11/11/2020 02:04 pm ET Updated 1
day ago
Trump’s Transition Chaos Is A National Security Nightmare
The outgoing president is purging
agencies to expand his influence, and Biden’s team can do little to limit
Trump’s behavior toward Iran, Afghanistan and more.
President Donald Trump remains commander in chief for only
more 10 weeks, until President-elect Joe
Biden takes office in January. But during that time, Trump is in a
position to make destabilizing foreign policy choices that could sow chaos and
restrict Biden’s future policies.
While the president has been raging on Twitter about
an election he sees as illegitimate, his administration is rapidly exerting control
over key national security positions — elevating the risk of mayhem and
alarming experienced officials across Washington, D.C.
On Monday, Trump fired Defense Secretary Mike Esper,
removing one of the key officials who have, to some degree, pushed back against
the president’s plans. He replaced Esper with Christopher Miller, the
former head of the National Counterterrorism Center, who is known for
encouraging the U.S. to more aggressively confront Iran, which Trump allies
want to pressure before the president leaves office.
A series of further personnel moves at the Pentagon
followed: Top defense officials resigned and were replaced by Trump loyalists,
including Anthony Tata, who has called former President Barack Obama a
“terrorist leader” and has pushed a range of
unhinged conspiracy theories, and GOP operatives Kash Patel and Ezra
Cohen-Watnick.
“It is hard to overstate just how dangerous high-level
turnover at the Department of Defense is during a period of presidential
transition,” House Armed Services Committee chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said
Tuesday.
And at the National Security Agency, Trump installed
Michael Ellis, who was previously involved in Republican efforts to question
Russian interference in the 2016 election, as general counsel, according to The Washington Post. Ellis
has been transferred to a civil servant position, making it harder for Biden to
remove him, CNN reported.
The president is desperate to declassify intelligence
on Moscow’s meddling to justify his 2016 win, regardless of how that might hurt
sensitive research methods and American alliances, the Post reported on
Wednesday.
On Thursday, Trump forced out a senior
cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security.
Experts and Democratic operatives said the risk of
vengeful or irresponsible moves by Trump is particularly high when it comes to
foreign policy, an area in which the president can often act
unilaterally.
“The only thing that has kept Donald Trump from doing
things that would have been absolutely crazy, and I would underscore
absolutely, was the prospect of reelection and political pressure,” said a
former Obama administration official who requested anonymity to speak frankly.
In a transition period, “The limited guardrails that have been on this
presidency would no longer be there.”
“We would see this president take precipitous action
in ways that would be counter to our national interest but then would also set
in motion crises that the Biden administration would have to account for,” the
former official added.
I’m
not really sure there are many guardrails.Former
Obama administration official
The possibilities worrying the ex-Obama staffer and
others range from Trump launching a war, to using an executive order he signed
last month to place political loyalists in some influential roles usually held
by civil servants.
And the personnel moves in the national security arena
go well beyond just the Pentagon and National Security Agency. It’s clear a
thorough purge is underway. On Friday, Trump ousted Bonnie Glick, a former
foreign service officer serving as the deputy head of the sprawling U.S. Agency
for International Development. The move kept his controversial appointee John
Barsa in charge of the organization, despite the fact that his term as acting
chief has expired. On
Monday, Barsa told his team the transition of power to Biden has not yet
begun, CNBC reported.
Trump also forced Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, the
administrator of the agency that oversees America’s nuclear stockpile, out of
her job on Friday. “That the Secretary of Energy effectively demanded her
resignation during this time of uncertainty demonstrates he doesn’t know what
he’s doing in national security matters,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.),
the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said.
Trump’s General Services Administration chief, Emily
Murphy, has also refused to sign a letter granting resources to Biden’s
transition team, the Post reported on
Sunday night, subverting a normal practice seemingly because of the president’s
dishonest claims that the election is still not settled. That denies Biden not
only taxpayer funding and computer systems but also full intelligence briefings, which former House
Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican, said the president-elect should
already be receiving.
