President Obama meets with National Security Advisor Susan Rice and Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken in the Oval Office.

President Obama meets with National Security Advisor Susan Rice and Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken in the Oval Office. White House photo by Pete Souza

The White House Must Delegate More National Security, Officials Say

To manage the many conflicts happening at once, the White House is urged to loosen its grip. By Gayle Tzemach Lemon

From the Gaza war to Ukraine, Iraq, Syria and the Afghan elections, there are so many conflicts occurring at once that the Obama administration’s tight-gripped method of handling global crises at the top is starting to show cracks.

Former senior Defense Department and State Department officials are saying the growing number of conflicts demanding the attention and leadership of the United States means it is time the White House start delegating more.

“It is hard to handle the volume of what the world is throwing at the U.S. right now if everything has to go up to the most senior levels,” said Michèle Flournoy, CEO of the Center for a New American Security and President Barack Obama’s former under secretary of defense for policy, in an interview with Defense One.

Critics frustrated at the administration’s noninterventionist responses from Syria to Russia have said that the proliferating and worsening conflicts are a sign of America’s shrinking global influence. Others, including Flournoy, take issue with the idea of downsized American leadership, but say that it is simply too much work for this or any White House to handle, and that it is time to roll more power down to the professional diplomats, interagency professionals and cabinet members closest to the front lines of any given issue.

“There are some things that needed to be coordinated at the very top within the White House,” Flournoy said, “and there is a lot that with some basic guidance you could empower your agencies. Over-centralization in this kind of environment really hampers your responsiveness and limits what you can take on.”

Others who have served on the front lines of U.S. foreign policy in some of the world’s toughest spots echo this view. 

“In the past the administration has controlled decision making and when you only have 24 hours in the day, the White House can’t make all the decisions,” says former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, who stepped down earlier this year.

The president himself appeared to address the criticism in an exchange on Friday. “Apparently people have forgotten that America, as the most powerful country on earth, still does not control everything around the world. And so, you know, our diplomatic efforts often take time,” Obama said at a news conference. “That’s the nature of world affairs. It’s not neat, and it’s not smooth.”

Some who served in the Obama administration, however, say that the White House’s process is slowing internal U.S. deliberations on international affairs issues. And that that in turn slows the timing of public announcements and policy implementation. Former administration officials say that Obama’s White House has taken charge of aspects of foreign policy-making that in other Administrations would have been left to the State Department. Questions that in the past may have been heard, shaped and largely decided at Foggy Bottom now get their final hearing – usually several hearings – at the White House.

On whether or not to cut off aid to Egypt, for example, one former official says, detailed discussions went on “for months” as the White House sought to find the right balance between looking tough on an anti-democratic leadership and not entirely abandoning a longtime ally critical to the region.

In his memoir former Defense Secretary Robert Gates called it “by far the most centralized and controlling in national security of any I had seen” since the Nixon White House.

Ford said the message must be that the president has “the foreign policy team’s back.”

“In the past, on the Syria policy, a very great deal of it, especially as the conflict got nastier and the humanitarian, and especially the security issue became more complicated, the tendency has been to defer more and more questions to the senior leadership, and what that necessarily does is it slows down response time because senior people’s schedules are just so busy,” Ford said. “There has to be a more visible delegation of authority and it has to be a more real delegation so that decisions do not require the top level White House sign off on every single thing.”

Others who served in the White House say that following a decade of war and the economic crisis, the administration has navigated the barrage of global crises the best it could, given the constraints.

“In the wake of Afghanistan, there was no intervention left – every country just has so much intervention in its intervention account and you spend that down and it takes a while to build it back up again,” said Steven Simon, former National Security Council senior director for Middle Eastern and North African affairs. “The administration has been presiding over a traumatic period in the country’s history, domestically and in foreign policy terms, and I think they are trying to do the best they can under the circumstances. I think generally they have done a good job, but when you do a good job by keeping your ambitions reined in and lashed up to your capacities, you are going to be criticized.”

And as the president alluded to in Friday’s press conference, that capacity question is at the heart of so many current foreign policy issues now demanding America’s attention. After the past decade of two wars, thousands of dead and trillions spent, America is reaching for the “pause” button on its global ambitions while the Pentagon is fighting to do a lot with a lot less and Congress struggles to pass a defense budget.

“Americans no longer have the brash overconfidence that some had going into Iraq in 2003, and that is probably a very good thing, but they also don’t have the same sense of American capacity that perhaps a Cold War generation did,” says Tamara Wittes, former deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs and now the director of the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings. “When you have as your defining moments 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, maybe you have a different set of experiences and perspective."

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.