James Clapper Has Problems With Words

Yesterday in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Director Of National Intelligence, James Clapper, made a series of blunt statements which perturbed the senators massively.  The remarks regarding the possibility of Gaddafi prevailing in the current insurgency were bad enough apparently.  Even worse was Clapper's contention that Russia and China presented the greatest "mortal threats" to the US.

The Clapper testimony coming as it did on top of his earlier contention that the Muslim Brotherhood had become a primarily secular organization sent at least one powerful Republican senator, Lindsey Graham (SC), into high Earth orbit level dudgeon.  The Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, the antediluvian Democrat from Michigan, Carl Levin, confessed himself nonplussed, saying that Iran and North Korea came to mind far ahead of Russia and China.  With its usual courage and eagerness to defend honestly held and expressed conclusions, the White House dispatched National Security Advisor Tom Donilon to declare Clapper off the reservation and damn his interpretation of events in Libya as too static and having failed to take into account the fluid, dynamics of the situation.

A less impassioned view of the Clapper comments shows that the DNI was not being overly pessimistic.  Nor does it show the man to be somehow demented or terminally out to lunch.  Rather, the larger context indicates that Clapper, a man with nearly a half century in the intelligence racket, was providing an assessment based on capacities without regard to intentions.

The Geek has never been a fan of the Office of National Intelligence.  He saw it (and sees it) as an unnecessary complication in the already overly complex US intelligence community.  The ONI arguably is an artifact of Congress, a disfiguring carbuncle created by poorly informed politicians in response to an overly rapid and superficial analysis undertaken in the panic ridden aftermath of 9/11.  The gestation of ONI was the consequence not so much of a documented need for such an addition but rather the result of the usual politician's need to appear to able to take charge and move out, to do something, anything, so as to reassure We the People that someone, somewhere, is taking care of the store.

The ONI and its Director are presumably the tip of the Great American Intelligence Community Pyramid.  It is to be presumed that the DNI has the best analyses available predicated upon the totality of the best catch.  So, what is wrong?  Why are the senators--and some representatives--so torqued off with Clapper that they want his head detached from the rest of his body?  Is Clapper's view so out of touch with the facts and the analyses that his comments merit only contempt?

Or does the retired Air Force general simply have a problem with words?  Does he choose to speak too bluntly?  Would he be better off if he were to have shaded his assessments, qualified them with appropriate covers of vagueness, and expressed them with well nuanced euphemisms?

Well, let's step back and take a closer look at what Clapper said and what predicates support his views.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a many faceted creature.  As testimony before Representative King's subcommittee brought forth yesterday, the vast majority of Muslim terror plots in the US can be traced in one way or another to some faction or personality in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.  Homegrown terror appears to develop best if provided with foreign fertilizer.

At the same time, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has had to learn to deal with the real world's real problems in realistic ways during its years of operating an impressive array of social and educational services throughout the country.  It is not surprising that the Brotherhood has discovered the strictures and duties of the Koran do not provide all, or even most, of the solutions which must be constructed to meet the real and pressing needs of Egypt's massive impoverished population.  This has provided a significant impetus to adopting secular answers to the challenges confronting the Egyptians.

The tension between these two poles of the Brotherhood has existed for some years.  It has grown in recent months and weeks.  The uprising in Egypt and the consequent removal of Hosni Mubarak have accelerated the growth of the tension.

This implies strongly that Clapper was not wrong in his assessment but did not express it in a way which properly noted that while tensions exist, it is too early to say with certainty that the Brotherhood would tilt more and more to the secular side of the continuum as the outflow from the Mubarak overthrow continues.  He would have been far better off to have noted the foundations of the tensions, the results to date, and the range of most probable outcomes over the next few months.

In short, Clapper wasn't so much wrong as he was inarticulate.

In his assessment of Gaddafi's potential for success in the insurgency, Clapper was on solid ground.  Gaddafi has billions of dollars worth of cash stashed in and around Tripoli.  He has sufficient money to keep his mercenaries well paid.  He has sufficient cash on hand to hire more.  He has more than enough of the old vigorish to pay off his indigenous supporters.  He even has enough bread to get more weapons and munitions on the black market where cash is king and ethics totally situational.

Given that Gaddafi has no safe harbor (other than, perhaps, Venezuela) as well as a world class case of megalomania, it is certain that he has the political will to continue the war.  The US and the rest of the West have stiffened this political will by the threats of criminal prosecution.  (Way to go, guys!)

