Friday News Roundup — July 24, 2020
CSPC Remembers John Lewis; China Consulate Closed; UK Report on Russian Interference; Arctic Strategy; Constitutional Crisis in Portland; Intra-GOP Squabbles; Plus News You May Have Missed.
Good Friday morning to you from Washington, D.C. One cannot look back at the week’s events, let alone those of the past six decades, without thinking of the impact, legacy, and leadership of John Lewis. As noted by CSPC President & CEO Glenn Nye:
“The CSPC community joins in mourning the loss of Congressman John Lewis this week, and in celebrating his life and legacy. I was proud while serving in Congress to have the honor of proximity to a great moral leader, someone who commanded a rare and bipartisan degree of respect from Members of Congress of all stripes. Congressman Lewis risked his life, in the face of violent racism, to better our country and showed us all the meaning of dignity and grace in his leadership. This civil rights icon lived a life worth remembering and we commit ourselves to trying to live up to his inspiration in striving for a more equitable America.”
With Congress also back, attention has quickly turned to the next phase of Coronavirus relief. While we’re still at the point where there is a lot more political messaging than legislating ongoing, the outlines of compromise and contention appear to be focused on unemployment benefits, additional stimulus payments, another round of PPP, support for state and local governments, and liability protections for reopening. With some programs lapsing at the end of the month, there is pressure to act. However, with rumors already being floated of stop-gap extensions for some measures, expect negotiations to go down to the wire, if not into August.
At least baseball is back! However, in the most 2020 of outcomes, the opener for the shortened season was shortened by thunderstorms, as the defending champion Nationals fell to the Yankees 4–1 in an official game of 5 innings.
On Thursday, CSPC hosted Nina Jankowicz, Global Fellow at the Wilson Center and author of “How to Lose the Information War,” in a virtual discussion about her work studying disinformation campaigns and how we societies can prevail, or fail, against them. This week, Joshua also reviewed“In the Dark of War” by Sarah Carlson, which entails the CIA’s evacuation from Libya, while also putting a human face on America’s intelligence professionals.
In this week’s roundup, Dan covers the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston as relations with China worsen. Joshua unpacks the UK’s report on Russian interference, while Ethan looks at the future of U.S. Arctic strategy. Michael decries the deployment of DHS to the streets of American cities, and Chris looks at what some of the intraparty tensions in the GOP might mean. As always, we wrap with news you may have missed.
Consular Contretemps with China
Dan Mahaffee
When the Houston police and fire departments responded to reports of smoke and flame at 3417 Montrose Boulevard on Tuesday night, the cause was not an electrical fire or kitchen conflagration, but rather sensitive documents being burned in the courtyard of the consulate of the People’s Republic of China. Earlier that day, the United States Department of State announced that Beijing had until today to close its diplomatic outpost in Houston.
U.S. officials cited the continued espionage efforts, and according to The New York Times, these included efforts to obtain research, including medical research; to create “talent recruitment plans” for professors in sensitive fields; and to coerce “Chinese citizens in the United States whom the Chinese government has deemed as wanted fugitives to return to their homeland.” Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee tweeted:
https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1285918905412853761?s=20
The Houston area is home to key research institutions, private sector headquarters, and government facilities in fields related to technology, biomedicine, energy, and spaceflight — so the region would be a natural target for espionage efforts. The order to close the consulate came after the Department of Justice unveiled charges against a pair of suspected Chinese hackers. The indictment highlighted how the efforts of the hackers to steal intellectual property and commercial trade secrets — ongoing for years — had recently pivoted to data related to COVID-19 research.
Others, though, questioned the links of the Houston consulate to these charges — there appears to be no direct connection, though there were suspicious activities undertaken by Chinese diplomats in Houston. Many would consider the consulate in San Francisco to be more deserving of closure, given the efforts by Beijing focused on Silicon Valley. Additionally, on Wednesday, Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian of Axios reported that the San Francisco PRC Consulate has been harboring Tang Juan, who is wanted by the FBI. Ms. Tang is wanted for visa fraud, having misrepresented her ties to the Chinese military when applying to study at UC-Davis.
