Clearing up some misconceptions about the QDR and national strategy formulation (UPDATED)

There are a lot of problems with the way the U.S. government crafts and communicates national strategy. If I were to run them down (which I'm not going to do here, but have done before), I might begin with the most glaring: almost none of them meet even the most very basic test to be accurately identified as strategy: they do not comprehensively consider ends, ways, and means. This goes for the National Security Strategy (published by the White House), the National Defense Strategy (published by the Office of the Secretary of Defense), and the National Military Strategy (published by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs); it also applies to the QDR Report, which makes no titular claim to be a strategy but which is required by law to contain "a comprehensive discussion of the national defense strategy of the United States, the strategic planning guidance, and the force structure best suited to implement that strategy at a low-to-moderate level of risk."

Ex and Spencer had a little back-and-forth this morning based on Ackerman's brief blog post entitled "The Designed-In Failures of Pentagon Strategy," in which he criticizes the statutory language that mandates the QDR:

This year, something unexpected happened. In April, after the Pentagon crafted its budget, President Obama announced that the Defense Department needed to chop $400 billion out of its budget over the next decade. (Since the Pentagon will spend, unimpeded, $5 trillion over the next decade, that might not look like such a big number.) Outgoing Secretary Gates reluctantly said that the Pentagon would conduct a review of "roles and missions" to proritize -- and potentially jettison -- to guide the cuts.

Wait a minute, you might think. Why not just use the QDR for that? 

CNAS' footnote finally provides me with an answer. "[C]ongressional legislation," the CNAS report announces, "prohibits the QDR from addressing [financial] constraints." See Footnote 28:

Pursuant to 10 U.S.C. 118b, each Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) shall be conducted so as "to make recommendations that are not constrained to comply with the budget submitted to Congress by the President." This stipulation was added in the [Fiscal Year] 2007 National Defense Authorization Act.

Aaaaaand that's my jaw hitting the floor. Congress specifically instructed the Pentagon to plan for the future without regard to the money necessary for making its plans reality. At the time, I thought the 2009 QDR was a pretty good document. Others looked at it and saw a wish list. Still others looked at it and saw an incomplete wish list. Now I see that those who considered it a wish list were quite literally accurate.

Ex shot back with "Why the QDR Should Not Mention Cost." And the Beard Battle was joined.

Spencer Ackerman is one of the brightest and most provocative defense policy journalists working today, but he is wrong to be so upset that the Department of Defense executes its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) without consideration of potential budget constraints. [...] It is the responsibility of elected officials in the executive and legislative branches -- not military officers of Department of Defense civilians -- to determine where and how to assume risk in our national defense posture and activities. Here is the way the conversation should go:

Department of Defense: "I need to do X, Y, and Z, and here is what I need to do X, Y, Z."

Elected Officials: "Great. We will fully fund X and Y but not Z. Given spending priorities elsewhere, we will assume risk there."

Department of Defense: "So I understand that if I am called upon to do Z and am unable to do so, the burden of responsibility falls on those elected by the American people and not those commissioned to defend the American people."

Elected Officials: "Correct."

Unfortunately, I think both guys may slightly misunderstand exactly what the QDR does and doesn't require, though they're closer to the mark in their impressions of how strategy formulation and budgeting ought to go.

Let's first go back to the footnote sentence Spencer cited in the CNAS report (which hasn't yet been made public, so we'll have to take his word for it [see update below]): "[C]ongressional legislation prohibits the QDR from addressing [financial] constraints." I'm curious to see the broader context of this statement; at best, it's misleading, and at worst, it's factually incorrect.

