I recently read an article written by former Secretary of the Navy, former Senator from Virginia Jim Webb titled Congressional Abdication published this month in the National Interest. It is the best published article I have read this year, because I frequently find myself pondering much of what it says. I have no intention on quoting from the article, because I believe that if you click the link and begin reading the article - you will find yourself compelled to read it all. It is an article I believe everyone should read, and give serious consideration to the content.
We are in a very strange place in America today, particularly politically. In my opinion the establishment of the Republican party is frequently not very conservative, and the establishment of the Democratic party is frequently not very liberal. Partisan loyalty to the establishments is still very high, but the loyalty of partisans has become emotional, not intellectual, as the problems continue to mount with neither side willing to compromise - largely for political purposes - towards any actual solutions to any of the current challenges that all need legitimate solutions. My sense is the President is poised to step up to the very real challenges facing America, and as he does so he will become much less popular in the eyes of everyone for doing the things that must be done.
Sequestration happened. I told you - 22 months ago - it would. Very few people believed it would. The DoD is still operating under the rules of the Continuing Resolution, although hopefully that will change very soon. The result of sequestration + the CR means operations and maintenance will be sacrificed to the sacred cow of the defense infrastructure - the defense industry. It is how the two laws work together. For the Navy that means they must park ships at the pier to pay contracts that cannot be canceled. It is very easy to get all /Facepalm about how horribly managed all of this has been for the DoD, but I find myself in agreement with the argument that three and four star Generals and Flag Officers are basically political appointments to the executive branch these days, so why should we expect them to act any different than exactly that? In the end I believe sequestration and the continuing resolution are applying legitimate and correct intentions in the worst possible way. The US is in trouble, but only because all strategies in the Department of Defense today are for purposes of domestic politics, not international politics. The history of the world tells us that our nation will take a hit for taking our eyes off the ball in the hubris that we are a superpower and too big to fail, and fixing what amounts to small (in context) budget problems doesn't solve this problem.
Among our political leaders and political appointees, very few men and women stand out as unique voices with a core set of beliefs and a willingness to stand up for them. When they do - we know who they are, and even when we disagree with them we love them for being genuine. This is exactly why so many in this community and the US Navy have so much admiration and respect for men like Admiral John Harvey and Undersecretary Bob Work, and why Bob Work in particular has stood out as one of the singularly most unique government officials in the Navy community in many decades. Undersecretary Work advocated the same positions he had before his appointment, and I assure you his positions will remain consistent when he moves into his new position over at CNAS. My observation is very few people agree with him on everything, particularly his positions on the Littoral Combat Ship, but disagreement with his positions does not diminish how he earns respect among his critics for engaging them in respectful public debate on the merits of any specific issue, and most critically - the debate is always a discussion of substance.
The ability to sustain a focused debate on the substance of an issue was probably why I was easily distracted by Rand Paul's activity on the Senate floor last night. I know nothing about Rand Paul except that I know of his father, and I never agreed with his father much on political issues. It is easy to dismiss the absurdity of drawing a line in the sand on the issue of drones killing American citizens on American soil, because that would never happen, right? Common sense screams - "of course not!"
And yet Eric Holder would not commit the Obama administration to that position, the implication of his intentional omission being that "yes, drones may indeed one day kill American citizens on US soil." You may not think this is even possible, but this is a legitimate civil liberties issue and as many smart people have pointed out (example here), the administration cannot easily stand with Rand Paul on this issue, because there are legal issues regarding the use of drones in targeted strikes around the world that extend well beyond American soil that have not been sorted out legally, and there are lawsuits already out there regarding American citizens killed by drones in other countries that the Administration must tread very cautiously because of.
For me, that is really where this issue Rand Paul raises comes into play, and impacts many of the issues we discuss here on Information Dissemination. Rand Paul vs Eric Holder on drones isn't something any of us can simply dismiss as a silly political trick or an argument over a hypothetical issue, because the issue is very much legitimate. A few things to think about...
