President Trump’s decision to downsize the National Security Council staff has evoked howls of protest from members of the media and from former NSC staffers under President Joe Biden — at times they are one and the same. These critics argue that Trump is “removing part of his government’s brain” and increasing the risk of America being unable to address and respond to a developing crisis.
Their case would be much stronger if the NSC had, for example, understood the risks of a hurried withdrawal from Afghanistan and planned a more deliberate departure from that country.
Biden had reduced the size of the National Security Council staff, which at its apogee under President Barack Obama stood at 400. Yet the Obama administration failed to stop Bashar Assad’s chemical attacks on Syrian rebels and negotiated an agreement with Iran that Tehran began to violate before its ink had even dried.
Nor did a 200-person NSC staff under President George W. Bush successfully coordinate the warring State and Defense Departments — a contributing factor to U.S. failures in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is noteworthy that President George H.W. Bush — who managed a highly successful foreign and national security policy, including an outright victory over Saddam Hussein — relied upon no more than 60 NSC professionals. Their leader, Brent Scowcroft, is widely acknowledged to have been the most capable of all post-World War II national security advisors.
Bill Clinton’s NSC staff coordinated a relatively successful national security policy that included the expansion of NATO and the successful defenestration of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic and the end of the Balkan Wars. Clinton had increased the NSC staff by 50 percent from the previous administration, but it still numbered less than 100 officials and was half the size of Biden’s NSC cohort.
What emerges from this tale of fluctuating numbers is that the size of the National Security Council staff matters not nearly as much as both its mission and the cohesion — or lack thereof — of the agency heads that constitute the council itself.
For the elder Bush, as well as for Clinton, the NSC staff functioned as a true coordinating body, offering the president top-level policy choices while allowing the agency heads to manage their own respective operations. Biden, and even more so Obama, sought to usurp the operational responsibilities that rightly resided with the agencies that constituted the NSC, and essentially micromanaged foreign and national security policy. Of course, there was no way that a staff that at most numbered 400 people could do the job of agencies with several orders of magnitude more personnel.
Trump’s approach to downsizing the NSC staff certainly involves risk. That is not because of the smaller number of staff, since a small staff would have no option but to focus on coordinating the activities of Cabinet agencies.
Rather, it is the manner with which the staff has been reduced, and the capabilities of those personnel who will populate it. Laura Loomer, the conspiracy theorist and gadfly, is hardly an expert in either national security policy or personnel management, and her attacks on several highly talented NSC staffers should have been ignored by the president. On the other hand, it is not as if the remaining NSC staffers will necessarily be a bunch of incompetent dunderheads.
Moreover, if, as it appears, the leading agency heads in Trump’s second administration will cooperate with one another — much like Secretary of State James Baker, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Scowcroft worked hand-in-hand, even as they offered H.W. Bush alternative approaches to policy — then all that Trump needs is a small staff that coordinates the agencies that constitute the NSC.
Some have argued that Marco Rubio’s multi-hatted role as Secretary of State and acting National Security Advisor gives the State Department an upper hand in policy making. Many of those making this case are the very people who previously expressed concern that State had been sidelined by the Pentagon and was a shell of its former policy-making self. In fact, although Rubio is no Henry Kissinger (and many of Trump’s older critics hated Kissinger too), he certainly can ensure that State’s concerns receive the same due consideration as those of Defense, or for that matter Treasury. That is not a bad thing at all.
Finally, some argue that the NSC staff will simply offer up to Trump whatever it is that he wishes to hear. Perhaps. But a smaller staff by definition will be unable to stifle the views of agency heads, all of whom will offer the president what they view are the best possible choices in any given circumstance.
National Security Council staffs, like the agency heads, serve at the pleasure of every president, not only this one. It is their job to ensure that his policies meet with success. They may have different views about which policies accomplish his objectives, but they all share the same goal. One can argue the wisdom or correctness of Trump’s policy decisions, but like all his predecessors, the last word will always be his.
And the job of the NSC staff is not to preempt the Cabinet and other top agency heads but to ensure that the president has the most viable alternatives from which to choose before he decides upon a given course of action, whatever it may be.
Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.