From Virtual Secretary of Defense
Purpose
The purpose of this memorandum is to establish priorities for my strategic objectives through 2012 and pending the concurrence of a new president with a proper staff, 2020. There is no such thing as strategic guidance for one year. This document informs without directing anyone.
Intent
My intent is to establish a baseline of truth–the truth at any cost reduces all other costs–so as to return our Armed Forces to a condition of readiness, responsiveness, and effectiveness in the face of all threats to the Republic, both domestic and foreign. At a minimum this means an Air Force capable of long-haul lift; a Navy capable of distributed littoral operations; an Army able to fight uncomfortable wars while also reinforcing legitimate governments and where appropriate helping insurgents holding the moral high ground to displace despotic regimes. It also means a Marine Corps able to put air-land-sea forces on any spot in 24 hours (platoon landing team), 48 hours (company landing team) and 72 hours (battalion landing team), along with a Coast Guard able to fulfill all of its homeland safety and security missions. Underlying my intent for the Armed Forces is a strategic intent to demand clarity, integrity, and sensibility from the Whole of Government–sustainable legal orders consonant with our public's culture.
Our blood must only be shed when our brains are engaged and all other means–cultural, diplomatic, economic, educational, and political–cannot achieve the objectives that are open, legal, ethical, moral, and validated by both Congress and the public. My intent therefore consists of creating the conditions for getting a grip on reality and being able to deal with reality, with a particular emphasis on assuring that all information necessary to inter-agency effectiveness and multinational engagement is both known to us, and shareable with others.
Brief Assessment
I'm doing the best I can with a rotten hand. The U.S. Government is incoherent, uninformed, and badly managed. We have no means of getting a grip on the totality of the threats to our Republic–both domestic and foreign–and no means of actually planning, programming, budgeting, and orchestrating Whole of Government acquisition, policy, and operations. Right now the military is a financial drain on a Treasury that has been looted by Wall Street, and my greatest concern is that foreign banks and powers will stop accepting the US dollar that is increasingly backed up by nothing more than belligerency and bluff.
The best assessment available is that of the United Nations High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change, which identified the following ten high-level (i.e. strategic) threats, in relative order of priority, for action by all Member states and all non-state organizations:
01 Poverty
02 Infectious Disease
03 Environmental Degradation
04 Inter-State Conflict
05 Civil War
06 Genocide
07 Other Atrocities
08 Proliferation
09 Terrorism
10 Transnational Crime
LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft, USAF (Ret) was the US representative on the High-Level Panel, and my regard for his wisdom is without limit. We will take these ten priorities in their current order of priority for action.
Priorities and Strategic Objectives
As the most expensive and most effective part of the US Government, our Armed Forces have the means and ways to achieve ends whether directed or not. Therefore my first priority is to create the National Monitoring and Planning Center (NMPC) as implicitly envisioned by David Abshire in his book Preventing World War III–A Realistic Grand Strategy and more recently and explicitly by General Tony Zinni, USMC (Ret) in his book The Battle for Peace-A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purpose.
The following four quotations guide my thinking. Such a Center, supported directly by the independent Defense Open Source Agency (DOSC) and the embedded Multinational Decision Support Center (MDSC) that were envisioned by Undersecretary of Defense Stephen Cambone emphasis on achieving universal coverage at neighborhood levels of granularity, will create a level illuminated playing field for everybody, a playing field in which corruption and fraud will be more easily exposed.
• Thomas Jefferson: A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry.
• James Madison: Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
• Fedor Dostoevsky: A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else.
• Robert Steele: The truth at any cost reduces all other costs.
Strategic Intelligence & Coherence
PRIORITY ONE is to get a grip on reality and stop the insanity of deficit spending on the basis of partisan ignorance and blind loyalty. We swore an oath to support the Constitution, not the chain of command, it is time we took our INTEGRITY off the shelf and put it back into action.
My first strategic objective is to lay the foundation for restoring an educated citizenry as the basis for an honest informed government that is inherently moral and legitimate, at home and everywhere else.
My second strategic objective is to create a foundation for influencing, in the most positive non-violent way possible–with unclassified decision-support–how everyone else spends their money. On the one hand, we can use shared decision-support to harmonize spending and avoid waste; on the other we can use it to expose fraud, abuse, and corruption–we should no longer support 42 of 44 dictators.
Strategic Acquisition & Multinational Engagement
PRIORITY TWO is to get a grip on how we train, equip, and organize both the Armed Forces, and the Whole of Government inter-agency capacity needed for the Transition to and From Hostilities–as well as peaceful preventive measures as General Al Gray, USMC, then Commandant of the Marine Corps called for in 1989; and Golden Hour Stabilization & Reconstruction in the aftermath of military victory. We know how to do this, it is time we started being serious (Haiti 2010, for example, should have been our finest hour, using an Information Operations (IO) lay-down to Reverse TIPFID into regional big air and big sea, with onward small air and small ship as well as “Peace from Above” precision air drops).
