General Miley

[Dill]

(09-24-2021, 07:21 AM)hollodero Wrote: I'm not unsympathetic to this arguments. Not at all. On the other hand though, the US has a certain constitution*, and certain roles for the president, including him being the commander in chief. Undermining these rules, imho, needs extraordinarily dire circumstances. I don't really can amount speculations about the threat level China might have felt as such an extraordinary emergency. Until an armed conflict, and even more so a preemtive Chinese strike, seems like a feasible options there'd be several steps of further escalation first; at some of these theoretical steps, acting would possibly be more understandable in Milley's shoes.

Bat as things stand right now, I see the danger of approving Milley's actions solely based on the fact that they were designed to counter Trump and Trump is a moron. That is, despite all your points, still too thin for me. It wouldn't be applauded probably if some general would undermine Biden in the belief he is mentally too far gone to lead the country the right way. I sure think this assessment is way more understandable in Trump's case, sure; but someone could see that differently and then just point to Milley's deeds as precedent for arbitrary acts. Any rule that you can not do that would be severely diminished if Milley just earns praise and no further consequences for his deeds.

(*that might be the actual problem here)

Thanks for the response, H. 

I fear there may still be some confusion over the point I have been making, which has been limited to Milley's phone calls to Xi. It is not clear to me that these were "arbitrary" acts, or even broke protocol, and therefore set some kind of "precedent" for which there should be consequences. At the moment, it looks to me like the calls were follow up with Esper, who actually took the lead on responding to the Chinese, insuring lower level functionaries were in near constant communication with the Chinese command since July.  The questionable effectiveness of these communications motived Milley to speak to his counterpart. I just found out today that he urged the Admiral in charge of the two carrier groups in the Far East to postpone exercises, and he did. That might be out of line, but I'm not sure. It did lower tensions.

Esper and Milley's motivation was fear that Chinese were drawing the wrong inference from their own intel. This fear was highest during Milley's second phone call, as Xi (from 3rd hand reports) was quite agitated during the Capitol assault. It seemed possible to him that the US government was falling, and he was repeatedly demanding assurances otherwise (according to the Woodward book). (I didn't think the government would fall because of a Trump mob, even as I watched them storm the Capitol, but I also wasn't 100% sure. So how might this look to a military commander in an authoritarian regime? What accountability awaited him if he got it wrong? 

So I have not been urging people to approve Milley's actions (phone calls) because he was countering a moron, but because he was preventing a looming conflict. 

I have not convinced you that those "steps of escalation" you don't see could easily have looked, from Xi's perspective, to have already been taken. I could say more about this, about the history of US-China interaction in the South China Sea and its complications/precedents for intel, and about Chinese paranoia, but I'd rather wait until Milley has a chance to speak before Congress on Sept. 28. That should be followed by closer and more informed discussions of protocol and military civilian boundaries in the NYT and WaPo. 

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As for Milley's other action--insisting staff and others inform him of any strike orders--there is already a bolder precedent: Schlesinger's similar insistance that he be informed if Nixon reached for the football during the latter's emotionally unstable final days.  https://time.com/5388648/watergate-nixon-anonymous-op-ed/

One particular moment from Nixon’s time offers insight into what it might look like for staffers to manage a President’s potential volatility: In the period before Nixon’s Aug. 9, 1974, resignation, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger reportedly ordered certain presidential orders — especially those related to nuclear arms — to be cleared by himself personally or National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger.

The story goes that Nixon had alarmed Schlesinger and advisors by declaring: “I can go into my office and pick up the telephone, and in 25 minutes 70 million people will be dead.”

As Craig Nelson explains in his history of the atomic age, Nixon embraced the so-called Madman Theory when it came to nuclear weapons. According to that theory, it helped U.S. foreign policy for Nixon to seem a bit crazy because it made potential enemies wary that he might actually use nuclear weapons. But California Senator Alan Cranston wasn’t comforted by that possible explanation. He is said to have flagged Schlesinger on the “the need for keeping a berserk President from plunging us into a holocaust,” as TIME previously reported.

So far as I know, Schlesinger and Cranston were mostly praised and suffered no consequences, in part because "both sides" could agree that Nixon was acting dangerously. Had Fox News existed back then, however, I'm sure this little known incident would have been a terrible scandal,  Nixon's unfitness disputed.  Where there is lacking a common ability to discern standards/incompetence, then it just looks like people condemn actions done by the other side, that they would applaud if done by their own.