Rice. Even by the increasingly mediocre standards for this exercise the administration managed to hit a new low for vapid superficiality, muddled thought and brazen political appeals to Democratic Party special interest groups, notably the gay lobby and environmental activists.
While it is normal for an administration’s political opposition to deride the NSS (and often there is much to deride; let’s be honest, the Bush administration NSS papers will not be shelved next to The Art of War either) it is atypical for the administration’s own recently retired top officials to blast it right out of the gate:
Former Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn blasted the Obama administration’s national security strategy on Sunday, describing it as too narrowly focused on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
“We need a much broader strategy that recognizes that we’re facing not just this tactical problem of ISIS in Iraq and Syria,” Flynn, who retired last year as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said on “Fox News Sunday.”“We’re facing a growing, expanding threat around the world,” Flynn said, noting that terrorist threats have doubled in the Middle East and Africa.
“I think what the American public is they’re looking for moral and intellectual courage and clarity,” Flynn said, adding the public didn’t want “passivity and confusion.”
“There’s confusion about what it is that we’re facing,” he added.
Flynn, who led the DIA for two years under Obama, previously served as assistant Director of National Intelligence and director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Central Command and Joint Special Operations Command.
Flynn used an analogy of a quarterback leading a football team down the field.
“I feel like when we say ‘ready, break,’ every player on the team is going off into other stadiums, playing different sports,” he said.
Flynn said it was a “good question” when asked who in the Obama administration is in charge of leading the U.S. counterterrorism strategy. “If everybody’s in charge, nobody’s in charge.”
Top tier center-left think tank, The Brookings Institution, is similarly unimpressed.
Flynn is right. No one is in charge. Which is why Leslie Gelb, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations called on the president to fire his entire senior White House staff and replace them with officials with at least average competence in national security. Gelb, it must be said, is a Democrat.
It is highly unlikely the president will fire any of his second term team regardless of the consistently poor foreign policy results they are delivering for him. If he cared at all, they would be gone already. The NSC is broken and is unable to formulate strategy because the truth is the President likes it that way and does not want a strategy. Strategies abroad force constraints on the domestic political freedom of action of politicians at home.
There is a silver lining however.
The administration is describing their approach now as one of “strategic patience” – signaling quite clearly that they intend to avoid any substantial foreign policy commitments for the next two years. This has foreign policy and national security community experts (and our allies) very nervous because our adversaries might read that as license for their own regional aggression, or at least substantially reduced risks and costs for ignoring American security interests. This is a valid concern, but there is a flip side.
If the people steering the ship of state have demonstrated – repeatedly- that they are not up to even the basics of the job, that they cannot read the horizon, operate the bridge or navigate successfully, do you really want this team going full steam ahead? In any direction? We are better off with the ship at anchor.
The real strategic patience will be the American people waiting out this dead in the water administration.
February 10th, 2015 at 4:46 am
While I generally agree with your assessment of this administration’s foreign policy, strategic patience should not be dismissed as weakness or a simplistic attempt to avoid foreign policy commitments. US foreign policy elites really do need to resist the urge to “do something” in response to every perceived foreign policy crisis – many times is it much better to wait to see what develops before unzipping one’s pants.
February 10th, 2015 at 6:29 am
In the abstract, patience is good. But in the current circumstances, where the administration is projecting incompetence and confusion, talking about patience suggests that the administration is simply recognizing its own limitation and walking off the field. It is the wrong signal. It suggests, or in this case, confirms weakness and weakness provokes attack. If the USA were generally feared and respected right now, we could be believed if we said ISIS is not an existential threat and we are not going to rise to their bait and get into a quagmire over there. But letting them behead Americans and appearing feckless in response is different because the overall impression it makes on the rest of world, potential friends and enemies alike, is totally different. The damage done by this administration in eight years is going to take a generation to repair.
February 10th, 2015 at 4:52 pm
Inspiring new administration slogan: “America, you deserve a smoke break. I know I do.”
February 10th, 2015 at 4:55 pm
Patience may be fine for strategic adversaries such as Russia or China. The realities of balances of power dictate primary consideration of the long game.
