Baffles GOP

Trump's foreign policy team baffles GOP experts

Republicans can't figure out the mogul's quirky mix of advisers.

By Michael Crowley

Donald Trump's new lineup of little-known foreign policy advisers isn’t exactly assuaging concerns about the Manhattan real estate mogul's readiness to be commander in chief.

Republican insiders were scratching their heads Monday at names Trump offered as sources of regular advice on national security. Several of those Trump cited during a visit to the Washington Post's editorial board are complete unknowns; others have mixed reputations among GOP national security pros. One prominently cites his attendance at a model United Nations conference as a credential on his LinkedIn page; another has compared President Barack Obama's official national security strategy to a document about slavery written in 1850.

"I don’t know any of them," said Kori Schake, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a former official in the George W. Bush State Department. "National security is hard to do well even with first rate people. It’s almost impossible to do well with third rate people."

Befitting a candidate who has threatened to cut off Muslim immigration into the U.S. "until we figure out what the hell is going on," Trump's roster includes two Middle East analysts who view Islamic Sharia law within the U.S. as a dire threat — even though many conservatives consider the issue a fringe obsession.

One of them is terrorism analyst Walid Phares. A professor at the National Defense University who has worked at the conservative Hudson Institute, Phares has warned that Islamists inside the U.S. "are here to spread Sharia." In one 2012 appearance, Phares — who advised Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign on Middle East issues — claimed that "there are advisers and experts for this administration... engaging with and partnering with the Muslim Brotherhood" in order to influence American foreign policy.

Another Trump adviser concerned with domestic Islam is Joseph Schmitz, a former Pentagon inspector general with ties to the Center for Security Policy. The center's president is Frank Gaffney, whose controversial statements about Muslims— including a charge that President Barack Obama might be a Muslim — came under new scrutiny when Ted Cruz named him as a foreign policy adviser last week. Schmitz, a Naval Reservist and former partner at the Washington law fim of Patton Boggs, co-authored a 2010 report for the center titled Shariah: The Threat to America.

Two of the five people Trump cited Monday have private sector backgrounds. One of them, George Papadopoulos, is a 2009 college graduate and an international energy lawyer. Papadopoulos had previously advised Ben Carson's presidential campaign and worked as a research fellow at the Hudson Institute before joining the London Center of International Law Practice, which describes itself as dedicated to "peace and development through international law and dispute resolution."

Papadopoulos' LinkedIn page boasts about his role at the 2012 meeting in Geneva of Model U.N., the student role-playing exercise on international diplomacy. It adds that he has "had experience lobbying foreign policy resolutions on Capitol Hill by means of coherent and concise arguments."

Another private-sector Trump adviser is Carter Page, a former investment banker and global energy consultant who graduated from the Naval Academy, according to his online biography. In discursive online blog postings about foreign policy which invoke the likes of Kanye West, Oprah Winfrey, and Rhonda Byrne's self-help bestseller The Secret, Page has blamed the U.S. for " misguided and provocative actions" towards Russia — notable in light of Trump's friendly words for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Specifically, Page has accused the State Department's top official for Ukraine and Russia, Victoria Nuland, of "fomenting" the 2014 revolution that overthrow Ukraine's government — a charge often lodged by Moscow and strongly disputed by the Obama administration.

Page has also compared the Obama administration's official 2015 national security strategy document to an 1850 document on how to manage slaves.

Rounding out Trump's list is retired Army Lieutenant General Joseph "Keith" Kellogg, who served as chief operating officer of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad, Iraq, from November 2003 through March 2004. The CPA was the de facto government installed by the U.S. after its March 2003 invasion of Iraq, and its performance is often judged as a failure.

Although the names finally deliver on an often-delayed Trump promise to unveil a list of foreign policy advisors, Republican foreign policy hands struggled to make sense of the lineup, which he told the Post would expand in the coming days. "I have quite a few more... but that’s a representative group," Trump said.

"So far it is a pudding without a theme" said Peter Feaver, a Duke University professor who was a national security aide in the George W. Bush White House. "Perhaps the other names Trump alludes to but doesn't list will complete the picture. But these don't cohere in some obvious way. Sometimes very divergent lists convey the theme of 'broad based' or 'touching the various factions of the party.' And sometimes divergent lists just seem divergent."

Trump has said that his national security advisory committee would be chaired by Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee— though Sessions is not generally regarded as one of his party's leading national security voices.

The Lebanese-born Phares has also been the subject of controversy over his past membership in a Christian militia with a record of massacres during that country's civil war. Phares has said he was a political official in the group and not a military one and has not been directly linked to any acts of violence.

Schake said she was also concerned by Trump's comments to the Post, including his now-familiar argument that U.S. allies — including the NATO alliance — should shoulder a much greater global security burden. Such comments likely make it difficult for Trump to attract top talent, even from unconventional places, she said.

"He’s probably working pretty hard to draw people — maybe not people comforting to the establishment and the typical way of doing things, but there are a lot of people who have anti-establishment views — and Trump is not able to draw them to him. And I think that’s interesting and illustrative," Schake said.