In choosing to close the Houston facility over San Francisco’s — or both, as former Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grinell suggested in comments to Reuters — it is likely that the administration wanted some level of proportionality in terms of the facility shuttered and the likely Chinese retaliation. Therefore, that the Chinese ordered the U.S. consulate in Chengdu shuttered on Friday morning makes sense, compared to the higher-profile facilities in Guangzhou, Hong Kong, or Shanghai.
The consulate closure, the indictments, additional sanctions on China, and a range of other measures and actions reflect a largely bipartisan toughening of our approach to China. Some analyses suggest that this is an attempt by the administration to get tough on China before the election. However, Congressional responses to Hong Kong and Xinjiang have been largely bipartisan. The upcoming back-and-forth over China policy for the 2020 election is best understood as a debate over who is better equipped to manage a tougher line with Beijing — that the tougher line is needed is largely settled.
Chinese influence in Western societies — across politics, finance, academia, and entertainment — is an increasing area of concern for security services and policymakers. The example of Australia shows how other countries face the challenge. There, the media and political class are becoming increasingly aware of just how deep Chinese influence has infiltratedAustralian society. Thus, they are seeking, as many of our allies in the region, to build new strategic approaches for their economic ties and national security. The question mark remains U.S. leadership. Positive steps forward — like collaborative efforts of “the Quad” of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States — fall on unsteady ground when the president also belittles allies and raises doubts about U.S. deployments in the region.
We are likely to see more, not less, of events like Tuesday’s, as the relationship between Washington and Beijing increasingly deteriorates. While the choice of the consulate closed likely anticipated some retaliation, we must also be aware of just how the Chinese playbook operates. The likely response would be to close a U.S. consulate, but the saga of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor presents another cautionary tale as tensions escalate. Held since the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver, Canada, on a U.S. extradition request, Beijing is increasingly dropping the facade, as a state-affiliated journalist openly admitted that Kovrig and Spavor were being held as leverage, in a now-deleted tweet saying “Meng is worth 10 Kovrig & Spavor, if not more.”
From Hong Kong to Xinjiang, to Hollywood studios and college campuses, it is clear that the Chinese Communist Party is unceasing in its pursuit of its interests and goals. Increased confrontation is coming, and it will complicate the educational, cultural, and commercial ties that the nations have enjoyed. Darker days in U.S.-China relations loom. Once unthinkable, a decoupling is increasingly possible. Responses are overdue for many of China’s most egregious actions. That there will be consequences, should not deter us from our contest with Beijing. That said, the challenge will be won-or-lost depending on how we prepare ourselves.
The United Kingdom’s Intelligence & Security Committee Russia Report Released, Finally
Joshua C. Huminski
This week the United Kingdom’s Intelligence & Security Committee (ISC) released the long awaited “Russia Report”, the investigation into Russian electoral interference in several recent votes. The report, as covered in last week’s Friday News Analysis, was completed in 2019, but its release was delayed by the Prime Minister until after the General Election. It was then again delayed by the formation of that ISC and political maneuvering surrounding the Prime Minister’s chosen chair — Chris Grayling — who ultimately lost out to another candidate, Julian Lewis.
A Damp Squib
At a macro-level, despite the hyperbole in the press (which reflected more of comments from Stewart Hosie, a Scottish National Party lawmaker made during a press conference accompanying the report rather than what is actually in the document), the report is a bit of a damp squib. For all of the breathless tabloid coverage, it speaks more about shortcomings within Whitehall than the Kremlin’s actual activity and threat.
It is very broad in its survey, covering the panoply of Russian activities in the United Kingdom without going into a great deal of detail, and rather scant on recommendations for reform or follow on action. Indeed, in reading the report, one wishes that the ISC was more articulate on precisely what the threat from Russia was during the elections and what it is going forward. There are very few declarative sentences that state: Russia aims to do X or Y.
Author and analyst Oliver Bullough captured it best saying, “basically, the report consists of 48 pages of fists being shaken impotently at an indifferent sky.”
Indeed, the question element in which nearly all commentators were most interested is left unanswered: “There have been widespread public allegations that Russia sought to influence the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. The impact of any such attempts would be difficult — if not impossible — to assess, and we have not sought to do so.” While the ISC recommends such an inquiry, it does not have the remit to undertake one itself.
