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July 2, 2010 at 2:45 pm

Don’t Be Facebook Friends with a Spy

Posted by Tom Skypek in American Foreign Policy, Current Events, Intelligence, Russia

It appears as though accused Russian spy Mikhail Semenko was an active social networker.  Semenko and his comrades are a case study in espionage 2.0.  He had accounts on LinkedIn and Facebook.  He even ran a blog on the Chinese economy.  What are the lessons here?  Well, first, you should know who you’re connected to on these social networking  sites.  A Facebook news feed could have been a great source of intelligence for Semenko, if he was friends with the right people–say, a congressman on the right committee who posts a little too much on his Facebook account or even a mid-level civil servant working in a sensitive national security position.  It seems hard to believe, but it’s true.  Spies aren’t just after things like weapons designs and highly classified documents.  More mundane and seemingly innocent bits of information, such as a person’s schedule, location or patterns of behavior, can be equally useful to a foreign agent.

If you’re a foreign agent, Facebook is a great way to target potential sources.  As such, people who work in sensitive positions, especially three-letter agencies, should be careful about what they put into these publicly searchable profiles.  This seems obvious, but you’d be surprised.  In military parlance, this is called operational security. Unfortunately, there are a lot of silly kids who don’t practice operational security.  I’m not suggesting that we need a Joe McCarthy of Facebook–only that people in sensitive positions be mindful about what kind of information they disclose and to whom.

Also, check out Jim Robbins’s account of his recent encounter with Semenko at a lecture in Washington.

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June 28, 2010 at 9:29 pm

Focus Group with Frank Luntz in Old Town Alexandria

Posted by Tom Skypek in American Foreign Policy, American Politics

I’ve seen Frank Luntz on TV a bunch of times and I’ve always found him to be a pretty interesting guy.  He’s definitely passionate about what he does.  Last week, I participated in a focus group with Frank at his office in Old Town Alexandria.  I was one of about 30 participants who showed up for the 3-hour session.  The subject of the evening was Israel.  It was a pretty interesting experience.  Before we started, they gave us sandwiches from Panera.  I had the smoked turkey, which was pretty solid.  Then we filled out a pretty lengthy questionnaire, watched a series of informational videos, news clips, and speeches.  We got to use those cool dials, or “Perception Analyzers,” Frank uses on TV when he’s doing a live focus group.  The dial knob goes from 0 to 100.  You start at 50–which is neutral.  When you hear something you like, you turn the dial up closer to 100.  When you don’t like what you hear, you turn the dial toward 0.  We’d watch a short clip and react.  Then his assistant would tell us, “Back to 50.”

The group seemed to be pretty evenly split between McCain and Obama voters.  Frank was pretty funny, cracking jokes here and there, but he also seemed a little stressed.  Even most of the conservatives in the group seemed to dislike Benjamin Netanyahu.  By my count, it was just myself and another guy who liked Netanyahu.  I told the group that Netanyahu strikes me as a decisive leader who’d protect my family and follow the terrorists to the gates of hell.  Others called him arrogant.  All and all the group struck me as being pretty slanted toward the Palestinian side.  The operation to stop the blockade runners definitely hurt Israel in the public relations department.  I think that Israel’s response to the blockade running was perfectly reasonable, but I was certainly in the minority.

The group overwhelmingly believed that Washington should cut foreign aid to Israel and seemed to indicate a general dissatisfaction with current U.S. foreign disbursements.  I think we should cut foreign aid across the board.  We hand out free money and frequently get nothing in return.  The entire point of foreign aid is to provide a return on investment.  Our aid disbursements are meant to advance the national interest and it seems like the vast majority of our aid programs simply don’t achieve that objective.  I think we could certainly look at reducing our foreign aid package to Israel.  They have nuclear weapons and an impressive conventional military and an economy capable of sustaining its military power and modernizing its forces, as necessary.

You can sign up to participate in a focus group with Frank Luntz here.  It’s a pretty good time, if you like politics and current events.  Plus they feed you and pay you for your time.

