Document Actions
Forging a Shield
Title: Forging a Shield
Date: November 2008
Author:
Institution: Project on National Security Reform
Bibliographic Entry: “Forging a Shield.” November 2008. Project on National Security Reform. http://www.pnsr.org/data/files/pnsr_forging_a_new_shield_report.pdf (Accessed December 12, 2008).
Electronic Link: http://www.pnsr.org/data/files/pnsr_forging_a_new_shield_report.pdf
Key Words: national security reform, war on terror, WMD, nuclear proliferation, new security environment, risk management, national security system
Summary of Key Points, Issues, Conclusions:
This report identifies the flaws of US national security and offers a “plan of comprehensive reform to institute a national security system that can manage and overcome the challenges of our time.” The report maintains that US national security is fundamentally at risk and is out of touch with the rapidly changing security environment. The current national security system is suffering from bureaucratic aging, fails to accommodate a diffuse and ambiguous threat, is unable to integrate adequately the military and nonmilitary dimensions of a complex war on terror, and cannot integrate hard and soft power in Iraq.
The report identifies four main challenges confronting the national security system:
1) rising state powers, rogue regime proliferators, and non-state actors that include terrorists, transnational criminal organizations, and other assorted entrepreneurs of violence
2) a spreading of US attention and limited resources to cover many contingencies
3) the pursuit of science and technology, now a global enterprise in which even small groups can participate, allows hostile states and non-state actors to employ existing knowledge and technique as well as new science and technology to assail far stronger states
4) an interdependence that makes it impossible for any single nation to address on its own the full range of today‘s complex security challenges
The report also offers six central recommendations toward the establishment of a new national security system:
1) focus the Executive Office of the President on strategy and strategic management
2) centralize strategy formulation and decentralize the modalities of policy implementation by creating Interagency Teams and Interagency Crisis Task Forces
3) link resources to goals through national security mission analysis and mission budgeting
4) align personnel incentives, personnel preparation, and organizational culture with strategic objectives
5) greatly improve the flow of knowledge and information
6) build a better executive-legislative branch partnership
Name of Researcher: Nathan Brown
Institution: Integrative Center for Homeland Security, Texas A&M University
Date Posted: January 8, 2009