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S. HRG. 114–395 

IMPROVING THE PENTAGON’S DEVELOPMENT OF 

POLICY, STRATEGY, AND PLANS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

DECEMBER 8, 2015 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Armed Services 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov/ 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona, Chairman 

JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma 

JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama 

ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi 

KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire 

DEB FISCHER, Nebraska 

TOM COTTON, Arkansas 

MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota 

JONI ERNST, Iowa 

THOM TILLIS, North Carolina 

DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska 

MIKE LEE, Utah 

LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina 

TED CRUZ, Texas 

JACK REED, Rhode Island 

BILL NELSON, Florida 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia 

JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire 

KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York 

RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut 

JOE DONNELLY, Indiana 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

TIM KAINE, Virginia 

ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine 

MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico 

CHRISTIAN D. BROSE, Staff Director 

ELIZABETH L. KING, Minority Staff Director 

(II) 

C O N T E N T S 

DECEMBER 8, 2015

Page 

IMPROVING THE PENTAGON’S DEVELOPMENT OF POLICY, STRATEGY, AND PLANS 1 

Flournoy, Hon. Michele A., former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy ........ 4 

Vickers, Hon. Michael G., former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence ... 17 

Eggers, Commander Jeffrey W., USN (retired), former Special Assistant to 

The President for National Security Affairs and Former U.S. Navy Seal 

Officer .................................................................................................................... 23 

Questions for the Record ......................................................................................... 46 

(III) 

(1) 

IMPROVING THE PENTAGON’S DEVELOPMENT 

OF POLICY, STRATEGY, AND PLANS 

Tuesday, December 8, 2015 

U.S. SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:31 a.m. in Room 

SD–G50, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Senator John McCain, 

(chairman) presiding. 

Committee members present: Senators McCain [presiding], 

Inhofe, SESSIONS., Ayotte, Fischer, Cotton, Rounds, Ernst, Tillis, 

Reed, Nelson, Manchin, Gillibrand, Blumenthal, Donnelly, Hirono, 

Kaine, King, and Heinrich. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN 

Chairman MCCAIN. The committee meets today to continue our 

series of hearings on defense reform. We have reviewed the effects 

of the Goldwater-Nichols reforms on our defense acquisition, management, and personnel systems. In our most recent hearings, we 

have considered what most view as the essence of Goldwater-Nichols, the roles and responsibilities of the Secretary of Defense and 

the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the service secretaries, 

and service chiefs, and the combatant commanders. 

This morning we seek to understand how these civilian and military leaders formulate policy, strategy, and plans, as well as how 

to improve the quality of civilian control of the military and military advice to civilian leaders. 

We are fortunate to have with us a distinguished panel of witnesses, who are not strangers to this committee, who will offer 

their views based on many years of service to our Nation: The Honorable Michele Flournoy, former Under Secretary of Defense—and 

should have been Secretary of Defense—for Policy, who is currently 

CEO [Chief Executive Officer] of the Center for American Security; 

the Honorable Michael Vickers, former Under Secretary of Defense 

for Intelligence, who has also previously served as a special forces 

officer and a CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] operations officer; 

and Commander Jeffrey W. Eggers, former Special Assistant to the 

President for National Security Affairs, who served both President 

George W. Bush and President Barack Obama and was previously 

a U.S. Navy SEAL officer. 

As we have heard in previous hearings, Goldwater-Nichols 

emerged from concerns about the unity of command and the ability 

of our military to operate jointly. However, another primary concern was poor military advice, which former Secretary of Defense 

James Schlesinger said at the time had grown so bad that it was, 

2 

quote, generally irrelevant, normally unread, and almost always 

disregarded. Unquote. 

That is why the Goldwater-Nichols Act elevated the Chairman of 

the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the Principal Military Advisor to the 

President and Secretary of Defense and created the position of Vice 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

The intent of these reforms is that the Secretary of Defense and 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff would be better able to promote a department-wide perspective that could integrate activities 

and resources comprehensively across the military services. 

Goldwater-Nichols also sought to improve the process of developing policy, strategy, and plans by requiring the President to submit a national security strategy and provide guidance to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the combatant commanders for 

the preparation and review of contingency plans. 

These were all important reforms, but 30 years later, how do we 

evaluate their effectiveness? If we base that on the quality of socalled strategy documents such as the National Security Strategy 

or Quadrennial Defense Review [QDR], I fear we may have a serious problem. The QDR process has grown so bad that Congress created an independent panel to review the Pentagon’s work. In 2010, 

that panel concluded, quote, instead of unconstrained, long-term 

analysis by planners who were encouraged to challenge preexisting 

thinking, the QDRs became explanations and justifications often 

with marginal changes of established decisions and plans. The poor 

quality of the DOD [Department of Defense] strategic planning documents may suggest a deeper, more troubling problem, that despite 

Goldwater-Nichols reforms or in some cases perhaps unintentionally because of them, the development of policy, strategy, and plans 

in the DOD has become paralyzed by an excessive pursuit of concurrence or consensus. Innovative ideas that challenge the status 

quo rarely seem to survive the staffing process as they make their 

long journey to senior civilian and military leaders. Instead, what 

results too often seems to be watered down, lowest common denominator thinking that is acceptable to all relevant stakeholders precisely because it is threatening to none of them. 

I would cite again our recent experience in Iraq. Regardless of 

what we think about the circumstances by which we went to war 

in Iraq, the fact is that our Nation was losing that war for 3 and 

a half years, with disastrous consequences for our national security 

if we did fail. And yet, the development of a new strategy to finally 

stabilize the situation was not produced by the system, but rather 

by a group of outside experts and insurgents within the system 

going around the system. In many ways, this question of strategy 

is the crux of our current review. The main problem that Goldwater-Nichols sought to address 30 years ago was primarily an 

operational one, the inability of the military services to operate as 

one joint force. It is impossible to dispute that at a tactical and 

operational level, the U.S. military today is unrivaled in the world 

and far more capable than it was 3 decades ago, thanks in no small 

part to 14 consecutive years of sustained combat. 

The problem today, however, seems to rest far more at the level 

of strategy. Our adversaries from ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and 

the Levant] to Iran and North Korea to China and Russia are inVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:28 Oct 20, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 C:\USERS\WR47328\DESKTOP\22222.TXT WILDA
3 

side our decision cycle. They are capable of responding to events 

deciding and acting faster than we are. Instead, the Department of 

Defense and the U.S. Government more broadly appears increasingly incapable of adapting and innovating at speeds sufficient to 

maintain the initiative and keep us a step ahead of our adversaries. 

The DOD also appears increasingly challenged by strategic integration, integrating thought and action across regions, across domains of military activity, and across short-term and long-term requirements. Perhaps this should not be surprising when, as previous have testified, the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary of Defense are the only two leaders in the Department with directive authority to mandate this kind of strategic integration. All of these 

problems are compounded by the fact that civilian control and oversight of the military has increasingly become confused with civilian 

micromanagement of the military. 

This is not an attempt to condemn an organization just because 

some disagree at times with its conclusions. This is a broader problem. Our defense organization has consistently been too slow in 

adapting to the threats and challenges we face today and will face 

tomorrow. And there are real questions as to whether our current 

defense organization, which has long assumed that wars it would 

fight would be short and largely one-sided, is optimally set up to 

succeed in long-term strategic and military competitions with great 

power rivals and non-state actors like ISIL. 

Part of this problem may lie, as previous witnesses have testified, in how the Department educates and develops its civilian and 

military leaders when it comes to strategy. I will be eager to hear 

our witnesses’ thoughts on how to improve the Department’s development and management of its people in this regard, and yet we 

must always remember that bad organizations all too often trump 

good people. Ultimately we must get this right because we have 

never confronted a more complex, uncertain, and numerous array 

of worldwide threats and our margin for error as a Nation is not 

what it once was and, indeed, is dramatically diminishing relative 

to our competitors. We have largely weathered the consequences of 

our previous failures, but without changes, we may not remain so 

fortunate for long. 

Senator Reed? 

STATEMENT OF SENATOR JACK REED 

Senator REED. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let 

me join you in welcome the witnesses and thank them not only for 

their testimony today but for their extraordinary service to the Nation. And I know they will provide insights that will better help us 

deal with these very complex problems that we face. 

As Secretary Bob Gates said before this committee in October, 

Americans, including all too often our leaders, regard international 

crises and military conflict as aberrations when, in fact and sad to 

say, they are the norm. 

He went on to further state, while we may not be interested in 

aggressors, terrorists, revanchists, and expansionists half way 

around the world, they ultimately are always interested in us or 

our interests or our allies and friends. 

4 

And Secretary Gates’ admonition has reverberated throughout 

our hearings these past few months. The Department of Defense is 

facing many complicated and rapidly evolving challenges. We have 

seen how violent extremist organizations are able to promote the 

destructive agendas and carry out attacks against the United 

States, our allies, and our respective interests. In Iraq and Syria, 

the breakdown of a nation-state system has allowed the reemergence of centuries old divisions, creating a vastly complex situation. 

At the same time, Russia continues its provocative behavior in Europe while also deploying Russian troops and military equipment 

to Syria to directly support the failing Assad regime. Likewise, China’s assertive behavior in the South China Sea reflects both its desire to assert great power status and a challenge to international 

norms, including the freedom of navigation. Compound these 

issues, and the age of nuclear proliferation and global instability 

becomes even more dangerous. 

It is in this context that previous witnesses before this committee 

have testified that the Department’s organization and processes are 

not flexible enough to respond in a timely manner. For example, 

Eliot Cohen outlined how the Department currently produces strategy documents on a fixed schedule and stated that a much better 

system would be something like the white papers produced by the 

Australian and French systems, not on a regular basis but in reaction to major international developments and composed by small 

special commissions that include outsiders, as well as bureaucrats. 

In addition to how the Department develops defense policy and 

military strategy to respond to evolving threats, I would also welcome the witnesses’ views on whether or not changes are needed 

to the Department’s force planning process, if the current combatant command structure engenders effective military operations, 

and whether the size and number of defense agencies and field activities and other headquarters functions should be consolidated or 

eliminated. 

Lastly, while not fully within this committee’s jurisdiction, I 

would be interested in the views of our witnesses on the current 

interagency structure for national security and whether changes in 

that area should also be considered. 

These are complex, multifaceted issues that do not offer easy or 

quick solutions. Again, I look forward to hearing from each of our 

witnesses for their perspectives and thank them for their service. 

And thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman MCCAIN. Secretary Flournoy? 

STATEMENT OF HON. MICHELE A. FLOURNOY, FORMER 

UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR POLICY 

Ms. FLOURNOY. Mr. Chairman, Senator Reed, distinguished 

members of the committee, thank you so much for inviting us here 

to testify before you. And I applaud this committee’s effort to take 

a hard look at the Goldwater-Nichols legislation 30 years after its 

passage and to consider a broad range of defense reforms. I believe 

that defense reform is absolutely critical to ensuring that we have 

a military that can underwrite the U.S. indispensable leadership 

role in a very complex and tumultuous environment. 

5 

The perspectives I offer today really come from serving two different administrations in the Pentagon, five different Secretaries of 

Defense from my perch at a defense-oriented think tank, but also 

from the time I have spent in the private sector looking at organizational best practices and so forth. 

This is a very target-rich environment. It would be hard to cover 

all of the range of defense reform issues that I hope this committee 

will address in a single session, but I just want to highlight five 

problems that I have seen particularly in the area of strategy and 

planning and policy. 

The first is what I call the tyranny of consensus and the duplication of effort across staffs. I think the emphasis on consensus, finding what we can all agree on, sort of watering down solutions to 

the lowest common denominator has really become quite pervasive 

in the Pentagon, sometimes in OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] but particularly in the Joint Staff process, as the different 

perspectives from the services, the COCOMs [Combatant Commands], and others are brought into discussion. 

I think this overemphasis on jointness in policy actually undermines the Department’s ability to respond quickly and effectively 

and strategically to some of the challenges we face. That emphasis 

or overemphasis on consensus is further complicated by what I see 

as a lack of role clarity between OSD, Joint Staff, COCOM staffs, 

and sometimes the services. I saw this in my perch as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy where frequently even though the OSD 

clearly had the policy lead, there were more officers working a 

given policy issue in the Joint Staff and on the COCOM staffs than 

there were on the policy staff. And this is across many functional 

areas, whether it is intelligence policy, logistics, a whole range of 

areas where there is a lot of duplication and a lot of confusion 

about who has what role and what responsibility. 

When you look at the Joint Staff and the Office of the Chairman, 

it has grown to nearly 4,000 people. That is 10 times what it was 

when the Defense Reorganization Act was passed in 1958. I actually think the Chairman and the Secretary would be better served 

by a smaller and more strategic joint staff that was focused predominantly on the Chairman’s core function, which is providing 

best military advice to the Secretary and to the President. 

Similarly, the COCOM staffs collectively have now burgeoned to 

over 38,000 people. I think they too are ripe for a real scrub in 

terms of the breadth of their functions and the level of duplication 

with the Joint Staff and with OSD. 

The second key problem is what I would consider a broken strategy development process. I am the veteran of many QDRs. I have 

the bruises and scars to prove it. But I think as well intentioned 

as the QDR was as a mandate from Congress, I think it has in fact 

in practice become a very routinized, bottom-up staff exercise. It includes hundreds of participants, thousands of man-hours, and really does not produce the desired result. What is really needed is a 

top-down, leader-driven exercise that focuses on clarifying strategy. 

What are our priorities? What are the hard choices? How do we allocate risk? 

I would encourage this committee to look at overhauling the 

QDR legislation. I know there was some new language in the 

6 

NDAA, but the key pieces that I see are, first, moving to a more 

leader-driven process rather than a staff exercise, and two, having 

the primary product be a classified strategy document that actually 

has the teeth to guide resource allocation and prioritization within 

the Department. You may also want to still publish the occasional 

white paper unclassified explanation of our defense strategy for 

outside audiences, but the key piece that is most important for the 

Department and its management is the classified piece. 

