Bill,
If you can be both soft and tough enough you can simultaneously be friends with Venus and fight alongside of Mars. Our friend Sun Zu knew how, unlike much of our old guard who are slaves to CvC in all things. In short we lack balance in our approach.
So much for the past; what is a possible solution to help us move forward?
Pragmatism = DIIME+PPP = whole of government approach + public private partnerships = inputs< outputs
What if we were to have a five person strong government working group regularly sitting at our President’s table providing him with sound whole of government advice regarding DIIME issues outside our nation’s borders? We, fortunately, see synergies with the Team Clinton-Gates (DoS and DoD – the D and M of DIIME) just as we did with Team Crocker-Odierno in Iraq. As for I (Intelligence ) once upon a time the Central Intelligence Agency was just that, however it now falls under some administrative fiefdom or another, while our 16 member strong intelligence community appears to happily drift along while burning through 50 billion USD or so a year. Horrible things have happened to the USIA and it appears that we have no one at the table who can represent or speak to our nations governmental Information needs. Similarly who would represent governmental Economics issues for our nation; USAID (external), Department of Commerce (Internal), the Export-Import Bank, etc?
What if we had a five person strong private partnership working group regularly sitting down with our President providing him with sound private partnership advice regarding DIIME issues outside our nation’s borders? What if membership was limited to a single representative from the top US Company in each of the DIIME arenas and membership was transparently reviewed and competed for every two years?
What if these two working groups had to develop quarterly combined work break down structures, schedules, cost estimates, and workplans for their proposals that would be subjected to our Executive, Legislative, and Judicial systems? What if working group members were held accountable for their successes and failures and concepts such as Return on Investment were used as benchmarks? What if the process was transparent and accountable to the population of the US?
Either it’s the beer or I must have bumped my head….
Steve
Sapere Aude
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