Hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee - Building Partnership Capacity and the Development of the Interagency Process

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

REP. ADAM SMITH (D-WA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to follow up a little bit on what Dr. Snyder was talking about on coordination, how we sort of bring all of this together, because we are dealing with a big comprehensive ideological struggle that has many components, involves many different countries. I mean, to some degree, it's like a counterinsurgency in several dozen different countries. You know, you've mentioned the example in the southern Philippines. I went down and visited what they were doing down there. So there's a huge development piece, certainly there's a military piece. And the challenge is, how do we bring all of that together in a coordinated fashion? I think this hearing is very appropriate.

And the one idea that I wanted to sort of float by and see what you thought -- what both of you thought -- is we have sort of coordinated our efforts on the tracking of high-value targets and sort of the direct-action piece of this big comprehensive struggle, I think in a very good way. And there's many different pieces to that as well. But we've used the National Counterterrorism Center. To some extent we've used other pieces that I won't get into. Some of it is top secret. But Secretary Gates, you know how they coordinate that.

And they really did a good job by picking out some people to coordinate it and then getting all of the key players to buy in and participate. And it's -- in that instance, it's dozens of different agencies as well. Granted, this one pulls in even more. But I think of that as the model.

And on a daily basis, all of those different players, you know, get briefed and sort of know what's going on in the high-value target world. And what I've always thought is that we need the same thing for the broader strategy, for strategic communications, for development, to sort of have a picture every day of the several dozen different countries that this struggle is playing out in, and what's happening and who's involved in what and how those resources are divided up.

So we do -- we just need somebody to coordinate that. And I'm curious, you know, again, to follow up, how you think that would play out, because I think I kind of agree with Secretary Rice that logically that fits in the State Department.

When you're talking about, you know, foreign aid, development, diplomacy, all of the different pieces there, it seems to have more pieces that are in their area and then some that cross over. The problem is, to be blunt about it, Mr. -- Secretary Gates has the money. And, you know, you mentioned, you know, the 1990s and how we, you know, sort of did our, you know, peace dividend. Well, even after 9/11, I mean after 9/11, we clearly responded militarily. You can look at the Defense Department budget from September 12th, 2001, forward, and you can see that we got the threat and responded. It has not happened in the State Department, on a development or diplomacy level.

So I guess the two questions are -- one, what level of funds do we need to do? Is it realistic to say now we're going to make that, you know, commitment on these other pieces in addition to the military piece? And factoring that in, then how do you see who you would pick to coordinate? And I guess I'd be curious if Secretary Gates thinks my analogy to what we're doing on the direct action piece works at all in terms of a coordination model. You know, either one of you can take a stab at that.

SEC. RICE: Well, thank you. First of all, on budget resources, obviously I would love to have the Defense Department budget. It's not going to happen. We recognize that.

REP. ADAM SMITH: Or even 10 percent of it, maybe.

SEC. RICE: I think I don't even have 10 percent of it, that's right. But we have had a significant increase in foreign assistance. The president has tripled it worldwide, quadrupled it in Africa, doubled it in Latin America. And recipients, obviously, like Afghanistan have been significant -- and Iraq, for that matter -- significant recipients of counterinsurgency foreign assistance, where we're going into an area and building after an area has been cleared of terrorists.

And so we have increased the -- what we've not kept pace with, frankly, is the platform for the State Department in terms of people. And we've spent a lot of money on buildings, but we have really have allowed the numbers. Now, Secretary Powell had a diplomatic readiness initiative which added a significant number of officers. they were almost immediately swallowed up by the big efforts that we have in Afghanistan, Iraq, and so forth.

REP. ADAM SMITH: If I may, I think that's why a lot of this stuff has fallen to DOD.

SEC. RICE: Yes.

REP. ADAM SMITH: My subcommittee has jurisdiction over the Special Operations Command, and a lot of those soldiers, you know, got involved in some of the stuff we're talking about because, again, they had the people.

SEC. RICE: I think that's exactly right.

REP. ADAM SMITH: So it's not just the money.

SEC. RICE: And it's why I think one of the answers, again, is to go to a kind of Civilian Response Corps, which would be, in effect, a kind of equivalent of the Reservists or National Guard; that you could call people up as you need them rather than trying to keep them on the payroll. But we also have to increase the pure numbers of serving Foreign Service officers, serving USAID officers.

I think it's an interesting question. I was in the NSC when we created the National Counterterrorism Center, and it's an important innovation. I think the problem in kind of taking it as a model for, for instance, how we might engage, let's say, the country of Pakistan or the country of the Philippines is it's such a complex set of calculations. It's not just the counterinsurgency piece, it has to build out to building government capacity, for instance, to deal with the problems that are causing the rise of the counterinsurgency, whether those are governance issues or justice issues or poverty issues.

And so I suspect that what you're going to find is that that does have to be done by the chief of mission and by the Department of State. I think we -- the National Security Council, we -- I have found that the National Security Council can play that role at the strategic level of policy guidance in an effective way. The minute it tries to get down into a more operational level, it gets into trouble.

I've been n national security adviser; Bob has been deputy national security adviser. You must, I think, keep the authority and responsibility in the same place. And because the national security adviser is not a confirmed officer, does not have either -- does not the authority and therefore does not have the accountability for those programs, I think it would be a mistake to have more than a kind of coordinating -- policy coordinating role in the NSC. But I would suggest that that's where that policy coordination ought to really be.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source