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. - 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.
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.
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?”
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