Previous IFPA-Fletcher Conferences

The 34th IFPA-Fletcher Conference on
National Security Strategy and Policy:
Security Planning and Military Transformation

December 2-3, 2003
U.S. Chamber of
Commerce Building
Lafayette Square, 1615 H Street, NW
Washington, D.C.

Address by Dr. Hans Binnendijk, Director, the Center of Technology and National Security Policy, National Defense University

Introduction by Dr. Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., President, IFPA

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Our final speaker this morning is one whom I have known for many, many years, perhaps longer than both he or I would like to admit. But Dr. Hans Binnendijk is a long-term friend of mine. He is Director of the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at National Defense University. Between 1999 and 2001, he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Defense Policy and Arms Control at the National Security Council. Among his many other appointments-- and there really are too many for me even to list here-- over the years, he has served as Director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies, also at National Defense University. He was Principal Deputy Director at the Policy Planning Staff in the Department of State. He then, before that, was Deputy Staff Director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and served a stint as Deputy Director and Director of Studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and he editor of its journal, Survival, that is familiar to all of us in this room. And he is a member of the board of overseers at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, one of our cosponsors, and one of my employers.

So, it is with very great pleasure that I welcome Dr. Binnendijk, and to say that I put him at the end of the panel because I believe that what he has to tell us about one of his current projects at NDU represents a very useful transition into the next phase of this conference, which of course will be looking more fully at some of the implications of what has been the subject of discussion here this morning, for security planning, and of course for military transformation. So, Hans, the podium is all yours.

Dr. Hans Binnendijk: Thank you very much. It is a true pleasure to be here with Bob Pfaltzgraff, because in the mid 60s, I was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, sitting in the back of one of Bob Pfaltzgraff's classes. And it really is due to Bob, and perhaps the Vietnam War, that I decided to get into the national security business. I had longer hair, and it was not as gray at the time. Bob hasn't changed an iota in 35 years.

The topic of this panel is the changing security context. And we have seen a number of snapshots from the other panelists. And what I would like to focus on is yet another snapshot, and this is post-conflict operations. This is where we are now in Afghanistan. This is where we are now in Iraq. We have made mistakes, I think, in both areas, and so we have undertaken a study to look at this phenomenon, to draw some conclusions. And, as Bob Kaplan said, a lot of this is not new, but we've forgotten a lot, and we need to relearn some lessons.

This is a study that we have conducted together with Art Cebrowski, the Office of Force Transformation. And it is not US government policy yet, but we hope it will become US government policy. Let's turn to the next slide, please. The basic notion behind our study is that the first military transformation has been very successful. And again, Bob Kaplan mentioned some of that, in terms of his description of Afghanistan. It has been very successful, and precisely because it has been successful, the transformation at the high end, of high intensity conflict, we need another military transformation, and that is to deal with post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction.

The slide that you have up there now is kind of the traditional model of warfare, where you have a period of planning. You have a fairly slow buildup in theater. The conflict itself takes a while. And at the end of the high intensity hostilities, you have a large force in theater. And therefore, you have the time and the people to bridge to the next phase, which is nation-building. Because of the very success of force transformation-- let's turn to the next slide-- this is where we find ourselves today. The planning is generally done more quickly, but you have a very rapid buildup in theater. The force in theater is often very small, compared to the traditional model. Conflict, at least, the high intensity portion of the conflict, does not last as long. And you find yourself with an apparent military victory, with very few forces in theater, and you are nowhere near ready to deal with the nation-building part of the equation. And so you have a gap, a stabilization and reconstruction gap.

And what our study tries to do is to make some suggestions as to how you fill that gap. And let's turn to the next slide. This is essentially our proposal. It is the creation of a stabilization and reconstruction force. And we would hope that we could do this without too much layering and too much bureaucracy, but rather to create this force as a force multiplier. This force would essentially allow for concurrent planning, so that when we plan the warfare, we plan the post-conflict piece as well. The force would be deployed to theater either concurrently with or just after the force that will do the high intensity fighting. It needs to be ready to go immediately after we have success in the high intensity fight, and then it serves as a bridge to the nation-building part of this equation, which is mostly a civilian operation.

