Sushil Aaron: Why Donald Trump will not win his battle with US intelligence agencies
It is astonishing to
watch the current confrontation between US intelligence agencies and Donald
Trump. The president-elect has finally conceded that Russia may have meddled in
the US presidential election but is incensed that a report by a former MI6
officer about the Trump team’s alleged contacts with the Kremlin and his lurid
escapades in Russia were leaked to the media. Trump blamed the intelligence
agencies for the leaks. The agencies are not backing down. On January 15, John
Brennan, the outgoing CIA director, termed Trump’s comments equating the
intelligence community with Nazi Germany as “outrageous” and mentioned that he
didn’t think Trump “has a full appreciation of Russian capabilities, Russian
intentions, and actions.”
Trump is carrying on
blissfully unmindful of the inner dynamics of the United States government. He
seems to think that presidents can easily tame structures of the government,
such as intelligence agencies. He talks as though his job were that of a CEO,
whereby his main task is to get the best people in important positions and that
as the new boss in town things will turn around in the government as they did
in his overrated business empire.
Nothing could be
further from reality, particularly when dealing with the national security
establishment, owing to their power and influence which are capable of
containing and shaping elected institutions, including the presidency. Trump
is, in effect, taking on the American ‘deep state’ – a fight he’s bound to lose
unless he compromises.
One way to think
through such tensions in Washington is the work of Michael J Glennon, professor
of international law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, who offered
great insight into the workings of the US national security institutions in his
2014 book National Security and Double Government. He draws on Walter Bagehot’s
thesis of “double government” in the book The English Constitution that
described the dual power set-up in Britain in the 19th century wherein
“dignified institutions” like the monarchy and the House of Lords had the
regalia of power but the real work of governing was done by concealed “efficient
institutions” like the Prime Minister, Cabinet and the House of Commons.
Glennon applies this
theory to the US and points to two set of institutions that wield power
unevenly in Washington. One is the “Madisonian” institutions like the
presidency, Congress and the courts, named after James Madison, the “principal
architect of the American constitutional design”, who favoured the separation
of powers between the three pillars in order to safeguard liberty. These are
America’s dignified institutions where the public believes power rests. But
there is another set of institutions called the “Trumanite network” that gets
its name from National Security Act of 1947, which restructured the government
to give the executive more flexibility to meet security threats. The act
“unified the military under a new secretary of defense, set up the CIA, created
the modern Joint Chiefs of Staff and established the National Security Council
(NSC).” Truman also set up the National Security Agency and now the network
consists of several hundred executive officials who “manage the military,
intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement agencies” that deal with
international and internal security.
Over the decades, the
power of the Trumanite network has grown at the expense of the Madisonians.
Trumanite officials deal with threats and so seek greater power and capability,
extending the reach of the State in ways that makes civil libertarians
uncomfortable. In 2011, the Washington Post identified 46 federal departments
and agencies “engaged in classified national security work.” In Glennon’s
narration, “Their missions range from intelligence gathering and analysis to
war-fighting, cyber operations and weapons development. Almost 2,000 private
companies support this work, which occurs at over 10,000 locations across
America.” The size of their budgets is classified “but it is clearly that those
numbers are enormous – total annual outlay of around $1 trillion and millions
of employees.” Presidents usually choose only around 4,000 individuals of the
2.8 million non-military federal employees that they are in charge of – and
several hundred policymakers needed for national security are drawn from the
bureaucracy.
At the apex of this is the most powerful of the lot, the
professional staff of the National Security Council which has nearly “400
aides” but needs to now reduce to 200 owing to recent legislation. The wider
group of several hundred policymakers includes professional staff, political
appointees, academics, think-tankers, military figures and officials seconded
from executive agencies – and this according to Glennon constitutes America’s
Trumanite network which sits at the pinnacle of what Harvard professor Jack
Goldsmith has called “Washington’s tight-knit national security culture.”..
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