Previous IFPA-Fletcher Conferences

The 33rd IFPA-Fletcher Conference
on
National Security Strategy and Policy

October 16-17, 2002
The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center
Washington, D.C.

Transcript Session 2: Strategic Responses to New Security Challenges

Reorganizing for Security of the Homeland and the Americas
Address by Lieutenant General Edward G. Anderson III, USA, Deputy Commander, U. S. Northern Command

Harmon: … We come now to the top of the line-up as it was published and to the gentleman who was most gracious and allowed us at the last minute to re-shuffle a bit, Lieutenant General Edward Anderson, the Deputy Commander of the 2nd newest unified command, Northern Command. He transitioned into that job from his earlier position as Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff of U. S. Space Command in Colorado.

Before holding these positions, General Anderson distinguished himself doing a variety of work for the Army including operations and plans, space and missile defense, armored forces, and infantry doctrine. General Anderson has also been a leader in various joint positions, including a research and development position at the Pentagon and being Director of Strategic Plans and Policy on the Joint Staff.

He will address us today on a subject that is one of the most asked about by American citizens, that is, how we should re-organize for the security of the homeland and the Americas. General.

Lt. General Anderson: Well, thank you very much Chris. I appreciate those kind words. Actually, I was getting a bit of a complex as I listened to the introduction of our earlier speakers. I think Bill Gertz and I are probably the only ones who are not graduates of Fletcher. But I would like to be, Bob, where are you? Oh, you are not either. All right. All right. Well, it really is a pleasure to be here.

I certainly consider it an honor and a privilege to be a part of this very distinguished panel that we have before us here. General Ed Eberhardt who is the Commander of U. S. Northern Command sends his sincere regrets that he could not be here. I can assure you that he feels that this conference is a very, very important forum. And he does sincerely regret that he could not be here.

I give my congratulations to General Jim Jones and the U.S. Marine Corps, Dr. Steve Younger and the staff of DTRA, as well as to Bob Pfaltzgraff, the IFPA and the Fletcher School for once again pulling together an absolutely great conference and addressing the key, relevant, and significant issues that face our nation here today. And I thank you for giving NORTHCOM an opportunity to be a part of this.

As you know, and as you can see up there, our panel is required or was asked to address the subject of a strategic response to new security challenges. And we in NORTHCOM believe that the establishment of NORTHCOM represents a strategic response to the new security challenges that we face every day. So, what I would like to do is I would like to take the next few minutes to tell you a little bit about U. S. Northern Command and then, obviously, I will look forward to your questions.

I am going to begin, however, with a little subtlety here that you probably wouldn’t pick up on except for the fact that -- recognize it was just two weeks ago yesterday -- this command achieved its initial operational capabilities. So, certainly as Chris indicated we are one of the newest unified commands on the block. And at the same time it is probably the first time that we have started from a blank sheet of paper in terms of establishing a unified command.

So, it has been an interesting time. And what I would like to explain to you is, if you will look up at the right side of the slide you will see our distinctive uniform insignia and symbol, or logo. And let me just take a moment because there are some subtleties there that are pretty important that I would like you to just take a look at. Number one, as you can see, looking outside-in it goes red, white and blue for obvious reasons.

Certainly, it has the national symbol of our eagle on there and certainly, he is looking toward the olive branch in one hand for peace and of course the 13 arrows in the other talon, and he is overlaid on the area of responsibility for U. S. Northern Command. Here are some of the subtleties: The shield, the warrior’s shield that is emblazoned on the eagle there, if you will note the stars, the 13 stars, they are the six-pointed stars, which are exactly the same stars, 13 of them of course, that were on George Washington’s flag that flew over Valley Forge, arguably our first commander responsible for homeland defense.

And then if you look across the top you will see five stars there. Those are eight-pointed stars, the eight points signify the directions on the compass to indicate that we are looking in every direction. And the five stars represent the five Services; Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Coast Guard. And then if you look under the left wing you will see three stars, three gold stars.
Those three gold stars are intended to represent the location of the tragic events on 9/11 and the symbols, gold stars, you may recall, are a carry-over last used in World War II when mothers flew the gold stars when they lost family members in World War II. So, that is our symbol that we have established for U.S. Northern Command. Let me, if I could-- I will go to the next slide please.

