Thread-topic: House’s ‘Irregular Warfare’ Provision Risks Unintended War - Defense One
(By now, I hope everyone recognizes my opposition to US Militarism, and analyses of it in the Hannah Arendt manner, of looking to its “Origins.” Which for historical brevity, I look to the post-WWII ideology which
came into existence then, and remains our national, bi-partisan ideology of today. Even when that “steps on some people’s toes” here. In line with that, I finally went live with a webpage: Project for the Study of American Militarism (PSAM) ( a shameless
ripoff and mimicry of PNAC and “Institute for the Study of War”), which can be found at:
americanmilitarim.org. Not much content on it yet but had to have a place to go for anyone seeing it as a Sponsor of this webinar with Roger Waters coming up on the 8th:
https://actionnetwork.org/events/webinar-with-roger-waters?clear_id=true. Having no illusions that it will acquire any sort of readership but I need a place to post oral history interviews, and sound articles like the one below. It should be considered
a tribute to Bill Polk with whom I had many long discussions on this topic, and I know he would support it, and write for it, were he still here. As it is, I have some notable people from VIPS who said they would be on a Board of Advisors, but I will wait
to post their names.)
I meant to “Share” the DefenseOne article on Irregular Warfare below but inadvertently the second article here was included, which Conservatives will want to avoid unless they want to offer an apologia for Trump’s
plans if he should regain power, or similarly minded Conservatives like DeSantis becomes POTUS. I don’t usually agree with the authors of articles provided on this DOD Early Bird as they are generally advancing “Interests” (new Conservative code-word to justify
US wars, vs the old justifications offered by NeoLibs/Cons) of the Military (expansive meaning) but the DOD’s Early Bird is generally the first news site I peruse in the morning as it informs me a lot of all that the Military is planning and developing. And
during the Trump years, provided evidence of the fallaciousness of those claiming Trump was “ending the endless wars,” when in fact he was expanding them, using authorities like Sec. 1202. Which was obviously put into the 2018 NDAA with the Trump administration’s
approval, if not their insistence. Why didn’t the supposed Conservative opponents of expansive Executive authority in Congress at the time: Gaetz, Hawley, De Santis, Rand Paul, et al., ever raise an alarm over these expansive powers? Were they too busy scrambling
to be first to register their support to please Trump?
One thing the so-called “non-interventionist Conservatives,” to include libertarians like Thomas Sowell, all have in common; they want Republican Presidents and elected officials to use the Military as the “Final Say,” on
foreign policy and domestic law enforcement, with that Military under their strict ideological control.
So the conclusion of the second article here is not just hyperbole: "It’s not just control of the House that’s on the ballot; it’s control of the U.S. military.” Unfortunately though, with the Democrats following the Republican/Conservative model as never before,
that too may be increasingly irrelevant :-(
BLUF: "The House-passed bill codifies and increases the budget of the “1202 authority,” a provisional authority from
2018 that has allowed the military to secretly recruit, train, and pay foreign forces and private individuals to conduct irregular warfare operations on behalf of the United States. To date, 1202 programs
have been non-kinetic in nature: information and intelligence operations targeting so-called “rogue
regimes” and “revisionist powers” in Eastern Europe and East Asia, as the Pentagon sets its sights on great power competition. But nothing prevents the military from using the 1202 authority to send proxy forces into combat.
. . . .
"The Defense Department has already crafted arguments for why it can use the military in self-defense against potential Russian threats, as well as yet-undisclosed threats in East Asia. Each
of the Defense Department’s current 1202 programs, including numerous programs in Eastern Europe and at least one program in the Indo-Pacific region, is justified on the basis of self-defense. Since the Cold War, presidents have maintained that they have the
authority to use the military for self-defense without congressional authorization, so long as their operations do not rise to the level of an all-out “war
in the constitutional sense.” They have defined “self-defense” to include not only the defense of the American homeland or U.S. forces abroad, but also the defense
of foreign partners and even the defense of abstract “national
interests.” Between the 1202 authority and this expansive view of presidential power, the Defense Department has all it needs to raise a proxy force to counter, say, Russian separatists in the Donbass.”
