Charles W. King

Assessment by American and Israeli intelligence agencies of the April 13th strikes against the chemical weapons facilities of Bashar Al Assad have revealed that the stikes did little to impede the regime's ability to use chemical weapons against its people. This prompts the question of what was the point of these strikes, and why has the United States, France, and United Kingdom not continued attacking Syrian facilities. The cessation of strikes suggests that their objective was not to render the Assad regime incapable of using chemical weapons, but a number of possible objectives remain. One is that the strike made the regime unwilling rather than unable to use chemical weapons in the future. Time will tell if the strikes did deter the future use of chemical weapons, but current indications are not encouraging. Even if Assad does not use chemical weapons again, that does not mean that deterrence was the intent, in total or in part, of strikes.

Being seen to done something, and something violent, in response the use of chemical weapons is important for the Trump Administration both at home and abroad. Abroad the United States needs to demonstrate that it’s longstanding threats of harsh treatment for any government that uses chemical weapons are credible. With little ability to implement harsher sanctions or further isolate the Syrian government, military strikes were the logical choice to demonstrate American resolve and ensure credibility. However, the relative ineffectiveness of the strikes dents this credibility somewhat.

The Trump Administration also has obvious domestic political motivations for using military force against Syria, it puts the Administration in direct contrast to their bête-noire, the administration of Barack Obama. Assad’s forces also used chemical weapons during the Obama Administration, crossing what that administration described at a “Red Line”. The Obama Administration was roundly criticized for its response to this line being crossed, which was to implement, through the United Nations, a disarmament program we now know to be ineffective.

Making foreign policy based on domestic political considerations is dangerous. Neither Woodrow Wilson nor Franklin Delano Roosevelt would have come to the aid of France and the U.K. if they had relied on the opinion of the American people. William McKinley was unable to resist the overwhelming push for war with Spain in 1898.

While the resulting victory in the Spanish-American War proved beneficial for the United States as it expanded its reach in the Caribbean and Western Pacific public opinion rarely coincides with good strategy. The First and Second World Wars are prime examples of when the United States had clear strategic interests but was prevented from acting on them by domestic politics.

At the end of World War Two Harry Truman ordered the use of atomic bombs against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which remain controversial to this day. Having advocated for its development and worked on producing atomic weapons, dozens of scientists signed a petition against the use of atomic bombs against people. Despite this, and the fervent belief of Generals like Curtis LeMay that the Japanese would surrender due to conventional bombing before an invasion was necessary, Truman chose to use the atomic bombs against Japanese cities.

Especially in democratic systems doing nothing can be extremely difficult, despite it often being the best way to secure long term strategic objectives. Frequently the premise that advisors are presented with is to recommend a course of action, which excludes the possibility of restraint. Policy-makers should not conflate restraint with inaction or indecision. Choosing not to act is a valid and important strategic choice that must be part of the full range of options for foreign policy.

Charles W. King

On April 13th, 2018, the Trump administration bombed a number sites in Syria in response to Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons in the ongoing Syrian Civil War. In the aftermath much has been made of the fact that the United States warned the Russian government that the strikes were incoming. In the current political climate in the U.S. this kind of coordination with Russia is being characterized in some quarters as further evidence in support of the allegations that the Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russia. Regardless of these allegations, the act of warning the Russian government of the April 13th strikes is not unusual. De-escalation procedures like this are common, and are a specific strategic choice that the United States and other have made in the past for good reason.

Throughout the Korean War and the Vietnam War both North Korean and North Vietnamese forces received substantial aid from the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union. Both sides maintained that American forces were not engaged with, killing, and being killed by Chinese and Russian forces. This was a fiction agreed upon by all sides, particularly in the air wars over Korea and Vietnam. Many of the pilots were Russian or Chinese, as were the crews and officers of much of North Korea’s and North Vietnam’s air defenses. The American, Chinese, and Soviet governments understood that if they admitted that their pilots were regularly engaged with forces of the opposing super-powers the conflicts would escalate from regional one to global, and likely nuclear, wars. Despite the intense competition between the world powers, this kind of escalation was not something they desired, and the mutually agreed upon fiction allowed that. A famous example of this is illustrated in the theatrical depiction of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Roger Donaldson’s Thirteen Days. An American pilot returns from taking pictures of missile sites in Cuba with what are clearly bullet holes in his aircraft, but having received instructions from the White House he jokingly tells his ground crew that he, “Ran into a flock of sparrows.” Admitting he had taken anti-aircraft fire would have precipitated a response that would have escalated the conflict just as the United States and Soviet Union were attempting to reign it in.

