To take the example of the memorandum on the National Security Council, which has been widely reported as "demoting" the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and lead intelligence representative (which has changed in the interim with creation of the Director of National Intelligence).
Yet the language is identical to that in President George W. Bush's 2001 executive order on the same subject. Suggesting a grievous civil-military peril of the president isolated from the input of military and intelligence professionals has served to obscure the more important issue of formally including a political counsellor - namely, Stephen Bannon - in national security decision-making.
But there, too, Stevenson and others wrongly treat Bannon's inclusion in the Principals' Committee as without precursor, when former President Barack Obama had earlier blurred the line between political and national security issues by allowing his political advisor into the meetings. Arguing technicalities like whether David Axelrod had a formal vote is hardly a man-the-ramparts distinction.
A reasonable case could be made that politicos have a valuable role to play in ensuring domestic support for national security decisions, or that deconflicting, sequencing, and prioritising the president's efforts is legitimately a political counsellor's job.
Neither Obama nor Trump have tried to make that case, and politicising national security decisions leaves them more vulnerable to being criticised by the opposition party or overturned by successive administrations. But it is completely defensible for the president to organise the national security process largely to his liking.
Moreover, it is pointless (and probably a violation of the separation of powers) for Congress to attempt to legislate practices that don't suit the president's needs.
Will Wechsler from the Centre for American Progress and I conducted a study of NSC best practices, in which we interviewed leading policymakers from both parties, and the main finding was that formal inter-agency processes are meaningless unless they match the managerial practices of the president.
When they do not, as in the Obama Administration's initial aspiration to run a Scowcroft-type inter-agency process, informal practices develop to better provide the president information, preserve private deliberation with trusted advisers, and conduct diplomacy.
As Madeleine Albright told us about the Obama NSC, "it is working the way the president wants it to," meaning that Obama himself organised the process to marginalise the views of the military, diplomatic, and intelligence professionals and pursue his national security policies in the company of Tom Donilon, David Axelrod, Denis McDonough, and Ben Rhodes.
Finding ways to match this president's management will be no small feat. But there is good reason to believe that as Cabinet departments are staffed up and execution of policies begins, power will shift away from the White House.
The start of most presidential administrations is chaotic because jobs are not yet filled and everybody's newly working together.
This transition is more chaotic than most because:
a) the Trump team was unprepared,
b) many experienced conservative policymakers declined to support the candidate, and
c) this president's management style is less structured than most.
But he appointed mostly qualified people to the Cabinet, many of whom are known to disagree with some of his more virulent prescriptions.
Vice-President Mike Pence is headed to Europe with reassuring words, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was only just confirmed (but gave a solid opening performance in reassuring his department), and Secretary of Defence James Mattis has been a model diplomat.
Showing he understands the importance of symbols for countries reliant on American partnership, Mattis' first phone call was to the Canadian Defence Minister, the second to his Mexican counterpart, and third to the Nato Secretary-General.
He took his first overseas trip on his second week in office, to bolster Asian allies that had been badly shaken by candidate Trump's campaign rhetoric. And he threatened America's adversaries (saying North Korea would face withering retaliation for any attack on South Korea) and reassured friends (publicly committing that the US would aid Japan in any conflict over disputed territory).
The president may yet rebuke his Cabinet for pursuing polices at odds with his proclivities, but it looks more as though Trump's wilder tendencies and reckless loyalists in the White House are being reined in as processes of national security decision making are found by the most recent band of amateurs in whom the American voters have reposed their trust.
- Foreign Policy
- Kori Schake is a fellow at the Hoover Institution.
