The ongoing shake-up of the Pentagon's top policymaking office reveals new details about how the still-young Obama administration will conduct national security affairs.
The organizational shift began months ago, as the newly elected president's DoD transition team began mulling how to align Pentagon offices to implement the policy goals of the incoming White House team and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was asked to stay on after two years in the job.
The transition team "decided they needed to make some adjustments to better address the priorities of the secretary as he continued, recognizing some events that were coming up, like the Quadrennial Defense Review," said Peter Verga, deputy undersecretary of defense for policy integration. For instance, the transition team knew "greater emphasis needed to be placed in areas like space and cyber, and nuclear, because we would be doing the Nuclear Posture Review."
The shake-up is depicted on a new - and busy - organizational chart of the policy office, now run by Defense Undersecretary Michèle Flournoy. Some former officials and defense experts see only "another wire diagram," as one quipped. Some said they have only glanced at the revised chart, saying what matters most is the people selected for the various jobs.
Several assistant and deputy assistant secretary positions have been created to give emerging threats the attention they now deserve; others have been shifted, several to new offices to better align related issues.
Gates approved the new structure May 22.
Thomas Donnelly, a defense analyst with the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, advises against getting overly excited about the moves.
"It's a good thing that they have a [deputy assistant secretary] for Afghanistan and Pakistan. But when it comes time to meet with Petraeus, McChrystal and Odierno, I doubt a DASD is going to be the most vocal or influential person in the room," Donnelly said.
He was referring to Army Gen. David Petraeus, the chief of U.S. Central Command; Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. forces and the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan; and Army Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of American forces in Iraq.
Overall, Donnelly called it a "reasonably traditional structure," though he noted its lack of a deputy assistant secretary for one issue about which Obama administration officials talk a lot: climate change.
Others say the new framework shows how the six-month-old Obama administration views current and future threats.
"Looking at what they've done, I think, shows this group came into office with a clear idea of the threats," said one former Pentagon official who served under a Democratic administration. "The strategic planning model of the last few years was designed to deal primarily with the global war on terrorism. But the world has changed in some significant ways" since the last policy office reorganization was put in place in 2007.
"The bottom line is, it was time for a change," the former official said.
Under the new plan, space and cyber issues were paired, as were the nuclear and missile defense portfolios. Each set of issues was given its own deputy assistant secretary, who answers to the assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs - a post that had previously been called global security affairs, with a different policy portfolio. Michael Nacht now holds that job, which also oversees Pentagon efforts to set policies to counter weapons of mass destruction.
"We needed to place greater emphasis on strategic issues. We took an ASD that had been called global security affairs and called that global strategic affairs," Verga explained. "Under that went classic strategic issues."
The assistant secretary of defense for special operations, low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities, Michael Vickers, now oversees special operations and counterterrorism, the partnership strategy and stability operations portfolio; and the global threats and counternarcotics portfolio - the latter known as "drugs and thugs," Verga said.
"Reality isn't always reflected on an organizational chart. The real power structure is the people in the jobs. For example, Vickers is far more influential than the chart indicates an assistant secretary of defense would be," Donnelly said.
Vickers served under Gates during the final years of the Bush administration, and sources say he has become a top adviser to the secretary.
Some critics of the new framework questioned why the administration has a deputy assistant secretary for global threats and counternarcotics who does not answer to the assistant secretary for global strategic affairs.
"They're going to be fighting amongst themselves," one skeptic said. "It'll be a mess."
Flournoy reviewed several offices in the policy organization that deal with specific regions or the world and concluded "things were about right in the regional offices - the international security affairs office, Asian & Pacific security affairs, and homeland defense and Americas' security affairs," Verga said.
Only minor adjustments were made in these wings of the policy shop.
Officials "resurrected" a deputy assistant secretary to oversee defense policies related to Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia. And they decided to remove oversight of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asian policymaking from the purview of the deputy assistant secretary for South and Southeast Asia, giving the complex region its own DASD.
Several Pentagon watchers questioned placing the Af-Pak and Middle East portfolios under different roofs.
Verga countered that policy officials have built in "seams" between specific portfolios that will inevitably affect one another but answer each day to different assistant secretaries.
"It shouldn't be a problem," Verga said.
Flournoy also asked Verga, a career civil servant, to man the new deputy undersecretary position for policy integration, which also is the office's chief of staff. Verga also will oversee DASDs for detainee policy and prisoners of war/missing persons issues.
Aiming to give the policy outfit "more muscle," as Verga said, in the Pentagon's annual programming, planning and budgeting process, Flournoy created a deputy undersecretary of defense post for strategy, plans and forces, now Kathleen Hicks. Part of her charge is running the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review.
Under Hicks are three DASDs, one each for strategy, plans and force development.
"In the past, strategy and plans were combined and reported directly to [the] principal deputy undersecretary for policy," Verga said. "Force development had not been separated out [under a deputy assistant secretary], but had been part of forces and transformation policy, which was under SO/LIC," or special operations and low-intensity conflict. The latter office has been dissolved.
The thinking behind grouping development of U.S. defense strategy, plans and force development, Verga said, is to "put ends, ways and means under one portfolio." ■
E-mail: jbennett@defensenews.com.
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