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i 

51–105 2010

[H.A.S.C. No. 111–27] 

THE PROJECT ON NATIONAL SECURITY 

REFORM: COMMENTARY AND 

ALTERNATIVE VIEWS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

MARCH 19, 2009 
(II) 

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

VIC SNYDER, Arkansas, Chairman 

JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania 

GLENN NYE, Virginia 

CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine 

ROB WITTMAN, Virginia 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS, Washington 

DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

LORRY FENNER, Professional Staff Member 

THOMAS HAWLEY, Professional Staff Member 

SASHA ROGERS, Research Assistant 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS 

2009 

Page 

HEARING: 

Thursday, March 19, 2009, The Project on National Security Reform: Commentary and Alternative Views .......................................................................... 1 

APPENDIX: 

Thursday, March 19, 2009 ...................................................................................... 25 

THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 2009 

THE PROJECT ON NATIONAL SECURITY REFORM: COMMENTARY 

AND ALTERNATIVE VIEWS 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Chairman, Oversight 

and Investigations Subcommittee ....................................................................... 1 

Wittman, Hon. Rob, a Representative from Virginia, Ranking Member, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee ............................................................. 2 

WITNESSES 

Destler, Dr. I.M. (Mac), Saul I. Stern Professor of Civic Engagement, Director, 

Program on International Security and Economic Policy, School of Public 

Policy, University of Maryland ........................................................................... 8 

Krepinevich, Dr. Andrew F., Jr., President, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments ................................................................................................ 4 

Oleszek, Walter, Senior Specialist in American National Government, Congressional Research Service ................................................................................ 11 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Destler, Dr. I.M. (Mac) ..................................................................................... 51 

Krepinevich, Dr. Andrew F., Jr. ...................................................................... 34 

Oleszek, Walter ................................................................................................. 54 

Snyder, Hon. Vic ............................................................................................... 29 

Wittman, Hon. Rob ........................................................................................... 32 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Dr. Snyder ......................................................................................................... 71 

(1) 

THE PROJECT ON NATIONAL SECURITY REFORM: 

COMMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE VIEWS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE, Washington, DC, Thursday, March 19, 2009. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:07 p.m., in room 

2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Vic Snyder (chairman 

of the subcommittee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM ARKANSAS, CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

Dr. SNYDER. The hearing will come to order. Good afternoon. 

Welcome to the Subcommittee on Oversight Investigations hearing 

on the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR), better known 

as the Locher Project after its executive director. This is the report 

itself. We all have come to the conclusion that because of the density of the paper, it is the heaviest report that we have ever encountered in some time. It is so heavy, it tends to be dangerous 

when you set it down. 

I wanted to hold this hearing because of this subcommittee’s continuing interest in interagency issues in national strategy. As we 

heard Secretary Gates and others say over and over again, our national strategy in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan require, ‘‘whole 

of government approaches.’’ However, the question remains, how 

exactly do we do that? Some people do not think we need reform 

of structures but simply better leadership. Others believe we have 

good people who are working hard but our current structures and 

processes, largely built in 1947 to win the Cold War, do not serve 

us well now. And these structures and processes certainly won’t 

serve us well in the future as we face more numerous and complex 

challenges. 

An independent review on the subject was required by the Armed 

Services Committee. The two-year project we are talking about 

today was funded by both government funds, including some from 

the Department of Defense, and private funds. The full study is 

over 700 pages long and includes a history of the National Security 

Council, and about 100 case studies that seek to identify problem 

areas. More than 300 people participated in the study in one form 

or another, including retired General Jim Jones, our current National Security Advisor and retired Admiral Denny Blair, our current Director of National Intelligence. Their report was delivered to 

President Bush and the Congress in December. 
2 

The Project on National Security Reform focuses on how the National Security Council (NSC), the departments and agencies and 

the Congress contend with national security issues. We can all 

probably acknowledge that there is a gap between the NSC and the 

departments. We could call this gap the interagency space where 

true whole of government action might best be achieved. However, 

right now there is no structure at the interagency level that 

assures integration of all the tools of national power. 

The authors of this report propose strengthening the National 

Security Advisor, to be called the Director for National Security, 

and the National Security Council, to be called the President’s Security Council, to fill the gap. This will have certain implications 

for the rest of our national security system, including the Congress. 

So I hope our witnesses can help us sort out today some of these 

implications. In this report, the guiding coalition of national security professionals and thinkers have tried to make a case for urgent 

and broad reforms. They argue that all their recommendations 

should be taken as a whole. Some of these include creating a new 

Director for National Security, instituting a QDR-like interagency 

national security review, decentralizing management of national 

security issues by creating interagency teams and task forces, establishing a President’s Security Council to replace the National 

and Homeland Security Councils, creating an integrated national 

security budget, developing an interagency national security professional core, and establishing House and Senate Committees on National Security and strengthening the Foreign Relations and Affairs Committees. 

Our panel of witnesses today, to help us sort all of these questions out in the next couple of hours, consists of Dr. Andrew 

Krepinevich, President of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary 

Analysis; Dr. Mac Destler, Director of the Program on International Security and Economic Policy at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland; and Mr. Walter Oleszek, Senior 

Specialist at the Congressional Research Service. 

I also want to acknowledge we have an out-of-town guest here 

today, a parliamentarian from Quebec, Claude Bachand, who is a 

member of the Canadian Parliament. And he is going to be with 

us for a half hour or so. So we welcome you. Let us give him—and 

we will now turn to Rob Wittman, our ranking member, for any 

comments he would like to make. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Snyder can be found in the Appendix on page 29.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. ROB WITTMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM VIRGINIA, RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, members 

of the panel, for being with us today. I appreciate you taking the 

time to come before us and give us your thoughts on the issue that 

we have before us on the Project on National Security Reform. The 

subject of today’s hearing is indeed a very serious matter. Since the 

dawn of the 21st century, the United States has faced an ever 

shifting, complex international environment. And ideally we would 

have an agile national security structure able to respond to the 
3 

challenges as needed, but we do not. After all, the military services, 

via the jointness dictated by the Goldwater-Nichols legislation is 

able to task organize to meet almost any mission. But the greater 

bureaucracy of the executive and legislative branches of the Federal Government have rigid, unyielding structures and processes 

that sometimes struggle to organize coherent, effective responses to 

national and international crises. And this weakness has been 

widely recognized and studied, particularly after the intelligence 

failures of September 11, 2001. 

One outcome of that tragedy was the Intelligence Reform Act of 

2004 which reorganized and better integrated the Intelligence 

Community. Otherwise, the executive branch and congressional 

committee structures were left intact. To be fair, designing the best 

system to reorganize the National Security Council and half the 

cabinet departments is no easy matter. The Project on National Security Reform has reviewed the interagency coordination problem 

in a thoughtful, logical manner that makes a series of recommendations for the organization of both the national security apparatus and the Congress. 

While we cannot single-handedly make these changes, we do 

have a responsibility to start the dialogue. Our witnesses were not 

part of the Project on National Security Reform effort and are well 

placed to provide an impartial view of this study. Gentlemen, we 

appreciate you being here today to do that for us. Now, I am grateful to have you here as distinguished witnesses before us to comment on the project’s work and look forward to your testimony in 

shining some light on the applicability of that project. So we appreciate that. With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the Appendix on page 32.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Wittman. We are also pleased to be 

joined today by another Armed Services Committee member, Adam 

Smith from the State of Washington. Adam is the chairman of the 

Terrorism and Unconventional Threats Subcommittee of the House 

Armed Services Committee. He is also on the Intel Committee, and 

for most of the last decade, has been a Member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. So he has been following a lot of these 

issues very closely. Adam, if you would like to make an opening 

statement, feel free. 

