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[H.A.S.C. No. 11127]

THE PROJECT ON NATIONAL SECURITY

REFORM: COMMENTARY AND
ALTERNATIVE VIEWS

HEARING
BEFORE THE

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION

HEARING HELD
MARCH 19, 2009

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

51105

WASHINGTON

2010

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

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OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

VIC SNYDER, Arkansas, Chairman
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina
ROB WITTMAN, Virginia
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
JIM COOPER, Tennessee
CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania
DUNCAN HUNTER, California
GLENN NYE, Virginia
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
LORRY FENNER, Professional Staff Member
THOMAS HAWLEY, Professional Staff Member
SASHA ROGERS, Research Assistant

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CONTENTS
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2009
Page

HEARING:
Thursday, March 19, 2009, The Project on National Security Reform: Commentary and Alternative Views ..........................................................................
APPENDIX:
Thursday, March 19, 2009 ......................................................................................

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THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 2009

THE PROJECT ON NATIONAL SECURITY REFORM: COMMENTARY
AND ALTERNATIVE VIEWS
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Chairman, Oversight
and Investigations Subcommittee .......................................................................
Wittman, Hon. Rob, a Representative from Virginia, Ranking Member, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee .............................................................

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WITNESSES
Destler, Dr. I.M. (Mac), Saul I. Stern Professor of Civic Engagement, Director,
Program on International Security and Economic Policy, School of Public
Policy, University of Maryland ...........................................................................
Krepinevich, Dr. Andrew F., Jr., President, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments ................................................................................................
Oleszek, Walter, Senior Specialist in American National Government, Congressional Research Service ................................................................................

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APPENDIX
PREPARED STATEMENTS:
Destler, Dr. I.M. (Mac) .....................................................................................
Krepinevich, Dr. Andrew F., Jr. ......................................................................
Oleszek, Walter .................................................................................................
Snyder, Hon. Vic ...............................................................................................
Wittman, Hon. Rob ...........................................................................................
DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING:
Dr. Snyder .........................................................................................................

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THE PROJECT ON NATIONAL SECURITY REFORM:

COMMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE VIEWS

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES,
OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE,
Washington, DC, Thursday, March 19, 2009.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:07 p.m., in room
2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Vic Snyder (chairman
of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM ARKANSAS, CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

Dr. SNYDER. The hearing will come to order. Good afternoon.

Welcome to the Subcommittee on Oversight Investigations hearing
on the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR), better known
as the Locher Project after its executive director. This is the report
itself. We all have come to the conclusion that because of the density of the paper, it is the heaviest report that we have ever encountered in some time. It is so heavy, it tends to be dangerous
when you set it down.
I wanted to hold this hearing because of this subcommittees continuing interest in interagency issues in national strategy. As we
heard Secretary Gates and others say over and over again, our national strategy in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan require, whole
of government approaches. However, the question remains, how
exactly do we do that? Some people do not think we need reform
of structures but simply better leadership. Others believe we have
good people who are working hard but our current structures and
processes, largely built in 1947 to win the Cold War, do not serve
us well now. And these structures and processes certainly wont
serve us well in the future as we face more numerous and complex
challenges.
An independent review on the subject was required by the Armed
Services Committee. The two-year project we are talking about
today was funded by both government funds, including some from
the Department of Defense, and private funds. The full study is
over 700 pages long and includes a history of the National Security
Council, and about 100 case studies that seek to identify problem
areas. More than 300 people participated in the study in one form
or another, including retired General Jim Jones, our current National Security Advisor and retired Admiral Denny Blair, our current Director of National Intelligence. Their report was delivered to
President Bush and the Congress in December.
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The Project on National Security Reform focuses on how the National Security Council (NSC), the departments and agencies and
the Congress contend with national security issues. We can all
probably acknowledge that there is a gap between the NSC and the
departments. We could call this gap the interagency space where
true whole of government action might best be achieved. However,
right now there is no structure at the interagency level that
assures integration of all the tools of national power.
The authors of this report propose strengthening the National
Security Advisor, to be called the Director for National Security,
and the National Security Council, to be called the Presidents Security Council, to fill the gap. This will have certain implications
for the rest of our national security system, including the Congress.
So I hope our witnesses can help us sort out today some of these
implications. In this report, the guiding coalition of national security professionals and thinkers have tried to make a case for urgent
and broad reforms. They argue that all their recommendations
should be taken as a whole. Some of these include creating a new
Director for National Security, instituting a QDR-like interagency
national security review, decentralizing management of national
security issues by creating interagency teams and task forces, establishing a Presidents Security Council to replace the National
and Homeland Security Councils, creating an integrated national
security budget, developing an interagency national security professional core, and establishing House and Senate Committees on National Security and strengthening the Foreign Relations and Affairs Committees.
Our panel of witnesses today, to help us sort all of these questions out in the next couple of hours, consists of Dr. Andrew
Krepinevich, President of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Analysis; Dr. Mac Destler, Director of the Program on International Security and Economic Policy at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland; and Mr. Walter Oleszek, Senior
Specialist at the Congressional Research Service.
I also want to acknowledge we have an out-of-town guest here
today, a parliamentarian from Quebec, Claude Bachand, who is a
member of the Canadian Parliament. And he is going to be with
us for a half hour or so. So we welcome you. Let us give himand
we will now turn to Rob Wittman, our ranking member, for any
comments he would like to make.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Snyder can be found in the Appendix on page 29.]
STATEMENT OF HON. ROB WITTMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE
FROM VIRGINIA, RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, members

of the panel, for being with us today. I appreciate you taking the
time to come before us and give us your thoughts on the issue that
we have before us on the Project on National Security Reform. The
subject of todays hearing is indeed a very serious matter. Since the
dawn of the 21st century, the United States has faced an ever
shifting, complex international environment. And ideally we would
have an agile national security structure able to respond to the

3
challenges as needed, but we do not. After all, the military services,
via the jointness dictated by the Goldwater-Nichols legislation is
able to task organize to meet almost any mission. But the greater
bureaucracy of the executive and legislative branches of the Federal Government have rigid, unyielding structures and processes
that sometimes struggle to organize coherent, effective responses to
national and international crises. And this weakness has been
widely recognized and studied, particularly after the intelligence
failures of September 11, 2001.
One outcome of that tragedy was the Intelligence Reform Act of
2004 which reorganized and better integrated the Intelligence
Community. Otherwise, the executive branch and congressional
committee structures were left intact. To be fair, designing the best
system to reorganize the National Security Council and half the
cabinet departments is no easy matter. The Project on National Security Reform has reviewed the interagency coordination problem
in a thoughtful, logical manner that makes a series of recommendations for the organization of both the national security apparatus and the Congress.
While we cannot single-handedly make these changes, we do
have a responsibility to start the dialogue. Our witnesses were not
part of the Project on National Security Reform effort and are well
placed to provide an impartial view of this study. Gentlemen, we
appreciate you being here today to do that for us. Now, I am grateful to have you here as distinguished witnesses before us to comment on the projects work and look forward to your testimony in
shining some light on the applicability of that project. So we appreciate that. With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the Appendix on page 32.]
Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Wittman. We are also pleased to be
joined today by another Armed Services Committee member, Adam
Smith from the State of Washington. Adam is the chairman of the
Terrorism and Unconventional Threats Subcommittee of the House
Armed Services Committee. He is also on the Intel Committee, and
for most of the last decade, has been a Member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. So he has been following a lot of these
issues very closely. Adam, if you would like to make an opening
statement, feel free.
Mr. SMITH. Certainly. Just a couple of quick comments. And I
thank Chairman Snyder for allowing me to sit in this hearing. The
report could not be more timely. I agree completely with both statements of the Chairman and the Ranking Member on the importance of interagency work. And we have certainly seen that in a
lot of the projects that we have undergone on national security in
the last several years. And my subcommittee is particularly focused
on that. We do a lot of counterterrorism work with the special operations command and you see where country by country, piece by
piece you need a lot of different sets of resources from different
agencies. And there is no formal mechanism really for pulling those
together. It has been done in an ad hoc basis.
In some cases fairly effectively. Joint Special Operations Command (JSCO), I think, has done a very effective job of pulling together the counterterrorism efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, work-

