Hi Ron,

I don't know that you are mistaken, but I do think the civilian leadership needs to make choices that reflect their political objectives. To me its a question of how and why $$$ are allocated. DoD has I believe recently helped fund some DoS activities. Even in Secretary Gate's KU speech, while he put in a strong pitch for funding soft power (maybe you could call that the output of statecraft?), he also said he'd be back asking for more money for defense - our "to do list" has not shrunk, nor will it any time soon - if anything its grown .

It will take some time to build up other capability and capacity in the "whole of govt.", and it will take some money. In the meantime, those gaps will have to be covered by DoD because within the inter-agency, we're the only ones who have capacity.

Key to shortening that interim period will be the mutual understanding between the Executive and Legislative branches, and the American People about what we need to do and why. It will be painful and it will seem expensive to grow capabilities and capacity in our FP tool bag, but in the long run I believe it will be cheaper, and it will allow govt. to live up to the expectations of those who elected it.
Best, Rob