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.

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?

Open Thread: National security reform (UPDATED)

The comment thread on yesterday's SOF post is starting to morph into two separate lines of discussion thanks to a couple of comments about suggested re-organization of the government to optimize irregular warfare tasks. I think that's an interesting subject and one worthy of discussion, but national security reform is a HUGE topic that spans well beyond the scope of special operations. I've decided to create a new post to discuss those and other suggested structural or organizational changes, and I encourage you to comment on it with your own ideas. I'm going to reproduce the relevant comments from the other thread here to get us started.

Mike Few kicked things off:

I'll add one problem/radical solution.

Problem. USSOCOM is more akin to FORSCOM than CENTCOM.

Solution. Move SOF to the CIA and SF to the State Department.

How would that go over for reform?

And I responded like this:

I'd say "USSOCOM is more akin to" an entire MILDEP (like the Army), not just a component like FORSCOM, because of the doctrine and concepts development, the acquisition function, etc etc that goes beyond personnel management or sourcing of forces. But yeah, I agree. Of course, this is only a "problem" if you presume that USSOCOM should have primary responsibility for the operational employment of SOF (as opposed to the relevant GCC).

When you say "move" them, I assume you mean transfer OPCON and TACON to those organizations, not uproot the entire structure from the military and re-establish it in non-DOD Departments...? Because if you do that, you've suddenly lost the linkage to the basic military skills that are at the root of many SOF capabilities. You've basically just re-created the IC's paramilitary orgs (CIA SAD, etc.) and established an operational unit under SECSTATE "command." I'm not sure what's accomplished by that.

Then an anonymous commenter jumped in with an even more radical proposal:

The CIA is a failed organization that has proven resistant to reform. Therefore, the CIA should be broken up into its constituent parts, and those parts assigned to organizations that already have clear missions and defined chains of command, as follows:

1. Transfer CIA offices and personnel operating within the United States to the FBI. The CIA was never intended to be a domestic spy agency. The FBI is designed to handle domestic intelligence operations. The FBI is measured and held accountable by its ability to catch criminals, and this accountability provides the motivation for the FBI to perform.

2. Transfer all CIA embassy activities overseas to the US Department of State. The State Department is designed to handle diplomacy. Much of what the CIA now does in its embassies involves diplomacy, such as handling relationships with liaison services. State Department officers are able to make contacts with other foreign government representatives in diplomatic venues. The State Department handled these functions prior to the creation of the CIA in 1947.

3. Transfer overseas human intelligence collection efforts to the US military. Focus case officers exclusively on the gathering of human intelligence. The fundamental motivation of the American military—to win wars and to protect the lives of its soldiers—will provide the motivation to ensure that its case officers provide the necessary intelligence and do not become distracted by soft targets or by designing programs meant to look busy and spend money. The US military already has a large corps of trained case officers, graduates of the CIA’s own training course. The US military already has a better ability to place case officers overseas in non-State Department positions. The military’s command structure is clearly defined and much flatter than the Agency’s.

We should recognize the scope of the problem: The lack of human sources of intelligence has haunted American Presidents since the foundation of the CIA in 1947.

Look up Gen. Russ Howard (former SF)

To which Mike responded:

That's the most radical organizational structure change that I've seen that would require both restructuring and changing the law.

The premise was based on the close working relationship developed between SOF/CIA over the last ten years and the habitual CoC SF/State find themselves in in most FID efforts.

Other ideas include dismantling USSOCOM and elevating an SF position in the JCS.

I've got some thoughts of my own on this proposal, but I'll save them for the comments. Hope others will join in.

UPDATE: Anybody else having problems with comment functionality today? I'm having a hell of a time getting anything to post, so I'm just going to stick my first comment up here in the main text until this gets sorted.

So it turns out that what I identified as the thoughts of an anonymous commenter were actually recommendations from Ishmael Jones’s critical book about the CIA. (I read the book a couple years ago, but apparently it didn’t stick.) Intelligence reform isn’t really my thing, but let’s take a look at these ideas as they relate to broader restructuring of the national security apparatus.

1. Transfer CIA offices and personnel operating within the United States to the FBI. The CIA was never intended to be a domestic spy agency. The FBI is designed to handle domestic intelligence operations. The FBI is measured and held accountable by its ability to catch criminals, and this accountability provides the motivation for the FBI to perform.

Could not agree more strongly with this. In fact it seems clear to me that domestic investigation and counterintelligence has been (and should always have been) the responsibility of law enforcement.

2. Transfer all CIA embassy activities overseas to the US Department of State. The State Department is designed to handle diplomacy. Much of what the CIA now does in its embassies involves diplomacy, such as handling relationships with liaison services. State Department officers are able to make contacts with other foreign government representatives in diplomatic venues. The State Department handled these functions prior to the creation of the CIA in 1947.

I’m not sure I understand exactly what Jones means here. “CIA embassy activities overseas,” in my understanding, consist basically of collection management – that is, directing the activities of case officers (intelligence collectors) in the country in question and providing reachback to resources in the U.S. – plus a certain amount of liaison with the host nation government/intelligence service in those countries where this is appropriate and practicable. (It’s possible there’s something else that I’m missing here.)

