Civilian Control

Welcome to Shield of the Republic. A podcast sponsored by the Bulwark and the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, and dedicated to the proposition articulated by Walter Liptman during World War two that a strong and balanced foreign policy is the shield of our Democratic Republic. I’m Eric Edelman, a counselor at the Center for strategic and budgetary assessments and a polar contributor and a nonresident fellow at the Miller Center, and I’m joined as always by my colleague, Elliot Cohen. The Osgood professor of Strategy at the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University in Washington and the Arleigh Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Elliot, how are you?

I’m doing great. I just finished a book manuscript and That makes me feel really good. But, ideally, since I know that it will make all my academic colleagues feel miserable

that they haven’t finished theirs. And since I’ve been reading it, I can say it’s a good book, and we’ll get back to that in the future. But why don’t you introduce our guest today who’s a friend of ours, both and former colleague in government, and I hope a friend of the Shield of the Republic podcast.

Yes. So it’s it’s a terrific pleasure to welcome an old old friend Peter Fever. Peter and I are really living demonstrations of the fact that deterrence works. We said, we were in graduate school together. I have stories about him.

He’s got stories about me. So, you know, we just we’re very careful around each other. Actually, Peter is Professor at Duke University. He is one of those academics who are actually quite rare, who’s gone in and out of government. He’s served several times on the National Security Council.

Staff. He was a naval reservist. He has written widely. I think he’s particularly well known for his work. On civil military relations, on public opinion in wartime and how particularly American public opinion towards a war shaped by whether or not you’re succeeding, and nuclear command and control, and on national security strategy documents.

So we’ve got We have loads of stuff to talk about. Eric, why don’t you well, first, welcome Peter. Well,

thank you. It’s great to be here.

And secondly, Eric, why don’t you begin the inquisition?

Well, it won’t be an inquisition. No one was expecting the Spanish inquisition. Peter recently in war on the rocks. There was a document about what good civil military relations ought to look like between senior leaders that was signed by a number of former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and a number of former secretaries of defense. And I know you were involved in that process.

Obviously, there’s been a lot of discussion about civil military relations at some point, I wanna come back to the question of civil military relations under Donald Trump and what damage was done there and what needs to be done to rectify it. But tell us a little bit about the document that appeared and worn the rocks and what caused it to appear? What was the, you know, the approximate cause of of having to address this issue now?

Well, thank you. Yes. I have the great privilege of teaching a co teaching with General Dempsey, who is the retired chairman of the joint chiefs staff. And is now a fellow at Duke. He and I co teach a course on American Civil Military Relations.

The two out of the three Springs, the other, spring, we teach American Grand strategy through film, which is a lot of fun. And hopefully, one day, you can have me back to talk about that. But we were teaching the treadmill course this spring in in the process as we were engaging in, you know, what was the legacy of the last administration? We came away with a strong view that the public doesn’t have a good understanding of how to evaluate Cive Mill. When is it good?

When it is bad? What does what does good sibling control look like? What does bad sibling control look like? And we thought this was an opportunity to put out a document that would maybe correct some of the bad rating rubrics that are unoffered. If you listen to cable TV tonight, you’ll probably hear people saying that GoodS of Mel is the president gets whatever he wants as immediately, even if he’s saying who will rid me of this meddlesome priest, you know, he gets it automatically.

Provided he’s my party president. And if he’s the other president, then he should be blocked and forwarded in everything he wants to do. That’s not good, says no. And so the idea was let’s I there needs to be a statement. But, of course, if if I put out the statement, it would have no carry no weight at all because no one knows who I am.

What it would really be helpful would be for this the people who did Civil Mill twenty four seven this was their job to be the civil military interface. That would be the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. To have them put out what was good civil middle and what was not as they understood it and that this would then become the grading rubric that would be used for, you know, for the current team. And that was the genesis of the idea. So

Peter, let me ask you a question. You staff this. Obviously, you helped conceive it. It’s quite remarkable to get Almost all, not all, but almost all of the living former secretaries of defense and former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. To sign this kind of thing.

And I have to think that they signed it, not just because they said, oh, it’s a good idea, but because they’re concerned, if not indeed alarmed. Is that is that a fair assumption?

Absolutely. Everyone who responded. We had everyone but two respond. One secretary of defense didn’t respond. One chairman didn’t respond.

But everyone else who responded said, this is very important. This is needful. There is something awry in Civil mill. Not so much that there was a problem with how our military was acting. There wasn’t necessarily a problem with even how the current team was conducting Sydney.

There’s a problem in the broader public conversation about Smith. And to a person, they agreed this problem was serious and needed to be addressed. Where the debate was was on exactly how to say it. How to say something without violating the Hippocratic oath, without making the problem worse. What

do you think of the key argument? Not they’re not arguments of the assertions, really? What are the key assertions that you would want people to take away from that document? And like I said, you can find this on war on the rocks And it really is worth worth a read, although it is it is carefully couched as these things have to be. But it had a number of assertions, which I thought were critical.

