Boy, this is a long one and this will take you a little bit to read through all the speeches and various articles. But hey, if you are a student of strategy and are wanting to take a look into the future of defense contracting, you have to figure out what the big boys are thinking and wanting to do.
What is interesting about ‘Smart Power’, is that it is a concept that gained it’s start as a political buzz word to differentiate one party’s views on foreign policy versus another’s. Which is standard play in the world of politics. Although I would argue that every administration no matter what party, all strive to use smart power in their foreign policy strategies. But hey, I will let the political pundits play that game–I have more important things to talk about.
With that said, with a new administration comes newly minted foreign policy goals. Smart power is the flag pole that they are rallying around and that is what we all must focus on in order to stay current.
There are a number of places to research the definition and origins of the concept of smart power. For this post, I wanted to stick with Matt Armstrong’s definition of smart power because his pays respect to the original strategists who promoted such concepts back in their day. He built a ‘snow mobile’ out of it, and brought in Sun Tzu and Clausewitz to create four pieces to the definition.(see below)
Now that we have perspective and reference for smart power, my intention in this post was to highlight what the defense industry thinks about smart power. Just look at the latest moves of Cerberus, and you will see how important this smart power concept is. DynCorp, along with other defense companies involved with contracting, are all trying to adapt to the goals of a new administration and their ‘smart power’ focus, and investors are taking notice. So what does all this mean for security contractors like you and me?
Training, training, and more training is going to be the wave of the smart power future. In order to stop a state from failing, you need to get into nation building, and the defense industry is jumping all over that. From training police and military forces to propping up government institutions, the defense industry is all about training and mentoring. Expect to see more contracts in really bad places in the world, all with a focus on strengthening the recognized government and stabilizing that country. Those are the places that need expertise and all the help we can give them, and private industry will answer that call.
We also can provide other necessities of the state. We can build defenses, enforce borders, build government facilities, create ‘Green Zones’, guard dignitaries or investors (commerce is vital to failed states as well), build infrastructure and provide the necessary support to the U.S. military and federal government as they go around the world and implement ‘smart power’. We are the SysAdmin and the ‘hold and build’ portion of today’s strategies. Security contractors are essential for all of that, whether a local national guard or it being an expat guard. Someone has to protect these folks as they rebuild a crumbling state.
Smart power is very friendly to private industry in another way. Using military for everything when it comes to nation building, is not smart. If we want to put a civilian face to our diplomacy, as opposed to a menacing military face, then smart power requirements will need civilians. Of course there will be federal employees providing that civilian face, but that only goes so far, and federal response is no where near as fast as private industry response. In other words, private industry equals speed, flexibility and scalability. In a fast paced and highly dangerous world, private military companies with nation building capabilities and built in security mechanisms will be necessary to implement smart power strategies. Just look at today’s wars and projects throughout the world, and tell me private industry doesn’t have a role in that process? (might I note that contracting has only increased under the current admin–too bad we get zero recognition for our contribution to smart power)
Interesting stuff, and let me know what you think. –Matt
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Smart Power is “the capacity of an actor to combine elements of hard power and soft power in ways that are mutually reinforcing such that the actor’s purposes are advanced effectively and efficiently.” Those familiar with Sun Tzu and Clausewitz will recognize the four elements of Smart Power:
• The target over which one seeks to exercise power—its internal nature and its broader global context. Power cannot be smart if those who wield it are ignorant of these attributes of the target populations and regions.
• Self-knowledge and understanding of one’s own goals and capacities. Smart power requires the wielder to know what his or her country or community seeks, as well as its will and capacity to achieve its goals.
• The broader regional and global context within which the action will be conducted.
• The tools to be employed, as well as how and when to deploy them individually and in combination.
From the Mountain Runner blog.
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What’s “Smart Power”? DynCorp’s Tony Smeraglinolo on six best practices
April 12th, 2010
by JD Kathuria
“Smart power” — ever since Defense Secretary Robert Gates outlined the policy in a 2008 speech, it’s become the emerging tenet for how the United States should approach global security initiatives. Through a mix of military strength and nation-building activities, the aim is to keep “fractured or failed states,” as Gates put it, from teetering on the brink of war — or from requiring the US military, already stretched thin in Iraq or Afghanistan, from having to intervene further.
The urgency for smart power has only grown with the Obama administration’s call for $39.4 billion in funding for civilian foreign operations in fiscal 2011. Now comes the hard part: Determining how smart power can be implemented effectively to address global challenges.
Tony Smeraglinolo is working to cut through that uncertainty. As president of Global Stabilization and Development Solutions for DynCorp International, Smeraglinolo offers up this succinct definition: Smart power requires the application of three D’s — Defense, Diplomacy, and Development. Since assuming his role in April 2009, Smeraglinolo has helped structure his division at DynCorp to provide all three core competencies.
In the process, the division has doubled in size. Here, Smeraglinolo shares six ways to implement smart power on behalf of defense customers:
1.) Build local capacity. That comes through knowledge transfer, which takes the form of training, mentoring, and development activities. “Whether training police or hiring locals to help us in construction — not other third party nationals, as some of our competitors do — the ultimate goal is to transfer our knowledge, as a corporate entity and as a nation, to another country as the foundation of nation-building,” says Smeraglinolo. Current efforts include teaching local nationals to carry out demining in countries such as Turkey, Cambodia, and along the Syrian border; abatement and removal of obsolete and dangerous weapons in Bulgaria; and security services in Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan. “Wherever the location, when we leave, those skills remain with local nationals,” says Smeraglinolo.
2.) Ensure alignment with customer. That requires having a “lean forward” approach, says Smeraglinolo. “If we know there will be a ramp-up of Afghan police training, it is not unusual for us to ramp up our recruiting process prior to being tapped contractually,” he says. “Because,” he adds, “we know that we need to lean forward — we know things are time-critical.” Understanding a customer’s objective is also key. In Iraq, for example, DynCorp is supporting US Forces One (formerly, “Multinational Security Transition Command”). The initiative involves mentoring and advising interior and defense ministries in building institutional capacities. Recently, in an effort to control crime and bombings, an Iraqi edict was passed stating that police uniforms could no longer be sold on the open market. That measure is a result of DynCorp advisers who encouraged several different government offices to compare data within crime incidence reports.
3.) Integrate expertise. That entails offering global solutions, not just services. “We look for a more holistic approach to global challenges versus just selling one particular competency,” says Smeraglinolo. That philosophy is reflected in a key structural change within the company. In April 2009, DynCorp reorganized a division, International Security Services, to become, Global Stabilization and Development. DynCorp has also expanded its core competencies through its recent acquisition of Casals & Associates, which specializes in building up legal systems and public-health infrastructure in developing nations. “Casals & Associates had distinguished themselves in the USAID marketplace where they addressed local governance, anti-corruption, and rule of law — all building blocks for a country to go govern themselves,” says Smeraglinolo.
4.) Offer best value. Implementing smart power — development, diplomacy, and defense — in difficult environments requires a best value, not necessarily the lowest, cheapest, “cut corners” cost, says Smeraglinolo. “That’s what’s needed to make smart power work and that’s what we focus on — the best value,” he says. “The basis for winning any job is understanding the customer’s mission and their problems in detail so that you can bring a discriminating solution,” he adds.
