INTRODUCTION:
In 1986, National Security Decision Directive 221 declared drug production and trafficking a threat to the security of the United States. The U.S. government response to the drug (predominantly cocaine) epidemic was multi-faceted, in keeping with the nature of the trafficking threat. In the source region, the United States urged the Andean countries to gain control of their traffickers, and provided law enforcement and judicial system support to the Andean countries––Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru–– through the Drug Enforcement Agency, the State Department, and other institutions. However, by the end of the decade, it was becoming clear that counterdrug efforts in the Andes were not working. In August 1989, newly inaugurated U.S. President George H.W. Bush launched the Andean Initiative––a five-year program that allied the United States with Andean countries in the fight against narcotics. The initiative provided financial aid, program support, and training for Andean military and law enforcement efforts.

STRATEGY:
The U.S. counterdrug strategy inaugurated in 1989, including its international aspects, was well thought out via an interagency analysis which took place after Bush Sr. came into office. The Andean Strategic Initiative was laid down by the president in National Security Directive 18 (NSD-18), released in August of 1989. In it, the president noted that drugs affected U.S. national security by their corrosive effect on American society and that they undermined international security by destabilizing friendly governments. The broad-based counternarcotics strategy was unveiled in the 1989 publication of the National Drug Control Strategy, a 154-page report covering international and domestic issues. The report iterated specific objectives for the Andean Initiative as configured by the overarching framework of NSD-18. The five key objectives in the Andean region included: 1) “… isolation of major coca-growing areas in Peru and Bolivia”; 2) “… interdiction in these countries of the delivery [precursor] chemicals used for cocaine processing”; 3) “… destruction of cocaine hydrochloride processing facilities”; 4) “… dismantling of drug trafficking organizations”; and 5) “… eradication of the coca crop when it can be made an effective strategy.”

INTEGRATED ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL POWER:
The newly-created Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and its Director (commonly referred to as the Drug Czar) were charged with coordinating all U.S. domestic and international counterdrug efforts. ONDCP was additionally mandated with power to dictate national strategy and a national drug control budget. Thus, NSD-18 granted the ONDCP integrative and leadership responsibilities for the Andean Initiative. The elevation of Andean counternarcotics to the level of a national security threat meant that the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency would join the Department of State in the institutional structure. NSD-18 designated the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics Matters as lead agency in the development of Andean country programs. Department of Defense (DOD) policy directives and procedures were revised to expand DOD support of U.S. counternarcotics efforts and to permit DOD personnel to conduct training and operational support activities. In addition, the Department of Justice’s Drug Enforcement Agency, U.S. Customs Service, and U.S. Coast Guard provided advising and training for their Andean counterparts. The Agency for International Development and the United States Information Agency were also involved in the initiative.

EVALUATION:
Institutionalization of leadership, proactive crafting of strategy that recognized the multi-jurisdictional range and challenge of the Andean drug problem, and reconfiguration and integration of government security institutions constituted the primary strengths of the U.S. approach. Emphasis on collaboration in the strategy, initially configured by National Security Directive 18 and the first National Drug Control Strategy of 1989, helped bridge agency disjuncts. The president’s declaration of the primacy of the drug threat also provided a fulcrum to motivate action. However, several critics have concluded the Drug Czar lacked real authority to enforce decisions. Notably, the czar did not command nation-wide drug policy budget authority and to solve bureaucratic disputes the czar remained dependent on presidential backing. The monitoring of military aid in achieving counternarcotics objectives was also particularly problematic.

RESULTS:
Assessments of the Andean Initiative, and indeed of counterdrug strategy in general, do not provide a universal picture of success. Such measurable objectives as the number of hectares of coca destroyed or the amount of drugs seized were touted as a desirable means of evaluating success or failure, but difficulty in gathering reliable statistics on these drug trade measures makes them uncertain assessors. Still, the U.S. counternarcotics infrastructure was strengthened through the Andean Initiative. Almost immediately, coca crops were reduced. The Medellin cartel was effectively dismantled by the time Bush Sr. left office, and the Cali cartel followed in a few years. Gradually, the Andean countries were strengthened in their ability to fight cartels, combat insurgents, and improve governance. The counterdrug alliance between the United States and these countries was also solidified.

CONCLUSION:
Analysis of the Andean Initiative provides an example of how the U.S. government attempted to integrate multiple tools of national power across disparate jurisdictions in pursuit of one primary strategic goal: namely, decreasing drug production and trafficking in Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru. While complete success in the so-called War on Drugs is elusive and hard to measure, tangible results were achieved in the Andean countries to the long-term benefit of U.S. national security. These gains were accomplished through an interagency approach that focused on justice and law enforcement but which also leveraged DOD assets in a way that avoided pulling the military into large-scale operations.

INTRODUCTION:
Towards the end of his first term, President George W. Bush declared that democracy promotion in the Middle East would become a central tenet of U.S. foreign policy. The administration aimed to encourage democratic change throughout the region, even in countries with authoritarian regimes traditionally friendly to American interests. For example, Egypt has been one of Washington’s closest regional allies for decades, and yet the Bush administration pushed successfully for democratic reforms in the country. However, when the regime in Egypt began rolling back the imposed reforms, the Bush administration could muster only a limited response due to conflicting foreign policy interests, a lack of expertise regarding Islamist political movements, and resistance to the democracy project from officials within the administration. As a result, authoritarianism remains entrenched in Egypt, and the credibility of American democracy promotion efforts, as well as Washington’s overall reputation, has been further diminished in Egypt and beyond.

STRATEGY:
President George W. Bush stated clearly that democracy promotion abroad was essential to securing peace at home. As a result, the administration attempted to integrate democracy promotion in Egypt and the broader Middle East into its regional strategy. The White House instituted new initiatives within the State Department, garnered international consensus, and increased funding for all government bodies engaged in democracy promotion, the National Endowment for Democracy in particular. The administration also made an unprecedented diplomatic push in public and private statements supporting democratic development in Egypt and among its neighbors. Nevertheless, the government’s approach to democracy promotion lacked a centralized “command and control center” and thus had little strategic coherence. Additionally, the role of democracy promotion in the GWOT was never explicitly articulated. Furthermore, many in the U.S. government (such as the Office of the Vice President but even elements of the State Department) never bought into the strategy, particularly as it related to Arab allies, such as Egypt. As such, no unified strategy was adequately pursued.

