Ensuring Security in an Unpredictable World: The Urgent Need for National Security Reform
The national security system of the United States was created in
1947 during the administration of President Harry Truman. That world no
longer exists. Today the nation is confronted with a globalized, more
unpredictable world with multidimensional threats. It is a system in
need of massive restructuring according to The Project on National
Security Reform, a two-year undertaking of some 300 scholars and
national security experts under the leadership of James Locher. PNSR is
about to release its recommendations to Congress and the next president
for resolving the current national security system problems.
James R. Locher III, Executive Director of PNSR, will discuss the
project’s recommendations for a comprehensive redesign of the system
including draft presidential directives and a new National Security Act
to replace many of the provisions of the 1947 legislation.
Ambassador James F. Dobbins, bringing over three decades of
experience in European and global affairs, will offer his comments on
the National Security Reform Project and the transformation of the
national security system.
Speakers:
Speakrs
James R. Locher III
Executive Director, The Project on National Security Reform (PNSR)
Ambassador James F. Dobbins
International Security and Defense Policy Center, RAND Corporation
Daniel Serwer,
Moderator
Center for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations, U.S. Institute of Peace
Panel's
'National Security' Construct Carries Major Budget Implications for DOD
By
Jason Sherman
Defense
Alert
December
4, 2008
Dec.
4, 2008 -- The Pentagon's annual budget request should be weighed against an
array of non-military spending needs that also contribute to national security
under a new framework that could, for the first time, directly pit requests for
funding new weapon system programs against projects currently funded outside
the Defense Department budget.
The
congressionally mandated Project on National Security Reform, in a report
released yesterday calling for sweeping reorganization of the federal
government, argues that the U.S. government must create an integrated national
security budget influenced by a new White House office, the President's
Security Council -- which would replace the current National Security and
Homeland Security councils.
The
bipartisan panel of more than 300 experts argues that national security
encompasses more than military might and the nation's collective wealth; it
also includes “sound” economic policy, energy security, and robust physical and
human infrastructures, among them U.S. health and education systems, especially
in the sciences and engineering.
“A new
concept of national security demands recalibration of how we think about and
manage national security resources and budgeting,” the panel argues in its
792-page report. “Today's more complex challenges impose qualitatively more
demanding resource allocation choices, even in good economic times. If we
should face a period of protracted austerity in government, as now seems more
likely than not, meeting those challenges will become orders of magnitude more
difficult.”
The
single-most reliable measure of the success of a policy is whether it is
funded, the panel argues, noting that “we are unanimously agreed that the
current system's gross inefficiencies risk collapse under the weight of the
protracted budget pressures that likely lie ahead. We need to do more with
less, but we cannot hope to achieve even that without fundamental reform of the
resource management function.”
The
Defense Department is allocated considerably more than all the combined total
given to the other arms of the federal government that play roles in national
security. In fiscal year 2006, for instance, the Pentagon was allocated $419.3
billion; the State Department, $31.8 billion; the overall intelligence
community an estimated $60 billion; the office of the director of national
intelligence, $1 billion; the Homeland Security Department $29.3 billion; and
the Treasury Department $11.6 billion, according to the report.
The
current “resource allocation process fails to meet primary national security
purposes in two ways,” the report argues: The process does not connect national
security strategy to budget choices and it “does not address long-term national
security needs in an integrated fashion across agencies -- it is simply not
designed to address interagency needs.”
Current
processes provide no means of considering “clear tradeoffs among priorities
across agencies,” the report states. Because the Office of the Secretary of
Defense largely oversees the review of budget requests and accompanying
follow-on, five-year investment plans, with limited oversight from the White
House Office of Management and Budget, “it is nearly impossible to create a
national security interagency trade-off review at the OMB/[Executive Office of
the President] level,” the panel asserts.
Accordingly,
it calls for all of the national security arms of these agencies and
departments to adopt the Pentagon practice of preparing six-year budget
projections in order to facilitate trades between agencies.
The
proposed new President's Security Council would issue “national security
planning guidance” to inform these six-year investment plans, according to the
panel.