At the same time, the insurgents have a number of very serious problems.  Compared to the "elite" battalions of the Libyan army commanded by Gaddafi's kids, the rebels are untrained, poorly armed, badly organized, and overstretched in the logistics area.  While they have many reasons to keep on fighting, the coherent political will required for protracted insurgency has not had time enough to develop.  Also, compared to Gaddafi, the insurgents lack financial resources.  This, in and of itself, is a major, major disadvantage.

Overall, the correlation of forces is such as to favor Gaddafi greatly over the longer term.  The rebels failed to take the country by assault.  Now the war is rather like a siege.  There are serious reasons to doubt the capacity of the insurgents to maintain coherence and will as the siege drags on.

Neither the Senate nor the White House might have liked to hear Clapper's contentions.  That does not make the DNI wrong.  He would have been better off had he been vague, superficial, and hewed to the official White House line.  Of course, this ignores the reality that intelligence officers are presumed to have the intellectual and moral courage necessary to tell it as they see it regardless of the reaction up the chain of command.  In short, Clapper did his job.

Russia and China, "mortal threats" or not?  James Clapper was asked to rate threats.  He concluded, after having touched on Iran, North Korea, and violent political Islam, that Russia and China constituted the only "mortal threats" to the US.  This assessment sent Graham into his high Earth orbit.  This position nonplussed Levin.  Clapper's words will also disturb the Boys in the Kremlin and the Trolls of Beijing, who will use the characterization as being "Cold War rhetoric" and similar shopworn slogans.

Clapper based his contention on perceptions of capability.  This is a well established and conservative way to measure threats.  There can be no doubt but in current and near term potential capabilities, only Russia and China present a genuine threat to the US as well as its national and strategic interests.  Both countries have impressive conventional and nuclear forces today.  Both are committed to major upgrades in both the conventional and nuclear areas.  In either case, but more so with respect to China than Russia, the proposed procurement plans will result in forces far in excess of those necessary for purely defensive measures.

Both countries, again China more than Russia, are current threats with the capacity to deal a mortal blow to CONUS.  Given the upgrades both are undertaking, each will be even more of a potentially "mortal threat" in a very few years.

It is true that the US has requested "clarification" from the Trolls of Beijing and the Boys in the Kremlin regarding current and future intentions.  Neither have responded in unambiguous fashion.  This is how it should be.  No self-respecting nation-state would believe itself to be obligated to justify its military expenditures to another nation-state.  (It boggles the mind that the Obama administration actually believed it had the right to ask let alone expect an honest answer from either county.)

Historically, intelligence agencies, military services, and governments have used perceptions of capability to equate with perceptions of intent.  While Clapper did not directly address intent, his accurate assessment of capabilities demands close attention be paid to probable intents in both the Kremlin and Forbidden City.  No one in Congress or the White House wants to do this.

If one takes Clapper's assessment to its logical conclusion, the US would have no choice but to assume the intentions of either or both the Boys in the Kremlin and the Trolls of Beijing are not beneficent toward the US.  One would have no choice but to conclude that at the least either or both governments want to challenge US national and strategic interests.  This would require the US to invest more in its own military capabilities both conventional and nuclear (as well as newer critical arenas such as space and cyberwarfare.)

Spending more on defense (to use the polite euphemism) is not a popular notion today.  Ideology and fiscal constraints conspire to put defense on the slow track.

This is a tough matter.  On the one hand, there is a strong impetus not to spend more on the military.  On the other, the DNI honestly and too bluntly identified the "mortal threats" facing the US.  So, the best answer is to do the equivalent of shooting the messenger.  Denial is cheaper and ideologically more satisfying than facing a highly unpleasant and most inconvenient truth.

And, when the balloon does go up, when the US wakes up to find itself outclassed by one or two countries that have an agenda opposing our own, the politicians of both parties have an easy out.  They will point fingers and claim with one united voice, "Intelligence failure!"   Then they will create yet one more senior intelligence office.

Immigration Reform--Once More With Feeling

To err on the side of accuracy, it's immigration reform, once more with too much feeling, too much passion. The torrent of emotion is understandable in that no subject has been more contentious in American history over the past century than that of the relationship between our collective national identity and immigration.

