NS-See Ya
Trump and Rubio move decisively. Fed's Jerome Powell trying to tank economy to help Democrats. Government should end H1-B visa scam.
On Fox News, Christian discusses Chinese student visas and ending the H1-B visa scam, both of which harm Americans, and State Department reform. Video: https://bit.ly/3HjL3Y2
When Donald Rumsfeld, who was Secretary of Defense during the Ford and George W. Bush administrations, was told by his staff that “the NSC wants…,” he apparently would occasionally retort, “No it doesn’t, I’m on the NSC.”
Rumsfeld was referring to the actual National Security Council (NSC), created by the National Security Act of 1947 amid major postwar restructuring of the defense and intelligence apparatus. As Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld held a position that was one of the four original members of the NSC. The Secretary of Defense joined the president, Secretary of State, and even the vice president—previously alienated from foreign policy and identified more with the legislative than executive branch. The idea was to formalize a process that would coordinate a sprawling national security apparatus based on lessons learned in World War II as the United States reorganized for the Cold War.
Over the years, more statutory members were added to the NSC, and presidents could of course designate other members (e.g., Secretary of Treasury, Secretary of Energy) and non-member advisors (e.g., CIA Director, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman). It was to this this senior-level body of top men that Rumsfeld referred. But his staff was referring to its counterparts on the de facto secretariat of that body, known more properly as the National Security Council staff but inevitably referred to throughout government as “the NSC.”
This confusion of which Rumsfeld was making light is less innocuous than it sounds. It is a problem that President Donald Trump sought to resolve through previous cuts to this bureaucracy which culminated May 23 in mass layoffs. Trump’s supporters celebrated what they believed to be a major blow to the Deep State and they were right in part. But they overlooked friendly fire that took out Trump supporters among part of the NSC staff, including people with skill in surmounting deep state traps laid to snag a Republican president.
Over the years the NSC staff had become bloated to the point where it was an agency unto itself. It grew in power out of necessity during the Bush administration as the complexity of the War on Terror, with its foreign and domestic threats, became apparent. But its expansion was also necessitated by bitter divides between the Pentagon, State Department, and intelligence bureaucracy that fell to staff to try to bridge (“coordinate”) since President Bush declined to adjudicate them.
The NSC bureaucracy reached nearly 400 official staffers during the Obama administration. Successive White Houses expanded the number of directorates (i.e., subject areas) and inflated titles. At one point, there were so many “deputy national security advisors,” that to deal with a mere “senior director”—previously a big-deal title—just didn’t cut it.
A big problem was not just the size of the NSC staff, but its composition. Despite working at the “White House,” very few staffers were political appointees. The NSC has a relatively modest budget to hire its own direct staff and instead relies heavily on “detailees” loaned from various government agencies, especially the Pentagon, State Department, and CIA.
While many detailees sought merely to help implement a president’s agenda, some brought their own agenda with them—or the parochial interests of the agency or military branch from which they were loaned to the NSC. Others were ignorant of political reality, seeing themselves as above politics—a stupid form of preening since there is nothing more political than war. Others were political and opposed the president’s politics.
The worst case in point was Alexander Vindman, the Fat Colonel. He was loaned from the Army to the NSC staff to cover Ukraine issues, despite being born in Ukraine and having an obvious conflict of interest with that region. The Fat Colonel was accused of leaking the transcript of Trump’s 2019 conversation with Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky and later shimmied into his army suit to testify against his own president in the phony first impeachment of Trump.
The president and his advisors learned the hard way that the NSC staff was against him—a risk about which my colleagues and I had warned every major Republican presidential campaign and presidential transition since 2008 to no avail.
Fast forward to 2025. The second Trump administration failed again at staffing the NSC properly. And now comes the correction and overcorrection.
In mostly obliterating the NSC staff, Trump could paradoxically be making it stronger. A handful of people who can plausibly claim to have the ear of the national security advisor and the president himself are far more powerful than scores of palace eunuchs whom the president distrusts or obviously doesn’t even know.
But the clearing of the decks of the NSC staff probably went too far. A case in point is Andrew Peek, the pro-Trump foreign policy expert seen frequently on Fox News who helped design and execute Trump’s first-term “maximum pressure” sanctions against Iran’s clerical regime and its nuclear weapons program. He, along with other Trump loyalists, were dismissed or placed on administration leave. Ironically, the Deep State detailees can just mope back to their old jobs at the Pentagon and State Department. Peek and others like him may be out—leaving even fewer senior officials who are loyal to Trump and have experience negotiating with the Iranians and Russians, which is not an easy skill to learn.
The near-mothballing of the NSC staff also works only if Trump doesn’t need a process of national security coordination and has loyal national security aides who have a nearly identical vision of policy. An effective NSC staff could closely monitor the activities of the sprawling U.S. government and tattle to higher authority when parts of the bureaucracy act contrary to a president’s wishes. Trump no longer has this capacity at his fingertips. Can he compensate by centralizing all decision-making and relying on his cabinet? We’ll see.
Also, in taking the NSC staff to a skeleton crew, the White House has dismantled a place for mid-career national security types who think like the president to get White House experience. Other similar options are limited to a small number of political appointee slots at the Pentagon and State Department—or staff jobs on Capitol Hill. That means the tiny portion of Republicans who can do battle with the massive national security establishment just got smaller.
Let’s hope at least that those who stayed loyal to Trump but got pushed out of the NSC staff are put to use elsewhere in his administration.
Domino Theory
Fyodor Lukyanov on what Russian President Vladimir Putin is thinking in regard to a deal on Ukraine and whether Russian interests or policy have changed.
Fyodor Lukyanov on possible areas of U.S.-Russia cooperation apart from Ukraine.
We need to end H1B visas until every legal American has a job or a place in a university that they want.