U.S. turns to other routes to supply Afghan war as relations with Pakistan fray

Washington Post

By Craig Whitlock, Published: July 3

The U.S. military is rapidly expanding its aerial and Central Asian supply routes to the war in Afghanistan, fearing that Pakistan could cut off the main means of providing American and NATO forces with fuel, food and equipment.
Although Pakistan has not explicitly threatened to sever the supply lines, Pentagon officials said they are concerned the routes could be endangered by the deterioration of U.S.-Pakistan relations, partly fed by ill willfrom the cross-border raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Memories are fresh of Pakistan’s temporary closure of a major crossing into Afghanistan in September, resulting in a logjam of hundreds of supply trucks and fuel tankers, dozens of which were destroyed in attacks by insurgents.
While reducing the shipment of cargo through Pakistan would address a strategic weakness that U.S. military officials have long considered an Achilles’ heel, shifting supply lines elsewhere would substantially increase the cost of the war and make the United States more dependent on authoritarian countries in Central Asia.
A senior U.S. defense official said the military wants to keep using Pakistan, which offers the most direct and the cheapest routes to Afghanistan. But the Pentagon also wants the ability to bypass the country if necessary.
With landlocked Afghanistan lacking seaports, and hostile Iran blocking access from the west, Pentagon logisticians have limited alternatives.
“It’s either Central Asia or Pakistan — those are the two choices. We’d like to have both,” the defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid alienating Pakistan. “We’d like to have a balance between them, and not be dependent on either one, but always have the possibility of switching.”
U.S. military officials said they have emergency backup plans in case the Pakistan routes became unavailable.
“We will be on time, all the time,” said Vice Adm. Mark D. Harnitchek, deputy commander of the U.S. Transportation Command, which oversees the movement of supplies and equipment.
In such an event, however, the military would have to deliver the bulk of its cargo by air, a method that might not be sustainable; it costs up to 10 times as much as shipping via Pakistan.
“We’d have to be a little bit more mindful of what we put in the pipe,” Harnitchek said.
The Defense Department is already boosting the amount of cargo it sends to Afghanistan by air. To save on costs, the military is shipping as many of those supplies as possible to seaports in the Persian Gulf before loading them on planes bound for the war zone.
As recently as 2009, the U.S. military moved 90 percent of its surface cargo through Pakistan, arriving by ship at the port in Karachi and then snaking through mountain passes, deserts and remote tribal areas before crossing the border into Afghanistan. The Pakistan supply lines are served entirely by contractors instead of U.S. military convoys and are vulnerable to bandits, insurgents and natural disasters.
Today, almost 40 percent of surface cargo arrives in Afghanistan from the north, along a patchwork of Central Asian rail and road routes that the Pentagon calls the Northern Distribution Network. Military planners said they are pushing to raise the northern network’s share to as much as 75 percent by the end of this year.
Obama administration officials said they are negotiating expanded agreements with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and other countries that would allow for the delivery of additional supplies to the Afghan war zone. Washington also wants permission to withdraw vehicles and other equipment from Afghanistan as the U.S. military prepares to pull out one-third of its forces by September 2012.
By shifting the burden to Central Asia, however, the U.S. military has become increasingly reliant on authoritarian countries, prompting criticism from human rights groups that the Obama administration is cozying up to dictators.
For instance, more than one-third of the northern-route cargo passes through tiny Azerbaijan, a country saddled by “pervasive corruption,” according to the State Department’s annual human rights report. U.S. defense officials also say the northern supply lines would not be possible without the cooperation of Russia. One new route runs through Siberia.
The biggest potential choke point, however, lies in Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic that borders northern Afghanistan. It previously had kicked the U.S. military out of the country after Washington complained about the killing of hundreds of protesters in 2005.
But as the United States has deepened its involvement in Afghanistan, relations with Uzbekistan have warmed up again. Today, more than 80 percent of supplies shipped along the Northern Distribution Network pass through the country.
Expanded supply lines
The northern routes were developed in the waning days of the George W. Bush administration. Since then, the U.S. government has expanded the network into a spiderweb of supply lines.
Some start at Baltic seaports and run through Russia and Central Asia by rail. Another key line picks up traffic on the Black Sea and funnels it through the Caucasus region. One winding truck route begins at a U.S. Army depot at Germersheim, Germany, and ends, an average of 60 days later, at Bagram air base in Afghanistan. As with the Pakistan routes, the deliveries are all made by contractors.
“If you look at what we’ve done there in the last two years, we look at it more or less as a logistics miracle,” said Alan F. Estevez, the Pentagon’s principal deputy assistant secretary for logistics.
There are two big limitations, however, on what the Pentagon can ship through Central Asia. First, supplies are generally restricted to food, water and construction material; ammunition, weapons and other “lethal” cargo are prohibited.
Also, the routes are strictly one-way. Nothing can be shipped back out of the war zone.
U.S. officials said they are trying to negotiate deals with several countries to remove those restrictions. That will be crucial as the United States withdraws 33,000 troops from Afghanistan over the next 15 months, military leaders said.
Perhaps the most vital section in the northern network is a rail line that crosses south through Uzbekistan and over the Amu Darya river to reach Hairaton, Afghanistan. About five out of every six cargo containers travel this route.
“In reality, Uzbekistan is really at the center of all these routes,” said Alexander Cooley, a Barnard College professor and an expert on U.S. military relations in Central Asia. “They’re certainly in the catbird seat. And they know it.”
The final leg of the Uzbek rail line, from the city of Karshi to the Afghan border, underscores how the U.S. military has been forced to rely on rickety routes to sustain its troops.
In November 2009, U.S. embassy officials in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, were warned by a confidential source that the tracks were brittle and at risk of fracturing if trains carried more than half their usual loads. On top of that, the Soviet-era locomotives carrying U.S. cargo were not designed to cross steep mountains; engineers had to apply the brakes almost constantly as they moved downhill.
“By the time the trains have descended from the mountains, the wheels are glowing red hot,” the embassy reported in a diplomatic cable. The source, an engineer, said he was “appalled by how long it takes to transport anything by rail in Uzbekistan” and that he refused to take the train for fear of a crash.
The cable, titled “Uzbek Rail: Red Hot Wheels to Afghanistan” and obtained by the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks, concluded that “a train wreck is possible in the literal sense.”
U.S. military officials said they knew of no accidents or safety problems on the 200-mile rail segment. In February, Uzbekistan announced it had obtained a $218 million loan from Japan to upgrade the line to the Afghan border.
Human rights concerns
Uzbekistan has been assailed by human rights groups for repression under President Islam Karimov, who has ruled the country since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Freedom House, a Washington-based advocacy group, ranks it as one of the nine worst countries in the world for civil liberties and political rights.
From 2001 to 2005, the U.S. military relied on an Uzbek air base as a hub for combat and supply missions to Afghanistan. U.S. forces were evicted from the base after Washington pressured Karimov to allow an international probe into the deaths of hundreds of anti-government protesters in the province of Andijan.
Since 2008, however, Washington has steadily worked to repair relations. A stream of U.S. military leaders and diplomats has visited Tashkent, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in December and Denis McDonough, the deputy national security adviser, in late May. Uzbekistan, in turn, has reopened its railroads, highways and airspace for U.S. cargo.
Thomas M. Sanderson, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the Obama administration has continued to raise human rights concerns with Uzbekistan but that the Afghan supply routes usually take precedence.
“There is no doubt about it. We are there for one primary reason, and that is to enable our operations in Afghanistan,” said Sanderson, who has studied the Northern Distribution Network.
State Department officials said they do not hesitate to press Uzbekistan to improve its human rights record. When Clinton visited Tashkent, they noted, she made a point of meeting activists and calling for the release of jailed journalists.
“We’ve made a real effort to try to engage Uzbekistan on human rights and in trafficking persons, and in some cases there’s been some progress,” said Robert O. Blake, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia. “This is something that’s in their own interest to do, to allow greater freedom of religion and greater freedom of expression.”
Diplomatic cables, however, show Uzbek officials have not hesitated to demand U.S. restraint on human rights in exchange for cooperation on the supply routes.
In March 2009, shortly after the State Department gave an award to an Uzbek human rights activist, Foreign Minister Vladi­mir Norov made an “implicit threat” to suspend deliveries to Afghanistan, according to a cable signed by Richard B. Norland, the U.S. ambassador in Tashkent at the time.
An angry Karimov also complained to Norland personally.
“Put yourself in my place,” Karimov told the ambassador, according to the cable. “Would you trust me if I had done this?”
In that cable and others to Washington, Norland counseled the Obama administration to check its public criticism of Karimov to maintain the viability of the supply lines. In advance of a visit to Tashkent by a senior State Department official, Norland advised using “private, but frank diplomacy” to cajole Uzbekistan rather than “more openly coercive measures.”
“Uzbek pride often gets the better of rationality and officials here will think nothing of cutting off their nose to spite their face,” Norland added in a July 2009 cable.

