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Inside Obama's War Room
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The president rules his National Security Council meetings with an iron fist, making rapid-fire decisions. But Leslie H. Gelb says the team’s frenzied pace reveals a worrisome lack of strategy.
If you were allowed to perch inside the Situation Room at the White House and listen to a National Security Council meeting, you’d find the most centralized and controlled operation, well, ever. It is an Obama-centric system. The president sets the schedule of meetings, runs the discussions with an iron hand, actually calls on attendees to talk, and usually ends the session by making decisions at the table. And either because of his command personality and style or the moderate consensus of the participants or both, they are getting along with each other better than any group of NSC officials in memory.
It’s hard to escape the feeling that some of the Obama decisions fall into the category of change for change’s sake.
The principal participants in these meetings, besides the president, are: Vice President Joe Biden; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Defense Secretary Bob Gates; National Security Adviser Jim Jones; his deputy, Tom Donilon; another deputy, Denis McDonough (known as Obama’s enforcer); and intelligence chiefs Dennis Blair and Leon Panetta. Key aides from the departments and NSC staff also attend, depending on the subject.
Historically, the meetings have been more or less informal, with the national-security adviser running the sessions, asking questions, making sure the agenda gets covered. Participants joined in as they had something to say, often interrupting each other. Presidents, of course, intervened as they wished to comment or question. Only on rare occasions did presidents actually make decisions at the table. Usually they’d return to the Oval Office with the national security adviser and perhaps one or two others, and draft a decision directive, which they’d pass around to the secretaries of State and Defense informally before issuing it.
The Obama system doesn’t close off debate, and participants aren’t complaining about not being able to speak their piece. But I find it hard to believe—based on my own experience at such meetings—that the people at the table don’t feel more constrained than usual by the direct involvement and control of Obama. While his words certainly invite disagreement and dissent, his command manner may discourage it.
At this point, my main concern, however, is not the discussions, but the frequency and ease of the Obama decisions. Just in the last few weeks, he’s decided to reset relations with Russia; offer Russia a trade of not deploying US missiles in Eastern Europe in return for Moscow’s help with Iranian nukes; send envoys to Syria; invite Iran to a conference on Afghanistan; suggest the US would be willing to talk to the Taliban; assure China that our human-rights concerns would take a back seat to economic relations; and on and on.
It’s not that I quarrel with most of these calls; most are basically sensible. But to me, it’s not sensible to put them out one at a time and without first coming to terms with an overall strategy to deal with these particular issues. Don’t decide on sending more troops to Afghanistan and talking to the Taliban until you’ve first worked out your overall strategy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan. For example, two weeks ago, the Obama administration criticized the Pakistani government for making a deal with the Taliban in a region not far from Islamabad. Only a few days later, the administration announced it was just fine for us to deal with the Taliban. The president will get himself into more and more such contradictions and tensions if he continues this pattern.
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Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
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Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
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Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
disfasia
I almost miss W. Bush. Obama has a slick way of getting away with what Bush has pretty much done. $400 billion this year alone for these colonial invasions and occupations, and nobody seems to have the good sense to point out that our economy is sinking PRECISELY BECUASE we are invested in a phony war on terror that has gotten us--and them--nowhere. Real change involves pulling off the shroud from this "war on terror" and admitting that one cannot fight terror with more terror. Our terrorism is not superior to theirs, our bombs will never "knock sense" into people who simply see us as their aggressors, their colonisers, their 9/11...each and every day.
I am totally uninterested in "war" chit chat here. It is pretentious and elides the very existense of the very people we ostensibly for whom are "looking out". If Obama were serious about change, he would unmask this farce of our agressions on these cultures and simply put those hundreds of billions of dollars into developing our economy, creating a new automotive industry of purely green cars, expanding our rail system, and creating a single payer health care system. It is that simple.
dissenter5
"The top dogs in this administration truly seem to be getting along with each other. There are none of the usual press leaks and public maulings between the secretary of state and the national security-adviser."
OOPS, looks like Mr. Gelb blew that one
cpriester
disfasia - that's quite a facile solution. Pulling up stakes on Iraq and Afghanistan would compound the problem Georgie got us into. If Afghanistan falls into chaos, Pakistan might not be far behind. Then we have a failed nuclear state on our hands. Must we then ignore what happens when Israel and India freak out and demand we honor our obligations as allies?
Stick our head in the sand and hope it all goes away while we build electric cars and wind turbines? What would Russia do in a total power vacuum? What new threats might be borne from our avoidance of the ones we currently face?
We can't afford to be isolationists. Last time we did that, in the late 1930s, we let our military atrophy to the point of ineffectiveness, while Washington threw embargos around and signed Neutrality Acts rather than get involved. The Japanese, sensing weakness, and rather than negotiating with us, bombed Hawaii instead. We had to put the whole country on a war footing for three years just to get back to where we could effectively respond militarily.
I agree that our interventionism has cost us dearly. But we can't just completely disengage. Short-term relief would lay the seeds for greater long term pain. If we aren't involved in events on the world stage, we are doomed to be overtaken by them.
boatscain2003
Disfasia, aka disillusioned,
I find it amusing that you call it a phony war on terror without acknowledging that it is a real war. You're completely oversimplifying a very complex situation that you clearly have no grasp on whatsoever.
As to the article, Mr. Gelb seems to be calling some sort of shot here. The new President has only been in office for 50 days and hasn't had a whole lot of opportunity to fail so the way his meetings are conducted draw criticism? Is that what I'm supposed to take away from this? I think it's a bit absurd to highlight the fact President Obama makes everyone at these meetings throw in their two cents. Was this not happening before? Every person in that meeting is being paid a pretty nice wage to be there and by that thinking, they're also qualified to be there. Shouldn't someone MAKE them contribute?
