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Overview
Experience gained from the 9/11 attacks, combat in Iraq
and Afghanistan, disaster assistance during and after Hurricane
Katrina, and the ongoing war on terror provides the basis for
amending our anachronistic national security structures and
practices. Many analysts and officials have called for a second-generation
version of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense
Reorganization Act of 1986 to address the array of organizational
and management challenges that we face. Some argue that the
new security environment requires even more fundamental change,
similar to what was enacted after World War II. The principal legislation
that emerged from that era was the National Security Act
of 1947. Goldwater-Nichols aimed to fix inter-Service problems by
streamlining the chain of command and promoting “jointness” but
did not fundamentally alter the structure of the U.S. military.
These earlier efforts attempted to strike a balance between
those who wanted to unite bureaucracies to improve efficiency (primarily
resource considerations) and produce more effective outcomes
and those who opposed potentially dangerous concentrations
of power and desired to preserve their heart-and-soul missions (as
well as congressional support for their strategic view and related
combat systems and force structures). Today, the debate rages
anew with the security of this nation dependent on the outcome.
This paper explores two options for reorganization: unification
and coordination. We investigate each against the backdrop
of the two previous attempts at reorganization in the context of
the Madisonian political culture that constitutes part of who we
are as a nation. Finally, each option is judged against its ability to
contribute to the development and implementation of the kinds of
strategies and operations needed to wage the new kind of war and
peace in the emerging global security environment.
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