“We recommend the creation of an integrated national security
budget to provide the president and the Congress a government-wide
understanding of activities, priorities, and resource allocation, and to
identify redundancies and deficiencies in the resourcing of national security
missions,” the pane's report states.
Project on National Security Reform Delivers Proposals to Obama
By
Fawzia Sheikh
Inside
the Pentagon
December
4, 2008
After two years of study, the Project on National Security Reform
unveiled a long-awaited report for the next administration that recommends
merging the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council, and
shifting functions to the State Department from other agencies to undo the
militarization of foreign policy.
The project involved former senior officials with national
security experience and is sponsored by the Center for the Study of the
Presidency. The final report released yesterday, titled “Forging a New Shield,”
offers 38 recommendations falling under seven themes with interagency
cooperation as a key.
The panel also calls for mandating an annual national security
planning guidance and an integrated national security budget.
Moreover, it suggests initiating “highly collaborative,
mission-focused interagency teams for priority issues.”
Recommendations in the report are grouped by themes such as new
approaches focused on national missions and outcomes; unity of purpose;
decentralized management of national security issues; resources linked to
goals; alignment of personnel incentives with strategic objectives; improved
flow of knowledge and information; and a partnership between the legislative
and executive branches.
The proposals were delivered last Wednesday to President Bush,
President-elect Obama, House Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Cheney, PNSR
Executive Director James Locher told a group of reporters at a Dec. 2 briefing.
He said he expects the findings to save money in the long run for the
government. Previous failures to impose national security reform hurt the U.S.
government’s ability to formulate policy, he noted.
“Our government is in vertical stovepipes wearing concrete shoes
at a time in which we need to be able to rapidly integrate our expertise and
capabilities,” Locher declared.
The project’s mandate to bring together the skills and experience
of different government departments and agencies was touched on during a Dec. 1
press conference in which Obama announced his national security team. “To
succeed, we must pursue a new strategy that skillfully uses, balances and
integrates all elements of American power: our military and diplomacy, our
intelligence and law enforcement, our economy and the power of our moral
example,” Obama said.
Locher said he has not heard back from Obama’s team about the new
guidance.
The report notes that major and subordinate recommendations are
constructed as a single integrated proposal. These themes and recommendations
are dependent on each other for their effectiveness “no less than a building’s
foundation, superstructure and functional systems must be conceived as an
aggregate for any part of it to work as intended,” it notes.
The recommendations are meant to respond to several problems with
the national security setup, the first being a grossly unbalanced system,
Locher said. “We have these strong department capabilities linked in with their
congressional committees, and we have incredibly weak integrating mechanisms.
The National Security Council, the national security adviser, they have only
advisory responsibilities. So we have a headquarters without headquarters
powers, and it’s tremendously small.”
Second, the government lacks strategic direction, denying the
national security system “unity of purpose,” Locher noted. The United States
does not undertake strategic planning or “visioning,” referring to a practice
of looking ahead 20 or 30 years and preparing for these threats, he said. A key
reason the government does not carry out this visioning is because the
“dysfunctional system” requires all energy to be spent on solving problems “of
today and tomorrow,” he asserted.
Another obstacle is a tendency to centralize the management of
issues in the executive office of the president, he added.
A fourth hurdle is resources are not aligned with strategic objectives,
he said. “It’s hard to believe that in our system, we don’t have the clear
articulation of our strategic objectives, the missions we’re trying to
accomplish and then match our resources to those,” he said. “The Office of
Management and Budget is still really preparing the president’s budget based
upon inputs, not based upon outputs. And this is one reason why we have this
critical imbalance between the military and non-military budgets.”
Fifth, departmental interests “trump” national interests, he
maintained. This occurs because the power lies within the departments but the
personnel incentives are “working against us,” he asserted, adding this calls
for “major changes” to the reward system.
Next, the system is not managed as a system and, indeed, is not
considered as a system, including “lots of important tasks and strategic
guidance,” Locher noted.
He said the last problem is Congress, which is “as stovepiped as
the executive branch” and arguably even worse.