In an effort to implement the Obama administration’s national security strategy, a congressional panel on Wednesday explored ways to better coordinate U.S. development, diplomacy and defense policies.
The following are key to strengthening interagency collaboration, said John Pendleton, director of the Government Accountability Office’s research on force structure and defense planning issues, at the June 9 meeting of the House Armed Services oversight and investigations subcommittee: - Implementing overarching, integrated strategies to achieve national security objectives.- Creating collaborative organizations that facilitate integrated national security approaches.- Developing a well-trained workforce.- Sharing and integrating national security information across agencies.- Sustained leadership.
Gordon Adams, professor of international relations at American University and a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center, argued that a “funding rebalance” between the U.S. Agency for International Development and the departments of Defense and State was not needed.
“Rather, missions should drive requirements and resources, not some arbitrary algorithm,” he said.
A few other excerpts from Adams’s prepared testimony:
“Interagency” and “whole of government” are buzz words that arose after the September 11th attacks and in direct response to the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both of these operations, as well as counterterrorism missions elsewhere, raised important issues about agencies’ capacities and their ability to work together. Since the interagency ‘problem’ grew directly out military missions, the ’requirement’ was driven by what the military thought it needed and did not have. Specifically, DOD was frustrated by the absence of a significant, flexible, well-funded civilian capacity at the State Department and USAID, able to take responsibility for post-conflict reconstruction and stabilization after U.S. combat operations concluded. Yet operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are not the best guidelines for future reform in the interagency space. Interagency needs of the future cannot be extrapolated from these cases because future commitments likely will not be the result of a sizeable deployment of US military forces.
Instead, future commitments likely will require the military to provide secondary support to a civilian mission. The question of agency strength and mission therefore is critical both to today’s missions and those of the future. There cannot be an interagency process that is truly “whole of government” absent stronger mission statements for the civilian agencies that are clear and adequately resourced.
Part of the interagency problem, then, is civilian agencies’ weakness in strategic planning, mission definition, capacity building, institutional coherence, and resources.
This weakness is partly structural. For the past 60 years, we have created new program agencies to implement new program areas, from USIA and USAID decades ago to MCC and PEPFAR in recent years. International affairs activities now form a complex diaspora spread throughout all of the civilian departments of government.
Moreover, existing government agencies not traditionally part of the foreign policy process have become significant international actors as globalization causes more and more problems to transcend state boundaries. The Secretary of State does not influence many of these programs and activities, making it difficult to coordinate even just civilian institutions.
Another part of the problem is normative. ‘Whole of government’ now is invoked as a prescription rather than a description, and as though the chances of a mission’s success go up with each department or agency involved. Reflexively applying the ‘interagency’ and ‘whole of government’ concepts to all of our overseas activities is wrong. Some circumstances are properly managed by just one department.
Managing this complex environment and improving collaboration across the government depends on better understanding the circumstances under which ‘interagency’ and ‘whole of government’ approaches are appropriate. There are areas where there is a need for the expertise of agencies that are primarily domestic in focus. In these circumstances they might operate under the development guidance of USAID. There are also areas where these domestic missions relate to international activities and these agencies have policy equities. In these cases, they might be part of the interagency process led by the Department of State and guided by foreign policy objectives.
Structure and norms do not explain all of the civilian agencies’ weakness, however. There also is not a strong tradition of genuine strategic planning in the civilian foreign policy agencies.
Interagency reform proposals need to address this contrast in culture. Otherwise, ‘coordination’ simply will mean synchronizing the civilian agencies’ missions in line with DOD’s established strategic plan and the significant resources matched to it.
This year’s quadrennial plans provide an example of both the problem and the potential solution. The Defense Department has provided some input to the ongoing Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, but made no mention of the State Department’s foreign policy leadership in the Quadrennial Defense Review’s strategic assumptions and planning scenarios.
Despite this imbalance, it is important for the QDDR exercise to institutionalize planning discipline in the State Department because only though such discipline can a clear sense of missions emerge. This, in turn, will drive the need for resources (human and fiscal) and appropriate authorities and flexibility at State and USAID.
