Trump’s national security advisers have fallen in his defense

THE LATEST ATTEMPT TO GIVE shape, form, intellectual coherence and respect to Trump’s hubris and impulsiveness on matters of national security is New York Times columnist Ross Douthat conversation with Robert O’Brien and Elbridge Colby.

Douthat describes his interlocutors as “Republican foreign policy specialists (who) believe that Trump 2.0 will be a continuation of his first term, presenting a grand strategy based on both Trump and traditional Republican elements.” They could just as easily be described as, in O’Brien’s case, Trump’s national security adviser during the former president’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results, and in Colby’s case, one of the authors of the 2018 National Defense Strategy under his leadership. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis – although Colby did get to a completely different conclusion from Mattis on Trump’s fitness for office and the prospects for a second Trump term.

The interview may give the unsuspecting reader the idea that the foreign policy choice between Republicans and Democrats in this election is essentially the same as in, say, the 2012 election: Republicans favor a more muscular foreign policy focused on military power, while Democrats favor a softer, gentler approach focusing primarily on diplomacy. In other words, it’s misleading – if not completely untrue – almost from start to finish.

O’Brien argues broadly that the Trump administration has acted on the Reaganite line of “peace through strength” and argues that the world has been more peaceful under Trump because, for example, he has provided lethal assistance to Ukraine in the form of Javelin anti-tank missiles and imposed sanctions on Russia. Now the world is heading towards World War III, which he says is obviously Joe Biden’s fault.

Far from being a serious political analysis, O’Brien’s argument is a jumble of partisan arguments. The Trump administration was marked by many adventures – and some good steps, such as providing lethal aid to Ukraine – but a lack of response to Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf, including the cancellation of retaliatory attacks on Iran because of Tucker Carlson worried this would lead to escalation and lack of response to the Iranian attack on the Saudis Abqaiq oil installationdeterioration of US deterrence in the region. Congress imposed sanctions on Russia Trump’s sharp objections. The world heading into World War III obviously has deeper roots than it has in the past four years, and both Trump and Biden share some responsibility for where we find ourselves.

On Afghanistan, O’Brien made it clear that he stopped the frantic effort to hastily withdraw from Afghanistan, that Trump agreed with him and that Biden botched the withdrawal. This last part is true, but the first part is not.

The attempted reckless withdrawal from Afghanistan completely involved O’Brien, who had been a weak national security adviser in the chaotic Trump administration. It was Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and after Esper’s firing, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who he stopped this idea.

O’Brien also carefully ignores the fact that it was Trump who sought and sanctioned the Doha Agreement (signed by Mike Pompeo) behind the backs of our Afghan partners, demoralizing them and setting the stage for the subsequent disaster. He also ignored the fact that the Trump administration never held the Taliban accountable for the terms of the agreement. One of the Biden team’s first mistakes was to engage Trump’s Afghanistan negotiator, Zalmay Khalilzad, to implement the agreement. What reason or evidence can anyone offer that an Afghan withdrawal under Trump would be better than under Biden?

Returning to Ukraine, O’Brien proposes a plan – though he cautions, not necessarily Trump’s plan – of escalating economic sanctions on Russia, rather than military escalation, to get it to the negotiating table.

There are problems with O’Brien’s plan, but they don’t really matter because we know what Trump’s plan is. Trump said he suggested it wants the sanctions imposed on Russia to be lifted. Or more precisely, it does apparently approved plan published by Gen. Keith Kellogg and Fred Fleitz of the America First Institute, which involves threatening both sides and, failing that, imposing current lines of contact as ceasefire lines. (Colby broadly endorses this framework in his conversation with Douthat). The plan would, in effect, ratify Putin’s aggression.

The former national security adviser also asserts, without evidence, that Trump’s camaraderie with dictators like Putin was a tool for having difficult conversations with them that allowed them to remain vigilant and guess his true intentions. This theory, while questionable, cannot be disproven because we don’t actually know what was said between Trump and Putin during their individual meetings in Helsinki and Hamburg. Trump confiscated translators’ notes.

