General Michael Flynn’s resignation and the selection of H.R. McMaster as the new National Security Advisor has brought the roles and responsibilities of this position into sharp relief. As a former official who has served as the top East Asia member of the National Security Council under former President George W. Bush, as the top CIA analyst on China, and as the editor of the President’s Daily Brief, I have spent a great deal of time in meetings in the Situation Room (most often as a backbencher) and in thinking about the system for national security decision-making and the role of the Intelligence Community in that process. The issues faced by President Donald Trump’s national security team are not new but the President’s unconventional style confronts the new National Security Advisor with some unique challenges.
It is said that President Trump prefers an improvisational operating style in which he is the hub and hears competing views directly from different advisors before making a major decision. If true, it will be incumbent on his new National Security Advisor to conform to his preference to find the most effective foreign policy decision-making approach. The competition of ideas in national security is desirable and necessary, but it must be orderly and transparent to participants in the national security policy process—with the National Security Advisor as the honest broker to keep the game fair. On several occasions, I witnessed Cabinet members meet privately with the President to get a decision from him before they even consulted the National Security Advisor.
During the George W. Bush Administration, I participated in many senior Situation Room meetings on China and North Korea in which the participants, at times, could not have been further apart in their viewpoints. The debate was often intense, and it was the role of the NSA to impartially referee these discussions and ensure that all voices were heard. This is where the participation of Presidential Senior Counselor Steve Bannon in the meetings could be problematic. Senior counselors are often viewed as the President’s political alter ego. His mere presence in the NSC deliberations could encourage groupthink—particularly if it is feared that he, perhaps signaling the President’s desires, has a strong preference for a certain outcome. Domestic political advisers often weigh in, and rightly so, with the President on foreign policy matters, but having the Counselor in NSC deliberations, at a minimum, could obscure the lines of argument as people parse their words instead of speaking forthrightly. The new National Security Advisor must deal with this issue explicitly and gain the President’s full backing as the leader of the presidential national security process.
Once satisfied with the options available, it is the responsibility of the National Security Advisor to present the NSC’s options and views to the President. This is not to say that Cabinet members should not, or will not, try to influence the President on foreign policy independently of the NSA. Indeed, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley argues that the advisor should encourage and facilitate direct interaction between them and the President. The final decision, though, must be made in consultation with the National Security Advisor, otherwise the National Security Advisor position becomes untenable.
Deputies, principals, or full NSC meetings typically have begun with a short Intelligence Community update on the available intelligence and analysis on the issue at hand so that all the members of the national security team are working from the same set of facts. The participants often ask clarifying questions or even disagree with a point of analysis. I remember being asked early in the Bush presidency to present as a backbencher on Chinese military modernization. As I finished my last point, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld launched into a 10-point rebuttal based on his belief that CIA analysts were overly confident in our ability to understand the People’s Liberation Army, given its lack of transparency. I did not enjoy being taken to task but I took his criticism seriously because it did not involve claims that we were trying to politicize or falsely report the situation. My professionalism and core motives were not questioned, nor did I question Rumsfeld’s motives. Given recent concerns raised by Trump about the integrity of intelligence officials, the new NSA must work to restore trust in the profoundly important deep expertise and valuable intelligence of the Intelligence Community. This expertise includes both an attitude and rigorous tradecraft that values and insist on objectivity, and CIA officers practice this daily with diligence and rigor and hold each other accountable.
Unauthorized disclosures or leaks are the bane of a good national security advisor because they tend to erode trust in the process and incline the advisor to narrow the number of officials involved in the national security process. The key to a successful NSC is the creation of as transparent a system as possible, given classification constraints. When those who feel they should be consulted are cut out of the process, there is a danger that they will not implement the policy decision with enthusiasm, and it may even incline them to undermine the policy, particularly if their professional integrity and tradecraft is under assault. Good discipline on not leaking starts with the NSC and the White House, and the national security advisor must make clear to his staff that leaking is unacceptable, but it also requires conveying trust and respect for government foreign policy professionals and for their ability to put aside their own politics in order to serve the Commander-in-Chief.
The most difficult responsibility of the national security advisor may be to ensure that the president’s strategic foreign policy initiatives are acted upon by the national security bureaucracy in a timely, committed, and effective manner. The NSC staff was never intended to implement policy because the United States has a large and capable national security apparatus and the NSC is purposefully small. Rather, the NSC staff is there to integrate policies across agencies and ensure that the president’s priorities are acted upon when they are implemented by others. One of the most useful processes we had on the NSC in Bush’s second term was a milestones review in which each senior director had to account for progress in his or her area of foreign policy responsibility against a list of the President’s priorities. A strong and expert NSC that respects—and protects—the limits of its powers is the key to foreign policy success.