Maybe you could just say a little bit about that.

Well,

one of them which may feel like civics one zero one, but it it deserves to be emphasized is that civilian control does not rest only in the president as commander in chief and the secretary of defense. Yes, that is the chain of command. But when it comes to the broader making of of strategy and policy, The other two branches of government have a crucial role to play in civilian control. Congress, of course, is essential in the race maintained and equipped part of national security. And the courts also play a crucial role because they get to declare what is legal or ill illegal.

And one of our hallowed principles of civilian control in the United States is that the military will carry out, must carry out legal orders, but must not carry out illegal orders. And therefore, the courts play a role in determining whether an order is legal or not. At least, you know, in the extreme as that that is a possibility. And so they they play a role in civilian control as well. That’s one of the big principles.

The second one is and the it’s not worded quite this way, but I this is how I would summarize it, that good process is conducive to good civil military relations, which is good conducive to civilian control. And when you have the the president sort of thinking out loud, wouldn’t it be great if something happened. And then people around the president turning that into an x sword, that’s not a good process. Because that means

An execution order would just

execution order. Right? That it’s not good civilian control for that thinking out loud to be translated immediately into action. What the president needs is his or her team to explain, well, sir, let me tell you what the second and third order effects are of that. And if you do this, you are simultaneously having the system do that?

Are you sure that’s what you want? Because many times, what the president thinks the president wants is not, in fact, what the president actually wants once the full risks of a course of action is understood. And so it’s not breaking it’s not undermining civilian control to alert the president to these issues. In fact, it it would be undermining civilian control not to alert the president. And, of course, there was a lot of reporting on the the last

well,

the last four years of the entirety of the Trump administration, but especially in the last six months when the wheels were coming off the bus. In the Trump interagency. And in those moments, so, you know, on cable TV, you can get criticisms of what, say, General Miller or Secretary Mark Esper did, that I think missed the mark, misunderstand that actually they were supporting civilian control when they were making sure president Trump knew what might happen if this particular idea was carried out. Let

me just ask the two of you because both of you studied with Samuel Huntington, whose study in the late nineteen fifties, a soldier in the state. Created what

what I think

Elliott would you call the the normal theory of civilian control of the of the military. And it basically suggests that the military is responsible for those things that fall into the province specifically of military professionalism and manning training and equipping the armed services of the United

States. And

the

civilians are in charge of policy. They’re the ones who make the political decisions that are then executed by the armed services in in accordance with what the kinds of pre sex, Peter, that you were just sort of articulating. My own experience as both Dash and Bush forty one administration. And then Dash

is deputy assistant secretary — Yep. —

assistant

secretary of defense. And then as under secretary of defense, the number three policy position in the Pentagon, is that in fact, it’s not as neat as that. Mean, particularly at the highest levels because it’s much more the line between what is professional military advice to the president and what is policy advice becomes very very permeable. And I so I so in my own experience, I kind of conceived it this way. You’re all familiar with Edwin Korwin’s famous statement that the constitution is an invitation to struggle over the control of foreign policy.

I thought that the National Security Act of nineteen forty seven was an invitation of struggle over the control of of defense policy between civilians and the uniform military. And in fact, if you look at the official histories of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the through line that connects all those volumes is the struggle to develop adequate staff for the civilians to be able to kind of control this rather large military bureaucracy. So am I wrong? Was was the hunting thing a little too simplistic? Or how do you guys see it?

So I think Peter and I would agree that Sam Huntington was a genius. He was the greatest political scientist of his generation. Also important to remember he the the soldier in the state came out in nineteen fifty seven. He was about thirty years old. Which is pretty staggering when you think about it.

And it is to some extent a product of an intellectual climate, which was shaped by a couple of things. First, the recent experience of World War two and sort of the received wisdom about how the war was conducted and and, you know, the roles of the joint chiefs of staff, which have actually been undermined, I think, by a lot of the recent historical literature and including on on Franklin Delano Roosevelt and also a very particular conception of what a what a profession is. So, Huntington was working with ideas that really went back to the twenties and thirties, if if not before. But I think you’re absolutely right. I mean, Peter and I and tackled the issue in different ways, then I’ll stop in a moment.

But he’ll he’ll speak for himself. But Sam really believed that there could be bright lines between the political and the military function and some of his students like Dick Bats actually I think have continued to make those kinds of arguments and like you I don’t buy it. I think the in practice, it’s a lot murkier than that. I’ll say just one other thing, and then I’ll stop and wait for Peter to tell me I’m wrong. You know, I think you’re right.

