Then, out of the blue, he raised what Kelly had told him about the McMaster and Tillerson feud over who would negotiate with the Saudis to get the $4 billion for operations in Syria and elsewhere.
He said he had heard McMaster had urged Tillerson to back off. He laid into his national security adviser. “Why would you do that?” he asked McMaster. “The Saudis are confused. This is $4 billion. Rex is going to do this. H.R., stay out of it. I have no idea why you possibly would’ve thought that it was wise for you to take it away from Rex, but steer clear. Rex is going to do this. He’s going to handle it.”
McMaster took the dressing-down in stride. He had been insulted in front of the National Security Council he was supposed to lead and coordinate.
McMaster, a chain-of-command general, replied, “Yes, sir.”
Tillerson, on the other hand, turned back to the main issue: the value of forward deployment. “It’s the best model. The global system. Joining together in trade and geopolitics leads to good security outcomes.”
Dunford again supported his argument. “Our forward-deployed cost in South Korea is roughly $2 billion. South Korea reimburses us for over $800 million of that. We don’t seek reimbursement for the cost of our troops” such as their pay. The chairman also said that other countries were paying the U.S. an annual subsidy for activities we would engage in anyway for our own protection. “We’re getting $4 billion a year subsidy in our efforts to protect the homeland,” Dunford said.
“I think we could be so rich,” Trump said, “if we weren’t stupid. We’re being played [as] suckers, especially NATO.” Collective defense was a sucker play.
Citing a number often used by Bannon for the financial sacrifice and cost of all the wars, military presence and foreign aid in the Middle East, the president summed up, “We have [spent] $7 trillion in the Middle East. We can’t even muster $1 trillion for domestic infrastructure.”
The president left. Among the principals there was exasperation with these questions. Why are we having to do this constantly? When is he going to learn? They couldn’t believe they were having these conversations and had to justify their reasoning. Mattis was particularly exasperated and alarmed, telling close associates that the president acted like—and had the understanding of—“a fifth or sixth grader.”
When I first learned of the details of this NSC meeting, I went back to a transcript of what President Obama had told me in 2010 about what he worried about the most.
“A potential game-changer,” Obama said, “would be a nuclear weapon . . . blowing up a major American city. . . . And so when I go down the list of things I have to worry about all the time, that is at the top, because that’s one area where you can’t afford any mistakes. And right away, coming in, we said, how are we going to start ramping up and putting that at the center of a lot of our national security discussion? Make sure that that occurrence, even if remote, never happens.”
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The pressure campaign on North Korea was effectively put on hold while the 2018 Winter Olympics were held in South Korea from February 9 to 25.
General Dunford learned that the Air Force had planned some research and design tests of its nuclear-capable ballistic missiles from California into the Pacific Ocean, scheduled right before and after the Olympics.
They were the kind of tests that the United States was pressuring North Korea to stop. They were provocative. He stepped in and the Air Force held off on the tests.
Early in 2018, the CIA concluded that North Korea did not have the capability to accurately deliver a missile into the United States mainland with a nuclear weapon on top. According to the intelligence and the information on the testing of North Korean rockets, they did not have the reentry of missiles perfected. But they were marching toward that goal. The CIA, for the moment, seemed to convince Trump that the North was not yet there.
CHAPTER
38
Afghanistan continued to frustrate Trump. Months earlier, in late September, he had hosted a reception at the United Nations annual meeting in New York. Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev and his wife posed for a picture with the Trumps. The Azerbaijan leader passed word that the Chinese were mining substantial amounts of copper from Afghanistan.
Trump was furious. Here was the United States paying billions for the war, and China was stealing copper!
Afghan president Ghani had dangled the possibility that the United States would have exclusive access to vast mineral wealth, untouched in the Afghanistan mountain ranges. His argument: There’s so much money to be made. Don’t walk away. Rare earth minerals, including lithium, a main ingredient in the latest batteries. Some exaggerated estimates held that all minerals in Afghanistan might be worth as much as several trillion dollars.
Trump wanted the minerals. “They have offered us their minerals!” he said at one meeting. “Offered us everything. Why aren’t we there taking them? You guys are sitting on your ass. The Chinese are raiding the place.”
“Sir,” said Gary Cohn, “it’s not like we just walk in there and take the minerals. They have no legal system, no land rights.” It would cost billions of dollars to build the mining infrastructure, he added.
“We need to get a company in there,” Trump said. “Put it out for bid.” This was a giant opportunity, capitalism, building and development at its best. “Why aren’t we in there taking it?”
“Who’s we?” Cohn asked.
“We should just be in there taking it,” Trump said, as if there were a national mining company to move into Afghanistan.
At a subsequent meeting in the Oval Office, Trump asked, “Why hasn’t this been done?”
“We’re running it through the NSC process,” McMaster said.
“I don’t need it done through a fucking process!” Trump yelled. “I need you guys to go in there and get this stuff. It’s free! Who wants to do this?” It was a free-for-all. Who wanted this bonanza?
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross volunteered. “I’ll take care of it, sir. I’ll do it,” he said as if it were a Commerce Department issue.
Trump approved.
Kelly didn’t say much but took McMaster, Ross and Cohn to his office.
McMaster was ripshit at Kelly for not intervening. “You just chopped my legs out from me. You knew I was running a process.” He was going by the textbook as usual, was working with the State and Defense Departments and any other departments or agencies with an interest. “You hung me out to dry in front of the president!”
There was little that appealed to Trump more than the idea of getting money from others to pay for national security commitments made by previous U.S. administrations—NATO, Afghanistan, Iraq. The only other appealing prospect was making a good deal, and he thought this was one.
The State Department assessed the mineral rights. Analysts concluded this would be a great propaganda boon to worldwide extremists: The United States is coming to rape your land and steal your wealth from the ground. They sought legal opinions in hopes of slowing it down.
On February 7, 2018, McMaster convened a small group of principals in the Situation Room to hear Commerce Secretary Ross’s report. He had talked with the acting minister of mining in Afghanistan that morning. “The Chinese are not getting anything out. They have these big concessions, as they do worldwide, and they sit on them. They’re in it for the long term. They don’t need to make immediate money off it.”
So there was nothing to worry about. Afghanistan did not have the infrastructure or transportation, the regulatory or environmental controls, he said. No private company would make an investment.
“It’s fake news,” Ross said, to mild laughter.
McMaster added that most of these minerals would be impossible to reach because a lot of them were in Taliban-controlled areas. It was a war zone, and a military perimeter defense would have to be established before mining. At best, he said, it would take 10 years if everything went right.
Ross said he would follow up to explain this to the president.
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