Is there an "Obama Doctrine"?

From The Washington Times --

Years from now, historians may well write that the decline or upswing in the American empire of liberty occurred during the Obama presidency. They will either write that the Obama administration’s self-fulfilling prophecy and rhetoric of decline was overcome by the overwhelming greatness of the United States or that the ultimate downfall was caused by the conditions created by this White House.

Today, the country’s expert and pundit classes are obsessed, first and foremost, with the absurd autopilot of sequestration designed to protect us from adult decision-making. As a distant second, media make some mention of the pressing national security issue of the day: The use of drones in fighting what was formerly known as the “war on terrorism.” Both issues describe this presidency writ large, highlighting the desire to avoid clear and direct decisions, mixed with an overreliance on a peculiar and unmanned technology. It is a White House on programmed reflex.

A question that I have been asked on more occasions than I care to remember is whether President Obama, in fact, has a national security doctrine. Three schools of thought exist on this matter.

The first view is, at first glance, quite glib: There is a doctrine, and it can be labeled ABB — Anything But Bush. However, before we completely dismiss this attitude, one should keep in mind that the Obama camp rejected unilateralism, pre-emption, democracy promotion, prevention and, generally, the global war on terrorism. These were the pillars of American grand strategy under President Bush and the administration has struggled mightily (often to the detriment to the country) to wrest itself from the Bush legacy. The second school of thought denies the existence of an Obama Doctrine altogether. His supporters have argued that he did not need one, so he could remain light and lethal, unconstrained by the prisons of declarations and pronouncements. The president’s detractors, meanwhile, state that mass confusion and anxiety over national security issues is evidence of absence.

The third school, and the one that seems to make the most sense, posits that an Obama Doctrine does exist, albeit in a form that is too messy and murky to detail fully. Rather, the Obama Doctrine represents a cobbled-together robot that issues platitudes and seeks penance. Like Presidents Carter and Clinton before him, Mr. Obama has exhibited a disdain or disinterest in this singularly important aspect of the presidency. The two campaigns that elected him president were ones where the media allowed national security and foreign policy to be pushed to the back burner, rearing their heads only sporadically.

There was a moment when this could have changed. Mr. Obama, comfortable with his electoral victory, could have proved the critics wrong and set the stage for real leadership in national security. This moment, of course, was the State of the Union address.

Instead, what did the American people receive? A laundry list, tacked on pro forma, made up of vague posturing: We heard that we “need” to end the war in Afghanistan by telegraphing our withdrawal worldwide. Mr. Obama blisteringly called on the totalitarians of Pyongyang to meet their international obligations. There was the continued declaration that Iran will face a serious coalition of negotiation. And finally, the strong desire to disarm our nuclear arsenal. The Anything But Bush School received a shot in the arm by the president’s inability to mention the global war on terrorism, the 60,000 Syrian dead or the aggressive moves made by China in the Pacific. If there was a grand strategy, it was the embrace of a sort of neo-isolationism. Yet this was countered by resurrecting the Bush team’s desire for more free-trade agreements, and Mr. Obama’s support of a trans-Pacific partnership.

What are we left with at the start of the president’s second term? We are where we started, with a disjointed doctrine, vague strategy and ambiguity held at high altar. Mr. Obama effectively has patched together four prior presidential doctrines to form his own. He channels Nixon to achieve his burden-sharing, colloquially known these days as “leading from behind.” He invokes Mr. Carter’s multilateralism for the sake of same, and as a counter to charges of American exceptionalism. Mr. Clinton’s vision is summoned for its risk-averse nature, its faith in globalization and its worship of technocracy over ideals.

Ironically, though, the only success that the president has had in national security and foreign policy is where he had been unable to shake the spirit of George W. Bush. The Bush years have granted the U.S. government now the breathing room to engage in greater counterterrorism operations and a chance to establish a permanent presence in the Arab world and Central Asia. But this “Bush Lite” strategy has been embraced only out of a sense of inertia and the harsh encroachment of reality.