Equally, the number of outside experts consulted is surprisingly thin for a report of this significant. As evidenced by CSPC’s own webinar series on Russia, disinformation, and covert operations, there is a wealth of experts across the pond — Catherine Belton, Mark Galeotti, Gordon Corera, and others — any of whom could have provided expert testimony, but sadly did not.
It is hard to imagine that this report would have seen the light of day or been signed off on by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence under Chairman Mike Rogers and Ranking Member Dutch Ruppersberger — perhaps the apogee of the Committee. Indeed, comparing the 2012 Huawei and ZTE report to the ISC’s report is akin to comparing a doctoral thesis with a high school political science essay.
Moscow, cheeky as ever, denied the report’s allegations. Dmitry Peskov, a spokesperson for President Vladimir Putin said “Russia has never interfered in electoral processes in any country in the world: neither in the United States, nor in Great Britain, nor in other countries.” Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry called the report “fake-shaped Russophobia.” Not to be outdone, Nigel Farage, Brexit party leader claimedthe report exonerated his Leave.EU campaign from any collusion with Moscow, saying “It was all a hoax — apologies are now required.”
This is not to say that there are not interesting bits of information contained therein. Rather, the report is almost a reflection of the problem itself: it is broad and only just scratching the surface of deeply ingrained problems and intelligence challenges.
Whitehall Missing in Action
The Russia Report does not read well for the political class of successive governments. Despite assessments by the intelligence agencies that Russia represented a threat to the United Kingdom, no significant action was undertaken. Successive prime ministers from Cameron to May and onto Johnson failed to undertake significant action or launch investigations into reports from MI5 and others.
The press note accompanying the report said, “What is clear is that the Government was slow to recognise the existence of the threat — only understanding it after the ‘hack and leak’ operation against the Democratic National Committee, when it should have been seen as early as 2014. As a result the Government did not take action to protect the UK’s process in 2016.”
Through a combination of political hubris, naivete, and willful blindness, the Cameron, May, and Johnson governments simply missed the Russian threat and, in many cases, simply weren’t looking. “The written evidence provided to us appeared to suggest that HMG had not seen or sought [emphasis added] evidence of successful interference in UK democratic processes or any activity that has had a material impact on an election, for example influencing results.” The ISC report added that it did not appear that the government had yet looked at what happened, saying, “We have not been provided with any post-referendum assessment of Russian attempts at interference.”
Prime Minister Johnson was quick to respond, saying he would not follow the ISC’s suggestion that a review of interference in the Brexit vote be conducted. The government said, “We have seen no evidence of successful interference in the EU referendum”, adding “A retrospective assessment of the EU referendum is not necessary.”
The Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, also pushed back on suggestions that this government was not paying attention, saying “We are not for a second complacent about the threat Russia poses when it comes to cyber.” This is, perhaps, disingenuous given the report’s assessment and Mr. Raab’s fixation on “cyber”. Indeed, Russia’s financial influence in the United Kingdom and its broader campaign of online activity goes well beyond the traditional notions of “cyber” and well into active disinformation activities.
The report noted that there was no shortage of public, open-source information on Russian interference in the 2014 referendum on Scotland’s independence and the 2016 European Union referendum (the Brexit vote), but that little was done to pursue this information or use it to open larger investigations. The report noted that “the Agencies nonetheless have capabilities which allow them to ‘stand on the shoulders’ of open source coverage “, but it did not appear this was done.
A Political Hot Potato
What is most interesting in this report is the fact that the ownership of the Russian interference threat was in question. “Yet this Inquiry found it surprisingly difficult to establish who has responsibility: the defence of the UK’s democratic processes has appeared to be something of a ‘hot potato’, with no single organisation identifying itself as having an overall lead.” The intelligence agencies were reluctant, apparently, to become involved in issues related to the democratic process and saw their job merely as the provision of secret intelligence.
Representatives of these agencies said “that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) holds primary responsibility for disinformation campaigns, and that the Electoral Commission has responsibility for the overall security of democratic processes.” Both organizations are singularly ill-equipped to handle the threat of any nation-state adversary, let alone one as determined as Russia. As the ISC noted “DCMS is a small Whitehall policy department and the Electoral Commission is an arm’s length body; neither is in the central position required to tackle a major hostile state threat to our democracy.”