I agree that the important rule interventionists must learn is, “first do no harm”, and in that case less is more would apply.
On the other hand, urgent, gaping wounds like Daesh require immediate actions, else our abdications and deferences lead us flailing down reactionary paths. Here we must stabilize the situation then deal with the consequences and side effects as they come.
February 10th, 2015 at 4:59 pm
“The damage done by this administration in eight years is going to take a generation to repair.” Just so. We must be thinking about how bad things may get; things like NATO being broken, Ukraine being Finlandized, Finland being reFinlandized, one or all of the Baltic states being occupied, the middle east ending up nobody can imagine, etc. Then there is Red China possibly deciding to make some moves while they can. We have to think about all this so the next crew can have some idea of how to start at least clearing away the wreckage.
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If the ship were anchored in a safe harbor that would be tolerable but we are anchored off a lee shore and the wind is starting to blow harder.
February 10th, 2015 at 7:18 pm
“The damage done by this administration in eight years is going to take a generation to repair.”
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It certainly seems that when he says things like:
“We are summoned to push back against those who would distort OUR religion for their nihilistic ends”
or
“you’ve got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or RANDOMLY shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris”
reasonable questions arise about whether the problem is that no one is in charge or that someone is actually in charge and taking us on a very bad and wrong course.
February 10th, 2015 at 11:29 pm
Does anybody (anybody who doesn’t actually work in the White house, I mean) have a favorable opinion of this NSS? I’m serious. I’d like to hear the other side of the argument. So far all I’ve heard is the negative.
February 11th, 2015 at 4:20 am
Hi Gents,
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In reverse order…..
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Dave – among most FP/Natsec folk, it is almost unanimously negative on a bipartisan basis. It is not much better outside that circle but perhaps VOX will devote a special article to Kleinsplaining the NSS
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Grurray & Carl – we are anchored offshore, given. The choice is anchor or sail. If they had the sense for port I’d not have written the post. Will they do more damage in motion or at rest?
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Lynn – that cries out for an internet meme
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Lex – agreed. But worse or better in motion vice passive?
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Andy – I agree with your colorful sentiments. Patients in the hands a calculating and competent statesman with a better reputation is a different kettle of fish
February 11th, 2015 at 5:27 am
Zen: Point taken. If they sailed they’d steer us straight into the rocks. If they don’t sail they’ve still set the anchor so poorly it is going to drag and we are going into the rocks. Either way, we got two more years of this crew and we are going into the rocks. There is no getting around that.
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We must start thinking right now about how bad things are going to be in January 2017 and what we will have to do to try and salvage things.
February 11th, 2015 at 3:10 pm
Follow up to Dave’s comment.
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Steve Metz, one of the USG strategists for whom I have a great deal of respect and who is no Republican, writes of the NSS that it is “a stump speech”
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http://breakingdefense.com/2015/02/obamas-strategic-patience-folly-or-the-future/
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February 11th, 2015 at 3:33 pm
The most favorable reaction to the NSS I’ve found so far is from Thomas Wright at Brookings:
“But, in this document, the White House is also making it clear that it does not want to be defined by the return of geopolitics. It rejects the notion that the future of the order is at a hinge point. It sees many of these crises as immediate but not likely to define the next decade. It does not identify stark strategic choices that the United States must choose between.
So what is there instead? The first section, on security, focuses on homeland security, terrorism, conflict prevention, non-proliferation, climate change (which it calls “an urgent and growing threat to our national security”) access to shared spaces (maritime, air, cyber, and space), and global health. These are the transnational and largely shared challenges of our time. This is how the document begins and it clearly is what matters most to the president. It implies continuity with where the president began in January 2009.
This document is a valuable and thoughtful contribution to the discourse. I am much more in the first camp than the second, but this is a debate that needed to happen and has now truly begun.”
February 12th, 2015 at 7:22 pm
It’s not that this administration doesn’t have a strategy, it’s that it doesn’t talk about it much. The strategy is to return as much of the globe as possible to the empires that once ruled them: Ukraine and Eastern Europe to Russia, The Western Pacific to China, and most catastophically, the Middle East to Iran.