On the twelfth day of Christmas, my SecDef gave to me [Pres.-elect Obama]. . .  (continued)
Twelve learning cultures,
Eleven hybrid agencies, . . .

 

In this mornings New York Times, Peter Baker reported that the Bush team has generated more than a dozen contingency plans for the new administration:  e.g. a North Korean nuclear explosion, a cyber attack on American computer systems, a terrorist strike on United States facilities overseas or a fresh outbreak of instability in the Middle East.  In addition, Baker reports that the White House has drafted as many as three dozen other long-term policy memorandums outlining various pressing issues that will confront the new team and how Mr. Bushs aides see the status of each of these issues as his presidency comes to a close.  But wouldnt a more effective national security system be a better gift to the new administration than a stack of NSC memos?

One of the overwhelming findings of the Project on National Security Reforms 750-page report, Forging a New Shield, is that the current national security system does not effectively manage the interagency space.  President-elect Obama has just announced the appointments of his Secretary of Agriculture and his Secretary of the Interior.  How can Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates help his eleven Cabinet-level colleagues, including Agriculture and Interior, better manage the interagency space?

Todays answer is that Gates can tinker with eleven hybrid agencies jointly controlled by him and by one of the eleven new cabinet secretaries.  First, there needs to be a clean distinction made between departments (long-term, large, Cabinet-level, stovepipes) and agencies (short-term, small, non-Cabinet-level, agile).  The twelve departments are Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health & Human Services, Homeland Security, Interior, Justice, State, Transportation, and Treasury.  There are numerous small governmental organizations that float in the interdepartmental space.  It would help to label these smaller non-Cabinet-level organizations as agencies:  e.g. Central Intelligence Agency, Environmental Protection Agency, Centers for Disease Control, Department of the Army, Department of the Air Force, and Department of the Navy. 

Here are four of the eleven possible hybrid agencies that Gates could create in the next 35 days as Christmas presents to his eleven new colleagues on the Cabinet:

Defense/State.  The Marine Corps is the national security systems most high-performing organization.  The State Department has a diplomatic security organization; the Defense Department tasks marines to provide security to embassies.  These two mirroring organizations could be combined into a Marine Corps that could be under the joint command of two Cabinet Secretaries:  Secretary of Defense Gates and Secretary of State Clinton.  The Marines are no longer a subset of the Navy.  They often work in close proximity with intelligence community assets outside of the United States.  The Marine Corps has its own college now.  The incoming Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs was the commandant of the Marine Corps.  Treating the Marine Corps as the nations first and best hybrid agency would be a large step forward to bridging historical rivalries between State and Defense.

Defense/Homeland Security.  The Hart-Rudman Commission report (Road Map for National Security: Imperative for Change) released in January 2001 predicted a catastrophic attack on American soil within the next 25 years; it happened in eight months.  A careful reading of that report in the nine days after the 9/11/01 attacks led many of us to believe that the U.S. Coast Guard could provide the core organizational culture for the new Department of Homeland Security.  The traditional dual-nature of the Coast Guard dictated that the organization was under Department of Defense during times of war, and not under the Department of Defense during times of peace.  Why does the Coast Guard need to be under the sole control of the Secretary of Homeland Security?  It makes more sense to position the Coast Guard as a second exemplary hybrid culture under the joint control of Secretary Gates and incoming Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano.

Seven Additional Hybrid Agencies.  The Defense/Justice hybrid agency could pull together all of the Department of Defense lawyers and all of the Department of Justice people working on defense issues.  The Defense/Health hybrid agency could pull together all of the militarys physicians, researchers, nurses, and hospitals and create significant learning advantages while keeping the Defense Department focused on defense and DHHS focused on medicine.  (Would there have been a Walter Reed Hospital scandal or a lingering sense of inferior care in Veterans Administration hospitals if there were a high-performing hybrid agency between Defense and Health?)  The Defense/Education hybrid agency could pull together all of the militarys educators and create significant synergies between the nations P-20 (pre-school through college graduation) efforts and its post-graduate military education programs.  The Defense/Energy hybrid agency already exists in part due to the Rickover nuclear navy cultures migration into governmental and civilian nuclear power programs.  The Defense/Transportation hybrid organization could pull logistics expertise from the military into the service of the nation as a whole; wasnt national security the impetus for Eisenhowers interstate freeway system?  The Defense/Commerce hybrid agency could build on units such as the National Defense Universitys Industrial College of the Armed Forces.  The Defense/Treasury hybrid agency could continue tasks such as the monitoring and freezing of Al Qaeda assets; President Bush is speaking on the value of Defense-Treasury cooperation today at the Army War College.

Defense/Agriculture.  A wide variety of possible national security implications of agriculture will be mentioned in half an hour in Chicago.  One of the important tasks in post-conflict periods in Afghanistan was the reform of agriculture away from opium crops toward different crops, but it was difficult to move Agriculture people into a war zone.  Decisions will need to be made on whether ethanol will continue to be part of the nations plan for energy independence, which implies that the U.S. military, as the worlds largest consumer of gasoline, might need to build more joint expertise between the military culture and the agriculture culture.  Humanitarian missions by the U.S. military, such as the recent support by the military of food relief in Myanmar/Burma, will require sophistication on the relationship between food production and food transportation.  Creating a culture that is as strong as the Marine culture or the Coast Guard culture that is a hybrid of the Defense and Agriculture departments would create a powerful tool for future presidents.

Defense/Interior.  The Secretary of the Interior will inherit a broad portfolio of sub organizations.  One of the divisions of the Department of the Interior is focused on emergency management, which implies a possible link between National Guard units and Interior units.  The Department of the Interior might also inherit responsibility for wild land firefighting, currently housed in the Department of Agriculture.  The wild land firefighting community is the nations most sophisticated organization in terms of understanding high-reliability organization theory.  The U.S. military is routinely called upon to assist in large fires in the western United States.  Climate change and environmental degradation are increasingly seen as national security issues with significant military implications.  Secretary Gates could set in motion the creation of a hybrid agency that could help create an effective bridge between military operations and environmental concerns.

If Secretary Gates could transfer national security knowledge from the current administration into these eleven hybrid agencies that he would co-lead with eleven new cabinet secretaries in the incoming administration, the nation would be better prepared to survive the transition than it would be with a large stack of memos from the Bush National Security Council.  Eleven new organizations with vibrant, distinct, creative problem-solving cultures would be valuable presents to the country, and would be a nice way to get the two new cabinet secretaries up to speed on national security issues.