Let's turn to the next slide. Lessons from history. We have, incidentally, copies of this report available outside, and it's also online. So you can, if you're interested, study this chart in more detail. But, lessons from history. Basically, what we have learned, first of all, is that it is possible to have success in these kinds of operations, across a number of different cultures and regions. Secondly, since Somalia, these operations are becoming more frequent and more complicated. Third, success depends on several factors. First, you have to stabilize the situation. You cannot really proceed with significant reconstruction if you have ongoing low intensity conflict. So, that is key. Another important factor is the history and background of the country in question. You can't control that. But there are controllables that clearly make a difference, and it has to do with the effort that our nation and other nations are willing to put into this kind of operation. And as you look at the history, it demonstrates that if you have forces, if you have funding, and if you have the right kinds of operational concepts, you can be successful.

Next slide, please. You do need some new operational concepts, and we have really lost track of this in our current operations, both in Afghanistan and Iraq. You need unity of effort between the high intensity portion of the conflict and this stabilization and reconstruction mission. We really didn't do that in Iraq. We didn't plan together. The planning for the post-conflict effort began very, actually, early in this calendar year, whereas planning for the military operation began well over a year prior to that. So, we also did not have in theater the kinds of forces that we needed for this kind of a mission. We did not have unity of effort. We did not work properly and efficiently with indigenous forces. Certainly that's the case in Iraq, if not Afghanistan. We therefore did not have the kind of cultural intelligence that we needed in Iraq to be successful.

What we are recommending, therefore, is the creation of a force structure, a new capability that will allow us to deal with some of these problems. Let's go to the next slide. This is a look at some illustrative scenarios, and it basically makes the point that if you look out into the future, there is plenty of potential call for future post-conflict operations, and therefore for a force like the one we're about to propose. Next slide. If you try to size a force like the one we are proposing, much depends upon the environment, the national security strategy, and the amount of risk that you're prepared to take. But what we did was to try to calculate what it would take to do one large or two medium sized post-conflict operations. And as we went through that, with medium sort of degree of difficulty, and reasonable risk, we concluded that you need essentially two division equivalents of this kind of capability. And I would love to have both of those in the active force, but I don't think that's possible now. So we chose to recommend one for the active force, and one for the reserve component. Next slide.

Basically, how do we do this kind of operation today? It's late, and it's ad hoc. What we are recommending here is a more structured approach, with standing headquarters, with modular, scalable capabilities, and also, importantly, a force that is joint-- the Army would probably have the lead, but very much joint-- and also one that brings in civilian skills, and the civilian component, which has been, to a large degree, missing in Iraq. Next slide.

This is the organizational structure for these two division equivalent groups that we are recommending. And the heart of this structure is these four groups that you will find in the middle of the structure. And the important part of this is that you have military police, civil affairs, engineers, psychological operations, medical units, intelligence, military intelligence, and that you combine them. You train in advance. You don't play pickup, as we have been doing in the past, but you train this kind of a capability in advance. I would suggest it perhaps at Fort Polk, with a different kind of a training operation than we have there now. And you create new synergies among these groups. You also have, in this group, an ability to pull in civilian capabilities that need to be further developed. Next slide.

So, how radical is this recommendation? Well, it's not very radical. If you look at the currently available forces, and compare them to the force structure that we are recommending, much of this already exists in the Army, and to a lesser degree in the other services. It would require a bit of re-balancing in civil affairs, where this capability is heavily in the reserves, and probably also with regard to engineers. You might do some reorganization of the military police, and some new capabilities would have to be created, especially in the training and security systems support area. But the basic point here is that this is more about focusing, reorganizing, and re-balancing than it is about creating a lot of new capabilities. Next slide.

