Quote from Report Of The
On National Security/21st Century:
FINAL DRAFT REPORT
EMBARGOED UNTIL
Road Map for National Security:
Imperative for Change
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"Thus, in Phase III, it recommends a new
National
Homeland Security Agency to consolidate and refine the missions of the nearly
two dozen disparate departments and agencies that have a role in
Securing the National Homeland
The combination of unconventional weapons proliferation
with the persistence of international terrorism will end the relative
invulnerability of the
We therefore recommend the creation of a new independent
National Homeland Security Agency
(NHSA) with responsibility for planning,
coordinating, and integrating various
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(320 Pages, 1212 footnotes)
(1) The Phase III Report Of The
On National Security/21st Century
http://www.rense.com/general10/roadmap.htm
Part 1
http://www.nssg.gov/phaseIII.pdf
Data Compiled By 'mebs'
FINAL DRAFT REPORT
EMBARGOED UNTIL JAN. 31, 2001
Road Map for National Security:
Imperative for Change
The Phase III Report of the
National Security/21st Century
The
DRAFT FINAL REPORT
January 31, 2001
U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century*1
Gary Hart
Co-Chair
Warren B.Rudman
Co-Chair
Anne Armstrong Norman
Commissioner
R. Augustine
Commissioner
John Dancy
Commissioner
John R. Galvin
Commissioner
Leslie H. Gelb
Commissioner
Newt Gingrich
Commissioner
Lee H. Hamilton
Commissioner
Donald B. Rice
Commissioner
James Schlesinger
Commissioner
Harry D. Train
Commissioner
Andrew Young
Commissioner
Contents
Foreword, Gary Hart and Warren Rudman
Preface, Charles G. Boyd
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Introduction: Imperative for
A. The Strategic Framework
B. Organizational Realignment.
C. Executive-Legislative Cooperation
II. Recapitalizing America's Strengths in Science and
Education
A. Investing in Innovation
B. Education as a National Security Imperative
III. Institutional Redesign
A. Strategic Planning and Budgeting
B. The National Security Council
C. Department of State
D. Department of Defense
E. Space Policy
F. The Intelligence Community
IV. The Human Requirements for National Security
A. A National Campaign for Service to the Nation
B. The Presidential Appointments Process.
C. The Foreign Service
D. The Civil Service
E. Military Personnel
V. The Role of Congress
A Final Word
Appendix 1: The Recommendations
Appendix 2: The USCNS/21 Charter
Appendix 3: Commissioner Biographies and Staff Listing
Foreword
American power and
influence have been decisive factors for democracy and security throughout the
last half-century. However, after more than two years of serious effort, this
Commission has concluded that without significant reforms, American power and
influence cannot be sustained. To be of long-term benefit to us and to others,
that power and influence must be disciplined by strategy, defined as the
systematic determination of the proper relationship of ends to means in support
of American principles, interests, and national purpose.
This Commission was established to redefine national
security in this age and to do so in a more comprehensive fashion than any
other similar effort since 1947. We have carried out our duties in an
independent and totally bipartisan spirit. This report is a blueprint for
reorganizing the U.S. national security structure in order to focus that
structure's attention on the most important new and serious problems before the
nation, and to produce organizational competence capable of addressing those
problems creatively.
The key to our vision is the need for a culture of
coordinated strategic planning to permeate all U.S. national security
institutions. Our challenges are no longer defined for us by a single prominent
threat. Without creative strategic planning in this new environment, we will
default in time of crisis to a reactive posture. Such a posture is inadequate
to the challenges and opportunities before us.
We have concluded that, despite the end of the Cold War
threat, America faces distinctly new dangers, particularly to the homeland and
to our scientific and educational base. These dangers must be addressed
forthwith.
We call upon the new President, the new administration,
the new Congress, and the country at large to consider and debate our recommendations
in the pragmatic spirit that has characterized America and its people in each
new age.
Gary Hart Warren Co-Chair
B. Rudman Co-Chair
Preface
The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century was
born more than two years ago out of a conviction that the entire range of U.S.
national security policies and processes required reexamination in light of new
circumstances. Those circumstances encompass not only the changed geopolitical
reality after the Cold War, but also the significant technological, social, and
intellectual changes that are occurring.
Prominent among such changes is the information
revolution and the accelerating discontinuities in a range of scientific and
technological areas. Another is the increased integration of global finance and
commerce, commonly called "globalization." Yet another is the
ascendance of democratic governance and free-market economics to unprecedented
levels, and another still the increasing importance of both multinational and
non-governmental actors in global affairs. The routines of professional life,
too, in business, university, and other domains in advanced countries have been
affected by the combination of new technologies and new management techniques.
The internal cultures of organizations have been changing, usually in ways that
make them more efficient and effective.
The creators of this Commission believed that unless the
U.S. government adapts itself to these changes-and to dramatic changes still to
come-it will fall out of step with the world of the 21st century. Nowhere will
the risks of doing so be more manifest than in the realm of national security.
Mindful of the likely scale of change ahead, this
Commission's sponsors urged it to be bold and comprehensive in its undertaking.
That meant thinking out a quarter century, not just to the next election or to
the next federal budget cycle. That meant searching out how government should
work, undeterred by the institutional inertia that today determines how it does
work. Not least, it meant conceiving national security not as narrowly defined,
but as it ought to be defined-to include economics, technology, and education
for a new age in which novel opportunities and challenges coexist uncertainly
with familiar ones.
The fourteen Commissioners involved in this undertaking,
one that engaged their energies for over two years, have worked hard and they
have worked well.*2 Best of all, despite diverse experiences and views, they
have transcended partisanship to work together in recognition of the
seriousness of the task: nothing less than to assure the well-being of this
Republic a quarter century hence.
This Commission has conducted its work in three phases.
Phase I was dedicated to understanding how the world will likely evolve over
the next 25 years. From that basis in prospective reality, Phase II devised a
U.S. national security strategy to deal with that world. Phase III aims to
reform government structures and processes to enable the U.S. government to
implement that strategy, or, indeed, any strategy that would depart from the
embedded routines of the last half-century.
Phase I concluded in September 1999 with the publication
of New World Coming: American Security in the 21st Century.*3 Phase II produced
the April 2000 publication, Seeking a National Strategy: A Concert for
Preserving Security and Promoting Freedom. Phase III, presented in these pages,
is entitled Road Map for National Security: Imperative for Change. This report
summarizes enough of the Commission's Phase I and Phase II work to establish an
intellectual basis for understanding this Phase III report, but it does not
repeat the texts of prior phases in detail. For those seeking fuller background
to this report, the Commission's earlier works should be consulted directly.*4
In Road Map for National Security, the Commission has
endeavored to complete the logic of its three phases of work, moving from
analysis to strategy to the redesign of the structures and processes of the
U.S. national security system. For example, in Phase I the Commission stressed
that mass-casualty terrorism directed against the U.S. homeland was of serious
and growing concern. It therefore proposed in Phase II a strategy that
prioritizes deterring, defending against, and responding effectively to such
dangers. Thus, in Phase III, it recommends a new National Homeland Security
Agency to consolidate and refine the missions of the nearly two dozen disparate
departments and agencies that have a role in U.S. homeland security today.
That said, not every Phase I finding and not every Phase
II proposal has generated a major Phase III recommendation. Not every aspect of
U.S. national security organization needs an overhaul. Moreover, some
challenges are best met, and some opportunities are best achieved, by crafting
better policies, not by devising new organizational structures or processes.
Where appropriate, this report notes those occasions and is not reluctant to
suggest new policy directions.
Many of the recommendations made herein require legislation
to come into being. Many others, however, require only Presidential order or
departmental directive. These latter recommendations are not necessarily of
lesser importance and can be implemented quickly.
The Commission anticipates that some of its recommendations
will win wide support. Other recommendations may generate controversy and even
opposition, as is to be expected when dealing with such serious and complex
issues. We trust that the ensuing debate will ultimately yield the very best
use of this Commission's work for the benefit of the American people.
Organizational reform is not a panacea. There is no
perfect organizational design, no flawless managerial fix. The reason is that
organizations are made up of people, and people invariably devise informal
means of dealing with one another in accord with the accidents of personality
and temperament. Even excellent organizational structure cannot make impetuous
or mistaken leaders patient or wise, but poor organizational design can make
good leaders less effective.
Sound organization is important. It can ensure that
problems reach their proper level of decision quickly and efficiently and can
balance the conflicting imperatives inherent in any national security
decision-system-between senior involvement and expert input, between speed and
the need to consider a variety of views, between tactical flexibility and
strategic consistency. President Eisenhower summarized it best:
"Organization cannot make a genius out of a dunce. But it can provide its
head with the facts he needs, and help him avoid misinformed mistakes."
Most important, good organization helps assure
accountability. At every level of organization, elected officials-and
particularly the President as Commander-in-Chief-must be
able to ascertain quickly and surely who is in charge.
But in a government that has expanded through serial incremental adjustment
rather than according to an overall plan, finding those responsible to make
things go right, or those responsible when things go wrong, can be a very
formidable task. This, we may be sure, is not what the Founders had in mind.
This Commission has done its best to step up to the
mandate of its Charter. It is now up to others to do their best to bring the
benefits of this Commission's effort into the institutions of American
government.
