There’s been a lot of coverage, much of it somewhat angsty or gossipy, playing out over who President-elect Biden is going to select as his Secretary of Defense. Most of the coverage appears to be in Politico, with Axios, whose founders were also Politico’s founders, getting one scoop in. The reporting largely focuses on former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michelle Flournoy. Flournoy founded the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), served as President Obama’s first Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, and then, when she left government, founded a national security consulting firm with Secretary of State designee Antony Blinken. The news stories include reporting that the Congressional Black Caucus is pushing for the first African American to be appointed Secretary of Defense to GEN (ret) Loyd Austin* and former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson being the African Americans under consideration for the position to suggestions that she might not get the nomination because President-elect Biden doesn’t know her well to questions about Flournoy’s clients and work in the private consultancy she founded and ran with Blinken to Flournoy’s charitable work with CARE.
The reporting is somewhat interesting in an inside baseball sort of way if you like that sort of thing. It is also a clear indication that Politico and Axios are looking for anything even remotely controversial within the Biden-Harris transition, which itself would seem to indicate that no one at those publications, as well as others, have learned anything over the last five years.
The reality for whomever will be the next Secretary of Defense, just as the reality for whomever will be appointed to the requiring Senate confirmation principal and deputy positions across the executive branch is going to be triage. What the Department of Defense is going to need, just as every other department, agency, bureau, and office within the executive branch, is someone who both knows how to run a large organization and recognizes that the job is going to be overseeing a rapid assessment of the damage done by Trump’s appointees, or, in some cases, lack of appointees, and that is still being done through the transition. This includes identifying which of Trump’s political appointees have been burrowed into senior civil service positions where they are intended to prevent President-elect Biden and his appointees from making repairs, changing policy, and revising strategy. It will then be necessary to strip these burrowed in political appointees of all responsibility, basically pay them to do nothing, until the long, slow process of removing them from the civil service is worked through so they can be fired. President-elect Biden’s senior appointees and their teams will then have to shore up what can be shored up and repair what can be repaired so that the different executive branch elements can begin to function properly again. They will then need to develop plans to build something better to replace those parts of the executive branch that have been broken beyond repair. And, in the case of the Secretary of Defense, all of this will have to be done will maintaining readiness, conducting all the ongoing missions, being ready and able to conduct missions to deal with events that haven’t even happened yet and that not even the people on the Futures teams can anticipate.
Frankly, whomever is Biden’s first Secretary of Defense is likely to be gone in two years. Not because they aren’t a quality appointment, nor because they aren’t committed to the President-elect’s vision, but because this is going to be an exhausting, thankless job. As I’ve written about here, as well as other places, despite the massive amounts of money we spend on the Department of Defense and the Services, we have a readiness problem. Some of that is personnel related. Too much tail and not enough tooth combined with recruitment issues. Some of it is material related. The Government Accountability Office just released a report that found that the vast majority of military aircraft have fallen short on readiness over the past decade. This lines up with what Lt Gen (ret) Deptula stated in January 2017:
The U.S. Air Force (USAF) has been at war not just since 9/11, but since 1991. After 25 years of continuous combat operations, coupled with budget instability and lower-than-planned top lines, have made the USAF the oldest, smallest, and least ready it has ever been in its history. The average USAF aircraft age is 27 years—the youngest B-52 is over 50 years old. Going into Operation Desert Storm, the USAF had over 530,000 active duty personnel, today that number is 320,000—40 percent less, and the USAF has almost 60 percent fewer combat fighter squadrons today (55) than it did during the first Gulf War in 1991 (134). Today, over 50 percent of USAF forces are not sufficiently ready for a high-end fight against near-peer capabilities posed by China or Russia.
Despite spending over $700 billion a year on the Department of Defense and the Services, we are, to use the colloquialism, out of Schlitz. While the Budget Control Act, d/b/a The Sequester, was waived every year for the DOD and the Services, the reality is that it was used to justify all sorts of bizarre decisions not to spend money. I cannot tell you how many DOD and Service civil service positions were allowed to go unfilled when people retired, in fact when people were incentivized to take early retirement, in order to meet budgetary targets resulting from the sequester, even though the sequester was waived every year. I cannot tell you how much of this work was pushed to the contract side and then those contracts were never finalized – start work orders never issued – because of the time it takes to run through the contracting process either providing contracting officers with excuses to claw back money because it hadn’t been spent promptly or because the start work orders got pushed back until the contract awards conflicted with the 80/20 rule for when money has to be spent by or clawed back. And more contract awards than ever are now being contested, and in some cases litigated, by the companies that lose the bid, which further compounds the problem.
And if you think the Department of Defense has it bad, let me tell you about the Department of State and USAID. Secretary of State designee Blinken is inheriting a pair of agencies that have been gutted. Whomever is named to be the next Attorney General has a morale and professionalization issue that is going to be hard to address at the Department of Justice and the FBI. The DNI nominee and, eventually, the Director of Central Intelligence nominee have similar problems as whomever will be the next Attorney General. Secretary of the Treasury designee Yellen is going to have a huge task in cleaning up the mess made by Mnuchin, as will whomever is nominated to take over at Commerce, Interior, HHS, Agriculture, etc.
At the end of the day what is going to matter is who President-elect Biden is comfortable with and how they get along with their key counterparts. For instance, how the Secretary of Defense gets along with the Secretary of State** and the National Security Advisor. Or how the Secretary of the Treasury gets on with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. The first two years of the next four years is going to be a massive undertaking of assessing what condition the executive branch is in, what can be quickly fixed, what can be patched while longer term repairs are planned and undertaken, and what can’t be repaired and has to be replaced with something new.
Build back better isn’t a campaign slogan, a motto, or a mission statement. It is a recognition of a very grim reality. A grim reality that will wear down even the best of people.
Open thread!
* Full disclosure: I know GEN (ret) Austin, but not well. I met him in Iraq in 2008 when he was the Commanding General of 10th Mountain Division. The brigade combat team my team was assigned to had been split off from the rest of 1st Armored Division in Multi-National Division North and sent south and east of Baghdad to Multi-National Division Central. 10th Mountain Division fortunately took over Multi-National Division Central two months into our deployment. I met GEN Austin when he came to our FOB as part of his initial battlefield circulation. I was introduced to him, he spoke to me for about 90 seconds, and my part of his briefing lasted about two minutes tops. I also provided support to him when he was the Commanding General of CENTCOM via his Command Sergeant Major, who was my point of contact in the CENTCOM command group.
