We have our hawks and we have our doves.
The hawk-dove nomenclature came into contemporary parlance during the Vietnam War and has continued since. As it has evolved, the terminology primarily applies to national security hawks and doves and to budget-deficit hawks and doves.
In popular usage, national security hawks are those who advocate an aggressive foreign policy based on strong military power. Doves favor trying to resolve international conflicts through diplomacy and without the threat of force. And on the budgetary side we had hawks who advocated (and in some cases promised) a hard line on government spending and drastic reductions in federal budget deficits -- those deficits being said to be undermining our future, threatening our economy, and cause of concern about Chinese ownership of U.S. debt. These were constant themes among Trump supporters.
The hawk-dove dichotomy generated many offshoots, including a popular watering hole near the capitol in Washington, called the "Hawk'n'Dove," dating from 1968.
Recently, deficit hawks, once very prominent, especially in conservative circles, have been scarce; indeed, we are now seeing some ornithological obituaries.
Legions of legislators and political aspirants regularly promised to achieve a balanced budget or at least substantial reductions in budget deficits. But those notions are not even on the horizon, casting serious doubt on pledges from Trump and others that the budget can be balanced "at the right time." More realistic predictions are that the U.S. budget deficit will reach $897 billion in the next fiscal year, up from $779 billion currently and expected to reach $1 trillion in a few years. Arkansas Republican Rep. Steve Womack, former chairman of the House Budget Committee, recently told the Democrat-Gazette getting the budget balanced within the next decade is unlikely. Despite all the talk from budget hawks in the recent past, Womack said, "It's not politically douable and so I try to live in political reality."
We also have conflicting and shifting perches among those concerned with national security, particularly related to the Middle East, Iran and Afghanistan. President Trump has stirred controversy in the national security coterie and revived memories of the Vietnam era -- light at the end of the tunnel. In 1969, Gen. William Westmoreland proclaimed the Vietnam War was almost over, saying the enemy's hopes were bankrupt and he and other officials could see the end of the tunnel. Soon thereafter, the enemy stunned the nation with the Tet offensive, LBJ decided not to run for re-election, domestic discontent over the war mounted, and Gen. Westmoreland was replaced.
In today's heated political climate with its accompanying contradictions, we see elements of hawkish and dovish directions. Trump has employed some forceful rhetoric about U.S. assertiveness internationally, but has also invoked what could be considered more peaceful tones in some cases. He stakes out positions that ignore assessments from our major intelligence agencies. Take the cases of Iran and North Korea: It might be said that North Korea and its leader Kim Jong-Un, once subject to the most hawkish denunciation from Trump, now draws dovish and florid geniality. Speaking of the North Korean leader, Trump boasted: "We have great chemistry together." But Trump sternly refuses to engage with Iran, opposing an agreement engineered by the Obama administration and supported by other major nations.
Hawk or dove? And consider the talk of pulling out of Afghanistan and Syria. In campaigning, Trump repeatedly called for ending the war in Afghanistan, saying it was not in U.S. national interest. Once in office, however. he was persuaded by military advisers to remain in Afghanistan. Now he seems to have tilted back toward a U.S. withdrawal. Negotiations that could lead to withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan continue, but are far from completion, according to the top U.S. envoy to U.S.-Taliban peace talks. For more than 17 years Afghanistan has been an open-ended war with no U.S. exit strategy.
To the surprise of many, including top military commanders, Trump unexpectedly announced a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria as he is trumpeting the defeat of ISIS. Undoubtedly, significant and impressive progress has been made in thwarting ISIS. However, is this a repetition of "light at the end of the tunnel" or "mission accomplished" if on a smaller scale? The general heading U.S. military operations in the Middle East told a Senate committee that ISIS could stage a resurgence after U.S. troops are withdrawn from Syria. And there's reportedly a Trump plan to re-base U.S forces to Iraq, which raises yet another series of questions.
With all of this, it would be wise -- whether the issue is "the wall," or military operations or procurement -- to recall the old Washington axiom: a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon we're talking about real money.
In today's murky politics and policies, we have dovish hawks and hawkish doves.
What's clear is that we are going to have lots of ruffled feathers in the days ahead.
Commentary on 02/13/2019