Allocation of effort
That the UK security and intelligence services were less focused on Russia is not wholly surprising. With the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the rise of Salafi-Jihadist terrorism, attention was indeed focused elsewhere.
As the report notes, “twenty years ago, MI5 devoted around 20% of its effort to Hostile State Activity, which includes Russian activity.” By 2001 it fell to 16% before reaching a nadir of 3% by 2008. It began to climb again, but “It was not until 2013/14 that effort began to increase significantly, rising to 14.5%– a level that MI5 says meant that slightly more staff were working on Russia than had been during the Cold War.”
Similar statistics for SIS, responsible for overseas intelligence, were redacted, but likely followed the same pattern. GCHQ, for its part, reported that at the height of the Cold War, 70% of its efforts were directed at the Soviet Union, falling to 4% in 2006, before recovering to 10% through 2016. The current allocation of effort against Moscow was redacted.
Blame should not be laid at the feet of the intelligence agencies alone. Indeed, MI5, MI6, and GCHQ were responding to the taskings of successive governments. If anything, these agencies did what was asked of them and were responding to what was seen as the most immediate and pressing threat.
Prosperity, Influence, and Kompromat
The ISC’s report is also particularly damning Russian financial influence in London. It noted, “successive Governments have welcomed the Russian oligarchy with open arms, and there are a lot of Russians with very close links to Putin who are well integrated into the UK business, political and social scene — in ‘Londongrad’ in particular.”
However, “few, if any, questions have been asked regarding the provenance of their considerable wealth and this ‘open door’ approach provided ideal mechanisms by which illicit finance could be recycled through the London ‘laundromat’.” The arrival of Russian money spawned an eco-system of enablers who “all played a role, wittingly or unwittingly, and formed a “buffer” of Westerners who are de facto agents of the Russian state.”
The ISC notes that there is an inherent tension between a prosperity agenda and the need to protect national security. Unsurprisingly, the report begged off from naming or directly criticizing members of the political class. Some had expected the ISC to note the donations from Russian expatriates to the Conservative Party — in excess of $4 million over ten years. While this is a small amount by American standards, it is quite significant in the UK context.
Equally, the report only referenced the influence Russian money has in Parliament, saying “a number of Members of the House of Lords have business interests linked to Russia, or work directly for major Russian companies linked to the Russian state — these relationships should be carefully scrutinised, given the potential for the Russian state to exploit them.” Peers do not, under current rules, need to declare the identity of the people for whom they work.
The Path Forward
The report does recommend new espionage legislation, additional resources for the security services, and greater international cooperation, such as the expulsion of Russians in the wake of the Skripal poisoning. It also suggests the establishment of a U.S.-style foreign agents registration act. Most notably, it calls for untangling the “complicated wiring diagram” that is Whitehall oversight of the Russian threat.
These measures, as others have noted, will take considerable time to implement, but will be doubly so more difficult to advance when it does not appear the political leadership recognizes that there is a problem in the first place.
The report is a missed opportunity. The ISC could have easily lain down the gauntlet, defining the threat from Russia in clear and concrete terms, compiling supporting evidence of what Moscow had done and is likely to do in the future, and hold both Whitehall and the security services to account for shortcomings. In reality, it does none of these things.
Artica ars Imperatoria
Ethan Brown
Out of sight, out of mind are often the strategic implications for the region of hostile extremes above the 66th parallel, better known as the Arctic Circle. While not the headline-grabbing hotbed of CCP activity as is the South China Sea, or the perpetual liminal, fringe campaign waged by Putin’s Russia, the Arctic has hosted a great many and varied force projections by the United States and its adversaries alike, all under the 21st century paradigm of great power competition. This week, the Pentagon released a “joint” Air Force-Space Force Arctic Doctrine regarding utilization of the northernmost zone for GPC, and with that, some takeaways in the following analysis.
Strategic Significance
The Arctic Circle presents a myriad of challenges in force projection for the United States and allies, notably due to the austere environment, erratic weather patterns, and sheer volume of space necessary in need of securing, while mostly devoid of infrastructure. The geographic surface area of the Arctic circle is nearly three times the size of the continental United States. As it is effectively ‘hemmed in’ by the land area that is Canada, there is no climate-moderating effect by the Gulf Stream, which means the North American piece of this pie is considerably more extreme climate-wise compared to its European counterpart. Despite the vast, sprawling and largely desolate landscape, the Arctic circle is a critical facet of threat deterrence, as it is the shortest distance for Russian and North Korea adversaries to cover in order to threaten the homeland with strategic air and missile attacks.