We had talked earlier about language and area specialties. And this really demonstrates the point. Of the 1,000 or so foreign area officers that exist in the Army, less than 15% of them are focused on the area that we're now talking about, which is the greater Middle East. That's got to change. We really have to re-balance the FAO program. And I just use that as one example. This really runs throughout the various capabilities that the US government has developed. We still have very much a Cold War structure when it comes to these kinds of capabilities, and that's got to change pretty quickly.

Next slide. Let's just skip over that one. That just makes, again, the point that it's mostly re-balancing and reorganization. We have to change our military culture. Basically, the Army doesn't like to think of itself as doing these kinds of operations, and with some good reason, given the history of Somalia and Vietnam. But they're going to have to adapt, and this is going to require changes in culture. It's going to have to come from our leadership, and it's going to have to come from professional military education. What you see in front of you here is a list of characteristics-- this is from the US Institute of Peace-- a list of characteristics that are needed by the US military personnel to do peacekeeping and stabilization and reconstruction operations. We have bolded the last six of them there, because that's where we think most of the work is needed. So, we also need to make changes not just in leadership thinking, but in our professional military education. Next slide.

There are a number of technologies that are available to enhance our ability to do these kinds of operations. Some things are very simple. Civilian and military forces have got to be able to communicate with one another, and very often now they can't. Biometrics, tagging, other examples of things that can be used to enhance security. Non-lethal weapons, the Marine Corps is working hard on this. Ways to make judgments about the infrastructure that you're working in. The Air Force has worked very hard on the effects-based operations. What do you have to destroy to bring down a country? This is essentially the reverse of that. What do you have to build up to quickly revitalize the country? And human relations, simple things like translation equipment. It's still fairly primitive, but it's getting better. And, again, there are a number of efforts now underway to study elites, elite modeling. And this too is a technology that might help in this area. Next slide.

Again, we really have to work hard on the interagency part of this effort. We're currently trying to find 100 or so civilians to move to Iraq. And we're having a very hard time finding those people. So, we have to develop them. The interagency itself is not equipped to deal with this part of the mission. The last administration developed a procedure called PDD-56. It was not particularly successful in the last administration, and it's moribund now. We need to revitalize that, which is essentially holding various people in the interagency process accountable for pieces of this effort. Let's move to the next slide.

Finally, we have to bring the international community also into this effort in a much bigger way. That obviously requires the right kind of diplomacy up front, but when you have that, then are the capabilities there? One of the things we need to do is to begin to identify the niche capabilities that exist among our allies, to help us in this area. Secretary Rumsfeld has talked about creating an international peacekeeping force. There are advantages and disadvantages to that. But I think the point I'd like to make on this slide is, we need to get NATO to do more. Let's move to the next and final slide.

Right now, NATO has created a new NATO response force. That is a high end capability. We need to augment that now with a NATO stabilization and reconstruction force, so that as we in the United States develop this capability and fine tune it, our NATO allies are doing the same thing, and so that when we call upon them for this post-conflict mission, they will be there to help us. Thank you, Bob.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Thank you very much, Hans, for this final presentation on the panel. We're running just a few minutes behind schedule now, but I do think that, given the fact that we've been sitting here for all of this time, we should take a short break in the program, then return as quickly as possible, because we're going to open the floor for comments and discussion with this distinguished panel. So, may I urge that you return here no later than 11:10, and that will give us 35 minutes of discussion. So, we'll take a short 15-minute, break now. Thank you.

Questions and Answers

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: We're still missing Mansoor Ijaz, but I think we should begin the discussion. Let me just give you the basic ground rules. Please keep your question brief. We're looking for questions. If there's a statement you need to make, make the statement, but make it brief. Secondly, please identify yourself. And thirdly, please wait for the microphone after you're recognized for the question. So, who would like to be the first questioner? Who would like to go first? Yes, right here.

