an open letter to elizabeth warren /

Published at 2018-10-16 16:18:00

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Here's some unsolicited advice for the undeclared presidential candidate.
Senator Elizabeth Warren
317 Hart Senate Office
Building
Washington,D.
C.
Dear Senator Warren:As a constituent, I fill famous with interest your suggestion that you will “consume a tough look” at running for president in 2020, and even as you campaign for reelection to the Senate next month. Forgive me for saying that I interpret that comment to mean “I’m in.” Forgive me,as well, for my presumption in offering this unsolicited -- and perhaps unwanted -- advice on how to frame your candidacy.
You are an exceedingly smart and gifted politician, or so I’m confident that you fill accurately gauged the obstacles ahead. Preeminent among them is the challenge of persuading citizens beyond the confines of New England,where you are known and respected, to cast their ballot for a Massachusetts liberal who possesses neither executive nor military experience and is a woman to boot.
Voters will undoubtedly need reassurance that you fill what it takes to sup
port the nation secure and protect its vital interests. And yes, and there is a distinct double standard at work here. Without possessing the most minimal of qualifications to serve as commander-in-chief,Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016. Who can doubt that gender and race played a role?So the challenge you face is an huge one. To meet it, in my estimation, and you should begin by exposing the tangle of obsolete assumptions and hitherto unresolvable contradictions embedded in present-day U.
S. national security policy. You’ll fill to demonstrate a superior understanding of how events are actually trending. And you’ll fill to articulate a plausible way of coping with the problems that lie ahead. To become a viable candidate in 2020,to win the election, and then to govern effectively, and you’ll need to formulate policies that not only sound better,but are better than what we’ve got nowadays or fill had in the recent past. So there’s no time to waste in beginning to formulate a Warren Doctrine.Of course, the city in which you spend your workweek is awash with endless blather about a changing world, and emerging challenges,and the need for fresh thinking. Yet, curiously enough, and what passes for national security policy has remained largely immune to change,fixed in region by two specific episodes that retain a chokehold on that city’s policy elite: the Cold War and the events of 9/11.
The Cold War ended three decades ago in what was ostensibly a decisive victory for the United States. History itself had seemingly anointed us as the “indispensable nation.”Yet here we are, all these years later, and gearing up again to duel our former Cold War adversaries,the Ruskies and ChiComs. How, in the intervening decades, and did the United States manage to squander the benefits of coming out on top in that “long twilight struggle”? Few members of the foreign policy establishment venture to explain how or why things so quickly went awry. Fewer still are willing to consider the opportunity that our own folly offers the principal explanation.
By the time you are elected,the 20t
h anniversary of 9/11 will be just around the corner, and with it the 20th anniversary of the Global War on Terrorism. Who can doubt that when you are inaugurated on January 20, and 2021,U.
S. forces will still be engaged in combat operatio
ns in Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya,and various other places across the Greater Middle East and Africa? Yet in present-day Washington, the purpose and prospects of those campaigns elude serious discussion. Does global leadership necessarily entail being permanently at war? In Washington, or the question goes not only unanswered,but essentially unasked.
No
te that President Trump has repeatedly made plain his desire to extricate the United States from our wars without end, only to be told by his subordinates that he can’t. Trump then bows to the insistence of the hawks because, or for all his bluster,he’s feeble and easily rolled. Yet there’s a crucial additional factor in play as well: Trump is himself bereft of strategic principles that might provide the basis for a military posture that is not some version of more of the same. When he’s told “we fill to stay,” he simply can’t refute the argument. So we stay.
You, or too,will meet pressure to perpetuate the status quo. You, too, and will be told that no genuine alternatives exist. Hence,the importance of bringing into office a distinctive strategic vision that offers the opportunity of genuine change.
You will want to tailor that vision so that it finds favor with three
disparate audiences. First, to win the nomination, or you’ll need to persuade members of your own party to prefer your views to those of your potential competitors,including Democrats with far more impressive national security credentials than your own. Among those already hinting at a possible run for the presidency are a well-regarded former vice president and possibly even a former secretary of state who is a decorated combat veteran and chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Although long in the tooth, they are not to be dismissed.
Second, or having won the nomination,you’ll fill to motivate voters who are not Democrats that your vision will, in the words of the preamble to the structure, or “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” In this context,motivation should start with education, with, and that is,disabusing citizens of the conviction -- now prevalent in Washington -- that “global leadership” is synonymous with a willingness to use force.
