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Flynn’s Warped Worldview and Iran
A new article on Michael Flynn’s tenure as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency contains some worrisome details. This may be the most disturbing:
During a tense gathering of senior officials at an off-site retreat, he gave the assembled group a taste of his leadership philosophy, according to one person who attended the meeting and insisted on anonymity to discuss classified matters. Mr. Flynn said that the first thing everyone needed to know was that he was always right. His staff would know they were right, he said, when their views melded to his [bold mine-DL]. The room fell silent, as employees processed the lecture from their new boss.
Micah Zenko commented on this excerpt: View image on Twitter
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 Micah Zenko @MicahZenko
I study leadership in hierarchies, and this is among worst anecdotes I've seen. t.co
4:31 PM - 3 Dec 2016
This would be a bad trait for anyone in a leadership position, since it implies both supreme arrogance and an unwillingness to admit error, but in someone tasked with running an intelligence agency it is even worse. If Flynn assumes he is always right and expects everyone else to conform to his views, he isn’t going to have much success managing the National Security Council or handling disagreements among its members. More important, it seems likely that his analysis of threats will be driven by his ideological assumptions that will cause him to dismiss contrary evidence. Consider the anecdote about his reaction to the 2012 Benghazi attack:
Mr. Flynn saw the Benghazi attack in September 2012 as just one skirmish in this global war. But it was his initial reaction to the event, immediately seeking evidence of an Iranian role, that many saw as emblematic of a conspiratorial bent. Iran, a Shiite nation, has generally eschewed any alliance with Sunni militants like the ones who attacked the American diplomatic compound.
For weeks, he pushed analysts for evidence that the attack might have had a state sponsor — sometimes shouting at them when they didn’t come to the conclusions he wanted. The attack, he told his analysts, was a “black swan” event that required more creative intelligence analysis to decipher.
“To ask employees to look for the .0001 percent chance of something when you have an actual emergency and dead Americans is beyond the pale,” said Joshua Manning, an agency analyst from 2009 to 2013.
This shows how much of a distorting effect Flynn’s preoccupation with Iran has had on his thinking and his ability to analyze threats. As we have seen in the book he co-wrote with Ledeen, that preoccupation is as strong as ever. Flynn’s apparent certainty that he is always right is married to the warped worldview that I have described several times before. His partnership with Ledeen seems to have been one born of genuine agreement:
The two men connected immediately, sharing a similar worldview and a belief that America was in a world war against Islamist militants allied with Russia, Cuba and North Korea. That worldview is what Mr. Flynn came to be best known for during the presidential campaign, when he argued that the United States faced a singular, overarching threat, and that there was just one accurate way to describe it: “radical Islamic terrorism.”
All of this suggests that Flynn will give Trump very bad advice informed by a warped view of foreign threats, and he probably won’t want to entertain contrary views and evidence. That seems to promise a dysfunctional policy process distorted by ideological obsessions. That is going to deliver bad and misleading information to the president, who will more than likely defer to what his top adviser recommends.
Posted in foreign policy, politics. Tagged Donald Trump, Iran, Micah Zenko, Michael Flynn, Michael Ledeen.
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4 Responses to Flynn’s Warped Worldview and Iran
Victory over Eurasia says:
December 3, 2016 at 5:33 pm
Can’t be repeated too often. The new administration has a high potential to initiate a worldwide catastrophe, and mere Iraq 2002-level disaster should be looked on as a brilliant outcome. Has there ever been a more grotesque, incompetent and corrupted administration in waiting in the history of modern democracies?
White America has, and will continue to have, a lot to answer for. They are burning down the extraordinarily successful world order in order to stick to that black guy in the White House, and all of those uppity women and gays – what a disaster. I cannot think of a single upside that is likely to come out of this team of buffoons.
A tragedy for today, for our citizens, for the environment, for the world……. a tragedy for which no amount of tax cuts or make America great rallies can ever compensate
a spencer says:
December 3, 2016 at 6:41 pm
Traditional US allies, particularly in Europe – even if they elect right wing governments – don’t seem likely to allow their domestic multi-national (heh) corporations to pull up stakes and sign onto a new war in Iran. Assume China (oil and now other considerations) and Russia (sold Iran an air defense system) will not be on board, not even with sanctions at this point.
Judging from the reported roster of Trump’s congratulatory phone calls, are we to assume Taiwan and the Philippines will pick up the slack?
Chris Chuba says:
December 3, 2016 at 9:05 pm
If Donald Trump doesn’t change the trajectory of our foreign policy. I am becoming convinced that we will eventually suffer an experience as traumatic as the Soviets experienced in the 90’s. Things that should be wakeup calls are being dismissed by the foreign policy establishment.
KevinS says:
December 3, 2016 at 9:32 pm
How any conservative voted for this buffoon is beyond me. |