Mr. SMITH. Certainly. Just a couple of quick comments. And I 

thank Chairman Snyder for allowing me to sit in this hearing. The 

report could not be more timely. I agree completely with both statements of the Chairman and the Ranking Member on the importance of interagency work. And we have certainly seen that in a 

lot of the projects that we have undergone on national security in 

the last several years. And my subcommittee is particularly focused 

on that. We do a lot of counterterrorism work with the special operations command and you see where country by country, piece by 

piece you need a lot of different sets of resources from different 

agencies. And there is no formal mechanism really for pulling those 

together. It has been done in an ad hoc basis. 

In some cases fairly effectively. Joint Special Operations Command (JSCO), I think, has done a very effective job of pulling together the counterterrorism efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, work-
4 

ing with a wide variety of different agencies. But that was really 

sort of driven by the individuals who made that decision and made 

it work. What we need is a more formalized structure because the 

problem will not just be peculiar to Iraq and Afghanistan. It is part 

of dealing with global development issues. It is a big part of dealing 

with a messaging issue. I say that as I see Mac Thornberry walk 

in the room. Not to do that to you, Mac, right when you walk in 

the door. He was Ranking Member on my committee for the last 

two years and also on Intel’s. He has been very focused on what 

is our strategic communications strategy. 

And at the end of the day, we have got about 35 or 40 different 

groups or agencies that have a piece of that. It is not well coordinated and well focused. Nobody is in charge. I could go on, but I 

won’t because I want to hear your testimony. But the bottom-line 

is the interagency piece is going to be critical to our national security strategy going forward in a number of different areas. Thank 

you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to say a couple of things. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Smith. We have also been joined by 

Congressman Mac Thornberry from Texas. Through the years, Mac 

and I just cannot get enough of Andy Krepinevich. He has sponsored some forums that Andy would put on about 10 years ago. We 

appreciate you being here today. Mac is also a member of the Intel 

committee in addition to the Armed Services Committee. Gentlemen, what we will do is begin with your opening statements. I am 

going to have Dr. Fenner put the clock on. When you see a red 

light flash, you should feel free to drive on through it if you think 

you have some more things you need to say. But if you stay to 

about the five minutes, then we can get to the members’ questions. 

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Krepinevich, we will start with you. 

STATEMENT OF DR. ANDREW F. KREPINEVICH JR., PRESIDENT, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS 

Dr. KREPINEVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As you know, I 

submitted a written statement and I will summarize my remarks. 

Dr. SNYDER. All written statements are a part of the record. 

Dr. KREPINEVICH. Again, let me add my compliments to the efforts of the project, an impressive array of individuals, a very comprehensive report. And as also noted, a very substantial report in 

many, many ways. What I would like to do is focus my five minutes 

on an issue that was raised by the Project, which is the issue of 

restoring the ability of the U.S. government to craft strategy competently, as well as to execute it. It has been said if you don’t know 

where you are going, any road will take you there. And if you don’t 

have a clear strategy to inform the path you have chosen to achieve 

your security objectives, any structure or process will do. The need 

for a good strategy, our best strategists tell us, is the greatest at 

any time since the early days of the Cold War. It has been said 

that you need strategy and strategic thinking most during periods 

of great change. And I think the Project certainly makes the point 

that we are at a period of tumultuous change, but also when resources are scarce. 

As one British politician famously said about a century ago, we 

are running out of money, we will have to start to think. And while 
5 

I am a big fan of structure and a big fan of process, I am an even 

bigger fan of thinking. And that is what strategy is all about. 

Strategy is not just how do you apply certain means at your disposal to achieve your objectives. More specifically, it is about the 

hard work of identifying, developing and exploiting sources of advantage in ways that give you the greatest leverage, in ways that 

allow you to effectively achieve your objectives at minimal costs 

and minimal risk. And that traditionally has been very difficult 

work. 

Failure to craft strategy well leads to a waste of resources, as 

well as endangering our security and our well-being. Now, I have 

identified in my testimony a number of barriers that I think really 

compromise our ability as a government to do strategy well. One 

is confusing strategy with the two polar aspects of it, one being the 

goal and one being the means. An example of confusing strategy 

with objectives is the Clinton Administration’s national security 

strategy in 2000, which said that a key element of its strategy was 

preventing conflict. Well, that is not a strategy, that is an objective. 

When President Bush said as they stand up, we will stand down, 

that is our strategy for Iraq. That is not a strategy. That is substituting one set of means, the Iraqis, for another set of means, the 

United States. That is not a strategy. So again, just a failure to understand what strategy is, even at the highest levels of government. A second is a failure to understand the enemy. To a certain 

extent your strategy is trying to get your rivals, your adversaries, 

your competitors and even your allies to behave in certain kinds of 

ways. We have to know what motivates them. And throughout the 

Cold War and even into the current period, a number of statements 

indicate that oftentimes we don’t understand our enemy. 

Consider the fact, for example, that Lyndon Johnson after giving 

a speech at Johns Hopkins University in 1965 in April in which he 

proposed a Tennessee Valley Authority sort of project for the 

Mekong Delta, turned after the speech and said, ‘‘Old Ho can’t turn 

me down now.’’ Well, he wasn’t dealing with a politician from Tennessee. He was dealing with a communist revolutionary. President 

Kennedy’s first reaction upon finding out that the Soviets were 

placing nuclear missiles in Cuba was, ‘‘he can’t do that to me.’’ 

Well, again, a misunderstanding of the motives and the character 

and the objectives of the Soviet Union at the time. In my testimony, I lay out the debate very briefly that occurred in the early 

days of the Cold War between three of the wise men, the so-called 

wise men, George Kennan, Paul Nitze and Chip Bohlen over the 

character of the threat posed by the Soviet Union. That had a material effect on the kinds of strategy, the kinds of resources, the 

whole approach of government that we took to dealing with the Soviet threat. 

So again, the importance of understanding the enemy. And I 

think it is one thing that we can agree upon is that we really even 

now don’t have a good understanding of the challenges posed by 

those who seek to do us ill. A third barrier is discounting the value 

of strategy. Perhaps we are too busy with the crisis du jour. Sandy 

Berger famously once said that he preferred to worry about today 

today and tomorrow tomorrow. Well, that may be a good way of 

taking care of today, but again, you need a strategy that guides you 
6 

not only through the current period but over the long term. Another barrier is the failure to accept that resources are limited. 

I will give you a quick example here. This plays big in the Pentagon. Again, strategy seeks to balance your objectives with your 

resources. In the Pentagon, they have what are called cut drills. 

The defense program is always too ambitious for the defense resources. And rather than typically come up with a strategy for 

dealing with that, the services continue to boost their requirements, trying to create as big a gap as possible. Why? Because the 

strategy is to prevail in the cut drill. You want to be cut less than 

any other service. So the more needy you look, the strategy to 

make yourself look needy as opposed to the strategy to play to your 

advantages to cause your rival the greatest amount of discomfort 

is typically given short shrift. 

Finally—and obviously—there is bureaucratic hostility. There is 

the what I call—there is certainly efforts to frustrate strategy execution, but there is also the Ben-Hur approach to developing strategy. And there are a couple of charts from the Pentagon that I put 

in my testimony. It is the cast of thousands. It is the Quadrennial 

Defense Review that has got panels and committees and groups 

and focus groups. And that is the approach that is taken to crafting 

strategy. That is not to say that we don’t need a big government. 

That is not to say that we don’t need a big bureaucracy. But strategy is hard. It is typically done by small groups of very talented, 

strategic thinkers, whether you are looking at NSC 68, the Solarium Project under Eisenhower, NSC 162/2, some of the efforts that 

laid the strategic foundation that guided and informed everything 

else, typically done by small groups of people. So in my testimony, 

I offer a rather modest recommendation and that is to go back and 

take a good hard look at what I call the Eisenhower model. 

Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1997 on the 50th anniversary of the National Security Act observed that when President Kennedy disestablished Eisenhower’s national security structure, he eliminated 

the U.S. government’s ability to do strategy at the highest levels. 