It’s an invitation to struggle, and that means civil military relations is always problematic even in the app of a, you know, a threat of a coup or something like that. We don’t really worry about that in the United States. But there are loads and loads of issues whether you’re talking about the relation between the military and society or the military and other institutions like the courts or the relationship between the generals and admirals on the one hand and the secretary and the press and the other, which are just gonna be constant tension. And one, you know, one issue you always have to ask yourself is, what is kind of a normal level of tension and what is something that’s worrisome and and I will end this with a question that I hope Peter will address as he you know, gives his take on what I just said is, you know, I on the one hand, I think the those generals and Secretary of Defense were obviously had to have been reacting to the Trump years. But I think a number of us have been concerned about things really for a lot longer than that.

I mean, Peter, you and I have been discussing these issues, you know, confidentially for decades. And so there’s been a feeling I think for some time that there are things that are problematic going on. And I wonder if, you know, you felt that the secretary’s and the former chairman we’re reacting simply to Trump or to something that transcends Trump. But want to start with Huntington. Peter, before you go, let me just just throw

some fuel on fire that Elliott just ignited. So four years ago, when I co chaired the National Defense Strategy Commission, we raised this question of civil military relations in our report. And in particular, we said we were concerned, and this was a panel that included at my cochair, for instance, the former CNO, Gary Ruffhead, whom you know well, as well as former vice chief of staff for the army, Jack Keane, and it was the unanimous view of both the civilians and the two former four stars on our panel. That this was a that was a problem. And in particular, that there had been an in bet growing imbalance in the advice being offered both to the secretary of defense and to the president, in part driven by the sort of unanticipated consequence of the Goldwater Nichols Act in the mid nineteen eighties, which created these really powerful combatant command staffs that are quasi permanent.

They’re not really permanent, but they have an ongoing life while civilian appointees, for instance, in the Department of Defense routinely, or down about a quarter. That’s to say there is about twenty five percent vacancy rate constantly in these senate confirmed to this side. There used to be forty four. I think there may be more now. You know, these presidential appointees confirmed by the senate.

Who are meant to provide some of this civilian control. So if you could, you know, comment on that as you respond to Elliot, I’d be grateful.

Right. So let me

just step back and begin with Huntington. His great one of his great geniuses was in identifying a narrative story of Sivotal that the military liked a lot. So one reason why he remains so relevant is that if you take an average military officer, scratch them and ask them to talk about how you think it ought to go, what comes out is pretty close to what Sam describes. So he the military think that’s the way it should go. But you’re right, Eric, and Elliott that that’s not in fact how it goes and very few civilians, very few presidents, enter into their role thinking that that’s the way it should go.

And I liken it a little bit to a marriage where each of the partners comes in thinking they know how it’s gonna go and what their role is and what the other side’s role is gonna be. And then they get married and they discover whoa. The other my partner doesn’t have the same set of expectations, and they keep underperforming on mine, and I keep underperforming on theirs. And some of the struggle intention that Elliot mentioned is, you know, derives I think from that competing expectations. That’s the first point I make.

Second point is, there’s no question that Sivotal was a a matter of great tension in the Obama administration. But it was also a a matter of gray tension in the Bush administration, particularly under in the first, you know, four years under secretary Roosevelt, but But in the second four years, there were other concerns. So you what you find if you look at it in a historical perspective is a little bit of a pendulum swing. There was complaints during the Obama years of the NSC is too large. There’s too much micro management.

We are spending all day in endless DCs and PCs, and we’re never getting any decision. Boy, I wish we had a more loose and freewheeling, you know, an agency system. Well, they got that under President Trump. Yeah.

The DCs and PCs or deputies and Principles Committee meetings. Right. This

is

when as ideas get policies get worked at lower levels ready for the president to decide. And what you had in the Trump administration is a very different set of problems. You had an interagency process that was not connected to the president. So it was bubbling along fine. As long as the questions they were deciding didn’t have to be decided by the president and or the president didn’t care about it.

But if the president intersected with the process, then whatever the interagency was doing just didn’t matter much in the Trump years. And so part of the the answer to your question is, yes, there would not been a muscle memory of sort of really good civil military relations. You know, you go back four, five, six years where you didn’t have good relations inside the DOD with a very strong and empowered civilian staff advising the secretary and balancing a very strong joint staff that was advising the chairman. And together, the DOD was going across the hill into a function an inner agency where it was going, well, there wasn’t muscle memory of that, whether from the Trump years or from the late Obama years. And so that’s part of the story.

And then just one other part of the story, which to complicated further,

is we

have aggressively politicized the military by saying we, I mean, civilians as much as the military. Particularly civilian political actors. And to a certain extent, that was the final catalyst I think that convinced the folk the the the signer’s letter that to to do this project, which was the the almost virulent attacks on the military for from a partisan perspective for pure partisan gain. And that that that felt new. It’s not unprecedented in American history, of course, but it’s that is different from what we’ve had over the last several decades.

