March 13, 2015

Earlier this week, top officials appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to discuss the Obama Administration’s proposed authorization for use of military force (AUMF) against the Islamic State. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey took part in a conversation that highlighted several areas of concern for which additional focus is warranted going forward. In particular, the hearing added confusion to the proposed definition of “associated forces” and how it is currently interpreted or could be interpreted in the future. The hearing also confirmed the proposed language that would prohibit “enduring offensive ground combat operations” lacks significant meaning. The discussion highlighted that the Administration is increasingly comfortable relying on 2001 AUMF authority to prosecute the war and that they believe they could revert to 2001 authority should an Islamic State-specific authorization expire. Finally, back-and-forth during the hearing and related statements by top Republican senators indicate there is a real chance that the war against the Islamic State could escalate to taking action against Bashar al-Assad – and that some Republicans want to put the authority to do that in the AUMF.

It is becoming less clear how the term “associated forces” as defined in the proposed AUMF would be interpreted and used. The hearing focused heavily on what constitutes an “associated force,” but unfortunately the discussion created more confusion than clarity.

Do ISIL “wannabes” count as “associated forces?” In response to a question regarding attacking ISIL associated forces in Libya, Secretary Carter implied targeting “wannabes” was part of the reason for the kind of associated forces language contained in the bill: “But you do see in this social media-fueled movement called ISIL, people who are wannabes or want to join or have been associated with al-Qaeda or some other group who are putting up the flag of ISIL. And we need to recognize that that’s a characteristic of the campaign and that’s why the AUMF has the [associated forces] language that it does.” [Ash Carter via Ryan Goodman, 3/12/15]

Do ISIL affiliates have to attack the United States or coalition partners to count as “associated forces?” Ryan Goodman, professor at NYU School of Law, adds: “That said, Mr. Kerry did refer to the affiliate ‘join[ing] with ISIL in a specific strategy to attack coalition partners [or the United States as part of the idea of associated forces]’… Still, Kerry did not, by any stretch, stipulate that phrase is an essential requirement of the test of associated forces. Indeed, it is likely not a minimum condition of the test since to ‘join…a specific strategy to attack’ is likely [a higher]…threshold than the administration would even apply to al-Qaeda under the existing co-belligerency standard [used to determined associated forces]. Kerry was more likely using the phrase by way of example – not setting an outer limit.” Adding to the confusion, Gen. Dempsey used a lower standard, saying an affiliated group only had to “threaten U.S. interests” to qualify as an associated force. [Ryan Goodman, 3/12/15. Marin Dempsey, 3/11/15]

 What ISIL-affiliated groups would count as associated forces? This was a direct question that went unasked and unanswered. When specific groups like Boko Haram were discussed, however, it was unclear how various interpretations of “associated forces” would apply. At one point, Secretary Carter said associated forces language “can be interpreted, but has not yet been interpreted, to cover other groups like Boko Haram.” [Ash Carter via Slate, 3/12/15]

 The Administration’s proposed AUMF’s prohibition on “enduring offensive ground combat operations” is being shown to have no significant meaning. Previously, national security and legal experts have explained the term has no military or legal meaning. That was confirmed during the hearing when Gen. Dempsey said the term was not drawn from military doctrine and no precise meaning was offered by other witnesses. Instead, Secretaries Carter and Kerry repeatedly resorted to explaining the way they “contemplated” the term to mean prohibiting operations smaller in scale than those seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. What would be allowed under their current interpretation of the term short of Iraq- or Afghanistan-like operations is undefined. Moreover, the interpretation of the next Administration cannot be predicted – and certainly won’t be significantly legally constrained by the current proposal if it becomes law.