Charles G. Boyd, General, USAF (Ret.) Executive Director
Executive Summary
After our examination of the new strategic environment of
the next quarter century (Phase I) and of a strategy to address it (Phase II),
this Commission concludes that significant changes must be made in the
structures and processes of the U.S. national security apparatus. Our
institutional base is in decline and must be rebuilt. Otherwise, the United
States risks losing its global influence and critical leadership role.
We offer recommendations for organizational change in
five key areas:
1 ensuring the security of the American homeland;
2 recapitalizing America's strengths in science and
education;
3 redesigning key institutions of the Executive Branch;
4 overhauling the U.S. government personnel system; and
5 reorganizing Congress's role in national security
affairs.
We have taken a broad view of national security. In the
new era, sharp distinctions between "foreign" and
"domestic" no longer apply. We do not equate national security with
"defense." We do believe in the centrality of strategy, and of
seizing opportunities as well as confronting dangers. If the structures and
processes of the U.S. government stand still amid a world of change, the United
States will lose its capacity to shape history, and will instead be shaped by
it.
Securing the
National Homeland
The combination of unconventional weapons proliferation
with the persistence of international terrorism will end the relative
invulnerability of the U.S. homeland to catastrophic attack. A direct attack
against American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter
century. The risk is not only death and destruction but also a demoralization
that could undermine U.S. global leadership. In the face of this threat, our
nation has no coherent or integrated governmental structures.
We therefore recommend the creation of a new independent
National Homeland Security Agency (NHSA) with responsibility for planning,
coordinating, and integrating various U.S. government activities involved in
homeland security. NHSA would be built upon the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, with the three organizations currently on the front line of border
security-the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, and the Border Patrol-
transferred to it. NHSA would not only protect American lives, but also assume
responsibility for overseeing the protection of the nation's critical
infrastructure, including information technology.
The NHSA Director would have Cabinet status and would be
a statutory advisor to the National Security Council. The legal foundation for
the National Homeland Security Agency would rest firmly within the array of
Constitutional guarantees for civil liberties. The observance of these
guarantees in the event of a national security emergency would be safeguarded
by NHSA's interagency coordinating activities-which would include the
Department of Justice-as well as by its conduct of advance exercises.
The potentially catastrophic nature of homeland attacks
necessitates our being prepared to use the tremendous resources of the
Department of Defense (DoD). Therefore, the department needs to pay far more
attention to this mission in the future. We recommend that a new office of
Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security be created to oversee the various DoD
activities and ensure that the necessary resources are made available.
New priorities also need to be set for the U.S. armed
forces in light of the threat to the homeland. We urge, in particular, that the
National Guard be given homeland security as a primary mission, as the U.S.
Constitution itself ordains. The National Guard should be reorganized, trained,
and equipped to undertake that mission.
Finally, we recommend that Congress reorganize itself to
accommodate this Executive Branch realignment, and that it also form a special
select committee for homeland security to provide Congressional support and
oversight in this critical area.
Recapitalizing America's Strengths in Science and
Education
Americans are living off the economic and security
benefits of the last three generations' investment in science and education,
but we are now consuming capital. Our systems of basic scientific research and
education are in serious crisis, while other countries are redoubling their
efforts. In the next quarter century, we will likely see ourselves surpassed,
and in relative decline, unless we make a conscious national commitment to
maintain our edge.
We also face unprecedented opportunity. The world is
entering an era of dramatic progress in bioscience and materials science as
well as information technology and scientific instrumentation. Brought together
and accelerated by nanoscience, these rapidly developing research fields will
transform our understanding of the world and our capacity to manipulate it. The
United States can remain the world's technological leader if it makes the
commitment to do so. But the U.S. government has seriously underfunded basic scientific
research in recent years. The quality of the U.S. education system, too, has
fallen well behind those of scores of other nations. This has occurred at a
time when vastly more Americans will have to understand and work competently
with science and math on a daily basis.
In this Commission's view, the inadequacies of our
systems of research and education pose a greater threat to U.S. national
security over the next quarter century than any potential conventional war that
we might imagine. American national leadership must understand these
deficiencies as threats to national security. If we do not invest heavily and
wisely in rebuilding these two core strengths, America will be incapable of
maintaining its global position long into the 21st century.
We therefore recommend doubling the federal research and
development budget by 2010, and instituting a more competitive environment for
the allotment of those funds.
We recommend further that the role of the President's
Science Advisor be elevated to oversee these and other critical tasks, such as
the resuscitation of the national laboratory system and the institution of
better inventory stewardship over the nation's science and technology assets.
We also recommend a new National Security Science and Technology
Education Act to fund a comprehensive program to produce the needed numbers of
science and engineering professionals as well as qualified teachers in science
and math. This Act should provide loan forgiveness incentives to attract those
who have graduated and scholarships for those still in school and should
provide these incentives in exchange for a period of K-12 teaching in science
and math, or of military or government service. Additional measures should
provide resources to modernize laboratories in science education, and expand
existing programs aimed at economically-depressed school districts.
Institutional
Redesign
The dramatic changes in the world since the end of the
Cold War of the last half- century have not been accompanied by any major
institutional changes in the Executive Branch of the U.S. government. Serious
deficiencies exist that only a significant organizational redesign can remedy.
Most troublesome is the lack of an overarching strategic framework guiding U.S.
national security policymaking and resource allocation. Clear goals and
priorities are rarely set. Budgets are prepared and appropriated as they were
during the Cold War.
The Department of State, in particular, is a crippled
institution, starved for resources by Congress because of its inadequacies, and
thereby weakened further. Only if the State Department's internal weaknesses
are cured will it become an effective leader in the making and implementation
of the nation's foreign policy. Only then can it credibly seek significant
funding increases from Congress. The department suffers in particular from an
ineffective organizational structure in which regional and functional policies
do not serve integrated goals, and in which sound management, accountability,
and leadership are lacking.
For this and other reasons, the power to determine
national security policy has steadily migrated toward the National Security
Council (NSC) staff. The staff now assumes policymaking roles that many
observers have warned against. Yet the NSC staff's role as policy coordinator
is more urgently needed than ever, given the imperative of integrating the many
diverse strands of policymaking.
Meanwhile, the U.S. intelligence community is adjusting
only slowly to the changed circumstances of the post-Cold War era. While the
economic and political components of statecraft have assumed greater
prominence, military imperatives still largely drive the analysis and
collection of intelligence. Neither has America's overseas presence been
properly adapted to the new economic, social, political, and security realities
of the 21st century.
Finally, the Department of Defense needs to be
overhauled. The growth in staff and staff activities has created mounting
confusion and delay. The failure to outsource or privatize many defense support
activities wastes huge sums of money. The programming and budgeting process is
not guided by effective strategic planning. The weapons acquisition process is
so hobbled by excessive laws, regulations, and oversight strictures that it can
neither recognize nor seize opportunities for major innovation, and its
procurement bureaucracy weakens a defense industry that is already in a state
of financial crisis.
In light of such serious and interwoven deficiencies, the
Commission's initial recommendation is that strategy should once again drive
the design and implementation of U.S. national security policies. That means
that the President should personally guide a top-down strategic planning
process and that process should be linked to the allocation of resources
throughout the government. When submitting his budgets for the various national
security departments, the President should also present an overall national
security budget, focused on the nation's most critical strategic goals.
Homeland security, counter- terrorism, and science and technology should be
included.
We recommend further that the President's National
Security Advisor and NSC staff return to their traditional role of coordinating
national security activities and resist the temptation to become policymakers
or operators. The NSC Advisor should also keep a low public profile.
Legislative, press communications, and speech-writing functions should reside
in the White House staff, not separately in the NSC staff as they do today. The
higher the profile of the National Security Advisor the greater will be the
pressures from Congress to compel testimony and force Senate confirmation of
the position.
To reflect how central economics has become in U.S.
national security policy, we recommend that the Secretary of Treasury be named
a statutory member of the National Security Council. Responsibility for
international economic policy should return to the National Security Council.
The President should abolish the National Economic Council, distributing its
domestic economic policy responsibilities to the Domestic Policy Council.
Critical to the future success of U.S. national security
policies is a fundamental restructuring of the State Department. Reform must
ensure that responsibility and accountability are clearly established, regional
and functional activities are closely integrated, foreign assistance programs
are centrally planned and implemented, and strategic planning is emphasized and
linked to the allocation of resources.
We recommend that this be accomplished through the
creation of five Under Secretaries with responsibility for overseeing the
regions of Africa, Asia, Europe, Inter- America, and Near East/South Asia, and
a redefinition of the responsibilities of the Under Secretary for Global
Affairs. The restructuring we propose would position the State Department to
play a leadership role in the making and implementation of U.S. foreign policy,
as well as to harness the department's organizational culture to the benefit of
the U.S. government as a whole. Perhaps most important, the Secretary of State
would be free to focus on the most important policies and negotiations, having
delegated responsibility for integrating regional and functional issues to the
Under Secretaries.
Accountability would be matched with responsibility in
senior policymakers, who in serving the Secretary would be able to speak for
the State Department both within the interagency process and before Congress.
No longer would competing regional and functional perspectives immobilize the
department. At the same time, functional perspectives, whether they be human
rights, arms control, or the environment, will not disappear. The Under
Secretaries would be clearly accountable to the Secretary of State, the
President, and the Congress for ensuring that the appropriate priority was
given to these concerns. Someone would actually be in charge.
