At The Week Damon Linker is as puzzled about the braggadocio of American government officials as I am:
I fully support the policy of providing Ukraine with intelligence to aid in its fight, including intelligence that leads to the infliction of painful defeats on Russian forces. It’s also a good thing for Russia to know that we’ve played a significant role in enabling Ukraine to defend itself.
But it is a very bad thing for this information to be public knowledge. I don’t blame the journalists who’ve reported it. If high-ranking, trustworthy government officials reveal newsworthy information to a reporter, it’s usually considered acceptable to publish it. I blame the officials — especially since the Biden administration has made clear that it has not authorized the disclosures. This is a person or group of people showing off to journalists about their role in hurting Russia. That’s extremely reckless and could well lead to an exceptionally dangerous escalation of the conflict that ends up with the U.S. and NATO being draw into a direct military confrontation with Russia.
He attributes it to out-of-control government officials blowing off their mouths:
Author Yuval Levin has written about the trend in recent years of people who work in large institutions treating them as platforms for personal attention and applause rather than as structures that constrain individual behavior and channel it toward the ends the institution serves. I suspect that’s what’s been happening here: People on the inside who know about our covert efforts on Ukraine’s behalf have decided to brag to journalists about it, figuring it will enhance their image in the ruthless status hierarchy of official Washington.
During World War II a prominent component of American propaganda was “loose lips sink ships”, i.e. beware of unguarded revelations. Apparently, the prevailing wisdom in Washington is that loose tweets are neat. I can only think of a single circumstance in which that might well be the case which is if we are not nearly as potent as we claim to be.
IMO covert operations are most effective if they remain covert. Becoming an obvious open combatant not only exposes the United States to a heightened level of risk, it increases the likelihood of Russian escalation and exposes Ukrainians to a heightened level of rusk. While these reckless admissions may tell us nothing about our actual contributions to the Ukrainians’ efforts, they certainly tell us a lot about the Biden Administration’s control over the executive branch. The Trump Administration was bedeviled by sometimes outright opposition from lower level government officials, sometimes called the “Deep State”. Unless these claims are part of an information operation, it looks as though the Biden Administration has similar problems.
