ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
During the presidential campaign, Eliot Cohen helped lead a group of Republican foreign policy and national security veterans warning about the dangers of a Trump presidency. During the George W. Bush administration, Cohen was a top adviser to the secretary of state, and now he writes in The Atlantic that Trump's first week in office confirmed his worst fears, and he warns that it will get worse.
Eliot Cohen, welcome to the program.
ELIOT COHEN: Good to be with you.
SHAPIRO: I'd like to start with the reorganization at the NSC. Why is the cast of characters here so important?
COHEN: Well, there are a couple of things. One is, there's a very powerful symbolic message that's being sent particularly by putting Steve Bannon as a member of the Principals Committee. I mean that's - that is - to put a political adviser there no matter who it would be would be troubling. That was certainly not the practice, for example, in the administration that I was part of. And actually, President Bush was very careful to keep say, Karl Rove - people like that out of those sorts of positions.
SHAPIRO: But explain why. I mean if this is somebody who's president for so many senior policy meetings at the White House, why should this person be kept out of the National Security Council?
COHEN: Because I think decisions about foreign policy and the national security of the United States or at least the formulation of those decisions before they go to the president should not have a large domestic, political component to them at all.
SHAPIRO: So you're saying - just to give a hypothetical - whether to go to war or not should not be decided on based on how it will influence the president's re-election prospects.
COHEN: Absolutely. But there's a lot more to it than that. There's a particular problem I think with Bannon, who is not just a domestic political adviser, clearly does have strong foreign policy views. And I think most of us, certainly those of us who signed those letters - and I helped organize those letters as well as signing them - think has dangerous views and will be in a position to push those.
SHAPIRO: I want to ask you about this piece you wrote for The Atlantic, which is pretty dire. And in it, you emphasized your greatest concern comes not from Trump's policies but from his temperament and character. Are you saying that programs like the Muslim immigration ban or the wall with Mexico might have been all right if they had been executed and implemented differently?
COHEN: Well, you know, in principle, am I against having a control of our own borders - of course not. In principle, do I believe in the careful vetting of immigrants - yes, within reason. But you don't do it in this kind of blanket way, and you don't do it in this way that's going to disrupt lots of people's lives. One of the things you learn in government is the way you handle things can be absolutely as important or indeed more important than the things you actually do.
SHAPIRO: This piece that you've written has some language that is incredibly dark. You warn that the Trump administration will probably end in calamity, substantial domestic protest and violence, you write, a breakdown of international economic relationships, the collapse of major alliances or perhaps one or more new wars. Do your friends typically think of you as a Cassandra, a worst-case-scenario person? Or is this pretty unusual for you?
COHEN: They think of me probably as more of a glass-half-empty kind of guy...
SHAPIRO: OK.
COHEN: ...Than a glass-half-full kind of guy.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter) All right - so context here.
COHEN: But this is a very dark picture, but I think it is the realistic picture. And that is why with a lot of friends and colleagues, we were willing to go out there and do some things that did not come naturally, which was to write these - and circulate these two letters denouncing the candidate of the party I belong to.
SHAPIRO: But then you also warn experts within that party not to join the government, that it will only harm them in the long run. And I wonder; if people with experience and smarts steer clear, won't that make all the problems worse, if you just have unintelligent, unqualified, inexperienced people filling the ranks of government?
COHEN: I think there can be some cases where, say, if you're working for Secretary Mattis, who I know quite well...
SHAPIRO: The defense secretary...
COHEN: ...Defense secretary - then I think that is one thing. But I think if you go work in the White House and you think you're going to influence them, you're wrong. And they're going to end up influencing you.
People in Washington, particularly people who've been around power and people who like power, will often fool themselves about the amount of good that they can actually do. And it is the oldest excuse in the book to say, I'm simply doing this for the country; this isn't my ambition talking. You know, I think I can change these people. And sometimes those things are true, but more often, in my experience, that's self-delusion.
SHAPIRO: Eliot Cohen was a former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and he's now with the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies. His new book is called "The Big Stick: The Limits Of Soft Power And The Necessity Of Military Force." Thanks for joining us.
COHEN: You're very welcome.