There are probably a few hundred people in Washington D.C. who have spent several years of their lives working within the National Security Council system. They are former NSC staff, Foreign Service Officers, retired and active duty military personnel, and others who worked critical and sensitive decision through the interagency process. Just as important, they have implemented policies and action plans that have been created within the NSC system.
None of these people are involved in the Trump administration.
Sitting atop the NSC system, making the trains run on time and go to the right stops, is the National Security Advisor and his or her Deputy National Security Advisor. In the Bush (41), Clinton, Bush (43) and Obama administrations, one or both of these positions were held by people who had already spent years working in the NSC system, either in the White House or in one of the leading departments.
That is not true in the Trump Administration.
General Flynn, the current NSC Advisor, has never served as an NSC Deputy, or as an NSC Senior Director, or as a regular attendee at the crucial Principals Committee or Deputies Committee representing the Defense Department or any other component. His Deputy, K.T. Mcfarland, who every day will run what is in effect the U.S. Government’s Operating Committee for national security, has never held a policy position in the U.S. Government and was last a government employee as a press liaison thirty years ago. She has spent her time since on Fox television.
Why does this matter? Because national security is not bumper cars. You cannot just walk in off the street and assume you know how to run the millions of people, civilian, military, law enforcement, intelligence and civil servants deployed all around the world in dangerous places doing important jobs.
I suspect that Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson, former CEO of Exxon, would be aghast at the thought of Flynn and Mcfarland showing up to run Exxon. After years at Exxon, Tillerson knows how hard and complex that task is. Well, running a Superpower is even more difficult and cannot be done by people who have never held any position of responsibility before in the NSC system.
The first proof of this team’s incompetence has been the drafting, vetting and implementation of their ban of people from any of seven nations entering the United States, including those that already live here. Whether or not you agree with the idea, which I do not, the chaos at airports around the country and the massive and spontaneous popular protest of the move might well have been avoided if the NSC system had been used to draft, vet and implement the idea. That system, properly employed, analyses proposals, identifies what will not work, prepares the groundwork with the Congress, media, and interest groups, and ensures that federal agencies are ready to carry out the new policy. Most importantly, the NSC system makes sure that any new policy is actually legal.
General Colin Powell used to describe his attendance at NSC Principals Committee meetings as important more for the killing of “crazy ideas” than for any other reason. There was clearly no one doing that at any Principals Committee on the new refugee and immigration policies. As a result, the new administration looks to the world as incompetent. Bad things happen when America’s enemies, competitors, and allies come to the conclusion that the United States government’s national security system does not work.
The lack of understanding of the NSC is typified by the President’s directive that the senior most U.S. intelligence and military officials need only attend the Principal’s Committee when needed. That committee has met at least once a week for the last 28 years and never once has it not needed the wisdom of the senior most military and intelligence officials.
The immediate beneficiary of this incompetence has been ISIS and al Qaeda, who are no doubt benefiting enormously in their recruitment by the Administration seeming to prove their point that the U.S is at war with Islam. A functioning NSC system would have asked, “what is the problem we are trying to solve?” It would have noted that there has been no problem from the hundreds of thousands of refugees and other immigrants from the seven countries on Trump’s list of “bad” nations. The problem is not with those refugees, it is with the inexperienced people in the White House.
served on the White House National Security Council staff for Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. He is the Chairman of the Middle East Institute (mei.edu)