A longtime Trump adviser told HuffPost he believes
that CIA director Gina Haspel and FBI director Christopher Wray could also be
removed soon.
Biden’s team can’t do much to rein Trump in. They
want to respect the fact that the U.S. only has one president at a time ― not
least because of Democratic frustration with Trump acting as though he was
already in charge when dealing with Russia, Israel and the United Arab Emirates
before Obama left office in 2016. They also know the country will already
be tense as Trump pursues lawsuits to deny Biden’s victory and baselessly
alleges election fraud; they don’t want more squabbling that undermines
Americans’ and foreigners’ faith in the U.S. commitment to an orderly and
peaceful transition of power.
POOL NEW /
REUTERSSecretary of State Mike Pompeo (left)
departed on a foreign trip soon after the election to promote tough measures on
Iran in cooperation with partners like Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz
(right).
Few Democrats expect help from the other side of the
aisle. Many Republican lawmakers are already promoting Trump’s
dangerous conspiracy theories about the vote. Even when GOP figures have
challenged the president’s foreign policy choices, they have rarely actually
blocked them. And some ambitious Republicans clearly want to stay on
the Trump family’s good side, anticipating that the outgoing president will
remain a force in conservative politics.
“I don’t have any faith in Mitch McConnell’s Senate. …
As we’ve all seen over the last four years, the president has a lot of
flexibility and leeway when it comes to national security, so I’m not really
sure there are many guardrails,” the former Obama staffer said.
Asha Rangappa, a former FBI official, predicted upcoming
“sabotage, vindictiveness, and norm-breaking” beyond even the excesses of
Trump’s first term. “It’s time to brace ourselves,” she tweeted on Sunday.
Global Instability
Iran will likely be Trump’s biggest target in his
lame-duck period.
Hardliners in the administration believe Democrats are
too soft on Iran and want to make it difficult for Biden to resurrect the
Obama-era accord that gave Iran greater access to the global economy in
exchange for limits on its nuclear program. Some figures associated with
Trump’s maximalist Iran policy, notably Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, also
believe pushing a hard line now could help them if they seek higher office
later.
On Sunday, Axios reported that Trump
plans to “flood” Iran with sanctions. The country of 80 million is already struggling under
unprecedented U.S. restrictions and one of the world’s worst outbreaks of the
coronavirus. A new wave of financial pain would boost anger and distrust on the
Iranian side and eventually set up a tougher fight for Biden domestically,
where he would have to justify rolling back those measures to a hawkish
Congress.
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Trump could also create a situation that’s so
difficult Iran feels it must respond or — as some Pentagon officials worry —
launch his own operations, including in secret.
The administration has already proved willing to risk
a direct clash by hitting Iran-linked targets in Iraq, notably Iranian commander Qassem
Soleimani, the former Obama official noted. “We could certainly see
more of that and even on an accelerated scale if this president isn’t bound by
any sort of political pressure.”
Iran is also thought to still want to avenge
Soleimani’s killing and some analysts believe it could use the unstable
transition period to do so. Tehran may avoid a confrontation, however, in
preparation for a more coherent approach from Biden, said Tamara Cofman Wittes,
a former State Department official now at the Brookings Institution.
Transition teams like Biden’s and career officials at
agencies like the Pentagon are familiar with the risks of these periods, she
added, citing past instances of North
Korean escalations around the time of U.S. elections.
Meanwhile, anti-war advocates are prepared to check
the president, particularly if he frames a rush to war as part of his broader
attempt to cling to power.
“If Trump escalates with Iran, it will be a ruse to
try to shore up his support and further try to invalidate the elections. …
[He] could view a conflict with Iran as a means towards assaulting U.S.
democracy more than he has already,” Yasmine Taeb of the Center for
International Policy wrote in an email. “The American people and progressives
should be hyper cautious, be ready to organize, and view any claims Trump and
company make about Iran with the utmost scrutiny.”
A Weaker America
America enters the transition with a severely weakened
professional foreign policy apparatus.