INTEGRATED ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL POWER:
In refining its Middle East strategy during the second term, the Bush administration identified development aid and democracy promotion as essential tools for achieving U.S. national security objectives, particularly as they pertained to the GWOT. As a result, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department, began focusing more energy on U.S. democracy promotion efforts from 2003-2006. However, since 2006, high-level U.S. support for change has been notably absent as other foreign policy goals in the region have trumped democracy promotion. Additionally, Washington’s extensive economic and military aid to Egypt over the last 30 years is not well leveraged to press for democratic reform. Indeed, by continuing to provide aid to Egypt despite President Mubarak’s repeated authoritarian crackdowns, the United States has fostered skepticism abroad regarding its commitment to democracy. These conflicted actions have led to the resignation of several frustrated staffers who supported democracy promotion efforts.

EVALUATION:
The lack of unified purpose and the absence of a coherent strategic plan regarding how best to encourage a democratic transition in Egypt while pursuing broader U.S. goals in the region has rendered democracy promotion efforts halting and haphazard. This lack of unity was partially the result of purposeful resistance of administration officials who doubted the wisdom of the democracy project and resisted the effort. The available sources do not indicate how some individuals were able to contravene the President’s direction, but make it clear that Bush lacked the capacity (organizational tools and personal time) to oversee the proper implementation of his directives. These individuals and organizations were suspect of transformational diplomacy, and preferred realist, status quo driven policy or simply desired to keep working in their traditional areas of expertise (for example, development). The bureaucratic resistance hindered Bush’s freedom agenda and compelled the departure of frustrated staffers tasked with democratization. Furthermore, consensus was never reached regarding whether democracy promotion was a tactic in fighting the GWOT or a grand strategy and policy end in itself.

RESULTS:
It is widely recognized that the attention lavished by the Bush administration upon the cause of Egyptian democracy between 2003 and 2005 helped create space for democratic political opposition in Egypt and encouraged President Mubarak to adopt at least mild reforms. On-the-ground efforts of U.S.-sponsored nongovernmental organizations helped make possible Egypt’s reasonably free and fair parliamentary elections in 2005. Since then, however, Mubarak has cracked down on opposition parties and civil society groups with little response from the United States, damaging the credibility, and thus the effectiveness, of the U.S. democracy promotion agenda throughout the Middle East.

CONCLUSION:
While Bush called for reform throughout the Middle East and funds were assigned to serve that purpose across the region, Egypt is one of the few countries where the U.S. had, at least for a time, a positive impact on democratic reform. However, success was short lived and many experts who have recently analyzed President Bush’s so-called “freedom agenda” in the broader Middle East and North Africa have declared the effort largely ineffective due to competing interests and lack of commitment. These individuals point out that if the U.S. hopes to encourage democracy among its autocratic allies, Washington will have to learn how to pursue this aim in tandem with other priorities.

INTRODUCTION:
Foreign intelligence services have stolen U.S. national security secrets for decades. The damage Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen, and Chinese agents have inflicted on U.S. national security has been incalculable. To remedy this problem, the office of the National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX) was established in 2001 to provide strategic direction to U.S. counterintelligence (CI) and to integrate and coordinate the diverse CI activities of the U.S. government (USG). Nevertheless, interagency struggles and a lack of authority have frustrated the new office. American secrets remain excessively vulnerable to foreign intelligence services.

This case study, written by the first National Counterintelligence Executive appointed by the President, discusses the challenges of leading and integrating the U.S. CI enterprise. It discusses issues ranging from the practical details of setting up and staffing a new USG office to the interagency mechanisms for reaching consensus and implementing policy. The study also explains the significance of the first national counterintelligence strategy, which established new policy imperatives to integrate CI insights into national security planning and engage CI collection and operations as a tool to advance national security objectives.

STRATEGY:
U.S. counterintelligence duties have historically been dispersed among independent departments and agencies. By creating the NCIX, the Congress sought to replace this divided approach with a more integrated and effective U.S. CI apparatus. The Counterintelligence Enhancement Act established the duties of the NCIX, which include: identifying and prioritizing the foreign intelligence threats of concern to the United States; developing a strategy to guide CI plans and programs to defeat those threats; evaluating the performance of the CI agencies against those strategic objectives; and ensuring that the budgets of the many CI organizations of the federal government are developed in accordance with strategic priorities. In 2005, the NCIX issued the first National Counterintelligence Strategy, which set forth consistent, clear, and new strategic direction for U.S. counterintelligence. The subsequent creation of the office of the Director of National Intelligence, to whom the NCIX now reports, consolidated the NCIX mission within the new architecture of U.S. intelligence.

INTEGRATED ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL POWER:
Getting the departments and agencies to work together with the NCIX to implement the national CI strategy has proven an elusive goal. Efforts towards this end have been complicated by the unique history of the disaggregated U.S. CI enterprise, deficiencies in the NCIX and DNI organizations, and a seeming lack of awareness of the gravity of foreign intelligence threats among national security leadership. Interagency cooperation in many cases proved anathema to the U.S. government’s CI organizations. The FBI, for example, which consumes the lion’s share of U.S. CI dollars and billets, unilaterally withdrew most of its personnel from the NCIX office. In addition, the FBI’s counterintelligence division published its own “national strategy for counterintelligence” two months after the NCIX’s presidentially approved strategy was issued. The creation of the DNI did not facilitate cooperation––in fact, the DNI has worked to weaken the NCIX as it has eclipsed that office’s authorities in counterintelligence budget, collection, and coordination.