Perhaps an overstatement, but certainly don’t want to discount 

the views of someone who was a National Security Advisor during 

the Cold War and Brzezinski certainly was that. Second, the importance of the active, persistent involvement of the President. We 

have reports, we have documents and we need them. President Eisenhower famously said the importance of strategic planning is not 

the plan, it is the planning. The plan is almost immediately obsolete once you put it on the shelf. He said the world—and certainly 

this is something the project highlighted—the world is changing in 

such a dynamic way, that strategy is not something you do every 

4 years. Strategy is a persistent effort that requires constant adjustment, the constant identification of new sources of advantage 

that your rivals are developing and the search for new sources of 

advantage in how you can apply them on your side. And so for that 

reason, while some presidents—for example, President Bill Clinton 

in his first term—of course, a much less dangerous period—had 

less than two dozen meetings of his National Security Council. 

President Eisenhower, in his first term, had 179. And again, it 

was the sense that you needed a persistent involvement on the part 

of the senior leadership. In those NSC meetings, he had his prin-
7 

cipal advisors and he had no one else. There were no back benchers 

feeding information to the Secretary of State or the Secretary of 

Defense. He told these people, though, ‘‘you are too busy to think 

strategically at every possible moment, to devote the kind of dedication that is required.’’ So what Eisenhower had done at the suggestion of George Marshall was to establish something called the 

Planning Board. And the Planning Board—each statutory NSC 

member had a full-time person basically working on the Planning 

Board. In State, it might be somebody like the Director of Policy 

Planning and in Defense it might be someone like the Office of Net 

Assessment Director Andrew Marshall. And these people were responsible for doing the hard work of strategy, identifying issues 

and presenting them for consideration at the NSC meetings, doing 

the hard thinking of strategy. 

And again, Eisenhower said that, of course, you could never quite 

predict the crisis. You would confront the problem when it would 

manifest itself in full form. But he said the fact that you had these 

regular meetings, that you were doing this diligent work of 

strategizing meant that when you finally encountered that problem, you had been living with it. He and his team had been living 

with it, they had an understanding of what to do. Much better than 

they would have if they just sort of managed the strategy from crisis to crisis. 

Finally in addition to the Planning Board, there was an Operations Coordinating Board. And this essentially was the group of 

people who three months later, six months later, nine months later, 

once the President made a decision would go out to the departments, to the agencies and say the President made a decision, what 

are you doing to execute it. And the failure on the part of groups 

or individuals or departments and agencies to comply should be an 

opportunity for staff changes, if I could say so. But the idea was 

to hold the bureaucracy accountable. Now, certainly there is the opportunity to organize interdepartmental groups. I think that is certainly a good idea, particularly when you look at the multidimensional aspects of the many problems we face. But again, that is not 

new. 

And one of the more famous examples of such a group was the 

interdepartmental Special Group (Counter-Insurgency) that President Kennedy organized that was chaired by Maxwell Taylor and 

Robert Kennedy to deal with the growing threat of wars of national 

liberation. And you did have this interagency approach. You had 

two people who had direct access to the President. And still, that 

effort ultimately proved a failure. And I think the reason why was 

not because of organizational structure. I think, again, it is a matter of crafting good strategy and enforcing accountability on those 

who are directed to carry out the directives of the President. While 

this is far from comprehensive—I only have five minutes? It is a 

modest proposal. It is an area of focus. It is something that the 

President can do without legislation, without any new assistant 

secretaries of this or that. And it is something although modest 

and certainly not as comprehensive as the Project’s report, I think 

has the potential to make a substantial contribution. This concludes my remarks, Mr. Chairman. I would be happy to respond to 

any questions. 
8 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Dr. Krepinevich. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Krepinevich can be found in the 

Appendix on page 34.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Destler. 

STATEMENT OF DR. I.M. (MAC) DESTLER, SAUL I. STERN PROFESSOR OF CIVIC ENGAGEMENT, DIRECTOR, PROGRAM ON 

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND ECONOMIC POLICY, 

SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND 

Dr. DESTLER. Thank you very much, Chairman Snyder, Congressman Wittman, distinguished Members of Congress, it is an 

honor to be here. I am happy to—there is going to be a little bit 

of tension before I finish my remarks between what I am going to 

argue and what my distinguished colleague has very expertly argued for. First of all, let me pay tribute to this Project. There is 

an awful lot of good stuff in here and I say this as someone who 

didn’t participate in it. So I can be objective. And it also seems to 

be relevant. Our new National Security Advisor, General Jones, 

has declared that the Obama National Security Council will be dramatically different from its predecessor, with broader substantive 

scope. And the President issued last month Presidential Policy Directive Number-One mandating broad participation in national security policymaking at the presidential principals and deputies levels and below. 

Certainly, the needs for such reform seem undeniable. The institutions currently available to meet 21st century challenges are in 

the main institutions created in the late 1940s. A very, very different world. It is hard to argue against, to quote the report, ‘‘a 

bold but carefully crafted plan of comprehensive reform.’’ And the 

Project on National Security Reform has devoted enormous effort 

to this undertaking. Its conclusions merit serious consideration. Yet 

history offers caution. And as shown by our most recent national 

effort at organizational reconstruction, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, bold changes do not necessarily bring 

benign results. 

Let me concentrate here on the two core PNSR recommendations 

that my colleague here referred to. First of all, the creation of a 

President’s Security Council to encompass not only the subjects 

currently addressed by the NSC and the Homeland Security Council, but also with international economic and energy policy, ‘‘fully 

integrated,’’ as well. 

And the second central organization proposal is statutory creation of a Director of National Security replacing apparently the 

current national security assistant or Assistant to the President for 

National Security Affairs, known as the National Security Advisor, 

and having this official supported by a statutory executive secretary. My credentials for arguing this are most of my lifetime 

spending time at least off and on looking at these issues and recently co-publishing a book, which I will wave not because I want 

you all to run out and buy it, of course, but because it actually is 

the basis for my testimony. Because it is an analytic history of how 

National Security Advisors from actually McGeorge Bundy onward 

have handled the job and have related to their presidents. And it 
9 

leads me, as you will see, to some skepticism about the Director of 

National Security proposal. 

First of all, let me talk about the President’s Security Council. 

The impressive members of the guiding coalition who signed this 

report have backgrounds overwhelmingly in national security policy traditionally defined. It is, to their credit, that they see a need 

for broadened jurisdiction but no one in the group so far as I can 

tell has had any senior level experience in addressing economic 

issues, domestic or international. Historic NSC has proved progressively less able to oversee economic issues effectively. Beginning 

with Richard Nixon, Presidents have established parallel economic 

policy coordination institutions outside of the NSC to handle them 

with the National Economic Council established by Bill Clinton and 

continued by George W. Bush and Barack Obama as the latest 

manifestation. 

This is no accident, because international economic issues are not 

simply an extension of national security issues. They reflect a set 

of challenges arising from a different set of forces, processes and 

institutions. They are at least as much linked to domestic economics as they are to political-military issues that drive the NSC and 

would likely drive a President’s Security Council. They involve different forms of analysis, different instruments of policy, different 

governmental institutions as the current global economic crisis 

makes abundantly clear. 

Their current urgency demands that they have at least co-equal 

status in the White House, advisor and counsel addressing these 

issues on their own terms, not wedged within a security perspective. Of course, Larry Summers and James Jones should coordinate 

with one another. And if they haven’t engaged the capable joint 

deputy, Michael Froman, to be sure that international economic 

policy draws on both of their perspectives. But to go further to subordinate economic issues within a Presidential Security Council 

would be, I think, to go against both logic and experience. 

I am not as familiar with energy or environmental policy, but I 

suspect some of the same considerations may apply. Perhaps President Obama is not wrong to have engaged separate senior officials 

for national security environment and energy—national security 

and economics and energy and the environment. Though keeping 

them from working at cross purposes on issues that overlap is a 

daunting task. I have a different set of doubts about establishing 

a Director for National Security at the White House. Presumably 

this official would replace the National Security Advisor, although 

the executive summary doesn’t quite say that. The position would 

be established by legislation, but no recommendation is made on 

whether she or he would be subject to Senate confirmation. 