Our military intellectuals, notably those employed by the U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute and within the U.S. Navy's DEEP BLUE element at the Naval War College in Newport, knew as early as 1992, and more fully in 1998, that there are four threat classes and that we require four forces after next.
My third strategic objective is to submit to the President for presentation to the Cabinet and Congress a proposed revision to Title 10 that sharply reduces the autonomy of the four military services in the acquisition arena, and elevates the regional Combatant Commanders to a new Strategic Acquisition Board while also creating an Inter-Agency Expeditionary Planning & Programming Council. I will urge the President and Congress to commit to a $200 billion a year redirection of funds from Program 50 to Program 150 as part of this long-overdue redirection of how we do planning, programming, and budgeting for global security and all related inter-agency policies. This redirection should be contingent on three diplomatic initiatives that will be fully-funded as part of the non-reimbursable redirection:
• Creation of the Open Source Center as a national agency under diplomatic auspices, built on top of the DOSC and MDSC and located at the South-Central campus between the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) and the Department of State, utilizing Kennedy Center parking and meeting spaces during the day, and including the operational elements of the World Brain.
• Elevating the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy to Deputy Secretary of State for Democracy, with two assistant secretaries: one for the dictators that agree to a five-year peaceful transition to democracy; and one for those that do not.
• Creation of the Office of Information Sharing Treaties and Agreements.
As part of that redirection, I anticipate the following redirection of the four services:
• US Air Force. Transfer Close Air Support (CAS) mission to the US Army effectively immediately. Plan, program and budget for being able to execute two long-haul airlifts, one with organic air and one with conscripted air, for sustained periods up to one year. Dramatically increase inter-theater and intra-theater lift inclusive of geoposition parachute drops to enable routine multiple “Peace from Above” air drops as a regular recurring mission in every regional theater simultaneously.
• US Army. In close coordination with the US Marine Corps and coalition partners, create a Core Force capability that is able to provide intra-theater multinational and non-governmental mobility, communications, and logistics services across the full spectrum of conflict and explicitly including multinational governmental and non-governmental elements as nodes to be supported; absorb all US Air Force CAS assets, personnel, and where desired, facilities; focus on three force packages: big war, small war, and stabilization & reconstruction.
• US Marine Corps. Stop going along with the US Navy on the big ship mantra. Be all you can be, a restoration of the Strategic Generalizations and the Expeditionary Environment Planning and Programming Factors Study. Refine your forced entry capability and non-combatant evacuation capabilities, while also becoming, in close partnership with the Army CAB, a language and culturally-qualified constabulary force that provides officers and non-commissioned officers to indigenous forces for extended periods. Create Regimental Landing Teams for each region and stabilize related skills.
• US Navy. Enough already. Execute U.S. Naval Power in the 21st Century.
• US Coast Guard. Double in size, we'll pay for it. Collaborate with the US Navy on the Expediter. Collaborate with other maritime powers and the US Navy to create a new global multinational maritime intelligence center that restores informed mastery of all territorial waters including global geographic tracking of the elements of every supply line entering the USA.
My fourth strategic objective is to redirect within our existing budgets no less than 20% of all funding, billets, and facilities from waging war to waging peace. I am specifically interested in, and will personally oversee:
• Elevating the Assistant Secretary for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (ASD SOLIC) to Undersecretary of Defense for Special, Limited, and Peace Operations (USD(S)).
• Elevating the Army Civil Affairs Brigade (CAB) to Force or Field Agency status, making the commander of that force a two-star flag officer who is also the junior Deputy Combatant Commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), the “White Hat” DC envisioned by General Peter Schoomaker, USA, in 1997.
• Redirecting no less than 20% but preferably 40% of the time and energy and money within the Defense Advanced Program Research Agency (DARPA) from war to peace. I specifically wish to end programs seeking to create automated substitutes for humans, and refocus those programs on creating very low-cost green tools that address the non-military threats identified by the High-Level Panel–threats that become military if not addressed in a pro-active preventive fashion.
PRIORITY THREE is to end the U.S. role as the principal proliferator of weapons from nuclear, biological, and chemical to small arms, and to make it possible for the British, Russians, and Chinese to do the same. We spend $1.3 trillion a year waging war when it is clearly documented that for one third of that price we can wage peace and eradicate the ten high-level threats to humanity.
My fifth strategic objective, working in partnership with the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence (USD(I)) and the White Hat DCC/USSOOM, is Multinational Engagement. We have made a profound mistake over the past decades since World War II (WWII) in focusing on foreign military assistance to dictatorships, and on security training to the palace guards of dictators. What we should be doing is leveraging the deep historical, cultural, and practical knowledge of our multinational colleagues–to include widening the circle to acknowledge that all tribes, all nations, all states, are part of the We–in establishing the best means of meeting the basic needs of humanity.
