Gopal Ratnam
Defense News
31 January 2005
The Pentagon’s sweeping review of military strengths and capabilities to face a variety of threats could become a de facto national security strategy, but without the participation of other U.S. government agencies,according to analysts.
Senior U.S. defense officials directing the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) are preparing the military for four broad threats: irregular, catastrophic, disruptive and traditional.
But doing so could stretch the military services and expand the scope of the Department of Defense, said Gordon Adams, professor at the Elliott School of International Relations at George Washington University.
Taking on such a broad range of threats also should involve the Departments of Treasury, Commerce, Justice and State, which usually contribute to the national security strategy, Adams said.
There are some moves afoot to address the weak hand dealt to the other agencies in the national security decision-making process.
Retired Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, the departing head of the Pentagon’s transformation office, has proposed creating “a Goldwater-Nichols Act for the rest of the government.”
“A new national security culture has to be created, not just for the military, but the entire national security apparatus,” he said.
The 1986 act bolstered the influence the Joint Chiefs of Staff have in defense policy.
In the absence of such authority for other U.S. government agencies, “it is being left to the military to conduct every mission,” said Adams, who served as the director of national security affairs in the Office of Management and Budget during the Clinton administration. The Pentagon could end up with “a strategy for the entire government, a smorgasbord of solutions.”
At a Jan. 26 conference organized by the Precision Strike Association in Arlington, Va., the man overseeing the QDR, Christopher Ryan Henry, briefly addressed the role of the Pentagon in relation to other agencies.
The U.S. military is “optimized for traditional warfare,” or fighting against a conventional enemy state, said Henry, the principal deputy undersecretary
of defense for policy. “We have a significant overmatch” in that area, but in the other areas the Pentagon only has a supporting role, he said.
Conceding that other agencies have a key role is not enough, Adams said. The other agencies should play a role too, he said.
Military mission creep is not surprising, said Richard Betts, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, New York, and a former member of the White House National Security Council.
“The Pentagon has been more or less taking on and usurping a bigger
chunk of foreign policy since Sept. 11,” Betts said. “This would be
consistent with that profile.”
Senior defense officials also expect the QDR to leave a lasting impact on the Pentagon, beyond just budgets and force structure.
During the review, now under way, officials led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his senior aides hope to change the management
culture, prepare the military services to take on a variety of foes, reshape the force structure, get the services to fight better together — all as defense budget growth is expected to slow.
The once-in-four-years review mandated by Congress offers the “potential for looking at ways we might shape the force and prepare the Department of Defense for the next two decades,” Henry said.
Henry, his deputy Jim Thomas, and their boss, Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, play key roles in the review. Feith announced his resignation Jan. 26 and said he would leave by summer; no replacement was announced by press time.
Defense officials want this QDR to be more effective than previous ones, Henry said. Past QDRs were not closely linked to the ongoing budget top. They recommended encouraging strong competition for new ideas from the services.
To avoid extensive analysis backed by Power Point presentations and
“stovepipe thinking,” Rumsfeld and his advisers favor a “top-down
approach. … We are changing the management model from the past,”
Henry said.
Four Fights
The review will center on evaluating the services’ ability to fight
unconventional foes without demanding more money and diluting their
traditional strengths, Henry said. “People think we need to migrate from traditional warfare to other [areas], but that’s not true,” Henry said. “It’s one of adapting.”
We are not looking at reinvestment or changing investment patterns,” he said. Defense spending, which reached an 18-year peak in 2006, “has to come down,” he said.
In fact, one of the guiding principles of this QDR will be to “generate resource-neutral QDR recommendations,” he said.
The review will encourage each service to work jointly with — even depend on — the others, he said. Each must plan with the mindset that “I do what I do best and rely on other services to provide the rest,” Henry said. In a departure from the previous QDRs, the current one will be tied to the annual defense budget process and the next round of military base closures, as well as “spawn road maps” that will influence defense decisions for the next several years, Henry said.
Unlike earlier reviews that were presented to Congress in September, this one will consider the implications for base closures and the money it will free up. The review will be completed in February 2006 along with the 2007 defense budget.
Some analysts wonder how much of the Pentagon’s expansive plans can be implemented.
Though there is a broad consensus that the U.S. military is “over-invested in capabilities for traditional threats and under-invested in areas that are non-traditional … the challenge is to get beyond the rhetoric to really frame the key trade-offs for decision makers,” said Michèle Flournoy, analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington.
She was a senior Pentagon official in charge of QDR efforts during the Clinton administration.
“Everyone can think of their favorite things to invest in, but few can think of what can be given up,” she said.
Defense officials must find ways to assess the effectiveness of anti-terrorist and counter-insurgency warfare, she said. Unlike the models available to predict success in conventional warfare, no such tools are available for the new kinds of wars, she said.
The vast changes being contemplated in a fiscally tight environment would require senior defense officials to “get the buy-in” of military commanders as well as “significant engagement with Congress, so people feel ownership,” she said. “But this particular leadership doesn’t have a good track record.” •
Vago Muradian contributed to this report.
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Citation:
Gopal Ratnam, "With QDR, Pentagon Takes Lead in U.S. Strategy", Defense News, 31 January 2005.