Donald Trump is taking his time naming a permanent replacement for his National Security Adviser. But he’s already sent a clear message: the job once held by figures like Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski won’t matter in his administration nearly as much.
Even before he removed Mike Waltz from the post on May 1, the president had cut the staff and influence of the National Security Council, relying instead on his own instincts and a close cadre of loyalists like New York real estate mogul Steve Witkoff for diplomatic missions and key decisions.
On Saturday, Secretary of State — and acting NSC director — Marco Rubio announced that he and Vice President JD Vance had brokered a ceasefire between India and Pakistan hours after the two countries’ militaries targeted each other’s bases, fueling fears of an all-out war.
As Trump tries to resolve wars in Ukraine, Gaza and on the Indian-Pakistani border, expand US reach from Greenland to Panama and redraw the rules of global trade, Trump has sidelined the NSC, a body whose leader and senior staff were often pre-eminent voices in the shaping of US foreign policy. That was especially true under President Joe Biden, whose national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, was one of his closest and most influential confidantes.
“People like Witkoff and Trump himself are looking at things and saying, I can handle this. I can do this. I don’t need these experts, because the experts were wrong,” said Cedric Leighton, a former senior military intelligence officer. “We’re looking at people who are not necessarily enamored with traditional areas of expertise.”
Trump has long promised to eradicate what he calls the “deep state” – longtime government staff who he accuses of seeking to sabotage his initiatives. He often asks everyone in the room what their view of a particular topic is, even if they’re not subject-matter experts, according to people who’ve sat in meetings with him.
His allies say the NSC was overdue for cutbacks, having grown bloated under previous presidents who relied heavily on it to shape policy.
“The job of the Secretary of State and State Department is to make foreign policy again, and the NSC should be the interagency implementer of that,” said Mauricio Claver-Carone, the administration’s envoy for Latin America.
For the moment, Trump added the national security adviser responsibilities to Rubio’s already sprawling portfolio. Rubio joked this week about the extra work.
“They said one of the things we want you to look at is consolidation,” Rubio said in a speech Wednesday. “Can you take, for example, what today are four jobs and just give them all to one person? And I said that sounds like a great idea. We should do that across the government. Little did I know they just meant me.”
Trump has said he could take as long as six months to fill the job permanently. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff who “is at the top of the totem pole” for the post, has little foreign policy experience. But he’s one of Trump’s longest-serving and closest advisers who’s helped lead the administration’s crackdown on immigrants. He’s also added his voice to some policy discussions, including on plans to attack Yemen’s Houthis that were later revealed by an Atlantic magazine reporter.
“The National Security Council works with President Trump’s Cabinet and senior leadership team to implement his national security policy by putting the American people first,” spokesman Brian Hughes said. “The president has assembled an unparalleled team of experts who are making our country safer by carrying out President Trump’s agenda.”
Still, the lack of preparation of the team Trump is leaning on has fueled fears that US is at risk of major mistakes given his ambitions to overhaul US foreign policy. The NSC, which at its most senior level includes the adviser, the vice president, secretaries of state and defense and others, was created in 1947 to coordinate foreign, defense and domestic policy across the government to ensure the president looks at multiple factors when making decisions.
Experts in their own right, NSC staff typically tap into agencies across the government to pull together important information for the president to see, according to Emily Harding, a director at the National Security Council under President George W. Bush.
“If you skip that step then it’s hard to know for sure that the president has taken into account all the information he needs to take into account before he makes a decision,” said Harding, now a vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Some top NSC jobs are still unfilled, while many mid-level staff have been sent back to their home agencies. Several recent appointees were ousted after far-right activist Laura Loomer raised doubts to the president about their loyalty to him.
The weight of national security adviser has varied across administrations. Kissinger, who like Rubio combined the job with the post of top diplomat, opened up US relations with China and was the key adviser as American involvement in the Vietnam War wound down under President Richard Nixon. As national security adviser to George H.W. Bush, Brent Scowcroft helped push through Germany’s reunification.
Waltz, a former US House member, brought experience on major issues even if he lacked the long resume of some of his predecessors. His hawkish track record reassured some Republicans concerned Trump might veer too far into isolationism.
But his ouster — the first high-profile administration departure of Trump’s second term — came after Waltz inadvertently added an Atlantic journalist to a Signal chat group discussing pending US attacks on Houthi rebels in Yemen. The chat, which was created in March, included Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as well as Miller, and revealed details of plans for strikes by American military personnel.
“The risk is that certain people like Witkoff might get overextended in the roles that they’re playing right now and that could result in some major policy hiccups,” said Leighton.
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