Inside the Pentagon
Dec. 22, 2009 -- The Obama administration next month will unveil its first National Security Strategy (NSS), according to Pentagon officials. Draft versions of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review refer to a January 2010 rollout of the new NSS, a keystone strategic planning document, these officials say.
In development for nearly a year by the National Security Council, the new strategy is expected to provide an updated framework to guide the work of the Defense Department and other national security agencies in carrying out key tasks, including budgeting and planning, according to Pentagon sources.
The document is expected to set forth the United States' national security interests, to include “an international order underpinned by U.S. leadership and engagement that promotes peace, responsibility, and cooperation to meet global challenges, including transnational threats,” according to a Nov. 12 Joint Staff briefing that summarizes draft findings of a White House-led national security policy review.
By law, a new president is required to issue a new National Security Strategy to Congress within six months of taking office, but such reports have historically been late. Since the 1986 legislation calling for NSS reports was enacted, no president has submitted such a report to Congress within his first year, let alone within six months of taking office, according to the 2008 book "Difficult Transitions" by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell and Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg.
On April 23, a senior defense official predicted the Obama administration's first NSS would not be released until after the QDR.
“We're unlikely to have a published National Security Strategy before the QDR is done, but what we do have is an NSC process -- one of the early policy reviews has been a national security priorities review,” the official told reporters at the Pentagon. “That is sort of the key insights that would be written up in an NSS.”
The policy review, which Inside the Pentagon first reported in March, continued through the summer, allowing Joint Staff officials this fall to provide feedback on matters the military regarded as central to a new strategy.
In September, the Joint Staff -- according to the briefing -- offered its view that the new strategy should consider six strategic challenges: transnational violent extremism; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; rising power and regional instability; cyber and space vulnerability; competition for natural resources; and natural disasters and pandemics.
Legislation requires that the strategy address five points: global interests, goals and objectives that are “vital” to U.S. national security; the U.S. “national defense capabilities” required to deter aggression; the proposed short- and long-term uses of the tools of national power, including the military, to protect or promote U.S. interests; and the adequacy of U.S. capabilities to execute the NSS, including an “evaluation of the balance” among U.S. national power capabilities.
As the White House prepares a new NSS, the Defense Department is preparing a number of related strategy documents as well.
First, the congressionally mandated Quadrennial Defense Review is due to be sent to Congress in February along with the Pentagon's fiscal year 2011 budget request.
Second, the Joint Staff is preparing a new guidance document updating the National Military Strategy. In the summer of 2008 the Joint Staff scuttled an update to the 2004 National Military Strategy without offering a reason why. The move came after Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in June 2008, issued a new National Defense Strategy that included a risk assessment that all the service chiefs disagreed with -- in particular its directive to reduce investments in conventional capabilities in order to boost spending for irregular capability.
Pentagon sources say the Office of the Secretary of Defense is also preparing an updated National Defense Strategy to be issued in the new year. -- Jason Sherman
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