Thursday, December 24, 2009

New NSS?

Federal Law requires the incoming President to issue a National Security Strategy (NSS) within 150 days of taking office.  This has not yet happened.  In other words, the President is late.  Now comes news that the NSS is about to appear.

Inside Defense, for which I have neither a user ID nor a password, has a little blurb out on their website.  Here is the lede:
The Obama administration next month will unveil its first National Security Strategy (NSS), according to Pentagon officials. Draft versions of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review refer to a January 2010 rollout of the new NSS, a keystone strategic planning document, these officials say.
The Pentagon is pushing for the NSS to include discussions on the following:
In September, the Joint Staff -- according to the [previously cited] briefing -- offered its view that the new strategy should consider six strategic challenges:  transnational violent extremism; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; rising power and regional instability; cyber and space vulnerability; competition for natural resources; and natural disasters and pandemics.
This will be an interesting document to read.  We should hope that it provides some insight as to where the Obama Administration is going with regard to climate change and international institutions and maybe even world peace.

Regards  —  Cliff

1 comment:

  1. Interesting that you should bring this up. "The Pentagon Brief" has a blurb that seems to disagree with your source, to wit:

    "Pentagon observers disagree on how soon President-elect Barack Obama’s team will develop its new national security strategy and whether his administration will have time to conduct a new, sweeping national security review before completing the Pentagon’s 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, reports Inside Defense.

    By law, Obama is required to submit a comprehensive national security strategy report within 150 days of taking office. A Defense Department briefing slide reviewed by Inside the Pentagon suggests the new team might develop high-level planning guidance next spring, followed by a new national security strategy next summer. In early 2010, the Obama team’s first QDR report would be issued, along with a National Defense Strategy and National Military Strategy, according to the slide."

    Certainly, at this point, it is surely anybody's guess about the tone of the new NSS, but my guess is that it will be somewhat vague, ambivalent on many key issues, and open ended.

    While world peace is a worthy goal, it is also not a realistic one given the vagaries of human behavior and the realities of life on the planet. And thus, I am not at all sure that trying to make friends with a hungry grizzly bear is good policy.

    Cheers,

    Neal

    ReplyDelete

Please be forthright, but please consider that this is not a barracks.