Another concerning aspect of General McMaster’s approach, explained Metz “is what might be called an ‘absolutist’ perspective on the use of force which posits a clear distinction between peace and war. This too has a long and deep tradition in the American ethos. For an absolutist, the objective in war is to use overwhelming force to impose your will on the enemy.”
That sort of thinking is likely to go over well in a Trump White House. But it is at odds with what Metz has described as the “realist” understanding “that in a bipolar, nuclear-armed world, force and statecraft must be inextricable.”
Of course, General McMaster wrote his book, and Metz reviewed it, twenty years before Trump named the general as the country’s twenty-sixth national security advisor. The Iraq War proved that many of the lessons learned from the Vietnam experience were unlearned too quickly. And the struggle with ISIS brings new urgency to an old question articulated by Metz about “whether the United States could again stumble into a form of armed conflict that it does not understand.”
The answer in the Trump era, when an ill-prepared and egotistical president is the commander in chief, is at once the great unknown and the great fear. There are no guarantees that Trump, or Steve Bannon, will listen to General McMaster on every issue. In fact, given the general’s stated view that the label “radical Islamic terrorism” is not helpful because terrorists are “un-Islamic,” it is quite likely that they will dismiss much of what their advisor says.
The likely, and troubling, prospect is that Trump and Bannon will hear what they want to hear from General McMaster. And what they will hear, in particular, are arguments for a dramatically extended military-industrial complex.
“Like Trump, McMaster’s positions on American grand strategy remain to be seen,” Metz wrote in a thoughtful February 2017 assessment for World Politics Review. “[McMaster] has, though, taken strong positions on the application of armed force. This means that his writing and speeches may indicate how the Trump administration in general will think about the use of the U.S. military.”
In particular, Metz suggests, General McMaster is likely to counsel a “go big or stay home” approach that may be cautious about launching wars but that is committed to winning them: “no half-measures or incremental escalation designed to send subtle messages.” The point is to be definitional and overwhelming. And, of course, that demands a very big, ever-at-the-ready military. Coupled with General McMaster’s advocacy for dramatically expanding the size of the U.S. Army—in 2016 he told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee that the army “risks being too small to secure the nation”—the “go big or stay home” strategy is a recipe for precisely the sort of dramatic increases in Pentagon spending that have been outlined in the White House budget plans advanced by OMB director Mick Mulvaney.
The wise counsel that says defense spending levels do not need to rise in order to keep America secure is not going to come from this national security advisor. It may be that Trump would never have put anyone in the position who would provide that counsel. But this does not change the fact that General McMaster seems to be determined to build up the military at the expense of every other prospect.
That’s dangerous not just in this moment but for the long-term prospects of a nation that must do more than simply prepare for the next war.
The historian Andrew Bacevich argues that the national security advisor should focus on “grand strategy.” “In this rarified atmosphere, preparing for and conducting war coexists with, and arguably should even take a backseat to, other considerations. To advance the fundamental interests of the state, the successful grand strategist orchestrates all the various elements of power. While not shrinking from the use of armed force, he or she sees war as a last resort, to be undertaken only after having exhausted all other alternatives.” Bacevich asks rhetorically: “Can General McMaster restore the distinction between grand strategy and military strategy and resubordinate the latter to the former?” The historian’s answer is a sad one. “Little reason exists to suggest that he will do so—indeed, whether he is even inclined to make the effort.”
— 13 —
THE KOCH BROTHER
Mike Pompeo
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
In the “Republican wave” election of 2010, when brothers Charles and David Koch emerged as defining figures in American politics, the greatest beneficiary of Koch Industries largess was newly elected congressman Mike Pompeo. Since his election, Pompeo has been referred to as the “Koch Brothers’ Congressman” and “the congressman from Koch.”
Now, under President Trump, Pompeo is the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
A foreign policy hawk who has fiercely opposed the Iran nuclear deal, stoked fears of Muslims in the United States and abroad and opposed closing the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, Pompeo has defended the National Security Agency’s (NSA) unconstitutional surveillance programs as “good and important work.” An advocate for the sort of secrecy that allows the government to act in our name but without our informed consent, Pompeo has even gone so far as to say that NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden “should be brought back from Russia and given due process, and I think the proper outcome would be that he would be given a death sentence.”
Pompeo is a hardliner, so much so that Human Rights Watch urgently opposed his confirmation as CIA director. “Pompeo’s responses to questions about torture and mass surveillance are dangerously ambiguous about whether he would endorse abusive practices and seek to subvert existing legal protections,” said Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno, the group’s U.S. program co-director. “Pompeo’s failure to unequivocally disavow torture and mass surveillance, coupled with his record of advocacy for surveillance of Americans and past endorsement of the shuttered CIA torture program, make clear that he should not be running the CIA.”
