NSC Staff Too Big, Too Activist: Top Former Generals, Officials
http://breakingdefense.com/2016/03/nsc-staff-too-big-too-activist-top-former-generals-officials/
NSC Staff Too Big, Too Activist: Top Former Generals, Officials
By Colin Clark on March 14, 2016 at 7:27 PM
WASHINGTON: The Senate and House Armed Services committees push to review the foundational law underpinning todays US military, known as Goldwater-Nichols, was given a boost today by a group of top former generals and mostly Democratic Pentagon officials.
Their biggest takeaway: the National Security Council is too big and takes activist positions on military operations instead of mediating the interagency process. Breaking D readers are familiar with this problem. In addition to those problems, identified by the first panel at the Center for Strategic and International Studies this morning, a group of former generals and Democratic added their authority to a letter (which appears below) calling for greater efficiency and effectiveness in the national security process and the Pentagons command structure.
The letter criticizes a wide array of Pentagon and broader national security processes, saying the Defense Department, and even more so the broader U.S. national security complex, appear sclerotic in their planning, prioritization, and decision-making processes.
But the morning panel hammered away in particular at the NSC, which has grown from 40 people under the first President Bush to almost 400 under President Obama. Leading the discussion was the uber defense Democrat, former Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre, who is CEO of CSIS.