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June 25, 2010 at 1:15 pm

Fran Townshend Speech at National Defense University

Posted by Tom Skypek in American Foreign Policy, Terrorism

I heard Fran Townshend, the former Homeland Security Advisor to George W. Bush, speak the other night at National Defense University at Ft. McNair.  I was fortunate enough to get an invite through my affiliation with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and their Nuclear Scholars Initiative program.  She gave a solid speech about the continued threat of terrorism and how it’s important for the government to clearly communicate threats to the American people.  People get anxious when they’re kept in the dark and only told bits and pieces of a story, she argued.  She also provided some lessons she learned navigating the sprawling national security bureaucracy both as a civil servant and a high-level political appointee.

I asked her during the Q&A whether she thought it was productive for the administration to describe terrorism as a “man-caused disaster” and refer to Islamic extremism as a “far-reaching network of violence and hatred.”  Some observers think this is purely semantics.  I think it’s important to identify threats in clear and unambiguous terms. Evidently Fran feels the same way.  She called the move by the administration “dangerous” and unproductive.  It got back to her point about keeping the American people informed.

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June 23, 2010 at 7:23 pm

National Review Institute (NRI) Washington Fellows

Posted by Tom Skypek in American Culture, American Politics, Conservatism

Recently, I found out that I was accepted into the National Review Institute’s Washington Fellows Program–a year-long program dedicated to the study of the history of the modern conservative movement.  It is truly humbling to be affiliated with the Institute that William F. Buckley, Jr. founded in 1991 to advance conservatism in the United States. For a conservative such as myself, it’s tantamount to being knighted (or at least that’s how I view it).  There are a total of 25 Fellows in the 2010 class and it’s an honor to be listed among such a talented and distinguished group of conservative thinkers.  You can learn about the 2010 Washington Fellows here.

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at 2:39 pm

Red Dawn Remake with People’s Liberation Army!

Posted by Tom Skypek in American Culture, American Foreign Policy, Current Events, Media

So it looks like the classic 1984 war film Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayzee and Charlie Sheen, is being remade.  This time, though, the Chinese will be the invaders.  If you haven’t seen the original, you should definitely check it out. Red Dawn was listed as #15 on National Review Online’s list of the Best Conservative Movies.

I’m really fired up for this film.  While I’ll miss Swayzee and Sheen, I have high hopes for Connor Cruise, Tom Cruise’s son. More specifically, though, I’m glad that China’s growing military power is starting to get some attention in the popular media. Defense analysts and a handful of policymakers have been watching China’s military modernization program with great interest for almost two decades now.

The U.S.-Chinese relationship could be a real cash cow for Hollywood in the coming years–films on espionage and war and great power politics.  I guess it will depend on how this film does at the box office.

h/t David Adesnik

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at 1:45 pm

Breaking News: Obama Accepts McChrystal’s Resignation, Petraeus Named as Replacement

Posted by Tom Skypek in American Foreign Policy, Current Events, Military History, The American Presidency

It’s not too surprising that this is how it ended up.  Obama, who is already perceived as a weak and indecisive leader by many, would have lost pretty much all credibility as a serious leader had he not relieved McChrystal.  Gen. David Petraeus is currently the Commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and oversees the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.  So this is a bit of a peculiar arrangement.

A friend just e-mailed me with the following comment, “one 2012 rival out of the way…”

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at 11:54 am

Eliot Cohen on Why McChrystal Needs to Go

Posted by Tom Skypek in American Foreign Policy, American Politics, The American Presidency

A great piece by Eliot Cohen on the McChrystal-Rolling Stone episode.

The president has not spoken publicly about Afghanistan in any serious way since December, and one wonders whether he has the nerve to act, in respect to Gen. McChrystal, like a serious commander in chief. If he leaves a wounded—and therefore more malleable—commander in place, he will have shown a calamitous weakness masquerading as political cleverness.

