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You are here: Home / Archives for Silverman on Security / The Trump Doctrine

The Trump Doctrine

In Non-Impeachment News, the President Has, Apparently, Shifted the Republic of Korea Into an Alliance With the People’s Republic of China

by Adam L Silverman|  November 19, 20191:06 pm| 175 Comments

This post is in: America, Foreign Affairs, Military, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine

Faced with the President’s demand that the Republic of Korea (ROK) increase their cost sharing of the basing and sustainment of US military and civilian personnel in the Republic of Korea to $5 billion, the ROK’s leadership was not amused and very concerned. Especially, as this would mean not just a four to five time increase, but that the ROK would be covering the entire cost, rather than sharing it. Earlier today, things took a turn for the worst.

In a rare public display of disagreement in the alliance, US negotiators abruptly walked out of today's talks with South Korea after the 66-year ally balked at President Trump's price tag for funding 28,500 American troops in the country.https://t.co/utKjCvauvU

— Min Joo Kim (@Min_Joo_Kim_) November 19, 2019

The United States broke off talks with South Korea on Tuesday over how to share the cost of the two nations’ military alliance, injecting fresh tension into the relationship over Washington’s demands that Seoul pay sharply more.

President Trump has demanded South Korea raise fivefold its contribution to cover the cost of stationing 28,500 U.S. troops in the country, asking for nearly $5 billion, officials on both sides said. But that demand has triggered anger from Korean lawmakers and sparked concerns that Trump may decide to reduce the U.S. troop presence in the Korean Peninsula if talks break down.

The top U.S. negotiator, James DeHart, said the U.S. side decided to cut short the negotiations on Tuesday morning, the second of two days of planned talks. In a rare public show of disunity between the allies, he blamed South Korea for making proposals that “were not responsive to our request for fair and equitable burden sharing.”

“As a result we cut short our participation in the talks today in order to give the Korea side time to reconsider,” he said in a statement. “We look forward to resuming our negotiations when the Korean side is ready to work on the basis of partnership, on the basis of mutual trust.”

This year, South Korea agreed to pay about $890 million toward the cost of stationing U.S. troops in the country, a little more than 40 percent of the day-to-day expenses. It also provides land for bases rent-free, paid more than 90 percent of the $10.7 billion cost of moving the main U.S. base out of Seoul, and buys significant amounts of U.S. military equipment.

But Trump insists that South Korea, as a “very wealthy nation,” needs to pay more. His demand for up to $5 billion would imply South Korea was effectively not only being asked to cover local costs but also the entire wage bill for the U.S. troops.

This genius move of walking out on a negotiation, which is not taught as part of how to conduct a negotiation to any career US government officials, such as Mr. DeHart who is a career foreign service officer, is a hallmark of the President’s understanding of how to conduct negotiations. Specifically, make an outrageous demand, posture and preen, throw a fit at the negotiations and walk out, then wait for the other party to come back and grovel for a deal. The Republic of Korea is not going to play the President’s game.
Here’s the text from Yahoo News:

The defense ministers of South Korea and China have agreed to develop their security ties to ensure stability in northeast Asia, the latest indication that Washington’s longstanding alliances in the region are fraying.

Mission accomplished!

Open thread!

In Non-Impeachment News, the President Has, Apparently, Shifted the Republic of Korea Into an Alliance With the People’s Republic of ChinaPost + Comments (175)

Ambassador Taylor’s Opening Statement to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

by Adam L Silverman|  October 22, 20194:18 pm| 157 Comments

This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Election Year, Foreign Affairs, Impeachment Inquiry, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine, The Whistleblower Saga

The Washington Post has obtained and published Ambassador Taylor’s opening statement to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The link to it is here. And the pdf can be directly accessed from Balloon Juice below.

Ambassador_Taylor_Opening_Statment

Open thread!

Ambassador Taylor’s Opening Statement to the House Permanent Select Committee on IntelligencePost + Comments (157)

The Vice President Announces a Ceasefire That Is Not a Ceasefire & the President Announces That Everyone is Happy With It

by Adam L Silverman|  October 17, 20193:41 pm| 184 Comments

This post is in: America, Crimes against humanity, Domestic Politics, Foreign Affairs, Military, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine, War

Earlier this afternoon, the Vice President, with the Secretary of State behind him, announced a ceasefire he had gotten Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to agree to. The President then did an impromptu press gaggle on the tarmac of the Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport where he ran with this news. The President spun the Vice President’s announcement of what Turkey supposedly agreed to as great for the Kurds, the Turks, the US, and civilization itself.

There's no apparent basis for Trump's claim just now that "everybody" has been trying to get this Turkey deal for "10 years," unless he means Turkey's government. (He habitually claims that previous administrations couldn't have achieved deals they never tried to achieve.)

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 17, 2019

Trump now says it was "more than" 15 years people have tried to get this deal. This is some of the fastest lieflation in recent memory. https://t.co/04GFSKQYaR

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 17, 2019

Trump concludes of his deal with Turkey: "Civilization is very happy."

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 17, 2019

This comment about “having to have it cleaned out” is an excuse and rationalization for ethnic cleansing!

Referring to Kurds living along Turkish border in Syria, Trump says of Turkey, "they had to have it cleaned out." pic.twitter.com/W8J7IFctO3

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 17, 2019

TRUMP: "What Turkey is getting now is they are not going to have to kill millions of people." 😳 pic.twitter.com/JXKfam96hv

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 17, 2019

The Turks, however, have their own understanding of what was agreed to and it is not a cease fire.

#BREAKING 'Pause of Turkey's operation in Syria is not cease-fire, cease-fire can only happen between two legitimate sides': Turkish foreign minister

— ANADOLU AGENCY (ENG) (@anadoluagency) October 17, 2019

Cavusoglu added that a “safe zone” would need to be established at 32 kilometer (roughly 20 miles) depth from east of Euphrates to the Iraqi border. (Which is what Turkey wanted initially.)

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) October 17, 2019

The ceasefire that the Vice President announced at his press conference in Turkey is not one. Moreover, it doesn’t actually bind the proxy extremist groups that Turkey has turned loose in the area and who have been committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in their fight with the Kurds. I’m honestly not even sure this binds the Kurds. And, as a result, we can predict what will happen.

As the Kurds move through this now supposedly temporarily pacified battlespace, to both collect the dead, the wounded, those trapped behind their enemy’s lines and to make it to the new lines 20 miles from the Turkish border, they will come into contact with the Syrian extremist groups that the Turks are using as proxies and a force multiplier. Those Syrian extremists, not bound by the agreement, will initiate hostilities with the Syrian Kurds and Arabs that make up the Syrian Democratic Forces because part of this Turkish operation was to colonize the buffer area they have just been granted by the President via the Vice President and Secretary of State. And the Syrian extremists that Erdogan is using as a proxy force are not going to want to have to let the Syrian Kurds and Arabs trying to get clear of the new buffer area take their property and possessions with them. Those are spoils of war that belong to those extremists who are going to set up shop in the buffer zone with whomever else Erdogan relocates there.

That’s right, you’re not crazy, you’re not hallucinating Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo, on orders from the President, just ceded 20 miles of Syria to Turkey. Land that Syria’s Kurds have long claimed as a homeland where they deserve self determination and recognition as a nation-state. This was done unilaterally. Without consulting with the Syrians. Or the UN. Or Congress. Or seemingly anyone else. I’m sure Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs got asked for their opinions though. The President definitely knows how to get a real estate deal done!

Once the Kurds and Arabs of the SDF come into contact with the Syrian extremists that Erdogan is using as a proxy force and force multiplier, those extremists will attack. And the Syrian Democratic Forces will defend themselves. And once they do that, the Turks will claim that the temporary cessation of hostilities was violated by the Kurds and the SDF, and the Turkish military will restart offensive operations. I give it 12 hours, tops, before we’re back to where we were before the Vice President’s press conference today.

But civilization is happy, so good job everyone!

