US President Barack Obama on Friday named hard-charging aide Tom Donilon as his new national security adviser, in the first shuffle of a wartime foreign policy team beset by multiple global crises.
Donilon will succeed his boss, James Jones, who is retiring after two years in the crucial role managing the White House national security apparatus, during which he was seen as an outsider, remote from Obama’s inner circle.
Donilon is close to US Vice President Joe Biden, and was seen as a fellow skeptic of military arguments for a full-scale counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, before Obama decided last year to send 30,000 more troops to war.
He will take over with Washington facing multiple crises abroad, including the Iranian nuclear showdown, Middle East peace talks which are on the verge of collapse and the elusive search for progress in the war in Afghanistan.
Donilon has a close working relationship with Obama. He is known as a workaholic and was also intimately involved in last year’s Afghan strategy review.
“Over the last two years, there’s not a single critical national security issue that has not crossed Tom’s desk,” Obama said.
“He has a probing intellect and a remarkable work ethic, although it’s one that depends on a seemingly limitless quantity of Diet Coke,” the president said.
As the troop surge reaches its most intense phase, Donilon will run the next Afghan review, which Obama has said he will mount at the end of the year, though officials have signaled that no big changes are expected.
David Rothkopf, a visiting academic at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Donilon must now prove his mettle in a national security team packed with political personalities, such as US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Biden.
“He is going to have to perform some roles he has not performed before,” Rothkopf said, noting that Donilon may sometimes have to challenge Obama’s own perceptions in private. “He is also going to have to hold his own with those other heavyweights.”
Obama had warm words for Jones, despite the whispering in Washington that the two men shared deep respect, but not a close friendship.
“The American people owe Jim an unbelievable debt of gratitude for a lifetime of service,” Obama said, thanking his “friend” Jones for his counsel and dedication.
However, few observers will be surprised that Jones, a former Marine general with a refined manner at odds with Washington backbiting, was leaving.
There had long been talk that Jones and Obama had not melded and the former general’s frequent foreign travel was interpreted as a sign he preferred advancing policy abroad to running the national security apparatus at home.
Rothkopf, an author and expert on the National Security Council, said Jones was chosen originally because he was a man of stature.
“What happened was that he was aloof and the president was aloof and there was no chemistry,” Rothkopf said, adding Jones soon became the “odd man out” in Obama’s inner circle, which included many 2008 campaign veterans.
Jones played a major role in the Afghan strategy review run by Obama on Afghanistan and Pakistan policy last year and has racked up thousands of kilometers pushing US diplomacy abroad. He recently returned from Russia.
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