Yesterday, Robert O'Brien confirmed what we've all known -- the Trump administration has had no policy process over the past few years -- and he's tried to develop one over the last 5+ months on the job. What's it look like? A few observations. 1/x
The Trump team struggled from the start with so-called “interagency relations,” the traditional give-and-take with the state, defense and other departments. He & the govt did so because of one of their few agreements about process. 2/x
In 2017, Trump & many in the bureaucracy shared a belief Barack Obama micromanaged govt in meeting after meeting. So they cut the schedule and broke the process, but no one - including HR McMaster or John Bolton - could really formulate a process to fill the void. 3/x
As the Ukraine hearings exposed the breakdown to the world, O’Brien tried to pick up the pieces of government. But the new national security advisor made clear the goal was not interagency business as usual. 4/x
In order to pursue Trump’s “vision for a lean, efficient government,” O’Brien sought to cut the NSC staff, the president’s representatives to the interagency, by a third or 60-70 staffers—a target he’ll reportedly meet this month. 5/x
That staff design reflects the sort of process O’Brien wants to run. In addition to Trump and O’Brien, the decision-making circle is very small. On Iran, it included Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Mark Esper, and Gen. Milley. 6/x
Although it includes many statutory members of the National Security council, Trump’s new NSC resembles an informal, ad-hoc gang in which members share views and keep secrets—including from their own agencies. 7/x.
That sort of gang appears to be a good fit for Trump, who has spent no time in government or bureaucracy and all of his adult life in a family business driven by his whims and staffed by obedient children. 8/x
The gang model also allows for the president to organize little coalitions of the willing, advisers keen to pursue relatively discreet, one-off objectives like shaking down Ukraine or striking Iran. 9/x
And a smaller, like-minded, agreeable circle gives the president an inflated perception of his own power and flexibility, in part by limiting input from the government’s bureaucrats, lawyers, and more. 10/x
To O’Brien and Trump, the Soleimani strike was proof of concept for their gang and this process. Despite the mess surrounding it, the whole experience appears to have inspired some confidence at the WH. 11/x
An ally of the president said the new team “understand the president. They have chemistry among themselves.” The result, according to one former official is “less introspection, less debate and faster action.” 12/x
The whole thing, at least to O’Brien, feels (John) Kennedy-esque. The 35th president was also sure his predecessor Eisenhower had been too deliberative and government too sclerotic. 13/x
Kennedy too wanted to make bold, imaginative, flexible decisions for a dynamic new decade in give-and-take sessions with a small club of educated, ambitious advisers. What was Camelot, after all, if not a glamorous gang? 14/x
Even though many blamed the Kennedy gang for the Bay of Pigs fiasco that almost mortally injured the presidency in its early days, O’Brien sees their later handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis as proof of a concept for a smaller foreign-policy team. 15/x
Kennedy of course did find a way down from the brink in October 1962, but it is more appropriate to judge his process on an episode less than a year later. 16/x
On Saturday, August 24, 1963, Michael Forrestal, a NSC staffer, encouraged the president on vacation at Hyannis Port via telegram to signal support for a coup being planned against South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem. 17/x
After the assent was cabled to Saigon and everyone returned to work on Monday, everyone freaked out about the idea and how little it was thought through. Though Forrestal offered to resign and Kennedy admitted, “We fucked that up.” 18/x
3 months later, Diem had been shot in the back of an armored personnel carrier &Kennedy assassinated in the back of a convertible in Dallas. But his successor Lyndon Johnson made his most fateful decisions about Vietnam in JFK’s casual, clubby process and with his gang. 19/x
That history is important to remember today. The problem is not that Trump is doing things differently than Washington has done them in recent decades—the problem is that he’s doing things the way we know leads to disaster. 20/x
“Group think,” the tendency for like-minded advisors to conform that drove so many Kennedy and Johnson decisions on Vietnam, explains both the decision Trump made on Soleimani and why it was so hard to explain to anyone outside the gang. 21/x
Government by gang is better than no government at all but risky just the same. For more, please check out my new piece here: foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/04/tru…