4
ing with a wide variety of different agencies. But that was really
sort of driven by the individuals who made that decision and made
it work. What we need is a more formalized structure because the
problem will not just be peculiar to Iraq and Afghanistan. It is part
of dealing with global development issues. It is a big part of dealing
with a messaging issue. I say that as I see Mac Thornberry walk
in the room. Not to do that to you, Mac, right when you walk in
the door. He was Ranking Member on my committee for the last
two years and also on Intels. He has been very focused on what
is our strategic communications strategy.
And at the end of the day, we have got about 35 or 40 different
groups or agencies that have a piece of that. It is not well coordinated and well focused. Nobody is in charge. I could go on, but I
wont because I want to hear your testimony. But the bottom-line
is the interagency piece is going to be critical to our national security strategy going forward in a number of different areas. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to say a couple of things.
Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Smith. We have also been joined by
Congressman Mac Thornberry from Texas. Through the years, Mac
and I just cannot get enough of Andy Krepinevich. He has sponsored some forums that Andy would put on about 10 years ago. We
appreciate you being here today. Mac is also a member of the Intel
committee in addition to the Armed Services Committee. Gentlemen, what we will do is begin with your opening statements. I am
going to have Dr. Fenner put the clock on. When you see a red
light flash, you should feel free to drive on through it if you think
you have some more things you need to say. But if you stay to
about the five minutes, then we can get to the members questions.
Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Krepinevich, we will start with you.
STATEMENT OF DR. ANDREW F. KREPINEVICH JR., PRESIDENT, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS

Dr. KREPINEVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As you know, I

submitted a written statement and I will summarize my remarks.
Dr. SNYDER. All written statements are a part of the record.
Dr. KREPINEVICH. Again, let me add my compliments to the efforts of the project, an impressive array of individuals, a very comprehensive report. And as also noted, a very substantial report in
many, many ways. What I would like to do is focus my five minutes
on an issue that was raised by the Project, which is the issue of
restoring the ability of the U.S. government to craft strategy competently, as well as to execute it. It has been said if you dont know
where you are going, any road will take you there. And if you dont
have a clear strategy to inform the path you have chosen to achieve
your security objectives, any structure or process will do. The need
for a good strategy, our best strategists tell us, is the greatest at
any time since the early days of the Cold War. It has been said
that you need strategy and strategic thinking most during periods
of great change. And I think the Project certainly makes the point
that we are at a period of tumultuous change, but also when resources are scarce.
As one British politician famously said about a century ago, we
are running out of money, we will have to start to think. And while

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I am a big fan of structure and a big fan of process, I am an even
bigger fan of thinking. And that is what strategy is all about.
Strategy is not just how do you apply certain means at your disposal to achieve your objectives. More specifically, it is about the
hard work of identifying, developing and exploiting sources of advantage in ways that give you the greatest leverage, in ways that
allow you to effectively achieve your objectives at minimal costs
and minimal risk. And that traditionally has been very difficult
work.
Failure to craft strategy well leads to a waste of resources, as
well as endangering our security and our well-being. Now, I have
identified in my testimony a number of barriers that I think really
compromise our ability as a government to do strategy well. One
is confusing strategy with the two polar aspects of it, one being the
goal and one being the means. An example of confusing strategy
with objectives is the Clinton Administrations national security
strategy in 2000, which said that a key element of its strategy was
preventing conflict. Well, that is not a strategy, that is an objective.
When President Bush said as they stand up, we will stand down,
that is our strategy for Iraq. That is not a strategy. That is substituting one set of means, the Iraqis, for another set of means, the
United States. That is not a strategy. So again, just a failure to understand what strategy is, even at the highest levels of government. A second is a failure to understand the enemy. To a certain
extent your strategy is trying to get your rivals, your adversaries,
your competitors and even your allies to behave in certain kinds of
ways. We have to know what motivates them. And throughout the
Cold War and even into the current period, a number of statements
indicate that oftentimes we dont understand our enemy.
Consider the fact, for example, that Lyndon Johnson after giving
a speech at Johns Hopkins University in 1965 in April in which he
proposed a Tennessee Valley Authority sort of project for the
Mekong Delta, turned after the speech and said, Old Ho cant turn
me down now. Well, he wasnt dealing with a politician from Tennessee. He was dealing with a communist revolutionary. President
Kennedys first reaction upon finding out that the Soviets were
placing nuclear missiles in Cuba was, he cant do that to me.
Well, again, a misunderstanding of the motives and the character
and the objectives of the Soviet Union at the time. In my testimony, I lay out the debate very briefly that occurred in the early
days of the Cold War between three of the wise men, the so-called
wise men, George Kennan, Paul Nitze and Chip Bohlen over the
character of the threat posed by the Soviet Union. That had a material effect on the kinds of strategy, the kinds of resources, the
whole approach of government that we took to dealing with the Soviet threat.
So again, the importance of understanding the enemy. And I
think it is one thing that we can agree upon is that we really even
now dont have a good understanding of the challenges posed by
those who seek to do us ill. A third barrier is discounting the value
of strategy. Perhaps we are too busy with the crisis du jour. Sandy
Berger famously once said that he preferred to worry about today
today and tomorrow tomorrow. Well, that may be a good way of
taking care of today, but again, you need a strategy that guides you

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not only through the current period but over the long term. Another barrier is the failure to accept that resources are limited.
I will give you a quick example here. This plays big in the Pentagon. Again, strategy seeks to balance your objectives with your
resources. In the Pentagon, they have what are called cut drills.
The defense program is always too ambitious for the defense resources. And rather than typically come up with a strategy for
dealing with that, the services continue to boost their requirements, trying to create as big a gap as possible. Why? Because the
strategy is to prevail in the cut drill. You want to be cut less than
any other service. So the more needy you look, the strategy to
make yourself look needy as opposed to the strategy to play to your
advantages to cause your rival the greatest amount of discomfort
is typically given short shrift.
Finallyand obviouslythere is bureaucratic hostility. There is
the what I callthere is certainly efforts to frustrate strategy execution, but there is also the Ben-Hur approach to developing strategy. And there are a couple of charts from the Pentagon that I put
in my testimony. It is the cast of thousands. It is the Quadrennial
Defense Review that has got panels and committees and groups
and focus groups. And that is the approach that is taken to crafting
strategy. That is not to say that we dont need a big government.
That is not to say that we dont need a big bureaucracy. But strategy is hard. It is typically done by small groups of very talented,
strategic thinkers, whether you are looking at NSC 68, the Solarium Project under Eisenhower, NSC 162/2, some of the efforts that
laid the strategic foundation that guided and informed everything
else, typically done by small groups of people. So in my testimony,
I offer a rather modest recommendation and that is to go back and
take a good hard look at what I call the Eisenhower model.
Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1997 on the 50th anniversary of the National Security Act observed that when President Kennedy disestablished Eisenhowers national security structure, he eliminated
the U.S. governments ability to do strategy at the highest levels.
Perhaps an overstatement, but certainly dont want to discount
the views of someone who was a National Security Advisor during
the Cold War and Brzezinski certainly was that. Second, the importance of the active, persistent involvement of the President. We
have reports, we have documents and we need them. President Eisenhower famously said the importance of strategic planning is not
the plan, it is the planning. The plan is almost immediately obsolete once you put it on the shelf. He said the worldand certainly
this is something the project highlightedthe world is changing in
such a dynamic way, that strategy is not something you do every
4 years. Strategy is a persistent effort that requires constant adjustment, the constant identification of new sources of advantage
that your rivals are developing and the search for new sources of
advantage in how you can apply them on your side. And so for that
reason, while some presidentsfor example, President Bill Clinton
in his first termof course, a much less dangerous periodhad
less than two dozen meetings of his National Security Council.
President Eisenhower, in his first term, had 179. And again, it
was the sense that you needed a persistent involvement on the part
of the senior leadership. In those NSC meetings, he had his prin-

