Declining Competency in Crafting Strategy

Via the blog "War, the military, COIN and stuff," we learn of Andrew Krepenivich's latest portrait of strategic thinking and what's wrong with the Obama administration's National Security Strategy. In short, the problem is that it isn't really a strategy. It's a wish list.

One might think that the major increases in defense spending have left the US military well-equipped to address these challenges. Sadly, this is not the case. The defense buildup has not resulted in a significant modernization of the military. Indeed, from a procurement standpoint, the US military can be said to have experienced a “hollow buildup.” The result is an aging inventory of equipment whose service life is being shortened further by the high tempo of ongoing military operations. Those looking for large, painless cuts in the defense budget are bound to be disappointed.
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Fortunately, there are more than two ways (increasing funding and creating efficiencies) to resolve a mismatch between the defense program and the resources available to sustain it. They involve strategy, which can be simply defined as how a state’s resources are best employed to achieve the ends it seeks. The better the strategy, the more that can be accomplished with a given set of resources.

Strategy necessarily involves setting priorities and taking risks. This is because no state, however powerful relative to other states, has ever had sufficient resources to eliminate all risks to its security and well-being. Thus two ways of dealing with the problem of having to work with a relative decline in resources are to reduce the objectives to be achieved; or to accept greater risk that they may not be accomplished.
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There is an opportunity here, if the Obama Administration is willing to seize it. It involves exploring all available options for diverting the country from its path toward a declining military posture, and doing so within the context of an overall integrated strategy. Similar to the approach pursued by Great Britain a century ago, this would involve providing clear guidance as to how the United States might expand its circle of willing and capable allies, how it might identify, create and leverage sources of advantage and how they would be employed to address the most pressing challenges to the nation’s security. Such a strategy would set clear priorities and make hard choices. It would identify areas where the United States would have to scale back or divest itself of commitments, and where it would accept an increase in risk in protecting vital national interests. Importantly, the details of such a strategy document would, as was true of the key Cold War strategy documents, not be made public. Major business firms and sports teams do not share with the public (and hence their rivals) how they plan to achieve success, lest the competition use that information to its advantage. This applies all the more to governments, which are charged with preserving the survival and well-being of their citizens. Yet the Obama Administration has no such integrated, classified national security strategy document.

I just want to know, why hasn't the Obama administration hired Andrew Krepenevich to run the National Security Council's long-term strategy development yet. What are they waiting for? Also read Todd Harrison's "Analysis of the FY 2011 Defense Budget."

Comments

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"The defense buildup has not resulted in a significant modernization of the military"

Uh, that defense buildup took place when there was a nice, tidy National Security Strategy in place, something that Krepenevich seems to ignore. So how is a shiny new NSS going magically to fix procurement and the defense budget? Pixie dust?