Here's the relevant section of the law (which is not, as the CNAS footnote indicates, 10 USC 118b, but rather 10 USC 118 (b)):

(b) Conduct of Review — Each quadrennial defense review shall be conducted so as—

(1) to delineate a national defense strategy consistent with the most recent National Security Strategy prescribed by the President pursuant to section 108 of the National Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. 404a);

(2) to define sufficient force structure, force modernization plans, infrastructure, budget plan, and other elements of the defense program of the United States associated with that national defense strategy that would be required to execute successfully the full range of missions called for in that national defense strategy;

(3) to identify

• (A) the budget plan that would be required to provide sufficient resources to execute successfully the full range of missions called for in that national defense strategy at a low-to-moderate level of risk, and

• (B) any additional resources (beyond those programmed in the current future-years defense program) required to achieve such a level of risk; and

(4) to make recommendations that are not constrained to comply with the budget submitted to Congress by the President pursuant to section 1105 of title 31.

It's important to note that the law treats the QDR and the QDR report separately: §118 (a) requires a review; §188 (b) specifies how it must be conducted and what questions must be answered; and §118 (d) specifies what must be contained in the QDR report along with when and to whom it must be submitted.

The bit Spencer and the CNAS authors are talking about is in sub-subsection 4. Read it in context. It doesn't say that the QDR must ignore financial constraints -- only that the requirements identified by the review must not be adjusted or suppressed to fit with the administration's budget request. (The statute further ensures this by requiring in 10 USC 118 (d) that the QDR report be submitted to the relevant Congressional committees "not later than the date on which the President submits the budget for the next fiscal year.") The law isn't saying "don't even think about how much this costs!" -- it expressly requires consideration of budget plans "that would be required to execute successfully the full range of missions called for" in the specified national defense strategy.

If we consider this language on its face, it makes perfect sense: the Congress requires the DOD to make a full accounting of what missions, capabilities, and systems are required to execute national strategy with a low level of risk in order to understand how much must be appropriated to that end. Of course, it's hard not to be cynical (aka realistic) about the whole thing and conclude that this mandate exists to facilitate the sort of military-legislative-industrial collusion that ensures near unimpeded increases in defense spending; if legislators require the military to lay out its "requirements" irrespective of administration funding priorities, they can hammer the president for imperiling national security by failing to adequately fund their favored defense programs. This is Congress saying to the Pentagon "do not take the president's guidance about future funding levels as an appetite supressant. Tell us what you need to defend the country and we'll worry about getting the cash."

There's a simple way to solve this problem if you're the White House, to keep the military from making an end-run around you to Congress: write a good National Security Strategy (this is not a good one), complete with prioritization of interests and an appreciation of relevant conditions in the operating environment (like for example the nation's fiscal health).

You're not going to hear me say this very often, but the law is actually pretty good here: the Department is directed to conduct a review that's based on the requirements of executing the NSS with low-to-moderate risk, not on some out-of-left-field assertion of national defense requirements that the Pentagon has cooked up from scratch. If the president does a good job of setting out his view of America's vital interests and national security priorities, and he happens to define those things more narrowly than the hawks on the Hill do, that's fine; he can be held accountable by those who argue that his view of what's necessary to defend the country isn't expansive enough, but so long as his budget plans are in line with that strategy, he can't be criticized for a failure to appropriately resource the things he's asking the military to do.

Where I think Ex gets this wrong is by suggesting that there's a way for the military to punt on missions it's directed to perform, whether or not they're resourced or included in national strategy. The burden of responsibility always falls on the elected government: the Defense Department is merely the president's proxy on matters of defense. And if the military can't execute a mission that the president assigns, there may be plenty of explanations ("we're not budgeted for this," "we didn't plan for this," "you didn't tell us you were going to want to do this in the NSS," etc.) but there are no excuses. The Army and Marine Corps weren't prepared to perform counterinsurgency and stability operations in 2003 and hadn't been given to expect that they'd need to by previous guidance from higher, but they still had to adapt to accomplish the mission. The reality is that if the military is called upon to perform mission Z and found unable to do so, few people will be comfortable with the explanation "but the burden of responsibility falls on those elected by the American people and not those commissioned to defend the American people!", and Ex knows this.

But the current NSS justifies and perhaps even requires a defense program that prepares the military for nearly all contingencies in all circumstances and all climes and places, while the budget will not resource that program. Considering the fiscal and political environment, it seems clear we need a new strategy. 

