A balanced strategy: reprogramming the Pentagon for a new age.

• Author: Handley, John
• Position: Robert M. Gates - Report

A BALANCED STRATEGY: Reprogramming the Pentagon for a New Age

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20090101faessay88103/robert-m-gates/how-to-reprogram-the-pentagon.html

By Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates

Reviewed by Colonel John Handley

Dr. Robert Gates, an intelligence professional who has served six presidents, became secretary of defense in December 2006, and President Barack Obama asked him to remain in that post. The only career officer in the history of the CIA to become the agency's director, he has also held national security posts within the White House. His memoir, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War, was published in 1996, shortly before he accepted an appointment at Texas A&M that led to his becoming its president in 2002.

In "A Balanced Strategy," published in the January-February issue of Foreign Affairs, Secretary Gates identifies three areas in which he believes the Pentagon, the Congress, and America's military-industrial community are, in fact, out of balance, a condition that can be corrected by the Pentagon's new National Defense Strategy (NDS). The strategy's three critical tasks are: (1) prevailing in current conflicts while preparing for future combat; (2) institutionalizing counterinsurgency capabilities while maintaining a technological advantage in conventional and strategic forces; and (3) retaining good cultural traits in the U.S. military while discarding harmful habits.

Addressing his first concern, current versus future conflicts, Secretary Gates states that "[s]upport for conventional modernization programs is deeply embedded in the Defense Department's budget, in its bureaucracy, in the defense industry, and in Congress ... [yet] there is not commensurate institutional support--including in the Pentagon--for the capabilities needed to win today's wars and some of their likely successors" (29). The military and civilian national security apparatus, according to Dr. Gates, "have responded unevenly and have grown increasingly out of balance ... [since] this same apparatus is still coping with the consequences of the 1990s ...." (30), a reference to the drastic reduction of resources and personnel in both Department of Defense and Department of State during the Clinton administration. The new NDS purportedly addresses and reverses that trend.

The second issue, improving counterinsurgency capability while maintaining superior...