Churchill and his war cabinet

  I've just finished a fascinating and valuable book, Jonathan Schneer's Ministers at War,  a study of Winston Churchill and his war cabinet. While most history that I have read tends to depict Churchill as the dominant leader of an amazingly unified group of people from across the political spectrum, Schneer shows how fragile Churchill's hold on power was, and gives a persuasive case why he was bound to be thrown out of office once the war was won.

The Prime Minister showed political acumen in his choice of both his small War Cabinet and the broader coalition cabinet, balancing Labour and Conservative factions and shifting the mix to deal with particular crises. In the winter and summer of 1942, however, he faced no confidence votes in the House of Commons that he brilliantly maneuvered to defeat. In 1940 and 1943, however, he faced revolts within his cabinet from ministers who gossiped and plotted behind his back.

Schneer cites numerous examples where Churchill accepted cabinet positions that he strongly opposed, as well as times when he embraced stupid ideas with the same enthusiasm he had for wise policies.

Americans like me who believe they understand presidential government have a hard time understanding how cabinet governments work. [The original British "House of Cards" gives good insights.] It's shocking to learn of secret meetings discussing how to dump Churchill in order to get a better leader, often one of the conspirators like Lord Beaverbrook or Stafford Cripps. But that's what happened.

The plotting reminded me of what a long serving Labour MP, Emanual Shinwell, wrote in his memoir. He describes watching a debate in Commons early in his career while sitting next to one of his oldest colleagues. Shinwell commented that one of his party leaders had just given a "sharp blow to the enemy."  His elder friend corrected him: "You will learn in time that the gentlemen across the way are the opposition; your enemies you are more likely to find on this side of the House."

This kind of history can never be written again, because most of the participants kept revealing diaries or exchanged letters now available to scholars. On numerous occasions, Schneer disputes the conventional wisdom, such as what Churchill wrote in his multivolume history, by citing perspectives from others at the same meeting.

None of this diminishes Churchill's extraordinary leadership of parliament and Britain during World War II. Indeed, it shows how many challenges he had to overcome, and how he did it.

surviving a nuclear war, revisited

Once again proving my belief that "some people die only in the New York Times," that venerable newspaper has an obituary on an official in the Reagan administration who minimized the consequences of nuclear war just as the American public was growing increasingly concerned about such a conflict. While making the case for civil defense measures in a newspaper interview, T.K. Jones went overboard and earned his Times obituary by famously observing, “If there are enough shovels to go around, everybody’s going to make it.”

 He went on: “You can make very good sheltering by taking the doors off your house, digging a trench, stacking the doors about two deep over that, covering it with plastic so that rainwater or something doesn’t screw up the glue in the door, then pile dirt over it.”

Digging, he figured, would take about 10 hours, followed by installation of a ventilation pump and dealing with sanitation and supplies. Apartment dwellers were no problem, he said; they could be moved to rural areas.

Many officials had at least a brief enthusiasm for massive civil defense programs, President John F. Kennedy among them. But when the costs were weighed against the other impacts of a major nuclear exchange, civil defense seemed to have minimal benefits. Nor did the Reagan administration propose a major civil defense program. But its nuclear strategists faced a strong challenge from public opinion which wanted a "nuclear freeze" instead of its proposed massive buildup of offensive nuclear firepower.

So people like Jones and his mentor Richard Perle pointed to Russian civil defense efforts to prove that Moscow wanted to fight and win a nuclear war.  I had my own encounter with Perle on this topic when he made the point that some Russian cities even practiced evacuation of the population. "Richard," I responded, "so do we --every Friday afternoon in the summer."

"We don't really have a strategy at all"

Former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates said that on Monday. Some retired military officers and many Republicans say the same thing with regard to ISIL and Iraq. I think those complaints miss the mark.

I believe that the underlying problem is that the Iraqi government doesn't have a strategy, or at least not an evident and feasible one. And the United States can advise and cajole and warn Iraq, but it can't control events. Nor could it control the fighting with 10,000 or 20,000 residual forces instead of the 2011 pullout or a similar number of ground troops today.

Fred Kaplan of Slate says  Obama has to decide on his least worst option. None are good. I think that's true for the U.S. Government -- and also for the Iraqi government. Both governments want a stable and inclusive Iraq, with Iran's unavoidable influence still limited. But the Iraqi armed forces aren't fighting well, despite U.S. training and equipment. The Sunnis in Anbar fear both ISIL and the Shiite militias. Prime Minister Abadi is besieged by political opponents and thus has little maneuver room.

So what to do? Tony Cordesman  of CSIS wants a "strong advisory effort." A Defense One poll  of Pentagon officials found quite limited support for U.S. ground troops [31.4%] and bare majority support only for U.S. airstrikes and trying to enlist regional allies. Lots of luck.

David Ignatius wants Abadi to "empower the Sunnis" and notes that "This is still Iraq’s war, not America’s." That point is well worth keeping in mind.

words don't matter

I was discouraged to read in today's NYTimes a comment by the NSC's Ben Rhodes that the sanctions against certain Venezuelan officials were based on a lie,

“The United States does not believe that Venezuela poses some threat to our national security,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, during a telephone call with reporters to discuss the president’s trip. ...

