The CSPC Dispatch - DEC. 5, 2024
Welcome to The CSPC Dispatch!
This edition features contributions from CSPC President and CEO Glenn Nye on political reform efforts following the 2024 election cycle, Senior Fellow James Kitfield on the worrying decline in U.S. military readiness, Senior Fellow Ethan Brown, who takes a look at the prospect of civil-military relations going forward, as well as a book review and podcast from CSPC Senior Vice President Joshua Huminski.
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Setbacks and Silver Linings for Political System Reform
by Glenn Nye
Photo Credit: Tony Webster
In the 2024 general elections American voters resolved the immediate question of who would occupy federal offices and what party would control majorities in each chamber of Congress but left open some important long-term questions about the design of our election system and the inherent incentives built into that design. Voter resolved to return former President Donald Trump to the White House, leaving open concerns about the long-term effect on democracy of leaving unaccounted a presidential attempt to overturn a past election. Voters changed majority control of the Senate by shifting four seats to Republican candidates, while narrowing further the Republican majority in the House of Representatives to just two seats.
One of the most important elements of the 2024 election season was the dramatic increase in ballot initiatives across several western states designed to change election methods to minimize the polarizing effect of partisan primaries. What appeared to be a potentially phenomenal leap forward in momentum for primary system reform resulted in a lackluster performance for electoral reform, with seven states failing to enact balloted reforms to primary election systems, one of the most promising ways to reduce polarization and promote cooperation among elected officials. Reformers were fighting uphill messaging battles against entrenched interests, including leaders from both political parties unwilling to cede partisan control over general election ballot access. Despite that setback a new initiative passed in the District of Columbia to open primaries to independent voters and establish a majority requirement with the use of an instant runoff method. Arizona voters declined a measure to replace partisan primaries with a non-partisan primary and adopt a majority requirement for candidates to win, but voters also rejected a measure that would have required the state to use partisan primaries in the future, leaving open the door to future efforts to adopt a non-partisan method.
The biggest silver lining, however, came from Alaska voters, who voted narrowly to uphold the non-partisan primary system they instituted in 2022. The result is that voters who have tried non-partisan primaries paired with an instant runoff system that requires a majority of votes to win opted to keep that system, a tremendous validator for future efforts that overcomes complaints that the system is unworkable or overcomplicated. In an interesting twist, Alaska voters opted narrowly to replace their 2022 choice, moderate Democrat Mary Peltola with moderate Republican Nick Begich. Both of those elections featured the new voting methodology requiring a majority of votes to win. In 2022 the system sidelined the candidacy of a more extreme Republican, Sarah Palin, who opted not to run in 2024. Republican candidates agreed to coordinate and drop out in favor of whichever 2024 candidate got the most votes in the non-partisan primary and they followed through, leaving Begich the only Republican in the multi-candidate general election. This shows that political parties and campaigns only took one election cycle to adjust to the new method. The results from 2022 and 2024, the two elections using the non-partisan primary method, were the election of a moderate Democrat and a moderate Republican, proving that there is no partisan bias in the election system, and validating the intent of the system to allow more moderate candidates who attract the support of a broader swath of voters to win elections. This bodes well for more cooperative future politics if the momentum can spread to other states. While 2024 was a setback year for those hoping for new momentum in the short term, the validation of the most promising elements of reform by voters opting to continue its use may provide some needed foundation for growth in coming cycles.
Glenn Nye is the President and CEO at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress.
Countering an ‘Axis of Autocracies’
Storm Clouds Gather as U.S. Military Readiness Declines
by James Kitfield
An aerial view of the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., May 15, 2023. (DoD photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. John Wright)
Storm clouds are gathering at the far reaches of Pax Americana, and yet there is remarkably little sign that the U.S. government or body politic have awoken to the mounting dangers. The threat posed by China and Russia and their rogue nation allies rated only passing mention in the recent presidential campaign, for instance, which traditionally revolved around domestic issues like the economy and inflation.
That domestic focus on bread-and-butter issues stands in stark contrast to the sense of urgency and alarm felt at the Pentagon, at the U.S. military’s geographical commands positioned forward around the globe, and among noted experts who have analyzed the United States’ deteriorating national security posture. From their vantage point U.S. military and security forces and the defense industrial base that sustains them already find themselves stretched thin by intense combat operations, hybrid and proxy warfare, and tense military standoffs with an increasingly cohesive “axis of autocracies” spread out over six times zone that span the globe.
