Paul R. Pillar
Two months ago, I recounted the eerie similarities between President Donald Trump’s escalating confrontation with Venezuela and the lead-up to the George W. Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Both involved politicization of intelligence, with the administration making unqualified assertions about a supposed threat while ignoring or denigrating relevant output of the intelligence community. Both exhibited the absence of a policy process that would apply the insights of the national security bureaucracy to all possible ramifications of the coming military action. Both were driven less by specific behavior of the targeted country than by broader ideological or political objectives. Both became a vehicle for the incumbent president to find his footing or bolster domestic support.
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