Defense Intelligence Strategy, 2008

The Department of Defense published this framework of U.S. intelligence strategy:  We have embarked on a fundamental change to the concept of defense intelligence— one that balances the unique role of support to the war fighter with the recognition that today’s security environment crosses traditional organizational domains.

But how much has actually changed?

CFR: Task Force on US-Latin America Relations

General James T. Hill (Ret.), co-Chair of the CFR Task Force on U.S.-Latin America Relations and former commander of U.S. Southern Command, meets CFR editors for an interview:

Let’s say it’s the middle of November and you’ve been elected president and you’re sitting down with your national security team talking about issues coming up. What’s your first thought about Latin America?

I’d probably have to have somebody remind me about it. That’s sad because as our Task Force report makes clear, the issues affecting Latin America are primarily domestic policy issues. In one way or another, the new administration will have to deal with those issues that affect Latin America because those issues directly affect us in very real ways.

IW Shortfalls

SWJ alerts us to the recent Inside the Pentagon reporting on a 15 May memo by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England that spells out Irregular Warfare (IW) shortfalls within the Department of Defense.

In a May 15 memo to the armed services, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen, the combatant commanders and other defense officials, England says an irregular warfare study uncovered steady-state shortfalls in the general-purpose forces’ capability and capacity to handle counterinsurgency and foreign internal defense missions.

Inside the Pentagon, which obtained a copy of the memo, quotes England as identifying deficiencies in doctrine, training and institutions before general-purpose forces can train, equip and advise large numbers of foreign security forces in key irregular warfare missions.

DOD’s roles and missions review will seek to find the right division of responsibilities for special operations troops and general-purpose forces across the spectrum of irregular warfare, including for counterinsurgency and foreign internal defense, according to a draft terms of reference that ITP reviewed.

Based on the study’s results and recommendations, England directs specific follow-up actions. Transforming the Pentagon’s institutions for irregular warfare requires “concerted effort and continued attention by all DOD components,” he writes.

SWJ has more at a 6 May post – IW on Roles and Missions Task List

“Stretched to its Limits, Our Military Needs One Million Men”

Thomas Donnelly and Frederick Kagan, in the New York Post and a bit of the expected right.v.left bombast, argue for a robust military, and for something more than surrender.

The Army and the Marines are indeed under great stress, but, as service leaders, officers, and sergeants-major take great pains to explain, they are far from broken. If anything, the tactical performance and discipline of US forces in the field has improved significantly in recent years. The Iraq surge is a case study of counterinsurgency warfare planned and executed brilliantly. Broken forces do not conduct such operations. From the level of team and squad to supreme command, US forces have adapted themselves remarkably to a war they were not at first ready to fight. In retrospect what is remarkable is how resilient and flexible the all-volunteer, professional force has proven to be.

The compelling reason to reinvest in America’s Army and Marine Corps is not to withdraw and prepare for the “next war,” but to build land forces capable of sustaining and prevailing in the so-called “Long War,” the effort to secure more legitimate governments, and thus a more durable stability, in vital regions like the Persian Gulf.

Read the rest here.

via: SWJ Blog

Military Review: Interagency Reader

Military Review releases a new special edition with its new Interagency Reader, a collection of recent articles on interagency coordination.  A mixture of the interesting, the self serving, the cutting edge, and the best/worst of “me too-ism”.  They outline some of the problems.  And some are some of the problems.

CFR muses: Is America in Decline?

The debacover te of the May/June 2008 Foreign Affairs, in bright red, asks the provocative/cyclical question “Is America in Decline?” Newsweek Editor Fareed Zakaria and CFR Chair Richard Haas agree in the at turns banal and surprising (yet still surprisingly banal) discussion:

The Future of American Power (Fareed Zakaria). As it enters the twenty-first century, the United States is not fundamentally a weak economy or a decadent society. But it has developed a highly dysfunctional politics. What was an antiquated and overly rigid political system to begin with (now about 225 years old) has been captured by money, special interests, a sensationalist media, and ideological attack groups. The result is ceaseless, virulent debate about trivia — politics as theater — and very little substance, compromise, or action. A can-do country is now saddled with a do-nothing political process, designed for partisan battle rather than problem solving.