Pompeo’s open disregard for privacy rights in particular and civil liberties in general, as well as his penchant for extreme language and more extreme policies, marked him as an exceptionally troublesome pick to serve as the head of a powerful intelligence agency. But the Republican-controlled Senate didn’t see things that way. Pompeo was confirmed by a wider margin than most Trump picks, 66–32, when the Senate considered his nomination in January 2017. The Senate’s failure to provide proper oversight with regard to the Pompeo nomination was problematic because of his aggressive disregard for civil liberties in general and privacy rights in particular. But it was perhaps even more disturbing because the new CIA director comes with strings attached. Pompeo has assumed a position of great sensitivity as one of the most strikingly conflicted political figures in the frequently conflicted city of Washington, thanks to his ties to the privately held and frequently secretive global business empire that has played a pivotal role in advancing his political career. He is not the only Koch-tied politician in the Trump administration. UN ambassador Nikki Haley is another. OMB director Mick Mulvaney is another. EPA administrator Scott Pruitt is still another. But it is fair to say that Pompeo is the most Koched up of the bunch, and that’s a big deal, as the experience of bending to the Koch brothers does not prepare politicians to serve honorably in positions of public trust.
The Kochs were not big fans of Trump in 2016, and Trump was not a big fan of the Kochs. But as he staffed up his cabinet, Trump was looking for pliable politicians. And Koch politicians are definitionally pliable.
They are reliably pro-corporate, and reliably friendly to the sort of crony capitalism that keeps contractors not just for the military but for the intelligence services rolling in tax dollars. The Kochs like to say they are against crony capitalism. So does Trump. But, just as Trump has not drained the Washington swamp, so Koch-tied appointees like Pompeo are not going to oppose the contracting schemes that barter off intelligence gathering and monitoring almost as aggressively as the Pentagon barters off what was once military work to the highest bidders of the military-industrial complex.
As Trump slashes fun
ding for the State Department, watch for him to make more use of the CIA—once he is satisfied that the agency is sufficiently loyal to him. Watch for Pompeo to display that loyalty to Trump, his new boss, just as he was steadily loyal to his old bosses the Kochs.
The Pompeo-Koch connection runs deep.
Pompeo came out of the same Wichita, Kansas, business community where the Koch family’s oil and gas conglomerate is headquartered. Indeed, Pompeo built his own company with seed money from Koch Venture Capital.
More important, from a political standpoint, is the fact that Pompeo made the leap from business to government with a huge boost from the Koch brothers and their employees. “I’m sure he would vigorously dispute this, but it’s hard not to characterize him as the congressman from Koch,” said University of Kansas political science professor Burdett Loomis.
In fact, that’s a strikingly appropriate characterization for the man who Donald Trump chose for a position in which Pompeo is required to “serve as head of the United States intelligence community; act as the principal adviser to the President for intelligence matters related to the national security; and serve as head of the Central Intelligence Agency.” As the Center for Food Safety, which once wrangled with Pompeo on food-labeling issues that are of tremendous interest to the global agribusiness and grocery industries, noted in 2014: “Congressman Mike Pompeo was the single largest recipient of campaign funds from the Koch Brothers in 2010. After winning election with Koch money, Congressman Pompeo hired a Koch Industries lawyer to run his office. According to The Washington Post, Congressman Pompeo then introduced bills friendly to Koch Industries while Koch hired outside lobbyists to support them.”
Recalling the 2010 election, the Center for Responsive Politics explained that “Koch Industries had never spent as much on a candidate in a single cycle as it did on Pompeo that time around, giving him a total [of] $80,000. Koch outdid itself again in the 2012 cycle by ponying up $110,000 for Pompeo’s campaign.”
When Pompeo ran for reelection in 2014, he faced a tight primary contest with another local Republican who had Koch ties. One of the biggest turning points in that race came when the Kochs sided with Pompeo. “KOCHPAC is proud to support Mike Pompeo for Congress based on his strong support for market-
based policies and economic freedom, which benefits society as a whole,” Mark Nichols, the vice president of government and public affairs for Koch Industries, told Politico.
Just as the Kochs have been loyal to Pompeo, so Pompeo has been loyal to the Kochs. He’s a regular at their behind-closed-doors gatherings and he’s outspoken in their defense, claiming that President Obama and “Nixonian” Democrats have unfairly “vilified” Charles and David Koch.
But, of course, the supposed vilification has simply involved a questioning of the influence wielded by billionaires in general and the Kochs in particular over American politics and governance. That’s hardly an unreasonable concern, considering that, as one of the most prominent Koch-backed politicians in the country, Pompeo was called out just weeks after taking office for proposing legislative initiatives that “could benefit many of [the Kochs’] business interests.”
“The measures include amendments approved in the House budget bill to eliminate funding for two major Obama administration programs: a database cataloguing consumer complaints about unsafe products and an Environmental Protection Agency registry of greenhouse-gas polluters,” reported the Washington Post back in 2011. “Both have been listed as top legislative priorities for Koch Industries, which has spent more than $37 million on Washington lobbying since 2008, according to disclosure records.”
“It’s the same old story—a member of Congress carrying water for his biggest campaign contributor,” Common Cause’s Mary Boyle complained at the time.