 As it stands now, the Administration’s proposed AUMF allows reverting back to the 2001 AUMF and potentially ignoring the limits in any Islamic State-focused authorization. The Administration is increasingly brazen in its claim that the 2001 authorization applies to the Islamic State and that it doesn’t technically need any additional authority. Secretary Kerry said, “We‘re convinced we have the authority. That’s not the issue here.” But that belief does in fact pose a problem. Heather Brandon of Human Rights First explains, “Carter…said that if the ISIL AUMF was not reauthorized after three years, a future president could continue to target ISIL under the 2001 AUMF – and consequently, without the limits in the ISIL AUMF. This effectively renders the ISIL AUMF debate absurd.” A potential solution is to add to the proposal a so-called “supersession clause” that either says an ISIL-only AUMF supersedes the 2001 authority in application to the Islamic State – as recommended by a coalition of national security law organizations – or a provision that explicitly states the 2001 AUMF does not apply to the Islamic State. [John Kerry via UPI, 3/11/15. Heather Brandon, 3/12/15]

Key Republican senators are angling for the AUMF to authorize going after the Assad regime – and the military strategy may be shifting in that direction. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said he won’t support an AUMF that does not apply to Assad. “Any authorization to use force that will not allow us to neutralize the air threats that any group going into Syria [such as moderate Syrian opposition elements the U.S. intends to train and equip] would face from Assad is not only militarily unsound, it is immoral,” he said. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) has voiced similar concerns. Gen. Dempsey agreed in the hearing that successfully training and equipping moderate Syrian opposition to allegedly fight the Islamic State might require some kind of support against Assad’s forces. “We’re under active discussion about whether and how to support them,” he said.

Taken together, these factors indicate it is becoming increasingly possible for the war against the Islamic State to escalate to a war also intended topple Assad’s regime, something with very different risks, as NSN has pointed out previously. [Lindsey Graham and Martin Dempsey via The Hill, 3/12/15]

Photo Credit: A Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon receives fuel from a U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker over Iraq. The F-16 is striking ISIS targets in support of Operation Inherent Resolve [U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Perry Alston, 3/10/2015]

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Congressional Progressive Caucus
Forum on ISIL and the President’s AUMF Proposal
March 16, 2015

Distinguished members of Congress, I am honored to join you to discuss the president’s proposed authorization for use of military force (AUMF) against ISIL. Over the next few minutes, I would like to outline how a number of key national security issues relate to considering the president’s proposed resolution and what kind of provisions it should – and should not – ultimately include as a result. In particular, I will focus on select aspects of how the U.S. military strategy against ISIL should inform congressional action on a potential AUMF.

As I think all of us know, ISIL poses a very real national security threat to the United States. The organization threatens U.S. and partner interests in the region, including: (1) the territoriality of states in the Middle East; (2) human security on a mass scale; (3) and the political stability of American partner-states, especially Iraq. It is precisely the significance of these national security concerns that mean it is important that Congress play its role in helping to institute an effective counter-ISIL strategy that uses all elements of American national power, including diplomatic, economic, informational, and military.

To that end, a well-crafted and tailored AUMF can serve as a powerful tool for making sure any war authority is tied to an effective and appropriate strategy. The administration’s proposal is a step in that direction, but there are a number of key issues remaining regarding the relationship between the military outlook of the campaign and the content of the president’s proposed AUMF.

First, the proposal does not define the objectives of the war against ISIL. Without specifying objectives – and other important limitations some of my colleagues will discuss in more detail – the next president would be free to perhaps dramatically change the nature of the campaign before consulting with Congress. Moreover, giving objectives in statute can help focus the kind of collective understanding of the conflict that is conducive for full debate over the justification for the authorization, including future reassessments.

But this is not to say we don’t know what the objectives of the campaign are. Officials have elsewhere defined the purpose of the conflict in terms of “degrading and ultimately destroying” ISIL. But “destroying” ISIL poses significant military and political challenges to which there does not yet appear to be any realistic solutions proposed by either the administration or outside policy community. Militarily, full destruction of the organization appears unrealistic given that the United States and coalition forces have not yet destroyed organizations like core al-Qaeda and the Taliban despite more than a decade of war involving sizable ground forces. While the United States is set to increase its assistance to moderate members of the Syrian opposition, their top priority is fighting the Assad regime, not ISIL. Politically, destroying ISIL requires being able to extend legitimate political governance over the territory taken back from the organization. This can be accomplished in Iraq, where a central government exists, but it’s not clear what the path forward would be in Syria, unless the Syrian civil war is first resolved. At present, no political entity exists in Syria that has the capability or intent to govern the territory and population presently controlled by ISIL – nor are there any credible plans that I’m aware of to create such an entity.

