Turmoil, fear and a certain resolute grimness marked this week at the Pentagon and Capitol Hill. The military scrambled to cope with a range of new threats as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and the Pentagon leadership begin to grapple with the grim future posed by the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration. Put it all together and you have a military in turmoil, as the four services prepare to battle for missions and budget dollars, while our nation’s senior leaders at the White House, State Department and Pentagon grope for clear strategic direction in a highly unpredictable world.
“I would just highlight the fear in the room at the Pentagon,” noted one of Washington’s top defense analysts, Todd Harrison, referring to a briefing Wednesday evening he and defense wallahs from four think tanks received from Hagel and senior staff. Harrison is the budget expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Data point:. Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs James Winnefeld told the House Armed Services Committee Thursday about the sweeping effort ordered to rewrite the country’s crucial operational plans 18 months ahead of the usual schedule. Kudos to Rep. Mac Thornberry for knowing about this and asking about it in an open hearing. Kudos to Winnefeld for a surprisingly honest — if lacking in detail — answer. (Tip of hat to Wall Street Journal’s Julian Barnes for spotting this and getting details.)
“We don’t want to fight the last war,” Winnefeld told Thornberry. “We’re always accused of fighting the last war. I don’t want to do that.”
Data point: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel decided to share the results of the Strategic Choices and Management Review (SCMR) with the American taxpayers and Congress on Wednesday. In past years, a high-level review like this would probably have remained either classified or pegged under the stupidest and hoariest of Pentagon rubrics, “pre-decisional.”
Mackenzie Eaglen, defense analyst at the American Enterprise Institute and a member of the Breaking Defense Board of Contributors, said yesterday evening that senior Pentagon officials had told her earlier in the week that the results would not be released. (As anyone who deals much with the American military knows, those who rely on publicly available official papers, memos and formal briefings have completely missed the boat when it comes to important decisions. They only know about them once the decisions been taken and can’t influence the result.)