Mr. President, please help yourself to a Nobel Peace Prize. Take it out of petty cash.

Open thread!

The Vice President Announces a Ceasefire That Is Not a Ceasefire & the President Announces That Everyone is Happy With ItPost + Comments (184)

President Obama & His Administration Did Indeed Have a Strategy for Syria: It is Not President Obama’s Fault if You Don’t Understand It and It is Not an Excuse for What the President Did Last Week

by Adam L Silverman|  October 16, 20197:14 pm| 88 Comments

This post is in: Absent Friends, America, Domestic Politics, Election Year, Foreign Affairs, Military, RIP, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine, War

(Figure 1: Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve Campaign Design)

Since the President’s horrendous decision to pull US Special Forces, as well as the US Marine Corps artillery batteries supporting them out of Syria, a cottage industry has sprung up among the President’s supporters and defenders that this is really the fault of President Obama because President Obama and his administration either had no Syria strategy or they had a bad one. And that this is the ultimate driver of the President’s betrayal of our Syrian Kurdish and Arab partners in the Syrian Democratic Forces that has enabled Erdogan to begin a campaign that will likely include an attempted ethnocide of Syria’s Kurds.

Some of these defenders would not know, let alone understand, low intensity warfare and/or strategy and policy if it walked up and bit them. Some actually know better. But all of them are actually grappling with a strawman. President Obama and his administration had two different, but related strategies regarding Syria. The first was to quite simply not get sucked into the Syrian Civil War. Humanitarian assistance would be provided to refugees seeking shelter in adjacent states, internally displaced Syrians that made it to where the US was operating along the Syrian-Iraqi border or within Syria would be provided for and protected, but the US would not get pulled into the Syrian Civil War, and the underlying proxy wars by regional powers that had been partially driving it, and risk escalating that conflict as it would have regional consequences. Frankly, from a semi-informed observer as this was playing out, this drove a number of President Obama’s actual advisors and senior national security officials nuts as several of them wanted the US to intervene because of the humanitarian crisis being created by the Syrian Civil War. Instead President Obama opted for what was, essentially, a containment strategy of trying to keep the Syrian Civil War and the proxy wars being fought by Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran under its cover contained within Syria so as not to destabilize the rest of the region.

This strategy was really an assumption of risk strategy in order to buy time. The US, as the leader and largest and most militarily powerful member of the multinational coalition operating in the area, would assume the risk that the Syrian Civil War and the proxy wars for regional hegemony subsumed within it, would and could be kept within Syria. That they would not spill out and over its borders and negatively impact Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel. And that they wouldn’t negatively effect the two sets of high level diplomatic negotiations being undertaken in the region: the Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative of 2014 and what we now know were the JCPOA+5 negotiations with Iran regarding its nuclear energy and weapons programs. President Obama had decided to play for time. To assume the risk that either the Syrian Civil War, the proxy wars for regional hegemony taking place within it, or both wouldn’t blow up into a larger conflagration, spill over Syria’s borders, and engulf the entire region.

It is also important to remember that in 2013, when Bashar Assad’s chemical attack on his own citizenry crossed the red line that President Obama had unequivocally stated, there were calls for both a retaliatory strike to punish and deter Assad and for Congress to weigh in before any action was taken, President Obama did, in fact, seek Congressional approval for such a strike. The majority Republican House of Representatives refused to provide President Obama with the authorization to make that strike and enforce the red line he had set. Congressman Paul Ryan, the chair of House Budget Committee at the time, went so far as to assert that the called for strikes would not achieve US strategic objectives and that they would be “feckless show of force” that would “only damage our credibility”. A New York real estate developer and reality TV star named Donald Trump tweeted that “The only reason President Obama wants to attack Syria is to save face over his very dumb RED LINE statement. Do NOT attack Syria, fix U.S.A.” As a result of Congress denying him explicit military authorization to engage Syrian military targets outside of the Authorization for Military Force for the global war on terror, President Obama did not order a strike.

The Obama administrations’s second Syria strategy was for pursuing the campaign against ISIS. Specifically to apply low intensity and unconventional warfare doctrine to reduce ISIS’s physical caliphate that spanned Iraq and Syria’s shared border, and, ultimately, to reduce ISIS. This is the “by, with, and through” strategy that I’ve referenced here before and that you may have seen mentioned or referred to in news reports and other analyses. Simply put the “by, with, and through” strategy focuses on finding reliable host country partners who are willing to fight on their own behalf and then sending the US’s unconventional warfare specialists, the Green Berets (Special Forces) to embed with them in a train, advise, and assist mission. This is a very, very light footprint strategy. Small teams of US Special Forces known as Operational Detachments Alpha (ODAs), with specific enablers from other elements of US Special Operations Forces and, most likely some of the CIA’s paramilitary operators at the outset, as well as a small support element were sent into Syria to identify, recruit, and vet local Syrians that would then be trained, advised, and assisted with operations against ISIS. Eventually a small contingent of US Marine artillery were also moved into the US led Coalition’s theater of operations in Syria to provide fire support for the ODAs and their host country partners they were embedded with.

Train, advise, and assist has a very specific meaning here. Training means that the Soldiers on the ODAs would teach the Syrian Kurds and Arabs that are known as the Syrian Democratic Forces how to fight more effectively against ISIS. These host country fighters didn’t need to be taught how to fight, both the Syrian Kurds and Arabs have their own ways of war. What the Special Forces Soldiers on the ODAs did do was to teach them to fight more effectively at the tactical and operational levels against the specific type of enemy that is ISIS within the theater strategy that was established based on the US’s national strategy against ISIS. Training blends into advising and assisting, especially in regard to logistics and planning. As the Syrian Democratic Forces became a more effective host country fighting force, especially within the context of the type of campaign that had been designed to reduce ISIS’s physical caliphate, defeat them, and then retard their ability to continue to terrorize and destabilize the region*, the US Special Forces would do less assisting in the actual combat operations. Part of the assistance was also air support. The US led Coalition flew sorties day and night as necessary to degrade ISIS targets on the ground.  Here is the link to the continually updated list of these sorties and strikes.

The US and its coalition partners had been trying to successfully adapt and implement a “by, with, and through” strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan since GEN (ret) Petraues’s revised Counterinsurgency Manual, FM 3-24: Counterinsurgency, arrived to great fanfare in the mid aughts. The key idea behind a “by, with, and through” strategy is to empower the lowest societal level you can work with, ie the population layer/element, work from that level up (work from the bottom up), and then reconcile the tactical and operations gains made with the state to state strategic efforts, such as diplomatic initiatives and the use of economic and information power, being made at the top end. This never really worked during Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom (OIF and OEF) because we didn’t actually institute a true “by, with, and through” strategy. Rather, we had US Conventional Forces and our Coalition partners, also usually Conventional Forces, trying to implement and realize something that is the specialty of US Special Forces. I’m not knocking the efforts put in or the actual tactical and operational successes achieved, as there were and are many, just that the size of Iraq and Afghanistan and the need to have Conventional Forces work outside their expertise by undertaking an unconventional warfare strategy, did not lead to theater strategic success. Often because of failures at the national and theater strategic levels and despite the tactical and operational successes.

The size, scope, and scale of OIF and OEF made it impossible to let Special Forces take the lead as we simply do not have enough Green Berets to work one entire theater the size of Iraq, let alone two with the second theater being the size of Afghanistan. Even if we pulled in all the other US Special Operations Forces – SEALs, Operational Detachment Delta/Delta Force, Rangers, Air Commandos, Recon Marines, the Intelligence Support Activity (Gray Fox/Field Operating Group), Civil Affairs, and PSYOPers – and had them pick up the slack while ignoring their own missions and mission specialty areas, we still wouldn’t have had enough Special Operations Forces to do the job. There is a reason that Marines and Special Operations Forces fight battles and conventional Armies fight campaigns and wars in the Land Domain; because the former do not have the capacity to scale to the latter.

