The Republican National Convention ended Thursday night with nominee Donald Trump vowing to be the “law and order candidate.” His speech was peppered with national security pronouncements, from criticizing Democratic president candidate Hillary Clinton’s legacy as Secretary of State to declaring that under his plan the United States will destroy ISIS and “win fast.”
The Cipher Brief’s Mackenzie Weinger spoke with former CIA and NSA director General Michael Hayden to get his thoughts on Trump’s NATO comments, Thursday’s acceptance speech and whether he would support the candidate after watching the convention.
TCB: I want to start with Trump’s comments to The New York Times about NATO, where he said that if he is president the U.S. will only defend NATO countries if they had “fulfilled their obligations to us.” That drew a lot of sharp rebukes from both sides of the aisle. What’s your take on his NATO stance?
MH: Yes, that actually was a very frightening statement, and made even more frightening by being so incredibly inconsistent with not just our treaty obligations for God’s sake, but with the rhetoric coming out of the convention. I actually took the time to look at some of the other quotes, and you’ve got his favorite military officer Mike Flynn saying, “We have become the best enemies and the worst friends,” or “this has caused the world to have no respect for America's word.”
And then, he says, “ehh, solemn treaty obligation — not so much.” I mean, the inconsistency of that statement with regard to NATO and the harshly critical language of the current administration not being a reliable ally - it creates cognitive dissonance that’s difficult to describe. They’re so inconsistent.
By the way, Estonia does pay more than two percent of its GDP to defense. Estonia meets the NATO standard. It sends troops to Afghanistan. I mean, the idea — I’ve been in Estonia in the last month, and the Obama administration, the one he claims is so weak, has actually gotten NATO to commit a battalion each to Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. That’s all designed to deter any kind of Russian adventurism, and now you’ve got the Republican nominee undercutting that by saying he may not respond to a Russian attack on Estonia.
TCB: That leads to my next question — what do you you think it says about his potential relationship with Russia? Does this give you pause?
MH: The idea of deterrence is to put thoughts in your opponent’s mind that if this, therefore that. And Trump’s statement, which frankly doesn’t appear to have been a stray electron — his spokesman has backed it up since then — his statements have been largely along the lines of, if then, ehh, we’ll have to take a look. Which is hardly a successful formula for deterrence. And then I would add, it reflects a view of strategic relationships through an exclusive lens of bookkeeping rather than mutual strategic interest.
He looks at this not through the lens of strategic interest, not through the lens of grand strategy, but through, well, look, if you haven’t paid your bills, you can’t get your table at the restaurant. Ok?
And then, at another point in that interview, he talks about bringing forces home from overseas. He’s talking about Korea and Japan, because they (Japan and Korea) are not paying enough. Actually, they pay a lot. They underwrite those forces to a mighty tune, and if he were to bring them back to the United States, the only way he could save money would be to dissolve the units because they would cost a lot more to be kept here in the United States than they cost us to be kept overseas in Japan and Korea.
And he makes the point that if we decide we have to defend the United States, we can always deploy from American soil. And, according to him, it will be a lot less expensive. That is absolutely wrong. In fact, it’s his argument that we can’t be paying everything but his answer is just mathematically incorrect. It is more expensive to keep the forces here — period — than it is overseas, and it is incredibly expensive to move them to a point of conflict once something starts to go wrong. And so this is beyond incoherence.
TCB: I want to change tack to another statement Trump made. He said he vowed to suspend immigration from countries he described as “compromised by terrorism.” He hasn’t elaborated on what that distinction means, just saying it would last “until such time as proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place.” Do you think this is a viable approach?
MH: It’s probably our current approach. We actually vet refugees very, very thoroughly already. He’s talking as if Ellis Island is open the way it was in the middle of the 19th century. The most seriously vetted group entering the United States are refugees. Now, will mistakes be made? Yes, they will. They will be made under the current system and they will be made under any system that Mr. Trump sets up. And then what was his phrase?
TCB: “Compromised by terrorism.”
MH: That would be the United Kingdom.