We further recommend that the activities of the U.S.
Agency for International Development be fully integrated into this new State
Department organization. Development aid is not an end in itself, nor can it be
successful if pursued independently of other U.S. programs and diplomatic
activities. Only a coordinated diplomatic and assistance effort will advance
the nation's goals abroad, whether they be economic growth, democracy, or human
rights.
The Secretary of State should give greater emphasis to
strategic planning in the State Department and link it directly to the
allocation of resources through the establishment of a Strategic Planning,
Assistance, and Budget Office. Rather than multiple Congressional
appropriations, the State Department should also be funded in a single
integrated Foreign Operations budget, which would include all foreign
assistance programs and activities as well as the expenses for all related
personnel and operations. Also, all U.S. Ambassadors, including the Permanent
Representative to the United Nations, should report directly to the Secretary
of State, and a major effort needs to be undertaken to "right-size"
the U.S. overseas presence.
The Commission believes that the resulting improvements
in the effectiveness and competency of the State Department and its overseas
activities would provide the basis for the significant increase in resources
necessary to carry out the nation's foreign policy in the 21st century.
As for the Department of Defense, resource issues are
also very much at stake in reform efforts. The key to success will be direct,
sustained involvement and commitment to defense reform on the part of the
President, Secretary of Defense, and Congressional leadership. We urge first
and foremost that the new Secretary of Defense reduce by ten to fifteen percent
the staffs of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the
military services, and the regional commands. This would not only save money
but also achieve the decision speed and encourage the decentralization
necessary to succeed in the 21st century.
Just as critical, the Secretary of Defense should
establish a ten-year goal of reducing infrastructure costs by 20-25 percent
through steps to consolidate, restructure, outsource, and privatize as many DoD
support agencies and activities as possible. Only through savings in
infrastructure costs, which now take up nearly half of DoD's budget, will the
department find the funds necessary for modernization and for combat personnel
in the long-term.
The processes by which the Defense Department develops
its programs and budgets as well as acquires its weapons also need fundamental
reform. The most critical first step is for the Secretary of Defense to produce
defense policy and planning guidance that defines specific goals and
establishes relative priorities.
Together with the Congress, the Secretary of Defense
should move the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) to the second year of a
Presidential term. The current requirement, that it be done in an
administration's first year, spites the purpose of the activity. Such a
deadline does not allow the time or the means for an incoming administration to
influence the QDR outcome, and therefore for it to gain a stake in its
conclusions.
We recommend a second change in the QDR, as well; namely
that the Secretary of Defense introduce a new process that requires the Services
and defense agencies to compete for the allocation of some resources within the
overall Defense budget. This, we believe, would give the Secretary a vehicle to
identify low priority programs and begin the process of reallocating funds to
more promising areas during subsequent budget cycles.
As for acquisition reform, the Commission is deeply
concerned with the downward spiral that has emerged in recent decades in
relations between the Pentagon as customer and the defense industrial base as
supplier of the nation's major weapons systems. Many innovative high-tech firms
are simply unable or unwilling to work with the Defense Department under the
weight of its auditing, contracting, profitability, investment, and inspection
regulations. These regulations also impair the Defense Department's ability to
function with the speed it needs to keep abreast of today's rapid pace of
technological innovation. Weapons development cycles average nine years in an
environment where technology now changes every twelve to eighteen months in
Silicon Valley-and the gap between private sector and defense industry
innovation continues to widen.
In place of a specialized "defense industrial
base," we believe that the nation needs a national industrial base for
defense composed of a broad cross-section of commercial firms as well as the
more traditional defense firms. "New economy" sectors must be
attracted to work with the government on sound business and professional
grounds; the more traditional defense suppliers, which fill important needs
unavailable in the commercial sector, must be given incentives to innovate and
operate efficiently. We therefore recommend these major steps:
1 Establish and employ a two-track acquisition system,
one for major acquisitions and a "fast track" for a modest number of
potential breakthrough systems, especially those in the area of command and
control. 2 Return to the pattern of increased prototyping and testing of
selected weapons and support systems to foster innovation. We should use testing
procedures to gain knowledge and not to demonstrate a program's ability to
survive budgetary scrutiny. 3 Implement two-year defense budgeting solely for
the modernization element (R&D/procurement)of the Defense budget and expand
the use of multi-year procurement. 4 Modernize auditing and oversight
requirements (by rewriting relevant sections of U.S. Code, Title 10, and the
Federal Acquisition Regulations) with a goal of reducing the number of auditors
and inspectors in the acquisition system to a level commensurate with the
budget they oversee. Amidst the other process reforms for the Defense
Department, the Commission recognizes the need to modernize current force
planning methods. We conclude that the concept of two major, coincident wars is
a remote possibility supported neither by the main thrust of national
intelligence nor by this Commission's view of the likely future. It should be
replaced by a planning process that accelerates the transformation of
capabilities and forces better suited to, and thus likely to succeed in, the
current security environment. The Secretary of Defense should direct the DoD to
shift from the threat-based, force sizing process to one which measures
requirements against recent operational activity trends, actual intelligence
estimates of potential adversaries' capabilities, and national security
objectives as defined in the new administration's national security
strategy-once formulated. The Commission furthermore recommends that the
Secretary of Defense revise the current categories of Major Force Programs
(MFPs) used in the Defense Program Review to correspond to the five military
capabilities the Commission prescribed in its Phase II report- strategic
nuclear forces, homeland security forces, conventional forces, expeditionary
forces, and humanitarian and constabulary forces.
Ultimately, the transformation process will blur the
distinction between expeditionary and conventional forces, as both types of
capabilities will eventually possess the technological superiority,
deployability, survivability, and lethality now called for in the expeditionary
forces. For the near term, however, those we call expeditionary capabilities
require the most emphasis. Consequently, we recommend that the Defense
Department devote its highest priority to improving and further developing its
expeditionary capabilities. There is no more critical dimension of defense
policy than to guarantee U.S. commercial and military access to outer space.
The U.S. economy and military are vitally dependent on communications that rely
on space. The clear imperative for the new era is a comprehensive national
policy toward space and a coherent governmental machinery to carry it out. We
therefore recommend the establishment of an Interagency Working Group on Space
(IWGS).
The members of this interagency working group would
include not only the relevant parts of the intelligence community and the State
and Defense Departments, but also the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA), the Department of Commerce, and other Executive Branch agencies as
necessary.
Meanwhile, the global presence and responsibilities of
the United States have brought new requirements for protecting U.S. space and communications
infrastructures, but no comprehensive national space architecture has been
developed. We recommend that such responsibility be given to the new
interagency space working group and that the existing National Security Space
Architect be transferred from the Defense Department to the NSC staff to take
the lead in this effort.
The Commission has concluded that the basic structure of
the intelligence community does not require change. Our focus is on those steps
that will enable the full implementation of recommendations found elsewhere
within this report.
First in this regard, we recommend that the President
order the setting of national intelligence priorities through National Security
Council guidance to the Director of Central Intelligence.
Second, the intelligence community should emphasize the
recruitment of human intelligence sources on terrorism as one of the
intelligence community's highest priorities, and ensure that existing
operational guidelines support this policy.
Third, the community should place new emphasis on
collection and analysis of economic and science/technology security concerns,
and incorporate more open source intelligence into its analytical products. To
facilitate this effort, Congress should increase significantly the National
Foreign Intelligence Program (NFIP) budget for collection and analysis.
The Human
Requirements for National Security
As it enters the 21st century, the United States finds
itself on the brink of an unprecedented crisis of competence in government. The
declining orientation toward government service as a prestigious career is
deeply troubling. Both civilian and military institutions face growing
challenges, albeit of different forms and degrees, in recruiting and retaining
America's most promising talent. This problem derives from multiple
sources-ample private sector opportunities with good pay and fewer bureaucratic
frustrations, rigid governmental personnel procedures, the absence of a single
overarching threat like the Cold War to entice service, cynicism about the
worthiness of government service, and perceptions of government as a plodding
bureaucracy falling behind in a technological age of speed and accuracy.
These factors are adversely affecting recruitment and
retention in the Civil and Foreign Services and particularly throughout the
military, where deficiencies are both widening the gap between those who serve
and the rest of American society and putting in jeopardy the leadership and
professionalism necessary for an effective military. If we allow the human
resources of government to continue to decay, none of the reforms proposed by
this or any other national security commission will produce their intended
results.
We recommend, first of all, a national campaign to
reinvigorate and enhance the prestige of service to the nation. The key step in
such a campaign must be to revive a positive attitude toward public service.
This will require strong and consistent Presidential commitment, Congressional
legislation, and innovative departmental actions throughout the federal
government. It is the duty of all political leaders to repair the damage that
has been done, in a high-profile and fully bipartisan manner.
