GAO Director Calls for Integrated National Security Budgeting

Walter Pincus reports the Government Accountability Office is calling for integrated national security budgeting, reflecting views expressed by reports from PNSR and the Center for American Progress.  Gene Dodaro, GAO’s director and acting Comptroller General commented in a speech that separate budget planning by departments and agencies hinders interagency collaboration and leads to waste.  Dodaro proposed that the NSC (NSS, now) and OMB should work together to establish overarching objectives to drive departmental budgets.

Pincus mentions PNSR:

His call for developing and implementing “overarching strategies to achieve national security objectives” reflects the findings of a December 2008 report by the Project on National Security Reform. The report recommended “issuing an integrated national security strategy and creating a unified national security budget”; several leading members of the Obama administration were involved in that project, including Adm. Dennis C. Blair, now director of national intelligence, and James B. Steinberg, now deputy secretary of state.

He also pointed out how the different regional maps in departments like State and DoD could cause problems with coordinating interagency policy.

“This Week in Defense” Interview with Jim Locher

Click on the link below to watch Jim Locher’s interview with Vago Muradian on “This Week in Defense News”. This episode originially aired on November 29, 2009.

\"This Week in Defense News\" interview with Jim Locher

PNSR op-eds on World Politics Review

Last week, PNSR was afforded a great opportunity by World Politics Review, a forum we hold in high regard for its writers’ insight and depth of analysis of important issues. WPR hosted three op-eds authored by PNSR President and CEO, James R. Locher III, adapted from PNSR’s recently released report, Turning Ideas Into Action. Each piece focused on a significant initiative discussed or recommendation made in TIIA, and explained their objective.

The first in the series focused on PNSR’s call for a Next Generation State Department, one that “possesses [and] exercises sufficient authority to manage the full range of international civilian programs effectively:”

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/Article.aspx?id=4648

The second explains the need for empowered interagency teams. In an era of “czars,” the president still runs high-risk with this unchecked, informal set up, and institutionalization of stand-up issue teams would be beneficial to the way national security is managed:

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/Article.aspx?id=4663

The third op-ed deals with the need of improvement to high-level, national security strategic planning. “With the National Security Staff consumed with day-to-day priorities, and without comprehensive strategies for the medium- and long-term timeframe in place, planning and budgeting inevitably lack coordination and coherence,” Locher said.

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=4673

Please follow the links to read each op-ed at World Politics Review, and download the whole Turning Ideas Into Action report here. Also, please share your thoughts in the comments section of our blog, or by emailing info@pnsr.org.

 

-Michael Drohan

Gary Hart is correct: America needs “A national security act for the 21st Century”

Last week, Gary Hart, former United States Senator of the state of Colorado, had a very interesting and important piece published on The Huffington Post. Titled “A National Security Act for the 21st Century,” Sen. Hart laid out his vision for “a new statutory basis for [America's] national security strategy in this new century.”

You can read the whole piece here for context, but as far as PNSR and its CEO James R. Locher III see it:

Senator Hart is correct.  “The only issue that matters is whether Cold War strategies and structures adequately address present and future realities or whether the realities of a new century demand a fresh look at the institutions and policies, military and non-military, that will make the nation secure.”

Understanding these challenges and the imperative for timely reform, PNSR is engaging with stakeholders and external experts to further discover and develop potential solutions, inviting those who want to advance reform to contribute.  More information can be found at www.pnsr.org.

Senator Hart should take comfort, this issue has already been answered.  “After our examination of the new strategic environment of the next quarter century and of a strategy to address it, this Commission concludes that significant changes must be made in the structures and processes of the US national security apparatus.”  The above quotation is the very first sentence of a commission’s report that was delivered to the Congress on March 15, 2001 – long before the attacks of 9/11 that further clarified the problems of our Cold War legacy thinking and institutions.

Senator Hart should also take heart – literally.  He along with former Senator Warren Rudman led a team of distinguished Americans that wrote that sentence.  In fact, the two-and-a-half year effort addressed the nature of the 21^st Century threat, questioned weapon procurements, took on the intelligence community, and raised the implications of challenges for which the military is either not suited or needs to be collaborative with other skills from across government and others.

The Project on National Security Reform’s (PNSR) first report, Forging a New Shield, delivered to the President and Congress in November 2008 and consisting of some 800 pages, identified and analyzed specific problems of our current national security system and described the root causes.  It then presented a vision for 21^st Century national security and the path to reach it.  PNSR’s newly released report, Turning Ideas Into Action, focuses on specific implementation steps and tools that will make the vision a reality.

