Author: Kelley Beaucar Vlahos

Reprinted from Responsible Statecraft (Quincy Institute) with permission.

A coalition of both conservative and progressive foreign policy organizations have delivered a letter to the White House, asking the president to pursue a broad diplomatic path with the Russians in the much-anticipated U.S.-Russia talks on Monday and in NATO meetings later next week.

The letter, which was signed by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, asks the White House to pursue the Minsk agreements which would “demilitarize the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine and guarantee meaningful political autonomy to the region while retaining Ukrainian sovereignty over the area and its borders.” QI fellow Anatol Lieven has detailed the agreement and the promise it would hold for peace in the region here.

De-escalation is key, wrote the signing organizations, which also emphasized the need to stop NATO expansion and resist calls to send U.S. troops to defend Ukraine.

Continue reading “Bi-Partisan Coalition Urges Biden To Resist Calls for Military Action Against Russia”

From Responsible Statecraft:

Investigative journalist, author, and Iraq veteran Jack Murphy sat down with the Quincy Institute’s Adam Weinstein to talk about U.S. drone strikes in Afghanistan, and how loosened rules of engagement led to an accelerated number of strikes, unacknowledged civilian deaths, and moral injury among soldiers and veterans.

Murphy, who served as a Sniper and Team Leader in 3rd Ranger Battalion and as a Senior Weapons Sergeant on a Military Free Fall team in 5th Special Forces Group, recalled to Weinstein, an Afghanistan War veteran, how by 2018 the rules of engagement were loosened to the point where anyone on the ground who fit the “criteria” were vulnerable to a strike. Watch here:

The Taliban had been dismantling cell phone towers for years, so insurgents and civilians used walkie-talkies to communicate, he noted. “The ROE (rules of engagement) could be met by seeing someone speaking on a radio, carrying a radio, just touching a radio at some point.” There was no human intelligence or friendly forces on the ground, everything was communicated by surveillance drones monitoring potential targets via cameras. Once these “eagle scans” identified targets, they would call in the armed drones for the strike itself.

At this point in 2018 “you’re going back to Vietnam-era body counts…the metric for success is the number of strikes you’re doing, the number of people you are killing every day. And if commanders on the ground know that, they’re going to do things to make themselves look as good as possible. That means, at least in this case, striking people whether they are armed combatants or not.”

“It’s a very Orwellian, dystopian kind of way to think about it,” he continues. “You have this sort of unblinking eye, this surveillance eye hovering over population in Afghanistan, waiting for them to ‘fuck up.’ I think that a lot of the animosity that the people had for us.”

He and Weinstein talk about the trauma among drone operators. Following targets on the ground, close enough to see whether they are wearing eyeglasses, for hours and days on time, then striking them, watching their bodies get picked up, and the family grieving — it takes a toll. “There’s a significant moral injury that these people incur, especially when they are part of lethal strikes that they feel are immoral or unethical,” Murphy contends.

A lot of these feelings, he said, have been resurrected with the withdrawal and the war in Afghanistan now in the rearview mirror. Many veterans are now asking “what did it all mean? What was it for?”

Our colleague and friend Mark Perry passed away today after a battle with lung cancer, his son Cal Perry announced on Twitter earlier this morning. It is devastating news to so many because Perry had been a staple in Washington foreign policy/military journalism and activism circles for decades and had fostered quite a collection of friends, compatriots, sources, and colleagues over the years. If you put them all in a room right now it would likely be a motley assemblage, ranging from active duty and retired Pentagon officers, to Arab-American friends from his time in Beirut, to peace activists, watchdogs, mavericks, and journalists – all shaking their heads in shock and regretting they hadn’t had just one more conversation with him.

We were lucky at the Quincy Institute to have him on our side, if even just for a short while, working as a military analyst for the last year. He penned some of our best stories at Responsible Statecraft. He was “part time” but he put in full-time work because this was his milieu – researching, cultivating sources, and getting under the surface (and skin) of the Pentagon world, whether it be budgets and strategy, or meta stories like U.S. wars in the Middle East or the advancing Cold War with China. He was absolutely a stickler for facts and loved history, and learning from it. He took nothing at face value and was a true skeptic and iconoclast – no one got respect until they earned it.

His career trajectory was nothing but colorful – he was the director of Conflicts Forum, which brought him to Beirut, where he lived for some time. He worked with Vietnam Veterans of America and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. He was an unofficial advisor to PLO Chairman and Palestinian PresidentYasser Arafat from 1989 to 2004. He was a prolific writer, publishing several books, including “Four Stars: The Inside Story of the Forty-Year Battle Between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and America’s Civilian Leaders,” “Partners In Command: George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace,” “The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur,” “Grant and Twain: The Story of an American Friendship,” and the latest, “The Pentagon’s Wars: The Military’s Undeclared War Against America’s Presidents,” which he published in 2017.