TCB: And France, Germany —
MH: Yes, France and Germany and so on. Is it all Germans who want to come to the country or only Germans who eat halal? I mean, what does all of that mean? And it begins with a presumption that all we have now are totally open borders and no methodology with regard to screening. So I appreciate that he finally stepped back from the incredibly stupid line that no Muslim can come into the United States, but this is only a marginal improvement.
TCB: Another thing he painted a picture of last night was the status of the world and the Middle East in 2009. He said, “pre-Hillary, ISIS was not even on the map. Libya was stable. Egypt was peaceful. Iraq had seen a big reduction in violence. Iran was being choked by sanctions. Syria was somewhat under control.” Does this read on 2009 make sense to you?
MH: It was one of the passages in his talk that actually did carry with it some ground truth. Now, where we are in the Middle East is the product of many factors. One of those factors really comprises American decisions, including the American decision to go to zero in Iraq in 2011. And also the American decision to intervene in Libya with no clear plan whatsoever as to what we would do when we overthrew Gaddafi, so that does contain very serious, accurate criticisms. That said, there’s a lot else going on in the Middle East. It doesn’t take just American missteps to make this a very dangerous and very difficult region. And so we certainly have made our mistakes, but to say that what’s going on there now is all the result of our mistakes is to oversimplify the problem and that is something that concerns me.
TCB: He also used it to critique Clinton’s legacy as Secretary of State. He specifically described it as a legacy of “death, destruction and terrorism and weakness.” And he linked it to how now Libya is “in ruins,” Egypt “was turned over to the radical Muslim Brotherhood, forcing the military to retake control,” Iraq is “in chaos,” Iran is “on the path to nuclear weapons” and Syria is “engulfed in a civil war and a refugee crisis that now threatens the West.” Those were the talking points he pulled out while describing Clinton’s legacy. Is that an appropriate assessment?
MH: I certainly hope he doesn’t think that we’re the chess master who controls all the movements of all the pieces on the board. There are a lot of things that go on, whether the United States wants them to or not. So that’s one point.
Second, Secretary Clinton did support policies that added to the turmoil in the Middle East. There is no question about it. But it’s also true that Secretary Clinton supported policies that President Obama refused to enact, like having a more robust response in Syria.
And so although there’s certainly truth to his criticism, the situation, again, is more complex than he’s letting on. There are factors there beyond our control and, in fact, Secretary Clinton was pushing for some tougher policies — she just couldn’t convince the president of them.
TCB: I want to now switch to his comments about intelligence gathering and how best to protect the United States from terrorism. He said the U.S. needs to be focused on three things: having “the best, absolutely the best, gathering of intelligence anywhere in the world,” abandoning what he described as Clinton’s “failed policy of nation building and regime change” and destroying ISIS “quickly.” From an intelligence perspective, and your background, does he need to elaborate on his plan to “win fast?”
MH: (laughs) How’s that for an answer? How about my just laughing?
Ok so, we’re going to “win fast?” What’s the plan? What will we do on January 20 that we’re not doing now? What will that entail? Is it going to be a military victory? And if it’s a military victory, I want to know what forces are going to be prominent. Is it going to be a ground force victory, an air force victory? And if it is a ground and air force victory, whose ground forces and whose air forces? And what do you define as victory over the Islamic State? How do I know this is over, how do I know that I’ve won? What are the conditions you’re asking me to create?
Then, when I go to the sentence right in front of that, which is we’re going to abandon regime change and nation building — so when we’re done with the killing, then we’re just going to leave?
And I’ve had this conversation with several administrations. Unless you change the facts on the ground, all you’re able to do is to kill people. And you get to kill them forever. And so I don’t understand how he fixes this without changing ground truth in that part of the world.
Now, that’s not quite the same thing as unilateral nation building but it certainly entails a lot more than just going in and blowing stuff up.
TCB: I just wanted to get your assessment on the week at large from a national security perspective. And the obvious question, would you support him after this?
MH: No, I would not. The overall take I got was a great deal of anger. A strong dose of isolationism. An incredible ability to oversimplify problems. And overall, the lack of coherence in a broad international approach. Other than that, he did great.
Read the Q&A with Hayden on Clinton and the Democratic National Convention here.
