1947 National Security Won’t Work in 2017

Our own national security’s structure has been largely the same since the passing of the National Security Act in 1947- the act that created the Department of Defense, CIA and the National Security Counsel  (along with the total reorganization of our military forces).  That act is now 70 years old, and so is the structure.   For a long time, that large siloed system made a lot of sense.  In the 1980s, the main three threats facing the US weren’t all that dissimilar to those in 1947.  Those threats included: 

• A nuclear arms race with the Soviets.
• A wall separating Germany.
• A world largely aligned behind one of the two superpowers that fought, or financed proxy wars for influence around the globe, with the “third world” so named as unaligned countries almost as an afterthought in our overall security interests. 

How much different is that than the current environment of porous borders in small, underdeveloped countries around the world.  One could in fact make an argument that the most dangerous countries in the world today aren’t rogue states, but failed states (or failing states).   Successfully limit the maneuverability of the government of Iran and you’ve limited the maneuverability of Iran.  Do the same in the recognized leadership of Somalia, and you have accomplished almost nothing on the ground- and yet those states not in control of their own borders (such as Somalia, Waziri regions of Pakistan, and Yemen) comprise some of the largest threats to global security precisely because they are regions where a little bit of money and a whole lot of interest in training willing participants to go forth and do violence elsewhere can be the greatest single threats to our current security.  And yet we must still at least prepare for a future situation where other rising superpowers (such as China) will continue to exert more and more influence in Asia and eventually the world.  However you feel about what “really” happened in Ghazni, it makes the point that despite nearly 4,000 paratroopers on the ground in Italy- just across the Mediterranean, the siloed distinctions between conventional forces, intelligence and foreign relations, seem no longer structured to efficiently and quickly respond to threats.

Secretary of State Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Mattis were together in Australia a few weeks ago, and they seemed to be working closely together in the current administration.  That’s maybe a good start, but the silos below them still fan out with duplicative efforts and uncoordinated arms that make current operations of relief, local interactions with locals and transmission of information in a timely manner much more difficult as the lines of diplomacy, intelligence gathering become increasingly blurred and fluid, and it seems time for some rethinking of that structure. 

In an executive branch that so far seems light on details, this seems like a tall order for the NSC’s principals in their early years, but a necessary one to re-think.  As technology continues to improve the tools of terror, rather than focusing first on blanket policies that most negatively affect compliant visitors to the US, restructuring ourselves for the new era seems likely to yield greater results than re-instituting this travel ban, but that takes more than an executive order.  I’m still waiting to see how much interest this administration has in the sorts of important details that don’t fit neatly into a Twitter tweet.