THE END OF HOMELAND SECURITY?
As Defense Bill Divides Senate, the Pentagon Shows a Crack in the Armor
The national security state is on the verge of a radical transformation.
From DHS to the military, the pressure is mounting on all sides to revamp
federal law enforcement hierarchies, shift information pipelines, and
reimage the nature of warfare.
by Raul Diego
August 17th, 2020
By Raul Diego
Adecision by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found that
Chad Wolf, the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and
his deputy, Ken Cuccinelli are ineligible to serve in their respective
roles, throwing the most powerful U.S. law enforcement entity into chaos at
a time when it is reaping the whirlwind for its draconian response to the
anti-police protests in Portland last month, where demonstrators were
abducted by federal agents and journalists were attacked for covering the
agency's repressive actions in the city.
The sudden fire coming at DHS from both sides of the aisle betrays an
atypical political will to carry out the dismemberment of the department.
Tom Ridge, the first director of DHS and staunch Republican, has put the
blame squarely on Trump, saying this "president has perverted the mission of
DHS" as critics call for the agency to be disassembled. The Congressional
watchdog's hounds were set on the Trump appointees early on. Only two days
after Wolf was confirmed by the Senate in November 2019 by lower house
members, (D-MS) Bennie Thompson and (D-NY) Carolyn Maloney requested an
investigation from the Comptroller General.
In a July editorial for The Washington Post, former NSC Coordinator for
counterterrorism under Clinton and Bush, Richard A. Clark, proposed some
ideas about how to shed the agency's "Orwellian name" by breaking up the
entity and instituting "new organizational designs" together with
rebranding, which, he wrote, could "reinvigorate and redirect agencies".
Clark proffered the concept of a Department of Public Safety to bring FEMA,
the Coast Guard, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA),
TSA, and the Secret Service together under one roof. In tandem, the career
conservative operative suggested that a parallel agency be created to manage
all immigration and Customs Enforcement; effectively dividing the federal
security apparatus into twin pillars of enforcement and surveillance.
Harsh public criticism from national security state stalwarts like Clark and
Ridge points to the imminent breakup of the of 17 different federal law
enforcement agencies that were collected under the Department of Homeland
Security. While some are in favor of returning to the pre-9-11 arrangement
and putting the agencies back in their original departments, the odds favor
reconfiguration of the kind Clark envisions.
Getting the coup right
The end of DHS at this juncture - when police departments across the country
are on the ropes - would open the door for the radical transformation of law
enforcement. But DHS is not the only department coming under fire by their
own ranking members. The U.S. military has also been in the crosshairs of a
small but growing clique of former armed forces members who are pushing for
the literal replacement of serving military generals with a new
cybersec-aware breed who can disrupt counter-insurgency theory as they lead
battalions through the brave new battlefield of cyberwarfare and robot
armies.
Last week, the main proponents of the idea penned an open letter that sent
shockwaves through the military and political establishment. Retired
Lieutenant Colonels, John Nagl and Paul Yingling raised eyebrows when they
suggested to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley,
that he should be ready to forcibly remove Donald Trump from office if he
"refuses to leave office at the expiration of his constitutional term."
Yingling attained notoriety in 2007 when he wrote a scathing critique of the
U.S. armed forces in "A Failure in Generalship," calling for the
intervention of Congress to prevent the failures of "America's generals in
Vietnam and Iraq" by changing "the officer promotion system in ways that
reward adaptation and intellectual achievement". He concluded his
influential diatribe by warning that the "hour" was late. But "not too late
to prepare for the challenges of the Long War". Nagl, who co-wrote the
latest Counterinsurgency Field Manual with General David Petraeus, is a
fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) - a D.C. think tank
that focuses on national security issues, such as counterterrorism and
irregular warfare as these relate to the emergence of Asia as the next
"global power center"
"The president of the United States is actively subverting our electoral
system," wrote Nagl and Yingling. "In a few months' time, you [Milley] may
have to choose between defying a lawless president or betraying your
Constitutional oath." A reaction to the blistering letter, co-authored with
a former defense policy advisor and an American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
alumni, called the letter "deeply irresponsible" and "organizationally
nonsensical". Curiously, the critics offer some helpful advice should a
"coup" be necessary. "If you're going to advocate a coup," write the
authors, "you might want to choose as its leader someone with command
authority over actual troops" as they pointed out Milley's
constitutionally-limited powers as chairman of the JCS.
Order out of chaos
Meanwhile, a three quarter Trillion-dollar defense bill is sitting on the
floor of the U.S. Senate with the Pentagon's annual budget and its myriad
agencies; many of which form part of the teetering DHS and receive funding
from the National Defense Authorization Act NDAA instead of Congress'
special funding vehicle created for the DHS, itself.
Publicly, the reason given for the impasse is the issue of renaming Army
bases that are named after Confederate leaders, which Trump has promised to
veto. According to Politico, another reason revolves around efforts to block
Trump's decision to pull American troops out of Germany. This latter theory
might get closer to the reality as we stand on the eve of a radical
transformation of vast parts of the national security state, which will
require breaking more than a few eggs along the way.
The Atlantic Council has published its own recommendations for the future of
the DHS, urging the agency to focus more attention on "Infectious diseases,
cyber threats from hostile nation-states, threats to election security,
foreign disinformation, threats to critical infrastructure from climate
change".
With speculation that Trump wants to let go of Defense Secretary, Mark Esper
and Chad Wolf at DHS - or his deputy - looking unlikely to ride out the year
in that post, the possibility that a sizable portion of the American
national security state will be in complete disarray come election time is
becoming very real and very concerning.
