The director of national intelligence has apparently made her peace with a more hawkish, interventionist foreign policy.
A bit more than a year ago, I predicted that Tulsi Gabbard was going to hate the job of U.S. director of national intelligence, because the job combines an impressive-looking title with little actual authority over U.S. intelligence agencies.
A bit less than one year into the Trump administration, Gabbard is still on the job. She’s had some rough patches in her tenure, such as not being invited to the president’s Camp David meeting preceding strikes against Iran, her decision to post a video on her personal social-media accounts in June, warning, “we stand here today closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before,” and Trump saying in front of news reporters and cameras, “I don’t care what she said.” Overall, the Trump administration has been much more hawkish and interventionist than Gabbard’s past statements indicate she would prefer. But she’s still there, and as far as we know, there’s no serious talk about replacing her in that role.
This morning, Warren Strobel of the Washington Post (where I write a weekly column) notices that Gabbard has made only one terse statement about the U.S. operation that grabbed dictator Nicolás Maduro; in the past, she had strongly opposed U.S. actions against the regime in Venezuela. Back in 2019, she responded to a statement by then–National Security Adviser John Bolton, “It’s about the oil . . . again. Bolton just exposed real motive for intervention in Venezuela: ‘We’re in conversation with major American companies now…It would make a difference if we could have American companies produce the oil in Venezuela. We both have a lot at stake here.'”
Earlier this week, Trump called up MSNOW’s Joe Scarborough and emphasized the importance of oil in his decision to approve the military operation in Venezuela.
“Joe, the difference between Iraq and this is that [former President George W.] Bush didn’t keep the oil. We’re going to keep the oil,” Trump said, according to Scarborough.
Scarborough added: “‘In 2016, I said we should have kept the oil. It caused a lot of controversy. Well, we should have kept the oil,’ the president said. ‘And we’re going to rebuild their broken-down oil facilities, and this time we’re going to keep the oil.’”
If Gabbard does not agree with that sense of geopolitical priorities, she’s keeping her objections to herself, at least for now.
You know what? Good for Gabbard. It must be difficult to be a presidential adviser and to watch the president make decisions that are counter to your worldview and recommendations, on more than one occasion. But in that situation, the adviser has the choice of resigning, or sticking around and hoping the president concurs on the next big consequential decision. Apparently, Gabbard has decided she can do more good inside the administration than out of it. And as far as we know, Gabbard isn’t going rogue or leaking to make other cabinet officials look bad.
After spending the first twelve years of her public life consistently arguing against U.S. military interventions and toppling hostile regimes, Gabbard has apparently come to accept that a secure American future requires the intermittent use of covert CIA operations, more than 150 Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps bombers, fighter jets, and electronic attack planes, and the occasional use of Delta Force to give a Venezuelan dictator and his wife a free helicopter ride and a new residence in Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. (In addition to free transportation and room and board, Maduro is now the proud winner of a “relaxed fit” Nike Tech fleece sweatshirt and sweatpants, retailing at about $260. When it comes to removing a brutal dictator from power, just do it.)
If Tulsi Gabbard can come to accept that, then probably just about anyone can.