Power & Security, United States After Trump ‘Chaos,’ National Security Council Seeks a Return to ‘Regular Order’

Perry World House Director of Communications and Research, John Gans, is quoted in this article from Defense One.

The Biden administration’s team of national security professionals is trying to make policymaking normal again. 

When President Joe Biden took office in January, he took control of a national security decision-making apparatus that had been through one of the more tumultuous periods of American history. The officials serving during President Donald Trump’s presidency worked through a commander-in-chief temporarily sidelined by COVID-19, his impeachment for attempted bribery of Ukraine, alienating and insulting NATO allies, coddling and wooing adversaries and dictators, stoking conspiracy theories and domestic violent extremism, all culminated by the siege at the Capitol just weeks before. 

“What the team inherited was not a blank page, but literally a burned page,” said John Gans, who published a book about the National Security Council in 2019. “It was disused, it was dysfunctional, and it was completely totally disconnected from any of the traditions and processes and norms by which the National Security Council has functioned for 70-something years.”

Read more in Defense One >>