The Arctic is also environmentally and economically significant, to which China (a non-arctic territorial nation) is drawn as part of its One Belt, One Road initiative. For nearly two decades, while limited in its aggression, China has made efforts to normalize its presence in the region, which it considers “consequential to its strategic, economic and environmental interests”, while considering itself a “near-arctic state”, per a 2018 Arctic Policy published by the state. The Arctic is assessed to contain over $1 trillion in rare-earth minerals and more than 90 billion barrels of natural gas reserves, which would equate to over a quarter of the world’s oil supply. In fact, Russia draws nearly a quarter of its GDP from resources above the 66th parallel, depending heavily on its military to secure both infrastructure and terrain necessary for continued economic exploitation of their geographic possession of the Arctic. The draw of this economic value, combined with the increasingly volatile permafrost thaw, has drawn in non-regional actors like China in hopes of altering the balance of power in this pivotal strategic zone.
U.S. Strategy
The Air-Space Doctrine released this week takes particular note of the economic and environmental implications and challenges mentioned above, while highlighting both the impressive network of deterrence and surveillance systems in place to track missile threats as well as further project U.S. force capabilities in the region. However, constraints due to the environment (extreme weather, shore erosion, permafrost thaw) are all significant factors in sustaining the U.S. and allied presence in the region.
The doctrine has four main “Lines of Effort”:
1) Vigilance in all domains-
Areas of deterrence include Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance (C3ISR); improved Space capabilities involving orbital body tracking and beyond the horizon surveillance; weather tracking and prognostication; and missile detection and defense through continued increasing integration with allied capabilities. Many of these integrated systems are built around the detection services of NORAD fame, including the Long-Range Discriminating Radar in Clear, AK, Thule, Greenland’s “Site J” Radar station, and the COBRA DANE site in Shmeya, AK (googling images of these radar arrays is not recommended for those with trypophobia).
2) Projecting power through a combat-credible force-
Alaska provides a major facet of this critical endeavor, as the largest State in the U.S. supports the Air Forces lions share (80%) of Arctic DoD efforts, in addition to its critical IndoPacific support role. While the radar stations (more than 50 known sites) mentioned above are the lynch pin of monitoring and detecting, the permanent staging of 5th-generation advanced fighter jets like the F-22 at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (Anchorage) and soon the F-35 at Eielson AFB, provide key intercept capabilities against Russian and Chinese air incursions. A priority for securing the Arctic region includes safeguarding navigational freedom and overflight for non-aggressors, while providing logistical support in the form of command and control and aerial refueling to DoD and Joint/Allied efforts. In pursuit of modernizing the Arctic infrastructure, the USAF and the Space Force will explore AGILE operational and logistical methodologies while upgrading and improving permanent facilities and supply chain networks to support increasing presence by the U.S. and her allies.
3) Cooperation with allies & partners-
As this space has hammered repeatedly throughout this Great Powers research program, partnerships and allies matter as much, if not more so, than continuing to funnel billions and billions of dollars into defense projects. Interoperability with those coalition partners is the most fundamental aspect of international partnerships arrayed against strategic rivals. The Arctic Circle offers unique geographic significance in that it truly reduces proximity between the U.S. and its partners in this field- compared to the vast distances (the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, for example) that must be crossed in order to integrate with partners of more familiar European, Middle Eastern, and Pacific rim playing fields. The upgrades and modernization mentioned above (particularly regarding the C3/refueling capabilities) are a foundational aspect of these improved partnerships. It is part of what makes the F-35 program so important, and why its many flaws and setbacks have been such a volatile hot-potato for congressional budgetary reviews. One important takeaway from the new doctrine is the near-certainty of increased cooperation and joint/coalition exercises in the future, focused on the Arctic.