It was about that time that I met Mark and soon had him writing for The American Conservative, where he was a regular contributor on military/war issues for the next two years. He not only elevated our national security coverage but he helped me behind the scenes, editing and fact checking. I trusted his judgment, and basked in his encouragement. Long after we both came to QI/RS, I continued to consult with him on stories and authors – we called him my “BS meter.”

Mark’s truth-telling spirit, journalistic integrity, and views on non-interventionism brought him right into the orbit of the left-right coalition on realism and restraint, and his experience and wisdom were a good fit in a Washington arena where memories can be long or short depending on political convenience. He reminded folks of mistakes in hopes that they may not happen again. He tore open wounds so that we would remember the blood. He tried to heal with the facts in hopes that they would win over hyperbole and demagoguery.

His work, unfortunately, is not finished. He leaves a hole, in our hearts and in our project. Again, we have only benefitted from the short time he was here. Please take the time to read his work, here and here. Our condolences go out to his wife and children and grandchildren, who he spoke about often (otherwise he was quite private, and humble), and to all of the comrades he collected, along the way.

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is Editorial Director of Responsible Statecraft and Senior Advisor at the Quincy Institute. She was formerly an editor at Antiwar.com and The American Conservative. Reprinted from Responsible Statecraft with permission.

On the eve of the second anniversary of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, QI and Showtime Documentary Films hosted a discussion about the implications of the assassination for U.S.-Saudi relations past, present, and future.

The discussion also offered a sneak peak at Showtime’s Kingdom of Silence, the upcoming documentary that provides an in-depth look into the Washington Post journalist’s life, work, and murder against the backdrop of complex U.S.-Saudi relations.

Journalist Lawrence Wright and Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman, both featured in the film, joined with Quincy Institute’s Annelle Sheline, in a conversation moderated by Responsible Statecraft’s Kelley Vlahos about the important questions the film raises – the future of the U.S.-Saudi relationship in the era of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s consolidation of power.

Reprinted from Responsible Statecraft (Quincy Institute) with permission.

It was called ‘“the worst debate in American history” by more than one pundit and cable news anchor.

The graphic descriptions of Tuesday night’s presidential debate between incumbent Donald Trump and challenger Joe Biden began mounting on social media and spilling over into Wednesday’s headline stories. The most used: “train wreck” and “dumpster fire.” CNN’s Dana Bash figured it was the night to break protocol: “I’m just going to say it like it is. That was a shit show.”

The highly anticipated event devolved early into bickering and interruptions, with moderator, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, having to reprimand the president several times to wait his turn, reminding him at one point that his campaign had agreed to the terms for letting his opponent speak for two minutes, uninterrupted, during responses.

The evening rolled over the broad domestic issues that only emphasized today’s domestic divide: Trump’s Supreme Court nomination, the coronavirus pandemic, economic recession, racial strife. Rather than leading to a substantive discussion on the candidates’ records or plans, each question immediately gave way to squabbling and sharp personal attacks. Biden called Trump a “racist” and a “clown.” Trump repeatedly and aggressively demanded Biden talk about his son Hunter’s business in Ukraine; at one point he sneered that Hunter was “kicked out of the military” for “cocaine use.”

Continue reading “Debate ‘Train Wreck’ Shows US in No Position To Lecture the World”

Reprinted from Responsible Statecraft (Quincy Institute) with permission.

Tuesday’s highly anticipated debate between President Trump and Democratic challenger Vice President Joe Biden is expected to delve into several broad topics critical to today’s political environment: the Supreme Court, COVID, the economy, race and violence in cities, the integrity of the election, and the candidates’ records.

Of course the discussion may or may not touch upon salient foreign policy and national security issues that often spill over from these more domestic concerns — like the U.S. relationship with China, Russia, or the continuing wars abroad.

So we canvassed the Quincy Institute staff and asked them what questions should be asked tomorrow night (but probably won’t):

Andrew Bacevich, President: In its recently published official history of the Iraq War, the US Army acknowledges “the failure of the United States to attain its strategic objectives in Iraq.” Do you agree with that judgment? If so, what are the implications of that failure for US policy going forward?  If not – if you think that the war ended in something other than failure – how would you characterize the outcome? In either case, what lessons should the United States take from its war in Iraq?”

Continue reading “10 Foreign Policy Questions That Should Be Asked at the Presidential Debate (But Probably Won’t)”