The campaign against ISIS in Syria, however, was different. The theater of operations was limited in size. We had been able to identify, recruit, vet, and then train reliable host country partners that we and our Coalition allies could work “by, with, and through”. A limited number of Operational Detachment Alphas, plussed up with personnel from other SOF elements, with a small support element and a small amount of Marine artillery batteries for fire support were tremendously successful! Perhaps beyond anyone’s legitimate expectations based on the mixed results from trying to apply the “by, with, and through” strategy during the latter portions of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. And that success carried over to maintaining the peace in the area of operations once ISIS’s physical caliphate had been reduced. About 1,000 US Special Forces and Special Operating Forces, working with the SDF, had been able to reduce ISIS’s physical caliphate to nothing because the SDF, as the host country partners, did the hard, dangerous, and deadly work. Which is why the SDF suffered over 10,000 killed in action and the US Special Forces partnering with them suffered zero KIA in this campaign.

What the President has thrown away with his rash and ill considered pull out and betrayal of our Syrian Kurdish and Arab allies, and what his defenders and supporters don’t understand in their rush to defend him by blaming all of this on President Obama and his administration, is just how successful this campaign against ISIS has been. How much reward we reaped in exchange for the amount of blood and treasure wagered and risk assumed. And how well it was working to maintain the peace in this area of Syria by preventing ISIS from reestablishing a stable physical ground base of operations from which to try to reestablish the physical caliphate.

There wasn’t one single Obama administration strategy for Syria, there were two distinct and specific strategies. The first was to assume risk by not intervening in the Syrian Civil War in order to buy time for what were considered to be other regional priorities – the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations and the JCPOA+5 negotiations and the reduction of ISIS. The second was an unconventional warfare strategy to degrade and reduce ISIS’s physical caliphate and reduce ISIS’s capacity to continue to terrorize and destabilize the region. While the first strategy’s efficacy is debatable, the second strategy to counter ISIS has been successful beyond all possible expectations. And the President has thrown away all of that success and by doing so betrayed our Syrian Kurdish and Arab partners, weakened and diminished the United States power and ability to project power, and degraded our moral standing. He has further destabilized the region. He has handed the Russians, the Syrians, the Iranians, and the Turks a victory without them having to actually contest for it. And he has most likely set the conditions for Erdogan to try to finally solve his Kurdish problem.

Open thread!

This post is dedicated to the late Sergeant First Class (ret) Terry Caldwell. Terry was my Area Specialty Officer (ASO) and taught me everything I know about small team operations and the practical realities of asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional warfare. Rest well Old Man!

* Interestingly enough the chart at the previous link is based on the four phases of conventional warfare, not the seven phases of unconventional warfare used by US Special Forces, which is the result of the commend element of CJTF-OIR being a conventional 3 star Corps headquarters. There is also a full description of the campaign at that link.

Disclosure: In May 2015 I was on site to present the kickoff and keynote briefing of XVIII Airborne Corps’ strategic assessment week and was on site throughout the week as the cultural subject matter expert/cultural advisor as their preparation for assuming command of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve. The briefing focused on the regional strategic and geo-strategic considerations of the Levantine problem set and the campaign against ISIS. It was specifically prepared for the Commanding General, Command Group, senior staff, as much of their staff as could be jammed into the auditorium, and a variety of attendees by secure videoteleconference at a number of outstations. Also in attendance were several senior leaders (general officers) from our Coalition partners who were on the Coalition senior staff. In the weeks after the briefing I prepared a strategic assessment on how to leverage the campaign against ISIS to set the conditions in the theater of operations to secure the peace after the termination of military operations. My work for XVIII Airborne Corps was as a private consultant being paid on contract. I was asked to do this work by the then Corps’ G5 (Officer in Charge of Plans), who I’d both previously worked with at III Corps and who was a student at USAWC when I was the cultural advisor at both. My civilian mobilization/appointment as a senior civil servant at both USAWC and the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Security Dialogue assigned to US Army Europe were not political appointments. I was not then, nor have a I ever been, part of President Obama’s appointed foreign policy, national security, and/or defense policy team, though I did provide significant support to a number of those appointees during my civilian mobilization from 2010 through 2014.

 

President Obama & His Administration Did Indeed Have a Strategy for Syria: It is Not President Obama’s Fault if You Don’t Understand It and It is Not an Excuse for What the President Did Last WeekPost + Comments (88)

A Badly Executed Mob Shakedown: The President’s Ukraine Mess Is Just An Extension of His Russia Mess

by Adam L Silverman|  October 14, 201910:36 pm| 170 Comments

This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Foreign Affairs, Impeachment, Mueller Report, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine

On Friday I wrote the following in an email explaining what is actually going on with the Ukraine mess that the President has made:

I amazed that all of this current brouhaha is just a really bad Russian mob shakedown. The play here is to get Parnas’s and Fruman’s boss in the Russian mob, Dmitri Firtash, off of house arrest and out from under the extradition warrant to the US so he can go back to Kyiv and take over the Ukrainian natural gas industry, strip it of every last penny, then crash it on behalf of Putin and the Russian mob. This then forces Ukraine to buy natural gas from Russia, which allows Putin to then further knuckle Ukraine by sucking resources out of Ukraine to create leverage to force Ukraine back into his orbit. As was reported last night, Giuliani is on Parnas’s payroll and has been for a while. Parnas is on DiGenova’s and Toensing’s payroll, who are working pro bono with Giuliani on behalf of the President, though they’re using him as their translator for their legal work for Firtash. Parnas and Fruman report to Firtash in regard to Russian organized crime activities. Firtash works for the Kyiv born Semion Mogilevich, who is the titular head of the Bratva. Mogolivech works for Putin who is the functional krysha/roof/protector of the Bratva. The Biden stuff is simply disinformation recycled from the Russians from 2014 as part of the maskirovka.

Earlier this evening, Andrew Weiss, who is the Vice President for Studies of The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is in their Russia and Eurasia Program, tweeted the following explainer that really delineates all the parts of the network I was describing in my email from last Friday. (I’m going to put the first half above the jump and the second half below it).

Bear with me as I lay out some facts. They exceed the unreality of a Gary @Shteyngart novel. Yet based on my reading of these facts, several questions readily jump out. I don’t have all of the answers to these questions but think it’s worth asking them. 2/

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

The other point of comparison that immediately comes to mind is an ongoing Federal criminal investigation of Elliot Broidy, a former top Trump fundraiser and the former vice chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign. More on him in a second. 4/ pic.twitter.com/DWADspZ8sI

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

That’s a curiously menial role for Parnas who presented himself as a high roller and whose campaign contributions gave him access to Trump and other GOP leaders. (Lawyer John Dowd says they had a similar role for Giuliani on behalf of President Trump) https://t.co/3MYZlQcVc3 6/

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

In reality ties betw Parnas/Fruman and Firtash run much deeper. They were “working for Firtash" before "Parnas joined [Firtash’s] legal team…Firtash has paid their expenses in the past [including] private jet charters..& foreign travel to Vienna.” https://t.co/1PYZ6oj9eN

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

Arguably the single biggest set of toes belongs to Firtash. He was arrested immediately after the 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine and has been stuck in Vienna fighting extradition to the U.S. after being charged by the Feds with FCPA violations. 10/ pic.twitter.com/gNAOcwdo8F

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

It’s also good to think of the gas trade as Exhibit #1 for the comingling of the Russian govt/organized crime. Firtash served as the top gas trade intermediary for the Kremlin & a Russian mob figure Semyon Mogilevich who’s on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List & helped control it 12/ pic.twitter.com/LdTWKGpc2h

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

It’s been all too easy to get a chuckle out of Parnas and Fruman’s bumbling hijinks after they joined the ranks of top GOP/Trump donors, despite having such a long trail of bad debts, evictions, and sketchy relationships back in Ukraine. https://t.co/vYeGu25kYf 14/