** Given that Michelle Flournoy and Antony Blinken are friends and have been working together – inside and outside of government – and are co-owners of a national security consultancy in DC, I expect that this will have some bearing on the final decisions as to who will be chosen to become the next Secretary of Defense. I don’t know Flournoy, but in many ways she is an almost perfect example of the right make, model, and type you’d want to be the Secretary of Defense right now. I don’t know if that and her relationship with Blinken will be enough and I’m sure whomever President-elect Biden selects will be an exemplary candidate.
Open Thread: Biden and Harris Live
Edmund Dantes
We really need to tear down the defense budget and rebuild it. It’s so god damn wasteful
I am also waiting for my unicorn to show up.
Jim Appleton
This is a vital concern and unfortunately down the list of vital concerns the incoming administration has to deal with.
I appreciate this perspective.
We live in interesting times.
Cheryl Rofer
I’ve been figuring that ALL of Biden’s initial Cabinet picks will be leaving after two years. That’s about enough to get things up and running, and time to get some fresh faces in. It will be, in a way, a thankless job to get things running again and then be so exhausted that you can’t actually run them, but that is how things go, and the people being picked for Cabinet positions understand that. Also, there will be a certain amount of pissing people off, more than if they walked into a functioning government, so the first picks will be (mildly) hatchet people, who always leave after they’ve done their jobs.
The great thing about the people Biden is picking is that they are honest, capable people. Biden’s being comfortable with them is more important than usual because of the necessity of rebuilding.
Cheryl Rofer
@Edmund Dantes: Totally agree, along with some of the structures, which are repetitive and wasteful. It’s possible some of that will happen in the rebuilding, but probably not enough.
Mary G
Thanks for the pep tslk, Adam! //
I think one of the reasons Republicans put up with Twitler, besides the No. 1, racism, is that he really did want to drown the government in a bathtub and made astonishing progress towards that goal. The damage to the planet in terms of pollution allowed is also going to be massive.
I have come around to the belief that PE Biden was the best candidate for the job. He knows how the sausage gets made.
Of course the lawsuits will be flying and the courts are packed, so that’s another thing in the way.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The Mattis example has convinced me of the wisdom of the notion that career military should not serve as SoD.
Flournoy and Johnson both strike me, as someone who relies on the opinions of elite expert types, as solid choices.
Roger Moore
@Edmund Dantes:
More than anything, we need to tear down our procurement process and rebuild it. It’s optimized for building political support rather than building good equipment, and that desperately needs to change.
NotMax
Hey, soldiers need their take-out deliveries from Adam’s Ribs.
:)
/M*A*S*H reference
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: I like GEN Austin, but neither he, nor any other retired general should be the SecDef.
Gin & Tonic
Maybe we can convince DougJ to run a fundraiser so we can buy Blinken an “H.” Poor fellow got shortchanged.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: Yes. My three points are entirely independent of the individuals who may be involved. Particularly after Trump’s attempts at breaching the civil-military divide, we need a civilian in charge of the military. And a nominal civilian who is a retired general does not fit in that category.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
sort of on-topic: I always admired Loretta Lynch and I feel like she got shafted by VSP Caucus, but I haven’ seen anyone mention her being brought back to DoJ. She might well not want to, given what she was put through.
NotMax
Edmund Dantes
fingers crossed
lowtechcyclist
Getting hired in the civil service generally comes with a probationary period, during which the hiree can be dismissed immediately without cause. (After that, firing an employee can be quite arduous.) In the agency I work for, the probationary period is one year; I don’t know if it varies across the government. But the incoming Administration should be ready to take advantage of this.
O. Felix Culpa
Cool-sounding expression, but not one I’m familiar with. Can you explain what it means?
p.a.
I’d rather they be living in a cardboard box roasting sparrows, but if tRumpplants have civil service protections, I can live with them getting pay and benefits while being charged with procuring office supplies. First audit they’ll prolly be bootable.
Pete Downunder
@O. Felix Culpa: Tooth – actual combat troops; Tail – everyone else
O. Felix Culpa
@Pete Downunder: Thanks!
Phylllis
FEMA, which is Defense-adjacent (and maybe should be with Defense?) also needs to be rebuilt. Maybe James Lee Witt would come out of retirement
ETA: Take it back to cabinet-level.
cmorenc
Not to step off-topic from the thread without good cause:
The Dangerman
“…pay them to do nothing…”
How do I get that deal?!!
/Trump
/…ok, me, too.
Roger Moore
@O. Felix Culpa:
The “tooth” are the parts of the military that do the actual fighting, and the “tail” are the parts that support them.
JPL
OT Gabriel Sterling, voting manager for SOS of GA staunch Republican is calling out Senators and the President for doing nothing to stop the death threats. “Someone is going to get hurt, someone is going to get shot, and it’s not right” He’s calling out trump.. wow
“You want to run for election in four years do it, but stop stepping in and tell your supporters to don’t be violent. “
O. Felix Culpa
@Roger Moore: Thank you. I was guessing at the meaning, but wanted to make sure.
NotMax
Ugh and double ugh. Or vice-versa.
Pro tip: Wait until the pearls are harvested before attempting to clutch them.
;)
BruceFromOhio
Repeat ad nauseum.
Thanks for the breakdown on the issues, it is a Gaia-damned mess, much as was expected.
craigie
Speaking as a person who thinks we spend far too much on “defense”, this is disconcerting information.
Frankensteinbeck
@cmorenc:
Isn’t that weird? I wonder why? Maybe it’s a rat abandoning a sinking ship. He thinks he’s done all the evil he can, and hopes he can get get wingnut welfare if he’s fired at the very last second for being principled. I dunno, that’s just the only idea I’ve got.
CaseyL
@Frankensteinbeck: I saw one Tweet that interpreted Barr’s remarks as “the DOJ can’t find a reason to get involved on the Federal level, so keep those civil lawsuits coming!”
That seems as likely as Barr being honest. Likelier, even.