The areas where one lets Obama be Obama demonstrate the most dangerous results for strategy. The goals seem to be tactical: more treaties, adherence to more international organizations, an emphasis on soft power and greater diplomatic “restraint.” We have seen a souring of relations with nations such as the United Kingdom, Japan, Poland and Israel, a blind eye to Russian, Chinese and Iranian aggression, obsequiousness before the United Nations, and a glossing over of the grossest human rights violations in places such as North Korea, Sudan, China and Syria. Simultaneously, Mr. Obama’s reversal of grand strategy regarding the use of nuclear forces has been nothing short of breathtaking, signaling a reluctance to use the very weapons that have kept enemies at bay.

The key to the Obama Doctrine is the need to “rebalance American commitments,” code for managing our decline. His doctrine is more about process than strategy. When he does speak on national security, the president likes to say that he would intervene if America’s vital or national interests were at stake. However, in more four years, he has never once fully articulated what he believes those to be.

If the United States is to continue to claim its exceptional place in the annals of humankind, it has no choice but to be the only sword and shield for these. A president who fails his duty here has failed not only Americans, but all mankind. The president could still turn this ship around and embrace both the pragmatic and idealist destiny of his country. It will be his choice how history reads his presidency and this crossroads in our American epic.

Lamont Colucci is senior fellow in national security affairs at the Washington, D.C.-based American Foreign Policy Council and the author of “The National Security Doctrines of the American Presidency: How they Shape our Present and Future” (Praeger Publishing, 2012).

Interest Payments: America's Silent Killer

From Tea Party Patriots --

When discussing and debating federal spending, liberals focus on defense spending and some subsidies. Conservatives focus on everything else.

However, a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report discusses something many politicians and pundits miss – the fiscal threat of interest payments:

Following a recent hearing, we were asked by a Member of Congress: “How would higher-than-expected interest rates affect federal budget deficits over the next decade? In particular, what would be the effects of these scenarios:

1. Interest rates rise to their average levels over the 1991-2000 period;
2. Interest rates rise to their average levels over the 1981-1990 period; and
3. Interest rates follow a path that is consistent with the average of the 10 highest projections shown in the October 2012 and February 2013 releases of Blue Chip Economic Indicators.”

CBO projected Scenario 1 would have interest rates of 4.9% and Scenario 2 rates of 8.8%, as compared to the current 4% projection in CBO’s baseline analysis, from 2018 to 2023. In other words, interest rates would be much, much higher. Treasury note rates would also be higher:

Similarly, rates on 10-year Treasury notes would average 6.7 percent between 2018 and 2023 under scenario 1 and 10.6 percent under scenario 2, compared with 5.2 percent in the baseline projections.

What were the results? Devastating:

In other words, if interest rates go up even a little, the entirety of sequestration will be wiped out. And while entitlement spending will be the largest driver of our debt in coming years, interest payments on the debt will be even larger. The Treasury Department projects that interest will be almost as much a burden on the budget as budget as Social Security, and by the time today’s newborns are in their mid-twenties, interest will be the biggest item in the federal budget.

The only real answer to this problem is cutting spending. CBO notes a number of caveats to its estimates, including the impacts of inflation, an improving economy, and interest rates on the cost of interest payments. But only cutting spending, and substantively so, will prevent rates and payments from becoming unsustainable.

One other thing: CBO only examines publicly held debt, which is less than three-quarters of the total debt of the United States. So their estimates above are very likely to underestimate the total burden of interest payments on the federal budget.

Speaker Boehner and President Obama say we don’t have a spending problem now. They also have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell us.

Happy Easter

Senator Rand Paul; A Duty to Preserve the 2nd Amendment

From The Washington Times --

When Congress reconvenes next month, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is expected to bring gun control back to the Senate floor. If this occurs, I will oppose any legislation that undermines Americans’ constitutional right to bear arms or their ability to exercise this right without being subject to government surveillance.