The first panel in this session certainly addressed this subject of security challenges very, very well and certainly we would all agree that Secretary Wolfowitz did the same. But let me just touch on it for a moment because it certainly is very, very relevant to why we have a Northern Command. I think we would all agree, perhaps, as we look historically, that the United States has always felt protected by virtue of, among many other things, our geographic location, where we are bounded on the east and the west by two vast oceans and on the north and the south by two great and trusted allies.

And the fact that we have a military force that is second to none in the world and capable of defeating threats on distant shores before they ever approach the United States. But as we approach the 21st century, and as we are now actually in the 21st century, we are seeing the emergence of asymmetric threats in addition to the traditional threats that we are accustomed to. And so you see some of them listed there and those were, in part, addressed this morning by the panel.

And certainly these are not all of the asymmetric threats, but recognize that terrorism is recognized as an asymmetric threat. And, of course, the other thing is that not only do we have new threats but we have new players, different players than the traditional players that we have had. It is not just the nation states that we have seen in the past but the rogue states and other groups such al Qaeda, who are a little less well-defined.

So, as we look at our country and you look at the events of about the last 10 years, I think we should recognize our country and our people are vulnerable. And that geographic location does not provide us that protection that we once assumed. So, certainly, I think (an over simplified statement, admittedly), this is a very, very much more dangerous and complex environment, which obviously is going to require an expanded effort. And we must be prepared to meet all of these potential threats to include the threats from terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Next slide please.

Do we want this to happen? Obviously, that is a rhetorical question. The easy answer is no, we don’t want this to happen. But the fact is that a clear and present danger does exist. Clearly addressed this morning, clearly addressed this afternoon at lunchtime. WMD, weapons of mass destruction, certainly are of significant concern to us. They potentially could kill thousands or hundred of thousands of innocent people at any one time.

And, as we know, there are people out there who want to do that. These are not weapons as they used to be that were intended for deterrence. These are weapons that are determined to be employed by a variety of different actors who are out there. So we have got to protect our homeland, obviously, from all of these kinds of threats. And there may be those out there, maybe some who are even in here today, who questioned why we need a Northern Command.

Well, I think the President put it clearly when he said, we are not going to sit around here and just wait for another incident. We’re going to act. And that is what this is. This is a response to be proactive versus being reactive. And that is what is being demonstrated by the stand up of Northern Command. Next slide, please.

This is our mission. Now, as you are reading through that, let me just focus on a couple of things there. There are two major pieces here to our mission separated by the semi-colon. And I guess an oversimplified way, again, to take look at it is, if you look at the upper part of it, that is the part that any of our regional combatant commanders would find in their mission statement as well, whether it be PACOM, SOUTHCOM, EUCOM, CENTCOM, those same words would apply.

It is the second part, however, the part after the semi-colon, that makes our mission different from the other combatant commanders. And, of course, that is the responsibility for providing civil support as directed. Or, you could look at it in another way, and say that the part in front of the semi-colon is intended to address external threats and the part after the semi-colon is intended to address internal threats.

Internal threats are primarily a responsibility of law enforcement and we support, we do not do, law enforcement. Let me make sure that that point is made very, very clear. Okay. Next slide please. This is our area of responsibility or, in our jargon, our AOR, as you would expect. If you start with Alaska up there at the left hand corner, our boundary, or our AOR extends 500 miles into the ocean.

And then you start coming down south, it encompasses all of Canada, all of the continental United States, Mexico, portions of the Caribbean, back up the east coast, along the west coast of Greenland, and back to Alaska. So, it is much like any other combatant commander’s AOR except for one significant difference, it contains our homeland. And that is a significant difference.
But, if we are going to be able to do our mission of protecting our homeland the way we want to do it, what we have to do is down there in the lower right -- there where you see the AOR of the other combatant commanders. As you know, the vast majority of threats against this country originate outside our boundaries. And so we must ensure that we are closely coordinating and synchronizing with the other combatant commanders. Next slide please.

This is intended to depict our responsibilities. As has been pointed out a couple of times today, the President issued his National Security Strategy in September and it outlines how the nation, at all levels of government, among other things, will prevent future terrorist attacks. Some of the specific objectives were, number one -- prevent attacks, number two -- reduce America’s vulnerability to attacks and then number three -- recover from those attacks that do occur.