We the People have experienced periodic waves of identity crisis ever since the early Nineteenth Century. With only a little effort that starting date can be pushed back to the time of the War of Independence or at least its immediate aftermath. The divisive subject then was that of national language: English or German. Both were spoken by a large percentage of the American public and it was believed that our American identity required reinforcement by the establishment of an official language.

While the issue finally faded, it left behind an unanswered question.

The question?

Simple, basic, and not yet fully answered. How can a new nation-state founded on an abstract set of ideas only ambiguously set forth in the Constitution--rather than a long shared history, culture, and geographic sense of place--fully develop a national sense of self?

The United States then and now is unique among the nation-states of the world by its having been founded in an instant of time on the flimsy basis of mere ideas rather than having evolved organically within a single people bound together by language, culture, shared space, and a common history. Exacerbating the uniqueness and its concomitant problems has been our status as a "nation of immigrants."

The predictable consequences of these features of uniqueness have been the bouts of national identity crisis and their companion, suspicion and hostility directed against the most recent arrivals. From the Order of the Star Spangled Banner nearly two hundred years ago to the assorted border vigilance groups today, our history has been marked by apprehension and loathing directed against those immigrant groups presumed to present a threat to a coherent, consensual understanding of national identity.

We the People have a fine historical record of assuming that Catholics, Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, Jews, Asians, and Hispanics would never "assimilate," embrace shared values, adopt community norms, speak English, and generally be-like-the-rest-of-us. From this We the People concluded repeatedly that immigration, particularly unchecked immigration, would rip our collective identity to shreds. With equal regularity We the People and those who (purportedly) represent us acted upon the assumptions and conclusion in order to control immigration so that national identity would not be put in peril.

The mythology of the threat presented by immigration overpowered other considerations regarding the roles played by immigrants in our collective life. At the same time the astigmatic focus on the immigrant-as-threat prevented effective consideration of the nature of our national identity and the relation between it and those who were newly come to our borders and shores.

Rather than deal with the basics of who-are-we?, debates over immigration reform have always been based upon matters of employment, social costs, community cohesiveness, and, quite openly before World War II, race. Proponents of restrictive immigration laws have focused on the need to assure jobs for the native-born, or the social disruption caused by clumps of non-English speaking peoples with habits, cultural expressions, and political values of foreign provenance. Those favoring liberalization have celebrated cultural, linguistic, and social diversity and have lauded the contributions made by immigrants to the collective wealth of our country.

Both sides have invoked justice, mercy, compassion, religious values, and moral considerations in the passionate pursuit of their cause. For more than a century the same arguments--even the same insults--have been deployed with only minor changes in wording. During the same period both major political parties have sought electoral advantage by either supporting or opposing restriction (or liberalization, as the position of the parties has reversed as dictated by the partisan reading of the contemporary zeitgeist.)

During all the many major fights over immigration the issue has not only possessed a foreign policy dimension, foreign governments have involved themselves both directly and indirectly in the domestic political battle. Over the generations the governments of China, Japan, Italy, and, more recently, Mexico and assorted Central and South American countries have invested diplomatic capital in the issue.

Nothing is different today as Senators Schumer and Graham outlined their bipartisan proposal for immigration reform to the approval of President Obama and legions prepare to demonstrate in Washington to demand immediate action. The proponents of reform including a form of earned amnesty for the eleven million or so illegal immigrants currently resident in the US have hauled out all the usual arguments adding only the long out of style issue of "race." Opponents are already loading the big guns with old ammunition of jobs-for-Americans and fear of social disruption.

In the not-so-distant background loiter the high-minded idealists of unlimited migration as a basic human right and the not-so-high-minded governments and elites of Latin American countries seeking to assure that the US remains the always available safety valve for their unemployed populations. Also standing in the near shadows are those of We the People who harbor a deep fear of change for whom the immigrant is the fiend, the "other" who embodies all the many causes of their fears.

If, as it generally is, the past is but prologue, the upcoming fight over immigration will be nasty, filled with vituperative attacks, appeals to both high morality and base self-interest. It will end in a result which is guaranteed to be completely unsatisfactory to the hard core on each side.

Most importantly, the fight will prove inconclusive as have been all similar immigration reform contests in the past. The reason for this conclusion is simply that any discussion of immigration which does not focus on the nature of the American identity and its recurrent crises misses the centrality of the matter.

Defining national identity is every bit as important as defining and maintaining territorial borders. Perhaps more so. Borders mark our periphery. National identity constitutes our very center, our heart and soul as a nation.

We had all best get a grip on that.