[Kabar-indonesia] NYT: Rumsfeld Shift Lets Army Seek Larger Budget [+3 WP Reports]

[Joyo at aol.com]

4 reports: 

- NYT: Rumsfeld Shift Lets Army Seek Larger Budget

- WP: Worse Than McNamara?
 
- WP: It's Time for Him to Go
  
- WP: The World According to Rummy

The New York Times
Sunday, Oct. 8, 2006

Rumsfeld Shift Lets Army Seek Larger Budget 

By THOM SHANKER and DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is allowing the 
Army to approach White House budget officials by itself to argue for substantial 
increases in resources, a significant divergence from initial plans by Mr. 
Rumsfeld and his inner circle to cut the Army to pay for new technology and a 
new way of war.

With its troops and equipment worn down by years of fighting in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, the Army appears likely to receive a significant spike in its share 
of the Pentagon’s budget request when it goes to Congress early next year. 
Significantly, increases to the size of the Army made by Congress since 2001, 
amounting to 30,000 troops, have become a permanent fixture of the force, military 
and Congressional officials say. 

Beyond that, the Army is discussing internally whether it should expand by 
tens of thousands more, as some in Congress have long advocated. This time, Mr. 
Rumsfeld is not standing in the way. His original vision for a transformed 
military called for leaner, more agile forces capitalizing on the latest 
technological innovations. 

Mr. Rumsfeld’s current acquiescence is viewed within the Pentagon as 
reflecting both the reality of the Army’s needs to increase its size and repair or 
replace current equipment and a decision not to cross swords with the service — 
or with the Army’s staunchest supporters in Congress. Some of them are sharply 
critical of the defense secretary’s management of the war effort and have 
called for him to step aside. 

But Mr. Rumsfeld is requiring the Army to make its own case. The defense 
secretary has broken Pentagon precedent by allowing the Army to make its financial 
case directly to the president’s Office of Management and Budget, a task 
normally managed by the defense secretary and his staff rather than by the 
individual military services. The Air Force and the Navy also asked to present their 
budgets directly to the budget agency and the requests were granted.

The federal government is at the point in the budget process where 
departments are building their budget requests, with the Office of Management and Budget 
overseeing the effort.

Pentagon officials said the Army was seeking about $138 billion for the next 
fiscal year, compared with its $112 billion request last year. Army officials 
told Congress that the service was already $50 billion short in equipment when 
terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001, and that the wars in Iraq and 
Afghanistan would require $17.1 billion in extra spending for 2007 just to repair and 
replace tanks, Humvees and other gear. Money to repair and replace equipment is 
expected to be $13 billion in 2008 and the next five years.

As negotiations in the Defense Department and with the Office of Management 
and Budget got under way to build the 2008 budget proposal, which the White 
House is due to submit to Congress in February, the Army took the unusual step of 
ignoring a deadline for submitting its central budget document, which the 
armed services use to explain their missions and resource requests. 

“This is unusual, but we are in unusual times,” a senior Defense Department 
official said. The official, who said the missions assigned to the armed 
forces were larger than those envisioned in official Pentagon strategy and far 
outstrip what can be supported by current budgets, described the conundrum Mr. 
Rumsfeld and the Army face.

“Do we lower our strategy, or do we raise our resources?” said the official, 
who was given anonymity to discuss budget deliberations. “That’s where we’re 
at.”

Army officers made the case that meeting the administration’s internal preset 
deadline for budget proposals before the service had fully assessed its needs 
— and made the case for a substantial increase — would create a false debate 
over numbers that would have to be dramatically revised before the February 
deadline for the administration’s public budget submission to Congress.

Even with additional money and more troops, it is far from clear that the 
Army will be able in the near term to fulfill all of its commitments in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, prepare for other contingencies and keep its pledge to 
active-duty soldiers to give them two years at home between yearlong deployments to the 
war zone. Some senior Army officials are said to be advocating a growth not 
just of 30,000 soldiers, but of 60,000 to 80,000, and it is likely that 
sustained troop levels in Iraq may require a sizable recall of the National Guard to 
fill out future deployments there.