Supported by a statutory executive secretary, this director would 

not only be ‘‘the principal assistant to the President on matters related to national security,’’ but he would also be charged with administering a wide range of planning and integrating instrument 

in overall strategy, planning, guidance, a resource document, a network of interagency teams, et cetera. The director would be asked 

to combine the planning tasks of Dwight Eisenhower’s Bobby Cutler who managed the system that my colleague here has described 

and Kennedy’s McGeorge Bundy, who managed the day-to-day 
10 

issues for the President, whence would come the power of this individual to carry out this awesome task. What would make the departments and agencies commit their time and best people to this 

elaborate exercise, whatever its abstract merit, the PNSR report 

uses words like ‘‘empower,’’ suggesting that mandating these activities is the same as making them real and effective. 

In practice, however, whatever the change in title, the director 

would gain his power overwhelmingly from his relationship with 

the President, just as National Security Advisors do today. Would 

the President want him or her to spend his time that way? Eisenhower didn’t want Bobby Cutler to do this. But he also had Andy 

Goodpaster, who handled his day-to-day decisionmaking on crisis 

management often outside Eisenhower’s formal system. Kennedy 

didn’t want it and he and Bundy transformed the National Security 

Advisor job to one supporting the President’s daily national security business and connecting his senior officials to him and to one 

another. 

None of Kennedy’s successors, including Jimmy Carter— 

Zbigniew Brzezinski may now say that there should have been an 

Eisenhower system, but I know of no effort that he made to create 

anything like this when he was National Security Advisor. But 

none of Kennedy’s successors wanted an Eisenhower/Cutler planning system, save Nixon and Kissinger who employed an improved 

version for about 4 months in their Administration before they 

abandoned it to carry out—to pursue the most secretive policymaking process in history. It seems to me, given that presidents 

are not really going to want this, at least experience suggests that, 

this director would have a choice. He could persist in the elaborate 

integration mandate knowing that the President at best tolerated 

it and knowing that one day agency officials would learn that the 

process was not really driving presidential decisions or he could respond to what the President really wanted and delegate the formal 

system management to the executive secretary. 

Then there would be two layers, an interagency planning process 

below disconnected from the President and its principal advisors. 

Let me repeat, there is much that is good in this sophisticated report and its understanding of many of the problems of the current 

system and in its focus on improving budgeting and personnel. But 

I don’t think the key organizational recommendations will survive 

careful analysis. And I particularly don’t think they would work 

under this President, who strikes me as more like John F. Kennedy 

than like any other President in the postwar era, very cerebral, 

very much wanting to handle things himself, impatient in terms of 

formal structures. And I think the question is going to be whether 

James Jones, who I think would like a more formal structure, will 

be able to adapt to Barack Obama or whether he will end up having less relevance than he should have to the Obama decision process. 

In any case, it is the President—in national security policymaking in the end, it is to paraphrase a Clinton campaign label, 

it is the President, stupid. It is he, or she one day perhaps, who 

drives the system. His operating preferences and decision style are 

what any White House aide must accommodate. To encumber this 

aide with heavy formal responsibilities is to increase his distance 
11 

from the President, weakening their joint capacity to achieve such 

national security policy coherence as our system of government will 

allow. Thank you very much. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Dr. Destler. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Destler can be found in the Appendix on page 51.] 

Dr. SNYDER. You all may have figured out we are having a little 

clock problem. So Dr. Fenner is timing the five minutes and you 

are not getting that very helpful green and yellow. You are just 

getting the red flash at five minutes. That is what happened. 

Dr. DESTLER. I am taking advantage of it. I am sorry. 

Dr. SNYDER. No, you didn’t. You actually both were about the 

exact same time. Mr. Oleszek. 

STATEMENT OF WALTER OLESZEK, SENIOR SPECIALIST IN 

AMERICAN NATIONAL GOVERNMENT, CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE 

Mr. OLESZEK. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking 

Member, distinguished committee colleagues. Let me say that I am 

here because—not that I am an expert on anything to do with the 

military or national security or—only a little bit probably on executive organization. I am here largely because since I arrived at CRS 

in 1968, I have been involved in practically every House and Senate legislative reform effort since that time. So what I want to 

focus on are the recommendations that have been put forward by 

the Project on National Security Reform. And to do that, I am 

going to concentrate principally on one of their major suggestions 

and that is to create a Permanent Select Committee on National 

Security. I will also comment on the other recommendations as 

well. And so I have posed three questions that obviously I am going 

to answer. 

And since I made up the questions, I hope I can give you the 

right answers. But anyway, the first question is: Is the House committee structure organized in a fashion to promote integrated, coordinated interagency national security decisionmaking? And I suppose a short answer would be no. That would take some additional 

analysis and study. But the point I really want to emphasize is 

this: That the great strength of the Congress is that it is a decentralized structure. The fact that it functions through committees, 

subcommittees, informal task forces and other entities as well. This 

is the division of labor. This is the specialization system that the 

Congress has provided itself. 

And it is also a way for constituents and special interest groups 

or anybody else to have access during the formative stages of the 

lawmaking process during the committee policymaking process. So 

there are tremendous advantages to having the dispersion of policymaking power spread around if you will. And now the question 

becomes if it is spread around too much. One of the deficiencies in 

the legislative branch would be the lack of what people would call 

integrative or coordinative capacities and there are a few committees that are able to do this. 

One of those committees that take a big picture view if you 

would—it would be the Budget Committee, for example. Or another 

one might be the Rules Committee. But principally the integrative 
12 

force on Capitol Hill—are the party leaders. Particularly in the 

House, it is going to be the majority leadership, particularly the 

Speaker. They are the integrators that will control the centrifugal 

forces out there manifested by the committee system. 

Now, the second question that I would pose is this: If the system 

is not organized for integrative coordinated activity in this realm, 

is a permanent select committee the proper approach? And the answer that I would provide is maybe, perhaps because that question 

is not answerable unless you know what is the authorizing responsibility of the Select Committee. Does it have legislative authority 

or not, the ability to receive and report legislation? What is its 

membership, what kind of support does it have? Now, we have had 

tremendously good examples of select committees that have performed this coordinative function, but generally there’s a dilemma 

and I am going to cite one or two. 

But the dilemma often in terms of crafting select committees, 

whether or not they have legislative jurisdiction or not, it raises 

the issue of turf. As all of you are familiar, better than I, turf is 

viewed as power on Capitol Hill. And when you create a select committee with legislative jurisdiction, then where is their mandate 

going to come from? Because all of the other standing committees 

are going to believe, well, that is potentially in my area, particularly when we are talking about interagency, national security 

issues. For example, just, you know, the 110th and now recreated 

in the 111th. But I will use the 110th, we all recall there is a Select 

Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming chaired 

by Mr. Markey. That did not sit well when Mr. Dingell chaired the 

Energy and Commerce Committee in the 110th House. He was 

quoted pretty prominently and he used a phrase that caught the 

eye of a lot of folks that creating this Select Committee is useless, 

it is like having feathers on a fish. But nonetheless, it went forward and there were adjustments made, accommodations in the 

110th to accommodate some of his concerns. 

Now, a couple that were with legislative jurisdiction are recently 

examples that I can cite are quite successful. Quite useful potentially and that is the ad hoc—not the ad hoc, the Select Committee 

on Homeland Security in 2002 created by Speaker Hastert. Why 

was it created? To create one single mission, and that was to create 

a Department of Homeland Security. And this was a pure leadership committee, the chairman was the majority leader, Dick 

Armey. Dick Gephardt named as the ranking minority member and 

Nancy Pelosi and every other member on both the majority and minority side were party leaders. Marty Frost, the Chair of the Democratic Caucus; Tom Delay, the majority whip, right down the line. 