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cipal advisors and he had no one else. There were no back benchers
feeding information to the Secretary of State or the Secretary of
Defense. He told these people, though, you are too busy to think
strategically at every possible moment, to devote the kind of dedication that is required. So what Eisenhower had done at the suggestion of George Marshall was to establish something called the
Planning Board. And the Planning Boardeach statutory NSC
member had a full-time person basically working on the Planning
Board. In State, it might be somebody like the Director of Policy
Planning and in Defense it might be someone like the Office of Net
Assessment Director Andrew Marshall. And these people were responsible for doing the hard work of strategy, identifying issues
and presenting them for consideration at the NSC meetings, doing
the hard thinking of strategy.
And again, Eisenhower said that, of course, you could never quite
predict the crisis. You would confront the problem when it would
manifest itself in full form. But he said the fact that you had these
regular meetings, that you were doing this diligent work of
strategizing meant that when you finally encountered that problem, you had been living with it. He and his team had been living
with it, they had an understanding of what to do. Much better than
they would have if they just sort of managed the strategy from crisis to crisis.
Finally in addition to the Planning Board, there was an Operations Coordinating Board. And this essentially was the group of
people who three months later, six months later, nine months later,
once the President made a decision would go out to the departments, to the agencies and say the President made a decision, what
are you doing to execute it. And the failure on the part of groups
or individuals or departments and agencies to comply should be an
opportunity for staff changes, if I could say so. But the idea was
to hold the bureaucracy accountable. Now, certainly there is the opportunity to organize interdepartmental groups. I think that is certainly a good idea, particularly when you look at the multidimensional aspects of the many problems we face. But again, that is not
new.
And one of the more famous examples of such a group was the
interdepartmental Special Group (Counter-Insurgency) that President Kennedy organized that was chaired by Maxwell Taylor and
Robert Kennedy to deal with the growing threat of wars of national
liberation. And you did have this interagency approach. You had
two people who had direct access to the President. And still, that
effort ultimately proved a failure. And I think the reason why was
not because of organizational structure. I think, again, it is a matter of crafting good strategy and enforcing accountability on those
who are directed to carry out the directives of the President. While
this is far from comprehensiveI only have five minutes? It is a
modest proposal. It is an area of focus. It is something that the
President can do without legislation, without any new assistant
secretaries of this or that. And it is something although modest
and certainly not as comprehensive as the Projects report, I think
has the potential to make a substantial contribution. This concludes my remarks, Mr. Chairman. I would be happy to respond to
any questions.

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Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Dr. Krepinevich.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Krepinevich can be found in the
Appendix on page 34.]
Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Destler.
STATEMENT OF DR. I.M. (MAC) DESTLER, SAUL I. STERN PROFESSOR OF CIVIC ENGAGEMENT, DIRECTOR, PROGRAM ON
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND ECONOMIC POLICY,
SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

Dr. DESTLER. Thank you very much, Chairman Snyder, Congressman Wittman, distinguished Members of Congress, it is an
honor to be here. I am happy tothere is going to be a little bit
of tension before I finish my remarks between what I am going to
argue and what my distinguished colleague has very expertly argued for. First of all, let me pay tribute to this Project. There is
an awful lot of good stuff in here and I say this as someone who
didnt participate in it. So I can be objective. And it also seems to
be relevant. Our new National Security Advisor, General Jones,
has declared that the Obama National Security Council will be dramatically different from its predecessor, with broader substantive
scope. And the President issued last month Presidential Policy Directive Number-One mandating broad participation in national security policymaking at the presidential principals and deputies levels and below.
Certainly, the needs for such reform seem undeniable. The institutions currently available to meet 21st century challenges are in
the main institutions created in the late 1940s. A very, very different world. It is hard to argue against, to quote the report, a
bold but carefully crafted plan of comprehensive reform. And the
Project on National Security Reform has devoted enormous effort
to this undertaking. Its conclusions merit serious consideration. Yet
history offers caution. And as shown by our most recent national
effort at organizational reconstruction, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, bold changes do not necessarily bring
benign results.
Let me concentrate here on the two core PNSR recommendations
that my colleague here referred to. First of all, the creation of a
Presidents Security Council to encompass not only the subjects
currently addressed by the NSC and the Homeland Security Council, but also with international economic and energy policy, fully
integrated, as well.
And the second central organization proposal is statutory creation of a Director of National Security replacing apparently the
current national security assistant or Assistant to the President for
National Security Affairs, known as the National Security Advisor,
and having this official supported by a statutory executive secretary. My credentials for arguing this are most of my lifetime
spending time at least off and on looking at these issues and recently co-publishing a book, which I will wave not because I want
you all to run out and buy it, of course, but because it actually is
the basis for my testimony. Because it is an analytic history of how
National Security Advisors from actually McGeorge Bundy onward
have handled the job and have related to their presidents. And it

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leads me, as you will see, to some skepticism about the Director of
National Security proposal.
First of all, let me talk about the Presidents Security Council.
The impressive members of the guiding coalition who signed this
report have backgrounds overwhelmingly in national security policy traditionally defined. It is, to their credit, that they see a need
for broadened jurisdiction but no one in the group so far as I can
tell has had any senior level experience in addressing economic
issues, domestic or international. Historic NSC has proved progressively less able to oversee economic issues effectively. Beginning
with Richard Nixon, Presidents have established parallel economic
policy coordination institutions outside of the NSC to handle them
with the National Economic Council established by Bill Clinton and
continued by George W. Bush and Barack Obama as the latest
manifestation.
This is no accident, because international economic issues are not
simply an extension of national security issues. They reflect a set
of challenges arising from a different set of forces, processes and
institutions. They are at least as much linked to domestic economics as they are to political-military issues that drive the NSC and
would likely drive a Presidents Security Council. They involve different forms of analysis, different instruments of policy, different
governmental institutions as the current global economic crisis
makes abundantly clear.
Their current urgency demands that they have at least co-equal
status in the White House, advisor and counsel addressing these
issues on their own terms, not wedged within a security perspective. Of course, Larry Summers and James Jones should coordinate
with one another. And if they havent engaged the capable joint
deputy, Michael Froman, to be sure that international economic
policy draws on both of their perspectives. But to go further to subordinate economic issues within a Presidential Security Council
would be, I think, to go against both logic and experience.
I am not as familiar with energy or environmental policy, but I
suspect some of the same considerations may apply. Perhaps President Obama is not wrong to have engaged separate senior officials
for national security environment and energynational security
and economics and energy and the environment. Though keeping
them from working at cross purposes on issues that overlap is a
daunting task. I have a different set of doubts about establishing
a Director for National Security at the White House. Presumably
this official would replace the National Security Advisor, although
the executive summary doesnt quite say that. The position would
be established by legislation, but no recommendation is made on
whether she or he would be subject to Senate confirmation.
Supported by a statutory executive secretary, this director would
not only be the principal assistant to the President on matters related to national security, but he would also be charged with administering a wide range of planning and integrating instrument
in overall strategy, planning, guidance, a resource document, a network of interagency teams, et cetera. The director would be asked
to combine the planning tasks of Dwight Eisenhowers Bobby Cutler who managed the system that my colleague here has described
and Kennedys McGeorge Bundy, who managed the day-to-day