Howard Bauchner:

We probably should wrap up this part of the discussion, but I I really was going to I wanted to ask you to comment on two particular episodes, which are, of course, quite famous. One is Jerome Millies walk in Lafayette Park during a demonstration where, you know, the the president was out there and they brought in the National Guard and he was in uniform and he later apologized for it. So if you could just talk us through those issues, but then, of course, the big one is January sixth. Right. And also, you know, the remainder of the that fraught period where Trump was not willing to accept the outcome of the election.

And, you know, generally is put in this very very difficult situation of what, you know, what do you do if he you know, if he gives the kind of orders that he could conceivably have given, some of which might have would would have been illegal. That’s easy. You just don’t do it. But some of which might have been legal. Right.

And and just how how do you think about all that? Okay. So this is

these are two very important questions that let’s take the Lafayette what’s called the Lafayette Square incident, you really have to begin at the day

before.

Because or several days before, there had been an ongoing debate between president Trump and his national senior national security team about how to respond to the protests. And president Trump wanted to respond forcefully and wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act. So as to mobilize commate units to to move in, and to a person, his team, so this attorney general, the secretary of defense, the chairman, so far as we know, the national caretaker, they all advised against it and told him that this was a bad idea, not that it was illegal because it probably would not have been illegal. The president the insurrection act is loosely written enough that the president probably could have ordered that, but it would have been a bad a a bad decision from a policy point of view. It would’ve and all of his advisers agreed.

That it would have been. So they basically talk to president out of doing this. And I think in the process helped the president enormously because if if that if the president hadn’t gotten what what he initially asked for, it probably would have been a lot lot worse. In response to that, The White House was frustrated. And, of course, it leaked immediately that that the this debate had gone on, and that made the president look weak, and they were reported the president was hiding in the bunker.

So that made him look weak. And so in response, the president and the White House devised a basically a photo op that would make the president look strong.

Presidents are allowed

to do photo ops that make him look strong. That’s part of political process. There’s nothing improper for the White House to stage photo ops for the president. That’s part of their job. What made it unfortunate was that they asked General Milly to come along generally happen to be

wearing combat fatigues. And secretary Esper?

Yes. And that asked them to come along before they understood, before they knew for sure what they were being asked to do. They would be were called to If the president calls you to a meeting, you gotta go. You can’t say, well, I’m busy, sir. No.

They went to the meeting in the White House. And then it turned out the meeting in the White House was really gonna be a walk across Lafayette Square. As soon as said, a gentleman only discovered that that’s what this was, he bugged out because The military should not be involved in partisan photo ops. That’s not their job. That’s an inappropriate use of the military.

Presidents can be military not. The problem is General Millie bugged out a couple minutes after a photographer got the shot of him walking over. So even though he was not in the in front of the church with the holding of the bible, he was in the the scene of walking over. And it looked like, therefore, he was embracing what the president was saying about that moment. And what the president was saying was a very partisan take on the situation in the square.

And also, that the General Milli was endorsing the heavy handed tactics that were used to clear a safe space for the president to walk across the square. So a firestorm of criticism leveled against General Milli from the people that probably he cared about the most, meaning former senior military mentors. And former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, admiral Mollin, went public with the criticism, and several others did as well. And Indeed, some of them were calling on him to resign. Resigned for having been allowed to be seen in a

photo op. It’s

generally

consulted widely with a bunch of people. I don’t know who only talked to. One of the people he talked to was me. And I urged him not to resign. I thought that would that was a mistake that would further politicize the matter and would suggest that he had been in a he maybe had been wrong in advising the president against the, you know, invoking the indirect act.

When, in fact, that was part of his job, that all of that was proper And while it was unfortunate that he had been in the photo op, it was not a, in my judgment, a career ending mistake. And what General Millie was able to do, I thought was very deaf which is he apologized to the military profession saying, you know, I got caught in a situation. I wasn’t quick enough to recover from it. He he gave a speech to the graduating class at NDU and basically said, man, I That was a that’s on me. That was a mistake.

If you get caught in these kind of situations, be sure that you don’t get involved in partisan politics. And that he did it once. He didn’t go on an apology to her, but he did it in the right venue to the profession. And and that and then he moved on. That was theft on his part, but it made it put him crosswise with the president who felt like he had done nothing wrong.

In fact, the wrong thing was not to to go all the way across the the park. So this was, you know, this created bad odor between General Miley and President Trump. In the next six months of the administration were very rocky, for the relations between General Millian and President Trump. What’s remarkable to me is how much of Trump’s policies, General Mills still carried out, fulfilled. He was not inside working as a Sabbatore trying to undermine the president every turn.

No. He was basically doing his job. However, there are a couple, you know, high profile incidents that happen in late October and then into January, which is your second question, Elliot. So let me address

those. If

you look at what he did, what General Milli did, I think there’s very little default in form. What he did was advise the president, made sure that the president knew about the second, third order consequences, and some of the hair brain schemes that the president’s advisors wanted him to do, the president decided after further, if I can, no, I don’t wanna do. He also made sure that the Chinese didn’t get a garble about what our policy was. That is part of General Miller’s job to develop relations with odds or with other heads of military around the world so that in a crisis, he can reach out to people, know them, take the phone call and explain. And so both of the times he did that, there was nothing wrong with it.

