From Mark Thompson, The National Interest: “The U.S. military is an immense bureaucracy. That breeds conservatism—as a character trait, not a political philosophy—in its more senior ranks. It doesn’t much care for change, or for outsiders—even in Congress. (Raise your hand if you remember the Pentagon vainly telling lawmakers to stuff it when it came to the wholesale changes in military command that Congress ordered it to make under 1986’s Goldwater-Nichols act, or the creation of the U.S. Special Operations Command the next year). The only way to change the U.S. military is to inflict it from the outside. Alas, few civilian outsiders are demanding change, so it’s simply not happening, despite flashing red lights that says the status quo is unacceptable.”
Filling in the Blanks at Trump’s Pentagon
From Mark Thompson, The National Interest: “The U.S. military is an immense bureaucracy. That breeds conservatism—as a character trait, not a political philosophy—in its more senior ranks. It doesn’t much care for change, or for outsiders—even in Congress. (Raise your hand if you remember the Pentagon vainly telling lawmakers to stuff it when it came to the wholesale changes in military command that Congress ordered it to make under 1986’s Goldwater-Nichols act, or the creation of the U.S. Special Operations Command the next year). The only way to change the U.S. military is to inflict it from the outside. Alas, few civilian outsiders are demanding change, so it’s simply not happening, despite flashing red lights that says the status quo is unacceptable.”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
DOD ACQUISITION REFORM
Archives
April 2024
Categories |