And their mission was to deal with one issue. And the way they 

were a terrific coordinative body was that all the other dozen 

roughly dozen standing committees had an opportunity to look at 

the segments of the Department of Homeland Security that fell 

within their jurisdiction and then they were all submitted back to 

the select Homeland Security Committee chaired by Chairman 

Armey. And they aggregated this information and then submitted 

the legislation to the floor. And obviously we have a Department 

of Homeland Security. 
13 

Once the Homeland Security Department was created, and this 

is not uncommon, sort of triggers a notion about what about our 

own committee system on the House side, the same thing occurred 

in the Senate as well. Do we need a standing committee to handle 

Homeland Security issues? And again another select committee 

was created in 2003 by Speaker Hastert, of course, subject to the 

vote of the House of Representatives. But he made plain in this 

membership of the Select Committee that—and it was filled with 

lots of committee chairs who were very protective of their turf, but 

he made a statement right after he was sworn in as speaker to all 

the members of the House, but this one sentence was targeted to 

the committee chairs you can be sure. It went something like this, 

that ‘‘your authorizing an oversight jurisdiction will be protected.’’ 

And by golly, it was protected. 

And when this committee was actually created, every—like 10 

other standing committees, including Armed Services Committee in 

terms of the legislative history, had specified exactly what kind of 

control they had over Homeland Security matters. Three things are 

really important in terms of creating a select committee. One is the 

support of the leadership without question. You have to have, you 

know, broad support certainly of, you know, the membership and 

then also you have to have the involvement of the standing committees that will be affected by the creation of this select panel. 

One of the issues that caught my eye was the jurisdictional mandate of this committee, if it ever came into being. It is quite broad. 

They give you—there are several pages, in terms of issues that this 

committee ought to be considering. Their brief definition is national 

security is the capacity of the United States to defend, define and 

advance its position in a world that is being continuously shaped, 

reshaped by the turbulent forces of change. And then they also 

highlight the turbulent forces of change affect all of the national 

sources of power. 

And what are all these national sources of power? It is quite 

broad to say the least. One of those things, sustain stewardship of 

sound economic policy. Energy security. Infrastructure, health, educational systems, et cetera. You go on to another page. And this 

caught my eye in terms of a grand strategy of how you mobilize 

all the sources of national power to accomplish your national goal. 

And it says it comprises these things, carefully coordinated and 

fully integrated use of all political, economic, military, cultural, social, moral, spiritual, and psychological power. That is quite a mandate. 

But anyway, so those are just issues to be mindful of and I don’t 

think anybody knows how many interagency groups are out there 

is another consideration. Are there other ways by which this might 

be handled? Yeah, there are a lot of other ways. I am not saying 

a select committee should not be created. All I am saying is, hey, 

there has to be a lot of negotiation before it is going to be successfully created. But there are other methods that are in place. And 

one would be perhaps as a model, the Select Oversight Panel that 

is composed of members of the Intelligence Committee and the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Sort of an ad hoc joining of the 

authorizing and appropriating responsibility. You could have specialized subcommittees created. 
14 

Even this committee might be reestablished in some way in the 

rules and by resolution as the forum to consider interagency national security issues. A multi-referral process could be artfully 

used by the Speaker. She has a power, not just Speaker Pelosi, but 

no Speaker has ever used this power that is embedded in the rules 

of the House, and that is to create an ad hoc oversight committee 

charged with obviously reviewed this kind of realm. Other methods 

as well. Committee composition, you had Congressman Smith, I 

was struck by the fact there were only a couple of committees 

where you deliberately have budget and intelligence, members 

drawn from other standing committees. And maybe that is an approach that ought to be tried on other standing committees as well. 

So you get this interagency national security concept, you know, 

the integration idea perhaps more prominently placed in the policymaking process there are others that I mentioned, but just quickly 

to wrap up, there is also the recommendation to consolidate all 

oversight within—of the Department of Homeland Security in the 

Committee on Homeland Security. 

The House took a major step in that direction in the 111th Congress when it passed House rules that granted the Committee on 

Homeland Security what is called special oversight. And special 

oversight is akin to the broad investigative power granted to the 

Governmental Affairs Oversight Government Reform Committee 

that was established by the 1946 Legislative Reorganization Act. 

So they have broad authority to oversee the Department of Homeland Security. The point is even if areas are within the jurisdiction 

of other standing committees, special oversight gives the committee 

the authority the right to review agencies and programs that fall 

within other standing committees. 

I should also mention that you are never going to consolidate and 

maybe you never should consolidate all oversight over any activity 

within a single committee. I think it is helpful to have a diversity 

of points of view. There is always the concern that people raise 

about committees being captured by, you know, the agencies or departments that they are overseeing. So I think there are tremendous advantages of having a large number of committees that oversee any particular department, particularly one so broad as the Department of Homeland Security. Another—they also recommended 

a consolidation of appropriations for Homeland Security and one 

appropriation, Homeland Security subcommittee chaired by, as we 

know, David Price today. And the two issues there are again turf. 

You have other appropriations committees, subcommittees that 

handle it. And also the bicameral factor. They like to have parallel 

subcommittee structures, House and Senate. So that is another 

consideration. And lastly, empowering the Foreign Affairs Committee. In my estimation, when I reviewed the three that they 

mentioned, I don’t see how it empowers the Foreign Affairs Committee at all. 

One of the recommendations is to amend the budget allocation 

302(a), so that you have an interagency national security function 

I believe. Well, these budget functions are for informational purposes only. There is no parliamentary way to enforce them. Second, 

they talk about firewalls. Don’t transfer money out of international 

accounts or defense accounts into domestic accounts. But again 
15 

they deal with—that is appropriation firewalls, not dealing with 

authorization legislation. And then a supermajority requirement to 

waive the rule that says authorizations are supposed to be enacted 

into law. They mention consideration. But they have to be enacted 

into law under House rules. Specify what supermajority, 60, twothirds, and I believe all that does is empower a minority. It doesn’t 

empower the Foreign Affairs Committee at all. And it often—the 

Foreign Affairs Committee will go to the Rules Committee to get 

a waiver of the rule against legislation on appropriation bills because there is a variety of reasons why you can’t get a foreign aid 

or State Department authorization bill enacted in a timely way. 

And that is I guess really all I want to say. 

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Oleszek can be found in the Appendix on page 54.] 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Wittman and I always put ourselves on the five 

minute clock and so we will begin. I think we are going to have 

votes sometime between 2:00 and 2:15. But I think we have time 

to do at least one round of questions. Mr. Oleszek, I think I will 

ask you the first question. I think you can respond just yes or no 

if you like. One of the things that the report says is that it needs 

to be adopted in its entirety, all the recommendations adopted in 

its entirety. Do you think the chances are pretty good of that happening? 

Mr. OLESZEK. I should say as a part-time academic, I am programmed to speak in 60 minutes clip, no. 

Dr. SNYDER. I was actually surprised. I mean, I know people that 

have worked on it, but there is almost a certain naı ̈vete ́ about it 

that says you are going to adopt everything about the Congress, 

the Administration. I wasn’t sure quite why they decided to make 

that point. Dr. Krepinevich, I wanted you to, if you would, tell me 

what you think about the changes that have already been made in 

President Obama’s administration with regard to the National Security Advisor, the National Security Council, how you see that is 

different from the President Bush Administration, where you see 

that fitting into what you were recommending with regard to President Eisenhower? 

Dr. KREPINEVICH. Well, referring to what my colleague, Dr. 

Destler said, I think people matter and thinking matters. And obviously, if President Obama is not inclined to an Eisenhower-like national security staff structure, it is going to fail. And there is no 

system that if you put it into place can survive the unwillingness 

of a leadership to employ that system. There is always potential for 

the President to find workarounds for a system that he or she 

doesn’t want. Having said that, as long as we are using the Kennedy analogy, you can have a very bright, energetic, charismatic 

President, as President Kennedy was, and as many people certainly 

believe President Obama is. But I also recall that President Kennedy’s system, in part, also contributed to during the first 18 

months or so of his administration to—you know, we had a series 

of crises, whether it was the Bay of Pigs, the Vienna Summit, the 

Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

When you look long-term, we had the sort of stumbling along in 

places like Vietnam. So there is, I think, a decision for a President 
16 

to make that if I want to be serious about strategy, these are some 

of the things I have to do. And it doesn’t have to a carbon copy of 

the Eisenhower structure, but it does have to be the persistent, active involvement of the President in this kind of a process. And certainly, we don’t have that right now and I am struck by the fact 

that people who typically are very bright and who are very self-disciplined, and I think those are both qualities that the President 

has, are capable of—and who can exercise self-discipline can do 

some remarkable things. If you look, for example, at the history of 

our first President, George Washington, particularly during the 

Revolutionary War, his whole personality told him that he should 

engage the British in battle after getting his clock cleaned a few 

times, he exercised an incredible amount of self-discipline and only 

sought battle on those most—occasions most advantageous to him. 

