DefenseNews (subscription required) talks with Peter Verga, currently the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Integration and Chief of Staff, about the big, big differences in Michele Flournoy's office of the under secretary of policy.
Under the new plan, space and cyber issues were paired, as were the nuclear and missile defense portfolios. Each set of issues was given its own deputy assistant secretary, who answers to the assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs - a post that had previously been called global security affairs, with a different policy portfolio. Michael Nacht now holds that job, which also oversees Pentagon efforts to set policies to counter weapons of mass destruction.
"We needed to place greater emphasis on strategic issues. We took an ASD that had been called global security affairs and called that global strategic affairs," Verga explained. "Under that went classic strategic issues."
Oh, well, that makes ALL the difference. And the best part is that you don't have to change the stationary, since the letters GSA are still the same.
The assistant secretary of defense for special operations, low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities, Michael Vickers, now oversees special operations and counterterrorism, the partnership strategy and stability operations portfolio; and the global threats and counternarcotics portfolio - the latter known as "drugs and thugs," Verga said.
It was one of the stranger things the Bush administration did in defense policy - to put counterproliferation of WMDs in with the "drugs and thugs" group. The idea was that narcoterrorists and terrorists seeking WMDs all ran in the same circles - the reality was that the daily focus remained on "drugs and thugs" and WMD issues went no where for the past four years.
Aiming to give the policy outfit "more muscle," as Verga said, in the Pentagon's annual programming, planning and budgeting process, Flournoy created a deputy undersecretary of defense post for strategy, plans and forces, now Kathleen Hicks. Part of her charge is running the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review.
The QDR teams are very, very busy. Some days it's hard to get the action officers on the phone because of all the meetings. It will be interesting to see what they come out with. Hopefully it's not just more changing of names and titles.
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