The Administration Takes a Hatchet to the NSC

Yahoo

5 days ago

At 4:20 p.m. on the Friday before Memorial Day, Brian McCormack, the National Security Council chief of staff, sent an email to more than 100 staffers telling them that they had 30 minutes to clear out their desk. Nearly all were people the Trump administration had hired to the NSC.
President Donald Trump has been gunning for the NSC since 2019, during his first term in office, when two staffers filed a whistleblower complaint about his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and got him impeached. On Friday, White House officials told Axios that the NSC is plagued by unnecessary committees and meetings that slow down decision making, and that the council is a needless check on the president's power. One official called the NSC 'the ultimate Deep State. It's Marco vs. the Deep State. We're gutting the Deep State.'
That is a very strange way to characterize the arm of the government that exists to make sure the others are carrying out the president's agenda. In dismantling the NSC, Trump is not only removing part of his government's brain but creating real risk should a crisis strike. That's because the council has two core functions based in congressional statute: One is to advise the president on national security and foreign policy, and the other is to coordinate the work of agencies and departments in executing the policies he chooses.
So why do Trump officials think the NSC staff is unnecessary or harmful? The one quoted by Axios went on to say: 'If you have officials fighting each other and their agencies always involved in turf wars, you maybe need this process. That's not what you have here. Rubio, Bessent, Hegseth, Bondi—all of them know each other and like each other, and they know they're there to execute the president's will.'
[Read: Inside the fiasco at the National Security Council]
It is nice to hear that Trump officials all get along, and that the rumors to the contrary are false. But the point of the NSC process is not simply to resolve clashes of personality. I served in the NSC for almost three years under President Joe Biden, as the head of the strategic-planning directorate, and I had a bird's-eye view of the entire bureaucratic process.
No one loves committees, but that doesn't mean they're unnecessary. In a typical week, a committee of deputy Cabinet secretaries meets two or three times in the Situation Room, to discuss issues of the highest priority to the president. No phones or electronic devices are allowed. Lower-level committees meet to prepare groundwork. Occasionally, if significant differences emerge among departments, Cabinet officials will meet—imagine the Houthi-strike Signal group, but in a classified space, with real preparation.
This doesn't involve as many people as you might think. The NSC policy staff stood at 186 at the end of Biden's term, larger than in Trump's first term but smaller than under George W. Bush or Barack Obama. These people are spread across about 20 different directorates, and drawn from across the government. Some directorates are charged with covering different regions or specific issues: technology, energy, intelligence, defense. Most of the people let go on Friday were career civil servants working in these directorates.
The White House briefings implied that these people were the tools of the 'deep state,' sent to slow down the decision-making process and work against the president from the inside. But no one is sent to the NSC in that sense. The president and his national security adviser appoint the council's senior directors. These political appointees then pick directors to work on their teams—usually civil servants with the type of expertise and skills they believe the president will need to implement his agenda. The directorates often take the president's overarching ideas and convert them into nuts-and-bolts policy: AUKUS (the pact with Australia and the U.K. on nuclear-powered submarines), key elements of the CHIPS Act (which invested in the domestic manufacturing of semiconductors), the effort to roll back China's overseas bases, and the technology-export controls on China all originated in the NSC.
The NSC is a crucial tool for the president in a moment of crisis. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, for example, called for a policy response spanning much of the U.S. government. The Biden administration's policy mobilized sanctions, weapons, diplomacy, and intelligence cooperation; it required coordination or communication with Europe, China, the Middle East, Congress, and the press. To make all of this happen, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met daily with senior NSC staffers, not only to solve immediate problems, but also to figure out what more could be done to advance the president's objectives. The NSC was behind the move to get Ukraine sufficient numbers of air-defense missiles; it came up with an inventive scheme to generate funds for Ukraine out of Russian sovereign assets without seizing them outright; and it recommended the strategic declassification of intelligence to pressure Russia.
Trump, of course, could use his NSC to advance very different goals than Biden did. That's as it should be. But he has opted instead to divest himself of this tool. He has a few senior directors left—an unspecified number were fired on Friday, and others have been let go over the past couple of months—and each oversees a massive portfolio. The Europe directorate alone covers about 50 countries, including Russia and Turkey. These senior directors are now largely on their own. They have hardly anyone to draft policy guidance, review speeches, or be the first point of contact for embassies.
Those who oppose Trump may welcome these cuts, precisely because they reduce the ability of this president to destroy and remake U.S. foreign policy. Decimating the NSC removes a layer of White House oversight from the departments engaged in foreign affairs, which could mean strengthening them relative to Trump: If Rubio is truly a temporary national security adviser, there for just six months, the gutting of the NSC will weaken his successor and strengthen his influence as secretary of state. The Pentagon, Treasury Department, Department of Homeland Security, Central Intelligence Agency, and other agencies could likewise set up their own mini–foreign policies, each based on the Cabinet secretary's interpretation of what they heard from the president, whether in a meeting, a side conversation, or a Truth Social post.
Not only would this produce a chaotic and likely ineffective U.S. foreign policy, but the administration could run into some serious trouble with contingency planning. The NSC staff normally flags things that could go wrong and pulls together high-level working groups called 'tiger teams' to prepare plans for worst-case scenarios. The Biden administration ran tiger teams for Ukraine, various Taiwan scenarios, and a widening of the war in the Middle East. At least one looming crisis now deserves that type of attention.
[Read: Inside the fight over Trump's foreign policy]
On April 1 and 2, China carried out a maritime exercise called Strait-Thunder 2025A, for a quarantine of Taiwan and attacks on its military installations. Senior officials in the U.S. and allied nations saw this as a clear warning that China may be preparing a major action short of an invasion against Taiwan. It could, for example, impose a customs zone on Taiwan, whereby Beijing would control everything going in and out of it. The United States depends on Taiwan for semiconductor chips vital to the AI race—something the Trump administration is particularly concerned abou—and a quarantine or customs zone would wreak havoc with that.
In any other administration, the NSC would run a tiger team for such an eventuality. Two senior directors would convene senior officials from all departments and the military, who would then come up with options for deterring China from taking any such action, for making sure the U.S. gets advance notice if China does act, and for responding in a manner that would frustrate China's effort. The team would consider sanctions, diplomacy, and military options. It would scrutinize the plans of the departments. Deputies and principals would then discuss the tiger team's plan and make adjustments. If China struck, America would be as ready as it could be.
The kind of coordination the NSC provides, whether in anticipating crises or responding to them, does not happen automatically, even when Cabinet officials get along with one another. And no single department or agency can replace the NSC's role, because none has a sufficient overview of the whole field, or of all the tools the U.S. government can bring to bear. If one department did take the lead over all the others, it would likely be biased in favor of using the tools it controls and advancing its institutional interests.
Trump seems to think that he doesn't need any of this, that he knows what to do in any circumstance and doesn't need 'options' and 'recommendations' served up to him. In his mind, he just needs a small team to carry out his orders. But if China makes a move against Taiwan, especially if it is novel and unexpected, Trump may find himself asking what choices he has. If the plans have not been prepared, he will not be able to choose among them. Instead, the country will be dangerously exposed, relying solely on the president's gut instinct on a subject he knows little about.
Article originally published at The Atlantic