Restricting Americans’ ability to purchase firearms readily and freely will do nothing to stop national tragedies such as those that happened in Newtown, Conn., and in Aurora, Colo. It will do much to give criminals and potential killers an unfair advantage by hampering law-abiding citizens’ ability to defend themselves and their families. Potentially on the table are new laws that would outlaw firearms and magazines that hold more than just a handful of rounds, as well as require universal “background checks,” which amount to gun registration. We are also being told that the “assault weapons” ban originally introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein is not happening. We can only hope. But in Washington, D.C., bad ideas often have a strange way of coming up again.

These laws are designed to sound reasonable, but statistics have shown that gun control simply does not work. What constitutes reasonable? If limiting rounds and increasing surveillance were really the solution to curbing gun violence, why should we stop there? Because everyone knows that none of this actually curbs gun violence.

Gun control itself is unreasonable.Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws in the entire country — and one of the worst gun-crime rates, with more than 500 homicides last year. Compare this to Virginia, where in the past six years, gun sales went up by 73 percent, while violent gun crime fell 24 percent. The types of firearms and clips the left is currently so intent on banning are used in fewer than 2 percent of gun crimes — and how many of those crimes involve registered weapons? Few to none.

For every national tragedy that happens, there are hundreds if not thousands of examples of Americans preventing similar killings from happening, thanks to the use of personal firearms. Last June, for example, a 14-year-old Phoenix boy shot an armed intruder who broke into his home while he was baby-sitting his three younger siblings. The children were home alone on a Saturday afternoon when an unrecognized woman rang their doorbell. After the 14-year-old boy refused to open the door, he heard a loud bang, which indicated that someone was trying to break into the house. The boy hurried his younger siblings upstairs and collected a handgun from his parents’ room. When the boy rounded the top of the stairs, there was a man standing in the doorway with a gun pointed at him. The boy shot at the intruder and saved the lives of his three younger siblings.

There have been would-be mass murderers who have walked into schools, churches, shopping malls, movie theaters and other public places who didn’t get very far because, thankfully, an armed citizen was nearby. There have been countless home invasions, armed robberies and other assaults in which lives were saved, thanks to citizens possessing private firearms.These stories are heroic, but they don’t become big headlines. We should all be glad that they don’t become such headlines, thanks to the unsung heroes who prevent them from becoming potential national tragedies.

For these reasons, I will oppose any attempt by President Obama, Mr. Reid or anyone else in Washington who works against Americans’ right to bear arms. Sens. Mike Lee and Ted Cruz have decided to join in this effort.We do this not only because it is right — but because it is our duty as United States senators.

When I stood up for the Fourth and Fifth Amendments during a filibuster a few weeks ago to address drones and executive power, it was not because I was partial to those amendments, important as they are. When I came into office, I took an oath to uphold the Bill of Rights. 

I took an oath to uphold the First Amendment. I took an oath to uphold the Second Amendment.

The Second Amendment reads: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” It doesn’t say “might be” infringed. Nor does it say “could be” infringed. It read “shall not” be infringed. The current gun-control legislation being proposed unquestionably infringes. For these reasons, I will work diligently to stop any such gun-control legislation. Our Constitution, individual liberty and personal safety depend on it.

Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Homeland Security committees.

Why China Is Reading Your Email

From The Wall Street Journal --

Timothy L. Thomas By DAVID FEITH

Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

For several years, Washington has treated China as the Lord Voldemort of geopolitics—the foe who must not be named, lest all economic and diplomatic hell break loose. That policy seemed to be ending in recent weeks, and Timothy Thomas thinks it's about time.

The clearest sign of change came in a March 11 speech by Tom Donilon, President Obama's national security adviser, who condemned "cyber intrusions emanating from China on an unprecedented scale" and declared that "the international community cannot tolerate such activity from any country." Chinese cyber aggression poses risks "to international trade, to the reputation of Chinese industry and to our overall relations," Mr. Donilon said, and Beijing must stop it.

"Why did we wait so long?" wonders Mr. Thomas as we sit in the U.S. Army's Foreign Military Studies Office, where the 64-year-old retired lieutenant colonel has studied Chinese cyber strategy for two decades. More than enough evidence accumulated long ago, he says, for the U.S. to say to Beijing and its denials of responsibility, "Folks, you don't have a leg to stand on, sorry."