NORTHCOM has responsibility in all three of those objectives and the Secretary of Defense has outlined for us how we will develop or how we will support the President’s strategy. And we will respond to three categories of situations that you can see there, extraordinary circumstances, temporary circumstances, and emergency circumstances.

When you look at the top, start at the top, which we consider to be our number one priority, the extraordinary circumstances are those traditional military missions that are there to basically defend against the external threats of aggression. It is our number one priority as I say. An example that you could come to would be the CAPs, the Combat Air Patrols that we were providing over our cities and key infrastructure shortly after -- right after -- 9/11.

In those circumstances, we expect that we in Northern Command would have the lead role, and obviously we prefer that this would never happen. If you go down to the lower left corner down there in the category called emergency circumstances, what we see are those circumstances that are generally catastrophic in nature and so we would be called upon to provide the unique capabilities that we may possess that other organizations and primarily city, state, or federal organizations do not have and would be directed to do that by the President or the Secretary of Defense.

So, examples would be things like floods and forest fires and those kinds of things. And then the things in temporary circumstances that you see in the middle are those things that are limited in scope and the other agencies have the lead, things like special events -- like the Olympics -- or perhaps support to the FBI in some sort of a law enforcement piece. So, those are the responsibilities that we see for our command here in protecting the homeland. And, obviously to do all of this it requires a team effort. Next slide please.

Let me begin with our team, the team that we have on the staff there. It is a total force team. In staffing our headquarters we used the concept of only bringing in the best of the breed. And what that simply means is that we did not focus on an individual’s service or their component. We took those who had the right skills and the right experience and brought them onto the staff.

So, what we have on the staff is a mix of reserve components, active duty with all Services represented as you can see there. Now, that is our force on the headquarters, but to be a total force requires a total national team, obviously. It is going to be key. And what will be key will be the relations that we have with those organizations. And please don’t misinterpret this. I do not intend to reflect that only those that you see on the right slide are those who are part of the national team. That is not correct.

There are many others who will be there as well. But we have got to be very careful in defining our relations with federal, state, and local agencies because what we expect to gain from that kind of a partnership, from those relationships is information sharing, which will be very, very important to us and it will be important to us to break down the cultural barriers that have existed there on all sides, ourselves included, for so very long.

We are already well along in this effort. We have a number of organizations represented on our staff that are not normally on staff. FEMA will be there soon. We expect a representative from Customs. FBI is already there. CIA, State, NSA, and so on and so forth as a part of our national team. Next slide please.

Every combatant commander has a responsibility for theater security cooperation. I don’t want to misrepresent the top (of the slide.) All of those, of course, are flags who are in the area. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we have theater security cooperation agreements with each of them. But certainly, as you know, the two primary countries in our AOR are Canada and Mexico. We already have many agreements with Canada and certainly have a well-established relationship with them of cooperation and coordination and we intend to continue to build on that.

Mexico, we respect their sovereignty and their interests and certainly we will be prepared to address coordination and cooperation with them when our two countries determine that it is appropriate for both, and certainly will be doing that with all countries in the AOR. Next slide please.

So, in conclusion, obviously, new security challenges in this 21st century have made our nation and our population vulnerable, let there be no doubt. The protection that we have provided, that was provided by geographic isolation has clearly diminished. What we believe is important is a capabilities approach to dissuade future adversaries, not just deter but dissuade future adversaries. And by that, that means, don’t allow them to get the capability.

Deter means they have the capability and you don’t want them to use it. Dissuade means don’t develop the capability. That is really what we are looking for there. And just as we have done in the past, we must continue to take advantage of new and existing technologies so that we may be able to maintain our advantages here.

We certainly will be working closely with federal, state and local governments. We see that, as I mentioned, our primary missions are deter, prevent and defeat. We feel as though the most important of those are to be able to deter and prevent so that we hopefully never have to be in a situation where we have to defeat. But, we will be prepared to do that, obviously. We are open for business at U. S. Northern Command with our initial operational capability.

We may be young, but let me tell you, we are absolutely and totally dedicated to that one, single mission, one-stop shopping, if you will, for homeland defense. Next slide please.