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Perhaps O’Brien’s easiest claim to refute is that Trump’s team has spent four years rebuilding the military and replenishing depleted munitions supplies. But the numbers don’t lie: for Trump’s first two years, the defense budget increased by 3 percent, and then for two fiscal years it stayed flat (meaning a slight decline in defense spending due to inflation). Ammo accounts have not been significantly increased. In fact, Committee on National Defense Strategy 2018 which I co-chaired with former Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Gary Roughead, pointed out that we had almost run out of precision munitions in the campaign against ISIL, but virtually nothing had been done to remedy the situation.

Asked by Douthat whether the Middle East is a priority region for the United States, O’Brien begins his answer: “If you’re Jewish. . ” Douthat saved him from saying something regrettable by changing the question.

Elbridge Colby is more refined than O’Brien and would not make such a mistake. He argues, as he has done many times, including: book length (with Douthat’s note) that in the face of limited resources, the United States must absolutely prioritize the Indo-Pacific theater because China poses the most important long-term strategic threat to the United States.

Therefore, it seems that Colby’s policy provides no hope for a repeat of the defense build-up of the 1980s. Call it “peace through limits.” The National Defense Strategy Committee I co-chaired with Jane Harman MP calling for a real 3-5% increase in defense spending for two years, and then rose to about 5-6 percent of GDP – roughly the same as the ratio of defense spending to GDP in the 1980s. Colby seems to believe this is impossible, which would be true if Trump implemented all his irresponsible tax proposals.

Moreover, the idea that we can prioritize our commitments to allies – prioritizing commitments in East Asia and neglecting commitments everywhere else – ignores the fact that our allies themselves are indivisible in our national defense. With America’s power declining relative to the rest of the world, Colby calls for alienating our friends when the only logical option is to bring them together. What happens in Europe has consequences in Asia – just ask South Koreansor for that matter Taiwanese and Japanese.

Nearly everyone in Washington would like to see America’s allies take on more of the burden of defending themselves, but that’s easier said than done – especially in Colby’s case.

In the case of the United States, he advocates aligning foreign policy with what Americans are willing to support: “We need a willingness to deal with the gap between what Americans realistically want and are able to do and what we are trying to do on the international stage.” ” (There is no argument here, although part of the job of politicians is to lead public opinion, not follow it). And yet, surprisingly, our allies do not face the same constraints. “It is Europeans who must intensify their actions,” he admonishes. “And Germany and Poland can do much more. . . . The Italians, Spanish, Greeks, Turkish, British and French, with their naval forces, could actually play a much more significant role. . . . Most Europeans don’t spend enough.” If convincing the public to spend more on defense is so difficult for Americans, why should it be easy for our allies?

Colby has had a lot of practice explaining and defending his iconoclastic and idiosyncratic foreign policy view, but it’s unclear what that has to do with Trump questioning whether we should defend Taiwan. It also neglects valuable steps the Biden team has taken to improve our competitive position in the Indo-Pacific region: AUKUSadditional base access agreements with alliesand better coordination through Square AND US-ROK-Japan consultationsjust to name a few.

All these omissions, omissions and outright lies do not constitute very convincing evidence that a second Trump term would be anything other than a train wreck causing enormous damage to our alliances and international security in general.

And the timing couldn’t have been worse. Robert’s testimony that Trump loves our troops contradicts John Kelly and Mark Esper’s revelations that he considers dead soldiers “suckers and losers” and that he doesn’t like seeing wounded warriors because “it looks bad” for his. Milley, Mattis, Kelly, AND Esper this is what everyone has been talking about in the news lately, questioning Trump’s views and fundamental fitness. If the guy at the top is an unhinged fan of fascists, the opinion of his foreign policy advisers doesn’t matter much.

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