Transforming the Military

The Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College publishes some interesting stuff. This month they published a summary of their third conference on Security Transformation, which, in my non-military understanding, means how well the military is adapting to a changing world. While the conference, which was co-sponsored by Harvard's Kennedy School and the National Defense University, was held in November 2004, the thoughts of the defense officials - current and former - and the military gurus who attended the conference are still, I think, au courant. Let's look at some of them.

Stability & Reconstruction
or, S&R in military jargon, is pretty poor. "Astonishingly, we have not found a way to build an effective S&R capability that brings together the necessary elements of organization, resources and operational control." The basic problem is that the Defense Department (DOD) seems to want to go it alone, although they really need the assistance of the State Department (remember their plans for post-Iraq?), the Justice Department, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services. "Little progress has been made since the last conference where we concluded that a better way is urgently needed for the United States to carry out peacekeeping operations." This failure to work with other agencies also negatively impacts our homeland security capabilities.

DOD Budget Outlook
The participants feel that it is unlikely that the DOD budget will continue to grow. Thus, there won't be the money to pay for some of the planned modernization programs. If that is the case, attention must be paid to the likely benefits of these programs in our changing world.

There has been a fair amount in the press about the Quadrennial Defense Review. The conference participants see this review "as having become a bureaucratic exercise in which the services and other DOD elements work to defend their programs and interests rather than a forum for examining the fundamental basis of the defense posture: the relationship of forces to likely future threats and security missions."

Changing Defense Industry
DOD relies more and more on contractors to manage programs, yet there has been little debate about the merits of this.

Congress is not helping the defense industry - and the defense of this country - by promulgating such policies as buy American, export control rules, limiting the availability of foreign scientists. And DOD's limits on technology transfer are forcing our allies to build their own weapons systems.

You wish our leaders would read some of the things the underlings - and the experts - have to say about the world in which we live.