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

show full post on front page

What then to make of the revelation that Parnas and Fruman were arrested at Dulles last Thursday while en route to Vienna? Or that Giuliani planned to leave for Vienna, Firtash’s home base, the following day? https://t.co/TmhXrjmhNn @elainaplott 16/

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

Bloomberg's @nwadhams broke a story about Trump and Giuliani seeking special favors from DOJ/State Dept for one of the latter’s clients, a convicted Turkish gold trader who had violated Iran sanctions. Rex Tillerson thought these requests were illegal https://t.co/OFJn5fWC1m 18/

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

That brings us back to where I started. Does this scandal echo the circumstances that led to the naming of Robert Mueller? Was Giuliani ever involved in seeking special favors for Firtash? Did he or anyone else ( DiGenova? Toensing?) raise this case with Trump or others? 20/

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

What is AG William Barr’s involvement in the search for dirt on the Bidens and conspiracy theories about the 2016 election? Remember: Trump told Zelenskyy to contact Barr. Does Barr have a conflict of interest or at least the appearance of one? Does he need to recuse himself? 22/ pic.twitter.com/3nYNsF64B4

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

ADDENDUM The Reuters team which broke the story about Firtash’s ties to Giuliani’s associates deserves a major shoutout @AramRoston @karen_freifeld @polinaivanovva

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

Weiss’s thread, however, goes beyond just making explicitly clear the different key nodes in the network behind this poorly executed mob shakedown. Weiss’s thread makes it very clear that the Republican Party has been bought by Russian and post-Soviet oligarchs and incorporated into their influence network, including the Russian mob. And as was the case with the cost of Putin’s information warfare and active measures campaign against the US, they did it for pennies on the dollar.

Open thread!

 

A Badly Executed Mob Shakedown: The President’s Ukraine Mess Is Just An Extension of His Russia MessPost + Comments (170)

President Fathead Has No Idea What the Fuck is Going On

by John Cole|  October 11, 20193:32 pm| 145 Comments

This post is in: Military, The Trump Doctrine, Just Shut the Fuck Up

Awesome:

President Donald Trump falsely claimed on Thursday that the United States has no troops in Syria.
Trump was defending his decision to remove American troops from a part of northern Syria that Turkey wanted to attack. Speaking to reporters on the White House lawn, Trump asserted, “We have no soldiers in Syria.”

“We’ve won, we beat ISIS, and we beat ’em badly and decisively. We have no soldiers. The last thing I want to do is bring thousands and thousands of soldiers in and defeat everybody again. We’ve already done that,” Trump said.

Facts First: The US still has about 1,000 soldiers in Syria, military officials have told CNN and other news outlets, and the troops Trump removed from the area of the Turkish incursion offensive were not removed from the country
.
Jonathan Hoffman, chief Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement on Tuesday: “We have made no changes to our force presence in Syria at this time.”
Less than an hour after Trump made his Thursday claim that there are “no soldiers in Syria,” a senior State Department official told reporters that the US military mission in Syria is ongoing.

“We had and still have a significant military mission there to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS, also to maintain the stability of northeast Syria and the region given our other critical missions in the Near East,” the official said on a conference call conducted on condition of anonymity.

Not only do we have troops in the region, but, well, the inevitable has happened:

A contingent of U.S. Special Forces has been caught up in Turkish shelling against U.S.-backed Kurdish positions in northern Syria, days after President Donald Trump told his Turkish counterpart he would withdraw U.S. troops from certain positions in the area.

Newsweek has learned through both an Iraqi Kurdish intelligence official and senior Pentagon official that Special Forces operating on Mashtenour hill in the majority-Kurdish city of Kobani fell under artillery fire from Turkish forces conducting their so-called “Operation Peace Spring” against Kurdish fighters backed by the U.S. but considered terrorist organizations by Turkey.

The senior Pentagon official said that Turkish forces should be aware of U.S. positions “down to the grid.” The official could not specify the exact number of personnel present, but indicated they were “small numbers below company level,” so somewhere between 15 and 100 troops.

Meanwhile:

Five Isis militants have broken out of a prison in northern Syria after Turkish shelling nearby, a spokesman in the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has said.

The detainees escaped from a prison in Qamishli city, Marvan Qamishlo said.

In times like these I calm myself by chanting my favorite soothing mantras- “pallets of money on the airstrip” and “but her emails.”

President Fathead Has No Idea What the Fuck is Going OnPost + Comments (145)

The Kurdish Mess

by John Cole|  October 7, 20195:50 pm| 54 Comments

This post is in: The Trump Doctrine

Mistermix and Adam have already discussed the Kurdish disaster, but just a few extra points. If it is not immediately obvious what has happened here, President Geoffrey Baratheon, a narcissist and imbecile of the first order, got on the phone and just blabbed his fat mouth and completely gave up the farm without having ANY idea what he was talking about or ANY idea what the ramifications of this would be. As a narcissist of the first order, he thinks he knows everything, and combined with his insatiable greed and inability to think more than a half step down the road, thought there is nothing in it for us (and by us, I mean Trump Inc.), and just said whatever it takes to get Erdogan to flatter him.

Because our unscripted and uninformed imbecile does these calls alone while hopped up on adderall and lounging on silk sheets littered with double cheeseburger wrappers, none of the people who actually know things were informed of the call and allowed to offer input prior to our during the call. Once again, blabbermouth completely blindsided the pentagon and DOD, anyone and everyone in national security and foreign policy, as well as, you know, the Kurds. So blindsided were they that Sec. Def. initially tweeted and released a statement that the DoD does not agree with the President. It has since been removed.

It’s worth noting that we just forced the Kurds to bulldoze their defense position with the promise that we would defend them.

So, yeah. Solid work, Republicans. I have no idea how we dig our way out of this mess, but I imagine we’ll start to hear a lot of Obama blaming because, you know, why not?

The Kurdish MessPost + Comments (54)

Watching the Disinformation Being Made in Real Time: The New York Times Reported Some New Information On How the Whistleblower Filed His Complaint and Fox’s John Roberts Teed It Up as a Conspiracy for the President to Swing at During His Press Conference

by Adam L Silverman|  October 2, 20193:35 pm| 222 Comments

This post is in: America, Election 2016, Election Year, Foreign Affairs, Impeachment Inquiry, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine, The Whistleblower Saga

The New York Times has reported greater detail of how the Intelligence Community whistleblower went about bringing his complaint. We already knew, from previous reporting, that he or she first tried to go through the anonymous internal whistleblower complaint hotline at their own, home agency. This then triggered that agency’s counsel to coordinate with the White House Counsel’s Office, the National Security Council Counsel’s Office, and the Department of Justice. When the whistleblower learned of this, he or she decided they needed to find a way to get the concerns before Congress as soon as possible and this is where today’s New York Times‘ reporting starts off:

The Democratic head of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, learned about the outlines of a C.I.A. officer’s concerns that President Trump had abused his power days before the officer filed a whistle-blower complaint, according to a spokesman and current and former American officials.

The early account by the future whistle-blower shows how determined he was to make known his allegations that Mr. Trump asked Ukraine’s government to interfere on his behalf in the 2020 election. It also explains how Mr. Schiff knew to press for the complaint when the Trump administration initially blocked lawmakers from seeing it.

The C.I.A. officer approached a House Intelligence Committee aide with his concerns about Mr. Trump only after he had had a colleague first convey them to the C.I.A.’s top lawyer. Concerned about how that initial avenue for airing his allegations through the C.I.A. was unfolding, the officer then approached the House aide. In both cases, the original accusation was vague.

The House staff member, following the committee’s procedures, suggested the officer find a lawyer to advise him and file a whistle-blower complaint. The aide shared some of what the officer conveyed to Mr. Schiff. The aide did not share the whistle-blower’s identity with Mr. Schiff, an official said.

A spotlight on the people reshaping our politics. A conversation with voters across the country. And a guiding hand through the endless news cycle, telling you what you really need to know.