Just as a point of reference, let's look at the state of national strategy formulation and publication in the Obama administration. When the president was inaugurated in January 2009, the government was operating under an NSS that was published by the Bush Administration in 2006, an NDS from 2008, and an NMS that was last published in 2004 (and then recertified as current on a two-year basis thereafter, as required by law). The QDR had last been conducted in 2005, with the report published in 2006.

Here's what's happened since:

1. The Pentagon conducted a QDR in the latter portion of 2009 and delivered the report (pdf) to Congress on February 1, 2010.
2. The National Security Strategy (pdf), which the law requires be submitted to Congress within 150 days of the inauguration of a new president, and which is meant to serve as the foundational document for the delineation of a national defense strategy by the Secretary of Defense as part of the QDR process, was published on May 1, 2010 -- 466 days after the president took office, and a full three months after the issuance of a report for which it was meant to serve as a guide. (10 USC 118 (b)(1): "Each quadrennial defense review shall be conducted so as to delineate a national defense strategy consistent with the most recent National Security Strategy prescribed by the President pursuant to section 108 of the National Security Act of 1947 (50 USC 404a).")
3. The National Military Strategy (pdf) was updated on February 8, 2011; according to the introductory letter by the CJCS, "the purpose of this document is to provide the ways and means by which our military will advance our enduring national interests as articulated in the 2010 National Security Strategy and to accomplish the defense objectives in the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review."

And we still don't have an updated NDS, for whatever that's worth.

So long as you've read this far, I figure you're probably interested in a solution to this mess, right? Here's how the process should work, optimally:

1. When a new administration takes office, the White House should publish a meaningful, realistic, and constrained NSS. This strategy should take account of context as well as America's enduring and contemporary national interests to set concrete, achievable policy objectives (ends); describe the general approaches through which these goals can be accomplished (ways); and elaborate the elements of national power that will be created, strengthened, or maintained for application to this general plan (means). This document should be published at the outset of the president's term, as required by both law and reason.
2. Upon publication of this strategy and in accordance with the relevant statute, the Pentagon should begin a review of extant force structure, modernization plans, infrastructure, and budgets to account for the present state of the Department and the nation's military forces in parallel with the development of a national defense strategy -- to be published both as an independent NDS and as a required portion of the QDR report. This strategy should specify the defense-related objectives laid out in the NSS that DoD will seek to accomplish (ends); the types of missions that U.S. military forces will be required to conduct to do so (ways); and the military capabilities necessary to perform those missions (means). The QDR report should specify the changes to the overall defense program the Secretary deems necessary to execute an appropriate NDS in support of the NSS. 
3. In accordance with his or her legal obligation to submit "a report containing the results of a comprehensive examination of the national military strategy" not later than February 15 of each even-numbered year, the CJCS should elaborate through the publication of the NMS the Joint Chiefs' assessment of the military capabilities, doctrine, concepts, organization, personnel, and weapon systems required to execute and support the Secretary of Defense's NDS. The NMS should constitute not so much a strategy as a plan: explaining how the military services will execute the operational tasks set out for them in the NDS and the transformational objectives of the QDR report.

How's that for a start?

UPDATE @1630 ET: The CNAS report (pdf) is out. The footnoted paragraph that Spencer cited reads like this:

In light of the significant budget cuts now being considered, civilian leaders should not ask the military to execute the expansive defense plans codified in the Obama administration's National Security Strategy, Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and National Military Strategy. These documents did not adequately address the possible effects of budgetary constraints. In fact, congressional legislation prohibits the QDR from addressing such constraints.

Word. As should be obvious from what I've written above, I agree: it's the administration's job to make sure the NSS is realistic and attuned to environmental realities, including fiscal pressures. But it's a bit disingenuous to say that "congressional legislation [one wonders what other kind of legislation there is!] prohibits the QDR from addressing such constraints" when in fact that legislation simply requires that the QDR be conducted in line with national strategy. The law puts pressure on the administration to get the strategy right rather than putting pressure on DOD to try to make that strategy work with the limited resources on offer. As Ex wrote, it's the elected leadership's responsibility to say what ought to be done and why, and the Department's responsibility to say "here's how we will accomplish what you're asking." When the means change, you've either got to change your ways, change your ends, or accept a higher level of risk. The law doesn't allow DoD to unilaterally accept more risk, so there are two options: the Pentagon can say "here's a plausible way that we're going to do more with less," or the White House can say "we're going to ask you to do less." If doing more with less were that easy, we'd already be doing it. So national strategic objectives is what we've got left.