George W. Obama and the OLC

Saturday, June 18, 2011

JB


Charlie Savage writes that President Obama took the unusual step of overruling the head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and the top counsel for the Defense Department in order to conclude that the U.S.'s participation in the war in Libya did not amount to "hostilities or "imminent hostilities." This meant that the 60 day clock in the War Powers Resolution did not continue to run. Hence, Obama was able to conclude that he was not in violation of the WPR's 60 day requirement because "hostilities" or "imminent hostilities" had not occurred since the beginning of April.
But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of “hostilities.” Under that view, Mr. Obama needed no permission from Congress to continue the mission unchanged.

Presidents have the legal authority to override the legal conclusions of the Office of Legal Counsel and to act in a manner that is contrary to its advice, but it is extraordinarily rare for that to happen. Under normal circumstances, the office’s interpretation of the law is legally binding on the executive branch.
It is instructive to compare President Obama's actions with those of his predecessor, George W. Bush, who sought legal justification for his decision to engage in waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques," which constituted torture. Bush wanted above all to be able to deny that he was violating the anti-torture statute and other laws and treaties. So he found a small group of lawyers in the OLC, headed by John Yoo, and asked for their opinions. This short-circuited the usual process through which the OLC collected views from various agencies and then used them to develop legal opinions for the executive branch. That is, Bush (assisted by his Vice-President, Dick Cheney) arranged matters so that decisions about waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques would be in the hands of lawyers he knew would tell him yes; the normal process of collating opinions was short-circuited and other lawyers were effectively frozen out.

Obama's practice is different, but it has disturbing similarities. Normally, Obama would have asked the OLC for its opinion, and as noted above, the OLC would have polled legal expertise in various agencies, consulted its precedents, had long discussions, and then come up with a scholarly opinion that is normally binding on the executive branch. Instead, Obama routed around the OLC, asking for opinions from various lawyers, including the White House Counsel and the Attorney-Advisor for the State Department. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that from the outset Obama was prospecting for opinions that would tell him that his actions were legal, and once he found them, he felt comfortable in rejecting the opinion of the OLC.

Obama's strategy, like Bush's, also short circuits the normal process of seeking opinions from the OLC; it simply does so in a different way.

By bypassing a careful set of procedures designed to produce careful legal opinions, George W. Bush was able to say that he was following the OLC, or at least a rump of the OLC. But he was effectively undermining the OLC's function as an honest broker of executive branch opinions. Obama also bypassed this same careful set of procedures by canvassing various lawyers until he found opinions he liked better than the OLC's. If one is disturbed by Bush's misuse of the process for vetting legal questions, one should be equally disturbed by Obama's irregular procedures.

Lest I be misunderstood, let me make clear that there is no single way that the Executive Branch has to be organized. The Constitution does not speak to it. George Washington consulted various cabinet members about the constitutionality of the First Bank of the United States, finally settling on the views of his Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton. But this was early in the nation's history, and long before the creation of the Justice Department following the Civil War and the creation of the OLC itself in the twentieth century.

Moreover, the practice of having the OLC serve as the canvasser of legal opinions from various parts of the executive branch, and the custom of treating the OLC's opinions-- reached after ample deliberation--as binding on the executive branch is not constitutionally required. The President may disregard the OLC without violating the Constitution.

However, there are good reasons why these practices and customs were implemented. They were designed to prevent Presidents from treating their lawyers like so many guests at a cocktail party that they can causally survey in order to pick out their friends. These procedures exist because there is almost always a prominent and skillful lawyer in the Administration who will tell the President pretty much what he wants to hear.

The OLC's procedures are designed to prevent precisely this sort of cherry picking. If the President can simply canvas the opinions of enough such lawyers he is not restrained very much by the law. Indeed, it is particularly relevant here that one of the lawyers who supported the President's position on Libya is the White House Counsel. The White House Counsel's office, as it has developed over time, is much closer to the political arm of the President's operations, and much much less likely ever to cross the President. White House Counsels who do not facilitate the President's political goals do not remain long as White House Counsels. Not surprisingly, the White House Counsel's office does not have the same academic or judicious traditions of the OLC. Whether or not one thinks that the OLC is likely to say yes to the President simply because it sits in the Justice Department, the White House Counsel's office is likely to be ten times more flexible.

The fact that Obama is a former professor of constitutional law does not justify his scuttling practices that are designed, over long periods of time, to improve legal deliberations and help ensure that presidents conform to the law. Former professors of constitutional law, like current ones, have been known to disagree among themselves about what the law requires; they have even been known to make mistakes and engage in serious misjudgments.

The fact that Obama may think he is smarter and more learned than George W. Bush also does not justify his practice. The next President, or the one after that, may think themselves smarter than Obama. They will certainly find a group of able lawyers somewhere in their Administration to tell them so. Obama came into office promising to reform the abuses of the Bush Administration and its manipulation of the OLC. The best way to do that is not to create entirely new abuses of one's own.

President Obama Rejected DOJ and DOD Advice, and Sided with Harold Koh, on War Powers Resolution

LawFare
by Jack Goldsmith

Charlie Savage has the amazing story that President Obama “rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization.” The Acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Caroline Krass, and the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, Jeh Johnson, advised the President that military activities in Libya constituted “hostilities” under the War Powers Resolution and thus Section 5(b) of the WPR required him to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20. The President – himself a lawyer – rejected this advice and instead sided with the White House Counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department Legal Advisor, Harold Koh, who argued that the actions in Libya fell short of “hostilities” and thus did not implicate Section 5(b)’s termination provisions.

There are many things to say about this but here are a few quick reactions.

As Savage notes, the President has the authority under Article II to make legal determinations for the Executive branch. The process by which he reached this decision, however, was very unusual. The typical (and in my view best) process is for OLC to solicit the views of interested agencies and then offer its interpretation in a written opinion; then the President can, if he wishes, reject that considered OLC interpretation based on his independent judgment. This process has the virtue of placing the presumptive legal decision in the office – OLC – that is institutionally best suited to provide relatively detached legal advice to the President as well as the advice most consonant with Executive branch precedents and traditions. (I am not naïve about how detached OLC is, nor do I think it should be entirely detached; my complex views on this issue are laid out in The Terror Presidency and are summarized on pp. 195-97 of this essay.) OLC is also the government’s institutional expert on interpretations of the WPR. And it has not, traditionally, taken a narrow view of the WPR.

In the Libya decision, however, the typical process was not followed. As Savage explains:

The administration followed an unusual process in developing its position. Traditionally, the Office of Legal Counsel solicits views from different agencies and then decides what the best interpretation of the law is. The attorney general or the president can overrule its views, but rarely do.

In this case, however, Ms. Krass was asked to submit the Office of Legal Counsel’s thoughts in a less formal way to the White House, along with the views of lawyers at other agencies. After several meetings and phone calls, the rival legal analyses were submitted to Mr. Obama, who is a constitutional lawyer, and he made the decision.

This is not a process designed to produce a sound legal decision. (In the NYT story, former OLC chief Walter Dellinger makes a similar point.) When the President effectively decides the legal question in the first instance based on the input of interested agencies, his legal judgment is inevitably skewed a great deal by wanting to uphold his policy. OLC (and any executive branch lawyer) faces this danger to some degree, but the danger is less pronounced when the initial decision is made in a relatively independent legal office in DOJ as compared to the Oval Office. And indeed in this instance, for reasons I explained here, the best reading of the law was clearly the one that OLC (and DOD) apparently gave the President.

It is interesting and unusual enough that President Obama, of all people, would take an aggressive view of his war authorities and interpret the WPR very narrowly. But the lawyers he relied on to reach this conclusion make the situation even more interesting and unusual. I discount the legal input of the White House Counsel; Bob Bauer is a smart man but neither he nor his office is expert in war powers or situated to offer thorough legal advice on the issue. Legal Advisor Harold Koh, by contrast, spent his entire academic career studying and writing about presidential war powers, including the WPR. Based on this academic record, one would not have expected Koh to push an unusually narrow interpretation of the WPR. Nor would one have expected him to have supported the original constitutional justification for unilateral presidential intervention in Libya. To get a flavor of what one might have expected, consider what Koh’s former colleague Bruce Ackerman said in support of his nomination to lead State-L:

This is the real importance of the Koh nomination. President Obama has selected one of the few lawyers who probed deeply into the constitutional implications of presidential unilateralism and how it might be controlled. Koh would be taking his position as legal adviser at one of the rare moments when it might be politically possible to consider a National Security Charter that aims to restore an effective system of checks and balances.

This is not how things have worked out. One wonders why. One possibility is that Koh has a client, the Secretary of State, who is committed to the Libya intervention, and he is serving his client faithfully. Another possibility is that Koh’s commitments to humanitarian intervention and the “responsibility to protect” outweigh his commitment to his academic vision of presidential war powers. I certainly do not believe that Koh’s academic views should control his advice and judgment during his government service. Nor do I think that his academic writings addressed the precise issue under the WPR that he is now advocating in the government. But for a quarter century before heading up State-L, Koh was the leading and most vocal academic critic of presidential unilateralism in war, and a tireless advocate for institutional cooperation between the political branches in war decisions. I am thus genuinely surprised, as many people are, by his current stance.