Citizen Alan
@JPL: So is he upset about death threats against politicians in general? Or just that the nutcase wing of the GOP is going after Republicans as well as Dems? Is there a single Republican in Georgia who would have wept had Stacey Abrams become Governor and then been killed by some racist Trump-sucking animal?
Geminid
@cmorenc: I’m not surprised. The Federalist Society/Koch Brothers crowd to which Barr belongs have gotten their money’s worth out of trump, and are cutting him loose.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Open thread? from ABC news
the last sentence, if true, is the only interesting one. “Pardon Ivanka, those other two losers? We’ll see”
trollhattan
@cmorenc:
Saw that. Perhaps as close to a white flag from Trump we’re going to see, given Barr’s frequent role as Trump’s stand-in.
Also perhaps a death-row conversion by Barr in an attempt [as if] to resurrect his reputation. He should talk to Dersh about how well that works.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He still has 50 days. That’s a sadly long time.
Poe Larity
Meh, the B52’s were too old 4 decades back and B-1 Bob gave us new stuff that was already in the junkyard 2 decades ago. Plenty of wing life left. Put new engines on them and they can bomb Syria all day and send a few tanker squadrons to the junkyard too.
What part of Unilateral Disarmament did DoD/Congress not understand the F-35 to be?
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
“Who’s ‘Eric’? I’m not familiar with anybody named that.”
ETA Instructive to see Trump allies like Hannity openly admitting those offspring need pardoning. “If you didn’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.”
Roger Moore
@O. Felix Culpa:
Sure. As Adam briefly mentions, there’s a long-term worry within the military that we’ve shifted to too much tail and not enough tooth. I personally think this worry can be a bit overblown. Part of our problem is that modern warfare has moved in the direction of increased mechanization. The US has swung farther in that direction than many countries because we see mechanization as a way of keeping troops out of harms way. That’s just a nicer way of saying we’re growing the tail in the hopes we can make the remaining teeth more effective. The other side of this is that you need more support troops when you’re fighting on the far side of the world than when you’re doing it in your back yard. This tends to make the US look bad when compared to Russia and China, both of which have built their military to fight closer to home.
HumboldtBlue
Booger
@Phylllis: Hell, get Craig Fugate back in there. He’s fresher and was a damn good leader.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@HumboldtBlue: Oh that is sly
Another Scott
@Roger Moore:
I’m not sure that’s the biggest problem.
Procurement is a huge, complex, problem – and different parts of the DoD use different processes (because running a 30 year aircraft program is different from stocking the commissaries in Kansas is different from keeping a FOB stocked). The DoD is trying to rationalize processes and digitize things, but as you might imagine, it’s hard to fit square pegs in round holes, and people who are trained in the new systems soon look for brighter pastures that pay more than GS-level in the federal government. So everything slows down even more while new people have to be trained, etc.
Another thing is, every time there’s some scandal about waste, or someone decides that a certain Chinese company is stealing all our stuff and we have to Do Something About It™, then yet more rules and regulations and paperwork fall to the people who try to buy stuff and let contracts for stuff that the DoD needs. [Insert horror stories about trying to buy stuff with a credit card here.] And things take longer still.
And when people don’t know their final budget numbers for the year until 3 months before the fiscal year ends, then it makes planning really, really difficult.
The DoD is (or until recently, was) the largest buyer of stuff in the world. It’s not nimble.
Probably what’s needed most is trust in professional people. Yes, oversight is needed, and there are people who break the rules, but if we can trust people with the nation’s secrets, can’t we trust them to buy stuff sensibly the vast majority of the time??
Another thing that’s needed, to get back to Adam’s topic, is a long and hard think about what the DoD is tasked to do in the next 10-50 years and either giving it the resources it needs to do those jobs, or cut back on our commitments. The current path is not sustainable.
Cheers,
Scott.
Patricia Kayden
Well he is a snake.
Mike in NC
The newspaper says that Jared Kushner is taking another trip to Saudi Arabia. Presumably to ask for another handout for his properties?
Omnes Omnibus
@cmorenc: Barr isn’t an idiot. He has clearly indicated that he was willing to go only so far in support of fascism. I think he drew the line at criming and things that would certainly fuck up his law license. Also, why would he chose to go down with the SS Trump?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mike in NC: while he’s still got something to sell….
Geoduck
Barr’s evidently having an unscheduled meeting at the White House. The Shiatgibbon might even be unhinged enough to fire him..
NotMax
@HumboldtBlue
FYI (emphasis added).
Kropacetic
I read an article the other day in the FTFNYT about Biden’s first ethics challenge in his administration. It was basically about the industry connections of some of his employees. It was covered in very generalized terms, no ethics breaches were actually alleged.
Yes, I agree being to close to an industry can create ethics concerns. But the FTFNYT were framing it like this were some sort of new thing and unique to Biden. It was literally just baiting people who might not like those sort of connections, but have somehow managed to never look at any other president’s cabinet, like ever.
What? Are we not allowed to have appointees who have ever held a job?
Patricia Kayden
NotMax
@Mike in NC
Another confab about Iran.
Emphasis on con.
(snark on full)
Also investigating timeshare opportunities in Neom.
(snark back to standby)
Patricia Kayden
@HumboldtBlue: I wish this were true. I also wish VP Harris would run with this and see what happens.
Just Chuck
What is the actual mission of a fighter squadron? Til now, the word “drone” appears nowhere in this thread — I would hope it appears somewhere in the actual reports. How _do_ we in fact measure readiness of drone units?
Patricia Kayden
@Geoduck: Barr did all that he could to protect Trump from the consequences of his misconduct. Alas, Barr is only human. Cut him some slack. /s
Miss Bianca
@HumboldtBlue: Wow, is that really true? (guess I should read the article, huh…)
sab
@Omnes Omnibus: Seriously hope he guessed wrong on where the line was for his law license. Line obviously more restricted in the hinterland than in DC.
J R in WV
@HumboldtBlue:
Pretty sure this is imaginary happy-talk-babble. While VP Harris will be President of the Senate constitutionally, she wields almost no power according to the Senate Rules, which are imposed by the Senate itself.
