The Project on National Security Reform was a much-ballyhooed attempt by a Congressionally funded consortium of Washington think tanks to produce a broader version of the 1988 Goldwater Nichols legislation which transformed the Department of Defense and “unified” the individual military services. The goal this time was nothing less than to “unify” the different branches of the federal government so as to avoid the kind of problems that plagued the response to Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq.
The task force’s guiding spirit was Jim Locher, who as a congressional aide wrote the Goldwater-Nichols Act. He assembled an impressive staff and set up multiple working groups. Now after more than two years year of effort by what the report describes as “more than three hundred dedicated U.S. national security executives, professionals, and scholars,” the PNSR has produced its report signed by worthies ranging from Newt Gingrich to Wes Clark and Brent Scowcroft. The executive summary can be read here. If you have a lot of time on your hands, you can read the entire 702-page report here:
Although I was supportive of the project’s work (and involved in it in a very minor way), I find the final product underwhelming. The report makes a compelling case for updating a bureaucratic structure that still largely dates from the late 1940s. But laying out the case for change is the easy part. Recommending actual change that will make a difference is a lot harder, and that’s where I think the PNSR falls short.
Its top recommendation: “we recommend the establishment of a President’s Security Council (PSC) that would replace the National Security Council and Homeland Security Council. International economic and energy policy would be handled by the PSC as well, fully integrated into U.S. political and security strategies that focus not on departmental strengths and goals but on national missions and outcomes.”
The number 2 recommendation: “To establish a coherent framework for the national security system, we recommend the issuance of an Executive Order, supplemented as necessary by presidential directives, to define the national security system, establish presidential expectations for it, and establish norms for its fundamental functions that are likely to transcend administrations.”
This is followed by a call for lots more committees producing lots more paperwork such as this: “To improve strategic planning and system management, we recommend instituting a National Security Review to be performed at the beginning of each presidential term, as directed by the new President’s Security Council.”
And, of course, lots more bureaucrats: “To enhance the performance and oversight of the national security system, we recommend the creation of an official, reporting to the director for national security, to analyze interagency operations, including real-time assessments of overall system performance and system components’ performance.”
Some of these recommendations may be useful. Others, I suspect, will only hamstring the already sclerotic bureaucracy. Whatever the merits of individual proposals, however, they do not amount to much. Certainly not to the ambitious goal stated in the project’s report: “The United States therefore needs a bold, but carefully crafted plan of comprehensive reform to institute a national security system that can manage and overcome the challenges of our time.”
After reading the PNSR’s report, I am still waiting for that “bold,” “comprehensive” reform. But now I am starting to suspect that maybe it doesn’t exist, and we will have to muddle along as best we can with a little tinkering at the margins of our existing system.