Warning rivals or even the targets of incoming attacks is also a long standing de-escalation practice, though not always a successful one. On July 22, 1946, the King David Hotel in Jerusalem was bombed. The southern wing of the hotel housed the central offices of the government of the British Mandate of Palestine, the target of the bombing. The attack was carried out by the Irgun, a right-wing militant zionist organization. Attempts were made by the Irgun to warn the British, but what happened remains controversial. What is for certain is that the hotel was not evacuated and ninety-one people were killed. The attempted warnings are nonetheless important for understanding the Irgun’s objectives. The bombing would doubtless be an escalation, but the target was the hotel, a symbol of British rule, rather than the people. By trying to mitigate the loss of life the Irgun attempted to escalate the conflict, but not too much. The destruction of building and other capital expenditures without killing the people who work there remains an important, if difficult practice in the conduct of warfare.

The decisions to inform the Russian government of incoming strikes against chemical weapons facilities in Syria is in keeping with a long-standing practice of de-escalation. Preventing the direct engagement between forces of two global powers in a warzone where they both possess a military presence is difficult but essential. The use of warnings to ensure that attacks destroy capital investments in things like weapons programs without loss of life is a feature of modern warfare along with precisions weapons and advanced surveillance. Warning the Russians of this particular attack demonstrates its limited objectives and the desire to prevent escalation to a conflict between the United States and the Russian Federation.

Charles W. King

At a recent speech on the state of the Russian Federation Russian President Vladimir Putin announced to the world a number of new nuclear weapons. These included not only a new, longer range, intercontinental ballistic missile, but also a long range nuclear torpedo and a cruise missile that is not only capable of carrying a nuclear warhead but uses a nuclear reaction as its method of propulsion. While these weapons may seem fantastical, neither is beyond the scope of current technology. The nuclear torpedo is simply the combination of existing technologies that are already being adapted for underwater drones, and is in fact a much simpler technical problem than what many Western drones are being designed to address. The nuclear powered cruise missile is technology the United States developed as far back as the 1950’s. Engine tests were performed, but not atmospheric flight tests for the same reason the program was ultimately scrapped; the large amount of radioactivity dispersed by the engine. Western defense officials will be wise to take Putin’s statement with some skepticism, it was part of a speech with primarily a domestic Russian audience, but it cannot be discounted that the Russian Federation is developing new strategic weapons.

The United States and the Russian Federation are both investing considerable sums into their strategic weapons, but the difference between the projects being developed demonstrates the differences in American and Russian priorities. The United States’ programs consist primarily of anti-missile technology, smaller & variable yield tactical warheads, and the modernization of existing stockpiles. These projects show that the United States is focusing on the threat of smaller nuclear powers like Iran and North Korea where regional instability increases the risk of conflict, and on the safety and reliability of aging nuclear weapons. These programs will cost the United State significant amounts of money, but they represent a desire to maintain existing deterrence with nuclear powers like Russia and China and increased capability to strike small hardened targets.

In contrast the Russian focus is on new delivery systems. The various capabilities of the three delivery systems mentioned in Putin’s speech are all designed to defeat Western defensive capabilities. They also reveal that there is a profound difference in perception between the U.S. and Russia. While the United States is attempting to maintain the Cold War status quo of Mutually Assured Destruction, Russian development of new delivery systems shows that they believe the status quo has changed significantly and they need new capabilities in order to maintain a credible second strike capacity. This cannot simply be brushed off as Russian paranoia or propaganda for domestic Russian consumption. This kind of investment, at a time when the Russian economy is struggling under sanctions, is indicative of Russian geopolitical concerns.

One of the keys to effective foreign policy and diplomatic relations is to understand that foreign countries have different perceptions of history and current events. The announcement of new delivery systems for nuclear warheads demonstrates that Russian policy makers have a starkly different assessment of the nuclear balance of power than their Western counterparts. No amount of Western assurances that the deployment of anti-ballistic missile systems to Poland, Romania, or South Korea will change this view, and attempting to do so would be futile. American policy makers must recognize Russian strategic concerns, then they will be able to effectively engage diplomatically.

Charles W. King

The last time the United States Congress passed a budget on time was 1997. Since then there have been dozens of continuing resolutions, which kick the can down the road anywhere from a few months to a year, and multiple shutdowns of the federal government. These long term budgetary difficulties have significant and damaging effects on the American foreign policy and defense strategy.

The Budget Control Act of 2011 implemented sequestration in 2013. Meant as a sword of Damocles hanging over the collective necks of Congress to force them to pass a budget or suffer cuts to sectors dear to both Democratic and Republican parties that in 2011 were considered to be so harsh as to be unthinkable, since 2013 theses dramatic decreases in federal spending have become the baseline from which American policy-makers must now work.