This episode makes me wonder how all of this is being taken by the U.S. military. It must be strange to many involved in Operation Odyssey Dawn to be told that not only are they not involved in “war,” they are not even involved in “hostilities.” A midshipman at the Naval Academy wrote to Tom Ricks to say, in light of the original unilateral resort to force in Libya, that he wondered whether the soldiers fighting in Libya “are breaking their oath to obey only legal orders.” I think this is a large overreaction to the initial use of force. And despite my views of the WPR here, I do not think that disobedience would be a proper reaction to the President’s decision under the WPR. The President gets to make the call and his decision is not so far out of bounds to warrant disobedience. But it cannot be pleasant for the men and women involved in this “kinetic military action” to know that the Defense Department General Counsel and the head of OLC think the intervention in Libya as currently executed is unlawful.

Update: Jack Balkin makes similar but more amplified points about the importance of process here.

White House Clarifies Position on Libya and the WPR: US Forces Not Engaged in “Hostilities”

LawFare
by Robert Chesney

Charlie Savage at the NY Times has just reported that the White House is today providing Congress with information on ongoing operations in Libya, including an explanation of the Administration’s position as to why the continuation of the operation beyond 60 days does not violate the War Powers Resolution. The core of the argument, as I understand it, is that current operations do not constitute “hostilities” within the particular meaning of that term as used in the WPR. Does that make sense? It at least has a strong foundation in the past practice of the executive branch under the WPR. Here is some of the relevant background:

The argument begins with the point that the 60-day clock is triggered by the circumstances identified in WPR section 4(a)(1): i.e., U.S. armed forces either are introduced into “hostilities” or into circumstances where “hostilities are imminent.” That being so, the clock ceases to apply when those predicate conditions cease to be satisfied (i.e., US armed forces no longer are in hostlities or in circumstances where hostlities are imminent. Obviously, then, much hinges on the best interpretation of the WPR’s use of the word “hostilities.”

Since the mid-70s, the executive branch on several occasions has weighed in on this issue, taking a fairly consistent view. Here are the highlights as I understand them (if readers feel I’ve misread these or left out something important, I’ll be glad to update):

1975 – The Ford Administration, in the person of the State Department’s Legal Advisor and the Defense Department General Counsel, wrote to Congress that “hostilities” refers to a situation in which U.S. forces are “actively engaged in exchanges of fire with opposing units.”

1980 – The Carter Administration’s Office of Legal Counsel adopts that same definition, and adds that exchanges of fire must be more than merely intermittent or sporadic. The idea is “full military engagement,” not deployments in which U.S. forces from time to time come under limited fire.

1983 – The Reagan Administration declines to treat the WPR as applicable to the deployment of Marines to Lebanon, even after the barracks bombing. A Senate Report insisted that at least after the bombing, the hostilities condition was satisfied, but the Reagan Administration responded that such violence was too episodic to count for WPR purposes.

1993 – The Clinton Administration, with troops on the ground in Somalia from time to time conducting strike operations, writes to Congress to assert that “intermittent military engagements,” in contrast to “sustained hostilities,” did not suffice to keep the clock running (though a report was filed after an initial strike). Some legislators object, but in any event the Clinton Administration did not withdraw after 60 days.

1995 – The Clinton Administration files separate WPR reports after specific strikes in Bosnia, but does not treat each strike as starting the clock. The underlying theory presumably was that the strikes were too intermittent to generate a sustained state of WPR hostilities.

From that perspective, it’s not hard to see how the Administration comes to the view that the current state of US involvement in Libya–i.e., no boots on the ground, no manned aircraft flying combat missions and thus putting pilots in harm’s way as a theoretical matter, UAVs conducting combat missions only sporadically and with seemingly low intensity (isolated strikes on specific vehicles, that sort of thing), and manned aircraft otherwise conducting only support missions like refeuling and jamming–taken as a whole fails to come within the scope of the WPR’s requirements.

That’s not to say it’s an unassailable argument. For one thing, some no doubt would not give as much weight to executive branch interpretations as would, well, the executive branch. And there is the complication of Admiral Stavridis, an American officer, in command of NATO forces from other countries that are engaged on a much more sustained basis in “exchanges of fire.” But as Rick Pildes says in Charlie’s story, it’s not likely in any event that courts are going to weigh in on the matter (As Jack points out below, the Kucinich suit is a non-starter). The question instead will remain largely in the political sphere, with today’s arguments by the executive branch at least benefitting from continuity with the interpretations offered by past administrations of both parties.

Anger ramps up in Congress over Obama’s legal defense of Libya operation

Washington Post

By David A. Fahrenthold and Peter Finn, Sunday, June 19, 4:37 AM

On Capitol Hill, legislators who disagree with President Obama’s legal defense of the military operation in Libya will have two options when they resume their session this week. They could try to cut off funding for the campaign, or they could formally register their disapproval that Obama did it without congressional say-so.

The first tactic has rarely worked in U.S. history.

And the second one hasn’t worked on Obama so far.

Unhappiness in Congress was magnified Saturday by a report that Obama ignored some of his legal counselors when he decided last week that the Libya campaign should not be counted as “hostilities.”

That decision allowed him to bypass the 1973 War Powers Resolution, a law that requires presidents to report to Congress on any ongoing military conflict within a limited period of time. After receiving the report, Congress then has to decide whether to authorize the action taken.

On Saturday, sources familiar with the deliberations said Obama had not overruled a formal opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel — because there wasn’t one. They can take months or a year to put together.

Instead, the sources said, advisers presented him with their opinions and he chose one that White House counsel and the State Department favored.

Still, many in Congress said they were not persuaded by Obama’s logic for avoiding a congressional debate over the three-month-old conflict.

“The president has had to go through legal contortions because he knows he faces a Congress that would not give him approval,” said Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio). He has proposed a resolution that would allow Congress to formally “disapprove” of the Libya operation. “This has to be stopped,” Turner said.

This week, the Libya debate will become a key test for House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who appears caught between his members and his own instincts. In the House, legislators from the ideological right and left have demanded a showdown with Obama. But Boehner has seemed wary of a confrontation. When members rallied around a bill to stop the campaign this month, he authored a resolution that gave Obama 14 more days to make his case.

Obama waited 12 days. And then, on Wednesday, he told Congress he didn’t need its permission.

“U.S. military operations [in Libya] are distinct from the kind of ‘hostilities’ contemplated by” the War Powers Resolution, a White House report said.

The logic was that U.S. forces are mainly limited to supply, logistics and intelligence missions — although American drones continue to attack Libyan targets.

On Saturday, sources said Obama had solicited opinions on the matter from the Pentagon, the State Department, White House counsel and the Office of Legal Counsel, which is set up to provide independent legal analysis.

Advisers from the Pentagon and the Office of Legal Counsel, the sources said, believed that the drone strikes required that the Libya operation be described as “hostilities.” Advisers from the State Department and the White House believed they should not.

Obama, trained as a constitutional lawyer, sided against the inclinations of the Pentagon and the Office of Legal Counsel. One source emphasized this was not an illegal, or even very extraordinary, outcome.

Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman, said that “there was a full airing of views within the administration and a robust process that led the president to his view.”

On Saturday, a New York Times report describing his decision making about Libya and the War Powers act further inflamed Obama’s critics on Capitol Hill. Rep. Thomas J. Rooney (R-Fla.) said the report had convinced him that Congress ought to cut off funds for the operation.

“Today, yes, I would” support that, Rooney said. He said he was troubled by the idea that “people inside the Pentagon . . . are saying one thing but then the administration is saying something different.”

But what is Congress prepared to do about it?

On Saturday, a spokesman for Boehner said the New York Times report “reinforces the need for the White House to answer the questions that Congress and the American people have about our involvement in Libya.”

But spokesman Michael Steel was noncommittal about Boehner’s next move. “That’s something we’ll discuss” with GOP legislators, he said.

The two party leaders in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) were not available for comment on Libya on Saturday.

One option would be to hold a vote to approve or disapprove of the Libyan campaign, even if Obama has said Congress’s approval isn’t necessary.

Last week, two of Obama’s strongest allies on Libya — Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) — said they wanted such a vote. Durbin last week teamed with Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) and introduced a resolution that would support the president’s Libyan actions but would set an end date of Dec. 30 and bar the introduction of U.S. ground troops, something Obama has said repeatedly he does not plan to do.

Another would be to seek to cut off funding for the operation. Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) said Saturday that he would introduce such a measure this week, when the House plans to consider a bill to fund the Pentagon.

That has happened before. In 1973, for instance, after a cease-fire had been agreed to in Vietnam, Congress voted to prohibit money being used to reintroduce troops into Southeast Asia.

In many cases, Congress has been leery about withdrawing money for troops already in harm’s way. That might still be true here, even though U.S. forces are not on the ground in Libya and face relatively little danger in the air.



Staff writers Scott Wilson, Jerry Markon, Felicia Sonmez, Walter Pincus and Ylan Q. Mui and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

On Obama legal stance on Libya

The Libya Debate Heats Up
http://blogs.cfr.org/lindsay/2011/06/14/the-libya-debate-heats-up/

Obama Answers Boehner on Libya
http://blogs.cfr.org/lindsay/2011/06/15/obama-answers-boehner-on-libya/

White House answer on Libya
http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/204673/united-states-activities-in-libya-6-15-11.pdf

2 Top Lawyers Lost to Obama in Libya War Policy Debate

NYtimes
June 17, 2011
By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.

Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.” Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20.

But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of “hostilities.” Under that view, Mr. Obama needed no permission from Congress to continue the mission unchanged.

Presidents have the legal authority to override the legal conclusions of the Office of Legal Counsel and to act in a manner that is contrary to its advice, but it is extraordinarily rare for that to happen. Under normal circumstances, the office’s interpretation of the law is legally binding on the executive branch.

A White House spokesman, Eric Schultz, said there had been “a full airing of views within the administration and a robust process” that led Mr. Obama to his view that the Libya campaign was not covered by a provision of the War Powers Resolution that requires presidents to halt unauthorized hostilities after 60 days.

“It should come as no surprise that there would be some disagreements, even within an administration, regarding the application of a statute that is nearly 40 years old to a unique and evolving conflict,” Mr. Schultz said. “Those disagreements are ordinary and healthy.”

Still, the disclosure that key figures on the administration’s legal team disagreed with Mr. Obama’s legal view could fuel restiveness in Congress, where lawmakers from both parties this week strongly criticized the White House’s contention that the president could continue the Libya campaign without their authorization because the campaign was not “hostilities.”

The White House unveiled its interpretation of the War Powers Resolution in a package about Libya it sent to Congress late Wednesday. On Thursday, the House speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, demanded to know whether the Office of Legal Counsel had agreed.

“The administration gave its opinion on the War Powers Resolution, but it didn’t answer the questions in my letter as to whether the Office of Legal Counsel agrees with them,” he said. “The White House says there are no hostilities taking place. Yet we’ve got drone attacks under way. We’re spending $10 million a day. We’re part of an effort to drop bombs on Qaddafi’s compounds. It just doesn’t pass the straight-face test, in my view, that we’re not in the midst of hostilities.”

A sticking point for some skeptics was whether any mission that included firing missiles from drone aircraft could be portrayed as not amounting to hostilities.

As the May 20 deadline approached, Mr. Johnson advocated stopping the drone strikes as a way to bolster the view that the remaining activities in support of NATO allies were not subject to the deadline, officials said. But Mr. Obama ultimately decided that there was no legal requirement to change anything about the military mission.

The administration followed an unusual process in developing its position. Traditionally, the Office of Legal Counsel solicits views from different agencies and then decides what the best interpretation of the law is. The attorney general or the president can overrule its views, but rarely do.

In this case, however, Ms. Krass was asked to submit the Office of Legal Counsel’s thoughts in a less formal way to the White House, along with the views of lawyers at other agencies. After several meetings and phone calls, the rival legal analyses were submitted to Mr. Obama, who is a constitutional lawyer, and he made the decision.

A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about the internal deliberations, said the process was “legitimate” because “everyone knew at the end of the day this was a decision the president had to make” and the competing views were given a full airing before Mr. Obama.

The theory Mr. Obama embraced holds that American forces have not been in “hostilities” as envisioned by the War Powers Resolution at least since early April, when NATO took over the responsibility for the no-fly zone and the United States shifted to a supporting role providing refueling assistance and surveillance — although remotely piloted American drones are still periodically firing missiles.

The administration has also emphasized that there are no troops on the ground, that Libyan forces are unable to fire at them meaningfully and that the military mission is constrained from escalating by a United Nations Security Council resolution.

That position has attracted criticism. Jack L. Goldsmith, who led the Office of Legal Counsel during the Bush administration, has written that the administration’s interpretation is “aggressive” and unpersuasive, although he also acknowledged that there was no clear answer and little chance of a definitive court ruling, so the reaction of Congress would resolve it.

Walter Dellinger, who led the Office of Legal Counsel during the Clinton administration, said that while “this is not an easy question,” Mr. Obama’s position was “both defensible and consistent with the position of previous administrations.” Still, he criticized the administration’s decision-making process.

“Decisions about the lawfulness of major presidential actions should be made by the Department of Justice, and within the department by the Office of Legal Counsel, after consultation with affected agencies,” he said. “The president always has the power of final decision.”

Other high-level Justice lawyers were also involved in the deliberations, and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. supported Ms. Krass’s view, officials said.

Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said, “Our views were heard, as were other views, and the president then made the decision as was appropriate for him to do.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 17, 2011


An earlier version of this article misspelled in one reference the surname of the Pentagon general counsel. He is Jeh C. Johnson, not Johnsen.

White House Defends Continuing U.S. Role in Libya Operation

NYtimes
June 15, 2011
By CHARLIE SAVAGE and MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — The White House, pushing hard against criticism in Congress over the deepening air war in Libya, asserted Wednesday that President Obama had the authority to continue the military campaign without Congressional approval because American involvement fell short of full-blown hostilities.

In a 38-page report sent to lawmakers describing and defending the NATO-led operation, the White House said the mission was prying loose Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s grip on power.

In contending that the limited American role did not oblige the administration to ask for authorization under the War Powers Resolution, the report asserted that “U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve U.S. ground troops.” Still, the White House acknowledged, the operation has cost the Pentagon $716 million in its first two months and will have cost $1.1 billion by September at the current scale of operations.

The report came one day after the House Speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, had sent a letter to Mr. Obama warning him that he appeared to be out of time under the Vietnam-era law that says presidents must terminate a mission 60 or 90 days after notifying Congress that troops have been deployed into hostilities, unless lawmakers authorize the operation to continue.

Mr. Boehner had demanded that Mr. Obama explain his legal justification for passing the deadline. On Wednesday, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner, said he was still reviewing the documents, adding that “the creative arguments made by the White House raise a number of questions that must be further explored.”

The escalating confrontation with Congress reflects the radically altered political landscape in Washington: a Democratic president asserting sweeping executive powers to deploy American forces overseas, while Republicans call for stricter oversight and voice fears about executive-branch power getting the United States bogged down in a foreign war.

“We are acting lawfully,” said Harold H. Koh, the State Department legal adviser, who expanded on the administration’s reasoning in a joint interview with the White House counsel, Robert Bauer.

The two senior administration lawyers contended that American forces had not been in “hostilities” at least since early April, when NATO took over the responsibility for the no-fly zone and the United States shifted to primarily a supporting role — providing refueling and surveillance to allied warplanes, although remotely piloted drones operated by the United States periodically fire missiles, too.

They argued that United States forces are at little risk because there are no troops on the ground and Libyan forces are unable to exchange fire with them meaningfully. And they said the military mission was constrained by a United Nations Security Council resolution, which authorized air power for the purpose of defending civilians.

“We are not saying the president can take the country into war on his own,” said Mr. Koh, a former Yale Law School dean and outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s expansive theories of executive power. “We are not saying the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional or should be scrapped or that we can refuse to consult Congress. We are saying the limited nature of this particular mission is not the kind of ‘hostilities’ envisioned by the War Powers Resolution.”

Jack L. Goldsmith, who led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the Bush administration, said the Obama theory would set a precedent expanding future presidents’ unauthorized war-making powers, especially given the rise of remote-controlled combat technology.

“The administration’s theory implies that the president can wage war with drones and all manner of offshore missiles without having to bother with the War Powers Resolution’s time limits,” Mr. Goldsmith said.

It remains to be seen whether majorities in Congress will acquiesce to the administration’s argument, defusing the confrontation, or if the theory will fuel greater criticism. Either way, because the statute does not define hostilities and the Supreme Court has never ruled on the issue, the debate is likely to be resolved politically, said Richard H. Pildes, a New York University law professor.

Also on Wednesday, 10 lawmakers — led by Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, and Representative Walter B. Jones, Republican of North Carolina — filed a lawsuit asking a judge to order Mr. Obama to pull out of the Libya operation because Congress did not authorize it. That lawsuit faces steep challenges, however, because courts in the past have dismissed similar cases on technical grounds.

The administration had earlier argued that Mr. Obama could initiate the intervention on his own authority as commander in chief because its anticipated nature, scope and duration fell short of a “war” in the constitutional sense. Since then, the conflict has dragged on for longer than expected, and the goal of the NATO allies has all but openly shifted from merely defending civilians to forcing the Libyan leader, Colonel Qaddafi, from power. But Mr. Koh and Mr. Bauer said that while regime change in Libya might be a diplomatic goal, the military’s mission was separate and remained limited to protecting civilians.

While many presidents have challenged the constitutionality of other aspects of the War Powers Resolution — which Congress enacted over President Richard M. Nixon’s veto — no administration has declared that the section imposing the 60-day clock is unconstitutional, and in 1980, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that it was within Congress’s power to enact such a limit.

Mr. Bauer and Mr. Koh said that the 1980 memorandum remained in force, but that their legal argument was not invoking any constitutional challenge to bolster their interpretation of hostilities.

It was not clear whether the Justice Department had endorsed the White House’s interpretation of hostilities. Mr. Bauer declined to say whether it had signed off on the theory, saying he would not discuss interagency deliberations. In his letter on Tuesday, Mr. Boehner demanded to know whether there was internal dissent about the administration’s legal stance.

