Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Waltz Moved to UN Job from National Security Advisor
Mike Waltz has proved himself an embarrassment as National Security Advisor. He set up the Signal chat group in which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth revealed information about an American attack on the Houthis in Yemen. National Security Advisor Waltz was responsible for Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic being in the group. Between the two of them, they told the press of an ongoing operation, and it is only the patriotism of Mr. Goldberg that kept a lid on it. So both are doomed, and Mr. Waltz was the first to go. But he will be fine. The President is making him UN Ambassador and giving the job of National Security Advisor to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Simply put, it is a mess.
In the 1970s, a book called The Peter Principle became a popular read in business and government. It argued that a person continues to be promoted in an organization until that person gets to a job in which he or she proves to be incompetent. At that level, they are not purged, but rather, they are simply left in place until they leave. Mr. Waltz is a prime example of this.
Mr. Waltz graduated from the Virginian Military Institute. He served as an Army Ranger, and his decorations include four Bronze Stars, two of them for valor. He served as a defense policy director for Defense Secretaries Rumsfeld and Gates. He went into business and sold his firm for $92 million in 2020. So far, so competent. He won a seat in Congress, and his competence ran into political ambition. He voted the Trump party line sufficiently to get appointed National Security Advisor a couple of months ago.
What would have secured his future, even with boneheaded mistakes like the Signal-Goldberg Affair, had be been able to get his people into the jobs he needed them to hold in order to support him. His appointees to National Security Council at the senior director level got nowhere. The MAGA hard-core did not like the candidates for theportfolios on strategy, nuclear and strategy, claiming they were NeoCons in disguise.
Mr. Trump also knows that firing a National Security Advisor for incompetence is bad for him. He went through that when Mike Flynn was fired in the first term, in February 2017. So, the UN job is a fig leaf. The White House is trying to sell it as a promotion, but no one who knows the structure of US foreign policy machinery buys that. The UN is in New York, while the National Secuirty Advisor job is in the White House. There is less power, and in bureaucratic politics, that is all that matters.
At the same time, the "Stable Genius" decided to give the National Security Advisor job to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, until he finds a permanent replacement. This is the first time since Henry Kissinger that one person has had both jobs. As conservative anti-Trumper Tara Setmeyer put it, "Marco Rubio is no Henry Kissinger." Mr. Rubio does have the foreign policy experience and understanding to do one of the jobs quite well. Thus far, however, he has simpled done what he is told and doesn't ask for anything. He is wasting his talent.
To be fair to him, however, he also has two other federal jobs. He is also serving as the acting Archivist of the United States, and since USAID was folded into State, he is also its acting boss. One hopes he is getting four paychecks for these duties (if he did so, he would be making over $630,000 a year). It appears that Mr. Trump just gives odd portfolios to him until he finds someone he really wants.
While Mr. Waltz did not need Senate confirmation for the security advisor job, he does to the UN Ambassador. He will almost certainly get the consent of the upper chamber. But he will face hearings and hostile questions regarding Signal and so on that should make for loads of TV ads in the mid-term elections. This journal advises readers to get comfortable and make some popcorn. The collapse of the incompetent is often entertaining.
© Copyright 2025 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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