You think it’s scary to have the United States occasionally barging around the world starting wars, defying international conventions, and generally acting like a rogue state?
Well, how about this: the idea that within the US administration there are rogue tentacles that go around the world doing exactly the same but almost entirely out of any centralized control system?
To me, that is even scarier.
At least, with a rogue state, you have the general idea that there’s some kind of a centralized “intelligence” at work, assessing risks and trying (perhaps) to minimize the overall damage caused to the global system… Or, at the very least, that there’s a single “address” to which people can go with any queries or complaints about various US actions.
But now, according to this disturbing article in today’s WaPo, the Pentagon is actively promoting a plan that,
- would allow Special Operations forces to enter a foreign country to conduct military operations without explicit concurrence from the U.S. ambassador there…
The reporters, the estimable Ann Scott Tyson and Dana Priest, cite as their sources, “administration officials familiar with the plan.” They note that,
- The plan would weaken the long-standing “chief of mission” authority under which the U.S. ambassador, as the president’s top representative in a foreign country, decides whether to grant entry to U.S. government personnel based on political and diplomatic considerations.
According to Tyson and Priest, this shift is still only “proposed”. And not surprisingly the proposal has come in for a lot of resistance from the State Department (and also, perhaps a little more suprisingly, from the CIA.)
The reporters attrobute to “current and former administration officials” the news that,
- Over the past two years, the State Department has repeatedly blocked Pentagon efforts to send Special Operations forces into countries surreptitiously and without ambassadors’ formal approval.
And they attribute to recently retired deputy Secretary of State Rich Armitage the info that, while he was still on the job,
- he and others stopped six or seven Pentagon attempts to weaken chief-of-mission authority.
In one instance, U.S. commanders tried to dispatch Special Forces soldiers into Pakistan without gaining ambassadorial approval but were rebuffed by the State Department, said two sources familiar with the event. The soldiers eventually entered Pakistan with proper clearance but were ordered out again by the ambassador for what was described as reckless behavior. “We had SF [Special Forces] guys in civilian clothes running around a hotel with grenades in their pockets,” said one source involved in the incident, who opposes the Pentagon plan.
Other officials cited another case to illustrate their concern. In the past year, they said, a group of Delta Force soldiers left a bar at night in a Latin American country and shot an alleged assailant but did not inform the U.S. Embassy for several days.
The reporters write that some people at State had been worried that when Armitage and then his boss Colin Powell both left the State Department last month, there were some worries that Powell’s replacement, Condi Rice, might not fight as hard as her predecessors had to hold the line on the “chief of mission” issue.
But luckily,
- In the past week… [Rice] has made it clear that she intends to protect the existing chief-of-mission authority. “Rice is resolute in holding to chief-of-mission authority over operations the way it exists now, for a very rational reason — you need someone who can coordinate,” said a senior State Department official.
Still, it sounded from the story that even though the Pentagon crazies had not yet gotten the change to the “chief of mission status” formally written into the administration’s “execute order” yet, nevertheless they had already been trying to launch some pretty nasty and risky “rogue tentacle” actions ways behind the backs of the local ambassadors. So if Condi Rice wants to make sure that the US chiefs of mission in the many countries around the world still retain their control and their prerogatives, then she’ll probably need to be at least as vigilant about enforcing that as Powell and Armitage have been.
And who knows, the Pentagon hawks may yet get the change that they seek formally approved by the president…
War with Iran or Syria, anyone?
Well, of course Rumsfield is doing such things!
Rice in no way will be able to prevent this, in fact i doubt she would even want to stop it. It is amazing to me that the main ‘mouthpiece’ for administration policies is now being painted as a voice of reason. Rice got the job because Rumsfield and Cheney know she is ‘on board’.
She is nothing but their puppy.
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Yes, I have read somewhere that the department really important in U.S. diplomacy is not State but Defense. When you want to do something significant in a region, talk the the local CinC, not the ambassadors.
This whole proposal does sound like a really bad idea. Why not extend the authority to the DEA, CIA and Peace Corp? Who would coordinate the circus? I guess they’d all meet up in some third world jail to compare notes.
We really can’t go around getting ourselves in a tizzy everytime somebody says something dumb. We’d never calm down! Imagine if we all got excited everytime some member of Congress or the government proposed a bad idea
Helena, check out Sy Hersh’s article about this same subject in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago. The media covered it, but focused on the “Iranian factor,” when the real story was what the WaPo finally ran yesterday.
I’ve been mildly amused over the last few months watching as Hersh reports something in the New Yorker, everyone pooh-poohs it, and then the WaPo picks it up weeks later and the mainstream media treats it as a brand new story…
Says something about having too large a journalistic profile, I guess.
What about the recent nomination of Negroponte as the new intelligence czar ? At first this sounds surprising, given his diplomatic carrier. But then, he was accused to be involved with US-sponsored groups that tortured and killed people In Honduras. Now that Iraq will have a more or less legitimized government and one which may not be so easy to influence, the hawks will certainly try to gain more hiden influence there as well…
Get serious. The war with Iran and Syria is already on. The wording is far more insidious than that: It legalizes paramilitary action anywhere in the world without the consent of the host government (this has always been done) nor even the ambassador (now this is new) at the sole behest of the Pentagon (no wonder both State and the Agency oppose it). The problems with international law are immense.
The other little problem is an elevated risk of our shooting each other, and starting a intra-US Armageddon. Whoops.
If we are anxious about removing chief of mission authority from US ambassadors over US Special Forces Syria and Iran are unlikely candidates to feel the consequences. The US has nearly no diplomatic representation in Iran, in Syria all open or covert military personnel are watched like hawks. US Special Forces operating in Syria and Iran right now are probably responsible regionally to generals in Iraq, not senior diplomats or the Pentagon.
Rather, it is “allied” countries where the US has large diplomatic representation that this policy change would take dramatic effect. Within the CENTCOM area this post specifically mentions Pakistan/Afghanistan as one such place, familiar readers will know of notorious, ongoing sparring with diplomats in Yemen over similar issues. Also within CENTCOM this would affect US diplomatic missions in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kenya, Sudan, and Central Asia, outside of CENTCOM but within the al-Qa’ida pursuit portfolio Mozambique, Egypt, Indonesia, and Morocco.
This is a bad idea all around as it will heighten the responsibilities to which US diplomats will be held while undermining local government trust in those same personnel. If diplomats cannot be trusted to make critical judgments, why have them? Let’s just replace embassies with bases and get it over with.