Secretary Gates on a Balanced Strategy

I don't know if it's appropriate for an officer to gush over his Defense Secretary, but I can't help it: every time Secretary Gates gives a speech or writes a paper, he waters my eyes. The secretary's latest paper appears in the forthcoming issue of Foreign Affairs. A Balanced Strategy: Reprogramming the Pentagon for a New Age explains the 2008 National Defense Strategy and lays out a clear, pragmatic vision for allocating limited resources to prepare for both conventional and asymmetric military operations.

Some of the terrain is familiar. Gates--who never misses an opportunity to raise the subject--writes again about the erosion of America's non-military instruments of power like the State Department, USAID, and our public diplomacy apparatus, and the crucial need to rebuild their capacity.

Other material is new. Without actually using the phrase, Gates hints at a growing military-industrial complex that has locked the DOD into expensive weapon procurements geared for conventional wars. The system is expensive, contributes to an overmilitarization of American foreign policy, and is ill-suited to meeting many of the challenges of today's world. Gates writes, "Support for conventional modernization programs is deeply embedded in the Defense Department's budget, in its bureaucracy, in the defense industry, and in Congress. My fundamental concern is that there is not commensurate institutional support -- including in the Pentagon -- for the capabilities needed to win today's wars and some of their likely successors."

He suggests that it's time to institutionalize a lower-tech, rapidly-implementable procurement system for irregular warfare capability. He asks some pointed questions: "Why was it necessary to go outside the normal bureaucratic process to develop technologies to counter improvised explosive devices, to build MRAPs, and to quickly expand the United States' ISR capability? In short, why was it necessary to bypass existing institutions and procedures to get the capabilities needed to protect U.S. troops and fight ongoing wars?"

In his book The Pentagon's New Map, Thomas Barnett argues that the procurement cycle actually drives operational planning--which is opposite of how the system should work. Gates addresses this issue head-on: "The key is to make sure that the strategy and risk assessment drive the procurement, rather than the other way around."

Gates goes on to discuss the resistance that he faces trying to break through a rigid bureaucracy: "Apart from the Special Forces community and some dissident colonels, however, for decades there has been no strong, deeply rooted constituency inside the Pentagon or elsewhere for institutionalizing the capabilities necessary to wage asymmetric or irregular conflict -- and to quickly meet the ever-changing needs of forces engaged in these conflicts."

Dissident colonels. I like the sound of that. That's what I want to be when I grow up. In the meantime, I'm grateful for a Secretary of Defense who sides with the dissidents and is willing to tackle institutional resistance to meeting the challenges of a rapidly changing world.