4) Preparation for Arctic Operations-
This space has beaten the environmental challenges thread ad nauseum. But as an important component of this strategy, it must be considered as the dominating narrative. While the last two decades have prepared the Joint Force for operational locales in the Middle East, Afghanistan (which has its own unique climatological challenges), Africa and the more docile parts of Europe and the South Pacific, the Arctic is a beast of an operational environment. That reality makes what Russian Special Forces and clandestine operatives accomplished in April of this year on the Franz Josef archipelago even more impressive- jumping from 33,000 feet and establishing forward operating bases against a theoretical pseudo-insurgency. It is why prioritizing realistic, environmentally-focused training with an emphasis on austere, non-supported (read: denied) battlespace is critical. Realistic training like the SERE ‘cool school’ Arctic Survival training(which the author was able to attend while stationed at JBER many years ago) is necessary for vectoring the force toward competency in a unique environment.
Parting Shots
What wasn’t readily identified from the doctrine was a specific Space Force applicable strategy. While missile defense and orbital detection are inferred throughout, in addition to the repeated references to the communications infrastructure, the release doesn’t fully express considerations for beyond-the horizon detection, or total joint force integration (what role can the U.S. Navy and Marines play in the Arctic, and where can the Air/Space Forces integrate those domestic partners?). The doctrine further highlights the need for ‘space capabilities’, but these are painfully vague and do not imply a clear, concise vision for what role the Space Force will in fact play, in this critical region. Literal force projection is old hat for the USAF, the 5th-gen aircraft are a testament to the long-range strike commitment and broader deterrence strategy. But perhaps most notably absent from this doctrine (by this author’s personal bias at least) is no mention of ABMS, JADC2, or how the Air/Space Forces plan to enable the necessary combined modernized C3ISR for the region.
Something is Rotten in the State of Oregon and the Department of Homeland Security
Michael Stecher
In the last week, news reports have painted a vivid picture of a heavy-handed federal response to protest activity in Portland, Oregon. At least 100 federal officers, many of them armed heavily, dressed in military-style camouflage, and driving in unmarked vehicles, have been arresting (abducting?) people suspected of committing federal crimes — or, according to a statement at around the 35 minute mark of this press conference, suspected of being near a person who may have aimed a laser pointer at a federal agent.
Oregon is a complicated place with a long history of aggressive politics, but these “shows of force” by agencies within the Department of Homeland Security violate core tenets of our federal system. There is also the terrifying prospect that promoting a violent counter-reaction to further the president’s reelection theme is precisely the point of this action. The entire episode also highlights some of the persistent deficiencies within DHS that should prompt a serious rethink of its authorities and organization.
Aside from its association in the popular imagination as the west coast’s densest agglomeration of eccentric hipsters, Portland is one of the major centers of a particular kind of Pacific Northwest leftist politics. Oregon was founded as a whites-only state, maintaining a prohibition on African-American settlement until such laws were invalidated by the Fourteenth Amendment; a line in the state constitution barring “free negroes or mulattos” from residing in or owning property in the state remained on the books until 2002. Nearly one-third of voters opposed the ballot initiativethat removed it. The interior Northwest has a long history of violent, anti-government, white supremicist politics.
West of the Cascade Mountains, however, the Northwest has some of the most aggressive anti-capitalist leftist politics in the United States. In 1999, the demonstrations against the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, which included hundreds of violent anarchists interspersed with tens of thousands of peaceful protestors, overwhelmed local authorities. This volatile history explains why, in a city and state where the Black population is only 5.8% and 2.2% of the total respectively, Black Lives Matter protests have taken place every day since police officers in Minneapolis killed George Floyd on May 25. These protests have included more direct action, some of it violent, than protests in other cities, but there has been no evidence of a breakdown in social order prior to the deployment of federal forces to the city last week.
The Constitution gives the federal government extremely limited police powers. While federal law enforcement authorities have grown, the Tenth Amendment delegates the overwhelming majority of law enforcement powers to the states. This is the very essence of federalism. In Portland, the government’s theory for the deployment is that protestors are committing property crimes against federal property and buildings, and the federal government does have the authority to arrest people for breaking federal law. It is less clear, however, why they are detaining people some distance away from those federal properties.
There can be good reason to use federal force to enforce state law, as in the case of the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to use the troops to restore civil order. This was most recently invoked in 1992 in Los Angeles during the Rodney King riots. In the 1950s and 60s, there was even cause to deploy federal forces — including the regular army — over the objection of local officials to enforce civil rights laws. All of these cases, however, share a common theme: a breakdown of civil authority that only federal force can rectify.
