Conflict, Defense, Middle East, United States Trump’s Thin Crisis Team Is Scary, Too

Our Interim Director Michael Horowitz's analysis is cited in this piece on the Iran crisis from Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg.

I’ll leave the analysis of the foreign policy and military actions between Iran and the U.S. to the experts. For what it’s worth, my read of the experts after Iran attacked U.S. military bases in Iraq Tuesday night was fairly optimistic; many sense that there’s an opportunity here for President Donald Trump to de-escalate and avoid full-out war...

Now, there’s no straight line between these problems and any particular outcome. And the two biggest foreign policy fiascoes since World War II — Vietnam and the Iraq War — were both the products of what were at the time extremely well regarded national security and foreign policy teams. But it almost certainly is true that inexperienced, unqualified and unconfirmed people in key positions increases the chances of things going wrong. 

1. Michael C. Horowitz and Elizabeth N. Saunders at the Monkey Cage on why all-out war between Iran and the U.S. is unlikely.

2. Nathaniel Rakich puts Trump’s approval ratings at the beginning of the election year in historical perspective.

3. Greg Sargent on the increasingly implausible arguments Republican senators are making against impeachment trial witnesses and other evidence.

4. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Noah Feldman on John Bolton. Key point: “If Bolton really wanted to tell his story, nothing stops him from holding a press conference and doing so.” Exactly. And I’d add that Bolton has an ethical obligation to tell that story, whether it helps or hurts Trump.

5. And Ian Richardson on the expected record turnout for the Iowa caucuses. 

Read more in Bloomberg >>