Donald Rumsfeld: Obama’s weakness encourages violent Islamism

Donald Rumsfeld became one of the most recognized leaders in the world as President George W. Bush’s secretary of defense. He previously served on the Cabinets of Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon, was an advisor to President Reagan, a four-term congressman representing Illinois, and a Navy pilot. An experienced business executive, Mr. Rumsfeld led two Fortune 500 companies as CEO. His 2011 memoir, “Known and Unknown,” reached No. 1 on the New York Times bestsellers list. It was President Ford who first encouraged his then-White House chief of staff to put together all of the quotes, axioms, snippets of advice and other truism that Rummy started collecting in a shoebox as a child, which is now available in his new book, Rumsfeld’s Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War, and Life.

Decker: In “Rumsfeld’s Rules,” you write, “Preserve the boss’s options. He will need them.” What examples do you have illustrating how this maxim served you well while serving as a top advisor to four presidents?

Rumsfeld: In any position you serve, it’s useful to keep in mind that the boss has only limited options available and it’s his or her prerogative – not yours – to choose among them. I favored giving the president the maximum number of options because at the top the decisions are tough. He, after all, was the freely elected chief executive of the United States. In my experience, some advisors can make statements that can limit those options, in effect reducing the number of choices available to the president. There’s an old joke about the State Department. Often State Department memos could be boiled down to three options: do nothing, nuclear war, or do some diplomacy. There isn’t much of a choice in that construct.

I saw it as my responsibility as an advisor to a president to try to preserve a range of options, set out the pros and cons of each, and provide enough information for the president to decide. I remember in July 2001, I wrote a memo for the president outlining options for U.S. policy toward Iraq. They included a diplomatic overture to Saddam Hussein and a regional effort to put pressure on the regime. Over the next two years, all of us considered those options carefully, and ultimately the president made a decision to oust Saddam.

Decker: You quote President Reagan’s advice, “Don’t be afraid to see what you see.” What’s the historical context behind that statement, and is the federal government violating the principle in regard to today’s threat from radical Islam?

Rumsfeld: President Reagan offered that advice in his last months in office as part of his farewell speech to the nation. It’s a useful rule to remember. The context was the Cold War, and the statement was a reference to the Soviet Union. Over eight years, he had charted a strategic course for America to defeat the Soviet Union, not accommodate to it. Reagan knew when to negotiate with the Soviets, but to do so from a position of strength, as he did at Reyjavik when he refused to concede America’s right to self-defense with a ballistic missile shield.

The point behind his advice was to not be confused about our enemies, to not be afraid to call them what they are. In the case of the Soviet Union, it was a totalitarian “evil empire.” Today, it is a violent Islamism that seeks to impose a caliphate around the world under sharia or Islamic law. The Bush administration did not call out the enemy forcefully, but the Obama administration has taken the urge to be politically correct to an extreme. The idea of Fort Hood being characterized as a case of “workplace violence,” or the war on terror being “overseas contingency operations,” or acts of terror being “man-made disasters,” would be laughable if we didn’t have an administration that actually says and may even believe these things.

Decker: What rules were most useful in your management of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Did lessons learned from those conflicts provide new rules that in hindsight could have been instructive earlier?

Rumsfeld: I received some criticism for this comment, but one thing I said and have since made a rule is that, “You go to war with the army you have – not the army you might wish to have.” It’s a fact. And it shaped the way our forces had to fight, at least in the earlier years of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2001, we still very much had a military organized for the Cold War, one organized to fight against large armies, air forces and navies. That’s of course not what we faced in 2001, and so we began the difficult task of transforming the military to fight terrorist organizations, to collect human intelligence, to train foreign armies, to fly armed unmanned aerial vehicles, to conduct manhunts, and to prevail in insurgencies – things that the U.S. military was not well-equipped to do on Sept. 11th. It was a difficult process, and it’s taken some time, but the Defense Department has benefited from the Bush administration’s and my insistence that it be prepared to fight unconventional wars.

Decker: America’s international posture under President Obama has been aptly described as “leading from behind.” If he so desired (and not to suggest he does), what rules could the president use as guideposts to reestablish respect for U.S. preeminence on the world stage? What are the most vital principles he is violating as commander in chief?

Rumsfeld: If there’s a principle in my book “Rumsfeld’s Rules” that the president might benefit from, it would be this: “Weakness is provocative. Time and again weakness has invited adventures which strength might well have deterred.” My concern is that we are living in a time where nations and non-state actors around the world see America as weakened. The administration failed to get a status of forces agreement in Iraq. It has announced a precipitous drawdown from Afghanistan. It has said it will go back to the negotiating table with North Korea and Iran, two nations that time and again have shown no interest in good-faith negotiations. We’ve outsourced the problems in Syria, it seems, to Israel. The Obama administration’s mismanagement of our economy with growing deficits and debts is signaling to the world that America is in decline. The leadership vacuum that is being created will be filled by others who have values and interests notably different from ours. The world has a growing sense that the United States is withdrawing.

Decker: Most of the left’s critiques of capitalism during recent economic crises ignore that the real culprits were bad government regulations that manipulated the market. You quote Milton Friedman’s reflection that, “Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.” That doubt is behind a lot of federal action, especially under this administration. Are you concerned about a decline in faith in capitalism and freedom in general in modern America, and what consequences can this trend have across the world where the United States is seen as the beacon of liberty?

Rumsfeld: There’s no doubt that capitalism and the power of free markets are under assault. It stems from a lack of understanding of economics and a growing willingness to penalize success and to label those who create wealth and jobs as “greedy” and to characterize our free system “unfair.” Capitalism needs defending. It requires business leaders to speak up against an all-powerful government, burdensome regulation and overreaching taxation.

It also must be said that other systems are destined to failure. One of my favorite rules is from the late Margaret Thatcher, who said, “The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” It doesn’t work. It would be a catastrophe if America were to decide to dabble in socialism after its failure on the European continent, but I am confident that over time the American people will find their way back to the strength of free markets and a willingness to create an environment that is hospitable to investment, risk taking and job creating.

Brett M. Decker is Editor-in-Chief of Rare. Follow him on Twitter @BrettMDecker