The National Security Strategy: Documenting Strategic Vision Second Edition
Authored by Dr. Don M. Snider.
March 15, 1995
26 Pages
Brief Synopsis
The Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act requires the President to submit an annual report on the National Security Strategy. In theory, a formal presentation of grand strategy was intended to lend coherence to the budgeting process; a clear statement of interests, objectives, and concepts for achieving them gave Congress a clear idea of the resources required to support the President's strategy. The problem with such documents is that they often create the false impression that strategy formulation is a rational and systemic process. In fact, strategy formulation both within the executive branch and between the executive branch and Congress is an intensely political process from which national strategy emerges after protracted bargaining and compromise. Key personalities do what they can agree to do.
Don Snider, as an Army colonel, participated in this process at the National Security Council, and prepared the 1988 Report on National Security Strategy. This study is his account of the strategy formulation process as viewed from the White House.
Summary
The Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 requires the President annually to submit an articulation of national grand strategy. There have been six such reports published, two during the second Reagan administration (1987 and 1988), three by the Bush administration (1990, 1991 and 1993), and one by the Clinton administration in July 1994.
Several conclusions about the formulation of American national security strategy can be drawn from the way in which these reports were developed. Perhaps most importantly is the notion that today there is no consensus as to an appropriate grand strategy for the United States. Second, the executive branch traditionally does not conduct long-range planning in a substantive or systematic manner. Third, what the executive branch does do is episodic planning for particular events as they rise to prominence.
The issue addressed in the following paper is whether it is wise in the future to attempt anything more than broad and episodic planning as a part of the formulation of strategy at this level. The art of devising and articulating strategy is that of combining the various elements of power and relating them to the desired end. But in the final analysis, people of goodwill and intelligence will have to place national interests above political, personal, or even organizational concerns if the United States is to be served well by a coherent and appropriate strategy.
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