Fear: Trump in the White House(101)
One person present said Mattis’s message was clear: Stop fucking around with this. We’re doing this because we’ve got to prevent World War III. This isn’t some business gamble where if you happen to go bankrupt or whatever, it’s not a big deal.
It seemed Mattis and others were at the end of their rope with the president. How are you possibly questioning these things that are obvious and so fundamental? It was as if Mattis were saying, God, stop it!
Mattis was not finished. “We have the ability to defend the homeland with forward deployment” of the 28,500 troops. He was reluctant to mention the Special Access Programs in such a large meeting.
Mattis explained, without the intelligence capability and the troops, the risk of war would vastly increase. The means of defending South Korea and Japan would be decreased. If there was a war without these assets, “The only option left is the nuclear option. We can’t achieve the same deterrent effect” in any other way. “And we can’t do it as cost effectively.” The arrangement with South Korea was one of the great national security bargains of all time. Mattis tried to speak the president’s language of cost/benefit analysis.
“But we’re losing so much money in trade with South Korea, China and others,” Trump countered. “I’d rather be spending money on our own country.” The United States was subsidizing others with the trade imbalances.
“Other countries,” Trump went on, “who’ve agreed to do security things for us only do it because they’re taking so much of our money.” They were almost stealing from us.
“Forward-positioned troops provide the least costly means of achieving our security objectives, and withdrawal would lead our allies to lose all confidence in us,” Mattis replied.
Chairman Dunford jumped in, seconding all these points with some passion.
“We’re spending massive amounts for very rich countries who aren’t burden sharing,” Trump said, hammering his point.
Then, out of the blue, he raised what Kelly had told him about the McMaster and Tillerson feud over who would negotiate with the Saudis to get the $4 billion for operations in Syria and elsewhere.
He said he had heard McMaster had urged Tillerson to back off. He laid into his national security adviser. “Why would you do that?” he asked McMaster. “The Saudis are confused. This is $4 billion. Rex is going to do this. H.R., stay out of it. I have no idea why you possibly would’ve thought that it was wise for you to take it away from Rex, but steer clear. Rex is going to do this. He’s going to handle it.”
McMaster took the dressing-down in stride. He had been insulted in front of the National Security Council he was supposed to lead and coordinate.
McMaster, a chain-of-command general, replied, “Yes, sir.”
Tillerson, on the other hand, turned back to the main issue: the value of forward deployment. “It’s the best model. The global system. Joining together in trade and geopolitics leads to good security outcomes.”
Dunford again supported his argument. “Our forward-deployed cost in South Korea is roughly $2 billion. South Korea reimburses us for over $800 million of that. We don’t seek reimbursement for the cost of our troops” such as their pay. The chairman also said that other countries were paying the U.S. an annual subsidy for activities we would engage in anyway for our own protection. “We’re getting $4 billion a year subsidy in our efforts to protect the homeland,” Dunford said.
“I think we could be so rich,” Trump said, “if we weren’t stupid. We’re being played [as] suckers, especially NATO.” Collective defense was a sucker play.
Citing a number often used by Bannon for the financial sacrifice and cost of all the wars, military presence and foreign aid in the Middle East, the president summed up, “We have [spent] $7 trillion in the Middle East. We can’t even muster $1 trillion for domestic infrastructure.”
The president left. Among the principals there was exasperation with these questions. Why are we having to do this constantly? When is he going to learn? They couldn’t believe they were having these conversations and had to justify their reasoning. Mattis was particularly exasperated and alarmed, telling close associates that the president acted like—and had the understanding of—“a fifth or sixth grader.”
When I first learned of the details of this NSC meeting, I went back to a transcript of what President Obama had told me in 2010 about what he worried about the most.
“A potential game-changer,” Obama said, “would be a nuclear weapon . . . blowing up a major American city. . . . And so when I go down the list of things I have to worry about all the time, that is at the top, because that’s one area where you can’t afford any mistakes. And right away, coming in, we said, how are we going to start ramping up and putting that at the center of a lot of our national security discussion? Make sure that that occurrence, even if remote, never happens.”
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The pressure campaign on North Korea was effectively put on hold while the 2018 Winter Olympics were held in South Korea from February 9 to 25.
General Dunford learned that the Air Force had planned some research and design tests of its nuclear-capable ballistic missiles from California into the Pacific Ocean, scheduled right before and after the Olympics.
They were the kind of tests that the United States was pressuring North Korea to stop. They were provocative. He stepped in and the Air Force held off on the tests.