The Pitfalls of American Strategy

- What I think is really important is, is to, is to try to always identify the assumptions on what your strategy is, is based and, and to challenge those assumptions. So we could talk more about all this. I'm try, try to go through this pretty quickly. What, what are some of the pitfalls and strategy that you should be aware of? I mentioned this already, you know, predictable. For a historian to say studying history is, is is really important. Oddly enough, historians are the ones often who are most reluctant to apply history. But I think there's, there's a shift in that. Now, there's some great programs here at, at Hoover with, with Professor Kin, the Hoover History Lab. My colleague Victor Davis Hanson does a fantastic job with a military history seminar. You have the, you have an applied history programs at Harvard, for example, many other universities as well. I think the, the, but you have to guard against the abuse of history. And these are kind of the facile analogies you hear a lot of times, you know, in, in Afghanistan, which we're talking about. We, we often heard, you know, it's the graveyard of empires. You know, for, for example, there are a lot of these sort of, you know, phrases, you know, misunderstandings of history. That can be, that can be, that can be misleading. And then all, what I think is really important is to, is to try to always identify the assumptions on what your strategy is, is based and, and to challenge those assumptions. So if you think about really this kind of unipolar moment in the, in the post Cold War period and the overconfidence, we, we talked a little bit about the assumptions that underpinned our approach to strategy overall, which were of course that this arc of history guaranteed the primacy of our free and open societies, that great power competition was relic of the past. That our, our technological prowess would guarantee our security. But those assumptions carried over into specific assumptions about approaches to other countries, to rivals adversaries like China, for example. And the, the assumption that really underpinned our China strategy in the post Cold War period pretty consistently across multiple administrations was that China having been welcomed into the international order, would, would, would play by the rules. And as China prospered it, were liberalized its economy and ultimately liberalized its form of governance. You know, how's that working out? I mean, the, the, the, the assumption that underpin, I would say US policy toward Iran across multiple administrations, with the exception I would say of maybe the, the two Trump administrations is that Iran's theocratic regime would fundamentally shift its nature over time and ameliorate or greatly reduce its permanent hostility to the United States, Israel and the West. If it was only reintegrated, you know, into the global economy, for example, if we took a conciliatory approach to Iran, you know, the, the supreme leader's heart would grow two sizes bigger, you know, like the Grinch on Christmas Eve, you know, and if just have a complete change of heart or, or that if we welcomed Iran back into the international order, another assumption was that, that that, that the moderates in Iran, you know, the so-called Republicans would, would gain more, more influence and, and the, and then the, the revolutionaries would have less influence. This is a, this is an Iranian, I, I think deception operation against us to, to can you to propagate that myth. But that assumption, I believe was fundamentally flawed. How about with Russia? Because this is quite relevant with the, with the summit coming up between President Trump and President Putin under multiple administrations. US leaders believe that if we can only allay Putin's security concerns, Putin will come to the conclusion that his, his futures war with the West, right? Integrating with Europe, that's better for Russia, right. Than, than than than Russia to continue its aggression a against the west. And so we did a series of things to try to allay those security concerns. President George W. Bush met him, remember? And, and say he looked into his soul and saw somebody who really cares about his people. You know, you had, you had President Obama, even after the invasion of Georgia, leaned over to Veta, remember when he was keeping the seat warm for Putin and, and said, Hey, all more flexibility after the election, he traded off missile defenses in Poland again, under this belief that we should just allay Putin's security concerns. President Trump labored under this as well, right? He, he could, he could bring Putin in from the cold. It's not just Americans, right? Look at Chancellor Angela Merkel for how many years, right? Thought that she could be the Putin whisperer, right? And by buying more Russian gas and integrating Russian war into Europe economically, right? That he would've, he would've a change of, of, of heart President Biden what to Geneva and the last summit between two presidents and during, which I think he got humiliated there. And, and I, one of my hopes is maybe that President Trump will see what Putin's trying to do with him in, in Alaska. And, and, and, and you know, kind of back into this approach of putting more pressure on Russia, but President Biden pulled our ships out of the Black Sea, listed all the things he wouldn't do to support Ukraine, suspended our lethal assistance there, evacuated all of our advisors, right? I mean, evacuated and scuttled our embassy. It looked like a green light for an invasion to me, right? So, so Putin is, but Putin is driven by something different than, than really security concerns about nato. He's driven by his sense of honor lost associated with the collapse of, of, of the, of the Soviet Union. And as, as a man who is obsessed, obsessed with restoring Russia to national greatness. Now he can't compete with, with us on our own terms, right? As economy's the size of, of Italy's economy, for example. He, he's trashed his economy. I mean, he is spending 50% of his budget on defense now. He has a labor shortage. He's not diversified. The, the economy sitting on piles of cash. He can't convert. He's in a real hurt. But his theory of victory is to drag everybody else down under the theory that he can kind of be the last, the last person standing. So what's driving him is this sense of honor lost the obsession with restoring Russia to, to to, to national greatness. And of course, he and Xi Jinping other dictators are also obsessed with staying in power, right? Because it wouldn't, it would be, wouldn't be a, a good situation for either one of them. And, and Putin has amassed a lot of wealth and he can only access that wealth if he stays in power. So what are the assumptions that are underpinning your policies? And this is where I think Zach Shore does a fantastic job in all of his books, but in particular this book A Sense of the Enemy where he emphasizes strategic empathy, which is really your ability to view these complex challenges from the perspective of the other with particular attention to what are the emotions and the aspirations that drive it, that drive and constrain the other. I