5.) Be ready to think big — and follow through. Imagine this: Your company is called upon to support the brunt of the surge against US forces in Southern Afghanistan. Your support will require you identify, recruit, and employ 7,500 employees — all within a 90 to 100-day period. Putting employees in the field will also require the installation of IT, communication, and accounting systems. “That’s the type of challenge we take on,” says Smeraglinolo.
6.) Do sweat the small stuff. It comes down to a focus on the micro. That, says Smeraglinolo, is the most important part of the equation. “Though we have to employ 7,500 people, each one is an individual, with their own unique training — and life — needs,” he says. “Whether an employee is injured in the field, whether it’s the family back home, whether it’s employee assistance — you can never lose sight of the micro,” says Smeraglinolo. In keeping with that corporate value, DynCorp recently established DI Care Employee Assistance Program (EAP), a corporate-wide effort to assist employees in events of serious or life-threatening injury. Says Smeraglinolo: “DI is working intensively to support its customers as they implement new smart power initiatives, and has the track record and expertise to do so comprehensively. We will accomplish this by delivering high-performing teams that will deliver not only performance but compliance and conduct.”
Story here.
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Defense Industry Pursues Gold in ‘Smart Power’ Deals
MARCH 23, 2010
By AUGUST COLE
MONROVIA, Liberia—Lockheed Martin Corp. became the nation’s No. 1 military contractor by selling cutting-edge weaponry like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
Its latest contribution to the U.S. arsenal: training prosecutors in Liberia’s Justice Ministry.
The U.S. government has hired the defense contractor to test an emerging tenet of its security policy. Called “smart power,” it blends military might with nation-building activities, in hopes of boosting political stability and American influence in far-flung corners such as Liberia.
U.S. officials are concerned that nations imperiled by poverty and political strife could spark regional conflicts and foster terrorist networks. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the problem posed by failing states “is in many ways the ideological and security challenge of our time.”
The Pentagon and the State Department are now leaning on defense contractors to come up with ways to stave off crises before they occur, with programs as simple as mentoring lawyers or teaching auto repair. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has advocated for “smart power” initiatives abroad. In a speech earlier this month, the Pentagon’s top officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen, talked about the need for more civilian efforts—or “soft power”—overseas, instead of just military muscle.
“Secretaries Clinton and Gates have called for more funding and more emphasis on our soft power, and I could not agree with them more,” Adm. Mullen said. “Should we choose to exert American influence solely through our troops, we should expect to see that influence diminish in time.”
Defense firms are eager to oblige. “The definition of global security is changing,” says Lockheed’s Chairman and Chief Executive Robert Stevens. He wants the maker of the Air Force’s most advanced fighters to become a central player in the U.S. campaign to use economic and political means to align countries with American strategic interests.
Last year, Lockheed had two of its highest profile programs, the F-22 Raptor fighter and a fleet of presidential helicopters, ended by the Obama administration. Now, Lockheed is one of several defense firms expected to bid for a State Department contract to support “criminal justice sector development programs world-wide,” that could be worth up to $30 billion over five years.
Northrop Grumman Corp., the No. 3 Pentagon contractor behind Boeing, has trained Senegalese peacekeeping troops in the basics of human-rights law. Another giant defense contractor, BAE Systems Inc., has provided anthropologists to accompany U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to aid understanding of local cultures. BAE said it is seeking more “smart power” contracts, including in Africa, where much of the government’s efforts are being targeted.
The Obama administration has requested $39.4 billion in funding for civilian foreign operations in fiscal 2011; part of that will be for programs such as the Peace Corps, while some will go to defense contractors for development or training programs.
Morgan Stanley defense analyst Heidi Wood says Lockheed’s early push into this realm sets it apart from competitors. It is too soon to pinpoint a financial impact, she says, but the moves will pay off. “It’s a complete paradigm change.”
Some question whether big military contractors are the right ones to carry these programs out. Sam Rosenfeld, a former British army officer who trained soldiers in Sierra Leone and is chairman of security consultancy Densus Group, says it is hard to determine if big contractors are creating lasting programs or simply passing recruits through training. “Is the taxpayer getting value for money because they’re getting sustainable systems, or is it just headcount?”
Others worry that once defense firms get into this business, their longstanding relationship with the U.S. government will end up driving more money into these initiatives, no matter the results. “It’s sort of like the soft-power industrial complex,” says William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, who is writing a history of Lockheed.
Defense firms are going into an area that was the domain of smaller firms and nongovernmental organizations, not shareholder-minded corporate giants. Mr. Hartung questions whether defense firms have a long-term commitment to this kind of work. “It’s a little bit outside their comfort zone and different from their normal corporate activity,” he says.
Recently, defense firms have begun investing in this direction. In January, DynCorp International Inc. bought Casals & Associates Inc., which specializes in building up public-health and legal systems in the developing world. The acquisition “furthers our alignment with the Obama Administration’s emphasis on the application of ‘smart power’ to global challenges,” said DynCorp Chief Executive William Ballhaus in announcing the deal.
In 2008, L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., a major military technology and services contractor, bought International Resources Group Ltd., which works on economic development, energy and other projects in dozens of countries.
The economic and political tenets of smart power are in many ways a modern extension of past U.S. foreign endeavors such as the Marshall Plan that helped rebuild Europe after World War II. “We cannot kill or capture our way to victory,” Mr. Gates said in a 2008 speech that outlined the new policy. He has said the biggest threats to U.S. security “emanate from fractured or failed states,” and to combat them, the Pentagon needs to engage with these countries in a way “that reduces the need for direct U.S. military intervention.”
Africa—where few U.S. troops are stationed—is a major focus. Many countries on this continent already are, or risk becoming, failed states. While they previously hadn’t been considered a threat to the U.S., that view is changing. Somalia’s nexus of terrorism and piracy is one example of how destabilized countries can become a redoubt for al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.
The U.S. military is already overstretched between Iraq and Afghanistan. So the Pentagon is eager to send defense firms to fill the gaps, in the hope that investing millions in training or advisory programs today may stave off a regional calamity that could cost billions in the future.
“Africa certainly is an area of interest to our U.S. government customers, and what’s important to our customers is important to us,” said Lockheed’s Mr. Stevens.
Lockheed’s interest in development and post-conflict work took off about five years ago when Mr. Stevens, who became chief executive in 2004, began taking steps to reposition the company.
“When I started out in the business … more than 30 years ago, we probably then thought more in terms of military capability for the U.S,” says Mr. Stevens, who enlisted in the Marine Corps after high school. Today, national security is defined “well beyond making provisions to apply military power.”
In 2006, Lockheed spent $700 million to acquire Pacific Architects and Engineers Inc., which built bases for the U.S. during the Vietnam War and more recently did extensive work in Africa for the U.N.
Liberia presents an important test of whether Lockheed is suited to this changing role for defense contractors. The country emerged from two decades of intermittent civil war in 2003. Thatis when PAE, as well as DynCorp., began to rebuild the Liberian military on behalf of the U.S. government, which lacked spare troops to do the task.
The country’s president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has been cultivating a relationship with the U.S. since taking office in 2006. She says she believes encouraging Lockheed to expand its presence in Liberia will allow the country to attract more American investment in the future.
“Lockheed is very much part of our longer term attempts at creating a security architecture that keeps us safer, and the entire region,” Ms. Johnson Sirleaf said in an interview last year.