U.S. targets of suspected Chinese cyber attacks include news organizations (this newspaper, the New York Times, Bloomberg), tech firms (Google, GOOG -1.06%Adobe, ADBE +2.00% Yahoo YHOO -0.26% ), multinationals (Coca-Cola,KO +0.55% Dow Chemical DOW +0.19% ), defense contractors (Lockheed Martin,LMT +2.17% Northrop Grumman NOC +0.36% ), federal departments (Homeland Security, State, Energy, Commerce), senior officials (Hillary Clinton, Adm. Mike Mullen), nuclear-weapons labs (Los Alamos, Oak Ridge) and just about every other node of American commerce, infrastructure or authority. Identities of confidential sources, hide-outs of human-rights dissidents, negotiation strategies of major corporations, classified avionics of the F-35 fighter jet, the ins and outs of America's power grid: Hackers probe for all this, extracting secrets and possibly laying groundwork for acts of sabotage.

China's aggression has so far persisted, Mr. Thomas says, because "it makes perfect sense to them." The U.S. has difficulty defending its cyber systems, the relatively new realm of cyber isn't subject to international norms, and years of intrusions have provoked little American response. "I think they're willing to take the risk right now because they believe that we can't do anything to them," he says. "You have to change the playing field for them, and if you don't, they're not going to change. They're going to continue to rip off every bit of information they can."

Hence the promise of Washington's apparent shift in policy. "There's something going on," Mr. Thomas says, and the Donilon speech was only one part. This month's more significant news, he argues, was the announcement that the U.S. military's Cyber Command (founded in 2009) would for the first time develop and field 13 offensive cyber-warfare teams. The Chinese "now know we are ready to go on the offense. There's something that's been put in place that I think is going to change their view."

Not that he expects Beijing to back down lightly. On the contrary, Mr. Thomas points to the literature of the People's Liberation Army to demonstrate that China's cyber strategy has deep—even ancient—roots.

The essence of China's thinking about cyber warfare is the concept of shi, he says, first introduced in Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" about 2,500 years ago. The concept's English translation is debated, but Mr. Thomas subscribes to the rendering of Chinese Gen. Tao Hanzhang, who defines shi as "the strategically advantageous posture before a battle."

"When I do reconnaissance activities of your [cyber] system," Mr. Thomas explains of China's thinking, "I'm looking for your vulnerabilities. I'm establishing a strategic advantage that enables me to 'win victory before the first battle' "—another classic concept, this one from the "36 Stratagems" of Chinese lore. "I've established the playing field. I have 'prepped the battlefield,' to put it in the U.S. lexicon."

Or, as Chinese Gen. Dai Qingmin wrote in his 2002 book, "Direct Information Warfare": "Computer network reconnaissance is the prerequisite for seizing victory in warfare. It helps to choose opportune moments, places and measures for attack." Says Mr. Thomas: "He's telling you right there—10 years ago—that if we're going to win, we have to do recon."

A 1999 book by two Chinese colonels put it more aggressively (albeit in a sentence as verbose as it is apocalyptic): "If the attacking side secretly musters large amounts of capital without the enemy nations being aware of this at all and launches a sneak attack against its financial markets," wrote Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, "then, after causing a financial crisis, buries a computer virus and hacker detachment in the opponent's computer system in advance, while at the same time carrying out a network attack against the enemy so that the civilian electricity network, traffic dispatching network, financial transaction network, telephone communications network, and mass media network are completely paralyzed, this will cause the enemy nation to fall into social panic, street riots, and a political crisis." No kidding.

This vision from 1999 reads like an outline of the report published last month by Mandiant, a private-security firm, about "Unit 61398," a Shanghai-based Chinese military team that since 2006 has mounted cyber assaults to steal terabytes of codes and other information from U.S. assets. Among the targets of Unit 61398 was Telvent Canada, which provides remote-access software for more than 60% of the oil and gas pipelines in North America and Latin America.

Unit 61398 is said to engage in "spearphishing," whereby would-be cyber intruders send emails with links and attachments that, if clicked, install malware on target computers. Lesser hackers might spearphish while posing as Nigerian princes, but Unit 61398 developed sophisticated ways, including colloquial language, to mimic corporate and governmental interoffice emails.