The Commander in Chief stated it this way, “And certainly one significant and bold action that this nation has already taken is the establishment of Northern Command.” Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here and to speak to you, and I look forward to your questions.

Questions and Answers

Audience: Jeff Clark, Center of Military History. This is a question for Mr. Billingslea, SOLIC. Sir, you spoke about rebuilding, reconstruction, the role of Special Operations in that task, it could be in Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq or Kuwait. And you mentioned Civil Affairs and they have a great capability for infrastructure, for governmental infrastructure reconstruction with help from the Corps of Engineers and maybe companies like Newton-Brown.

But what about the political reconstruction or construction? You go into a country like Iraq or post-World War II Germany and Japan. Who do you think or how--? Do you have any thoughts about how best to approach that part of kind of nation building if we want to get back into that business? That is my question. Thanks.

Harmon: Mr. Clark’s question is a very good one. However, he can’t tell probably because of where the podium sits, but the Principal Deputy of SOLIC has escaped back to the Pentagon and has to face another meeting there. It may well be, however, that three of our other panelists are interested enough in the question to want to comment on it. Yes, sir.

Locher: It has been many years since I have been the Assistant Secretary for SOLIC, so I am a little dated, but with respect to this idea of political reconstruction, when a Civil Affairs team is preparing for reconstitution of a government, the team can have expertise on political, governmental matters. As a matter of fact, when we were redoing the reconstitution in Kuwait, that was actually planned here in Washington with 54 Civil Affairs Reservists and one member from 20 Kuwaiti ministries.

So there is expertise there, political expertise in the Civil Affairs Organization, how that might be augmented by other elements of the United States government I don’t know at the present time. But this is an area where the Civil Affairs people could at least make a start.

Harmon: General Anderson, the Army is so heavily involved in Civil Affairs abroad, especially with some of the reservists’ work, things like that side of work. I don’t know if you wanted to add to—

Anderson: Well, you bring up a very good point. And certainly, Mr. Locher is well informed on that. I think the other dimension to this, however, is that when you are addressing that kind of a problem, that kind of an issue, this really requires an interagency approach. And it should not be expected that the military, in and of itself, has to develop those skills solely to be able to perform that function.

Others, such as the Department of State and other organizations within the government are well equipped to be able to do those kinds of things. And so, I think an interagency approach with Civil Affairs and the other organizations equipped to do that is a good start, if you would.

Gertz: Yes, and I would also like to make the point that I think that NGOs can also play that role. There is a very good group headed by Al Santoli who used to work on the Hill and he just formed a group that is supporting our Special Forces in the Philippines by getting medical supplies and getting them out to the people in the poor areas of the southern Philippines. And he really looks at it as the humanitarian war against terrorism because that is really going at the root causes.

And that is a program that is just beginning and I think that the military is going to look to NGOs to do that in a lot of other places, too.

__: I would add that the President’s new National Security Strategy certainly indicates the significance of the war of ideas in the current effort abroad against terrorism, that certainly reasonable structures have a great deal to do with the kind of alternative there can be both to some of the plans of terrorists but also the norms the despots try to establish before housing some of those same terrorists

And I think that the United States may or may not have been tremendously good in the past at sort of the war of ideas and the proponency in preparation for democracy abroad. But it does seem to me to be an absolutely vital part of our national strategy. It has been, of course, a part of all past national security strategies, at least all those I have read.

And it varies on emphasis with administration to administration but each has recognized its utility and the current one, released September 17th , certainly does too.

Harmon: Good. We should go to another question. Dr. Shultz. Richard.
Shultz: This is for Bill. Your comments were interesting. I wondered if you could elaborate a bit on what you had in mind when you said that SOCOM should have its own intelligence capability and what specifically; how do you see that unfolding?

Gertz: Again, it is a unit kind of a function whereby you would have a unilateral capability in places around the world that could-- I mean, it is an action-oriented organization but it would be involving the infrastructure and preparations for the deployment of forces so that we don’t have to start from ground zero to begin an operation renting warehouses, locating various things that are going to be needed for those kinds of things. I think that we need a Special Operations intelligence/covert action capability that can be doing that in a lot of places.