Mr. Koh noted that there had been disputes about whether the 60-day clock of the War Powers Resolution (a deadline that can be extended for 30 days under some circumstances) applied to deployments in which — unlike in Libya — there were troops on the ground and American casualties.

Still, such previous cases involved peacekeeping missions in which the United States had been invited in, and there were only infrequent outbreaks of violence — as in Lebanon, Somalia and Bosnia. The Libyan operation, by contrast, is an offensive mission involving sustained bombardments of a government’s forces.

Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting.

Resets and Reruns

Moscow Times
06 June 2011
By Richard Lourie
U.S.-Russian relations took a complex turn in late May.

On May 26, the U.S. State Department issued a statement declaring the Caucasus Emirate, a group led by Doku Umarov, a terrorist organization. “We stand in solidarity with the Russian people,” it said. Not only that, the State Department put its money where its mouth is, offering a reward of up to $5 million for actionable information about Umarov’s whereabouts.

It might seem a bit odd that the United States is offering a reward for the capture of a militant in Russia, but Umarov himself has declared the United States an enemy, along with Russia, Israel and Britain. The State Department statement, which also included a physical description of Umarov and e-mail addresses to contact, was no doubt welcomed by the Kremlin, which is often criticized for its brutality in combating Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus.

A more important development concerned the conflict over NATO’s plan to place a missile shield over Europe. President Dmitry Medvedev has stressed that Russia could only participate in this venture as an “equal partner.” The United States wants NATO and Russia to establish separate but coordinated systems. That’s not enough for Russia, but as one senior European military official put it, “Realistically, the controls will be held by an American general in a NATO hat somewhere in Europe.”

On May 20, Russia’s top generals made what Time magazine called “a startling admission of weakness.” In their opinion, by 2015 the NATO missile defense system would neutralize both Russia’s ICBMs and its submarine-based ballistic missiles. That could be devastating for Russia because, as defense analyst Ruslan Pukhov points out, for “relatively little expense, Russia’s nuclear forces support the country’s status as a great power, provide a military deterrent to other major powers and enable it to maintain moderately sized conventional forces.”

But Pukhov also demonstrates that the generals are wrong about the 2015 date — or were just making noises as part of the bargaining process. Russia’s nuclear arsenal will not be significantly stymied by the system NATO wants to put in place. But once in place, that system could provide an excellent base for a more elaborate system that could indeed neutralize Russia as a nuclear power. Since Russia has no leverage over the United States and NATO, its only choice would be to upgrade its own heavy, ground-based multistage missiles. In other words, Russia and the United States, without in the least meaning to, may be backing into a new arms race.

And so the leaked nomination in late May of U.S. President Barack Obama’s top Russian adviser, Michael McFaul, to be the next ambassador to Russia was probably more than a matter of good timing. The Russians will be pleased to see the president’s own man in Moscow, a sign of the importance he ascribes to the relationship. McFaul, author of the “reset” policy, will provide the right blend of principles and practicality to keep the new relationship on track.

McFaul’s writings are quite critical of Putin, contending that any stability and economic progress in Russia came despite his authoritarian model. McFaul’s mandate may be to influence the Russian leadership to shift from the Putin model to the one identified with Medvedev. Obama, 49, McFaul, 47, and Medvedev, 45, are of the same generation, whereas Putin, 59, seemed more connected to an older time of suspicion and hostile competition, a time that could all too easily make a comeback. The stakes just got higher.

Richard Lourie is author of “The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin” and “Sakharov: A Biography.”

On his last trip abroad, Gates to argue that tighter budgets won’t cut US role in Asia

By Associated Press,

WASHINGTON — On his final overseas trip as secretary of defense, Robert Gates will make the case to a gathering of Asian defense chiefs in Singapore that expected budget-slashing in Washington will not weaken America’s commitment to Asia.

Gates will be in Singapore, after a stopover Tuesday in Hawaii, to attend the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s most prominent security conference. Its agenda includes discussion about the challenge of Afghanistan, the implications of China’s military buildup and the dangers of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

The backdrop to all of that is the contrasting financial condition of the two biggest regional powers — China, with its roaring economic engine feeding a major military expansion, and the United States, mired in mounting debt.

Gates is scheduled to quit his Pentagon post on June 30, a little more than 4½ years after he entered as the successor to Donald H. Rumsfeld. He started at a time of enormous public anxiety about Iraq, where the war was going badly. Many in Congress were calling for an immediate troop withdrawal, but there was relatively little worry about Afghanistan.

He is finishing up his tenure with a far more stable — but still not peaceful — Iraq, and with congressional focus turned almost entirely on the war in Afghanistan, one that is costing much more in blood and treasure than when Gates became Pentagon chief. There were 24,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan when he began his tenure — just one-quarter of today’s total — and the once-defeated Taliban was just beginning its comeback.

He will leave it to his designated successor, Leon Panetta, to oversee what President Barack Obama has promised will be a drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan beginning in July. Decisions on the pace of that drawdown are expected shortly after Gates returns from his round-the-world trip. The last stop is in Brussels for a NATO meeting June 8-9.

Asia figures prominently in the Pentagon’s strategic planning, given China’s rise and its anger over U.S. support to Taiwan, and uncertainty about the impact of U.S. budget constraints on the military’s ability to preserve its influence in the region.

In a series of speeches leading up to the Singapore visit, Gates emphasized America’s staying power.

In a commencement address at University of Notre Dame on May 22, Gates argued that whatever budget cutting is necessary to put the country’s woeful finances in order, it must not undermine the military’s global reach.

“Beyond the current wars, our military credibility, commitment and presence are required to sustain alliances, to protect trade routes and energy supplies, and to deter would-be adversaries from making the kind of miscalculations that so often lead to war,” he said.

“All of these things happen mostly out of sight and out of mind to the average American, and thus are taken for granted. But they all depend on a properly armed, trained and funded American military, which cannot be taken for granted,” he added.

A few days later, in an address at the American Enterprise Institute, Gates said the United States faces a budget predicament that could turn into a crisis “of credit, of confidence, of our position in the world — if not addressed soon.”

In that speech he made clear that military modernization must focus on the kinds of weaponry and capability that will be needed to keep a long-term edge on China: a next-generation fighter aircraft, new aerial refueling planes to ensure long-range strike capability and a replacement fleet of nuclear-armed submarines to deter other nuclear powers like China.

“I know that after a decade of conflict, the American people are tired of war,” Gates said. “But there is no doubt in my mind that the continued strength and global reach of the American military will remain the greatest deterrent against aggression and the most effective means of preserving peace in the 21st century, as it was in the 20th.”

The Pentagon is undertaking a review of how its forces are aligned in Asia and how it can forge stronger partnerships with some Asian and Pacific nations. For decades the U.S. military presence in Asia has been centered on Japan and South Korea, although the U.S. also has defense treaties with Thailand and the Philippines.

Gates has advocated a strengthening of U.S. defense relations with Southeast Asian countries — a subject likely to arise during his Singapore visit.

At last year’s Shangri-La conference, North Korea was a dominant topic, two months after the sinking of a South Korean warship that killed 46 South Korean sailors.

At that conference, Gates joined South Korea in trying to marshal world support for the conclusion that North Korea was to blame and should be held to account. An international investigation concluded that North Korea blew up the warship Cheonan with a torpedo — an accusation the North denies and China refused to endorse.

As the North’s largest patron, China agrees with the U.S. and much of the rest of the world that Pyongyang should not have nuclear weapons, but it has been unable to compel the North to disarm. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il visited China last week, saying upon his return home that ties with Beijing are “sealed in blood.”

North-South tensions have eased lately, and the North is not expected to be as big a topic in Singapore as it was last year.

___

Robert Burns can be reached at http://twitter.com/robertburnsAP

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Obama nominates Army general Dempsey to lead Joint Chiefs of Staff

By Craig Whitlock and Nia-Malika Henderson,

President Obama nominated Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and promoted two other senior military leaders Monday, completing an overhaul of his national security team in advance of the 2012 election.

Obama’s appointments will usher in a new leadership at the Pentagon, where for the first 21 / 2 years of his term he had kept most of the existing brass from his predecessor George W. Bush.

Dempsey, who served two war tours as a commander in Iraq, was not believed to be Obama’s first choice. For more than a year, the president had been leaning toward Marine Gen. James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, one of his most trusted military advisers. But Obama informed Cartwright on May 21 that he wouldn’t get the job because of opposition from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and the outgoing chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, who butted heads with Cartwright over strategy for the war in Afghanistan.

Speaking at the White House before a Memorial Day visit to Arlington National Cemetery to lay a wreath in honor of the nation’s war dead, Obama did not explain why he bypassed Cartwright. He showered the general with praise, saying he has “benefited enormously from [his] advice and counsel.”

In turning to Dempsey, Obama had to pull him out of a high-ranking position — Army chief of staff — that he had appointed him to just last month. Obama called Dempsey “one of our nation’s most respected and combat-tested generals.”

