President Barack Obama’s statements and decisions around responses to Bashar al-Assad’s use of Sarin against Syrian opposition provide a test case for three issues: Intervening in conflicts that have only indirectly to do with US interests, assumptions about the use of force that have gendered aspects, and how a president communicates. If we are to end our forever wars and avoid stumbling into more, we need to understand these issues.
Some time ago, I wrote up an analysis focusing on the gendered assumptions about the use of force and struggled with an editor over it for several months, until Jeffrey Goldberg published his interview with President Obama in The Atlantic. I had predicted some of the new information in that interview in my analysis, but of course the interview precluded the use of that analysis. So I never published it. But the fact that the interview supported my analysis has kept me watching for more information about presidential decisions in August and September of 2013.
Ben Rhodes has provided more information in an Atlantic article taken from his forthcoming book. The Obama interview is a useful companion read. In this post, I’d like to work through my three issues in relation to Rhodes’s article.
The biggest news in Rhodes’s article comes near the end.
On the flight home [probably September 6, 2013], Obama mentioned that he’d had a private conversation with Putin on the margins of the [G20] summit. For years, Obama had proposed that the United States and Russia work together to address the threat from Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile; for years, Russia had resisted. This time, Obama again suggested working together to remove and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons. Putin agreed and suggested that John Kerry follow up with his Russian counterpart.
That Monday, September 9, John Kerry mused before reporters’ cameras that Syria should give up its chemical weapons. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, replied that Syria could do that. By September 12, Russia and the United States had an agreement on the subject.
That sequence seemed scripted to me at the time, and, if Rhodes’s account is accurate, we now know it was.
In the White House discussions, it appears that Rhodes played the part of what Obama called the foreign policy “blob” – the Washington conventional wisdom that military force is the first response to be considered to most foreign relations problems. Obama wanted to change that conventional wisdom. Read through that framework, Rhodes’s article is a suspenseful account of one battle in Obama’s struggle with the blob.
Even though I had misgivings about our Syria policy, I wanted to do something about the catastrophe in Syria, just as I had advocated intervention in Libya.
When bad things are happening, it’s natural to want to do something, and for people in power, that all too often translates to military force.
Yet I was also wrestling with my own creeping suspicion that Obama was right in his reluctance to intervene militarily in Syria. Maybe we couldn’t do much to direct events inside the Middle East; maybe U.S. military intervention in Syria would only make things worse.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, said that something needed to be done even if they didn’t know what would happen after they took action. That’s not good military thinking. But blob thinking is pervasive.
All this was in April 2013, before the attack on Ghouta that caused more than a thousand deaths. Assad tested Obama’s earlier warning with small attacks. Rhodes does not say what the purpose of doing something would be, perhaps to send Assad a warning. But a warning of what? Would there be more American attacks if Assad ignored the warning? Troops on the ground? This is the problem with the blobby do something.
The intelligence people were not sure enough that Assad was behind the attacks to write a finding. They gave their information to Rhodes to write an equivalent document.
The United Nations inspection team had not completed its work. Germany’s Angela Merkel felt that support needed to be built in Europe. Congressional opposition to a strike was building. There was an element of hypocrisy in Republican opposition, but it was a real difficulty for going ahead with strikes. The administration’s lawyers had concerns. The British Parliament voted against joining American strikes.
With Rhodes’s assessment in hand, John Kerry said in a speech at the State Department, “My friends, it matters here if nothing is done. It matters if the world speaks out in condemnation and then nothing happens.” Which is why presidents have to be careful what they say. On the other hand, we are now seeing what happens when too many people do not call out wrongdoing.
Rhodes continues as the voice of the blob:
Kerry suggested that we wait another week to bring other countries into a coalition. I argued that we had to act as soon as possible—time was not our friend, and our military action was likely to change the public dynamic. Obama, who seemed increasingly focused on the factors aligning against us, pressed for the domestic and international legal basis that we could cite for taking action.
As Rhodes becomes convinced that cruise missiles would soon be hitting Syria, Obama decides to seek approval from Congress.