think you have to really be careful about optimism and, and groupthink. You know, there, there is, there is a tendency to give bosses the answer that, that they, that they want to have to, it's consistent with what their policy preferences are. You see how intelligence can sometimes bend to give policymakers really what, you know, what what their, their, their preferred, the preferred intelligence. Just look at the director of national intelligence's assessment, for example, about, about Iran, you know, and, and the Iran nuclear program recently or or other. I've seen many other cases in which the, the intelligence community is, is sort of bending intelligence for policy preference. When I, when I asked for a paper on the situation, Afghanistan, when I first came into this job as a national security advisor, I wrote across the top of it, did we outsource this to the Taliban? You know, because it, it had all these elements in it about, you know, it's really the Taliban's separate from Al-Qaeda, you know, they're, they're really, they're, they're more willing to share power. Now if they were to gain power, they'd be nicer to women. You know, how's, how's all that working out? You know, and, and, and so you have to, you have to, you have to guard against, against this and, and, and group think and, and really as a, as a young person maybe working on a staff or something, you should try to, you know, really emphasize not falling into this trap and, and providing alternative perspectives and, and guarding against, guarding against it. Also, you have to, you have to really guard against contriving consensus. And, and, and there is a tendency to try to get everybody to agree and then to bring one option to a president. This is the case in the run up to the Vietnam War, for example, when, when President Lyndon Johnson, he wanted a strategy for the war that would, that would allow him to pursue really his domestic political priorities. He saw Vietnam mainly as a danger to what he wanted to do with the Great society legislation, for example, or just by, for getting elected in his own right in 1964. And so he wanted a strategy that would, that would permit him or make sure that he didn't alienate some key constituencies on which that domestic agenda depended. And what he got was the strategy of graduated pressure, and everybody signed up for that and brought it to the, brought it to the president. And so this is why I think it's really important in an element of strategic competence, is to always try to develop multiple options for a leader. Because it's oftentimes in the comparison of those options where you can draw out long-term costs and consequences, and you should differentiate these options by degree of risk, for example, the degree of resources and so forth. So be wary of contrived consensus. And then, and then also be wary of passivity or inaction. You know, the risks of action are always apparent, right? They're easy to kind of envision, right? If you, if you act against Iran's nuclear program, what could Iran do, right? Iran could try to activate what's left of its, of, of its threat network across the Middle East could attack US bases and US individuals. It could conduct terrorist attacks internationally. Maybe it has some cyber capabilities that, that it could use, it could attack shipping in the Gulf, right? You can, you can imagine all of this deploy drones again, maybe even against Saudi oil fields as they had done in the, in the past and oil facilities in the past. But, but also you, if you, if you're considering those risks of action, you have to also consider the risk of inaction. What if you don't act to take out Iran's nuclear capabilities in these deep buried sites and, and you don't block their path to nuclear weapon. And at the end of, of Israel's 12 day campaign, and with that latent capability can, could the Iranians maybe dash to some kind of a nuclear device, right? I mean, that's possible. So you have to consider the risk of the risk of inaction as as well. So I'll just leave you with this and I'd love to hear what's, what's on on your mind, what you like to talk about. So I, this is kind of, you know, a checklist kind of looking thing, but, but it really, it's just a way to think about these complex problems. The first thing that when you're framing a challenge to national security is try to define that problem on its own terms, apply design thinking to it, ask first order questions. What is the nature of this challenge? And, and what, what is driving this challenge? What are the emotions and the ideology that's driving, training the others? Then I think then I think what you do is identify your vital interests. What is at stake? Why do we care? Typically, this is about American security or prosperity or influence in the world. Then when you identify those interests, then you can view that complex challenge through the lens of those vital interests and craft an overarching goal and more specific objectives and, and, and sort of answer the so what? The so what, because you have to answer the so what, why do we care about it? And then, and then as I mentioned, identify the assumptions on which a planning effort would be based. And then, and then of course, you know, examine, examine history to, to deepen your understanding, understand what could go wrong, what the risks and costs might be. And I'm just gonna put this up as an example. So I mentioned the overall example of, of the assumptions that underpinned China's policies and strateg. I see Secretary Mattis here, he was in this meeting that we had, I think in March of 2017. And, and we are, the purpose of the meeting was to frame a new China policy for President Trump in advance of, of the summit he was gonna have with Xi Jinping in April. And what we did is we asked the departments and agencies across our government to collaborate on this five page paper, a framing paper for that new strategy so that when we went into Mar-a-Lago, we would have a sense of kind of the direction of US policy, not the whole policy done, 'cause President Trump had just come into office in, in that January. But we would have a, a foundation for our general approach toward the Chinese Communist Party. And I brought with me the, the a series of papers of that that described previous administration's policy towards China. And I pulled out the Obama administration policy toward China and read a portion of it. And that portion that I read really made clear that the assumption that had underpinned the Obama administration policy toward China was this assumption that China would, would liberalize, that China would once welcome to the national community, would liberalize its economy and liberalize this form of governance. And I, I just noted that that had not been the case and that we were about to help President Trump affect maybe the most significant shift in US foreign policy since the end, end of the Cold War. And these were just some of the new assumptions that we put in into place that were sort of the opposite of, of the assumptions that underpin previous policies. Okay. So with that, what I'd like to do is just open up for questions, see where you'd like to take the discussion.