Sides in Syrian War

Obama has gotten a lot of criticism for failing to support the rebels against Assad, while Putin supported Assad, who had the Syrian military at his disposal.  Many of the rebels opposing Assad were affiliated with al-Qaeda or ISIS.  The few rebels not affiliated with them were very weak.  John McCain’s idea to support the more trustworthy rebels would clearly have benefited Al-Qaeda and ISIS to some extent.  Obama pretty much avoided doing that, to his credit.  But Obama’s potential allies were weak, while Putin’s allies in the Syrian government were stronger.  

People criticize Obama for failing to kill Assad after he crossed Obama’s red line on chemical weapons.  I think Obama did the right thing.  If Obama had killed Assad, or undertaken a massive invasion of Syria to unseat thim, it’s likely that the war would have become even more violent and even more chemical weapons would have been used.  By getting Assad to renounce chemical weapons, Obama significantly reduced their use in the civil war.  

In terms of who will win the civil war, Assad’s opponents have never been close to winning, even with foreign support.  Assad was not strong enough to win quickly, but he was the only participant who had a chance of winning with only a little outside support.  When Russia provided this support, the iide began to turn in Assad’s favor.  

It’s not clear whether the end of the war is near, and if so, what it means.  Hopefully it will mean less violence and death.  It’s possible that Assad will seek revenge against the rebels, continuing the violence and the refugee deluge, but ideally things will be better than they are currently.  

Obama could have lessened the destruction in Syria, by supporting Assad despite his unsavory human rights record.  Obama could not have led the rebels to victory unless he had sent in US troops for a full scale war.  Thus, the easy course of supporting Assad was open to Putin and he took it.  He did not expend much in terms of men and equipment, but it appears to have been enough to turn the tide.  He comes out looking like a strong man by supporting a human rights pariah.  

Fareed Zakaria and Bernard-Henri Levy

Fareed Zakaria has French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy on his Sunday morning program often, but he fails to point out that Levy fomented the European and American invasion of Libya that destroyed the country and left it in a state of chaos.  Gaddafi was a bad man, but the situation Levy created is even worse.  He is a philosopher with a lot of blood on his hands.  Fareed should mention this when he introduces Levy.  

Trump’s Foreign Policy and My Career

When Newt Gingrich and the Republicans took over the House, they made many changes in US foreign policy that affected me personally in an adverse way.  Of course, Clinton and his Democratic administration had to accept these changes, but the main responsibility lay with the Republican Congress.  First, the Republicans refused to continue to fund the joint science cooperation program that I oversaw as Science Counselor at Embassy Warsaw, the Maria Sklodowska-Curie Fund II.  The US signed a five year agreement to fund the program jointly with the Poles, but refused to pay after three years.  Second, on the day that I was scheduled to leave Warsaw for a new position at the American Embassy in Rome, the Republicans shut the government down in 1995.  While I was saying good-byes around 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon with the car packed with all of our belongings, including two dogs. Embassy Rome called and said not to travel because of the government shutdown.  Third, after I got to Rome, the US Congress refused to appropriate money to fund the US share of the US- North Korean agreement that limited North Korea’s nuclear program, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO).  Fourth, a US law barred issuing visas to children of employees of the Italian phone company.  When a phone company executive complained to me about it, I couldn’t believe it, but I confirmed with the head of the consular section that it was true.  

I probably would not have quit in protest, but I was old enough and had enough years of service to retire.  So, I did.  

I sympathize with the Foreign Service officers who are unhappy with the new Trump policies, but I think that you can disagree with policies and yet carry them out.  So far, Trump’s edicts mainly affect consular officers who issue visas.  Other edicts on trade and national security will affect economic and political officers.  I don’t believe that any of Trump’s orders so far are so out of the mainstream that they risk asking diplomats to do anything unlawful.  No one who is not a citizen or permanent resident has any “right” to enter the US, constitutional or otherwise.  US immigration policy over the years has incorporated all kinds of discrimination.  It may be questionable on human rights grounds, but it is not illegal.  In fact, the US has probably engaged in more illegal conduct by not enforcing immigration laws on the books over the years, resulting in millions of “illegal” residents of the US.  Illegality has been the US policy towards immigration for decades.  