For the rest of us, there is a lesson about re-establishing fundamental norms of civilian-military relations. For years both political parties have used generals as props. Democrats cheered when disgruntled generals snarled at Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Republicans, to their equal discredit, played up military disquiet with President Bill Clinton and may do so again in this case.

In wartime, generals become public heroes. In some cases—in Stanley McChrystal’s—they really may be heroes. But that does not change the fundamental imperative of maintaining order and discipline. And if doing so means relieving a hero of command, so be it.

I’d recommend that you read this piece in its entirety.  Cohen echoes several of the points that I made yesterday regarding civil-military relations in this country. He does a great job of putting this particular incident into the proper context–that this entire episode is really just an extension of the Obama’s administration’s mismanagement of the war in Afghanistan.

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June 22, 2010 at 2:11 pm

McChrystal Tests Civil-Military Relations

Posted by Tom Skypek in American Foreign Policy, American Politics, The American Presidency

From Politico:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates publicly rebuked Gen. Stanley McChrystal Tuesday, saying in a statement that the top commander in Afghanistan had “made a significant mistake and exercised poor judgment” in the biting remarks he and his aides made in a Rolling Stone article about President Barack Obama and others in the administration.

The statement from Gates followed news that McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, has been summoned to the White House to explain the comments published in a Rolling Stone article.

President Barack Obama has to relieve Gen. McChrystal of his command.  I don’t really see how this ends any other way.  I guess McChrystal could tender his resignation, but even that would be a slap in the face to the Office of the President.  If McChrystal did not have faith in his civilian leadership, he should have resigned.  Civilian control of the military is one of the pillars of this Republic.  To disrespect the commander-in-chief in such a blatant manner is an affront to the Office of the President and borders on insubordination.

There is clearly a perception within the U.S. military–in the officer corps and among the enlisted ranks–that this president is a weak commander-in-chief (which, I believe, is justified).  He won the Democratic nomination by campaigning that he would have the U.S. out of Iraq within 16 months of being elected, remember?  He doesn’t believe that the U.S. is at war with Islamic extremism and his conduct of U.S. foreign policy has been amateur, at best.  Further, his decision to place additional stress on the force by repealing “Don’t ask, don’t tell” while fighting two wars is more than problematic.  Still, he is the president.  If he does not fire Gen. McChrystal, Obama will only reinforce the perception that he is a weak and indecisive leader.

According to Byron York, “…the bigger problem with McChrystal’s leadership has always been the general’s devotion to unreasonably restrictive rules of engagement that are resulting in the unnecessary deaths of American and coalition forces.”  York makes a good point here, but the general is merely an accomplice to a failed policy.  In enforcing these restrictive rules of engagement, McChrystal is following the guidance passed down by the Obama White House.  These rules of engagement put U.S. troops at risk.  You can’t win a war with one hand tied behind your back.  Here’s an excerpt from the article.

One soldier shows me the list of new regulations the platoon was given. “Patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force,” the laminated card reads. For a soldier who has traveled halfway around the world to fight, that’s like telling a cop he should only patrol in areas where he knows he won’t have to make arrests. “Does that make any f–king sense?” Pfc. Jared Pautsch. “We should just drop a f–king bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself:  What are we doing here?”

It is odd that a four-star general would give such access to a media outlet.  Even if some of the comments were “off the record,” it is peculiar that he would trust a  journalist from Rolling Stone, or any media outlet for that matter.  Maybe this was an elaborate plan to force a confrontation with the White House.  I don’t know.  Regardless, it puts the president in a tough spot.  While the first order impact of this article is the McChrystal fallout, I hope it shines renewed light on the overall mismanagement of the war in Afghanistan and how the current rules of engagement are putting American lives at risk.  If that’s how this White House wants to prosecute this war, then we shouldn’t be there.