Steven Kosiak, a defense budget expert at the Center for Strategic and 
Budgetary Assessments, an independent group that monitors defense policy, said 
previous budget plans looking ahead to 2011 gave the Army about 25 percent of the 
defense budget, roughly the same level it has received for decades.

But by pushing for a substantial increase in 2008 and for years thereafter, 
the Army is saying it needs a bigger share to deal with the requirements of 
combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, possible future wars and the need to modernize 
its force.

Unlike the Air Force and the Navy, which have been cutting their total 
personnel substantially to save money that can be applied to operations and new 
weapons systems, the Army is being forced to increase its total numbers, drawing 
from money for overhauling equipment and for new weapons systems.

The Air Force and Navy also have substantial mission requirements that cannot 
be ignored, so eventually, the question will be whether or by how much the 
Pentagon budget should be allowed to grow to meet the Army’s rising needs. 

Loren Thompson, an analyst at the Lexington Institute, a policy research 
group in Virginia, noted that the military budget was on the verge of exceeding a 
half trillion dollars a year, a level that, based on inflation-adjusted 
dollars, has been reached only three times before. Each previous time the budget 
reached that level, after the wars in Korea and Vietnam and after the defense 
buildup in the 1980’s, it soon went back down.

“The question is, Are we going to break that glass ceiling this time?” Mr. 
Thompson said. “The future is unknowable, but I would say probably not.”

Mr. Rumsfeld has come around to the Army’s position of needing more money 
after a series of meetings and briefings with senior officers.

“The secretary said: ‘Prove your case. Show me the metrics,’ ” a member of 
Mr. Rumsfeld’s policy staff said. “The Army came in and showed him their 
metrics and proved their case. That’s when Rumsfeld said, ‘O.K. Now go over to 
O.M.B. and talk to them.’ ”

Mr. Rumsfeld has not publicly addressed his reasons for allowing this tactic, 
although it is a no-cost decision for the defense secretary, one that allows 
an important yet thorny issue to be raised with the White House without any 
specific personal commitment from him at this early stage of the debate. 

Some Pentagon officials are frustrated that the Army is arguing for increases 
to pay for current missions even as it resists calls to cut its own $130 
billion, 10-year investment in a next-generation weapons program called Future 
Combat Systems. Others express concern that the Army is using its current 
resources inefficiently.

Rumsfeld supporters say the continued financing of Future Combat Systems 
illustrates how his agenda to use technology to overhaul the Army is still being 
pursued. Some of the additional money the Army is seeking would go toward 
another part of his plan, realigning the infantry divisions into more deployable 
brigades.

Mr. Rumsfeld has opposed proposals to increase the size of the military, 
citing the need to contain health benefits and other personnel costs that have 
been eating a larger share of the defense budget.

Congress authorized a 30,000-soldier increase in the active-duty Army after 
the Sept. 11 attacks that was described as a temporary measure. Army officials 
say they hope to reach the authorized total troop strength of 512,000 by next 
year. 

Lt. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle, the Army’s top personnel officer, said that 
number was being treated as a “permanent floor.”

In an interview, General Rochelle called that level “adequate” and said the 
Army “is growing the force as quickly as we can to get to that.”

Inside the Pentagon, officials both in the Army and in Mr. Rumsfeld’s inner 
circle go out of their way to describe a consultative relationship between the 
defense secretary and senior officers. The tenor, they said, is far more 
constructive than it was before Mr. Rumsfeld called a retired four-star officer, 
Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, from his Rocky Mountain ranch to become the Army chief 
of staff and rebuild relations.

General Schoomaker, in his final year as chief, now finds himself negotiating 
with a strong hand as the Army carries the lion’s share of the mission in 
Iraq. 

-------------------------------------------

The Washington Post
Sunday Outlook
Oct. 8, 2006

Worse Than McNamara?