John Nagl is a really smart guy, but this is just goofy excuse-making

Josh Rogin got his hands on an advance copy (pdf) of the Final Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel, the group of bipartisan defense experts charged by Congress with Monday-morning quarterbacking DoD's work in writing the official QDR. The panel was composed of a whole bunch of big names in the field, including Stephen Hadley, William Perry, Richard Armitage, Jack Keane, Eric Edelman, John Lehman, Jim Talent, and John Nagl.

The report is broadly critical of the QDR, which puts Nagl in the uncomfortable position of having to defend the work of his colleagues while not being too rough on the woman who founded the think tank where he's now president, former CNAS pooh-bah and current Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy. This is even harder than eating soup with a knife!

Nagl ... told The Cable in an interview that his panel's report doesn't necessarily contradict Flournoy's document.

"The QDR was a very good product and did a good job of focusing on the wars we're in, but was unable to focus on the far out, which is was congressionally mandated to do. Plus the panel could look at things that were outside the Department of Defense," he said. "We also have the luxury of thinking deeper and seeing some troubling trends."

Who else thinks that saying you're "unable" to do something that's required by law is a tolerable excuse? I mean, seriously, that's your excuse? They were unable to do what Congress has mandated they do because there was some other stuff going on? Can you imagine trying that one at work (or on the IRS)?

Ok, so the panel had some luxuries, like not fighting a war at the same time as trying to accomplish its goal. (The Defense Department also has something like a squillion more people to devote to the task than the QDR Independent Panel, but whatever.) And I know how hard it is to develop a massive document like this, especially one that's consensus-built. But there is really no excuse for failing to do what's directed.

Oh, wait. Yes there is.

One of the problems with the QDR was that it came out before President Obama's National Security Strategy and therefore couldn't be properly aligned with the overall vision, Nagl said. "The entire process is not as tightly organized as we would like to see it and it doesn't cascade down from the top as we'd like it to."

Yeah. That is a problem.

As I've told you before, the way we formulate national strategy is all kinds of effed up right now. The QDR should really be informed by a National Military Strategy that's nested within a National Defense Strategy that's nested within a National Security Strategy, all of which should coherently articulate American interests, strategic objectives, means, choices, and associated risk. But let's be clear: the QDR is not a strategy, per se; it's a strategic review. The QDR is overlaid on the various strategies, articulating how the various tools of national power housed in DoD will be applied to threats and strategic challenges. The NSS hadn't yet been published when the QDR came down the pike, and that's a problem. (Of course, the NSS sucks so badly that it wouldn't have helped to produce a better QDR anyway, so I've always found the bleating on that note to be sort of silly.)

All of this is a long way of saying that I agree with the Independent Panel report's general conclusions about the shortcomings of the QDR, as outlined in the introduction:

The initial Bottom-up Review [the QDR's predecessor] was considered a success. Of course there was much debate about the conclusions, but Congress thought the process was worthwhile and mandated that it be repeated every four years. Unfortunately, once the idea became statutory, it became part of the bureaucratic routine. The natural tendency of bureaucracy is to plan short term, operate from the top down, think within existing parameters, and affirm the correctness of existing plans and programs of record.That is exactly what happened to the QDR process. Instead of unconstrained, long term analysis by planners who were encouraged to challenge preexisting thinking, the QDRs became explanations and justifications, often with marginal changes, of established decisions and plans.

