SUNDAY, MARCH 6 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A27
SUNDAY Opinion
H
ave you heard about how Bill
Barr saved democracy?
It’s all there — in this new
book by, er, Bill Barr.
In excerpts published Thursday in the
Wall Street Journal, President Donald
Trump’s former attorney general re-
counts how he bravely stood up to Trump
about his bogus claims of election fraud,
telling him: “The fact is, we have looked
at the major claims your people are
making, and they are bulls---.”
The courageous Barr hit Trump with
another expletive: “I’ve told you that the
fraud claims are not supported.... But
your legal team continues to shovel this
s--- out to the American people. And it is
wrong.”
And another! “ ‘Mr. President,’ I said,
‘the reason you are in this position is that,
instead of having a crackerjack legal
team that had its s--- together from day
one, you wheeled out a clown show.’ ”
Our protagonist was relentless in his
pursuit of truth. “ ‘Look, Mr. President,
they wasted a whole month with this
idiotic claim about Dominion machines,’I continued. ‘First, there is no evidence
they were compromised.’ ”
Barr delivered yet another self-
c ongratulatory swipe at Trump: “The
president seemed a bit taken aback that I
seemed to know what I was talking
about. ‘Have you bothered to ask the
people who are feeding you this s--- how
the votes compared to the last election?’ I
pressed.”
Barr goes on to recount how Trump
tried to fire him, but aides cried out “No!”
and “This is a big mistake, Mr. President,”
and begged Barr not to go.
Codswallop. If Barr did say anything
like that privately to Trump, it only shows
how deceitful he was in public, lending
credence to Trump’s ridiculous claims.
In real time, Barr jettisoned Justice
Department norms and authorized the
department to open election-fraud inves-
tigations before the tallies were certified.
Barr, who had falsely asserted that mail-
in voting was vulnerable to counterfeit
foreign ballots, did allow at one point
that the Justice Department hadn’t
found enough fraud to change the elec-tion outcome — “to date.” But his syco-
phantic departure letter (“you built the
strongest and most resilient economy in
American history”) said “these allega-
tions will continue to be pursued.”
Had Barr spoken out publicly about
Trump’s “clown show,” perhaps he could
have punctured the “big lie” before it
resulted in the Jan. 6 insurrection. Barr
didn’t even speak out during Trump’s
impeachment, instead offering his self-
serving view 14 months later while hawk-
ing his book — after Trump managed to
get the bulk of the Republican electorate
to accept the “big lie” as an article of
faith.
Barr is just the latest in the parade of
former Trump officials to wash their
hands of him long after their public
condemnation would have done any
good: John Bolton, John F. Kelly, Rex
Tillerson, Jim Mattis, Reince Priebus,
Nikki Haley, Gary Cohn, Omarosa Mani-
gault Newman, Michael Cohen, Anthony
Scaramucci, H.R. McMaster and many
more.
But nobody in the administration didmore to enable Trump’s deceptions and
assaults on democracy than Barr. He
buried the Mueller report while issuing a
public summary that misrepresented it;
he alleged the Obama administration
“spied” on the Trump campaign, and he
appointed a prosecutor who is, years
later, still trying to prove true Trump’s
paranoid fantasy; he scoured the world
for evidence to discredit the Trump-
R ussia probe; his Justice Department
gave credibility to Rudy Giuliani’s rav-
ings about the Bidens in Ukraine; he
tried to give favorable treatment to
Trump cronies Michael Flynn and Roger
Stone; he justified the violent assault on
peaceful demonstrators in Lafayette
Square; he made unfounded allegations
against “antifa” and assembled a militia-
like force of often-unidentified federal
police in D.C. And on, and on.
Now Barr wants to be remembered as
the brave figure who spoke truth to
power? Talk about a clown show.
Barr’s attempted self-justification
would be funny if the consequences of his
silence hadn’t been so dire. He allowedTrump to pull off a democracy-defying
swindle.
Today, only 1 in 5 Republicans believe
Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020
election. This means 80 percent have
swallowed a flagrant lie — hook, line and
sinker. Barr, and those in similar posi-
tions in the GOP, allowed the triumph of
disinformation.
We can all see where this could lead.
