Keeping up with Jones

The now-expected appointment of former Marine general James L. Jones as President Elect Obama’s National Security Adviser has comes as a surprise to many. Until few weeks ago the names in the frame were Susan Rice, and James Steinberg. And though General Jones had been mentioned as a possible Vice-Presidential candidate, nobody thought he was in the running for a White House job.

But if international politics had the equivalent of bourses, they would definitely rally upon hearing the news of the appointment. General Jones is widely respected for his time both as the Marine Commandant and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, where he won over skeptical Europeans with his native-level French. He reportedly turned down the job to run CentCom a few years ago and told his fellow Marine Peter Pace not to take the job as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs as he would become a “parrot” on Donald Rumsfeld’s shoulder – which is exactly what happened.

Like Obama, General Jones oozes calm and ambassadorial polish. Unlike Obama, Jones's brings years of foreign policy experience to his job. Since leaving the Marines after 40 years, the towering Jones – who stands at 6 foot, 4 inches – has branched out from the traditional “hard” security issues, heading the Institute for 21st Century Energy and authoring two key reports - one on Iraqi security forces and one on NATO’s Afghan mission.

But what kind of National Security Adviser will he be? The roles of both the National Security Council and the National Security Adviser were left rather ambiguous in the 1947 National Security Act, and each president has shaped the body and its staff to best suit his management style and foreign policy agenda.

Robert C. McFarlane had to plead with Ronald Reagan's aides for brief meetings with the President. Conversely, under Henry Kissinger the National Security Adviser was clearly the foreign policy figure, towering over even other Cabinet members. For a while, Dr. Kissinger combined the job with that of Secretary of State. His successor, Brent Scowcroft, was conciliatory, self-effacing, but is widely thought to have created the modern model of how to manage the policy process. The opposite can be said for Condoleezza Rice, who was clearly a presidential aide; unable to referee between Cabinet official;, trumped in the foreign policy process by others like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld; and someone who handed over handling of the biggest foreign policy issue – Iraq – to General David Petraeus.

General Jones is likely to be a bit like Scowcroft – calm, self-effacing and super-efficient – but given his stature and the respect he commands across the world, he may also be more of a Cabinet personality in his own right. Unlike, however, Kissinger or Scowcroft, Jones is no academic, has no PhD and espouses no foreign policy “vision”. There is no “Jones Doctrine”, nor likely to be one. In this, the National Security Adviser he may resemble most may be another 4-star general, Colin Powell, who served as Reagan’s aide in the Gipper’s last years.

Ultimately, the President is the person who determines who his principal adviser is going to be, whatever the statutory situation. In fact, there is a market in power in the White House, with the President determining what it is, who has it, who can trade it. It ebbs and flows because people make mistakes, people prove themselves, the issues people are associated, and as a result the power can shift.

But in appointing General Jones, Obama starts off by signaling a policy shift to the centre, and desire to reinstate a White House-led policy process, which is seen to have collapsed during George W Bush’s two administrations. Said to be on friendly terms with Hillary Clinton, General Jones should be able to balance the strong-willed new Secretary of State, manage the inter-agency process, but leave the intellectualizing to others like Biden, Clinton and her deputy, Jim Steinberg. Few think Obama could have made a better pick, particularly now that the Mumbai bombings have (yet again) showed that terrorism, and not only financial matters, will require Obama’s attention.