Now, however, it’s a different story, because “the congressman from Koch” is carrying water for Donald Trump as the director of one of the most powerful intelligence-gathering agencies in the world.
— 14 —
THE U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE AMERICAN ANTI-CHOICE MOVEMENT
Nikki Haley
U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations
On January 17, 2017, Samantha Power, the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at that school, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, member of the Obama State Department transition team, former special assistant to the president and senior director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights on the National Security Council and chair of the White House Atrocities Prevention Board, delivered the last speech of her long tenure as U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations. It was a tour de force foreign policy address, ably delivered, bluntly honest and scathing in its denunciation of those who dared neglect the essential issues facing the world.
Ambassador Power made news, with her detailed explanation of how “the Russian Government under President Putin is taking steps that are weakening the rules-based order that we have benefitted from for seven decades. Our values, our security, our prosperity, and our very way of life are tied to this order. And we—and by ‘we,’ I mean the United States and our closest partners—must come together to prevent Russia from succeeding.” It was a damning assessment, described as “scathing,” “blistering,” “brilliant.”
Everyone with even a passing interest in foreign affairs, diplomacy and the United Nations was talking about “the speech.”
So it made sense that U.S. senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat who had distinguished himself as one of Washington’s savviest and most engaged observers of security threats facing the United States, would ask about the Powers speech when South Carolina governor Nikki Haley appeared the following day before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. After all, Haley was making the case for her confirmation as Donald Trump’s replacement to Samantha Powers.
“I have real trouble with [Trump’s] idea that, in any way, we should trust Vladimir Putin and his Russia at an equal level as Angela Merkel and Germany, and all of our NATO allies,” Coons began. “[Trump’s] ongoing, steady diminution of the value of NATO, when NATO has been the strongest, most enduring alliance we’ve dealt with and been a part of. Ambassador Power gave a very pointed farewell speech yesterday, where she laid out the case that Russia is the single greatest threat to the world order today—the world order we’ve built, the so-called liberal rules-based world order that the U.N. is one of the highest examples of. Did you read or follow that speech?”
“I did not,” replied Haley, who allowed that she would try to do so. But Haley was obviously upset by the line of questioning.
“Senator…” she griped, “I know that your concerns over the comments of the President-elect are probably best suited to ask him, as opposed to me.”
“He is not in front of me, you are, so forgive me…” Coons explained.
“And you’re not getting an answer from me on that,” snapped Haley, interrupting the senator who was charged by the Constitution with getting just such answers before affirming nominees to sensitive posts. “I’m just telling you again in the importance of time.”
Haley never claimed to know much about the job of UN ambassador. She did not put much effort into preparing for it, as was made obvious by her neglect of her predecessor’s headline-grabbing final speech. And she shut down dialogue about the elephant in the room: a series of bizarre statements and troubling actions by the president-elect who had appointed her about the issues she would have to address at the United Nations.
Coons did not vote to confirm Haley, when her nomination was overwhelmingly approved by a Senate that was, frankly, overwhelmed by the atrociousness of so many Trump picks that it failed to do due diligence regarding Trump nominees, especially nominees who were as politically skilled as Haley. Only a handful of Democratic senators took the Haley n
omination seriously enough to examine her record. But those who did determined that she simply was not qualified to represent the United States at the United Nations. Noting that “Governor Haley’s lack of foreign policy experience combined with a President who promotes isolationism and has been near outright hostile to the institution,” New Mexico senator Martin Heinrich said that “after careful review of Governor Haley’s testimony and written statements, and the number of difficult issues that we can expect the UN to encounter in the years ahead, I’m skeptical that the President and our Ambassador will play a constructive role in addressing the refugee crisis, climate change, nuclear nonproliferation, or the fundamental operations of the United Nations.” His colleague Tom Udall (another of the group of four “no” voters that included three Democrats and Vermont independent Bernie Sanders) complained about Haley’s lack of “requisite experience.” He also explained that she also lacked “the right positions on key questions of American foreign policy.”
Udall said he appreciated Haley’s willingness to say a few tough things about Russia, as did much of the U.S. media several weeks later, when Haley added a condemnation of “the dire situation in eastern Ukraine” to an initial UN address where she said: “We do want to better our relations with Russia.” But Udall said in explaining his vote against Haley’s nomination that “I am troubled by her positions on several central issues, which ultimately convinced me that I could not support her confirmation. For example, she has indicated that she opposes the historic nuclear agreement with Iran, a deal which Defense Secretary Mattis has stated we must uphold. On Cuba, Governor Haley suggested that she would double down on decades of failed policy that have done nothing to bring freedom and openness to the Cuban people. She was noncommittal when I asked her to pledge to remain in the Paris Climate Agreement, and indicated that she does not envision the United States as the global leader in combating climate change. Governor Haley has not demonstrated any commitment to advocating for a livable wage in foreign countries where there is a record of mistreatment of workers. And, she would not pledge to support longstanding, bipartisan U.S. policy stating that settlement expansion is a barrier to peace in the Middle East.”