It is a fairly expensive thing to do. It is fairly time consuming, but I think that is the kind of thing that they need to do.
__: ...(inaudible)

Gertz: Absolutely, yes, both places where we can get to easily and especially places that we can’t get to. And, of course, that is going to involve better unit capabilities across the board to be able to do that.

Harmon: I think I saw another arm down that way. Yes, sir.

__: ...(inaudible) of Indonesia. My question is for Mr. Bill Gertz. Because we all know that in ...(inaudible) in the northern tip of Sumatra Island, there is Muslim’s ...(inaudible) movement. They want to establish 100% Muslim country. And we all know that in 1980s they got training from Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. Now their strength is about 300 weapons and what is your point of view about this movement. Is it belong to ...(inaudible) terrorists or not. Thank you.

Gertz: Well, as I said, I think that the al Qaeda strategy is to try and fold all of those kind of groups into one group that they head that has their extremist vision of Islam. I am not familiar with that particular group but I know that is a pretty bad neighborhood as far as emerging terrorist threats. I think the Philippines is also dealing with that too.

I know that-- As I mentioned this one humanitarian program is trying to get on the Island of Suhoo(?) and try to get some help there to try to do humanitarian work and in some sense, ideological work. I didn’t mention it in my points but one of the big intelligence challenges for the war on terrorism is going to be how to deal with the ideological component. And I don’t think we are doing a very good job.

And part of the problem is that the President has said this is not a war against Islam, but from the Islamic extremists point of view, this is clearly a war against Judaism and Christianity. And we need to find some ways to deal with that, whether it is bringing together moderate Muslims, say, in Egypt and Turkey, if we can find them, and trying to deal with the issue of Islamic extremism head on.

Again, I think it is an ideological problem that would have an impact on the area that you are talking about.

Harmon: Yes, sir.

Fautua: Dave Fautua, Joint Futures Lab, U.S. Joint Forces Command. I’d like to take advantage of the panel members and ask a question of all three of you that are linked and, depending on how you answer, be interactive. First to Mr. Locher, you mentioned the Seven S’s, McKinsey’s Seven S’s, in relation to culture with the interagencies. And I completely agree with you. It is a very, very big problem.

I wonder if you could speak to how you would operationalize those Seven S’s within HLS but also within the context of NORTHCOM. And then, General Anderson, based on what he says, what would you do to operationalize his recommendations. And then, lastly, Mr. Gertz, given what General Anderson says, how does that at all relate to sharing information, which in itself is compartmentalized and hidden behind green doors, etcetera. Is it possible to have this kind of Seven S’s with information and intelligence?

Locher: Well, I guess I need to start this response. With respect to the issue of culture and the interagency, the different departments that play a role in the national security process have, over the years, developed different cultures. Culture is not something that is easy to address straight on. It actually takes a long period of time. And as you are thinking about how can I change the culture, you often need to think about what are the nearer-term things that I can do in some of the other Seven S’s that slowly begin the cultural change.

For example, in the Counter-terrorism Security Group at the NSC where I served for four years, there was little interest by many of the participating agencies to get involved in exercises. In the Department of Defense it was something that we were always used to doing. But it was alien to the civilian agencies.

And the Department of Defense actually proposed doing exercise, tabletop exercises, here in Washington with various terrorism scenarios. And in the beginning there was very weak participation by the civilian agencies. The fifth assistant would normally be sent to participate. But over time the value of those exercises became obvious to the participants from all of the agencies and we slowly began to change the culture there to understand how we had to be prepared for some of these national security responsibilities.

To talk about the Department of Homeland Security, in my slide I had mentioned some of the things that would be foremost in my mind if I were the Secretary of Homeland Security and thinking about how am I going to, what are those organizational levers that I have out there that I could employ across those Seven S’s that could begin to unify this department. And those are the things that I would focus on.

Anderson: Interestingly enough, Dr. Younger and I were talking about this issue over lunch, as a matter of fact. Because I think that our challenge is considerably different than the challenge that OHLS or the Department of HLS faces primarily because we are in a situation where our challenge is to create a culture. The Department of HLS is in a situation where they have to change culture that has already been created in 22 different organizations.

So I do feel that is a significant difference between the two. So, we have talked about this and we do believe that it is very, very important to establish our culture at the beginning and what Commander, General Ed Eberhart has established, has been a number of different elements, if you will, of the culture.

