SUMMARY: After nearly five years of fighting, a U.S.-led coalition has almost completely destroyed what's known as the territorial caliphate, the Islamic pseudo-state created in Iraq and Syria by ISIS--but that doesn’t mean the end of the terror group. Amna Nawaz talks to special correspondent Jane Ferguson for an on-the-ground look at what war has left behind in Syria and the threat that remains.
SUMMARY: In Syria, U.S.-backed Kurdish forces are retaking the final territory of the Islamic State. As the caliphate dissolves, however, what will happen to the 40,000 foreign fighters who joined the terror group’s ranks over the past few years? Many of them have been detained, but the path for prosecuting them, and preventing them from driving an ISIS resurgence, remains unclear. Nick Schifrin reports.
SUMMARY: Fear around the North’s missile and nuclear programs have spiked with false alarms in Hawaii over the weekend and Japan on Tuesday. At a Vancouver summit, U.S. officials hope to unite the West to target North Korea economically. Meanwhile, the two Koreas continue their first direct talks in two years. Nick Schifrin talks to retired Adm. Mike Mullen, former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman.
SUMMARY: What does the U.S. plan next in response to civil war in Syria? Members of the Trump administration have appeared to send mixed messages about U.S. policy going forward, most notably on the future of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner reports.
SUMMARY: What will be the fallout of a U.S. strike against a Syrian military base? And what signal does it send to world powers around the world? Former State Department official Sarah Sewall, retired Gen. John Allen, a former NATO commander, and retired Col. Andrew Bacevich of Boston University join Judy Woodruff for a discussion.
SUMMARY: President Trump ordered a U.S. military strike Thursday night in Syria. The target, the Assad military's Sharyat air base, which U.S. officials say acted as a launch pad for a chemical attack that killed more than 80 people. The attack drew widespread support from American allies, and condemnation from the Syrians and their allies. Judy Woodruff reports.
SUMMARY: President-elect Trump tweeted this week that the U.S. needs to build up its nuclear arsenal. He also declared that should an arms race occur, the U.S. would triumph over any adversary. John Yang talks to Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund and Matthew Kroenig of Georgetown University about the reaction to Mr. Trump's words and the status of American weaponry.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): We return now to President-elect Trump's comments about the need to build up the United States' nuclear arsenal — and to John Yang for that.
JOHN YANG (NewsHour): Are the president-elect's tweets and comments signaling a change in U.S. nuclear weapons policy? And should the nation beef up its nuclear arsenal?
For that, we turn to Matthew Kroenig, an associate professor at Georgetown University who's written extensively about nuclear weapons; and Joseph Cirincione, the president of the Ploughshares Fund, a non-profit organization that advocates for disarmament. He, too, has written widely on the subject.
Gentlemen, thank you both for joining us tonight.
Mr. Cirincione, let me start with you, when you hear or read the president-elect saying that the United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability and then tell Mika Brzezinski this morning, “Let it be an arms race,” what's your reaction?
JOSEPH CIRINCIONE, Ploughshares Fund: Stunned. An ill-considered, disrespectful and dangerous series of statements. This would upend decades of Republican and Democratic policy that ever since Ronald Reagan has been reducing nuclear arsenals, both in the United States and Russia and around the world, stopping other countries from getting nuclear weapons.
By using that word “expand”, he says he wants to grow the arsenal or grow the capabilities. Look, nobody is against keeping a strong nuclear deterrent. If that's all he said, we wouldn't be having this debate.
President Obama has put in train a trillion-dollar program to replace every single nuclear weapon we have over the next 25 years. Donald Trump seems to be saying he wants to go ahead with this. His advisors tried to walk it back, but he himself said this morning, let it be an arms race. That is an extremely dangerous posture, that's why people all over the globe are worried and talking about this today.
JOHN YANG: Matthew Kroenig, what's your take?
MATTHEW KROENIG, Georgetown University: Well, the statement is certainly controversial but I think Trump is basically right. U.S. nuclear policy in the U.S. can't be static, it has to respond to international politics and all America's nuclear armed rivals, Russia, China, North Korea, are expanding and modernizing their arsenals. So, it doesn't make sense for the United States to continue reducing its arsenal as our adversaries are going in the other directions. And moreover, many of these countries, especially Russia, are relying more not less on nuclear weapons in their strategy.
So, again, the United States needs to take that into account as it formulates its own nuclear posture. And so, I think some strengthening of U.S. nuclear strategy and U.S. nuclear posture has been long overdue.
JOHN YANG: Matthew Kroenig, when you say the United States shouldn't be reducing its arsenal, but isn't that what's called for under an existing treaty with Russia?
MATTHEW KROENIG: Well, the existing treaty with Russia, the new START treaty was signed in 2011. According to the treaty, both countries can have 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear weapons. Right now, the United States is actually well under 200 or so warheads under. The Russians are 250 warheads above.