From these changes in rhetoric, the campaign must
undertake several actions. First, this Commission recommends the most urgent
possible streamlining of the process by which we attract senior government
officials. The ordeal that Presidential nominees are subjected to is now so
great as to make it prohibitive for many individuals of talent and experience
to accept public service. The confirmation process is characterized by vast
amounts of paperwork and many delays. Conflict of interest and financial
disclosure requirements have become a prohibitive obstacle to the recruitment of
honest men and women to public service. Post-employment restrictions confront
potential new recruits with the prospect of having to forsake not only income
but work itself in the very fields in which they have demonstrated talent and
found success. Meanwhile, a pervasive atmosphere of distrust and cynicism about
government service is reinforced by the encrustation of complex rules based on
the assumption that all officials, and especially those with experience in or
contact with the private sector, are criminals waiting to be unmasked.
We therefore recommend the following: 1 That the
President act to shorten and make more efficient the Presidential appointee
process by confirming the national security team first, standardizing paperwork
requirements, and reducing the number of nominees subject to full FBI
background checks. 2 That the President reduce the number of Senate-confirmed
and non-career SES positions by 25 percent to reduce the layering of senior
positions in departments that has developed over time. 3 That the President and
Congressional leaders instruct their top aides to report within 90 days of
January 20, 2001 on specific steps to revise government ethics laws and
regulations. This should entail a comprehensive review of regulations that might
exceed statutory requirements and making blind trusts, discretionary waivers,
and recusals more easily available as alternatives to complete divestiture of
financial and business holdings of concern. Beyond the appointments process,
there are problems with government personnel systems specific to the Foreign
Service, the Civil Service, and to the military services. But for all three,
there is one step we urge: Expand the National Security Education Act of 1991
(NSEA) to include broad support for social sciences, humanities, and foreign
languages in exchange for civilian government and military service.
This expanded Act is the complement to the National
Security Science and Technology Education Act (NSSTEA) and would provide
college scholarship and loan forgiveness benefits for government service.
Recipients could fulfill this service in a variety of ways: in the active duty
military; in National Guard or Reserve units; in national security departments
of the Civil Service; or in the Foreign Service. The expanded NSEA thus would
provide an important means of recruiting high-quality people into military and
civilian government service.
An effective and motivated Foreign Service is critical to
the success of the Commission's restructuring proposal for the State
Department, yet 25 percent fewer people are now taking the entrance exam
compared to the mid-1980s. Those who do enter complain of poor management and
inadequate professional education. We therefore recommend that the Foreign
Service system be improved by making leadership a core value of the State
Department, revamping the examination process, and dramatically improving the
level of on-going professional education.
The Civil Service faces a range of problems from the
aging of the federal workforce to institutional challenges in bringing new
workers into government service to critical gaps in recruiting and retaining
information technology professionals. To address these problems, the Commission
recommends eliminating recruitment hurdles, making the hiring process faster
and easier, and designing professional education and retention programs worthy
of full funding by Congress. Retaining talented information technology workers,
too, will require greater incentives and the outsourcing of some IT support
functions.
The national security component of the Civil Service
calls for professionals with breadth of experience in the inter-agency process
and with depth of knowledge about policy issues. To develop these, we recommend
the establishment of a National Security Service Corps (NSSC) to broaden the
experience base of senior departmental managers and develop leaders who seek
integrative solutions to national security policy problems. Participating
departments would include Defense, State, Treasury, Commerce, Justice, Energy,
and the new National Homeland Security Agency-the departments essential to
interagency policymaking on key national security issues. While participating
departments would retain control over their personnel, an interagency advisory
group would design and monitor the rotational assignments and professional
education that will be key to the Corps' success.
With respect to military personnel, reform is needed in
the recruitment, promotion, compensation and retirement systems. Otherwise, the
military will continue to lose its most talented personnel, and the armed
services will be left with a cadre unable to handle the technological and
managerial tasks necessary for a world-class 21st century force.
Beyond the significant expansion of scholarships and debt
relief programs recommended in both the modified National Security Education
Act and the newly created National Security Science and Technology Education
Act, we recommend substantial enhancements to the Montgomery GI Bill and strengthening
recently passed and pending legislation that supports benefits-including
transition, medical, and homeownership-for qualified veterans. The GI Bill
should be restored as a pure entitlement, be transferable to dependents if
desired by career service members, and should equal, at the very least, the
median tuition cost of four-year U.S. colleges. The payments should be
accelerated to coincide with school term periods and be indexed to keep pace
with college cost increases. In addition, Title 38 authority for veterans
benefits should be modified to restore and substantially improve medical,
dental, and VA home ownership benefits for all who qualify, but especially for
career and retired service members. Taken as a package, such changes will help
bring the best people into the armed service and persuade quality personnel to
serve longer in order to secure greater rewards for their service.
While these enhancements are critical they will not, by
themselves, resolve the quality recruitment and retention problems of the
Services. We therefore recommend significant modifications to military
personnel legislation governing officer and enlisted career management,
retirement, and compensation-giving Service Secretaries more authority and
flexibility to adapt their personnel systems and career management to meet 21st
century requirements. This should include flexible compensation and retirement
plans, exemption from "up-or-out" mandates, and reform of personnel
systems to facilitate fluid movement of personnel. If we do not decentralize
and modernize the governing personnel legislation, no military reform or
transformation is possible. We call for an Executive-Legislative working group
to monitor, evaluate and share information about the testing and implementation
of these recommendations. With bipartisan cooperation, our military will remain
one of this nation's most treasured institutions and our safeguard in the
changing world ahead.
The Role of
Congress
While Congress has mandated many changes to a host of Executive
departments and agencies over the years, it has not fundamentally reviewed its
own role in national security policy. Moreover, it has not reformed its own
structure since 1949. At present, for example, every major defense program must
be voted upon no fewer than eighteen times each year by an array of committees
and subcommittees. This represents a very poor use of time for busy members of
the Executive and Legislative Branches.
To address these deficiencies, the Commission first
recommends that the Congressional leadership conduct a thorough bicameral,
bipartisan review of the Legislative Branch's relationship to national security
and foreign policy. The House Speaker, Majority, and Minority leaders and the
Senate Majority and Minority leaders must work with the President and his top
aides to bring proposed reforms to this Congress by the beginning of its second
session.
From that basis, Congressional and Executive Branch
leaders must build programs to encourage members to acquire knowledge and experience
in national security. These programs should include ongoing education, greater
opportunities for serious overseas travel, more legislature-to-legislature
exchanges, and greater participation in wargames.
Greater fluency in national security matters must be
matched by structural reforms. A comprehensive review of the Congressional
committee structure is needed to ensure that it reflects the complexity of 21st
century security challenges and of U.S. national security priorities.
Specifically we recommend merging appropriations subcommittees with their
respective authorizing committees so that the new merged committees will
authorize and appropriate within the same bill. This should decrease the
bureaucracy of the budget process and allow more time to be devoted to the
oversight of national security policy.
An effective Congressional role in national security also
requires ongoing Executive- Legislative consultation and coordination. The
Executive Branch must ensure a sustained effort in consultation and devote
resources to it. For its part, Congress must make consultation a higher
priority, in part by forming a permanent consultative group composed of the
Congressional leadership and the Chairpersons and Ranking Members of the main
committees involved in national security. This will form the basis for
sustained dialogue and greater support in times of crisis.
The Commission notes, in conclusion, that some of its
recommendations will save money, while others call for more expenditure. We
have not tried to "balance the books" among our recommendations, nor
have we held financial implications foremost in mind during our work. We
consider any money that may be saved a second-order benefit. We consider the
provision of additional resources to national security, where necessary, to be
investments, not costs, in first-order national priorities.
Finally, we strongly urge the new President and the
Congressional leadership to establish some mechanism to oversee the
implementation of the recommendations proffered here. Once some mechanism is
chosen, the President must ensure that responsibility for implementing the
recommendations of this Commission be given explicitly to senior personnel in
both the Executive and Legislative Branches of government. The press of daily
obligations is such that unless such delegation is made, and those given
responsibility for implementation are held accountable for their tasks, the
necessary reforms will not occur. The stakes are high. We of this Commission
believe that many thousands of American lives, U.S. leadership among the
community of nations, and the fate of U.S. national security itself are at risk
unless the President and the Congress join together to implement the
recommendations set forth in this report.
Introduction:
Imperative for Change
The U.S. Commission on National Security/ 21st Century
was chartered to be the most comprehensive examination of the structures and
processes of the U.S. national security apparatus since the core legislation
governing it was passed in 1947. The Commission's Charter enjoins the
Commissioners to "propose measures to adapt existing national security
structures" to new circumstances, and if necessary, "to create new
structures where none exist." The Commission is also charged with providing
"cost and time estimates to complete these improvements," as
appropriate, for what is to be, in sum, "an institutional road map for the
early part of the 21st century."*5
Our Phase III report provides such a road map. But Phase
III rests on the first two phases of the Commission's work: Phase I's
examination of how the world may evolve over the next quarter century, and
Phase II's strategy to deal effectively with that world on behalf of American
interests and values.
In its Phase I effort, this Commission stressed that
global trends in scientific- technological, economic, socio-political, and
military-security domains-as they mutually interact over the next 25 years-will
produce fundamental qualitative changes in the U.S. national security environment.
We arrived at these fourteen conclusions:
* The United States will become increasingly vulnerable
to hostile attack on the America homeland, and U.S. military superiority will
not entirely protect us.
* Rapid advances in information and biotechnologies will
create new vulnerabilities for U.S. security.
* New technologies will divide the world as well as draw
it together.
* The national security of all advanced states will be
increasingly affected by the vulnerabilities of the evolving global economic
infrastructure.