Lockheed uses both its own full-time employees and contractors that it hires for a set amount of time. Some tasks, such as construction work, are subcontracted to local firms, overseen by Lockheed personnel.
Since 2006, contractors hired by Lockheed have mentored Liberian prosecutors as part of a project to bolster the country’s judicial system. They also helped establish a cadre of public defenders. PAE remodeled parts of Monrovia’s battle-scarred Temple of Justice, installing a new roof and new electrical wiring.
“They’ve come in to really strengthen the system,” said Liberia’s Justice Minister Christiana Tah, who has been on the job since July. “We can see the difference in the performance of the prosecutors, which was terrible.”
Criminals prosecuted by the Lockheed-trained lawyers were caught by Liberia’s national police force whose members were trained by Lockheed’s PAE.
On a strip of soggy grass outside a run-down police headquarters, a Liberian commander drilled officers in how to remove a jammed round from their American-made assault rifles. As he shouts, “Jammed round!,” the men, members of the Liberian National Police’s Emergency Response Unit, shoulder their weapons to protect colleagues who drop to one knee to clear their weapons. An American Lockheed contractor wearing navy-blue fatigues and a light-blue United Nations beret looked on.
For PAE, the biggest effort has been training and equipping the 2,000 members of Liberia’s Armed Forces.
Standing in an open mechanics’ bay next to a military truck, Charles Jallah, a Liberian PAE employee, trained soldiers in the basics of automotive repair. Nearby, stacks of tires stood ready to be painted before being half-buried in the ground to create a training route for inexperienced drivers. “Basically before we got here there was nothing… no kind of skilled labor,” said Mr. Jallah.
Near the base’s main entrance, a militarized Ford Ranger pickup passed by with a huge “student driver” placard affixed to the front.
Much of Lockheed’s contract work with the Armed Forces of Liberia is winding down. Lockheed’s involvement in the country, however, is evolving.
Through a six-month agreement signed with the Liberian government in August, valued at about $468,000, Lockheed is working to improve Roberts International Airport.
Before Lockheed arrived, travelers jostled to enter a decrepit passenger terminal. Bribes were often necessary to get through customs, according to U.S. and Liberian officials.
Now, the well-lit terminal has two lines that flow quickly and customs officials are watched by police.
Departing travelers can shop for watches and whiskey at a duty-free lounge. A separate waiting room for business travelers was set up.
Some of the biggest changes are in security, which now includes U.S.-style passenger screening with X-ray machines.
For Liberia, the goal is clear. If it can get the U.S. Transportation Security Administration to sign off on the airport, Delta Air Lines can start flying directly there. U.S. security concerns stopped an attempt over the summer to start service. Currently, travelers have to stop at least once elsewhere in Africa or Europe.
The contract isn’t a money maker for Lockheed. To convince the Liberian government it could do the work, the company spent half a million dollars of its money on a study of the airport. But the airport project is the first time Lockheed has landed work directly from the Liberian government. The company believes it could lead to further work down the road, such as selling Liberia products like government computer networks.
The contract is crucial for Liberia too. If Lockheed can modernize the airport, Liberian officials can offer its use to the Pentagon, which lacks a ready toehold in West Africa. Liberia was the only African country to publicly lobby to permanently host the U.S. Africa Command, which is currently based in Germany. “We’re really hoping we can get Roberts Field up,” says Brownie Samukai, Liberia’s defense minister.
This kind of intermingling of interests is what the U.S. programs are trying to accomplish, says Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. Ambassador in Liberia. She says “smart power” in Liberia involves the U.S. using “the diplomatic side, the defense side and the development side” in order to “promote democracy, stability and peace in a region that has not seen that for a very long time.”
Liberia’s president Ms. Johnson Sirleaf said she sees a broader role for Lockheed there. After the company completes the airport upgrade, she hopes “they will then see that they can expand their business.”
Story here.
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March/April 2004
Suzanne Nossel was Deputy to the Ambassador for UN Management and Reform at the U.S. mission to the United Nations from 1999 to 2001 and is currently an executive at a media company in New York.
RECLAIMING LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, conservative foreign-policy makers have united behind a clear agenda: combating terrorism, aggressively preempting perceived threats, and asserting the United States’ right and duty to act alone. Progressives, in contrast, have seemed flummoxed. Stuck on the sidelines, they advocate tactics that differ sharply from those of the Bush administration. But they have not consistently articulated a distinct set of progressive U.S. foreign policy goals.
This is a mistake. Progressives now have a historic opportunity to reorient U.S. foreign policy around an ambitious agenda of their own. The unparalleled strength of the United States, the absence of great-power conflict, the fears aroused by September 11, and growing public skepticism of the Bush administration’s militarism have created a political opening for a cogent, visionary alternative to the president’s foreign policy.
To advance from a nuanced dissent to a compelling vision, progressive policymakers should turn to the great mainstay of twentieth-century U.S. foreign policy: liberal internationalism, which posits that a global system of stable liberal democracies would be less prone to war. Washington, the theory goes, should thus offer assertive leadership — diplomatic, economic, and not least, military — to advance a broad array of goals: self-determination, human rights, free trade, the rule of law, economic development, and the quarantine and elimination of dictators and weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Unlike conservatives, who rely on military power as the main tool of statecraft, liberal internationalists see trade, diplomacy, foreign aid, and the spread of American values as equally important.
After September 11, conservatives adopted the trappings of liberal internationalism, entangling the rhetoric of human rights and democracy in a strategy of aggressive unilateralism. But the militant imperiousness of the Bush administration is fundamentally inconsistent with the ideals they claim to invoke. To reinvent liberal internationalism for the twenty-first century, progressives must wrest it back from Republican policymakers who have misapplied it.
Essay link here.
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Center for Strategic and International Studies (Washington, DC)
Remarks as Delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Washington, DC, Saturday, January 26, 2008
Thank you for the kind comments, John [Hamre], and, Sam [Nunn], thank you for your kind remarks as well. I should note that John has had the courage if not necessarily the good judgment to accept my invitation to chair the Defense Policy Board. And I thank him for it.
Well, it’s a real pleasure to be back in Washington – not – (laughter) – the place where Harry Truman said you spend the first six months wondering how the hell you got here and the next six months wondering how the hell the rest of them got here. (Laughter.) To quote Senator Alan Simpson, “Washington is the only place where those who travel the high road of humility encounter little heavy traffic.” (Laughter.) The only place in the world you can see a prominent person walking down Lover’s Lane holding his own hand. (Laughter.)
Well, looking out to the audience today, I see no shortage of friends, colleagues, and distinguished figures from the worlds of politics, diplomacy, business, the military, and academia. I’m sure that conspiracy theorists would have a field day with this gathering, right up there with the trilateral commission and fluoridated water. (Laughter.) I have to say you begin to think in those terms when you’ve had a guy wearing a football helmet covered with tin foil outside the White House for a year holding a sign accusing you of controlling his brain waves. (Laughter.)
There are many friends here today, but I would like to just indulge myself by singling out three people: first, Dave Abshire, CSIS co-founder, still going strong and still bettering our understanding of statecraft and the importance of integrity and leadership; Anne Armstrong, former ambassador to the United Kingdom, stalwart supporter of CSIS and perhaps most important to me former member of the board of regents of Texas A&M. Had it not been for Anne’s support, I would not have been selected as president of A&M; And, finally, George Schultz. As I wrote in my book more than 10 years ago, I believe history will record George as one of America’s greatest Secretaries of State. (Applause.)
