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Trump National Security Adviser to Return NSC to Traditional Size, Role

Reuters

   WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump's new national security adviser,
   Robert O'Brien, said Thursday he plans to reduce the size of the
   National Security Council by about a third in coming months and limit
   the NSC's role to gathering options for Trump rather than directing
   foreign policy.

   O'Brien appears eager to reinstate the inter-agency coordinating role
   for which the NSC was originally conceived after conservative hawk John
   Bolton's tenure in which he drew fire for not adequately consulting
   other agencies. Trump fired Bolton last month over strong policy
   disagreements.

   "We're going to coordinate policy out of the White House, we're not
   going to operationalize national security and foreign policy as the NSC
   out of the White House. That's the work of the departments and
   agencies," O'Brien told Reuters in an interview.

   O'Brien was the U.S. special envoy for hostage affairs when he was
   tapped by Trump on Sept. 18 to be his fourth national security adviser,
   a choice that had the blessing of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

   Policy challenges

   A California lawyer with U.N. and State Department experience, O'Brien
   will have to navigate enormous policy challenges, including Republican
   backlash to Trump's decision this week to withdraw some U.S. troops
   from northeast Syria, a move that enabled Turkey to begin an incursion
   against U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters.

   O'Brien has told aides his job is not to tell the president how the
   world works and what he should do but to ensure he has options. He
   seeks to bolster the role of the Cabinet departments in crafting policy
   rather than have the NSC attempt to do it.

   He told Reuters he was happy to offer Trump his own national security
   opinions if asked, but only after the president had already heard from
   his Cabinet.

   Foreign policy role

   The National Security Council has played a powerful foreign policy role
   over the decades since it was created in 1947 under President Harry
   Truman.

   Some national security advisers have beefed up staff and run foreign
   policy out of the White House to the chagrin of officials at the State
   and Defense departments.

   The number of NSC policy advisers has trended higher over the past 30
   years. President George H.W. Bush had less than 50, Bill Clinton went
   up to 96, George W. Bush's grew to 136 in his second term, and Barack
   Obama at one point had 184, according to NSC records.

   O'Brien said he wants to bring the size of the White House agency down
   to 117 policy advisers from its current strength of about 178.

   That is about the size the NSC was under the leadership of Condoleezza
   Rice when she was President George W. Bush's national security adviser
   during Bush's first term in the early 2000s.

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