Empowering Our National Security Professionals
By Nancy Bearg, Senior Advisor and Study Director of The Power of People: Building an Integrated National Security Professional System for the 21st Century
Congressmen Geoff Davis, John Tierney, and James R. Locher III discuss the report
The power of people. It sounds like a political slogan, but in the context I’m about to describe, it is not. In this case, the power of people is about the way people who work in government on complex national security issues work together. It is fundamental to our national security.
It’s not just about cooperating or coming to agreement on policies and carrying them out, but rather collaborative approaches to handling the kinds of issues of today’s world, the kind that cut across government agencies and reach into state and local government. Think of terrorist threats, economic interdependence, Katrina and Haiti, conflict over scarce resources. It means preparing people specifically to do the work of the 21st century. It’s both perspective and skills brought together to find the best approaches.
PNSR long has talked about the need to transform the overall U.S. national security system. It is outdated and not integrated or strategically managed. It is stovepiped too often in perspective and in the way people work – mainly with the equities of their own organization in mind rather than a larger perspective.
In the 21st century, business as usual will not work, especially not with the precious resource that lies at the heart of promoting our national security and prosperity in a globalized world. This resource is people, specifically in this case National Security Professionals (NSPs) who have training and experience in collaborating in a whole-of-government effort. These people exist, but there is not a system to recruit, train, and manage them, or even to facilitate communication.
Bill Navas, Catherine Dale, Pamela Aall, and Nancy Bearg
In our new report, The Power of People, PNSR has called for an Integrated National Security Professional system to be implemented in four stages over several years. It would build on current – but insufficiently robust – efforts to designate and train individuals for the cross-cutting tasks they must do in day-to-day or crisis assignments.
We can start by increasing training and education opportunities and beginning to set up the elements of a formal, integrated human capital system for this purpose. Is that doable? Yes, and one reason it is doable is that such a system for a cadre of NSPs would not replace or interfere with the current personnel systems, but rather would be an overlay. And it is a small subset of our dedicated national security professionals here and abroad.
This issue is bipartisan. Indeed, last year a bipartisan bill was introduced by Representative Geoff Davis (R-KY) and former Representative Ike Skelton (D-MO) to set up such a system. There is continuing, active bipartisan interest on the Hill in this concept and in the recommendations of the PNSR report.
Packed audience at the Power of People event
PNSR looks forward to debate to move this issue forward in the interest of our national security – both in legislation and in increased efforts that can be made without legislation.
The power of people. It’s always important. In national security, it is foundational. And building an excellent cadre of National Security Professionals is something practical that can be done across party lines and without breaking the bank.
JFK and the Art of National Security
One of our senior associates, Christopher Holshek, wrote this for the Huffington Post:
The media commemorations of the inauguration of the 35th president of the United States this week range from the nostalgic and wistful to the hopeful. Many reflect on the past and what might have been, suggesting how much America has declined in the time between the first Catholic and first African-American chief executives. In that span of time, America went from number one in just about everything to number one in hardly anything. We look at our country and its international standing with an ever-growing sense of national insecurity.
Kennedy, of course, most represented the eternal and ethereal promise of American reinvention and renewal, as well as the belief in and participation of especially youth in government. Now as America finds its way in a very different world that makes, for example, his exhortation to us to “ask not… ” seem archaic and impossible to imagine being uttered today, we may wonder what there is of relevance that this president told us then that can help us approach this newest of frontiers, which Kennedy already recognized as more moral than physical.
There are calls for renewal of many kinds, among them to maintain our position of power by restoring the kind of economic and technological prowess that the United States enjoyed as it ushered in the era of the “military-industrial complex” Kennedy’s predecessor warned us about as he left office, and which persists today. As in response to Sputnik, we look to “strengthen education and human capital” and “enhance science, technology, and innovation” in order to preserve our economic competitiveness and prosperity, which the current National Security Strategy identifies as the “wellspring of American power.”
We should, however, also remember that the foundation of American strength is moral — it’s what we are about that makes us a unique force for good in the world. And that world we find ourselves in today is less about “hard” coercive power and more about “soft” persuasive influence, less about American dominance and more about American leadership, less about defending the country against threats and more about engaging partners and opportunities to find what we Americans famously call the “win-win.” It’s not just because these approaches are more appropriate in the interconnected world we Americans largely created; it’s because we are rapidly running out of the ability to pay to put soldiers on various corners of the globe indefinitely, looking for bad guys.
As a civil affairs soldier for more than a quarter-century, I intrinsically understood that security, especially the kind we must now create, was more a function of art than science. Even our most celebrated military leaders, such as Robert E. Lee and George Patton, were more artists in their trade, as Eisenhower and Marshall were soldier-statesmen. They were well aware of Napoleon’s famous dictum that, in their line of business, “the moral is to the physical as three is to one.”