That ship too has sailed, since 2014 as admitted recently by multiple military officials, though accelerated under Trump by all indications, resulting in Russia having a legitimate casus belli
in their eyes to invade Ukraine and take all-out military action against proxy forces. Similar to what Rehnquist’s 1970 OLC Legal Opinion asserted to justify the US invasion of Cambodia.
From 2018 NDAA – Trump’s
"Baby"
SEC. 1202. SUPPORT OF SPECIAL OPERATIONS FOR IRREGULAR WAR- FARE.
(a) AUTHORITY.—The Secretary
of Defense may, with the concurrence of the relevant Chief of Mission, expend up to $10,000,000 during each of fiscal years 2018 through 2020 to provide support to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals engaged in supporting or facilitating
ongoing and authorized irreg- ular warfare operations by United States Special Operations Forces.
(b) FUNDS.—(3)
ELEMENTS.—Each report required by this subsection shall include the following:
(A) A summary of the ongoing irregular warfare operations, and associated authorized campaign plans, being conducted by United States Special Operations Forces that were supported
or facilitated by foreign forces, irregular
forces, groups, or individuals for which support was pro- vided under this section during the period covered by such report.
(B) A description of the support or facilitation provided by such foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individ- uals to United States Special Operations Forces during
such period.
(C) The type of recipients that were provided support under this section during such period, identified by author- ized category (foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or
individuals).
(D) A detailed description of the support provided to the recipients under this section during such period.
(E) The total amount obligated for support under this section during such period, including budget details.
(F) The intended duration of support provided under this section during such period.
(G) An assessment of value of the support provided under this section during such period, including a summary of significant activities undertaken by foreign forces, irreg- ular
forces, groups, or individuals to support irregular war- fare operations by United States Special Operations Forces.
(H) The total amount obligated for support under this section in prior fiscal years.
(i) IRREGULAR
WARFARE
DEFINED.—In this section, the term ‘‘irregular warfare’’ means activities
in support of predetermined United States policy and military objectives conducted by, with, and through regular forces, irregular forces, groups, and individuals participating in competition between state and non-state actors short of traditional armed conflict.
Congress may be sleepwalking the United States into war, potentially with a nuclear state. A provision in the recently passed House version of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act would expand the U.S. military’s ability to use proxy forces for “irregular
warfare” operations against Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China. It’s not clear how many lawmakers were aware of the provision—much less considered how the military’s use of foreign proxies can escalate into direct military conflict. The Senate should reject
this dangerous measure in its consideration of the bill.
The House-passed bill codifies and increases the budget of the “1202 authority,” a provisional authority from
2018 that has allowed the military to secretly recruit, train, and pay foreign forces and private individuals to conduct irregular warfare operations on behalf of the United States. To date, 1202 programs have been non-kinetic in nature: information and
intelligence operations targeting so-called “rogue
regimes” and “revisionist powers” in Eastern Europe and East Asia, as the Pentagon sets its sights on great power competition. But nothing prevents the military from using the 1202 authority to send proxy forces into combat.
The 1202 authority was modeled on 10
U.S.C. § 127e, an earlier authority designed to give the military operational flexibility and greater access in its pursuit of groups like al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In practice, the 127e authority has been used to create
and command shadowy proxy forces in at least 16 countries across Africa
and Asia, including Niger, Egypt, and Yemen. The military’s 127e proxies—such as the Danab
Brigade in Somalia, a force of 1,000 fighters who take orders and salaries from
U.S. troops—are regularly instructed to conduct patrols, raids, and kill-or-capture missions against terrorist targets. At times, U.S. forces join their proxies in the field, themselves engaging in combat and taking
casualties.
Under both 127e and 1202, the use of proxy forces must support “authorized” U.S. military operations. The Defense Department has cited two sources of authority for engaging in combat through and with 127e proxies: the 2001
Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF—the authority for the United States’s endless “war on terror”—and the president’s constitutional prerogative to engage in “self-defense,” defined expansively by executive branch lawyers.