By Stanley Karnow

By the mid-1960s, President Lyndon B. Johnson had deployed nearly half a 
million troops to Vietnam. His spokesmen loudly maintained that our troops' 
palpable military superiority -- they were equipped with ultramodern artillery, 
supersonic airplanes, technological gadgets and other sophisticated weaponry -- 
was having a decisive impact, killing countless Viet Cong guerrillas and North 
Vietnamese regulars.

But even as the situation in Vietnam was being pumped up, a few officials in 
Washington were questioning the conventional optimism. Not the least of them 
was Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara -- the man who had staunchly promoted 
the anti-communist struggle in Southeast Asia for half a decade, first under 
President John F. Kennedy and then under Johnson.

As I contemplate McNamara's evolution from war supporter to war skeptic, I 
ponder whether Donald H. Rumsfeld, his heir at the Pentagon, nurses any similar 
doubts about the dubious Iraq strategy he vaunts in his rhetoric. I wonder 
whether it's possible that, despite his projection of unshakable faith today, he 
may eventually come to make the same confession about Iraq that McNamara did 
about Vietnam, in the surprisingly candid mea culpa he published in 1995: "We 
were wrong, terribly wrong."

There's no public sign that Rumsfeld is swayed by such thoughts. But 
McNamara's dramatic transformation took years to surface.

I first discerned a change in him at a conference in Honolulu in February 
1966. The small group of reporters he invited to his deluxe hotel suite for a 
background briefing was stunned by his appearance. His face seemed grayer, and 
his patent-leather hair thinner. His voice lacked the authority it had projected 
in briefings past, when, like the consummate corporate executive he had been, 
he would briskly point to an array of graphs and flip charts to buttress his 
roseate appraisals of the war's progress.

Exactly a year before, Johnson had galvanized Operation Rolling Thunder, the 
sustained aerial offensive that was supposed to crack Hanoi's morale. But 
McNamara bluntly told us that the attacks were ineffective. A rural society 
couldn't be blasted into submission, he emotionally insisted. "No amount of bombing 
can end this conflict."

His aim in leaking his reservations to the news media was to obstruct the 
Joint Chiefs of Staff and the belligerent faction on Capitol Hill, who were 
demanding an aggressive program to demolish every ammunition dump, bridge, road, 
factory, rail junction and warehouse in the North, as well as obliterate the Ho 
Chi Minh trail that threaded through the jungles adjacent to Cambodia and 
Laos. Some further advocated mining Haiphong harbor and flooding the Hanoi region 
by destroying the Red River dikes.

McNamara had partly endorsed their pugnacious scenario in hopes that it would 
fail and enable him to persuade LBJ to try diplomacy. The president was 
sympathetic to his proposals. Contrary to the portrait of him as implacably 
truculent, Johnson felt trapped in the Vietnam quagmire. But he feared that unless he 
continued to escalate the commitment, he would incur the anger of the hawks 
and ultraconservatives in Congress, whose support he needed to pursue his 
liberal domestic agenda.

McNamara was heavily influenced by the shifting attitudes of his civilian 
aides, notably John McNaughton, Paul Warnke and Adam Yarmolinsky, whose zest for 
the war had faded. Searching for fresh ideas, he consulted several prominent 
scholars. Their studies confirmed his pessimism. The communists were receiving 
sufficient equipment from Russia and China to bolster their insurgency, while 
the campaign against them had "clearly engendered their patriotic and 
nationalistic enthusiasm and strengthened their determination to resist the U.S. 
incursions," the academics concluded in a 1967 report.

Rumsfeld, unlike McNamara, evidently relies on a tight circle of loyal 
acolytes and shuns outside mavens. His assessments of the war in Iraq remain upbeat 
despite a growing drumbeat of criticism from both retired and active military 
officials, plummeting public support and a stream of disastrous news from 
Baghdad. In that regard, he may perhaps be more beleaguered than McNamara in 
1966-67.