While I retired rather than enforce policies that I did not agree with, I don’t blame officers for whatever decision they make: to enforce policy they do not agree with, as long as they are not illegal, or to resign or retire rather than enforce them.  If they don’t leave the service, I don’t think they would criticize the policies publicly, although internal criticism is acceptable.  It is really a part of the normal policy-making process.  Almost every policy is the result of discussion among people who did not completely agree.  In my experience more decisions than most people would expect go to the President for decision, because the various agencies under him cannot agree on a course of action.  

Rating Obama

I’d give Obama a 6 or 7 out of 10.  I would give most of his predecessors a 5 or less.

Trump’s election showed that some of Obama’s greatest successes were his biggest failings.  He saved the US from a 2nd great depression, but failed to prosecute any of the guys who caused the recession.  He ripped off the middle class to help the super-poor and the super-rich.  The poor got welfare and the rich got no jail and low taxes.  Income inequality got worse on his watch, probably because it was the easiest course to keep the economy going, but he failed to help a lot of regular people as the rich got richer.  Unemployment is down, but many people have worse jobs than before 2008.

Obamacare expanded government health care, but it was a mess, purposely so to help the health insurance industry, hospital administrators, doctors, etc.  The real solution was single-payer Medicare of all, and Obama didn’t do it.  I would not be surprised to see him on the boards of some healthcare companies and banks soon or making speeches to them, ala Hillary and Bill.

He also failed to get any kind of gun control; his heart was in the right place, but the NRA beat him.

On foreign policy, he did great keeping us out of new wars.  He was right not to intervene in Ukraine or Syria, but he and the EU made a mess of Libya.  Iraq and Afghanistan are still a mess, and will probably collapse into some kind of chaos if we ever leave entirely.  That’s not all his fault, but he didn’t solve it.  The Iran deal was quite an accomplishment; I hope Trump doesn’t destroy it.  Israel hates Obama, bur should love him; he ended up pitting the Arab states against each other, Sunni v. Shiite, Iran v. Saudi, etc., which meant they couldn’t focus on Israel.  Except for the Palestinians (a problem Israel itself created) Israel is safer than it has been for years.  He was right to try to focus on Asia, but failed.  I think the Israeli lobby would not allow him to turn away from the Middle East.

One of Obama’s strengths was his honesty and decency, keeping corruption at bay.  Because he was such a decent person, he probably didn’t perceive how corrupt Hillary appeared to voters.  For Obama’s main failings it’s useful to look at Bernie’s campaign rather than Hillary’s or Trump’s – health care, inequality, guns….

I’m probably the wrong person to talk about race.  I would give Obama pretty good marks for being evenhanded, especially for being black himself.  But I can see that many blacks think he failed them.

He was a great speaker.  I will really miss that.  I think we have gone from a college level vocabulary to a third grade one.  But I speaking may be overrated.  Some of Obama’s most eloquent speeches were about gun violence, and they made no difference.

Obama’s presidency would have been much better, maybe even great, if the Republican Congress had not stonewalled everything he tried to do.

I like being tough on leakers.  When I was in Brasilia, I had several contacts who used to give me information on Brazil’s nuclear weapons program.  I used to report this pretty straight in secret cables, using their names.  CIA reports like that don’t use names; they have some super secret database that links reports to names.  Their reports say something like, “According to a reliable source with access.”  Only the CIA ops guys know who that really is.  If my old cables had been released, my old contacts would have been in big trouble.  So, I’m unhappy Chelsea/Bradley Manning got released.  

