The world we live in: if you couldn't laugh, you'd have to cry

This morning the president will announce his intent to streamline the federal government by merging a number of trade- and commerce-related agencies. In order to do so, he is requesting that Congress grant him so-called fast-track consolidation authority; this would allow the president to propose consolidations to the legislative branch and get a clean up-or-down vote within 90 days. No president since Reagan has held this power.

As you might imagine, this proposal is expected to be politically contentious. Republicans in Congress are unlikely to accede to the president's demands in an election year, notwithstanding the fact that this sort of consolidation and streamlining is generally consistent with their political platform.

Now consider this: the president can go to war without even asking Congress. When he does deign to request approval, it is reflexively and near-unanimously granted. The executive branch has consistently interpreted the Constitution as granting unitary executive authority to the president in matters of war and foreign policy. What's more, every White House since Truman's has asserted the unilateral right to use nuclear weapons as the president sees fit.

The president must go to Congress with hat in hand in order to merge the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Small Business Administration, but he can embroil this country in expensive, bloody, and strategically dubious foreign wars with scarcely a phone call to the Hill.

He needs an up-or-down vote from the legislature in order to roll up a few sub-cabinet offices, but can invoke the "housekeeping privilege" to bar the release of executive-branch records to the judicial branch—including in cases where the very question of executive privilege and presidential power is at issue.

I vaguely remember a literary quotation I read as a kid (and which I am of course completely unable to track down or even attribute in my adulthood, even with the powers of Google) that said something to the effect of man's inattention to the most important things and attention to insignificant things are the mark of a strange disorder. Quite.

"The more things change...": Statecraft and Malice Aforethought Edition

Let's flash back to America near the turn of the century, shall we?

And we can only say that it looks very much as though, in this case, the action of the United States government had been determined primarily on the basis of a very able and quiet intrigue by a few strategically placed persons in Washington, an intrigue which received absolution, forgiveness, and a sort of a public blessing by virtue of war hysteria—of the fact that … victory was so thrilling and pleasing to the American public—but which, had its results been otherwise, might well have found its ending in the rigors of a severe and extremely unpleasant congressional investigation.

Ok, you've found me out. The turn of which century?, you perceptively ask. It's obvious we're not talking about the close of the twentieth, of course; the very suggestion of a modern Congress investigating the executive for a foreign policy failure is risible.

The ellipses above mark where I omitted Admiral Dewey's name in George Kennan's analysis of the fleet action at Manila Bay and subsequent dispatch of an expeditionary army to the Philippines in 1898. Among the "strategically placed persons" were both Dewey and Theodore Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy and aspiring imperialist.

What should we conclude from this episode?

For its part, Congress seemed incapable of analyzing a presidential proposal and protecting its institutional powers. The decision to go to war cast a dark shadow over the health of U.S. political institutions and the celebrated system of democratic debate and checks and balances. 

The dismal performances of the executive and legislative branches raise disturbing questions about the capacity and desire of the United States to function as a republican form of government.

That's all? Oh, wait, sorry: that's Louis Fisher's verdict, in a 2003 Political Science Quarterly article (pdf), on the embarrassing show put on by the White House and Congress in the run-up to the Iraq war. Sorry for that distracting and totally irrelevant non-sequitur! Let's get back to Dewey at Manila.

Thus our government, to the accompaniment of great congressional and popular acclaim, inaugurated hostilities against another country in a situation of which it can only be said that the possibilities of a settlement by measures short of war had been by no means exhausted.

Why do you hate freedom, Kennan, you disgusting peacenik?

[Kennan's words are reproduced from American Diplomacy, a book adaptation of several lectures he gave in 1950. The quotes are from pages 14 and 12, respectively.]

Where you sit is where you stand, Example No. 671,000,000,000

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, speaking at General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, CT, November 17, 2011:

I'm not going to hollow out the force. Coming out of World War II, coming out of Korea, coming out of the Vietnam War, coming out of the fall of the Soviet Union, the problem was that cuts were made across the board, and the result was we weakened defense across the board. We hollowed out the force.

Congressman Leon Panetta, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, quoted in the New York Times on January 31, 1990:

Pressure is also building to divert some of the money for costly Pentagon weapons systems and create a ''peace dividend'' that could be used to avoid big cuts in social programs. But Mr. Cheney has largely shunned suggestions to kill any new weapons programs, arguing that the United States military needs a modern force.

Representative Leon E. Panetta, the California Democrat who serves as chairman of the House Budget Committee, said that Mr. Cheney's 1991 military budget was ''very disappointing.''

Mr. Panetta said that when some members of Congress recently complained to Mr. Cheney about the absence of a peace dividend, ''he made the comment that the peace dividend is peace.''

Don't worry, though: Uncle Leon explained this apparent discrepancy when he was over on the Hill back in June, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in support of his nomination. When asked by John Cornyn about his role in the post-Cold War defense drawdown, when he served as President Clinton's budget director, here's how today's SECDEF responded:

As Director of OMB, obviously, I was given the responsibility by the President to try to achieve significant savings as part of the economic plan that was adopted by the Congress that, by the way, reduced the deficit by almost $500 billion. And I think that, plus other agreements that were made in the Bush administration and, ultimately, with the Republican Congress all contributed to our ability to achieve a balanced budget.

Specifically, with regards to the defense area, my responsibility as OMB Director was to provide a number to the Defense Secretary and those at the Defense Department to determine how best to try to achieve those savings. And I do understand that that was part of what they proposed.

But looking at it in hindsight, it might not have been the best way to achieve those savings, but it was a decision that was made at the Defense Department.

A lot to unpack there, but it basically comes down to I was for it before I was against it.

Panetta contends that he's not responsible for whatever negative effects were suffered by the '90s drawdown because he just did his job, just presented a topline number, while Defense officials made the program decisions necessary to get there. "[I]t might not have been the best way to achieve those savings," he says, presumably referring to the major cuts to procurement accounts that Cornyn brought up in his question, "but it was a decision that was made at the Defense Department."

Well, Mr. Secretary, now you are the Defense Department. And you're telling us that it's appropriate for the Congress and the White House to serve you up a topline number that jibes with political reality, just like you did for the Aspin Pentagon. And you're telling us that past procurement holidays might have been a mistake. And you're telling us that you're not going to hollow out the force. And you're telling us that you're not going to break faith with military personnel.

So now what are you going to do?

Are you going to "suck it up, do what's right for the country"? Are you going to "do the work that [you're] supposed to do"? Are you going to prioritize and make decisions and accept risk and put your own ass on the line -- are you going to show some leadership?

Or are you going to stand up in front of a bunch of guys in hard hats and say "damn" and "son of a bitch" a lot, get everybody chuckling at good ol' Uncle Leon, and feed them pathetic applause lines about what Congress needs to do for you?

