Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

30 • Shattering Illusions: A National Security Strategy for 2009-2017and the spread of democracy within a stable system of states that can controlinsurgencies and transnational violent groups within their borders. 10 The nextadministration must consider whether such an open-ended, if laudable, goalrepresents a viable endstate.• The dynamics of the world situation, including the major security challengesto the United States and the directions they appear to be taking. Nobody hasan infallible crystal ball, so precise forecasts are specious. The general outlines,however, of any major military threats would be visible today.• The administration’s philosophy on the relative importance of these threatsto the United States and the tools we have for dealing with them, which mayrange from confronting them to containing them to ignoring them. It is in thissection that the administration should address the utility of military force.• The direction the administration intends to take, given the situation, the statusof U.S. forces, and its philosophy on the usefulness of the means available. Thedirection must balance between being too general, so that it offers no guidance,and too specific, so that it becomes irrelevant before it can be promulgated.• The first steps it intends to take. So if an element of the administration’s approachis to reduce spending on Cold War-era weapons programs, there shouldbe a statement, “As our initial step, we will cancel the …” A statement like this,which will be elaborated in the details of the strategy, signals to the Americanpeople that this is a strategy the new administration intends to implement.Although the theory is straightforward, the formulation of strategy can be tortuousbecause people will disagree on the elements and defend their positions for personal,philosophical, political or bureaucratic reasons to the point of obstruction. A trilliondollar annual expenditure, 11 whether justifiable analytically or not, brings along apotent constituency, people whose prosperity, livelihood, or in the case of woundedveterans, for example, even survival depend on this flow of money.Because a strategy that does not lead to feasible plans is both worthless and wasteful,the administration should make an estimate of what is possible. If Congress, forexample, is not going to allow cancellation of major programs or the demobilizationof substantial parts of the force structure, then the administration should not buildthese elements into its proposals. Even without this level of change, the administrationcan rationalize defense by eliminating overhead, support and bureaucracy duplicatedamong the services – the “four air forces” situation providing just one example, thefact that it has persisted for so many years testifying to its intractability. A coherent