That is not happening in Portland. Prior to the deployment of DHS forces last week, the US Attorney for the District of Oregon had brought charges against nine people for crimes committed during protests, a clear sign that the federal justice system is operating there. Since then, he has brought none — but he has referred the conduct of federal agents to the relevant Inspectors General for investigation.
This deployment has already sparked a reaction by Oregonians. More people have taken to the streets to hear speeches from the local Black activists who have been leading many of the protests from the outset, and a group of women calling itself the “Wall of Moms” has borrowed tactics from protests in Hong Kong. The question, however, is whether the purpose of these heavy handed tactics is to generate images of “anarchists” battling with the forces of order for the purposes of President Trump’s reelection campaign, borrowing a page from the Putin playbook on “performative authoritarianism.”
President Trump has seized on the protest movement that has grown up since George Floyd’s death as evidence of a growing threat from the political left that is actively trying to undermine traditional values. The Times has also noted large advertising buys by the Trump campaign that feature statements about Democratic lawmakers allowing or abetting bedlam in major cities. That would explain the impulse to expand this deployment to other large cities.
Regardless of the possible political motives at play, these events demonstrate a true rot at the center of the Department of Homeland Security. During the Lafayette Park incident on June 1, two people received the most internal pushback from their organizations: Attorney General Bill Barr and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley. The Justice Department and the military are the organizations most associated with federal power, but they have strong cultures resistant to being used in a crackdown on civil liberties. It is telling that, rather than invoking the Insurrection Act or federalizing the Oregon National Guard, the president has instead elected to use a cobbled-together force from various agencies within DHS.
With the exception of the Coast Guard and the Secret Service, the agencies within DHS lack those strong professional cultures that are committed to the balance of liberty and security. Many of DHS’s constituent parts were created during reorganizations after 9/11 and morale is consistently low. As law enforcement agencies, they tend to be highly militarized and operate in areas like airports and the border, where people do not fully enjoy the rights they are afforded elsewhere. To the extent that DHS has ever functioned particularly well, it has been because of strong leaders who worked to cohere the sprawling breadth of the organization.
At the moment, that leadership is clearly lacking. DHS has not had a senate-confirmed Secretary for 471 days; it has not even had a nominee in that time. This is the longest such vacancy in any cabinet office in U.S. history. Having an acting official for that long is probably a violation of the Vacancies Reform Act and stands in opposition to the way that the cabinet was designed to work by the founders. The reason that cabinet officials require Senate confirmation is so that they do not consider themselves merely organs of the president’s interests. Acting Secretary Chad Wolf and Illegally-Styling-Himself-as-Acting-Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli clearly feel no such pressure.
After this terrible episode concludes, it will be necessary to fundamentally rethink the way that DHS operates. This is not a question of abolishing this agency or defunding that one. Counterterrorism, disaster management, and border control will remain federal responsibilities for the foreseeable future. There will be agencies tasked with implementing those policies, even if what is happening in Portland will make their jobs more difficult in the future. However, that does not mean that they cannot be reined in to conform to republican principles.
The next Congress should think hard about how to create something like the dedication to the profession of arms or the post-Watergate intelligence reforms for Homeland Security. A major part of that is going to be elevating the Homeland Security committees in Congress to levels where they consistently function, like the Armed Services and Intelligence committees do, as collegial oversight mechanisms. Short-term fixes will not be enough and it will take bipartisan, bicameral, trans-Pennsylvania Avenue cooperation to make that happen. Anything else risks leaving this gun of potential repression loaded.
The Elephant in the Room
Chris Condon
The Republican Party has been subject to much change since its inception. It has transitioned from the party of abolitionism to the party of big business and the gold standard, from the party of imperialism and progressivism to the party of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism, and from the party of traditional values and neoconservatism to the party of Donald Trump. It is not out of the question to think that the Party will change again, and if history is any indication, the change will not take long. Especially in this instance, it seems like the party’s current ideology is rather transient. Based around the hollow bravado and uninformed populism of one man, the modern GOP cannot maintain this course forever. So what is going to replace Trumpism in the Republican Party after the presidency of Donald Trump?