A crucial moment for McNamara arose in August 1967, when he testified at a 
session of Sen. John C. Stennis's subcommittee on preparedness. Stennis had 
scheduled the closed hearings to probe the attempts of "unskilled amateurs" to 
shackle our "professional soldiers." The admirals and generals were there, 
resplendent in their ribbons. McNamara showed up with mounds of statistics and, 
lecturing in his patronizing style, repeated his thesis that the clamor for a 
tough approach would not yield results.

Johnson was furious. Though he distrusted the brass and braid, he flinched at 
antagonizing their backers. In addition, he suspected that McNamara might be 
covertly collaborating with Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, who now opposed the war 
and was ambitiously focused on the White House. Suggesting that the Cabinet 
officer he had once hailed as a model had suffered a breakdown, Johnson maneuvered 
McNamara into the presidency of the World Bank, a post he took up after 
resigning from Defense in February 1968.

As far as I could tell, the experience traumatized McNamara. On one occasion, 
he rejected my request for an interview, then spent an hour on the telephone 
explaining to me why he was unable to talk.

In contrast to McNamara's relations with Johnson, Rumsfeld appears to enjoy 
the entire confidence of President Bush and, just as important, Vice President 
Cheney, neither of whom seem to be plagued by any Johnson-like uncertainties. 
So barring his possible ouster, he's unlikely to emulate McNamara by 
apologizing for a policy in Iraq that has been as misguided as the tragic Vietnam 
disaster.

Stanley Karnow, author of "Vietnam: A History" (Penguin), covered the Vietnam 
War for The Washington Post.

-----------------------------------------

The Washington Post
Sunday Outlook
Oct. 8, 2006

It's Time for Him to Go

By Robert Dallek

Before he appointed Donald H. Rumsfeld as secretary of defense, President 
Bush would have done well to listen to the tape of an old telephone conversation 
between Rumsfeld and President Richard M. Nixon. It was March 1971, and Nixon 
was offering career advice to Rumsfeld, then head of Nixon's Office of 
Economic Opportunity:

"You should be thinking of what you should do in the future," he told the 
39-year-old Rumsfeld. "Down the road, my view is that you would be a Cabinet 
officer. . . . [A]nd you can do, as far as I'm concerned, anything in the Cabinet 
field, except I wouldn't put you in Defense and I wouldn't put you in State . 
. . actually, you could be attorney general."

Perhaps Nixon understood something about Rumsfeld that eludes Bush. Whether 
out of loyalty to his defense secretary, or out of a stubborn reluctance to 
acknowledge Rumsfeld's failings -- and therefore his own -- Bush seems determined 
to keep Rumsfeld in the Pentagon. In so doing, the president is hanging on to 
an individual who has become the public face of the U.S. debacle in Iraq, one 
who has drawn fire not only from political opponents and countless retired 
military officers, but also from longtime Bush loyalists, such as former chief 
of staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and even, reportedly, first lady Laura Bush.

But Bush would not be the first president to keep a controversial or 
ineffective official in place for fear of embarrassing his administration. 
Predecessors from Woodrow Wilson to Lyndon B. Johnson have grappled with similar dilemmas.

Forcing Rumsfeld to retire would be a political blow for the White House, at 
least in the short term: It would be an admission that Bush not only 
miscalculated the need for a preemptive war against Saddam Hussein but also bungled the 
plan to pacify and democratize Iraq after the invasion. Nonetheless, history 
shows that such tough personnel decisions can, eventually, prove healthy for 
an administration and for a nation, particularly in times of war. They force 
reassessments of long-standing policy; they help presidents stand back, evaluate 
and chart new directions.

Now, with little more than two years remaining in the Bush administration, 
the president can still drop his longtime defense secretary in favor of another 
who could bring fresh ideas and renewed credibility to the battle against 
terrorism and the war in Iraq. It's not too late.