“Like other whistle-blowers have done before and since under Republican and Democratic-controlled committees, the whistle-blower contacted the committee for guidance on how to report possible wrongdoing within the jurisdiction of the intelligence community,” said Patrick Boland, a spokesman for Mr. Schiff.

Mr. Schiff’s aides followed procedures involving the C.I.A. officer’s accusations, Mr. Boland said. They referred the C.I.A. officer to an inspector general and advised him to seek legal counsel.

Mr. Schiff never saw any part of the complaint or knew precisely what the whistle-blower would deliver, Mr. Boland said.

“At no point did the committee review or receive the complaint in advance,” he said. He said the committee received the complaint the night before releasing it publicly last week and noted that came three weeks after the administration was legally mandated to turn it over to Congress. The director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, acting on the advice of his top lawyer and the Justice Department, had blocked the inspector general for the intelligence community, Michael Atkinson, from turning over the complaint sooner.

Much more at the link, some of it previously reported.

There’s nothing actually shocking here. The whistleblower, concerned he needed to get the information to Congress ASAP, approached a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to seek guidance on how to do so. That staffer told the whistleblower to make a formal complaint under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA) to the appropriate inspector general – either the IG at their own agency or the Intelligence Community Inspector General. This is what the whistleblower did. He or she filed the complaint with Mark Atkinson, the Intelligence Community Inspector general.

Brad Moss, a national security lawyer who works with Mark Zaid, who is currently of counsel for the whistleblower’s attorney Andrew Bakaj, and who is walled off from the case so he can publicly comment, provides the Office of the Director of National Intelligence guidance for bringing a whistleblower complaint.

For everyone reviewing that NYT piece and screaming "oh my lord, the WBer went to the HPSCI initially before the IG!?!", here is the relevant DNI guidance on "protected disclosures".

See something familiar in terms of which entities can be approached? pic.twitter.com/Tvc1EOBgr3

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) October 2, 2019

Here’s the link to the guidance at the ODNI website.

So while The New York Times‘ reporting is interesting, as it fleshes out the timeline and presents more context for all of us, there’s nothing irregular, strange, unprofessional, unethical, and/or illegal here. Enter Fox News’ John Roberts. Roberts had the first two questions at the President’s 2 PM EDT press conference. His second question teed the President up by framing this new reporting as a conspiracy between Congressman Schiff and the whistleblower, intimating that Congressman Schiff actually directed the complaint, fabricated the key accusations, and basically created his own need for oversight to drive impeachment. The President, as I’m sure you’re shocked to learn, took Roberts’ line of bullshit and ran with it.

Fox News gets the first question and Trump immediately goes on a lengthy rant. He ultimately accuses Adam Schiff of "a criminal act" and "treason." pic.twitter.com/97fJSFs6SQ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 2, 2019

Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, is already pushing the President’s and John Robert’s take on The New York Times‘ reporting.

BREAKING –> Chairman Adam Schiff just got caught orchestrating with the whistleblower before the complaint was ever filed. Democrats have rigged this process from the start.https://t.co/oMdSGByYtf

— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) October 2, 2019

As has RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel.

This is a stunning indictment of this impeachment charade.

Schiff got a heads up on all this.

His team then advised the “whistleblower” how to proceed, like getting a Clinton/Schumer lawyer who donated to Biden.

Who’s colluding now?https://t.co/qLDM3AYHmO

— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) October 2, 2019

If I had to make a professional estimate, as soon as The New York Times‘ story was reported, a set of disinformation talking points was prepared and quickly circulated throughout the Republican, movement conservative, and conservative news and digital information media ecosystems framing the reporting this way. This is why Roberts’ framed the reporting in the way he did, in line with the disinformation now being pushed, which was done to tee up the President’s response at the press conference.

We’ve just watched the disinformation process in real time.

And Congressman Schiff has decided to push back directly on the disinformation.

When a whistleblower seeks guidance, staff advises them to get counsel and go to an IG.

That’s what they’re supposed to do.

Unlike a president pressing a foreign leader to dig up dirt on a political opponent.

That’s not what a president is supposed to do.

And we all know it. https://t.co/dzVAFGpMen

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) October 2, 2019

Open thread!

 

 

Watching the Disinformation Being Made in Real Time: The New York Times Reported Some New Information On How the Whistleblower Filed His Complaint and Fox’s John Roberts Teed It Up as a Conspiracy for the President to Swing at During His Press ConferencePost + Comments (222)

Let’s Say You Wanted To Destabilize Half a Dozen Countries All at Once…

by Adam L Silverman|  September 30, 20198:26 pm| 136 Comments

This post is in: America, Election 2016, Election Year, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine

If you wanted to bring down the governments of, at least, 3 of the 5 Five Eyes countries (US, UK, AUS) and several other western (Italy) and western oriented (Ukraine) governments, what has been reported on today would be a good way to do it. You’ve got at least five legitimacy crises being created by this that will at the very least weaken the stability of the governments in each state. I really do wonder what is on the transcripts of the calls between the President and Putin that have been stashed in the National Security Council’s Directorate of Intelligence’s code word access only computer system.

Open thread!

Let’s Say You Wanted To Destabilize Half a Dozen Countries All at Once…Post + Comments (136)

Politico Confirms and Validates the Whistleblower’s Allegation That White House Staff Are Misclassifying Records of the President’s Communications With Foreign Leaders

by Adam L Silverman|  September 26, 20194:09 pm| 162 Comments

This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Election Year, Foreign Affairs, Impeachment, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine

Well would you look at that!

NEW: Former Trump official confirms that WH started placing Trump call transcripts into NSC’s codeword system—effectively concealing them—sometime after Mexico, Australia transcript leaks in 2017.
Experts say doing that poses whole host of natsec risks. https://t.co/WpcngAUS1K

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) September 26, 2019

From Natasha Bertrand at Politico (emphasis mine):

After 2017, when verbatim transcripts of his conversations with the leaders of Australian and Mexico were leaked to the press, the White House began to restrict the number of officials who had access to the transcripts. One former Trump administration official confirmed that the White House started placing transcripts into the codeword system after those leaks.

April Doss, who served as senior minority counsel for the Russia investigation on the Senate Intelligence Committee and, prior to that, as a top attorney at the National Security Agency, said the S//OC//NF designation of the memo “seems like a typical level of classification for that kind of call.”

That classification indicates that the disclosure of the call would cause “serious damage” to national security, cannot be disseminated by anyone except the originator, and is prohibited from disclosure to foreign nationals. A code word classification, meanwhile, is top secret—a level higher than secret—and then further compartmentalized by adding a code word so that only those who have been cleared for each code word can see it.

Doss said it would be “highly unusual” for this kind of routine call between world leaders to be placed into a system that’s used for information about the nation’s most highly compartmented programs. “It risks undermining a whole host of important national security activities,” she said, noting that “most if not all” officials who would need to have access to call readouts as part of carrying out their regular duties in advising on foreign affairs and implementing the administration’s policies “would not have access” to the codeword system.

The president has ultimate classification authority and it’s an open legal question whether he’s bound by executive orders, including one signed by Obama in 2009 that says information can’t be classified in order to “conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error” or “prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency.”

But it would be squarely within the whistleblower’s rights, as governed by the 1998 Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, to sound the alarm over the potential violation of that executive order, Doss said—especially if it was done by the president’s staff. That in turn could at least partly be why the IC IG considered it to be within the intelligence community’s purview, despite the DNI’s determination that it fell outside their jurisdiction.

A former intelligence official who served on Obama’s National Security Council, but who wished to remain anonymous to discuss the NSC’s codeword-level system, agreed that storing a transcript on that system “would severely limit those personnel able to view it.”

While limited in what he could disclose about the system without revealing classified information, the official said, “The bottom line is that if the administration attempted to upload the transcript to that system it would have been to make it nearly impossible to share. The system was not intended for unclassified material.”

He added that he’d “never” seen a presidential transcript stored there. Pfeiffer said that he could not recall ever seeing a transcript stored there, but said it would’ve only been possible if a president’s calls “touched on compartmented matters requiring that protection.”