The third problem I would highlight is a flawed force planning 

process. This is the process that translates strategy into the forces 

we will need for the future. And here the tyranny of the consensus 

is very much apparent. As we look at how this process is done, 

every step of the way from scenario design to analysis, to insight, 

all of that is governed far more by reaching the consensus among 

parochial interests than it is guided by pursuing the national interest. The current process is antithetical to the kind of competing of 

ideas and innovation that the Department really needs to grapple 

with the key questions, which are how are new technologies and 

capabilities going to change the nature of warfare in the future. 

How will we develop those new concepts to prevail in a more contested and difficult environment? How are we going to make the 

necessary tradeoffs in programming and budgeting? 

What we need and I think what is possible is the creation of a 

safe space by the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary to really 

have a process where all stakeholders can bring solutions, ideas, 

concepts to the table to compete on how best to solve a given problem, whether it is the COCOMs, the Joint Staff, the services, and 

also industry who have great insights about what is technologically 

feasible. 

This may not necessarily require legislative change but it does 

require leader focus and change within the Department if we are 

going to get the kind of force development and innovation that the 

Department needs to keep pace with the threats that we are facing. 

The fourth key problem I would highlight is bloated headquarters that undermine both performance and agility. In recent 

years, headquarters have continued to grow even as the active duty 

force has shrunk. The Office of the Secretary of Defense now has 

more than 5,000 people; Joint Staff, as I mentioned, nearly 4,000; 

COCOMs, 38,000. In total, if you add in the defense agencies, you 

have 240,000 people, excluding contractors, at a cost of $113 billion. It is almost 20 percent of the DOD budget. 

And this is not just a matter of inefficiency. It is also a matter 

of effectiveness. When you go out into the private sector, there is 

case after case where you document that bloated headquarters’ 

slow decision-making push too many decisions up the chain rather 

than resolving them at the lowest possible level, incentivize riskaverse behaviors, undermine organizational performance, and compromise agility. I think the same is certainly true in government. 

And what is more is all these resources that are duplicative take 

resources away from investment in the warfighter, which is the 

DOD’s primary mission. 

So I would really encourage this committee and the Congress 

more broadly to take several steps in this regard. 

7 

First, strongly encourage the Secretary of Defense to conduct a 

comprehensive and systematic effort to delayer headquarters staffs 

across the defense agency. When I say delayering, I am talking 

about a systematic design effort that goes through, eliminates unnecessary layers of bureaucracy, optimizes spans of control. There 

are proven methodologies for doing this that have been used across 

both the private sector and the public sector. I would start with 

OSD, the Joint Staff, move to the COCOMs, the service secretariats, and then the defense agencies. 

Second, I think the Congress needs to give this Secretary of Defense the kinds of authorities that past Secretaries of Defense have 

been given to manage a reshaping of the organization in the workforce, things like reduction force authority, things like meaningful 

retirement and separation incentive pays, including things like 

base realignment and closure. And I know we can get to that in 

the Q and A if you would like. 

The third thing is I think that Congress should actually direct 

the Secretary to commission a study by an outside firm that has 

both deep private sector experience and familiarity with the unique 

requirements of the defense enterprise to look at these areas of 

overlapping functions, how do we better integrate and streamline 

staffs within the Department. This could look at the service secretariats versus service chiefs’ staffs. It could look at OSD and 

Joint Staff functional area overlaps. It could even look at areas like 

transportation and logistics where all of the leading private sector 

firms have integrated those functions, yet in the Department of Defense, we have two separate organizations managing those. 

And lastly I would say I think we all need to take a hard look 

at the combatant command staffs. I personally believe it is time to 

actually reduce the number of COCOMs—there are areas of consolidation that would make sense—streamline the subcommand 

and service component structure and also look at the size and composition based on a honing of the functions that we want the staffs 

to perform. 

I think the last piece I would just foot-stomp is the importance 

of providing the Secretary with the authorities he needs to actually 

make these changes. I have mentioned some of them. One of the 

ones I want to highlight because it is in this committee’s direct control is a requirement that is placed on all DOD nominees being 

considered that is different from what is being placed on other 

agency nominees, and that is in most agencies, to avoid conflict of 

interest problems, you are allowed to put your assets and your 

holdings in a blind trust and then, if necessary, recuse yourself 

from certain decisions. The SASC [Senate Armed Services Committee] historically has said, no, that is not enough. You actually 

have to divest of your assets in any company that does business 

with the Pentagon. The result of that is that you basically 

disincentivize anyone from the private sector who has the kind of 

management acumen and experience running large organizations 

to come in and serve in the Department of Defense. And we lament 

that lack of expertise and that lack of acumen in terms of the people we are able to recruit to serve, and yet, some of the rules in 

place have prevented that kind of service. So I would just encourVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:28 Oct 20, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 C:\USERS\WR47328\DESKTOP\22222.TXT WILDA
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age you, before the next presidential transition, to take a hard look 

at that rule. 

I am out of time, but let me just conclude by saying a lot of these 

problems can be addressed by means other than revising the fundamental legislation of Goldwater-Nichols. I personally believe a lot 

of the core elements of Goldwater-Nichols—they got it right. The 

powers given to the Secretary of Defense, the role of the Chairman 

not only as the military advisor to the Secretary but also to the 

President, ensuring that the President has the ability to hear military dissent if it exists before he makes a national security decision. 

The one thing that I will say I would not like to see that some 

others who have testified before you have recommended is reinserting the Chairman in the operational chain of command. In 

my view, giving the Chairman decision-making authority over the 

COCOMs and services would come at a high cost, essentially commensurately reducing the authorities of the Secretary of Defense. 

Decisions about where to deploy forces, when and how to use force 

in conducting military operations are fundamentally decisions 

about where, when, and how the United States should use its 

power and expend its blood and treasure. In a vibrant democracy 

like ours, those decisions should remain in civilian hands, not the 

hands of military authorities. 

So let me conclude there, and I am happy to entertain your questions. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Flournoy follows:] 

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Chairman MCCAIN. Thank you. 

Secretary Vickers? 

STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL G. VICKERS, FORMER UNDER 

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR INTELLIGENCE 

Mr. VICKERS. Chairman McCain, Ranking Member Reed, distinguished members of the committee, it is a privilege and a pleasure 

to be with the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning to 

discuss how the Pentagon might improve its development of policy, 

strategy, and plans. 

It is an additional pleasure to be joined by my former colleagues, 

Michele Flournoy and Jeff Eggers. Let me say Michele and I are 

almost always of like minds, and I strongly endorse everything she 

said. 

It has been 7 months since I retired from my position as USD(I) 

[Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence]. I miss the great 

privilege of defending my country, and as astonishing as this may 

sound to some, I miss all of you too. 

[Laughter.] 

30 years ago, a lack of joint interoperability and interdependence 

and insufficient attention given to our special operations forces provided the impetus for major defense reform. Today, the need for defense reform is no less urgent. 

In my view, defense reform today needs to address two critical 

problems, one managerial, how to reverse the steady decline in 

combat power that stems from rising personnel and weapons costs 

and excessive overhead, and the other strategic, how to get better 

strategy and therefore more effective military operations at the 

higher levels of war. 

As Dr. Kissinger and others have noted, we are engaged in three 

long-term conflicts or competitions in the Middle East with global 

jihadi groups and Iran, in Europe with Russia, and in Asia with 

China. Mr. Chairman, as you noted in your opening statement, 

these three strategic challenges are highly asymmetric and two are 

wholly or predominantly unconventional. Each of our adversaries 

and competitors are able to impose significant costs on us, and each 

challenge will likely last for decades. 

We were as much as a decade and a half late in responding to 

China’s anti-access/area-denial challenge to our power projection 

capabilities, but now I believe we are generally heading in the right 

direction. We seem flummoxed by and self-deterred in our response 

to Russian indirect and direct aggression, and although it is certainly not from a lack of trying, we are far from having a strategy 

that can bring stability to the Middle East. 

We have had considerable success at the tactical and operational 

levels, particularly in the counterterrorism arena and in turning 

around at least temporarily the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, 

but much less at the strategic level. It is not enough to win battles 

or even campaigns. We must win our wars and our strategic competitions, and victory must lead to the establishment of the regional and international orders that we seek. Our need for good 

strategy is more important than ever and our organizational capability to produce it is uneven at best and very much personalitydependent. 

18 

Let me say a few words about good and bad strategy. In my written statement, I described what I think good strategy is and I provided several examples from our history of the past 30 years that 

I think constitute it and so I will not belabor it now. 

Bad strategies result from a poor understanding of the strategic 

and operational environment, unrealistic games, or confusing goals 

with strategy, inappropriate ways, insufficient means, and inadequate follow-through. But more than anything, they stem from an 

inability to identify the decisive element that confers enduring advantage and then to focus actions and resources on it. 

The reasons why we frequently produce bad strategy are insufficient strategic education, lack of relevant operational expertise and 

strategy-related experience among many of our practitioners, as 

Michele noted, insufficient competition and rigor in the marketplace of strategic ideas, and failure to bring Congress along as a 

partner in the development and implementation strategy. The most 

successful strategies that I have been associated with in my career 

have been when we have had Congress as a real core partner. 

Bad strategy affects not just current operations but future ones 

as well. As Secretary Gates has observed, the Department all too 

frequently prepares for the wrong war and prioritizes capabilities 

for imaginary wars over real ones. 

Now, let me offer a couple of ideas that dovetail with what 

Michele said that could improve the Department’s making of strategy. 

Let me first emphasize my core point: good strategy requires 

good strategists. It is just hard to get away from that. Strategy is 

hard. It looks deceptively simple. It is anything but, particularly as 

you move up from tactics to strategy and grand strategy. 

The first is to revamp the selection and promotion of our general 

and flag officers to give greater weight to strategic education and 

development in the course of their career. We are packing too much 

in the careers of every officer, and today it is hard for me to see 

how we will produce in the future four-star commanders who have 

Ph.D.s like General Petraeus and Jim Stavridis or have significant 

foreign expertise, as General Abizaid and some others. The system 

just simply does not allow that anymore. 

With our one-size-fits-all line officer or personnel management 

system, we have sacrificed the strategic education of our officer for 

tactical and joint gains, which are very, very necessary but not sufficient. It is far less likely going forward, as I said, that we will 

produce officers who have attained a Ph.D., are proficient in foreign 

languages and knowledge about areas of strategic interest to the 

United States. 

We are paradoxically plagued by both too much and too little 

joint experience in our officer corps. For some promising officers, 

we should consider relaxing the joint duty assignment until they 

reach the general officer or flag officer rank, and within our services, we should seek to produce a mix of highly tactically proficient 

and then somewhat less tactically proficient but still tactically proficient but strategically educated officers that are on the command 

track and compete to our highest levels of military office. 

The second idea, which again dovetails with something Michele 

said, is to rigorously select and educate a joint corps of operational 

19 

strategists and transition the current joint staff, which does all 

things for all people, into a real joint general staff focused on the 

preparation and conduct of war. 

Let me draw one difference. On the civilian realm and civilian 

control, as Michele said, strategy is usually set by a few people at 

the top or should be. In the military, it very much depends on having a talented action officer that provides impetus up to the top, 

and I do not really see that system changing. It just can be reformed. 

A joint general staff would differ from the current general staff 

in several important ways: in the rigor of selection and strategic 

education; in their longevity of position; in their independence from 

their services once they go in this area, although they would maintain their operational currency; and in their exclusive focus on war 

and strategy. 

Let me close with a few thoughts on improving strategy across 

the broader national security establishment. The National Security 

Council system works very well when it focuses on big questions 

of strategy and crisis management. I do not personally believe that 

a Goldwater-Nichols for the interagency would be wise. In fact, I 

think it would perpetuate some of the strategy pathologies we have 

in the Department across the interagency. 

Good strategy and effective operations are greatly enabled by 

good intelligence and the operational integration of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense in recent years 

has significantly improved our operational effectiveness in several 

areas. And I am sure I am going to sound parochial in saying this, 

but at the margin, given the challenges we face, their asymmetric 

and long-term character, we will likely see a larger return at the 

margin, dollar for dollar, in our strategic effectiveness by providing 

additional resources to national intelligence than we will by providing equivalent amount for defense. And of course, I am for both. 

Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before you 

today. I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Vickers follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT BY MICHAEL G. VICKERS

Chairman McCain, Ranking Member Reed, it is a privilege and pleasure to be 

with the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning to discuss how the Pentagon might improve its development of policy, strategy and plans. It is an additional pleasure to be joined by my former colleagues, Michele Flournoy and Jeff 

Eggers. 

It has been seven months since I’ve left my position as USD(I). I miss the great 

privilege of defending my country, and as astonishing as this may sound, I miss you 

all as well. 

I have followed with great interest the Committee’s hearings on U.S. National Security Strategy and Defense Organization. I commend you for taking on the critical 

task of Defense Reform. 

Thirty years ago, a lack of joint interoperability and interdependence within the 

armed services and insufficient attention given to our Special Operations Forces 

provided the impetus for major defense reform. Today, the need for defense reform 

is no less urgent. 

A major problem that must addressed today is that rising personnel and weapons 

costs, and excessive bases and headquarters staffs are generating decreasing strategic and operational returns on our defense investment, resulting in less and less 

combat power available for the defense of our national security interests. Second, 

and even more urgent, we are not winning our nation’s wars. We are winning battles and campaigns, but not our wars. 

20 

As I will discuss momentarily, we are engaged in three long-term conflicts or competitions for which we have yet to devise effective strategies. I have focused my 

statement this morning on our difficulties with developing good strategy, since policy and plans, and, indeed, effective military operations flow from good strategy. 