Spearphishing, too, draws on traditional Chinese stratagems: "The Chinese strive to impel opponents to follow a line of reasoning that they (the Chinese) craft," Mr. Thomas wrote in 2007. With this kind of asymmetric approach, he says, "anybody can become an unsuspecting accomplice."

In this context Mr. Thomas mentions a cartoon published last year in Army magazine in which one Chinese general says to another: "To hell with 'The Art of War,' I say we hack into their infrastructure." Good for a chuckle, perhaps, but Mr. Thomas warns against taking the message seriously. China's hacking is in fact "a manifestation of 'The Art of War,' " he says, and if the U.S. military doesn't realize that, it "can make mistakes. . . . You have to stay with their line of thought if you're going to try to think like them."

"Boy," he later laments, "we need a lot more Chinese speakers in this country"—a point underscored by the fact that he isn't one himself. He reads Chinese military texts in translation, some published by the U.S. government's Open Source Center and some he has found himself. He stumbled upon Gen. Dai's "Direct Information Warfare" on a trip several years ago to Shanghai, when an associate led him (and an interpreter) to an unmarked military bookstore on the top floor of a building on the outskirts of town. "I could tell when I walked in that the people behind the cash register were stunned I was there," he recalls. In public bookstores, he says, material addressing Chinese national security is often marked "not for foreign sale" on the inside cover.

The Ohio native does speak Russian, having focused most of his military service (from West Point graduation in 1973 until 1993) on the Soviet Union. That language skill still comes in handy, and not just because Russia is suspected of having carried out cyber assaults against Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in 2008.

Look at the Mandiant report's map of Chinese cyber intrusions (at least those tied to Unit 61398): Russia is untouched. "That's a huge area. . . . I really would wonder why they're after South Africa, the U.A.E. and Singapore but not Russia. And Luxembourg. They went after Luxembourg but not Russia?" Together with Iran, he argues, China and Russia make up "not the axis of evil but the axis of cyber."

So what is to be done? Security firms are working to harden networks against hackers, and members of Congress are promoting legislation to let the government work more closely with Internet service providers without opening up the companies to lawsuits or infringing on civil liberties. Washington could challenge Chinese cyber espionage with targeted economic sanctions. Meanwhile, there is much talk about establishing international standards for cyber space, but it is unclear what that would mean—which probably explains why top officials in Washington and Beijing have both endorsed the idea.

None of this seems promising to Mr. Thomas, who stresses building deterrence through offensive capabilities, such as the 13 new teams at U.S. Cyber Command. The implication is that the best defense is a good offense.

And doesn't that suggest, in turn, that the U.S. and China are headed toward a dynamic of mutually assured cyber destruction? "It seems like it," he says.

It's heartening to hear, then, that Chinese military literature isn't uniformly aggressive toward America. This includes writings about the "China Dream," which posits that China will overtake the U.S. economically and militarily by midcentury—and which has been adopted as the signature cause of new President Xi Jinping.

"They give you both versions," says Mr. Thomas. "They give you a model that says, 'There will be no way we'll ever fight [the U.S.], we'll work on cooperation.' A chapter later, 'There could be a time where if pushed hard enough, we'll have to do something and there will be a battle.' "

But what about the argument that the U.S. is shedding crocodile tears? America (and Israel) were almost certainly behind the most successful known cyber attack to date: the Stuxnet virus that impeded Iran's uranium-enrichment program. There might be some comfort in knowing that the U.S. is doing unto China what China is doing unto the U.S., says Mr. Thomas, but "we don't seem as intrusive as the other side." That is illustrated especially, he says, by China's state-sponsored commercial espionage. He frequently hears complaints from U.S. firms dealing with Chinese counterparts who know their secrets, adding that "I don't think people really get the security briefing of just how invasive it is."