Even in the business of economics this relationship is true. America’s greatest comparative advantage is no doubt the ability of its dynamic, multicultural society to create and innovate. Entrepreneurs are artists, and even the geekiest of inventors must think synthetically more than analytically to recognize a new way of doing things. And yet, this remains a nation that takes “experts” for granted and finds little to no (economic) value in philosophers and poets.
Just a few months before my retirement last year, I came across a remarkable speech Kennedy gave at Amherst after the passing of Robert Frost and less than a month before his own demise. What particularly caught my eye:
In America, our heroes have customarily run to men of large accomplishments… The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us… Our national strength matters, but the spirit which informs and controls our strength matters just as much… When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment… The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state.
Although I have long felt we have overlooked the potency of our cultural strength and the role artists have played and must continue to play if the country is to remain viable and relevant in the world, I have never seen the connection between art and national security articulated in such a way. In our endeavor to again make America anew by, for example, bolstering our human capital through education and other incentives, as Kennedy realized, we would be wise to strike a more conscientious balance between builders and artists — both of which we will need to secure our place in a safe and prosperous world for generations to come. Builders make things; artists make sense of them. Builders bring things to form; artists contextualize them. Builders are conscientious of risk; artists are enamored with opportunity. Builders improve upon the past; artists create new futures.
And, as did Kennedy:
I look forward to a great future for America, a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past, and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future… I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all our citizens.And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well. And I look forward to a world which will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction.
Richard Holbrooke’s Great Legacy
U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard C. Holbrooke meets with Pakistani NGO representatives and Punjab provincial government officials to discuss flood relief efforts and reconstruction plans in Multan, Pakistan, on September 16, 2010. (State Department photo/ Public Domain)
The United States lost a great public servant yesterday. People know Holbrooke by his larger-than-life personality and his talent and accomplishments as a diplomat taking on the toughest assignments.
I have admired Richard Holbrooke from a distance as I leafed through his old Foreign Policy article, “The Machine that Fails,” in which he described the organizational deficiencies of the State Department during Vietnam. We studied his practice of running small and agile interagency teams as he did in the Balkans and, most recently, with Afghanistan, and we recommended that these teams be created throughout the government.
The approach Holbrooke took was not easy. In many cases, he ran up against entrenched institutional habits. In the Balkans, he worked closely with General Wesley Clark while the Pentagon chiefs saw their closeness as an affront to process. With Afghanistan, Holbrooke seemed to be up or down every month. The issue was incredibly complex, and the cast was crowded with many players. In a way, only someone with Holbrooke’s forcefulness could keep these US policies integrated and the people together. That is why he is such a loss to us.
P.J. Crowley tweeted about Holbrooke yesterday, “Richard Holbrooke’s legacy is a combined military, civilian, regional and international strategy, focused on a common objective.” That legacy has been our mission. We hope to see the Holbrooke approach become a common practice to deal with the panoply of national security challenges the United States will face in the 21st century.
What role should soft power play in 21st century national security?
With the QDDR release imminent, we asked the staff to give their thoughts on soft power. Here is what they had to say:
Chris Holshek: We need to rebalance hard and soft power
Dan Langberg: Resourcing and integrating America’s soft-power: A 21st century imperative
Jack LeCuyer: The QDDR must be a part of a larger strategy that integrates all our capabilities
Holshek: We need to rebalance hard and soft power
“Soft power” is integral to national power and must therefore be understood and applied strategically – within a holistic, comprehensive context. It’s not either/or, but both: “soft” (or persuasive) and “hard” (coercive) power are complementary and synergistic – they are co-multipliers. Still, in the 21st century, America’s “soft” power – the moral suasion of the ideal of e pluribus unum of this nation-of-nations in a globalized world – will play the preeminent role of defining the United States in the world than “hard” power did over the last century. This is not just because hard power is less conducive to the strategic and operational environments we now find ourselves in, in which the United States is no longer the dominant (yet still leading) power. It is also because “hard” power is too expensive and risk-laden in a world in which the margins of error among decision cycles flattened by 24/7 information are too small. In the 21st century, “hard” power must be in support of “soft” power more than the other way around. Thus, the civil-military relationship in applied American power must reflect this practical reality as well as align with the moral imperative of a democratic society. In this way, the United States can best fulfill its international destiny.
– Chris Holshek, Senior Associate
This is from a series of posts by our staff in response to this question: What role should soft power play in 21st century national security?
