DrNatSecMgt

11/11/2024

Love at Home, Love at Home: Springdell after COvID, Arrest, Surgery, and Trump (November 10, 2024)

06/08/2018

Rebooting as Center for Trauma Studies and Resilience Leadership.

12/18/2016

There is a long tradition in the United States of "The Education of ...." analyses. Two that I remember are a book, The Education of Henry Adams, and a perhaps-New York Times Magazine article, The Education of Dan Quayle. To me, it seems that the President-Elect's cabinet choices are a good first chapter for Volume 1 of The Education of Donald Trump. He seems to be treating his cabinet picks as if they were first-bid negotiating positions which will be discarded during their confirmation hearings. This, of course, presumes the existence of an equally powerful negotiating adversary who has equally provocative first-bid negotiating positions on the other side of the table. If you know any Trump loyalists who believe he might benefit from an education, please explain to them that his current cabinet picks will strengthen Chuck Schumer's place in history as President Trump's most effective adversary.

11/24/2016

I have been obsessively googling "trump romney" and news since Saturday, wondering if Mitt Romney will continue his father's legacy of humble public service. Saturday Night Live, Mike Huckabee, and Newt Gingrich have all made the case that Romney should walk away from the position.

08/03/2014

We teach five complementary leadership styles at National Defense University -- classical, heroic, administrative, transformational, and strategic (CHATS). I spent the day reviewing classical leadership styles for our new students, who arrive on Monday.

11/19/2011

I have argued for years that there are two types of national security advisors: national security guru (Kissinger, Brzezinski) and national security manager (Scowcroft, Powell). Dr. Rice, in her new book, claims to have been an honest broker, presumably a blend of the two styles, but I wonder if she wasn't actually a shadow Secretary of State instead.

08/31/2011

There is a quotation on the need to build a High Reliability National Security Strategy from Adm. William H. McRaven – the new commander of Special Operations forces -- in today's NYT, with high relevance to 8/6/11: "I'm not sure I know how it ends... This may be the 'new normal',' in terms of this threat that we will have to live with for a long time. But we are better postured now to deal with that threat than we've ever been before. I don't think we will ever be complacent again."

02/22/2011

In late February 2002, SAIC convened a workshop in Mclean Virginia to discuss how to dismantle the Al Qaeda network. Howard Aldrich, Kathleen Carley, Richard Harrison, and I (the organization scholars) tried -- and failed -- to explain that to defeat a network you needed to be a network. Message received, finally (perhaps).

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/110221_815-mcchrystal-hourglass.jpg

02/16/2011

Nathan Hodge's new book, Armed Humanitarians, reviews what is largely already known about the Human Terrain System -- the deaths of Bhatia, Suveges, and Loyd; the Fondacaro creation narrative; and the spat between Montgomery McFate and the anthropological community. http://www.amazon.com/reader/160819017X?_encoding=UTF8&query=human%20terrain

Amazon.com: Armed Humanitarians: The Rise of the Nation Builders (9781608190171): Nathan Hodge: Books

02/10/2011

An author at Project on National Security Reform posted an interesting critique of the current U.S. national security system – as it relates to the National Security Staff’s missteps in handling the evolving Egypt event. The PNSR blog reminded me of an April 6, 2010 presentation by then-DNI Denny Blair in which he also saw high value in the creation of interagency teams. See DrNatSecMgt.blogspot.com for details.

President Barack Obama talks on the phone with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in the Oval Office, Jan. 28, 2011. Vice President Joe Biden listens at left, and the President’s National Security team confer in the background. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza.)

02/09/2011

On June 15, 2005, a group of very smart people tried to come up with a theory of intelligence. A theory of intelligence in the absence of a theory of national security is a means-ends inversion; see Steve Kerr's classic treatise on bureaucratic pathologies, "Rewarding A [intelligence], While Hoping for B [national security]."

http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/conf_proceedings/2006/RAND_CF219.pdf

02/08/2011

Recent missteps by the National Security Staff related to Egypt demonstrate a lack of regional expertise. (1) Dan Shapiro's area of responsibility is too large. (2) A more detailed "common map" would make it clear that Egypt is in the Maghreb (not in the Middle East). (3) Seven regional directors is not enough.

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-02-07/crisis-egypt/transcript