Two months ago, giving the Landon lecture at Kansas State University, I made the case for increasing the capacity of America’s civilian tools of statecraft and for better integrating them with the hard power of our military, or as John Hamre once put it, to combine the tools of “intimidation” with the tools of “inspiration,” also called smart power. Of course, what got the media’s attention was the man-bites-dog aspect of the speech, the Secretary of Defense calling for a significant increase in the budget of the Department of State.
I dare say, Secretary Schultz, I suspect that did not happen during your tenure. (Laughter.) And so, John asked me to talk about this subject here today. In recent years, we have seen that the close of the Cold War, an event that raised hopes for an era of prosperity, tranquility, and, quote, unquote, “the end of history” also had the effect of unfreezing ancient hatreds and unleashing new pathologies. The revived monsters of the past have returned far stronger and more dangerous than before because of modern technology, both for communication and for destruction and to a world that is far more closely connected and interdependent.
For years to come, we will deal with a new, far more malignant form of global terrorism rooted in extremist and violent jihadism, new manifestations of ethnic, tribal, and sectarian conflict, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, failed and failing states, states enriched with oil profits and discontented with their place in the international system, authoritarian regimes facing increasingly restive populations that seek political freedom as well as a better standard of living, and, finally, we see both emergent and resurgent great powers whose future paths remain unclear.
These challenges have two things in common. First, they are, by their nature, long term, requiring patience over years and across multiple presidencies. Second, they cannot be overcome by military means alone and they extend well beyond the traditional domain of any single government agency or department. They require our government to operate with unity, agility, and creativity, and will require devoting considerably more resources to non-military instruments of national power.
In the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns, one of the most important lessons that has been learned, and to a large extent, relearned is that military success is not sufficient. Our efforts must also address economic development, institution building, the rule of law, promoting internal reconciliation, good or at least decent governance, public services, training and equipping indigenous security forces, effective, strategic communications, and more. These so-called soft capabilities along with military power are indispensable to any lasting success, indeed, to victory itself as Clausewitz understood it, which is achieving a political objective.
Despite the heroic effort of individual soldiers and diplomats and many successful operations – the surge in Iraq being the most recent and compelling example – the whole of our government’s activities has often added up to less than the sum of the parts.
The military and civilian elements of our national security apparatus have responded unevenly and have grown increasingly out of balance. For example, in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen have filled the void created by the absence of civilians available to deploy and operate in different and dangerous environments. I dealt with this shortly after becoming Defense Secretary when the Iraq surge was announced.
A key part of the plan was more provincial reconstruction teams. The Department of Defense soon thereafter thereafter received a memo from State asking for military personnel to fill the civilians slots on the PRTs. As you might imagine, this provoked a somewhat negative response in Defense.
But the problem is not will; it is capacity. In many ways, we are still coping with the consequences of the 1990s, when with the complicity of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, key instruments of American power abroad were reduced or allowed to wither on the bureaucratic vine. The State Department froze a hiring of new Foreign Service officers for a period of time. The U.S. Agency for International Develop dropped from a high of 15,000 permanent staff during the Vietnam War to about 3,000.
And then there was the U.S. Information Agency. At one point, its directors included the likes of Edward R. Murrow. It was split into pieces and folded into a corner of the State Department. Since September 11th, and through the efforts of first, Colin Powell, and, now, Condi Rice, the State Department has made a comeback. Foreign Service officers are being hired again and foreign affairs spending has about doubled since President Bush took office.
But shortfalls persist. A couple of weeks ago, I spoke with several dozen U.S. ambassadors who were visiting Washington for a Chiefs of Mission conference. The speaker who preceded me on the program was the Director General of the Foreign Service, the State Department’s chief personnel officer. I’m told that his briefing was sobering, bordering on grim, of unfilled billets across the word due to shortages of mid-level and senior-level officers, caused by earlier hiring freezes and the staffing requirements of Iraq. Additionally, about 30 percent of AID’s foreign service officers are eligible for retirement, valuable experience that cannot be contracted out.
This is why I believe we need to think about America’s investment in foreign affairs on a fundamentally different scale. It is useful to remember that the amount of national treasure it would take to fund a major boost in civilian capabilities is relatively small. In a week and a half, I will go to Capitol Hill to present the fiscal year 2009 Defense budget. It’s no big secret that the total will be somewhere around a half a trillion dollars. The total foreign-affairs request last year was $36 billion, about what the Pentagon spends on health care. Another comparison – the Army is planning to add about 7,000 more soldiers in 2008 to the active Army. It’s part of a multi-year expansion. In pure numbers, that is equivalent to adding the entire U.S. Foreign Service to the Army in one year.
Beyond filling current voids in staffing and operations, a permanent sizable increase in the ranks of foreign service, if done properly, would have significant institutional benefits in terms of State’s capacity and its influence vis-à-vis other agencies.
To give you a military example, a certain percentage of officers, even in time of war and when the force is stretched, are always enrolled in some kind of advanced training and education and leadership, strategy, or planning at the staff and war colleges and at graduate school. No such float of personnel exists for the Foreign Service. The same is true of planning. Between the joint staff, the services, and various commands, the military has thousands of officers dedicated to planning in some form. That kind of capacity does not exist on the civilian side of the government.
Despite the relatively modest amounts of money involved, getting the additional resources and authorities for soft power is not an easy sell politically. It simply does not have the built-in, domestic constituency of defense programs. As an example, the F-22 aircraft is produced by companies in 44 states; that’s 88 senators. (Laughter.) However, within the senior ranks of the military, a real constituency does exist for strengthening the non-military tools of national power. Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff once said as Chief of Naval operations that he would hand over a portion of his budget to the State Department in a heartbeat, assuming it was spent in the right place.
After all, civilian participation is necessary to the success of most military operations. As we have seen in PRTs and elsewhere, the inclusion of even a few properly employed civilian experts becomes what the military calls force multipliers
But we have to be realistic about how much even well-funded civilian agencies can do to reduce the demands on our armed forces to conduct what in recent years has been called non-traditional missions. Ever since General Winfield Scott led his army into Mexico in the 1840s, virtually every major deployment of American force has led to a longer military presence to maintain stability. General Eisenhower, when tasked with administering North Africa in 1942, wrote, “The sooner I can get rid of all of these questions that are outside the military in scope, the happier I will be! Sometimes, I think I live 10 years each week, of which at least nine are absorbed in political and economic matters.”
During World War II, the Army even established a school of military government whose students played a key role in post-war Germany and Japan. And after much of the military establishment said “never again” following Vietnam, U.S. Armed Services found themselves again policing and rebuilding places like Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans, and, now, Afghanistan and Iraq. The requirement for the U.S. military to maintain security, provide aid and comfort, begin reconstruction, and stand up local government and public services will not go away. At least in the early phases of any conflict, military commanders will no more be able to rid themselves of these tasks than Eisenhower was.
As a former U.N. Secretary General once said about peacekeeping, “It is not a job for soldiers, but only soldiers can do it.” I told an Army gathering last year that it is hard to conceive of any country challenging the United States directly in conventional military terms for some time to come. We can expect these so-called asymmetric operations, messy, protracted struggles without clear battle lines or exit strategies to be a mainstay of the 21st century battlefield.