LeCuyer: The QDDR must be a part of a larger strategy that integrates all our capabilities
The issue is not the dichotomy between “hard” or “kinetic” and “soft power.” Both have their utility in a variety of situations. The issue is how the two are integrated in a true interagency effort to marshall all of the elements of our national power in the broadened definition of national security as articulated in the president’s national security strategy. Soft power is much more than diplomacy and development — it extends to law enforcement, economic and financial issues, the environment and much more. While the QDDR is a most welcome first step in thinking about State Department equities and their role in our national security, it must be integrated into the larger context of the president’s national security strategy and how we integrate all of the instruments of national power (and departmental capabilities) to achieve our national security objectives and maintain U.S. leadership in the complex global security environment of the 21st century.
– Jack LeCuyer, Distinguished Fellow
This is from a series of posts by our staff in response to this question: What role should soft power play in 21st century national security?
The 2014 QDDDR
I give the U.S. national security system a failing grade because of a gross resource allocation problem — Defense has too many people, too much money, and too much power, while Treasury, State, Security, and Justice have too little. There cannot be smart power (effective integration of soft andhard power) until State and Security are credible counter-weights to Defense.
One powerful move that would reduce the disparity between State and Defense from a 100-to-1 size imbalance to a 10-to-1 size imbalance would be deficit-reduction legislation to move 150,000 people from Defense to State. To accomplish this obvious, but politically difficult move, Congress could leverage a popular meme currently circulating in the national security system is the “three D’s” — Diplomacy, Development, Defense. The Quadrennial State Review in 2014 should be a Quadrennial Diplomacy-Development-Defense Review, or a QDDDR.
– Doug Orton, Senior Associate
This is from a series of posts by our staff in response to this question: What role should soft power play in 21st century national security?
Rautenberg: Soft power means collaboration
As the 21st Century continues to unfolds, so too should our commitment to “soft power”. The complexity and diversity of current national security challenges at home and aboard demands a more collaborative, dimensionalized and nuanced approach by America and its allies. In fact, even the notion of allies most be expanded to include traditional rivals, even rouge states and non-state actors. One of our nation’s greatest cultural strengths has been its ability to innovate and collaborate to make positive change possible. In the decades ahead, our strength will be derived from our ability to work and play well with others and less from our unilateral ability to project “hard power” to specific locations to meet potential high conflict situations. We live in an age when governance and management of systems, networks and markets are more important than the behavior or performance of any particular organization, including nation states. In such a world one’s ability to persuade with reason and wisdom will be far more important than one’s ability to coerce another’s behavior through the barrel of a gun. Hard power is still important and will be for the foreseeable future, there are still a handfull of dangerous people in the world. But, soft power is on the move and will become ever more critical to our survival and success as a nation and as a species.
– Tom Rautenberg, Director of Strategy and Development
This is from a series of posts by our staff in response to this question: What role should soft power play in 21st century national security?
Locher: Soft power prevents costly conflict
Since the end of the Cold War, the utility of “soft power” in addressing the complex challenges of the 21st century has greatly increased. Against the ambiguous threats of nonstate aggressors, traditional applications of “hard power” have limited success and often produce adverse consequences. America has been dreadfully slow to recognize the needed shift in emphasis. Our strategy and resourcing still emphasize military force, which continues to be our preferred instrument of power. We have neglected nonmilitary instruments, especially diplomacy and development. Serious attention must be given to strengthening these instruments and rebalancing our national security toolbox. Given our troubled financial situation, soft power’s economy of effort is even more important. Soft power offers an economical ounce of prevention while hard power delivers an expensive pound of cure. For increased effectiveness and efficiency, soft power is the answer.
– Jim Locher, President and CEO
This is from a series of posts by our staff in response to this question: What role should soft power play in 21st century national security?
A quick look at the strategic environment reveals myriad complex sets of threats and opportunities that require effective integration of all sources of American power—hard and soft. However, our national security system is grossly imbalanced and finds it easier to mobilize resources for hard-power assets than soft-power capabilities. The Project on National Security Reform has examined numerous case studies, such as the Iraq War, the disestablishment of the U.S. Information Agency, and missions in Bosnia and Kosovo, that illustrate how inadequate reserves of soft-power resources have deprived the United States of its ability to employ all requisite elements of national power. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, among others, has been outspoken on the subject, stating when he came into office, “I am here to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use ‘soft’ power and for better integrating it with ‘hard’ power.” Our national security system must employ a more balanced approach that can adequately resource, train, and equip the full range of civilian instruments required to operate successfully in today’s security environment. We must also empower mechanisms, such as interagency teams, that can effectively integrate hard and soft power by establishing common national security goals to create unity of purpose and by carrying out those goals jointly to achieve unity of effort.
– Dan Langberg, Deputy Director for Interagency Teams and Planning
This is from a series of posts by our staff in response to this question: What role should soft power play in 21st century national security?
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