The United States is now suffering the long term effects of these failed attempts to resolve the budget. This is because the nature of federal spending means that some things are more directly affected by budget sequestration and government shutdowns than others. Shutdowns of the federal government resulting furloughs of indeterminate length for hundreds of thousands of civilian federal employees, but military service people must stay regardless of whether or not they know they are going to be paid. These furloughs, while exempting many positions that are deemed ‘essential to national security’, significantly affect the ability of the United States to conduct foreign policy and geopolitical strategy effectively by sending home anyone whose position isn’t related to crisis response. While this retains the federal government’s ability to react to global events, its ability to plan and strategize for the future suffers.

These budgetary measures also affect different kinds of federal spending differently. It is relatively straightforward to tell federal employees to not come in to work, but for acquisitions and federal contracting the government has agreed to contracts and pays in lump sums rather than weekly paychecks. Contracts for shipbuilding for example are places almost a decade in advance in some cases. Additionally when it comes time to trim the defense budget in particular the nature of large defense acquisitions leads them to be protected by the Representatives and Senators whose states they are being built in. This is part of the reason why the Department of Defense continues to spend large amounts of money on large and expensive pieces of new kit while the budgets for training, maintenance, and readiness have suffered for decades.

In recent years the U.S. military has run in to multiple shortages of spare parts and required emergency funding for their purchase. The Seventh Fleet has experienced a number of deadly collisions that have been directly attributed to a lack of adequate training time due to lack of funding and personnel. The Department of Defense is tasked with training and equipping military forces with a vision to what new threats and military innovations may occur decades in the future. Large military assets like bombers and aircraft carriers have lifespans of forty years or more, the best of military personnel spend decades in uniform. The long term nature of defense assets and forward thinking requirements of effective foreign and defense policy is put under tremendous strain when it is unclear year-to-year or even month-to-month whether or not the Department of Defense is going to be able to train and equip its soldiers and sailors in the field. Compounded by the ease of protecting bulk expenditures than ongoing spending, the past two decades have seriously distorted the spending of the Department of Defense in ways that has been deleterious to national security. The United States desperately needs a budget process that ensures both fiscal responsibility and strategic thinking by the Department of Defense.

Charles W. King

At the height of the Cold War there existed within the Western intelligence community a cadre of analysts who specialized taking whatever their agency could get on events within the Soviet Union—human and signals intelligence, Soviet Propaganda—and attempting to divine the inner workings of the Soviet state. These Kremlin watchers, also called Kremlinologists, used the slightest hints: changes in the order of portraits and standing position overlooking parades, and the arrangement of articles in the part’s newspaper Pravda. Kremlinologists resorted to this kind of piecemeal clues to determine who was currently influential within the Soviet Politburo because getting information out the Soviet Union was extremely difficult, but knowing who was pulling the strings behind the Iron Curtain was tremendously valuable. Knowledge of who was in control of Soviet policy, what their tendencies and beliefs were, and who their rivals were could potentially be the difference between escalating a tense situation and finding a resolution that averted a third World War.

Kremlinology was a high stakes exercise in anthropology, taking what information that could be gleaned from the Soviet Union as a whole to elicit fine detail about the day to day politics of the most powerful men in the Soviet government. The Soviet government did not work like any western government, knowledge of how it did function, which was itself scarce in the West, was treasured knowledge. Even then Kremlinologists often got things wrong, or failed to predict sweeping changes in Soviet policy. The underlying assumption of Kremlinology, that Soviet politics are fundamentally different from Western politics demonstrates how the Anthropologist’s Dilemma can affect policy-making and national security in a number of dangerous ways. Knowledge of the extensive dysfunction of the Soviet Union could lead analysts to distain Soviet methods; conversely there are examples of western experts on the Soviet Union becoming disillusioned with Western liberal democracy and becoming Soviet agents. Both are examples of errors endemic to the field of anthropology, because the core assumption of anthropology is that another society is different than one’s own it becomes exceedingly tempting to categorize that society as inferior or superior. Doing this in academia is problematic; doing it in policy-making is dangerous.

Kremlinology did not disappear with the Soviet Union. The term is still used to describe analysis of the internal politics of the Russian Federation. The most famous use of anthropology by the United States in recent years may be the Human Terrain Teams that were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. These teams ended up being controversial, but they did demonstrate the fundamental value of understanding the society that American and coalition forces were operating in. On the other side of the curtain, it has been repeated many times when attempting to deal with the Soviet Union, Russian Federation, or People’s Republic of China that those governments do not understand the constraints and pressures of democratic political systems. The United States and others will continue to engage in Kremlinology, both of the Kremlin itself, and the general principal of watching the internal politics of foreign powers, but analysts and policy-makers must be cognizant of the assumptions and pitfalls inherent in such endeavors.