The rise of prominence in using drones to execute US Foreign Policy and US National Security Policy is a bigger issue than the limited but important aspect of drones Rand Paul championed yesterday on the Senate floor. The single biggest drone issue, in my opinion, is that drones have lowered the threshold for use of force. It is why the CIA is now operating drones for targeted killing, and why the USAF has basically restructured itself over the last decade to support this activity as needed globally. It is why the US does not fly manned military aircraft into Pakistan to kill Al Qaeda - the people in Pakistan would be outraged if we did - but those same Pakistani citizens don't seem to care when we send an armed unmanned flying computer into Pakistan and kill a bad guy. This oddly acceptable condition has allowed the Obama administration to fly drones and kill people in Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and Afghanistan over the last four years, with an unknown level of approval or consent. AFRICOM is setting up a drone base as we speak, and it is a safe bet we will be killing people with drones in Africa in the near future. South America - you are almost certainly next.
Drones have lowered the political risk and raised the political reward of using lethal force and done so at a lower cost to the US taxpayer. In my opinion, the use of armed drones globally represents a natural and expected 21st century asymmetrical evolution of military power in our dealing with non-state actors that distributed towards smaller footprints after we engaged with overwhelming conventional military force. I see the US use of drones as a completely understandable military capability evolution. Like any new adaptation of State power that changes the rules of any battlefield in our favor, there are new considerations for using this new State power that must be addressed to insure rules of the road for others who also develop the same State power capability.
The Obama administration is reshaping the United States National Security Strategy around remotely piloted drone strike capabilities, offensive cyber capabilities, and special operations capabilities. This basically shifts the liberal use of US military power (that is very common in American history) towards three precision strike capabilities on a global scale that - legitimately - can create unforeseen collateral damage. To take it a step further, none of these capabilities have easily recognized legal frameworks because they operate outside the normal rulesets that would otherwise govern the use of lethal military power.
For example, armed drones have killed Americans - now under two consecutive Presidents. There are lawsuits in the name of dead Americans that cite the US Constitution regarding judicial process, because in the end the precision strike capability - in this case drones - ultimately killed American citizens without due process under the law. It is not even clear if the Americans were the target or not - but in the case of Anwar al-Aulaqi all indications are he was the target. Like the vast majority of Americans (according to the polls anyway) the inner Patton in me thinks the guy deserved his fate, but as an American wanting to protect my own civil liberties I certainly would appreciate if our political leaders would step out and clearly define the rule set for use of force with this global precision strike capability so that I know the law protects me and my family from the use of such State power. It is hard for me to imagine any American likewise wouldn't appreciate similar such protections under the law - particularly on US soil as Rand Paul articulates.
Another example - Cyber. The collateral damage from STUXNET has been enormous. With a weaponized cyber capability that probably was developed by the government of the United States, if we examine purely from a monetary standpoint this cyber smart bomb called STUXNET did more collateral damage than any single military strike since we dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The lack of lethality for using such a weapon makes the use of these cyber smart weapons highly attractive to political leaders, but what protections do American businesses have against these kind of State power precision payload military grade capabilities that also have huge collateral damage implications? Even more to the point, what happens when military grade smart worm does actually kill people? There is no legal framework in this country, much less on an international scale, to govern use of such weapons, and yet when examined on a financial scale this military grade weaponized cyber capability is only comparable to the use of a nuclear weapon. The political leadership of this country is waiting for people to die before they take this very serious issue specific to emerging National Security Policy seriously.
Finally, have you seen Zero Dark Thirty? It's a fictional movie, but it's a good frame of reference. Have you read about the Osama bin Laden raid, the various books and articles of substance? Lets just review what happened generically. The United States sent a military unit into a foreign country for purposes of a precision strike on a facility right next to a major military installation. What would have happened if the Pakistani Army rolled up during that action with the tactical approach of shooting first and asking questions later? The other guy gets a vote, so what if our special forces folks were immediately attacked by the Pakistan Army and never given an option to surrender? Would the folks in the White House listened intently as all members of the special operations unit were killed, or would they have allowed the unit to call in air support and defend themselves? A special forces unit has the capability, and in most situations has the higher level military support, to rain hell and fire on anyone within their sights. A very legitimate different outcome that night could have been the US military killing a thousand soldiers of the Pakistani Army in what was supposed to be a clandestine precision strike inside another country.