So what he did, not a problem. What he said at the time about other to other people about what he

did, probably

not a problem. But what the fact that we know about it, that’s where there might be a problem. So a lot of this entered into the public record because reporters got access to

it. And

so that has created a challenge for General Mobility because a lot of Trump supporters in congress believe, you know, take take one or other of these items, maybe misunderstand and misinterpret it, now they have a partisan schedule and they’ve been beating General Milli over their head and shoulders with it. So the issue there is, well, should so much of this has been into the public record. So soon, that’s that’s a different matter. But if you look at what he actually did, I don’t find much to fault

him on. So I think we probably we could go on on this one for a long time, but time has been slipping by. I’ve been

drawing on is what you’re saying. No. Not at all.

Before we try it off, Elliot, I wanna just footstomp something Peter said. Because

I

really abhor it. And it’s Peter’s point that it’s civilians who in many ways have politicized the military. And I I lived through this going through the the bush forty one to Clinton transition. The Clinton to bush forty three transition and and even the tail end of my career as we went through the the forty three Obama transition. And and this is the notion that every four years, you know, at the quadrennial political conventions, each party troops out, it’s group of retired military officers to endorse a presidential candidate, which creates the perception that although these guys are retired, And therefore, you know, they’re within their rights presumably to express their political opinions at this point in their life, although they’re still subject to the uniform code of military justice.

It creates the notion that there are, you know, Clinton generals and Bush generals. Or Bush generals and Obama generals. And I I think it’s really corrosive and a terrible thing. And both parties do it. You know, president Trump famously was talking about my generals, you know, why can’t they be like the German generals who has as General Kelly pointed out to him tried to kill Hitler three times.

But president Biden did it too when president Biden gave his speech at Philadelphia. He had those two marine security guards silhouetted, you know, and red, white, and blue lights behind him. I mean, it was equal it wasn’t equally bad, but it was bad. And it’s just wrong for both parties to do it. I just don’t want us to leave this section without my making that point.

No. I I I think

that’s look, that’s absolutely right. You know, Peter and I alternately write historical op eds on this subject. Every every four years. They they do they do some good. I mean, there I think there’s a norm among a lot of retired general officers who don’t do this.

But there is still plenty who will succumb and say, well, either I’m different or the situation is different. And, you know, it’s an issue of norms, not laws, and a large part of civil military relations is about norms. You know, legally a a four star, retired four star can become pulled answer in Las Vegas too. But, you know, it it’s not the kind of thing that would bring credit onto the onto the service. I I wanna I mean, when I once I once wrote that and I had a couple of angry generals and then a whole bunch of colonels nominate generals to be bold answers.

Oh, I I

thought it would be the bold answers complaining that you were casting companies that. I wanna move on to the next topic, but I wanna introduce it with a kind of refusal on my part. We wanna get Peter who’s actually drafted an national security strategy. He was the lead drafter, I think it’s fair to say, of the two thousand and six national security strategy. And the second term of bush forty three.

The Biden administration has just released its national security strategy a little bit late, but, you know, better late than ever, I guess. That this is a genre of document that I know Elliott holds in minimum low regard. And so I I want I wanna sort of really kind of get you guys, you know, tearing at each other over this. But I wanna also inform our our listeners that I am going to, for rare occasion, maintain a kind of studied silence on the subject since I’ve been nominated to be on the National Defense Strategy Commission that was created by the last National Defense Authorization Act, and we’re gonna have to comment publicly on these documents. I’m gonna at least for the moment, withhold judgment about the Biden national security strategy on shield of the Republic.

But I I invite the two of you to have added. Okay. So so let me let me just begin by saying I

it it is indeed the case that I regard these documents with scoring and consuminally. But I still like Peter. So Peter, actually, maybe to get us started, could you explain just first, you know, like physically, what is this document? How often is it an is issued? What is its relationship to other official documents?

So just give us the

kind of bureaucratic and then we’ll let’s get into the substance. So this was a a legislative requirement from the Goldwater Nichols reforms in the mid nineteen eighties. At a time when it was argued that the Soviet Union plays chess and we play checkers, they can think strategically and and we can’t we need to be more strategic. We need to think about the second and third order effects of of what we wanna do. We have to think about how different lines of action fit together and and how priority if you prioritize one thing, What does that mean you’ll do for the lower priority?

So this was all in the ether in the late eighties. And you said that’s required the administration to produce a document every year that outlines the president’s vision in this area. Well, every year turned out to be ridiculously too often, and no administration has produced one every year. It turns out most administrations have produced about one to two one per term that are useful. And they I think, you know, Ellie, you and I disagree on this.

