A restructuring of the White House National Security Council (NSC) was started on Friday (23), when President Donald Trump decided to reduce the size and scope of the once powerful organ, according to five sources informed on the matter.
Employees dealing with a variety of important geopolitical issues from Ukraine to Caxemira, received resignation in the afternoon, the sources said, who asked for anonymity because they had no permission to talk to the media.
The change took place a few weeks after the Secretary of State Marco Rubio took the place of Mike Waltz as a national security counselor. The NSC preferred not to comment.
The NSC restructuring is expected to further reduce the influence of the agency, transforming it from a powerful policy formulation organ into a small organization focused more on the implementation of the president’s agenda, the sources said.
In practice, it is expected that the measure grants more authority to the State Department, the Department of Defense and other departments and agencies involved in diplomacy, national security and intelligence, the sources added.
The Government’s goal is to reduce the size of the NSC to just a few dozen people. Four sources with knowledge of the plans said they hoped the final number of NSC employees will reach about 50 people.
NSC is traditionally the main organ used by presidents to coordinate the national security strategy. His team usually makes important decisions regarding the US approach to the world’s most volatile conflicts and plays a key role in keeping the US safe.
The agency had more than 300 employees during the government of Democratic President Joe Biden, but even before Trump’s recent layoffs, it was already less than half the size of Biden’s NSC. NSC employees who are fired from the agency will be transferred to other positions in the government, two of the sources told Reuters.
Many conservatives have long pushed a reduced NSC, arguing that several of the positions are duplicates of functions found in other areas of the government.
NSC has been difficult to recruit the best talents in recent months. Some important positions, such as the highest post of Latin American subject supervision, have never been permanently filled.
Several high -ranking employees were fired earlier this year after the right -wing conspiracy theoretical Laura Loomer introduced Trump a list of national security officials she considered unfair.
The revelation that Waltz, the previous national security advisor, had accidentally shared information about an imminent bombing campaign in Yemen with an Atlantic journalist further shook his morals.
As part of restructuring, certain NSC sections are expected to be known as boards – to be combined with other boards or completely eliminated, three sources said. In most boards that remain, there are only a few employees, the sources added.
Among the boards that can stop operating as independent organs are those that supervise African matters and multilateral organizations, such as NATO, the three sources said.
This content was originally published in the US National Security Council has a drastic reduction of employees on the CNN Brazil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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