As Dr. Kissinger and other witnesses have testified, we face major challenges to 

our national security interests in the Middle East, in Europe and in Asia. 

• In the Middle East, the old order is collapsing. There is an assault on the international system by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, al-Qaeda, and associated global jihadi groups; expanding sectarian conflict; and a widening proxy 

war between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and its allies, and Iran and its allies. 

• In Europe, a revanchist Russia has successfully waged hybrid warfare against 

Georgia and Ukraine, and seeks to reorient the continent away from the United 

States. 

• In Asia, a rising China is asserting its growing power across the region, and 

anticipates that within a few decades that it will surpass the United States as 

the leading power in the international system. 

These three strategic challenges are highly asymmetric, and two are largely unconventional. Each of our adversaries and competitors are able to impose significant 

costs on us. Each challenge will likely last for decades. We are not postured as a 

Department, intellectually or organizationally, for these highly asymmetric and 

largely unconventional long-term challenges. We are also in the midst of an ongoing 

revolution in technology that will have profound consequences for strategic balances. 

We must account for this ongoing revolution in our defense strategy and investment. 

We will need to develop an array of strategies to deal with these challenges. Much 

as some might prefer, we cannot simply opt out. As my former boss and mentor, 

Bob Gates, told this Committee seven weeks ago, ‘‘while we may not be interested 

in aggressors, terrorists, revanchists and expansionists half a world away, they ultimately are always interested in us—or in our interests, allies and friends.’’ And, unfortunately, our strategic effectiveness across administrations from both parties has 

not been at the level that will be needed going forward. 

We were as much as a decade and a half late in responding to China’s anti-access/ 

area-denial challenge to our power projection capabilities, though, now, I believe, we 

are generally heading in the right direction. We seem flummoxed by and self-deterred in our response to Russian indirect and direct aggression. And, although it’s 

certainly not from a lack of trying, we are far from having a strategy that can bring 

stability to the Middle East. 

We have had considerable success at the tactical and operational levels, particularly in the counterterrorism arena and in turning around the situations in Iraq and 

Afghanistan, but much less at the strategic level. It is not enough to win battles 

or even campaigns. We must win our wars, and victory in war must lead to the establishment of the regional and international orders that we seek. We must develop 

and field capabilities and demonstrate the will to use them, moreover, to restore the 

deterrence component of our strategy. 

GOOD STRATEGY/BAD STRATEGY

As Richard Rumelt observes in his excellent book, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, 

good strategy is unfortunately the exception and not the rule. Good strategy almost 

always looks simple and obvious, but it is not. 

Good strategy is made by good strategists. A talented leader identifies the critical 

issues in the situation, pivot points that can multiply the effectiveness of his effort, 

and then concentrates action and resources on them. Good strategy doesn’t just 

apply one’s strengths against an opponent’s weaknesses or against the most promising opportunity; it creates strength, both short and long-term, often from unexpected or non-obvious sources. Good strategy aims to force an opponent to play our 

game, sometimes by changing the rules of the game, or to beat him at his own game 

when he overreaches and makes himself vulnerable. And, important aspects of 

strategy, particularly in the national security realm, must be developed in secret to 

be effective. 

I was privileged during my career to be part of two efforts that represent what 

I believe good strategy is. 

During President Reagan’s second term, the administration leveraged American 

economic and technological superiority to force a competition the Soviets knew they 

could not win without major reform, and we beat the Soviets at the own unconventional warfare and covert action game by driving the Red Army out of Afghanistan 

and supporting Solidarity in Poland. Importantly, the Regan administration and its 

21 

George H.W. Bush successor sustained both efforts until they were victorious, despite a warming in U.S.-Soviet relations. 

Late during President George W. Bush’s second term and through President 

Obama’s first term, the administrations adopted and sustained an effective strategy 

against core al-Qaeda in the Pakistan border region that has brought core al-Qaeda, 

though not its franchises, closer to operational defeat than the group has ever been. 

There are of course numerous other examples, large and small, of good strategy 

since the end of the Second World War: the strategies of containment, rollback, and 

economic and technological superiority that we pursued in varying ways through the 

Cold War; the opening to China, which we leveraged to great effect in our covert 

war with the Soviets in Afghanistan; the shift to a deep/follow-on forces attack strategy against Soviet forces in Europe during the late 1970s; the strategy to drive Iraqi 

forces out of Kuwait; the air strategy that led to the Dayton Peace Accords; and the 

air-irregular ground campaign that toppled the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks. 

There are others, and an even greater number of examples of bad strategies that, 

in the interest of time, I won’t go into. Bad strategies result from a poor understanding of the strategic and operational environment, unrealistic aims, inappropriate ways, insufficient means, and inadequate follow through. But more than anything, they stem from an inability to identify a decisive element that confers enduring advantage, and then to focus actions and resources on it. As Clausewitz noted, 

strategy gets more difficult the farther one moves from tactics to operations to strategy and to grand strategy. With respect to the Department of Defense, examples of 

good and bad strategy are evident in both the conduct of war and in the preparation 

for war, in operational plans and in force development. The latter results in a Department that all too frequently prepares for the wrong war and prioritizes capabilities for imaginary wars over real ones. 

IMPROVING STRATEGY WITHIN THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

I have spent my career developing and implementing strategy and conducting and 

overseeing operations. I’ve spent far less time thinking about how to make the making of strategy better. With that in mind, I’ll offer a few thoughts on reforms you 

might consider that could improve the making of strategy (and policy and plans 

along with it) within the Department of Defense and the U.S. National Security Establishment more broadly. 

Let me return briefly to my core themes: good strategy is made by good strategists; you can mandate strategy, as we have done with a series of national security 

strategies and quadrennial defense reviews, but you can’t mandate good strategy; 

good strategy is the exception rather than the rule; the problem is getting worse 

and more consequential as challenges to our national security significantly increase; 

the problem affects not only strategic and operational planning but also force development; and Goldwater-Nichols has done very little to address our growing strategy 

deficit; it has, in fact, contributed to it. 

I have described the sources of bad strategy. The structural and systemic causes 

that often result in bad strategy in the Department are insufficient strategic education, lack of relevant operational expertise and strategy-related experience among 

practitioners, insufficient competition and rigor in the marketplace of strategic 

ideas, and failure to bring the Congress along as a partner in the development and 

implementation of strategy. 

There are a number of ideas, several of which I had a hand in developing in an 

earlier stage of my career, that have been proposed by previous witnesses that could 

address some of the structural and systemic causes that frequently result in bad 

strategy. As such, they are at least worth exploring as you continue your review of 

potential defense reforms. 

These include: remaking our system for selecting and promoting general officers 

to increase the odds that strategic leaders will rise to the top; making a much larger 

investment in the strategic education of select members of the officer corps; transforming the Joint Staff into a Joint General Staff with an exclusive focus on the 

conduct of war and the preparation for war; transferring responsibility for certain 

warfare areas (counterterrorism, special operations and cyber) to functional combatant commands—CIA, for example, has a functional organization in charge of its 

global CT operations; elevating Cyber Command to a Unified Command; establishing additional standing warfighting joint task forces and reorienting regional 

CoComs on military diplomacy; strengthening the role of the Services in operational 

planning and encouraging a greater degree of inter-service and intra-service competition in the development of operational concepts; establishing much closer linkages among strategic and operational planning, intelligence assessments and force 

planning; establishing additional Services (Special Operations, cyber and space); and 

22 

consolidating staffs (OSD and the JS and those within the Military Departments). 

Most of these ideas have as their animating principle the development of deeper 

strategic expertise within the Department—through rigorous strategic education 

and career development, through specialization, and through healthy competition. 

Several of these proposed reforms may have merit, and there may be important 

synergies that can be realized by adopting several of them as part of a coherent 

strategy. Some may be alternative courses of action, e.g., establishing additional 

Services versus transferring operational responsibility to Service-like organizations 

(SOCOM and CYBERCOM) to gain greater operational expertise in certain areas of 

military strategy. (In this vein, Space Command could also be reestablished.) But 

each of these ideas has drawbacks that must be carefully assessed. 

While I’m admittedly generally skeptical of organizational change as a driver for 

strategy improvement, something must be done. Accordingly, I think the biggest direct strategic bang for the buck could come from revamping selection and promotion 

of general and flag officers, and from rigorously selecting and educating a corps of 

joint operational strategists and transforming the Joint Staff into a real Joint General Staff. Good strategy requires good strategists. 

During the past three and a half decades, our armed forces have become far more 

proficient at the tactical level of war. They have also become more jointly interoperable and interdependent. These are good things. That increased tactical proficiency 

and joint effectiveness has come at a strategic cost, however. With our ‘‘one size fits 

all’’ line officer personnel management system, we have sacrificed the strategic education of our senior officer corps for these tactical and joint gains. It is far less likely 

going forward that we will produce four-star combat arms officers who have attained 

a Ph.D. or who are proficient in foreign languages and knowledgeable about foreign 

areas of strategic interest to the United States. That means no more Dave 

Petraeus’s, no more Jim Stavridis’s and no more John Abizaid’s. If continued, this 

practice over time will reduce our strategic effectiveness. We are paradoxically 

plagued by both too much and too little joint experience and tactical expertise in 

our officer corps. 

Good military strategists can be military or civilian, and on the military side, they 

can be produced in several ways. Indeed, to increase our overall strategic effectiveness, we should pursue several diverse paths. For some promising officers, we 

should consider relaxing the joint duty requirement until they reach general officer/ 

flag officer rank. This would allow them to pursue strategic education, gain important foreign experience or become masters in their domain of warfare. Within our 

Services, we should seek to produce a mix of highly tactically proficient and somewhat less tactically proficient but strategically educated officers on the command 

track. To keep pace with the ongoing technological revolution, we will also need 

command track general and flag officers with doctorates in the STEM disciplines. 

A Joint General Staff would differ from the current Joint Staff in several important ways. First, its members, after demonstrating operational proficiency, would 

have to pass a rigorous selection process that would seek to identify those with potential to serve as strategists, and then would have to complete several years of 

graduate level strategic education. Second, as opposed to a single two-to-three year 

tour in a joint assignment, Joint General Staff officers would spend the remaining 

two-thirds to three-quarters of their careers in the Joint General Staff, rotating back 

to their Services of origin periodically to maintain operational currency. Third, to 

ensure their strategic independence, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, dual-hatted 

as the Chief of the Joint General Staff, and not their parent Services, would control 

the promotions of JGS officers. Fourth, a Joint General Staff would be focused exclusively on the conduct and preparation for war at the strategic and operational levels 

as opposed to the wide and duplicative range of broad policy and staff functions the 

current Joint Staff engages in. 

IMPROVING STRATEGY ACROSS THE U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ESTABLISHMENT

Although it is beyond the remit of this hearing, I would like to close with a few 

thoughts about improving strategy across the broader U.S. National Security Establishment. 

The National Security Council system works well when it focuses on big questions 

of strategy and crisis management. Problems in strategy at the national level usually stem from not presenting clear strategic alternatives with their likely consequences to the President, and/or from not having deep and relevant operational 

expertise directly available to the President when needed. Accordingly, I do not 

think a ‘‘Goldwater-Nichols for the Interagency’’ would be wise. In fact, I believe it 

would likely make our strategy problem worse, as it would replicate the sources of 

bad strategy within DoD across the interagency. To repeat for a final time what has 

23 

by now become my mantra, good strategy comes from having good strategists in the 

right positions. 

I’d like to close by noting that good strategy and effective operations are greatly 

enabled by good intelligence, and that the operational integration of CIA and DoD 

capabilities has significantly improved our strategic effectiveness in several areas in 

recent years. I’m sure I will sound parochial in saying this, but at the margin, we 

will see a larger return in strategic effectiveness by providing additional resources 

to national intelligence than we will by providing equivalent amounts to defense. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you today. I look forward 

to your questions. 

Michael Vickers, a former Special Forces Officer and CIA Operations Officer, was 

Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, 2011–2015, and Assistant Secretary of 

Defense for Special Operations, Low-Intensity Conflict and Interdependent Capabilities, 2007–2011. 

Chairman MCCAIN. Thank you. 

Commander Eggers? 

STATEMENT OF COMMANDER JEFFREY W. EGGERS, USN (RETIRED), FORMER SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT 

FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS AND FORMER U.S. NAVY 

SEAL OFFICER 

Mr. EGGERS. Thank you, Chairman McCain, Ranking Member 

Reed, and members of the committee. It is an honor and a privilege 

to testify on this important topic. And I am honored to be joined 

by my former colleagues, Michele Flournoy and Michael Vickers. 

My testimony today is, of course, informed by my own experiences as a naval officer, policy advisor to several senior defense officials, a National Security staff member across two administrations, and as well my recent public policy research on the intersection of organizational performance and behavioral science. 

Goldwater-Nichols was, of course, informed and catalyzed by the 

failures of that generation. And my sense is that our modern shortcomings are equally deserving of reform. So I appreciate the significance of this topic and this opportunity. 

My experience across both ends of the policy spectrum is that the 

defense policy and strategy apparatus that employs our world-class 

military is by comparison relatively weak. So my testimony today 

is focused on what I consider to be the greatest challenge to the 

future of our defense policy, and it is not any particular threat, nor 

is it how we are organized. Rather, I see our most significant challenge to defense policy as simply how we think and the most significant future threat we face as a failure to adapt in the future. 

Amidst budgetary pressures and a very rapidly dynamically 

changing future environment, it is imperative that we invest in the 

concept of intellectual adaptability. This is particularly important 

because we have demonstrated an inability to actually predict the 

course of future threats. Secretary Gates perhaps said it best. 

Quote: When it comes to predicting the nature and location of our 

next military engagements, since Vietnam our record has been perfect. We have never once gotten it right. 