To heed their warnings the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress (CSPC) recently launched a new strategic budgeting and military procurement initiative that is closely examining reforms needed to reinvigorate U.S. military readiness and America’s once unmatched “Arsenal of Democracy.” As the lead author of that initiative I have spoken directly with noted experts on the subject from the U.S. military and business communities, as well as members of the recent Commission on the National Defense Strategy (NDS), whose 2024 report stated that a national security “train wreck” may soon be upon us.
“The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945 and include the potential for near-term major war,” the NDS Commission report begins in sober fashion, noting that the United States has not fought such a global conflict since World War II, nearly 80 years ago, and last prepared for such a contingency during the Cold War, 35 years ago. “It is not prepared today.”
Ambassador Eric Edelman was vice-chairman of the recent Commission on the National Defense Strategy, and he has served on similar commissions dating back a decade. “We’re in a crisis right now, with the largest land war in Europe since World War II, a significant conflict in the Middle East that has seen Iran for the first time fire missile barrages at a U.S. ally, and a tightening collaboration between China, Russia, North Korea and Iran that is as close to an adversarial axis as we have faced since World War II. We also face a growing North Korean nuclear weapons force that could soon be larger than Great Britain’s, with Iran also knocking on the door [of nuclear weapons capability],” Edelman recently told the Defense Writers Group.
America’s “unfortunate history” is to wait until disaster strikes before reacting, Edelman noted, whether it was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor at the outset of World War II; the decimation of the U.S. military’s “Task Force Smith” early in the Korean War; the unexpected Soviet Union technological surprise with the launch of the first “Sputnik” satellite in 1958; the near decimation of the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division in the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley at the outset of the Vietnam War in 1965; and the surprise terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland on September 11, 2001 that presaged the United States’ longest wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“We’re trying to create a national discussion with this report before catastrophe strikes, because what we’re really talking about is restoring the United States’ ability to deter conflict,” said Edelman. “And failure to deter a conflict is always more expensive than spending the money necessary to provide for the common defense, which under the Constitution is Congress’ number one obligation.”
When read closely, the recent National Defense Strategy report amounts to an indictment of the entire system by which the United States translates national security strategy into policies and budgets and ultimately military capability. Highlighted nodes of failure include in the Oval Office, where successive commanders-in-chief from both parties have failed to use the bully pulpit to alert the public to the mounting dangers and the sacrifices necessary to meet them head on [“The American public have been inadequately informed by government leaders to the threats to U.S. interests – including to people’s everyday lives – and what will be required to restore American global power and leadership.”]; to the halls of Congress, where increasingly partisan lawmakers have continually prioritized tax cuts, entitlement spending and “hot-button” social issues over reaching consensus on providing for the common defense [“Very little progress will be possible without Congress, where a relatively small number of elected officials have imposed continual political gamesmanship over thoughtful and responsible legislating and oversight…[weakening] our ability to manage strategic competition with our peer adversaries”]; to the Pentagon puzzle palace where contracting offices responsible for executing acquisition and procurement programs reflect a mindset from a more peaceful and benign era [“DoD’s business practices, byzantine research and development (R&D) and procurement programs, reliance on decades-old military hardware, and culture of risk avoidance reflect a [bygone] era of uncontested military dominance.”]; to the boardrooms and shop floors of a defense industrial base that has dangerously atrophied in the decades since the end of the Cold War, with insufficient manufacturing capacity and inadequate workforces [“The U.S. defense industrial base is unable to meet the equipment, technology, and munitions needs of the United States and its allies…[and] a protracted conflict, especially in multiple theaters, would require much greater capacity to produce, maintain and replenish weapons and munitions.”].
Retired Congresswoman Jane Harman, D-CA., former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, served as chair of the recent Commission on the National Defense Strategy. “We have to find a way to convey the urgency of this moment and get ahead of this problem, because there was consensus that this is our most dangerous moment since World War II, much more dangerous than the 9/11 attacks even, which I lived through. In that case we were also unprepared, and our response failed to meet the moment,” she said in an interview with the Defense Writers Group.