Some Cabinet members stay in office long beyond their usefulness. Cordell 
Hull ended up as the longest-serving U.S. secretary of state (from 1933 to 1944) 
despite his unimaginative leadership and severely limited role in shaping 
Franklin D. Roosevelt's foreign policy. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was 
reluctant to kick out "Engine" Charlie Wilson, his much-criticized defense secretary. 
At the time, some joked that Wilson, a former General Motors executive, had 
invented the automatic transmission so that he would always have one foot free 
to stuff in his mouth. And Nixon resisted firing Attorney General John N. 
Mitchell despite -- or because of -- his role in Watergate.

Other Cabinet secretaries, by contrast, leave too soon. President Jimmy 
Carter and the country lost a thoughtful public servant when Cyrus Vance resigned 
as secretary of state after the failed hostage rescue effort in Iran, which he 
had opposed. Vance's departure deprived the administration of an experienced 
national security official at a time of great international turmoil; the move 
only reinforced Carter's shortcomings as a foreign policy leader and weakened 
his bid for a second term.

It is wars, however, that provide some of the toughest personnel decisions 
for presidents -- but also some of the best opportunities to change course. The 
wartime dismissals or resignations of three high-level officials are 
particularly illustrative: William Jennings Bryan, Wilson's secretary of state; Gen. 
Douglas MacArthur, Harry S. Truman's commander of U.S. forces in Korea; and 
Robert McNamara, Johnson's secretary of defense and principal architect of the war 
in Vietnam.

Bryan resigned in 1915 over his belief that Wilson -- by favoring Britain and 
France -- was violating the stated U.S. policy of neutrality in World War I. 
The move came as a surprise to the White House, and resurrected questions 
about Bryan's suitability as the country's chief diplomat. A parochial 
Midwesterner with limited knowledge of the outside world, Bryan had been puzzled by a 
diplomat's mention of the Balkans during a trip he took to Europe in 1908. "What 
are they?" he asked as he boarded a train in Constantinople.

Bryan had been appointed to State for his eminence as a party leader and his 
help in winning Wilson the Democratic presidential nomination, not for any 
expertise in world affairs; he was certainly not the best person to shape an 
effective response to the European war that began in 1914. But his sudden 
departure -- its initial embarrassment to Wilson notwithstanding -- forced into the 
open a debate over America's role in the conflict and helped spur the domestic 
consensus that allowed the United States to join the Great War.

When Truman dismissed MacArthur in 1951 after the general publicly attacked 
the president's Korea policy as too timid -- "There is no substitute for 
victory," MacArthur had declared -- Secretary of State Dean Acheson warned Truman 
that the move would provoke "the biggest fight of your administration" with the 
men Acheson called the "political primitives." But it was more than right-wing 
zealots who attacked Truman over his decision. The dismissal became a 
headline story nationwide. In the words of Truman biographer David McCullough, the 
reaction "was stupendous, the outcry from the American people was shattering." 
Calls for Truman's impeachment became common and MacArthur's return to the 
United States turned into a triumphant tour of major cities, with parades and 
demonstrations greeting the general. Sixty-nine percent of Americans sided with 
MacArthur against the president.

Within weeks, however, the outcry turned into acceptance of the president's 
assertion of civilian authority over military power. MacArthur's firing 
eventually led to a sober examination of what best served U.S. interests in Asia -- a 
wider war with China or a conflict confined to Korea that contained communist 
aggression and left the United States free to defend its security in other 
parts of the world? In hindsight, MacArthur's firing encouraged a realistic 
understanding that containment made more sense than war. "Victory" was no more the 
only exit strategy in Korea than it was decades later in Vietnam or than it 
is today in Iraq -- no matter what Henry Kissinger said to Nixon in the 1970s 
or whispers to Bush and Vice President Cheney today.