PNSR believes that we must organize for success.  We need a collaborative, agile and innovative national security system that can work together across agencies, departments, jurisdictions, and sectors.  This system must horizontally and vertically integrate all elements of national power to make timely, informed decisions and take decisive action.

Reaching this vision will require significant changes to the way people think and operate today.  The national security apparatus must:

- Focus at the strategic level

- Concentrate on national missions and outcomes

- Match resources to missions

- Take a whole-of-government approach

- Establish a national security workforce

- Leverage and extend the collective knowledge of the entire national security community

Getting there will not be easy.  Many obstacles must be overcome.  First, the mental model that persists is clearly that of the Cold War system and is dominated by defense and intelligence, and to a lesser extent, diplomacy – each in its own separate domain.  Second, political sensitivities, concerned about power, jurisdiction and resources, resist change.  Third, the sheer size of national security reform is huge and can be daunting unless broken into manageable pieces.  The fourth obstacle is bandwidth – that is, the time and attention needed to focus on the reform challenge is overwhelmed by the requirements of managing the daily “in-box.”

Leaders like Senator Hart must continue to demand reform.  Momentum is building, but in the face of the great challenges the nation faces, we need more action.  The movement for true national security reform needs more push, more support, more drive and more commitment from those at all levels who know that things must change.  Hard work lies ahead, but the time to act is now.

Sen. Hart has responded to this in the comments on his blog, hosted by Matters of Principle. Sen. Hart’s own words:

Jim Locher is better equipped by background and experience than anyone I know to comment on defense structures and reforms, as his comments here prove. He has given extensive thought to the need for our Cold War structures and institutions to adapt to the new realities, opportunities as well as threats, of the 21st century. I encourage all those concerned with the urgent need for this adaptation and the reasons for it to follow the work of the Project on National Security Reform. As Jim says, the key is to change the way people think and operate today.

We appreciate Hart’s leadership, vision, and voice to the important issue of national security reform, and are thankful for the conversation. Hopefully now the mission led by PNSR and others like Hart will transfer to Washington’s halls of power, ending the talk and beginning the action.

-Michael Drohan

How can national security sttrategy documents work best? A response to Stephen Walt

Although his blog entry seems overly negative, Professor Stephen Walt makes a good point that the National Security Strategy documents mandated by Goldwater-Nichols haven’t resulted in something terribly useful to the presidency, Congress, or the public in general.

Consider timeliness. An administration is supposed to issue the strategy within 150 days of coming into office, and annually thereafter. Most never make the deadline and are lucky to get a security strategy published in the first term. A better system would be for an administration to issue a strategy once every four years and only after it has had a chance to put together its national security team. Issuance within 365 days makes more sense and would be more in line with actual practice. A national security review that names threats, proposes assumptions, and identifies opportunities is something that can be done on an annual basis and should feed the national strategy.

Now let’s look at content. Most strategies have been rhetorical documents with lists of goals lacking priority order, identification of advantages over adversaries, or practical considerations such as resources available. So, in their present form, they aren’t really strategies at all. A real national security strategy with unclassified and classified portions that provide selected assumptions, weigh resources, identify opportunities, and establish priorities would help most administration decision-makers stay on track. Officials below the principal-level who have rare encounters with the president or their own leadership would find such guidance helpful. Congress would find it more useful too, because it would provide better justification for legislation.

Professor Walt also suggests that strategies ought not be made public at all. A bit extreme, but there is good reason to have, at least, classified and unclassified versions. There are some actions our government may not want to broadcast. But that doesn’t mean that there should be no political guidance, or that subordinate officials should be kept in the dark. Going that far would exacerbate an existing vulnerability, that (outside of DoD) we don’t strategize or plan well. Doing away with a requirement for a national security strategy would enshrine that weakness.

Instead, the national security strategy needs to be less a square-filler and more of a document that provides analysis and guidance. Not long and ponderous, but sufficient to direct the national security bureaucracy to implement presidential policies according to resources we have, opportunities before us, and against dangers that we think may threaten. Since the primary purpose of our government is to protect its citizens and their way of life, blowing off writing a strategy—just because it hasn’t been done well in the past—would be a serious mistake.”

-Steve Johnson

Steve Johnson is a Distinguished Fellow with PNSR, leading the organization’s development of Strategy and Resource research and recommendations. Prior to Joining PNSR, Johnson was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs. His views are not necessarily representative of PNSR’s.