Again, you would hope that we wouldn’t have to learn the hard 

way, that this administration wouldn’t have to learn the hard way. 

But the structure we have set up now, it seems to me, doesn’t really bring together the kinds of talent and the organization and the 

level of persistent commitment that was characteristic of the Eisenhower Administration. 

Dr. SNYDER. Excuse me. What do you think, then, of the changes 

that have been made thus far? There has been a couple of directives that have come from the President about changes to the National Security Council. 

Dr. KREPINEVICH. I think there is an effort to look at problems 

in a more comprehensive holistic way, which I think can be a good 

thing. I am concerned about the fact that—I talked to—this was in 

a public setting—Brent Scowcroft about this. He was concerned 

about the growth in the National Security Council staff and I share 

that concern. The fact that it should not be a substitute for department and agency performance. It should help bring issues to the 

attention of the President, present them in a very logical, coherent 

way for his or her decision. And it should help ensure that the 

President’s decisions are executed faithfully. And I am concerned 

about the fact that, again, there seems to be a certain amount of 

effort here to try and make up for the deficiencies in the departments and agencies in terms of execution and in their performance 

in identifying if there is any issues to the President. 

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Krepinevich, where do you see the issue that— 

we have been having the discussion the last couple of years about 

the whole issue of interagency and interagency reform which the 

Locher Report is talking about. In your construct, where you put 

a priority on strategy, I thought your discussion was very good. 

Where do you see—where does the—the issue of interagency—the 

need for interagency reforms, the disconnect from the difference 

agencies, where do you see that fit into your construct on strategy 

and means and resources? 

Dr. KREPINEVICH. One of the interesting aspects of the so-called 

Planning Board on the NSC staff on the Eisenhower administration, was again you had this persistent attention but they also had 

the ability to go outside the organization and tap into expertise. 

And I think here you might have the—you have the potential for 

organizing certain interdepartmental groups that focus on a particular issue as long as it is relevant and that is sort of a group— 
17 

I will give you a historical example of one that was formed during 

the Kennedy, counterinsurgency and that was designed to bring together various elements of the government because as we know, 

counterinsurgency involved not only security but reconstruction 

and governance and intelligence and so on. And the effort there 

was to raise that to the presidential attention. 

It was worthy of presidential attention. And in that case, you 

had no planning board. You had Maxwell Taylor and Bobby Kennedy essentially reporting directly to the President on what kind 

of progress they thought they were making. It was more ad hoc. It 

was less rigorous than something that would be incorporated into 

a planning board. But I would see that as being something that 

could prove productive in this current environment. 

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Destler. 

Dr. DESTLER. Could I suggest you put on the table an alternative 

model to Eisenhower’s? And that is the way the policy process was 

run under the first President Bush, George H.W. Bush, which you 

had Brent Scowcroft as the ultimately trusted, capable low-profile 

national security assistant who essentially was the glue that held 

together a policy process at the principals level, at the deputies 

level, and below. It was a good, constructive, positive interagency 

process. It was not an elaborate planning system. They were being 

hit with changes and they had to adapt to them. But they did some 

very far-sighted things, as in making the unification of Germany 

on terms that were not only acceptable to Britain and France, 

which was difficult enough, but actually making it acceptable to 

Russia in a situation—and they did this very carefully but through 

a set of informal relationships that were carefully nurtured by 

Scowcroft, whose principle was you spend the first year on the job 

establishing trust most of all with the President, but with everybody else as well. 

It was an informal system, but it was very effective. I believe 

that is probably about the best that we can do in terms of highlevel coordination. Now, I mean there were other—you could invent 

a Brent Scowcroft with even greater skills in some areas. You 

could—you could tweak it in different ways. You could say you 

could add maybe more budgetary analysis. But I think basically 

what you need to do is look for a person who can work with the 

President and develop informal networks and they are supported 

also. 

There is a formal structure too. My colleague mentioned all the 

meetings that Eisenhower had of the National Security Council. 

There is something of over 300 I think during the eight years of 

the Eisenhower administration. I am not sure there were that 

many in the entire 50 years or so—other years—50—other years of 

the—and that suggests that most Presidents have not found that 

formal deliberative process very useful. They may be wrong. But 

they are the ones who make the calls. So I think building on what 

the Presidents want, you still need to try to develop something. 

And you still need to try to constrain the President, but you can 

only do it if you have his confidence and you serve him effectively. 

Dr. SNYDER. My time has expired. We will now go to members 

who were here at the beginning of the hearing when the gavel went 

down. And we go to Mrs. Davis for five minutes. 
18 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to all of you 

for being here. I marvel a little bit in the fact that in my short time 

here in Congress, we seem to have really gained at least some understanding and consciousness of the need to do this, which quite 

a few years ago we didn’t really have—certainly as a committee or 

here. Dr. Krepinevich, you mentioned your skepticism, I think, 

about the willingness of departments and agencies to reward personnel who choose to invest in interagency expertise. If we don’t do 

that, where do we look for that kind of change in management and 

behavior? How do you—could you respond to that? 

Dr. KREPINEVICH. My expertise is primarily associated with the 

Defense Department. So I will give you an example about something that I know. In the Goldwater-Nichols legislation in 1986, 

something called the JROC, the Joint Requirements Oversight 

Council, was established in the Defense Department. And the idea 

was that you would have the number-two person in each of the four 

military services meet along with the Vice Chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs, and they would make decisions that would be in the best 

interest of the Defense Department and support national security. 

The idea was that you would create trade space, that this body of 

five would identify what the Department requirements were as opposed to their individual service requirements. And in so doing, it 

would liberate resources to be moved from one area to another. 

That just hasn’t happened in, what, 23 years now. You are the 

Vice Chief of Staff of the Army. You go back to the Army and if 

you have lost or you have lost resources to the Air Force and the 

Navy, you go home and you have lost the game. I mean, you should 

be ashamed of yourself. We have had all different kinds of people 

in the environment and they are all good men. But they all come 

from institutions and they all know where they come from. 

The way to break that logjam I think is you have to have a senior civilian leader in the form of the Secretary of Defense who is 

willing to force that body to work, to say, ‘‘Look, if you don’t come 

up with the answers for me, then I am going to make decisions 

based on my best understanding. I have two internal think tanks, 

I have the Office of Net Assessment that does strategy for me, I 

have the Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation that can do 

tradeoffs for me. And if the professional military can’t give me any 

help, if all you are going to do is protect your rice bowls, then I 

am going to make decisions based on the best information I have.’’ 

And that, I think, offers you the best chance of getting a healthy 

competition going to where you can get senior people to live outside 

their particular service or institution. That, again, is a fairly narrow example. 

Mrs. DAVIS. If I could just interrupt for a second. Because in 

many ways, that seems premised on the belief that you have on 

deep benchers on all sides, that you have got people to fill in, to 

cross-train, to do a certain amount of work out of their own specialty. And I think one of the problems that we see and I hope that 

in the discussion we will look at the budgets. And the report talks 

about the interactive budgets and integrated budgets. I am sorry. 

I think what we find so frustrating is in many of our discussions 

we know that there is such an imbalance between the needs of 
19 

State Department for example, and the Pentagon and that you just 

don’t have the people to play those roles. 

Dr. KREPINEVICH. But again let me sort of make the case for 

strategy. What is our strategy for dealing with an increasingly disordered world that is characterized by radical Muslim fundamentalists, transnational criminal gangs, narcotics gangs. I would submit that there are four that I have heard in my travels around 

Washington. One is the ‘‘no more Iraqs, no more Afghanistans.’’ 

