[Peace-discuss] QI’s Mark Perry @ FP: Austin Is Escalation Skeptic Like Biden. Blob Is Pouting

[Robert Naiman]

ICYMI.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Robert Naiman <naiman.uiuc at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Dec 17, 2020 at 3:29 PM
Subject: QI’s Mark Perry @ FP: Austin Is Escalation Skeptic Like Biden.
Blob Is Pouting

QI’s Mark Perry @ FP: Austin Is Escalation Skeptic Like Biden. Blob Is
Pouting


Summary: Biden is a skeptic of incessant Blob demands for escalation.
Therefore, he wants a Secretary of Defense as his trusted lieutenant who is
also a skeptic of incessant Blob demands for escalation. Therefore the Blob
is very, very angry. But the Blob knows that eighty million Americans who
just voted for Biden don’t give a hoot how unhappy the Blob is - if
anything, eighty million Americans and more see Blob unhappiness as a
feature, not a bug - so the Blob is trying to repackage its sour grapes
into concern-trolling about the waiver in the hopes that they can fool
someone who hasn’t been following the plot.


https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/16/lloyd-austin-isnt-who-you-think-he-is/


Lloyd Austin Isn’t Who You Think He Is

The “silent general” has never been very quiet on policy. That’s exactly
why Biden picked him as defense secretary—and why Washington's
foreign-policy establishment is wary.

BY MARK PERRY | DECEMBER 16, 2020, 7:34 AM


[Mark Perry is a senior analyst at the Quincy Institute for Responsible
Statecraft and the author of ten books on foreign policy and military
history.]


It was in 2010, when General Lloyd Austin was head of U.S. Forces in Iraq,
that he got to know then-Vice President Biden. Austin had already become
friendly with Biden’s son Beau (they regularly attended Catholic services
together in Iraq, where Beau Biden was also deployed, according
<https://archive.is/o/WoAhf/https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/lloyd-austin-biden-defense-secretary/2020/12/08/dd937584-396e-11eb-8328-a36a109900c2_story.html>
to the Washington Post), but it was his unflappability in person that most
impressed the vice president, according to a senior Pentagon official with
contacts in the Biden transition team.


Ten years later, those encounters in Iraq were one factor in
president-elect Biden’s decision to select Austin as his secretary of
defense. Austin has powerful Biden allies
<https://archive.is/o/WoAhf/https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/17/nongovernment-national-security-experts-brief-biden-as-trump-resists-transition.html>
and political supporters, including retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who
retains the president-elect’s admiration despite the embarrassing critiques
McChrystal’s staff made of Biden back in 2010. (McChrystal did not respond
to the author’s invitation to comment on his relationship with Austin.) But
most crucially, it’s clear that Biden and Austin share common beliefs
<https://archive.is/o/WoAhf/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lloyd-austins-qualities-may-have-worked-for-him-as-a-general-but-not-as-defense-secretary/2020/12/08/3819fa28-39a6-11eb-bc68-96af0daae728_story.html>,
including a healthy skepticism about America’s serial Middle East
interventions, a deep-seated belief in the efficacy of diplomacy, and a
nearly instinctive commitment to rebuilding U.S. alliances. These are the
foreign-policy ideas that helped secure the White House for Biden—but have
not always been as popular with the military as with the American public.


Austin’s commitment to these themes is a testimony to the equanimity Biden
first noticed in him in Iraq—and which was prominently reflected in a
notorious disaster that could have curtailed Austin’s career before it
started. On the afternoon of March 23, 1994, an F-16 Fighting Falcon
collided with a C-130 Hercules troop transport over Pope Air Force Base in
North Carolina. The C-130 was able to land safely, but the F-16 barreled
into the parking ramp of Pope’s east-west runway, where two
battalions—about 500 soldiers—of the 82nd Airborne Division were lined up
on the airfield’s “green ramp” in preparation for a training mission. The
resulting carnage was horrific: 23 paratroopers of the two battalions were
killed, and more than 80 were injured. Many of the injured suffered
life-threatening burns, and one died the following year. The commander of
one of the battalions was then-Lt. Col. Stanley McChrystal; the commander
of the other was then-Lt. Col. Lloyd Austin.