Second, the proposal omits a number of key reporting requirements that could be important for reassessing the conflict, its strategy, and its progress. In particular, there is a need for regular reporting on things like: (1) What is the whole-of-government strategy in detail? (2) What are the metrics of success in the campaign? (2) How are these metrics being met or not? (3) What capabilities and intent does ISIL have to target the American homeland, if any? Authoritative reporting on these issues would facilitate continued congressional assessment of the strategy and whether it is either necessary or wise to reauthorize the conflict, assuming a sunset provision remains a part of the AUMF as under the president’s proposal.

Third, any final AUMF will be a product of the political process. Therefore, it is important to prevent provisions that would be potentially harmful to national security from being added. There are many counterproductive provisions that could be added, but one stands out above all others: some conservative members of Congress have called for making sure this AUMF gives the president the authority to attack the Assad regime, which constitutes the main opponent of the moderate Syrian opposition. They argue this is necessary to protect the moderate opposition who we are assisting. But granting this and future presidents any statutory authority to launch strikes against the Assad regime would open the door to mission creep on the Syrian side of the war that could expand to U.S. forces being ordered to degrade the Syrian military and, ultimately, perhaps topple the Assad regime itself. These kinds of operations would be a sizable military undertaking and differ significantly in character from the kind of operations conducted during the campaign thus far. Taking on Assad would also risk the United States inheriting Syria’s full political future, potentially including nation-building activities. This would be a dramatically different war than the one heretofore debated by Congress.

It is worth mentioning that the possibility of military escalation against Assad as an extension of the war against ISIL is not merely a position advocated by conservative hawks. American officials have made clear that they agree protecting U.S.-trained forces in Syria against the Assad regime will be important to battlefield success and that they are deliberating on how to best provide such protection. While U.S. officials have also said any such operations would not be conducted under ISIL AUMF authority, they did not specify what other authority would be used.

With that, I thank you for your time and look forward to your questions.

Photo Credit: Marines conduct a leaders’ reconnaissance during Amphibious Squadron/Marine Expeditionary Unit Integration Training (PMINT) aboard Camp Pendleton, California to hone their skills in a field environment to improve their combat effectiveness as a unit. [U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Jamean Berry/Released, 3/11/15]

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By J. Dana Stuster, NSN Policy Analyst
March 2, 2015 |  LA Times

Since President Obama asked Congress in February for a new Authorization for Use of Military Force against Islamic State, the proposal has been under attack by hawkish members of Congress. “My goal is to do no harm to the war effort,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said recently. “The harm is to embrace a strategy with no chance of success.”

He’s right — and that’s precisely why the use-of-force prescriptions Graham and others are advocating are so misguided.

Congressional hawks are pushing for expansive executive war powers. Though they have not offered their own comprehensive strategy, interventionists such as Graham and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) are calling for Obama — and his successor — to be able to wage another American war of choice in the Middle East.

J. Dana Stuster is a policy analyst at the National Security Network and coauthor of the report “Confronting the Islamic State: An Assessment of U.S. Strategic Options.”

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Photo Credit: Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) [U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. John Orrell, 3/3/11]

This piece was re-posted on:

Gulf News, 3/4/15
Olean Times Herold, 3/3/15

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By Bill French, NSN Policy Analyst
February 27, 2015 | The Hill

This week Congress begins considering an authorization for use of military force (AUMF) against the Islamic State. So far, the debate has focused on how specific a potential authorization should be. The administration has requested a modestly limited authorization and some in Congress want an even more tailored resolution. In response, conservative hawks in Congress are leading what amounts to a Blank Check Caucus that wants to grant this and future presidents broad war authority that is unspecific and unlimited so long as the Islamic State and vaguely related groups are the targets.

But the Blank Check Caucus misunderstands the basic functions of war authorizations and fails to appreciate the challenges that non-state actors like the Islamic State pose to Congress’ constitutional role to declare war. By correcting these errors, it is evident that limits are necessary and appropriate in an Islamic State AUMF.