* Energy supplies will continue to have major strategic
significance.
* All borders will be more porous; some will bend and
some will break.
* The sovereignty of states will come under pressure, but
will endure as the main principle of international political organization.
* The fragmentation and failure of some states will
occur, with destabilizing effects on entire regions.
* Foreign crises will be replete with atrocities and the
deliberate terrorizing of civilian populations.
* Space will become a critical and competitive military
environment.
* The essence of war will not change.
* U.S. intelligence will face more challenging
adversaries, and even excellent intelligence will not prevent all surprises.
* The United States will be called upon frequently to
intervene militarily in a time of uncertain alliances, and with the prospect of
fewer forward-deployed forces.
* The emerging security environment in the next quarter
century will require different U.S. military and other national capabilities.
The Commission's stress on communicating the scale and pace of change has been
borne out by extraordinary developments in science and technology in just the
eighteen-month period since the Phase I report appeared. The mapping of the
human genome was completed. A functioning quantum computing device was
invented. Organic and inorganic material was mated at the molecular level for
the first time. Basic mechanisms of the aging process have been understood at
the genetic level. Any one of these developments would have qualified as a
"breakthrough of the decade" a quarter century ago, but they all
happened within the past year and a half.
This suggests the possible advent of a period of change
the scale of which will often astound us. The key factor driving change in
America's national security environment over the next 25 years will be the
acceleration of scientific discovery and its technological applications, and
the uneven human social and psychological capacity to harness them. Synergistic
developments in information technology, materials science, biotechnology, and
nanotechnology will almost certainly transform human tools more dramatically
and rapidly than at any time in human history.
While it is easy to underestimate the social implications
of change on such a scale, the need for human intellectual and social
adaptation imposes limits to the pace of change. These limits are healthy, for
they allow and encourage the application of the human moral sense to choices of
major import. We will surely have our hands full with such choices over the
next quarter century. In that time we may witness the development of a capacity
to guide or control evolution by manipulating human DNA. The ability to join
organic and inorganic material forms suggests, that humans may co-evolve
literally with their own machines. Such prospects are both sobering and
contentious. Some look to the future with great hope for the prospect of curing
disease, repairing broken bodies, ending poverty, and preserving the biosphere.
But others worry that curiosity and vanity will outrun the human moral sense,
thus turning hope into disaster. The truth is that we do not know where the
rapidly expanding domain of scientific-technological innovation will bring us.
Nor do we know the extent to which we can summon the collective moral fortitude
to control its outcome.
What we do know is that some societies, and some people
within societies, will be at the forefront of future scientific- technological
developments and others will be marginal to them. This means more polarization
between those with wealth and power and those without-both among and within
societies. It suggests, as well, that many engrained social patterns will
become unstable, for scientific-technological innovation has profound, if
generally unintended, effects on economic organization, social values, and
political life.
In the %Internet age, for example, information
technologies may be used to empower communities and advance freedoms, but they
can also empower political movements led by charismatic leaders with irrational
premises. Such men and women in the 21st century will be less bound than those
of the 20th by the limits of the state, and less obliged to gain large
industrial capabilities in order to wreck havoc. For example, a few people with
as little as $50,000 investment may manage to produce and spread a
genetically-altered pathogen with the potential to kill millions of people in a
matter of months. Clearly, the threshold for small groups or even individuals
to inflict massive damage on those they take to be their enemies is falling
dramatically.
As for political life, it is clear that the rapidity of
change is already overwhelming many states in what used to be called the Third
World. Overlaid on the enduring plagues of corruption and sheer bad government
is a new pattern: information technology has widened the awareness of democracy
and market-driven prosperity, and has led to increasing symbolic and material
demands on government. These demands often exceed existing organizational
capacities to meet them. One result is that many national armies do not respond
to government control. Another is that mercenaries, criminals, terrorists, and
drug cartel operators roam widely and freely. Meanwhile, non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) along with global financial institutions sometimes
function as proxy service and regulatory bureaucracies to do for states that
which they cannot do for themselves-further diminishing governmental control
and political accountability.
As a result of the growing porosity of borders, and of
the widening scope of functional economic integration, significant political
developments can no longer be managed solely through the vehicle of bilateral
diplomatic relations. A seemingly internal crisis in Sierra Leone, carefully
observed, implicates most of West Africa. A problem involving drug cultivation
and political rebellion in Colombia cannot be addressed without involving
Panama, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, and Mexico. Financial
problems in Thailand tumble willy-nilly onto Russia, Brazil, Japan, Indonesia,
Malaysia, and the United States.
Demography is another major driver of global political
change. Population growth tends to moderate with increased literacy,
urbanization, and especially changes in traditional values that attend the
movement of women into the workplace. Thanks to these trends, the world's rate
of population increase is slowing somewhat, but the absolute increases over the
next quarter century will be enormous and coping with them will be a major
challenge throughout much of the world. In some countries, however, the problem
will be too few births. In Japan and Germany, for example, social security and
private pension systems may face enormous strain because too few young workers
will be available to support retirees living ever-longer lives. The use of
foreign workers may be the only recourse for such societies, but that raises
other political and social difficulties.
Yet another driver of change may be sustained economic
growth in particular parts of the world. Asia may well be the most economically
dynamic region on earth by 2025. Much depends on China's ability to reform
further the structure of its economy and on India's ability to unleash its vast
economic potential. But if these two very large countries achieve sustained
economic growth-and if the economies of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam also grow-the focus of world
power will shift away from the dominant Western centers of the past five
centuries. While America is itself increasingly diverse, it still shares more
philosophically and historically with Europe than with Asia. The challenge for
the United States, then, may rest not only in a geostrategic shift, but in a
shift in the cultural fabric of international politics itself.
In Phase II the Commission moved from describing
objective conditions to prescribing a strategy for dealing with them. Subtitled
A Concert for Preserving Security and Promoting Freedom, the Commission
stressed that America cannot secure and advance its own interests in isolation.
The nations of the world must work together-and the United States must learn to
work with others in new ways-if the more cooperative order emerging from the
Cold War epoch is to be sustained and strengthened.
Nonetheless, this Commission takes as its premise that
America must play a special international role well into the future. By dint of
its power and its wealth, its interests and its values, %the United States has
a responsibility to itself and to others to reinforce international order. Only
the United States can provide the ballast of global stability, and usually the
United States is the only country in a position to organize collective
responses to common challenges.
We believe that American strategy must compose a balance
between two key aims. The first is to %reap the benefits of a more integrated
world in order to expand freedom, security, and prosperity for Americans and
for others. But second, American strategy must also strive to %dampen the
forces of global instability so that those benefits can endure and spread.
On the positive side, this means that the United States
should pursue, within the limits of what is prudent and realistic, the
worldwide expansion of material abundance and the %eradication of poverty. It
should also promote political pluralism, freedom of thought and speech, and
individual liberty. Not only do such aims inhere in American principles, they
are practical goals, as well. There are no guarantees against violence and evil
in the world. We believe, nonetheless, that the expansion of human rights and
basic material well-being constitutes a sturdy bulwark against them. %On the
negative side, these goals require concerted protection against four related
dangers: the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; international
terrorism; major interstate aggression; and the collapse of states into
internal violence, with the associated regional destabilization that often
accompanies it.
% THE UNITED STATES WANTS TO PREVENT REBELLION?
These goals
compose the lodestone of a U.S. strategy to expand freedom and maintain
underlying stability, but, as we have said, the United States cannot achieve
them by itself. American leadership must be prepared to act unilaterally if
necessary, not least because the will to act alone is sometimes required to
gain the cooperation of others. But U.S. policy should join its efforts with
allies and multilateral institutions wherever possible; the United States is
wise to strengthen its partners and in turn will derive strength from them.
The United States, therefore, as the %prime keeper of the
international security commons, must speak and act in ways that lead others, by
dint of their own interests, to ally with American goals. If it is too arrogant
and self-possessed, American behavior will invariably stimulate the rise of
opposing coalitions. The United States will thereby drive away many of its
partners and weaken those that remain. Tone matters.
To carry out this strategy and achieve these goals, the
Commission defined six key objectives for U.S. foreign and national security
policy: First, the preeminent objective is "to defend the United States
and ensure that it is safe from the dangers of a new era." The combination
of unconventional weapons proliferation with the persistence of international
terrorism will end the relative invulnerability of the U.S. homeland to
catastrophic attack. To deter attack against the homeland in the 21st century,
the United States requires a new triad of prevention, protection, and response.
Failure to prevent mass-casualty attacks against the American homeland would
jeopardize not only American lives but U.S. foreign policy writ large. It would
undermine support for U.S. international leadership and for many of our
personal freedoms, as well. Indeed, the abrupt undermining of U.S. power and
prestige is the worst thing that could happen to the structure of global peace
in the next quarter century, and nothing is more likely to produce it than
devastating attacks on American soil.
Achieving this goal, and the nation's other critical
national security goals, also requires the U.S. government, as a second key
objective, to "maintain America's social cohesion, economic
competitiveness, technological ingenuity, and military strength." That
means a larger investment in and better management of science and technology in
government and in society, and a substantially better educational system,
particularly for the teaching of science and mathematics.