This current experience is a one off, we are not going to do this 

anymore, the military needs to get out of this business. Just like 

after Vietnam we will take a 30-year break. And I have had generals tell me that. 

Second is the strategy that sort of came out of the 2006 QDR, 

which is the indirect approach building partner capacity. We are 

not going to get directly involved anymore, we are going do build 

up the militaries of other countries so they can defend themselves. 

Secretary Gates in his recent Foreign Affairs article talking about 

a balanced defense seemed to indicate that it was that, plus the 

ability to surge if a country that was truly vital to our security was 

coming unraveled. 

And then there is the fourth option that says we are going to 

have a strategy where we conclude that we can’t get the rest of the 

world to help, we can’t get our allies to help, we are going to have 

to take the lead, we are going to have to police democracy’s empire, 

we just need to face up to that fact. 

Depending upon what strategy you pursue, it has profound implications for the military services, their size, their orientation, who 

gets what. And so I guess my plea here today is strategy really 

does matter, and strategy is hard to do. But you ignore it at your 

peril, you ignore it at the risk of compromising the nation’s security, the survival and well-being of its citizens. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. I can go on, Mr. Chairman, but I suspect 

my time is up, even though the lights are not on. 

Dr. SNYDER. Dr. Fenner just was contemplating what the content 

was and lost track of time. 

Mr. Wittman for five minutes. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you members of the panel. I appreciate you 

coming here. Some interesting dichotomy there in thoughts about 

this particular study. Dr. Krepinevich, you pointed out really focusing on crafting good strategies and you talk about using the Eisenhower NSC model, including planning and operation coordination 

boards. 

Is that something that you think can be effective in the long run 

from administration to administration? And the reason I say that 

is if you get a new administration is that something you would say 

needs to transcend administrations? And in addition to that, what 

do you think on the congressional side should happen to make decisionmaking there more effective, more efficient? 

Dr. KREPINEVICH. Well, let me preface by just voicing my agreement with Dr. Destler’s point that people matter here. You can’t 

force a particular system on a President. They will find a way to 

work around it. They can have any kind of ad hoc group they want, 

no matter what you call the formal group, and they each have their 

own decisionmaking styles. 
20 

Having said that, my observation is if you want to craft good 

strategy you need to know that it involves the persistent, active involvement of the President of the United States, that he does not 

have time to craft strategy himself, which is why something like 

the Planning Board where you have in a sense an interdepartmental group of strategists working hard trying to identify issues, 

sources of advantage and so on. You have frequent meetings of the 

key players, the National Security Council. It doesn’t have to be 

the statutory, it can be just the relevant players for that issue. And 

you have to have some way of enforcing decisions, which was the 

Operations Coordinating Board. And you have to have a President 

who is willing to fire people, and I think that is one of the endearing, if I could say, aspects of Secretary Gates. He will not put up 

with people who aren’t doing their jobs. And again, you have got 

to enforce some level of rigor, and even then it is going to be difficult. 

But that is my message to an administration that is interested 

in crafting good strategy and trying to get it executed. I think Congress has the oversight role; to what extent is the Administration 

crafting strategy, does the strategy make sense? I think there is 

certainly limitations on that. Several years ago Chairman Hunter 

essentially tried to take on that mission, at least in terms of the 

Defense Department, and get the committee to look at various aspects of a Quadrennial Defense Review from Congress’ position as 

a way of being an informed B team, if you will, or red team for 

what the Pentagon was doing. 

I participated in the National Defense Panel in 1997. I think that 

is another way that Congress—you know, an independent body of 

experts focusing, sort of strategy experts, if you will, sort of Congress’ planning board, that can at least evaluate and assess and 

provide Congress with an independent view of how good the administration strategy is, may be another possibility. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you. Dr. Destler, in your opinion has the 

National Security Advisor become a policymaker or an implementer 

instead of a policy advisor to the President? And to add to that, if 

the National Security Advisor conducts national security policy, 

should the appointment require Senate confirmation and allow for 

the person to be subject to testify to congressional committees? 

Dr. DESTLER. That is a very, very good and important question, 

Congressman. First of all, I hate to say it depends on which National Security Advisor, and it is too early to tell about the present 

one. I would say that most recent National Security Advisors have 

not been implementers, have not been negotiators. Some, like 

Condoleezza Rice, have been very prominent public spokespeople 

for the administration. Certainly Henry Kissinger did everything 

when he worked for Nixon. He was a negotiator. He was actually 

not the spokesman until very near the end of the first term. People 

don’t remember that because he spoke so much after that. But nevertheless the National Security Advisor is a very—I would argue 

that in principle I do not believe the National Security Advisor 

should be confirmed by the Senate, because I think that would lead 

to the National Security Advisor in practice being an alternative official public spokesman. And this would create real problems, real 
21 

tensions with the Cabinet officials, particularly the Secretary of 

State but also the Secretary of Defense. 

However, I would say that to the degree that the National Security Advisor in fact becomes, say, the principal negotiator, or becomes the most important and visibly important policy voice, short 

of the President, I think Congress will quite understandably seek 

to have this person confirmed because Congress naturally wants to 

talk to the person, the people who are really making the decisions. 

So I would say I would combine my cautionary recommendation 

about confirmation with the caution to the National Security Advisor; don’t get out too much in public, don’t—you know, if you give 

an address to the President make it confidential, don’t go telling 

the press that you are the one who really made the decision. Play 

the role quietly, give credit to others, and talk to Members of Congress, but not necessarily testify, and be straight and helpful to 

Members of Congress. 

Dr. SNYDER. Ms. Pingree for five minutes. 

Ms. PINGREE. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you very much 

for your presentation. As you can see by my placement in the room, 

I am one of the newest members in this committee, and so I am 

actually here to learn as much as to ask you questions. But let me 

just ask you one thing that any one of you I am happy to hear from 

on this. And I think one of you mentioned this idea that once we 

run out of money then we have to think. And given the suggestions 

that have been made here in what you have already said to us and 

what is written in the very thick document that you have in front 

of you, how do some of these suggested changes have an impact on 

our refocusing of national defense spending? I mean clearly for 

many of us coming in in these difficult economic times that is one 

of the challenges. And given the responsibilities we have on our 

plate, and also the interest in shifting some of the way we think 

about our defense priorities, how do you see some of this having 

an impact on that and other suggestions you might make in that 

kind of realm? 

Dr. DESTLER. That is a wonderful question. Let me just respond 

very briefly. I think Secretary Gates has been one who has said 

that because the Defense Department has a bigger budget and has 

certain capacities, that the Defense Department has been asked to 

carry certain activities which would be better off being carried by 

other parts of the government, particularly the State Department. 

And certainly the whole complicated question of postwar stabilization has been one of those areas. 

So I think one of the issues is, which is important both in terms 

of congressional decisionmaking in terms of Administration decisionmaking, Administration planning, is how can one at least incrementally figure out a way to empower institutions, particularly 

the elements of the State Department, but other operational institutions outside the Pentagon, so that they both can get resources 

from Congress on a consistent basis for carrying out very strong civilian operational responsibilities and also are capable of doing 

that in a way that will satisfy you. 

I think that is the right question, and I think it probably it is 

going to have to be dealt with incrementally. Hopefully Secretary 
22 

Clinton—I believe she is thinking about this, and hopefully will 

work on this issue. 

Dr. KREPINEVICH. If I could be permitted to use my strategy example. Suppose we pick, let us call it, the ‘‘Gates Strategy’’ in respect to dealing with a disordered world. And it is going to be an 

indirect approach, it is going to be building partner capacity, but 

we reserve the right to surge military capability into an area that 

is threatened. In that case you are going to be heavily engaged in 

efforts in terms of economic assistance, in terms of assisting states 

that are weak states with their governance, which means you are 

going to have to devote more money perhaps to the United States 

Agency for International Development (USAID), you are going to 

have to shift funding into the State Department to train more Foreign Service Officers and others that can come in and help nations 

improve their governance. 