Not that I wouldn’t love to see VP Harris over-rule Moscow Mitch, and rub it in hard, I’m not expecting it unless we win those GA Senate elections…
Miss Bianca
@Kropacetic: Some of my friends on FB were posting Erin Brockovich’s screed in The Grauniad about…Michael McCabe, was it?…on Biden’s EPA transition team. Never mind that the guy had been part of EPA regional leadership for *years*, and therefore would know backwards and forwards what might be broke and how to fix it, he had *actually defended DuPont against the EPA* at one point, so he’s suddenly a “corporate consultant”, oh noes, and he and Biden are OBVIOUSLY prepared to sell us all out on the environment!
Le sigh.
JPL
@Citizen Alan: Not then, but now he would. There is one part of the tirade where he went after the Senators, and Warnock and Ossoff should use that part. It was a wake up call.
schrodingers_cat
I have faith in the President-elect he will make the right choice.
Kropacetic
I mean, I’ll admit to a certain level of skepticism of the incoming administration, but I’ll wait for them to at least start doing things before I criticize what they’re doing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Miss Bianca: the Sunrise Whatever They Are tried declare war on Brian Deese, and no less a personage than Bill McKibben stepped up to explain that sometimes you have to look a little deeper than your Outrage Bingo Card.
catclub
@Miss Bianca:
Don’t worry, Biden will only sell us out for corporations that are incorporated in Delaware. Its a small place, so no worries.
kidding, for the irony impaired.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I read the title and thought you had changed your nym.
neldob
I want to say your posts are great, one of the big reasons I read this blog and you were mentioned in Thanksgiving thankfullness. Maybe some day the news will be boring enough that news services will actually cover issues and their history instead of scandal monger and stenograph.
Just Chuck
@Miss Bianca: Brockovich reminds me a lot of Woodward, both coasting on name recognition from a decades-old story that they’ve since failed to live up to. At least Brockovich hasn’t quite become quite as lazy as her counterpart, but nonetheless, real journalism doesn’t depend on whether people recognize you as Robert fucking Redford or Julia Roberts.
catclub
increasing their unit’s budget authority?
Forgetting what close air support means whenever the Army mentions it?
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat: I do too. He’s been doing a solid job and I see no reason to be pre-disappointed. h/t OO
Kropacetic
Well, if they need a quick refresher…
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The misguided Sunrise children are annoying. Its a thinly disguised Berner-PAC
O. Felix Culpa
@NotMax: The pedant in me compels a response to the pedant in you, which is that oe is an acceptable substitute for o-umlaut in German if the symbol ö is not readily available.
Just Chuck
@Kropacetic: Ooh, reminds me of Total Annihilation. With enough gunships, everything goes down.
MisterForkbeard
@cmorenc: Barr is being very careful not to say there wasn’t fraud (there wasn’t), but he’s hanging his hat on two things:
Basically: He’s trying to imply that lots of fraud did happen, but they haven’t turned up anything to prove it. And that even though the Democrats may have cheated, maybe they didn’t need to.
It’s minimally helpful. The only fraud we’ve found was scattered Republicans double voting or whatever. Nothing even medium scale, and nothing Democratic.
Jay C
@Mike in NC:
We should hope (and only be so lucky) if that’s all he’s going there for. Unfortunately, I doubt it. One of the less-fortunate legacies of the Trump Administration that is going to be very hard to “undo” is the more-or-less formal shackling of US policy in the Middle East to a Saudi-based/Israeli-supported anti-Iranian bloc: where most (if not all) regional policy decisions are going to have to be pre-approved by the Saudis/Israelis: who also have a considerable domestic political “base” over here to keep any “unfriendly” Administration in line.
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
I was thinking specifically of the procurement process for big ticket weapons systems. There’s something deeply broken with that process. No, on second thought, it’s not something deeply broken; it’s everything deeply broken. The whole process seems to be built around corporate welfare and pork barrel politics rather than getting good equipment at the best possible price. Unfortunately, the underlying problem is with Congress, and there’s simply no way to remove Congress from the procurement process while remaining a democracy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
ORTHOGRAPHY IS A FABLE AGREED UPON BY ELITES!
and I am not a krank
Kropacetic
@Just Chuck: Those gunships are scary. I’m partial to siege from an elevated position while holding most of my army in reserve to respond to however they try to stop me.
Dan B
IANAPersonnel Manager, but how many people who left the agencies could be lured back? I am aware that individuals does not make a team and that many who did not accept early retirement might think twice about signing up for what might be a four year gig if GOP stonewalling makes a mess that the public blames on the DEMS. See Mnuchin, Steve, stealer of assistance for the Covid unemployed and evicted.
Goku (Amerikan Baka)
@NotMax:
@Patricia Kayden:
@J R in WV:
From Humbolt’s linked article:
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: That is funny but I too did a double take when I saw the title.
BTW did you check out my first long Twitter thread translating a glorious rant against Modi and the BJP. I did it at the behest of our own Roger Moore
LuciaMia
@Omnes Omnibus: And probably also got a premonition that he was NOT gonna get one of those swiss-army-knife type pardons from Trump
Just Chuck
@Jay C: Israel has always had first veto in our foreign policy in the middle east, followed closely by SA. When have we ever gone directly against their interests in anything that actually matters? In fact it seems even easier these days to tell Bonesaw to go pound the thing he has aplenty, namely sand, seeing how his genius ploy of “start an energy price war before a global pandemic” didn’t exactly work out in his favor. Hell, didn’t the price of oil futures go _negative_ then? It’s not like he has any actual treaties he can wave in our faces, just handshake agreements with mobster families.
Adam L Silverman
@craigie: You’re welcome!
NotMax
@Goku (Amerikan Baka)
What I linked to above regarding the Veep’s limited abilities within the chamber is the Senate’s own site. Guess that’s not definitive enough for you?
Adam L Silverman
@HumboldtBlue: @Dorothy A. Winsor: Not going to happen.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
That was rightous.
Adam L Silverman
@neldob: Thank you for the very kind words.
You are most welcome.
J R in WV
@Goku (Amerikan Baka):
This is an unsigned article in an online magazine dedicated to music in New Hampshire. I went there too, and did more than copy the article.
Not related to any constitutional law scholar.
Better luck next time.
Not that I wouldn’t like VP Harris to be able to over rule Mitch, mind you, I just don’t believe everything I read on the innertubes. It would blow McConnell’s mind if VP Harris became his boss~!!~
Sweet, but not real. Sorry…
ETA: Also, what NotMax linked to up above…
Dan B
@schrodingers_cat: A+ rant!