The United States must also take better advantage of the
opportunities that the present period of relative international stability and
American power enable. A third key objective, therefore, is "to assist the
integration of key major powers, especially China, Russia, and India, into the
mainstream of the emerging international system." Moreover, since
globalization's opportunities are rooted in economic and political progress,
the Commission's fourth key U.S. objective is "to promote, with others,
the dynamism of the %new global economy and improve the effectiveness of
international institutions and international law."
A fifth key objective also follows, which is "to
adapt U.S. alliances and other regional mechanisms to a new era in which
America's partners seek greater autonomy and responsibility." A sixth and
final key objective inheres in an effort "to help the international
community %tame the disintegrative forces spawned by an era of change."
While the prospect of major war is low, much of the planet will experience
conflict and violence. Unless the United States, in concert with others, can
find a way to limit that conflict and violence, it will not be able to
construct a foreign policy agenda focussed on opportunities.
Achieving all of these objectives will require a basic
shift in orientation: to focus on preventing rather than simply responding to
dangers and crises. The United States must redirect its energies, adjust its
diplomacy, and redesign its military capabilities to ward off cross-border
aggression, assist states before they fail, and avert systemic international
financial crises. To succeed over the long run with a preventive focus, the
United States needs to institutionalize its efforts to grasp the opportunities
the international environment now offers.
An %opportunity-based strategy also has the merit of
being more economical than a reactive one. Preventing a financial crisis, even
if it involves well-timed bailouts, is cheaper than recuperating from stock
market crashes and regional recessions. Preventing a violent conflict costs
less than responsive peacekeeping operations and nation-building activities.
And certainly, preventing mass-casualty attacks on the American homeland will
be far less expensive than recovering from them.
These six objectives, and the Commission's strategy
itself, rest on a premise so basic that it often goes unstated: democracy
conduces generally to domestic and international peace, and peace conduces to,
or at least allows, democratic politics. While this premise is not a
"law," and while scholars continue to study and debate these matters,
we believe they are strong tendencies, and that they can be strengthened
further by a consistent and determined national policy. We know, that a world
characterized by the spread of genuine democracy would not be flawless, nor
signal "the end of history." But it is the best of all possible
worlds that we can conceive, and that we can achieve.
In Phase I, this %Commission presented four "Worlds
in Prospect," agglomerations of basic trends that, we believed, might
describe the world in 2025. The Democratic Peace was one. Nationalism and
Protectionism was a second, Division and Mayhem a third, and Globalism Triumphant
the fourth. We, and presumably most observers, see the Democratic Peace as a
positive future, Nationalism and Protectionism as a step in the wrong
direction, Division and Mayhem as full-fledged tragedy. But the Globalism
Triumphant scenario divides opinion, partly because it is the hardest to
envision, and partly because it functions as a %template for the projection of
conflicting political views.
%%%Some observers, for example, believe that the end of
the nation-state is upon us, and that this is a good thing, for, in this view,
nationalism is the root of racism and militarism. The eclipse of the national
territorial state is at any rate, some argue, an inevitable development given
the very nature of an increasingly integrated world.
We demur. To the extent that a more integrated world
economically is the best way to raise people out of poverty and disease, we
applaud it. We also recognize the need for unprecedented international
cooperation on a range of transnational problems. But the state is the only
venue discovered so far in which democratic principles and processes can play
out reliably, and not all forms of nationalism have been or need be illiberal.
We therefore affirm the value of American sovereignty as well as the political
and cultural diversity ensured by the present state system. Within that system
the United States must live by and be ready to share its political values-but
it must remember that those values include tolerance for those who hold
different views.
A broader and deeper Democratic Peace is, and ought to
be, America's aspiration, but there are obstacles to achieving it. Indeed,
despite the likely progress ahead on many fronts, the United States may face
not only episodic problems but also genuine crises. If the United States
mismanages its current global position, it could generate resentments and
jealousies that leave us more isolated than isolationist. Major wars involving
weapons of mass destruction are possible, and the general security environment
may deteriorate faster than the United States, even with allied aid, can
redress it. Environmental, economic, and political unraveling in much of the
world could occur on a scale so large as to make current levels of prosperity
unsustainable, let alone expandable. Certain technologies-biotechnology, for
example-may also undermine social and political stability among and within
advanced countries, including the United States. Indeed, all these crises may
occur, and each could reinforce and deepen the others.
The challenge for the United States is to seize the new
century's many opportunities and avoid its many dangers. %The problem is that
the current structures and processes of U.S. national security policymaking are
incapable of such management. That is because, just below the enormous power
and prestige of the United States today is a neglected and, in some cases, a
decaying institutional base.
The U.S. government is not well organized, for example,
to ensure %homeland security. No adequate coordination mechanism exists among
federal, state, and local government efforts, as well as those of dozens of
agencies at the federal level. If present trends continue in ***elementary and
secondary school science and mathematics education, to take another example,
the United States may lose its lead in many, if not most, major areas of
critical scientific-technological competence within 25 years. We are also
losing, and are finding ourselves unable to replace, the most critical asset we
have: talented and dedicated personnel throughout government.
Strategic planning is absent in the U.S. government and
its budget processes are so inflexible that few resources are available for
preventive policies or for responding to crises, nor can resources be
reallocated efficiently to reflect changes in policy priorities. The economic
component of U.S. national security policy is poorly integrated with the
military and diplomatic components. The State Department is demoralized and
dysfunctional. The Defense Department appears incapable of generating a
strategic posture very different from that of the Cold War, and its weapons
acquisition process is slow, inefficient, and burdened by excess regulation.
National policy in the increasingly critical environment of space is adrift,
and the intelligence community is only slowly reorienting itself to a world of
more diffuse and differently shaped threats. The Executive Branch, with the aid
of the Congress, needs to initiate change in many areas by taking bold new
steps, and by speeding up positive change where it is languishing.
The very mention of changing the engrained routines and
structures of government is usually enough to evoke cynicism even in a born
optimist. But the American case is surprisingly positive, especially in
relatively recent times. The reorganizations occasioned by World War II were
vast and innovative, and the 1947 National Security Act was bold in advancing
and institutionalizing them. Major revisions of the 1947 Act were passed
subsequently by Congress in 1949, 1953, and 1958. Major internal Defense
Department reforms were promulgated as well, one in 1961 and another, the
Department of Defense Reorganization Act (Goldwater-Nichols) in 1986. The
essence of the American genius is that we know better than most societies how
to reinvent ourselves to meet the times. This Commission, we believe, is true
to that estimable tradition.
Despite this relatively good record, resistance will
arise to changing U.S. national security structures and processes, both within
agencies of government and in the Congress. What is needed, therefore, is for
the new administration, together with the new Congress, to exert real
leadership. Our comprehensive recommendations to guide that leadership follow.
First, we must prepare ourselves better to defend the
national homeland. We take this up in Section I, Securing the National
Homeland. We put this first because it addresses the most dangerous and the
most novel threat to American national security in the years ahead.
Second, we must rebuild our strengths in the generation
and management of science and technology and in education. We have made
Recapitalizing America's Strengths in Science and Education the second section
of this report despite the fact that science management and education issues
are rarely ranked as paramount national security priorities. We do so to
emphasize their crucial and growing importance.
Third, we must ensure coherence and effectiveness in the
institutions of the Executive Branch of government. Section III, Institutional
Redesign, proposes change throughout the national security apparatus.
Fourth, we must ensure the highest caliber human capital
in public service. U.S. national security depends on the quality of the people,
both civilian and military, serving within the ranks of government. If we are
unsuccessful in meeting the crisis of competence before us, none of the other
reforms proposed in this report will succeed. Section IV, The Human
Requirements for National Security, examines government personnel issues in
detail.
---%Fifth, the Congress is part of the problem before us,
and therefore must become part of the solution. Not only must the Congress
support the Executive Branch reforms promulgated here, but it must bring its
own organization in line with the 21st century. Section V, The Role of
Congress, examines this critical facet of government reform.
Each section of this report carries an introduction
explaining why the subject is important, identifies the major problems
requiring solution, and then states this Commission's recommendations. All
major recommendations are in bold-face type. <not in ASCII FORMAT
*instead>
*6 Related but subordinate recommendations are italicized
and in bold-face type in the text.
As appropriate throughout the report, we outline what Congressional,
Presidential, and Executive department actions would be required to implement
the Commission's recommendations. Also as appropriate, we provide general
guidance as to the budgetary implications of our recommendations but, lest
details of such consideration confuse and complicate the text, will provide
suggested implementation plans for selected areas in a separately issued
addendum. A last word urges the President to devise an implementing mechanism
for the recommendations put forth here. Finally, we observe that some of our
recommendations will save money, while others call for more expenditure. We
have not tried to "balance the books" among our recommendations, nor
have we held financial implications foremost in mind during our work. Wherever
money may be saved, we consider it a second-order benefit. Provision of
additional resources to national security, where necessary, are investments,
not costs, and a first-order national priority.
I. Securing the
National Homeland
One of this Commission's most important conclusions in
its Phase I report was that attacks against American citizens on American soil,
possibly causing heavy casualties, are likely over the next quarter century.
*7 This is because both the technical means for such
attacks, and the array of actors who might use such means, are proliferating
despite the best efforts of American diplomacy.
