President Donald Trump has returned to the White House with a long national security to-do list. It starts with shoring up the U.S.-Mexico border while ridding the nation of criminal migrants who entered in significant numbers under former President Joe Biden. But Trump’s second term has no time to waste on more traditional matters of national security.
The clock’s ticking because America’s strategic position has declined precipitously in the four years since Trump departed the Oval Office’s Resolute desk. Our global standing has eroded, and Biden’s disastrous Afghan retreat in 2021 revealed American weakness to the world, while China has grown significantly in military strength. Our enemies no longer fear us. Simply put, our relative present peace is fragile. Whether we can avoid major war is the key question confronting the 47th president.
Here’s what Trump must focus on most. And without delay.
First, our broken intelligence community requires root-and-branch reform. Trump seeks payback against intelligence community leaders who became Democratic shills in 2020, especially the 51 “spies who lied” about Hunter Biden’s laptop. But Trump’s desire for revenge isn’t incompatible with reform, provided that said reform is done smartly. As I’ve outlined in this column, the sensible road map for serious intelligence community reform is clear.
For a start, the FBI needs a thorough shake-up, not merely reorganization. Indeed, it would be wise to remove the national security mission from the FBI altogether, passing its national counterintelligence mission to a new, stand-alone domestic intelligence agency without law enforcement powers. That would protect civil liberties while placing America in line with nearly all Western democracies regarding who exactly catches spies.
The whole intelligence community also needs immediate depoliticization. Spies who prefer playing politics to performing their intelligence mission must be shown the door without delay. John Ratcliffe, Trump’s nominee to head the CIA, told the Senate last week that he wants to refocus Langley on traditional espionage while shedding all partisan politics and DEI propaganda. That’s exactly what’s needed at the CIA.
Former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee for the director of national intelligence, has yet to testify before the Senate. There are rumblings that Gabbard, who possesses no intelligence background, isn’t well-versed in the basics of intelligence community activities. A trying confirmation fight likewise confronts Kash Patel, Trump’s choice to head the troubled FBI. Patel is a MAGA loyalist who rubs some Republican senators the wrong way. Either way, speed is of the essence when getting officials confirmed. The longer this process takes, the more time Biden loyalists in the intelligence community will have to undermine future reform. If Gabbard and Patel cannot be confirmed with celerity, the White House must find more Senate-friendly nominees.
No matter who becomes the next DNI, it’s imperative that Trump’s spy bosses expose two major frauds perpetrated by Biden’s intelligence community: classified cover-ups about the origins of COVID-19 and anomalous health incidents, popularly termed the Havana Syndrome. In both cases, Biden employed top leaders at the DNI and CIA to lie to the public and pressure analytical outcomes, hiding intelligence that delivered unwanted messages. This must be set right, to restore shattered public trust in the intelligence community, as well as the lagging confidence of American spies in their own agencies.
The Pentagon demands equally quick action. The good news here is that Pete Hegseth, Trump’s choice for secretary of defense, performed well in last week’s Senate testimony. Democrats failed to land punches on the former Fox News pundit and Army veteran. Hegseth appears likely to be confirmed. While before the Senate, he laid out a reform agenda that is red meat for the MAGA base. Hegseth’s emphasis on restoring the “warrior ethos” to the Department of Defense while shutting down DEI programs and propaganda, which have damaged the readiness and effectiveness of the U.S. military, sounded the right notes.
Pentagon reform must also include fixing a broken DOD acquisition process and getting Navy shipbuilding and repair processes right. The U.S. Navy, the guarantor of the world’s freedom of navigation since 1945, is facing very stormy seas, with unacceptable numbers of its warships unable to go to sea due to repair backlogs. At the same time, the People’s Liberation Army-Navy is churning out superb vessels, such as the Type-055 air defense destroyer, at astonishing speed.
Getting this right will take decades, not years, but reform must start at once. A great start to fixing our broken Pentagon would be cashiering most senior DOD military and civilian leaders, who have failed in their core mission of warfighting. There’s plenty of talent waiting to rise up, so give those warriors a chance. This can be done without Congress, requiring only the presidential pen. The president, after all, is the commander in chief.
There’s no time to waste. The world is getting more dangerous by the day as American hegemony fades and rivals wait to exploit power vacuums globally.
The one piece of good news is that the Middle East is getting calmer than it’s been since Hamas started the Gaza war on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel has delivered crushing blows to Iran’s proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, while humiliating the mullah regime in Tehran. Combined with the recent fall of its Assad regime protégé in Syria, Iran’s strategic position vis-à-vis Israel has significantly declined, thanks to coordinated Israeli, U.S., and allied military and intelligence action. And the end of major combat in Gaza is a welcome development. One that’s all the more remarkable since Trump brokered it before his second inauguration.
Whether Trump’s deal-making acumen can bring peace to Ukraine is another question. There’s no doubting Trump’s sincerity about peacemaking, but any deal with the Kremlin confronts the reality that Russian President Vladimir Putin believes he’s winning his aggressive war against his neighbor, albeit at a terrifying cost in Russian lives and treasure. Attrition works resoundingly in Russia’s favor against Ukraine. Unless Trump can offer Putin tangible incentives for peace alongside painful consequences for continued war, the renewed Russo-Ukraine war, Europe’s biggest and bloodiest conflict since World War Two, will waltz into its fourth year next month.
All the same, the top foreign policy crisis facing the second Trump administration is China.
Containing an increasingly bumptious People’s Republic of China without war represents the top challenge for American diplomacy, intelligence, and military power today. The odds of misunderstandings with Beijing devolving into a shooting war in the late 2020s, most likely over Taiwan, are far higher than the American public realizes. Fortunately, Trump has assembled an impressive team of China hawks to confront this conundrum, including longtime Sen. Marco Rubio as secretary of state, Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) to head the National Security Council, and strategy guru Elbridge Colby to lead the Pentagon’s policy shop. All are likely to be confirmed by the Senate.
However, Trump’s “First Buddy” is Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, whose electronic vehicle company is dependent on Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party’s favor to prosper. The new White House will contain very different opinions on China. How will Trump proceed?
This isn’t an easy question to answer. Trump’s flip-flop on banning TikTok raises concerns. Since that popular app is controlled and exploited by China’s Ministry of State Security, a fact that the Supreme Court just recognized when it upheld the ban on TikTok operations inside the United States, allowing it to continue operating under ByteDance ownership broadcasts a weakness that Beijing won’t miss.
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We need strength against the Chinese Communists more than ever, as America faces an unprecedented espionage offensive executed by the MSS and legions of other Chinese spy agencies. If U.S. counterintelligence isn’t reinvigorated and empowered to blunt that spy offensive, encompassing a whole-of-society approach to counter Beijing’s expansive intelligence operations against us, America is likely to lose any shooting war with China before it even starts.
But as he sits down for his first intelligence briefings as president, Trump will surely recognize that there’s no time to waste.
John R. Schindler served with the National Security Agency as a senior intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