More please! It’s valuable to look under the tent flap to see what BJP authoritarians do to retain power.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Omnes Omnibus: @LuciaMia: as someone who imagined Barr to be some super-lawyer, I’m open to those who say I’ve overestimated him, but as Omnes says, I don’t think he’s an idiot, and I suspect he’s kept his fingerprints off anything indictable, as have most of his in-house cronies. I feel the same way about Kellyanne and Mnuchin and a few others.
I’ve been unpleasantly surprised by the evidence that the trump spawn seem to have learned from their father, who probably learned it from his, that you don’t write down anything you don’t have to– specifically, I’m thinking of the trump tower meeting with the Russians
As I recall, in the case where Fredo and Grifterella almost got indicted for fraud– a weak/ish case as I understand that involved them lying about the sales rates in some mis-named condos in Manhattan— there were emails saying “we both know this is bullshit, right?”.
WaterGirl
If you haven’t checked the Balloon Juice Calendar A to make sure all your guys are in there, that all the info is correct, that there’s a heart if there should be a heart, etc…
Please do so now because we hope to have the calendar order-able sometime tonight, and if you don’t catch the error before you order, you are out of luck. :-(
Check the links in the sidebar to the spreadsheets so you know whether your guys are in Calendar A or Calendar B. If all goes well, Calendar B is coming this evening.
https://balloon-juice.com/2020/12/01/2021-balloon-juice-pet-calendar-calendar-a/?updated=1606858443#comment-7983367
Just Chuck
@HumboldtBlue: What actually is in the constitution is “The Senate sets its own rules”, and what’s not is the actual powers of the President of the Senate. Which as I’m led to understand means the floor addresses all remarks to said President, and that’s it.
If we had 100 Democratic senators then maybe we’d stand a slim chance of changing the rules. Otherwise I have zero faith that rotting deliberative body will ever change.
Mart
@BruceFromOhio: A bit disappointed but not surprised all the old tropes about Dems poor governance (often with no substance) are being trotted back out by the press.
Leto
@Roger Moore: I’ll ask this, which is a larger question I always ask when people talk about this: how much do you think a modern fighter jet should cost? (I’m asking about jets because I’m AF). Let’s forget about fleet size atm, but how much do you think a jet should cost? Let’s go with just a 4th gen upgrade, not 5th gen. Understanding what a current 4th gen fighter jet is asked to do, how much should that cost
Edit: I ask this because I feel people really don’t understand how much these items cost. They don’t understand the mission most of these are asked to do, they don’t understand the technology installed in these planes, nor do they understand that this isn’t a car purchase.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: It was nice to see someone rip that fraud a new one, that too in colorful Hindi! The media critter must have asked him a question because he had that big tilak on his forehead thinking that he must be a BJP supporter.
Bill Arnold
@trollhattan:
The Power of the Presidential Pardon is absolute, right? Why can’t the POTUS do a blanket pardon of the entire US population? (Or all registered Republicans, or whatever. :-)
KithKanan
@MisterForkbeard: There was some fraud, but the fraud I’ve seen documented so far was individual level and perpetrated by Republicans.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat: I have a young friend who worked for the Sunrise Movement and then became an organizer for the Democratic Party during the campaign. She is urgently motivated by the climate crisis, which is a rational response especially for people of her generation. She’s also smart and young, with the good and bad that comes with passionate inexperience. (I vaguely remember those days and may have made an ass of myself more than once in my youthful “wisdom.”) She was dismayed about Cedric Richmond’s appointment to the Biden administration and I think I was able to talk her down off the ledge with my aged perspective, i.e. that his appointment does not necessarily portend the dismantling of Biden’s climate program.
I don’t know much about the leaders of the Sunrise Movement and their financial backers, but the young people I’ve become acquainted with in that group are bright, deeply committed, passionate, articulate, and unsurprisingly share the arrogance of youth, which will over time benefit from some…seasoning. But I respect their commitment and fight for an important cause. I hope the best for them.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: @Roger Moore: There are four overlapping problems. The first applies to everything: Congress works on 12 to 24 month budget cycles and the DOD is forced to do so as a result, but most of the DOD needs to be on longer budgetary cycles. The second is that a lot of stuff the DOD and the Services think, in good faith, they will need in five or ten years turn out to not be what they need when they actually get to that five or ten year mark. The third is that even when they do need it, by the time it is built or acquired in that five to ten year acquisition cycle, it is obsolete. So they need it, but what they contracted for, in good faith and was built and supplied and/or acquired in good faith, doesn’t actually meet the actual needs. The fourth is that members of Congress constantly tell the DOD and the Services they need things they don’t need and/or don’t want because they’re lobbied by companies that make those things or provide those services that are located within their states or districts.
schrodingers_cat
@O. Felix Culpa: They gave Biden and the Orange One an F on climate policy during the campaign and they now want to dictate terms on who he should appoint. Their motto seems to be criticize Ds first.
cain
Didn’t Trump out an EO to get rid of careerists and replace with political operatives? It seems to me that we should leave that in the books so that Biden fire the political operatives. Especially if we can get the careerists to get these interlopers out we can actually work on rebuilding departments.
Adam L Silverman
@Dan B: We were already facing a civil service problem right around now. A plurality, if not a majority, have come up for retirement over the last five years or so or will be coming up soon. The Trump folks have so screwed up the civil service hiring process, combined with the damage from the sequester, that I’m honestly not sure how to fix things. I can diagnose the problem as someone who has some significant experience with Federal hiring flexibilities, but I’m not sure how to solve it.
Just Chuck
@Leto: A more realistic question would be how much should it cost over its entire service lifetime. Even better would be how much it costs compared to a drone. Very first thing one learns in economics class (which used to be part of basic high school civics) is that price is the number on the tag, but cost is what the price is compared to the next best thing. And when it comes to dropping ordnance from the sky, we have a whole lot of next-best-things that are a whole lot cheaper.
If the squadron/wing has a specialized mission that can’t be taken on by drones, fine, then call that out explicitly and justify the cost. In fact, every last unit in the military should be required to justify its continued existence.
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You need to think of Barr less as a litigator and more of as a very capable bureaucratic knife fighter and strategic advisor and counselor.