To fill the vacancy of Army chief of staff, Obama said he would appoint Gen. Ray Odierno, a four-star former commander in Iraq who has served for the past year as head of the Joint Forces Command, based in Norfolk. The Pentagon is closing the command as part of a broader money-saving restructuring plan.

Obama also named Adm. James “Sandy” Winnefeld Jr., head of the military’s Northern Command, to take over as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

All of the appointments are contingent upon Senate confirmation. If approved, Dempsey will take over Oct. 1 from Mullen, who is scheduled to retire four years after Bush named him to the job. Cartwright’s term as vice chairman will end in August.

Obama said Dempsey and Winnefeld would make “an extraordinary team” on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Between them they bring deep experience in virtually every domain,” he said. “Land, air, space, sea and cyber. Both of them have the respect of our troops on the front lines, our friends in Congress and allies and partners abroad.”

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the highest-ranking officer in the armed forces and the principal military adviser to the president.

Dempsey’s appointment comes one month after Obama nominated CIA Director Leon Panetta to move to the Pentagon to replace Gates as defense secretary. Gates, another Bush administration holdover, is scheduled to retire June 30.

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, is slated to succeed Panetta as CIA chief.

The new national security team is taking shape as Obama faces pivotal decisions in Afghanistan, where he has promised to begin withdrawing at least some troops in July amid waning public and congressional support for the conflict.

Obama’s war cabinet also must decide its role in quelling the violence in Libya, where a NATO-led campaign to protect civilians has lapsed into a drawn-out conflict with Libyan ruler Moammar Gaddafi. Yet more questions loom in Iraq, where the White House has an agreement with the Iraqi government to withdraw all U.S. forces by the end of the year. Some White House and Pentagon leaders would like to negotiate a new deal to allow at least some troops to remain longer.

At the same time, the new faces at the Pentagon will have to grapple with an expected freeze — or at least an abrupt slowdown — in the defense budget, which has roughly doubled over the past year to more than $550 billion, excluding the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Dempsey commanded the Army’s 1st Armored Division during the height of the Iraqi insurgency, overseeing 20,000 soldiers based in Baghdad. He also spent two years in charge of the development of Iraqi army and police forces that were supposed to take over the battle against insurgents.

Odierno also served several years in Iraq, including as commander of all U.S. forces in the country from September 2008 to September 2010.

Obama will need to name another member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the coming weeks to replace Adm. Gary Roughead, the head of the Navy, who is scheduled to retire in September. The other chiefs are Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James F. Amos.



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Obama's Europe visit: redefined ties and a touch of 'political Beatlemania'

The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

European leaders warmed to President Obama's emphasis on pragmatism and mutual values. Playing ping-pong and visiting Moneygall, Ireland, didn't hurt his popular image, either.


President Obama addressed both houses of Parliament in Britain on Wednesday, the US president so honored.
(Andy Rain/AP)
By Paul Wootton, Correspondent
posted May 30, 2011 at 10:00 am EDT

London
Europe always provides good photo opportunities, but the images of Barack Obama's recent visit were a publicity consultant's dream: the quaint Irish village of Moneygall, hanging out with the queen, high-fiving Prime Minister David Cameron after a game of ping-pong. The media circus lapped it up.

As did the Irish and Britons. Thou­sands of Dubliners turned out to welcome him, thrilled by his efforts to sound Irish and his recently discovered Moneygall roots. In Britain, politicians fawned over him, hoping that some of his charisma might rub off. At Westminster, as the houses of Parliament awaited Mr. Obama's historic address, member of Parliament Tessa Jowell tweeted that the atmosphere was like "political Beatlemania."

Well before he'd moved on to France for the Group of Eight summit, Obama's European tour had already been hailed a success.

But beyond the feel-good photography and the cheerful bonhomie, there was purpose and substance to Obama's trip as well, specifically the need to redefine America's relationship with Europe in a much-changed world. That meant making a renewed commitment to the allies of old, but it also meant outlining a new approach to American foreign affairs.

IN PICTURES: Obama visits Britain

He spelled out this new direction in his speech to Parliament, emphasizing a more consensual approach to policy and talking of proceeding with humility in the Middle East.

"That's not something you would have heard in the previous administration," says James Ellison, of the School of History at Queen Mary, University of London, who acknowledges that America's new multilateralism is a pragmatic response to recent global events. Libya, in particular, he suggests, demonstrates how and why US foreign policy is shifting.

"The Americans are suffering from a deficit just like the Europeans are," says Mr. Ellison. "They can't afford to overextend themselves. But they also want the Europeans to think about their defense budgets. The longer the war with Libya, the more they will be forced to think about them. What we're seeing is the Obama administration's intent to make sure that Europeans lift their weight with defense."

Clear pragmatism

America's shift in foreign policy is clearly pragmatic, given the lack of appetite at home for more conflict, but it also highlights the different values Obama has brought to the presidency. One line from his keynote address makes this clear: "Ultimately, freedom must be won by the people themselves, not imposed from without," he said. This emphasis on self-determination is a far cry from efforts in Iraq and Afghan­istan. As Ellison notes, Obama's Euro­pean visit has gone "a long way to extend America's history beyond Bush."

Xenia Dormandy, who served in the US government and now works for Chatham House, a British think tank, says the visit highlighted a marked change in tone. "Obama talks about mutual values and how they should guide our policy. The language of 'interests' has gone," she says. "The idea of supporting rather than leading change is a hugely different theme for the US."

Obama stressed these mutual values as he reaffirmed the "special relationship" between the United States and Britain. In the past, Obama has been criticized for being the least Anglophile of all US presidents. So the extent to which he affirmed the "special relationship," calling it not just special but "essential," was a striking feature of the visit.

It suggests a maturing of the relationship, says Stephanie Carvin, a lecturer in international relations at Royal Holloway, University of London. " 'Special' is an emotional word, but 'essential' makes the relationship sound practical," she says. "In the past there's been this worry that Obama is more interested in the Pacific, but I think this indicates that we don't have to be concerned about that anymore."

And if the British continue to fret about the state of this relationship, they should take heart from the knowledge that a strong bond between the two countries is important to the US, too, because "it's one less area of the world that the US has to worry about," says Ms. Carvin.

Beyond the rhetoric, Obama and Mr. Cameron announced there would be increased cooperation between the two nations in six key areas, including security, education, and cyberspace.

"There's a lot of work being done to bring the two countries closer strategically," says Ms. Dormandy. "This visit sets a new bar for the bilateral relationship away from the semantics, away from the superficiality of the idea of a special relationship, and away from the doubts over whether Obama likes Europe anymore. This takes it to a new level."

Legendary rapport with queen

And this time around, Obama seemed more genuinely engaged with Britain than before. Some of that is about personal relationships, of course. His rapport with the queen is fast gaining legendary status, and there was considerable camaraderie on display between Obama and Cameron, not least as they flipped burgers at a barbecue in honor of wounded military service personnel.

At the state banquet at Buck­ing­ham Palace, Obama also spoke of his gratitude for the support Britain had shown the US in the past. Such solidarity would be just as important in the future, he told Parliament the following day.

"Even as more nations take on the responsibilities of global leadership," he said, "our alliance will remain indispensable to the goal of a century that is more peaceful, more prosperous, and more just."

And despite the new sensitive approach to foreign affairs, he insisted that the US and Britain together had a key role to play in the world. "As millions are still denied their basic human rights, we are the nations most willing to stand up for the values of tolerance and self-determination that lead to peace and dignity."

IN PICTURES: Obama visits Britain

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Ambassador McFaul

Moscow Times
31 May 2011
By Konstantin Sonin
The New York Times reported Sunday that U.S. President Barack Obama would appoint his top adviser on Russia and Eurasia, Michael McFaul, as the new ambassador to Moscow. It is an interesting choice, indeed.

As a former Stanford University political science professor, McFaul would be the first U.S. ambassador to Russia in the past 30 years who was not a career diplomat. What’s more, he has been the most authoritative U.S. commentator on Russian events and trends for the last decade and has spent a great deal of time in Moscow, where he has cultivated a wide circle of acquaintances.

While attending a reception at the U.S. Embassy on the day of the U.S. presidential elections in 2008, half of my acquaintances said they were hoping for an Obama win. The reason was that McFaul, who they said was their close friend and colleague, would likely be retained as Obama’s top adviser to Russia. I only hope that McFaul won’t disappoint his Moscow acquaintances.

In academic circles, McFaul is part of a new wave of Russia specialists who came to prominence following the end of the Cold War. This generation of Russia experts — the most prominent of whom, in addition to McFaul, are Timothy Frye of Columbia University and Daniel Treisman of the University of California at Los Angeles — are different from their predecessors. In the past, such specialists were characterized by their particular bias in relation to their country of expertise. But it is impossible to say whether the members of this new generation are “for” or “against” Russia. It is simpler for Frye and Treisman to be neutral because their work is almost completely academic in nature.

It has been more difficult for McFaul to maintain neutrality because he regularly contributes articles to Foreign Affairs magazine and even his scholarly work is largely geared toward the general public in the United States, where, like in most countries, the leaders and citizens tend to view the world in black and white. But in his articles and books, McFaul has an uncanny ability to dig deeply into “insider” details while simultaneously maintaining the air of a dispassionate observer.