10
issues for the President, whence would come the power of this individual to carry out this awesome task. What would make the departments and agencies commit their time and best people to this
elaborate exercise, whatever its abstract merit, the PNSR report
uses words like empower, suggesting that mandating these activities is the same as making them real and effective.
In practice, however, whatever the change in title, the director
would gain his power overwhelmingly from his relationship with
the President, just as National Security Advisors do today. Would
the President want him or her to spend his time that way? Eisenhower didnt want Bobby Cutler to do this. But he also had Andy
Goodpaster, who handled his day-to-day decisionmaking on crisis
management often outside Eisenhowers formal system. Kennedy
didnt want it and he and Bundy transformed the National Security
Advisor job to one supporting the Presidents daily national security business and connecting his senior officials to him and to one
another.
None of Kennedys successors, including Jimmy Carter
Zbigniew Brzezinski may now say that there should have been an
Eisenhower system, but I know of no effort that he made to create
anything like this when he was National Security Advisor. But
none of Kennedys successors wanted an Eisenhower/Cutler planning system, save Nixon and Kissinger who employed an improved
version for about 4 months in their Administration before they
abandoned it to carry outto pursue the most secretive policymaking process in history. It seems to me, given that presidents
are not really going to want this, at least experience suggests that,
this director would have a choice. He could persist in the elaborate
integration mandate knowing that the President at best tolerated
it and knowing that one day agency officials would learn that the
process was not really driving presidential decisions or he could respond to what the President really wanted and delegate the formal
system management to the executive secretary.
Then there would be two layers, an interagency planning process
below disconnected from the President and its principal advisors.
Let me repeat, there is much that is good in this sophisticated report and its understanding of many of the problems of the current
system and in its focus on improving budgeting and personnel. But
I dont think the key organizational recommendations will survive
careful analysis. And I particularly dont think they would work
under this President, who strikes me as more like John F. Kennedy
than like any other President in the postwar era, very cerebral,
very much wanting to handle things himself, impatient in terms of
formal structures. And I think the question is going to be whether
James Jones, who I think would like a more formal structure, will
be able to adapt to Barack Obama or whether he will end up having less relevance than he should have to the Obama decision process.
In any case, it is the Presidentin national security policymaking in the end, it is to paraphrase a Clinton campaign label,
it is the President, stupid. It is he, or she one day perhaps, who
drives the system. His operating preferences and decision style are
what any White House aide must accommodate. To encumber this
aide with heavy formal responsibilities is to increase his distance

11
from the President, weakening their joint capacity to achieve such
national security policy coherence as our system of government will
allow. Thank you very much.
Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Dr. Destler.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Destler can be found in the Appendix on page 51.]
Dr. SNYDER. You all may have figured out we are having a little
clock problem. So Dr. Fenner is timing the five minutes and you
are not getting that very helpful green and yellow. You are just
getting the red flash at five minutes. That is what happened.
Dr. DESTLER. I am taking advantage of it. I am sorry.
Dr. SNYDER. No, you didnt. You actually both were about the
exact same time. Mr. Oleszek.
STATEMENT OF WALTER OLESZEK, SENIOR SPECIALIST IN
AMERICAN NATIONAL GOVERNMENT, CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE

Mr. OLESZEK. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking
Member, distinguished committee colleagues. Let me say that I am
here becausenot that I am an expert on anything to do with the
military or national security oronly a little bit probably on executive organization. I am here largely because since I arrived at CRS
in 1968, I have been involved in practically every House and Senate legislative reform effort since that time. So what I want to
focus on are the recommendations that have been put forward by
the Project on National Security Reform. And to do that, I am
going to concentrate principally on one of their major suggestions
and that is to create a Permanent Select Committee on National
Security. I will also comment on the other recommendations as
well. And so I have posed three questions that obviously I am going
to answer.
And since I made up the questions, I hope I can give you the
right answers. But anyway, the first question is: Is the House committee structure organized in a fashion to promote integrated, coordinated interagency national security decisionmaking? And I suppose a short answer would be no. That would take some additional
analysis and study. But the point I really want to emphasize is
this: That the great strength of the Congress is that it is a decentralized structure. The fact that it functions through committees,
subcommittees, informal task forces and other entities as well. This
is the division of labor. This is the specialization system that the
Congress has provided itself.
And it is also a way for constituents and special interest groups
or anybody else to have access during the formative stages of the
lawmaking process during the committee policymaking process. So
there are tremendous advantages to having the dispersion of policymaking power spread around if you will. And now the question
becomes if it is spread around too much. One of the deficiencies in
the legislative branch would be the lack of what people would call
integrative or coordinative capacities and there are a few committees that are able to do this.
One of those committees that take a big picture view if you
wouldit would be the Budget Committee, for example. Or another
one might be the Rules Committee. But principally the integrative

12
force on Capitol Hillare the party leaders. Particularly in the
House, it is going to be the majority leadership, particularly the
Speaker. They are the integrators that will control the centrifugal
forces out there manifested by the committee system.
Now, the second question that I would pose is this: If the system
is not organized for integrative coordinated activity in this realm,
is a permanent select committee the proper approach? And the answer that I would provide is maybe, perhaps because that question
is not answerable unless you know what is the authorizing responsibility of the Select Committee. Does it have legislative authority
or not, the ability to receive and report legislation? What is its
membership, what kind of support does it have? Now, we have had
tremendously good examples of select committees that have performed this coordinative function, but generally theres a dilemma
and I am going to cite one or two.
But the dilemma often in terms of crafting select committees,
whether or not they have legislative jurisdiction or not, it raises
the issue of turf. As all of you are familiar, better than I, turf is
viewed as power on Capitol Hill. And when you create a select committee with legislative jurisdiction, then where is their mandate
going to come from? Because all of the other standing committees
are going to believe, well, that is potentially in my area, particularly when we are talking about interagency, national security
issues. For example, just, you know, the 110th and now recreated
in the 111th. But I will use the 110th, we all recall there is a Select
Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming chaired
by Mr. Markey. That did not sit well when Mr. Dingell chaired the
Energy and Commerce Committee in the 110th House. He was
quoted pretty prominently and he used a phrase that caught the
eye of a lot of folks that creating this Select Committee is useless,
it is like having feathers on a fish. But nonetheless, it went forward and there were adjustments made, accommodations in the
110th to accommodate some of his concerns.
Now, a couple that were with legislative jurisdiction are recently
examples that I can cite are quite successful. Quite useful potentially and that is the ad hocnot the ad hoc, the Select Committee
on Homeland Security in 2002 created by Speaker Hastert. Why
was it created? To create one single mission, and that was to create
a Department of Homeland Security. And this was a pure leadership committee, the chairman was the majority leader, Dick
Armey. Dick Gephardt named as the ranking minority member and
Nancy Pelosi and every other member on both the majority and minority side were party leaders. Marty Frost, the Chair of the Democratic Caucus; Tom Delay, the majority whip, right down the line.
And their mission was to deal with one issue. And the way they
were a terrific coordinative body was that all the other dozen
roughly dozen standing committees had an opportunity to look at
the segments of the Department of Homeland Security that fell
within their jurisdiction and then they were all submitted back to
the select Homeland Security Committee chaired by Chairman
Armey. And they aggregated this information and then submitted
the legislation to the floor. And obviously we have a Department
of Homeland Security.