EVALUATION:
The Counterintelligence Enhancement Act established a national leader to bring strategic direction to U.S. counterintelligence, but the legislation failed to establish a strategic counterintelligence program. While charging the NCIX with responsibility for heading counterintelligence, the law did not assign the NCIX the authorities needed to manage a strategic CI program. Though the NCIX office is responsible for providing strategic direction to U.S. counterintelligence, it does not have the power to direct budget allocations. Program and budget authorities for CI activities remain divided among the departments and agencies and subject to their individual priorities, which too often take precedence over national objectives.

Similarly, NCIX is given the responsibility to evaluate department and agency performance, but it is not empowered to direct programmatic changes. Under this model, the NCIX is inherently advisory, rather than authoritative. In addition, within the office of the DNI, authorities and lines of responsibility for counterintelligence have become blurred, diluting the concentrated focus and guidance that the NCIX was created to provide.

RESULTS:
A series of government and independent analyses have documented the high costs of the seams in U.S. counterintelligence strategy. Failing to establish an effective national CI leader threatens to replicate past costs. Seven years after the NCIX was created, no single entity is capable of providing a comprehensive threat assessment of possible foreign intelligence successes, supporting operations, or formulating policy options for the President and his national security team. While CI-related cooperation among the FBI, CIA, and the military services has increased, this collaboration has failed to provide the comprehensive, well-integrated CI strategy and policies required to uphold U.S. national security.

CONCLUSION:
The NCIX seemed poised to succeed when created. It had widespread congressional support, a consolidated National Strategy, the endorsement of a highly respected commission, and the President’s personal backing. Yet, the statutory intent to integrate U.S. CI efforts has been repeatedly frustrated. Due to the weaknesses of the NCIX and the lack of a strategic program, individual agency priorities have eclipsed USG-wide CI integration. As a consequence, Washington has inadequately addressed the threats posed by foreign intelligence agencies to U.S. national security.

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INTRODUCTION:
This case study examines the formation and implementation of U.S. policies in response to three of the most important national security crises between the United States and the People’s Republic of China: the June 1989 decision by the Chinese military to employ force to suppress unarmed student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square; the accidental May 1999 bombing by U.S. aircraft of China’s embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo War; and the April 2001 collision between an American EP-3 surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter aircraft off China’s coast.

Three considerations make a study of how the United States has managed crises with China important for the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR). First, managing security relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been, and will probably remain for at least several more decades, one of the most important national security missions of the U.S. government. Second, assessing the U.S. interagency response to three short-term incidents sharing common characteristics provides examples of how the American national security system reacts to unexpected international crises. This evaluation complements other PNSR case studies that review how the U.S. government forms and executes strategies during longer-lasting events. Third, the three cases highlight various differences in American policies towards China that clarify the formation and execution of U.S. national security strategy.

STRATEGY:
The leading national security policy makers in each of the three administrations under consideration held different views about the appropriate U.S. strategy toward China even if they subscribed to a general consensus that a more democratic, less bellicose PRC would be a more favorable partner than an authoritarian regime that pursued repressive domestic policies and confrontational foreign policies.

George H.W. Bush entered office with a well-formulated strategy toward China. The President, who inclined toward a realpolitik perspective of great power relations that focused on the external rather than the internal behavior of countries, emphasized the need to prevent a rupture in Sino-American ties despite the end of the Soviet threat that had united the two countries during the Cold War.

In principle, the overarching strategic framework of the Clinton administration toward China was that of “constructive engagement.” Its adherents sought to promote China’s domestic liberalization, global economic integration, and responsible international behavior gradually by deepening bilateral dialogue and interaction on a range of issues. In practice, due to the lower level of presidential interest and other factors, the Clinton administration was divided over its strategic priorities regarding China. Some elements were most concerned with promoting human rights, others with securing commercial advantage, others with curbing nuclear and ballistic missile proliferation, and still others with pursuing defense diplomacy with a reclusive but increasingly powerful PLA. Absent senior White House direction, the U.S government agencies primarily responsible for America’s China policy often failed to integrate and prioritize these objectives.

The second Bush administration came into office with a strategic framework that saw China as a long-term strategic competitor, but the EP-3 collision occurred too early in the new administration for it to have developed a coherent strategy, with supporting interagency procedures, regarding China or many other important issues. The crisis might have accelerated the development of an integrated strategy that treated China as a potential near-peer competitor if the September 2001 terrorist attacks had not quickly overwhelmed U.S. government planning efforts and directed policy makers’ attention away from China and toward countering international terrorism.

INTEGRATED ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL POWER:
The three specific incidents under review encompass a wide range of actors that have participated in the formation and execution of U.S. security policies towards China. These include several executive branch departments, agencies of the U.S. intelligence community, influential members of Congress and their staff, and diverse non-governmental organizations. Yet, each of the three administrations under consideration employed distinct processes for formulating and executing American security policies towards China.

U.S. policy toward China during the first Bush administration was directed by the President himself. George H.W. Bush relied primarily on his most senior advisers when making key policy decisions toward China after Tiananmen. These officials would reach decisions and then seek to implement them without necessarily requiring formal advanced or post-decisional meetings of the established NSC committees. Although this centralized system received criticism for being too closed, the fact that it involved key actors who played important roles in both the formal and informal structures helped keep the two processes in sync.

The priority that President Clinton and other senior U.S. government officials placed on winning the war in Kosovo perhaps disinclined them from attempting to disrupt formal U.S. government decision making structures and processes by substituting ad hoc procedures. That said, for much of the period leading up to the Belgrade bombing incident, the administration had experienced problems integrating the various components of its comprehensive engagement toward China. Diverse executive branch agencies readily engaged with Beijing, but often on their own terms in pursuit of distinct agendas. By the time of the embassy bombing in 1999, Chinese officials had become distrustful of Clinton administration statements and actions, since these were often contradicted by at least one U.S. government agency.