Vladimir Putin has justified his inva-
sion of Ukraine on a tapestry of lies:
Ukraine was committing genocide
against Russians, it was run by neo-Nazis
and drug addicts, it was a puppet of the
United States secretly building nuclear
weapons. And Russian state television
uses clips of Tucker Carlson and other
Fox News personalities echoing Putin
propaganda.
If you can convince the public that
free and fair elections are illegitimate,
it’s not much of a leap to convince the
public that a democratic neighbor is a
Nazi regime. Mass deception is the tool
of the autocrat. And Bill Barr gave it his
blessing.DANA MILBANKBill Barr wants to be remembered as a truth teller? That’s a clown show.
reminded us of the decisive importance
of military power. We need a larger, more
advanced military in every branch, tak-
ing full advantage of new technologies to
fight in new ways. Air power will be
critical in both Europe and Asia, yet the
Air Force is reliant on aircraft that, on
average, are a quarter-century old. A
significantly bigger Navy is needed, es-
pecially in Asia, to protect lines of
communication and freedom of naviga-
tion worldwide. The Army needs to be
larger, in particular to allow us to
increase our military presence in Eu-
rope, at least as long as Putin is in power.
If we are to have a bigger, more
powerful and technologically advanced
military to support a global strategy,
there must be radical reform inside the
Pentagon. The current ways of doing
business there put us at risk. Old bureau-
cratic habits must give way to new
approaches that force speed and agility
in moving new technologies and acquisi-
tions from decision to deployment. Over-
head must be slashed, with the savings
plowed into military capabilities.
When I was defense secretary, in
2009, with three months’ work, we cut
three dozen wasteful or failing legacy
programs that, had they been built to
completion, would have cost taxpayers
$330 billion. A year later, again with only
a few months’ effort, we identified
$180 billion in overhead savings. Taxpay-
ers cannot be asked for more money to
ensure our military is superior to our
adversaries without demonstrating that
the wasteful, painfully slow defense
bureaucracy can and will be reformed.
Obviously, Congress has a central role
in all of this. Members of both parties
must begin to behave more responsibly
in national security. Long-standing,
mindless opposition to the proper fund-
ing of nonmilitary instruments of power
such as foreign aid must give way to
understanding the critical role these
capabilities have played in U.S. national
security in the past and must play in the
future.
On the military side, parochial de-
fense of legacy weapons systems and
unnecessary bases and facilities must
give way to the imperative of deploying
new equipment and advanced weapons.
Defense leaders need more budgetary
and organizational flexibility to take
advantage of new innovative opportuni-
ties and technologies. Congress’s dis-
graceful failure, year after year, to appro-
priate budgets for our national security
organizations by the beginning of the
fiscal year — forcing agencies to limp
along for months under continuing reso-
lutions — must end.
Putin’s war reminds us that the world
is a dangerous, deadly place. And that we
are in a global contest with two ruthless,
authoritarian powers that are deter-
mined to achieve their aspirations
through any means. Our executive and
legislative branches must understand
the new world we live in, set aside
business as usual, and embrace dramatic
change to ensure that we and our
democratic allies prevail in that contest.
Finally, the president — and members
of both parties in Congress — need to
work together to explain to the Ameri-
can people why the fate of other coun-
tries, including Ukraine, matters to the
United States. Of course, deterring ag-
gression and supporting freedom and
democracy matter. But Americans need
also to understand in practical terms
how events abroad affect security here at
home and their own pocketbooks. This
role falls, principally, upon the presi-
dent. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt
said, “The greatest duty of a statesman is
to educate.”
Putin’s war and Xi’s aggressive ambi-
tions have ended the post-Cold War era
and upended the global order of the past
70 years. The U.S. government must
respond by reforming and strengthening
our national security institutions, devel-
oping a global strategy and helping our
citizens understand why events abroad
matter to us.The writer served in the administrations of
eight presidents and was CIA director from
19 91 to 19 93 and defense secretary from
2006 to 2011.BY ROBERT M. GATESV
ladimir Putin’s invasion of
Ukraine has ended Ameri-
cans’ 30-year holiday from his-
tory. For the first time since
World War II, the United
States faces powerful, aggressive adver-
saries in Europe and Asia seeking to
recover past glory along with claimed
territories and spheres of influence. All
in defiance of an international order
largely shaped by the United States that
has kept the peace among great powers
for seven decades. The Russian and
Chinese challenge to this peaceful order
has been developing for a number of
years. Putin’s war has provided the cold
shower needed to awaken democratic
governments to the reality of a new
world, a world in which our recent
strategy — including the “pivot” to Asia
— is woefully insufficient to meet the
long-term challenges we face.
