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- Brett Bruen said Biden should "shake up" his whole national security team, including Sullivan.
- Bruen served as director of global engagement on President Obama's National Security Council.
- The Afghanistan 'disaster' was the result of a flawed decision-making process, said Bruen.
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An official who served in the Obama administration is calling on President Joe Biden to fire National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan due to both the "disaster" of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and what he sees as issues with the national security decision-making process.
"President Biden needs to fire his national security adviser and several other senior leaders who oversaw the botched execution of our withdrawal from Afghanistan," wrote Brett Bruen, the director of global engagement on the National Security Council during President Barack Obama's tenure, in an op-ed in USA Today on Monday. "He has to restructure how and with whom he is making major foreign policy decisions, allowing for more input from career experts."
"The disaster that unfolded in Afghanistan is illustrative of other major issues at the White House," writes Bruen, arguing that Biden's national security team fails to "challenge their own assumptions," speak "truth to power," or "manage up."
"In a case like this, you absolutely have to find a way to manage up and explain the real risks to pursuing the preferred presidential path. Instead of just going along, the national security adviser needs to lay out safer options that could accomplish the same stated goals," he wrote.
He also offered specific, pointed critiques of Sullivan himself. "While he knows all the theories and academic arguments in foreign policy, his overseas experience is less robust," Bruen wrote.
Jake Sullivan has been serving as Biden's national security advisor since the beginning of the president's term. Previously, he served a year-and-a-half stint as the Biden's national security advisor when he was Vice President, and was Hillary Clinton's chief foreign policy advisor during her 2016 presidential campaign.
Bruen expanded his critique of Biden's Afghanistan policy to a critique of the administration as a whole, arguing that Biden has failed to make systemic changes following the Trump administration and has relied too much on political appointees and donors.
"There is only one career diplomat in a senior position on the National Security Council, the senior director for Africa," he wrote. "Things do not get much better at the State Department, where for the first time in a quarter century a current career diplomat is not in one of the top three jobs."
"Biden has too often treated too many posts as political party favors, naming the well to do or well-connected to places like Turkey, where diplomatic experience is normally a prerequisite," he continued. "There should be absolutely no more donors appointed to represent us abroad. The stakes are just too high."
Bruen, a regular contributor to Insider, also criticized Biden's foreign policy in May and last week called the the president's Afghanistan plan "a disaster."
He wrote his USA Today op-ed as Afghanistan continues to be engulfed in political turmoil. As of Monday, the civilian government had fallen and scenes of Afghans falling from departing planes were circulating online.