I actually think they are a good window into how the president thinks usually. I say usually

because

The Trump national security strategy was not a window into how president Trump thought, but it was a useful window into how his administration, below him, thought. You know, HR McMaster, General secretary Mattis, and so forth, it it captured well, I think their vision of the world. And of course, the president Bush’s two national security strategies captured hit his view well I think Obama’s captured his view. Well, so at that level, they’re useful. Secondarily, they are they formed the top line that then is guidance for the ones that are below it.

Below the national security strategies, the national defense strategy put out by that secretary defense, then below that is the national military strategy put out by the chairman. And then below that is the various service specific or region specific strategies put out either by services or by teams focusing, say, on the Indo Pacific or something. Well,

that’s

how it

works in theory. In practice though, and I know this is one of your complaints about the NSS. It takes so wretchet long to get the president’s document out that that often it comes out after, the others have come out, and that happened this time. They finished their the the Biden team finished their NDS, and then the NSS came out later. Ironically, the administration that had it best on textbook was of the Trump administration.

They really did the integration of n s s to n d s to m s very well, in part because apparently, the president didn’t need to be involved, and that sped up the integration and and made it easier to integrate. So I do give the Trump administration credit for that. Now oh, I was just gonna make a comment on this the substance of the Biden one. But did you wanna Yeah. Let me let

me first take a swing at the at the genre. And then let’s talk about Biden. And so and you can respond to the swing at the genre. So I would offer two large critiques. One is They are platitudinous.

They’re banal. And that’s in part because they’re committee products. They’re part because they’re unclassified. And so, you know, okay, the the the penny that drops is China is a really big problem. Well duh.

You know, it doesn’t really add a whole lot. Whereas, you know, some of the other kinds of documents you’ve had in the past such as Nixon and Kissinger’s foreign policy reports, because kissinger actually was writing those things, you know, were I think much more useful. These tend to be, you know, even in the better drafted ones, they are the results of the committee. But secondly, and I think we do see this in the Biden one. It’s all about ends or priorities, but there’s nothing about means.

There’s nothing about resources. And so, you know, what is the strategy? Well, I guess I’ll I’ll be more assertive about it. Seems to me it’s not a strategy if you’re talking about, you know, circumstances. And here’s what we here’s what we see as a problem.

And here’s what we’d like to do about it. But you don’t actually say what you’re going to do about it, and you’re not actually talking about putting resources against any particular problem. It just we will address that. Well, that, again, I don’t think that is particularly useful. That’s just the beginning of it, but we don’t have time for the the full ninety minute lecture.

Right.

And and the answer, you’re right, that that no national security strategy is a fully satisfying strategy that would pass muster at, say, the professional military education institutions where they teach how to do strategy with ends, ways, and means, all specified, and risk with a risk, appendix, etcetera, etcetera.

That’s true, but

they

can still be very useful. And even the critique that you offered about president Biden’s one is possible as a measuring stick to hold up against the rest of what they do, particularly the budget. Because they’ve outlined I would say the way how brands puts it, I think, is really good. They’ve outlined a cold war level of great power competition, but they’re trying to resource it at a post cold war level of resources. Well, that’s a strategy ends means gap.

It showed up acutely in the Obama years when you could point to what they were trying to do or what they said they were trying to do and contrast that with how they resourced it. And the fact that you had the public statements and documents there made it possible to point out this gap. So I think that’s that’s useful as a teaching exercise. Alright. Well, we’re we’re gonna have

to In terms of

the committee versus non committee, that’s actually a a party. Effect. So the Republicans tend to do it with a very small group and tend to be more top down. That was the way Trump’s was. That’s the way President Bush’s, both of his were done that way.

And the Democrats tend to do it more bottom up. I actually worked on president Clinton’s first NSS when I was in the Clinton NSC, and that was very bottom up process. So was president Obama’s and same with Biden’s initially. Or that initially. Initially, it was top down.

Then they had an inner bottom up process, and then they brought it back top down. Yeah. The the that’s just a a party difference. Take I’m not sure it means anything more than just different teams are socialized into doing the process differently. Now, here’s my view on the present guidance.

I think it’s a good faith effort. To lay out president Biden’s preferred approach for dealing with what they see as great power competition and transnational challenges, which both coexist, both are a vital national interest according to president Biden, and I I tend to agree with him. You can’t do one and ignore the other. So that

is what he would like

to be able to do both at the same time. What the document is less clear on is how are you gonna manage the tensions that are inherent in

the

they identify the tension. They point out that it’s hard to address climate change without cooperating with China. But it’s hard to cooperate with China when you view them as a significant geopolitical the most significant geopolitical challenge. And president and China shows no interest in cooperating. So

I guess And the next question is,

okay. So now what are you gonna do about it? And I think the document’s a little less satisfying on answering that follow on question? So

I’ll I’ll just I mean, again, you and I could go on forever with this. First, we were able to do all these kinds of things in the era before it n assesses, before national security strategies. And in fact, you can argue we had much more coherent approach to the world before we had these ridiculous documents. And I don’t know. I I guess it the thing is, it seems to me that what happened with the Biden administration was the the thing that struck me most about their their national security strategies.

