Mastodawn

Most people only have a very vague idea how US national security and foreign policy decisions are made.

Most of the time, these decisions are made through the National Security Council (NSC) and its interagency process.

You might have heard of the NSC, which statutorily consists of the president; vice president; secretaries of state, defense, energy, and the treasury; and the national security advisor.

But the national security advisor also has a whole staff—usually people on rotation from places like the state department, pentagon, and intelligence community—that manages a vast interagency process.

HeavenlyPossum Feb 28

That process works something like this:

The president sets a goal for a country or region and wants policy options for achieving that goal. This is communicated to the NSC, which gets the interagency process rolling. Meetings—so many meetings—will be convened, involving representatives from every government component that might plausibly play a role in achieving that goal.

This includes the usual suspects, like the state department, the military, and the intelligence community, but might also include everyone from agriculture to the department of justice.

The goal is to both leverage the full capacity of the US federal government while also avoiding duplication of effort, figuring out costs and risks, assigning roles, mediating disagreements between different agencies, identifying potential allies who can help, etc etc.

HeavenlyPossum Feb 28

This process goes up and down a hierarchical chain. At the lowest level, you have relatively junior personnel working out the nitty-gritty aspects of policy: who will do what, exactly, with what money, according to which laws. These recommendations are kicked up to higher levels, who might either approve them or send them back down to be revised, or to answer questions, or to consider more contingencies.

Eventually, though, something like a coherent set of options might make its way up to the principles committee—the actual NSC—who will then present those options to the president to either select one to approve or restart the whole process if he doesn’t like them.

HeavenlyPossum Feb 28

It is a cumbersome, slow process that often produces policy that reflects a bland average of the decisions of many different bureaucrats. And it certainly doesn’t guarantee good outcomes, because these are ultimately policies to implement the goals of the US president.

But it’s at least a process, operating according to predictable rules, that is designed to produce achievable outcomes that match material means to explicit goals. We want to achieve X, so here’s how agency Y can legally leverage the resources it has to contribute according to a coherent plan.

HeavenlyPossum Feb 28

That process no longer exists, as a meaningful contributor to policy, under the Trump regime.

Trump is deeply incurious, profoundly ignorant, compulsively impatient, and, worst, a fascist. As Umberto Eco observed, fascists are anti-intellectual, anti-rational, and fetishize action for action’s sake. A process like the NSC is profoundly antithetical to the fascist’s worldview.

Under fascism, the Leader issues a declaration about the state of reality and then all of his fawning, obsequious underlings begin a competitive process of trying to bring reality into a plausible accordance with the Leader’s declaration. That’s it. That’s the process.

No slow, patient, bureaucratic procedure for clearly articulating ends, identifying means of rationally achieving them, coordinating between different components to achieve a whole-of-government approach, ensuring all stakeholders have endorsed the policy and had their concerns addressed.

Just declaration and then action.

HeavenlyPossum Feb 28

This is how we end up in a situation in which the US has gone to war with Iran, yet again, without even a clearly articulated strategic goal or desired outcome.

Trump has variously indicated that he wanted to intimidate Iran into negotiating with (ie, bribing) him, or to protect Iranian protesters, or to destroy a nuclear program he previously claimed he had destroyed, or regime change.

And the means of achieving whatever goal he wants to achieve is no more sophisticated than “drop many bombs on Iranian military and government targets.” This is simple punitive violence, the absolutely least sophisticated or precise approach to warfare. “Hurt them until they give you what you want” except that he hasn’t even articulated (and probably has not really conceived of) what he wants from the Iranians.

HeavenlyPossum Feb 28

So many people will die, in Iran and elsewhere in the region, to achieve something unclear, with no ability to identify operational objectives that would allow the US to evaluate whether it has made progress towards its strategic goals (because it doesn’t have any).

The Saudis tried this in Yemen starting in 2015; they’re still fighting there, while the Huthis still rule much of the country. Let’s see how this latest war works out for the US.

HeavenlyPossum Feb 28

Remember when Pete Hegseth demanded all the general and flag officers of the US armed forces gather to hear him deliver a TED talk, and they all sat stony-faced, oozing with contempt?

There was a lot of liberal glee at the thought of how much they hated him, how aware they were that he was a charlatan and a fraud. *The non-political, professional military will surely save us!* How’s that working out for you now? All of these officers took an oath to uphold the constitution, and every single one of them participating in this attack on Iran is blatantly participating in a violation of the US constitution. The president has no constitutional authority to launch this war, a power reserved by the constitution for congress. There is no AUMF this time, no plausible excuse or deniability. And they all followed orders and launched the war anyway.

I hope this at least gives the “Trump can’t just seize power, the military won’t follow orders like that” crowd *some* doubt.

