Our current national security system, and the manner in which it is governed and funded, does not permit the timely and effective integration of the diverse departmental expertise and capabilities required to protect the United States in an increasingly complex, globalized, and rapidly changing world. This gives the President a narrow range of options for dealing with national security affairs and causes an over-reliance on the military instrument of national power. Using a blunt and outmoded set of tools, the United States has jeopardized its national security, eroded the nation’s image and position in the world, and undermined the trust and confidence of the American people in their government.

This system was devised over sixty years ago for a different era, when national security was primarily a function of military capabilities wielded by one department in overseas missions. With major combat operations and nuclear deterrence the principal focus of US national security strategy, this system required only limited coordination of activities between vertically structured military and civilian departments and agencies. This system did not evolve as the strategic environment changed.

Today, national security involves a much wider array of issues that can only be addressed with a broader set of highly synchronized and carefully calibrated capabilities. This is the product of a global environment that is less structured and more interdependent, making it less amenable to management through conventional military force alone.

Overarching common threats and fixed alliances no longer constrain state behavior. States are often less susceptible to diplomatic pressure alone and the United States needs a bigger set of tools to avoid resorting prematurely to major military force. Globalization empowers non-state actors and individuals to wield influence that is far greater than any other time in human history, while weakening the administrative power of many states to exercise traditional sovereign responsibilities. This makes it imperative that the United States is able to act effectively below the level of a state. The economic and social interdependence of the contemporary global system makes it necessary for the United States to be able to act globally with great precision; ‘collateral damage’ is no longer a viable concept. Globalization creates vectors for disease, technology, ideas, and organization that never existed before.

These factors combine to create a dynamic environment, where obscure issues and geographic areas can suddenly rise rapidly to strategic significance and national boundaries are highly permeable. Frequently, the United States will be unable to anticipate the capabilities it will require in advance of a crisis, necessitating the ability to rapidly matrix capabilities from different sources. In many instances, the domestic and international divide in the US national security system will impede the nation’s ability to identify and confront threats to security.

The Project on National Security Reform was established to assist the nation as it seeks to better equip itself to operate in this 21st century security environment. The Project will contribute to a better understanding of how the national security arena has changed to include new missions that require a more sophisticated international response. The Project will examine the history of the development of the national security system and how and why it took its current form. The Project will then study and define the nature of the problems that inhibit the integration of national power and the consequences of these problems for national security. Finally, the Project will develop an array of possible solutions, evaluate those solutions, and then produce recommendations.

The Project is focused on the relationships between the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and Cabinet Secretaries rather than on the internal components of departments and agencies. Changes in the relationships between the EOP and Cabinet Secretaries will establish new performance criterion that will necessitate changes in the departments and agencies in the long run. By changing organizational output requirements at the interagency level, some intra-departmental change will occur on its own. In other cases, additional reform might be required within departments, at the direction of the leadership of those departments.

The Project on National Security Reform expects that these recommendations will involve substantial regulatory, statutory, and Congressional reforms, to include a new National Security Act, presidential directives to implement changes that do not require prescription in law, and changes to congressional rules governing committee structure and practice to provide sufficient support for and oversight of interagency operations, activities, and programs.

Thirty case studies examine enduring problems in interagency operations and their consequences for national security. These case studies inform the work of the other working groups, each of which will examine one principal element of organizational effectiveness. Three additional groups will take the products from the main analytic working groups and work with Congressional leadership to develop mechanisms for reform; draft legislative proposals, executive orders, and amendments to Senate and House rules; and assist in the implementation of reforms in the Executive Branch.

The project will focus on the tools for developing and executing policy, rather than policy itself. A reformed system will not necessarily lead to superior policy outcomes nor favor or inhibit any specific policy. In addition, while good leadership is always central to national security, the United States does not have to choose between the two, but should seek the best of both. No matter how good the leader, an ineffective system will consistently produce suboptimal outcomes. A better system will empower good leaders.