Is the NSC Unwell?

02/01/24 • 102 min

2 Listeners

Heart attacks, prostate cancer, Jake Sullivan awake for a home invasion attempt at 4 AM because he was just up working on a random Tuesday night?

Is the national security bureaucracy in America unwell?

To discuss, I have on today John Gans, a former Pentagon speechwriter, who’s had many, many other jobs in Washington. He is also the author of the fantastic “White House Warriors,” a history of the National Security Council.

We get into:

Why the organizational design of the NSC leads to such crushing burdens for midlevel and senior staffers
The kinds of high-flyers that are drawn to the national security complex and what keeps them there
How POTUS’s time constraints impact decision-making
Why NSC’s historically are excellent at spotting problems but often overeager when crafting solutions
The NSC’s role in America’s “forever wars.”
Roosevelt, Kennedy, Nixon, and Trump’s “maverick model” of running the NSC compared to the Eisenhower vision of “regular order”
How seemingly prosaic technological innovations like track changes and video conferencing have dramatically changed national security policymaking
How reading Shakespeare can improve the quality of our policy-making
What a better model could look like

Illustration from the New Yorker's recent feature on Sullivan. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/16/trial-by-combat

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Heart attacks, prostate cancer, Jake Sullivan awake for a home invasion attempt at 4 AM because he was just up working on a random Tuesday night?

Is the national security bureaucracy in America unwell?

We get into:

Why the organizational design of the NSC leads to such crushing burdens for midlevel and senior staffers
The kinds of high-flyers that are drawn to the national security complex and what keeps them there
How POTUS’s time constraints impact decision-making
Why NSC’s historically are excellent at spotting problems but often overeager when crafting solutions
The NSC’s role in America’s “forever wars.”
Roosevelt, Kennedy, Nixon, and Trump’s “maverick model” of running the NSC compared to the Eisenhower vision of “regular order”
How seemingly prosaic technological innovations like track changes and video conferencing have dramatically changed national security policymaking
How reading Shakespeare can improve the quality of our policy-making
What a better model could look like

Illustration from the New Yorker's recent feature on Sullivan. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/16/trial-by-combat

Outtro audio from

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Previous Episode

Taiwan Election Results and Implications for Beijing

Kharis Templeman, research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, returns to ChinaTalk to break down the recent Taiwan elections, held on January 13.

We discuss:

The lack of surprises in the election results, the subdued vibes during the campaign, and contrasts between local perspectives and foreign media narratives.
Why the KMT failed to win the presidency, notwithstanding voter dissatisfaction with the DPP.
China’s surprisingly muted response to the election, and how it may reassess its cross-Strait policies given a third DPP president.
The new composition of the Legislative Yuan, and the strategic position of the Taiwan People’s Party as gatekeeper.
Observations from Kharis’s time in Taiwan during the election season, and the gift of Taiwan’s democratic process.

Outro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epwlWDCCevY

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Next Episode

Pottinger on Trump 2.0

Matt Pottinger reported for years out of China, served as a US Marine Corps intelligence officer in Iraq and Afghanistan, and held several senior roles on Trump's NSC , concluding his time in the White House as the Deputy National Security Advisor.

Today, Matt chairs the China Program at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

In this interview, we discuss:

How Matt expects a second Trump administration’s China policy might develop.
Why Trump is leaning more into strategic ambiguity than Biden, what that means for deterrence, and how that impacts the likelihood of him standing by were the PRC to invade Taiwan.
Why bipartisan support for the US-China trade war will continue to shape the contours of great-power conflict.
Matt’s look at the origins and political fallout of COVID-19.
Plus, reflections on Mike Flynn and how Trump ran his NSC.

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Outtro music: Miles Davis, So What https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylXk1LBvIqU

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