Call and Response: Who will lead? By Al Sikes

Jazz encourages interplay between instruments characterized as “call and response”. Diplomacy features the same thing daily, but the most important work is not audible. It is done behind closed doors and is best done by operational diplomats with firm directions and skilled tongues and an innate understanding of leverage.

The best outcomes are led not barked. And they are not allowed to transition to bureaucratic nonsense without a working time clock. But here we are with the President-Elect choosing to bark without a Secretary of State or others of noted importance even in place.

This is normally the moment when I would expand and elaborate on themes of irresponsibility and amateur behavior. But it is too early to do that. And Trump is different and to a degree his difference sells.

Plus there is an overriding fact: there are four years and a few days to go in the Trump presidency. Yes it has started. Plus, I want to be encouraged about more than border control and Elon Musk’s agenda. Yes, reducing the gap between what we take in and spend is crucial even if Elon is often an ass.

One dimension of Trump’s barking is potentially constructive. We live in a world where the status quo is not working on important fronts. Without the resources to know for sure, it certainly appears that access to rare minerals will be needed to build on and sustain advanced developments in artificial intelligence (AI). Is our supply and related access the equal of need?

It is clear that humans and machines working in harmony, in search of the new new thing in say, medicine or weapons, is essential if America is to lead not just the free world but lead toward a better world. So how important is Greenland?

Does the melting of the Arctic presage new exploration, acquisition and alignments? What about shipping and military corridors?  And the leadership of NATO that looks more reactive than pro-active? Perhaps this barking will serve a useful purpose even if awkwardly initiated. And yes sending your first son in a Trump branded plane on the day this impulse was most loudly barked is not only awkward, it is the opposite of leadership. Showmanship is not leadership.

Relatedly and secretively there is an undercover war going on that few in the electorate know much about or understand. It is a quiet war but probably the most important one. How aggressive should we be? How much will it cost? Can it be contained? Should we be on offense; we are necessarily on defense? The war: the one in cyberspace. The physical assault is on data and its communication. Discover it? Manipulate it? Destroy it? Leverage it?

In the last several years President’s have been investigated and castigated for careless handling of secrets. I suspect most of those purloined “secrets” dealt with their protection and projection of themselves.

What about the real time secrets? The ones that could engulf vulnerable leaders in scandal or worse? The ones that could help take adversaries beyond our technological advantage? The ones that might expose relationships, purposefully secret, to enable a successful conclusion of an important challenge?

I hope we are fighting this war effectively. If we are, we are not likely to know about it. Hopefully this will be something the President-Elect will not be talking about and that we won’t later learn that we lost. And if we are ahead, or like with initial space travel behind (remember Sputnik), but about to be ahead, then the history books will give credit to the President-Elect but it will only happen if he stays quiet. Memorials are longer lasting than editorials.

Leverage

President-Elect Donald Trump is a fan of and skilled in the use of leverage. His business ventures underscore his use of financial leverage. But as he learned in his first term as President, dealing with various power centers in Washington and abroad can be messy. While financial and power leverage are thematically similar, they are different in important respects. Perhaps the biggest differences are ego, procedural complexity and the unknown when geopolitical power is on the line.

Now let me quickly get to the point. Cutting back on support for Ukraine to encourage a successful negotiation to end the war enhances Putin’s leverage. If a quicker end to the war, not surrender, is the end game, support for Ukraine is essential. The support needs to be more not less aggressive. And if he wants to personalize this policy turn he can blame President Biden for being timorous.

Vladimir Putin believes he can conquer Ukraine because the United States and NATO support will weaken. And he believes a win is necessary to retrieve his reputation which has taken a beating as Russia’s economy has suffered and its people have made sacrifices far beyond anything anticipated.

Simply stated, if the President-Elect wants leverage for the United States and its ally Ukraine—if he wants to hasten the end of the war—he will announce on day one that he is severely disappointed in Putin’s transparent resistance to a peaceful end and will double down on support for Ukraine until Russia steps back.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books.