Under any legal apparatus governed by the US Constitution, if the US would have started a war with Pakistan because of that action, it would have been a violation of every intent outlined in the US Constitution regarding the use of military force in starting a war, and under the law would have been legitimate basis for articles of impeachment for the President who - in this American citizens opinion - was doing the right thing by going after Osama bin Laden. But that's the key issue - our small special forces teams are supported by a US conventional military infrastructure of precision strike capabilities that outmatches everything else in the world. Some of our smallest special operations forces have the firepower and capability equivalent to the entire military of some nations at their fingertip. There is nothing new about special forces, but there is a lot of new about featuring special forces operations as a primary instrument of State power. Do the old rules that govern use of military force apply sufficiently to global precision strike capabilities of platoon sized forces with brigade level firepower at their fingertips? Do we need new rule sets for the emerging predominance of special forces operations in our global military taskings? Will America have to wait for Murphy's Law to kick us between the legs before Congress decides to rethink how the emerging predominance of special forces operations influences existing laws regarding the use of military force globally? When these guys come home from Afghanistan, they are not going to be sent home to sit on the couch - they will be used, everywhere else.
Has Congress sufficiently thought through this? With the nations mature long range strike network from air and sea, a special forces unit today can leverage the firepower of at least a battalion sized unit 20 years ago, but we never sent units with battalion levels of firepower around the world on quick strike missions 20 years ago. Emerging policy is to send special forces around the world on quick strike missions for the next 20 years, and my gut tells me our political leaders haven't stepped through this mentally yet.
The House and the Senate need to wake up and step up, because the growth of executive power since 9/11 has gone unchecked and is in dire need of a balance. Rand Paul may be focused on the details of civil liberties, and it is as good a place to start as any in my opinion, but the framework for 21st century National Security Policy is being established by the Obama administration - built on top of the Bush administrations eight years of very interventionist policies - that predominately feature means of very new, very capable State powers that lack rule sets, and drones is only one small piece of it.
I am generally supportive of the direction the Obama administration is taking with drones, cyber, and special forces instead of leveraging the large US Army approach of the Bush administration, but I see some serious issues with the policy that I believe needs a much healthier dose of oversight than what I - as an American citizen - has seen to date. I also believe the critical foundation of naval power - offshore, near but not intrusive State power, is being undervalued as a non-intrusive and diplomatically capable element of State power in emerging policy, and I believe it is with credible, present naval power the United States needs not always lead with the precision strike while still being able to leverage the potential use of it as a form of deterrence.
Without some serious oversight and consideration that includes alternatives to precision strike, this National Security Policy framework being developed by the Obama administration - that I generally agree with btw - is ripe for exploitation by future administrations if Congress doesn't get in there soon to address many of the very legitimate issues and shortcomings in each approach.
The Founding Fathers had it right all along. The nation maintains a Navy and the ability to raise an Army when needed. That framework works well within the construct of President Obama's National Security Policy that leverages drones, cyber, and special forces, and within that construct the Navy adds a very legitimate, very important, very enormous diplomatic wrapper of sea based military power around America's very lethal and capable precision strike capabilities. I see it as Sea Power in support of State Power, and not just State power in the context of precision strike, but State power in the context of the State Department and other elements of State power throughout the US government. In the abstract; drones, cyber, and special forces can be used in almost exactly the same way, but as asymmetrical alternatives to, a large Army invasion by the United States of another country - with the outcome of a state level war possible, after all we are - either figuratively or literally - bombing another country from the air with drones, destroying the economy of another nation with cyber, or putting boots on the ground for military operations with special operations forces. While I acknowledge it is legitimately my bias, I see sea power as a historical military framework that helps buffer an alternative to check and balance the emerging 21st century models for the liberal use of politically convenient, emerging State power military force options.