These attacks may involve weapons of mass destruction and
weapons of mass disruption. As porous as U.S. physical borders are in an age of
burgeoning trade and travel, %its "cyber borders" are even more
porous-and the critical infrastructure upon which so much of the U.S. economy
depends can now be targeted by non-state and state actors alike. America's
present global predominance does not render it immune from these dangers. To
the contrary, U.S. preeminence makes the American homeland more appealing as a
target, while America's openness and freedoms make it more vulnerable. xxx
Notwithstanding a growing consensus on the seriousness of the threat to the
homeland posed by weapons of mass destruction and disruption, the U.S.
government has not adopted homeland security as a primary national security
mission. Its structures and strategies are fragmented and inadequate. The
President must therefore both develop a comprehensive strategy and propose new
organizational structures to prevent and protect against attacks on the
homeland, and to respond to such attacks if prevention and protection should
fail.
Any reorganization must be mindful of the scale of the
scenarios we envision and the enormity of their consequences. We need
orders-of-magnitude improvements in planning, coordination, and exercise. The
government must also be prepared to use effectively-albeit with all proper
safeguards-the extensive resources of the Department of Defense. This will
necessitate new priorities for the U.S. armed forces and particularly, in our
view, for the National Guard.
The United States, however, is very poorly organized to
design and implement any comprehensive strategy to protect the homeland. The
assets and organizations that now exist for homeland security are scattered
across more than two dozen departments and agencies, and all fifty states. The
Executive Branch, with the full participation of Congress, needs to realign,
refine, and rationalize these assets into a coherent whole, or even the best
strategy will lack an adequate vehicle for implementation.
This Commission believes that the security of the
American homeland from the threats of the new century should be the primary
national security mission of the U.S. government. While the Executive Branch
must take the lead in dealing with the many policy and structural issues
involved, Congress is a partner of critical importance in this effort. It must find
ways to address homeland security issues that bridge current gaps in
organization, oversight, and authority, and that resolve conflicting claims to
jurisdiction within both the Senate and the House of Representatives and also
between them.
Congress is crucial, as well, for guaranteeing that
homeland security is achieved within a framework of law that protects the civil
liberties and privacy of American citizens. We are confident that the U.S.
government can enhance national security without compromising established
Constitutional principles. But in order to guarantee this, we must plan ahead.
In a major attack involving contagious biological agents, for example, citizen
cooperation with government authorities will depend on public confidence that
those authorities can manage the emergency. If that confidence is lacking,
panic and disorder could lead to insistent demands for the temporary suspension
of some civil liberties. That is why preparing for the worst is essential to
protecting individual freedoms during a national crisis. Legislative guidance
for planning among federal agencies and state and local authorities must take
particular cognizance of the role of the Defense Department. Its subordination
to civil authority needs to be clearly defined in advance. In short, advances
in technology have created new dimensions to our nation's economic and physical
security. While some new threats can be met with traditional responses, others
cannot. More needs to be done in three areas to prevent the territory and
infrastructure of the United States from becoming easy and tempting targets: in
strategy, in organizational realignment, and in Executive-Legislative
cooperation. We take these areas in turn.
A. THE STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK
A homeland security strategy to minimize the threat of
intimidation and loss of life is an essential support for an international
leadership role for the United States. Homeland security is not peripheral to
U.S. national security strategy but central to it. At this point, national leaders
have not agreed on a clear strategy for homeland security, a condition this
Commission finds dangerous and intolerable. We therefore recommend the
following:
* 1: The President should develop a comprehensive
strategy to heighten America's ability to prevent and protect against all forms
of attacks on the homeland, and to respond to such attacks if prevention and
protection fail.
In our view, the President should:
* Give new priority in his overall national security
strategy to homeland security, and make it a central concern for incoming
officials in all Executive Branch departments, particularly the intelligence
and law enforcement communities;
* Calmly prepare the American people for prospective
threats, and increase their awareness of what federal and state governments are
doing to prevent attacks and to protect them if prevention fails;
* Put in place new government organizations and
processes, eliminating where possible staff duplication and mission overlap;
and
* Encourage Congress to establish new mechanisms to
facilitate closer cooperation between the Executive and Legislative Branches of
government on this vital issue.
We believe that homeland security can best be assured
through a strategy of layered defense that focuses first on prevention, second
on protection, and third on response.
Prevention: Preventing a potential attack comes first.
Since the occurrence of even one event that causes catastrophic loss of life
would represent an unacceptable failure of policy, U.S. strategy should
therefore act as far forward as possible to prevent attacks on the homeland.
This strategy has at its disposal three essential instruments.
Most broadly, the first instrument is U.S. diplomacy.
U.S. foreign policy should strive to shape an international system in which
just grievances can be addressed without violence. Diplomatic efforts to
develop friendly and trusting relations with foreign governments and their
people can significantly multiply America's chances of gaining early warning of
potential attack and of doing something about impending threats.
Intelligence-sharing with foreign governments is crucial to help identify
individuals and groups who might be considering attacks on the United States or
its allies. Cooperative foreign law enforcement agencies can detain, arrest,
and prosecute terrorists on their own soil. Diplomatic success in resolving
overseas conflicts that spawn terrorist activities will help in the long run.
Meanwhile, verifiable arms control and nonproliferation
must remain a top priority. These policies can help persuade states and
terrorists to abjure weapons of mass destruction and to prevent the export of
fissile materials and dangerous dual-use technologies. But such measures cannot
by themselves prevent proliferation. So other measures are needed, including
the possibility of punitive measures and defenses. The United States should
take a lead role in strengthening multilateral organizations such as the
International Atomic Energy Agency.
In addition, increased vigilance against international
crime syndicates is also important because many terrorist organizations gain
resources and other assets through criminal activity that they then use to
mount terrorist operations. Dealing with international organized crime requires
not only better cooperation with other countries, but also among agencies of
the federal government. While progress has been made on this front in recent
years, more remains to be done.*8 The second instrument of homeland security
consists of the U.S. diplomatic, intelligence, and military presence overseas.
Knowing the who, where, and how of a potential physical or cyber attack is the
key to stopping a strike before it can be delivered. Diplomatic, intelligence,
and military agencies overseas, as well as law enforcement agencies working
abroad, are America's primary eyes and ears on the ground. But increased
public-private efforts to enhance security processes within the international
transportation and logistics networks that bring people and goods to America
are also of critical and growing importance.
Vigilant systems of border security and surveillance are
a third instrument that can prevent those agents of attack who are not detected
and stopped overseas from actually entering the United States. Agencies such as
the U.S. Customs Service and U.S. Coast Guard have a critical prevention role
to play. Terrorists and criminals are finding that the difficulty of policing
the rising daily volume and velocities of people and goods that cross U.S.
borders makes it easier for them to smuggle weapons and contraband, and to move
their operatives into and out of the United States. Improving the capacity of
border control agencies to identify and intercept potential threats without
creating barriers to efficient trade and travel requires a sub-strategy also
with three elements.
First is the development of new transportation security
procedures and practices designed to reduce the risk that importers, exporters,
freight forwarders, and transportation carriers will serve as unwitting
conduits for criminal or terrorist activities. Second is bolstering the
intelligence gathering, data management, and information sharing capabilities
of border control agencies to improve their ability to target high-risk goods
and people for inspection. Third is strengthening the capabilities of border
control agencies to arrest terrorists or interdict dangerous shipments before
they arrive on U.S. soil.
These three measures, which place a premium on
public-private partnerships, will pay for themselves in short order. They will
allow for the more efficient allocation of limited enforcement resources along
U.S. borders. There will be fewer disruptive inspections at ports of entry for
legitimate businesses and travelers. They will lead to reduced theft and
insurance costs, as well. Most important, the underlying philosophy of this
approach is one that balances prudence, on the one hand, with American values
of openness and free trade on the other. *9 To shield America from the world
out of fear of terrorism is, in large part, to do the terrorists' work for
them. To continue business as usual, however, is irresponsible.
The same may be said for our growing cyber problems.
Protecting our nation's critical infrastructure depends on greater public
awareness and improvements in our tools to detect and diagnose intrusions. This
will require better information sharing among all federal, state, and local
governments as well as with private sector owners and operators. The federal
government has these specific tasks:
* To serve as a model for the private sector by improving
its own security practices;
* To address known government security problems on a
system-wide basis
* To identify and map network interdependencies so that
harmful cascading effects among systems can be prevented;
* To sponsor vulnerability assessments within both the
federal government and the private sector; and
* To design and carry out simulations and exercises that
test information system security across the nation's entire infrastructure.
Preventing attacks on the American homeland also requires
that the United States maintain long-range strike capabilities. The United
States must bolster deterrence by making clear its determination to use
military force in a preemptive fashion if necessary. Even the most hostile
state sponsors of terrorism, or terrorists themselves, will think twice about
harming Americans and American allies and interests if they fear direct and
severe U.S. attack after-or before-the fact. Such capabilities should be
available for preemption as well as for retaliation, and will therefore
strengthen deterrence.
