The Designed-In Failures of Pentagon Strategy

Over at Danger Room I have a piece about a forthcoming report from CNAS on how to cut the defense budget. The report's most shocking section was one I couldn't really write about in the piece. It's a footnote. 

The Tony Capaccios of the world may already know this. But to me, it was eye-opening. And it explains so, so much about why the means and the ends of national defense are massively out of alignment.

First, some background. Every four years, the Defense Department produces a congressionally-mandated strategy document called the Quadrennial Defense Review. It's supposed to be the master blueprint for the next four years inside the Pentagon. It sets out what the near-term geostrategic goals of the Defense Department are: what the immediate threats are, what capabilities the U.S. must field in response, and how the U.S. military's civilian masters see the opportunities to shape the U.S. security environment so those threats don't come back on us. Then it sets out the stuff the U.S. needs to buy and maintain: carrier battle groups for the Navy, stealth fighter aircraft for the Air Force (and the Navy and the Marines), Army brigades, etc.; their weapons; and particular areas on the globe to put them all. Among the most important reasons the QDR, as it's known, does all that is so the Pentagon can craft its budget for the next four years.

This year, something unexpected happened. In April, after the Pentagon crafted its budget, President Obama announced that the Defense Department needed to chop $400 billion out of its budget over the next decade. (Since the Pentagon will spend, unimpeded, $5 trillion over the next decade, that might not look like such a big number.) Outgoing Secretary Gates reluctantly said that the Pentagon would conduct a review of "roles and missions" to proritize -- and potentially jettison -- to guide the cuts.

Wait a minute, you might think. Why not just use the QDR for that? 

CNAS' footnote finally provides me with an answer. "[C]ongressional legislation," the CNAS report announces, "prohibits the QDR from addressing [financial] constraints." See Footnote 28:

Pursuant to 10 U.S.C. 118b, each Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) shall be conducted so as "to make recommendations that are not constrained to comply with the budget submitted to Congress by the President." This stipulation was added in the [Fiscal Year] 2007 National Defense Authorization Act.

Aaaaaand that's my jaw hitting the floor. Congress specifically instructed the Pentagon to plan for the future without regard to the money necessary for making its plans reality. At the time, I thought the 2009 QDR was a pretty good document. Others looked at it and saw a wish list. Still others looked at it and saw an incomplete wish list. Now I see that those who considered it a wish list were quite literally accurate. 

Imagine legislating that the Social Security Administration to design a retirement benefits package for everyone over 65 without regard for financing it. Imagine legislating that the Department of Education should support curricula around the country designed to boost science, technology, engineering and mathematics test scores to levels commensurate with Chinese students. (You can see I have no idea how the Department of Education works.) Imagine any social or domestic-policy program getting told to shoot the moon and not to worry about how to pay for it. 

Update, 12:45 p.m. EST: Andrew Exum says I shouldn't be so excited about this, because it's the elected officials who should be telling the Pentagon how much money there is to spend & the Pentagon's job to say what it thinks it needs to do. Not really objectionable, but I don't understand why it's either/or. Elected officials should help the Pentagon set defense strategy. Defense officials should understand that strategy operates within budgetary constraints. Doesn't seem problematic for either group's chocolate to get into the other's peanut butter, since that's what happens on the back end of the appropriations process anyway.

This, however, I think I should respond to.

I also think Spencer gets it largely wrong in this Danger Room post as well. I am not sure why advocating for resource-intensive counterinsurgency campaigns to salvage what were rapidly deteriorating situations in Iraq and Afghanistan necessarily means that scholars and practitioners working at CNAS would continue to push for the same capabilities to wage such campaigns after a transition in Afghanistan. You might have needed capabilities and resources in 2007 that you will not need in 2017. If President Perry or whoever invades Iran, that may well change, but I guess I thought it to have been reasonable to assume we should invest fewer resources in our conventional ground forces and more resources in our air and naval forces after 2014.

Put another way, what is strong, pragmatic and principled defense policy one decade might not be so strong, pragmatic and principled the next.

I think a reading of my Danger Room piece will show that I describe the report's turn away from counterinsurgency in neutral, value-free terminology. It is newsworthy that a think tank that a few years ago served as the intellectual nerve center for counterinsurgency in D.C. put out a report that turns the page on COIN as an area of military focus. It's also newsworthy that a think tank so associated with the ground services would advocate that those services, and principally the Army, ought to be cut during an era of defense austerity. And that's why I crafted the piece the way I did.

I do not think a reading of my piece supports the proposition that I treated the "Hard Choices" report as a gotcha! moment for tilting away from COIN. Nowhere do I criticize the report for doing so; nor do I so much as put forth an argument for the continued relevance of counterinsurgency. Ex writes, "what is strong, pragmatic and principled defense policy one decade might not be so strong, pragmatic and principled the next." There's no argument with that statement in my piece. I suspect Ex is really arguing with CNAS' critics on Twitter, who leaped on my piece to snark at the think tank, but the piece itself doesn't actually give them the ammunition they might think it does. 