The State Department “is decimated and demoralized,”
Wittes said, citing Trump’s attacks on career diplomats who have exposed
actions like his bullying of Ukraine for the sake of his political vendetta
against Biden. “It’s going to take a huge amount of work to come back from that
damage.”
How
many more talented, knowledgeable experts is the U.S. national security
bureaucracy going to lose?Tamara Cofman Wittes,
former State Department official
Before the president-elect can begin that work, Trump
can cause additional pain. His October executive order on federal
employees makes it easier for him to fire career civil servants and fill positions without
going through the normal competitive hiring processes.
“How many more talented, knowledgeable experts is the
U.S. national security bureaucracy going to lose? That’s putting a new
administration behind the eight ball,” Wittes said. (Congress could legislate
to curtail Trump’s powers under the order, she said, but is extremely unlikely
to do so.)
Trump can also change the contours of international
politics, limiting Biden’s flexibility to restore traditional American
positions or advance progressive priorities.
The president is already advancing plans to sell major
new weapons systems to the United Arab Emirates and, potentially, its rival Qatar, and he
could further weaken America’s limits on
treating occupied Palestinian territory as part of Israel. As he plans for a
post-presidency future in which he has to pay back hundreds of millions of
dollars in debt, Trump could cut quid-pro-quo arrangements with the cast of
international leaders who have benefited from his transactional style and worry
they will be able to get less out of the U.S. under Biden.
“This is changing the dynamics and it’s done
recklessly,” Wittes said.
In Afghanistan, it’s possible Trump will carry out the
rushed troop withdrawal he has pledged for months, over concerns from Esper and
others ― a move the president could claim as a legacy item, thrilling conservatives, but one
that could also quickly cause bloodshed, gains for terror groups, and,
eventually, a messy return for U.S. troops. That would make it impossible for
Biden to pursue the more deliberate drawdown he has promised.
He could “undermine our remaining interests there,
potentially causing a Biden administration to do things that no one would want
to do,” the former Obama official said.
A Limited Response
The Biden team’s commitment to a standard pre-Trump
transition process is unlikely to waver, even as sitting officials make
parts of that impossible.
“The ability to coordinate with foreign governments is
not going to be on the table,” for instance, the former Obama official said ―
even if Trump ratchets up insults against counterparts abroad or makes promises
they might expect Biden to keep.
SPUTNIK PHOTO
AGENCY / REUTERSOvertures to the Russian ambassador in
Washington, D.C., by former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn
(left) before President Barack Obama left office horrified Democrats.
The hope is that public positions can, well, trump
private assurances and the last gasps of the Trump era.
Wittes, the former diplomat, said Biden can send clear
signals with choices like which international officials he engages with, as
congratulatory calls and messages come in. On Monday, the transition team
confirmed that he spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in his
first call with a future counterpart. Most recent presidents have made
the U.S.’s northern ally the destination for their first foreign trip. Trump
instead went to Saudi Arabia.
And while Democrats see the risk of Trump appointees
remaining in government to try and undermine the next administration, they feel
the practice ― known as “burrowing” ― may not be as corrosive as it might have
been during past transitions.
“What distinguishes Trump appointees is they don’t
have a public service bone in their bodies. … They’re there because of their
loyalty to President Trump; once he’s gone, their inclination to remain, even
to thwart a Biden administration, I don’t think will be that powerful for a lot
of these people,” the ex-Obama staffer said, suggesting they are far more
likely to seek lucrative private sector work.
The Biden team, meanwhile, has a huge number of
national security professionals it wants to bring in and has been quietly
conducting advance work to do so quickly.
Whatever Trump does in the weeks ahead, he can’t erase
the sense of a ticking clock that’s set in in Washington and internationally.
“The rest of the world knows that they have President
Trump for the next 80 or so days but then after that, they know that they will
be dealing with a President Biden,” the former Obama official said.
CORRECTION:
Adam Smith is a representative from Washington, not California, as this article
originally stated.
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