A House Panel Talks Strategy

While Ash Carter was getting all of the attention on Capitol Hill yesterday with his testimony in the Senate, the House Armed Services Committee held a hearing titled The Future of National Defense and the U.S. Military Ten Years After 9/11: Perspectives from Outside Experts. The panel included:

Mr. Jim Thomas
Vice President and Director of Studies
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments

Dr. Michael E. O’Hanlon
Director of Research and Senior Fellow
Brookings Institution

Mr. Thomas Donnelly
Resident Fellow and Director, Center for Defense Studies
American Enterprise Institute

Mr. Max Boot
Council on Foreign Relations
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies

Below is the video for those who missed it.

This was an interesting discussion, and once Dr. Michael E. O’Hanlon arrives it got very interesting in my opinion, but the HASC Republicans got thoroughly embarrassed before the hearing ended. Max Boot, who I readily admit I don't always read even though I am aware he writes a lot, pretty much made a fool of himself towards the end of this video.

During a late exchange with Representative Jim Cooper (D-TENN), the Congressman asks Max Boot a number of times if there is anything in the entire Defense Budget he would cut. Given numerous opportunities to answer the question, Max Boot gave several strange and ultimately ridiculous reasons why he wouldn't cut anything in the defense budget.

Not One Program, Nothing.

The inability to make a strategic argument in the context of the budget constraints facing the nation made Max Boot look like a clown. If you need evidence to support my accusation, just watch the video. His 'scary world' approach to the hearing did not contribute new ideas, or even strategic ideas to the discussion.

The politics of the defense debate has to improve if this nation is ever going to hold a legitimate strategy debate in this country, and HASC Republicans are shooting themselves in the crotch with a double barreled shotgun when they put their political faith for strategic analysis in the wisdom of folks like Max Boot. I'm sorry, but Max Boot was impossible to take serious on a panel that included folks like Dr. Jim Thomas and Dr. Michael E. O’Hanlon. Furthermore, while I respect and admire Tom Donnelly, Republicans badly need new faces and new ideas in their strategic dialog after 10 years of war.

Because there appears to be a lack of truly new strategic ideas being voiced on Capitol Hill for the Republican party, let me make a few recommendations that I believe the HASC Republicans should consider as future experts primarily because these new voices can make arguments that the Tea Party in particular could potentially find more appealing on defense and strategic issues.

Seth Cropsey
Hudson Institute
Senior Fellow

Anthony H. Cordesman
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy

Mackenzie Eaglen
Heritage Foundation
Research Fellow for National Security Studies, Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies

There are others, many others, but the real point is that when HASC Republicans are trying to find a political argument in support of defense at a time the primary issue facing defense is making good strategic choices towards shaping our defense posture with less money, picking someone like Max Boot who advocates against making any choices at all is a wasted opportunity to find a much needed political narrative for the right.

The conservative side of defense politics is remarkably weak right now - for the first time in decades - primarily because the old guard voices Republicans promote the most have no new ideas, and do more harm than good when chanting ideology instead of addressing strategic choices. Dr. James Carafano of Heritage Foundation, for example, has an enormous platform in the form of the Heritage Foundations broad reach and access to media, but because the Heritage Foundation under Dr. Carafano appears completely unable to make any strategic choices regarding budget and funding, nor a strategic argument based on vision instead of fear - Heritage Foundation has become almost completely irrelevant over the last several years to serious strategic discussions in the US despite their enormous reach on the political right.

It should be obvious to the Heritage Foundation - even the Tea Party is not listening to you on defense policy. Can you say Red Flag?

The only thing conservatives have going for them on defense policy is that no hard liberal think tanks take national security strategy seriously. Center for American Progress has long been completely void of serious national security strategy discussions on defense. Until their national strategy narratives are driven by substance instead of math, CAP will remain a loud political voice with no strategic policy influence in Washington. Note the HASC Democrats picked defense experts with non-partisan track records, Jim Thomas of CSBA and Dr. Michael E. O’Hanlon of Brookings, and there is no question they had the ideas that had the most impact in the hearing.

Finally, I do wonder when CNAS will shift from being a defense studies think tank focused on topical issues related to defense policy and build up a US policy and strategy shop. CNAS does great research and their experts write books worth buying on virtually all the major topics related to national security today, but the lack of a maritime studies and research arm at CNAS seems to prevent CNAS from taking positions relevant to the strategic level of policy - and keeps CNAS limited to a shop focused on regional topics.

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BTW, At 1 hour and eight minutes in the video above, Rep. Forbes starts a discussion with the panel that results in Jim Thomas giving one of the best public descriptions of AirSea Battle I've heard stated publicly to date. He doesn't go into great detail, but the conceptional explanation might be new to many who have heard of AirSea Battle but still have questions.