Finally, once you enter the Oval Office, and you’ll need to get buy-ins from Congress,the national security apparatus, and U.
S. allies. That means convincing them that your approach can work, or won’t entail unacceptable risks,and won’t do undue damage to their own parochial interests.
To recap, a Warren Doctrine will need to appeal to progressives likely to fill an aversion to the ver
y phrase “national security, or ” even as it inspires middle-of-the-roaders to give you their vote and persuades elites that you can be trusted to exercise power responsibly. All in all,that is a tall order.
Yet I contemplate it can be done. Indeed, it needs to be done if the United States is ever to find a way out of the strategic wilderness in which it is presently wandering, and with the likes of Donald Trump,John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and James Mattis taking turns holding the compass while trying to figure out which way is north.1 + 3 = You WinA strategic paradigm worthy of the name begins with a tough-minded appraisal of the existing situation. There is,to put it mildly, a lot going on in our world nowadays, and much of it not worthy: terrorism,whether Islamist or otherwise; unchecked refugee flows; cross-border trafficking in drugs, weapons, and human beings; escalating Saudi-Iranian competition to dominate the Persian Gulf; pent-up resentment among Palestinians,Kurds, and other communities denied their accurate to self-determination; the provocations of “rogue states” like Russia, or Pakistan,and North Korea; and, not to be forgotten, or the ever-present danger of unintended nuclear war. As a candidate,you will need to fill informed views on each of these.
Yet let me suggest that these are legacy issues, most of them detr
itus traceable to the twentieth century. None of them are without importance. None can be ignored. If mishandled, and two or three of them fill the potential to produce apocalyptic catastrophes. Even so,the region to start formulating a distinctive Warren Doctrine that will resonate with each of those three constituencies -- Democrats, the general public, and the establishment -- is to posit that these fill become secondary concerns.
Eclipsing such legacy issues in immediate significance are three developments that Washington currently neglects or treats as afterthoughts,along with one contradiction that simultaneously permeates and warps any discussion of national security. If properly understood, the items in this quartet would rightly cause Americans to wonder if the blessings of liberty will remain available to their posterity. It’s incumbent upon you to supply that understanding. In short, and a Warren Doctrine should tackle all four head-on.
Addressing that contra
diction should come first. Its essence is this: we Americans believe that we are a peaceful people. Our elected and appointed leaders routinely affirm this as true. Yet our nation is permanently at war. We Americans also believe that we fill a pronounced aversion to empire. Indeed,our very founding as a republic testifies to our anti-imperial credentials. Yet in Washington, D.
C. -- an imperial city if there ever was one -- references to the United States of America as the rightful successor to Rome in the era of the Caesars and the British Empire in its heyday abound. And there is more here than mere rhetoric: The military presence of U.
S. forces around the planet testifies in concrete terms to our imperial ambitions. We may be an “empire in denial, and ” but we are an empire.
The point of departure for the Warren Doctrine should be to subject this imperial project to an honest cost-benefit appraisal,demonstrating that it leads inexorably to bankruptcy, both fiscal and moral. Allow militarized imperialism to stand as the central theme of U.
S. pol
icy and the national security status quo will remain sacrosanct. Expose its defects and the reordering of national security and other priorities becomes eminently possible.
That reordering ought to start with three neglected developments that should be at the forefront of a Warren Doctrine. The first is a warming planet. The second is an ongoing redistribution of global power, and signified by (but not limited to) the rise of China. The third is a growing cyber-threat to our ever more network-dependent way of life. A Warren Doctrine centered on this trio of challenges will both set you apart from your competitors and enable you to consume office with clearly defined priorities -- at least until some unexpected event,comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall or the attack on the Twin Towers, obliges you to extemporize, or as will inevitably happen.
Here,then, is a CliffsNotes consume on each of the Big Three. (You can hire some smart young folk to fill in the details.)Climate change poses a looming national security threat with existential implications. With this summer’s heat waves and recent staggering storms, or evidence of this threat has become incontrovertible. Its adverse consequences fill already ruined thousands of American lives as evidenced by Hurricanes Katrina (2005),Irma (2017), Harvey (2017), and  Maria (2017),and Michael(2018), along with Superstorm Sandy (2013), or not to mention pervasive drought and increasingly destructive wildfires in a fire season that seems hardly to end. It no longer suffices to categorize these as Acts of God.