They had it all laid out. It’s all gonna be China, China, China. We’re gonna disengage from the Middle East. We’re gonna disengage from Europe. And then Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine.

And the truth is they don’t actually really adjust to it. It’s, you know, you you can tell there’s a document that keeps on being

rewritten.

To to try to somehow accommodate itself to the world as it really is. And that’s what often happens, whereas if you give a presidential speech at the right moment, seems to me you can address those kinds of questions much more effectively. So, but I guess we’re we are running short on time. I’ll I’ll just take it that Peter can see as my points. I’m reminded as

I watch Elliot Savage Peter on this issue of a real life moment when my then deputy, when I was under secretary, presented the two thousand six, then quadrennial defense review. To the defense policy board. And former speaker of the house, Newt Gingrich, was on the board and he he turned and rounded

on my

poor deputy who had to defend this doc bureaucratic document with all of the deficiencies that Elliott described. And said,

if this were a real

strategy for defending the United States, you’d be addressing all the problems in our education system and why we’re not competitive with China. China.

Yeah. Well, I that’s actually the

I would say, one of the challenges with certainly, president Obama’s, but to certain extent, president Biden’s is they cast the net so widely. It’s so capacious in what it it covers. That that, you know, that that does mean that it can’t it can’t be convincing on any

one of those. I I would just

let let me just close with one one other thing to flag. This maybe is more for you, Eric. When you put on that year ahead of, you know, the red teaming this strategy. They lean pretty heavily on the successful industrial policy as a way to compete with China, and they leaned pretty heavily on the revival of the American economy as a way to outgrow you know, we’ll grow out out out outgrow our problem. Well, those are two important pillars, which if they work, that will help, but how reliable are those pillars?

They they look shaky. I’m sure they’re gonna be

very anxious to

rely on one of the chief beneficiaries of that industrial policy. You know, Elon Musk. Yeah. Well, the so there

there’s

a lot there’s a lot to challenge. But but I do think they’re clear eyed about the threat and the challenges. I I I don’t think in this sense it’s not ahead in the sand document. That pretends we don’t face a problem from Russia. We don’t face a problem from China.

I in that sense, I give them credit. And here’s where you have to note, here’s a bipartisan consensus. We have a problem with both of those countries. And I hope that bipartisan consensus survives the midterm. Howard Bauchner: Yeah.

So

if I could just kinda tracking me back into this. I I really agree on China. And look, I agree with him about climate change and and about industrial policy and all all that. I think on Russia, actually, though, and I’ve actually talked to some of the people on the NSC staff who drafted it as I’m sure you have. They’re sort of expecting that the Russia problem goes away over five to ten years.

Whereas I don’t think that’s a safe assumption. I think the the safer assumption is however the Ukraine war settles itself out. You’re gonna be deal the the you’re likely to be dealing with a revanchist Russia, which is kind of gearing itself up for a second round, which is isolated from the west, which feels humiliated and angry, and which will probably not be a liberal democracy or anything even close to it. So I think that’s actually a it’s actually a larger long term problem. The thing is if you pose the problem that way, say, you absolutely have to deal with China, that’s the primary challenge but Russia’s an enduring challenge as well.

Then you get to our friend, Hal Brant’s point, then you better begin resourcing it appropriately. Yep. Right. I wanna

pick

up on

I wanna pick up on point Peter just made about whether the bipartisan support, which I agree this document there’s a lot of carryover from the Trump twenty

seventeen

NSS and and certain amount of bipartisan consensus on on on some of this, not all of it. But you’ve mentioned the midterm, perhaps, undermining the bipartisan consensus at least on on Russia, Ukraine. And just in the last day or two, putative future speaker at the house, Kevin McCarthy has actually made some comments about how it’s gonna be a

lot

harder. Public opinions so far, actually, as Olin has continued, remains pretty robust. I mean, I know shibley till Hammy has a new poll out showing, actually, since June, the gap between Republicans and Democrats and support has actually narrowed as as more Republican support has ticked up a little. So there’s that, and then there’s the question of, you know, how that’s translated by political figures. But Peter, you’ve written extensively about public opinion and support for war.

Now, this is a proxy war, not one in which we’re directly engaged But it’s a pretty expensive proxy war. I mean, right? We’ve already appropriated forty billion dollars in assistance. The administration’s asked for another, I think, eleven twelve. And it may require more, you know, over time.