13
Once the Homeland Security Department was created, and this
is not uncommon, sort of triggers a notion about what about our
own committee system on the House side, the same thing occurred
in the Senate as well. Do we need a standing committee to handle
Homeland Security issues? And again another select committee
was created in 2003 by Speaker Hastert, of course, subject to the
vote of the House of Representatives. But he made plain in this
membership of the Select Committee thatand it was filled with
lots of committee chairs who were very protective of their turf, but
he made a statement right after he was sworn in as speaker to all
the members of the House, but this one sentence was targeted to
the committee chairs you can be sure. It went something like this,
that your authorizing an oversight jurisdiction will be protected.
And by golly, it was protected.
And when this committee was actually created, everylike 10
other standing committees, including Armed Services Committee in
terms of the legislative history, had specified exactly what kind of
control they had over Homeland Security matters. Three things are
really important in terms of creating a select committee. One is the
support of the leadership without question. You have to have, you
know, broad support certainly of, you know, the membership and
then also you have to have the involvement of the standing committees that will be affected by the creation of this select panel.
One of the issues that caught my eye was the jurisdictional mandate of this committee, if it ever came into being. It is quite broad.
They give youthere are several pages, in terms of issues that this
committee ought to be considering. Their brief definition is national
security is the capacity of the United States to defend, define and
advance its position in a world that is being continuously shaped,
reshaped by the turbulent forces of change. And then they also
highlight the turbulent forces of change affect all of the national
sources of power.
And what are all these national sources of power? It is quite
broad to say the least. One of those things, sustain stewardship of
sound economic policy. Energy security. Infrastructure, health, educational systems, et cetera. You go on to another page. And this
caught my eye in terms of a grand strategy of how you mobilize
all the sources of national power to accomplish your national goal.
And it says it comprises these things, carefully coordinated and
fully integrated use of all political, economic, military, cultural, social, moral, spiritual, and psychological power. That is quite a mandate.
But anyway, so those are just issues to be mindful of and I dont
think anybody knows how many interagency groups are out there
is another consideration. Are there other ways by which this might
be handled? Yeah, there are a lot of other ways. I am not saying
a select committee should not be created. All I am saying is, hey,
there has to be a lot of negotiation before it is going to be successfully created. But there are other methods that are in place. And
one would be perhaps as a model, the Select Oversight Panel that
is composed of members of the Intelligence Committee and the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Sort of an ad hoc joining of the
authorizing and appropriating responsibility. You could have specialized subcommittees created.

14
Even this committee might be reestablished in some way in the
rules and by resolution as the forum to consider interagency national security issues. A multi-referral process could be artfully
used by the Speaker. She has a power, not just Speaker Pelosi, but
no Speaker has ever used this power that is embedded in the rules
of the House, and that is to create an ad hoc oversight committee
charged with obviously reviewed this kind of realm. Other methods
as well. Committee composition, you had Congressman Smith, I
was struck by the fact there were only a couple of committees
where you deliberately have budget and intelligence, members
drawn from other standing committees. And maybe that is an approach that ought to be tried on other standing committees as well.
So you get this interagency national security concept, you know,
the integration idea perhaps more prominently placed in the policymaking process there are others that I mentioned, but just quickly
to wrap up, there is also the recommendation to consolidate all
oversight withinof the Department of Homeland Security in the
Committee on Homeland Security.
The House took a major step in that direction in the 111th Congress when it passed House rules that granted the Committee on
Homeland Security what is called special oversight. And special
oversight is akin to the broad investigative power granted to the
Governmental Affairs Oversight Government Reform Committee
that was established by the 1946 Legislative Reorganization Act.
So they have broad authority to oversee the Department of Homeland Security. The point is even if areas are within the jurisdiction
of other standing committees, special oversight gives the committee
the authority the right to review agencies and programs that fall
within other standing committees.
I should also mention that you are never going to consolidate and
maybe you never should consolidate all oversight over any activity
within a single committee. I think it is helpful to have a diversity
of points of view. There is always the concern that people raise
about committees being captured by, you know, the agencies or departments that they are overseeing. So I think there are tremendous advantages of having a large number of committees that oversee any particular department, particularly one so broad as the Department of Homeland Security. Anotherthey also recommended
a consolidation of appropriations for Homeland Security and one
appropriation, Homeland Security subcommittee chaired by, as we
know, David Price today. And the two issues there are again turf.
You have other appropriations committees, subcommittees that
handle it. And also the bicameral factor. They like to have parallel
subcommittee structures, House and Senate. So that is another
consideration. And lastly, empowering the Foreign Affairs Committee. In my estimation, when I reviewed the three that they
mentioned, I dont see how it empowers the Foreign Affairs Committee at all.
One of the recommendations is to amend the budget allocation
302(a), so that you have an interagency national security function
I believe. Well, these budget functions are for informational purposes only. There is no parliamentary way to enforce them. Second,
they talk about firewalls. Dont transfer money out of international
accounts or defense accounts into domestic accounts. But again

15
they deal withthat is appropriation firewalls, not dealing with
authorization legislation. And then a supermajority requirement to
waive the rule that says authorizations are supposed to be enacted
into law. They mention consideration. But they have to be enacted
into law under House rules. Specify what supermajority, 60, twothirds, and I believe all that does is empower a minority. It doesnt
empower the Foreign Affairs Committee at all. And it oftenthe
Foreign Affairs Committee will go to the Rules Committee to get
a waiver of the rule against legislation on appropriation bills because there is a variety of reasons why you cant get a foreign aid
or State Department authorization bill enacted in a timely way.
And that is I guess really all I want to say.
Dr. SNYDER. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Oleszek can be found in the Appendix on page 54.]
Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Wittman and I always put ourselves on the five
minute clock and so we will begin. I think we are going to have
votes sometime between 2:00 and 2:15. But I think we have time
to do at least one round of questions. Mr. Oleszek, I think I will
ask you the first question. I think you can respond just yes or no
if you like. One of the things that the report says is that it needs
to be adopted in its entirety, all the recommendations adopted in
its entirety. Do you think the chances are pretty good of that happening?
Mr. OLESZEK. I should say as a part-time academic, I am programmed to speak in 60 minutes clip, no.
Dr. SNYDER. I was actually surprised. I mean, I know people that
have worked on it, but there is almost a certain navete about it
that says you are going to adopt everything about the Congress,
the Administration. I wasnt sure quite why they decided to make
that point. Dr. Krepinevich, I wanted you to, if you would, tell me
what you think about the changes that have already been made in
President Obamas administration with regard to the National Security Advisor, the National Security Council, how you see that is
different from the President Bush Administration, where you see
that fitting into what you were recommending with regard to President Eisenhower?
Dr. KREPINEVICH. Well, referring to what my colleague, Dr.
Destler said, I think people matter and thinking matters. And obviously, if President Obama is not inclined to an Eisenhower-like national security staff structure, it is going to fail. And there is no
system that if you put it into place can survive the unwillingness
of a leadership to employ that system. There is always potential for
the President to find workarounds for a system that he or she
doesnt want. Having said that, as long as we are using the Kennedy analogy, you can have a very bright, energetic, charismatic
President, as President Kennedy was, and as many people certainly
believe President Obama is. But I also recall that President Kennedys system, in part, also contributed to during the first 18
months or so of his administration toyou know, we had a series
of crises, whether it was the Bay of Pigs, the Vienna Summit, the
Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis.
When you look long-term, we had the sort of stumbling along in
places like Vietnam. So there is, I think, a decision for a President