Since the EP-3 collision occurred so early in the life of the second Bush administration, the executive branch had yet to establish clear interagency procedures regarding China or many other issues. Decision makers resorted to several ad hoc interagency mechanisms to establish and implement policies during the crisis. The U.S. military heavily influenced the initial U.S. government response since one of its planes was directly involved in the incident and because much of official Washington was not yet awake. After the non-DOD agencies became more engaged, however, the defense establishment adopted a lower profile and allowed Secretary of State Colin Powell and President Bush to manage the public response more effectively.

EVALUATION:
The realpolitik approach of the first Bush administration created tensions in executive-legislative relations, as diverse members in Congress sought to challenge the administration’s policies. The White House felt compelled to threaten presidential vetoes to prevent Congress from adopting sanctions that the executive branch strongly opposed. Yet, the Bush administration, like other foreign governments, proved unable to prevent the Chinese leadership from inflicting widespread human rights violations or induce Beijing to alter other policies obnoxious to American values and interests.

The priority of the Clinton administration was to settle the Belgrade bombing crisis in a way that quickly returned the Sino-American relationship to pre-crisis conditions and allowed the U.S. government to continue to concentrate on winning the war in Kosovo.

The initial U.S. response, which failed, was simply to hope that expressions of contrition by American leaders would assuage Chinese authorities, who would then suppress the public demonstrations. Most participants in the interagency working group established to monitor the crisis subsequently acknowledged feeling they were making decisions excessively hastily, with incomplete information. Constraints on the president’s time, congressional attacks on the Chinese government, and other impediments also complicated the U.S. government’s ability to handle this crisis.

The second Bush administration sought to settle the EP-3 crisis through a solution that, while not worsening Sino-American ties, would not compromise future U.S. intelligence operations against China. In this case, differences in interagency perspectives, especially between U.S. civilian and military actors, hindered policy implementation.

RESULTS:
In response to Tiananmen, President George H. W. Bush felt compelled to engage the Beijing government directly by circumventing traditional diplomatic and U.S. government channels. This approach had the advantage of flexibility but meant that, when details of the tactic became public, members of Congress felt less reluctance to attack the effort because they had never been briefed on the issue. More generally, congressional pressure continually forced the first Bush administration to pursue a harsher policy toward China than the President preferred. In terms of implementing its desired policy toward China, however, the main obstacle was not lack of interagency cooperation, but the dependence of the strategy’s effectiveness on Beijing’s response. Chinese policy makers proved unwilling to curtail their internal repression sufficiently to avoid undermining congressional support for the White House’s approach of pursuing long-term cooperation with China.

Despite having possessed several years of in-office experience conducting policies towards China, the Clinton team encountered problems orchestrating its diplomatic, economic, military and other foreign policy instruments before and during the embassy bombing crisis. The lack of interagency integration resulted from the embassy bombing’s unexpectedness and the White House’s preoccupation with winning a war in Kosovo that was proving much more difficult than originally anticipated. The military and intelligence communities proved reluctant to share information about their target selection procedures with their civilian colleagues, let alone the Chinese. As a result, the civilians in the State Department were left assuring the Chinese government that the incident had all been a mistake while acknowledging their limited understanding of why the intelligence failure had occurred.

The second Bush administration eventually achieved its immediate crisis objective of securing the return of the EP-3 crew and subsequently the plane. Nevertheless, the hard-line stance taken by U.S. military leaders was not well integrated with the softer approach of the U.S. State Department. A more integrated response might have helped secure the release of the crew and aircraft faster. Faced with unanswerable counterfactuals, however, one can acknowledge that the “good cop/bad cop” approach actually adopted, whether consciously or by accident, might have yielded the best results. In any case, congressional pressure for harsh U.S. retaliation if the Chinese failed to return the crew appeared to have strengthened the administration’s bargaining position by making its implicit threats more credible to Beijing.

CONCLUSION:
Several patterns emerge from the three crises under consideration. First, even those presidents that assumed office with well-integrated strategies often found it hard to implement them within the U.S. interagency framework. Second, absent close presidential attention, the agencies would often develop and pursue their own China policies, contributing to undesirable policy incoherence. Third, responding to the immediate crisis almost always involved a mixture of formal and ad hoc interagency processes. Fourth, serious problems arose when the crisis occurred early in a presidential transition since the new administrations had yet to establish fully functioning interagency processes or secure Senate approval of many mid-level political appointees. Fifth, since the Tiananmen crackdown, sustained tensions have affected executive-legislative policies regarding China , with Members of Congress often advocating much more confrontational policies than the executive branch deems wise. Finally, the main achievement of the U.S. government response to all the crises involved costs avoided—normally not a major accomplishment, but important here, when mismanaging events could have escalated into nuclear war.

INTRODUCTION:
Despite impressive progress in security made by the Surge, the outcome of the Iraq War remains in question. Though a comprehensive narrative of the war is not yet possible, an investigation of the major early decisions made at the presidential, interagency, cabinet department, and theater levels is important to the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR). The strategic significance of Iraq and the complex contingency character of much of the fighting alone warrant a comprehensive analysis of the decision to invade the country. In addition, evaluation of the U.S. government (USG) planning effort reveals critical shortcomings that the U.S. national security system must rectify to avoid similar errors in the future.

STRATEGY:
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001, the regime of Saddam Hussein assumed a new, more ominous appearance in Washington. Military operations against Iraq were first suggested by the Pentagon as early as September 12, 2001, but it was not until November 2001 that the President asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to begin planning for potential military operations against Iraq. The U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), headed by General Tommy Franks, was tasked with planning for the mission. The Chairman, General Richard Myers, USAF, and the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), General Peter Pace, USMC, played a supporting role. In the end, Secretary Rumsfeld assumed a uniquely preeminent position in the development of the battle plan and the invasion force.Rumsfeld envisioned a lightning-fast operation in Iraq, followed by a swift handover of power to the Iraqis. Later, Rumsfeld even deactivated the military’s automated deployment system–questioning, delaying, or deleting units on numerous deployment orders.