The basic purpose of Congress having the power to grant war authority is to make sure the conflict is justified and assessed according to the national interest. The process of justifying and authorizing wars presumes that the actual conduct of the war will in a general sense conform to the terms in which it was authorized. This is not to say that Congress needs to know exactly how a war will transpire down to the smallest detail, but it is to say that the basic scope of the war needs to be defined. Without having a relatively clear, collectively shared sense of the basic scope of the conflict, it is not possible for Congress to weigh the costs and benefits of military action to inform its decision to authorize or not.

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Photo Credit: A U.S. Army Soldier assigned to 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, adjusts an Iraqi trainee’s weapon to ensure he’s covering the correct sector of fire during infantry squad tactical training lanes at Camp Taji, Iraq. [USA photo by Master Sgt. Mike Lavigne, 1/7/15]

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Jennifer Bendery
February 26, 2015 | Huffington Post

WASHINGTON — As Congress turns its attention to President Barack Obama’s request to use military force against the Islamic State, more than a dozen groups are urging lawmakers to rein in a sweeping 2001 war authorization that never expired and is being used to justify open-ended military operations.

The American Civil Liberties Union, National Security Network and Constitution Project are among 16 groups that sent a letter to lawmakers on Tuesday demanding that they revise Obama’s war authorization request to explicitly state that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force does not apply to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, also known as ISIL or ISIS.

Obama opted not to address the 2001 AUMF in his proposal, which he sent to Congress this month. The request seeks limits on levels of U.S. ground troops and duration of the campaign. But the U.S. has already been bombing the Islamic State for six months without congressional sign-off, and Obama has cited the 2001 AUMF as his authority to do so. Because his new proposal leaves the 2001 AUMF intact, thatbroad war authority remains available to him and future presidents, regardless of whether Congress passes Obama’s plan.

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Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force planes at Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey.  Incirlik Air Base Facebook, 10/15/14. 

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February 25, 2015

This week, Congress is beginning the process of considering a new authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) against the Islamic State. The authorization recently proposed by the White House has positive and negative aspects, as NSN has noted previously. But with additional analysis coming out about the Administration’s proposal and Secretary Kerry’s Senate testimony yesterday, the conversation is advancing and many details deserve closer consideration. First, the extent to which the proposed AUMF would authorize U.S. ground forces is still very unclear. Second, new troubling questions are being raised about the conditions in which the Administration thinks it would have the authority to strike Assad’s forces under a new AUMF – something very different than the kind of war the White House has so far discussed. Third, going forward, Congress should look carefully at the implications of authorizing attacking Islamic State associated forces without geographic limits and extending the authorization to “successor entities.” Finally, ensuring that the current or future presidents cannot bypass the limits contained in an Islamic State AUMF by abusing other AUMFs, such as the 2001 law, is an important goal to achieve in the statute. 

Secretary Kerry has clarified his interpretation of “enduring offensive ground combat operations,” but the legal meaning of the term otherwise remains unclear.  Secretary Kerry clarified aspects of his interpretation of “enduring offensive ground combat operations,” a phrase contained within the Administration’s AUMF proposal denoting the kind of operations that would be prohibited. In testimony yesterday, he said, “If you’re going in for weeks and weeks of combat, that’s enduring…If you’re going in to assist somebody and [conduct] fire control and you’re embedded in an overnight deal, or you’re in a rescue operation or whatever, that is not enduring.” However, these are Kerry’s views in his current capacity as Secretary of State. They are not necessarily the perspective of other members of the Administration or of the next president – and are not included in any legislative text.

And, as Sen. Barba Boxer (D-CA) explained, the phrase itself still has no clear, collectively recognized meaning. “I asked the CRS [Congressional Research Service] if they could analyze this word ‘enduring,’” Boxer said yesterday. “Here’s what they say. This is incredibly important for you to hear. ‘It seems doubtful that a limitation on ‘enduring offensive ground combat operations’ would present sufficient judicially manageable standards by which a court could resolve any conflict that might arise between Congress and the executive branch over the interpretation of the phrase or its application to U.S. involvement in hostilities.’ This is the CRS, they don’t have a dog in the fight.” [John Kerry and Barbara Boxer, 2/24/15]

Greater clarity is needed on under what conditions the Administration thinks it would have the authority to target Assad’s forces in Syria.

