Reforms in the balance

Gabbard, Trump’s choice to be the Director of National Intelligence, at her confirmation hearing. — AP

TRUMP 2.0 has blasted off with much drama, plus even more controversy than many had anticipated.

Its prospects are still unknown, its effects even more uncertain, and its ultimate destination unfathomable. Still, there is no shortage of news value in its methods and likely implications.

Among the sweeping developments is Trump billionaire ally Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) takeover of the Federal Government’s payments machinery for the civil service. That definitively shapes firing and hiring decisions.

The primary task of DOGE: cut government spending by removing or downsizing departments and staff. Among others, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is targeted along with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), now effectively suspended before being reconstituted to depoliticise it.

Before last November’s election, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was said to be due for such work, which now seems underway. Security agencies routinely handled by a deep state pointedly hostile to Trump are also fair game. More mainstream agencies and institutions are likely to experience a similar revamp. The scope of the task is vast and the outcomes likely to be unprecedented.

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) nominee, former Congresswoman and retired US Army Lt-Col Tulsi Gabbard, is aboard this move. The 17 federal security agencies including the CIA and the FBI report to the DNI, who then reports to the President.

Gabbard has said such a move is long overdue. Security agencies in particular not only need to be more efficient, but also more professional and non-partisan.

Never before has the White House embarked on such action on such a scale. Besides domestic repercussions, the international implications of this government “spring cleaning” are also noteworthy. Over the years, an international consensus developed around a perception of US government agencies bending to accommodate and justify predetermined policies that defy reason and real national interests. Security agencies having to endorse questionable policies involuntarily through administration pressure amounts to institutional corruption.

A case in point is President George W Bush’s disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq. Official intelligence simply went along with the concocted rationale for eliminating Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction,” even when no evidence indicated they existed.

Such actual motives as seizing Iraqi oil reserves was denied or obscured. The intelligence agencies had been hijacked and their real work thwarted.

Meanwhile, a range of non-government organisations (NGOs) or “non profits” working abroad to feed US government agencies with stock narratives now face funding cuts and possible shutdowns. Their work tends to be cynical or derogatory about “adversaries” like China and Russia.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), dominated by Democrats to spread democracy worldwide including through regime change, also faces an uncertain future. Musk finds the “evil organisation” deeply corrupt and needs to be dissolved, by an administration opposed to ideological interventions and endless wars. The US political establishment in various guises naturally baulks at the implications and extent of the agency revamps. At stake is the future of official narratives on “significant other” countries, and by extension what the US should or should not do with them.

Given the gravity of the issues, the strength of the resistance and the scale of the opposition, there is no certainty the entire set of intended revamps will succeed. Few are even aware of how far the planned changes will go.

If they succeed reasonably well, however, an important agency that also needs to be more professional is the Congressional Research Service (CRS). The CRS performs a valuable role in providing Congress with “comprehensive and reliable” factual information and analyses for better policymaking.

Members of Congress are not habitually known for intelligent and enlightened policies, particularly in regard to other countries. For more than a decade already, the CRS has lost its earlier edge in consistently offering essential information it calls “timely, objective and authoritative.”

As with the intelligence agencies, CRS output has too often been politicised. That directly and significantly diminishes the important work of policymakers, researchers and journalists referencing CRS output. A wayward administration may still insist on unwise policies, but that would be harder to justify or to convince sceptics. Properly reformed security agencies like the CIA, and the CRS, would also act as a check on perverse policymaking.

The revamps face three immediate challenges: convincing enough Members of Congress, formal institutions like the courts and the general public to pull through; doing enough in four years to make a real and lasting difference; and sticking to its original purpose of a public good without being diverted, hijacked or compromised.

All of it looks like a very tall order, so can it all be done? Nobody can yet tell because it has never been achieved or even imagined.

A related question is how much of it needs to be accomplished before the whole campaign can be deemed successful.

Bunn Nagara is Director and Senior Fellow at the BRI Caucus for Asia-Pacific, and Honorary Fellow at the Perak Academy. The views expressed here are solely the writer’s own.