At some point, [Obama] said [to the National Security Council], a president alone couldn’t keep the United States on a perpetual war footing, moving from one Middle Eastern conflict to the next. In the decade since 9/11, we’d gone to war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya. Now there was a demand that we go into Syria; next it would be Iran. “It is too easy for a president to go to war,” he said.
As Obama goes around the room to gauge opinion, Rhodes agrees with him.
“In this Syria debate,” I said, “we’ve seen a convergence of two dysfunctions in our foreign policy—Congress and the international community. They both press for action but want to avoid any share of the responsibility.” All week, I had been thinking the answer to that problem was to go ahead and do something; now I saw Obama’s reasoning for why that wouldn’t work. “At some point, we have to address that dysfunction head-on.”
Of course, we now have so many dysfunctions in government that this one has gone to the back burner.
Obama decided not to ask Congress to vote on an intervention in Syria. Then came the massive chemical attack on Ghouta and the agreement between the United States and Russia to remove Syria’s chemical weapons.
As decisions are made about interventions elsewhere, it’s essential to think about alternatives, as Obama did, and evaluate on more criteria than the need to do something.
Image: National Security Council meeting in 2014. Rhodes is at the end of the table on the right.
Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner.
rikyrah
I agreed with some foreign policy decisions of 44.
Disagreed with some.
But, always trusted that he actually thought things through.
rikyrah
Trump shuns press conferences for Twitter. Twitter is a one-sided medium that gets the press to repeat what are essentially slogans all day.
The slogans are lies. If you’re going to quote the slogans, specify immediately that they are lies. Or else you are enabling propaganda.
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) June 4, 2018
If you don’t understand Trump’s propaganda tactics by now — and if you are reluctant to, say, call a lie a lie — journalism may not be the best profession for you
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) June 4, 2018
NotMax
Steve McQueen was right. Beware of the blob.
Major Major Major Major
Ah yes, the American foreign policy syllogism. Something must be done; use of force is something; therefore…
Mary G
We spend so much money on weapons manufactured in every state for political reasons that the temptation to advocate for their use so there will be political reasons to spend even more money. Jobs!
That image is really striking. Many white guys in dark suits with white shirts, one woman in a beige suit, and Susan Rice in hot fuschia pink standing out like a sore thumb. She didn’t pretend to be deferential and unassuming, and I believe that contributes a lot to the hysterical hate of her on the Republican side.
J R in WV
Great article, and the background about editors and fighting for your work strikes close to home indeed. And if enough time passes without an editor supporting your work, events can overtake it and render it obsolete. Sad but typical. Wife saw it often. I’ve seen it as well.
japa21
@rikyrah: And Trump, who believes he must do everything opposite of Obama, never thinks anything through.
rikyrah
On this latest bullshyt to blame CLINTON for Dolt45:
We ain’t trying to hear that noise and are letting them know to their faces- they are the reason for this mess and they can’t handle us talking back.
I have said for awhile, that, what shocks them most is…
Our side:
1. Having all the receipts from 44’s Administration
2. Our non-hesitance in pulling them out
3. Our insistence that, NOT ONLY are we NEVER going to give Dolt45 ANY RESPECT, but.
4. Our insistence that, your vote for Dolt45 IS a mark on you. It shows YOUR lack of character
5. Our willingness to point out that THEIR vessel for White Supremacy IS AN INTERNATIONAL EMBARRASSMENT.
6. Non-Whites, as a collective, (minus the slave catchers), saying, without hesitation, that EVERYTHING we are suffering through IS THEIR FAULT.
THERE.IS.NO.BOTH.SIDES.
ON MY SIDE, there was a supremely qualified candidate, Muthaphucka.
rikyrah
The #ConstitutionalCrisis Is Already Underway:
‘Before this is over, either Trump’s sweeping claim [I am the law] will survive, or the rule of law will, but not both.’#Constitution #RuleOfLaw #pardons #TrumpIsNOTAboveTheLaw https://t.co/9QiP5dlq4O
— Alice Stollmeyer (@StollmeyerEU) June 3, 2018
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
And Republicans are already digging a nice big grave for rule of law, to bury it in.
trollhattan
Pruitt seems to have gotten the full dose of Donny’s Teflon coating. Can this guy get any weirder?
