One more controversial nomination for a government casting built in its image. Donald Trump announced this Thursday, November 14 that Tulsi Gabbard would take over as head of American intelligence starting next January. A very strategic position created in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, aimed at overseeing the 17 American spy agencies, from the CIA to the FBI and the NSA. Problem: Tulsi Gabbard has distinguished herself more by her pro-Russian positions or her recurring support for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad than by her mastery of the workings of intelligence.
Aged 43 and originally from American Samoa, Tulsi Gabbard first rose to prominence within the Democratic Party, where she always defended an isolationist vision of foreign policy. Elected in Hawaii to the House of Representatives between 2013 and 2021, supporting Bernie Sanders in 2016 notably for his international positions, she even tried to run for the Democratic nomination for the 2020 presidential election, before having to quickly abandon the race in the primaries.
The war in Ukraine, NATO’s fault
But it was especially from the start of the Russian invasion in Ukraine that Tulsi Gabbard gained a certain notoriety across the Atlantic, with controversial positions openly taking up the Kremlin’s narrative. Thus, on February 24, 2022, the day after the start of the war launched by Vladimir Putin, she wrote on and NATO had simply taken into account Russia’s legitimate concerns about Ukraine’s possible entry into NATO.
A few weeks later, another statement caused a stir, when the former representative said on his social networks that the presence in Ukraine of “more than 25 biological laboratories financed by the United States which, in the event of an accident, would release and spread deadly pathogens” justified a peace agreement as quickly as possible. Allegations already made by Russian officials, which the American authorities had directly denied. “Tulsi Gabbard is just repeating Russian propaganda like a parrot. Her perfidious lies could well cost lives,” said senator and former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a fervent critic of Donald Trump.
A defender of Bashar al-Assad
However, Tulsi Gabbard was far from her first attempt. In 2017, his trip to Bashar al-Assad’s Syria sparked numerous controversies. The then Democratic representative said she was going there as part of a “fact-finding mission”, in order to “see and hear directly from the Syrian population” the consequences of the civil war in the country.
Once there, Tulsi Gabbard met Bashar al-Assad twice, at a time when the Syrian president was under the fire of countless investigations for the bloody repression of his opponents, the bombing of civilian populations, not to mention the devastating use of chemical weapons. Refusing to condemn the latter’s crimes, affirming that the Syrian autocrat was “not the enemy of the United States, because Syria does not represent a direct threat to the United States” while accusing his detractors of ” warmongers”, Tulsi Gabbard had notably questioned the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime. A position on which she has never returned, despite the overwhelming evidence.
Also on the Russian issue, we did not have to wait for the start of the war in Ukraine to see suspicions arise against it. Since his campaign for the Democratic primaries in 2019, many have pointed to the active relay of propaganda networks and Russian media in his favor, such as Sputnik News or Russia Today. Enough to make Hillary Clinton say that Tulsi Gabbard was “an asset for Russia”.
A personal revenge from Trump?
How could this personality with very ambiguous relations with certain dictators, without any experience in intelligence, be chosen to direct the entirety of American espionage? His resounding departure from the Democratic Party in October 2022, and his gradual shift towards the Republican camp marked by official support for Donald Trump last August, earned him a certain popularity within the Grand Old Party. This defector profile will therefore have earned her reward within the new administration, even though she had not failed to severely attack the Republican president in the past, notably for the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad in 2020.
From there to occupying such a strategic role, the step is immense. “Do you really want her to have all the secrets of the United States and our intelligence agencies when she has been so clearly under the thumb of Putin?”, worried Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren on CNN this THURSDAY. A question to which the American newspaper The Atlantic responds bluntly, asserting that “the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard represents a risk to national security.”
The magazine questions in particular the motivations which pushed Donald Trump to appoint her to such a position: “She supported him, but she did not play a central role in his campaign, and he does not owe her much- “For someone as mercantile as Trump, this nomination doesn’t make much sense.” The Atlantic notably raises the possibility that “Trump so hates the intelligence agencies – which he accuses of being at the origin of many of the problems encountered during his first term – that the appointment of Gabbard represents his revenge”. Alongside Marco Rubio, the future head of American diplomacy, the one who pleaded in 2022 to “put geopolitics aside and embrace the spirit of aloha, respect and love” to “reach an agreement according to which Ukraine will be a neutral country” will in any case have significant power if his appointment is confirmed by the American Senate.