The Administration has been unclear about what authority it thinks it would have under a new AUMF to target Assad: In yesterday’s hearing, Secretary Kerry and Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) had an inconclusive exchange on what might authorize the United States to strike the Assad regime and why. Sen. Corker interpreted Kerry’s comments to mean that “our authorization should authorize the administration to go against Assad when they’re doing things that take on the Free Syrian opposition [who are important to the strategy of destroying the Islamic State].” Kerry attempted to clarify, but ultimately left the question unresolved as he seemed to try to have it both ways, saying: “That’s not what I said. Assad is an entirely different component of this…What I said was they have to be authorized – the authorization is such that defending those that are engaged in the fight against ISIL, it seems to me, is an important part of defeating ISIL. But that’s a debate about how that’s implemented that is taking place in the administration right now. The president hasn’t made a final decision on that. I think we need to be discussing that as the AUMF comes together, but what is important is that the President have as much leeway as possible in the three years he’s asked for to be able to get the job done.” [Bob Corker and John Kerry, 2/24/15]

Granting this and the next president the authority to strike Assad would be a serious mistake: As Congress and the Administration clarify this issue, it is critical that no authority be given that could be employed against the Assad regime, which would open the door to effectively adopting the Syrian civil war as a problem for the United States to solve by military force. As NSN explained in a recent policy paper on U.S. strategy towards the Islamic State, such a policy would invite “large-scale intervention [that] would militarily attempt to force Assad into a settlement and commit the United States to a costly, open-ended conflict. This would divert U.S. efforts from counterterrorism to an intractable civil war in which the United States does not have a vital interest. The U.S. intervention would almost certainly be met with escalation by Assad’s allies, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in the Levant without providing a resolution to the war.” [NSN, 2/15]

Congress needs to understand that by authorizing use of force against the Islamic States’ associated forces, they could be opening the door to a conflict spanning regions across Africa and Asia. The President’s proposed AUMF would authorize use of force against the “associated forces” of the Islamic State, which it defines as “individuals and organizations fighting for, on behalf of, or alongside ISIL or any closely-related successor entity in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.” Depending on how loosely this is interpreted, and particularly how “coalition partners” is interpreted, this could give future presidents an opening to expand the war against potential Islamic State affiliates from North Africa to Southeast Asia. The Nation explains, “this is not a theoretical issue, and it’s not just countries that ‘neighbor’ Iraq and Syria. The New York Times reported Sunday that US intelligence officials claim ISIL is moving outside Syria and Iraq ‘to establish militant affiliates in Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt and Libya’ and that extremists have organized under the ISIS banner in Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Yemen. Elsewhere, Agence France Presse has reported that in the Philippines, two rebel groups have pledged allegiance to ISIL.” [The Nation, 11/20/15]

The simplest solution to avoiding the potentially significant expansion of the conflict beyond what is currently under consideration – even beyond the countries listed above, depending upon the future development of Islamic State affiliates –  is to include well-defined geographic limits outside of which force would not be authorized until further permission is granted by Congress.

Authorizing use of force against successor entities without geographic limits opens the door to war of unpredictable scope and sets a bad precedent. Ryan Goodman, professor at New York University Law School, explains that “the president’s proposal would go a step further than earlier measures by authorizing force against associated forces of ‘any closely-related successor entity’ to the Islamic State. In other words, the president is asking Congress to endorse his theory that looped in the Islamic State under the 2001 AUMF as a ‘successor’ to al Qaeda. More to the point, he’s asking Congress to authorize force against ‘associated forces’ of the Islamic State’s future successors. As Harold Koh, Obama’s former legal advisor in State Department [sic] has written, such a theory involves ‘a dangerous methodology whereby the current and future Presidents can cite ‘factual evidence of common [al Qaeda] DNA’ to go to war with groups far removed from the original authorization of force.’” [Ryan Goodman, 2/12/15]