My sixth strategic objective is to elevate Information Operations (IO) to co-equal status with kinetic operations. Commanders are spending 80% of their time on IO, while IO receives less than 1% of the total resources. This situation is analogous to a similar situation on the classified side of the house that spends $75 billion a year on the 10-20% they can steal, while ignoring open sources of information in 183 languages that will never be mastered by sufficient native Americans eligible for clearances. I envision:
• Making unclassified decision-support that is fully sharable the “default” within the Armed Forces, within Whole of Government, and within all coalition and non-governmental alliances.
• Effectively migrating the DOSC and MDSC to full multinational and multifunctional status, helping the UN and other regional organizations such as the African Union (AU) use information as a substitute for violence and to create wealth.
• Nurturing a Global Grid that is unclassified, multi-lingual, and relevant to the harmonization of both organizational and individual assets (80% of the one billion rich individuals do not give to charity–we must give them an online means of enabling micro-aid to the household level among the five billion poor).
• Using the DOSC and MDSC to further the inherently essential goals of achieving Open Everything but especially the broad global use of Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS), OSINT, and Open Spectrum.
• Funding the Office of the Assistant Secretary General for Decision-Support (ASG DS) and nurturing the creation of the UN Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN) with the specific selfish intent of harvesting all UN information to the high-side as it is created, while transferring to the UN and all other Member states and non-governmental organizations the tactics, tools, and techniques of OSINT–creating decision-support, including multi-stakeholder outreach and appreciative inquiry-deliberative dialog. The World Brain Institute and a model Center for Public Intelligence will be part of our controlled but transparent support to the UN.
• Funding the Office of Information Sharing Treaties and Agreements within the Department of State.
Health of the Force and Health of the Nation
I weep when I contemplate the number of suicides, the number of multiple and single amputees, the number of Gulf War syndrome (now known to be partially caused by our own use of depleted uranium), and the attendant damage to spouses, siblings, and children. We should not be using war as an alternative to high unemployment, and we should not be using war to enrich the military-industrial complex; to capture by force natural resources belonging to others; or to carry out the illegal orders of a partisan leadership that is corrupt to the bone as well as completely ignorant of the realities that we in the Armed Forces face abroad and at home.
The health of the force and the health of the nation–the Republic in which We the People are supposed to be sovereign and able to abolish the administrative government at any time–are inter-twined.
PRIORITY FOUR is the restoration of the health of the force and its family. At the operational and tactical levels this is PRIORITY ONE, but at the strategic level it rests on the first three priorities.
My seventh strategic objective is to properly train all ranks in the meaning of their Oath to the Constitution and in how to responsibly manage those situations in which illegal or unreasonable orders are given by civilian or higher-ranking military leaders . All flag officers will complete this course of instruction first; and as with those responsible for Recruit Training, will be required to pass a rigorous test, or resign. Ethics must permeate everything we do, at every level and detail of command. While we will support rather than lead foreign policy, we will not support the incoherent ménage a plus that passes for foreign policy today and for the past two decades. Madeline Albright may describe her job as the equivalent of being a “gerbil on a wheel,” our objective is to do what is necessary to assure that our Republic is able to make foreign policy on the basis of ethics, intelligence, and reality–no more gerbils.
My eighth strategic objective is to assure the full employment of every Prior Service individual, with priority given to those who have lost a limb. The human brain is the one inexhaustible resource we have. Our amputees are especially well-qualified to be founding members of the Peace Force (if an upper limb amputee) or of the Intelligence Force (if a lower limb amputee). I will leave no Prior Service person–or their family–wounded on the battlefield of life.
My ninth strategic objective is to use the power that we do have–to control ourselves and to inform ourselves–in order to create a prosperous world at peace in which force is the last resort, and rarely if ever needed because we have, as Sun Tzu urged us to do, defeated all enemies without fighting.
Conclusion
Persistent Global Engagement must not be predominantly military. Force, whether used by the military or by law enforcement, is only relevant when the broad majority of the population that provides the context for the use of force is stable and regards those using force as legitimate. Col Dr. Max Manwaring, USA (Ret) captures this perfectly in his edited work, The Search for Security-A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century. Our government and our civilian leaders of the military must hold to the moral high ground, be the legitimate power, and act with ethical intention in every clime and place. We start here and now. As I have for some time now, but without notice or acceptance from those that hold the power in their hands today, I am committed to creating a prosperous world at peace. We do that by getting a grip on reality; by pursuing the foreign and national security policies our Founding Fathers (and today Ron Paul alone) intended; and by consciously evolving–practicing evolutionary activism, to achieve non-zero outcomes. St.
21 December 2010
