Our Worst Nightmare — and George Mitchell, Sam Nunn’s: Strobe Talbott in a ‘Black Box’ National Security Council

This is the second in a series of
Center for Security Policy Transition
Briefs
intended to
identify critical, looming challenges
to U.S. national interests. The
Center believes that these issues
must be given immediate
attention by President Clinton’s new
national security team and by the
Congress that will be asked to
confirm his senior appointees and
oversee their activities.

(Washington, D.C.): Amidst all the
speculation about the Cabinet-level game
of Musical Chairs that is passing for
Clinton II’s security policy transition,
there seems to be remarkably little
speculation about who will
replace Anthony Lake as National Security
Advisor
. Presumably that is
because the cognoscenti know
that the President intends to appoint his
old friend and Deputy Secretary of State,
Strobe Talbott, to that position.

The lack of controversy about such an
appointment, however, suggests that few
— especially those now being romanced to
take top jobs at the State and Defense
Departments — have any inkling of what
Talbott’s ascendancy portends. Were
they to understand its implications, it
seems unlikely that luminaries like
Senators George Mitchell and Sam Nunn (to
say nothing of prominent Republicans said
to be under consideration for these and
other senior posts) would relish the idea
of serving in a second Clinton
Administration.
For example,
consider the following unappetizing
prospects:

  • ‘For the President’:
    Under the best of circumstances,
    President Clinton has been
    disinclined to pay much attention
    to foreign and defense policy.
    Given the heavy demands on the
    President’s time and energy that
    may be exacted by domestic
    political and personal legal
    problems, he will almost
    certainly want a trusted friend
    of many years standing to run
    interference for him on virtually
    all security policy matters.
  • As a practical matter, such an
    arrangement will probably
    translate into a policy
    “black box.”

    Cabinet officers and their staffs
    will dutifully make inputs.
    Interagency groups will dutifully
    help develop options papers.
    Meetings of principals will
    periodically occur. The press may
    even be encouraged to enthuse
    about the orderly, collegial
    workings of the Nation’s security
    policy apparatus.

    In fact, this will amount to a
    Potemkin policy-making process.
    Like the near-useless National
    Economic Council href=”96-T112.html#N_1_”>(1)
    the decisions will be wired in
    advance and issued “for the
    President” — or over his
    autopenned signature — by Strobe
    Talbott.

  • No ‘Check and Balance’:
    As things stand now, it seems
    clear that there will be few, if
    any, checks on Talbott’s power.
    What other senior Administration
    official can rival the longevity
    and intimacy of Talbott’s
    “Friend of Bill”
    status? Certainly not the newly
    appointed White House Chief of
    Staff, Erskine Bowles. Neither
    probably will the eminences
    grises
    that may have — on
    paper, at least — a superior
    rank. Since the First Lady shares
    Talbott’s agenda there is little
    likelihood that her unelected,
    but very influential, office will
    serve as the needed
    counter-weight.
  • Privileged Intelligence:
    The asymmetry in influence
    enjoyed by Strobe Talbott
    relative to that of the
    Secretaries of State and Defense
    could be further intensified by
    special treatment he may well
    receive from a politicized
    director of Central Intelligence,
    whether the incumbent or his
    successor. While the men in those
    Cabinet positions have
    traditionally benefitted from
    access to their own intelligence
    agencies, the increasing emphasis
    on subordination of all
    intelligence components to the
    CIA director and his unique
    access to all-source information
    can afford the National Security
    Advisor a distinct advantage in a
    business where knowledge is
    power.
  • Talbott’s Cadre:
    The incoming Cabinet officers
    with line responsibility for
    defense and foreign policy will
    likely find that they are
    required to retain/hire personnel
    who have found favor with the
    Talbott NSC. Some of these will
    be seconded to work on the
    National Security Council staff;
    others will remain at their
    agencies, serving as cut-outs for
    Talbott and Company when it
    proves necessary to circumvent
    their Secretaries and interagency
    decision-making mechanisms. These
    surrogate players may even come
    to enjoy the kind of access to
    the White House complex that has
    heretofore been reserved for such
    “ministers without
    portfolio” as former Deputy
    Assistant Secretary of Commerce,
    John Huang. In this way,
    as few as 6-10 people can come
    largely to run U.S. foreign and
    defense policy, largely out of
    the public eye and almost
    entirely unaccountable to the
    public and the press.
  • Good News for Moscow:
    One of the most ominous
    consequences of Strobe Talbott
    moving into a “black
    box” operation at the
    National Security Council could
    prove to be the opportunity thus
    afforded for him further
    to reduce the visibility of U.S.
    policy initiatives towards Russia
    .
    Talbott’s reflexive tendency
    to accommodate the Kremlin has
    caused enough problems when it
    was relatively above-board and
    monitorable.
    The NSC will
    afford him vast new opportunities
    for: funneling multilateral and
    bilateral aid to Moscow;
    brokering dubious new arms
    control agreements and squelching
    efforts to insist on Russian
    compliance with existing ones;
    tempering criticisms of Foreign
    Minister Yevgeni Primakov’s
    malevolent behavior vis a vis
    Iraq, Iran, Serbia, China, North
    Korea, etc.

The Bottom Line

There is, of course, one other reason
why Strobe Talbott’s move to National
Security Advisor appeals to President
Clinton: It is far from clear
whether he could be confirmed by the
United States Senate for any senior
position requiring its advice and
consent.
After all, Talbott
received 31 votes opposing his nomination
as Deputy Secretary of State in February
1994 — when the Senate was still in
Democratic hands
.

The Senate of the 105th Congress is
likely to look with still less favor
on the appointment of an
individual whose judgment on an array of
foreign and defense policy issues — from
the Russia portfolio to Bosnia to Iraq to
Israel to arms control to Pentagon
budgets and programs — has been flawed
and costly to U.S. interests
.
While the President may think he can
finesse the Senate’s concerns about
Strobe Talbott by giving him a post that
does not require confirmation, one thing
should be perfectly clear to both
incoming and outgoing Senators: Any
effort to increase the influence and
control exercised by this man over
American security policy will bring the
Nation further grief, and should be
resisted at every turn
.

– 30 –

1. For a
description of the vacuous nature of the
Clinton National Economic Council, see an
article featured on the front page of
Saturday’s Washington Post
business section, entitled “Will NEC
Continue to be Clinton’s Neglected
Child?”

Center for Security Policy

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