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.

Grant aid to Egypt: the more things change...

On April 15 of this year, the president signed the spending bill (pdf) which kept the government from shutting down. Despite the ouster of Mubarak two months earlier, grant military assistance to Egypt remained the same as in past years: a $1.3 billion Foreign Military Financing (FMF) earmark, cash that expressly "shall be available for grants only for Egypt." That's consistent with the language of past years, and the dollar amount has held steady (pdf) since the late 1980s.

As you'll know if you pay attention to the news, we still don't have signed appropriations bills for 2012; there's another shutdown threat for the end of the week. In fact, there's not even any talk of a full-year spending bill at this stage in the game: the Congress is just trying to pass legislation to keep the lights on through the middle of November, when they'll have to take this up all over again. (The stopgap bill is currently being held up by disagreements over how to pay for something like $6 billion in disaster-relief funding, which makes perfect sense when you think about the fact that we're dealing with something like 0.2% of the damn budget.)

What we do have, though, is an FY 12 State Department and Foreign Operations spending bill (pdf) that's made it out of committee in the Senate, which is something, I guess. Language in that bill (especially where it's consistent with language in the draft of the House bill (pdf)) will probably make its way into whatever legislation ends up appropriating money for FY 2012, whenever that happens. Here's what's new:

[U]p to $1,300,000,000 shall be made available for grants only for Egypt, including for border security programs and activities in the Sinai: Provided further, That prior to the obligation of funds appropriated under this heading for assistance for Egypt, the Secretary of State shall certify to the Committees on Appropriations that the Governments of the United States and Egypt have agreed upon the specific uses of such funds, that such funds further the national interests of the United States in Egypt and the region, and that the Government of Egypt has held free and fair elections and is implementing policies to protect the rights of journalists, due process, and freedoms of expression and association [p. 49 of the pdf]

(The House draft merely states that funds will be made available "with the expectation that the Egyptian military will continue to adhere to and implement its international obligations, particularly the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty," which is also taken up later in the Senate bill. Of course, the SecState can waive that provision if deemed "important to the national interests of the United States," so there's that.)

Beyond the requirement for democratic and liberalizing reform, the certification provision is in there to make it clear that the post-Mubarak government can't suddenly re-imagine its military priorities and redesignate funds they'd previously committed to spend on U.S.-approved goods and services. It's not much for advocates of conditioned aid to latch on to, but it's more than the basically un-caveated aid written into previous spending bills. (All grant assistance is bound by the provisions of the Foreign Assistance Act, of course, which does require adherence to certain human rights standards, &c.)

Here's the bottom line: the money is still going to flow, whatever happens in the coming months on elections or civil liberties in Egypt. The distribution of military aid to Pakistan requires a certification that Pakistani government entities are fully cooperative in the fight against anti-Afghan insurgents and terrorist groups; ADM Mullen finally admitted last week that the USG can make no such declaration in good faith, and yet the aid still flows. The bilateral relationship with Egypt is much stronger and much more institutionalized, and many of the peculiar details of Egyptian aid are premised on the understanding and assumption of stability over the long term. (Egypt and Israel, for example, are exceptional among grant aid recipients in that they aren't required to pay the full balance of their purchase costs in the year of sales agreement; in fact, unspent aid is held by the U.S. in an interest-bearing account from year to year.) The money will keep on coming unless Congress acts to expressly block it.

One more thing that's worth noting in the Senate bill, however, is Sec. 7039(a):

Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, funds appropriated by this Act under the heading ‘‘Foreign Military Financing Program’’ for assistance for Egypt may be transferred to, and merged with, funds appropriated for assistance for Egypt under the heading ‘‘Economic Support Fund’’ [p. 134 of the pdf]

This is interesting because it permits the transfer of money appropriated for military aid to an account used for economic assistance -- that is, to a fund specifically intended "for the purpose of improving the lives of the Egyptian people through education, investment in jobs and skills (including secondary and vocational education), and access to finance for small and medium enterprise with emphasis on expanding opportunities for women, as well as other appropriate market-reform and economic growth activities" (p. 135 of the pdf). It seems unlikely to happen, but the option's there.

Oh yeah, and while we're on the subject: PCCF is back! (See p. 10 of this pdf.) In the International Security Assistance section of the State budget! Instead of in the Defense budget! And with a billion dollars! That's $200 million more than the $800 million appropriated for FY 11! Foreign policy is saved from militarization! At least until somebody needs to slash a bil from the aid budget, anyway; then DoD will change the way it calculates inflation, or something, and slide that extra billion in under its catastrophically shrunken topline. Or something.

Strategic assumptions in a non-unitary government

Ben Lombardi had an interesting piece in the Spring 2011 issue of Parameters called "Assumptions and Grand Strategy" (pdf). I spent part of this afternoon skimming it and thinking about the way it relates to the Olson essay I cited earlier today. In explaining the three types of assumptions that impact and shape strategic plans, Lombardi reminds us of both the existence and the validity of "imposed assumptions" -- the planning constraints that stem from policy decisions made by the government.

An example of this is the exclusion of the United States as a possible adversary from British planning before both world wars. A paper prepared in 1928 for the CID stated that "[t]he improbability of war with America has been a factor in the policy of this country for a considerable number of years." It further acknowledged that the consequences of a conflict with the United States would be disastrous to British interests. Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain observed that such a conflict was beyond reasonable expectations:

It would not even be necessary for the United States to take any warlike action against us in protest. They could close markets and financial sources of vital importance to us. Such a situation [was] the only one from which a war with America might arise, but he could not imagine that any British Government would be mad enough to create such a position.

Asserting that war with America was implausible played far more than just a passive role (i.e., excluding conflict with the US from military scenarios) in British planning. When the consolidation of the Royal Navy followed the introduction of reforms in the early years of the 20th century, there was only limited concern expressed about the reduction of naval assets in North American waters. Whitehall was also guided in framing its relations with other countries by that outlook. The Anglo-Japanese Arbitration Treaty (1911) included a clause that released Britain from its alliance obligations should Japan find itself in a conflict with the United States.

The imposition on strategic planning of this assumption was probably influenced by a variety of nonrational considerations, such as the wrongness of a conflict between the two principal Anglo-Saxon powers. It was, after all, a leading British politician, Joseph Chamberlain, who in 1896 referred to an Anglo-American war as an "absurdity as well as a crime" and opined that the two countries would one day work together to fashion a new world order "sanctioned by humanity and justice." Just as significant, however, this presupposition was also firmly grounded in a rational appreciation of Britain’s vulnerabilities and its strategic interests. As that assessment demanded that conflict with Washington be avoided, there was no purpose served in planning military contingencies against the United States. The [Committee of Imperial Defense], and presumably lower-level defense planning staffs, were instructed to assume that no such conflict would occur.

Recognition of imposed assumptions in the strategic planning process is just one of several ways that the strategist can remain cognizant of the inherently political nature of his work. If policymakers say we're not going to war with China and it does us no damned good to prepare for war with China, then that's the way it ought to be. The strategist's assumptions must be based as a matter of course on the nation's assumptions. But this can get complicated in what's probably a pretty obvious way: in a republic, no one person or body gets to decide what constitutes the national interest. Whatever your feelings about war powers or the constitutionality of military action absent legislative sanction, it's clear that the American system of government includes a role for both the Congress and the President in both foreign policy and warmaking. (The plain fact that these two domains of state action were far more clearly delineated from one another in the 18th century than the 21st -- and that the erosion of this line complicates matters -- hardly even bears mentioning.)

When it comes to national strategy, is it even possible for the executive to provide direction to his military planners based on a policy determination like the one discussed above? Could the president direct the Pentagon to exclude China from planning scenarios in a country where the Defense Department has a statutory requirement to brief Congress annually on Chinese military strength? Or where it's considered appropriate and unexceptional more generally for the Congress to legislate requirements for all sorts of similar reports and associated preparatory measures? (For example 10 U.S.C. §153(b)(2), which requires the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to submit to Congress in odd-numbered years "an assessment of the nature and magnitude of the strategic and military risks associated with executing the missions called for under the current National Military Strategy" (which, lest you forget, is published by the CJCS himself).)

I suppose the answer is that it's still perfectly reasonable for the White House to lay down its own imposed assumptions within the confines of each administration's four-year strategic planning cycle, but the threat of Congressional squealing about anything controversial mitigates against such definitive pronouncements. (I should note here that I'm only using the China example as a thought experiment, in large part because I found it difficult not to think of our creditor-frenemy when reading Chamberlain's remarks about closing markets and governmental madness.)

Is it too hard to do realistically constrained, scenario-based strategic planning in a non-unitary government with four-year turnover? Is this what Olson meant when he said we lacked the necessary "strategic culture" absent the Cold War?

Lesson number one on how to operate in the executive branch of a constitutional republic

If you're the Defense Department, don't tell your congressional paymasters that certain funding levels would be "completely unacceptable." (Or "clearly unacceptable," for that matter.)

We're all familiar with the Constitution, right? Article I, Section 8, in particular?

There's actually a Constitutionally-provided means for the executive branch to register its opinion that certain legislative initiatives are "completely unacceptable": it's called the presidential veto. Here's a not-exhaustive list of people who are not statutorily guaranteed veto power: the Secretary of Defense; "senior defense officials"; you (except you, Mr. President).

Is it any wonder that a world such as this, where appointed officials of the executive branch dictate to the elected representatives of the people what is and is not "acceptable," produces generals who believe Congress requires re-education in the national interest?

Is it any wonder that appropriate civil-military relations in this country, not to mention the clear distinction between the legitimate roles and missions of the various departments and agencies of the government, are so constantly and consistently eroded as to scarcely merit comment in some circles?

Is it any wonder that the unitary executive sees fit to wage war (under the guise of "kinetic military action") in Libya without legislative sanction, and in the face of popular opposition?

Is it any wonder that we're increasingly comfortable with the Jominian subversion of our domestic politics to the imperatives of forever war?

No, I think what's unacceptable is the Defense Department telling the Congress that there's a certain funding level at which it refuses to prioritize and make choices... that is, it refuses to do its job.

"The Pentagon cannot presume to exempt itself from the scrutiny and pressure faced by the rest of our government" on the matter of budgets. That's your predecessor talking, Mr. Panetta. That's a man who knew a little bit about what was and wasn't acceptable.

More money = more readiness, just as simple as that?

The infamous Rep. Forbes, chairman of the HASC Readiness subcommittee, brought the number two guys from each of the services over to the Hill on Tuesday to talk about how the imagined "sustained lack of resources" for defense has imperiled American military preparedness. (Read Spencer's and Philip Ewing's excellent pieces on the hearing.) Each officer made the standard, prosaic opening statement -- underpinned as always by a pledge about his service being prepared to carry out the country's missions and support the warfighter and blah blah blah -- before being poked and prodded into elaborating on the horrifying future we should expect if a deficit-reduction deal includes significant defense cuts. This line of reasoning, of course, is built on the premise that readiness is all about resources. But resources are always constrained in some way; what we ought to be talking about is whether or not we're making the best possible decisions about how to use them.

To wit, take a look at this snip from Air Force vice chief Gen. Philip Breedlove's written testimony. After running down a list of the many operational missions the service has executed in recent years, he drops this on us:

This level of activity reflects our commitment to provide Global Vigilance, Reach, and Power in today’s Joint fight. However, this high operations tempo (OPTEMPO) has had some detrimental effects on our overall readiness. Since 2003, we have seen a slow but steady decline in reported unit readiness indicators. Maintaining our ability to be ready for the full spectrum of operations at an acceptable level of risk is challenging, especially for the Combat Air Forces (CAF) and some limited-supply/high-demand units.

I know I sound like a broken record on this, but it bears repeating: operations erode readiness. War definitely erodes readiness, but so too do training and exercises and the whole range of peacetime missions that aren't accompanied by the extra burden and risk of combat losses. Simply put, we're spending more and ending up with less because we're using what we've bought, and using it harder and more than we usually count on doing. But resources are constrained, you know? So if we had a few extra bucks, we'd probably spend them in ways that helped to mitigate those readiness concerns, right... not just to do more of the same? Hold that thought.

Let's pause for just a second and kick it over to CSBA's Todd Harrison to explain what the Pentagon calls "unfunded priorities."

Each year, the Services rank and prioritize items for inclusion in the budget request. Unfunded priorities are those items not included in the budget request because they are a lower priority and do not fit within the funding ceiling set for the Department. The Services’ lists of unfunded priorities, sometimes referred to as “wish lists,” are routinely requested by Congress for consideration during their markup of the budget. The total amount of unfunded priorities grew dramatically over the past decade, rising from $9.5 billion in FY 2001 to a peak of $38 billion in FY 2008 (both figures in FY 2012 dollars). In the FY 2010 budget process, Secretary Gates required the Services to present their unfunded priorities to him for review before submitting them to Congress. Unfunded priorities for that year fell by an order of magnitude to just $3.5 billion. In FY 2011 unfunded priorities fell to $1.8 billion, and in FY 2012 they total only $1.2 billion. Nearly all of the unfunded priorities submitted to Congress are in procurement and O&M. This indicates that if the Services had additional funding available they would prioritize the maintenance of existing equipment and would procure additional equipment or spares to augment their inventory. (pdf, p. 4)

We're going to leave aside the interesting subplots here -- that Congress actually requires the Services to list the things they've decided not to ask for in the budget request, that "unfunded priorities" skyrocketed over the same period that the budget topline dramatically increased, etc. -- and get back to what the Air Force would do if it had a bit more cash.

The Air Force requests $124 million in unfunded priorities. At the top of the list is $42.5 million for 75 maintenance testers and spares to support the A-10 aircraft. According to the Air Force, the currently fielded testing equipment is “obsolete and no longer procurable,” and the lack of new testing equipment will result in some aircraft being grounded in FY 2013. An additional $33.7 million is requested for an EC-130H avionics upgrade to replace the air data computer, which if not replaced would result in Compass Call aircraft groundings, also beginning in FY 2013. The remaining $47.5 million funds the replacement of Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM), Anti-Missile Countermeasures Decoy Systems, Air-to-Ground Missiles, and Laser-Guided Weapons expended due to operations in Libya. (pdf, p. 5)

Look back at what Gen. Breedlove said: "a slow but steady decline in reported unit readiness indicators." So why is the extended budget ask entirely composed of new stuff? The VCSAF tells us elsewhere that the service is pumping efficiency savings back in to modernization accounts to pay for the next-gen bomber, more UAVs, F-15 radar modernization, and many other things... all of which are surely important to the development of future capabilities, but which have little to do with maximizing current operational readiness.

Obviously it's true that extra airframes and spares help to boost readiness by addressing maintenance shortfalls and recapitalizing aging fleets, and spare cash can be used to pay for more fuel, more flight hours, more time in simulators, and so on. But instead of asking leading questions like "wouldn't it be tough to do your job if the defense budget was cut by a trillion dollars?", why aren't legislators making a more committed effort to find out exactly how the resources they're meant to provide actually translate into readiness and combat power? To learn how the Air Force, for example, plans to reverse that "decline in reported unit readiness indicators" both by spending extra money and by adapting how they do business, making related changes to training, doctrine, organizations, and all things you've got to figure out how to do when the time comes that the dollar figure just ain't getting any bigger?

Forbes and his pals don't make a better effort because what they're doing is political theater, not strategic leadership. The chairman and his colleagues surely know that such an exploration would almost certainly reveal that sometimes the answer isn't simply to buy more, better, newer stuff. The recent focus on strategy development as the essential first step in a rational and comprehensive resourcing process is both refreshing and fundamentally beside the point. Here's how Forbes put it in Tuesday's hearing:

As we consider our deficit, federal spending, and the impact on our defense budget, I believe we should be asking four questions: 

First, "What are the threats we face?" Second, "What resources do our combatant commanders need to protect us against those threats?" Third, "What do these resources cost and how can we obtain them as efficiently as possible," and fourth, "What can we afford and what are the risks to our nation if we do not supply those resources?" 

I believe many in Congress and the White House have been asking only the portion of question four that asks how much they want to expend, and they have been ignoring the other questions almost entirely.

Fair enough, and the congressman is right to draw attention to the Department's (and the country's) strategy deficit. But it's disingenuous to pretend as if these questions aren't asked in some way, shape or form, because they are. It's also true that the answers are speculative, lack rigor or compelling rationale, and do little to help us set real priorities. And a big part of the reason it happens that way is that the folks tasked with asking the questions and generating the answers have absolutely zero incentive to make hard choices. They're rewarded for dreaming up an expansive list of threats, challenges, risks, and attendant "requirements."

To believe that we can ever draft a prioritized list of desired capabilities to meet projected threats, then arbitrarily draw a chop line below one program and above another based on somebody's assessment of "what we can afford" is simple fantasy. And beyond that, it's an economic nonsense: a laundry list in which all "priorities" can be or ought to be funded scandalizes the transactional philosophy that underpins efficient resource allocation. We all know there's no such thing as getting something for nothing, and to ignore the trade-offs that come with just spending more in the belief that security can be commoditized is dishonest and irresponsible.

I hate to keep repeating myself on this, but to parrot the former SECDEF's now-famous phrase, we have to do math and strategy. Yes, we need to take a look at fundamental roles and missions. Yes, we need to write real, meaningful, actionable strategy documents that can inform resource decisions instead of the unsatisfying pap we currently churn out. Yes, we need to try to get a handle on the role we want to play in the world, the tasks the military needs to be able to accomplish to enable that role, and the capabilities we think are best suited to accomplishing those tasks. That's strategy.

But strategy is also about thoughtful adaptation. It's about figuring out multiple ways to accomplish the same ends, particularly when the means get changed up on you. The credit-based economy has thieved this skill from most people and many governments; instead of thinking how to meet our needs with the resources we've got, we spend time thinking up ways to eventually pay off the tab we've run up collecting the things we want. If I say "write me some plans for defending America with a single infantry battalion," you might reasonably say that's nonsensical and a-strategic. But if I say "here's $300 billion, now buy me the best defense you can," you damn well ought not come back with a blank page and plead poverty.

Mark Kirk gets his feelings hurt, says a spectacularly dumb thing

Russian ambassador to NATO/kooky unreformed nationalist Dmitri Rogozin, who has a habit of saying (and tweeting) somewhat nutty stuff, took a whole bunch of shots at unilateralist Russophobe dinosaurs/U.S. Senators John Kyl and Mark Kirk in his country's press after meeting with the two this week. The story is related by Josh Rogin at The Cable. Here's the money line from Rogozin:

"The meeting [with Kirk and Kyl] is very useful because it shows that the alternative to Barack Obama is a collapse of all the programs of cooperation with Russia. Today, I had the impression that I was transported in a time machine back several decades, and in front of me sat two monsters of the Cold War, who looked at me not through pupils, but targeting sights."

The guy is always good for a few lulz, but Kirk was less amused. He gave Rogin a few snippy quotes that aren't worth recounting, but also dropped what I imagine he thinks is the hammer:

"In a potential missile combat scenario between NATO and Iran, Russia is thoroughly irrelevant. So Russian concerns about what we do and not do about the Iranian threat are interesting but largely irrelevant."

Wow. Russia is thoroughly irrelevant, and its concerns are largely irrelevant. (See if you can't sort that one out for yourself.)

I know it's probably a bit much to expect sophisticated understanding of strategic deterrence theory from a guy who "misremembers" his own military record, but could we at least hope for some common sense?

"In a potential missile combat scenario between NATO and Iran," precisely nobody with nuclear weapons and an early-warning/launch detection system is "irrelevant." Especially not a state with a massive arsenal of nuclear warheads and the delivery systems to get them to American soil, one with a cultivated distrust of American intentions vis-a-vis missile defense.

"In a potential missile combat scenario" in which the sky fills up with ballistic missiles, every damned guy on the planet with a red button is going to go reaching for it until he has a pretty solid sense that none of those missiles is going to land on him. That solid sense is probably going to take just a little while longer to materialize when you've got a bunch of senior "statesmen" running their yaps and posturing in ways that seem almost certainly intended to impede information-sharing and common understanding, to keep the other guy off balance, wondering if -- in spite of official policy statements to the contrary -- our missile defenses really are targeting his weapons.

Russia's "irrelevant" to a scenario that could kindle nuclear war, huh, Senator? More irrelevant than a guy who has to shit-talk his own government to America's biggest foreign creditors just to get on the news? More irrelevant than a guy who spent much of his time in the House impotently railing against the government's irresponsible spending habits while serving as a member of the body that writes America's checks? More irrelevant than a guy whose idea of inspired leadership and aggressive oversight is pathetic obstructionism and delaying tactics in a condominium of ignorance with the U.S. Senate's most trifling and manifestly inconsequential clowns?

Well hell, Rogozin, I might take "irrelevant" as a compliment coming from that guy.

If only defense spending had a domestic constituency! (UPDATED)

The tragic indifference of American political leaders, commentators, business executives, and senior military officers to the plight of the shrinking U.S. defense budget continues unabated today. Well, unless you read the op-ed pages of major American newspapers, watch cable news, use the internet, or have a conversation with any human being within 50 miles of the Pentagon.

Today in Politico, four Members of Congress go "On the offense over Defense cuts" -- Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Ft. Lee, JFCOM), Rep. Michael Turner (R-Wright-Patterson AFB), Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Hill AFB), and Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Goodfellow AFB):

The U.S. military confronts readiness shortfalls and a growing array of risks and security challenges. That is why I am deeply concerned about the avalanche of military spending cuts being discussed — from President Barack Obama’s $400 billion proposal to the Senate’s Gang of Six proposal that could cut up to $886 billion.

The time to draw a line in the sand, and go on the offense to support national security must be now.

Let’s be clear: Defense spending is not what put us in this position, and gutting the defense budget to pay the bills is unlikely to get us out of it. As a percentage of our gross domestic product, the defense budget remains just 3.6 percent. This figure is low by all historical standards.

Even if we start slashing major portions of the budget — say $50 billion each year over the next decade — that figure would still only add up to a fraction of the nation’s debt. Yet the additional risk to the nation could be substantial.

Surely the legislative interests of these honorable legislators have little to do with the location of major military facilities inside and alongside their Congressional districts. Such coincidences are inevitable when we consider such a large political body, right? The devoted advocacy of these men is no doubt motivated solely by a desire for "an open and objective review of the threats we face and the resources required to meet them."

Should we cut them a break for lying to us?

The defense budget does not represent "just 3.6 percent" of GDP. You get this artificially low number when you exclude from consideration funds being spent on current operations. Why would anyone choose to calculate defense spending without considering the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? This seems to me a lot like willfull disingenuity.

$749.75 billion. That's the total OMB gives for national defense outlays in FY 2011. (See page 132 of this pdf.) This includes money appropriated to the Energy Department for nuclear weapons, as well as a few other non-DoD incidentals, but the military-only figure still works out to more than $700 billion.

Four point nine percent. That's OMB's "national defense" outlays as a percentage of GDP for FY 11. Not 3.7%. 4.9%. That's a pretty big difference. Not only that, but 4.9% does not represent a "figure [that] is low by all historical standards"; in fact, it's only roughly a percentage point lower than the height of the Reagan defense buildup.

Nineteen point six percent. Here's the most important figure of the whole lot, and it's one that the good Congressmen left out altogether (they didn't even give us an artifically low alternative number, perhaps because even that one is distressingly high): the percentage of total U.S. government outlays that are devoted to national defense. Let's be clear about this, because the percent of GDP figures are bandied around all the time to mislead people (and apparently it works): about one in every five dollars the U.S. government spends goes to defense. (When President Reagan was patriotically defending America from peacenik budget-slashers, defense spending accounted for about one in four dollars spent.)

Ready for the most damning bit in the whole op-ed? Ok, here it is:

Even more concerning are the assessments from our Combatant Commanders in the unclassified portion of the Quarterly Readiness Report to Congress. This paints a distressing picture of a military stretched thin by nearly 10 years of war and a sustained lack of resources.

BREAKING NEWS: war erodes readiness. But you know what does NOT constitute "a sustained lack of resources"? A 150% increase in defense outlays over a ten-year period. (2001: $304.73 billion. 2011: $749.75 billion.) Defense accounts were bumped by approximately ten percent per year for a decade. This is what Forbes, Turner, Bishop, and Conaway call "a sustained lack of resources"? This is their definition of taking the strength of our armed forces for granted? This is their "growing readiness problems"?

If the wanton spending of the last ten years can't guarantee military readiness or national security, MAYBE YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

The Congressmen want us to base our national defense planning on "an open and objective review of the threats we face and the resources required to meet them," and complain about how "we now have that process in reverse." They're right, we do -- and it's because of nonsense rationalizations like the ones given in this article, where they try to pretend like the Army's failure to incorporate iPad-like technology has anything at all to do with the cancellation of Comanche, FCS, EFV, and DDG-1000.

They even give us a cute little analogy to highlight what they suggest is the irresponsible way the White House and the Defense Department go about determining the budget.

In many ways, it’s like a family who is about to purchase a new home. The correct course would be to have an inspector look at the house and tell the family what the problems are and what they will cost to fix. What if, instead, that family told the inspector that they only had $1,000, and they wanted the inspector to go through and identify only $1,000 worth of problems to fix?

What if, instead, that family had an inspector look at the house to find problems and estimate required costs, but also told him they'd already signed papers with a contractor committing to $2,000 worth of demolition and paint work? And then when the inspector found that the house had termite damage, the contractor and his buddies started writing letters to the family and the bank saying that the special kind of paint they were going to use helps to solidify building foundations and kill termites. Because that's a much more apt analogy.

Stop lying to people. Stop rationalizing wasteful spending. Stop pretending like the thing that accounts for 20% of USG spending has nothing at all to do with our deficit problems. Stop imagining the spending that benefits your constituents is sacrosanct, while everything else is politically-motivated profligacy.

The government spends much more than it takes in. One-fifth of this spending goes toward defense. Considering the fungibility of money and the statutory mandate for certain types of non-discretionary spending, it is a simple absurdity to say "defense spending is not what put us in this position." If your teenager ran up tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt and said "I spent most of that money on food and rent and books! Only 20% of it was on hookers and blow! That's not what put me in this position!", you'd punch him in the face.

Punch yourself in the face, America.

UPDATE: More criticism of the Forbes-Turner-Bishop-Conaway piece from budget guru Gordon Adams, who also addresses the accounting gimmicks that go into making the end of the current wars look like a massive cut. He does so in considerably less shrill and aggressive fashion than I, it's worth noting.

Kagan: "defense has no domestic constituency"

No, this is not a joke.

Jennifer Rubin, writing on conservative criticism of the "Gang of Six" deficit-reduction proposal, quotes an email she received from alleged defense expert Robert Kagan:

[The proposed cuts are] utterly irresponsible and dangerous to national security. Also cowardly, since defense has no domestic constituency, while entitlements — the real source of our fiscal crisis — do.

It is simply remarkable that anyone could hold this view, especially someone even remotely acquainted with defense politics. (It may be even more remarkable that a second person would unquestioningly reproduce such a patently absurd statement.) So for Kagan and Rubin's benefit, let's go ahead and draw up an inclusive (but not exhaustive) list of those people and organizations that make up defense spending's domestic constituency.

1. The U.S. and global defense industry. Higher defense budgets means more spending on materiel and weapon systems. More money for weapon systems means more profit for the companies who manufacture them, higher stock prices, and pleased shareholders. This linkage is so simple that the requirement to explain it strains credulity.

2. Communities dependent on defense dollars. This group consists of people and governments across the country that are dependent for their economic and social health on defense-related funds. That could mean military bases that provide jobs and fuel local economies, or the facilities of armaments and materiel manufacturers that do the same. If these dollars go away, people lose jobs. And they get pissed about it. There's a reason defense contractors ensure the widest possible geographic distribution of essential work on major acquisition programs.

3. Members of Congress. Guess who starts getting phone calls when the ol' jet-engine factory closes down? Defense pork is the tastiest and most pervasive kind, and legislators benefit in more ways than one from the flow of defense dollars: they're able to maintain constituent support by bringing job-creating industrial facilities and economically stimulating military bases to their districts and keeping them there, and they often reap significant financial rewards in the form of defense industry campaign contributions. And we haven't even mentioned the way that politicians get almost consequence-free "strong on defense" cred just from lending rhetorical support to defense budget increases.

4. The Defense Department and the military services. Executive branch organizations can't expressly lobby Congress, of course, but don't believe for a second that they're objective and disinterested participants in the budgeting process. The significant majority of the "strategic thinking" generated by the Pentagon (some in the form of Congressionally-mandated reports) serve to justify major extant acquisition programs and rationalize force structure rather than informing capabilities-development, as strategy ought to do. Defense senior leaders are often caught in a double-bind: they have significant incentives to support the priorities of the defense industry, which will later offer opportunities for a comfortable and leisurely post-retirement career, while simultaneously recognizing that collaboration with those in Congress and industry whose interests align may be the best way to ensure plentiful resourcing of their statutory mission.

5. Commentators, advocates, and pseudo-scholars. A lot of people in this town make a living talking about defense (COUGHCOUGHROBERTKAGANCOUGH). Some of those people are financially supported by the defense industry. Some of them work for organizations that are ideologically committed to "strong defense," which as we've discussed always equates to more defense spending. Some of them simply find it impossible to consider challenging the conventional wisdom of their friends and colleagues, and come by their rabid support for MORE MORE MORE SPENDING NOW AND ALWAYS MORE totally honestly. But let's not pretend like most these people are indifferent to the defense budget, or that their professional and personal incentive structures don't mitigate in favor of advocacy for higher budgets.

These various constituencies so often work in concert with one another that we've almost ceased to find it noteworthy when the front men for such collaborations lie, dissemble, misrepresent, bullshit, and scheme to protect every last dollar in defense accounts. We're not even surprised when they conspire to shame their critics and ruin careers.

All of which leads me to wonder whether Robert Kagan and Jennifer Rubin understand precisely what is meant by the term "constituency," at least in the sense of budgets. Sure, entitlements have a clear domestic constituency: the citizens who get checks in the mail, the representatives they elect, and the businesses and organiziations that are supported by the dissemination of those funds. Does Kagan really fail to see that defense dollars seep into society and influence people in the same way?

Is he sweetly, charmingly ignorant of all this, or a disingenuous, self-aware participant in the whole scheme? Well, I suppose I'll leave it up to you to decide.

Uh, sir, could you maybe think about using a different word?

My favorite unreadable anti-journalist and China hawk has an item today about this week's SASC Airland subommittee hearing on tactical aircraft. Unsurprisingly, his account focuses exclusively on a China angle.

Asked during the hearing what "keeps you up at night," Rear Adm. David L. Philman, Navy director of warfare integration, said: "Well, the China scenario is first and foremost, I believe, because they seem to be more advanced and they have the capability out there right now, and their ships at sea and their other anti-access capabilities."

The Pentagon refers to China's advanced weapons, including ballistic missiles that hit ships at sea, new submarines, anti-satellite weapons and cyberwarfare capabilities, as "anti-access and area denial" arms.

Adm. Philman said the J-20 rollout is a concern, but with 1,000 test hours on the F-35, the jet is a "far leap ahead from the Chinese fighter that's flown three times."

"But they will catch up. They understand. They're a smart and learning enemy, and if we don't keep our edge, then we will be behind, or at least lose our advantage," Adm. Philman said. [emphasis mine]

So, um, RADM Philman: any chance you could avoid describing the world's most populous country as an ENEMY? Considering the way that, you know, we're not actually at war with them or anything like that, and how in fact we actually have a gradually growing mil-to-mil relationship with them? I know it's just fighter-pilot lingo, and I know you're talking about the PLA more specifically, not the entire country, and I know we're talking about hypothetical future threats to U.S. air dominance and that in that context, it's reasonable to talk about us and "the enemy," even if only as a matter of the way forces are arrayed (as in friendly aircraft vs. enemy aircraft, etc.). But dude, come on.

Can we just go with something like "adaptive adversary"? It's less aggressively inflammatory, it connotes potential rather than actual threat, and it has the added benefit of being consistent with doctrine!

Want to see what the quotidian militarization of foreign policy looks like?

It's simple to look back over time and recognize broad, somewhat vague policy trends like "the militarization of foreign policy." You can look at the way we budget for international affairs versus defense; you can point to the myriad wars and other interventions in which we've engaged in recent years; you can even complain, if you like, that our international humanitarian and disaster relief efforts are primarily channeled through the military. But when you think about that trend, you're not imagining a decision-maker waking up one morning, sitting down at his desk, and saying "I'm going to militarize our foreign policy today!" -- it's just the way we label a whole bunch of aggreggated effects of seemingly reasonable decisions, right?