I'm not going to get into the specific recommendations made by the panel in the sections of the report that amount to a re-do of the QDR (but suffice it to say that it's definitely informed by the now-published NSS, and amounts to something like "more of EVERYTHING, wwwhhhheeeeee!!!!"). But the fact of the matter is that the QDR needs to be focused on the big picture, on strategic evolution, and on reconceptualizing the way that the nation's military tools can be applied to the task of achieving our strategic goals -- not our intermediate operational objectives. I didn't hate the document as much as some people did, but the Independent Panel got this part right.

The 2010 National Security Strategy sucks, and I'm gonna tell you why

The 2010 National Security Strategy was published by the White House yesterday. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but it sucks.

On the bright side, so has pretty much every other version of the NSS. The fundamental imperative for any strategic document, I think, can be summed up in the guidance my favorite sports-talk station gives to listeners before they call in: "have a take and don't suck." The problem with a document like this is that it's developed by consensus, by innumerable chops back and forth among a bunch of different stakeholders, so just about everyone with a "security" issue gets to wedge in his or her "priority." You end up with something that's comprehensive rather than assertive, and so the NSS is often more remarkable for what it chooses not to focus on than for what it includes. That's not to say that there needs to be some controversial core argument, but rather that the guidance should lay out some clearly-defined vision rather than cobbling together every possible "threat" and "challenge" imaginable in the future security environment.

Now on the other hand, this NSS sucks especially bad. And I'm going to argue that it sucks in ways that are not only disappointing, but actually sort of pernicious. But we'll get to that later. To start off with, let's talk about what's wrong:

1. It's a statement of principles, not a strategy.

It's no coincidence that the writer of the NSS is Ben Rhodes, previously the president's national security speechwriter, now Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications. Stuff like this is normally drafted by speechwriters, so it's not exactly a departure from the norm. But as others have already argued, this "strategy" reads more like a State of the Union than anything that would go by that name in the Pentagon. The document does a fantastic job of laying out just "what America is about," what we value, and how we'd like the world to be if we could draw it up from scratch, but without the connective tissue of prioritization and resource choices, none of that is really what strategy is about.

2. It doesn't know what it wants...

The "Overview" section at the beginning of the NSS tries to tell us what the whole thing is about:

Our national security strategy is, therefore, focused on renewing American leadership so that we can more effectively advance our interests in the 21st century.

"National security" is construed so broadly as to incorporate basically every element of American political, economic, and military strength. "American interests" are defined in such a way that they're nearly unintelligible. Here's what the NSS has to say on page 17:

To achieve the world we seek, the United States must apply our strategic approach in pursuit of four enduring national interests:

• Security: The security of the United States, its citizens, and U.S. allies and partners.
• Prosperity: A strong, innovative, and growing U.S. economy in an open international economic system that promotes opportunity and prosperity.
• Values: Respect for universal values at home and around the world.
• International Order: An international order advanced by U.S. leadership that promotes peace, security, and opportunity through stronger cooperation to meet global challenges.

But are these really our "enduring national interests"? If so, why? Is a stable international order actually a core national interest, or is it merely a means to ensure security, prosperity and respect for universal values? Is "security" really a desired endstate, or is it simply a means to ensure both liberty and prosperity?

One of the novel areas of focus in this version of the NSS is domestic economic strength.

At the center of our efforts is a commitment to renew our economy, which serves as the wellspring of American power. The American people are now emerging from the most devastating recession that we have faced since the Great Depression. As we continue to act to ensure that our recovery is broad and sustained, we are also laying the foundation for the long term growth of our economy and competitiveness of our citizens. The investments that we have made in recovery are a part of a broader effort that will contribute to our strength: by providing a quality education for our children; enhancing science and innovation; transforming our energy economy to power new jobs and industries; lowering the cost of health care for our people and businesses; and reducing the Federal deficit.

Each of these steps will sustain America's ability to lead in a world where economic power and individual opportunity are more diffuse.

And so there we are: back to the "ability to lead," and to global primacy. So our objective is "leadership," right? And we get leadership by... assuring our security? And enhancing and sustaining our economic prosperity? But wait, aren't those the interests that we're trying to advance through leadership? See how this gets circular? We need to be strong so that we can be secure so that we can lead so that we can advance our interests in being strong and secure and prosperous and... leading? It all ends up as a meaningless tautology.

