The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review is clear on the military’s approach to not only COIN, but counterterrorism and increasing stability in the Middle East region. These approaches, however, entail a new set of responsibilites for the military on top of their traditional ones (remember, we are still at war). Given that, the military is not just paying for maintenance of installations and operations both CONUS and OCONUS, as well as air, sea, and land-based weapons systems, but they are also further building capacity of U.S. forces and armed forces of partner states, supporting civil affairs, and re-tooling enlisted military and officers from a skills perspective(e.g., intelligence, stakeholder engagement, negotiation, languages, etc). As such, DoD’s budget reflects the fact that our armed forces are taking on new responsibilities AND have to retool themselves in order to successfuly execute their mission to protect our interests. The State Department has no such problem and their budget reflects that as well.

The military has to adjust both in capability AND capacity. The State Department just has to worry about capacity. And again, no surprise, their budgets reflect this fact. Does that mean there is a discrepancy in mission, or even a discrepancy between their respective missions and their budgets? Not hardly. In fact, I dare say that their budgets properly reflect the missions, as well as strategies and levels of effort, that they both have in defeating terrorists and promoting peace and stability.

-Erin Brown Duggins
Harris School of Public Policy, MPP’99

Army doctrine hopes for an ideal situation in which the nation has a set of modular capabilities (offensive, defensive, and stability/support) that can be used with agility, that can be combined as needed, and that may be scaled up and down as national security requires. The institutional barriers that stand in the way of developing these capabilities, to say nothing of employing the capabilities with agility, are formidable. Adequate funding for these capabilities will most likely occur only after someone articulates a plausible path through the institutional barriers.

John D. Baldridge
Command Sergeant Major, USA
Harris School AM ‘90

I remain skeptical of NATO’s role as a harbinger of security however. This is because most member states value government spending on domestic and foreign social policy instead of defense policy. The domestic public decry of British troops dying in Afghanistan is an example of this. But one cannot base the future of an international organization on the compunctions of a few states. We’ll just have to wait and see how this all unfolds.

I think it is also worth highlighting the role the war on drugs plays in fueling the conflict in Colombia. The guerrillas and paramilitary fund themselves through the drug trade since they have practically no popular support.