Also, when I worked in DC on missile proliferation, we relied on intelligence to to try to stop transfers to bad countries.  The intel agencies often did not want us to use their intel because it might give away their "sources and methods.”  We were forbidden to use their info until they cleared it, which sometimes took weeks or months.  Several times NYT reporter Michael Gordon called me at home around 10 pm to get me to comment on a story based on leaked intel information about something some bad country was doing.  State was always the dove, saying to wait, while the Pentagon wanted to act and beat up the bad guy.  The leak to Gordon was always correct, sometimes of top secret information, intended to pressure us to act.  I aways did the “refuse to confirm or deny” thing with Gordon, but the leak was clearly from the hawkish Republicans in the Pentagon under the G.H.W. Bush admin, probably from people who worked for then Asst. Sec. Steve Hadley, who went on to be G.W. Bush’s NSC Advisor.  

I would like to think that leaks are a dishonest way to push a policy in Washington and should be punished.  

I also didn’t mention immigration.  My first State job was issuing visas in Sao Paulo, Brazil.  I always felt bad denying a visa, because it probably meant that person would never get to the US, while if a Mexican was denied, they could just sneak across the border.  It was a racist policy favoring those who could walk across the border over those who had to fly.  Immigration laws have been like Prohibition, on the books but totally disregarded.  Now that I’m retired and shopping at a lot of discount stores, I often hear more Spanish spoken than English.  Denver has changed just in the years we’ve been out here.  Obama and the Democrats (and Reagan) refused to enforce the immigration laws.  I think that is dishonest and undermines respect for law in general.  Mexicans are inclined to regard American law as toothless, whether it’s about immigration or drugs.  It’s tough to be a law enforcement officer when your boss, the President, says, “Oh, violating this law is no big deal; let them all go.”  I know Obama deported a lot of people, but as in the financial crisis, he didn’t get the job done in a way that pleased the American public.  

I suppose I was never smart enough or tough enough to win a leak war; so, I didn’t like them.  And it is against the laws on the books.

On Mexican territory (California, Texas, etc.), my view is that we won it fair and square and it’s ours now.  Maybe it’s like Israel’s West Bank.  We’ve created even more than 2,500 settlements on it.  And what about the Indians?  Do they get the whole country back?

I have thought about Mexico and California in connection with Ukraine.  Ukraine used to be part of Russia, i.e., “the Ukraine,” like “the American Mid-West.”  Both have been breadbaskets of the country, and Kiev was really the first capital of what became Russia when Moscow was still a backwater, the 11th or 12th century.  The Russians established a naval base at Sevastopol in 1783.  California did not become part of the US until the 1800s and the San Diego Naval Base was not built until the 1920s.  Arguably, our forcing Russia to give up its base at Sevastopol is like Russia encouraging Mexico to take back San Diego and force the US to remove its naval base.  Not the same, but there are similarities.

On migration, I just worry that our country is changing.  The Hispanics have been in Colorado for hundreds of years.  Senator and Sec. of Interior Salazar was from one of those families.  But in general, Hispanics have no shared history with the British Europeans who founded the US on the East Coast.  Washington and Jefferson have no ancestral connection to them, as European immigrants have.  Plus they come here for economic reasons, not political ones; so, they don’t have any particular reverence for the American form of government.  It’s okay, but they are used to the corruption in Mexico, too.  Countries change, but we could have controlled how it did.  We passed laws on immigration, but they were ignored.  We had a preference, but we ignored it, and just let nature take its course.  It’s not unlike global warming; if you ignore it, the impact sneaks up on you.

So, who represents this historically elite East Coast establishment that I extolled?  Donald Trump, the Europeans’ answer to Barack Obama.  I am hopeful that he will do some good things by instinct, but intellectually he could hardly be farther from the founding fathers.  I don’t think Hillary was the real East Coast heir, because her appeal was to the newly powerful Americans -- Hispanics and blacks, (with the votes) and Jews (with the money).  She was to be the voice of the new America, not the old one.  Now we have the voice of the old one, and it speaks with a third grade vocabulary.  Oh well….