By: Lt. Col. James Price
President Trump’s national security team has to be ready to hit the ground running in January. The list of challenges is long: a resurgent and aggressive Russia, a rising China, a belligerent and nuclear capable North Korea, an Iranian government inserting itself throughout the Middle East, Syria and international terrorism. While a new administration will be eager to address these challenges, one fact is evident: Even the best national security strategy will fail if it does not have the right structure to see it through. As part of my experience as a senior military fellow at a Washington think tank, I have had the good fortune to personally meet with many former Cabinet-level leaders to hear their candid views about our national security process and their message is crystal clear: President Trump needs to reform the National Security Council (NSC) process by shrinking its White House staff and placing trust and accountability back in the hands of his cabinet and NSC principles.
The past two administrations have consolidated national security decision making in the White House by micromanaging the implementation and execution of policy from the NSC staff. President Trump does not need to take a year to find out what previous administrations already recognize; the interagency decision-making and -execution process is broken. Now is the time for our new president to demonstrate trust in Cabinet-level leaders and their departments by cutting his own staff and allowing those NSC principals to advise him and then implement and execute the final policy. The NSC principals, not the NSC staff, should then be held accountable for the implementation and execution in their organizations. The president can and should do this on day one.
The NSC, traditionally composed of various Cabinet secretaries and government department directors and chaired by the president, serves as the president’s primary vehicle to harmonize and craft national security policy. More importantly for this discussion, the only NSC position mandated by law is the executive secretary. This gives the president unparalleled freedom to shape the size, organization, functions and processes of the NSC and its staff to his liking. During the early years of the NSC, the staff that supported the NSC at the White House consisted only of a very small group of military officers, career civil servants and Foreign Service officers. Initially, that NSC staff served a coordinating and preparation function for the president and his NSC meetings. The staff was solely intended to support the NSC process and to help coordinate, throughout the interagency, the decisions and policy decided on by the NSC. During the Kennedy administration the president added a few political appointees to his NSC staff, but the staff still numbered less than 20 individuals. The numbers stayed fairly low into the 1990s, but by 2000 it counted more than 100 and then exploded under the Bush and the Obama administrations to its present form numbering just under 400 staffers.
During the past 20 years, numerous critics have accused the NSC staff of duplicating and usurping the work of Pentagon and State Department bureaus and staffs. They view the NSC staff as its own agency, making independent inputs into the NSC decision-making process. The staff is deeply involved in not only the crafting and formulation of policy, but also the implementation and execution. The normalization of diplomatic ties with Cuba is an excellent example of NSC staff members implementing policy from their positions at the White House. Ricardo Zúñiga, an NSC staff member, and Ben Rhodes, the president’s chief foreign-policy aide, came up with the policy idea, received presidential approval and then were directed to oversee the entire process. They even represented the United States in the negotiations.
In the past four months I have sat across the table from several former cabinet level secretaries, Combatant Commanders, National Security Advisors and scores of high-ranking government leaders who all agree that the NSC staff needs to be drastically cut in size. As a whole, there is a belief that power and information are now centralized in the NSC staff and that the organization makes decisions independent of cabinet secretaries and outside input. Instead of serving as arbitrators they are in fact serving as “shadow secretaries.”
The role of the NSC staff needs to return to that of coordinating, consolidating and preparing the president to make decisions after all the other applicable government agencies have made inputs based on their areas of expertise. The departments of State, Defense and others all have extensive staffs and experts that should be called upon to provide input.
Following consultations with NSC principals, the president should make a decision and then the NSC staff publishes that decision and can monitor the implementation by the various government departments. Of course, military commanders and State Department diplomats should receive clear policy guidance from the commander-in-chief, but they should then be given the professional freedom to implement it. They are deliberately trained professionals and can be trusted to execute strategy, but with that trust they should also be held accountable for the execution. Allowing them to implement and execute while making decisions within their legal authority will go a long way in cementing trust between them and elected officials.
This really comes down to whom the president trusts to provide advice and expertise. It is widely known that President Obama often personally approved individual airstrikes. His NSC authorized small deployments of a few dozen troops (a task that clearly should be delegated to the secretary of defense consistent with Title 10 of United States Code). Many military recommendations stalled as the NSC staff debated them. Former Defense Secretary Gates once said that the White House micromanaged him to the point it “drove [him] crazy.”
Mr. Trump also has been accused by some of micromanaging his subordinates in his business dealings and during his campaign. In addition, he has called out our current military leaders for incompetency. Last year, for instance, he said of the Islamic State group, “I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me.” These are not encouraging signs, but some hold out hope that President-elect Trump will return much of the oversight and execution of foreign and defense policy to the State Department and the Pentagon. One of Trump's military advisers during his campaign, Republican Congressman Randy Forbes of Virginia, told Defense News in late October that as president, we can expect Trump to make a break early in his presidency, making it clear that "we are going to have an international defense strategy driven by the Pentagon and not by the political National Security Council."
President Trump should repair some of the broken relationships with military leaders and diplomats and demonstrate trust in their leadership and advice early in his presidency by cutting the size of the NSC staff and returning much of the staffing, implementation and execution of national security policy back to the departments of Defense, State and the other pertinent government agencies. If he delegates and empowers his NSC principals, he must also hold them accountable for the implementation and execution of that policy. He can do this from the start of his presidency. This way forward has been widely endorsed by leaders and politicians from both parties garnering overwhelming bi-partisan support. It just takes a president with enough trust in his Cabinet-level secretaries and their departments to make the necessary cuts to place trust and accountability back in the hands of his Cabinet.
James Price is a Senior Military Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the US government.
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