National Security Team

Hard to ignore all the drama being publically played out over who is going to be who in the new Trump administration. There were two new picks made this last week but they hardly tell us what is going to be the direction of our foreign and defense policy.

For ambassador to the United Nations they choose South Carolina governor Nikki Halley.

Wikipedia bio: Nikki Haley

Somewhat critical article: Ignorance is Bliss

Hard to argue with the article. Spending a couple of weeks seeing the inside of hotels in Europe hardly qualifies one to be a foreign policy expert.

There have been 29 acting or approved U.S. ambassadors to the United Nations. Some of these have been very established political names (like Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., Adlai Stevenson, George H. W. Bush), some have been established foreign policy experts and even a few have been professional diplomats (what a concept!). This is certainly a pick that is none of the above. This has happened before (Andrew Young’s selection by Jimmy Carter comes to mind). It is an odd pick.

List of past U. N. Ambassadors is here: United_States_Ambassador_to_the_United_Nations

The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations has often been a cabinet-level position under democratic presidents but is usually not a cabinet level position under republican presidents. I have not heard, but suspect that this will not be a cabinet-level position. My sense is that she will not be a major player in determining national security policy.

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.
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Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.
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His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) , The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019), The Battle for Kyiv (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2023), Aces at Kursk (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024), Hunting Falcon: The Story of WWI German Ace Hans-Joachim Buddecke (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024) and The Siege of Mariupol (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2024).
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Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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