While CENTCOM and the JCS did not underestimate the challenge of Phase IV stability operations, civilian leaders at the Pentagon remained critical of the need for a large troop presence. Phase IV planning was uneven within CENTCOM itself. All of the invading divisions and separate brigades believed that they would return home as soon as practicable after the cessation of hostilities. The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), charged with carrying out initial stabilization and reconstruction activities, was not established until January 2003, at which time it was subordinated to the Secretary of Defense, who placed it under the authority of Central Command.

Colin Powell, with the strong backing of the United Kingdom and other U.S. allies, convinced President Bush in August 2002 to exhaust diplomatic efforts before going to war. While Secretary Powell was successful in restarting weapons inspections in Iraq, he was never able to build a consensus for decisive action in the Security Council. The President fared better with Congress and received strong, bipartisan approval for prospective military operations against Iraq.

In March 2003, the U.S. military commenced Operation Iraqi Freedom and effectively toppled Saddam. By May 2003, however, an anti-coalition insurgency had begun to develop. The military had not prepared for a counterinsurgency campaign and required approximately a year to adjust its field operations. The civilian ORHA plan for postwar Iraq was also scrapped and replaced by more than a year of formal American occupation under the Coalition Provisional Authority led by Ambassador L. Paul (Jerry) Bremer.

INTEGRATED ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL POWER:
Though Saddam’s perceived possession of WMD unified diverse factions within the administration in support of the war, USG efforts were not well integrated. While formal war planning was in high gear from Thanksgiving of 2001 up to March 2003, planners in the civilian agencies were not included in Pentagon close-hold briefings. They did not begin to make meaningful independent contributions until summer 2002. Moreover, postwar issues were divided and addressed by different groups that often worked in isolation from one another, sometimes for security reasons and sometimes for bureaucratic advantage. Complicating matters, very few humanitarian planners had access to the war plan, while very few war planners cared about anything other than major combat operations.

Though Powell and CIA Director George Tenet supported the President’s decision to wage war, a significant number of officials in the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency dissented, sometimes through disruptive media leaks. Within the Pentagon, Franks––who shared Rumsfeld’s belief in the importance of speed––was caught between trying to placate his boss and satisfy the physical needs of his forces. Though the subordination of ORHA to the Pentagon appeared to streamline the chain of command, it also dampened interagency cooperation. The dysfunctional tension between clear lines of command and cross agency coordination continued when ORHA was replaced by the CPA. Bremer emphasized his status as Presidential Envoy and did not report consistently to or through either the Secretary of Defense or the National Security Advisor.

EVALUATION:
The Iraq war is a classic case of failure to adopt prudent courses of action that balance ends, ways, and means. Policy queuing was a problem. The tentative scheme to manage postwar Iraq was approved in October 2002, but little could be done as diplomats vainly attempted to solve the problem without recourse to arms. After major combat operations had ceased, U.S. efforts were hampered by ineffective civil and military plans for stability operations and reconstruction. The U.S. government deployed inadequate military forces to occupy and secure Iraq. Washington has also been unable to provide a sufficient number of trained civilian officials, diplomats, and aid workers to conduct effective stabilization and reconstruction missions. The State Department and USAID remain underfunded and insufficiently operational, while military manpower has been overextended. Exacerbating the situation, the U.S. government was slow to appreciate the ferocity of the Iraqi insurgency. Problematic U.S. funding and contracting mechanisms also delayed the provision of services and basic reconstruction.

From the outset, the underlying assumption that major combat operations would be difficult but that securing peace would be easy had a corrosive effect on planning. Faulty intelligence on Iraq’s suspect weapons of mass destruction, the state of Iraqi infrastructure, and the usefulness of Iraqi police contributed to “rosy scenario” predictions. Whether motivated by wishful thinking, stress, or predisposition, decision-makers failed to properly account for the extensive countervailing analysis, which warned of the dangers in postwar Iraq. In addition, one consistent problem demonstrated by the first Bush administration has been a failure to partner successfully in the interagency, with the Congress, and with our allies.

RESULTS:
As of mid-2008, the Iraq War had cost the United States over 4,100 dead and over 30,000 wounded. U.S. military allies have suffered hundreds of additional casualties. Iraqi civilian dead may number more than 90,000, while over 8,000 Iraqi soldiers and police officers have been killed. Fifteen percent of the Iraqi population has become refugees or displaced persons. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the USG now spends over $10 billion per month on the war. Total direct appropriations for Operation Iraqi Freedom from March 2003 to June 2008 have exceeded $524 billion.

Globally, U.S. standing among friends and allies has decreased substantially. At the same time, operations in Iraq have had a negative effect on efforts in other facets of the war on terrorism, which have taken a back seat to the priority of the war in Iraq when it comes to manpower, materiel, and decision makers’ attention. The U.S. armed forces––especially the Army and Marine Corps––have been severely strained. American efforts in Iraq have fostered terrorism and emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East.

CONCLUSION:
The central finding of this study is that U.S. efforts in Iraq were hobbled by a set of faulty assumptions, a flawed planning effort, and a continuing inability to create security conditions in Iraq that could have fostered meaningful advances in stabilization, reconstruction, and governance. With the best of intentions, the United States toppled a vile, dangerous regime but has had great difficulty replacing it with a stable entity. Notwithstanding recent progress under the Surge, this case study exposes serious mistakes in U.S. government policy making and execution regarding Iraq.

INTRODUCTION:
From 1918 to 1919, a particularly virulent strain of influenza struck the United States, quickly becoming the most destructive pandemic in human history. The total number of deaths attributed to the outbreak range from 40 to 100 million. The United States alone suffered 675,000 deaths out of a population of 105 million. An examination of the U.S. government’s management of the epidemic for the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR) highlights Washington’s failure to conduct an effective, coordinated response to one of the most important public health crisis in the United States.