Going forward, it is crucial that Congress make clear that any Islamic State AUMF supersedes previous authorizations in order to stop this or future Presidents from abusing the law to get around limits contained in an Islamic State AUMF. Previously, the White House has inappropriately claimed that the 2001 AUMF authorizes the war against the Islamic State, and that the 2002 AUMF could also be used. A letter signed by 16 organizations, including the ACLU, Constitution Project, and National Security Network, explains that “If Congress fails to tackle both the 2001 AUMF and the 2002 Iraq AUMF in any new ISIL-focused AUMF it risks simply adding to what has become a tangled and ambiguous web of war authorities from which a president might pick and choose without explanation. In other words, even if Congress were to pass legislation that clearly and precisely defines the President’s power to combat ISIL, those statutes lurk as opportunities to try to circumvent Congress’ will. Going forward, clarity is at an absolute premium.”

The letter also explains why it was wrong for the White House to claim the 2001 AUMF applied to the Islamic State: “There is no evidence that when Congress authorized the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001—targeting those responsible for the September 11 attacks—or the invasion of Iraq in 2002—targeting the then government of Iraq and its claimed development of weapons of mass destruction—Congress intended to delegate to whoever might be president more than a decade later the sole authority to decide that the United States should join in a new war; one that at the time had not begun, was not foreseen, and involves parties that did not exist.” [Coalition Letter, 2/24/15]

Photo Credit: Secretary Kerry appears before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee [State Department, 2/24/15]

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Tobias T. Gibson
February 20, 2015 | The Hill

Last week, the Obama administration sent Congress a draft proposal for a new Authorization of Military Force (AUMF) specifically targeted at the threat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Predictably, the reaction was swift. Equally predictably, the feelings toward the proposal were largely divided along partisan lines. There is one commonality, however — feelings that the draft AUMF is not perfect.

Responses were swift by those outside of government, as well. My colleagues at National Security Network (NSN) offered ”the good, the bad and the ugly” of the proposed AUMF. Among the “good,” seconding Pelosi, is the end to the 2002 Iraq AUMF.

There are more two contested “good” outcomes stemming from the proposed ISIS AUMF.First, NSN contends that three-year expiration date “is important to make sure the conflict is reassessed in the future and to prevent the next president from dramatically changing war policy without congressional approval.” However, this provision is part of the concern expressed, primarily by conservative members of Congress and other critics, that the AUMF may inadvertently hamstring the president — or the president’s successor — in the struggle to “degrade, and ultimately destroy” ISIS. However, in a report issued in August of last year, it was revealed that nearly a quarter of previous military authorizations included expiration dates. Thus, it is unlikely that President Obama’s request will undermine the legitimacy of the commander-in-chief powers.

Gibson is an associate professor of political science at Westminster College in Missouri and a National Security Network (NSN) Fellow. The views expressed here are not necessarily the views of NSN.

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Photo Credit: A U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor aircraft refuels after conducting airstrikes in Syria Sept. 23, 2014. The F-22 was part of a large coalition strike package that was the first to strike Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) targets in Syria. [DoD photo by Maj. Jefferson S. Heiland, U.S. Air National Guard/Released, 9/23/14] 

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February 20, 2015

On Wednesday, Jeb Bush laid out the foreign policy framework for his anticipated presidential campaign in a speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Bush’s remarks covered a broad range of subjects, and while he identified many of the pressing international challenges facing the United States, his remarks lacked clarity or solutions. As the presidential race moves forward, the national security debate will require more depth of understanding on issues including resolving Iran’s nuclear program, addressing the threat from the Islamic State, the fighting in Ukraine, normalizing relations with Cuba, and ongoing Pentagon spending debates, and we will look for candidates that back up emerging positions with effective policies.

