Categories: Daniel Serwer

Stevenson’s army, March 15

  • The woman who headed the NSC office for Global Health Security disbanded in 2018 explains what it did and could do.
  • The Post has a further report on disarray and infighting in the WH: The administration’s struggle to mitigate the coronavirus outbreak has been marked by infighting and blame-shifting, misinformation and missteps, and a slow recognition of the danger. Warring factions have wrestled for control internally and for approval from a president who has been preoccupied with the beating his image is taking.The scramble for solutions is occurring in an overriding atmosphere of trepidation of saying something that Trump might perceive as disloyal and of fear that their fumbles could cost the president his reelection in November. The task force meetings often last about 2 ½ hours. At best, they have been forums to suggest and debate a broad range of ideas, from disease mitigation to public communications. At worst, they have been dens of discord, with officials with varying portfolios feuding over policy or even simply power and position. The mood has turned especially tense over frustrations with testing delays.“People just show up in the Oval and spout off ideas,” said a former senior administration official briefed on the coronavirus discussions. “He’ll either shoot down ideas or embrace ideas quickly. It’s an ad hoc free-for-all with different advisers just spitballing.”
  • History lesson: the New Yorker has posted a 1997 article by Malcolm Gladwell  telling the story of the 1918 Spanish flu.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).

Daniel Serwer

Share
Published by
Daniel Serwer
Tags: Corona virus

Recent Posts

Trump likes incompetence and chaos

Even without Trump's chaos, the expansion would be unlikely to last much longer. We are…

7 hours ago

Trump’s first foreign policy failure

China will want to assert sovereignty over Taiwan. Israel will annex the West Bank and…

2 days ago

Group rights encourage tyranny

Power should flow from the choices of individuals, organized how they prefer. Forcing people into…

4 days ago

Trump’s cabinet of horrors

This is a cabinet of horrors. Its distinguishing characteristics are unquestioning loyalty to Donald Trump,…

1 week ago

Immigration is clear, national security not

Trump is getting through the process quickly and cleanly. There are lots of rumors, but…

1 week ago

Americans, welcome to the 4th Reich!

I, therefore conclude with a line from the Monk TV series. I may be wrong,…

1 week ago