To sum up: utterly cheap bastard Okie goes to Washington to release five decades’ pent-up suppressed consumerism on the country’s dime and in the process, squanders our environment at No Extra Charge.
sdhays
@rikyrah: My feelings exactly. He wasn’t perfect, but I always knew he brought the kind of judgement that I’d want the President to have to the hard decisions. I always felt we were in good hands, even if I wasn’t sure the decision was the right one.
ruemara
WHY THE FUCK ARE THERE CONSTANT AUTOPLAY VIDEO ADS!
Sorry, but this is hella annoying. They just restart & restart. THAT FUCKING HONDA AD!
RE: topic. You know, it’s never been more obvious than now that we had a sensible, decent, thoughtful human in charge for 8 years. And because of that, white supremacists home & abroad went full scale insane. This 4th of July, never let a Trumper claim to be a patriot. Call them vassals to Russia, the UAE & every government with $5.
sdhays
@trollhattan: If we can keep him the media spotlight so that he drowns out coverage of Spanky, Spanky will finally shit-can him. No one distracts the media from the dumpster fire in the White House.
TenguPhule
@trollhattan:
This has got to be the piss.
TenguPhule
@ruemara:
Use adblock //s
Blame Alain.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule:
Hosting this site is not free. Somebody has to pay for it.
rikyrah
Trump—and complicit Republicans in Congress—are orchestrating a deliberate campaign to undermine rule of law in America. It’s something I got used to seeing when I’ve lived in countries ruled by authoritarian despots, but never under an American president. pic.twitter.com/qLbpFugWPX
— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) June 4, 2018
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
Assuming a Democrat were to win in 2020 (that’s a big assumption) how would / could they conduct foreign policy from this point forward? We are a country of feckless can’ts and could easily elect another Trump like POTUS in 2024. We are a rogue nation with nukes, no one should ever trust us again.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
Nobody wants to buy anything from an auto-play ad. Just fucking fundraise on the front page already. People have donated for less worthy causes all the time.
ETA: And doesn’t adblock totally defeat the purpose for using an auto-play ad for revenue?
eric U.
yes, but there are lines that should not be crossed. Popups and auto-play audio should not be on a site that wants visitors. I use ublock and privacy badger with some recommended settings and I don’t have any of that. So many malicious ads. Someone scammy enough to pay for auto-play is probably scammy enough to install bitcoin mining malware on your computer
TenguPhule
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap:
Take a page from the Khan and send the heads of the highest ranked Trumpsters to our allies as an apology.
Just their heads, mind you.
Adam L Silverman
I just want to make one quibble with how Rhodes presents GEN Dempsey’s advice:
Actually this is exactly what we teach senior leaders to think at the strategic level at the senior leader colleges (war colleges). We specifically teach that once you establish a strategic objective, provide the ways and means to achieve it, and do actually achieve it, that it changes the operating environment so that it is not always possible to predict what will happen as a result of the change. This is why the military plans for everything. Why we have plans and sequels for every possible contingency that can be conceived. Why we bring in fiction novelists to QA/QC war game scenarios. And write some of them too.
In this instance Dempsey was articulating what we want every general officer/flag officer, as well as their senior officers and NCOs, as well as SESes and senior civil service personnel to recognize: that once military action is complete, there is no reestablishment of normal before the crisis occurred. Rather, we will be moving into a fluid situation that may, if properly managed, lead to the establishment of a new normal. And that new normal may be better. Or it may be worse. But it is largely an unknown despite all of our planning and forecasting.
Finally, I know Dempsey. I’ve worked under his command. For a short time I ran a line of effort (the culture of the Profession of Arms) for him on the Profession of Arms study before he rejiggered his intent, which led the lines of efforts to be changed. Dempsey is, perhaps, the most thoughtful, most well read, most measured, most studied, most even keeled, and most strategically oriented of any other general officer/flag officer of his generation. And if not, then certainly among Army generals off his generation (as the Marines tend to produce some excellent strategically minded generals, which is weird given that the Corps is a specialized tactical force – in fact it is the original American specialized force). I’ve never known Dempsey to argue for military action for its own sake and without a clear set of end states, objectives, and effects to be achieved with appropriate planning to increase the likelihood for success. As a result, I think Rhodes took his remarks out of this context and attributed to him intentions that he didn’t intend to convey.