So, there is a gap of about 400 warheads that's worrying in and of itself, and it raises questions about Russia — whether Russia actually intends to follow through on this agreement or not. So, this is one of the measures that a new President can take to strengthen America's nuclear arsenal to increase the size of the arsenal, at least to the limits allowed for under new START.
SUMMARY: The longest-running war in American history will go on even longer than expected. Hari Sreenivasan speaks to the Washington Post’s Greg Jaffe about what prompted President Obama to change course and decide to leave troops in Afghanistan.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): We get more on today’s announcement from Washington Post reporter Greg Jaffe.
Greg, how did he get to this decision?
GREG JAFFE, The Washington Post: You know, in the spring, they started a review to decide what they were going to do. The plan had been to go to essentially a Kabul-based force, a small force.
And I think most in the administration, especially the president’s inner circle, seemed to think that that’s where they were going to land. The discussions carried on through the summer. In August, General Dempsey came forward, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — he just recently stepped down — with a plan for a sustaining force of about 5,000 focused on counterterrorism.
And it was then, it seemed to me, that the debate changed, and the President seemed open to that.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): So what were the tensions here? Is this partly the political pressure of making a campaign promise to get the country out of this war, and then the military reality on the ground, where all his top advisers are saying something different?
GREG JAFFE: You know, I don’t think politics played a big role in it. I think the President has a real skepticism about military forces’ ability to effect solutions in places like Afghanistan, so he’s a really hard sell on these sorts of issues, just because he doesn’t think military force fixes the problems, that they’re really political problems. No military solutions has sort of become a mantra.
So, it took a lot of convincing to bring him around, I think.
HARI SREENIVASAN: So, if you have insight to this, what was the menu card of options that the generals presented him, here’s A, here’s B, here’s C? What were his choices?
GREG JAFFE: You know, I think that the main choices, as I understand them, were there was an option to essentially stay at 9,800, where they are, indefinitely.
The real choice and the real focus of the debate in terms of a sustaining presence beyond 2016 into 2017 was really this 5,500 option. That was the one that sucked most of the oxygen in the room. That was the one that they really focused on.
Special Report: America’s neocons, who wield great power inside the U.S. government and media, endanger the planet by concocting strategies inside their heads that ignore real-world consequences. Thus, their “regime changes” have unleashed ancient hatreds and spread chaos across the globe, as Robert Parry explains.
Historically, one of the main threads of U.S. foreign policy was called “realism,” that is the measured application of American power on behalf of definable national interests, with U.S. principles preached to others but not imposed.
This approach traced back to the early days of the Republic when the first presidents warned of foreign “entangling alliances” – and President John Quincy Adams, who was with his father at the nation’s dawning, explained in 1821 that while America speaks on behalf of liberty, “she has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. …
“Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”
However, in modern times, foreign policy “realism” slid into an association with a cold calculation of power, no longer a defense of the Republic and broader national interests but of narrow, well-connected economic interests. The language of freedom was woven into a banner for greed and plunder. Liberty justified the imposition of dictatorships on troublesome populations. Instead of searching for monsters to destroy, U.S. policy often searched for monsters to install.
In the wake of such heartless actions – like imposing pliable “pro-business” dictatorships on countries such as Iran, Guatemala, Congo, Indonesia, Chile and engaging in the bloodbath of Vietnam – “realism” developed a deservedly negative reputation as other supposedly more idealistic foreign policy strategies gained preeminence.
Some of those approaches essentially turned John Quincy Adams’s admonition on its head by asserting that it is America’s duty to search out foreign monsters to destroy. Whether called “neoconservatism” or “liberal interventionism,” this approach openly advocated U.S. interference in the affairs of other nations and took the sides of people who at least presented themselves as “pro-democracy.”
In recent years, as the ranks of the “realists” – the likes of George Kennan, Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft – have aged and thinned, the ranks of the neocons and their junior partners, the liberal interventionists, swelled. Indeed, these “anti-realists” have now grown dominant, touting themselves as morally superior because they don’t just call for human rights, they take out governments that don’t measure up.
The primary distinction between the neocons and the liberal interventionists has been the centrality of Israel in the neocons’ thinking while their liberal sidekicks put “humanitarianism” at the core of their world view. But these differences are insignificant, in practice, since the liberal hawks are politically savvy enough not to hold Israel accountable for its human rights crimes and clever enough to join with the neocons in easy-to-sell “regime change” strategies toward targeted countries with weak lobbies in Washington.
In those “regime change” cases, there is also a consensus on how to handle the targeted countries; start with “soft power” – from anti-regime propaganda to funding internal opposition groups to economic sanctions to political destabilization campaigns – and, then if operationally necessary and politically feasible, move to overt military interventions, applying America’s extraordinary military clout.
Moral Crusades
These interventions are always dressed up as moral crusades – the need to free some population from the clutches of a U.S.-defined “monster.” There usually is some “crisis” in which the “monster” is threatening “innocent life” and triggering a “responsibility to protect” with the catchy acronym, “R2P.”