16
to make that if I want to be serious about strategy, these are some
of the things I have to do. And it doesnt have to a carbon copy of
the Eisenhower structure, but it does have to be the persistent, active involvement of the President in this kind of a process. And certainly, we dont have that right now and I am struck by the fact
that people who typically are very bright and who are very self-disciplined, and I think those are both qualities that the President
has, are capable ofand who can exercise self-discipline can do
some remarkable things. If you look, for example, at the history of
our first President, George Washington, particularly during the
Revolutionary War, his whole personality told him that he should
engage the British in battle after getting his clock cleaned a few
times, he exercised an incredible amount of self-discipline and only
sought battle on those mostoccasions most advantageous to him.
Again, you would hope that we wouldnt have to learn the hard
way, that this administration wouldnt have to learn the hard way.
But the structure we have set up now, it seems to me, doesnt really bring together the kinds of talent and the organization and the
level of persistent commitment that was characteristic of the Eisenhower Administration.
Dr. SNYDER. Excuse me. What do you think, then, of the changes
that have been made thus far? There has been a couple of directives that have come from the President about changes to the National Security Council.
Dr. KREPINEVICH. I think there is an effort to look at problems
in a more comprehensive holistic way, which I think can be a good
thing. I am concerned about the fact thatI talked tothis was in
a public settingBrent Scowcroft about this. He was concerned
about the growth in the National Security Council staff and I share
that concern. The fact that it should not be a substitute for department and agency performance. It should help bring issues to the
attention of the President, present them in a very logical, coherent
way for his or her decision. And it should help ensure that the
Presidents decisions are executed faithfully. And I am concerned
about the fact that, again, there seems to be a certain amount of
effort here to try and make up for the deficiencies in the departments and agencies in terms of execution and in their performance
in identifying if there is any issues to the President.
Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Krepinevich, where do you see the issue that
we have been having the discussion the last couple of years about
the whole issue of interagency and interagency reform which the
Locher Report is talking about. In your construct, where you put
a priority on strategy, I thought your discussion was very good.
Where do you seewhere does thethe issue of interagencythe
need for interagency reforms, the disconnect from the difference
agencies, where do you see that fit into your construct on strategy
and means and resources?
Dr. KREPINEVICH. One of the interesting aspects of the so-called
Planning Board on the NSC staff on the Eisenhower administration, was again you had this persistent attention but they also had
the ability to go outside the organization and tap into expertise.
And I think here you might have theyou have the potential for
organizing certain interdepartmental groups that focus on a particular issue as long as it is relevant and that is sort of a group

17
I will give you a historical example of one that was formed during
the Kennedy, counterinsurgency and that was designed to bring together various elements of the government because as we know,
counterinsurgency involved not only security but reconstruction
and governance and intelligence and so on. And the effort there
was to raise that to the presidential attention.
It was worthy of presidential attention. And in that case, you
had no planning board. You had Maxwell Taylor and Bobby Kennedy essentially reporting directly to the President on what kind
of progress they thought they were making. It was more ad hoc. It
was less rigorous than something that would be incorporated into
a planning board. But I would see that as being something that
could prove productive in this current environment.
Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Destler.
Dr. DESTLER. Could I suggest you put on the table an alternative
model to Eisenhowers? And that is the way the policy process was
run under the first President Bush, George H.W. Bush, which you
had Brent Scowcroft as the ultimately trusted, capable low-profile
national security assistant who essentially was the glue that held
together a policy process at the principals level, at the deputies
level, and below. It was a good, constructive, positive interagency
process. It was not an elaborate planning system. They were being
hit with changes and they had to adapt to them. But they did some
very far-sighted things, as in making the unification of Germany
on terms that were not only acceptable to Britain and France,
which was difficult enough, but actually making it acceptable to
Russia in a situationand they did this very carefully but through
a set of informal relationships that were carefully nurtured by
Scowcroft, whose principle was you spend the first year on the job
establishing trust most of all with the President, but with everybody else as well.
It was an informal system, but it was very effective. I believe
that is probably about the best that we can do in terms of highlevel coordination. Now, I mean there were otheryou could invent
a Brent Scowcroft with even greater skills in some areas. You
couldyou could tweak it in different ways. You could say you
could add maybe more budgetary analysis. But I think basically
what you need to do is look for a person who can work with the
President and develop informal networks and they are supported
also.
There is a formal structure too. My colleague mentioned all the
meetings that Eisenhower had of the National Security Council.
There is something of over 300 I think during the eight years of
the Eisenhower administration. I am not sure there were that
many in the entire 50 years or soother years50other years of
theand that suggests that most Presidents have not found that
formal deliberative process very useful. They may be wrong. But
they are the ones who make the calls. So I think building on what
the Presidents want, you still need to try to develop something.
And you still need to try to constrain the President, but you can
only do it if you have his confidence and you serve him effectively.
Dr. SNYDER. My time has expired. We will now go to members
who were here at the beginning of the hearing when the gavel went
down. And we go to Mrs. Davis for five minutes.

18
Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to all of you
for being here. I marvel a little bit in the fact that in my short time
here in Congress, we seem to have really gained at least some understanding and consciousness of the need to do this, which quite
a few years ago we didnt really havecertainly as a committee or
here. Dr. Krepinevich, you mentioned your skepticism, I think,
about the willingness of departments and agencies to reward personnel who choose to invest in interagency expertise. If we dont do
that, where do we look for that kind of change in management and
behavior? How do youcould you respond to that?
Dr. KREPINEVICH. My expertise is primarily associated with the
Defense Department. So I will give you an example about something that I know. In the Goldwater-Nichols legislation in 1986,
something called the JROC, the Joint Requirements Oversight
Council, was established in the Defense Department. And the idea
was that you would have the number-two person in each of the four
military services meet along with the Vice Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs, and they would make decisions that would be in the best
interest of the Defense Department and support national security.
The idea was that you would create trade space, that this body of
five would identify what the Department requirements were as opposed to their individual service requirements. And in so doing, it
would liberate resources to be moved from one area to another.
That just hasnt happened in, what, 23 years now. You are the
Vice Chief of Staff of the Army. You go back to the Army and if
you have lost or you have lost resources to the Air Force and the
Navy, you go home and you have lost the game. I mean, you should
be ashamed of yourself. We have had all different kinds of people
in the environment and they are all good men. But they all come
from institutions and they all know where they come from.
The way to break that logjam I think is you have to have a senior civilian leader in the form of the Secretary of Defense who is
willing to force that body to work, to say, Look, if you dont come
up with the answers for me, then I am going to make decisions
based on my best understanding. I have two internal think tanks,
I have the Office of Net Assessment that does strategy for me, I
have the Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation that can do
tradeoffs for me. And if the professional military cant give me any
help, if all you are going to do is protect your rice bowls, then I
am going to make decisions based on the best information I have.
And that, I think, offers you the best chance of getting a healthy
competition going to where you can get senior people to live outside
their particular service or institution. That, again, is a fairly narrow example.
Mrs. DAVIS. If I could just interrupt for a second. Because in
many ways, that seems premised on the belief that you have on
deep benchers on all sides, that you have got people to fill in, to
cross-train, to do a certain amount of work out of their own specialty. And I think one of the problems that we see and I hope that
in the discussion we will look at the budgets. And the report talks
about the interactive budgets and integrated budgets. I am sorry.
I think what we find so frustrating is in many of our discussions
we know that there is such an imbalance between the needs of

