What's Goin On
Something seems to be going on.
It appears to involve a tangle of issues and stakeholders, ranging from globalization, cultural conflict, religious extremism, poverty, refugees, lack of education, economic development, infrastructure, democracy, sovereignty, justice, respect, human rights and community.
When some number of these issues come together in a country far away, and that country descends into the mire, then we get terror or other forms of anti-global-community behavior that simply can't be ignored.
Somehow, it appears that addressing these dynamics is part of our national destiny.
The question is, how?
If we frame it as war against some extremists, we seem to miss the side-effects we create as well as many opportunities on other levels to change the game and to set the terms of the game.
Yet, in specific circumstances, there clearly appears to be a need for military capacity, security infrastructure, police, intelligence and international legal processes.
To deploy these in a timely fashion, we must be prepared and already having planning in place.
If we go into an area, for example in hot pursuit, and there is military action and then local unstability, then what?
We also need to be prepared for post-conflict, getting involved as may be necessary on all levels, .many of which are non-military, non-security.
This is not to say we ever should wish to do an Iraq as we've known it, again.
In fact, what happened in Iraq should be a kind of object lesson in what not to do.
But situations, even much smaller and more narrowly targeted, will arise, and the same complexity will be the case.
Transforming the War Czar Meme
The long and short of it is there is an opportunity now, now that the political train has wrecked and its clear that neither side at this juncture has sufficient power to unilaterally institute its own solution.
Why not take this idea of the War Czar, throw the name out, and re-envision such a thing in a way that would actually be useful to the nation?
Suppose Congress begins a process of looking at all of the aspects of working with the sorts of global tensions we are talking about, and envisioning a department whose purpose it is to provide coordination, planning, transparency and accountability to the process?
Coordination and Communication
One of the big complaints Congress has now, is they are often lied to, spun to and the facts are simply hidden.
Noone knows what the metrics are or how we are doing.
There is no formal plan and no accountability to a plan.
There is no one person to call down and ask what's going on.
Plans are adopted, changed, replaced, forgotten and the overall feeling is being stuck.
You have the generals, but they are part of a chain of command whereby they must more or less simply report what the Commander in Chief has ordered.
And the job of the military overall, constitutionally, is to fight and win wars.
You have State, but their basic duty is to promote diplomacy.
You have an enterprises like the Coalition Authority in Iraq, but they are localized and temporary, often ending up discarded.
You have spokespeople in the White House, but their job appears to be to win the daily spin game at any cost.
You have Congressional committees, but they don't have all the info nor power to create new processes directly.
You have the President, but he is a political leader, not a technocrat.
A New Leadership Role
Why not have a new cabinet-level person, non-military, with a department, which coordinates all the govt functions that go into working with these troubled areas of the globe?
It would not necessarily be a vast new bureaucracy, because it would simply pull into itself or just coordinate, existing departments, functions and information flows spread throughout government.
But it could be tasked to provide all the things that are missing from the current process, which has allowed the process to become so distorted and subsequently not trusted.
Such a department would be created by an act of Congress, which of course the president would have to sign, so it would represent a national agreement and it would have to sufficiently embody a wide range of concerns.
For one, it would not be military, or led by a military officer, it would be civilian.
It would also not take the premise of an eternal War on Terror, or endless war for endless peace.
Rather it would come up with a new framing of what's going on, new words, that leave open the possibility of a wide variety of means of seeking good outcomes in these far-flung places.
Global Community and Transformation
Perhaps something like Dept of Global Community and Transformation
- It would not direct a war, if a war were fought, that would remain the Pentagon's job
- It would not itself do the formalities of diplomacy, treaty-negotiation, visas and other duties that State does
- It would not take over what the intelligence agencies do
- It would not be part of the White House communications operation
- But, it would coordinate all the multi-dimensional processes involved in working with a failed state or unstable region
- It would bring together and collate information from all its functional areas
- It would be responsible for setting up, publishing, tracking and assessing timelines, milestones, metrics
- It would report in published form, on the web and to Congress on progress on all these projects
- It would continuously promote cultural outreach, political dialog, religious reconciliation, and economic, social and political development in these areas
- It would promote democracy, but via building up of cultural institutions, working with local grassroots efforts
- It would seek to develop educational systems and methods that can work in these areas with their local contexts, to help people become part of the global community
- It would help envision regional infrastructure projects which could help economies develop
- It would be tasked as part of its charter with always standing for transparency, access, open govt principles
- Its budget would be public and open, unlike some intelligence and military areas
- It would be overseen by new committees in House and Senate, with all hearings public
- It would recruit a civilian technical corp which could be deployed in post-conflict or just be on loan to a given area to help them put in place systems and infrastructure that could change the local feeling in an area for the better
- It would report on the agendas, historical background and strategies of various terror organizations, promoting global awareness of their propaganda and its distortions, educating people about the reality and devise ways of responding to them
- It would coordinate responses from religious, political and social leaders with relationships to troubled areas, who could form effective counter-voices to the advocates of destruction
- It would make recommendations about the level of force appropriate to a situation, which the president would then use in assessing whether to order a deployment, a redeployment, a withdrawal or a change in strategy
- It would as a matter of its charter support wide-ranging debate, open, public criticism and response, and have as advisors representatives from the full political spectrum.