It is logical that McFaul is the architect of the Obama administration’s policy on Russia, which was best articulated two years ago when the U.S. president spoke before the graduating class of Moscow’s New Economic School. No wonder he has been called “no drama Obama.” The call for a reset in U.S.-Russian relations is completely devoid of needless drama or sensationalism. Washington explains its plans objectively and then lets Moscow choose its response from a menu of possible relationships.

If the Kremlin wants close cooperation, it can have it. If it wants another Cold War, it will get that as well. Unaccustomed to taking responsibility for its relations with the United States, Russia’s ruling elite was initially thrown off guard by Obama’s Moscow speech. But the record of the past two years indicates that it has regained its footing.

Relations with the United States have returned to normal, and that might be better than if they were pigeon-holed as simply “good” or “bad.”

Policy Adviser Tapped to Become U.S. Ambassador to Russia

May 29, 2011
By PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — President Obama has decided to send the architect of his so-called Russia reset policy to Moscow as the next United States ambassador there, seeking to further bolster an improved relationship as both countries head into a potentially volatile election season.

Mr. Obama plans to nominate Michael McFaul, his top White House adviser on Russia policy, for the post, according to administration officials who declined to be identified before the formal announcement. Mr. Obama told the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, of his choice during a meeting in France last week, officials said.

In selecting Mr. McFaul, Mr. Obama is breaking with recent tradition in Moscow, where all but one of eight American ambassadors over the last 30 years have been career diplomats. But in choosing someone from his own inner circle, Mr. Obama underscored his determination to keep Russian-American relations a centerpiece of his foreign policy after his early push to reset the relationship following years of growing tension.

“Mike, as the guy who really helped the president establish the reset, is the perfect person to go to Moscow to make sure there’s no lapse in momentum in the relationship,” one of the administration officials said.

Since Mr. Obama took office, the two countries have signed the New Start arms control treaty, finalized a civilian nuclear cooperation pact, agreed on tougher sanctions against Iran and greatly expanded the American supply route to Afghanistan through former Soviet territory. After meeting with Mr. Obama in France last week, Mr. Medvedev shifted his public stance on the crisis in Libya and agreed that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi “has lost his legitimacy” and “must leave.”

But the relationship is moving into a new and complex stage, particularly on efforts to forge cooperation on missile defense in Europe and to admit Russia into the World Trade Organization, goals that have eluded the two sides for many years. Moreover, some analysts have questioned whether the enthusiasm for warmer relations has diminished American pressure on the Kremlin over the state of Russian democracy and intimidation of former Soviet states like Georgia.

Mr. McFaul has become known in Washington as a passionate defender of Mr. Obama’s policy, arguing that the United States can speak out on democracy and Georgia while still seeking cooperation with Moscow in other areas.

Although not a diplomat, Mr. McFaul, 47, is widely considered one of the foremost American voices on Russia, with deep contacts in Moscow. He was a Rhodes scholar who first traveled to the Soviet Union in 1983 and lived there at several points over the next decade. A Stanford University professor and Hoover Institution fellow, he is the author or editor of more than 20 books, establishing a reputation as a vocal advocate of Russian democracy and sharp critic of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin’s crackdown on dissent.

Mr. McFaul’s friendly ties with neoconservatives at times have generated suspicions among his fellow Democrats, but since joining the White House he has also occasionally been at odds with fellow democracy advocates who have been critical of the reset policy.

Should the Senate confirm him to succeed the departing ambassador, John Beyrle, Mr. McFaul’s charge will be to make sure that the thawing relations do not just turn out to be a brief seasonal shift. One test may be the negotiations over the Russian supply route to Afghanistan. When Mr. Obama took office, virtually no American military supplies traveled to Afghanistan through Russia. But an agreement to open Russian airspace has raised that to roughly half, and given the uncertainty of relations between the United States and Pakistan, Washington may come to depend on Russia even more.

Another test will come next year as both Russia and the United States hold presidential elections. Mr. Obama will have to decide next year how much he will criticize what Americans expect to be a tightly controlled Russian election at the risk of souring the relationship he has nurtured. And the approach of the American election could freeze any effort to advance policies that could be seen as beneficial to Russia.

G8 ‘Marshall Plan’ for Arab Spring Nations Falls Short

Posted on 05/28/2011 by Juan
The 8 wealthiest industrial countries, meeting at the G-8, urged that the world give Egypt, Tunisia and liberated Libya (‘emerging democracies in the Arab world’) some $40 billion in aid. The sum will make headlines but there is less to it than meets the eye.

The G8 is only ponying up $10 billion itself, and that is only in the form of relatively vague promises of a sort that have often not been completely followed through on in the past. It is urging that the Gulf oil states to give $10 billion, though some of them, like Saudi Arabia, were not actually very happy about Hosni Mubarak being overthrown and it is not clear that they will want to help grassroots democratization succeed. That $10 bn. may or may not come through, and if it did it might have strings attached that would actually be undemocratic. Saudi Arabia is very afraid of the outbreak of press freedom in Egypt, which could end its stranglehold over Arabophone journalism and open its authoritarian system to critique. What price would it extract from Cairo for its billions in aid?

Then the G8 is urging that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank provide another $20 bn., but that aid is likely to be in the form of loans.

But Egypt alone is carrying $80 billion in debt, and its debt servicing costs have risen because its credit rating has been downgraded in the wake of the political crisis.

Tunisia is even worse off, with 1/8 of Egypt’s population but a debt of $50 billion racked up by the Zine El Abidine kleptocracy. Before the crisis, Tunisia had been looking to borrow nearly $3 billion this year just to pay the interest on the old debt and cover budget shortfalls (caused by the ruling class stealing the country blind).

So the G8′s idea of getting these countries further in debt, and making vague promises on direct aid, isn’t probably actually very helpful.

There is, moreover, a contrast to be made here in what the wealthy countries seem to most value when it comes to their financial dealings with places like Egypt. In 1990-1991, Egypt was $50 billion in debt, and then its government joined in the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein’s forces occupying Kuwait. After the Gulf War, $25 billion of the debt was forgiven, i.e., half, which uplifted the Egyptian economy in the early to mid 1990s. Pakistan also got very heavy debt forgiveness after 2001 for turning on the Taliban and allying with the United States and NATO.

If joining a war is worth half a country’s debt, then moving from a military dictatorship to trying to become a democratic country should be worth just as much. That would mean Egypt alone should be getting $40 bn. in debt forgiveness. After all, the debt was incurred by a military dictatorship that did not consult the people, and which was in the hip pocket of the Western Powers. Why should poor Egyptians in Ismailiya and Asyut be held hostage for repayment?

And, the $25 bn. in debt forgiveness for Egypt of the early 1990s was a sure thing, not vague promises and ‘calls’ on other countries and institutions of the sort that just came out of the G8.

It is also true that in the 1990s, US debt was relatively small and that Bill Clinton even had a budget surplus late in his term, whereas G.W. Bush and his Republican majority doubled the national debt and created long term structural deficit with his tax cuts and wars. (Obama’s deficits have been one-off and won’t affect things going forward.). But all that is not the fault of the Tunisian and Egyptian people, though it underlines how much Bush weakened America.

Egypt’s transition to democracy is going to be rocky enough without the albatross of Hosni Mubarak’s debts hanging around its neck. The world community needs to be far more generous and pro-active if Egyptians are going to feel rewarded rather than punished for their remarkable achievement in moving toward popular sovereignty and a rule of law. The same holds true for Tunisia. But Egypt is a fourth of the Arab world and an opinion leader, and its success really would resonate widely in the Arab world and Africa.

The G8 gesture was good as a confidence-building measure, but it is piddling in relationship to the real needs and is short-sighted in its picayune dimensions. It also signals that war-fighting is more valued than democracy-making.

One good thing about the likely victory of the Free Libya forces is that that country’s oil wealth ($26 bn a year) could be used in part to support the new democracies in its neighborhood, while Qaddafi would have tried to undermine them.

U.S. Has Binged. Soon It’ll Be Time to Pay the Tab.

NYtimes
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
May 28, 2011

SAY this about all the bickering over the federal debt ceiling: at least people are talking openly about our nation’s growing debt load. This $14.3 trillion issue is front and center — exactly where it should be.

Into the fray comes a thoughtful new paper by Joseph E. Gagnon, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, which studies economic policy. Written with Marc Hinterschweiger, a research analyst there, the report states plainly: “That government debt will grow to dangerous and unsustainable levels in most advanced and many emerging economies over the next 25 years — if there are no changes in current tax rates or government benefit programs in retirement and health care — is virtually beyond dispute.”

The report then lays out a range of outcomes, some merely unsettling, others downright scary, that face us as a nation if we continue down the big-spending path we are on.

The report, “The Global Outlook for Government Debt Over the Next 25 Years: Implications for the Economy and Public Policy,” arrives when our debt as a percentage of gross domestic product is around 65 percent and rising fast. Much of the recent increase, up from 43 percent in 2007, is the result of the panic of 2008 and the ensuing recession, when the government stepped in to mitigate the damage.