And I would submit to you, and I know he believes the same thing, that the most important one of that is establishing relationships with those with whom we are going to work across the broad spectrum of organizations to include the interagencies, Services, and other DOD agencies, and that kind of a thing because there is just no way we can do it by ourselves. We recognize that. And ultimately with the Department of HLS as well--

But there are a number of other elements, as well, that constitute culture. But that, I would submit to you, is probably one of the very first and important ones for us.

Gertz: And as far as the-- And what the issue here is, and I think Jim Locher put it good, the imbalance between department and national interests. That is really the problem of bureaucracy and there is no easy solution to that. To get the job done you need a bureaucracy but the problem always is that after a time, bureaucracies turn on themselves and become more interested in survival and self-preservation and that is really where we are.

In the Homeland Security Department, I would point out that the intelligence community was excluded from that. They have their own bureaucracy and they don’t want to be part of a new bureaucracy. And that is going to create problems because those agencies won’t have their own ability to get the information. They are going to have to ask other intelligence components to get that information for them. So that is one problem right there.

And I don’t really have an answer for how to fix it. But I can tell you in Washington, information is power and sharing it tends, in the bureaucratic sense, there is a resistance to do that because you would lose power and influence and budget and people and that kind of thing. It is a big cultural problem and I am not sure I know the answer on how to fix that one.
Harmon: We go now to the gentleman in the back.

Williams: Avon Williams, Department of the Army. General Anderson, in keeping with the focus on organizational architecture, I have a more parochial question. There is already a Division of Military Support for civilian authorities function in DOD, which I believe the Secretary of the Army is the executive agent. And it sounds to me-- and reading the documents related to the stand up of NORTHCOM, the function, the civil support function that NORTHCOM is going to perform sounds almost identical to the DOMS function at HQDA.

And I am wondering if there is some redundancy there or if I am not understanding what the separation of functions is going to be between NORTHCOM and DOMS.

Anderson: Okay, you are absolutely right. DOMS has been, for 40 or 50 years, doing that particular function. My understanding is that OSD is in the process of re-evaluating exactly that issue as to whether or not there is a continued need for DOMS given NORTHCOM. We will see what the outcome of that is going to be. My expectation, however, is that DOMS will no longer exist.

And the functions performed by DOMS will be passed either to the Joint Staff or OSD or to Northern Command and that is how I see, I think, that will be settled so that we eliminate that duplication.

Harmon: I think we have time for a couple of more questions. See a hand anywhere-- Okay. Very Good. Thank you. Yes.

Joyal: Thank you. Paul Joyal, InterCon International. I was very interested in your analysis concerning the S’s, especially your stress on the second most important element being systems. So, my question, Mr. Locher is, does an opportunity now present itself actually, with the formation of the Homeland Defense Organization, if you establish or organize the entity around the system, which creates, a technological system, which creates a virtual enterprise-wide environment that stresses collaboration, shared documents through proper compartmentation, etcetera, etcetera.

Do we face a real opportunity to maybe overcome some of the traditional impediments that bureaucracies develop over time especially when they develop from a paper-laden environment versus an electronic environment? What opportunities do you see existing under these conditions?

Locher: Well, I think there is a great opportunity, an opportunity that can be exploited by effective leadership. And one of the things that I have noticed in the legislation describing the structure of the Department of Homeland Security is that in most of our departments, especially in the Department of Defense, we are organized almost everywhere on a functional basis.

And in the Department of Homeland Security the Undersecretaries really have a mission focus. And so they are broader than those functional stovepipes that have a tendency to be inward looking. And so, right away, the structure lends itself to focus more on outcomes, to be thinking about looking across the department. But this will be quite a challenge. There is a lot to do. There is a lot to bring together and to unify.

But there is a great opportunity here to lay out some of these new ideas, to make use of some of the new technologies, some of the new techniques, to really create an organization that can work all the way across those disparate entities and get focused on what we have to achieve.

Harmon: Another question from the floor. And if there aren’t any, then we can adjourn a moment or two early and keep on time. Despite the pressures of schedules in Washington we have managed to retain the majority of our panel for the two-hour panel and I want to ask you now to join me in thanking General Anderson, Mr. Gertz, and Mr. Locher.