I recently resigned from my role on the Board of Visitors at National Defense University, the venerable institution of joint professional military education at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C.
I did not want to leave the job. I loved advising the NDU president on military issues that affect higher education; engaging with our military officers and students about Taiwan and Ukraine; thinking about the role of AI, war-gaming, and drones in our national defense; and more.
But as the Trump administration’s defense leaders continued to commit strategic and tactical blunders that threaten America’s security, I felt compelled to do what I could about it: to resign in protest.
Some will say, because I am a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, that this decision is a purely partisan reaction to Republican control of the White House. This is false. My three decades of public service have been all about bipartisanship, reaching across the aisle to forge consensus, and seeking to put country over party.
I began my political career as a staffer for Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., who always stressed the need to attract Republican senators to help write and sponsor legislation. I served in Congress for six terms (never losing) and built a legislative reputation on being inclusive on my committees and seeking out Republicans for partners on bills. I collaborated with Republicans on the bipartisan 9/11 Commission to help us pass 39 proposals into law to protect our nation from terrorists. And I served as the American Ambassador to India, not a Democratic or Republican ambassador.
So my resignation was not for partisanship but over policy. In March, the defense secretary shared highly sensitive military information on an unsecured system, including details about how, when, and where the U.S. military would be attacking the Houthis in Yemen. This is like a bank robber posting an alert that the heist will take place next Monday at 11 a.m., using a shotgun to steal the jewels from the basement vault. It is an egregious and sloppy mistake that could have risked the lives of every military person involved in the operation.
That followed the secretary’s Feb. 21 dismissal of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General C.Q. Brown, for no substantive reason. Deeply experienced and widely respected, Brown was replaced with a retired 3-star with no strategic command experience who needed multiple waivers to take the new job. By vaulting a nominee past far more deeply qualified candidates, the secretary undermined the military’s promotion system, which was painstaking built upon learning essential strategic skills, working with a broad number of people worldwide, and earning vital trust inside the chain of command. This unprecedented ideological caprice does serious damage to morale.
The blunders go beyond the E-ring. The administration is attempting to negotiate an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine, which—no matter your party politics—needs to end. But it must end fairly, with enforcement mechanisms, transparent verification, and political sustainability. Negotiations over the details of sovereignty, ceasefire, land rights, peacekeeping troops, and economic assistance are crucial to a lasting peace. Unfortunately, the Russians are gleefully running circles around the administration’s negotiators. They are prolonging the war, increasing the death toll and improving their tactical advantages on a daily basis. This process is not turning out to be in America’s military interests with Europe, NATO, and our partners. Russia, China, and North Korea all benefit from this military quagmire and diplomatic disaster.
The administration’s decision to gut and virtually eliminate the United States Agency for International Development does tremendous harm to our national security. It’s one thing to scrutinize the government budget for waste, fraud, and abuse. I fully support this effort to take a scalpel to government and trim spending toward a fiscally balanced budget. I voted this way in Congress. But destroying a program that helps our international allies address disease, improve their efforts to access food in malnourished places, and outsmart the Chinese in our soft-power battle defies basic common sense. As James Mattis—the first person Trump picked to be defense secretary—told Congress, when you slash soft-power investments, you do not save money. “If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition, ultimately,” Mattis said in 2013. Hopefully, Congress can help reverse this executive-branch over-reach.
I am also deeply concerned about the administration’s attacks on higher education. My worry is not so much about Harvard and Columbia universities, which have enormous endowments to sustain them and almost unlimited resources to defend themselves. But National Defense University is in a more precarious position. Lacking an endowment, NDU depends year to year on Congress and the Defense Department to allocate its budget. The administration’s ideological approach to education and its narrow focus on “lethality” suggest that the administration does not understand the importance of educating our next generation of leaders, let alone the need to train them in joint fighting skills, to update facilities with 21st-century technology, to increase investments in wargaming, and so forth.
What could possibly be next? The president could propose to build luxurious condominiums in Gaza making it the “Riviera of the Middle East,” and pledge U.S. troops and American tax dollars for decades to protect it. Well, sadly, that’s actually happened.
The word “resignation” connotes giving up a position or acceptance of something inevitable. I do not give up, nor do I believe policies are inevitable. I will truly miss the challenge of my job at NDU and the school’s superb staff, students and faculty. I believe in democracy in America, where President Trump was fairly elected in 2024, yet I firmly believe that his national-security policies must change.
By resigning, I am moving from inside the government machinery to the outside public arena to amplify the call for change. I will not give up trying to change flawed policy. We the people still have the power to make a difference and the responsibility to be involved in the fight. Our Declaration of Independence demands it.
Tim Roemer is a former U.S. Representative, D-Indiana; a former U.S. ambassador to India; and former 9/11 Commissioner.
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