Election season is thankfully almost over and the lines of a new debate over force planning and national security strategy have begun to solidify.

One of the more provocative offerings in the maelstrom of think tank reports hoping to gain influence in the next administration and QDR is CDI’s forthcoming monograph America’s Defense Meltdown.

Regarding national security strategy:
Richards is dead on when he says that “The new president needs to formally assess the policy objectives for which military force still has utility in today’s world…” We’ve arrived at a point as a nation where our portfolio of national power is decidedly military-heavy, which forces us to use it even when another tool would be better tailored for the task at hand. We need to see the new administration demonstrate leadership in rebalancing our foreign policy toolbox.

Richards is less on the mark with his recommendation for changing intelligence “so that misuse of force based on false pretext becomes far more difficult.” Robert Jervis [1] has offered a penetrating critique of the debate over intelligence reform and points out that the intelligence agencies of our anti-Iraq War allies reached the same general conclusions of our intelligence agencies, strongly undermining the argument that politically skewed intelligence was responsible for the Iraq debacle.

Regarding Ground Forces:
I’m very curious to read about the new strategies, tactics and technologies that Cols. Macgregor and Wilson promise will produce more victories and fewer casualties. I didn’t expect to encounter such claims in a 4GW-inspired monograph.

I’m also curious how William Lind proposes to make reserve units as capable as active-duty batallions. Increased training time? Better equipment?

Regarding Naval Forces:
At the moment, I really don’t have anything to add to Galrahn’s assessment.

Regarding Budget and Acquisitions Reform:
Winslow Wheeler makes a sweeping recommendation to create “a new panel of independent, objective profesionals (with no contemporaneous or future ties whatsoever with industry or other sources of bias or self-interest)” to help the president assess:
-the appropriateness of the DoD’s portfolio for the current world
-the national security strategy
-the realistic budget available to DoD
And then the panel would be the primary advisor to the SECDEF in how to acquire the DoD’s portfolio.

A strident proposal, to be sure.

I empathize with the urge to rationalize the force planning process of the DoD. Assuming one could recuit an appropriate group of oracles for this presidential panel, how would they implement their decisions? How would they enforce the newly rationalized process? I’ve blogged this issue before when assessing other plans to reform national security decisionmaking. I want the process to be rational. Without enforcement, however, it doesn’t matter whether a rational decision gets made - it won’t be implemented. The personal trust between the SECDEF and the panel will also be key.

[1] Robert Jervis, “Reports, Politics, and Intelligence Failures,” The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol 29, No 3, Feb 2006, pp 3-52.