Audience: I'm Ed Rowney (?), your former friendly arms controller. My question, I guess, is mostly to Bob Kaplan, but maybe to some others. And that has to do with this mindset-- Maybe the other speakers can chime in on this. Why is it that the leaders of the Islamic faith, the mullahs, don't recognize that this extremist group could possibly bring about their downfall? Why don't they speak out against them, and excommunicate them? Why the timidity of the mullahs?

Robert Kaplan: The Middle East is a laboratory of pure power politics. Soft power is not very well understood. Remember that we operate in a world of legality, of laws, and regulations, where if you have a fight with someone else, you have courts to resume to. But in the Middle East, though there are laws on the books, in all these societies, it's driven by pure power and intimidation of one sort or another. And if some of these others, more moderate groups, thought that they had the power to overcome the others, they might in fact operate that way.

But there is another thing. As Mansoor said, al-Qaeda and its spin-off viruses is the most dynamic element today in Middle East society. You know, it doesn't require country clearances, travel orders. It doesn't have to write CONOPs. It's not totally snarled in bureaucratic paperwork the way the postindustrial age West has become, or with big organizations, the way we have become. You know, it's the ultimate postindustrial kind of centerless corporation. It's run on an informal basis, and we think of informal, medieval institutions as backward. In fact, they're far forward than us, because the most effective power is informal power and influence. And these people have really developed a very dynamic, centerless cluster of organizations that conveys itself, that conveys its power.

And there's something else. Islam is the best of the three religions for poor people. If you're poor, and downtrodden, Islam is an austere voice. It's a religion that's willing to fight. It's a simple message. It's kind of like early Christianity was in the second and third centuries of Rome. If you read about the various Christian cults who rose up against Roman rule in Tunisia and what is today western Algeria, you'll see a great similarity between them and some of the radical Islamic cults.

And then there's something else, and then I'll push it on to the other panelists. If you look at a map, and you look at these towns, and these tribal agencies of Pakistan, like Parachinar, Miramshan (?), Wizeristan (?), they look like small towns, and they were, 10 or 15 years ago. But when you get there, they're slums. They're inner city slums, with narrow warrens, five, six stories, many families packed in tight. The regime in Pakistan has done nothing for them. As one of them said to me, "We don't care if it's Noar Sharif (?), Benazir Bhutto, Musharraf, whether it's democrat, it's an army coup. It makes no difference. The people in Islamabad hate us. We're not really part of the country." And the radical mullahs are the ones who say, "Stand up and fight."

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: I think that Mansoor Ijaz would like to comment on this question as well, and any other member of the panel is welcome to do so. But Mansoor, you in particular

Mansoor Ijaz: I think the way I would put it to you, very simply, is that the rulers are afraid of the monsters that they created. They created the monsters by suppressing the natural capacity. Who is bin Laden, at the end of the day? What is the phenomenon of this man? He basically wanted to combat and rise up against his fascist father, and he couldn't do that. Then he wanted to rise up against the state, and the state was in such a state of affairs that he wasn't able to do that. And so he said, "Let me go and strike out at those who support my state." And when the state stripped him of his citizenship, they stripped him of his dignity, and that caused even more-- It's what I call the trampling of the ego. In the infamous memo that many of you know about, that I wrote to Sandy Berger (?) in 1996, I said to him, "Sandy, we cannot achieve anything in the Islamic world by trampling the egos of their downtrodden. If we do not do more to raise them up, their disaffected up, they will surely come to our shores to tear us down."

In the end, it comes down to a war of not intellects, not minds. It's a war of what's going on in your heart. Because every human being's heart beats the same way. And these leaders have not provided for their people. And then on top of that, they've taken orders from us. That's the perception, at least over there. We've got to stop making them give orders, and they've got to start providing for their people. Otherwise, that large, silent majority that exists in the Muslim world will never rise up against these fanatics and contain them from within, and that is the only ultimate long-term solution that we ought to be trying to get at, because nothing else will work.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Anyone else on that question? In that case, let's go to our next questioner, the gentleman right back here. And then this next one will be back there. So, let's start right here.

