Names are already circulating over whom President-elect Trump will pick for his Cabinet’s top national security and foreign policy posts, but there are more questions than answers at this point as uncertainty swirls over who will fill key posts at both the Pentagon and State Department.
While sources say former Sen. Jim Talent and current Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker are likely to get tapped to head the Pentagon and State Department, core strategy shifts are expected to be closely orchestrated from within the White House, with retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn the probable pick for national security adviser.
“The ultimate power is going to rest with Trump and his inner circle,” said Michael Rubin, a resident scholar with the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, arguing foreign policy success or failure will depend whether Mr. Trump’s closest advisers can stay on message in implementing any major policy shifts.
“If he is going to be successful,” Mr. Rubin said, ” … he is going to have to delegate responsibility for issues like Iran, Russia, China, trade and immigration to key aides and allow them to implement the policies without uncoordinated White House statements throwing their work into disarray.”
That could be a challenge for Mr. Trump, if his penchant for late-night tweeting and provocative — at times contradictory — statements on foreign policy and national security during the campaign continue over into his presidency.
Beyond his promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, the president-elect “has given only hints of how he might approach foreign policy,” said Daniel Serwer, a Middle East Institute scholar, who heads the Conflict Management Program at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.
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Mr. Trump has “emphasized the importance of an improved relationship with Russia to a rapid military defeat of the Islamic State and the need for ’extreme vetting’ of Muslim immigrants to the United States,” Mr. Serwer noted in an analysis circulated to reporters Monday. “He has also suggested he would re-institute torture and might kill the families of terrorists.”
“While he may walk back some of these intentions once in office, much will depend on whom he names to key posts, especially those positions relevant to the tumultuous Middle East.”
But if the president elect’s initial staff picks are any indication, his team could prove a marked break with the bipartisan foreign policy establishment that has long dominated Washington, an establishment that had harsh words for Mr. Trump during the presidential campaign.
On Monday, Mr. Trump was said also to be considering Richard Grenell to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. If confirmed, he would become the first openly gay person to fill a Cabinet-level foreign policy post.
Mr. Rubin suggested that Gen. Flynn, who was President Obama’s Defense Intelligence Agency chief from 2012 to 2014 but later made headlines criticizing the president and others inside the White House, could prove a polarizing force in the new administration.
The retired general, Mr. Rubin quipped, “has a poor record of shooting his mouth off that he makes even Joe Biden seem like a paradigm of judgment and tact.”
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But Gen. Flynn is also popular among many in Washington. Michael O’Hanlon, a senior defense and foreign policy fellow at Washington-based Brookings Institute predicted that the retired general would be a team player and natural fit inside the Trump White House.
“I am a Mike Flynn fan and friend, even if we favored different candidates in the recent presidential race,” said Mr. O’Hanlon. “I don’t think Flynn had a long career as a micromanager,” he added.
He noted that the retired general had a track record “serving people above him,” including former Gens. Stanley A. McChrystal and David H. Petraeus.
“His reach is broad. And of course he’s been close to Donald Trump for the better part of a year or more,” Mr. O’Hanlon said. “I think he could do pretty well in that role of national security adviser.”
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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