So the military must retain the lessons and institutionalize the capabilities it has learned and relearned in these key areas. The military and our government as a whole is grappling with the reality that the fundamental nature of conflict as we’ve long perceived it has changed. As we have seen from the recent campaigns, the once stark black-and-white divisions between war and peace have faded. And so, America’s national security apparatus, military and civilian, needs to be more adept in operating along a continuum involving military, political, and economic skills in a gray area that is likely to be persistent, containing opportunities as well as dangers. These scenarios will call for more shaping and influencing and less compulsion of friends, adversaries, and, most importantly, those in between.
Over the past 15 years, we have tried to overcome post-Cold War challenges and pursue 21st century objectives with processes and organizations designed in the wake of the Second World War. The National Security Act that created most of the current interagency structure was passed in 1947. The last major legislation structuring how American dispenses foreign aid was passed during the Kennedy administration. The U.S. government has tried, incrementally, to modernize our posture and processes in order to improve interagency planning and cooperation mostly through a series of new directives, offices, coordinators, tsars, and various initiatives.
And there are some signs of progress.
• Two years ago, Secretary Rice initiated was has been called transformational diplomacy. She questioned why the United States had as many diplomats stationed in Germany, a nation of 82 million people, as in India with a billion people. People and resources are being moved from where they made sense during the Cold War to where they make sense now.
• At last year’s State of the Union, President Bush called for a new civilian reserve corps in the State Department, a permanent, sizeable corps of deployable experts comparable to the National Guard in the military arena.
• New joint authorities have been granted by Congress to State and Defense that allow us together to train and equip partner security forces with more speed and flexibility than in the past.
• The number of civilians deployed in PRTs has increased over the past year. And the State Department recently announced that it is doubling the number of Foreign Service officers assigned to military headquarters in the United States and abroad. In fact, one of the two deputy commanders of the new Africa Command will be a State Department officer.
• A new executive order on national security professional development encourages Foreign Service officers and civil servants from State as well as the military and other departments to serve tours in other agencies in a way that enhances their career and promotion prospects.
We are also looking toward more untapped resources outside of the government, places where it’s not necessarily how much you spend, but how and where you spend it. After World War II, the defense establishment realized it needed to be better connected to the academic and scientific communities, not only for new technology and weaponry but for their insights into history, strategy, and economics. And this led to the creation of institutions like RAND.
We are once again trying to mine these resources for cultural expertise. Over the past year, for example, the military has been advised by anthropologists in Afghanistan called human terrain teams. In one case, the anthropologist pointed out that in one Afghan village, there were many widows, and that their sons might feel compelled to take care of them by joining the Taliban where many of the fighters are paid. And so, the American officers started a job training program for the widows. Similarly, American land grant universities like Texas A&M have deployed teams to Iraq and Afghanistan that provide valuable expertise in agriculture and other areas.
As in any new venture, there has been resistance. The human terrain teams have met with some pushback in academia where the military is sometimes viewed with a certain measure of suspicion. But it is important that we take advantage of the expertise available outside the ranks of the government.
As important and promising as many of these initiatives are, they have often been created ad hoc and on the fly in a climate of crisis. We need to figure out how to institutionalize and integrate programs such as these. The ultimate answer is probably not going to be recreating the old USIA or AID or simply adding more deployable people to State and other agencies. New approaches and new institutions are required for the 21st century.
Looking forward, bureaucratic barriers that hamper effective action should be rethought and reformed. The disparate strands of our national security apparatus, civilian and military, should be prepared ahead of time to deploy and operate together.
I should note that some of these challenges are not new. Our government has always been plagued by turf wars and stovepipes and conflicts over personality and ideology. During the Cold War, there were military, intelligence, and diplomatic failures in Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Granada, and many others. Getting the military services to work together has been a recurring battle that has had to be addressed time and again. But despite the problems, we understood that the nature of conflict required us to develop and support key capabilities and institutions and, over time, devote the necessary resources, people and money, and get enough things right while maintaining the ability to recover from mistakes along the way. I suggest this is our task today.
To this end, the Department of Defense will soon award a contract to an independent, non-partisan, non-profit group to produce a study that in effect tries to answer the question I posed at Kansas State. If we were to rewrite the National Security Act of 1947 for the 21st century, what would it look like? What new institutions, arrangements, and authorities would it create? I look forward to seeing the result, which perhaps might form the basis of legislation or at least debate in the next administration.
In closing, I have observed that repeatedly over the last century, Americans averted their eyes in the belief that events in remote places around the world need not engage this country. How could an assassination of an Austrian archduke in unknown Bosnia-Herzegovina affect us, or the annexation of a little patch of ground called Sudetenland, or a French defeat in a place called Dien Bien Phu, or the return of an obscure cleric to Tehran, or the radicalization of a Saudi construction tycoon’s son?
What seems to work best in world affairs, historian Donald Kagan wrote in his book, “On the Origins of War,” is that the possession by those states who wish to preserve the peace of the preponderant power and of the will to accept the burdens and responsibilities required to achieve that purpose. In an address at Harvard in 1943, Winston Churchill said, “the price of greatness is responsibility.” The people of the United States cannot escape world responsibility. Our country has now, for many decades, taken upon itself great burdens and great responsibilities, all in an effort to defeat despotism in its many forms and to preserve the peace.
Today, across the globe, there are more people than ever seeking economic and political freedom, seeking hope, even as repressive regimes and mass murderers sow chaos in their midst. For all of those brave men and women struggling for a better life, there is and must be no stronger ally or advocate than the United States of America. Our responsibilities to them and to the world in the final analysis are not a burden on the people or the soul of this nation. They are, rather, a blessing. Thank you.
Link to speech here.
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Landon Lecture (Kansas State University)
Remarks as Delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Manhattan, Kansas, Monday, November 26, 2007
Thank you, Jon for that kind introduction, and for inviting me to speak here today.
Congresswoman Boyda, Speaker Neufeld, thank you for being here. It is also good to see General Durbin and soldiers with us from Fort Riley and Leavenworth.
I’d like to extend a special thanks to the ROTC cadets in the audience. Your willingness to serve in this time of peril is a testament not only to yourselves, but to a new generation of leaders who will face great challenges in the coming years.
It is both an honor and a pleasure to be part of the Landon Lecture series – a forum that for more than four decades has hosted some of America’s leading intellectuals and statesmen. Considering that fact, I at first wondered if the invitation was in fact meant for Bill Gates.
It is a pleasure to get out of Washington, D.C., for a little while. I left Washington in 1994, and I was certain, and very happy, that it was the last time I would ever live there. But history, and current events, have a way of exacting revenge on those who say “never.” I’ve now been back in the District of Columbia for close to a year, which reminds me of an old saying: For the first six months you’re in Washington, you wonder how the hell you ever got there. For the next six months, you wonder how the hell the rest of them ever got there.
As I look down at my remarks and the material I want to cover this afternoon, I am reminded of the time George Bernard Shaw told a speaker he had 15 minutes to speak. The speaker replied, “15 minutes? How can I tell them all I know in 15 minutes?” Shaw responded, “I advise you to speak very slowly.” I want to warn you in advance that my remarks are more than 15 minutes.
Dr. Wefald has highlighted my K-State bona fides. I would just comment that my mother who is 94 attended my swearing-in ceremony in Washington. That night Conan O’Brian remarked on the fact that I had announced that my 94 year-old mother was there and then he said, “she came up to me and said…‘now go beat the hell out of the Kaiser.’”