Leto
@Adam L Silverman: Lots of good points here. One of the things I like about the F22/35 is the fact that it’s upgradeable. More so than other legacy aircraft. Personally I think the AF should be more willing to upgrade their aircraft (F-15X and F-16V come to mind). I asked a pilot one time about that and the answer basically boiled down to: we want every single advantage we can get. I fully understand that. We don’t ask ground soldiers to use muskets because modern guns cost too much. Same should apply to our air crews (AF/Navy/Marines).
Cacti
Thankful as I am for Trump to be out of power, the only hope we had of rebuilding better was a massive repudiation of the Republican Party across the board on election day.
It didn’t happen.
Biden’s presidency may slow the bleeding, but the proverbial fin de siecle of the American superpower will continue.
NotMax
@Bill Arnold
As there’s no stipulation limiting pardons to citizens, he could posthumously pardon (for conducting or supporting war against the U.S) all those convicted at Nuremberg.
//
gene108
I will add to what Adam wrrote that the inability of a Republican House to pass an annual budget forcing stop gap continuing resolutions to keep the government open made it impossible for departments to do any planning, purchases, etc.
For example, the government needs to engage electricians to install wiring for better overhead projectors in base classrooms. The project should take five months. The continuing resolution keeps the government open for two months.
The funds for this five month project have not been appropriated for five months, therefore it is either scrapped, the contractor gets selected but the order gets canceled due to lack of funds, but the project is still on the books, etc.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat: As I said, the young person I worked with became a Democratic Party organizer and a very good one, at that. They may be less monolithic than they appear…or perhaps some individuals in the group are less doctrinaire than their leadership.
I also work with the local Sunrise Movement youth, trying to build a cooperative alliance between them and the party. It’s not easy, because they are highly suspicious of us, but we’re making some inroads as they see we have many shared values. I cut them some slack since they’re young and they’ve been fed a lot of nonsense about the Dems over the years.
ETA: I will add that their adult leader is more hostile and difficult to work with than the youth themselves. I wonder if that rigidity is representative of the top leadership and leads to the negative outcomes that you mention.
Yutsano
@NotMax: Both are correct, actually. In a situation where the umlaut is not available, ae, oe, or ue to denote the vowel can be used instead of ä, ö, or ü.
/German pedant
Adam L Silverman
@Leto: You are SPOT ON!!!! I used to have to get my students at USAWC to focus by explaining that they can’t do defense, let alone Federal budgeting, because none of them were financing an aircraft carrier, let alone a fleet of them. Or a F22, let alone an entire wing of them.
schrodingers_cat
@O. Felix Culpa: That is good to know. Their national leadership is not doing them any favors.
Just Chuck
@Bill Arnold: POTUS has the absolute power to grant pardons. It does not necessarily mean the pardons themselves are absolute. It’s one of those things where the Framers just assumed we future generations weren’t complete fuckwits and would go along with the definitions that long antedated the Constitution itself like “writ of habeas corpus” and “common law”. Add that to their list of failures I guess.
Leto
@Just Chuck: But one also learns that there’s limitations to what technology can replace. Drones are great at mapping/imagery/reconnaissance. And sure, we have Hellfire drones that do drop some limited ordnance. But you know what’s in the area? A person in a cockpit overseeing all that. Because at the end of the day, the drop operator is essentially viewing the target area through a coffee straw. Their field of vision is highly restrictive. Which is just one of the problems with introducing drones into the field of battle.
Lifecycle costs are typically included with the price. At least initially with the original contract. But what’s not included with that is what Congress is going to do with our manning. It’s one thing to have a squadron at 100% manning, and another with it at 70% (which is a lot closer to what front line squadrons are operating at). Life cycle cost is the same at 100 or 70. But those two squadrons are operating in entirely different worlds. And then when the military is forced to choose between modernizing equipment, or keeping personnel… well equipment always wins. Congress/DoD will always sacrifice people (there’s your true lifecycle cost) v equipment. And this goes back further than just Eisenhower and the Mil/Ind Complex.
NotMax
@Yutsano
The primary point being that ö is available.
Martin
I like Jeh Johnson. I don’t know if he’d be good at the job, but I like him.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Dwayne Johnson would make a great Secretary of Defense
Just Chuck
@Leto: Yes, drones do have limitations, and if a manned fighter wing has advantages over a drone, it should justify its existence based on that. And as the technology improves, it should have to revise its justifications. I’m well aware that a war can’t be won from the air, but as long as we’re comparing _air_ power, we should be talking about ordnance delivered, capabilities denied, actual mission results. Not “The 151st Fighting Jackalopes have been around since Orville Wright, so we need $151B to continue operating”
To say nothing of operating as if we’re always at war. Maybe it should be fucking OKAY to be “not ready” to take on a superpower in two strategic theaters at once, which afaik is what our current posture entails. That’s why states of war exist in the first place. I’m no West Point graduate, but it seems to me being able to stand down out of war seems pretty necessary to being prepared for the contingency of an actual war.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@O. Felix Culpa: to my mind anyone telling these young people that Democrats are the real enemy is doing those young people and their cause a disservice. Lying to them.
Which is not, of course, to say Democrats are perfect. But somebody’s going to have to explain to me the point, other than an adolescent taste for drama and provocation, of staging a sit-in in Nancy Pelosi’s office, when Mitch McConnell’s is down the hall, and Donald trump is president. And protesting the DNC on the day trump announces he wants to open the ANWR to extraction industries is symbolism I wouldn’t dare to script.
surfk9
@Adam L Silverman: You are right on about the issues with staffing. My wife is a supervising attorney at a federal agency. Ever since Trump came in they have been unable to fill behind people who left. There are holes in the agency everywhere.
bluehill
@JPL: Face-eating leopard supporter getting what he voted for.
Kent
I don’t see this ultimately working. The Senate can change it’s rules by majority vote. And McConnell is crafty enough to figure out new Senate rules that bring us back to where we are right now.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat: @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Fair enough criticisms about their leadership, which I admittedly know little about. The kids I do know from that group are truly impressive and I hope that over time they’ll add wisdom to their smarts and passion, which we’ve all had to do. Or at least, I had to. I made some incredibly stupid political statements back in the day. I’m so much wiser now…I think.
Adam L Silverman
@cain: He did and no we shouldn’t.
