(2010-09-23) Woodward Obamas Wars Book

Bob Woodward has a new book out, ObamasWars about Afghanistan and Barack Obama's struggles against his own advisors to shorten the mess. Obama is shown at odds with his uniformed military commanders, particularly Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command during the 2009 strategy review and now the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan. Woodward reveals their conflicts through detailed accounts of two dozen closed-door secret strategy sessions and nearly 40 private conversations between Obama and Cabinet officers, key aides and intelligence officials.

In the end, Obama essentially designed his own strategy for the 30,000 troops, which some aides considered a compromise between the military command's request for 40,000 and Joe Biden's relentless efforts to limit the escalation to 20,000 as part of a "hybrid option" that he had developed with Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In a dramatic scene at the White House on Sunday, Nov. 29, 2009, Obama summoned the national security team to outline his decision and distribute his six-page terms sheet. He went around the room, one by one, asking each participant whether he or she had any objections - to "say so now," Woodward reports. The document - a copy of which is reprinted in the book - took the unusual step of stating, along with the strategy's objectives, what the military was not supposed to do. The president went into detail, according to Woodward, to make sure that the military wouldn't attempt to expand the mission.

Among the book's other disclosures:... A classified exercise in May showed that the government was woefully unprepared to deal with a nuclear terrorist attack in the United States. The scenario involved the detonation of a small, crude nuclear weapon in Indianapolis and the simultaneous threat of a second blast in Los Angeles. Obama, in the interview with Woodward, called a nuclear attack here "a potential game changer." He said: "When I go down the list of things I have to worry about all the time, that is at the top, because that's one where you can't afford any mistakes."

The book comes out Monday. It doesn't sound like many people have read it yet.

Sept25: Fabius Maximus follows a guest-post by Bernard Finel with some links to some scary articles.

• David Petraeus has now let it be known that he may not go along with beginning a troop drawdown in July 2011 as he had agreed with Obama. When asked on “Meet the Press” on August 15 whether he might tell Obama that the drawdown should be delayed beyond mid-2011, Petraeus said, “Certainly, yes”.

• Pat Lang wrote: Obama gave the generals too much in the outcome of the great "policy review." They interpreted that as an indication of weakness.

• A previous post by Finel about a critique of RobertGates. (Charles Dunlap wrote:)* It saddens me that in 34 years of active duty service I never saw alternate views crushed as thoroughly as during the Gates era. Could this be a key reason why the President received only General StanleyMcChrystal’s version of a “military” option for Afghanistan last fall? Others could have been developed, including fleshed-out plans supporting Vice President’s Biden’s reported “CT plus” approach — which, I predict, we will eventually have to employ anyway.* In other words, Gates is repeating the thought-police approach that killed off dissenting views about WMD, making the War On Iraq seem reasonable. Finel wrote: Finally, my biggest beef with Gates is that, frankly, he’s been the worst Secretary of Defense in terms of supporting appropriate civil-military norms in at least 50 years. The “Age of Petraeus” has either been enabled or tolerated by Gates. His willingness to throw aside principles of civil-military relations is, again, an example of Gates’ myopic approach. Yes, it has allowed first the Bush and then Obama Administrations to piggy-back on the popularity of the military to gain public support (or at least toleration) for conflicts of dubious strategic value. But this is a political benefit. For both Bush and Obama this has been the most politically convenient course of action. But think about that word — politically — and ask yourself how healthy it is for the military to become, effectively, an instrument for increasing the political standing of the President. And think of how dangerous are the consequences of this kind of politicization.

Oct01: Bernard Finel again: I just don’t know that you can command the respect of your national security professionals if you allow them to stonewall you, rig analytical exercises, and then win debates through threats of resignation... He ran for office making a lot of powerful, sophisticated assessments of international affairs. And in the Woodward book, he comes off as someone who has very good instincts about Afghanistan – e.g. wanting to minimize the commitment, develop an exit strategy, focus on training. He has the brains and the instincts to make the right decisions, but apparently not the confidence to impose his will on the national security bureaucracy. If Woodward’s reporting is accurate, it is very, very disappointing.

Oct02: Chuck Spinney suggests real-world Game Playing: The Pentagon is a rat’s nest of military-industrial factions, factions inside factions, and ever shifting alliances — all competing with each other. The information game is easily played at all levels — which is one reason why this behaviour is so intractable. Mafias inside the AF are hosing each other as well as the AF Chief of Staff, ditto for the Army and the Navy, the different services are hosing the Secretary of Defense as well as each other; the Secretary of Defense is hosing the President. All are working the press and the Congress … this is going on all the time at all levels, all the time. It is simply the human condition in large government bureaucracies where billions of dollars are at stake, and leaders ignore it at their peril. The key to playing this game successfully is to make a leader dependent on formal communications channels and the chain of command, then you can use the bureaucracy to filter what flows up to him/her. This is known as the mushroom treatment — keeping the boss in the dark and feeding him/her bullshit. Savvy leaders understand this and understand that trying to stop this kind of behaviour is futile. To avoid being trapped, they must take proactive action to let the sun shine in by opening up other pathways for he information to flow in... A subtle leader quickly learns that the best results often occur when he makes it clear he knows when subordinate is setting him up by tailoring the information, but chooses to give the subordinate a second chance (in bureaucratic jargon, this is known as appealing to his patriotism). That subordinate will never forget the experience, particularly if the leader has already established his cojones with a couple of ruthless well-timed career executions for similar behaviour.