I agree with most of what McChrystal and his staff said in the article, but I’m not a general officer in the United States Army currently running a war.  I’m a private citizen and there’s a big difference.  I’m not part of the chain of command.  The bottom line is that if he disagreed with Obama’s policies he should have resigned.  Making these comments while in uniform was not the way to go.  Do you think this whole episode will help or hinder morale?  If you were on the ground in Afghanistan and you found out that your commanding general thinks the president is a dolt and bungling the war–how are you doing going to react?  The efficacy of any military organization depends largely on strict adherence to the chain of command.  Some pundits will relish this episode as an example of Obama’s poor leadership and disconnect from the military (I don’t think this would be happening if it were President McCain).  But I believe this issue is bigger than Obama or McChrystal.  It really has to do with the Office of the President, the Constitution, and how we think about civil-military relations in this country.

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June 21, 2010 at 4:25 pm

Foreign Policy Amateur

Posted by Tom Skypek in American Foreign Policy, American Politics, The American Presidency

The Obama administration’s inept management of U.S. foreign policy is finally becoming apparent, even to Democrats like Mort Zuckerman.  Zuckerman writes,

The reviews of Obama’s performance have been disappointing. He has seemed uncomfortable in the role of leading other nations, and often seems to suggest there is nothing special about America’s role in the world. The global community was puzzled over the pictures of Obama bowing to some of the world’s leaders and surprised by his gratuitous criticisms of and apologies for America’s foreign policy under the previous administration of George W. Bush. One Middle East authority, Fouad Ajami, pointed out that Obama seems unaware that it is bad form and even a great moral lapse to speak ill of one’s own tribe while in the lands of others.

Even in Britain, for decades our closest ally, the talk in the press—supported by polls—is about the end of the “special relationship” with America. French President Nicolas Sarkozy openly criticized Obama for months, including a direct attack on his policies at the United Nations. Sarkozy cited the need to recognize the real world, not the virtual world, a clear reference to Obama’s speech on nuclear weapons. When the French president is seen as tougher than the American president, you have to know that something is awry. Vladimir Putin of Russia has publicly scorned a number of Obama’s visions. Relations with the Chinese leadership got off to a bad start with the president’s poorly-organized visit to China, where his hosts treated him disdainfully and prevented him from speaking to a national television audience of the Chinese people. The Chinese behavior was unprecedented when compared to visits by other U.S. presidents.

Obama’s lack of credibility as a competent leader limits our bargaining power abroad and invites provocations by our adversaries, who perceive Obama as a weak and indecisive leader.  This administration has fallen short in both style and substance.  There’s something wrong when you treat your adversaries better than your friends and allies.

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June 16, 2010 at 7:28 am

National Energy Tax Bill

Posted by Tom Skypek in American Politics, Current Events, Economy

From Politico:

Senate authors of a controversial climate change bill heralded EPA modeling results unveiled Tuesday as proof that their plan would have a limited pinch on Americans’ pocketbooks.

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) found many reasons to gloat after getting the 74-page study that showed the overall costs from their legislation’s major global warming provisions would cost an average household between $80 to $150 per year.

“There’ll be some people who will want to demagogue that politically, but that’s less than $1 a day,” Lieberman told reporters. “Is the American household willing to pay less than $1 so we don’t have to buy oil from foreign countries, so we can create millions of new jobs, so we can clean up our environment? I think the answer is going to be yes.”

We knew that this type of bill would rear its ugly head again.  A few points to consider:  First, models are imperfect tools.  They are decision-support tools and are frequently quite wrong (see mortgage securitization, for example).  So the estimates touted by the senators could be very low.  Second, $80 to $150 per year is a lot of money for some households.  It’s a month worth of groceries or the “activity fee” required by some public schools so your child can play athletics or participate in the band.  For some,  it eats into a rent or mortgage payment.  Think about the people who need to work two jobs to make ends meet.  Over the course of a year, $1 a day is a lot of money to them.  Third, this is simply an example of elitism at its finest.  The reality is that most Americans care about the economy.  A conjured problem like climate change, based on fraudulent since, is not high on their list of priorities or concerns–nor should it be.

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