The authors do not suggest that policy makers should hurry to raise taxes or cut spending right now. They acknowledge that the economic recovery is still fragile and propose that lawmakers wait to implement budget cuts currently under discussion until 2013 to 2015. Additional cuts would ideally go into effect in 2016.

What needs to be done now is to design a long-term plan to reduce fiscal deficits in the future. The authors contend that such a program would “reassure the markets, keep interest rates low and instill greater confidence and certainty about future tax and spending policies, thereby encouraging businesses to commit their resources to job-creating investment projects.”

An intriguing aspect of their analysis is how it views the rising tide of debt around the world from a historical perspective. For so many countries to be groaning under so much debt at the same time is unusual, the authors say. More typical are the somewhat contained debt crises, like in Latin America in the 1980s or in Russia in 1998. While both of those episodes reverberated beyond the countries from which they sprang, today’s debt problems are far more widespread. And, as a result, more worrisome.

The simultaneous buildup of very large public deficits and debt positions in virtually all of the advanced high-income countries “is a new element at work in the global economy,” the report says.

“It is unique in peacetime for so many countries to have so much debt,” Mr. Gagnon said in an interview last week. But he added that global capital markets, and the access to lenders that these markets provide, probably mute the ill effects of this simultaneous borrowing binge.

The paper assesses the potential consequences of a more pervasive debt crisis, one involving a number of countries in the same perilous position at the same time. The authors also consider the impact that future interest rate increases may have on these debt loads and provide separate estimates of how debt levels would grow under differing circumstances. They incorporate into these estimates expected growth rates in various regions as well as rising health care costs and retirement obligations. The analysis uses figures from the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Some of the results are surprising. For example, the study rebuts the commonly held notion that the outlook for Europe is worse than for the United States, as far as debt levels and obligations are concerned. This is because some euro zone countries have already begun to deal with their fiscal problems, Mr. Gagnon explained. “They’ve made some changes to long-run pensions, such as raising retirement ages,” he said, “and they’ve already made spending cuts and tax increases.”

Another surprise in the study: emerging markets are in much better shape, Mr. Gagnon said, than he had anticipated when he began the project.

Now, to the numbers, all of which are based on the status quo in tax rates and government obligations relating to health care and retirement.

You sitting down?

Under a best-case outlook, according to the authors, the nation’s net federal debt will rise to 155 percent of gross domestic product in 2035, more than double the current levels. (Net debt is defined as the government’s financial liabilities minus its financial assets.)

Under a more pessimistic view on growth rates, that load ratchets up to 302 percent of G.D.P. that year. As the paper notes, “debt ratios of around 200 percent of gross domestic product are at the extreme limit of what advanced economies can experience without becoming destabilized.”

Estimates for the euro zone fall well below these figures. Using an optimistic outlook for growth in that region, the analysis projects Europe’s debt to rise to 72 percent of G.D.P. in 2035. Taking a dimmer view on growth brings the debt level to 155 percent of output in the euro area.

Taken over all, debt levels in the advanced economies would rise to 122 percent of G.D.P. given an upbeat outlook, or 234 percent under grimmer circumstances, the study projects. Both Japan and the United States exceed these figures in expected debt loads.

By comparison, emerging economies look positively robust. Using an optimistic projection, their debt comes in at 35 percent of G.D.P., and under more pessimistic circumstances, rises to 59 percent.

HAPPILY, Mr. Gagnon and Mr. Hinterschweiger do not believe a Greek-style crisis is in the cards for the United States. They say that we have some time to start addressing our debt problems — five years at least. But given how our debt is growing, a fiscal crisis looms if policy makers do nothing.

“There may never be a single defining moment of crisis,” the authors write, “but rather a drift into ever-higher inflation and interest rates, ever-lower growth or deeper recession, and eventually hyperinflation along with rapid currency depreciation. Most economists would view such a prospect as a progressive strangulation of a nation’s well-being.”

This is straight talk on a vital topic. Let’s hope our leaders understand that living beyond our means will not be viable for a whole lot longer.

Pressing Obama, House Bars Rise for Debt Ceiling

NYtimes
May 31, 2011
By JACKIE CALMES

WASHINGTON — The House on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a measure to increase the government’s debt limit, acting on a vote staged by Republican leaders to pressure President Obama to agree to deep spending cuts.

Republicans brought up the measure, which was defeated 318 to 97, to show the lack of support in the House for raising the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling without concrete steps to rein in chronic budget deficits.

The preordained outcome followed several acts of odd political theater on the House floor: Republicans urged the defeat of their own measure, while Democrats — who not long ago were seeking just such a vote to raise the debt ceiling without attaching spending cuts — assailed Republicans for bringing it up, saying its certain defeat might unnerve the financial markets.

Just in case, Republican leaders scheduled the vote for after the stock market’s close, and in the preceding days called Wall Street executives to assure them that the vote was just for show, to show Mr. Obama that he would have to make concessions in budget negotiations if a debt-limit increase is to pass Congress.

“This vote, based on legislation I’ve introduced, will and must fail,” said Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee, objected. “This is a political stunt,” he said.

Voting against the measure were 236 Republicans and 82 Democrats. No Republicans voted in favor.

The showdown over the issue is likely to continue well into the summer, with consequences for both parties and, potentially, for the economy and Wall Street, where the bond market in particular is watching the partisan standoff closely. Yet for all the talk of crisis should Congress fail to raise the debt ceiling by Aug. 2, when the Treasury Department says it will run out of room to meet all the government’s obligations without further borrowing, the financial markets are likely to yawn at Tuesday’s proceedings.

“Wall Street is in on the joke,” said R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But beyond this week, Wall Street has reason to be nervous as the issue plays out, said people in both parties and in finance.

Investors have grown accustomed to partisan games of chicken that always end with the needed increase in the government’s borrowing authority. But this showdown, many say, is riskier because of the strongly held antispending, antitax views of the many freshman House Republicans combined with the fragility of the economic recovery.

“The people who are more politically savvy realize this may not be the normal brinkmanship,” said Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia. Nor, he added, is this standoff like the fight a few months ago over the current year’s spending, which ended with a late-night deal shortly before the government would have shut down.

“The thing that people are missing is that in shutting down the government you can go to the 11th-and-a-half hour, and the consequences of not doing it, while significant, are not economy-threatening,” Mr. Warner said. “You can’t go to the 11th-and-a-half hour on the debt limit. You don’t know what’s going to spook the bond markets.”

The chief wild card is the House Republican majority, which was elected last November after a campaign defined by voters’ antipathy toward budget deficits. More numerous than the insurgents elected in the conservative waves of 1980 and 1994, many freshman Republicans have no experience in public office and consider themselves citizen-legislators who entered government to shrink it, regardless of the political costs.

“The people who have been sent to Washington most recently are bringing a strong message from the Republicans more to the right that really want something done about government spending,” said Joseph E. Kasputys, founder of IHS Global Insight and an official in the Nixon and Ford administrations.

Many House Republicans have said publicly that they either do not believe the government will default or that they do not fear it. Many embrace a proposal by Senator Patrick J. Toomey, a first-year Republican from Pennsylvania, for the Treasury to pay bondholders with incoming tax revenues and delay other government payments pending a resolution. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and many on Wall Street call the idea unworkable.

Many Republicans have also made comments indicating that they do not understand or do not care that an increase in the debt limit is needed not only for new spending but also to cover Social Security checks, military pay and myriad other obligations previously agreed to, as well as for payments to creditors holding Treasury bonds.

Another difference from recent decades, when the parties several times agreed to bipartisan budget-cutting deals to raise the debt limit, is the scale of spending cuts that Republicans are demanding as the price of support — up to $2 trillion in savings over a decade.

For Republicans and Democrats to agree this summer on such a far-reaching deficit reduction plan is a hurdle that is all the higher given how far apart the parties are. Republicans oppose any new taxes while Democrats say a balanced package must include higher revenues.

Just as the political dynamic is more precarious than in years past, so too, say some analysts, is the economic recovery. The combination “definitely makes it more dangerous” to even flirt with default, said Rick Rieder, a managing director of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment management firm.

“The practical ramifications of it are dramatic, and I truly believe this,” Mr. Rieder said. At some point short of actual default, he said, “you’re going to run down the road where the rating agencies are going to have to react, the Fed is going to have to make a set of decisions, international investors are going to have to interpret what this means, and you could functionally have a self-fulfilling prophecy in terms of the risk while not actually having a default.”

“That is such a dangerous path to go down,” he said.

Not everyone believes an impasse would necessarily provoke economic damage. But much of the business community is concerned. “Am I the only one who remembers the split screen on TARP?” asked Mr. Josten.

He is not. Worriers from Washington to Wall Street increasingly recall how, amid the financial crisis of September 2008, House Republicans voted by a two-to-one ratio against the proposed Troubled Asset Relief Program, better known as the bank bailout. Cable networks split screens, showing stock markets going down simultaneously with the House vote; the Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 777 points, its largest single-day point drop.

Within days Congress approved a revised bailout and President George W. Bush signed it into law.

Jennifer Steinhauer and Carl Hulse contributed reporting.