As I delineated this morning, misclassifying this information by upclassifying it so it can be “locked down” prevents those who need to know this information from actually being able to access it and know it. Doing this to protect the President from himself, creates a serious insider threat and counterintelligence problem for the United States because it makes it almost impossible for senior national security and intelligence personnel to know what they need to know to both accurately and effectively carry out US national security and foreign policy, as well as to protect US interests because they do not know what the President is saying to, hearing from, agreeing with, and/or agreeing to do in his conversations with foreign leaders. The fact that the people that the President has hired into senior political appointments at the White House are unable to control themselves enough to not settle scores between themselves by viciously leaking about each other and the President to the press is not an excuse to mishandle and misclassify US government information. It is a good reason to hire better and more professional people.

And since the White House Counsel’s Office allegedly approved doing this, Don McGahn, Pat Cipollone, and their staff need to be brought before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to explain what it was and is they’re doing regarding classification of information. Their clearances should also be stripped and their access to classified information stopped immediately.

Politico Confirms and Validates the Whistleblower’s Allegation That White House Staff Are Misclassifying Records of the President’s Communications With Foreign LeadersPost + Comments (162)

The Acting DNI Publicly Testifies Before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

by Adam L Silverman|  September 26, 20198:52 am| 223 Comments

This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Election Year, Foreign Affairs, Impeachment, Information Warfare, Open Threads, Politics, Russia, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine

Vice Admiral (ret) Maguire, the Acting Director of National Intelligence and Senate confirmed Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, is testifying publicly before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) at 9:00 AM EDT this morning. HPSCI’s own live stream for you all is below. HPSCI has also now posted  both the now declassified whistleblower’s complaint that touched all this off, as well as Michael Atkinson’s, the Intelligence Community Inspector General, letter regarding the complaint.

From Congressman Schiff:

“The Committee this morning will be releasing the declassified whistleblower complaint that it received late last night from the ODNI. It is a travesty that it was held up this long.

“This complaint should never have been withheld from Congress. It exposed serious wrongdoing, and was found both urgent and credible by the Inspector General.

“This complaint is a roadmap for our investigation, and provides significant information for the Committee to follow up on with other witnesses and documents. And it is corroborated by the call record released yesterday.

“I want to thank the whistleblower for having the courage to come forward, despite the reprisals they have already faced from the president and his acolytes. We will do everything in our power to protect this whistleblower, and every whistleblower, who comes forward.

“The public has a right to see the complaint and what it reveals.”

If you want your own copies, I’m attaching them here. I’m just now digging into both – they’re not long – and will have more thoughts on them later today/this evening.

Here’s the whistleblower’s complaint:

20190812_-_whistleblower_complaint_unclass

And here’s the ICIG’s letter regarding the complaint:

20190826_-_icig_letter_to_acting_dni_unclass

Here’s the live stream of this morning’s testimony:

Open thread!

The Acting DNI Publicly Testifies Before the House Permanent Select Committee on IntelligencePost + Comments (223)

A Few Thoughts on the Attack on the Saudi Oil Facility

by Adam L Silverman|  September 16, 20199:40 pm| 70 Comments

This post is in: America, Foreign Affairs, Iran, Israel, Military, Open Threads, Politics, Saudi Arabia, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine

While we all wait to actually see something that resembles actual evidence, as opposed to speculation and assertions, of who is responsible for Saturday’s attack on the Saudi oil facility, I think there are several things to keep in mind. The first is that the administration in general and the President, the Secretary of State, and the US Special Representative for Iran do not have any real credibility in any of their public statements. You will undoubtedly remember that all three of them went all in on Iran being responsible for the two rounds of tanker attacks in port in the UAE and just underway off the UAE’s coasts earlier in the summer. You’ll notice that those assertions were not only quickly contested by the ship owners and the UAE. And you have also probably noticed that all three stopped talking about them shortly after the initial round of public bluster. So until or unless someone with some credibility comes out and provides some verification that the Iranians actually conducted Saturday’s attack on the Saudi refinery, all assertions from the administration should be taken with a very large grain of salt. And this goes even more for anything the Saudis state publicly, as well as the Israelis. Both Muhammad bin Salman and Bibi Netanyahu have their own reasons for wanting to place the blame for this on Iran. And both would really like the US to fight Iran for them to the last American Soldier, Sailor, Airman, Marine, DOD and Service civilian, and contractor. Is it possible that Iran is responsible? Yes it is. What we don’t know right now is how plausible or probably it is.

What I think is going to happen here is that the President will bluster a bit more on Twitter or in press gaggles about Iran, though, apparently, the Special Representative has told Congressional staffers that the President is still open to engagement with Iran. So I expect that we’ll see a replay of what happened with the two rounds of tanker attacks from this past summer. Several days of Presidential bluster on Twitter and in press gaggles about Iran being responsible and what the US could do, followed by the Secretary of State and the US Special Representatives trying to both back up the tough talk, while doing whatever it is they’re doing. If no evidence is actually ever presented, or contrary evidence comes out, then the whole thing will just be dropped.

I do not think we’re going to see a US military response. A one off strike, either lobbing a couple of missiles or a US Air Force or Naval aviation strike, would be both tactically and strategically pointless. All it would do is rally the just attacked Iranian populace to support the Iranian government. As I’ve written about here, as well as in more professional publications, an invasion of Iran would be strategic malpractice. Moreover, as I’ve written about here and elsewhere, we simply do not have the military resources right now to actually increase our military operational tempo, let alone add a third theater of war to the Afghan and Iraqi ones we are already operating in. And there’s another reason an American response is unlikely: this wasn’t an attack on Americans or American infrastructure. As far as we know so far from the reporting, no Saudis were hurt or killed. Certainly no Americans were. So any attack on Iran here would not be justifiable, it would be preemptory. Not that I think the President or the Secretary of State actually care about such things as Just War Theory. It is also hard to convince Americans to support going to war to protect Saudi oil refineries, so even the domestic politics of this would be a very difficult needle to thread.

There’s a final dynamic at work here that I think is very important, which is that the Iranians are in control of this situation, not the President, not the Secretary of State, not Muhammad bin Salman, and not Bibi Netanyahu. They also have the President’s number. They know he doesn’t want to actually get into any more wars in the Middle East and Central Asia and, in fact, wants to get out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible. They also don’t give a damn about the Trump Doctrine. The Iranians have no desire to treat the President fairly and from their perspective they’ve gotten nothing but “or else” from the US for over 40 years, with, perhaps, the exception of how President Obama treated them in the run up to and during the JCPOA negotiations. The open ended “or else” threat of the Trump Doctrine is a hollow threat for Iran. As a result, the Iranians are actually calling the shots here, not the President or anyone else. Whether the President, Secretary Pompeo, the Special Representative for Iran, or anyone else advising them recognizes this reality is something I cannot speak to.

Finally, for those looking for other resources, both subject matter experts and reporters, on the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Iran, I recommend the following.

  • Professor David Commins’ excellent book on Saudi Arabia. (Full disclosure: I know David)
  • Professor Juan Cole. Both his Twitter feed and his blog. (Full disclosure: I know Juan and have guest blogged for him in the past).
  • Professor Shibley Telhami. (Fill disclosure: I know Shibley)
  • LTG (ret) Mark Hertling, former Commanding General of US Army Europe and 1st Armored Division. (Full disclosure: I know LTG Hertling. I was the cultural advisor/senior civilian advisor for the 2nd Brigade Combat Team/1st Armored Division when he was the 1st Armored Division Commanding General)
  • Brett McGurk, former Special Envoy for Middle East Peace and for Combatting ISIS. (Full disclosure: I’ve been on secure video teleconferences with Special Envoy McGurk though I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t know me from Adam and I am Adam!)
  • GEN (ret) Barry McCaffrey.
  • Liz Sly, Washington Post Bureau Chief. (Full disclosure: I’ve known Liz for over a decade and been interviewed by her several times)
  • Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz correspondent and Netanyahu biographer.
  • Noga Tarnopolsky, who covers Israel and Palestine issues.
  • Ronen Bergman, journalist and author of Rise and Kill First, which is a history of Israel’s secret assassinations program.