It is good to be back in Kansas, where my family has lived for more than a century.
I believe Kansas imparts to its children three characteristics that have been a source of strength for me over the years: a rejection of cynicism and an enduring optimism and idealism.
Looking around the world today, optimism and idealism would not seem to have much of a place at the table. There is no shortage of anxiety about where our nation is headed and what its role will be in the 21st century.
But I can remember clearly other times in my life when such dark sentiments were prevalent. In 1957, when I was at Wichita High School East, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, and Americans feared being left behind in the space race and, even more worrisome, the missile race.
In 1968, the first full year I lived in Washington, was the same year as the Tet offensive in Vietnam, where American troop levels and casualties were at their height. Across the nation, protests and violence over Vietnam engulfed America’s cities and campuses. On my second day of work as a CIA analyst, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. And then came the 1970s – when it seemed that everything that could go wrong for America did.
Yet, through it all, there was another storyline, one not then apparent. During those same years, the elements were in place and forces were at work that would eventually lead to victory in the Cold War – a victory achieved not by any one party or any single president, but by a series of decisions, choices, and institutions that bridged decades, generations, and administrations. From:
· The first brave stand taken by Harry Truman with the doctrine of containment; to
· The Helsinki Accords under Gerald Ford; to
· The elevation of human rights under Jimmy Carter; to
· The muscular words and deeds of Ronald Reagan; and to
· The masterful endgame diplomacy of George H. W. Bush.
All contributed to bring an Evil Empire crashing down not with a bang but with a whimper. And virtually without a shot being fired.
In this great effort, institutions, as much as people and policies, played a key role. Many of those key organizations were created 60 years ago this year with the National Security Act of 1947 – a single act of legislation which established the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, the United States Air Force, and what is now known as the Department of Defense. I mention all this because that legislation and those instruments of national power were designed at the dawn of a new era in international relations for the United States – an era dominated by the Cold War.
The end of the Cold War, and the attacks of September 11, marked the dawn of another new era in international relations – an era whose challenges may be unprecedented in complexity and scope.
In important respects, the great struggles of the 20th century – World War I and World War II and the Cold War – covered over conflicts that had boiled and seethed and provoked war and instability for centuries before 1914: ethnic strife, religious wars, independence movements, and, especially in the last quarter of the 19th century, terrorism. The First World War was, itself, sparked by a terrorist assassination motivated by an ethnic group seeking independence.
These old hatreds and conflicts were buried alive during and after the Great War. But, like monsters in science fiction, they have returned from the grave to threaten peace and stability around the world. Think of the slaughter in the Balkans as Yugoslavia broke up in the 1990s. Even now, we worry about the implications of Kosovo’s independence in the next few weeks for Europe, Serbia, and Russia. That cast of characters sounds disturbingly familiar even at a century’s remove.
The long years of religious warfare in Europe between Protestant and Catholic Christians find eerie contemporary echoes in the growing Sunni versus Shia contest for Islamic hearts and minds in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, and Southwest Asia.
We also have forgotten that between Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, two American presidents and one presidential candidate were assassinated or attacked by terrorists – as were various tsars, empresses, princes, and, on a fateful day in June 1914, an archduke. Other acts of terrorism were commonplace in Europe and Russia in the latter part of the 19th century.
So, history was not dead at the end of the Cold War. Instead, it was reawakening with a vengeance. And, the revived monsters of the past have returned far stronger and more dangerous than before because of modern technology – both for communication and for destruction – and to a world that is far more closely connected and interdependent than the world of 1914.
Unfortunately, the dangers and challenges of old have been joined by new forces of instability and conflict, among them:
· A new and more malignant form of global terrorism rooted in extremist and violent jihadism;
· New manifestations of ethnic, tribal, and sectarian conflict all over the world;
· The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction;
· Failed and failing states;
· States enriched with oil profits and discontented with the current international order; and
· Centrifugal forces in other countries that threaten national unity, stability, and internal peace – but also with implications for regional and global security.
Worldwide, there are authoritarian regimes facing increasingly restive populations seeking political freedom as well as a better standard of living. And finally, we see both emergent and resurgent great powers whose future path is still unclear.
One of my favorite lines is that experience is the ability to recognize a mistake when you make it again. Four times in the last century the United States has come to the end of a war, concluded that the nature of man and the world had changed for the better, and turned inward, unilaterally disarming and dismantling institutions important to our national security – in the process, giving ourselves a so-called “peace” dividend. Four times we chose to forget history.
Isaac Barrow once wrote, “How like a paradise the world would be, flourishing in joy and rest, if men would cheerfully conspire in affection and helpfully contribute to each other’s content: and how like a savage wilderness now it is, when, like wild beasts, they vex and persecute, worry and devour each other.” He wrote that in the late 1600s. Or, listen to the words of Sir William Stephenson, author of A Man Called Intrepid and a key figure in the Allied victory in World War II. He wrote, “Perhaps a day will dawn when tyrants can no longer threaten the liberty of any people, when the function of all nations, however varied their ideologies, will be to enhance life, not to control it. If such a condition is possible it is in a future too far distant to foresee.”
After September 11th, the United States re-armed and again strengthened our intelligence capabilities. It will be critically important to sustain those capabilities in the future – it will be important not to make the same mistake a fifth time.
But, my message today is not about the defense budget or military power. My message is that if we are to meet the myriad challenges around the world in the coming decades, this country must strengthen other important elements of national power both institutionally and financially, and create the capability to integrate and apply all of the elements of national power to problems and challenges abroad. In short, based on my experience serving seven presidents, as a former Director of CIA and now as Secretary of Defense, I am here to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use “soft” power and for better integrating it with “hard” power.
One of the most important lessons of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that military success is not sufficient to win: economic development, institution-building and the rule of law, promoting internal reconciliation, good governance, providing basic services to the people, training and equipping indigenous military and police forces, strategic communications, and more – these, along with security, are essential ingredients for long-term success. Accomplishing all of these tasks will be necessary to meet the diverse challenges I have described.
So, we must urgently devote time, energy, and thought to how we better organize ourselves to meet the international challenges of the present and the future – the world you students will inherit and lead.
I spoke a few moments ago about the landmark National Security Act of 1947 and the institutions created to fight the Cold War. In light of the challenges I have just discussed, I would like to pose a question: if there were to be a “National Security Act of 2007,” looking beyond the crush of day-to-day headlines, what problems must it address, what capabilities ought it create or improve, where should it lead our government as we look to the future? What new institutions do we need for this post Cold War world?
As an old Cold Warrior with a doctorate in history, I hope you’ll indulge me as I take a step back in time. Because context is important, as many of the goals, successes, and failures from the Cold War are instructive in considering how we might better focus energies and resources – especially the ways in which our nation can influence the rest of the world to help protect our security and advance our interests and values.
What we consider today to be the key elements and instruments of national power trace their beginnings to the mid-1940s, to a time when the government was digesting lessons learned during World War II. Looking back, people often forget that the war effort – though victorious – was hampered and hamstrung by divisions and dysfunction. Franklin Roosevelt quipped that trying to get the Navy, which was its own cabinet department at the time, to change was akin to hitting a featherbed: “You punch it with your right and you punch it with your left until you are finally exhausted,” he said, “and then you find the damn bed just as it was before.” And Harry Truman noted that if the Navy and Army had fought as hard against the Germans as they had fought against each other, the war would have been over much sooner.