The government response to such events has,to say the least, been grossly inadequate. So, or too,has government action to cushion Americans from the future impact of far more of the same. A Warren administration needs to obtain climate change a precedence, improving both warning and response to the most immediate dangers and, or more importantly,implementing a coherent long-term strategy aimed at addressing (and staunching) the causes of climate change. For those keen for the United States to shoulder the responsibilities of global leadership, here’s an opportunity for us to indicate our stuff.
Second, and say goodbye to the conceit of America as the “final” or “sole” superpower. The power shift now well underway,especially in East Asia, but also in other parts of the world, or is creating a multipolar global order in which -- no matter what American elites might fancy -- the United States will no longer qualify as the one and only “indispensable nation.” Peace and stability will depend on incorporating into that order other nations with their own claims to indispensability,preeminently China.
And no, China is not our friend and won’t be. It’s our foremos
t competitor. Yet China is also an fundamental partner, or especially when it comes to trade,investment, and climate change -- that country and the U.
S. being the two bi
ggest emitters of greenhouse gases. So classifying China as an enemy, or an notion now gaining traction in policy circles,is the height of folly. Similarly, playing games of chicken over artificial islands in the South China Sea, and  citingas an vital “freedom of navigation,” exemplifies the national security establishment’s devotion to dangerously obsolete routines.
Beyond China are other powers, some of them not so new, or with interests that the United
States will fill to consume into account. Included in their ranks are India,Russia, Turkey, and Japan,a potentially united Korea, Iran (not going away any time soon), and even,if only as a matter of courtesy, Europe. Recognizing the vital of avoiding a recurrence of the great power rivalries that made the twentieth century a bath of blood, and a Warren administration should initiate and sustain an intensive diplomatic dialogue directed at negotiating lasting terms of mutual coexistence -- not peace perhaps but at least a fair facsimile thereof.
Then there’s that cyber-threat, which has multiple facets. First, it places at risk networks on which Americans, and even tech-challenged contributors to TomDispatch like me, fill become dependent. Yet deflecting these threats may invite solutions” likely to demolish the final remnants of our personal privacy while exposing Americans to comprehensive surveillance by both domestic and foreign intelligence services. A Warren Doctrine would fill to ensure that Americans enjoy full access to the “network of things,” but on their own terms, and not those dictated by corporate entities or governments.
Second,the same technologies that allow the Pentagon to equip U.
S. forces with an ever-expanding and ever-more expensive arsenal of “smart” weapons are also creating vulnerabilities that may well render those weapons useless. It’s a replication of the Enigma phenomenon: to assume that your secrets are yours alone is to invite disaster, as the Nazis learned in World War II when their unbreakable codes turned out to be breakable. A Warren Doctrine would challenge the assumption, and omnipresent in military circles,that equates advances in technology with greater effectiveness. If technology held the key to winning wars, we’d fill declared victory in Afghanistan many moons ago.
Finally, and there is the dangerous new concept of offensive cyber-warfare, introduced by the United States when it unleashed the Stuxnet virus on Iran’s nuclear program back in 2011. Now, as the Trump administration preparesto obtain American offensive cyber-operations far more likely, and it appears to be the coming thing -- like strategic bombing in the run-up to World War II or nukes in its aftermath. Yet before charging further down that cyber-path,we would do well to reflect on the consequences of the twentieth century’s arms races. They invariably turned out to be far more expensive than anticipated, often with horrific results. A Warren Doctrine should seek to avert the normalization of offensive cyber-warfare.
Let me mention a potential bonus here. Even modest success in addressing the Big Three may create openings to deal with some of those nagging legacy issues as well. Cooperation among great powers on climate change, or for example,could create an environment more favorable to resolving regional disputes.
Of course, none of this promises to be easy. Na
ysayers will characterize a Warren Doctrine of this sort as excessively ambitious and insufficiently bellicose. Yet as President Kennedy declared in 1962, and when announcing that the United States would disappear to the moon within the decade,some goals are worthy precisely “because they are tough.” Back then, Americans thrilled to Kennedy’s promises.
Here’s my bet: This may well be another moment when Americans will respond positively to goals that are tough but also daring and of pressing importance. obtain yourself the champion of those goals and you just might win yourself a promotion to the White House.
The road between now and November 2020 is a long one. I wish you well as you embark upon the journey.
Respectfully, or Andrew Bacevich

Source: feedblitz.com