The "Thinking and Doing" of National Security

FOREWORD I woke to the sound of the first salvo of rockets lifting off from their pod set up on the back of a donkey cart only three hundred yards away. SWIIIIOOOOOOSH. KABAM! Again. SWIIIIOOOOOOOSH. KABAM! The sounds were essentially the same as the volleys continued, but the aim of our intended killers was nearing where I was sitting. I was sitting on the edge of a bed in a darkened room in a dank and musty abandoned hotel in the middle of a U.S. compound in a country not my own. It had only recently become my latest home away from home after months spent in various quarters around the vicinity. My roommate awoke, a veteran of many decades of similar situations. There we both sat in our sleeping shorts, counting silently as if we knew this was a six-shooter and we would be safe if … Again, SWIIIIOOOOOOSH, KABAM! Still we sat, hands by our sides, as if waiting for our turn for the bathroom; as if preoccupied and waiting to return to sleep. I had been shot at before, but this was my first time being at the epicenter of a terrorist attack. My military background had desensitized me to an extent. I had always expected danger and/or death, but in an almost clichéd manner - I could not help think, ‘Not this way. Not without a chance to fight back. And not in my skivvies.’ In that same moment, I accepted the fate that might come in the very next instant if a rocket were to also penetrate my window, as it had undoubtedly already done just a few feet down the hallway. I would not dive for cover. I would accept. The only words I remember were me saying to my colleague, “This doesn’t sound good. There are going to be some folks hurt this time around,” and his reply of, “Yep.” Forty rockets later, in what may have been thirty seconds of real time on the watch, the immediate situation concluded with the usual after-sounds of stray crackling bits of residual concrete finding its final resting place. My room had been spared – no direct hit. Only hours earlier we had been awakened by two rockets impaling themselves only meters above, outside our window, but this attack seemed to have been directed from the other side of the building. Twenty-seven of the forty munitions would make it through twenty-seven windows of my civilian and military colleagues. Remarkably, a military peer of mine would be the attack’s only fatality. Yes, smoke or dust was in the air, in the hallways. Yes, I could hear the sounds of folks making their way rather calmly out of their rooms toward the staircases. Yes, from the sixteenth floor I could hear the hallway guards stationed twenty-four hours a day for just such a drill taking charge of the situation as best they could. I knew I was headed for another evacuation and immediately a long day of work without access to all my stuff. My reaction was … to take one last shower. You don’t know where this took place. It doesn’t matter. You or I could have been anywhere. In fact, it has been anywhere and everywhere for some time – terrorism, that is. In my moment, not the first and not the last, I found a kinship with all those who suffer the indignity of such a cowardly act. I also found my own sense of self in those times – a calm, a peace followed by a period of some regret for not being more heroic in some unknown way, and a wee bit of paranoia at the thought of more such attacks. This opening story captures in my mind both a moment I reaffirmed the difficulty in choosing viable national security endeavors that make sense, and my moment of decision to address this at the source, at least in America, where policy is made. Yet this book is not about terrorism, policies or policymakers who work on any particular national security issue. It is about the process that underpins those national security policymakers in deciding whether, when, where and how to address any issue, including putting us all in crazy places around the world with rockets pointed at our windows – or tanks. Yes, I said it. This is a book about process – the process of the thinking and doing of national security, and it is my belief that a proper, flexible system approach can scale and apply to any national mission, foreign or domestic. My aim is to present you with just such an approach. To be certain, some of you are no longer reading this book, this sentence. Process folks around the world are currently serving several back-to-back life sentences in the minds of the world’s doers. These doers see process as a euphemism for tail chasing, leading to an inevitable ‘paralysis of analysis’ by bureaucrats who conflate ‘thinking’ as ‘doing.’ And yet, we all have our talents. I guess I am just the latest glutton for punishment. In truth, thinking and doing are two sides of the same coin of national security, joined by process. One can’t exist without the other and neither can survive alone or together without process. It is like water to the human body. It is time to see the system as a whole and not as an either/or. To all my brothers and sisters who like doing more than thinking or who fancy themselves as perfectly balanced experts in both, I salute you. I only ask for your indulgence. My intent is to add, not to take away; to heal, not make worse; to simplify, not complicate. In the end, you be the judge. But first, a disclaimer. I believe that before we understand how something works, we must first take that step to simply think it or dream it. There is plenty in my proposal that needs to be worked out. I acknowledge this as a scientist might when he or she presents a working hypothesis in a scholarly journal to his or her peers. I too want to stimulate the discussion by first presenting a dream, even if not a completed one. I have done enough work to believe in its workability, but I am admittedly banking on its plausibility more than its undeniableness. Human genome sequencing was thought of once before anyone actually knew how it could be done. Most thought it impossible in even the next hundred years, but it took less than twenty to achieve once the dream was out there. All ‘hows’ are ‘what ifs’ at some earlier stage. None of this is said to dissuade or evade, only to invite your critiques in the spirit of collaborative discovery rather than in the spirit of competition. Finally, I don’t expect this book or the processes proposed in it to solve ‘world hunger’. Moreover, in the hands of the wrong person, any new system can be as useless as the one it proposes to replace. And in the end, this country will continue to face a never ending stream of national security issues that may never be fully resolved. So, why even try to worry about the system that underpins all this? Well in my mind it is simply about getting an advantage. A bad system can only makes things worse. A good system gives us a better chance. In particular, my proposal just might help keep America in the drivers seat a little while longer with just enough foresight, context, and wherewithall about ourselves to stay one step ahead of the competition. I will leave it to the American people as to whether that advantage will ultimately be used for good or bad. As for the system that creates this advantage, I say it is worth a try. I thank you for your time and attention, and I do look forward to your feedback.