Miles Taylor, a former chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who helped draft the first Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, argued Monday that President Donald Trump has now dismantled that framework, and in doing so, may have "invited the next Pearl Harbor."
“I warned [in 2019] that flipping the script would put the United States in unnecessary mortal peril by exposing us to surprise [attacks] and stripping us of our greatest legacy and strongest protection: leadership of the free world,” Taylor wrote in an analysis published Monday on his Substack. “It’s happening now.”
Taylor wrote that the original 2017 strategy, largely shaped by aides rather than Trump himself, pledged to defend Taiwan, counter Russian aggression toward NATO and respond firmly to North Korean provocations. He argued those commitments are now being abandoned on every front, most recently with Trump’s unprecedented decision Sunday to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea.
“Trump ordered the Pentagon to ‘substantially reduce’ our joint military exercises with South Korea, complaining that our ally wouldn’t join his war with Iran and insisting the drills send a signal that is ‘inappropriate and hostile’ to our friends in North Korea, which he called ‘unthreatening and respectful,’” Taylor wrote.
“Ah yes, Mr. President, they are so “unthreatening” that during your first term we had to urgently plan for the possibility that the hermit kingdom might launch a nuclear attack on the continental United States because Kim Jong Un was so ‘respectful.’”
Taylor also pointed to a Pacific carrier gap near Taiwan and a growing Russian drone threat near NATO countries as further signs of American retreat, one that he suspected the United States’ “foes” were privately celebrating.
“Our enemies are gobsmacked by what’s happening,” Taylor wrote. “Under Donald Trump, we’ve walked out onto thin ice and handed our foes a sledgehammer. They must be fist-pumping in foreign briefing rooms.”