The 2024 Worst National Security Team Award Goes To…

Strategic Incompetence at an Industrial Scale

It was an extremely difficult award to deliver.

The United States was a strong contender. Former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and the rest of Obama’s foreign policy leftovers in the Biden administration are not easy to beat when you're racing to the bottom. Their brilliance was on full display during the Afghanistan withdrawal—but they outdid themselves by managing to train just twelve Ukrainian pilots in over a year.

For context: the U.S. has the capacity to train hundreds annually. Yet under Sullivan’s watch, the sabotage of Ukraine’s air force was practically policy. Then came the excuse: Ukraine simply didn’t have “enough trainable pilots.”

The Biden team’s record is a case study in strategic malpractice. Matching their level of failure is no small feat.

But mind you, this award is only for 2024.

You probably already know who’s going to win it this year. But for last year, despite Jake and his team’s tireless efforts, the prize goes elsewhere.