So it’s not not nothing. What what is the work you’ve done in the past on public opinion and support for war? Tell you about where we are today and what the prospects are for continued support. Howard Bauchner: Well,

one thing, this

is not my work but another scholar has shown that when there’s a really bitter elite debate,

So the

elites are, you know, political elites are are sharply critical, as say, happened in late Vietnam. Then the public has divided queues and public support suffers as a result. So I do think that you could see public support for helping Ukraine drop if Republicans took over the house and at the same time decided, yeah, we need to now use Ukraine as a cudgel to beat up on president Biden. And if they made anti Ukraine talking points and efforts, a major plank of the the their congress, you know, their term or they started their session, that would reverbate in the public because you’d get folks who aren’t following the war closely enough to to say, well, maybe it’s not such a good idea. Do

you think they will do that, Peter? I I

think there will we we will elect. We, the electorate, will elect more people who are inclined to do that than are in the current Congress. So I think the caucus of of Republicans who would like to politicize this issue for whatever reason that that will be larger. I don’t think that’s gonna be the case in the senate. I think what you’ll see is it interchamber conflict between sort of the Republicans and the Senate versus Republicans in the House.

And I don’t think it’ll be the majority position in the House. But if, say, it’s a narrow Republican majority, then the speaker speak likely speaker McCarthy, he will be very dependent on this larger caucus of, say, Ukraine skeptics will call them. And so, yeah, I I I do worry about the the longer term level I prefer pro Putin

defeatists, but that’s okay. Yeah. Yeah.

That that

some of them, I think, who aren’t fit that bill. There’s also a more principled position that says, it’s all China and we just have to, you know, anything that distracts us from China. Is is a mistake. I think that’s wrong. I think it’s wrong on the merits, but that is a principled position different from some of the others.

So, yeah, I do think that there’s an opportunity. And, of course, it also matters what our European allies do. I I hope they’ll be strong even in a cold winter. But let’s be honest, Putin believes that his escalation card that’s work gonna work for him is a cold winter. And I and he’s, you know, he’s waiting for that card to play and rev and redown his benefit.

And and we have to see whether well, I hope it won’t, but but the European publics will be under a lot of pressure this winter. Howard Bauchner: Can I ask one

last

question, Peter? You know, you’re very unusual in that you studied domestic politics as well as national security firm policy. Something, you know, as I mean, we’re all never Trump types or at least we signed all the letters. Do you think the Republican part and and you but you’re very close to people who were particularly on the domestic side in the George W. Bush administration, which we all served.

Do you think the Republican Party will kind of de Trumpify at some point? Or or is this is it really kind of a fundamental shift that has occurred here, which it would be foolish for people like us to to think will be reversed. I think that

their

the problem is worse than I had hoped it would be. So I was of the school that thought that Trump’s political clout would would declined rapidly after he left office, and it has declined much more slowly than I expected. So I have to admit that And in the process, we’ve lost some really great, you know, great patriots, people like congresswoman, there’s Cheney, and others who some who lost and some who just decided to retire. And that’s a significant loss inside the Republican Party. So The problem is worse than I thought.

But in the long run, I don’t believe that you can build a functioning republican intellectual platform around what Trump stands for. And the folks who have tried to do that strain themselves and produce incoherent work that then the president himself former president himself sort of robust because what he’s all about is his personal grievances and not a coherent platform. And so at the end of the day, I I’m expecting the what I like to prefer to call sort of the the sensible wing of the Republican Party, which would include, you know, most of the people who are running for to compete against president Trump in two thousand sixteen. But also most many of the people, not all, but many of the people who are hoping he doesn’t run, so they have a shot. At running in twenty twenty four.

I think there’s some good folks there. The problem is that President Trump has a hold on important, very important part of the primary electorate, the people who vote to select. And that is forcing people to say things that I don’t believe they really believe about the twenty twenty election and and other things. And so I think it’s gonna get worse before it gets better. I think twenty twenty two will elect a more problematic Republican caucus and problematic, from my view.

And I think that the problems of that caucus will be manifest, and hopefully, we’ll will be fixed or will will be a warning so that the twenty twenty four produces a better set of actors. That’s that’s my optimistic hope. Well,

very rarely do

we end on an optimistic note on children of the Republic Peter say you’re you’re being very you know, very contrarian here, but that’s great. You’ve been very generous with your time. You’ve got a book coming out in twenty twenty three.

Yes. Thanks for your service on public confidence in the military and what targeted and what it why it matters. So maybe I’ll come back and show that book on to my next visit. Well,

we would love

to have you. Absolutely. But that will do for today’s episode of Shield of the Republic. If you enjoyed the podcast, please Wherever you get your podcast, go on, give us a review, give us a rating, and please send your emails to shield of the Republic at gmail dot com. We do read them.

And try to answer questions. We can’t answer all the questions that our listeners send in, but we do try to address them along the way with our guests and and gives us ideas for future episodes. So please keep those cards and

letters coming in. Thanks, Eric. Thanks, Peter. Thanks for

being.