So making the case for intellectual adaptability is quite easy. I 

think the hard part is designing change that actually results in intellectual adaptability. The good news is the Pentagon has gone a 

great way to internalize this concept and institutionalize it within 

their current strategic planning lexicon. 

24 

So I would first make a few points about how adaptability relates 

to people and technology. 

First is that adaptability relates to an organization’s culture and 

therefore and ultimately its people. As General Dempsey once said, 

if we do not get the people right, the rest of it will not matter. We 

are going to put the country at risk. 

It is in this light that I believe Secretary Carter’s Force of the 

Future initiative should be aggressively implemented, but the proposals are likely to meet some dilution as they go through the cultural resistance to change. 

Second, the strategic potential in this initiative of Force of the 

Future is not simply in controlling costs. Rather, it is enhancing 

the adaptability of the force. We must shift our way of thinking 

from retention of talent to the development of talent. 

Third, adaptability must not be misconstrued as how we acquire 

or buy technology. Even for DARPA [Defense Advanced Research 

Projects Agency], which I see as one of the world’s greatest intellectual innovation firms, their great history of innovation rests instead on their personnel system with their special hiring authority 

in a very rigorous intellectual process. 

Fourth, intellectual adaptability will require rebalancing the 

military’s emphasis on operational employment with academic development. Generally speaking, the more time spent in operational 

units, the more promising one’s military career, which is a disincentive to pursue experiences that broaden and build new ways 

of thinking such as civilian schools. 

And fifth and finally, the command-centric military promotion 

system results in a lack of skill differentiation that dulls intellectual adaptability. Command track officers who come to staff jobs to 

check the box so to speak for their joint requirement have little incentive to challenge the mainstream analysis of that institution 

lest they jeopardize their operational career. 

In exploring an adaptable force that is more open to new ways 

of thinking, my statement highlights cultural factors that generate 

a wider array of new ideas, improve upon a risk-averse culture, 

and can do things to inoculate against cognitive bias. We must do 

better at seeing the world as it is vice how we wish it were or 

thought it was going to be. 

Along these lines, my statement offers two broad sets of recommendations to promote intellectual adaptability in policy and 

strategy, which I will summarize. The first set speaks to military 

personnel management and the prioritization of people and their 

cognitive development. 

One, move beyond the joint concept by building senior military 

leaders in the future that have an abundance of national security 

experience outside of Defense. 

Two, prioritize academic growth by making such broadening 

tours more common by the time people reach the 06 milestone with 

a significant expansion of civilian school opportunities. 

Three, promote differentiation among our office community by 

balancing opportunity between a dominant command track career 

track and the non-command tracks. 

25 

Four, promote a meritocracy in military promotion by making 

more flexible both the early promote system and the up or out tradition. 

The second set of reforms is applicable to the civilian side of the 

defense policy community with three recommendations. 

First, institutionalize an independent red team of experts and 

outsiders that are empowered to rigorously test the policy assumptions and to present alternative perspectives into the process. 

Two, separate the policy development and implementation functions so that the policy development personnel can be protected 

from the burden and distraction of day-to-day operational crises. 

And third and finally, enhance the development of the civilian 

policy professional community with specialized training to enhance 

critical and divergent thinking in the policy development and assessment process. 

I greatly appreciate the opportunity to testify and offer these 

thoughts today. The uncertain nature of our future puts the need 

for humility into our planning and puts a clear premium on the 

concept of adaptive thinking and being more open to how we employ the resources we will have in the future. As always, such reform will be disruptive and costly and entail some acceptance of 

risk. However, in my view such risk will be more manageable and 

more acceptable than the increasing costs of a future failure to 

adapt. 

I hope my testimony serves useful to the purposes of this committee, and I look forward to assisting the committee and I definitely look forward to your questions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Eggers follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT BY CDR JEFF EGGERS

INTRODUCTION

Chairman McCain, Ranking Member Reed, and committee members, I appreciate 

the opportunity to testify in this series of hearings on how the American defense 

establishment might be improved. And I’m honored to join my former colleagues 

Michele Flournoy and Michael Vickers. 

After the painful and instructive failures of Vietnam, Grenada, and Operation 

EAGLE CLAW, Senators Nichols and Goldwater had the courage to overhaul our 

defense establishment with the landmark legislation that bears their names. It is 

difficult to see with clarity today how our more recent struggles with the business 

of defense and our operations in South Asia, the Middle East and Northern Africa 

will compare as potential catalysts for change. While our contemporary policy shortcomings may not have garnered as many protests on the Mall or have been marked 

by highly publicized operational failure, my sense is that our modern shortcomings 

may be equally deserving of thoughtful reform. 

America both deserves and needs a defense establishment that considers policy 

and strategy in a way that lives up to the complex array of threats it faces and the 

extraordinary military it employs. The operation of a modern day nuclear submarine 

or Army brigade combat team are small miracles in themselves. Yet my experience—across both ends of the defense policy spectrum, first as a field operator and 

later as a policy advisor—is that the strategic policy planning apparatus that employs our operational assets is, by comparison, relatively weak. The greatest military in the world deserves a world-class policy and strategy apparatus. 

Designing such a system, both for our defense and the government more broadly, 

is the basis of my current research at New America, where I am working to improve 

public policy through a better understanding of the intersection of organizational 

performance and behavioral science. 

26 

THE STRATEGIC CHALLENGE TO FUTURE DEFENSE POLICY

Many prior witnesses in this series have outlined how the rapidly shifting 21st 

century environment is making our 20th century models and tools obsolete. I 

couldn’t agree more, and so I won’t belabor those points. 

Moreover, I recognize fully that our defense policy challenges are rooted in the 

overarching national security process led by the national security staff. Defense reform needs to be nested within broader national security reform, but my statement 

today is constrained to issues within the purview of this committee. 

In this statement, I am focused on what I see as the most important challenge 

to the future of our defense policy. It is not how the Islamic State radicalizes our 

enemies, or how future adversaries tunnel through our cyber walls, whether Iran 

spins more centrifuges or whether Russia or China take their assertiveness to the 

next level. Nor is it fixing our broken acquisition system or rewiring command relationships within the Pentagon. These are all immensely important, but I believe 

that our greatest challenge is not what threat we may face, or even how we’re organized. 

Instead, I see our greatest challenge as how we think, and our greatest potential 

threat as a future failure to adapt and be more open to new ways of thinking. 

Amidst a rapidly shifting and uncertain landscape, we can ill afford to be locked 

into old patterns of thinking. A failure to adapt could cause us to fail militarily and, 

more broadly, as a society. 

This does not reflect insufficient faith in American ingenuity and determination. 

Rather, that spirit of optimism is tempered by the humility of my experience in public service and an awareness of history. For nearly a century, the strategic privilege 

enjoyed by the United States was rooted in geographic advantage and an abundance 

of power, particularly in our resources and our technology. In such an era, the U.S. 

could more easily afford to be slower to adapt. During his military career, the future 

National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane wrote that ‘‘having superior strategic 

military might has provided an enormous hedge for flabby thinking. We could afford 

less than optimal strategic planning because push was never going to come to shove. 

We have had the luxury of being able to be foolish.’’ 

We no longer have such luxury. With budgetary pressures, a shifting global landscape and a relative decline in global influence, we must improve our cognitive 

adaptability or suffer the consequence of failing to do so. As General Dempsey once 

testified, ‘‘Our competitive advantage is our people and their adaptability . . . . Overmatch in size and technology matters, but the rate in which we can innovate and 

adapt relative to these non-state actors matters more. This is a generational challenge.’’ 

THE CASE FOR ADAPTABILITY

A 2010–2011 Defense Science Board defined adaptability as the ‘‘ability and willingness to anticipate the need for change, to prepare for that change, and to implement changes in a timely and effective manner in response to the surrounding environment.’’ The concept of adaptability in defense planning is en vogue now, largely 

because it is seen as mitigating the risk posed by an uncertain and increasingly 

complex operating environment. In my experience, successful defense policy hinges 

on adaptability not just because we face an increasingly complex environment, but 

because we are consistently and profoundly unable, despite our best efforts, to accurately predict the future and the threats it will bring. 

General Mattis, the former commander of Central Command, once told this committee that ‘‘as we look toward the future, I have been a horrible prophet. I have 

never fought anywhere I expected to in all my years.’’ And Secretary Gates has perhaps said it best: ‘‘when it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next 

military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect. We have never 

once gotten it right . . . ’’ We will always be tempted with predictions, but we should 

also learn to embrace uncertainty. 

Greater intellectual adaptability will not only better posture the U.S. against an 

uncertain future, it will also improve the rigor and fidelity with which we make decisions in defense policy amid a dynamic landscape. We will do better at seeing the 

world as it is, vice how we wish it were or thought it would be. And we’ll be less 

prone to the logical fallacies that are often woven into human thinking. 

In my view, adaptability should be concerned with being more rigorous in our 

thinking, more open to new ideas and better prepared for change, whatever it may 

be. Because there is sometimes confusion between adaptability and the also-important versatility, I see intellectual adaptability as deriving from three critical aspects 

of how we think: intellectual innovation, or our ability to think creatively; intellecVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:28 Oct 20, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 C:\USERS\WR47328\DESKTOP\22222.TXT WILDA
27 

tual integrity, or having the courage to challenge assumptions; and intellectual humility, or our empathy to listen and learn. 

Intellectual innovation, integrity and humility derive from an organization’s culture, and ultimately, its people. People drive culture, culture drives how we think, 

and how we think drives our policies and strategies. So any reformation to the future of policy-making should start with how we invest in people. As the former 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marty Dempsey said, ‘‘If we don’t get the people right, the rest of it won’t matter. We’re going to put the country at risk.’’ The 

good news is that many of the services and the Pentagon staff are already 

prioritizing the concept of adaptability in their planning. 

MAKING ADAPTABILITY REAL

Indeed, and to a large degree, such a shift is already under consideration. The 

‘‘brain-drain’’ of the U.S. military has been well documented and the Pentagon has 

clearly taken note. Secretary Carter’s Force of the Future initiative should be aggressively implemented as a serious effort at reform. Secretary Carter’s vision has 

a tremendous champion in Undersecretary Brad Carson, but he will face a broader 

cultural resistance to change, which is likely to diminish the pace and breadth of 

reform. 

Force of the Future is only the latest study that validates the urgency of instilling 

greater adaptability into the defense enterprise and the thinking of its personnel. 

The Defense Science Board published a report in 2011 on ‘‘Enhancing Adaptability 

of U.S. Military Forces.’’ The Army’s Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at 

West Point has done considerable research on this problem to include a 2014 Task 

Force report on ‘‘Fostering Institutional Adaptability.’’ And Army Chief General 

Odierno’s ‘‘Force 2025’’ vision is an Army that is ‘‘adaptive, innovative, exploits the 

initiative and can solve problems in many different ways.’’ As other witnesses have 

told this committee, we seem to know we have a problem with the personnel system 

and acknowledge the need for adaptability, but struggle with agreeing on what that 

means in terms of reform. 

In my view, the potential in personnel reform is more strategic than retention, 

healthcare, retirement and compensation, as important as those issues are. Rather, 

the focus of personnel reform should be the broader spectrum of development to include recruiting, assessments, promotions, and education. The real potential in 

Force of the Future is not simply in controlling costs—it is in how it enhances the 

future cognitive performance and intellectual adaptability of the force. Indeed, Force 

of the Future might shift its lexicon from a focus on retaining talent to one of developing talent. Carrots and other retention tools are not necessarily the same as force 

development tools, and the more the two are confused, the more risk we incur. 

Moreover, adaptability in this context should not be misconstrued as how we buy 

or acquire technology, but is instead directed at how we think about defense policy 

and strategy itself. Of course, technology is important, but we tend to over-emphasize and misperceive technology as the crux of innovation. For instance, the establishment of a new Defense Innovation unit in California will bring entrepreneurial 

spirit and technical expertise to Washington. But what we need most from those 

outside of Washington is a spirit of intellectual integrity and humility, not just technical know-how. Many of our nation’s best and brightest are found in Silicon Valley, 

and we need to tap into that resource. However, we should aspire to a future military force that is itself regarded as the best and brightest, and where Silicon Valley 

comes to find and borrow talent. 

PEOPLE ARE THE CRUX OF ADAPTABILITY

One subtle irony with the Pentagon’s outreach to Silicon Valley is that the defense establishment owns DARPA, one of the world’s greatest innovation firms. 

DARPA has special hiring authority and robust funding because it has the sacred 

mission of maintaining a cutting-edge advantage in defense innovation. In a similar 

way, we should view the mission of defense policy and strategy as equally highstakes and sacred. Defense policy deserves and requires the same attention to intellectual innovation that we currently invest in driving defense technology. 

DARPA’s gift to the military is its innovative technology, and the real magic behind that technology is DARPA’s personnel system, which is built on a rigorous tradition of cognitive performance and an intellectually grueling process that insiders 

liken to defending a PhD thesis. This culture, coupled with special hiring authority 

that laterally acquires outside experts on a term-limited basis, drives an engine of 

innovation fueled by exceptional people who want to change the world. 

General Pete Schoomaker institutionalized this belief more than 20 years ago 

with the enduring principle that ‘‘humans are more important than hardware.’’ 

28 

Schoomaker’s passion for reforming the Army stemmed from his personal experience 

in the tragedy at Desert One in the failed Iranian hostage rescue. In his farewell 

message to the Army, he cautioned that ‘‘we must never forget that war is fought 

in the human dimension. Therefore, technology will always play an important but 

distinctly secondary role . . . ’’ 

Pixar president Ed Catmull has a similar philosophy about people that has enabled Pixar to remain an innovative and creative leader in the world of animation. 