I don’t have any problem with the idea of transferring these responsibilities to the State Department, but the station chief in each embassy is meant to coordinate his activities with the Chief of Mission (ambassador) already in the current system. And the intelligence competencies possessed by the CIA stations in each country would need to be reproduced in the State Department, likely at greater cost, effort, and administrative difficulty now that you’ve organizationally separated collection from collection management. (Shouldn’t the folks running case officers have experience as case officers themselves?)

3. Transfer overseas human intelligence collection efforts to the US military. Focus case officers exclusively on the gathering of human intelligence. The fundamental motivation of the American military—to win wars and to protect the lives of its soldiers—will provide the motivation to ensure that its case officers provide the necessary intelligence and do not become distracted by soft targets or by designing programs meant to look busy and spend money. The US military already has a large corps of trained case officers, graduates of the CIA’s own training course. The US military already has a better ability to place case officers overseas in non-State Department positions. The military’s command structure is clearly defined and much flatter than the Agency’s.

I think this is a terrible, terrible idea. Jones suggests that military personnel will be more motivated to do a good job because their “fundamental motivation” is “to win wars and protect the lives of its soldiers.” But isn’t the fundamental motivation of an intelligence officer to collect intelligence, detect threats, and protect Americans? It’s simply not serious to argue that the military interests are any less bureaucratic or parochial than those of intelligence officers. Furthermore, human intelligence collection is not a core competency of the armed forces and requires a dramatically different mindset than what’s demanded by most functional specializations in the military.And as for the DOD’s “ability to place case officers overseas in non-State Department positions,” I can only assume Jones means that military officers could operate under official cover as defense attaches (who are already intelligence collectors), liaisons, or security cooperation officers. But this flies in the face of the accumulated wisdom that resulted in DATTs being expressly differentiated from SCOs: if the host nation doesn’t know who is a collector and who isn’t, everyone gets treated that way. And that ends up hampering all the cooperative efforts that military personnel in foreign countries are there to execute.
Intelligence reform may be necessary, but further militarizing our overseas presence by putting operational military personnel in every country on the globe is a cure that’s worse than the disease.

Putting the "Inter" Back into Interagency

I'm fully aware that there are many of our readers who aren't fans of Michael Cohen's work over at Democracy Arsenal. A lot of that has to do with the bad rap he got over at AM many moons ago. For those of you said he was wrong, please go read his Afghanistan Mission Creep Watch series (I've linked to it previously) and see how right he's been for the past few months.

So while he still rails on mission creep, Michael has also been doing some great writing on military dominance in the D3 world (or 3D, depending on who you work for, which stands for: Defense, Diplomacy, Development). I highly recommend reading this post and this post. A lot of this is what I was getting at in this post on AFRICOM.

Michael makes some very interesting points on the role of USAID in post-conflict reconstruction and stabilization. This mission set seems to dominate that agency's agenda these days and Michael is spot on that that's wrong.

Maybe instead of an interagency USOCO as Bowen recommends, maybe DoD should have its own reconstruction arm for post-conflict everything. Lord knows DoD has the money and then reconstruction could be drawn from Title X funds instead of AID funds. I should mention that if this were the case they should be DoD civilians, not Soldiers and/or Marines. Then USAID could stop complaining about cleaning up after the military and do their normal jobs and DoD can stop complaining that USAID doesn't do enough for them. Win - win for everyone, right? Thoughts?

Michael Cohen is Spot On

I have been tracking Michael Cohen's series, Afghanistan Mission Creep Watch (AMCW), over at Democracy Arsenal very closely. For everyone's understanding, Michael and I did not get along very well initially and I'm pretty sure I said some pretty rude things in very public forums, as have many COINdinistas. What a lot of people misunderstand about Michael (including some of my co-bloggers) is that he isn't a COINtra or anti-COIN in general (this is my take on it and surely do not speak for him). He's just against using it in the case of Afghanistan, for a couple of reasons. First is that we don't have any real strategic interests in Afghanistan due to a lack of existential threats that could be projected from there. Second is that with what the President and GEN McChrystal have said we're going to do and for how long in Afghanistan, we have not devoted enough resources to get the job done. So something has to give. His new series tracks this second case.

I can honestly say that he is 100% right in this case. He cites two interesting facts: that we don't have the civilian agency personnel and Afghan Army numbers to sustain any gains in the current operation in Helmand. Other than the fact that we're limiting air power and talking with local leaders (to what end I have no idea), this doesn't even resemble population-centric COIN as I have ever defined it. It's a clearing operation being sold as pop-COIN for some sort of PR/strat comms reason. And I have very serious doubts about the sustainability of any gains made during the op. The Dons at Kings of War are suggesting the same.

This all may work out and prove me wrong, but there doesn't seem to be the same urgency found before the Iraq "Surge" - especially from an interagency focus. Either the civilian agencies and the ANA cough up the folks needed to accomplish the mission or we shouldn't bother doing it in the first place. There's also the possibility that we're selling ourselves short on military personnel as well to do what we need and want, understanding the limitations there due to other commitments. This is all adding up to a half-assed attempt at COIN and if we do learn anything from Iraq it's that COIN can't be done half-assed.