The Defense Department could cite similar authorities for the use of 1202 proxies. Although no AUMF was designed to counter Iran, North Korea, Russia, or China, the executive branch believes it has the authority to engage these countries militarily. The Trump
administration invoked the 2002
AUMF, the authorization for the Iraq War, to justify an airstrike
on Qassem Soleimani, a high‑ranking Iranian general. The administration reasoned that
the 2002 AUMF allows the pursuit of Iran-backed militias in Iraq and associated Iranian officials, even though the Iraq War has been over for more than a decade and did not involve Iran. The Biden administration has not refuted or rescinded this interpretation
of the 2002 AUMF. As long as the 2002 AUMF is on the books, no law stops the Defense Department from creating a 1202 proxy force to combat Iran-backed militias and related targets.
The Defense Department has already crafted arguments for why it can use the military in self-defense against potential Russian threats, as well as yet-undisclosed threats in East Asia. Each of the Defense Department’s current 1202 programs, including numerous
programs in Eastern Europe and at least one program in the Indo-Pacific region, is justified on the basis of self-defense. Since the Cold War, presidents have maintained that they have the authority to use the military for self-defense without congressional
authorization, so long as their operations do not rise to the level of an all-out “war
in the constitutional sense.” They have defined “self-defense” to include not only the defense of the American homeland or U.S. forces abroad, but also the defense
of foreign partners and even the defense of abstract “national
interests.” Between the 1202 authority and this expansive view of presidential power, the Defense Department has all it needs to raise a proxy force to counter, say, Russian separatists in the Donbass.
The Biden administration has not used the 1202 authority for combat through or with partners; it has limited its use of that authority to information and intelligence operations. But there’s no telling what a more belligerent or reckless future administration
might do. The legal limitations on the 1202 authority are few.
Moreover, Congress’s oversight of the 1202 authority is virtually nonexistent. The Defense Department’s reports to Congress on 1202 activity are so heavily classified that most congressional offices cannot read them. Offices that have seen these reports question
their value, suggesting that the reports omit key information. It’s far from clear that the House members who voted to codify and expand the 1202 authority through the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act understood the implications of doing so. The public,
of course, receives no information on the 1202 proxies that our tax dollars support.
If the Senate joins the House in codifying and expanding the 1202 authority, Congress will have given the Defense Department an authority that very well could lead to combat and even war. This time, though, the war might not be with al-Shabaab or ISIS. It might
be with a nuclear state.
Katherine
Yon Ebright is Counsel in the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law. She is the author of a forthcoming report
on the Defense Department’s security cooperation authorities.
Former U.S. president Donald Trump delivers remarks at the America First Agenda Summit in Washington, D.C., on July 26, 2022.
Kyle Mazza/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Trump Wants Concentration Camps and Presidential Control of Domestic Troops
The disgraced former president said the next chief executive should take control of the National Guard from state governors and deploy troops to quell cities.
Donald Trump just said he wants to build concentration camps in America and assume direct control over the National Guard in a way that sounds a lot like the
Nazi SS force.
I can attest that those items were not on bingo cards at last week’s Aspen Security Conference, a four-day gathering of the nation’s top security-policy professionals and practitioners. But at the summer’s most important
gathering of far-rightists, Trump on Tuesday attacked “weak mayors and powerful governors” who have resisted using National Guard troops and harsh, sometimes unconstitutional tactics to quell violence in American cities. In a rambling
speech reminiscent of his 2017
inaugural address in its dark depiction of American city life, Trump described the country as “a cesspool of crime” and argued that a president should usurp governors and order their state-run military forces into American cities to enforce order, if not
law.
"The federal government can and should send the National Guard to restore order and secure the peace without having to wait for the approval of some governor that thinks it's politically incorrect to call them in,” Trump
said at the America First Policy Institute summit in Washington, D.C. “When governors refuse to protect their people, we need to bring in what’s necessary anyway. We need to go beyond the governor.”
The audience wildly applauded this rejection of states’ rights, long a conservative tenet, and of the U.S. Constitution.
Trump also said authorities should round up America’s
homeless population—roughly half a million people—and incarcerate them in camps built on cheap land far from major U.S. cities. This, he argued, would hide an American embarrassment from visiting foreign leaders and motivate the homeless to stop being homeless.
Most Defense One readers probably don’t watch Trump’s speeches regularly anymore because most Americans don’t. He draws a fraction of the crowds he once did at his rallies, the
political candidates he endorses are frequently losing, and the editorial boards of the nation’s most important conservative newspapers—Rupert Murdoch-owned
Wall Street Journal and New York Post—have turned against him. But military and national-security leaders should still be paying attention to the once and
possibly future president, particularly to learn how the right wing puts national security and military issues to political use.