Audience: Wooston Lee (?) from the Department of Defense. My question is mainly to Mr. Hoehn and Mr. Kaplan. I was wondering if you felt the last presentation, regarding the creation of a two-division structure, was a viable option, given what you have observed thus far, and the work you're doing on transformation.

Andrew Hoehn: I think it would be a mistake to think that transformation is only about the major combat elements of our defense establishment and war fighting structure. In fact, what I hear from this panel, and frankly, what we have been thinking increasingly, is that the type of challenges that we're going to see in the years and decades to come are going to be more in terms of the low end asymmetries that you heard the panelists talk about, and the high end asymmetries that you heard Professor Bracken speak of, and frankly, somewhat less of the traditional kinds of warfare that we are both skilled at, but frankly have dominated. And hence, that's why we see war fighting moving more to the ends of the spectrum, and away from the middle.

So, in light of that, the work that Hans Binnendijk has been doing, and others, in terms of thinking through what kinds of organizations, what kind of structure, what kind of training, what kind of doctrine do we need to deal with the challenges are exactly the right ones. And so, I applaud the initiative that he has put forth. And I think he would be the first to admit that it isn't so much whether that specific option is the one that gets adopted. I think the real issue here is, do we have within our armed forces the capacity to deal with the problems of stabilization and reconstruction? And I think what I take from his proposal is that there is a deficiency in this realm, and that we need to be looking to build some viable alternatives. And he is offering one. Whether it's that one or something similar, or even something quite different that addresses that set of problems, that's the real issue here, is, do we have the capacity, the capability, if you will, to deal with that problem set, and to do so in the most effective ways that we can.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: I wanted to give Bob Kaplan the next opportunity on that question, but I think, Hans, you ought to have the last word on this question as well, since it's your proposal that is being discussed. So, let's go with Bob next.

Robert Kaplan: Let me answer that with an example that I was speaking to Secretary Hoehn about. We have this issue about tribal militias in Afghanistan. You know, our policy is to build up a national army there, and the tribal militias are an impediment in that. They're more warlord-focused. But when you actually get to Afghanistan, and you speak to the majors, and the lower ranking officers, and you go out, you find that in some parts of the country, supporting the ANA (?) is right, but in other parts, if you withheld support and weapons for the tribal militias, the Army special forces fire bases might even be overrun. It varies from one locale within a province to another. Therefore, these are not issues, I wouldn't even want Washington discussing, let alone deciding upon. These are issues that I wouldn't want decisions made at anything higher than the lieutenant colonel or the battalion level in the area.

And the problem is that Washington tends to identify the problems correctly, but it often deals with it by creating a new organization. And I think future is just cutting away vast amounts of organization here, and having much more people at the NCO level spending more time in Monterey at the language institute, and spending their whole lives in places like western Nepal, and the Horn of Africa, and places like that. It's like Secretary Hoehn said. Get more people out to the edges, and give them increasing autonomy. Because if not, if we don't watch out, we'll be like Gulliver, tied up by the Lilliputians.

Dr.Binnendijk: If this proposal focuses primarily on organization, and one tends to think of it that way, two divisions, then probably that's the wrong way to present it. I think this is much more about training. It's much more about the synergies that are created by bringing together various kinds of units. It's not intended to create a lot of layers. It's certainly not intended to put this problem back into Washington's lap. It is trying to do, on the ground, what we ought to be doing, but better, because we pull together these capabilities, and create these synergies.

Now, what is the viability of this? I think much will depend on the Army. The Army is going to resist this. Why? Because they think it's going to cut into one or two of their 10 fighting divisions. And if it does, it would be a mistake. I don't envision this as replacing an Army division. The analysis that we did indicates that most of these capabilities are around, and it's again a question of reorganization. You can do that in a way that you don't cut into the existing 10-division structure of the Army.

Now, I think, finally, what is likely to happen is that rather than the large structure that we suggested, where we'll be going, at least in the next several years, is that smaller groups will be created along this pattern, but not the division size groups. And they will be more deployable, more modular. That's not a bad starting place.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Unless there's anyone else on the panel who would like to comment, let's move on to the next question. There was a hand back here that I had said we would recognize. Yes, please, right there.

Audience: Jeremy Harrington (?). I'm a first-year student at the Fletcher School. I'd like to ask a question about the role and the performance of the intelligence community in illuminating the context of security planning, particularly the issues raised by the panel of the threat of non-state-armed groups. I'd be interested in Mr. Kaplan's observations, from his experiences being embedded at the grassroots level, what observations he has on what the intelligence community needs to do differently. And I'd also be interested in the views of Mr. Ijaz, in particular. Thank you.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: That's a question for a conference in itself, actually. But it's very important, and we'd like to get your reactions to it. Bob?

Robert Kaplan: One of the challenges I face as a journalist is, I often know where our intelligence people are by where I'm not permitted to go, or what fire bases I'm not permitted to visit. So I actually don't know as much about that as I would like to. There was one fire base I wanted to visit-- I won't say where-- where I was told, "No, you can't go there, because the OGAs, the other government agencies, i.e. the intelligence, owns that fire base, not the Green Berets." So, there's a lot going on that, frankly, I don't know about. But I think I would emphasize-- And this is what people in the intelligence community will always tell you, I think. We Americans are very good at signals intelligence, on the technological aspects of it. But where it falls down, where we really have to depend on friendly foreign intelligence agencies, is on human beings who can ferret out intentions, who have embedded into groups for long periods of time, overseas. And that, I think, is the great challenge. It's a big challenge in Iraq. It's a big challenge in Afghanistan, in Yemen, in many different places.

And I'll give you an example. Mansoor spoke earlier about the danger of international shipping. Well, one of the best opportunities for terrorists-- and this was written about in my magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, in a cover story, was about piracy of big tankers, and how much piracy there is, and how a number of tankers are actually run by ghost crews, because the real crew was killed at the high seas, and it's now being run by a ghost crew. And this is like a perfect petri dish for groups like al-Qaeda to take advantage of. And this is really where the rubber meets the road, where so much technological intelligence will be less helpful than two or three human beings who know exotic languages, who are in place, and who are with the right people.

Mansoor Ijaz: I think all that I'll add to that is that we have to ask ourselves in this country, why is it that we are not willing to resurrect what the CIA's great capacity was during the Cold War? Why is it that we're not willing to do that? What has happened to the ethos of this society that we're not willing to take the risk to go out and protect ourselves by engaging our own citizens? I mean, I do this out of a sense of moral obligation to my fellow countrymen, because this country gave me more than anyone in the world could ever imagine you could get as an opportunity. I was born and raised in this country, educated in the best institutions, worked on a farm, worked as a busboy in a delicatessen, and have the opportunity to give back something to society. But there's not that many of us around that speak different languages, and understand the cultural identities that you have to understand to be able to get inside these organizations.

Until we as a nation are willing to ask that hard question, and ask our political leaders to answer it, and then give the directive to our intelligence apparatus to go out and do it, I think there's very little chance that we're going to be able to infiltrate to the extent we need to to be able to diffuse the threats from inside.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: I would ask any other member of the panel to comment on this question as well, if you would like to do so. I would simply say that, given the diversity of this country, it seems to me puzzling that we haven't been able to do what Mansoor is talking about. I shouldn't depart from my role as moderator here, but it seems to me, with a country with the diversity that we have in it, we ought to be able to tap into people who have loyalties to this country, as you pointed out here, who would help us to improve that human part of the intelligence picture. But that's just my own personal opinion.