Full disclosure, the orders that sent me to USAWC were above GEN Dempsey’s signature
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule:
Most people don’t use ad blockers. Cole is resistant to soliciting donations.
Yutsano
@TenguPhule:
Ew.
Eww.
EEWWWW!!!
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: Klaas grew up in Minnesota and then moved to England for his graduate studies and remained there. He has not, based on his published bio, lived anywhere outside of Minnesota and England for any significant length of time. I realize Jesse Ventura was governor of Minnesota when he was growing up, but that hardly makes Minnesota an authoritarian despotic regime.
catclub
@japa21:
I was hoping that Obama’s good works mending fences with native Americans would get skipped over by Trump, but with Zinke at Interior, those are probably gone, too. Time to let the oil drillers forget to pay their taxes to the Tribes – again.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap:
Why is that a “big assumption”?
Adam L Silverman
@TenguPhule: It isn’t up to Alain. Take it up with Cole.
Mnemosyne
@trollhattan:
It’s the typical grifter shit: he spends taxpayer money like water but holds onto every penny of his own personal money.
Major Major Major Major
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: It’s far from guaranteed, beating incumbents is historically rather difficult.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Feel free to make checks payable to Adam L. Silverman at…//
Corner Stone
Speaking of Foreign Affairs:
Adam L Silverman
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Because in the modern period two term presidencies are the historic default followed by the presidency switching parties.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: As I wrote yesterday, I expect the Germans will pull his credentials within six months and send him home. He’s an Internet troll who has been made an ambassador. This was never going to end well.
TenguPhule
@Adam L Silverman:
i don’t have a font big enough for that.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
Use bigger bats. //
Adam L Silverman
@TenguPhule: 1 out of 5 men over a certain age…//
ruemara
@Major Major Major Major: I don’t mind ads. I mind autoplay, very loud ads that have no controls so I can’t even turn off the sound. I can’t be on the page for long because I’m wearing headphones as I work and the ads are blaring. Same thing at home. Put as many ads as the design allows, but don’t force irritating media on people.
Adam L Silverman
@TenguPhule: Do you know how hard it is to get an import license for a flying fox?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Major Major Major Major:
@Adam L Silverman:
I’m aware of that. Still doesn’t seem very productive. Tilda has a recent history of going full-emo. It’s tiring
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Read this article from LGM. And what Major x4 said.
Alain the site fixer
@TenguPhule: don’t fucking blame me, I do what the boss says.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: U.S. doesn’t get an exemption from history. Right now we’re a failed state. There’s no going back to what we were, things will be different, maybe better maybe worse.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap:
Yeah, and he only won by a razor-thin EC margin the last time. What are the odds that’s going to happen again?
And we can’t worry about what the media will say. We just have to ignore them and keep our eyes on the prize.
Corner Stone
While we’re just sayin’, I will just say that I finally got AdBlock to kill the *connatix.com plug-in or script or whatever and it has made a world of difference in loading this site.
SiubhanDuinne
@Major Major Major Major:
Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush are holding for you on lines 1, 2, and 3.
Amir Khalid
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Well, the Trumpenproletariat might well decide they want four more years of Trump pissing on their heads and callling it rain.
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: Those are the three historical anomalies. However, you have to look at context. Ford lost because he pardoned Nixon. Carter lost because the conservative takeover of significant constituencies like the Southern Baptist Convention and the NRA occurred during his presidency and hastened the reshuffling and consolidation of American politics. Bush 41 was essentially a 3rd Reagan term.
Corner Stone
@SiubhanDuinne: Isn’t Jimmy Carter the only one that really deserves to be on that list?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap:
I don’t disagree with much of this. It’s just you seen relentlessly negative and that won’t change things. Even if we fail, we still have to at least try and believe that we will prevail. If you believe you have already lost, then you surely will.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: yes, given context
ETA: Also, “x is difficult”… doesn’t mean “x has never happened.” Sheesh.
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major: Was that “sheesh” meant for me?
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: No, SD. I should have made that clear.