High atop the current list of right-wing talking points is crime in America’s cities, particularly ones governed by Democrats. Conservatives link the issue to everything from illegal immigration and border security to stricter
gun control, law-enforcement spending cuts, and the refusal to employ National Guard troops. Some blame city crime on Democrats who want to
help Ukraine fight Russia on the far edge of Europe instead of admitting trouble in their districts at home.
Since at least the 2016 presidential election, conservatives have
pointed to crime rates in Chicago as evidence that Democratic and minority leaders there are purposefully soft on crime and are wrong in their refusals to deploy the National Guard or using controversial policing methods like
stop-and-frisk. Republicans also say that in other cities where Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 turned riotous—sometimes through
instigation by white supremacists—more Democratic governors should have sent in their Guard troops, as Trump did,
controversially in Washington, D.C.
So, on Tuesday, in a speech meant for the ears of Republican primary voters, Trump said the next American president should send the National Guard to Chicago. That would require, at minimum, invoking the Insurrection Act,
which is supposed to be reserved for natural disaster or civil violence “to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order.” But it also would ignore the Illinois governor, the 1878 Posse
Comitatus Act, and the advice of top National Guard generals who strongly resist federalization. (We’ve
been through this debate before.)
And that’s how extreme partisan politics could change the U.S. military forever, if Americans want.
“This cannot go on anymore,” Trump said. “Every other approach has been considerably tried, and they tried the weak approach, they’ve been trying it for years... It’s not working. It’s time to go a different direction. And
only one option remains. The next president needs to send the National Guard to the most dangerous neighborhoods in Chicago until safety can be restored.”
The troops would be mobilized not just against criminals and disturbers of the peace, but against homeless and mentally unstable people, he said.
Don't miss:
“We have to take back our streets and public spaces from the homeless, the drug addicted, and the dangerously deranged. What’s happened to our cities?” he said. “We’re living in such a different country for one primary reason:
there is no longer respect for the law and there certainly is no order. Our country is now a cesspool of crime.”
And who is to blame? Not the pandemic, which
closed many homeless shelters and housing, or a nationwide housing shortage stoked by
income inequality and
local zoning policies. No; “We have blood, death, and suffering on a scale once unthinkable because of the
Democrat [sic] Party’s effort to destroy and dismantle law enforcement all throughout America. It has to stop, and it has to stop now.”
Then Trump said he would create a crime-free society.
“We believe that every citizen of every background should be able to walk anywhere in this nation at any hour of the day without even the thought of being victimized by violent crime,” he said. To build this utopia, America’s
leaders must “be tough and be nasty and be mean, if we have to.”
The crowd’s applause swelled.
Trump reiterated a
debunked claim that he broke up encampments in Washington when he was in the White House; he lamented seeing them as he returned this week. He called them an embarrassment, especially when foreign leaders visit. “It leaves such a bad impression. They go
home and say, ‘What kind of country has the United States turned into?’”
His response: make the homeless disappear.
“Perhaps some people will not like hearing this, but the only way you’re going to remove the hundreds of thousands of people, and maybe throughout our nation millions of people,...is open up large parcels of inexpensive
land in the outer reaches of the cities, bring in medical professionals…build permanent bathrooms and other facilities, make ‘em good, make ‘em hard, but build them fast, and build thousands and thousands of high-quality tents, which can be done in one day.
One day. You have to move people out.”
People cheered.
“Some people say, ‘Well, that’s horrible,’ but no, what’s horrible is what’s happening now,” he said.
Trump said it would help drive “the ambition of these people” to not be homeless. “I want to save our cities.”
He may want to, but at a cost that military and security professionals should consider and talk more about. Each passing day, Trump seems less likely to win the Republican primary, much less the presidency, without the support
of Murdoch’s newspapers or GOP donors. But Trumpism’s authoritarian views of federal power, use of troops, and law enforcement most certainly will live on, whether in the Republicans’ expected retaking of the House of Representatives in November’s midterm
elections, or in the 2024 primary for the presidency.
It’s not just control of the House that’s on the ballot; it’s control of the U.S. military.