The “green ramp disaster” was a searing experience for both McChrystal and
Austin, who had attended West Point together—McChrystal graduated in 1976,
Austin the year before—but had never been particularly close. In the
tragedy’s aftermath, both commanders received high marks for reshaping
units scarred by the disaster, but Austin’s work stood out, marking him for
higher command. Forged by the tragedy, McChrystal and Austin followed
dissimilar but parallel tracks to high command—with McChrystal’s meteoric
rise resulting in a five-year stint at the head of the Joint Special
Operations Command (and a controversial, all-too-public stint as the U.S.
commander in Afghanistan), while Austin’s more prosaic arc resulted in
steady if unspectacular promotions until he became assistant commander of
the 3rd Infantry Division during Operation Iraqi Freedom.


It was during the 3rd Infantry Division’s assault on Baghdad, in April
2003, that Austin made his reputation. With the division poised outside of
Baghdad, Austin greenlit the 2nd Brigade Combat Team’s sprint into Baghdad.
“Austin was the brains behind the assault on Baghdad,” a senior military
commander told me several years ago. “He was always pushing. Pushing,
pushing, pushing. He was one of the finest combat commanders I’ve ever
seen.” The assault was a spectacular success, and the high command noticed.
In the war’s aftermath, Austin received a now-celebrated Officer Evaluation
Report written by then-Lt. Gen. Dan Kelly McNeill, one of the Army’s most
respected, if under-the-radar, senior commanders. The McNeill report kicked
Austin into the Army’s stratosphere—where he served as command general of
U.S. Forces-Iraq, Army vice chief of staff, and then head of U.S. Central
Command.


While Austin remained predictably silent about the Obama administration’s
2008 surge of troops into Afghanistan, his doubts about implementing a
counterinsurgency strategy (aimed at wresting control of Afghanistan from
the hands of the Taliban) was well known among his fellow officers. Austin,
his colleagues argue, believed the United States should adopt a more
targeted counterterrorism strategy—aimed at disrupting and defeating al
Qaeda. Biden, as it turns out, made the same argument to President Barack
Obama.


Austin was also a private, though outspoken, critic of how Obama shaped the
anti-Islamic State coalition in Iraq, in 2014, when Austin was the head of
the U.S. Central Command. Austin stewed when Obama appointed retired Marine
Gen. John Allen as the administration’s special envoy to the coalition,
preferring that the president appoint a veteran diplomat. Austin complained
to aides that Allen’s appointment would lead to confusion about who was
leading the anti-Islamic State effort. Austin wasn’t alone in his
criticism, which extended to Allen’s former service. “John Allen is a great
guy,” retired U.S. Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni told one reporter
<https://archive.is/o/WoAhf/https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-obama-centcom-tampa-wednesday-20140914-story.html>,
“but does it take a retired general to coordinate a coalition? What is
Centcom, chopped liver?” Austin was so angered by Allen’s appointment that
when Allen requested that Centcom provide him with air transport to the
region, Austin’s staff turned him down—which would not have happened
without Austin’s approval. Since he now worked for the State Department,
Allen was told, he should check with them.


The incidents provide a counternarrative to what has been written about
Biden’s “quiet,” “low-key,” and “introverted”
<https://archive.is/o/WoAhf/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lloyd-austins-qualities-may-have-worked-for-him-as-a-general-but-not-as-defense-secretary/2020/12/08/3819fa28-39a6-11eb-bc68-96af0daae728_story.html>
secretary of defense-designate. That is all true: Austin is known in
military circles as “the silent general,” a description that is often
followed by one other description: that his reticence masks a deep
competence—an ability to capably manage large organizations, like the
Defense Department. “There are very few people I can think of who are more
competent than Lloyd Austin,” retired U.S. Army Col. David Johnson, a
senior researcher at the Rand Corp., said. “And if there’s one thing we
need in a secretary of defense, it’s competence.” Then too, and for those
who know him, the now-retired four-star general might be self-effacing in
public, but he’s less reticent than is generally portrayed. It’s not that
he doesn’t have opinions, it’s that “he just doesn’t like talking to
reporters,” as one of his colleagues said. Nor do Austin’s reputed command
failures stand up to scrutiny. Austin is criticized for failing to predict
the rise of the Islamic State and for failing to anticipate Saudi Arabia’s
March 2015 intervention in Yemen. “That’s all bullshit,” a senior retired
Army officer who worked with Austin in Iraq told me. “Why blame Austin? No
one saw ISIS coming and no one predicted what the Saudis would do. In both
cases, this was a J-2 [military intelligence] failure. If you know anything
about the military that’s not exactly shocking.”


