The Case for Gates
My colleague Brian Katulis made the case for keeping Robert Gates on as SecDef a while back along with his coauthor Nancy Soderberg. An excerpt:
In several speeches that haven’t received the attention they deserve, Gates has argued that, as he put it on Sept. 29 at the National Defense University, “direct military force will continue to have a role” in the “prolonged, world-wide irregular campaign” against al-Qaeda and other violent extremists. But here’s the important part: Gates understands “that over the long term, we cannot kill or capture our way to victory.”
Instead, he calls for beefed up U.S. diplomatic and development capabilities. Unlike Cheney and Rumsfeld, who were obsessed with potential great-power competitors such as China, Gates bluntly admits that the “most likely catastrophic threats to our homeland — for example, an American city poisoned or reduced to rubble by a terrorist attack — are more likely to emanate from failing states than from aggressor states.” His solution to failing states? Help patch them up. Shortly after he took office, Gates argued that the lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan is that “economic development, . . . good governance, providing basic services to the people, training and equipping indigenous military and police forces, strategic communications, and more — these, along with security, are essential ingredients for long-term success.”
Personally, I have somewhat equivocal feelings about this course of action, but I’m hoping Gates will prove Brian right.
17 Responses to “The Case for Gates”
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December 1st, 2008 at 12:53 pm
If Gates gives Obama the shield to withdraw more easily from Iraq, this is a good decision. But part of me wonders why someone else couldn’t have just as easily, or even be more able to have done this.
And while I agree with beefed up diplomatic activity and preventing failed states, that’s easier said than done. The Alliance for Progress had questionable results, and that wasn’t even geared towards states one would put in the “failed states” category that we’re seeing today. You can’t just “patch up” failed states. In fabric terms, these states are in shreds.
December 1st, 2008 at 12:55 pm
I know I was happy when Bush appointed Gates as Sec of Defense. The problem with Bush is that he kept the incompetent Rumsfield as Sec of Defense for 6 years. From his performance over the last two years, Gates is competent, gets the job done, and gives political cover to Obama for his defense agenda. It’s amazing how installing competent people at the top seems to make government function much better.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Personally, I have somewhat equivocal feelings about this course of action, but I’m hoping Gates will prove Brian right.
I suppose that described my own feelings as well.
I worry about the continued attraction of the view that global jihadism is not an intelligible political ideology that happens to be hostile to the ideologies preferred by most of us,westerners, but is rather some sort of psycho-social pathology that can be “cured” with the right mix of benevolent social work and nation-building gymnastics.
About a century ago, an anarchist movement with several violent factions staged several successful attacks on on the established order. For the most part, these anarchists did not come from failed states. They came from the US and Western European states.
15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, which is neither a failed state nor an aggressor state. Nor is it particularly poor. Nor are its jihadists grossly uneducated. Global jihadism is a distributed political movement aimed at expelling non-Muslim power and influence from lands that are seen by its adherents to be Muslim lands. The movement sometimes chooses violent means that are more-or-less rational, at least when seen in light of the ends toward which they are directed, and the values of their perpetrators.
It seems to me that instead of trying to cure jihadism, or “roll it back”, we just have to battle and counter it persistently, until it burns itself out the way radical political movements typically do. In the interim, we need outstanding intelligence aimed at locating the people who are actually willing and capable of carrying out these actions, keeping tabs on them, and then either apprehending them them if possible before they strike, or otherwise disrupting them or killing them if apprehending them is impractical.
December 1st, 2008 at 2:14 pm
I developed a respect for Gates after reading “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA” by Tim Weiner. Gates comes off as a voice of decency and integrity in this account.
December 1st, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Here’s why I like Gates as SecDef – as long as Gates has a stake in the future administration, he’s going to help scuttle any plans to attack Iran or whatever foolhardy venture that Bush and Cheney come up with.
December 1st, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Sure, he’s good for the country, but it just shows that the Democrats who don’t have anybody qualified to be Sec. of Defense, so it’s a bad political move.
December 7th, 2008 at 4:49 am
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