“So wouldn’t it be nice if we could create a 9/11-like sense of urgency before a 9/11 type attack? We now have a new administration coming, and some different leaders in Congress, and we’re urging leaders to take this opportunity to use the bully pulpit to educate the public,” noted Harman. In the event of a conflict with China over Taiwan, she said, “there will be a major cyberattack on our critical infrastructure. When the lights go out in our cities, and our ports close, and our transportation systems melt down, people will start to pay attention. So maybe we can help them pay attention ahead of that [catastrophe].”
James Kitfield is a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress, and a three-time recipient of the Gerald R. Ford Award for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense.
Violating sacred rules on civil-military relations
By Ethan Brown
Pete Hegseth speaking with attendees at the 2022 Student Action Summit at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida. (Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore)
The policy sphere was caught off-guard this week when President-elect Trump announced early nominees to key cabinet positions, but none were as jarring as naming Fox News pundit Pete Hegseth to the critical post of Defense Secretary.
Hegseth’s professional experience includes several overseas tours in the Army National Guard (with Bronze stars earned from Iraq and Afghanistan), a lobbyist for veterans causes (albeit tarnished by his on-record encouragement of then-President Trump to pardon war criminals), and is a published author and conservative pundit on the U.S. military ‘going woke’ and betraying American warriors. What is lacking from Hegseth’s professional experience prior to his time at Fox News is any time spent in policy, corporate defense, or federal government writ large.
The relationship between a military and a states’ governance is one which Samuel Huntington defined as a “special relationship” built on sacred trust. The founder of Foreign Policy magazine was one of the 20th century’s foremost political scientists and is lauded for his seminal work “The Soldier and the State,” a book in which Huntington examined the complexities of a professional military in a liberal democracy. Huntington argued that military security policy is the medium by which defense of the state against external threats is achieved, with internal policy protecting against subversion of institutions from within, while situational policy aims to prevent erosion of those institutions of the military through changing social, economic, and political conditions. Most importantly, Huntington asserted that “military institutions which reflect only social values may be incapable of performing effectively their military function (the professionalization of violence which is afforded by the unique trust placed in the institution by the society and the state).”
Hegseth’s appointment has been qualified by observers as decidedly political, owing to Hegseth’s unwavering loyalty to President Trump rather than selection based on professional expertise or credible experience in the defense policy arena. This nomination, at face value and upon deeper examination, has all of the hallmarks of a politically motivated move to one of the most critical cabinet positions in the American executive branch. It should be stated that cabinet appointments are, inherently, frittered by some partisanism, inherent to the power of the office of the President which is imbued to make such appointments and nominations. The office of the President and the function of the President as commander-in-chief vectors the machinations of the Pentagon through the “reliance upon the instrumentality of the civilian secretary.” As such, it is reasonable to expect some adherence to party philosophies when a President chooses their civilian defense secretary, but there remains a reasonable expectation that the person and position exudes clear-eyed judgement on advising the president on the use of the military, rather than using the position to pursue partisan agendas. For the political punditry that the military is not a social experiment (when in fact is has always been such), this nomination would indeed experiment with aligning military priorities with social values.
Considering Huntington’s definition of this use of power, the trust which the American people place upon the office of the President in terms of choosing appointees is based on “objective civilian control,” making such overtly political appointments an immediate source of discord between the office of the President and the congress which must ratify the appointment, as well as the people who place their trust in the military.
Even republicans in congress were caught off guard by the nomination, including public comments from Tommy Tuberville (AL), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Bill Cassidy (LA) ranging from surprise to complete ignorance of who Hegseth was. It should be recalled that Trump’s very first defense secretary nomination in 2016, former Marine four-star James Mattis, received bipartisan applause, both for his life-long and distinguished military service, as well as his public push-back against Trump on various policy issues—rightly asserting himself as an honest and objective broke. Trump would summarily dismiss Mattis after the Marine submitted his resignation two-years in, citing the Presidents lack of respect for allies and military judgment.