Anyone else on this panel who would like to talk about that? Then, let's go on to one or two more questions. And what I'd like you to do is to ask your question very briefly, because we're going to have to end the panel at 11:45 promptly. So, one quick question over here. Dick, I can see you back there. You have that.

Audience: ...[inaudible] semantics point of order with Robert Kaplan. I think you're giving the term CONOPs a bad rap. CONOPs, in its simplest form, tells what the relationships are between, who the players are, and what the mission is. And it's not doctrine, and it's not prescriptive, and it doesn't tell you what range, and what weapon, and what circuitry to use. We've never done it as well as the Brits, who have boiled it down to "Stop the Bismarck," or "Sink the armada." But I think if you get the CONOPs right-- and we're making tremendous efforts to get the joint CONOPs done first-- you will cover all those points that you made, that the NCOs can make decisions from advance bases, and the colonels can stay in Leavenworth, and be available for reach-back. But I think you're talking about doctrine, not about CONOPs.

Robert Kaplan: Can I respond?

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Yes, please, a brief response, Bob.

Robert Kaplan: That briefs well, but the reality is that the document is used for people at the higher levels to dilute, to play around with, to change the mission. And the ultimate result, every day, on the ground in Afghanistan, is that permission is given to hit compounds, to search various mud-walled forts, 72 or 96 hours later than they should, and the result is dry holes, rather than bull's-eyes. It's another method that gives control higher up, which goes completely against the trend I think we have to go in.

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: We have time for one or two more. Right back here. Yes, please. If you could stand up so they can see you when they bring you the mike.

Audience: Yes. Vivek Dubay (?) from Los Alamos National Lab. This is mainly a question for Professor Bracken. There's been a lot of talk about organizational transformation, but implicit and inherent to that is cultural transformation within the defense business and the national security business. Can you offer additional insights from the business world as to how successful companies have time and time reinvented themselves? How can we accelerate the rate of cultural change to get to the transformation we need to get to?

Paul Bracken: I think it's a mistake to look at technological transformation, and then people will say, "But we have to change the organization. There's too much focus on technology." Just for example, in this last go-round, I think the whole distinction between technical intelligence and human intelligence is 20, 30 years out of date. So to get to your point, the question, I think we have to think of strategies in terms of congruences, alignment, so that when you change your personnel system, and your culture and your people, you have to see if it matches your technology, if it matches your strategy.

And if you look at the great, really pioneering works in organization theory done years ago, like Joan Woodward's (?) Industrial Organizations, her whole point is that managers need to think in terms of these alignments. I changed my technology. Did I change the culture? Because if you only change one, you're not going to get the payoff. But if you look at it in a holistic way, which I think we know a lot better how to do from the late 1990s-- I mean, there's this view that bureaucracies don't change. Well, look at AT&T. Look at Enron. They were big bureaucracies, and they went under dramatic change. Oh, you said you wanted successful change? That's a different thing. That's a harder thing. But we have examples of that too. We have a wider range of experiences we can absorb.

And one of the things I believe, is that the DOD and the services need to do kind of an executive program, pooling the experiences of Hewlett Packard, and JetBlue, and IBM, and Enron and AT&T, for these alignments and congruences. When they changed the technology, did they change the people?

Dr. Pfaltzgraff: Well, unfortunately, time has run out. I wish this panel could go on for another hour, frankly. There's so much to talk about here. I think we have looked at these issues in holistic fashion, to use a point that was just made by Paul Bracken. I think that we have covered an immense amount of the security landscape. We have certainly seen at least various parts of the anatomy, or at least touched various parts of the anatomy of the elephant, using the proverbial blind person/elephant metaphor here. I think as a result of this, we have learned a great deal about the context of national security within which we must plan, and within which we must think about and carry out the complex tasks of transformation. So, on our collective behalf, I would like to express our thanks to this panel for an outstanding opening session, and for helping us to think through many of the issues that we will be dealing with as we proceed to this afternoon and to tomorrow.