In the creative industries, the priority is on novel ideas, much as the military puts 

its premium on technology. But according to Catmull, prioritizing ideas over people 

puts the cart before the horse: even great ideas can be spoiled within a culture 

where people are not the priority. 

The lesson of DARPA, Schoomaker and Pixar is that we must think of adaptability as a way of thinking rather than as something that is acquired or purchased. 

The pursuit of intellectual adaptation in policy will require balancing our investments in technology with our investments in people. 

BALANCING OPERATIONS WITH DEVELOPMENT

I’ve participated in two studies that assessed the future of U.S. Special Operations 

Forces. I’ve come to believe, despite all their successes and accomplishments, that 

the intensive utilization of special operations forces in permissive environments over 

the last decade has been akin to taking a very sharp knife and rubbing it across 

concrete. Sustained operational employment of our best forces is an inevitable temptation in a time of war, and it builds an incredible well of combat experience, but 

it does not provide the time to study and grow, and to experiment and fail, which 

are necessarily to hone cutting-edge cognitive performance and adapt ahead of the 

enemy. 

It is my sense that our military’s operationally-focused, command-centric culture 

is working against the development of intellectual adaptability. The model of promotion and personnel management is built around the operational command experience. The more our forces run to the sound of guns and serve in operational units, 

the more promising their career. By contrast, experiences that expose people to new 

ways of thinking, such as civilian schools, are still seen as rewards or ‘‘good deals.’’ 

Moreover, these ‘‘broadening’’ opportunities, where they do occur, are seen as 

‘‘rests’’ from the grueling operational pace. Thus the military officer student is 

incentivized to ‘‘take a knee’’ at school rather than actively invest in their learning 

and growth. How they do or what they write as students is generally irrelevant to 

their career promotion. Military colleges have a 100% pass rate, which does not reflect a rigorous process of independent learning. Overall, the operational culture still 

views broadening as a cost to be minimized vice a long-term investment to be expanded. 

The one-size-fits-all system and its lack of differentiation also results in a stratification of officers whereby some become ‘‘fast-track’’ and ‘‘groomed’’ for flag rank 

and the rest are among the ‘‘pack.’’ The competition for the ‘‘fast-track’’ is a powerful 

disincentive to investing in personal growth and development. Thus military members consider outside ‘‘broadening’’ opportunities with hesitation as they weigh the 

downside risk to their career. Moreover, the model tends to promote based on historic tactical and operational proficiency, not forward looking strategic thinking potential. The Army War College recently published the results of a Harvard thesis 

that concluded that Army officers with higher cognitive ability are statistically less 

likely to be promoted below zone or to achieve battalion command. The fact that 

we’ve had thoughtful and intelligent senior leaders in uniform should not be taken 

as evidence that the status quo generates an entire force with such traits. The question is not whether we can find a few critical thinkers every few years for the top 

positions, but whether we have an institution that collectively thinks critically from 

top to bottom. 

The operational culture also dulls intellectual adaptability by incentivizing convergent thinking. Fast-track officers who come to strategy and policy jobs to ‘‘check 

the box’’ for their staff job requirement have little incentive to deviate from the 

mainstream analysis, lest they jeopardize their operational career. The cultural 

command-track expectation is not that these officers ‘‘move the policy needle’’—it is 

instead that they merely ‘‘punch the clock’’ and move on to the next command-track 

job. They are ill served by rocking the boat they sit in. 

It is in this spirit that prior witnesses have raised the issue of a general staff as 

being preferable to the current joint staff model. Notwithstanding the drawbacks of 

a general staff, there is a very real problem with the joint staff increasingly serving 

as a pass-through rubber-stamp for combatant command or field recommendations. 

This deference likely stems from the above effect, whereby command-track officers 

29 

are unlikely to challenge other operational officers in command. There is little penalty for silence. 

The anti-intellectual cultural prioritization of operations over education should be 

inverted. This has been done before. During the inter-war period, the War Department explicitly prioritized Army staff and war college faculty manning above operational units. This prioritization of education was based on the assumption that future warfare would be different than the first World War—our planning assumptions today should be at least as humble. 

We can’t rely solely on a generation of combat experience and new technology. The 

development of our people, and their ideas, is how we’ll adapt and outsmart future 

enemies. 

INVEST IN DRIVERS OF ADAPTABILITY

Research points to several factors that could improve intellectual adaptability in 

defense policy and strategy decision-making: 1) autonomy and ownership; 2) experimentation and failure, and; 3) critical review and dissent. 

1. Autonomy and Ownership. The private sector is increasingly investing in the 

related concepts of autonomy and ownership as means of optimizing not only the 

intrinsic motivation of employees, but also as an important engine of intellectual 

innovation. Autonomy gives people the freedom to plan their work and to own 

that plan, and researchers have demonstrated that such factors generally result 

in a more creative process. Google, 3M, and other companies with a track record 

in innovation have institutionalized autonomy and ownership by accepting the 

inefficiency and cost of giving their people time to develop their own ideas. 

DARPA’s model also leverages this effect, whereby program managers and their 

teams generate and own the ideas at the center of their projects. 

In defense policy and strategy, autonomy would suggest moving away from the 

one-size-fits-all model to allow for differentiation among officer tracks to account 

for different strengths and interests. Autonomy might also involve rebalancing 

career paths to allow for ‘‘broadening opportunities’’ with increased flexibility for 

independent research and academic assignments. Force of the Future is proposing reforms to expand in-service civilian school opportunities, but internal 

compromise will likely result in a partial and modest prototype. A partial prototype could have the unintended consequence of continuing the stratification effect 

whereby officers perceive some handicap to their career path by experimenting 

with the traditional norm. As experienced with the Pentagon’s ‘‘Afghan Hands’’ 

program, career path reforms may not have the desired effect unless they are implemented broadly. 

2. Experimentation and Failure. The track record of innovation highlights a 

willingness to experiment with creative ideas and to accept the accompanying 

risk of failure so that iterative improvement can occur. However, we typically 

treat defense policy and strategy as a high-stakes venture, thus we become risk 

averse and have a very low tolerance for experimentation with bold ideas. And 

yet, the practical experience of defense policy is that we’re constantly undergoing 

experimentation and failing along the way, except that we don’t recognize it as 

such—we’re more likely to rationalize failure as the strategy being underresourced or not yet working. 

Intellectual integrity and humility avoid this trap, and would make it more likely 

in the future to salvage success from an initially flawed plan. 

Take, for instance, our recent experience with security cooperation as a strategic 

pillar of our defense strategy. I’ve concluded that the logic of our modern reliance 

on security cooperation as a means of ‘‘building partner capacity’’ is flawed. The 

logic is straightforward: the rise of non-state threats among failing or failed 

states presents an imperative to counter these threats with military means, and 

we can generate those military means by building capacity within other governments through traditional security cooperation. The flaw in the logic is also 

straightforward: experience has shown that other foreign governments, particularly those relevant to this issue, rarely share our interests or values, and how 

well they absorb, utilize and sustain the military capacity we provide often falls 

well short of our expectations. 

The flaw in the logic is reasonably apparent and well-documented, but it is easily 

overlooked because of a compelling perceived need to act in the face of these 

growing threats, and security cooperation provides an existing channel by which 

to act, particularly when political pressure makes it preferable and cheaper than 

30 

the alternative of deploying U.S. forces. And despite the fact that the track record 

of the experiment has been so poor in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, 

Syria, and others, we have yet to step back and revisit the logic of this strategic 

pillar of national defense. The lesson might be to be more modest in setting realistic objectives. Again, it is intellectual integrity that allows for adaptation to the 

strategy when the strategy isn’t working. And intellectual humility can help compensate for a ‘decisive win’ culture that frequently tries to hedge against all possible risk. 

As an aside, and in this regard, I applaud the new mandate, via the recently 

passed NDAA, to develop a ‘‘strategic framework’’ for security cooperation. 

3. Dissent and Critical Review. Related to the importance of failure is the necessity of dissent. We recently marked the 100th anniversary of the articulation of 

the theory of general relativity by Einstein, the most iconic of intellectual 

innovators. Among Einstein’s more famous quotes is the simple idea that ‘‘we 

cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created 

them.’’ While Einstein is often popularized and celebrated as a lone genius, he 

leveraged collaboration, peer review, critique and iteration to conclude his radically adaptive theory of general relativity. 

Defense policy decision-making is a relatively closed, consensus-based process, 

and is exposed to a limited infusion of external ideas. Moreover, research suggests that groupthink is more common in hierarchies with a high degree of cohesion, risk, and sense of mission. Thus defense policy is vulnerable to cognitive 

bias and shouldn’t be grading its own homework, yet that is often how our current system functions. Within the Pentagon, the offices that develop and implement policy are often the same ones that assess its effectiveness, and those assessments can suffer from a lack of objectivity. Thus assessments of defense policy typically fall to the intelligence services, which becomes understandably frustrating to the Pentagon and counterproductive to the national security process. 

The exigency of combat long ago brought about the practice of ‘‘red teaming’’ military planning to think like the enemy and probe one’s vulnerabilities, and the 

U.S. military has done much to advance the concept. After the failures in planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Schoomaker and Keith Alexander established 

a ‘‘Red Team University’’ at TRADOC at Ft Leavenworth to improve the Army’s 

decision-making process by teaching officers to be introspective and reflective of 

their own biases, to be more empathetic in listening to others, and to mitigate 

the effects of group-think. The current leader of that program, Steve Rotkoff, became dedicated to this challenge after personally experiencing the failures to account for the known risks of the 2003 Iraq invasion, which retired Marine General Zinni has called a ‘‘dereliction in lack of planning.’’ 

The recent book ‘‘Red Team’’ by CFR Fellow Micah Zenko scrutinizes the challenge of an institution evaluating its own plans and the utility of dedicating expertise that is empowered and expected to rigorously pressure-test those plans. 

Dr. Zenko outlines how the ‘‘tyranny’’ of expertise within groups can cloud objectivity and creativity and how the best insights within an organization often come 

from its least senior people. This sheds light on a critical challenge of our defense 

policy system whereby decisions get made top-down while understanding flows 

from the bottom up. The tools of ‘‘red teams’’ can help mitigate the risks of decision-making being separated–in this case by many layers–from the best source 

of insight. 

RECOMMENDATIONS

Along these lines, I offer two sets of recommendations on how this committee 

might promote the strengthening of intellectual adaptability in defense policy and 

strategy. The first set of recommendations would rebalance priorities at the individual level, i.e. within the context of talent development and career planning, mostly in the military context. The second set of recommendations would make changes 

at the organizational level, mostly in the context of defense civilians. 

1. Prioritize People and their Cognitive Development. The conventional military officer career path is based on the outdated idea that command at every 

level requires command experience at the prior level. Enhancing adaptability and 

cognitive performance will require broadening and diversifying this career path 

and allowing for differentiation of officer skill sets. Force of the Future proposals 

call for mandatory academic and interagency tours for promotion, but dilution 

and partial implementation of such proposals are likely. 

31 

Specifically, the services appear to be pushing back against more aggressive reforms due to concerns with finding room in the ‘‘conventional’’ career path for 

such mandates. To be fair, there is valid concern over the opportunity cost of having less operational experience when our forces are next called to fight. However, 

recent experience suggests that accepting the risk of this trade-off would be acceptable based on the lesson that intellectual adaptability in combat is increasingly valuable relative to conventional operational efficacy. This was the lesson 

of JSOC in Iraq in the hunt for al-Qaeda in Iraq, as outlined by Stan McChrystal 

in his recent book ‘‘Team of Teams.’’ To defeat the enemy, they needed to re-tool 

how they had learned to operate. 

These recommendations would put cognitive development on a par with tactical 

proficiency, based on the premise that rebalancing combat warfare proficiency 

with broadening education and training in divergent thinking will improve our 

future intellectual adaptability. 

• Move Beyond ‘‘Jointness.’’ Goldwater Nichols succeeded in building a joint 

force that thinks as a military rather than as a service, but the universal requirement for ‘‘joint’’ service has likely outlived its usefulness. Today’s military 

serves in a different landscape where the solutions to defense problems intertwine military capabilities with diplomatic, intelligence and competencies from 

other agencies. And yet, military leaders have little incentive to serve with 

other national security agencies because it would jeopardize their career path. 

This also bifurcates defense and foreign policy, with one community trained to 

think in military and intelligence terms, and another in diplomatic and political terms. This parsing may be traditional, but it is not conducive to effective 

policy solutions to the 21st century problems that increasingly blur these old 

divisions. 

Tomorrow’s national security apparatus needs ‘‘wholeness’’ among its agencies 

in the same way that Goldwater Nichols sought ‘‘jointness’’ among the services. The committee’s writ is limited in this regard, but Defense could lead the 

way by building a next generation of senior military leaders with an abundance of ‘‘national security’’ experience with other agencies or interagency task 

forces. 

• Prioritize Academic Growth. Academic or research ‘‘broadening’’ tours 

where military leaders are exposed to new ways of thinking should be as important to promotion as combat experience. In their 2008 Joint Operation Environment publication, the Joint Forces Command cautioned that ‘‘in the year 

2000, the PLA had more students in America’s graduate schools than the U.S. 

military.’’ Status quo career incentives should be rebalanced to make academic 

‘‘broadening’’ tour experiences more common by the O–6 milestone, with a significant expansion of civilian school opportunities. 

• Promote Differentiation. Outlying officers who do not achieve the ‘‘fasttrack’’ operational career because they have greater inclination to non-command academic or policy tours should not be handicapped in their career. 

Force of the Future is proposing the expansion of ‘‘technical tracks’’ for such 

officers, but this risks perpetuating the stratified, two-tier system of the ‘‘command track’’ and everyone else, which is not healthy. Until there is better equity and balance between the command tracks and other tracks, the non-command tracks will not attract and promote the best people. The concept of a 

‘‘technical’’ track should be made commensurate with the ‘‘command’’ track 

and include near-equal opportunities for the policy-minded strategists. 

