Small Wars Journal

Hybrid Threats Require a Hybrid Government

Sat, 01/02/2010 - 12:24pm
Hybrid Threats Require a Hybrid Government - Matt Armstrong, Budget Insight, Stimson Center

Nine years ago we went to war with the enemy we had, not the enemy we wanted. For several years after 9/11 we struggled to comprehend how military superiority failed to translate into strategic victory. We created labels like "irregular" and "hybrid" to describe adversaries that did not conform to our structured view of international affairs shaped by the second half of the Cold War. Today, conflict is democratized, not in the sense of bicameral legislatures but strategic influence in the hands of non-state actors empowered by falling barriers to information acquisition, packaging and dissemination as well as easy access to the means of destruction and disruption, physical and virtual.

This new "democracy" is messy and yet we continue to formulate, plan, and execute engagement using "regular" and "homogeneous" bureaucracies and budgets. Today's threats are increasingly complex, often stateless, and rarely conforming to neat lines of authorities and responsibilities across, or within, government agencies, most of which were designed in and for previous eras.

Calls for "smart power" and a "whole of government" approach has resulted in countless articles, memos, and reports on updating the State Department, the Defense Department, and other agencies to confront the challenges of today and tomorrow. A few more reports -- each significant -- will come from the Administration over the next several weeks, including the Defense Department's so-called "1055 Report" (named after the section in the Congressional report requiring it), a new strategy on public diplomacy from the office of the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, and a strategic direction from the National Security Council. Each report is likely to call for the blending of planning and execution across executive branch agencies. The focus on improving the operational elements of national power, while necessary, ignores a critical national security actor that has received little to no attention or pressure to adapt to the new and emerging requirements: Congress...

More at Budget Insight.

Comments

Christopher M … (not verified)

Sun, 01/03/2010 - 5:36am

For a comprehensive review of this topic, see Terry Kelly et al, "Fixing Foreign Assistance for Counterinsurgency" (Chapter Eleven) in "Counterinsurgency: the Challenge for NATO Strategy and Operations" at: http://www.ndc.nato.int/download/downloads.php?icode=139

Eric (not verified)

Sat, 01/02/2010 - 3:13pm

Continuing focus on planning but rarely does anyone talk about budgeting. Many a bad decision has been driven by the budget in one way or another. Budgets and budget systems are often Overly complicated, antiquated, rigid, and corrupt. Planning and budgeting are rarely ever linked or linked appropriately. Perhaps what we need are some new approaches to budgeting -chaotic budgeting? Hybrid budgeting?