On his criticism of President Obama's Afghanistan approach; I'm pretty sure the troops were committed to Afghanistan from Iraq because that was a top military brass recommendation, as was the prospect of talks with some Taliban. That particular strategy turned Sunni militants against Al Qaeda in Iraq.
And Mr Gelb, what's wrong with the idea of change just for change's sake? I'm sure that President Bush made a whole lot of decisions that didn't harm anyone, but I'm pretty sure they still sucked. Why not change out every facet of a very dark period for the American Presidency and plant seeds of prosperity? A better question; why not do it immediately?
majormoderate
disfasia-
i guess its pretty easy to create a foreign policy from your house anonymously on an internet blog. you seem to have all the answers, yet apparently don't know any of the problems. i guess ignorance really is bliss.
overtimegoal
I suggest that Obama has had a lot more than 50 days to think about how he wants to approach the national security issues that you list. All he's doing at this point is knocking off the low hanging fruit.
I suspect things will slow down once they need to respond to new events.
citivas
Even if you read every word of the article, you can walk away with a different interpretation than the author. The end of the piece is critical, when he acknowledges that no major policy action has been set yet. So what it really boils down to is Obama is not wasting any time in setting new directions in motion, but there's no evidence he is rushing to actual judgment. It really amounts to a whole lot of "feelers," which makes total sense. Foreign relations, Bush 43's interpretation aside, is not a unilateral process. It works best as a bilateral process, and I suspect Mr. Gelb would agree with that. So if Obama's Administration is going to reach good foreign policy, they need to have already deeply engaged with the other parties and determined which are open to mutual change and which are going to oppose us no matter what. For the former, they craft one type of policy and for the latter they are able to eventually say "see, we tried" and craft a very different approach. Given these things will take time, I don't see a problem with getting a quick start to what really is the exploratory process toward those ends. He may be setting a new directive a week, but the results will come much more gradually, each on its own schedule. I also think the seemingly fast changes are also a particular bi-product of Obama's predecessor. Since virtually all of his foreign policies fit in the category of either unilateral (Iraq, Afghanistan) or just ignore the problem (North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, etc.) the table is usually laden with directives that need reversing...
What I worry about more, reading between the lines of Mr. Gelb's piece is not the pace of decisions but the risk of group think. President Obama is an unusually well educated and studied President and his particular deep dive on Lincoln and FDR are well reported. I just hope he also boned up on the other President he has been compared to Kennedy, and re-learned the lesson's Kennedy did the hard way with the Bay of Pigs, etc. He too had a room of very smart advisors but he learned that when you encourage them all toward consensus you stifled good, even critical descent. Mr. Gelb says people feel free to say their peace, but if it ends in anything like consensus it is unrealistic that they really do "feel free" as it is improbable that they even remotely agree with each other on many issues.
dennisl59
You forgot to mention that Project X is under budget and on schedule for launch early Summer. And congratulations, 8,538,559 Americans, you'll be the 1st eaten when the Aliens invade since you were the difference in the election last November.
DemsDeBreaks
I support the president. (Gosh, it feels good to say that and mean it.) I realize the author of this piece is only trying to provide constructive criticism, but like many have said, it's only been 50 days and I'm sure Obama has been thinking about a lot of these issues for much more than 50 days.
connie47
How scary - a president who's intelligent and well-informed enough to process information quickly.
egdell
The problem in a nutshell is: there's an entire cottage industry of pundits, blowhards, talking heads, etc, who have made a very nice living so-called "analyzing" the buffoonery of the occupants of the Whitehouse over the past eight years. Now that there's a truly intelligent and capable man in the Whitehouse, these poor folks have to really scrape the bottom of the barrel for talking points. It would be funny if it weren't so pointlessly destructive!
penscott
Obama is undoubtedly the most arrogant, conceited, self-important president in history. God help us.
carouzer
Mr. Gelb--Interesting article, but what you describe sounds to me more of a process issue than a strategic issue--and the the President's process is not one that suits your personal fancy.
Obama seems now to be implementing the basic tenets he espoused during the campaign, something unique to modern American Presidencies. But he has also shown a willingness to alter his decisions based on changes in the current situation or his understanding of the situation.
He clearly is not tone-deaf, a la Nancy Pelosi, to factors that change his original posture on the issues. For example, he has extended the timeline for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq apparently based on the intelligence he has gotten from his team and, no doubt, including heavy input from Defense, Homeland Security, the military and State. As that timeline draws near, I don't doubt he will consider altering it again if conditions merit it.
He's smart, he listens and he entertains and pays attention to dissent. Unlike our previous "decider in chief," he understands that his decision is only as good at the facts he used to make it. And he clearly trusts and respects the input he gets from his team in these meetings.
Why should he then adjourn to the Oval Office to have his brain messaged by one or two advisors when he has had a full discussion in the Sit room with people who hold a variety of opinions and represent a variety of viewpoints? He didn't come into office without a strategy on an array of issues before him now. Why should he have to completely reformulate his overall strategy now if there isn't a good reason to do so?
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n--Y--MrRepublicanKemCho
Where are Democrat Congress leaders, who did not want to give a penny to Bush for Iraq war? They are bowing to this `Messiah' who is doing exactly the same what Bush did. Obama does not walk the talk. Someday Media will catch up with him.
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