• Promote a Meritocracy. Carrot-based incentives to retain the ‘‘best and 

brightest’’ are unlikely to succeed. What drives many such officers out is not 

the pay or benefits, but frustration with a time-in-grade system of promotion. 

If the rate of advancement could vary based on demonstrated aptitude for responsibility and leadership, with a less rigid system of tickets that needed to 

be punched, the ‘‘best and brightest’’ would be more amenable to being retained. Such a shift could be phased in, as a first step, by expanding and making more flexible the ‘‘early promote’’ quota system and removing the yeargroup management controls in the mid-grade years. 

2. Enhance Intellectual Adaptability within Defense Policy 

• Conduct internal, independent policy and strategy assessments. Policy 

developers and implementers should not be grading their own homework. 

While the intelligence agencies will continue to play a role in evaluating the 

implementation of policy, it is unproductive for the Pentagon to rely on anVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:28 Oct 20, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 C:\USERS\WR47328\DESKTOP\22222.TXT WILDA
32 

other agency to assess its defense policies. Rather, the Defense Department 

should have an institutionalized, independent ‘‘red team’’ of experts and outsiders dedicated to and empowered with the task of rigorously testing policy 

and strategy assumptions and opening eyes to alternate perspectives. This office should be led by an independent, direct report to the Secretary, comparable to the existing offices for budgetary and programmatic oversight 

(CAPE) and over-the-horizon analysis (ONA). Objective policy assessment is at 

least as important as long-term forecasting and budgetary evaluation. 

• Dedicate and separate policy developers and implementers. The urgency of policy implementation generally dominates policy resources, leaving 

little bandwidth for dedicated policy development. The two functions should be 

related, as implementation should inform development, but they should not be 

one in the same. Separation could be akin to the Ops-Plans model of military 

staffs, which is lacking in the current OSD model. OSD should consider such 

a policy model, whereby policy development personnel are dedicated and protected from the distractions of policy implementation issues and day-to-day 

operational crises. 

• Enhance the development of civilian policy professionals. OSD should 

augment the professional development of policy civilians with specialized 

training to enhance critical thinking in policy development and assessment. 

The Army’s University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies at Ft. Leavenworth gives an in-depth course of instruction to those who serve on ‘‘red 

teams’’ and provides a shorter curriculum to all Army officers, which includes 

important lessons on group think mitigation and fostering cultural empathy. 

Something similar could also be useful to civilian policy personnel. 

CONCLUSION

Mr. Chairman, Senator Reed, Members of the Committee, I appreciate the opportunity to offer this testimony. 

I believe that humility is required in predicting how many or what types of battalions, fighters or languages the force of the future will need. Those who proclaim that 

the future of conflict definitively lies in one region over another, or in one form of 

conflict over another, are likely to be proven wrong. The uncertain nature of future 

threats puts a clear premium on intellectual adaptability and being more open to 

new ways of thinking about how we employ the resources we have. 

This is difficult, because it requires an embrace of uncertainty and tinkering with 

some of the most revered, time-honored personnel models in our history. As always, 

such reform would be disruptive and costly in the short-term and require some acceptance of risk. Nonetheless, my view is that such risk would be smaller and more 

manageable than the increasing costs of a future failure to adapt. 

I hope this statement serves useful in your consideration of reform, and I’d look 

forward to assisting the committee in any way possible in the future. 

Chairman MCCAIN. Thank you very much. 

Secretary Flournoy, I have been concerned about the centralization of decision-making on a tactical level. I have been told, for example, the reason why we waited for a year to launch strikes 

against the fuel trucks, which were a great source of ISIS’s [Islamic 

State of Iraq and Syria] revenue, that the decision rested in the 

White House and had never been given. It seems to me that those 

decisions should be made at a tactical level, and I wonder about 

your concern about that. 

But, second of all, when I tell people and my constituents about 

the numbers that you just cited in your testimony, tens of thousands of staff members at all levels, they ask me a simple question: 

How did this happen? 

And finally, what is your solution? Do we have to act legislatively 

to put caps on the size of these staffs? Do we have to restructure 

the entire organizations? I think everybody agrees they are much, 

much, much too large. And so what is your suggestion as to how 

we get this situation back under control and get our service men 

and women back into the operational force? 

33 

Ms. FLOURNOY. So first on your point about tactical decisions 

being sort of pulled up the chain of command into either the senior 

reaches of the Pentagon or the White House, I think too often that 

happens because of two reasons: one, a lack of role clarity of who 

has what job; and two, a risk aversion. The more people are worried about risk, the more they tend to pull decisions up the chain 

of command. 

The irony of that is that I think if you were to keep the NSC 

[National Security Council] process focused on strategy development, policy setting, setting the right and left limits for execution, 

and then you were to empower the secretaries of the various agencies to actually execute on that policy and then hold them accountable if they screw up, but allow them to really be empowered executors of the policy, I think actually in fact that would reduce risk 

to the President and to the policy. 

So I do think it is a matter of role clarity, but it is also a matter 

of management style that empowers leaders down the chain and 

holds them accountable. 

You know, in terms of how this tremendous growth in headquarters staffs have happened, I think there is certainly instances 

where in a very complex world, the Department gets assigned new 

tasks and every time there is a new task and somebody new responsible for that task at a senior level, they grow a staff. 

Chairman MCCAIN. And there is a new command. 

Ms. FLOURNOY. And there is a new command. Right. 

So there is some of that. 

But I also think it happens—it is more about the natural tendency of bureaucracies to grow. The fact that without role clarity 

you have a lot of people competing to do the same work, we now 

have a situation where COCOMs are routinely pulled into the policy process. And if you are a four-star COCOM commander and you 

are going to have to appear in the situation room, of course, you 

are going to build your own policy staff so you are prepared to do 

that. But is that really what we want the functions of the COCOMs 

to be? 

So I think role clarity, really scrubbing the functions and then 

I think applying some of the best practices that many Fortune 500 

companies have gone through, which is systematic organizational 

design where you start with some design principles and then you 

go layer by layer and you optimize spans of control and you eliminate unnecessary layers. And not only do you get cost savings, but 

more importantly, you get the kind of organizational agility and 

adaptability that my colleagues here have been talking about. 

Chairman MCCAIN. Secretary Vickers? 

Mr. VICKERS. I would just underscore what Michele said about 

the dangers of centralization. I also think there is a case—and it 

does stem from risk aversion, and I think when you confuse a regional war for a counterterrorism campaign and apply processes 

you apply outside of areas of armed hostilities, then you get the results. If you compare our campaign against the Taliban in 2001 

versus our campaign against ISIL in Iraq and Syria, you see a really marked difference, and you see a marked difference in results 

as well in terms of toppling the hostile regime. ISIL, of course, is 

far more like a state—or it is a combination of a state and a global 

34 

jihadist organization. Even within the counterterrorism realm, 

when we have applied the principles that Michele described in 

terms of delegated authority, we have been far more effective. 

Chairman MCCAIN. Commander Eggers, briefly. 

Mr. EGGERS. Thank you, Chairman McCain. 

The only point I would add is the role of information flow and 

technology which has changed radically and made it far easier for 

the effect that Secretary Flournoy mentioned where we pull in the 

field. We feel an obligation to understand the operational level of 

detail and the policy decision-making process. And I think that has 

two drawbacks. One is it does bloat the size of the subordinate 

staffs, but two, it introduces a certain cultural deference to the 

field and a certain amount of bias towards the preferences of the 

field, which I alluded to in my statement for the record, which I 

think has to be acknowledged. 

History suggests that there is benefit by senior leadership understanding these tactical details and the effects of the policy and the 

strategy. Yet, I think that that has grown due to the proliferation 

of technology change and the way we see information and have 

awareness of the battlefield. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman MCCAIN. Senator Reed? 

Senator Reed. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you witnesses for very, very thoughtful testimony. 

Starting with Secretary Flournoy, you indicated that in the 

realm of planning documents, the process would be improved if it 

was a classified document essentially and then periodical releases 

of generic information, et cetera. If you want to elaborate, please 

do so, Madam Secretary, and then I will ask Secretary Vickers and 

the Commander for their comments too. 

Ms. FLOURNOY. In my view, when we have unclassified documents, we tend to get a lovely coffee table book that is a list of everything that is important. But what the Department really needs 

is strategy and strategy is about making choices. So clear priorities 

where not everything is a priority. Probably the hardest part of 

strategy is deciding where you are going to accept and manage 

risks. There are problems talking about that in too detailed a manner in a public context because your adversaries are listening, opportunists are listening, allies are listening. So it is very important 

I think for a real strategy document to be classified and shared 

with the appropriate overseers in Congress to really guide 

prioritization and resource allocation. 

I also think that that process should be leader-driven but be very 

inclusive at the leadership level. The best example of that I saw 

was in the development of the 2012 defense strategy where we did 

it because of profound changes in the resourcing and security environment, but it included everybody from the President to the Secretary of Defense to the Chairman to all of the COCOMs, all of the 

service chiefs and secretaries, and so forth. I would have liked to 

have actually seen it include a couple of key Members of Congress 

as partners. But it was an iterative process of really getting the 

leadership team as a leadership team to buy into a real strategy 

that did prioritize some things and accept risk and manage it in 

other areas. So I think that is a good model to build on. 

35 

Senator REED. I will just insert a point and then ask the Secretary, and then you might come back at the end, Madam Secretary. 

This is all nice, but ultimately we have got a budget, which is 

pretty open and people argue that that is the strategic guidance 

right there. You might think about this, Secretary Vickers. How do 

we sort of have this very classified sort of strategy and then have 

a budget that does not reveal it? 

Ms. FLOURNOY. I think there are parts of the budget that are 

rightly classified, and I think we can have a broad discussion of 

strategy and we should in a democratic context. I just think that 

what I hear from this committee and from others in the Department, frankly, is a frustration that we stop short of the hard 

choices sometimes. And I think some of those need to have a classified environment to have an honest discussion about what we are 

actually doing. 

Senator REED. Secretary Vickers, please, and then Commander. 

Mr. VICKERS. Sure. I think that important aspects of our strategy 

have to be developed in secret to be effective, and that really is the 

case. You know, it is a question of emphasis. The reason for this 

is that good strategy really has to be unexpected in some ways if 

you are going to exploit your strengths against your opponent’s 

weaknesses and create new strengths. Either to change the rules 

of the game or to beat him at his own game has to be consistent 

with your overt strategy, but there are important elements that 

have to be secret. 

I would add to your question, Senator Reed, classified strategy 

can use unclassified capabilities in unexpected ways, and that is 

what confounds your enemy, as well as our classified capabilities 

that we necessarily keep classified. 

Senator REED. Commander, can you comment, please? 

Mr. EGGERS. I would take a slightly different and mixed view on 

this which is that the problem with the strategic documents and 

the framing we have now is not necessarily that they are unclassified, it is that they avoid the hard decisions and that they become 

a laundry list of every conceivable approach to solve a problem because of the process. And that is not because of the unclassified nature so much as the process that develops those documents. And 

some strategic documents will need to be classified by virtue of the 

content, but that in general an open document that is open to the 

scrutiny and the debate of outside experts who will not have access 

to a classified document could be a valuable effect to increase the 

diversity of thinking that goes into that strategy that we would 

lose by classifying the document. 

Senator REED. Well, thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. 

Chairman MCCAIN. Senator Rounds? 

Senator ROUNDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Just down the line, does a classified document or series of classified documents exist today that actually are the operational directive that would be a replacement to a QDR? Is there a series of 

them out there right now that we simply do not talk about? 

Ms. FLOURNOY. Yes. There is a planning guidance that is issued 

both for force planning but also for contingency planning. And so 

36 

there are key elements of a strategy in those documents that do 

exist today. 

And I would agree with Commander Eggers. I am not suggesting 

that all our defense strategy should be classified and that solves 

the problem. I just think that the real issue is being able to make 

those hard choices, being able to debate where we are going to accept and manage risk, how we are going to prioritize among the 

many things we need to do. 

Senator ROUNDS. Agreed, gentlemen? 

Mr. VICKERS. Yes. I mean, there is certainly no shortage of classified documents and guidance. The question is whether they are 

strategically meaningful in a sense of concentrating actions and resources. That is where I think we fall short. That is the difference 

between good strategy and bad strategy. It is not things that we 

should do in the classified realm we sometimes do in the unclassified realm, but it is also whether what we are doing in the classified realm is really significant enough. It still has to meet the same 

test for good strategy. You are just more exposed, and that is why 

you keep it classified because you are trying to really—you are acknowledging how you assess the world, which may be different 

than the way you say things in public in some important aspects, 

and then actually how you are going to leverage your advantages 

is obviously sensitive. 

Senator ROUNDS. Mr. Eggers? 

Mr. EGGERS. And I would agree. I think people in the military 

decision-making and policy decision-making processes, when they 

set out to try and drive the process, will assemble all of these reference documents, unclassified or classified, QDR, national defense 

strategy, strategic planning guidance, and so on. And even then, it 

is very difficult to look at the mosaic of that guidance and the strategic framework and discern what that means for the implementation on that particular policy issue. In other words, it has become 

so big and so diverse in some ways that it often can lack coherence 

to the policy decision-making process that it is trying to inform, 

and even worse, it can become somewhat disconnected from resource allocation, which is a different problem in and of itself. 

Senator ROUNDS. Bottom line, if the QDR were to be eliminated, 

there would be a savings, I believe, in terms of staff time just creating it, and at the same time, there are other documents which 

could be expanded upon in a classified setting that would take the 

place of what we are doing right now in an unclassified setting. 