President-elect Trump’s appointment of a policy outsider with only narrow experience in tactical-level military functions, and entirely lacking any experience at a strategic level, violates a fundamental truth of civil-military relations. That truth is based on the implicit faith civil society places upon the military, who, as Huntington summarized, has professionalized and monopolized violence at scale to protect the nation from external threats while holding itself above and apart from the political process. That public faith exists because of the relationship between the state (government) and the professional military who is inherently apolitical; the latter entrusts the former to develop grand strategy to employ professional violence only when and where it is necessary, and never in such a manner wherein it violates that public trust. Thus, the appointment based on seeming political loyalties to a position which carries such tremendous influence has already risked politicization of the institution.
This appointee isn’t merely a concern for politicizing the military, he is on record for his plans to make politically driven decisions which impact the force. Appearing one the Shawn Ryan podcast earlier this year, Hegseth suggested that a political target of his Defense Department would include highly accomplished (and highly professional/politically-agnostic) senior leaders like General C.Q. Brown, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and former U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff. Brown’s appointment to the highest military office was anything but DEI-based, he was quite simply superbly qualified for the job. That same politicization which is inherently destructive to the sacred relationship between lawmakers and the military was further harmed by congressional holds on the promotion of Lt. Gen. Chris Donahue, the last U.S. servicemember to leave Afghanistan. The delay on Donahue’s promotion echoed this dangerous precedent of politicizing the military and in particular, senior officers, although the Army officer was finally promoted so as to assume command of U.S. Army Forces Europe.
Senior military appointments dating far back in American history were much closer to political motivations of the sitting President and Congress, but such instances were before American interests overseas required military strategy or involvement. Partisan selection of the then-secretaries of the Navy and war were indeed commonplace even as late as the American Civil War (with congress ratifying secretaries of war who adhered to the political ambitions of ending slavery and pursuant to geographic objectives for defeating the Confederacy). But in the ensuing years after the two World Wars of the Twentieth Century, far fewer American politicians would have military experience, in particular the President, making the appointment of the Defense Secretary necessarily an objective appointment. Huntington argued that objective civilian control was explicitly critical of a legitimate military serving a democracy: the public trust is vested in control of the military resting in the hands of the government for the purpose of national defense.
A professional military’s “thinking on national policy was power and the natural rivalry of nations,” as Huntington summarized. Simply, the role which an institution of professionalized violence plays in securing the nation-state must remain focused on contending with threats from abroad. At a time when American interests are complex, dynamic, and indeed challenging with an increasingly aggressive Communist China, erratic Iran and North Korea, and the persistent threat demonstrated by Russia, this nomination would seem to instead prioritize internal focus on shaping the Pentagon to fit a political mold, instead of shaping the force to prepare for conflict.
The culmination of these facts: a nominee with a clear, articulated agenda for politicizing the military, lacking strategic military or policy experience and established networks with strategic partners and allies, and a public perception of the loss of objective civilian control, makes for a concerning selection for the defense secretary position.
Ethan Brown is the Senior Fellow for National Security Studies and former inaugural Military Fellow of the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress.
Crime, Punishment, and Russia’s Failed Liberalization
by Joshua C. Huminski
(Originally published by the Diplomatic Courier on 23 November)
In Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” the Joker, masterfully played by the late Heath Ledger, opines that “This town [Gotham] deserves a better class of criminal. And I'm gonna give it to them.” The line, one among many exceptional ones throughout the film, raises the question: Can you judge a society and its progress by the quality or experiences of its criminals? Federico Varese, a Professor of Sociology at Sciences Po and researcher at the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics (CEE), believes that you can, and explores Russia’s post–Soviet history in “Russia in Four Criminals.”
It is a comparably slim volume that explores the lives of four Russian criminals to discern how Russian society has evolved since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Varese uses the lives of these four individuals to tell the story of Russia’s incomplete and failed liberalization. It is an interesting lens through which to view the country’s evolution. Rather than focus on the great and grand, he focuses on the dark underbelly of Russian society.
Varese writes with a certain panache. He brings the stories of the four titular criminals to life, writing them as an elevated form of the pulp thriller interspersed with his own encounters with some of the subjects and his own time in Russia. The brevity of these biographies makes for a swift read, but nearly every page leaves the reader wanting to know more and asking additional questions. Varese’s drive to answer his own queries leaves much unanswered.
For the full review, click here.
Joshua C. Huminski is the Senior Vice President for National Security and Intelligence Programs at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress.