The tip of a really idiotic iceberg

Over time, working in or around the defense bureaucracy inures you to stupidity, contradiction, and doublespeak. That's the only explanation I can give for not having already written about the proposed "empowerment" of the National Guard Bureau (by elevating its chief to membership in the Joint Chiefs of Staff), an idea so prosaically and unremarkably dumb that until last night -- when Twitter started throwing a collective wobbly about the whole thing -- it never even occurred to me to try to explain its fundamental bankruptcy. And maybe I'll get to that at some point, but for right now I want to talk about something that's way more important: the Defense Department can't even decide on the appropriate acronym for its own name.

It's possible that there are people in the world who identify me as marginally overconcerned with taxonomy and the doctrinal lexicon (which is a totally separate condition from typography nerd-ism, with which I am also afflicted). If you don't know what that means, I'll tell you in clearer terms: I like to whine about people using words and acronyms incorrectly. And I'm a particularly careful observer of the strange brand of pseudo-English spoken in the Pentagon. So when my friend Jon Rue asked this morning if I could clarify whether "DOD" or "DoD" is the appropriate form, I was happy to answer. The only problem is that there isn't a good answer, and that's where my desensitization apologia above comes in: somehow, this seems totally normal to me.

You might not have known this, but the U.S. military has its own dictionary. It's called Joint Publication (JP) 1-02, the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms. The simplest way to explain it is this: JP 1-02 takes all the terms and acronyms included in the various joint doctrinal publications and puts them in one place. If you're conversant in such things, you'll know from the title that the dictionary itself is a joint doctrinal manual; that means it's authoritative.

The preface of the manual lays out its scope and purpose: it "sets forth standard US military and associated terminology to encompass the joint activity of the Armed Forces of the United States," and the terms included "constitute approved Department of Defense (DOD) terminology for general use by all DOD components." To be even more clear:

This publication applies to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Services, the Joint Staff, combatant commands, DOD agencies, and all other DOD components. It is the primary terminology source when preparing correspondence, to include policy, strategy, doctrine, and planning documents. [Emphasis mine.]

That seems to just about settle it, right? JP 1-02 applies to everyone, and it's your primary source document for pretty much all writing, right? If you need to know the Department's position on the meaning of a specific term or acronym, you go to the dictionary: JP 1-02.

So what does 1-02 have to say about abbreviating the Department's name? Check out page A-45: it's DOD. This makes a lot of sense, seeing as the Pentagon refers to other Departments using the same format: DOS, DOJ, etc. (Curiously, the Department of the Navy is referred to as DON, while the Department of the Army is just DA. Don't ask me. Perhaps avoidance of "DOA" is self-explanatory.) So there you have it: DOD, simple as.

Oh, but not so fast, my friends. Department of Defense Instruction (DoDI/DODI) 5025.12, which is LULZily titled "Standardization of Military and Associated Terminology," uses "DoD" throughout. So does every other Department of Defense issuance (ppt) -- all other DoDIs and DoD Directives (DoDDs), plus Pubs, Manuals, Administrative Instructions, and Memorandums (sic; yep, that's correct DoD usage, too). You know what else uses "DoD"? DoD 5110.04-M, the "DoD Manual for Written Material."

THE DOD MANUAL FOR WRITTEN MATERIAL AND THE DOD INSTRUCTION ON STANDARDIZATION OF MILITARY AND ASSOCIATED TERMINOLOGY BOTH USE A DIFFERENT FORM THAN THE DOD DICTIONARY OF MILITARY AND ASSOCIATED TERMS. YA RLY.

Want to hear something even more awesome? The "Writing Style Guide and Preferred Usage for DoD Issuances" document (pdf), hosted on "The Official Department of Defense Web Site [sic] for DoD Issuances" and based on a memo from Bob Gates's executive secretary that Spencer Ackerman wrote about earlier this year (in a post called "Pentagon Issues Bitchy Acronym Memo (PIBAM)"), and which is a good quick-reference if you slept through 8th grade language arts, completely elides the whole dispute, noting only that "the acronyms 'DoD,' 'OSD,' and 'U.S.' do not need to be established upon first use." (The document also features a lowercase-o "DoD" in the ALL CAPS TITLE on the first page, not to mention specifying use of "website" in spite of the inclusion of "Web Site" in the header of the website/web site/Web Site on which it is hosted.)

But here's the absolute best part:

3. RESOURCES FOR WRITING DoD ISSUANCES. Use the resources in priority order below when you have questions on English usage, writing style, format, content, and organization of DoD issuances.

a. The Issuance Process

(1) Format, content, and organization Standards for each type of issuance.

(2) Frequently Asked Questions. [on the host website]

(3) Common Mistakes. [on the host website]

(4) DoD 5110.4-M, “DoD Manual for Written Material.”

(5) JP 1-02.

That's right, the authoritative "primary terminology source" that is codified in joint doctrine, the Department's dictionary -- JP 1-02 -- is only to be consulted if a conclusive answer cannot be found in a different DoD/DOD issuance... which in this case happens to offer a contradictory answer.

As if all of that wasn't bad enough, an older version of the usage guide included this provision:

The following acronyms and abbreviations may be used as adjectives only: U.S., DoD, POTUS, SecDef, DepSecDef, CJCS, VCJCS, DJS, VDJS, JCS, JS. Spell the terms out when using them as nouns.

So "DoD issuances" but "documents issued by the Department of Defense." (Or something.) The current version has eliminated that bit; now it only applies to "United States/U.S."

If you're still reading, quit. You've already thought about this for ten minutes longer than anyone else in the Pentagon. Which, in case you're wondering, seems like a safe substitute ("Pentagon," that is) for any of the various titles, acronyms, initialisms, or other forms of address used to collectively refer to the organizations and personnel who work in, around, beneath, or in connection with that building, and which/who seem incapable of conclusively deciding on what to call themselves.

Wait, I've got one last acronym for you: FML.

A telling headline: Defense and foreign policy

There's a profile of Michele Flournoy, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, in today's Washington Post. Reaction to the piece on Twitter has been universally positive, at least among the people I follow, and it's little surprise: Flournoy is a great defense policy mind and an effective leader, and her success sets a great example for the next generation of women in the field. I think she's generally done a good job, though I could come up with some inside-baseball complaints that wouldn't hold much significance for people outside the Pentagon.

But you know me: there's always a down-side. For this piece, it's the headline:

Michele Flournoy, Pentagon's highest-ranking woman, is making her mark on foreign policy

No one could quibble with the accuracy of the statement. But it may be worth reflecting for a moment on the fact that we've grown so accustomed to the modern Defense Department's coequal if not primary role in the formulation and execution of foreign policy that there's scarcely a mention of the fact that this isn't the way our government is designed to work.

This isn't a shot at Flournoy -- if she hadn't "made her mark on foreign policy," she'd probably have been fired by now for failing to do her job. No, it's but a wistful recollection of the days when the men and women who wanted to direct foreign policy -- the Nitzes and Kennans and Achesons -- did so at the State Department, when our national leaders recognized that armed force and the plentiful resources that backed it were but one of several tools that the country used to assure its interests around the world.

Without getting into the whole "should we cut off aid to Pakistan?" thing...

Let's talk for a second about the much-ballyhooed suspension by the U.S. of about $800M in military aid to Pakistan. The Los Angeles Times' Alex Rodriguez asked a couple of Pakistanis how these developments would impact the relationship between Washington and Islamabad, and unsurprisingly they had all sorts of dire predictions. Some folks went even further; though the aid pause is likely to have little effect on ongoing military operations,

Politically, however, it would be damaging to the relationship, said Pakistan's former ambassador to the United States, retired Major-General Mehmood Durrani said [sic], reflecting a widespread view in Pakistan that it was fighting America's war, for which Washington must reimburse it. 

"This is something that they have to pay, and if they don't then it's breach of agreement and breach of trust," he said.

Leaving aside the genuine, knee-slapping hilarity of being accused of breach of trust by representatives of the Pakistani security establishment, let's focus on exactly why this pause is happening: because the recipient is not meeting the conditions of the aid. I'm not talking generally about double-dealing, supporting anti-coalition insurgency, leaking sensitive operational information and intelligence, etc., but about the specific conditions of the aid that's being held up in this specific instance.

We're talking about two types of aid here: equipment and associated training on the one hand (the monetary value of which in this case is said to be about $500M), and reimbursement for counterinsurgency operations (totaling about $300M) on the other. When you see the $800M figure cited, that's not cash aid, but a combination of materiel and reimbursement funds.

There are two main reasons the aid is being withheld, and they're both very simple. One is that Pakistan is lately making a habit of denying visas to the U.S. military and contractor personnel that will train Pakistani security forces on the employment, maintenance, and long-term sustainment of the military equipment purchased for them with grant aid. When a country buys U.S. military equipment (or has it given to them as grant aid), it doesn't get to just sign for the crate. We're going to make sure you know how to use and maintain the damned thing correctly, that you're not going to waste our money by breaking it right after you tear off the wrapping paper, that you're not going to drive it without oil or try to fire the wrong projectile or strip it down and put on counterfeit rotor blades so you can sell the originals and pocket the difference, and so on. The USG wants reasonable assurances that its aid will actually be useful in serving its intended purpose, and this training (and associated long-term contractor logistics support) is one of the ways it gets those assurances. So it's simple: no visas, no trainers and support personnel, no stuff.

The second reason for the aid holdup is even more straightforward: Coalition Support Funds are meant to reimburse partner nations for military operations they've undertaken in support of U.S. forces*, but reimbursement is contingent on, you know, actually proving that you've conducted those operations. There's a method for the partner government to substantiate its expenses and have them validated by the Combatant Command before the USG just signs away the cash; by all accounts the Pakistanis have been resolute in their refusal to submit to the process.** So no, General Durrani, it's not "something that they have to pay" -- it's something that we've said we'll pay... just as long as you go ahead and meet your own obligations. But if that's too much trouble, ok, cool, fine with us. If you don't want to show daddy your report card, you're not gonna get your allowance.

There's a whole big-picture conversation we could have about whether or not it makes sense to provide military, development, and/or economic assistance to Pakistan, whether it advances our security aims, whether it provides us with any influence in the region, etc. But I want to make it clear that that's a whole different subject. This isn't happening because the USG is having second thoughts about the utility of the whole Pakistani aid program. The government is simply refusing to carry on with business as usual so long as the Pakistanis reject the long-standing conditions of these two types of aid.

When analysts and media talk about strained relations and the long-term prospects for cooperation, and about how aid could be resumed if Pakistan shows more aggressiveness against militancy and so on, they're just parroting the age-old talking points about the relationship and failing to explain to you just exactly what it is that this news is all about.

* Just for the record, Pakistan is the recipient of more than 80% of total CSF, and has gotten something like seven and a half billion dollars in reimbursements since FY02 (pdf).

** To be fair, the Pakistanis aren't the only ones responsible for this state of affairs: a 2008 GAO report (pdf) -- you really ought to read it in full if you care about this subject -- found that the Defense Department was not abiding by its own guidance on CSF oversight, which requires that reimbursement claims "contain quantifiable information that indicates the incremental nature of support (i.e., above and beyond normal operations), validation that the support or service was provided, and copies of invoices or documentation supporting how the costs were calculated." To put it even more bluntly, it was standard DoD practice until recently to simply write a check in response to Pakistani reimbursement claims without doing any of the analysis required to effectively steward taxpayer dollars.

Why not "Momentum III"?

Does anyone know who names campaign phases? Like what actual office in DOD assigns the official names? Because I'd never seen them before yesterday, when the Pentagon announced that new campaign stars were authorized for additional phases in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Here's part of the press release:

The additional campaign phase and associated dates established for the [Iraq Campaign Medal] is:
                        •  New Dawn - Sept. 1, 2010 through a date to be determined.

Six other phases, previously identified, include:
                        •  Liberation of Iraq - March 19, 2003 to May 1, 2003.
                        •  Transition of Iraq - May 2, 2003 to June 28, 2004.
                        •  Iraqi Governance - June 29, 2004 to Dec. 15, 2005.
                        •  National Resolution - Dec. 16, 2005 to Jan. 9, 2007.
                        •  Iraqi Surge - Jan. 10, 2007 to Dec. 31, 2008.
                        •  Iraqi Sovereignty - Jan. 1, 2009 to August 31, 2010 

The additional campaign phase and associated dates established for the [Afghanistan Campaign Medal] is:
                        •  Consolidation III - Dec. 1, 2009 through a date to be determined.

Three other phases, previously identified, include:
                        •  Liberation of Afghanistan - Sept. 11, 2001 to Nov. 30, 2001
                        •  Consolidation I - Dec. 1, 2001 to Sept. 30, 2006
                        •  Consolidation II - Oct. 1, 2006 to Nov. 30, 2009

The Iraq phase names make some sense, though I think "National Resolution" and "Iraqi Surge" are both a bit goofy. (Are we naming them as phases of the U.S. campaign, or based on host nation political transformation, or what? Seems like both.)

But Afghanistan... seriously? Consolidation I-III? Couldn't we do a better job with this? Like, for example:

• Bombing the Piss out of the Taliban - Sept. 11, 2001 to Nov. 30, 2001
• Escape from Tora Bora - Dec. 1, 2001 to Dec. 31, 2001
• General Indifference - Jan. 1, 2002 to March 18, 2003
• Economy of Force - March 19, 2003 to Nov. 30, 2009
• The Good War - Dec. 1, 2009 to June 21, 2011
• The Expensive, Disappearing War - June 22, 2011 through a date to be determined

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.

Are you coming up with some proposals for me to send around?

Yesterday afternoon, Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic unearthed what is almost certainly the most awesome Rumsfeld "snowflake" of all time. (This got some play in Politico's "Morning Defense" today -- though in true traditional media fashion, it was unsourced; I guess it's possible Phil Ewing just stumbled over it on the same day -- so I assume a lot of people are picking up on it. To those of you who have seen this already: sorry. But not that sorry. This will never get old.) Here it is, reproduced in full:

If for some reason you can't read/see this, here's the text:

April 7, 2003 11:46 AM 

TO: Doug Feith 

FROM: Donald Rumsfeld 

SUBJECT: Issues w/Various Countries 

We need more coercive diplomacy with respect to Syria and Libya, and we need it fast. If they mess up Iraq, it will delay bringing our troops home. [Ed.: LULZ!] 

We also need to solve the Pakistan problem. 

And Korea doesn't seem to be going well. 

Are you coming up with proposals for me to send around? 

Thanks.

I wish I could say I'd never gotten similarly vague email "direction" at work, but I'd be lying. But come on now: I'm not the story here.

Mr. Secretary -- Really excellent work here. You pretty much nailed down all the important security issues of the day -- really prescient stuff. I like how you didn't just stick to the fundamental roles and missions of the Defense Department, but really conceptualized your mission in an aggressive, proactive way. Drop some coercive diplomacy on that ass! Solve the Pakistan problem! And shit, come up with a Korea policy while you're at it! You know what, though? You're probably not best qualified to do that, and you've got a lot of demands on your time. Just drop all that stuff off in Dougie's inbox. Hell, what are Number Twos for?

Seriously, what kind of balls does it take to release something like this on your own promotional website? Probably about the same enormous balls it takes to imagine that the Secretary of Defense (or the Under Secretary, really) should be the lead on solving foreign policy problems, I guess. It's no wonder Rumsfeld wasn't interested in spending a whole lot of time fiddling with stability operations in Iraq -- he had foreign policy to conduct!

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.

If you're interested in any IRAQI FREEDOM, get it by 01SEP2010 (UPDATED)

According to a memo from the SECDEF to GEN Petraeus, that's when Operation IRAQI FREEDOM will cease to be known by that name. Get ready for Operation NEW DAWN. The switch is timed to coincide with the changing mission for U.S. forces in Iraq, and "presents opportunities to synchronize strategic communications initiatives, reinforce our commitment to honor the Security Agreement, and recognize our evolving relationship with the Government of Iraq."

Interestingly, publishers and headline writers (not to mention the Obama Administration) have been using the hell out of the expression "new dawn" since at least 2004, and the GoI's Arabic name for what we called Operation PHANTOM FURY (the Fallujah offensive) was al-Fajr: "the dawn."

UPDATE: Here's the text of the memo, via Mike Allen via Jake Tapper of ABC. For what it's worth, Tapper was reporting this as an "exclusive" at 6:37 p.m. yesterday. You heard it here first!

Don't hate the player, hate the game

If you're worried about the military spending money on beer and snacks for members of Congress on overseas trips, then don't just push for members to disclose expenditures of their uniformed escorts -- put an end to Congressional boondoggles altogether (or stop using senior servicemembers to book travel and do other logistics work for you)!

Military officials bought thousands of dollars worth of alcohol, food and other amenities for the U.S. lawmakers they accompanied on trips overseas, travel records viewed by The Wall Street Journal show.

The documents don't show these outlays have secured any favors or favoritism from lawmakers. And the funds spent by military personnel—which ran about $4,300 per trip for the 43 trips examined by the Journal—usually account for only a small portion of the total lawmakers spend on overseas travel.

Instead, the records shed light for the first time on how the military exploits its official escort role on these trips to foster relationships with lawmakers who approve departmental budgets and top appointments. The disclosures also underscore the military's pervasive pursuit of congressional access.

Indeed, the military aides who accompany lawmakers overseas are usually the same people who lobby Congress at home; their offices are in buildings shared with lawmakers.

If you think that O-6s go to Wal-Mart to buy Oreos for Chris Dodd so that FCS will get funded, as part of a "pervasive pursuit of congressional access," you're out of your damn mind. Military liaisons to Congress are professionals doing a job they've been told to do; you'd see the exact same behavior if they were escorting general officers instead of members of Congress. (Hell, you'd see the same behavior if they were escorting American mayors who had nothing to offer them!) Here's the opinion of someone close to me who has been on Congressional travel:

The escorts see Member travel as an opportunity to demonstrate excellence, and in so doing build confidence and rapport. Admittedly, in the wacky world of Congress, confidence and rapport can lead to funding, but can you begrudge the military for wanting to demonstrate core capabilities to decision makers? I particularly hate the use of the word “exploits” in the original quote; any number of synonyms would completely change the tone.

Well, can you? How about let's worry about the bigger problem: members of Congress running around on "fact-finding trips" all over the world on the taxpayer dime with only the thinnest of legislative justifications?

Let there be light, so that I can kill you with it

Tonight's big story is that Trijicon, a U.S. defense contractor, has been stamping letter and number sequences that refer to Bible verses on the ACOG sights they've been supplying to the U.S. military for years.

The inscriptions are subtle and appear in raised lettering at the end of the stock number. Trijicon's rifle sights use tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, to create light and help shooters hit what they're aiming for.

Markings on the Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight, which is standard issue to U.S. special operations forces, include "JN8:12," a reference to John 8:12: "Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, 'I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life,'" according to the King James version of the Bible.

The Trijicon Reflex sight is stamped with 2COR4:6, a reference to part of the second letter of Paul to the Corinthians: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ," the King James version reads.

Photos posted on a Defense Department Web site show Iraqi forces training with rifles equipped with the inscribed sights.

The Defense Department is a major customer of Trijicon's. In 2009 alone, the Marine Corps signed deals worth $66 million for the company's products. Trijicon's scopes and optical devices for guns range in cost from a few hundred dollars to $13,000, according to the company's Web site.

Look, I understand the concern here: we don't want it to look like there's any kind of crusading Christian message associated with our operations in Muslim lands. I absolutely agree with that. But seriously, is this something that's worth getting all that worked up about? I'm no Jesus jammer -- hell, I'm precisely the opposite! -- but I just can't spend a whole lot of energy worrying about this. Is an Arabic or Pashto speaker going to worry that "JN8:12" means that the dirty infidel is coming to conquer his lands and convert his people? (If he's been watching Ann Coulter, he's already worried.)

And here's the thing that no one seems to be mentioning: the two inscriptions that are mentioned in the Post article refer to verses dealing with illumination, which is what a tritium night sight is meant to provide! Maybe I'm a little too unserious, but these verses almost strike me as a bit of a joke: may God and this piece of highly sophisticated machinery shine the light on my enemy so that I may smite him!

Gates sticking around "for AT LEAST another year"

As if we thought the guy would walk out in the middle of the job. This from Mike Allen's Playbook on Politico this morning:

GATES STAYING ANOTHER YEAR -- Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell last evening, in response to an inquiry from AP: “Secretary Gates met with the President just before Christmas and gave him a commitment to stay on the job for AT LEAST another year. They agreed to revisit this issue again later this year, but for all intents and purposes their original agreement still stands: he serves at the pleasure of the President indefinitely and he is honored to do so, though he certainly looks forward to one day retiring to his family home in the Pacific Northwest.”

He's been looking forward to one day retiring to his family home in the Pacific Northwest AT LEAST since he spoke to my undergrad senior history seminar nine years ago. So good luck with all that!

2/101 set for Afghanistan next summer

As Tintin noted in comments a couple of weeks ago, 2nd BCT of the 101st Airborne Division is headed to Afghanistan next summer, along with 2,400 additional support troops. The DoD just made the announcement today. This brings us to (I think) 22,000 personnel identified out of the additional 30,000 the president announced on December 1st.

But dudes, listen, sometimes there are real emergencies. No, like REAL ones, not the ones the Republicans call "emergencies"!

President Obama told everybody back in February that the Pentagon was done with "budgetary sleight-of-hand." No more "emergency supplementals"! The regular ol' budget is going to include "the full cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan"! After all, we've been fighting for almost eight years, so we ought to know what it costs by now... right?

Let's ask Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell:

Q Geoff, correct me if I'm wrong here, but when President Obama took office in January, wasn't one of his stated goals -- a promise, if you will -- to not have any more war supplemental funding from the Pentagon? Was it a mistake to make that kind of a promise when he hasn't even gotten through a year without doing that?

MR. MORRELL: I seem to recall the statements to that effect. I mean, I think it's -- and that's perfectly reasonable. This administration has made a commitment I've seen it -- and I think you've seen it -- follow through on, which is that they wanted to fund the wars, you know, through a budget process that -- through the same budget process that we looked at for the base budget. So while it wasn't technically part of the base budget, both those numbers were sent to the Hill simultaneously, and the overseas contingency operations fund and the base budget were scrutinized in the same way, by the same committees, on the same timetable. And that remains the case to this day.

Now, obviously there have been developments that have taken place. There's been
a decision -- an extraordinary decision to surge additional forces in. That is the -- that would require emergency funding. And I think the administration, the White House, OMB, this department, are in the process of trying to determine how best -- how best to fund those operations. I don't know that a decision has been made as to whether it will require an additional supplemental, whether there will be an -- you know, whether you will amend something that, you know -- any of the budget bills that are currently up on the Hill. I don't know. They're the best people to address that to.

But I think the president's commitment to having the Congress be able to scrutinize the Defense budget, the war budgets in a very deliberate way remains strong to this day. And -- but I think -- I don't think the commander in chief has ever taken an option that he has off the table.

I don't think there was ever a promise, a determination that you would never perhaps fund things through emergency funding. Things happen that sometimes require that you fund them in extraordinary ways. But let's see what they ultimately determine as to the way ahead.

"Look, obviously there have been developments that have taken place. We could never have accounted for that! I mean, aren't emergencies like this the reason we fund the wars through emergency supplementals?"

[Psst! Hey Geoff! Can I have a word?]

"Oh, wait. I've just been told we're not in the business of doing emergency supplementals anymore. So let me get back to you on the yet-to-be-determined 'extraordinary ways' that might be required to fund this genuine emergency."

I wonder if Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand will follow in what we might call a domino effect

Secretary Gates hosted an honor cordon to welcome Vietnam's Minister of National Defense General Phung Quang Thanh to the Pentagon yesterday at lunchtime.

What are the chances this is happening with Abdul Rahim Wardak's successor in 2050? (Prediction: low.)

If you're actually interested in the subject of U.S.-Vietnam defense relations instead of me scoring cheap rhetorical points about Afghanistan, check out this Q&A from CSIS. I'm not, really, but still found it to be genuinely informative and useful. (See, I can say good things about think tank products!)

Yes, Geoff, it's a serious question

This exchange took place during Geoff Morrell's press briefing yesterday. (You've got to sort of fight through the garbled question, but you get the idea.)

Q As far as Afghanistan war is concerned, many, many think tanks are having discussions and also assessments, are bringing high-class experts, including Wesley Clark and others. What they are saying is that including President Obama and secretary of State and secretary of Defense -- that at peak of -- center of terrorism is not Afghanistan or enemies are not Afghanistan but in Pakistan. But why the war is going on in Afghanistan?

MR. MORRELL: Well, this, I mean -- I mean, are you serious? Is this a serious question?

Q That's what they are saying -- really, why they are fighting the war --

MR. MORRELL: We're fighting in Afghanistan because we were attacked from Afghanistan on 9/11. I'm not going to go re-litigate the history of why we're in Afghanistan at this hour.

Well maybe you ought to, dude.

Obviously we all understand why the war isn't happening in Pakistan: that country has a government that is capable of preventing us from operating on its territory (or that would, at the very least, object to something like that). Afghanistan does not. So terrorist safe-havens and ungoverned territory and blah blah blah. But the fact of the matter remains that those who are responsible for the 9/11 attacks are IN PAKISTAN. Al-Qaeda is currently based IN PAKISTAN. The major threat to South Asian regional stability is IN PAKISTAN.

Can we stop dealing in facile cliches like "we're fighting in Afghanistan because we were attacked from there"? Yeah, we were attacked from there, so we fought there. In 2001-2002. And then the guys who attacked us weren't there anymore. So why are we still fighting there?

There are good answers to this question. There are even good twenty-second answers that can be given in a press conference. Maybe try this one on for size: "As the President made clear during his speech back in March, our goal is to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent their return. Abandoning Afghanistan to the Taliban, who lest we forget were the state sponsors of the same al-Qaeda terrorists who killed 3,000 Americans just eight years ago, would allow terrorist organizations the freedom of movement and material resources they require to strike at Americans around the world. We're not going to permit that to happen."

Seriously, I don't even buy this and I came up with it in about ten seconds. So maybe stop being so effing glib and acknowledge that not everyone is quite so willing to accept your first principles and Ethical Appeal.* I know you can't be laying all this out every single day, but it's a well-intentioned question and it deserves a serious answer. Yes, mouthpiece of the Defense Department, it is possible for someone to be seriously curious about why we're fighting a war in a separate country from our main enemy.

*(To better make sense of this little bit of rhetorical cunning, see David Foster Wallace: "What the Ethical Appeal amounts to is a complex and sophisticated 'Trust me.' It's the boldest, most ambitious, and also most distinctively American of rhetorical Appeals, because it requires the rhetor to convince us not just of his intellectual acuity or technical competence but of his basic decency and fairness and sensitivity to the audience's own hopes and fears." And dude, consider this: maybe we're not so convinced of all that when it comes to our government.)

Loren Thompson to the rescue again!

We can always count on him for a great partisan-right or pro-industry quote, whatever the subject! This time he makes an appearance in an important article in Defense News about the Obama administration's failure to fill a number of senior positions in the acquisition apparatus at both the departmental and service levels.

"The hidden message in the Pentagon personnel data is that this White House really doesn't care much about defense," said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute. "The picture I get from all this is that President Obama's main security goal is just to keep defense off the front page. As long as the Pentagon doesn't present him with any political problems, he's content to focus on his domestic agenda and let military matters drift."

Honestly, what a freakin' joker. You really think that's the hidden message, huh? To "keep defense off the front page"? I mean, they must be doing a hell of a job, because as far as I can tell, defense never ends up on the front page these days.

Oh, wait, that's actually completely backwards: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are prominently featured in the news; everyone's talking about the appointment of GEN McChrystal and the associated proliferation of strategic assessments and reviews; the rise to prominence of counterinsurgency doctrine gets a lot of ink; more people know what the QDR is than ever before; and Secretary Gates has been fighting a highly-publicized campaign against established defense industry and Congressional interests to reshape the structure of our force and its strategic direction.

But otherwise, it's pretty much all been about welfare and bailouts and other commie stuff.

Good thing Dr. Thompson's got a new blog, where you'll no doubt find more incisive political analysis like this.

McNamara's next chance at redemption

Robert McNamara’s obituary in the New York Times is not half as interesting as the comments beneath it. Roughly four in five comments are on the verge of, or plainly, hateful. I agree this is not necessarily a very good measure of public opinion (readers are more likely to chime in when they are outraged than when they have something nice to say), but it bears the interesting question as to why McNamara, despite his repeated attempts to apologize for his admitted mistakes during his time as Secretary of Defense, never was able to convince. In Errol Morris’s The Fog of War, he suggested that he had been found guilty of, more than anything, losing the Vietnam War:

“We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo — men, women and children. LeMay said, ‘If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.’ And I think he’s right. He — and I’d say I — were behaving as war criminals. What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?”

But that’s not quite enough. I wonder if it if not precisely McNamara’s apologies that prompted so much contempt and despisal against him. In his memoirs published fourteen years ago, he did not merely admit to having made mistakes : he acknowledged that he knew these were mistakes at the time he was making them. This is what made In Retrospect read like a Greek tragedy: it pictured a man who knew he was damned but went through his ordeal as best as he could nonetheless. McNamara described himself as being put in a situation where there were no good options, and all decisions made would fall short of satisfying anyone. In his own memoirs, Clark Clifford described a McNamara on the verge of nervous breakdown by the end of his tenure : he was, reportedly, close to tears while telling his successor at the Defense Department, during a meeting in February 1968 : “We simply have to end this thing. I just hope you can get hold of it. It is out of control”.

Much more than his early recommendations to increase the American commitment in Vietnam, it seems to me that the reason why, forty years later, people can not forgive McNamara is the fact that once he understood—as he very clearly did—that there was no way to win the war, he did not do more to stop it. This is as much a criticism of McNamara (who, to be fair, certainly did try, on several occasions, to convey his doubts to Johnson) as of the decision-making process at the time. I remember being startled reading the notes taken during a working lunch with Dean Rusk, McNamara, Clark Clifford, Nick Katzenbach, Bill Bundy, Walt Rostow, Harry McPherson, and Joe Califano in February 1968 (the main item on the agenda was Westmoreland’s request for 205,000 more troops), which concluded with : “General impression: prevailing uncertainty. Radically different proposals were offered and debated, none rejected out of hand. […].We are at a point of crisis. McNamara expressed grave doubts over military, economic, political, diplomatic and moral consequences of a larger force buildup in SVN. Q[uestion] is whether these profound doubts will be presented to President.”

I wonder if Johnson, had he lived, would have received such scorn forty years later. I doubt he would have apologized like McNamara did, but who knows? (there was not a hint of it in The Vantage Point, but that was only a few years after he stepped down from the re-election campaign ; time may have given him more opportunity to reflect). People have forgiven Kennedy for his stepping up of the American involvement in Vietnam ; Nixon went down in shame, but for reasons that have nothing to do with the Vietnam War—even though more Americans died in Asia between 1970 and 1975, long after McNamara was gone, than during the six years that preceded. McNamara’s last major sin, it seems, is to have lived until 93 (again, the New York Times readers’ comments are quite telling in this regard) while so many of those he sent to war did not. Reaching such a venerable age was also McNamara’s damnation, for he could see the titanic effect the Vietnam war had on American policy, military, and culture for the decades to follow.

In my humble opinion, In Retrospect should be mandatory reading for all the current best and brightest whose analysis or recommendations feed into the decisions made in times of war.

New additions to the Defense Policy Board (UPDATED)

Via SWJ: Secretary Gates today announced several new additions to the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee. They include:

Gen. (Ret) Larry Welch, former Air Force chief of staff ; Stephen Biddle, Council on Foreign Relations; Richard Danzig, former secretary of the Navy; Robert Gallucci, former assistant secretary of state; Chuck Hagel, former senator from Nebraska; Robert D. Kaplan, Center for a New American Security; Andrew Krepinevich, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments; Rudy deLeon, former deputy secretary of defense; John Nagl, Center for a New American Security; Sarah Sewall, Harvard University; Wendy Sherman, former special advisor to the President.

It's hard to miss the fact that a lot of these people are associated with CNAS, and there's a fairly heavy dose of COIN-centrism. Nagl is the president of CNAS and was on the writing team for FM 3-24; Danzig's on the board; Kaplan is a senior fellow; Sewall wrote the introduction to the popular University of Chicago edition of the COIN field manual; Krepinevich is a vocal advocate of a bifurcated ground force, with one part dedicated to high-intensity conventional conflict and the other to stability operations and advising; Biddle provides the COIN expertise at CFR; Sherman doesn't seem to have any official links to CNAS but recently moderated a panel at their conference (and her boss, Madeleine Albright, is on the board); etc etc etc.

We've already seen Michelle Flournoy end up as USD(P), Kurt Campbell was recently confirmed as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Colin Kahl, Vikram Singh, Shawn Brimley... When you see something like this, it's hard to deny the claims that CNAS is becoming Washington's "'it' think-tank." Or, as Spencer Ackerman calls it, "Obama's shadow Pentagon."

The DPB, according to its charter, "serve[s] the public interest by providing the Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary, and Under Secretary for Policy with independent, informed advice and opinion concerning major matters of defense policy. It will focus upon long-term, enduring issues central to strategic planning for the Department of Defense and will be responsible for research and analysis of topics, long or short range, addressed to it" by the Department's top three.

I, for one, am happy to see Krepinevich, Nagl, and Biddle (among others) playing a part in that conversation.

(For what it's worth, I just noticed that the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments -- of which Krepinevich is the president -- has had this on their website since June 16. Not sure what that's all about.)

UPDATE: CNAS just sent out a press release congratulating Nagl and Kaplan. We also learn that Sherman and Sewall are members of the CNAS Advisory Board (as opposed to the Board of Directors, on which Danzig serves).