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[Cees Binkhorst]

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De vraag is dus: Is AIPAC & Co. de baas of Obama ;)

Groet / Cees

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-clemons/can-national-security-adv_b_214672.html?view=print
Can National Security Adviser James Jones Survive a Second Round of
Attacks and "Longer Knives"?

I am here in London where I'm participating in an interesting forum
sponsored by the Princeton Project on National Security and the Royal
United Services Institute (RUSI) Transatlantic Program, I've received not
just one email -- but three -- from prominent insider journalists and
policy hands that Jim Jones' tenure as National Security Adviser is highly
fragile.

One of these emails reports starkly:

Knives getting longer

That's all my contact said. But other emails have intimated to me a
serious tone-deafness by Jones about his role and responsibilities, his
relationship with the president, and his relationship with younger,
dedicated, hardworking and late-working staff. Jones recently said that
National Security Council staff members that stayed longer than 7:30 pm
must be disorganized in their work.

I speak to various NSC officials -- often at 10:00 or 11:00 pm at night.
They are hardworking, racing as fast as they can to manage the many, many,
many major initiatives that Barack Obama has decided to simultaneously
pursue.

James Jones is considered by his admirers to be a genius when thinking
about management structures and decision-making processes. On the other
hand, his critics see him as a plodding, slow-moving, out of touch retired
general who was better prepared to think about the last era rather than
the one we are moving into. His critics think that he's just too unable to
animate nimble, high flex policy decision making products for a White
House on a manic dash to get a lot of top tier issues dealt with.

Friends at the National Security Council respect a great deal the way in
which NSC Deputy Tom Donilon is managing his brief. Many see him picking
up the load that Jones seems unable or unwilling to carry. Donilon is
deeply engaged in the broad Middle East and Iran portfolio, the
non-proliferation/WMD/arms control portfolio, the China economic and
security portfolio, and he has -- according to reports -- supported and
helped cultivate relationship building between State, DoD, the NSC, and
other parts of the national security bureaucracy.

Some tell me that James Jones decided to try and remove himself from the
"whack-a-mole" crisis reaction style of decision-making that could rob the
Obama administration of the chance to define a new course in national
security affairs. Tom Donilon, according to reports, wields far more the
hand of power when it comes to day to day management and responding to
crises that require presidential attention and response.

Jones, in contrast, has been obsessed with the structure of decisions --
who is involved in those decisions, what the structure of decision-making
should be, and what legal modifications to this process need to be made.
He looks at that as the big nut that needs to be cracked -- and that would
improve, according to Jim Jones, the president's effectiveness and chances
of success at a macro level.

Jones' self-determined task is not high profile, mostly structural, and
has not won him many admirers for leadership -- but what he is doing is
necessary. If he departs his role, this challenge of dealing with the
growing complexity of national security threats and the vital need to
recalibrate the policy making and decision-making process will require the
attention of someone serious.

So, whether Jones stays or goes -- his portfolio will remain vital.

But what is clear is that Jones has enemies and that they are trying to
undermine his place in the Obama orbit.

Their motives may not be earnest concern about the tempo or pace of Jones'
management style -- but they very well could be his unwillingness to allow
the liberal interventionists inside the Obama administration to have more
than their fair share of power in the Obama decision-making process.

Jones has structured an all views on the table approach to decision making
-- quite evident when it comes to Middle East policy -- and the
hawkish/neocon-friendly/Likudist-hugging part of the Obama
administration's foreign policy operation may be engaged in a coup attempt
against Jones.

I don't know if he'll survive this latest effort to oust him -- but folks
need to know that those "longer knives", on the whole, do not have pure
motives.

Steve Clemons directs the foreign policy programs at the New America
Foundation and publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note

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