STRATEGY:
Due to Washington’s preoccupation with the First World War, the U.S. government proved unable to create a strategy for combating the epidemic. Instead, federal officials typically devolved almost all liability for organizing the response to state and local governments. The federal agency nominally responsible for managing such emergencies, the U.S. Public Health Service, lacked the resources and authority to do so. The U.S. government did not develop a method to track the disease, nor did it implement effective quarantine and containment procedures. Media censorship during the war precluded press coverage of the epidemic and discouraged Washington from pursuing a public education campaign. In the absence of government assistance, state public health departments which lacked adequate funds and other resources, were quickly overwhelmed by the volume of sick and dying.

INTEGRATED ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL POWERS:
Rather than coordinating a comprehensive response to the pandemic, federal agency priorities remained focused on the production of food, fuel, funding, industry, weapons or soldiers for the war effort. In 1918, the federal government dedicated only 180 public officials and 44 quarantine stations to combat the disease. Some U.S. military officers as well as state and local civilian authorities undertook their own response initiatives, but these were too limited in scope to have much effect.

EVALUATION:
The U.S. government had several opportunities to respond to the outbreak, but failed to take appropriate action. When the disease was first reported to the U.S. Public Health Service, officials neither offered advice nor acted on the information. The disease subsequently infected thousands of men at a U.S. Army training camp, but the Army did not notify the U.S. Public Health Service, nor did it quarantine the post. As the first wave of the flu spread overseas, Washington remained preoccupied with winning the war in Europe rather than developing and implementing an effective response to the crisis.

A second, more lethal, wave of influenza hit the United States in the summer of 1918. Domestic censorship and the limited scientific knowledge that existed about such diseases existed at the time hindered public awareness regarding the disease and impeded local officials from effectively responding to the crisis. The executive and congressional responses to the escalating crisis were always too little and too late.

The third wave of the disease arrived in the United States after the campaign in Europe had ended. Even without the war effort to overshadow domestic concerns, Congress paid little attention to the outbreak. The absence of anyone in charge, the lack of a coordinated strategy, and undeveloped and ineffective interagency decision-making structures prevented organizational learning from improving the U.S. government response.

RESULTS:
The U.S. government’s failure to develop an integrated strategy had a number of negative consequences, both militarily and economically. Soldiers who contracted the flu as trainees were moved from post to post, infecting others and virtually halting combat training. Shipping sick soldiers overseas impeded offensive operations in France. The economy was crippled as businesses and factories operated at a reduced capacity. In raw numbers, the disease killed more people than any other in human history.

CONCLUSION:
During the 1918-1919 pandemic, the U.S. government failed to recognize the importance of employing an effective interagency response to a threat that transcended traditional departmental and federal jurisdictions. Washington never mounted an integrated effort to decrease the number of sick and dying Americans. The federal government lacked strategic vision to conduct national operations and never issued sufficient guidance to states. In the absence of direction, local leaders were left to combat the disease using inadequate staff and resources. The deeply flawed response to the pandemic demonstrates the importance of ensuring shared situational awareness in responding to a crisis, not only for informing top-level decision-makers, but also for distributing knowledge to empower decentralized coordination and execution at the local level.

INTRODUCTION:
Strategic integration of American psychological-political activities during the Cold War—including public diplomacy—fluctuated markedly. The U.S. government’s ad hoc public diplomacy initiatives were too often pursued in isolation from larger national security strategy and poorly coordinated with other agencies. Yet, in the early 1950s and 1980s, presidential initiative sustained a largely effective White House-centered interagency effort; in particular, American psychological-political programs were critical to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, persisting weaknesses in the U.S. approach resulted in missed opportunities and sub-optimal exploitation of this tool

In light of recent events, which highlight the importance of information activities in support of a “long war,” it is important to revisit the historical lessons of American public diplomacy and related activities during the Cold War. Since no single organization can have a bureaucratic monopoly in this area, moreover, establishing a unified public diplomacy message requires interagency collaboration. The U.S. Government struggled with this challenge throughout the Cold War, making this case an excellent issue for analysis by the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR).

STRATEGY:
The Truman and Eisenhower administrations pursued an aggressive psychological-political strategy against the Soviet bloc. Authoritative documents such as NSC-68 identified ideological struggle with the Soviets as a vital arena in the emerging competition. With a few exceptions, however, future administrations allocated public diplomacy only a small a role in strategy formation. The Reagan administration revived the prominence accorded to public diplomacy during the high Cold War. The strategic framework of the Reagan administration’s public diplomacy effort featured, among other things, direct engagement with Soviet propaganda and disinformation, democracy promotion, and revitalization of U.S. international broadcasting.

INTEGRATED ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL POWER:
With some adjustments, the information organizations established under the Truman and Eisenhower administrations—especially Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and the United States Information Agency (USIA)—would remain through the end of the Cold War. Yet, Cold War-era public diplomacy coordination bodies were for the most part transient and largely ineffective The disconnect between public diplomacy and broader U.S. Cold War strategy became apparent in 1956, when the RFE’s Hungarian-language broadcasts arguably encouraged violent resistance against the Soviet occupying forces, despite U.S. policy against directly supporting the uprising. In spite of a brief renaissance during the Kennedy administration, public diplomacy thereafter drifted increasingly to the margins of government policy. This trend was reversed under President Reagan, for whom public diplomacy was an integral and valuable tool of national strategy. National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 77 created a new interagency framework for coordinating and managing national security-related information.

The State Department could have facilitated integration of policy and public diplomacy, as the Department exercised de jure authority over USIA for much of the Cold War. However, department officials typically resisted public diplomacy initiatives because they were viewed as complicating rather than complementing diplomacy.

EVALUATION:
If psychological-political activities are treated as a functionally distinct area of staff or interagency work, they risk becoming increasingly isolated from mainstream national security policymaking. This occurred to some extent even under the Reagan NSDD 77 interagency apparatus. However, the inclusion of an excessive number of actors and organizations in the psychological dimension of national security often results in a diffusion of responsibility and authority, which likewise leads to marginalization of public diplomacy. This seems to have been the case after the mid-1950s

It has long been a contentious issue for public diplomacy practitioners whether U.S. government broadcasting should aim simply to provide objective information, or instead seek to project American influence by proactively shaping information for particular foreign audiences . Due to this fundamental lack of clarity over the public diplomacy mission, U.S. information agencies have never been able to develop a single agreed vision, sense of purpose, body of principles, or set of doctrines. U.S. public diplomacy efforts throughout the Cold War were also consistently hampered by the poor state of education and training in the field.