Bush doesn’t seem to understand the goal of the nuclear negotiations with Iran – or the consequences if they fail. In his speech on Wednesday, Bush stated the threat from Iran in extreme hyperbole, calling it “an existential threat to Israel and to the world, including the United States.” He stated that the goal of the negotiations has changed from solving the problem to managing it. That’s not true: The goal of the Administration’s nuclear negotiations is, and always has been, to prevent Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon. This would entail managing and monitoring Iran’s nuclear program to extend the time it would take Iran to enrich the material necessary for a bomb while giving the United States and the international community time to respond, militarily if necessary, should Iran renege on its commitments. Bush’s dismissal of a tightly regulated Iranian nuclear program doesn’t consider the alternatives seriously. As Roger Cohen wrote last week, “This situation comes down to alternatives. Either you get a negotiated solution that ensures over some 15 years that Iran’s program is strictly limited, at least a year from breakout, with eyes and ears on the ground you’ve never had before, and the plutonium path to a bomb cut off by the transformation of the Arak research reactor — or you go for military action. And what would war achieve? It may set the program back some, but it will ensure that Iran goes for a bomb, inflame anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, and see the current international coalition for sanctions fall apart.” As NSN hasfrequently noted, passing legislation now that would impose new sanctions on Iran or force an up-or-down congressional vote on an agreement, which Bush encouraged, would make a comprehensive deal less likely. [Roger Cohen, 2/12/15]

On the Islamic State, Bush agreed with the Obama Administration’s approach, while claiming otherwise. As Bush observed, the challenge of confronting the Islamic State “gets really, really complicated,” but he seemed to not understand either what the current Administration policy has been or how he would improve it. “We have to develop a strategy that’s global that takes them out. First, the strategy needs to be restrain them, tighten the noose, and then taking them out is the strategy,” Bush said, actually echoing President Obama’s own rhetoric. Bush, like Obama, also stressed the importance of the international coalition, noting that the fight against the Islamic State “has to be done first in concert with folks in the region.” As NSN noted in its new report, Confronting the Islamic State: An Assessment of U.S. Strategic Options, there is a serious debate about the best approach to prosecute this fight, but all politicians should be wary of strategies that would escalate the conflict. And that’s a real concern with Bush, who seems fuzzy on the actual threat posed by the Islamic State. In his remarks he claimed they are “a fighting force of more than 200,000 battle-tested men,” though his office later claimed he misspoke and meant 20,000. As Juan Cole wrote yesterday, “A slip like that can reveal how a person views the world. Jeb Bush seems to think that menacing groups out there are 10 times larger than they are,” equivalent in size to the French military. [Juan Cole,2/19/15]

On Cuba, Bush called the normalization of relations “a bad deal” and said the United States should have held out longer on the status quo, despite every reason to believe the status quo was worse. “I think it was the wrong thing to do,” he said Wednesday. “Had they waited, they would have seen significant economic strains that would have brought Cuba to the table.” But, as Dan Drezner, professor at Tufts University and sanctions expert, explained in December, “while the benefits of catalytic carrots [i.e., engagement with renegade regimes] are not all that great, the status quo policy was worse. Way worse. It’s not like 50 years of economic sanctions altered Cuba’s regime. Sure, Cuba’s chief economic patron Venezuela is ailing right now, but Cuba endured far worse when the USSR disintegrated and the Special Period started. So anyone who tells you that the sanctions just needed more a little time [sic] to work is flat-out delusional. After more than a half-century, they were never going to work. By switching course, the United States reaps a few benefits. First, the odds of orderly liberalization and democratization in Cuba have increased. Not by a lot — maybe from 2 percent to 10 percent. But that’s still an improvement. Even if full-blown regime transition doesn’t happen, economic liberalization does make a society somewhat more free.” Moreover, Bush’s comments dodge the reality that America’s Cuba policy was isolating the United States and constituted one of the biggest obstacles towards renewed leadership in Latin America, as NSN has explained before. [Dan Drezner, 12/8/14]

On Ukraine, Bush struggled to find a difference with the Administration’s approach while sidestepping key details. Bush called the Obama Administration’s support of Ukraine “feckless,” insisting that the United States should not ignore Kiev’s request for weapons while also agreeing with America’s military reinforcement in the Baltic States. But the Obama Administration is considering sending arms to Ukraine. What has been missing from the debate among politicians on Ukraine, and the opportunity that Bush missed, was to engage more deeply with the risks of arming Ukraine and how U.S. policy should navigate those risks – if it should go forward with arms at all. As NSN hasdetailed previously, the challenges of arming Ukraine include driving a wedge between the United States and Europe (France and Germany are so far strongly opposed to sending arms), inducing Russian escalation, strengthening Putin’s hand domestically, and ultimately failing to affect the order of battle in Ukraine given Russian military superiority over Kiev.

