Fear: Trump in the White House

“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.”

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.

Early in 2018, the CIA concluded that North Korea did not have the capability to accurately deliver a missile into the United States mainland with a nuclear weapon on top. According to the intelligence and the information on the testing of North Korean rockets, they did not have the reentry of missiles perfected. But they were marching toward that goal. The CIA, for the moment, seemed to convince Trump that the North was not yet there.

CHAPTER

38

Afghanistan continued to frustrate Trump. Months earlier, in late September, he had hosted a reception at the United Nations annual meeting in New York. Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev and his wife posed for a picture with the Trumps. The Azerbaijan leader passed word that the Chinese were mining substantial amounts of copper from Afghanistan.

Trump was furious. Here was the United States paying billions for the war, and China was stealing copper!