Ms. FLOURNOY. Yes. I would encourage you to just fundamentally 

reset the process and ask the Secretary to produce a top-down, 

leader-driven strategy document that has a classified form and an 

unclassified form and get rid of the bottom-up, ‘‘everybody comes 

to the table’’ kind of process because in practice the QDR has become the ultimate tyranny of consensus. The object is what can we 

get everybody to agree on and sign off on as opposed to how do we 

frame and present to the Secretary and the Chairman the real 

choices before the Department and how to make those choices. It 

focuses it on consensus as much as framing and assessing the alternatives and offering those for decision, which is a different process than what the QDR has come to be. 

37 

Mr. VICKERS. And it is much bigger than the QDR in terms of 

strategy. You know, as Jeff said and the chairman said about strategic integration, we do strategy every day in lots of ways. So our 

COCOMs every day are doing something called phase 0 operations 

directed by classified guidance that is shaping the environment. 

Well, you know, we are not doing all that well that is shaping the 

international environment the last 15 years, and that is why a coherent strategy that is strategically integrated—this is something 

that spans administrations, but that is what is really missing from 

our overall practice of strategy. 

Senator ROUNDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman MCCAIN. Senator King? 

Senator KING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I find this a fascinating and important discussion. Napoleon said 

war is history. Freud said anatomy is destiny. It has been my observation that structure is policy, that if you have a large, cumbersome, slow structure, you will have cumbersome, slow, consensus-driven, and ultimately unsatisfactory policy or strategy, as 

we are talking about today. 

It is very interesting. Mr. Vickers, you kept talking about adaptability as the key term, and you used the phrase about consensus 

is the enemy. You cannot adapt if you have a consensus-based process, it seems to me. What we are really talking about is agility and 

agility in decision-making particularly in an era of such rapidly developing and changing challenges, the challenges we are facing 

today from ISIS are different from the challenges we faced from 

terrorism 2 years ago. The whole homegrown extremist idea is a 

new challenge. And yet, we have 38,000 people trying to evolve policy. 

Ms. Flournoy, I think one of your important insights is that policy should be top-down, that the people who are assigned to think 

big picture are to be the ones where the strategy should begin. 

Mr. Vickers, do you agree with that proposition? 

Mr. VICKERS. I do. That does not mean only senior leaders have 

to do it. They can be aided by a small staff or key individuals, but 

I think small groups, top-down, senior accountability is critical in 

strategy. 

Senator KING. If we are talking about strategic thinking in the 

military, give me some thinking, Mr. Eggers, on whether the promotion process stifles creativity, risk-taking, and the kind of adaptability that we are looking for. To put it more bluntly, could Rickover become an admiral today? 

Mr. EGGERS. In my statement for the record, I go into some detail about a lot of the research that suggests that the promotion 

system with its emphasis on the command track model, which puts 

the premium on operational experience, is in fact degrading our 

ability to be more creative and innovative in how we think. That, 

coupled with the refinements of Goldwater-Nichols and the Joint 

Staff requirement for promotion, for instance, means that you 

today have a Joint Staff that is built with some of the best officers 

we have largely from the operational community on a very promising career track who come to that job and have very little incentive to think differently and offer opinions that are outside the 

mainstream analysis, which hinders the process. In effect, the Joint 

38 

Staff can become something of a pass-through for field or COCOM 

recommendations in the process. 

Senator KING. I could not find the quote, but there is a wonderful 

quote from Churchill about the sum of any committee decision is 

always no, that the committee, by definition, sort of filters out a 

different thinking and adaptability and agility, which again is what 

we need. 

Let me change the subject for a minute. Is all this window dressing? Is real policy not made in the White House these days? We 

have thousands and thousands of people in the Pentagon thinking 

about strategy, but the decisions are made in the White House and 

perhaps that is where they have to be made. 

When I was Governor—or let me just make another example. It 

was not some mechanic—the headline was not ‘‘mechanic failure 

caused helicopters to crash in the desert.’’ It was ‘‘Carter mission 

to rescue hostages failed.’’ Do you see what I mean? If the President is going to be held responsible for these decisions, it seems to 

me in large measure they have to be made there. I do not have an 

answer here, but I am interested in your thoughts, Ms. Flournoy. 

Ms. FLOURNOY. I think strategy and policy decisions should be 

made at the Commander in Chief level—many of them, particularly 

when you are putting Americans in harm’s way. But I think once 

a general policy direction is set, empowering your line organizations to actually implement it within certain right and left limits 

and then holding people accountable for the results—you know, it 

is the only way you are going to be able to deal responsively and 

effectively with the full range of challenges that we are facing. 

I think from a White House perspective and from a senior leader 

perspective, one of the challenges is when you ask for options, 

when you ask for ideas, what do you get? And this gets back to the 

tyranny of the consensus. What we really need right now on the 

capabilities front is real competition of how are we going to solve 

some of the key problems in a much more contested Asia-Pacific 

environment or with a Russia who may actually realize real antiaccess/area-denial capabilities in the European theater even sooner, 

or with this persistent problem with ISIS and violent extremism. 

We need real options development, and that means a competition 

of ideas. 

Senator KING. I am out of time, but I think it was Mr. Eggers 

who talked about a red team. I love the idea of a red team in the 

Pentagon or perhaps in the National Security Council whose job it 

is to contest the conventional wisdom, to contest the consensus, to 

be obnoxious. I could volunteer for that. I am well qualified. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator KING. But seriously, I think literally a structure that 

builds competition and contrarianism into the system might be salutary. 

Thank you very much for your testimony. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman MCCAIN. I think it was the former head of IBM that 

had a sign on his desk that said ‘‘The Lord so loved the world he 

did not send a committee.’’ 

[Laughter.] 

Chairman MCCAIN. Senator SESSIONS.? 

39 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator King, thank you for beginning to think at a higher level. 

That is what is on my mind right now. We are talking about a very 

important thing, how to develop strategy within the Department of 

Defense. But if it does not coordinate with the executive branch’s 

ultimate decisions about how to conduct operations, then we have 

got a problem. We have got a breakdown. 

So I am thinking about the role of the National Security Council. 

I understand that to be the place where the President makes his 

final strategic decisions, and therefore, how does the Defense Department, which has the technical expertise presumably to execute 

whatever strategy they are given to execute—how do they influence 

that? Are they properly being respected and their expertise accepted? Or how does that relationship—and is there anything that we 

can do—I will ask the three of you—to enhance the ability of real 

practical knowledge on the ground? 

I may be wrong. I have a couple of problems. I think that we 

were way to slow in responding to ISIS’s move in Iraq. It was like, 

well, once they take over and they stop, then we will worry about 

taking back territory, which is normally harder than stopping it to 

begin with. And then we have the problems, as has been mentioned, in Syria. 

Secretary Flournoy, what do you think? 

Ms. FLOURNOY. A couple of observations. One is that I think 

when one of my former mentors, John Hamre, used to say, if you 

want to make a staff more strategic, cut it in half. I think as you 

grow staffs—and this includes the National Security staff—they 

tend to get more into operational details and tactical kind of oversight. I think historically when you have had smaller National Security Council staffs—I am thinking of, for example, the Scowcroft 

era with a very clear understanding of what their role is, which is 

strategy, policy, honest broker, and options development for the 

President and not getting into a lot of micromanaging of agencies’ 

actual execution, except when there is a problem and providing 

necessary oversight there—so I think that is very important. 

In terms of the Goldwater-Nichols structure, I actually think the 

structure is right in that you have the Secretary of Defense at the 

table in the National Security Council and you also have the Chairman as an independent voice, not only an advisor to the Secretary 

but also an advisor to the President. And what that ensures is that 

even when the President is—whether it is his own view, he is representing a COCOM view, what have you—when there is military 

dissent, that that direct line to the President by the Chairman ensures that he has an opportunity to make that dissent heard before 

the President makes a decision about using the military instrument. And I think that is absolutely critical. I have seen it work. 

It sometimes upsets people, but it is a very, very critical part of the 

system. 

Senator SESSIONS. Then you have the problem where if the President says it is my strategy, my policy not to have boots on the 

ground again in the Middle East, how does the Defense Department handle that? Do you structure a QDR that reflects that view? 

Ms. FLOURNOY. Well, once the President makes a decision with 

regard to a particular operation, then folks have a choice of they 

40 

implement that, salute smartly and implement, or if they feel that 

ethically or morally they cannot do that, then they have their own 

personal choices. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, I think that is a good answer. 

I think the Nixon-Kissinger, the China deal, was decisive, small 

people with the depth of knowledge themselves, knew who to ask, 

made the move, and it worked. It is hard to do that the larger you 

get I think. 

Secretary Vickers? 

Mr. VICKERS. Yes. I would agree with what Michele said. When 

you have too much centralization in the White House rather than 

on strategy, a big, broad strategy that is set, and when it is not 

working, it needs to change, you get a number of results. 

One, as you move up into our higher level committees of the National Security Council system, you tend to strip away real operational expertise for the problem at hand, and that can isolate a 

President. And that is why, as you said, making big decisions, of 

course, is the President’s—that is what they are elected to do, but 

they cannot tactically manage operations. And so you tend to be 

slower as you assess the situation, or you tend to be very protracted in decision-making for some decisions that take 3 years 

rather than 3 months in some cases. 

You know, as I said, if I look at different models—Michele talked 

about the growth in the staff. It is also a question of process and 

what you focus on. By very, very different experiences, for instance, 

in the 1980s when we were at war with the Soviets in Afghanistan, 

we reviewed that about every 6 months where we do not really do 

that today. We review them every week or every month. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Commander Eggers, do you want to respond? My time is about 

up. 

Mr. EGGERS. I would only offer an encouraging note, that the size 

of the National Security staff is an acknowledged issue and there 

is an ongoing effort I think to try and streamline and reduce that 

because of the effect that Secretary Flournoy spoke to, that smaller 

in this case could be better. 

Senator SESSIONS. A yes or no answer. Do you think that it is 

important for us to work harder to develop a long-term strategic 

policy for the United States on the major threats that is bipartisan 

in nature? 

Ms. FLOURNOY. Yes. And I actually think that that will be job 

one for a new administration going forward, and elections both in 

Congress and presidential elections will hopefully allow us to come 

together more on such a strategy and hopefully on a comprehensive 

budget deal that would actually underwrite the necessary investments for that. 

Chairman MCCAIN. Senator Ernst. 

Senator ERNST. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Thank you to our witnesses today for being here. 

I enjoyed the discussion about our force structure, about being 

more agile, more flexible, mobile. There are so many things that we 

really do need to consider. 

But as it comes to force structure, I am really concerned about 

our military intelligence force structure and our support to our 

41 

warfighters both now and to meet the needs in the future. And I 

really feel that we need more robust assets to meet the intelligence 

requirements in both Europe and Africa. And I believe that we 

should be able to enhance support to our warfighters by reforming 

the Cold War era institutions and really focus on streamlining 

some of these headquarters and command relationships. And I 

want to focus a little bit on INSCOM [U.S. Army Intelligence and 

Security Command]. 

As you know, the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command 

is located at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and it is currently the Army’s 

senior intelligence integrator. It equips, trains, mans all of our intelligence units around the globe. 

And when I asked about INSCOM and its impact on intelligence 

and warfighter last week, General Michael Flynn said before this 

committee we have Army component commanders underneath 

every geographic combatant commander and yet the Army intelligence forces are aligned back to INSCOM. Talk about more headquarters that you do not need. 

So I think there is a fundamental need to take a real laser focus 

at what you are addressing and decide whether or not INSCOM 

can be dissolved. There is a fundamental need to decide if INSCOM 

can be dissolved. You take resources and you push them out to 

those theater intelligence brigades which are necessary. End quote. 

That was from General Flynn. 

And, Secretary Vickers, do you agree with General Flynn’s comments on INSCOM, and how can the Army better align its intelligence forces? 

Mr. VICKERS. I actually do not. In fact, I strongly disagree with 

them. 

So the theater intelligence brigades that—and I have great respect for General Flynn. The theater intelligence brigades that 

General Flynn talked about support our combatant commanders. 

One of the functions that INSCOM serves is that—and I am 

against excessive headquarters. So let me say that upfront. But one 

of the functions that it serves is to provide the highest level command for the Chief of Staff of the Army for intelligence across the 

Army. But it also serves as managerial development for our senior 

intel leaders. If I compare our intel leaders, who are going to rise 

to positions of commanding great organizations, they need the 

same leadership development that our combat arms leaders do. 

So if you are a staff officer, if you are a J–2, if the last thing you 

commanded is a battalion or something like that and then suddenly you find yourself as director of a major national intelligence 

agency with 20,000 people, just like our combat arms officers, you 

hope you have had a division command or something else before 

you rise to a corps command. And that is one of the functions that 

I think INSCOM serves. It is 20,000-some people or something like 

that. It provides that opportunity for a two-star to not only set intel 

priorities for the Army but also to gain the important managerial 

experience that is required before you take on a national agency. 

Senator ERNST. I am not sure whether I agree or disagree with 

that. I would hope that developmental opportunity is important. 

Whether you have a command at that level or not is maybe another 

issue. But I would like to look more into that. 

42 

Secretary Flournoy, do you have any thoughts on that? 

Ms. FLOURNOY. I must confess this is not an issue that I have 

looked at in detail, so I do not have a view on it at this point. 

Senator ERNST. Okay. 

Commander Eggers? 

Mr. EGGERS. Similarly. With all the respect for both Michaels, 

Flynn and Vickers, I would not add anything. 

Senator ERNST. Very good. I appreciate the input. 

Secretary Flournoy, while we have you here, last week Secretary 

Carter announced that all military occupational specialties will be 

open to women. And I would love your thoughts on that. I support 

providing women the opportunity to serve in any capacity as long 

as standards are not lowered for women to join those types of occupational specialties and it does not hurt our combat effectiveness. 

However, I am disturbed at how it appears the Secretary has 

muzzled the services to a point where they cannot provide results 

and data from their combat integration studies before or even after 

that decision was made this past week. And what are your 

thoughts on the process of how this decision was made and can you 

provide any further input? And my time is running short as well. 

