Previous IFPA-Fletcher Conferences

National Security for a New Era:
Focusing National Power

November 14-15, 2001
The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center
Washington, D.C.

Panel 4

Mr. Thompson: Good morning. I'm Loren Thompson from the Lexington Institute, and I'm going to be moderating this morning's panel, which is called "Employing the Instruments of National Power in a Complex Environment." Let me bring on our three panelists. We have first coming out Dr. Gordon Adams of the George Washington University, General Anthony Zinni, former CENTCOM Commander and, finally, former Secretary of Defense, Frank Carlucci. Let me make a few opening remarks and then introduce them more fully and go to their presentations. And, after they've presented, we'll give you an opportunity to ask some questions. You know, it wasn't this difficult in the old days.

Although the threat that America faced in the Cold War was a good deal more serious than the challenges that we face today, at least it left little doubt as to what the danger was. For two generations, the entire apparatus of the federal government was directed to countering the threat posed by Communism; not just our defense posture or our foreign policy, but every aspect of federal exertion from the interstate highway program to the space program was justified, at least in part, by the contribution that it made to combating the Communist menace. Other lesser threats were neglected unless they could be linked to that overriding concern. And then, the Cold War ended. Since the Soviet Union collapsed, we've lacked an overriding threat around which to organize our national security preparations. For a decade after Desert Storm, we thought that the threat was rogue states.

Now, in the aftermath of the atrocities of September 11th, we have shifted our focus to global terrorism. But, the uncertainty remains. Do we mean the terrorism generated by a scattered fringe of disaffected fanatics, or do we mean a broader cultural phenomenon, perhaps something sweeping the Arab or the Moslem world. Or, perhaps what we mean is some sort of technology-driven dynamic that has empowered fanatics of every stripe around the world. We don't know yet. What we do know is that the world is a far more complicated place than it once seemed, a place where every instrument of national power may need to be employed and coordinated, but frequently changing ways. When the threat was relatively static, we could take years to work out the mechanisms by which various means of external influence were synchronized. But, we may not have that time anymore because the threat shifts frequently and, as we now know, in quite unexpected ways. So, how do we enable five military services, a dozen intelligence agencies, a sprawling diplomatic community and a decentralized economic apparatus to turn on a dime in response to new challenges. And, how do we make such shifts mesh with the relevant domestic agencies, with a divided Congress and with a diverse coalition of overseas friends and allies. That's the focus of this morning's first panel, employing the instruments of national power effectively in a complex environment.

We've gathered a group of three respected scholars. We've gathered a group of three respected scholars here, who make a moderator's job easy. Easy because they are, themselves, admired moderates who need no introduction. Let me tell you a little bit about the three of you and then we will see a video that introduces the panel further, and then finally, we'll go to their remarks. First there is Frank Carlucci, the Chairman of the Carlyle Group. Mr. Carlucci is one of the most accomplished policy makers of his generation, having served successively as Deputy Director of OMD, Undersecretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Ambassador to Portugal, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, Deputy Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor and, finally, Secretary of Defense. Aside from the fact that Frank remains deeply involved in national security matters, he brings to today's panel an unparalleled range of expertise in diplomacy, in intelligence, in management and in military affairs.

Second, there is General Anthony Zinni of the U.S. Marine Corp. General Zinni spent the last three years of his career as Commander in Chief of the U.S. Central Command, the regional command responsible for protecting U.S. interests in two dozen countries stretching from the horn of Africa through the Middle East to the former Soviet Union. Beginning as a Company Commander in Vietnam, General Zinni went on to hold a series of highly sensitive military posts directing operations in Iraq, in Somalia, in Turkey and in the former Soviet Union. Prior to assuming Command of CENTCOM, he was Commanding General of the First Marine Expeditionary Force.

And, finally, there is Dr. Gordon Adams, Professor of International Affairs and Director of Security Policy Studies at the George Washington University. Dr. Adams was director and founder of the Defense Budget Project, before entering the Clinton Administration, the Associate Director of OMB for National Security and International Affairs. After that, he went on to be the Deputy Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Few scholars have exercised a more persistent and a more perceptive influence over the way in which national security affairs are discussed, both in the press and on Capitol Hill. So, those are our panelists, and I understand that we now have a video that will briefly elaborate on the focus of this - we have a video that will briefly elaborate on the focus of this panel. So, if we could do the video now.

Video: Sole superpower, the United States faces some unprecedented contradictions. We have no peer competitors, but many challengers. We have more global might than any nation in history, but more constraints in using our power. How do we employ our resources in this complex environment? How do we bring them together to put our great strength to best use? Since September the 11th, we have been (inaudible) challenge that we face was much less (inaudible) identifiable as a result of what's on there and an enormous amount of coordination and cooperation across the government if we're going to succeed in what may well be a long and a twilight struggle against global terrorism. The largest concern we have in this regard has to do with continual mounting together of both our military and related capabilities with our domestic capabilities of locales, public health, fire and safety and so on.

That's a big challenge that we're not used to. We're probably overcoming the realization that to those of us the nation was (inaudible) that remain a super power and continue our own style of life and our way of living as we know it (inaudible) want it to be we're going to have to become more involved and more engaged in the war. Team work, interagency cooperation, synchronization, integration. The names of concepts are familiar, but never before have they been so critical to national success. If we are to succeed in the (inaudible) it's going to require an unusual amount of cooperation and coordination showing the information and analysis, mobilizing assets to bring to bear on specific international problems. We're going to have to decide when we plan on being competitive. I mean s one agency going to come up with one plan and another come up with a plan and then to chose the plan? Is that an efficient way to do business? Just as difficult as coordinating diverse agencies, is bringing together the various instruments of national power and achieving measurable results for the American people and our security partners.

This war against terror has to be fought with more than military troops. To win the war on terror will require intelligence and law enforcement and all of the economic tools at the disposal of the U.S. and its allies. For example, we know terrorist leaders have a need, a special need to mobilize large sums of cash quickly in order to continue their operation. We need to inhibit their ability to do so. This is not a military mission. It's an economic mission. Focusing the instruments of power in this complex world is a new challenge, a challenge that will require significant resources and unprecedented teamwork. I really go on believing (inaudible) that we have correctly anticipated the challenges that we face and we have not yet translated that anticipation into the instruments that will be most appropriate to address them.

Mr. Thompson: Now, we'll hear from our first panel member, Frank Carlucci.

Mr. Carlucci: Thank you, Loren. The film really said it, unprecedented teamwork. It's almost self-evident that in the current situation we're going to have to bring about the kind of coordination we've never seen in the past. We're dealing with an enemy that has no fixed address. He's everywhere but he's nowhere. He's in our schools and businesses and in the caves of Afghanistan. He turns our freedoms to his own advantage. And, he devises hideously ingenious ways of inflicting pain and killing on innocent civilians, including the use of suicide. To defeat this enemy will require an extraordinary effort. It's a war like no other that we have been in. Indeed, even victory is hard to define. A large portion of the equation is military and that seems to be rolling along rather well. But, together with our military operations, we have to employ good intelligence, including covert action, effective diplomacy including public diplomacy, and a massive effort to cut off the funding supplies for the terrorists. And, after that, homeland security, a new problem for us, which involves reportedly some 40 to 50 different agencies and you have a coordination task of gargantuan proportions.

The ultimate coordinator, of course, is the President. But, he has for this purpose a staff. He has a Chief of Staff, he has a Domestic Policy Council, he has a National Security Council and, now, he has a Director of Homeland Security. How these people exercise their authority and how they interact with one another will determine, to a large extent, how effective interagency coordination is. The Director of Homeland Security is a new player, and he'll be speaking to you later this morning, so I won't comment extensively. I'll just repeat what I told the Congress when asked to testify on this. That I think the NSC model is an appropriate model, at least while it's a work in process until we see how it works. But, it is true that domestic agencies respond more readily to budget pressures than anything else. So, Governor Ridge has to be a player in the budget game. And, as reported in the papers yesterday, he apparently is. He needs not only the right of review and comment, but he needs the right of escalation should he believe that the funding is not appropriate.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, I do not think that confirmation would add to his clout with the different agencies. In fact, by having him report to two masters, it may well weaken his influence with the agencies he's directed to coordinate. I anticipate that Governor Ridge will work through the National Security Council, the National Security Advisor's Office in dealing with the defense agencies, partly because that makes sense, partly because that's the realm of the four pillars of our national security that is in good shape and has proved the test of time. The others are in disrepair. Defense has been under funded, by various estimates from $50 to $100 billion a year, for some time now and we are not reconstituting the first subject, on which Loren has written extensively. Readiness has suffered and transformation is more of a concept than a reality at this point. While there may be some albeit thin rationale to demobilize our military, there is absolutely no rationale for demobilizing our State Department, but that's what we've done.

The State Department budget since the end of the Cold War has been cut some 40 percent in real terms. Instead of opening new posts with new countries, we're closing posts. Our people are working in insecure conditions without outdated telecommunications facilities. It's only been a year since the State Department got rid of its last Lang computer - a dysfunctional personnel system and a shortage of foreign service officers. Colin Powell is moving to correct this, but it will take time. Worse off, even worse off, is the CIA which has been used as a political football since the days of the Church committee. We've overladen the process with regulations. We've forced the CIA to disclose information threatening the protection of services and methods. We've created, in effect, a risk adverse atmosphere. We've indicted CIA officers for implementing policy and we've tried to conduct something called open intelligence, which is an oxymoron. We have no covert action capability. When the President signs a Covert Action Finding one day and it's headlines in the papers the next. NSC, of course, is a process, not a program. But, it works.

And, the NSC staff plays a key role. What are the qualifications for a national security advisor? First of all, obviously, some national security background. Secondly, and most important, access to the President. Third, enjoy the confidence of the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, DCI, and now the National Homeland Defense Coordinator. Fourth, understanding the process and being willing to drive that process forward. Sounds easy, but it really isn't. We saw what happened when the process broke down in Iran-Contra. And, leaving aside personalities, I made a judgment when I came in as National Security Advisor that there were several flaws in the system. One is that the organizational lines of accountability and authority were blurred. Secondly, there was no system of checks and balances. There was no independent general counsel, and we created one. And, third, the NFC was misguidedly involved in operations. And that, for the NFC, is fatal. Less fatal, of course, is upstaging the Secretary of State, but that's not recommended. There are natural tensions between State and DOD. People ask me all the time, "Well, isn't there a fight between the State Department and DOD? Do Rumsfeld and Powell get along?" My answer is, "I'd be disappointed if they agreed on every issue.

Indeed, the two organizations have different missions and good policy comes out of an interaction between their points of view. And, they generally can reconcile their points of view themselves, but if they can't, that's when the National Security Advisor has to step in. And, it's the job of the National Security Advisor to make sure that the decisions are teed up appropriately for the President, that he's given all the options, that he understands what the agency positions are and that, if necessary, the agency heads have the right to appeal to him. The National Security Advisor is usually asked for his or her opinion, but that should be at the end of the process, not at the beginning of the process. The National Security Advisor has to be an honest broker. Learn to mediate, learn to escalate to the President is always a judgment call. It depends much on the style of the President and the personalities involved. In closing, let me note that the current team is ideally suited to make this process work. They've all been there before. I've had the opportunity of working with all of them. They're superb individuals and the results are showing, and they certainly merit your confidence. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Mr. Thompson: Thank you, Frank. Next speaker General Anthony Zinni.

General Zinni: Well, first let me begin by echoing Mr. Carlucci's concern about the under funding of the State Department as an unpaid employee of the State Department. My assigned subject line and topic for this presentation was, "The role of the military as a key enabler for development, stability, crisis resolution and enduring peace." When I looked at that, at first I knew it had been written in Washington, and it took me a while to get through it and figure out what I was going to talk about. But, there is one part of that that I'd like to focus on and maybe change a little bit: That business about a key enabler. And, I'd like to change it to "the" key enabler because ever since the end of the Cold War what has happened in issues where we've had concerns about development, stability, crisis resolution and enduring peace, we have put the military in the position of being the centerpiece, or the key enabler. And, that has had mixed results.

There are plusses to the military being the key or the centerpiece, or the key enabler. The first is obvious. The military has tremendous capacity, tremendous resources compared to the other elements of power and the other agencies of government, and tremendous throwaway in just in terms of size and ability to deal with problems, to bring the logistics and the planning and all the sinews that help resolve issues. It's good to build around the military. The second is the military knows the neighborhood best. And, this may be arguable, but I'm going to say this as a former CINC: No one knew my region of the world better than I did and my unified command headquarters. No one. Not State Department, not anybody back here in Washington. We knew the region best. We lived and breathed there, we knew the leadership, we knew the issues, we worked the streets, we were there in military exercises, and you would probably find a vast majority of our ambassadors out there tell you that we ran the vast majority of engagement programs, not just the military to military, by default and again, by virtue of capacity and resources.

The military is capable of changing circumstances very fast and very dramatically. And what happens is we tend not to go into crises when they can be resolved easily, early. We go in when it's almost too late because by the very nature of the way we are forced to commit, it requires public support and political commitment here to commit to a crisis. And, that usually takes some pretty dramatic events on the ground. And, the military is the only one that can freeze the situation or reverse it rather rapidly. As someone who has been in the hills with the Kurds, been in Somalia three times, and many, many more operations, humanitarian, peacekeeping, crisis, quasi, war; I can tell you, the military is the one that makes the quickest and best change. If you want to build a coalition of the willing, the military is the best source to have as a core. Because those that want to commit to something want to see American boots on the ground. And, they can easily build around it. If I want a show of participation and commitment, I can add a little something to that very formidable presence the military brings. So, I can send my truck company or my air transportable hospital and claim I am part of a major military coalition, obviously led by the U.S.

And, the military has had now over a decade of experience. We've been through the Haitis and the Somalias and the Rwandans and the Bosnias and on and on and on. And, it is a credit to our military, and let me right here tip my hat to the Army and General Shinseki, in a number of these issues where the Army, particularly, has focused on these. The Peacekeeping Institute up at Carlyle, and many other efforts to come to grips in form of exercise, doctrine, training tactics and techniques to deal with this new different kind of environment that we face. And, what are the downsides of the military being the key enabler? The military doesn't like some of these roles. And, let's be completely honest. All of us that signed up and joined, we wanted to fight like our fathers. We wanted to fight the Second World War. We wanted the nation mobilized behind us, we wanted to go to war with a clear mission, unconditional surrender, we wanted a demonized enemy, we wanted to fight the forces in some sort of symmetrical fashion, we wanted to defeat them and come home to our ticker tape parade. And, we have been struggling ever since 1945 to repeat that.

That probably was an aberration in our history. Messy little wars - the Koreas, the Vietnams; unfinished wars like the Gulf War; the vast list of peacekeeping humanitarian and other operations other than war. Since we can't categorize them, we just lump them into "war - good", "other than war - bad". Got to do it. And, we have not really embraced those missions. These missions are expensive. They drain our readiness, they pull us off our combat missions and are difficult to deal with. They don't ideally suit the strong suits of our military. They tend to come at us, a popular phrase now, asymmetrically. Third, the military gets stuck. The military is wary of these commitments now because when everybody else home, the military is still there. We are still there in the Persian Gulf. Believe me, I know it. Coming out of Turkey and monitoring the security zone in Northern Iraq; policing Southern Watch in the no-fly, no-drive zones in the South; Bosnia and the Balkans - these are enduring commitments that once we get them we tend to look around and see not too many suits, but a hell of a lot of uniforms around still in place, still marking time.

The integration of the other elements of power are not done well. I really think our interagency process needs a major reform. The political dimension, the economic dimension, the cultural dimension, the humanitarian dimension are still not well blended with the military or security dimension. And we need to find a way to make that happen. It's not easy. We can see in the current situation that the pace of operations where the military piece of this is moving very fast, and maybe the humanitarian and political are on different timelines. Evening them up and getting them synchronized, you know, is going to be extremely difficult, especially when you're thrown into a situation that is breaking fast. The translation of the political objectives and the military tasks in these operations is extremely difficult. These are not clear-cut, easily identifiable military action verbs. We understand "disrupt, destroy" and the kinds of terms that we use on the ground and in the air to get things done. It's difficult when the political objectives are stated in very soft terms. And, we're trying to find a way not to be accused of mission creep, not to be expanding the objectives of the mission.

Trying to understand the situation on the ground, not having a very good iterative process back with those that make strategic decisions. And those that make strategic decisions tend to make them here. And I would tell you the battlefield inside the beltway looks very different than the battlefield out there. The way I saw the world as a CINC, and the way you may see it as someone making key strategic and policy decisions back here inside the beltway, are entirely different. I don't get the Early Bird. I don't watch the Sunday talk shows. I'm looking at events on the ground. You are back here being driven by other elements that have to be taken into consideration. And, there's been a lot of discussion about missions for the military, and after the Cold War that we were adrift. Last June, I was given an opportunity to deliver a lecture on the 21st Century U.S. military.

In preparation for that, I looked at what can we see as missions for the future. And, I came down with seven. The first is the outside possibility that we have a global power with sophisticated military capabilities that we have to face. Will we or won't we? I don't know. Admiral Prueher is going to be speaking, I think, in the next panel and as a former PACOM Commander and Ambassador to China we can talk, I think, to him at much greater length at what the possibilities are. We're second going to face regional hedgemons with growing asymmetric capabilities, such as weapons of mass destruction and missiles, all designed primarily to deny us access to vital areas and regional allies. We will face transnational threats, that include terrorist groups and extremists. International criminal and drug organizations - we're already engaged in those kinds of operations. We'll fight warlords as opposed to nation-states.

We will deal with new missions that we haven't even thought of yet, like environmental security, issues of health and disease control and illegal migrations. I think we'll see more of that in the future fall our way. We'll deal with the problems of failed or incapable states that require humanitarian peacekeeping assistance, disaster relief, and national reconstruction. We will continue to face a series of overseas crises that threaten U.S. citizens and property that we'll have to respond to, and very quickly, in very short term, and deal with very decisively. We will face domestic emergencies that exceed the capacity of other federal and local government agencies to handle. I wrote this in June, now. I'm not taking credit for it, but I think you're going to hear now, with Homeland Defense, the new commitment to federal forces. And, finally, we're going to deal with threats to our key repositories of information and our systems for moving information. And, we're going to have to learn to deal with that issue and in that realm.

Let me just say in closing that prior to the events of September 11th, the biggest issue we were dealing with was change. The military needed to change. The military needed help. We talked a transformation. I never quite understood what transformation was because no one defined it the same way. Everybody had their own definition. I felt that the first thing we needed to do was get a clear cut strategy and a clear cut direction for the military. We'd been lacking that since the end of the Cold War. And, then when we went about change, I thought there were four areas we had to look at. The first was reform. There are parts of our military that are in desperate need of reform. One is the personnel system. And, I would argue that we throw people out too soon. We can certainly age and give more experience to our people, more time and grade.

We ought to have a radical reconstruction of the personnel system and the way we handle our people and the way we develop a more professionalized and experienced core of leaders. And, that's just one area. There are other areas that I think "reform" is the right term. The second term I would use is "modernization". There are certain capabilities that we have that are damned good where we're going to see them around for a long while. And we need to keep the pace of modernization up, to stay ahead of any potential enemies. And I think we've made some misjudgments about some of these capabilities. There was a lot of talk about reducing ground forces in favor of more sophisticated space and air forces. Well, I hope the lessons of September 11th, one that comes out is "Thank God we didn't do that!" And I can tell you as a CINC in the region, that I had a heavy requirement to have a very balanced force and not an unbalanced force, and to rely totally on technology to solve all the problems.

We will have to make the decision about what we eliminate, as a third category. And I would say that we ought to do elimination carefully. In some cases, it ought to be atrophy, it ought to be over time, so that we're careful that whatever's going to replace that capability is online, that we handle our people right as we remove them from service. Not like we did at the end of the Cold War. And, the fourth area is truly transformation, as I would define, a major technological or conceptual leap ahead. Where will we invest the money to do that? Where will we invest the focus and research and development? It needs to be carefully thought out. There are advocates for sensing, advocates for precision, advocates for all sorts of capabilities. This goes back to the point about strategy and direction. That's going to cost a lot, that's going to be high risk and it must be focused. But change in the military needs to go through all these and look at all these possibilities as to how we change, and not just focus on one element or limit ourselves to just a few capabilities to handle these problems. Thank you. (Applause)

Mr. Thompson: Thank you, General Zinni. Gordon Adams.

Dr. Adams: Good morning. I have the unique, I guess, and difficult challenge in a world that is exceedingly well organized when it comes to the military side of the issue to talk about some broader arrays and instruments of American national power that need to be part of this game. Let me start by taking a step back, pretty much in the direction that General Zinni just took us, to the larger question of the agenda. And, then talk a bit about how one integrates these instruments, these broader instruments of national power, into that agenda. But, let's start with the agenda first. The impression that -- because I think we face a very critical learning moment in American national security policy. At the beginning of this particular Administration, the sense that one had about these instruments of power and their objectives, their missions, was that the military was intended to fight and win wars, that it would be transformed to do the job better, that there would be a deliberate attempt to end the kinds of over- commitments that General Zinni focused on, that there would be a concern about defending the United States, that the United States would not bail out other governments when they entered financial trouble and a certain amount of reluctance with respect to treaty regimes and overseas engagement.

My sense is that in the terms of that agenda, 9-11 has been a wakeup call, and a wakeup call that had a very specific focus, a concern about the vulnerability of the American homeland to terrorism and attacks with a global reach. That focused attention initially, and has focused attention, on the need to integrate on all fronts, to fight on all fronts, to integrate foreign and domestic capabilities, to create coalitions that could confront a terrorist threat. I want to say this morning that I think there is a much larger lesson that we could draw from our current circumstance. Terror, in my judgment, is a tactic used by specific forces, principally in this case seeking the end of U.S. global presence. But the United States is unlikely to tackle terrorists in every case in every country. In my judgment, terrorism represents one vector of a much broader array of interests and concerns that require American leadership and involvement. We are, in essence, on a learning curve for the 21st Century.

The fight against terrorism is not, I would assert, a central organizing concept of American national security policy. It is one vector in that broader concern about our engagement globally. General Zinni's been through a list of the kinds of broader agenda issues that the nation faces. I don't disagree with his list. I have a slightly different way - we all do our lists in our own way - of posing what those threats and challenges to the United States and those opportunities may be. But, they are very broad and they are very difficult to pull into one organizing central concept. We have vital regional interests, only some of which concern issues of terrorism, vital regional interests in Europe and with Russia, in the Middle East and the Gulf and East and Northeast Asia which I would judge to be the three central geographic regions of American vital interest. The terrorist issue to focus on terrorism seems to help with one of those. It has brought the United States and the Russians more closely together, aligned in what Sam (inaudible) has called a coincidence of interests, but not a major realignment. Secondly, we have issues of regional conflict, ethnic conflict and state collapse. And, many of those issues have not disappeared while we focus on this important conflict with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

The Balkans remains unsettled. Central Africa remains in conflict. Zimbabwe is in disintegration. And, other states face regional issues of major concern. Thirdly, we have major problems of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and they, plus other potential asymmetrical capabilities that could be used against the United States both at home and abroad, including the cyber conflict that General Zinni referred to. And, fourthly, the much broader issue which has kind of been lost in the last few months, and understandably, But, it does not go away, is the implications of globalization in the economy, in technology, in information, in the movement of people and finance and the development of a concern about the relationship between the have and the have-nots, which in turn leads to and fuels some of these other concerns of American national security.

Well, what then is the policy lesson of 9-11? What is the point that we find ourselves on the learning curve? Well, let me make three points as to what I think at least the policy lesson may be here. First, it makes it very clear, and these other issues that we face make it very clear that we need an integrated national security strategy. We do not have one yet. We have a Quadrennial Defense Review, which focuses on the Defense Department, but we still need to shape what a full national security strategy, using all of the instruments of power, is intended to be. Some dismiss the development of a national security strategy as an anodyne document that ends up in a filing cabinet, for File 13, long before it has even begun to gray. It is a very centralizing capability properly managed for focusing government attention on the broadest array of concerns and goals, the broadest array of instruments.

Secondly, we do need to integrate much more than we have all of the instruments of state craft, not just for the war on global terrorism, but to confront all of the issues that I have mentioned. It is really time to put an end to what I would call "calling card meetings", the meetings where you show up and say, "I haven't met you before. Here's my card. I'm with Agency "X". I'm with Agency "Y". I'm concerned with humanitarian relief. I do disaster relief. I do migration problems. I do the military in a particular situation." The integration of those instruments needs to be more great. I would suggest from my judgment that in terms of that integration of the instruments of state craft, the military is not, in fact, the key enabler. I agree with General Zinni it has by default, in the 1990s, become too often the key enabler. But, we have not done what we should do to embolden and develop and integrate the instruments of state craft that enable us to use the military wisely and selectively.

Thirdly, third point, that national security strategy needs to have three very critical foresight. One, it needs to anticipate, not respond. That's probably the key dimension and one of the reasons you need all the instruments of state craft to develop that strategy. It needs to anticipate, not respond. Secondly, it needs to work to shape, not react. So, when it anticipates it needs to engage and shape, not simply react to events. And, thirdly, it needs to be capable of recovering without leaving the defense forces of the United States deployed forever, as the holder of the bag, as General Zinni described it. To put it bluntly, we need to get ahead of the problems and not have the problems come to us. The military has to go in too late to fix things when the problems have come to us. Now, what are some of the other instruments involved here? I am not going to speak except briefly at the end about the State Department, but I think that Frank Carlucci and General Zinni have both made very important points there. The economic instruments that I want to say something about are key to anticipation and to shaping. And, they are not well integrated, not only into national security strategy making, but not even among themselves.

So, I want to make a few very selective comments about those instruments and the shortfall that we may still face with respect to their integration. Trade policy is the first, for the objective there is creating a more open free market economy around the globe. But it is not clear what the strategy is for trade policy and too often, in my experience, trade policy was developed in this country largely by hiding the hand from the rest of the national security structure. Now, I want to say in my experience, and let me interpolate that for a moment, that one of the key instruments here, one of the key problems here, is that these instruments of policy are not integrated at the Executive Branch level. The only place that funding for development and economics and trade and for the military and for intelligence were integrated into a single office, was in the office I occupied for five years at the Office of Management and Budget. There was no other office in the Executive Office of the President where there was a single focus of concern on all of those instruments. Trade policy, in my judgment, was not well integrated as a consequence. It was developed offline. Financial relations, secondly, and I say financial relations rather than treasury, because there are many instruments for the financial relationship.

Jane Hall's comments in the video talked about controlling money flows. That is one. Paying attention to currency value, providing monetary support and crisis response. In all of these areas, too, there is a tendency in the Executive Branch for the agency principally involved, Treasury Department, to hide the ball and not to integrate, not to seek to integrate, those capacities in a head. You can see, however, how the value of currency, how controlling money flows, how supporting monetary shifts, how responding to crises can play a role in anticipation and in shaping long before we have to leave the military holding the ball. International development programs. We have bilateral assistance, we have multilateral assistance; but in my experience, our bilateral assistance has not done as well in crisis response as it does in protecting long term pet rocks in the development agenda at the Agency for International Development. Now, I know they're in this building, so I'll probably pay for that comment, but the guardianship of pet rocks has systematically, in my judgment, hindered the capacity of AID to be integrated into using development assistance to anticipate and to shape.

We have watched a dwindling supply of economic support funds in the Department of State shift almost entirely into a program for Egypt, Israel and Jordan for the peace process in the Middle East. Not an unimportant process, but one which leaves our ambassadorial corps without the instruments they can use to anticipate and to shape, leaving it to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CINCS to know the region better and to have more funding for programs that bring people together in the region. That's a money issue and it needs to be fixed. We have large billion dollars of contributions to multilateral development banks and the World Bank. But, in my judgment again, our bureaucracy does not focus properly on the objectives of those programs and how they can work to anticipate and to shape the international environment. They are negotiated. The funding is transferred to the regional and World Bank offices, and yet, this is the core of our response to the issue of the have and the have-nots in globalization. We have a thin focus in all of these agencies on the last of the three goals that I described recovering so the military doesn't deploy forever.

The biggest problem we have faced in Bosnia, in Kosovo is integrating the capacity to develop justice systems, police systems, health systems, education systems and simply to reconstruct housing and roads because we have not focused on planning for that objective and we do not fund it well. Fourth, we have domestic economic policy. We don't often think of this as an issue of international security policy, and yet as we look at this quite somewhat concealed problem, which is a global recession that is currently under way, our capacity to develop and stimulate our own economy becomes in part and part of the capacity of the global economy to recover. We export the most, we import the most. So it becomes absolutely critical. And finally, technology policy. They don't talk much about this today, but it's an important instrument both of military power and of our economic capability. It involves the diffusion of know-how and how to control what is crucial and how to strengthen allied relationships.

We have here a stultified backward - I'm not going to mince words - piece of machinery preventing the American economic machine from close global interaction, especially with respect to dual-use and defense related technologies. And we have not had a focus on technology transfer reform or export control reform. It's an important element in our national -- international and national economic and military power that we have a focus on prevention rather than on cooperation. Finally to conclude, how would we handle these tools better? As I've said before, better integration is part of the answer. The only place at the centerpiece of the American government where that is integrated is at the budgetary level where all of those programs are considered in one place. The National Security Council does not incorporate them now and has not done so well in the past. The National Economic Council model developed by the prior Administration did not work terribly well and is, in any case, dead on arrival today. But, it did not have the heft organization structure, statutory capability and credibility with the agencies that the National Security Council machinery has had. So it needs some regular involvement of all of these agencies and their objectives in the development of the national security strategy and in the interagency process. And the way that happens is leadership.

A decision needs to be made at the center that these issues will play their part and be integrated. Secondly, I've suggested some areas where I think they need better funding. ESF needs to be rebalanced. Our Diplomat Corps needs better instruments in economic support funds to play the role of shaping and anticipating, AID needs a more strategic program focus, the Treasury Department needs to focus on the goals and objectives and not just the transfer of cash in the multilateral development process. Those are just illustrations of where we need better-shaped as well as more appropriate funding. Thirdly, some of the day you accomplish that is through better budget planning, is integrating in both in the strategic planning and in the budget planning, as well. Fourthly, and let me point to this particular issue which we haven't focused on much and often don't in these discussions in Washington, we need a much better Congressional recognition of the need for integration. I won't go into this in detail, but on the basis of experience, the jurisdictional Rube Goldberg device that deals with these pockets of funding on the Congress involves five or six different appropriate subcommittees and a large number of authorizing committees, none of whom work well in harness with each other.

A Congressional integration ought to be a focus as well. You can integrate the heck out of the Executive Branch, and the Congress can untie your integration and disintegrate the package. In conclusion, I think this only happens with leadership. Leadership is needed in the White House for strategy development, leadership is needed for the coordination process to be done effectively, leadership is especially needed not to allow agencies to go off and wandering in different directions, but in fact to de-conflict and make decisions. Now, those are some of the directions and some of the lessons that I think we can learn from 9-11 that will facilitate our ability to anticipate, to shape and to recover. Thank you.

Mr. Thompson: Thank you, Dr. Adams. Before we turn to the audience for questions, I guess I'd like to put one question to all three members of the panel, leveraging off of what Gordon Adams said about leadership. You know, the name of this panel is summoning forth the national instruments in a complex environment, using them effectively. Seems as though some of the complexity is out there, but a lot of it is in here inside of the beltway. As long as I can remember, we've been looking for structural solutions to this problem, different ways of organizing the boxes and coordinating the system. Is this an engineering problem or is this principally a form -- a problem of personalities that really can't be fixed in the absence of what Gordon calls leadership?

Mr. Carlucci: Well, I'll take a crack at it. It's both. I mean you have to have the proper organizational structure with lines of authority and accountability lined up. And there, if I can take a leaf from Gordon's book, the Congress, too, has been unhelpful because they tend to divorce accountability from responsibility as they pass laws affecting the Executive Branch. But a lot of it does impend on personalities and just the leadership function. A good leader can make a bad organizational structure work. But if you have -- if you line up your organizational structure a little better, a good leader can do even more. I think - at one time in my career I was appointed a Czar to a disaster relief effort. I had argued against it. I was in O&D at the time, Gordon, and I thought it was a bad idea. But, Nixon thought it was a good idea, so I gave in. And, I went out for the coordination of the Adenas (*sp) disaster and I had control over the agencies' budgets at the same time. Well, they fell into line very quickly. So, once again to emphasize Gordon's point, you get a hold of their budgets the domestic agencies will begin to respond.

General Zinni: I agree with Mr. Carlucci that it's both, but I would focus on the structure because I think, especially in terms of dealing with crises, that the structure is ad hoc. Go back to the point Gordon made about calling card meetings where you meet people for the first time. When people come into the middle of a crisis they are looking for the map, so you may have, for example, people on the military side that have been watching the crisis for years and have a much deeper understanding, and someone that's going to make some critical decisions in another element of national power that is just discovering the crisis. So, the structure needs to provide a more enduring organization for dealing with issues, and one that is cross fed and cross populated so that we have a better understanding of each other.

Dr. Adams: I guess my thought, Loren, is that there's just one dimension I think you left out which I also mentioned, which is strategy. That is, you can set up the best coordinating mechanisms in the world, but if you don't know where they're going to go it's very hard to direct them and decide which the priorities are. So, in choosing who you want to do what when in engineering terms, it's important to have a sense of what it is you want them to do, what the mission is, which is why I also would emphasize strategy. There are some engineering issues here. I truly continue to believe because I was the poor guy who had to integrate 16 to 20 agencies on the foreign policy side at the Office of Management and Budget that our foreign policy machinery alone is riddled with complexities, defects, lack of coordination, lack of a common sense of strategy. We struggled with that through the strategic planning process as required by Congressional legislation, but we are not home with that and it really requires leadership.

And, I think that's where people come in. I really -- I share Frank's point here. To give you one example, in one agency that was fundamentally broke in the early '90s, was the Federal Emergency Management Agency. And, the will and capability of one man at the head of that agency, Jamie Lee Witt, created into it the instrument that can respond as effectively as it can today. So, leadership is very important. Accountability is too. We have peculiarly weak process of government in the United States where we let the elective legislators basically really work in between elections. If you go to almost any other country in the world with a Parliamentary system, the legislatures rubber stamp more than they work in between elections because they've elected the majority and the majority, in a sense, becomes a kind of a dictator in the implementation of policy. Our legislature's separate. It's the glory of American government. What we don't always do well is integrate the two so that they can work together. I do think there's room for structural change in the Congress.

And I think just to put it on the table as an alternative option, I think, too, it's worth discussing whether something like homeland security needs a statutory basis of existence so that Governor Ridge can, in fact, effectively over time continue the process of making decisions and implementing those decisions and so he can work with the Congress rather than be at war with the Congress about who is in charge here, which is an awful battle to continually have with the United States Congress. You know, if those are your enemy, bring them close to you and hug them. Do not try to keep them at arm's length. Last point, I really share Frank Carlucci's point about budget control. Governor Ridge may be acquiring some of this over time. I would have right at the beginning of the process when Governor Ridge was appointed married Mitch Daniels to his hip and said, "All of the decisions that Governor Ridge is going to have to make are going to be implemented by this guy over here", because there's no greater authority for focusing the minds of agencies than saying, "Your budget is at stake."

Mr. Thompson: All right. Well, we have the opportunity now, for those of you who are interested, in the audience to ask a question. Could you wait until the microphone comes to you and when you ask your question could you identify who you are? I didn't say the microphone had to work. (Laughter)

Audience: Steven Binel, Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute. I have a question on organizing for homeland security. If you think in terms of the larger objective of homeland security, and keeping Americans safe from terrorist attack, that presumably includes both defense at home but also counter offensive action overseas. Ordinarily, we try and integrate defensive and counter offensive action as closely as possible within the military dimension of power, much less integrating across the military and the non military dimension of power. I was wondering if the panel could comment on the implications of organizing for homeland security by establishing an institution that focuses on the defensive home element and does it outside of the Department of Defense and the National Security Council.

Mr. Carlucci: I'm not sure I understood the question. You're talking about a separate agency?

Audience: Yeah. I mean, to the extent that the home -- that Governor Ridge's institution eventually becomes a substantial outside agency with this responsibility that's neither subordinate to nor superior to the Department of Defense and the National Security Council, does this promote tight integration of all of the elements that we need in order to provide homeland security or not?

Mr. Carlucci: Well, I personally have a knee jerk reaction against the creation of more agencies. I think we've got too many already. I think we have to give Governor Ridge a chance to make the coordinating role work. And, if he has sufficient budget clout and if he's got access to the President, which he clearly has, the agency should fall in line. If you create another agency, then somebody has to coordinate that agency. So I think what Governor Ridge is going to have to do, and he has obviously the capability to do this because General Downing apparently reports to two masters, is integrate his activities with the activities of the National Security Council, which after all does include Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense and the national security components.

General Zinni: Before September 11th, I participated as a Senior Mentor in a series of exercises regarding what amounts to now has become known as homeland defense, but reacting to crises much similar to what we're preparing for now. What struck me in that was some of the other agencies, like Justice and FEMA, go from the strategic here down to the tactical on the street where the event's occurring and have nothing in between. The military attempts to match up, or the DOD, has tactical operational strategic levels and there were mismatches. There was confusion on intelligence sharing, there was confusion on regional direction, tactical direction and then strategic direction from here. So, I do think something like this organization that Governor Ridge is putting together is necessary to fill that void. If you have isolated events that local agencies handle and then states reinforce and then federal come in, sort of the traditional come as soon as it gets beyond the capability of the level before you, that could be handled by the way things were before. If there are going to be a series of events, or they're going to have strategic implications, or they have to be married and seamless with counteractions overseas, I do think we need something to pull it all together, because there are missing levels and missing elements of coordination that are obviously necessary if you deal with something on that scale.

Dr. Adams: My response is first an observation about one of the interesting features that I've noticed out of the current response to the terrorist attacks, and that is that the capacity -- General Zinni's right. There's not a lot of degrees of development between policy making and street action in some of these other agencies. There certainly is in our military capability. It's organized to provide that kind of capability. After the terrorist attacks when the priority came of developing fiscal requirements for what we needed to do to respond and recover from the attacks, what struck me was the enormous and immediate capability of the Department of Defense and the services to identify what they needed, to prioritize what they needed, to establish those goals and to communicate them to the Congress, something that we do enormously effectively in the Pentagon.

What was also striking was the inability, the parallel inability, of the domestic agencies concerned with the same kinds of responses to develop that kind of integrated requirement -- set of requirements. These agencies have lived so long in an atmosphere of fiscal poverty and just getting along that they have not figured out how to aggressively and ambitiously define what is needed, hat the priorities are, what the requirements are, what funding is needed to provide them. It's quite striking that the development of that kind of package has fallen to the ranking minority member of the House Appropriations Committee, Dave Oglie, who himself put together a set of requirements for domestic agencies, as well as intelligence agencies in this case, that might be needed to deal with the terrorism crisis. There are a couple of things that I think we'll need to think about and maybe not do right away. I certainly agree that starting with Governor Ridge's operation is a good place to start.

I am concerned, I think, that he does not have appropriate budgetary authority and, as I said before, I'm concerned that I don't think he has the right kind of Congressional wiring and that, I believe in my view, should lead us to consider whether or not there should be a statutory responsibility located in the Executive Office of the President. That's worth discussion, perhaps not haste, but at least discussion to coordinate these things more appropriately. And, finally, I think it's worth thinking as well about what kinds of capabilities to protect the domestic American homeland we need to have at the federal level. I'm not entirely persuaded that the option defined by the Hart-Rudman Commission to combine a Border Patrol, Customs and the Coast Guard in a federated agency concerned with homeland security is quite right, but again, it's the kind of option that may need to be considered so that we know people aren't overlapping, duplicating. They're coordinated and they fit a strategy.

Mr. Thompson: I think we have time for one more question, if we could have brief responses from the panel. Here in front.

Audience: My name is David Strizen. I'm with JSA Partners. It's a consulting company. My question is primarily directed to Dr. Adams regarding your comments on export controls and technology policy. Although if the other panelists have a good opinion, I'd be interested in that too. And, particularly, when you said the focus right now is on prevention, not cooperation. I just want to know if you can explain a little bit better what you mean about that, particularly in light of weapons of mass destruction, etcetera.

Dr. Adams: It probably requires a longer answer than we have time to supply at this point, but we have a problem both -- we have two problems simultaneously, really three. One, technology and the capability to develop not only weapons of mass destruction but all kinds of instruments of war, is amply diffused and highly dual use at this point. Two, we have an issue involving the capacity of the U.S. and its NATO allied forces to interoperate. OK? And so, three, we have a question of what do we protect and what do we cooperate on. Right now, we have a piece of machinery operated largely in the Department of State. That process is 45 to 50,000 license requests a year, mostly for things that in no way engage major military capability that could be directed against the United States. What we have not done is prioritize very specifically what technologies we can, need to and should protect, what kinds of regimes we need to establish with our allies so interoperability and tensions over defense trade don't become a source of friction that weakens the alliance while being sure that we're not providing the capacity to other countries in those key technologies to develop capabilities to be used against us. It's a very difficult problem, but right now we're going at it in a way that doesn't control technology, doesn't allow interoperability and, therefore, doesn't strengthen our national security.

Mr. Thompson: Well, we are out of time. Let me just say by way of conclusion that even mushroom clouds can have silver linings. We may find that this war against global terrorism that we're all so preoccupied with right now is a relatively transient thing. But in the aftermath of what happened on September 11th, the distinction we've traditionally drawn between domestic and foreign affairs, between homeland and foreign defense, I think that's gone forever. So, I want to thank our panel members for offering their insights into how we deal with a radically transformed world and a different kind of defense in a new millennium. Thank you. (Applause)

Speaker: I want to thank the panel as well.