Open thread!

A Few Thoughts on the Attack on the Saudi Oil FacilityPost + Comments (70)

Muhammad bin Salman’s Khashoggi Gambit: The Trump Doctrine in Action

by Adam L Silverman|  October 15, 20182:41 pm| 269 Comments

This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Election 2018, Election Year, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Politics, Popular Culture, Post-racial America, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine, Not Normal

The actual Trump Doctrine, which we’ve covered here at Balloon Juice extensively since the President gave his first campaign speech about national-security and foreign policy back in April 2016, is:

America’s allies are taking advantage of our treaty and other obligations in the national security space; America’s allies and peer competitors are ripping the US off through our trade agreements; the US should go it alone if it can’t renegotiate better deals; and only a President Trump could guarantee that the US would be treated fairly – or else. That only a President Trump could guarantee that the US would be treated fairly, whether in national security arrangements or global trade, was simply an extension of one of the major, if not the major theme of his campaign: Donald Trump would be treated fairly or else and only Donald Trump could guarantee that Americans, especially the forgotten men and women as he phrased it, would be treated fairly or else.

That the US will be treated fairly or else, and that only a President Trump could guarantee that happening became the central, unifying theme of his national security and foreign policy approach was actually a stroke of strategic communication genius. A significant amount of the President’s initial strategic communication approach was through tying his primary opponents, the Republican National Committee, and the broadcast and cable news networks in knots about treating him fairly. This included trying to get Megyn Kelly removed from debate moderation after he felt she treated him badly, as well as actually dropping out of a GOP primary debate on Fox News and holding a competing charity event for veterans because he did not like that Fox wouldn’t comply with his demands. And if they failed to do so he’d deal with them harshly. Then candidate Trump threatened his fellow primary opponents and the RNC by making it clear that if he didn’t feel he was being treated fairly by them, then the “or else” would be his running as an independent candidate, thereby splitting the Republican vote for president, and handing the election to the then presumed Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton.

By making this the dominant theme of his national security and foreign policy approach, he was able to make a singular through line for his campaign – “I, Donald Trump, will be treated fairly or else by the GOP, the RNC, and the news media; only I, Donald Trump, can guarantee that you the forgotten men and women of America are treated fairly in regards to both domestic politics and foreign policy; and only I, Donald Trump, can guarantee that the US will be treated fairly or else there will be serious and severe repercussions for the GOP, the RNC, the news media, elected and appointed officials, and America’s allies, partners, and peer competitors”. Here was the simple through line to connect Make America Great Again both domestically and internationally by placing America first. It is also the essence of the real Trump Doctrine: President Trump and by extension the forgotten men and women of America, as well as America itself, will be treated fairly or else.

Muhammad bin Salman’s strategy for the wetwork operation against Jamal Khashoggi is to leverage the Trump Doctrine in order to allow him to get away with having Khashoggi to be vanished by rendition, or as is now reported and most likely to have happened, extra-judicially executed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The Crown Prince, who is popularly known as MBS, like so many other authoritarian and autocratic foreign leaders, has figured out that the President makes his decisions on whether he feels he is being treated fairly. If he feels that he is, then one can pretty much do whatever they want. If he feels that he isn’t, then the President goes on the offensive to deliver the “or else”. MBS believes he can get away with this because the President has publicly made it clear that as long as the Saudis spend money purchasing his properties or at his properties, then he likes them because they are treating him fairly.

At one of his 2015 campaign rallies the President said:

Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.

The Permanent Saudi Mission to the UN is housed in Trump World Tower across the street from the UN. The Kingdom owns the entire 45th floor. The Trump Tower in Chicago is running a profit, as is the Trump International Hotel and Tower in New York, largely because of bookings from the Saudis. Even as almost all the other Trump branded properties posted significant losses, especially his beloved Scottish golf courses. Jared Kushner has also been seeking financing from the Saudis for his personal business interests. At this time it appears that funding stream did not come through. The lack of funding, however, has not kept the Crown Prince from bragging that he has Jared in his pocket, which, once reported, MBS denied.

Muhammad bin Salman is gambling that because the Saudis spend lavishly on the President’s private business interests, and that because the President doesn’t understand the terms of what the Saudis have negotiated in regard to their potential purchases of US military equipment, which are really just a bunch of letters of intent that have yet to be finalized., that the President will provide him with the plausible deniability he needs to get away with having Khashoggi vanished and mist likely extra-judicially executed. Despite the fact that MBS negotiated a huge discount from Jared “The Hidden Genius” Kushner and guarantees that approximately 50% of the weapons would be built in Saudi Arabia, which means that the sale, if it were actually finalized, would not significantly increase US manufacturing or jobs.

Right on schedule this morning the President announced that Saudi King Salman, who is actually just an infirm figure head, stated the Saudis didn’t do anything to Khashoggi, but it could have been rogue killers.

Just spoke to the King of Saudi Arabia who denies any knowledge of whatever may have happened “to our Saudi Arabian citizen.” He said that they are working closely with Turkey to find answer. I am immediately sending our Secretary of State to meet with King!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 15, 2018

https://twitter.com/abbydphillip/status/1051825703623233538

You know, rogue killers who just happened to be traveling on Saudi Arabian diplomatic passports, on Saudi Arabian government jets, one of whom was an autopsy specialist who happened to pack his bone saw, who just happened to be hanging out at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul when Jamal Khashoggi walked in to get his official Saudi marriage documents signed, and who just so happened decided that Khashoggi looked like a good guy to practice a little recreational wetwork and improvisational autopsying on. Which would, I suppose, explain, why the Saudi Arabians had a professional cleaning team in their Istanbul consulate this morning, which left shortly before the Turkish police were allowed to enter the building.

Journalists at Saudi consulate in Istanbul spotting cleaners coming into building just before Turkish investigators are scheduled to arrive to probe Jamal Khashoggi disappearance (via APTN feed) pic.twitter.com/iAAjM0PpGu

— Borzou Daragahi 🖊🗒 (@borzou) October 15, 2018

Cleaning crew was brought in to #SaudiArabia consulate in Istanbul before Riyadh reportedly agreed to #Turkey's demand for a search of the premise where journo #Khashoggi was las seen entering. pic.twitter.com/xTMGIB8Vfs

— Abdullah Bozkurt (@abdbozkurt) October 15, 2018

As long as the President places being treated fairly, and specifically his subjective understanding of being personally treated fairly, as the central consideration of US policy, we will see more of this type of behavior from the authoritarians, autocrats, despots, tyrants, neo-nationalists, and neo-fascists that the President finds so admirable. During his 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl, he all but gave Putin a green light, and anyone else who was paying attention and might have similar interests, to keep assassinating people – from political rivals to opposition figures to journalists to defectors from Russia’s intelligence services – as long as they’re not American citizens and the wet work doesn’t take place in the US.

While there is an old political science/international relations axiom that state’s don’t have friends, they have interests, the Trump Doctrine has turned the US into a transactional state. A transactional state being run by the head of an ongoing white collar criminal and organized criminal enterprise. It is no surprise that authoritarians and aspiring authoritarians like Muhammad bin Salman are developing strategies that leverage the treat the President fairly part of the Trump Doctrine to get away with whatever they want in order to avoid the “or else” response.

We are off the looking glass and through the map.

Open thread!