Protection: The Defense Department undertakes many
different activities that serve to protect the American homeland, and these
should be integrated into an overall surveillance system, buttressed with
additional resources. A ballistic missile defense system would be a useful
addition and should be developed to the extent technically feasible, fiscally
prudent, and politically sustainable. Defenses should also be pursued against
cruise missiles and other sophisticated atmospheric weapon technologies as they
become more widely deployed. While both active duty and reserve forces are
involved in these activities, the Commission believes that more can and should
be done by the National Guard, as is discussed in more detail below. Protecting
the nation's critical infrastructure and providing cyber-security must also
include:
* Advanced indication, warning, and attack assessments;
* A warning system that includes voluntary, immediate
private-sector reporting of potential attacks to enable other private-sector
targets (and the U.S. government) better to take protective action; and
* Advanced systems for halting attacks, establishing
backups, and restoring service.
Response: Managing the consequences of a catastrophic
attack on the U.S. homeland would be a complex and difficult process. The first
priority should be to build up and augment state and local response
capabilities. Adequate equipment must be available to first responders in local
communities. Procedures and guidelines need to be defined and disseminated and
then practiced through simulations and exercises. Interoperable, robust, and
redundant communications capabilities are a must in recovering from any
disaster. Continuity of government and critical services must be ensured as
well. Demonstrating effective responses to natural and manmade disasters will
also help to build mutual confidence and relationships among those with roles
in dealing with a major terrorist attack.
All of this puts a premium on making sure that the
disparate organizations involved with homeland security-on various levels of
government and in the private sector-can work together effectively. We are
frankly skeptical that the U.S. government, as it exists today, can respond
effectively to the scale of danger and damage that may come upon us during the
next quarter century. This leads us, then, to our second task: that of
organizational realignment.
B. ORGANIZATIONAL
REALIGNMENT
Responsibility for homeland security resides at all
levels of the U.S. government- local, state, and federal. Within the federal
government, almost every agency and department is involved in some aspect of
homeland security. None have been organized to focus on the scale of the
contemporary threat to the homeland, however. This Commission urges an
organizational realignment that:
* Designates a single person, accountable to the
President, to be responsible for coordinating and overseeing various U.S.
government activities related to homeland security;
* Consolidates certain homeland security activities to
improve their effectiveness and coherence;
* Establishes planning mechanisms so as clearly to define
specific responses to specific types of threats; and
* Ensures that the appropriate resources and capabilities
are available. Therefore, this Commission strongly recommends the following:
* 2: The President should propose, and Congress should
agree, to create a National Homeland Security Agency (NHSA) with responsibility
for planning, coordinating, and integrating various U.S. government activities
involved in homeland security. They should use the Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) as a key building block in this effort.
Given the multiplicity of agencies and activities
involved in these homeland security tasks, someone needs to be responsible and
accountable to the President not only to coordinate the making of policy, but
also to oversee its implementation. This argues against assigning the role to a
senior person on the National Security Council (NSC) staff and for the creation
of a separate agency. This agency would give priority to overall planning while
relying primarily on others to carry out those plans. To give this agency
sufficient stature within the government, its director would be a member of the
Cabinet and a statutory advisor to the National Security Council. The position
would require Senate confirmation.
Notwithstanding NHSA's responsibilities, the National
Security Council would still play a strategic role in planning and coordinating
all homeland security activities. This would include those of NHSA as well as
those that remain separate, whether they involve other NSC members or other
agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control within the Department of
Health and Human Services.
We propose building the National Homeland Security Agency
upon the capabilities of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), an
existing federal agency that has performed well in recent years, especially in
responding to natural disasters. NHSA would be legislatively chartered to
provide a focal point for all natural and manmade crisis and emergency planning
scenarios. It would retain and strengthen FEMA's ten existing regional offices
as a core element of its organizational structure.
While FEMA is the
necessary core of the National Homeland Security Agency, it is not sufficient
to do what NHSA needs to do. In particular, patrolling U.S. borders, and
policing the flows of peoples and goods through the hundreds of ports of entry,
must receive higher priority. These activities need to be better integrated,
but efforts toward that end are hindered by the fact that the three
organizations on the front line of border security are spread across three
different U.S. Cabinet departments. The Coast Guard works under the Secretary
of Transportation, the Customs Service is located in the Department of the
Treasury, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service oversees the Border
Patrol in the Department of Justice. In each case, the border defense agency is
far from the mainstream of its parent department's agenda and consequently
receives limited attention from the department's senior officials. We therefore
recommend the following:
3: The President should propose to Congress the transfer
of the Customs Service, the Border Patrol, and Coast Guard to the National
Homeland Security Agency, while preserving them as distinct entities.
Bringing these
organizations together under one agency will create important synergies. Their
individual capabilities will be molded into a stronger and more effective
system, and this realignment will help ensure that sufficient resources are
devoted to tasks crucial to both public safety and U.S. trade and economic
interests. Consolidating overhead, training programs, and maintenance of the
aircraft, boats, and helicopters that these three agencies employ will save
money, and further efficiencies could be realized with regard to other resources
such as information technology, communications equipment, and dedicated
sensors. Bringing these separate, but complementary, activities together will
also facilitate more effective Executive and Legislative oversight, and help
rationalize the process of budget preparation, analysis, and presentation.
Steps must be also taken to strengthen these three
individual organizations themselves. The Customs Service, the Border Patrol,
and the Coast Guard are all on the verge of being overwhelmed by the mismatch between
their growing duties and their mostly static resources.
The Customs Service, for example, is charged with
preventing contraband from entering the United States. It is also responsible
for preventing terrorists from using the commercial or private transportation
venues of international trade for smuggling explosives or weapons of mass
destruction into or out of the United States. The Customs Service, however,
retains only a modest air, land, and marine interdiction force, and its
investigative component, supported by its own intelligence branch, is similarly
modest. The high volume of conveyances, cargo, and passengers arriving in the
United States each year already overwhelms the Customs Service's capabilities.
Over $8.8 billion worth of goods, over 1.3 million people, over 340,000
vehicles, and over 58,000 shipments are processed daily at entry points. Of
this volume, Customs can inspect only one to two percent of all inbound
shipments. The volume of U.S. international trade, measured in terms of dollars
and containers, has doubled since 1995, and it may well double again between
now and 2005.
Therefore, this Commission believes that an improved
computer information capability and tracking system-as well as upgraded
equipment that can detect both conventional and nuclear explosives, and
chemical and biological agents-would be a wise short-term investment with
important long-term benefits. It would also raise the risk for criminals
seeking to target or exploit importers and cargo carriers for illicit gains.*10
The Border Patrol is the uniformed arm of the Immigration
and Naturalization Service. Its mission is the detection and prevention of
illegal entry into the United States. It works primarily between ports of entry
and patrols the borders by various means. There has been a debate for many
years about whether the dual functions of the Immigration and Naturalization
Service-border control and enforcement on the one side, and immigration
facilitation on the other-should be joined under the same roof. The U.S.
Commission on Immigration Reform concluded that they should not be joined.*11
We agree: the Border Patrol should become part of the
NHSA. The U.S. Coast Guard is a highly disciplined force with multiple missions
and a natural role to play in homeland security. It performs maritime search
and rescue missions, manages vessel traffic, enforces U.S. environmental and
fishery laws, and interdicts and searches vessels suspected of carrying illegal
aliens, drugs, and other contraband. In a time of war, it also works with the
Navy to protect U.S. ports from attack.
Indeed, in many respects, the Coast Guard is a model
homeland security agency given its unique blend of law enforcement, regulatory,
and military authorities that allow it to operate within, across, and beyond
U.S. borders. It accomplishes its many missions by routinely working with
numerous local, regional, national, and international agencies, and by forging
and maintaining constructive relationships with a diverse group of private,
non-governmental, and public marine-related organizations. As the fifth armed
service, in peace and war, it has national defense missions that include port
security, overseeing the defense of coastal waters, and supporting and
integrating its forces with those of the Navy and the other services.
The case for preserving and enhancing the Coast Guard's
multi-mission capabilities is compelling. But its crucial role in protecting
national interests close to home has not been adequately appreciated, and this
has resulted in serious and growing readiness concerns. U.S. Coast Guard ships
and aircraft are aging and technologically obsolete; indeed, the Coast Guard
cutter fleet is older than 39 of the world's 41 major naval fleets. As a
result, the Coast Guard fleet generates excessive operating and maintenance
costs, and lacks essential capabilities in speed, sensors, and
interoperability. To fulfill all of its missions, the Coast Guard requires
updated platforms with the staying power, in hazardous weather, to remain offshore
and fully operational throughout U.S. maritime economic zones.*12
The Commission recommends strongly that Congress
recapitalize the Customs Service, the Border Patrol, and the Coast Guard so
that they can confidently perform key homeland security roles.
HSA's planning, coordinating, and overseeing activities would be undertaken Nthrough three staff Directorates. The Directorate of Prevention would oversee and coordinate the various border security activities. A Directorate of Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) would be created to handle the growing cyber threat. FEMA's emergency preparedness and response activities would be strengthened in a third directorate to cover both natural and manmade disasters. A Science and Technology office would advise the NHSA Director on research and development efforts and priorities for all three directorates. Relatively small permanent staffs would man the directorates. NHSA will employ FEMA's principle of working effectively with state and local governments, as well as with other federal organizations, stressing interagency coordination. Much of NHSA's daily work will take place directly supporting state officials in its regional offices around the country. Its organizational infrastructure will not be heavily centered in the Washington, DC area. NHSA would also house a National Crisis Action Center (NCAC), which would become the nation's focal point for monitoring em