McNamara's departure from the Johnson administration in 1967 was nothing like 
MacArthur's. McNamara left with his boss's blessing and received the 
presidency of the World Bank as a reward. But the real story behind the resignation 
was different from the image of a public servant in sync with his president on 
the Vietnam War and taking his leave after years of exhausting service. By the 
fall of 1967, McNamara had concluded that the war was a lost cause and urged 
Johnson to reduce U.S. involvement and shift responsibility for the fighting to 
the South Vietnamese -- a strategy reminiscent of today's "As Iraqis stand 
up, we will stand down." Indeed, the failed "Vietnamization" experiment of the 
Vietnam War should only deepen doubts that a rebuilt Iraqi army can deal 
effectively with Iraq's violent insurgency.

Johnson became angry with his defense secretary for abandoning a strategy 
that McNamara himself had done so much to put in place, and the president 
considered his removal a way to sustain the U.S. effort in Vietnam. But instead, 
McNamara's departure forced Johnson to reconsider the secretary's proposal and, 
eventually, to adopt it. Following the resignation, the president consulted with 
America's foreign policy "wise men" -- such as Acheson, W. Averell Harriman 
and Maxwell D. Taylor -- who convinced him that the country would not pay the 
price in blood and treasure to win in Vietnam. However uncomfortable and 
wrenching the departure may have been for both men, it was also a constructive step 
toward ending what had become a divisive and unpopular war, and one that was 
ultimately unproductive in the larger contest with Soviet communism.

Today, the nation again faces a divisive and unpopular war, and one that 
appears counterproductive in the larger battle against Islamic extremism. And in 
this war, Bush and Rumsfeld -- and, in particular, Cheney and Rumsfeld -- seem 
joined at 
the hip.

Yet the president should consider how the departures of Bryan, MacArthur and 
McNamara helped spark useful national debates and critical course corrections 
during World War I, Korea and Vietnam. Rather than considering Rumsfeld's exit 
as strictly an embarrassing confession of failure -- which of course it would 
be in part -- Bush could regard the appointment of a new defense secretary as 
an opportunity to stand back, review past actions and move in new directions.

Robert Lansing, a competent diplomat, took over for Bryan as Wilson's 
secretary of state. Johnson chose Clark Clifford, a respected and independent 
Washington figure, to fill in for McNamara. Both were instrumental in shifting policy 
on their respective wars, and were just as successful in renewing public 
confidence in U.S. efforts and intentions. Similarly, Bush could consider 
replacing Rumsfeld with someone of the stature of former senator George Mitchell or, 
as former chief of staff Card suggested (according to Bob Woodward's account in 
his new book "State of Denial"), former secretary of state James A. Baker III.

Finally, there is one candidate who is as qualified as he is unlikely to ever 
get the job: Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser under Carter. 
Brzezinski has proved brilliant and incisive in his criticism of the war. He 
notes, correctly, that there is no real U.S. strategy underpinning this 
conflict, as containment and deterrence focused the Cold War. Preemption has been 
disastrous, and victory is an outcome, not a strategy. Brzezinski also has the 
force of will and personality to demand real change. But that sort of change 
would require more than a new defense secretary -- it would require a new 
administration.

Robert Dallek's book, "Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power,"
will be published by HarperCollins next spring.

-----------------------------------------------

The Washington Post
Sunday Outlook
Oct. 8, 2006

The World According to Rummy

On May 1, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld circulated a secret memo 
titled "Illustrative New 21st Century Institutions and Approaches." The six-page 
document, excerpted below, highlights the Iranian threat, calls for a 
multilateral military force and argues that the United States' antiquated system of 
government makes competence "next to impossible." I obtained the contents of this 
memo while reporting for "State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III" (Simon & 
Schuster).
-- Bob Woodward