Update, 4:20 p.m. EST and yes I know hee hee that joke is over: Much, much, much more from Gulliver. The wonkery seeps from the pores in this post. He argues that the footnote is actually wrong about the law's mandate for the QDR:

If we consider this language on its face, it makes perfect sense: the Congress requires the DOD to make a full accounting of what missions, capabilities, and systems are required to execute national strategy with a low level of risk in order to understand how much must be appropriated to that end. Of course, it's hard not to be cynical (aka realistic) about the whole thing and conclude that this mandate exists to facilitate the sort of military-legislative-industrial collusion that ensures near unimpeded increases in defense spending; if legislators require the military to lay out its "requirements" irrespective of administration funding priorities, they can hammer the president for imperiling national security by failing to adequately fund their favored defense programs. This is Congress saying to the Pentagon "do not take the president's guidance about future funding levels as an appetite supressant. Tell us what you need to defend the country and we'll worry about getting the cash."

I dunno, that's a pretty credulous reading. CNAS seems to have the right interpretation here. 

Comments

[Kyle]

I think you are referencing an outdated statute. As of January 2008,

(b) Independent military assessment of roles and missions.--(1) In each year in which the Secretary of Defense is required to conduct a comprehensive assessment pursuant to subsection (a), the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shall prepare and submit to the Secretary the Chairman's assessment of the roles and missions of the armed forces and the assignment of functions to the armed forces, together with any recommendations for changes in assignment that the Chairman considers necessary to achieve maximum efficiency and effectiveness of the armed forces.

[Attackerman]

Not saying you're wrong, but I don't really see anything in that paragraph superceding the FY 07 language to align the QDR with budget considerations.

[Kyle]

Yea, wasn't trying to attack your post. Just providing the updated text.

[Gulliver]

It's not that Spencer's referencing an outdated statute, but rather that the CNAS report incorrectly denoted the appropriate section of the law. The one reproduced above is 10 USC § 118 (b) (4) -- that is, Section 118, paragraph b, subparagraph 4. (10 USC § 118b is a separate section, and the language Kyle reproduced above is from 10 USC § 118b (b) (1).)

I'll have a post coming on more substantive matters related to this one in the afternoon.

[Gulliver]

Apparently it won't take my links, but you can cut-and-paste urls if you want to compare:

10 USC § 118 (b)(4): http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode10/usc_sec_10_00000118----000-.html

10 USC § 118b (b)(1): http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode10/usc_sec_10_00000118---b000-.html

I'll have a post coming on more substantive matters related to this one in the afternoon.

[Gulliver]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "credulous." I'm also not quite sure that I'm "argu[ing] that the footnote is actually wrong about the law's mandate for the QDR." What I'm "arguing" is that the law mandates that the QDR should be conducted with a view to what capabilities, force structure, etc. are required to execute the NSS notwithstanding the President's budget request... which isn't so much a matter of interpretation as of fact.

[Jim Thompson]

A comment that has nothing to do with citations/references, but has direct bearing upon the purpose for the documents being discussed.

Though I have not been a part of the QDR, it is important to realize the QDR is a document that discussed the position or the situation of the DOD in what they consider to be a "period of persistent conflict". The QDR is used to observe and discuss needs which amount to courses of action at the strategic level. It is proper to develop a full menu of strategic options without the constraint of budget. The reason this is done because if you apply contraints too early in the analytic cycle you may disallow a winning approach or strategy because you never allowed it to mature, never evaluated it using the same criteria used to anayse the more "affordable" strategies.

If an expensive strategy brings victory, then it remains a valid strategy. If you can't afford it, well, that's a different thing - but at least you concieved of it, evaluated it.

You don't constrain yourself in the development of grand strategy. You constrain it in the analysis and course of action selection process. At the strategic level, let the big dogs run.

Cheers - JT

[Mark]

As the HASC staffer who worked the QDR provisions, when Gulliver writes

"This is Congress saying to the Pentagon "do not take the president's guidance about future funding levels as an appetite supressant. Tell us what you need to defend the country and we'll worry about getting the cash."

he gets it exactly right.

[Attackerman]

Mark, you know I love you. But do you really consider that provision to be responsible policymaking? It leaves the door massively open in the hallways of the Pentagon to profligacy and an imbalance between the ends and means of defense. That's exactly what's happened over the past few years. Shouldn't the QDR take budget constraints into effect?

[Gulliver]

Spencer -- Again, you're misreading the law. The Defense Department isn't creating the "imbalance between the ends and means of defense"; that's a matter of bad strategy. The legislation directs the military to outline what's required to execute the missions it's been assigned (or more accurately, the missions it has determined it will need to execute in support of the "strategy" that's been developed by the White House); if that review isn't conducted in a resource-constrained fashion, it simply serves to highlight the disparity between what the administration is expecting and the resources it's providing to meet those expectations.

That may be "just politics," but it's smart politics. Of course, the problem now is that instead of holding the strategists to account, the Hill (or at least the HASC) wants to go after the budgeteers.

[Belstaff Jacket Store]

So fun article is! I know more from it.