Ms. FLOURNOY. I was not involved or aware of many of the internal details of the process. Like you, I support an approach that sets 

a clear set of standards based on types of military specialties and 

then holds all people, men and women, to those standards. If 

women are able to pass the standards, they should be able to serve. 

The one thing I will say is that there has been a lot of discussion 

about impact on unit cohesion. I think much of that is disproven 

by actual operational experience that has occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I would also say we have not taken account some 

of the positives. I mean, all of the business leadership—I am 

sorry—literature and experience emphasizes that the more diverse 

you make a team, the better decision-making you get, the better 

performance you get, and so forth. 

So I am generally supportive of this decision. I am not aware of 

the particulars of the internal process. I would certainly hope that 

this committee in particular would be provided with all of the data 

that you request to understand how the decision was made and is 

being implemented. 

Senator ERNST. Thank you, and I do hope that we are provided 

with that information. 

Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Chairman MCCAIN. Secretary Flournoy, I would not like to end 

this hearing without making you uncomfortable. 

Ms. FLOURNOY. Sir, I would expect nothing less of you. 

[Laughter.] 

Chairman MCCAIN. Are we winning the war against—the conflict 

with ISIS? 

Ms. FLOURNOY. I do not think we are where we need to be, sir. 

I think that this threat has shown itself to be much more serious 

than I think we first realized. As Mr. Vickers said, it is going to 

be a generational issue. It is something that is a long-term challenge that we need to deal with, and I do not think we are fully 

resourcing a multidimensional strategy. 

43 

I do think a lot of the strategy the President has articulated is 

correct, and I personally support an approach that is primarily focused on enabling local partners to be more effective against this 

threat. I do not think invading Syria is the answer. But I do think 

we, as the United States, need to play more of a leadership role 

diplomatically, more of a leadership role in terms of enabling others militarily and with intelligence and be in a more forward-leaning posture because this threat is getting worse not better. 

Chairman MCCAIN. Secretary Vickers? And by the way, I read a 

very excellent piece you wrote recently. I think it was in Politico. 

I am not sure which one, but I thought it was very thoughtful. 

Mr. VICKERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I do not believe we are winning or we are certainly not winning 

fast enough. As Michele mentioned, this will be a long struggle, but 

if you look at our fight with al-Qaeda, if you look at it in terms 

of a campaign, we need a more rapid and decisive campaign that 

will at least deny sanctuary, much as we did with the Taliban in 

2001. The war was not over, but it certainly knocked them back on 

their heals, knocked al-Qaeda back on its heals for some period of 

time. And that is what I think we need to do to ISIL in the short 

run and then many, many things to follow. 

Chairman MCCAIN. Commander Eggers? 

Mr. EGGERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I would only add that while I agree with you that the situation 

is quite concerning not just because of the degree of the threat but 

also because how complex the problem is, that sometimes I am concerned that the debate becomes overly focused on the one thing we 

do control, which is U.S. troops and, quote, boots on the ground, 

which seems to me to somewhat disrespect the essence of our previous discussion, which is kind of thinking in broader and more diverse strategic terms. And in this particular context, I think the 

debate needs to consider not only the application of United States 

military means, to include soldiers and troops on the ground, but 

as well the broader political landscape both within Iraq, but as well 

within Syria and within the region, and that too often that gets 

lost in that debate and in that discussion. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman MCCAIN. I thank you. I am sure you understand the 

concern of the American people in light of the San Bernardino attack and Paris and others. The opinion polls have lifted this issue 

understandably to one of the highest priorities. And we need to 

have a national conversation about it. I obviously have my views 

and Senator Reed has his, which we are largely in agreement, but 

more importantly, we have to, I think, develop a strategy that is 

credible to the American people, and I do not think that is the case 

today. 

Jack? 

Senator REED. My only comment would be I think as the commander pointed out, it has to be a multifaceted strategy with political as well as military dimensions, information warfare dimensions. And I think interestingly enough, I think Secretary Vickers 

made a good point about we had not the last 15 set the conditions 

properly, and I think we have to go back and look back and say 

what were we doing. In fact, in some cases, we were victims of our 

44 

success. The ability to take out terrorists with drone strikes and 

Predators was very effective short-run, but it created this dynamic 

in the world that many people found a justification to focus their 

animosity against us as a reaction. So I think, again, what we have 

to do—and the chairman is right. We have to come up with a coherent, multifaceted strategy, and I think we can agree upon it and 

move forward. 

Chairman MCCAIN. I think Senator King wants to weigh in on 

this. 

Senator REED. He has a quote from Mark Twain. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator KING. No, I do not. Sorry about that. 

Chairman MCCAIN. Yes. The one about suppose you are a Congressman, suppose you are an idiot, but then I repeat myself? 

[Laughter.] 

Senator KING. Do not get me started. 

We are talking mostly about military strategy, and that is absolutely appropriate because we are fighting a military opposition. 

But we are also fighting an idea. And I think if there is any gap 

in the—well, there are several gaps, but one of the serious gaps is 

the clash of ideas gap. We wiped out USIA [United States Information Agency] 15 years ago. It now appears that was a mistake. For 

the country that invented social media to be losing the battle of social media is shocking to me, and I think that we need a much 

more strong and vigorous ideas thrust ultimately because it is very 

difficult to kill ideas and we are not going to do it with drones. We 

have got to do it with information. And I think that has got to be 

part of the strategy in connection with all the military options, the 

air strikes, the troops, all of those things. But I fear that that is 

one of the places. These people in California were radicalized online, and I think that should be a real serious warning to us that 

that is where this battle is also taking place. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman MCCAIN. Also, by the way, a great Russian success is 

their propaganda in eastern Europe as well. 

Would any of the witnesses like to respond to those words of wisdom by the Senator from Maine? 

Ms. FLOURNOY. I do not have a ready Mark Twain quote, but I 

do agree with the notion that this has to be a sustained multidimensional effort. I think some of the areas where we are lacking 

is in countering the narrative online. ISIS is posting 90,000 posts 

a day online, and one of the most effective things I saw in counter 

was the tweeting of a remark that was made after the stabbings 

in the UK metro, which was someone saying to the attacker, you 

ain’t a Muslim, bro. I mean, this behavior of stabbing civilians in 

the London Tube is not representative of the religion of all of 

Islam. And that got tweeted virally. And that was probably one of 

the most effective counter-narrative things that has happened recently. 

But we do not have a sustained and systematic effort online to 

counter ISIS presence and attempt at recruiting. But more fundamentally I think what we really lack at the community level, 

here, overseas, is community-level counter-radicalization programs. 

And it cannot be something the U.S. Government comes in and 

45 

does. We can help facilitate, but really funding, assisting, help enabling those community-level engagement to try arrest 

radicalization inside communities here, in Europe, elsewhere. That 

is a critical part of the strategy that I think needs more attention 

as well. 

Chairman MCCAIN. Secretary Vickers, did you want to add anything? 

Mr. VICKERS. No. I agree. You cannot win in the long run without really countering and discrediting the idea. I would add in the 

short run, one of the ways to discredit the idea is to really set them 

back. I mean, part of their success right now is they are perceived 

as having the success. 

Chairman MCCAIN. Absolutely. I think that is a very key item 

here. 

Mr. VICKERS. And we saw that, for instance, with the Taliban 

and al-Qaeda right after 9/11. You know, their stock went way up 

after 9/11, and then 3 months later, when they were kicked out, it 

was, you know, who are those bums for a while. Now, it did not 

last. It does not win the long-term war, but it does matter. 

Chairman MCCAIN. Commander Eggers, did you want to — 

Mr. EGGERS. I would just balance out the conversation by offering the flip side of that idea, which is that one way to destroy an 

organization’s ideology is to dismantle the organization, of course. 

But what we need to be careful about is the unintended consequences of how we do that because in this case that is precisely 

what could play into their narrative, particularly with the introduction of U.S. or Western ground forces and the escalation of that 

type of war within their region. And I think that is the issue that 

really comes into play where it gets very complex between the military application of means and the ideological fight. 

Chairman MCCAIN. Well, we can continue this discussion, but I 

think it is incredible to say if you accept the view that some U.S. 

military presence is needed, which clearly events indicate to me, 

which we have been talking about for a long time, and predicting 

the events that have taken place, that then you are conceding that 

ISIS can continue to succeed. There is no strategy now. There is 

no strategy to take Raqqa, their base, where they are, among other 

things, developing chemical weapons. So this idea that somehow 

the United States of America, by inserting some ground troops in 

order to succeed, is going to be counterproductive—what is the option? That they continue to succeed? Is it not to your satisfaction 

that we cannot defeat ISIS without American involvement and simply not from the air. Air power does not win. 

So I respectfully disagree with this insane idea that somehow if 

we intervened to stop people that have just orchestrated an attack 

that killed people in San Bernardino, that somehow it will be counterproductive. The worst counterproductive thing would be to allow 

them to succeed. 

But I look forward to continuing this discussion with you, Commander, and I respect your view. 

And I thank all of you for being here today, and we look forward 

to continuing working with you on this restructuring, which was 

the reason for this hearing to start with. Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 10:59 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

46 

[Questions for the record with answers supplied follow:] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY SENATOR KELLY AYOTTE

ISIS STRATEGY

1. Senator AYOTTE. Secretary Flournoy and Secretary Vickers, what is lacking in 

the President’s strategy against ISIS, and what should the administration be doing 

that it is not? 

Secretary Flournoy and Secretary Vickers did not respond in time for 

printing. 

NATO FORCE POSTURE

2. Senator AYOTTE. Secretary Flournoy and Secretary Vickers, the National Defense Panel review of the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) concluded last 

year that Russia’s aggression in Ukraine calls into question the longstanding view 

that Europe is a ‘net producer’ of security. As a result, the panel concluded that 

‘‘NATO must bolster the security of its own frontline states, especially in the Baltics 

and across southern Europe but also in Poland, lest they be subject to intimidation 

and subversion. America must lead the alliance in this regard.’’ This belief that we 

must bolster U.S. and NATO force posture in Eastern Europe has been reiterated 

in a bipartisan manner by others who have appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee this year, including former Secretaries of State Dr. Brzezinski and 

Dr. Albright. General Jones, Former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said earlier this year that a failure to respond to Russia’s aggression in Europe appropriately could represent the ‘‘beginning of the end of NATO.’’ What is your assessment of the administration’s action so far in bolstering security in NATO’s frontline 

states, and what more needs to be done? 

Secretary Flournoy and Secretary Vickers did not respond in time for 

printing. 

UKRAINE

3. Senator AYOTTE. Secretary Flournoy, along with others, you authored a report 

published this past February by the Atlantic Council, Brookings, and the Chicago 

Council on Global Affairs entitled ‘‘Preserving Ukraine’s Independence, Resisting 

Russian Aggression: What the United States and NATO Must Do.’’ The report said 

that the U.S. should provide ‘‘direct military assistance—in far larger amounts than 

provided to date and including lethal defensive arms—so that Ukraine is better able 

to defend itself.’’ The report concluded, ‘‘Only if the Kremlin knows that the risks 

and costs of further military action are high will it seek to fins an acceptable political solution. Russia’s actions in and against Ukraine pose the gravest threat to European security in more than 30 years.’’ Do you still believe that the United States 

should provide lethal arms to Ukraine? Why? 

Secretary Flournoy did not respond in time for printing. 

4. Senator AYOTTE. Secretary Flournoy, what specific capabilities would you recommend the administration provide to Ukraine? 

Secretary Flournoy did not respond in time for printing. 

DETENTION POLICY

5. Senator AYOTTE. Secretary Vickers and Commander Eggers, the spokesman for 

Operation Inherent Resolve, Colonel Steve Warren, recently said that ‘‘certainly it’s 

our preference to capture in all cases. It allow[s] us to collect intelligence.’’ As of 

today, Ayman al Zawahiri and Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the heads of al-Qaeda and 

ISIS respectively, have yet to be killed or captured. From an intelligence perspective, would you rather kill or capture Zawahiri and Baghdadi? Why? 

Secretary Vickers and Commander Eggers did not respond in time for 

printing. 

6. Senator AYOTTE. Secretary Vickers, would it take more than a few weeks to 

gather all of the valuable intelligence that Zawahiri and Baghdadi could provide? 

Secretary Vickers did not respond in time for printing. 

47 

7. Senator AYOTTE. Secretary Vickers, would there be value in potentially returning months or years later to interrogate Zawahiri and Baghdadi to confirm or clarify 

information gathered elsewhere? 

Secretary Vickers did not respond in time for printing. 

8. Senator AYOTTE. Secretary Vickers, could intelligence from Zawahiri and 

Baghdadi prevent future attacks and enable the United States to go after al-Qaeda 

or ISIS more effectively? 

Secretary Vickers did not respond in time for printing. 

9. Senator AYOTTE. Secretary Vickers, would it help or hurt our intelligence collection efforts if, after a few weeks of questioning Zawahiri or Baghdadi on a ship, we 

sent them to the Southern District of New York and told them that they ‘‘have the 

right to remain silent’’? 

Secretary Vickers did not respond in time for printing. 

10. Senator AYOTTE. Secretary Vickers, if Zawahiri or Baghdadi were captured tonight, where would we detain them for long-term law of war detention and interrogation? 

Secretary Vickers did not respond in time for printing. 

11. Senator AYOTTE. Secretary Vickers, on February 15, 2011, when you came before this committee as the nominee to be Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, I asked you about the administration’s detention policy. You responded that 

‘‘the administration is in the final stages of revising its—or establishing its detention policy.’’ Almost five years later, has the administration completed its detention 

policy? If yes, what is it? If no, why not? 

Secretary Vickers did not respond in time for printing. 

Æ