Leto
@Just Chuck: I agree, but if you actually read air war theory (outside of just the AF material) you’ll also find that all of this is still in it’s early infancy. Here’s something else to add to your lifecycle cost with a drone: you still need to factor in the cost of training an actual pilot. All of our drones aren’t fully autonomous, nor should they be. There should always be a human at the end of that chain. The uncertainties of the battlefield are too numerous that they can’t be fully programmed out. As such, you’re still going to need a pilot. They’re going to have to be trained to fly a physical plane (as well as all the other air training they receive). You’re still going to have to factor in that cost. Now, does Congress factor in that long term cost? Simple answer is no, they don’t. Which is how you get to some of our current military’s problems.
Adam L Silverman
@gene108: I lost at least three, if not six, contract assignments because of rolling CRs. The contracting officers would not allow anyone to on board until either a full fiscal year appropriation passed or a year on year CR. Once it finally did the contracting officer would come back and tell my boss that since the position had been unfilled for over six months it was clear they didn’t need to fill it and state he or she was clawing the money back.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: The primary point is that if you don’t like it, you don’t have to read it.
JPL
@bluehill: I disagree. He can take it, but a worker for Dominion who is twenty something found a noose and death threats can’t . LINK
Matt McIrvin
@Adam L Silverman: IIRC, Newt Gingrich has been talking for many years about undoing civil service reforms going back to Chester Alan Arthur so that everyone could be a political hack, and I remember him being very excited about getting on that during the Trump transition in 2016. Fortunately I don’t think it ever went that far. But there’s so much damage.
Adam L Silverman
@surfk9: Don’t even get me started on the problem of people like me. I was recruited as a full time equivalent supervisory contractor pay graded as a GS 15. Then I was on a civilian mobilization as an intergovernmental personnel appointment (under Title IV of 1970) civil servant as an actual GS 15 at the maximum step within the grade in both the Department of the Army and then at the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Then I was a full time equivalent supervisory contractor pay graded as a GS 15. All by the time I was 45. No one brings anyone of my seniority on without knowing them. And while I usually get through the application scoring as highly qualified when I apply for a civil service line, either Title V or Title X, I quickly get booted from the application pool by the actual hiring committee because I’m too senior. I’ve literally been asked about this on an interview in 2016 for a nat-sec Federal agency. I was interviewed by two people who appeared to be at least ten years younger than I was, I explained I was happy to just get onto the team and work my way back up to appropriate seniority, so make me an offer I’d be too stupid to refuse. They didn’t believe me.
Adam L Silverman
@Matt McIrvin: Yep. It’s been on his to do list since he broke the professional staffing system in the House when he became Speaker.
Just Chuck
@Leto: I think you and I are in agreement here. And the obvious reason as to why Congress doesn’t factor in long-term thinking is that their job operates on a two-year feedback cycle.
Roger Moore
@MisterForkbeard:
I think the equivocating Republicans are going to be very disappointed. They think they’re being oh so clever by neither supporting Trump’s claims of fraud nor refuting them, and this will let them claim to either side that they were in the right. Instead, I think they’ll discover that nobody likes them. The Democrats will see them as giving partial support to Trump’s coup attempt, while the Trumpists will see them as failing to give Trump full support when he needed it.
Leto
@Just Chuck:
I’m all for that too. We’d need to reconfigure how NATO operates, how much training we’re going to provide to partner nations, how much naval security assistance we provide… I mean, there’s whole hosts of stuff we’d have to reassess. But it would give us a breather. It’d let us reconstitute our forces, give our other NATO/Pacific/regional allies a chance to take over the lead role in a whole host of areas. Of course they’re going to need to spin up their own defense/mil capacities even more. A guess a talk we need to have.
You were speaking of economic theory earlier: how much easier is to keep on the current operating path versus shutting everything down, then having to spin it all up again? Because right now we’re operating in both situations. Again, speaking of just aircraft, but how many active assembly lines do we have operating right now just for fighter aircraft? What’s the lead time on opening those? I’m not saying perpetual corporate welfare, but also keeping the pilot light on is usually a good idea. And right now if another large scale conflict were to arise, we’re about 10 years behind the 8 ball on this. (10 years is a bit of hyperbole, but we would it would be a very very long time before we saw aircraft rolling off the line). Not even going to touch ship building.
Leto
@Just Chuck: We are. I’m all for having a larger, more robust State Dept with more foreign service people doing the dirty work of talking out our problems. I want the military to take a large step back because as Adam has stated, we’ve been at it since 1991. I never thought my son would be fighting the same shit I was, but here we are. I wish more Americans understood the fact that if we can provide incentives ($$$) for countries to change their behavior, that a lot of time it’s peanuts in terms of long term costs. The fact that we’re all in this together, and that their success is also our success. Preaching to the choir here and all.
Edit: regarding the incentives, the military does that quite well via military partnerships. We train a lot of foreign service pilots, and we have multi-lateral training agreements in place where we provide mil training to other nations because 1) that makes them better soldiers and 2) it’s another way for us to be bound together. We share cultures, understanding, creating long lasting bonds. And that’s not a zero sum game there. We both benefit from that.
schrodingers_cat
Whether its the defense department or immigration, Rs want to break things. Make governing impossible. Then they can make off with the spoils. Its vulture capitalist mentality applied to the government.
trollhattan
@Leto:
Speaking of ships, the Navy decided what we knew from the pictures and determined they’ll be scrapping the Bonhomme Richard. Our readiness gets less ready.
Matt McIrvin
@Adam L Silverman: I don’t think, even given Gingrich’s status as a transforming figure in politics, that most people even understand how radical an authoritarian he was and is. Another thing I recall him getting excited about on the pundit shows was the idea of pardoning soldiers for war crimes in advance, so you could order them to go do the crimes with a pardon in hand.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Cheryl Rofer:
Rip up the Key West Agreement of 1948….
Frank Wilhoit
@Edmund Dantes: You are neglecting the very substantial part of the civilian economy that trickles down from government procurement. I do not say that this is how things should be but it is how things are.