What’s crucial is what Austin did in the aftermath of these failures,
particularly after the Saudi intervention in Yemen. “Lloyd was enraged by
the Saudi intervention,” a senior officer who worked with Austin at Centcom
said, “because we [the Americans] were quietly supporting the Houthi fight
against AQAP [al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] at the time.” Austin was
so angered by the Saudi move, this now-retired officer said, that he
considered formally requesting that the Obama administration denounce the
intervention. “We waved him off of that,” the officer with whom I spoke at
the time said. But Austin also predicted the troubles the Saudis would face
and made his views known to senior civilians at the Pentagon. “He thought
the Saudis would lose in Yemen and that, before it was all over, we would
have to bail them out,” this same officer noted. Austin was right on both
counts: The Saudis found themselves mired in Yemen and dependent on U.S.
intelligence assets in their fight.


As crucially, the Saudi intervention marked the first time that Austin
would cross swords with then-Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John
McCain, who slammed the military for its failure to fully support the Saudi
effort. The reason the Saudis didn’t notify Centcom of their plans ahead of
time, McCain said, was because “they believe we are siding with Iran.” The
rebuke didn’t sit well with senior U.S. officers at Centcom or at the U.S.
Special Operations Command, who had been quietly supporting the anti-AQAP
effort. And it didn’t sit well with Lloyd Austin. A senior commander who
served with Austin said that McCain purposely “blindsided” Austin in order
to make the Obama White House look bad. Siding with Iran? McCain, this
officer suggested, knew better: “The reason the Saudis didn’t inform us of
their plans,” the officer told me
<https://archive.is/o/WoAhf/america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/4/17/us-generals-think-saudi-strikes-in-yemen-a-bad-idea.html>
at the time, “is because they knew we would have told them exactly what we
think—that it was a bad idea.”


Austin sparred publicly
<https://archive.is/o/WoAhf/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeBEzeyV8Ow>
with McCain several months after the Saudi intervention when the Arizona
senator slammed him for his lack of enthusiasm for a more intensive
intervention against the Islamic State in Syria. “Lloyd just sat there and
took it,” the senior officer told me last week, “and I have to say, I
thought he looked bad. But after the confrontation Austin’s reputation
grew. He could have told McCain to stuff it, that he was following the
direction of the commander in chief. But he didn’t do it, and that was the
right thing to do. He took one for the team.” Austin’s willingness to take
one for the team impressed Obama, and it impressed Biden. But it was not
only this willingness that impressed the now president-elect. As crucially,
Biden was attracted to Austin’s oft-stated belief in “strategic patience,”
a phrase that Austin has regularly used
<https://archive.is/o/WoAhf/https://asiatimes.com/2020/12/austin-signals-new-strategic-patience-with-china/>
in implying his skepticism of those who think the United States should take
a harder line on foreign competitors—and particularly on China.


And that, it appears, is the rub.


For while Biden has been criticized
<https://archive.is/o/WoAhf/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/no-job-general/617326/>
for appointing yet another retired general to head up the Pentagon, there’s
a growing suspicion that the opposition to Austin isn’t because official
Washington is worried his tenure will replicate James Mattis’s notorious
military mafia, or that he won’t speak his mind when dealing with a new
president, or even that his presence at the top of the U.S. chain of
command will wreak havoc on civilian-military relations. The real problem
with Lloyd Austin is that he’s not seen as sufficiently willing to take on
China, the enemy du jour among a host of Washington policymakers, many of
whom would prefer the appointment of someone who reflects their own
interventionist credentials, like Michèle Flournoy. Indeed, the roster of
anti-Austin and pro-Austin voices largely fall neatly into two categories:
those who repeat the China-is-a-threat mantra and those who don’t.


For Washington’s China-is-a-threat crowd, the appointment of Lloyd Austin
looms as a counterpoint to their foreign-policy agenda: one of larger
defense budgets, less reliance on diplomacy, and a greater willingness to
use force—all reasons why Biden appointed Austin in the first place.
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