3. ...And so it wants everything.

Political pressures and limitations mean that the truly important, defining questions that should inform American grand strategy are elided through a sort of assertive question-begging: the Obama administration, knowing that even to engage in a public consideration of whether American global "leadership" is still necessary or desirable -- whether the benefits of unipolarity are worth the costs -- would give rise to the sort of Democrats-as-defeatist criticisms to which they are already so vulnerable, simply ignores the question. The administration assumes, as has every other post-Cold War presidential administration, that the most appropriate remedy to a staggering array of global threats is simply to pursue or retain the power to do everything.

Here are a few of the things the document suggests are "priorities:"

pursuit of a nonproliferation agenda/security weapons of mass destruction; disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al-Qaeda and Associated Movements; succeeding in the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan; denying extremists safe haven in Pakistan; transitioning full responsibility for Iraqi security to that nation's sovereign government; comprehensive peace settlement between Israel and tis neighbors (to include creation of a Palestinian state with contiguous territory); engagement with Muslim communities around the world; rebuilding American economic strength; pursuit of bilateral and multilateral trade agreements; support for individual opportunity and state capacity abroad; promotion of "universal values" (er, but just by example), to include global equality for women; the shaping of a just and stable international order "capable of addressing the problems of our time."

And no joke, all that's just [paraphrased] from the section entitled "Advancing Top National Security Priorities."

The thing about priorities is that if you have a whole bunch, you don't have any. What are these objectives and mission sets prioritized against? What else is the nation interested in accomplishing or effecting that does not constitute a "priority"?

4. Unfortunately, what's missing is any idea of how to get there from here... if we can even figure out where "there" is.

Strategy is fundamentally about prioritization and resourcing. The National Security Strategy is meant to provide the broad, overarching strategic concept for ensuring the nation's security, within which the Defense Department will nest its National Military Strategy and the QDR. While the DoD is obviously responsible for identifying which parts of the NSS require the application of military means, this particular NSS does nothing to suggest which mission sets or objectives are more important than the others. It does nothing to answer questions of how budgets and authorities should be balanced between various departments -- meaning that it's essentially silent on the question of resources, or means -- or how what the military would call the defense, diplomacy, and development Lines of Effort should be blended across the various ways available to us to effect our desired endstates.

When the QDR was published several months ago, you had a great many budget hawks saying things like "how can we write a QDR and plan defense budgets when we don't even know what missions the Defense Department will be asked to perform by the national leadership??!" Most of these folks were just bent out of shape that the SECDEF was going to cancel programs they deemed necessary, holding out hope that the President's NSS would show just exactly how necessary their big industrial pet project was to national defense. (To be fair, though, the QDR really should be about understanding the ways in which the Department is working and must work in the future to execute the National Military Strategy, which of course ought to be nested within the NSS.) Well, let me ask you this: do we have any better idea about that now? Did this publication shed any light on whether the Department is asking itself the right questions, or answering them the right way in the QDR? Is there a single program decision from either the QDR or the budget announcement that makes more or less sense on account of this NSS?

In short, the document completely fails to provide any strategic leadership. It's the same old laundry list of "priorities" and "requirements" that the DoD and the services are criticized for providing when asked about programming and budgets for the future.

Reforming our national security apparatus is a process that must be led from outside and above the departments. It can't be done by DoD, no matter how often Secretary Gates says we need a rebalancing of the instruments of national power, and no matter how many times Admiral Mullen speaks on the Hill to ask that the foreign assistance budget be fully funded. This is exactly the sort of thing that requires Presidential leadership. Because without a strategic vision that's articulated outside the Department, you'll continue to see our foreign and security policies be dominated by defense considerations.