TenguPhule
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Better then average, considering the states we lost last time still haven’t got their voting machines up to date and secured.
Mike in NC
I wouldn’t pay a dime for any used object from a Trump property, most of all a mattress.
When we moved to NC we picked up a local classified ad paper, which listed a mattress in “like new condition” with the caveat that it had a “slight urine smell”. Ugh.
VOR
@TenguPhule: The Trump Hotel in DC had just opened in September 2016. How would it have used mattresses in early 2017? IMHO Pruitt was really asking for a huge discount, maybe even free, on a mattress from the company owned by his boss. It may have been pitched as a way for the Hotel to impress Trump by a favor to an important underling. Pruitt may have wanted the mattress as a way to suck up to Trump – “Look, I even sleep on your mattress I am so committed”. Trump and Pruitt deserve each other.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@TenguPhule:
Don’t you start
schrodingers_cat
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Negative Nellies don’t know the future. The worst may still happen even if we fight back but its better to fight back than to let the Rs win by default.
rikyrah
@Corner Stone:
good.
Throw his azz out.
Adam L Silverman
Kill it, kill it with fire! From space. With mass drivers! Specifically firey/flaming mass drivers!!!!
M4
@Adam L Silverman: I mean, he’s not wrong. I imagine a party that was actually doing populist (white) socialism would be quite popular—or rather, popular enough.
TenguPhule
@Adam L Silverman:
Bring on the Meteors.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@schrodingers_cat:
Exactly. I don’t blame people for being afraid and despairing. The last few weeks, the news was really starting to get to me and I thought I had a high tolerance for that kind of thing.
It’s easy to fall into that line of thinking but you can’t. You have to believe in yourself, your allies, and your cause. As much as I hate to say it, the base of the GOP does and they consistently turn out in election after election. We have to do the same if we want to reverse our “failed state” status.
Adam L Silverman
@M4: This is the US. Do you actually think we’d get this?
M4
@Adam L Silverman: didn’t the democrats keep their economically-progressive coalition together, pre LBJ, partly by making sure their socialist policies shit on black people? (I know this is an oversimplification)
Adam L Silverman
@TenguPhule: This one will require flaming, nuclear tipped mass drivers!
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@Adam L Silverman: I always said Bernie was the second most dangerous politician in America. One response to that tweet: “Steve Bannon can’t predict his own bowel movements.”
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@M4:
I’d think it’d be a stretch to say the Democrats were ever a socialist party. Maybe social democratic at the most
Adam L Silverman
@M4: Yes to a certain extent.
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
Ms. Loomer (is she quite tall?) needs a hairdresser intervention, STAT.
rikyrah
@Mike in NC:
Maybe NC is different than up here, but there are a ton of mattress stores around here. I never thought so many people could be buying mattresses. I have come to the belief that they are a money laundering business for someone.
rikyrah
@Adam L Silverman:
is this for real?
rikyrah
@M4:
Dolt45 White folks don’t have a problem with socialism. They only have a problem when socialism is open to the ENTIRE society. As long as it’s WHITE socialism, it’s fine.
Remember, they’ve found that they actually LIKE Obamacare.
The CARE they like.
Now, that OBAMA is gone, they’ve really found out how much they like the CARE.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
Sadly Yes. Fiction has to make sense.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
Where else are they going to stuff their life savings in?
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: I don’t know. Moreover, I don’t really want to know either.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@rikyrah:
So a sort of National Socialism?
Another Scott
Indeed.
It’s my (limited) understanding that the need to do something is what led to the lock-step march to the conflagration that ended up being called World War I.
One of my hobby-horses is that Vietnam and so many of the armed conflicts since then should have taught all of us that there are too many arms in the world, and (rightfully) too little willingness for us in the USA to kill tens or hundreds of millions of people, for us to impose our will upon the world any more. We can still break stuff, and turn cities to rubble, but we can’t impose our will. Obama recognized this, and Trump and the GOP don’t (or want their voters to think that they don’t). We don’t have to like everyone, and they won’t all like us, but we do have to find a way to get along.
Thanks for this, Cheryl. I hope you’re able to find a way to get more visibility for your take on issues like these.
Cheers,
Scott.