19
State Department for example, and the Pentagon and that you just
dont have the people to play those roles.
Dr. KREPINEVICH. But again let me sort of make the case for
strategy. What is our strategy for dealing with an increasingly disordered world that is characterized by radical Muslim fundamentalists, transnational criminal gangs, narcotics gangs. I would submit that there are four that I have heard in my travels around
Washington. One is the no more Iraqs, no more Afghanistans.
This current experience is a one off, we are not going to do this
anymore, the military needs to get out of this business. Just like
after Vietnam we will take a 30-year break. And I have had generals tell me that.
Second is the strategy that sort of came out of the 2006 QDR,
which is the indirect approach building partner capacity. We are
not going to get directly involved anymore, we are going do build
up the militaries of other countries so they can defend themselves.
Secretary Gates in his recent Foreign Affairs article talking about
a balanced defense seemed to indicate that it was that, plus the
ability to surge if a country that was truly vital to our security was
coming unraveled.
And then there is the fourth option that says we are going to
have a strategy where we conclude that we cant get the rest of the
world to help, we cant get our allies to help, we are going to have
to take the lead, we are going to have to police democracys empire,
we just need to face up to that fact.
Depending upon what strategy you pursue, it has profound implications for the military services, their size, their orientation, who
gets what. And so I guess my plea here today is strategy really
does matter, and strategy is hard to do. But you ignore it at your
peril, you ignore it at the risk of compromising the nations security, the survival and well-being of its citizens.
Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. I can go on, Mr. Chairman, but I suspect
my time is up, even though the lights are not on.
Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Fenner just was contemplating what the content
was and lost track of time.
Mr. Wittman for five minutes.
Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you members of the panel. I appreciate you
coming here. Some interesting dichotomy there in thoughts about
this particular study. Dr. Krepinevich, you pointed out really focusing on crafting good strategies and you talk about using the Eisenhower NSC model, including planning and operation coordination
boards.
Is that something that you think can be effective in the long run
from administration to administration? And the reason I say that
is if you get a new administration is that something you would say
needs to transcend administrations? And in addition to that, what
do you think on the congressional side should happen to make decisionmaking there more effective, more efficient?
Dr. KREPINEVICH. Well, let me preface by just voicing my agreement with Dr. Destlers point that people matter here. You cant
force a particular system on a President. They will find a way to
work around it. They can have any kind of ad hoc group they want,
no matter what you call the formal group, and they each have their
own decisionmaking styles.

20
Having said that, my observation is if you want to craft good
strategy you need to know that it involves the persistent, active involvement of the President of the United States, that he does not
have time to craft strategy himself, which is why something like
the Planning Board where you have in a sense an interdepartmental group of strategists working hard trying to identify issues,
sources of advantage and so on. You have frequent meetings of the
key players, the National Security Council. It doesnt have to be
the statutory, it can be just the relevant players for that issue. And
you have to have some way of enforcing decisions, which was the
Operations Coordinating Board. And you have to have a President
who is willing to fire people, and I think that is one of the endearing, if I could say, aspects of Secretary Gates. He will not put up
with people who arent doing their jobs. And again, you have got
to enforce some level of rigor, and even then it is going to be difficult.
But that is my message to an administration that is interested
in crafting good strategy and trying to get it executed. I think Congress has the oversight role; to what extent is the Administration
crafting strategy, does the strategy make sense? I think there is
certainly limitations on that. Several years ago Chairman Hunter
essentially tried to take on that mission, at least in terms of the
Defense Department, and get the committee to look at various aspects of a Quadrennial Defense Review from Congress position as
a way of being an informed B team, if you will, or red team for
what the Pentagon was doing.
I participated in the National Defense Panel in 1997. I think that
is another way that Congressyou know, an independent body of
experts focusing, sort of strategy experts, if you will, sort of Congress planning board, that can at least evaluate and assess and
provide Congress with an independent view of how good the administration strategy is, may be another possibility.
Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you. Dr. Destler, in your opinion has the
National Security Advisor become a policymaker or an implementer
instead of a policy advisor to the President? And to add to that, if
the National Security Advisor conducts national security policy,
should the appointment require Senate confirmation and allow for
the person to be subject to testify to congressional committees?
Dr. DESTLER. That is a very, very good and important question,
Congressman. First of all, I hate to say it depends on which National Security Advisor, and it is too early to tell about the present
one. I would say that most recent National Security Advisors have
not been implementers, have not been negotiators. Some, like
Condoleezza Rice, have been very prominent public spokespeople
for the administration. Certainly Henry Kissinger did everything
when he worked for Nixon. He was a negotiator. He was actually
not the spokesman until very near the end of the first term. People
dont remember that because he spoke so much after that. But nevertheless the National Security Advisor is a veryI would argue
that in principle I do not believe the National Security Advisor
should be confirmed by the Senate, because I think that would lead
to the National Security Advisor in practice being an alternative official public spokesman. And this would create real problems, real

21
tensions with the Cabinet officials, particularly the Secretary of
State but also the Secretary of Defense.
However, I would say that to the degree that the National Security Advisor in fact becomes, say, the principal negotiator, or becomes the most important and visibly important policy voice, short
of the President, I think Congress will quite understandably seek
to have this person confirmed because Congress naturally wants to
talk to the person, the people who are really making the decisions.
So I would say I would combine my cautionary recommendation
about confirmation with the caution to the National Security Advisor; dont get out too much in public, dontyou know, if you give
an address to the President make it confidential, dont go telling
the press that you are the one who really made the decision. Play
the role quietly, give credit to others, and talk to Members of Congress, but not necessarily testify, and be straight and helpful to
Members of Congress.
Dr. SNYDER. Ms. Pingree for five minutes.
Ms. PINGREE. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you very much
for your presentation. As you can see by my placement in the room,
I am one of the newest members in this committee, and so I am
actually here to learn as much as to ask you questions. But let me
just ask you one thing that any one of you I am happy to hear from
on this. And I think one of you mentioned this idea that once we
run out of money then we have to think. And given the suggestions
that have been made here in what you have already said to us and
what is written in the very thick document that you have in front
of you, how do some of these suggested changes have an impact on
our refocusing of national defense spending? I mean clearly for
many of us coming in in these difficult economic times that is one
of the challenges. And given the responsibilities we have on our
plate, and also the interest in shifting some of the way we think
about our defense priorities, how do you see some of this having
an impact on that and other suggestions you might make in that
kind of realm?
Dr. DESTLER. That is a wonderful question. Let me just respond
very briefly. I think Secretary Gates has been one who has said
that because the Defense Department has a bigger budget and has
certain capacities, that the Defense Department has been asked to
carry certain activities which would be better off being carried by
other parts of the government, particularly the State Department.
And certainly the whole complicated question of postwar stabilization has been one of those areas.
So I think one of the issues is, which is important both in terms
of congressional decisionmaking in terms of Administration decisionmaking, Administration planning, is how can one at least incrementally figure out a way to empower institutions, particularly
the elements of the State Department, but other operational institutions outside the Pentagon, so that they both can get resources
from Congress on a consistent basis for carrying out very strong civilian operational responsibilities and also are capable of doing
that in a way that will satisfy you.
I think that is the right question, and I think it probably it is
going to have to be dealt with incrementally. Hopefully Secretary