Though we have a number of security
challenges — Iran and North Korea, as
well as terrorism and global problems —
Russia and China are the main threats to
our economic, political and military
interests. The two nations each pose a
different kind of hazard.
The threat from Russia is a megaloma-
niacal leader convinced that his histori-
cal mission is to restore the Russian
empire and rewrite history since the
collapse of the Soviet Union. He is
willing to use the most brutal measures
to achieve that goal, at home and, as we
are seeing, even beyond Russia’s bor-
ders. When he passes from the scene,
though, a different Russia could emerge.
We caught a glimpse of such an alterna-
tive during the presidency of Dmitry
Medvedev from 2008 to 2012.Now hopelessly compromised, Med-
vedev spoke then about the need for
Russia to diversify its economy and build
stronger economic links to the West; he
lifted many of Putin’s restrictions on
foreign nongovernmental organizations
and acquiesced in the intervention in
Libya in 2011. That is not to say Putin will
be succeeded by some kind of liberal
democrat, but perhaps rather by a na-
tionalist who sees the opportunity for an
economically stronger, politically more
influential Russia and a better life for
Russians. In short, post-Putin, we could
see a Russia much less threatening to its
neighbors and to us.
China, on the other hand, will be a
long-term challenge for the United
States. Deng Xiaoping’s strategy 40 years
ago of “hiding” China’s strength and
“biding” its time was designed to avoid
provoking American hostility and resis-
tance prematurely — until China was
ready to claim its global leadership role
based on both economic and military
power. Deng’s successors embraced that
strategy, each doing his part to advance
economic growth and build a strong
military. Xi Jinping has now jettisoned
“hide and bide” for much more threaten-
ing and aggressive policies abroad and
exceptionally repressive measures at
home. There is no reason to expect the
challenge to diminish under Xi or his
successors.
A new American strategy must recog-
nize that we face a global struggle of
indeterminate duration against two
great powers that share authoritarian-
ism at home and hostility to the United
States. They are challenging us not only
militarily but also in their use of other
instruments of power — development
assistance, strategic communications,covert and other influence operations,
and advances in cyber- and other tech-
nologies.
We cannot pretend any longer that a
national security focus primarily on
China will protect our political, eco-
nomic and security interests. China, to
be sure, remains the principal long-term
threat. But, as we have seen in Ukraine, a
reckless, risk-taking dictator in Russia
(or elsewhere) can be every bit as much a
challenge to our interests and our secu-
rity. We need a new strategy to deal
effectively with adversaries in both Asia
and Europe — adversaries with global
reach.
A new strategy addressing global chal-
lenges to America — and all democracies
— in the 21st century requires significant
changes to U.S. national security struc-
tures that are, for the most part, a legacy
of the late 1940s. If we can avoid war
with Russia and China, our rivalry with
them will be waged using nonmilitary
instruments of power — the same kind of
instruments that played a significant
role in winning the Cold War: diplomacy,
development assistance, strategic com-
munications, science and technology,
ideology, nationalism and more.
Another crucial nonmilitary instru-
ment — as we have seen in recent days —
is our alliances and the power inherent
in acting together. Two of the most
important agencies during the Cold War
were the United States Information
Agency (strategic communications) and
the U.S. Agency for International Devel-
opment (economic assistance). We need
creatively to reinvent both — and other
critical nonmilitary instruments of pow-
er — for the global struggle in which we
are now engaged.
At the same time, Putin’s war hasBRIAN STAUFFER FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTWe need a more realistic strategy
for the post-Cold War era
A new American
strategy must recognize
that we face a global
struggle of indeterminate
duration against two great
powers that share
authoritarianism at home
and hostility to the
United States.