Breaking the Proconsulate: A New Design for National Power
Abstract
President George W. Bush, in the seminal 2002 National Security Strategy, declared, "The major institutions of American national security were designed in a different era to meet different requirements. All of them must be transformed." Few would argue with this laudatory goal, but by 2005 most changes within the US government as a whole have been ad hoc modifications to existing institutions. With the noteworthy exception of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, there have been few truly transformational changes to the institutions of national security themselves. As noted by one analyst, We have reconfigured our institutions to better address the spaces in between; but we have been far more reluctant to tamper with the basic institutions themselves. We have not fundamentally changed our habits of thought. Examples of obvious absurdities abound the fact that DOD's division of the world's nations in its Unified Command Plan bears no relation whatever to the State Department's regional bureaus, which, in turn, are different from the Central Intelligence Agency's regional groupings. DOD dutifully prepares its National Military Strategy (and now a National Defense Strategy), but there is no corresponding National Economic Strategy or National Information Strategy for two other key elements of power. Unified Action is a fine idea with a prominent place in DOD doctrinal publications; unfortunately, no one else in government pays much attention to DOD's doctrine. Culturally and organizationally, the geographic Combatant Commands are by far the most structured tools with which the United States can wield all the elements of its national power. But despite innovations such as the Joint Interagency Coordination Groups (JIACGs), evidence from Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom demonstrates that true unified action among the interagency construct remains a distant, elusive goal.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2006
- Accession Number
- ADA485654
Entities
People
- Mitchell J. Thompson
Organizations
- United States Army War College