Opinion
Why Trump’s explosive Iran question stumped this former White House insider
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editorChris Miller says he took the job as Donald Trump’s last defence secretary “scared to death because I listened to all the press that he was batshit, like unhinged”, Miller tells me.
After three days in the post, he got his first chance to find out for himself. Miller was summoned urgently to the White House for a crisis meeting of the top US national security officials. Trump had just seen on the news that Iran had edged closer to possessing a nuclear warhead. The then-president wanted to do something about it: “Are the Iranians giving the finger to the United States of America?” Trump asked his cabinet secretaries and assembled advisers, recalls Miller.
Illustration: Dionne GainCredit:
“Why don’t we bomb the hell out of them?” the president demanded. Miller wants me to understand that “that’s not national security language”. No kidding. But it was the right question, he says.
Miller assured Trump that they could: “And I said, ‘Mr President, we can absolutely bomb the shit out of Iran. We absolutely can. We can put several hundred missiles in and destroy their deeply buried [nuclear facilities]. It’s going to be about a two-week campaign, air campaign’.”
Then he set out some of the costs: “I said, ‘We’re probably going to look at losing four to six of those planes, with pilots. Alright, that’s what we pay those kids for. I mean, this is war, bad shit happens. So I’m not trying to jam you like, people are going to die. Of course they’re going to die’.”
“‘We’re going to have a lot, a lot of video,’” of downed US planes and captured pilots, continued Miller, “‘and Iranians will use it to their advantage, like Vietnam-era prisoners of war in the streets and show trials and all that stuff. Absolutely we can’.”
Trump turned to his other officials one by one, before returning to Miller for his recommendation: “‘You’re in the final weeks of your administration. You’re the first president since, like, William McKinley [president from 1897 to 1901], who hasn’t started a war, expanded a war’.
“‘You met all your promises to get us out of these endless wars [US commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan]. I think it would be really, really difficult to win re-election. You start a war in the final couple of weeks of your administration, I think that would be really incongruent with what you stand for’.”
Chris Miller in 2020 while he was serving as defence secretary under Donald Trump.Credit: AP
It was November 12, 2020. Trump had been incensed by a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran had increased its enriched uranium stockpile – since Trump had abrogated the US nuclear agreement with Iran, Tehran was no longer limited in how much uranium it could enrich.
Parts of this meeting were reported earlier, including in reporter Jonathan Karl’s book Betrayal: The Final Act in the Trump Show.
But we might be only halfway through the Trump show, depending on the November 5 election, and perhaps only partway through Miller’s role in it. His tenure as defence secretary was a brief 72 days, and he’s considered a possibility to return to the job in a second Trump administration.
Miller was a US Army colonel plucked from obscurity and vaulted over the heads of much more senior officers to lead the Pentagon, apparently because of his unconventional ideas. He has proposed, for instance, halving the US defence budget to force reform upon the Pentagon.
“When you spend a trillion dollars a year on defence, you don’t have to make hard decisions,” he tells me. The Pentagon budget this year isn’t a trillion, but it’s getting close – $US842 billion according to the US, and a bit more, $US916 billion according to the independent Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Miller wants the US to cut some of its big, expensive, conventional weapons in favour of smaller, newer, asymmetric ones such as aerial and underwater drones. He proposes universal service, though not necessarily of a military nature, for all young Americans.
The controversial would-be manifesto for an incoming Trump administration – Project 2025 – invited Miller to author the section on defence. In that chapter, he proposed an ideological purge of senior officers who advocate critical race theory, climate change “and other polarising policies”. Trump has disavowed Project 2025.
Around the table in the Oval Office in November 2020, Miller wasn’t the only one to counsel Trump against bombing Iran. Others warned Trump that it could lead to a wider Middle East war.
Miller told his story to explain why he thinks Trump is an excellent executive. He tells me there were no briefing papers, no written policy proposals, no coordination across the various departments of the US government, no staff experts present and no time: “You gotta come to the meeting with what’s in your head and in your heart.”
And while Trump didn’t do “national security language”, he did “New York business language”, says Miller. He asked the key questions; he gave everyone present a chance to speak; and he deferred to the weight of argument and the majority view. “You couldn’t ask for a better boss,” he concludes.
As for the policy implications of a second Trump term, while Miller doesn’t speak for the campaign, he knows his thinking. First, he had no reassuring words for the NATO alliance. “If you’re Germany, and you’re dithering around” with inadequate defence spending, “you probably should be worried”.
Second, he predicted that a president Trump would defend the Philippines and Taiwan against China. He said Trump “freakin’ hates bullies”, and China was the biggest of them all.
Besides, he said, if Xi Jinping tried to blockade Taiwan “there’d be absolute outrage, and the American public would force the politicians into taking action”, even if Trump personally was reluctant.
Third, he had high praise for the Australian alliance. Trump, he said, is “a big fan of Australia”. He likes “small alliances, bilateral alliances as opposed to these huge conglomerates like NATO”. He said that Trump likes allies spending at least 2 per cent of GDP on defence, which Australia is now doing.
AUKUS, too, was assured: “I cannot project or think of any major changes that would affect AUKUS from our side if the administration changes because this is exactly the kind of thing he’s talking about – ‘let’s just be partners’.”
Miller volunteered his own opinion that, after working with Australian special forces in Afghanistan, “Australia has absolutely the finest military service in the world, bar none – I’ll say it on the record, [but] I know I’m supposed to say the US does.”
Miller led a group of 10 US companies to Australia last week in his capacity as senior adviser to Azymmetric, an affiliate of the Australian venture capital fund Azcende, to explore possible investment in technologies and infrastructure under AUKUS.
He concluded that AUKUS could succeed only if there were “leadership by all three parties”, Australia, the UK and the US. After meeting government, opposition and other figures, he said “the spirit, the commitment and innovative thinking that are part of Australian culture give me enormous hope that the AUKUS project will be transformative”.
As for his early fear that Trump might be “batshit” crazy, he later confided in author Karl that he’d deliberately decided to play the “madman” with Trump in the Oval Office: “I have found oftentimes with provocative people, if you get more provocative than them, they then have to dial it down. They’re like, ‘Yeah, I was f---ing crazy, but that guy’s batshit.’”
So Miller’s successful formula for managing the then-president was to fight batshit with batshit. What could possibly go wrong?
Peter Hartcher is international editor.
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