Here’s why the U.S. national security apparatus keeps producing failures

If you want one statistic to explain the failure of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan it is this: The National Security Council met 36 times since April to discuss it. Even more remarkable, this number was shared with the media to illustrate how well the administration had handled things. The U.S. foreign policymaking apparatus has transformed itself into a dinosaur, with a huge body and little brain, a bureaucracy where process has become policy.

The more meetings you have, the less efficient an organization becomes. “Deputies would be in there for meetings for hours and hours on end. It comes at a cost,” recalled Frances Townsend, who served as Homeland Security adviser to President George W. Bush. People spend precious time in meetings talking rather than executing. Everything gets whittled down to the lowest common denominator. Preparation and memos for meetings become a substitute for effective action. The Wall Street Journal describes the run-up to the Afghanistan withdrawal: “The administration had been holding meetings for months . . . [but] there was little instruction to various government agencies on how to prepare for the transition of power.”

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