- It could host regular forums in troubled regions that do not constitute binding negotiations, but bring together important players from all parts of societies, both local players and US, in dialog, debate and collective visioning of ways forward.
Consolidating Existing Services
Many of these functions exist piecemeal, scattered throughout the Pentagon, State Dept, Intel Agencies, NSA, Commerce, and in many non-governmental or semi-governmental agencies which have heavy govt funding.
So, much of this would not have to be created from scratch, but could just be assembled or coordinated via a central office, which provides one stop shopping as far as determining what is being done, how it is working together and whether it is actually working.
The office itself might be quite small, especially to start, but would be vast as far as its information gathering, collating and publishing scope.
Changing Tone and Vision
Some of what would change would be tone
The military is designed to win conflicts, and to the extent they are responsible for post-conflict, 'win' that as well.
This is their mission and training and psychology and it has a justification, but it's not always the way you want to talk about things.
State is their to do formal diplomatic work and again, you sometimes need more freedom than what that allows for.
Intel has its own constraints and mostly must work in secret.
Commerce is specifically looking to promote business opportunities, mostly
working with that community.
Each of these areas has its own tone, its own language, for a reason.
So this new department would have a culture that was free of all these constraints and could grapple with issues of strategy more freely.
Congress should explore and clearly define the sort of culture and tone that would properly address the nature of the tensions and problems such a department would be oriented towards.
During a given presidency, the cabinet member would be appointed and confirmed by Senate, and obviously that person would embody a tone for the operation.
The charter of the department and the top position should spell out the kind of characteristics to be sought and verified during confirmation, so there is no debate about it later.
Since the actual strategies on the ground would vary over time, the real issues seem to be good and open management; absence of spin and propagandizing in communicating with Congress, the people and the world; clear and public processes and metrics.
Perhaps a chunk of it at least could look like the CBO or other non-partisan agencies, that are counted on above all to provide fair, accurate and timely information.
It should have a tone like the Baker Commission Report in some ways, but more open in process.
Separation from the Presidency
Once appointed and approved, there would be a general strategy in place during that time.
But if they did not do well, you could simply fire them and get someone new, also get a new strategy.
This would take at least some of the contention out of the presidency itself.
The reality is sometimes you need to make big shifts and experiments, but it's good for the presidency to be at least a little above the fray.
The president can't be changed except every 4 years, but you may need to allow for large shifts in strategy within that time.
This will have no effect on Bush, because opinions are already formed, but thinking forward to the next president, who will have a fresh start, it would be good for the country to have flexibility and to have a fairly steady presidential image promoted out into the world.
The president should represent what is best about America, in a very human way.
The president should give good speeches and make people simply feel proud when they appear.
People from other countries should always feel hopeful when they see the president.
Sometimes you have to delegate responsibilities so that someone at the top can focus on this larger role.
Addressing Our World in a Way that Works
The complexities we face in globalization and the inevitable transformation of many areas are real.
There will be tension.
People who feel they've been left out.
People, nations and regions who need various kinds of responses from America in order to be able to function as stable and reasonably successful members of the global community.
Sometimes force will be needed, but most times it will be narrowly targeted and will always have to be part of a much larger context of non-military responses, all coordinated and clearly understood.
The people, the Congress, our allies, the world at large and the local region must all understand very clearly what's happening, why, how long it will last, what its goals are, what its justification is.
The process must be public, transparent, accountable, reasonable and flexible.
We can't have a perfect world, but with the capacities we have, we should be able to do a much better job, and to know clearly where we stand and where we're going.
Start Now
Congress should seize this time to begin discussions, envisioning a new govt structure which can bring about this reality.
This is a moment where there is a collective sense of a broken process, on both sides of the aisle.
Setting up a new structure, or even just exploring and planning it, would take time.
If we'd like it to be constituted and operating with some reality to it by the time the next president takes office, we should start now.
This will go some way towards creating consensus at least on parameters of any govt activities which address these interlocking issues.
So that regardless of who is president or what the specific strategy or plan being followed may be at a point in time, everyone can feel that the process itself exists, is sound, is accessible and is not being spun and manipulated by any side, nor made too narrow by the real and necessary cultural differences found in our existing top-level govt agencies.
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