This record drove the thinking behind the 1947 National Security Act, which attempted to fix the systemic failures that had plagued the government and military during World War II – while reviving capabilities and setting the stage for a struggle against the Soviet Union that seemed more inevitable each passing day.
The 1947 Act acknowledged that we had been over-zealous in our desire to shut down capabilities that had been so valuable during the war – most of America’s intelligence and information assets disappeared as soon as the guns fell silent. The Office of Strategic Services – the war intelligence agency – was axed, as was the Office of War Information. In 1947, OSS returned as CIA, but it would be years before we restored our communications capabilities by creating the United States Information Agency.
There is in many quarters the tendency to see that period as the pinnacle of wise governance and savvy statecraft. As I wrote a number of years ago, “Looking back, it all seem[ed] so easy, so painless, so inevitable.” It was anything but.
Consider that the creation of the National Military Establishment in 1947 – the Department of Defense – was meant to improve unity among the military services. It didn’t. A mere two years later the Congress had to pass another law because the Joint Chiefs of Staff were anything but joint. And there was no chairman to referee the constant disputes.
At the beginning, the Secretary of Defense had little real power – despite an exalted title. The law forbad him from having a military staff and limited him to three civilian assistants. These days, it takes that many to sort my mail.
Throughout the long, twilight struggle of the Cold War, the various parts of the government did not communicate or coordinate very well with each other. There were military, intelligence, and diplomatic failures in Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Grenada, and many other places. Getting the military services to work together was a recurring battle that had to be addressed time and again, and was only really resolved by legislation in 1986.
But despite the problems, we realized, as we had during World War II, that the nature of the conflict required us to develop key capabilities and institutions – many of them non-military. The Marshall Plan and later the United States Agency for International Development acknowledged the role of economics in the world; the CIA the role of intelligence; and the United States Information Agency the fact that the conflict would play out as much in hearts and minds as it would on any battlefield.
The key, over time, was to devote the necessary resources – people and money – and get enough things right while maintaining the ability to recover from mistakes along the way. Ultimately, our endurance paid off and the Soviet Union crumbled, and the decades-long Cold War ended.
However, during the 1990s, with the complicity of both the Congress and the White House, key instruments of America’s national power once again were allowed to wither or were abandoned. Most people are familiar with cutbacks in the military and intelligence – including sweeping reductions in manpower, nearly 40 percent in the active army, 30 percent in CIA’s clandestine service and spies.
What is not as well-known, and arguably even more shortsighted, was the gutting of America’s ability to engage, assist, and communicate with other parts of the world – the “soft power,” which had been so important throughout the Cold War. The State Department froze the hiring of new Foreign Service officers for a period of time. The United States Agency for International Development saw deep staff cuts – its permanent staff dropping from a high of 15,000 during Vietnam to about 3,000 in the 1990s. And the U.S. Information Agency was abolished as an independent entity, split into pieces, and many of its capabilities folded into a small corner of the State Department.
Even as we throttled back, the world became more unstable, turbulent, and unpredictable than during the Cold War years. And then came the attacks of September 11, 2001, one of those rare life-changing dates, a shock so great that it appears to have shifted the tectonic plates of history. That day abruptly ended the false peace of the 1990s as well as our “holiday from history.”
As is often the case after such momentous events, it has taken some years for the contour lines of the international arena to become clear. What we do know is that the threats and challenges we will face abroad in the first decades of the 21st century will extend well beyond the traditional domain of any single government agency.
The real challenges we have seen emerge since the end of the Cold War – from Somalia to the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere – make clear we in defense need to change our priorities to be better able to deal with the prevalence of what is called “asymmetric warfare.” As I told an Army gathering last month, it is hard to conceive of any country challenging the United States directly in conventional military terms – at least for some years to come. Indeed, history shows us that smaller, irregular forces – insurgents, guerrillas, terrorists – have for centuries found ways to harass and frustrate larger, regular armies and sow chaos.
We can expect that asymmetric warfare will be the mainstay of the contemporary battlefield for some time. These conflicts will be fundamentally political in nature, and require the application of all elements of national power. Success will be less a matter of imposing one’s will and more a function of shaping behavior – of friends, adversaries, and most importantly, the people in between.
Arguably the most important military component in the War on Terror is not the fighting we do ourselves, but how well we enable and empower our partners to defend and govern themselves. The standing up and mentoring of indigenous army and police – once the province of Special Forces – is now a key mission for the military as a whole.
But these new threats also require our government to operate as a whole differently – to act with unity, agility, and creativity. And they will require considerably more resources devoted to America’s non-military instruments of power.
So, what are the capabilities, institutions, and priorities our nation must collectively address – through both the executive and legislative branches, as well as the people they serve?
I would like to start with an observation. Governments of all stripes seem to have great difficulty summoning the will – and the resources – to deal even with threats that are obvious and likely inevitable, much less threats that are more complex or over the horizon. There is, however, no inherent flaw in human nature or democratic government that keeps us from preparing for potential challenges and dangers by taking far-sighted actions with long-term benefits. As individuals, we do it all the time. The Congress did it in 1947. As a nation, today, as in 1947, the key is wise and focused bipartisan leadership – and political will.
I mentioned a moment ago that one of the most important lessons from our experience in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere has been the decisive role reconstruction, development, and governance plays in any meaningful, long-term success.
The Department of Defense has taken on many of these burdens that might have been assumed by civilian agencies in the past, although new resources have permitted the State Department to begin taking on a larger role in recent months. Still, forced by circumstances, our brave men and women in uniform have stepped up to the task, with field artillerymen and tankers building schools and mentoring city councils – usually in a language they don’t speak. They have done an admirable job. And as I’ve said before, the Armed Forces will need to institutionalize and retain these non-traditional capabilities – something the ROTC cadets in this audience can anticipate.
But it is no replacement for the real thing – civilian involvement and expertise.
A few examples are useful here, as microcosms of what our overall government effort should look like – one historical and a few contemporary ones.
However uncomfortable it may be to raise Vietnam all these years later, the history of that conflict is instructive. After first pursuing a strategy based on conventional military firepower, the United States shifted course and began a comprehensive, integrated program of pacification, civic action, and economic development. The CORDS program, as it was known, involved more than a thousand civilian employees from USAID and other organizations, and brought the multiple agencies into a joint effort. It had the effect of, in the words of General Creighton Abrams, putting “all of us on one side and the enemy on the other.” By the time U.S. troops were pulled out, the CORDS program had helped pacify most of the hamlets in South Vietnam.
The importance of deploying civilian expertise has been relearned – the hard way – through the effort to staff Provincial Reconstruction Teams, first in Afghanistan and more recently in Iraq. The PRTs were designed to bring in civilians experienced in agriculture, governance, and other aspects of development – to work with and alongside the military to improve the lives of the local population, a key tenet of any counterinsurgency effort. Where they are on the ground – even in small numbers – we have seen tangible and often dramatic changes. An Army brigade commander in Baghdad recently said that an embedded PRT was “pivotal” in getting Iraqis in his sector to better manage their affairs.
We also have increased our effectiveness by joining with organizations and people outside the government – untapped resources with tremendous potential.