Geminid
@Leto: Your remark on muskets reminded me of a passage in Confederate Artillery General E. Porter Alexander’s private memoir Fighting for the Confederacy (1994? ed.G. Gallagher). Alexander described the effectiveness of repeating rifles available by 1862. The Ordinance Department resisted their adoption because of the cost of the brass cartridges, and it was only in the last year of the war that they were issued to cavalry units. Alexander wrote that if the Union army had been equipped with repeating rifles the war would have been won two years early, saving many times the cost of the ammunition, not to mention lives. Even if the rebels had captured these weapons they could not have supplied the cartridges. As it was they could barely scrape up copper for percussion caps.
Roger Moore
@Leto:
We don’t ask them to use muskets, but they are still using pretty much the same rifle we were using during Vietnam, and the same heavy machine gun we used in WWII. There are newer designs that might be better, but we’ve decided that the degree of improvement isn’t worth the cost.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat:
QFT. Plus, I don’t think they know how to build anything. They’re not smart or creative enough, and none of the descendants of Newt Gingrich in Congress have ever experienced the actual work of legislating.
germy
https://www.wral.com/justice-department-investigating-potential-presidential-pardon-bribery-scheme-court-records-reveal/19409675/
debbie
@JPL:
What a country we’ve become, where the go-to response is a death threat. Apparently that RWNJ attorney Joe DiGenova has threatened the life of Christopher Krebs. Sheesh.
Mary G
O/T Sidney Powell has filed another voting lawsuit, but…
bluehill
@JPL: I agree it’s horrible that this is happening to someone who is undeservedly bearing the brunt of Trump’s failures as president.
To me, “It has gone too far” says that Sterling was ok with Trump demonizing some people and groups just not his people.
waratah
@JPL: I am pleased to see a Republican stand up and call this out. I am pleased to know it is Gabriel as he broke the monotony during the vote count for me when he lectured the press on Georgian pronunciations. When I hear about the death threats it reminds me of what happened in El Paso and no Republicans called Trump out.
Adam L Silverman
@Matt McIrvin: He’s nuts.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
As you’ve shown a decided preference for accuracy in details previously, thought it worth mentioning. Certainly shan’t ruffle your dainties with my presence in any of your threads further.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: That wasn’t my point and you know it. The point is I have an American English keyboard set up, not German. This isn’t a major error. It isn’t even wrong. You are always welcome to comment, but the pointless pedantry is tiresome.
Dan B
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks for your response. Like many others here I greatly appreciate your wisdom. It seems as though the Trump admin has torn up as many little, and not so little, processes that it’s looking like starting over, as fraught as that prospect is, may be the better approach. My near daily motto in my contracting career was, “Doing it the hard way is always easier.” In other words don’t take shortcuts unless you must and even then keep looking for the best solution. I believe that many Biden appointees will find some good solutions.
Feckless
I once took two friends from New Zealand to the museum of flight here in Seattle outside were some F4 phantoms both of my kiwi friends whined that that was the newest airplane in the Anzac air Force I looked at each one at a time and asked them how much they paid for college they both said nothing I said you’re welcome and f*** your air Force
we need to abolish the department of defense and create a department of Peace
Jay C
@debbie:
DiGenova has actually made a public statement over those threats: he has said that he “was only joking”.
SRSLY.
trollhattan
@Mary G:
Good lord. “Worth every penny.”
Just Chuck
@Jay C: I look forward to him making that argument at his disbarment hearing.
Roger Moore
@Feckless:
I think George Orwell might have something to say about that.
YY_Sima Qian
From Google, US DOD budget went from a peak of US$ 711.34B in FY2011 to a trough of US$ 596.1B in FY2015, and recovering to US$ 693.06B in FY2019. If the DOD has been finding every excuse to penny pinch over the past several years, then it begs the question, what is all that money being spent on?! And the DOD budget does not even include the expense of the ongoing wars.
The outcome of so much spending: persistently low readiness across the USAF, a badly deteriorated and overused USN (particularly the surface fleet, exterior conditions of US warships resemble that of the late Soviet/early post-Soviet Navy) burdened with “transformative” assets of next to no utility (the LCS and the Zumwalt class), a USMC that has to abandon main battle tanks to reduce cost, a US Army appears to be uncertain about its role in 2020 and beyond (but still jealously guard its slice of the budgetary pie), and a special operations community that has shouldered by far the heaviest burden since 2001.
I am just an amateur with a young boy’s casual interest of all things military, but it seems everything about US defense spending is broken, and has been for a long time (since before the Obama presidency), despite its mass also crowding out domestic priorities (education, infrastructure, R&D and application of green technology, etc.) that actually goes to support and enhance the US’ comprehensive competitiveness (rather than the narrow military one).
YY_Sima Qian
I found a recent quote by Michele Flournoy troubling. She said the way to reattain deterrence against China is to recover the same kind of dominance that the US enjoyed over China in the 90s and early aughts – China will refrain from military adventurism if the Chinese leaders know that all of People’s Liberation Army Navy’s surface ships will be sent to the bottom in 72 hours.
Now, it is dangerous to make judgment based on one quote, possibly taken out of context, possibly speaking in hyperbole. However, it suggests to me that she is one that wants dial the lock back to a time when the US colossus bestrode the world unchallenged. How much would that cost? Given the progress in Chinese military development, is it even feasible to gain that level of dominance? Why does she expect that China would surrender being dominated to such extent, rather than immediate work to undermine/circumvent/overcome such dominance (which is, after all, the development of the past 2 decades)? What domestic priorities would that rearmament effort crowd out, especially with the expected budgetary environment post-COVID-19 (very constrained)? Would the arms race bankrupt the US, as it did the fUSSR? Confidence in the US dollar is starting to become less than rock solid, given the disfunction political and government incompetence (more than just the executive branch and more than just at the federal level) on display, and the continued money printing to stave off economic catastrophe.
The days of the US unilaterally dominating the world is gone, has been since the Great Financial Crisis. Best to have realistic assessment of means and adjust goals to the available means, to maximize US power and influence (and constrain China and Russia’s worse behaviors) in the new reality. I am not sure Michele Flournoy (and she is far from alone among Democratic leaning policy makers) has mentally adjusted to the new reality. By the way, the US did not exactly behave responsibly in its last unipolar moment.
Raven Onthill
@Adam L Silverman: “The Trump folks have so screwed up the civil service hiring process, combined with the damage from the sequester, that I’m honestly not sure how to fix things.”
It may be that it never gets fixed, and responsibility devolves back to the states.
Which would be awful.
Thank you for an excellent piece.