The Age of Nonpolarity (Richard N. Haass). The United States’ unipolar moment is over. International relations in the twenty-first century will be defined by nonpolarity. Power will be diffuse rather than concentrated, and the influence of nation-states will decline as that of nonstate actors increases. But this is not all bad news for the United States; Washington can still manage the transition and make the world a safer place.

Both quote Tom Kennedy, both outline the decline of American power as both absolute and relative, both finger poor policies rather than fundamental imbalances as the cause for decline.  Both cite (often the same) statistics with similar disregard for practical application or what they actually mean, abysmal understanding of the current account balance or high unemployment coupled with low inflation two quick examples.

I have long said that comparison is the lowest form of analysis, and Zakaria’s premise comparing British and American empires immediately sinks most hopes.  Yet it is Haass’s article that comes across as a forced attempt to recast spent Friedman-esque ideas in the old lexicon of uni-polar, multi-polar, non-polar, globaloney, premptive v. preventative attacks, war of choice.  Zakaria wrote an article set up to lament historic inevitability but stops short; Haass pretends to actually review events from a modern realist point of view but his core arguement weaved throughout is that this is a change spend by actions but historically inevitable.  Haass does have the sense to acknowledge that energy policy matters, but clings to it in the “Driving with Osama Bin Laden” sense of economic nuance.

Strangely, it’s Haass’s article that increasingly sounds more like Newsweek fare, and Zakaria’s that sounds–well, like the best attempt at insight journalism has to offer.

And no mention of Congress?

A Useful Chinese Dialect

A slightly dated but worthwhile article from Newsweek: Australia to China: Let’s Not Be Friends

Does the West have a new secret weapon in dealing with China in the person of Kevin Rudd, the new prime minister of Australia? … Rudd’s brilliance in the speech [given at Beijing University last week] involves turning the Chinese term “friend” on its head. Friend (pengyou in Chinese) and frienship (youyi) are two of the most distorted concepts in modern China culture. In modern China, a friend is someone who will do you favors and who expects favors in return. A “foreign friend” is someone the Chinese party-state expects will carry water for them and NEVER criticize them.

Chicago Educates its Own

Back from the UAE, RAND again plumbs educational reform in the US, turning to Achievement and Attainment in Chicago Charter Schools:

Over the past decade, charter schools have been among the fastest-growing segments of the K–12 education sector in Chicago and across the country. This report addresses several key issues related to charter schools using student-level data provided by Chicago Public Schools.

The Economist’s May 8th article similarly praised the Chicago experiment:

Richard Daley, the city’s mayor, announced Renaissance 2010 (“Ren 10”) in 2004; Chicago’s business leaders created the Renaissance Schools Fund (RSF) to help support it. … Ren 10 is opening charter schools and trying to bring their flexibility to two new models: “performance” schools, where teachers are unionised, and “contract” schools, which may hire non-union teachers but must still abide by some district rules.

Robert Kagan and Charlie Rose

Charlie Rose has a superb conversation with Robert Kagan about his book, The Return of History and the End of Dreams.

Arvind Subramanian of the Peterson Institute testifies on US Leadership in the Global Food Crisis before the House Committee on Financial Services:

… on the trading system, Nancy Birdsall, president of CGD, and I have argued that we need a new global compact on agricultural trade. Note how we have ended up having the worst of all possible worlds. Under normal agricultural conditions, we have huge distortions in terms of costly taxpayer support to reduce imports and encourage production and exports. Under abnormal conditions, such as we are seeing now, we see the opposite where countries liberalize their imports but prevent exports. We need a system where imports and exports remain free to flow in both good times and bad. This is especially important if trade is to remain a reliable avenue for food security.

The text also links to the World Bank’s nifty chart on country policies and programs to address rising food prices.