RESULTS:
Public diplomacy did contribute to some historical successes, notably in the role it played in the final collapse of the Soviet system, but the shortcomings of American public diplomacy almost certainly resulted in wasted opportunities to achieve national objectives. Except for two brief periods, public diplomacy has been regarded by policymakers as a marginal component of national security policy and accordingly as a relatively low priority in terms of staffing and funding. Congress has generally evinced a low level of understanding and support of the public diplomacy function.

CONCLUSION:
On the basis of this study, one must conclude that public diplomacy activities were often ad hoc, detached from larger U.S. national security strategies, and ill-coordinated with other agencies. These characterizations can be attributed to several factors including: lack of bureaucratic weight of the dedicated public diplomacy agencies; little understanding of (and not infrequently, disdain for) the public diplomacy function throughout the national security bureaucracy and in the Congress, especially at senior leadership levels; unresolved tension regarding mission objectives; and cultural resistance both within and outside government to a strategic or proactive approach to official communication efforts. At other times, briefly in the early 1950s and again in the early 1980s, strong presidential interest in public diplomacy and related capabilities sustained an impressive, if not wholly effective, White House-centered effort.

INTRODUCTION:
After two failed attempts at interagency coordination during the Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson decided to intervene directly to improve the management of U.S. support to pacification in South Vietnam. The resulting initiative, known as CORDS (Civil Operations and Revolutionary Support), created an interagency headquarters that streamlined U.S. efforts in support of the South Vietnamese government and the fight against Viet Cong insurgents. The case of CORDS is critical to the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR) as it exemplifies an interagency structure that effectively integrated elements of national power in pursuit of U.S. counter-insurgency, nation-building, and governmental capacity building efforts in South Vietnam.

STRATEGY:
Prior to the inception of CORDS, the U.S. pacification assistance mission in South Vietnam was run by the United States Mission offices in Saigon. The State Department, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the U.S. Information Service (USIS) all were responsible for various aspects of this mission. The military advisory effort was run by Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV); however, military assets were outside the direct purview of the embassy. The U.S. Government created CORDS to overcome these organizational and administrative problems and better focus U.S. interagency support behind South Vietnamese efforts at pacification.

INTEGRATED ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL POWER:
CORDS was unique in that it placed nearly all civilian and military interagency assets involved in the pacification struggle under one civilian manager—and then subordinated that individual to the military hierarchy as a Deputy Commander of Military Assistance Command Vietnam. This innovative structure provided the pacification effort nearly unfettered access to enormous military and civilian resources. By centralizing planning and management in one headquarters, and subsequently replicating the identical management structure at every level of the South Vietnamese government (military region, province, and district), CORDS established an effective interagency body. It blended civilian and military personnel and improved U.S. pacification support to all levels of the South Vietnamese government.

EVALUATION:
One variable that explains CORDS’ ultimate success at mitigating interagency tension was the decision to put military commanders in charge of civilians and vice versa. This innovative mixed structure demonstrated to CORDS staff that agencies would reward personnel based on their skills, abilities, and mission performance and not on previous agency loyalty. Furthermore, CORDS was comparatively well-resourced, allowing its elements to accomplish objectives quickly and completely. Finally, CORDS emphasized creating a working relationship with the South Vietnamese to generate more comprehensive pacification plans that would ensure U.S. and Vietnamese military and civilian resources worked together. The Vietnamese pacification planning apparatus would grow in size and capacity as it slowly came to embrace all aspects of its mission.

RESULTS:
CORDS was, on the whole, effective in establishing viable military and civilian aid initiatives in conjunction with the South Vietnamese, efficiently managing those programs and measurably improving the effectiveness of the South Vietnamese security forces in the countryside. However, CORDS’ major, if inherent, weakness was that the organization had to partner with the deeply flawed South Vietnamese government. Although CORDS mobilized and integrated U.S. military and civilian pacification initiatives in support of South Vietnam, it could only achieve a limited success in that, by itself, it could not ensure the viability of an independent South Vietnam.

CONCLUSION:
CORDS assisted the American pacification effort in South Vietnam by reducing interagency bickering, creating a unified pacification effort under a single manager, placing that manager’s headquarters inside the military structure, and thereby allowing it to gain access to vast human, financial and organizational resources in implementing an integrated program at the provincial, district, hamlet, and village level. Despite these achievements, which required the allocation of enormous resources, the effort proved insufficient in itself to sustain the South Vietnamese government against its numerous internal problems and foreign enemies.

INTRODUCTION:
In 1964, an earthquake struck Alaska that measured 9.2 on the Richter scale, the most severe ever recorded in North America. Transportation networks and critical infrastructure were almost entirely decimated, crippling Alaska’s feeble pre-oil economy. Nevertheless, federal, state and local bureaucracies rapidly and effectively collaborated to maintain Alaska’s viability as a state in the aftermath of the disaster. The case is of particular interest to the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR) due to the Johnson administration’s successful coordination of federal and state agencies in managing the relief and recovery efforts.

STRATEGY:
No recovery organization had existed prior to 1964. The Johnson administration therefore confronted the task of integrating national resources in an ad hoc fashion. The president created the Federal Reconstruction and Development Planning Commission for Alaska, a cabinet-level agency that developed a rehabilitation strategy and managed its implementation through an effective division of labor among the agencies most engaged in the recovery efforts.

INTEGRATED ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL POWER:
Backed by presidential authority, the commission expedited both policy and operational decision-making, encouraging cooperation among scores of government agencies. Eventually, virtually every government agency became involved in the commission.

The many specialized task forces supplemented the activity of the first responders in the Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP) rather than attempting to supplant it. This non-hierarchical approach was essential to convincing the OEP to collaborate with the new commission.