Well, yeah. Most of the time. And sometimes it's a little less honest, and a little less accidental.

In 2009, the administration included in its emergency war supplemental a request for $400 million to assist Pakistan in the development of its counterinsurgency capabilities. Breaking with the traditional custom for military aid, whereby grant funds are appropriated to the State Department for dispersal to the partner nation, the president instead requested that this money be appropriated to the Defense Department as part of what he called the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund (PCCF).

While report language authored by House appropriators noted that "the Committee believes that the PCCF should be considered within the context of the Department of State appropriations" and expressed the sense that "such a request for training for Pakistan, or any other nation where we have a national security interest, must be considered within the context of Department of State policy guidance, applicable governing authorities and appropriations," the appropriators went one better: they not only established the $400M PCCF account within State's appropriation, but sent another $400M to DoD as the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund.

Yep, you've got that right: the 2009 supplemental (pdf) established a Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund in the Defense appropriation, satisfying the administration's exact request (but under a different name) in spite of expressed reservations about the appropriateness of DoD control over such a fund, and to soften the blow, appropriators also established a Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund in the State appropriation. That's PCF and PCCF: two different funds, two different money-owners, same general purpose.

So what's the difference? DoD's $400M was available upon passage of the bill (June 24, 2009) until the end of FY10, when the program's authority would also expire. The appropriated funds for State's PCCF would only become available on the last day of FY09, and both the funds and the program authority wouldn't expire until the end of FY11. If you're keeping score at home, that means that DoD had from June 2009 until the end of September 2010 to spend its $400M, while State had from October 2009 until the end of September 2011. Presumably this reflected Congress' desire to channel foreign military assistance through the State Department over the long term, while recognizing the Defense Department's unique ability to satisfy urgent Pakistani requirements in an expeditious fashion. What I mean by that is that the Pentagon has the capacity and the expertise to identify what the Pakistanis needed, put the equipment on contract, and deliver it to our partners ASAP -- which State simply wasn't yet suited to do.

That's sort of a funny way to look at things, though, considering how PCCF actually played out: as a simple pass-through fund from Congress to State to DoD, which executed the program. (The establishing legislation allowed for both PCF and PCCF funds to be transferred from one department to the other -- that is, combined with one another -- if the transferring Secretary saw fit.) Ironically (and hilariously), this procedure turns out to have made the State funds even more useful than the ones directly appropriated to DoD, as the State-to-Defense transfer constituted obligation of funds; once State "spent" its $400M with DoD, those funds could no longer expire, so the cash originally appropriated to PCCF (State) didn't have the same calendrical axe hanging over it as the DoD-appropriated funds. The pressure to spend that State money before it expired ceased to exist, while DoD had to scramble around getting equipment on contract with its own PCF cash before it disappeared at the end of September. But I digress...

By now you're probably wondering what the hell this has to do with the militarization of foreign policy, so let's get back to the point. Last week when the details of the shutdown-averting budget compromise started coming out, Colin Cookman noticed that there was $800M in there for PCF (Defense). This is interesting not only because of everything you've read above, Congressional intent to transfer responsibility to the State Department, expiration of PCF's program authority, etc etc, but because the White House didn't actually ask for any PCF money for FY11 -- they asked for $1.2B for PCCF, which (as CRS notes on p.18 of this pdf) "moves ongoing activities to increase the capabilities of Pakistan's security forces from DOD control to the purview of the Secretary of State."

In the words of the immortal Lee Corso: not so fast, my friends. As Josh Rogin predictably sniffed out before it had even occurred to me to look, there it is in the legislation signed last week:

For the `Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund', $800,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2012: Provided, That such funds shall be available to the Secretary of Defense, with the concurrence of the Secretary of State, notwithstanding any other provision of law, for the purpose of allowing the Secretary of Defense, or the Secretary's designee, to provide assistance to Pakistan's security forces.

But wait, there's more! Section 2112(b):

The authorities contained under the heading `International Security Assistance, Funds Appropriated to the President, Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund' in title XI of Public Law 111-32 shall remain in effect until September 30, 2012.

So the law extends the authorization for both PCF and PCCF until the end of FY12, but only appropriates money ($800M) to PCF... the program that was supposed to go away this year. Sure, it's a $400M cut to what had been requested, but that's not the real story here. (Only $700M was appropriated across the two programs in FY10, so nearly doubling that amount for FY11 would've been a stretch in any politico-fiscal environment.) No, the real story is the way so many players in government colluded to hoodwink the taxpayer and extend the Pentagon's control of a fund that nearly everyone agrees is the legitimate prerogative of the Secretary of State.

1. Congressional Republicans cynically refused to fund through the State Department's budget an account that most of them would agree is important to national security, choosing instead to hide nearly a billion dollars under DoD's topline (notwithstanding the inarguable reality that the program constitutes foreign assistance), secure in the knowledge that such scheming will burnish their collective reputation as supporters of the troops, advocates for a strong defense, and opponents of namby-pamby hand-holding foreign aid.

2. The White House and Congressional Democrats rolled over for this deal, knowing as they did that it would continue DoD control of an element of U.S. foreign policy and increase the likelihood that training and equipping decisions would diverge from the broader context of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, all without saving a single dollar in the overall topline.

3. The State Department, however minimal its say in the final budgetary wrangling, almost certainly breathed a sigh of relief at being able to throw Republicans a $1.2B bone without actually cutting anything. As Rogin noted, State was likely able to save several other programs under threat by satisfying 10% of its total topline cut through what amounts to a transfer to another department's budgetary bin.

4. Department of Defense senior leaders have consistently called for an increase in resources for the diplomacy and development legs of the 3D stool, but just as consistently fight against the normalization of military assistance programs currently being conducted under special Title 10 (Defense) authority and mutely accept the two-year continuance of their control over a program that should rightfully belong to those statutorily charged with the conduct of our foreign affairs.

No big deal, you might say: we need to help the Pakistanis, the money got appropriated, so who cares where program authority lands -- especially when State's been passing money and execution responsibilities through to the Pentagon anyway? Here's why it's a big deal: every single bit of institutional momentum, bureaucratic inertia, and political pressure will continue to facilitate "minor" compromises and symbolic switches like this until a forward-looking, reform-minded government takes a stand.

Next time you hear the president, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, or Congressional leaders bemoaning the militarization of U.S. foreign policy, just think back and remember how they've all got a hand in it.

Does the 2011 National Military Strategy fail to satisfy the requirements of U.S. law?