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ClintonI believe she is thinking about this, and hopefully will
work on this issue.
Dr. KREPINEVICH. If I could be permitted to use my strategy example. Suppose we pick, let us call it, the Gates Strategy in respect to dealing with a disordered world. And it is going to be an
indirect approach, it is going to be building partner capacity, but
we reserve the right to surge military capability into an area that
is threatened. In that case you are going to be heavily engaged in
efforts in terms of economic assistance, in terms of assisting states
that are weak states with their governance, which means you are
going to have to devote more money perhaps to the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID), you are going to
have to shift funding into the State Department to train more Foreign Service Officers and others that can come in and help nations
improve their governance.
You may reduce the size of the Army eventually because, again,
if the Army is not going to be sort of the first source of response
to these kinds of situations but they are going to train indigenous
forces, advise them, then they provide large amounts of manpower.
We provide very high quality manpower but in very small doses.
So that strategy over the longer term could lead you to, again, increase your resources for organizations like USAID, State Department, probably the Intelligence Community, although shift that
money within the Intelligence Community from more national technical means of gathering intelligence to human intelligence, and
then perhaps a reduction in the size of the Army because they
wouldnt be sort of the first and only response you would have to
a crisis situation.
And again, that is drawn upon the results of an effort to come
up, okay, what strategy makes sense. In this case, you recall I
talked about strategy involves identifying and exploiting sources of
advantage. Theoretically you would be exploiting two sources of advantage. One is high quality manpower in terms of advising, equipping, training, improving governance. The other is the scale of effort, assuming we right our economy, and so on, and strengthen the
foundation. We have the ability to provide assistance on a greater
scale than just about any other country in the world. And so for
small countries it seems like a huge amount of funding. And of
course we have a history, sometimes good, the Marshall Plan,
sometimes bad, Alliance for Progress, in terms of success here.
Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Thornberry for five minutes.
Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you
and Mr. Wittman allowing me to sit in, and I have not had a
chance to read Dr. Destlers book. I have read about it. I have had
the chance to read Dr. Krepinevichs recent book on the importance
of one of the things about it, importance of strategic planning,
which makes a very persuasive case for me.
I guess I would like to step back from the questions you have
had so far and ask: do you think we need to make significant organizational changes? I think a lot of the impetus for this report
came from maybe two things. One is the world is more interconnected than ever, so we cannot be effective and have military
over here and diplomacy over here and economic assistance over
here, and so forth. But secondly, there is a feeling that the military

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had to do everything in Iraq and Afghanistan, that the other departments never showed up. And while individuals did amazing
things on the ground, that the bureaucracies were in their stovepipe worried about turf and their budget.
So I think that is a lot of what got us here. And I appreciate the
issues you all have brought up with this particular report, but do
you think we need to have a significant organizational change or
can it be adjusted according to a Presidents preferences and we
can kind of get along?
Dr. Krepinevich.
Dr. KREPINEVICH. Again, if I have to vote, I would vote in favor
of the argument that people matter. It matters who the President
of the United States is. It matters whether that person is willing
to devote persistent time and attention to crafting good strategies,
and quite frankly being ruthless in implementing them in terms of
dealing with recalcitrant or reluctant elements of the bureaucracy.
I think thinking matters. I am a big fan of thinking relative to
process. And not to say that structure isnt important and process
isnt important, but again I honestly believe that there is a shortfall in terms of strategic thinking, strategic competence. And that
is one thing I think that the project really did hit very well.
The notion that the world is more complicated, okay, the world
is more complicated. Marshall Plan, late 1940s. I mean that was
a confluence of a number of factors. There were economic factors,
there were security factors, there were intelligence issues that
needed to be brought to bear, diplomacy on a very high level, the
Suez Crisis in 1956, Soviets threatening to launch nuclear rockets
on Paris and London, Eisenhower using U.S. economic leverage to
get the British to pull out of Suez, and then the conflict, diplomacy
to wrap things up, trying to pull improve the U.S. position in that
part of the world.
The world has been a messy place for a very long time, and it
is typically, not typically, but often the case that there is an interweaving. Kennedy Special Group (Counter-Insurgency). You know,
CIA, State, USAID. In a sense we have been to this movie before.
And so while I always believe that we can improve structure and
process, I think what really matters is people, as my colleague Dr.
Destler says, and thinking. Coming up with a good strategy. I
would rather have a mediocre execution of a great strategy than a
great execution of a mediocre strategy.
Dr. DESTLER. One of the ways you can I think think about people, but also think about sort of structuring, at least process, is you
need to have people at various levels of the system who know who
are the relevant players in the government on a particular issue
and can have empowerment to pull them together. It will be partly
what agencies they are from and what briefs they have, it will be
partly who is good, who is capable of moving things and getting the
process to work. And I think that probably has to be done more in
an informal than a formal way, but nevertheless it is going to have
like a Principals Committee structure in the NSC and a Deputies
Committee structure and some regional groups at a level below
that. But they sort of ought to beand I think that is one of the
good things about this report, is they do talk about flexible empowering of interagency groups and trying very much to push the re-

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sponsibility down in a way that people in the agencies can not only
participate and influence it, but influence it in the name of the
broader purpose, rather than simply.
So I think one needs to look for devices like that. But I cant
think of an organizational reform that would promote, you know in
terms of a structural change, that would do anything other than at
the margins, little things like the State Department created an Office of Reconstruction around the middle of the Bush Administration. And I think this was a constructive enterprise. People said,
well, is the State Department powerful enough to do this? Maybe,
maybe not. Were they able to get interagency cooperation? Well, a
little bit.
So I think you need to look for ways to make those things better.
But I think some things like that probably are worth doing and
hopefully helpful.
Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. SNYDER. We have votes going on. And I think given that we
have votes and we have been here about an hour and a half, I dont
think we will keep you all sitting here.
Do you have anything further you would like to ask, Mr. Wittman?
Mr. WITTMAN. No.
Dr. SNYDER. Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. DAVIS. No.
Dr. SNYDER. Ms. Pingree.
Ms. PINGREE. No.
Dr. SNYDER. Members may have questions for the record. And let
me just extend to you the offer that if you all have anything written that you would like to have attached to this, except this is a
question for the record, to send us anything that you would like to
add on.
We appreciate your contribution today, but also all three of your
contributions through a lot of years to these kinds of discussions,
and we appreciate you.
We are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:25 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

A P P E N D I X
MARCH 19, 2009

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

MARCH 19, 2009

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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING

MARCH 19, 2009

QUESTION SUBMITTED BY DR. SNYDER

Dr. SNYDER. Do you believe that the professional military education system does
or should play a role in designing national security strategy? Please comment.
Dr. KREPINEVICH. The professional military education system should play an importantalbeit indirectrole in designing our national security strategy.
Strategy at the national level (and strategy in general) is typically done best by
small groups of individuals who are talented strategists. This was the case with respect to the successful grand strategy developed by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations to prosecute the Cold War. The same is true for the triangular strategy developed by the Nixon administration that led to the opening to China in the
early 1970s and produced a major shift in our geopolitical situation. Our overall
strategy for prosecuting World War II in Europe with our British partners was
crafted and directed by President Roosevelt, General Marshall, Prime Minister
Churchill and General Alan Brooke.
Professional military education institutions support the design of good strategy in
two ways. First, our senior military schools teach strategy. To the extent they do
it well, they contribute to populating our government, over time, with senior civilian
and military leaders who have a good appreciation for strategy. Second, to the extent that these institutions are able to identify those individuals who are promising
strategists, it can be an important factor in their selection for senior positions that
require such a skill. (There is some recent scholarship indicating that it is possible
to identify those individuals who have the potential to do strategy well. Interestingly, the skill sets that the military values in selecting officers for command at the
tactical level of war, are not those that translate well into skills needed for senior
rank; i.e., for officers who must weigh issues at the strategic level, and who are responsible for strategy development.)
Do our senior military education institutions teach strategy well? Are they tased
with identifying students who show great promise as strategists? Is this attribute
valued by the career civil service and the military services when it comes to advancement and placement? These questions may be worth investigating. Both Rep
Skelton and Rep Israel have a strong interest in these issues and may be worth engaging, as may Rep Thomberry.
I hope this brief response proves of use to you.

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