Muhammad bin Salman’s Khashoggi Gambit: The Trump Doctrine in ActionPost + Comments (269)

The Text of the Statement Signed by the President and Kim Jong Un at the Singapore Summit

by Adam L Silverman|  June 12, 20187:41 am| 159 Comments

This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Election 2018, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Politics, Popular Culture, Post-racial America, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine, Not Normal

From CNN:

Joint Statement of President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea at the Singapore Summit

President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) held a first, historic summit in Singapore on June 12, 2018.
President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un conducted a comprehensive, in-depth and sincere exchange of opinions on the issues related to the establishment of new US-DPRK relations and the building of a lasting and robust peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK, and Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Convinced that the establishment of new US-DPRK relations will contribute to the peace and prosperity of the Korean Peninsula and of the world, and recognizing that mutual confidence building can promote the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un state the following:
  1. The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new US-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
  2. The United States and DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
  3. Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula
  4. The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.
Having acknowledged that the US-DPRK summit — the first in history — was an epochal event of great significance in overcoming decades of tensions and hostilities between the two countries and for the opening up of a new future, President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un commit to implement the stipulations in the joint statement fully and expeditiously. The United States and the DPRK commit to hold follow-on negotiations, led by the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and a relevant high-level DPRK official, at the earliest possible date, to implement the outcomes of the US-DPRK summit.
President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea have committed to cooperate for the development of new US-DPRK relations and for the promotion of peace, prosperity, and the security of the Korean Peninsula and of the world.
DONALD J. TRUMP
President of the United States of America
KIM JONG UN
Chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
June 12, 2018
Sentosa Island
Singapore

Joe Cirincione provides the analysis:

I honestly don’t think that Trump realizes that this has been done before, that this has taken place before. Just not by him. The right-wing of the GOP killed the previous efforts.

— Joe Cirincione (@Cirincione) June 12, 2018

There is nothing new here in this statement. As I wrote on May 1st (emphasis mine):

When you hear or read Kim or other DPRK officials calling for denuclearization, part of what they mean is for the US to remove the nuclear umbrella that it provides to Japan and the ROK, if not the removal of the US military from the Korean Peninsula. Not giving up the DPRK’s nuclear deterrent. Sue Mi Terry, formerly a senior Korea analyst at the CIA, provides an explanation of what denuclearization means to Kim:

She said it’s significant that Kim spoke not of removing nuclear weapons from North Korea, but rather of the “denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” as a whole. That formulation by the Kim government is “not new,” Terry told me, and has been accompanied in the past with demands for measures to preserve the regime’s security such as the signing of a peace treaty to finally end the Korean War, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea, and the end of the U.S.-South Korean military alliance, which in turn would terminate the protection the United States extends to South Korea through its nuclear weapons. Hence, talk of a nuclear-free peninsula despite the fact that South Korea doesn’t have nuclear weapons. (In this respect, Kim was right to assert that he was simply echoing the policies of his father, who was also quoted by Chinese media as committing to the denuclearization of the peninsula even as he persisted in developing the nation’s nuclear-weapons arsenal.)

What Kim is talking about is not what the President or anyone on his team is talking about when they talk about denuclearization. Before US-DPRK negotiations have ever begun we have a fundamental mismatch of what the key term means. This will make negotiating more difficult if there is no agreement to what the key terms mean and key issues actually are. There is little doubt that President Moon knows exactly what Kim means when he talks about denuclearization. Moreover, President Moon is no doubt very clear about the President not wanting to keep US military personnel in the ROK. The President, per his longstanding belief dating back to 1987, sees this as a waste of money and another example of America’s allies and partners taking advantage of it and playing the US for suckers.

While this is all significantly better than threats, escalations, and preparations for war, Kim got what he needed out of this summit and the President really didn’t. Kim’s now met with the President of the United States, which elevates his status internally and makes US allies like Japan very nervous. He got to go out on the town in Singapore after his arrival. The President has still floated the idea of a possible invite for a follow on summit in the US – either at the White House or Mar a Lago. The President has made vague statements of assurances of that an agreement will guarantee Kim’s regime’s survival, as well as significant economic aid. And Kim hasn’t had to do anything he wasn’t going to do anyway in exchange for all of this. Including agreeing to do anything substantial as a result of yesterday’s summit.

The President and his supporters will try to push this as a huge win over the next several months heading into the midterm elections. A sign of initial diplomatic and foreign policy success to compete with and cancel out the coming bad news that will accompany the trade war and counter tariffs that will result from the tariffs that the President had demanded and insists will Make America Great again for the forgotten men and women of America who are forgotten no more. Slowly, however, reality will intrude. Kim will continue to not give an inch; he’ll simply play good Supreme Leader in juxtaposition to playing bad Supreme Leader last year.

Updated at 8:oo AM EDT: (h/t Cheryl Rofer in comments)

The President appears to have caught everyone off guard by stating he’s going to stop further Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental, and Multinational (JIIM) military exercises with our South Korean and Japanese allies.

EXCLUSIVE: President Trump tells @GStephanopoulos "I wanted to stop the war games, I thought they were very provocative, but I also think they're very expensive," when asked if he discussed pulling U.S. troops out of South Korea with Kim Jong Un. https://t.co/ANdmOzpPd9 pic.twitter.com/k015aM4PH9

— ABC News (@ABC) June 12, 2018

South Korean Blue House spox: “At this moment, the meaning and intention of President Trump's remarks requires more clear understanding.”

— Elise Hu (@elisewho) June 12, 2018

Optics over substance.

Open thread!

(ETA: I fixed the missing Cirincione tweet that WP ate.)

The Text of the Statement Signed by the President and Kim Jong Un at the Singapore SummitPost + Comments (159)

US-DPRK Summit Part II: The Summiting!!!

by Adam L Silverman|  June 11, 20189:50 pm| 169 Comments

This post is in: America, Election 2016, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Politics, Popular Culture, Post-racial America, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine, Not Normal

As we wait for actual news to come out of the initial bilateral meeting between the President and Kim Jong Un with only interpreters present, just a few thoughts of what to look for as the evening/night here in the US wears on.

  1. The initial bilateral meeting is only the President, Kim, and interpreters. No note takers. This is significant and may lead to completely different read outs of the meeting. With the US presenting a read out that indicates the meeting went one way and the DPRK releasing one that contradicts it. Or, as has been the case so often, the US not releasing a read out until forced to because the other party to the meeting released one that cast the President in a bad light. Or details leaked from within the administration that did the same thing. This is why you never go into one of these meetings without your own interpreter and your own note taker!
  2. It has been reported that the communique has already been written and agreed to. While this isn’t all that uncommon, it will be interesting to see how different the communique is from either or both of the read outs, let alone the leaks, from the initial bilateral meetings or from whatever the President tweets once the summit is over.
  3. Earlier today it was reported that Secretary Mattis was unsure if a reduction of US forces in South Korea is on the agenda for discussion. While I doubt that Secretary Pompeo would have allowed it to be part of the structured discussion in the second meeting, given how the President operates it is one of the potential wild cards that could throw everyone for a loop.
  4. Despite stating otherwise on Friday before leaving for the G7 summit, the President will not be bringing up the DPRK’s human rights issues, so don’t expect that to be addressed in the read outs or the communique.
  5. It was reported last week that Kim’s envoy, Kim Yong Chol, pitched a development opportunity to the President when he met with him last week in the White House. Specifically a casino development project in the DPRK. If this is indeed an accurate report, then the Trump Doctrine, “I will be treated fairly or else”, is in play. (I’ll have more on the Trump Doctrine tomorrow in regard to Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in The Atlantic. The Bottom Line Up Front is that Goldberg has mistaken sloganeering for a strategic narrative.)
  6. Keep in mind that Kim has already gotten what he needed out of this summit. He’s meeting with the President of the United States; he got to go out on the town last night; a possible invite for a follow on summit in the US – either at the White House or Mar a Lago – has been floated by the President; rumored assurances of his regimes survival and significant economic aid. Up to this point Kim hasn’t had to do anything he wasn’t going to do anyway in exchange for all of this.
  7. Watch to see if the schedule is stuck to or if the initial bilateral meeting between the President and Kim runs late.

Stay frosty!

Open thread!

US-DPRK Summit Part II: The Summiting!!!Post + Comments (169)

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