1. Transformation of international institutions. Today the world requires new 
international organizations tailored to new circumstances. Many of the more 
pressing threats are global and transnational in scope. Terrorism 
proliferation, cyber crime, narcotics, piracy, hostage-taking, criminal gangs, etc. Because 
they cannot be dealt with successfully by any one nation alone, the 
cooperation of many nations will be vital. Current institutions such as the UN, NATO, 
OAS, the African Union, ECOWAS, ASEAN and the European Union, to mention a few, 
were designed at a time when the world's challenges were notably different. 
Some were formed over half a century ago to further U.S. foreign and security 
policy purposes. Today, as U.S. goals in the world at large have changed, 
existing international institutions have failed to adapt sufficiently. Effective 
international organizations are needed to bring competence to such areas as 
quick reaction forces, military training, military police training, 
counterproliferation, capacity building for the rule of law, governance and domestic 
ministries. This may require institutions designed for those purposes rather than 
struggling to reform existing institutions to take on tasks for which they are 
ill suited.

Examples . . . Peacekeeping and governance. The world and the U.S. would 
benefit from a "global peace operations and governance corps." A standing 
capability is needed ready to respond rapidly to deal with emerging situations before 
they spin out of control. Such a capability would have been useful in just the 
past few years in Liberia, Haiti and perhaps Sudan.

The U.S. and like-thinking nations could help to enable such a capability by 
training, equipping and sustaining peacekeepers with military and police 
capability, perhaps organized regionally in considerably greater numbers than are 
currently available. . . . Similarly, the U.S. and our friends and allies could 
help organize and train cadres of international professionals who can assist 
emerging governments in areas of governance and ministry building. The 
cost-benefit ratio of being prepared in advance and in benefiting from the use of 
several nations' troops rather than using solely US military forces would be 
substantial.

2. Regional challenges. Mideast security initiative. The threat Iran is 
posing and will likely continue to pose argues that it may well be time to form a 
new collective security arrangement for the Middle East and/or the Arabian Sea. 
Already one or two Middle East nations appear to be wondering if they should 
develop nuclear programs. This is the moment first to reassure key friends of 
U.S. commitment to shield them from nuclear blackmail through declaratory 
policy; and second, to find other ways to strengthen cooperation with them. Egypt 
and Saudi Arabia are the key. The U.S. needs to bolster Arab moderates now 
while they are viable. Some Gulf states are leaning well forward on this idea. . 
. .

3. A Goldwater-Nichols process for the national security portions of the U.S. 
government. The 1986 Goldwater-Nichols legislation led to greater jointness 
and interdependence in the Department of Defense among the 4 services, but it 
has taken 20 years to begin to fully realize its potential. The broader [U.S. 
government] structure is still in the industrial age and it is not serving us 
well. It is time to consider a new Hoover Commission to recommend ways to 
reorganize both the executive and legislative branches, to put us on a more 
appropriate path for the 21st century. Only a broad, fundamental reorganization is 
likely to enable federal departments and agencies to function with the speed and 
agility the times demand. The charge of incompetence against the U.S. 
government should be easy to rebut if the American people understand the extent to 
which the current system of government makes competence next to impossible.

Foreign assistance. The present structure of the U.S. government foreign 
assistance is an anachronism. A system is needed that recognizes assistance for 
what it really is, a component of our national security strategy. In simple 
terms, DOD has resources but not authorities, while State has authorities but not 
resources. . . . The only choice is to trash the current laws and to undertake 
a total overhaul of the current systems.

Strategic communications . . . A new U.S. agency for global communication 
could serve as a channel to inform, educate and compete in the battle for ideas. 
. . .

Today the centers of gravity of the conflict in Iraq and the global war on 
terror are not on battlefields overseas. Rather, the center of gravity of this 
war are on the centers of public opinion in the U.S. and in the capitals of 
free nations. The gateways to those centers are the international media hubs and 
the capitals of the world. [Ayman al-] Zawahiri has said that 50 percent of 
the current struggle is taking place in the arena of public information. That 
may be an understatement. Osama bin Laden, Zawahiri, [Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi had 
media committees that consistently outpace our ability to respond. When the 
U.S. government tries to compete in the communications arena it runs up against 
lack of national consensus and understanding about what means are acceptable 
to the media and to the Congress and disagreements as to what is legal.

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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