HeavenlyPossum Feb 28

Something important to understand about fascism is that it is first and foremost an *aesthetic*, one that plays out through power, violence, and cruelty but that never rises above the level of play-acting.

Fascists don’t care about things like knowledge and process and actively refuse to engage with them as part of their aesthetic of LARPing as the bravest, strongest, cruelest, coolest kids on the block. A US President has, at his disposal, an apparatus of turning his objectives into material reality of almost unthinkable capacity.

A vast intelligence apparatus for know in about the world. A vast bureaucratic apparatus for figuring out useful policies for achieving outcomes in the world. A vast apparatus of violence for hurting people with either precision or indiscriminately on a global scale. If Trump and his coterie were *not* fascists, they might be even more terrifying.

But they are fascists, which means they don’t advance beyond the level of “we want to hurt someone, so we’re going to give the order for someone to be hurt immediately and without deliberation or consideration.”

They are undoubtedly less dangerous than they could be because they don’t care about and can’t think past the most superficial level of an aesthetic of power and violence. They just want the bombs to fall, right now, doesn’t matter where or on whom, no questions asked.

This is why fascists can’t really build institutions or institutional capacity, but can only really cannibalize the capacity of institutions they seize until they have exhausted or destroyed them.

HeavenlyPossum Feb 28

Like, the US just went to war with Iran and its secretary of defense has been busy tweeting about how woke the Boy Scouts are and trying to shake down an AI company while his department shoots down the drones of another US government agency because none of these people can or want to do the jobs they were appointed to do.

They want to look like they’re doing the jobs they *imagine* they were appointed to do, which are mostly fantasy versions based on some tv and movies, shaped by their own innate fascist impulses and bottomless greed.

But these are not serious people and they cannot perform serious tasks. In addition to all of the people they will murder in places like Iran, they will causes many more people to die through incompetence and malfeasance.

Spiritual Annie ☮️Feb 28

@HeavenlyPossum

"... they will cause many more people to die through incompetence and malfeasance."

They already have.

They cancelled USAID.

They're letting immigrants die in concentration camps and killing protesters.

They've cut SNAP and Medicaid money for blue states.

They encouraged Gaza genocide.

They're trying to eliminate trans people, more of whom will commit suicide.

They've changed the vaccine schedule and defunded vaccine research.

And so much more... 😡

Sorry I'm an insufferable linguist, but I can't help but feel that there are two different meanings to "fascism" here. Many fascists have been cunning, even brilliant strategists, and masters at bureacracy. The only requirement to call something fascism is consolidation of power: you have to take power from the many and give it to the few. So what do you call the in-your-face obvious fascists, who hate knowledge and process and go about this theatrical thuggery; to distinguish them from the more subtle fascists who quietly pull the levers and switches behind the scenes, trying to turn us all into an obedient enslaved machine-planet?

Morten Kjeldgaard Feb 28

@HeavenlyPossum This feeling that that military officers would take seriously their oath to the Constitution is mainly an American position. Everybody else realizes that in the history of the world, armies have *always* followed orders from the leadership, legal, ethical, obeying laws of conflict or not.

oldguycrusty Feb 28

@HeavenlyPossum

#Fascist #oligarchy #War of #Empire
The #PetroMafia wants to make the working people of the world poor sick & fearful.

Ludwig Vielfrass Feb 28

@HeavenlyPossum No matter how much they may or may not hate their leaders, people don't get to flag rank because they disobey orders.

AN/CRM-114 Feb 28

@HeavenlyPossum there will not be a military coup, because the officers who have a problem with what’s going on would rather testify in Congress or get a book deal than do a coup; the officers who would gladly do a coup love what’s going on an want to help

CartyBoston Mar 1

@HeavenlyPossum He called them fat.

@HeavenlyPossum I think it achieves distraction from the Epstein files, which is all Trump is about

@HeavenlyPossum It's not a war. Only Congress can declare war. This is just a special policing operation. With bombs. Lots of bombs.

@HeavenlyPossum

While I broadly agree, I think you're making this sound way more like Trump (or the US) acting on his own than it really is. This attack was led by Netanyahu. I've heard a rumour that he threatened to use nukes if the US didn't back him up. Take that with a hefty grain of salt, but if it's true I don't think a more conventional US president would have acted any differently. It would also explain why the UK, France, and Germany have been so quick to condemn Iran's retaliation and so silent on the initial attack.

Now, it's entirely possible that conventional US diplomacy would have defused the situation before getting to this point, but I wouldn't bet on it. As dangerous as Trump's whims are, there's a lot more at play here. The fascism is transnational.

Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝Feb 28

@HeavenlyPossum

The liberal deliberative process and the fascist declaration of reality end up with the same actions anyways.

@richpuchalsky @HeavenlyPossum I disagree. Under a liberal process, if the president had said "I want to drop bombs on Iran", the executive would have said, "We're not going to do that, sir".

Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝Feb 28

That process sure stopped GWB

@HeavenlyPossum

HeavenlyPossum Feb 28

@robparsons @richpuchalsky

This is factually untrue. The president has command authority; the interagency process is about rationalizing options presented to the president, not restraining his power to order action.

@HeavenlyPossum @richpuchalsky as a statement of rule that is correct. But the formal structure includes a process whereby people who know what they're doing will put arguments to the President that what he wants is a bad idea. And also it includes people who will in the end say to the President, no, that order is illegal, I will not do it. Very few such people are left under Trump's administration. 1/2

@HeavenlyPossum @richpuchalsky and finally the President's authority is not absolute; it is bounded by law. Arguably, he has already exceeded his authority by sending troops into action without the authority of Congress.

HeavenlyPossum Feb 28

@robparsons @richpuchalsky

Biden violated the law when he directed material support to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the interagency process did not stop him.

HeavenlyPossum Feb 28

@robparsons @richpuchalsky

All of the same officers who served under Biden are now obediently following Trump’s obviously and blatantly illegal orders.

HeavenlyPossum Feb 28

They absolutely can, as with Bush II’s invasion of Iraq, during which the interagency process existed to support the president’s goal of fascist imperialism. And the president can always override the interagency process, as when Biden decided to materially support genocide in Gaza against the law and over the objections of the interagency.

The difference is, I think, the extent to which decisions like this are being made on the immediate and semi-random whims of a fascist who is also suffering from both (i strongly suspect) psychopathy and advanced dementia. It’s a level of Caligula-esque decadence that I don’t think the US has experienced in a while, at a time when it is materially stronger, in coercive terms, than it ever has been.

Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝Feb 28

@HeavenlyPossum

I don't really like the mental illness explanations. During the Cold War Presidents routinely made decisions to kill lots of people because some country or other didn't follow US interests, but they were either deniable, or justified by anti-Communism so they didn't seem like whims. But they were not essentially different.

HeavenlyPossum Feb 28

I’m not sure how to explain this distinction without sounding like an apologist for Cold War presidents—which I absolutely am not—but there seems to me to be an important distinction between a rational process and an irrational one, even if only from the perspective of “how effective is this evil empire at achieving its evil goals.”

Trump has, for example, started a war that has, for the first time ever, resulted in direct and *damaging* retaliation against US military facilities in Bahrain. This is something that previous acts of aggression did not provoke, because those were all carefully calibrated in terms of means, goals, and risks. In this case, Trump has *wrecklessly* ignored risks to his own assets because he is not just pursuing irrational or evil goals, but also because he is doing so in a haphazard and irrational fashion.

If anything, this is good news for accelerationists.

Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝Feb 28

@HeavenlyPossum

It's not a major thing, but I still disagree. Take the gradual US escalation in Vietnam, for example. None of the Presidents involved ever went through a rational process of carefully considering means, goals, and risks.

HeavenlyPossum Feb 28

They absolutely did! That was a golden age of the interagency process and the ascendency of national security advisors like Kissinger. Noting that the process was rational does not mean that the policies they recommended were good or that the president would somehow correctly pick the “best” option. Of course they messed up! But there was at least a process, in contrast to one person’s whim.

I don’t want to convey the impression that I think the US security apparatus is good or does good things or is how we should structure society. I’m just trying to explain what is functionally different, including the rapid erosion of this state capacity. I think this is evidence that the US state is rapidly shaking itself apart.

Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝Feb 28

@HeavenlyPossum

As I wrote before, this isn't a major disagreement, but I think that "the golden age of the interagency process" was a rationalization. The President had a whim and people had a long drawn out activity of pretending to advise, pretending to plan, and in general telling each other that it was a rational process.

HeavenlyPossum Feb 28

Ah, I see what you mean, and fully agree.

Fluffy Kitty Cat Mar 1

@HeavenlyPossum @richpuchalsky this seems to be a valid thesis. I also think their ICE strategy is pretty dumb. If I were them I'd have done it very differently but they can't help.but do a spectacle instead of diffusing it enough that we didn't have the ability to put together a resistance. Hopefully their incompetence means they will make crucial mistakes that help us fight back

Aknorals⚑Ⓐ 🏴Feb 28

@HeavenlyPossum This is how I found out the US started another war.

Ugh, weren't Congress critters supposed to meet earlier in the week to limit the post 9/11 powers to do endless war without authorization? I'm very not surprised nothing came of that.

HeavenlyPossum Feb 28

Some of them were trying to hold a vote this week, which honestly might have prompted Trump to act now before they could.

Congress could always impeach him for violating the constitution (lmao).

Aknorals⚑Ⓐ 🏴Feb 28

@HeavenlyPossum I remember when I was a kid, thinking impeachment was a real thing that could effect Bush Jr.