You may reduce the size of the Army eventually because, again, 

if the Army is not going to be sort of the first source of response 

to these kinds of situations but they are going to train indigenous 

forces, advise them, then they provide large amounts of manpower. 

We provide very high quality manpower but in very small doses. 

So that strategy over the longer term could lead you to, again, increase your resources for organizations like USAID, State Department, probably the Intelligence Community, although shift that 

money within the Intelligence Community from more national technical means of gathering intelligence to human intelligence, and 

then perhaps a reduction in the size of the Army because they 

wouldn’t be sort of the first and only response you would have to 

a crisis situation. 

And again, that is drawn upon the results of an effort to come 

up, okay, what strategy makes sense. In this case, you recall I 

talked about strategy involves identifying and exploiting sources of 

advantage. Theoretically you would be exploiting two sources of advantage. One is high quality manpower in terms of advising, equipping, training, improving governance. The other is the scale of effort, assuming we right our economy, and so on, and strengthen the 

foundation. We have the ability to provide assistance on a greater 

scale than just about any other country in the world. And so for 

small countries it seems like a huge amount of funding. And of 

course we have a history, sometimes good, the Marshall Plan, 

sometimes bad, Alliance for Progress, in terms of success here. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Thornberry for five minutes. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you 

and Mr. Wittman allowing me to sit in, and I have not had a 

chance to read Dr. Destler’s book. I have read about it. I have had 

the chance to read Dr. Krepinevich’s recent book on the importance 

of one of the things about it, importance of strategic planning, 

which makes a very persuasive case for me. 

I guess I would like to step back from the questions you have 

had so far and ask: do you think we need to make significant organizational changes? I think a lot of the impetus for this report 

came from maybe two things. One is the world is more interconnected than ever, so we cannot be effective and have military 

over here and diplomacy over here and economic assistance over 

here, and so forth. But secondly, there is a feeling that the military 
23 

had to do everything in Iraq and Afghanistan, that the other departments never showed up. And while individuals did amazing 

things on the ground, that the bureaucracies were in their stovepipe worried about turf and their budget. 

So I think that is a lot of what got us here. And I appreciate the 

issues you all have brought up with this particular report, but do 

you think we need to have a significant organizational change or 

can it be adjusted according to a President’s preferences and we 

can kind of get along? 

Dr. Krepinevich. 

Dr. KREPINEVICH. Again, if I have to vote, I would vote in favor 

of the argument that people matter. It matters who the President 

of the United States is. It matters whether that person is willing 

to devote persistent time and attention to crafting good strategies, 

and quite frankly being ruthless in implementing them in terms of 

dealing with recalcitrant or reluctant elements of the bureaucracy. 

I think thinking matters. I am a big fan of thinking relative to 

process. And not to say that structure isn’t important and process 

isn’t important, but again I honestly believe that there is a shortfall in terms of strategic thinking, strategic competence. And that 

is one thing I think that the project really did hit very well. 

The notion that the world is more complicated, okay, the world 

is more complicated. Marshall Plan, late 1940s. I mean that was 

a confluence of a number of factors. There were economic factors, 

there were security factors, there were intelligence issues that 

needed to be brought to bear, diplomacy on a very high level, the 

Suez Crisis in 1956, Soviets threatening to launch nuclear rockets 

on Paris and London, Eisenhower using U.S. economic leverage to 

get the British to pull out of Suez, and then the conflict, diplomacy 

to wrap things up, trying to pull improve the U.S. position in that 

part of the world. 

The world has been a messy place for a very long time, and it 

is typically, not typically, but often the case that there is an interweaving. Kennedy Special Group (Counter-Insurgency). You know, 

CIA, State, USAID. In a sense we have been to this movie before. 

And so while I always believe that we can improve structure and 

process, I think what really matters is people, as my colleague Dr. 

Destler says, and thinking. Coming up with a good strategy. I 

would rather have a mediocre execution of a great strategy than a 

great execution of a mediocre strategy. 

Dr. DESTLER. One of the ways you can I think think about people, but also think about sort of structuring, at least process, is you 

need to have people at various levels of the system who know who 

are the relevant players in the government on a particular issue 

and can have empowerment to pull them together. It will be partly 

what agencies they are from and what briefs they have, it will be 

partly who is good, who is capable of moving things and getting the 

process to work. And I think that probably has to be done more in 

an informal than a formal way, but nevertheless it is going to have 

like a Principals Committee structure in the NSC and a Deputies 

Committee structure and some regional groups at a level below 

that. But they sort of ought to be—and I think that is one of the 

good things about this report, is they do talk about flexible empowering of interagency groups and trying very much to push the re-
24 

sponsibility down in a way that people in the agencies can not only 

participate and influence it, but influence it in the name of the 

broader purpose, rather than simply. 

So I think one needs to look for devices like that. But I can’t 

think of an organizational reform that would promote, you know in 

terms of a structural change, that would do anything other than at 

the margins, little things like the State Department created an Office of Reconstruction around the middle of the Bush Administration. And I think this was a constructive enterprise. People said, 

well, is the State Department powerful enough to do this? Maybe, 

maybe not. Were they able to get interagency cooperation? Well, a 

little bit. 

So I think you need to look for ways to make those things better. 

But I think some things like that probably are worth doing and 

hopefully helpful. 

Mr. THORNBERRY. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. SNYDER. We have votes going on. And I think given that we 

have votes and we have been here about an hour and a half, I don’t 

think we will keep you all sitting here. 

Do you have anything further you would like to ask, Mr. Wittman? 

Mr. WITTMAN. No. 

Dr. SNYDER. Mrs. Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. No. 

Dr. SNYDER. Ms. Pingree. 

Ms. PINGREE. No. 

Dr. SNYDER. Members may have questions for the record. And let 

me just extend to you the offer that if you all have anything written that you would like to have attached to this, except this is a 

question for the record, to send us anything that you would like to 

add on. 

We appreciate your contribution today, but also all three of your 

contributions through a lot of years to these kinds of discussions, 

and we appreciate you. 

We are adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 2:25 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 
A P P E N D I X 

MARCH 19, 2009 

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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

MARCH 19, 2009 

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QUESTION SUBMITTED BY DR. SNYDER 

Dr. SNYDER. Do you believe that the professional military education system does 

or should play a role in designing national security strategy? Please comment. 

Dr. KREPINEVICH. The professional military education system should play an important—albeit indirect—role in designing our national security strategy. 

Strategy at the national level (and strategy in general) is typically done best by 

small groups of individuals who are talented strategists. This was the case with respect to the successful grand strategy developed by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations to prosecute the Cold War. The same is true for the ‘‘triangular’’ strategy developed by the Nixon administration that led to the opening to China in the 

early 1970s and produced a major shift in our geopolitical situation. Our overall 

strategy for prosecuting World War II in Europe with our British partners was 

crafted and directed by President Roosevelt, General Marshall, Prime Minister 

Churchill and General Alan Brooke. 

Professional military education institutions support the design of good strategy in 

two ways. First, our senior military schools teach strategy. To the extent they do 

it well, they contribute to populating our government, over time, with senior civilian 

and military leaders who have a good appreciation for strategy. Second, to the extent that these institutions are able to identify those individuals who are promising 

strategists, it can be an important factor in their selection for senior positions that 

require such a skill. (There is some recent scholarship indicating that it is possible 

to identify those individuals who have the potential to do strategy well. Interestingly, the skill sets that the military values in selecting officers for command at the 

tactical level of war, are not those that translate well into skills needed for senior 

rank; i.e., for officers who must weigh issues at the strategic level, and who are responsible for strategy development.) 

Do our senior military education institutions teach strategy well? Are they tased 

with identifying students who show great promise as strategists? Is this attribute 

valued by the career civil service and the military services when it comes to advancement and placement? These questions may be worth investigating. Both Rep 

Skelton and Rep Israel have a strong interest in these issues and may be worth engaging, as may Rep Thomberry. 

I hope this brief response proves of use to you. 

Æ