National Security Is in Trump’s Hands

It was another tumultuous week for US national security. Democrats are once again questioning President Donald Trump’s fitness as commander in chief, while most Republicans shrugged off the criticisms and went about business as usual in Trumpland.

The week began with revelations, first reported by CNN, that US intelligence agencies had pulled a high-level spy who gained the trust of senior officials inside the Kremlin, over fears the asset could be compromised. Then on Tuesday, the president jettisoned yet another national security advisor even as global conflicts, from Afghanistan and Iran to Venezuela, continue to simmer. The double whammy has lawmakers in at least one party worried that America is flying blind.

“I’m shaken by the instability of American foreign policy today. I think it’s super dangerous for us and the world,” Chris Murphy, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, told reporters at the Capitol earlier this week, right as news broke—via a presidential tweet—that John Bolton was no longer national security advisor. “Somebody’s got to convince this president to get his act together.”

There’s no love lost between Democrats and Bolton. The former Fox News firebrand, who served as UN ambassador under President George W. Bush, was a surprise pick to be Trump’s national security advisor. Bolton’s hawkish tendencies could seem out of line with Trump’s more dovish campaign rhetoric. On the other hand, Trump also ordered an air strike inside Iran earlier this year, only to call it off at the last minute, and has advocated for regime change and US intervention in Venezuela. (The president tweeted this week that his views on Venezuela are “far stronger” than Bolton’s.)

“I am glad Bolton left because I think he was a warmonger who did not look at the world through 20/20 glasses. I think he looked at the world through a very distorted view, which had a way of exacerbating some of President Trump’s worst tendencies,” Tim Kaine, the Democratic senator from Virginia, told WIRED. “So I think the fact that he is gone, regardless of anything else, makes the nation frankly safer and more secure.”

For Kaine, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Trump and Bolton brought out each other’s worst instincts. He said that Trump’s hastily agreed-to meeting at Camp David with the Taliban this month, which fell apart just as quickly over the weekend, was a serious blunder.

“So much is just ad hoc. We don’t get briefed on things—nobody here, Democrat or Republican, really knew about the Taliban thing,” Kaine added. “And it looks like it might have been rushed, and maybe it was rushed in a way that will end up being really counterproductive to something that could have happened. So there is a level of chaos before, during, and after, but Bolton being gone is net positive.”

Still, many Democratic lawmakers are troubled by the sudden departure. Bolton is now the third person to be cycled in and out of the national security advisor position in less than three years. Trump’s first advisor, Michael Flynn, resigned amid scandal just weeks into the president’s term. His replacement, H.R. McMaster, lasted just over a year before Bolton was named to the role—also in a tweet.

“I honestly have no love for John Bolton’s policy, but the idea that our allies have no one to talk to with consistency … is really dangerous,” Murphy said. “Did Donald Trump just figure out that John Bolton was a military hawk? Did it just come to his attention that John Bolton was going to recommend military intervention in all corners of the world?”

Even Kaine is concerned about the repercussions of having such a fluid cast among a whole host of top US officials, not just in national security advisors. “America is in a place now where you could not, as another nation, count on us,” he said. “Nations around the world who have been able to count on the United States, they can’t and that’s a shame. But that’s not because of the staff; that’s because of the president.”

Bolton could be a divisive figure even among Republicans. Senator Rand Paul, the libertarian-leaning isolationist from Kentucky, danced on Bolton’s political grave on Tuesday afternoon during an impromptu conference call with reporters. But even he refuses to buy the emerging doomsday narrative from progressives like Murphy.

“Many on the Democrat [sic] side were never fans, but now they just want to criticize Trump,” Paul told WIRED. Like many Republicans, he brushes off this latest episode of the president’s Apprentice: Oval Office season, and portrays criticism of Trump as partisan politics, not concerns about national security.

Representative Tom Reed, the Republican from New York and a loyal Trump supporter, said he is confident that this week’s shake-up won’t substantially change foreign policy inside this White House.

“That voice—the Bolton voice is still over there. The hawkish versus the dove, you know, the disengagement thing,” he told WIRED. “The two philosophies, obviously, are counter to each other, but it’s very clear the administration and the president know exactly where they stand. And they’re a policy of get our men and women home.”

Trump promised voters he’d end the war in Afghanistan while campaigning, and the US had been negotiating a deal with the Taliban before the Camp David talks collapsed.

SUBSCRIBE

Subscribe to WIRED and stay smart with more of your favorite writers.

“There are really good, qualified men and women that are setting forth plans in order to make sure, as we approach this disengagement policy, that we also recognize there are real risks, in real time that need to be dealt with proactively,” Reed said.

But the Democrats’ worries about national security go beyond just one job. Experts and former officials have warned that the administration’s cybersecurity policies could put the country at risk, for example, including Bolton’s own hawkish stance toward cyberwar. At the same time, the president has repeatedly downplayed other threats, such as foreign interference in US elections, despite warnings by American officials to the contrary. And Trump’s ability to handle classified information had already been called into question recently, after he tweeted a photo of an Iranian launchpad from an intelligence briefing, which internet sleuths quickly used to identify the US spy satellite that took it.

Then there are this week’s news that the intelligence community had to pull a top American spy from Moscow in 2017. CNN reported that the extraction was prompted in part by concerns over Trump’s own loose handling of intelligence, according to its sources. The New York Times reported that media attention to the CIA’s sources in the aftermath of Russian meddling in the 2016 election was the catalyst.

Many top lawmakers remain tight-lipped about the sensitive subject, especially those on the Senate intelligence committee. (Its vice chair, Democratic senator Mark Warner of Virginia, told WIRED “I can’t comment at all on anything related to that issue.”)

“He has certainly undermined his own intelligence community on many occasions,” Ben Cardin, the Democratic senator from Maryland, told WIRED. “The intelligence community plays it right down the line. They’re not partisan. They just give us the facts; we make the decisions. You can have your own opinions, but you can’t have your own facts.”

A number of Democrats said they fear this will result in the slow erosion of the nation’s intelligence sector. But their options are limited. The Constitution gives the executive branch broad latitude to run the nation’s foreign policy. Lawmakers can continue holding hearings and using the power of the purse as a way to rein in the administration, but this may not be as effective—especially because Republicans control the Senate and are giving Trump a long leash.

“I don’t buy the narrative that the president has done anything to compromise our national security,” Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, told WIRED. “And I can assure you that all the tools in the toolbox are being used when it comes to protecting the homeland, and intelligence gathering is very robust, and all the tools are being used.”

Lawmakers of all stripes seem to shrug off the suggestion that these latest national security upheavals amount to anything new—for better or for worse. “I don’t think it sends a new message,” Representative Brad Sherman, the Democrat from California, said to WIRED. “If anyone thought that Donald Trump was providing calm, careful, reasoned foreign policy for America, they’ve been in a coma.”

More Great WIRED Stories

Read More