This week, we got a glimpse of what the answer to this question might look like. In two instances, direct confrontations took place between Republican members of Congress over the direction of the Party and how current members fit into that trajectory. The first spat took place at a meeting of the House GOP Caucus. After Freedom Caucus member Matt Gaetz criticized Republican Caucus Chair Liz Cheney for backing Congressman Thomas Massie’s primary opponent, other members of the Party began to pile on. In their barrage, members of the Freedom Caucus criticized Cheney’s penchant for foreign interventionism along with her undying support for Dr. Anthony Fauci, and charged that her stances will damage the party’s chances in 2020. Although most media outlets framed this disagreement as a battle over Trump loyalism, the argument really exposes a more powerful undercurrent.
Another example of this looming conflict came from the other side of Capitol Hill. During a meeting of Senate Republicans, the ever-lucid Senator Tom Cotton opined that the Republican Party should be willing to rack up as much national debt as necessary to maintain power. Snapping back to reality momentarily, Senator Ted Cruz rebutted Cotton’s machiavellian suggestion, asking “what are we doing here?” and arguing that conservative voters may rebel against the GOP in November if the party continues on such a course. Both Cruz and Senator Rand Paul have also criticized Cotton’s affinity for supporting the Department of Homeland Security’s new secret police force, arguing that it is a clear example of federal overreach. Many media outlets have correctly analyzed this friction but some have failed to make the connection to the incident between Massie and Cheney: both are foreshadowing for 2024 and beyond.
In essence, this struggle boils down to the same difference that spurred the Tea Party Revolution in 2010. Back then, the Republican Party had embraced half-baked authoritarian social policies, outrageous deficits, and endless wars abroad for decades. Following the end of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the Party had struggled to hold onto its identity, often grasping at the middle way with nominees such as Bob Dole in 1996. After years of floundering in Iraq and Afghanistan and a wholloping at the polls by Barack Obama in 2008, Republican voters rejected the Bush-Dole-McCain brand of Republicanism in favor of a more populist, conservative message. Cloaking their movement in the language of the Founding Fathers, members of the Tea Party advocated for limited government, lower taxes, and a more restrained foreign policy. It was this movement that produced figures such as Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.
Liz Cheney, on the other hand, reeks of her father’s failed political ideology. Dick Cheney, Vice President under George W. Bush and well-known GOP operative, was the architect of much of the Bush administration’s disastrous foreign policy. Sacrificing the constitution and domestic interests for misguided crusading abroad, both Liz and Dick Cheney see figures such as Thomas Massie and Rand Paul as naive isolationists. Tom Cotton came on the scene in 2014, a product of the Bush era. He served overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq, and wholeheartedly endorses these sorts of conflicts. Evidently, he also hopes to see military operations conducted against his own countrymen, as he has been one of the most fervent defenders of police violence against American protestors.
In truth, the modern ideological struggle of the GOP stems from the original confusion in the aftermath of Reagan. One wing of the modern party, led by figures such as Massie, Paul and Cruz, take Reagan’s rhetoric to heart. Ronald Reagan prided himself on his ability to communicate, and the message he most often chose to convey was one of self-sufficiency and hostility to big government. One of his most famous quotes rings true here: “Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem.” Cheney and Cotton, for their part, represent the other side of the Reagan coin: the realities of his administration. While Reagan hoped for reduced spending, defense budgets soared under his watch. While he hoped for peace through strength, the U.S. intervened on multiple continents while he was Commander-in-chief. While he hoped for a smaller government, his Republican Party catered to the desires of authoritarian social conservatives at multiple junctures.
The Grand Old Party will not be the same in a decade as it is now. If Rand Paul has his way, perhaps the party will move toward a sustainable future marked by fiscal conservatism and social liberalism like the GOP of the 1920s. If Dick Cheney’s world view is allowed to rear its ugly head again in the form of his daughter and Tom Cotton, the party will retreat to its worst instincts of the early 2000s. If that is the case, an ever more diverse, pluralistic nation will slowly cease to accept the party of Lincoln, and some other political party may take its place in the coming decades. Let us hope that the GOP will advance toward a future of common sense and good governance, rather than uninformed populism or misguided jingoism.
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The views of authors are their own and not that of CSPC.