EVALUATION:
Several variables explain the development and implementation of a successful recovery operation. At a decision making level, it was important that no single agency had clear authority over peer agencies. This approach facilitated the conceptualization of a unified strategy, while maintaining incentives for individual agencies to employ their resources most effectively. The simplicity of the organization and management approaches used by the Federal Reconstruction and Developing Planning Commission for Alaska not only allowed a high degree of flexibility in the implementation of broad federal objectives, but in combination with the unprecedented emphasis on rapid action, it also minimized the level of financial investment necessary for the recovery effort. Reliance on experienced career personnel to lead the execution of Commission policies also turned out to be crucial. The decision to involve the Alaskan populace actively in the recovery process also facilitated success during the implementation phase. Rather than retarding progress, involving affected Alaskans, as well as state and local agencies in the federal decision making inspired trust in the actions of the federal government, and saved both time and money.

RESULTS:
The earthquake imposed major costs on many Alaskans, but the effective recovery efforts obviated the need to activate the last-resort strategy of relocating much of the Alaskan population to other parts of the United States. The rehabilitation efforts allowed the state’s economy to survive the ordeal. These successes demonstrated how the federal, state and local governments can profitably collaborate with businesses and nonprofit groups as an integrated team even in the dace of a catastrophic disaster. Although each community faced unique challenges, the unprecedented management strategies adopted by the commission provided a framework under which diverse and timely solutions could be implemented very rapidly.

CONCLUSION:
Reconstruction efforts following the 1964 Alaskan earthquake showcased effective and swift collaboration between federal, state, and local agencies tasked with responding to a catastrophic natural disaster. Vesting officials with the ability to respond rapidly compressed most critical reconstruction into the first few months after the Alaska earthquake, minimizing the economic impact of the damage and allowing residents to remain in the state.

INTRODUCTION:
After the voters of East Timor overwhelmingly voted to separate from Indonesia in a referendum on August 30, 1999, anti-independence militias linked to the Indonesian government launched a campaign of terror. Initially, U.S. officials looked to Indonesian authorities to halt the violence, but it soon became clear that the Indonesian government could or would not do so. Although the Australian and American governments both endorsed deploying an international peacekeeping force to restore order in the territory, the allies were initially unable to agree on an acceptable bilateral division of labor. In the end, the U.S. government contributed limited but important transportation, intelligence, communications, and logistics assistance as well as a modest number of American military personnel to the peacekeeping force, the International Force, East Timor (INTERFET). This contingent deployed in late September and rapidly restored peace to the territory.

The case of East Timor is an example of successful international peacekeeping achieved with a minimal commitment of U.S. assets. The American government’s response to the events in East Timor also serves as a useful study of Washington’s difficulties in developing coherent strategies in situations where U.S. national security interests are considered minimal.

STRATEGY:
Washington first encountered difficulties developing a cohesive strategy due to a lack of attention to the issue by senior U.S. leaders, which made it difficult to unify the agency response. As a result, the Australians received discordant messages from their American interlocutors. After the Australians made clear their dissatisfaction with the lack of clear U.S. support regarding an issue that they perceived as of vital interest for their country, President Clinton and his key advisers established a clear strategy—combining pressure on Indonesia with support for Australia—and effectively mobilized the bureaucracy behind it.

INTEGRATED ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL POWER:
During the pre-crisis period, U.S. government agencies pursued disparate agendas based on their varying core missions and areas of focus. The State Department was preoccupied with ensuring Indonesia’s transition from authoritarianism to democracy, the Department of the Treasury attempted to promote economic reforms in the country and manage the concurrent Asian financial crisis, while the Defense Department continued focus on improving relations with the Indonesian military. After the President and other senior U.S. leaders developed a coherent strategy, however, the diplomatic, military and economic bureaucracies proved effective at implementing it. In particular, the agencies pursued a successful integrated effort to compel a reluctant Indonesian government to permit the deployment of INTERFET on its territory and provided sufficient, though limited, assistance to the Australian-led military intervention.

EVALUATION:
U.S. government decision-making structures generally functioned efficiently only after senior leaders became engaged and took charge of the bureaucracy by empowering their key subordinates. Limitations on resources and capabilities, and a preoccupation with crises elsewhere (especially Kosovo), explain the initial U.S. hesitancy to intervene in the East Timor crisis. In this case, neither U.S. civilian nor U.S. military agencies suffered from inadequate resources, authorities, and operational capabilities, primarily because Australia took charge of the military response and the United Nations as well as other countries made important contributions. This multidimensional effort meant that Washington had to provide only modest support. Although members of Congress initially resisted allocating money and troops to quell violence in East Timor given its seemingly peripheral concern to core U.S. security interests, congressional leaders, like their executive branch colleagues, eventually rallied behind the intervention after Australian officials had defined the issue as a decisive test of the U.S.-Australian security alliance.

RESULTS:
Washington’s original reluctance to commit heavily to a military intervention in East Timor resulted in a short-term deterioration in U.S.-Australian relations and perhaps led to a greater level of post-referendum violence than might otherwise have occurred. Despite initial difficulties, the U.S. strategy regarding the East Timor crisis was largely successful. U.S. government agencies effectively mobilized diplomatic and economic pressure against the Indonesian government and subsequently provided vital support for Australia’s lead role in INTERFET. These policies ended the civil strife in East Timor, facilitated the territory’s transition to independence, and ultimately strengthened U.S.-Australian ties.

CONCLUSION:
Four key conclusions emerge from the analysis of U.S. policy making toward the East Timor crisis. First, U.S. government agencies initially encountered difficulties developing a coherent preventive strategy, which caused needless confusion in Australia. Second, implementation proceeded smoothly after President Clinton and other senior U.S. government officials decided on an integrated strategy and empowered subordinates to carry it out. Third, both the early weaknesses and the ultimate strengths that characterized the U.S. response resulted primarily from the fact that the American interests and resources engaged in East Timor proved to be modest. Finally, U.S. credibility and American-Australian security relations experienced short-term deteriorations but sustained no significant lasting damage.