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?”