American officials had previously sought to play down the language in the order, saying that the administration was required by law to make the security threat designation to carry out the sanctions.

But Mr. Rhodes went further on Tuesday, explicitly stating that Venezuela did not pose a threat, adding that the language was “completely pro forma.”

He's technically right, of course. The law used for the sanctions, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1978 [IEEPA] precribes a format, a declaration of national emergency, in order to be invoked. But by arguing that the words don't really matter he is disparaging and undercutting the law and raising doubts in the legislative branch that the administration feels bound by the words of its laws.

the Iran deal

The outline of the still-to-be-completed agreement with Iran restraining its nuclear programs looks pretty good to me, considering the alternatives. The public debate, however, is already focusing on false alternatives. The lengthy negotiations were never intended to deal with Iranian foreign policy or its support for various militant groups, so ti should not be judged on that basis.  Prime Minister Netanyahu claims that the alternative to this deal is a better agreement, if only the U.S. would increase sanctions until Iran surrenders. That's a mirage, for the failure to accept this agreement, regardless of what the United States does, is the collapse of the international coalition that until now has agreed to tough sanctions as leverage for diplomacy.  Israel is surely safer under this agreement and intrusive monitoring than under an unrestrained Iranian nuclear program.

If the intelligence community and other technical experts conclude, once a final agreement is signed, that it does limit Iran’s breakout potential to a year, I think the administration can make a good case for it.

The administration faces two big hurdles, however, the American friends of Israel who are persuaded that the agreement is bad for Israel and Congress as an institution that will likely take destructive actions unless it can be given a constructive role.

As a first step, the administration should stop its punitive actions against Israel. They can be held in reserve pending future Israeli behavior. Next, the administration should reach out to American friends of Israel and to Israelis not in the Netanyahu government to see what steps might reassure Israel if the agreement is concluded and implemented. Maybe increased military aid would help. Maybe the U.S. should offer a formal defense treaty, something  both sides have resisted in the past but which now might provide reassurances.

To deal with Congress, the administration should work out a deal giving Congress one or more votes on the agreement. The President has broad legal authority to sign and implement this kind of agreement without submitting it to a 2/3 Senate vote. But he should agree to allow an advisory vote by Congress and he should embrace a clear congressional vote on lifting sanctions. If the end result is a congressional vote criticizing the agreement and keeping US sanctions in place, the agreement could still go into effect; the US could still support a UN Security Council vote lifting sanctions; Iran would still be under pressure to comply with the agreement in order to get sanctions lifted by other countries.  That messy situation still looks better to me than a collapse of the agreement blamed on the U.S. Congress.

cyber offense

Although the American military are grouped in a Department of Defense, what they care most about is offense. After World War II, each service sought  missions using nuclear weapons to attack whatever enemies we faced. Defensive systems like the ABM [anti-ballsitic missile] were tolerated as something for technologists to play with, but the real action remained in offensive/attack systems. When capabilities were compared with other nations, only the total numbers of bombers and missiles and submarines were counted, rather than comparing effectiveness of one country's offensive bombers or missiles against another's defensive systems. The same logic applied to tanks and anti-tank weapons: what mattered was the tank total.

While some officers argued that deterrence of nuclear war required superior numbers of offensive weapons, the ultimately prevailing view was that what mattered most was a secure retaliatory capability. That's what America built and what we still have.

We seem to be slipping into the discredited offensive mindset with regard to cyber weapons. What we need most, of course, is defenses against cyber attacks, and ways of identifying and quickly recovering from whatever attacks might be launched. And we need those defenses for our armed forces and our civilian economy and infrastructure.

But what the new cyber warriors want most is offensive capability, according to recent remarks by senior officials and their congressional supporters. No wonder, with at least 21 federal organizations having some kind of cyber mission, each seeking money for their programs. As P.W. Singer and Allan Friedman noted more than a year ago, there is a cult of the cyber offensive.

This belief in the inherent superiority of cyberoffense has helped drive increased spending on offensive capabilities by militaries around the world, with the U.S. military spending, depending on the measure, 2.5 to 4 times as much on cyberoffense research and development as cyberdefense research.

Of course the United States should have offensive cyber capabilities. But this imbalance against defense is wasteful and worrisome.

the new Regressive Movement

It's shameful! The Supreme  Court, which launched its Regressive Movement by overturning a century-old law forbidding corporate and union contributions to political campaigns in the Citizens United case, now seems headed toward outlawing another reform of the early 20th century progressive movement -- citizen ballot initiatives. In arguments Monday, a majority of justices seemed ready to overturn the Arizona law requiring redistricting by a nonpartisan panel, another reform in several states to get around partisan gerrymandering.

Justices seemed fixated on the Constitutional requirement for election rules to be set by state "legislatures" rather than state legislative power. A century ago, several states started letting voters choose Senators instead of legislatures alone, as the Constitution provided. A formal amendment was adopted making that practice universal. That may be the only way around the expected Supreme Court decision.

But it is a shame that the Justices should reject a reasonable reform of our political processes and simultaneously call into question the progressive reforms of initiatives, referenda, and recall.