As you may have noticed, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff released the 2011 update to the National Military Strategy a week ago today. I've seen it asserted that the Chairman is required to review the strategy every two years, but only required to publish a new one when changes are necessary; I can't locate that provision in the law, but I might be missing something. (I've been going through Title 10 over the last couple of days. Don't ask. 10 U.S.C. Sec. 153 (d): "Not later than February 15 of each even-numbered year, the Chairman shall submit to the [Congressional defense committees] a report containing the results of a comprehensive examination of the national military strategy.") In any event, this is the first NMS to be published since 2004.

I sat down and read the NMS the morning it came out, and I'll admit that I wasn't terribly impressed. But I didn't write about it, because frankly there's just been too much going on. And that may be exactly what the Chairman and the SECDEF were hoping: that everyone would be too busy to really look at the thing. Not only does it suffer from many of the same failings as the National Security Strategy (namely: failure to actually be a strategy), but it seems to me that it fails to satisfy the statutory requirements that bear on the CJCS. So I'm going to go through the bit of the U.S. Code that specifies what "each report on the examination of the national military strategy" must include and just take a quick glance at whether or not that happened. You with me?

(A) Delineation of a national military strategy consistent with [the NSS, the QDR, and the SECDEF's required reports]

Ok, yes, we have a document called "the National Military Strategy." I'll let lawyers decide whether its not actually being a strategy is a violation of the spirit of the statute, but we'll give them a pass on this one.

(B) A description of the strategic environment and the opportunities and challenges that affect United States national interests and United States national security.

There is definitely a section entitled "Strategic Environment" (section II, page 2). Let's ignore the fact that it's merely a restatement of the same specious vagaries about "demographic trends," "nonstate actors," "weapons of mass destruction," "global commons," etc. that appear in every "strategy" or operating concept published by the Department; we'll give 'em two for two so far.

(C) A description of the regional threats to United States national interests and United States national security.

This wholly absent from the document. Threats are simply not discussed outside such vague assertions as "states with weak, failing, and corrupt governments will incresingly be used as a safe haven for an expanding array of non-state actors that breed conflict and endanger stability" -- and that's in the "strategic environment" section. The NMS does deal with several geographic regions individually in the section detailing the third "National Military Objective," to strengthen international and regional security. But this bit lays out U.S. goals and priorities in each of the regions, not "a description of regional threats."

(D) A description of the international threats posed by terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and asymmetric challenges to United States national security.

Again, there is no description of these threats, but merely an assertion of them as a feature of the "strategic environment." The word "asymmetric" is used only once in the document, in the context of desired U.S. space capabilities: "Joint Forces will... maintain symmetric and asymmetric capabilities to deter adversaries [in space]," which doesn't even make any damn sense. (What is an "asymmetric capability"? Here I feel compelled to paraphrase Conrad Crane and note that there are only two types of warfare: asymmetric and stupid. But asymmetric capabilities? Can anyone give me an example?)

(E) Identification of United States national military objectives and the relationship of those objectives to the strategic environment, regional, and international threats.

As noted above, the NMS does identify four "National Military Objectives": 1) Counter violent extremism; 2) Deter and defeat aggression; 3) Strengthen international and regional security; and 4) Shape the future force. It's not clear to me that the document identifies or explains "the relationship of those objectives to the strategic environment, regional, and international threats," seeing as threats are basically not identified at all, but this provision of the law could probably have been written more clearly.

(F) Identification of the strategy, underlying concepts, and component elements that contribute to the achievement of United States national military objectives.

This is what the entire middle section of the document is meant to accomplish, but it's a pretty poor show. I don't see a lot about underlying concepts (except "leadership") or component elements, or really much of anything beyond "this is what we want to do" without a whole lot of detail on the "how."

(G) Assessment of the capabilities and adequacy of United States forces (including both active and reserve components) to successfully execute the national military strategy.

If I've never read a National Military Strategy in my life and I'm trying to imagine what it should look like from reading the law, this is the section I'm going to focus on. Strategy -- as we've discussed many times -- is about means, ways, and ends. Objectives, of course, are the ends. Concepts of operation and force employment are the ways. Capabilities and resources are the means. You work backwards from what you need to accomplish (ends), figure out the mechanisms through which those things are accomplished (ways), and then identify and budget for the necessary tools (means). So yeah, an assessment of the adequacy of your capabilities is pretty freakin' important to understanding the risk you accept when implementing a particular strategy. More on that in a second.

(H) Assessment of the capabilities, adequacy, and interoperability of regional allies of the United States and or other friendly nations to support United States forces in combat operations and other operations for extended periods of time.

Probably shouldn't shock us that there's no assessment of partner forces' ability to support U.S. operations when there's not even an assessment of U.S. capabilities.

(3)(A) As part of the assessment under this subsection, the Chairman, in conjunction with the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commanders of the unified and specified commands, shall undertake an assessment of the nature and magnitude of the strategic and military risks associated with successfully executing the missions called for under the current National Military Strategy.

This is a separate subsection of the bit that pertains to the NMS; it's not something that is mandated for inclusion in the report, but a task the Chairman is expected to perform as a part of the broader review process. There's nothing that says he has to put the results of this assessment down on paper, but it sure would be nice to know, huh? Of course, in order to perform an assessment of strategic and military risk vis-a-vis the current strategy, you have to have a real strategy, right? You have to have clearly outlined missions, right? As should be pretty plain by now, that seems to be a bridge too far.

So what did we get? Well, we got plenty of meaningless boilerplate like "Leadership is how we exercise the full spectrum of power to defend our national interests and advance international security and stability." We got a restatement of a whole bunch of vague principles of national security and military force. We got a paean to the power of the interagency. We got a potentially meaningful hint that the outgoing Chairman sees a need to rebalance our military posture in favor of traditional missions and away from the sort of manpower-intensive land wars represented by current operations. But we didn't get real strategy. Here's how the document concludes:

This strategy is derived from a thorough assessment of the strategic environment and how to advance our national interests within it. It describes how the Joint Force will redefine America’s military leadership by enabling whole-of-nation approaches to address national security challenges. It calls for a broad portfolio of leadership approaches – facilitator, enabler, convener, and guarantor - to address problems that are truly international in nature. Our leadership approaches magnify the capabilities we possess, making them just as important to assuring favorable outcomes. Our ability to lead will determine how well we advance America’s interests through this strategic inflection point.

Um, right. So we use leadership to assure our interests. Which we advance to assure our leadership. Uh, and so on.

Congress should really be outraged about the whole thing. Presumably they enact laws for a reason, and they should either insist upon their satisfaction or take them off the books. Do I think this disappointingly shallow public-relations document represents the entirety of the U.S. military's efforts to think through global challenges, develop appropriate capabilities, and do the real scutwork of strategy development? No, I don't. But the weakness of this statutorily-mandated review is emblematic of a bigger, more meaningful failure in that regard, and the failure of Congress to perform due oversight helps to perpetuate that failure.