There are so many powerful forces in DC it is amazing we ever get anything right.

Perhaps the most powerful force is inertia. DC is still full of good Cold Warriors on both sides of the aisle who see our strategies, policies and activities of that era as what "right" looks like. What was a good idea in 1950 is hardly likely to be still a good idea in 2014 without some serious refinement applied.

There is also inertia of CT/"war"-think from the past 12 years.

Look at the budget/service battles in the Pentagon today and one sees these two forces of inertia locked in close battle, while very few speculate as to what type of military we actually need for the world we live in today and the missions, capabilities and capacities necessary to extend our messy peace into the future.

Their has also over the past 70 years been a gradual, but tremendous, shift in the relative balance of power between the Congress and the Presidency. It is no wonder all Congress seems to be able to do is quibble over which party wins the Oval Office next. Sustaining a warfighting military in peace necessay to implementing a containment strategy has enabled so many wars of presidential choice. I believe this more than any other factor has contributed to this shift of power. The Founders warned of this very effect and crafted language in the Constitution to prevent this from happening, but now we tend to think of that language as quaint or even obsolete.

Our post-Cold War National strategies have also contributed to our inability to see other people's "forests" because we have become so lost in our own. The twin pillars of sustaining the status quo under US leadership, coupled with a heavy promotion of US values at a time when virtually everyone else is seeking their own best future and turning inward to their own value systems is not a good match. The world is a come as you are party, and we need to embrace that reality. Certainly self-determination was central to our pre-Cold War strategic model.

But as I stated in the opening post:
"The boss has good instincts, but we have no strategy to provide the framework or narrative necessary to guide and communicate the logic of those actions."
We need to reframe how we think about the problems that vex us, and then we need to develop a new stategy to guide and communicate efforts in line with that understanding. We probably also are at the point where we need a national strategic plan and a HQ and staff under the Executive branch tasked to coordinate and synchronize efforts across government in the execution of that plan. Every Agency for themselves is no longer a degree of chaos we can get away with.