But the reality about these “anti-realists” is that their actions, in real life, almost always inflict severe harm on the country being “rescued.” The crusade kills many people – innocent and guilty – and the resulting disorder can spread far and wide, like some contagion that cannot be contained. The neocons and the liberal interventionists have become, in effect, carriers of the deadly disease called chaos.
And, it has become a very lucrative chaos for the well-connected by advancing the “dark side” of U.S. foreign policy where lots of money can be made while government secrecy prevents public scrutiny.
As author James Risen describes in his new book, Pay Any Price, a new caste of “oligarchs” has emerged from the 9/11 “war on terror” — and the various regional wars that it has unpacked — to amass vast fortunes. He writes: “There is an entire class of wealthy company owners, corporate executives, and investors who have gotten rich by enabling the American government to turn to the dark side. … The new quiet oligarchs just keep making money. They are the beneficiaries of one of the largest transfers of wealth from public to private hands in American history.” [p. 56]
And the consolidation of this wealth has further cemented the political/media influence of the “anti-realists,” as the new “oligarchs” kick back portions of their taxpayer largesse into think tanks, political campaigns and media outlets. The neocons and their liberal interventionist pals now fully dominate the U.S. opinion centers, from the right-wing media to the editorial pages (and the foreign desks) of many establishment publications, including the Washington Post and the New York Times.
By contrast, the voices of the remaining “realists” and their current unlikely allies, the anti-war activists, are rarely heard in the mainstream U.S. media anymore. To the extent that these dissidents do get to criticize U.S. meddling abroad, they are dismissed as “apologists” for whatever “monster” is currently in line for the slaughter. And, to the extent they criticize Israel, they are smeared as “anti-Semitic” and thus banished from respectable society.
Thus, being a “realist” in today’s Official Washington requires hiding one’s true feelings, much as was once the case if you were a gay man and you had little choice but to keep your sexual orientation in the closet by behaving publicly like a heterosexual and surrounding yourself with straight friends.
In many ways, that’s what President Barack Obama has done. Though arguably a “closet realist,” Obama staffed his original administration with foreign policy officials acceptable to the neocons and the liberal interventionists, such as Robert Gates at Defense, Hillary Clinton at State, Gen. David Petraeus as a top commander in the field.
Even in his second term, the foreign-policy hawks have remained dominant, with people like neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland inflaming the crisis in Ukraine and UN Ambassador Samantha Power, an R2Per, pushing U.S. military intervention in Syria.
SUMMARY: "American Sniper" has been nominated for six Academy Awards and is on track to be the biggest box-office war film ever. But the drama based on the life of a late Navy Seal, said to be the most lethal sharpshooter in U.S. military history, has rekindled debate about the Iraq war and the glorification of killing, as well as the veracity of Chris Kyle's own account. Jeffrey Brown reports.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now a look at a movie that has been at the top of the box office for the past two weekends, as well as generating a lot of conversation and controversy.
Jeffrey Brown has that.
It’s part of our occasional series we’re calling "NewsHour Goes to the Movies."
BRADLEY COOPER, Actor: Don’t pick it up. Drop it.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): “American Sniper” is a drama based on the real story of Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL said to be the most lethal sharpshooter in U.S. military history, credited with killing more than 160 people in Iraq.
ACTOR: Do you ever think that you might have seen things or done some things over there that you wish you hadn’t?
BRADLEY COOPER: Oh, that’s not me, no.
ACTOR: What’s not you?
BRADLEY COOPER: I was just protecting my guys. They were killing our soldiers. And I’m willing to meet my creator and answer for every shot that I took.
JEFFREY BROWN: Kyle himself told the story of his multiple tours from 1999 to 2009 and difficult adjustment to civilian life in a bestselling memoir.
Now the film, directed by Clint Eastwood, has become a huge commercial success, on path to becoming the biggest box-office war film ever, overtaking Steven Spielberg’s World War II classic “Saving Private Ryan,” with $200 million in ticket sales and counting. And it’s received six Oscar nominations, including for best picture.
SUMMARY: The new Congress has the fewest military veterans since World War II, but recent veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are on the rise. What priorities do they bring to Capitol Hill? Judy Woodruff talks to Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., a former Air Force colonel and pilot, and Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., a retired Marine captain.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now to a different look at Capitol Hill.
This new Congress has the fewest military veterans since World War II. In the years following, through the 1970s, as many as three-quarters of the members of Congress were veterans. But that started to drop after Vietnam, falling sharply in the ’90s, and bringing us to today, where only 18 percent have served in the military.
One element, however, has gone up, the number of recent veterans. Nearly half have served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. And for the first time, there are no World War II vets.
Yesterday, I spoke with two newly elected recent veterans.
Republican Representative Martha McSally of Arizona is a retired Air Force colonel and pilot who led fighter squadrons in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Democratic Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts is a retired Marine captain who served four tours in Iraq, including in a unit that was one of the first to go in, in 2003.