If the White House or the National Security Staff were to really engage in the preparation of strategy, it would go like this:

1. Identify enduring U.S. interests in a clear and comprehensive way
2. Determine what strategic endstates would ensure the advancement and protection of those interests
3. Develop the ways by which those endstates can be realized, how efforts must be channeled and directed, what levers and mechanisms must be manipulated
4. Create or modify the means the government requires to influence the environment and enable its lines of effort, which is to say figure out what kind of tools you need beyond a hammer, and then figure out how to budget and program for them

That's how strategy's developed: working back from endstates through ways/LOEs to means/tools, and then enacting measures to use the tools you've created along the ways you've identified to achieve the endstates necessary for the advancement of your interests.

AND SO BUT WHY THIS IS ALL SO VERY SCREWED UP:

For one thing, the NSS's abdication of responsibility for true strategic leadership aggravates the tensions in civil-military relations that so many people have been lately bemoaning. With a lack of clear guidance about our true national priorities, the Defense Department is left to the only thing it knows how to do: advocating for the centrality of problems it knows how to solve, slinging that hammer over the shoulder and heading out in search of a nail. In other words, you're going to have generals and senior DoD civilians doing the sort of high-level strategic freelancing you don't want, determining United States foreign policy from the perspective of the U.S. military. (Note: this is not the way this country is meant to run.)

BUT REALLY WHAT SEEMS LIKE ALMOST DEFINITELY THE MOST PERNICIOUS AND DESTRUCTIVE AND JUST REALLY NOT-COOL PART OF ALL THIS:

By writing a National SECURITY Strategy that completely fails to explain to people exactly what is meant by "security," and by pursuing a circular strength-means-leadership-means-security-means strength strategic logic, and by thus determining that essentially every political, cultural, social, and economic aspect of American life helps to define just exactly how "secure" we Americans are, this administration has cannily and basically without objection used rhetoric to establish every single one of its domestic political priorities -- "complete and competitive education for every American; a transformation of the way that we produce and use energy; ... access to quality, affordable health care; ... the responsible management of our federal budget; ... comprehensive immigration reform"; [you forgot "fat kids"!]; etc. -- as germane to national security.

And I'll just leave the interpretation of that part up to you.

Slammed

As you might imagine, the publishing of the QDR (document, site) and the defense budget request results in a lot of follow-on work for strategic planners in the Department and at the services, so apologies for the hiccup in your regularly scheduled programming. At some point I'm going to get around to making some comments on the QDR (even though that's probably going to have been pretty well covered elsewhere), but for right now, the chains of salaried employment rest heavily on my shoulders.

We've got our best man on it

John Donnelly does a good job for CQ (subscription only; the link I've provided is to the Early Bird, so it works if you're on a DOD server) of giving context on the development of the QDR, echoing many of the themes expressed by Andrew Krepinevich (in Foreign Affairs) and the Flournoy/Brimley team (in Proceedings). Here's my favorite snip:

Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, and other war planners support Gates’ effort to overhaul the military’s two-conflict strategic doctrine. But they concede the effort is still a work in progress, with no clear picture of what the new strategy will be.

“What do you change it to?” Casey said. “That’s the hard part.”

Glad to know he's thought this one through. But seriously, Secretary Gates nails it here:

“I think we’re trying to capture not just . . . how many things — the numbers issues — but the diverse range of . . . challenges we may be called on to deal with at one time,” Flournoy said.

Gates echoed that view in a separate session with reporters last month: The rethinking of conventional two-war strategies, Gates explained, “derives from my view that the old way of looking at irregular warfare as being one kind of conflict and conventional warfare as [another] discrete kind of warfare is an outdated concept.”

And not to worry, partisan hacks: Tom Donnelly of AEI keeps fighting the good fight for you guys, suggesting that any alleged strategic rethink is really just a ninja way of justifying defense budget cuts and leaving America at the mercy of the treacherous Chinese:

[He] argues that Gates is largely making a show of strategic rethinking to justify the reordering of the Pentagon budget he announced in April and other adjustments that are expected to fall in fiscal 2011. “They’ll produce a QDR that’s strategic lipstick on a budgetary pig,” he said.

In any event, a worthwhile read if you can access it (even if it is probably more informative for those who don't really follow this debate).