For example, in Afghanistan the military has recently brought in professional anthropologists as advisors. The New York Times reported on the work of one of them, who said, “I’m frequently accused of militarizing anthropology. But we’re really anthropologizing the military.”
And it is having a very real impact. The same story told of a village that had just been cleared of the Taliban. The anthropologist pointed out to the military officers that there were more widows than usual, and that the sons would feel compelled to take care of them – possibly by joining the insurgency, where many of the fighters are paid. So American officers began a job training program for the widows.
Similarly, our land-grant universities have provided valuable expertise on agricultural and other issues. Texas A&M has had faculty on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2003. And Kansas State is lending its expertise to help revitalize universities in Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif, and working to improve the agricultural sector and veterinary care across Afghanistan. These efforts do not go unnoticed by either Afghan citizens or our men and women in uniform.
I have been heartened by the works of individuals and groups like these. But I am concerned that we need even more civilians involved in the effort and that our efforts must be better integrated.
And I remain concerned that we have yet to create any permanent capability or institutions to rapidly create and deploy these kinds of skills in the future. The examples I mentioned have, by and large, been created ad hoc – on the fly in a climate of crisis. As a nation, we need to figure out how to institutionalize programs and relationships such as these. And we need to find more untapped resources – places where it’s not necessarily how much you spend, but how you spend it.
The way to institutionalize these capabilities is probably not to recreate or repopulate institutions of the past such as AID or USIA. On the other hand, just adding more people to existing government departments such as Agriculture, Treasury, Commerce, Justice and so on is not a sufficient answer either – even if they were to be more deployable overseas. New institutions are needed for the 21st century, new organizations with a 21st century mind-set.
For example, public relations was invented in the United States, yet we are miserable at communicating to the rest of the world what we are about as a society and a culture, about freedom and democracy, about our policies and our goals. It is just plain embarrassing that al-Qaeda is better at communicating its message on the internet than America. As one foreign diplomat asked a couple of years ago, “How has one man in a cave managed to out-communicate the world’s greatest communication society?” Speed, agility, and cultural relevance are not terms that come readily to mind when discussing U.S. strategic communications.
Similarly, we need to develop a permanent, sizeable cadre of immediately deployable experts with disparate skills, a need which president bush called for in his 2007 state of the union address, and which the State Department is now working on with its initiative to build a civilian response corps. Both the President and Secretary of State have asked for full funding for this initiative. But we also need new thinking about how to integrate our government’s capabilities in these areas, and then how to integrate government capabilities with those in the private sector, in universities, in other non-governmental organizations, with the capabilities of our allies and friends – and with the nascent capabilities of those we are trying to help.
Which brings me to a fundamental point. Despite the improvements of recent years, despite the potential innovative ideas hold for the future, sometimes there is no substitute for resources – for money.
Funding for non-military foreign-affairs programs has increased since 2001, but it remains disproportionately small relative to what we spend on the military and to the importance of such capabilities. Consider that this year’s budget for the Department of Defense – not counting operations in Iraq and Afghanistan – is nearly half a trillion dollars. The total foreign affairs budget request for the State Department is $36 billion – less than what the Pentagon spends on health care alone. Secretary Rice has asked for a budget increase for the State Department and an expansion of the Foreign Service. The need is real.
Despite new hires, there are only about 6,600 professional Foreign Service officers – less than the manning for one aircraft carrier strike group. And personnel challenges loom on the horizon. By one estimate, 30 percent of USAID’s Foreign Service officers are eligible for retirement this year – valuable experience that cannot be contracted out.
Overall, our current military spending amounts to about 4 percent of GDP, below the historic norm and well below previous wartime periods. Nonetheless, we use this benchmark as a rough floor of how much we should spend on defense. We lack a similar benchmark for other departments and institutions.
What is clear to me is that there is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security – diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action, and economic reconstruction and development. Secretary Rice addressed this need in a speech at Georgetown University nearly two years ago. We must focus our energies beyond the guns and steel of the military, beyond just our brave soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen. We must also focus our energies on the other elements of national power that will be so crucial in the coming years.
Now, I am well aware that having a sitting Secretary of Defense travel halfway across the country to make a pitch to increase the budget of other agencies might fit into the category of “man bites dog” – or for some back in the Pentagon, “blasphemy.” It is certainly not an easy sell politically. And don’t get me wrong, I’ll be asking for yet more money for Defense next year.
Still, I hear all the time from the senior leadership of our Armed Forces about how important these civilian capabilities are. In fact, when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen was Chief of Naval Operations, he once said he’d hand a part of his budget to the State Department “in a heartbeat,” assuming it was spent in the right place.
After all, civilian participation is both necessary to making military operations successful and to relieving stress on the men and women of our armed services who have endured so much these last few years, and done so with such unflagging bravery and devotion. Indeed, having robust civilian capabilities available could make it less likely that military force will have to be used in the first place, as local problems might be dealt with before they become crises.
A last point. Repeatedly over the last century Americans averted their eyes in the belief that remote events elsewhere in the world need not engage this country. How could an assassination of an Austrian archduke in unknown Bosnia-Herzegovina effect us? Or the annexation of a little patch of ground called Sudetenland? Or a French defeat at a place called Dien Bien Phu? Or the return of an obscure cleric to Tehran? Or the radicalization of an Arab construction tycoon’s son?
What seems to work best in world affairs, historian Donald Kagan wrote in his book On the Origins of War, “Is the possession by those states who wish to preserve the peace of the preponderant power and of the will to accept the burdens and responsibilities required to achieve that purpose.”
In an address at Harvard in 1943, Winston Churchill said, “The price of greatness is responsibility . . . The people of the United States cannot escape world responsibility.” And, in a speech at Princeton in 1947, Secretary of State and retired Army general George Marshall told the students: “The development of a sense of responsibility for world order and security, the development of a sense of overwhelming importance of this country’s acts, and failures to act, in relation to world order and security – these, in my opinion, are great musts for your generation.”
Our country has now for many decades taken upon itself great burdens and great responsibilities – all in an effort to defeat despotism in its many forms or to preserve the peace so that other nations, and other peoples, could pursue their dreams. For many decades, the tender shoots of freedom all around the world have been nourished with American blood. Today, across the globe, there are more people than ever seeking economic and political freedom – seeking hope even as oppressive regimes and mass murderers sow chaos in their midst – seeking always to shake free from the bonds of tyranny.
For all of those brave men and women struggling for a better life, there is – and must be – no stronger ally or advocate than the United States of America. Let us never forget that our nation remains a beacon of light for those in dark places. And that our responsibilities to the world – to freedom, to liberty, to the oppressed everywhere – are not a burden on the people or the soul of this nation. They are, rather, a blessing.
I will close with a message for students in the audience. The message is from Theodore Roosevelt, whose words ring as true today as when he delivered them in 1901. He said, “…as, keen-eyed, we gaze into the coming years, duties, new and old, rise thick and fast to confront us from within and from without…[The United States] should face these duties with a sober appreciation alike of their importance and of their difficulty. But there is also every reason for facing them with high-hearted resolution and eager and confident faith in our capacity to do them aright.” He continued, “A great work lies ready to the hand of this generation; it should count itself happy indeed that to it is given the privilege of doing such a work.”
To the young future leaders of America here today, I say, “Come do the great work that lies ready to the hand of your generation.”
Thank you.
Link to speech here.