Then there's the argument that all this is overblown because no cyber attack has ever killed anyone. Mr. Thomas responds, somewhat impatiently: "If I had access to your bank account, would you worry? If I had access to your home security system, would you worry? If I have access to the pipes coming into your house? Not just your security system but your gas, your electric—and you're the Pentagon?"

He adds: "Maybe nobody's been killed yet, but I don't want you having the ability to hold me hostage. I don't want that. I don't want you to be able to blackmail me at any point in time that you want." He cites the Chinese colonels' vision, back in 1999, of "social panic" and "street riots." "I wonder what would happen if none of us could withdraw money out of our banks. I watched the Russians when the crash came and they stood in line and . . . they had nothing."

Mr. Feith is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal.

Fed's Fund Vital Study on Snail Sex & Duck Penises - Cleveland Air Show & White House Tours still Canceled over Lack of Funds

As we face sequester cuts that have Rep. Marcia Fudge (OH-11) of Cleveland and her fellow Democrats screaming as if the world will end, the unemployed, under-employed, or low-paid American worker can still take solace in knowing some important programs & studies funded under President Obama's Stimulus and Continuous Resolution funding will remain in place.

The federally funded National Science Foundation (NSF), being described as, "good stewards of taxpayer dollars," and a future investment that plays into the big picture role of our economic success by NSF Spokesperson Debbie Wing, has recently funded and continued the funding on two of these "important" programs.....

From CNS News --

The National Science Foundation awarded a grant for $876,752 to the University of Iowa to study whether there is any benefit to sex among New Zealand mud snails and whether that explains why any organism has sex.

So far, the grant has paid out $502,357, according to NSF, and could pay out the full $880,000 between now and 2015. (More...)

And looking towards gathering crucial economic insight for future generations, Yale University has been busy at work on an important NSF funded study of their own....

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $384,949 grant to Yale University for a study on “Sexual Conflict, Social Behavior and the Evolution of Waterfowl Genitalia”, according to the recovery.gov website.

Many duck penises are cork-screw shaped and some scientists believe this is because of a form of evolution known as "sexual conflict". According to the NSF grant abstract the study shows that age, environment and breeding changes can impact the penis length of certain ducks.... (More...)

Unfortunately, due to the funding for important economic studies like the ones above and the belt tightening sacrifices we must make under the Sequester, White House tours and the Cleveland Air Show are still cancelled.

Another Part of Obamacare Ready to Get the Axe

From Tea Party Patriots --

Another piece of Obamacare may soon be on the trash heap of history:

Medical-device companies scored a political victory when the Senate voted in a non-binding resolution to repeal a new device tax, and now they are turning their attention to the House, especially U.S. Representative Ed Markey.

The 2.3 percent tax went into effect in January and is supposed to help offset the costs of implementing President Obama’s landmark health reform law. But the device industry argues that it would cost Massachusetts’ largest companies more than $411 million a year, according to a new analysis by the Pioneer Institute that will be released in April, just before the first payment is due.

The Senate voted 79-20 to repeal the tax Thursday evening in a bipartisan budget amendment in a non-binding resolution. Massachusetts Senators Elizabeth Warren and William “Mo” Cowan signed on to the repeal, following a flurry of last-minute lobbying from Massachusetts medical device makers of New England Democrats.

Rep. Markey voted against repeal of the tax last year, but says he opposes the tax on principle. The problem? Keeping Obamacare funded:

Markey says he has not signed onto the current bill because it does not specify how the repeal would be paid for.

“I am concerned about the impact that the device tax could have on the medical device industry and job creation in Massachusetts,” Markey said. “I opposed the inclusion of this tax in the House health care reform bill. I would support repealing the tax, as long as the revenue replacing it does not impact middle-class families or their health care benefits.”

With clear bipartisan support for repeal, there’s a good chance the tax will be overturned. However, two top Democrats – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) voted against repeal, which means a fight may still be ahead. On the other hand, the 1099 tax in Obamacare was overturned some time ago, giving precedence to elimination of a tax created in the health care law.

Given that the Senate amendment is non-binding, it has no force of law. But it is a good sign that an overwhelming majority of the Senate is expressing an opinion against this tax, which means legislation has a good chance of passing in the future.