President Trump has just carried out the first of what may be a series of Cabinet changes, especially in the national security area. He removed Michael Waltz from his position as national security adviser, nominated him as ambassador to the United Nations, and placed Secretary of State Marco Rubio as interim national security advisor. Trump is reportedly deliberating as to whether he needs a permanent replacement in that position at all.
Waltz was fired ostensibly because of his role in the Signal scandal, when he somehow added Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to a high-level official discussion of U.S. operational plans for a bombing attack in Yemen. Public disclosure of that classified information gravely endangered participating U.S. forces and could have caused a catastrophic failure of the mission. That it did not was probably because enemy intelligence services failed to monitor the Signal platform, assuming that American officials would not be so reckless and incompetent as to place classified operational plans on an unclassified platform.
Incredibly, the administration continued to use a “modified version” of Signal for other sensitive Pentagon communications even after this embarrassing and potentially fatal error.
Trump, like Joe Biden, is not known for his concern about protecting state secrets and classified materials. It is unlikely that he sacked Waltz at NSA primarily for this breach of national security, particularly since the person ultimately responsible for the episode was not Waltz but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who placed the sensitive materials on the Signal channel in the first place and has repeatedly dismissed its importance. He remains in his position and in Trump’s favor.
Press reports based on conversations with administration officials suggest that the real reason for Waltz’s removal to New York — away from proximity to the president — was discomfort over his “hawkish” views on Ukraine and Iran. His prior service in the military and Congress indicate a conviction that the Russian, Chinese and Iranian regimes are implacable enemies of the U.S. and that the use or credible threat of force is the most effective way to deter or defeat them before they can carry out their next hostile acts.
That worldview differs significantly from the Trump mindset, which is notoriously transactional and norm-free. Trump’s relations with world leaders are almost exclusively influenced by matters of perception and personal chemistry: how powerful he perceives them to be domestically and internationally, how willing they are to flatter his ego and tout his historical importance on the world stage, and how susceptible he believes them to be to his own persuasive powers.
Western values and universal norms seem to play no substantive role in Trump’s thinking, serving only as rhetorical, throw-away lines to suit transitory tactical purposes. He demonstrated this utilitarian approach in 2017and 2018 with his fleeting interest in North Korea’s atrocious human rights record as part of his maximum pressure campaign to get to a deal on denuclearization. In a series of speeches — at the United Nations, before South Korea’s National Assembly and in his 2018 State of the Union — Trump effectively made the case for regime change in Pyongyang. But after China’s president, Xi Jinping, summoned Kim Jong Un to Beijing and suppressed any inclination Kim may have had to reach a deal, Trump lost interest in North Korea’s human rights situation.
Similarly, in his focus on the Russia-Ukraine war, Trump has not seen fit to mention Vladimir Putin’s extensive record of war crimes. China’s genocide in Xinjiang, formally declared by Trump first-term Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and affirmed by Tony Blinken during the Biden administration, has not dampened Trump’s admiration for Xi and his repressive communist regime — that is, as long as a trade and tariff deal is in the offing.
It is left to Rubio to make the case in Trump’s interests-based administration that American values also constitute a realistic American security interest, and not only because they define the nation’s foundational identity. Peace is both an American value and an American interest, but not peace at any price, or one that sacrifices other values, or a short-term “peace in our time” that sets the stage for future, wider conflict.
A world characterized by a rules-based international order is a safer and stabler world for U.S. security and economic interests in which a secure and prosperous America can thrive. It is manifestly better to deter wars than to have to fight them. History and human nature teach the paradox that being able and willing to fight war is the only effective and lasting way to stop a committed aggressive power from starting one. This principle of deterrence was expressed in the Roman adage, “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
This year, a month after Trump’s second inauguration, China and Russia deepened their “no limits strategic partnership,” effectively reconfirming their shared hostile intentions toward America and the West. As much as Trump would prefer to focus on domestic social and economic concerns, the world will not go away, and evil regimes will continue to threaten their neighbors and global peace until they are stopped — either by the credible threat of force, or by their internal weakening from the opposition of their own populations.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration has removed or dismantled the very tools of information competition that can achieve regime change non-kinetically: Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the U.S. Institute of Peace. For better or worse, fate has presented Trump’s administration with probably the last opportunity to prevent Russia and China from making catastrophic strategic mistakes in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. All Americans must hope he can muster the strength and wisdom to meet the challenge.
Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies, a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute and member of the advisory board of The Vandenberg Coalition.