Bush’s ideas about increasing Pentagon spending lack explanation and dodge the issue. Bush said it was “really dangerous” that the United States is “on the path of only spending two and a half percent of GDP on defense by the end of the decade,” insisting that the United States should increase Pentagon spending and President Obama should work with both parties to increase military expenditures. However, he did not say what specifically was dangerous about spending that sticks to the spending caps imposed by the Budget Control Act (BCA), which for FY 2016 are set to $499 billion, or more than all of Asia and Oceania dedicates to military spending ($407 billion) or all of Europe including Russia ($410 billion), according to data collected by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Additionally, President Obama has alreadyattempted to work with Congress to eliminate the BCA caps, including submitting a Pentagon budget request this year that was $35 billion above the caps. Finally, Bush did not explain what he would do differently with Congress. Defense News reports, “the likely candidate did not lay out the kind of broader fiscal plan that would replace defense cuts on the books into the 2020s with other deficit-reduction items. Without successfully pushing that kind of legislation through both chambers of Congress, the 2011 Budget Control Act’s defense and domestic spending cuts must occur each year through 2021.” [Defense News,2/18/15]

Photo Credit: Jeb Bush speaks at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference [Photo by Gage Skidmore, 3/15/2013]

The post Jeb Bush Lays out Limited Foreign Policy Vision appeared first on National Security Network.

Philip Ewing
February 18, 2015 | Politico Pro (subscription based)

The Obama administration should scale back its ambitions to train Syrian fighters to take on the Islamic State, a new report urges, and instead focus on containing the terrorists.

The left-leaning National Security Network says President Barack Obama’s strategy has shown it can “halt and degrade” the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, but “is unlikely to achieve its stated goal of defeating the organization.”

“For defeat of the Islamic State to be realistically achievable, credible partner ground forces must exist that can retake significant territory and govern the reclaimed areas,” says the report, by researchers Dana Stuster and Bill French. “At present, these conditions do not exist, are unlikely to exist in the near-future and are beyond the ability of the United States to impose.”

Thousands of American troops are deploying to Iraq to train its army and to Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to train a force of “moderate” Syrian fighters that Obama hopes can begin to fight ISIL in Syria as soon as the end of the year. It’s an effort expected to take years — into the next presidential administration — and cost billions of dollars.

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Photo Credit: U.S. MARINE CORPS PHOTO BY CPL. CARSON A. GRAMLEY/ RELEASED, 1/28/15

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By Lyle Denniston
February 17, 2015 | Yahoo News

President Obama has won significant praise, from scholars, pundits and some politicians, for his action last week in recommending limits on a new move to wage military action against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. He proposed a three-year time limit on that authority, and a lack of permission for extensive use of U.S. ground troops against ISIL. He also asked Congress explicitly to repeal a 2002 resolution that had authorized the U.S. military invasion of Iraq.

As the President conceded, however, he explicitly declined to ask for repeal of the 9/11 authorization – the warmaking power that Congress had authorized against the Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist networks in 2001.   And that is the specific resolution upon which the President has claimed authority, since August 2014, to justify some 2,300 strikes by U.S. air forces against ISIL in Iraq and Syria. Indeed, with that authority on the books, the President and his aides have insisted that he actually did not need a new ISIL-specific grant of power, although they made clear they think it would be better for the country if the commitment were a shared one.

“The proposed ISIL AUMF does not restrict using the 2001 Authorization to bypass the limits set in an Islamic State-specific law. The Administration has already claimed that the 2001 AUMF gives them the necessary authority to engage in armed conflict against the Islamic State.”

– The National Security Network, a national defense advocacy group, in an online commentary on February 11, responding to the President’s proposal.

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To read the NSN Daily Update quoted, click here. 

Photo Credit: DoD photo by D. Myles Cullen/Released, 10/14/14

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