A battle plan for our top warrior

TO: Incoming Secretary of Defense

RE: Coming to Grips With DOD

OVER THE YEARS, the Pentagon has welcomed all sorts of outsiders as secretary of Defense -- lawyers and industrialists, congressmen and senators. But you are a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and, as such, your background may be viewed with some suspicion by many in the Department of Defense who view the CIA as a bitter rival for operational control and budgetary dollars.

On the other hand, you also come with a reputation as a realist. This should appeal to the many military officers and career officials who did not join the so-called revolt of the generals against Donald Rumsfeld but who shared many of their views. Morale has dropped precipitously in the DOD; your immediate task is to shore it up.

We are already enmeshed in two wars, with enough additional crises elsewhere. You cannot and should not try to develop Iraq policy on your own. The nation cannot afford to have the DOD at war with the State Department or any other branch of the government.

You should work with the military to develop a strategy to complement the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group (also known as the Baker-Hamilton Commission) with which, as an outgoing member of the group, you are no doubt familiar. Focus on preserving stability in the region rather than on more elusive (and illusionary) goals relating to governance in Iraq. Recognize that Iraq is in the midst of a bloody civil war that the U.S. cannot bring to an end. Propose that instead of pouring more American blood and treasure into embattled Baghdad and Anbar provinces, we instead reposition our forces to Kurdistan to prevent a conflagration between Turks and Kurds; to the Shiite south and the Iranian border to limit Tehran’s influence; and to the West to limit Syrian meddling and help protect the Jordanian border. Commit greater resources to equip and train the Iraqi military and make it responsible for restoring order in Anbar and Baghdad, however long that might take.

Some variant of such a strategy will prevent Iraq from regionalizing its civil war and prevent neighbors from carving up that unhappy country. It will also enable our forces to be reduced significantly, thereby easing the pressure of troop rotations on both the reserve and active military and reducing U.S. casualties. There are too many ruined lives lying in our military hospital beds.

Finally, it is important that you sustain the transformational changes that your predecessor initiated. Rumsfeld is being vilified for our fate in Iraq. He does not get enough credit for dragging the DOD, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century. He modernized our command structure beyond recognition: a new Northern Command to address threats to the United States; a new Joint Forces Command to combine tactics, training and experimentation with our most modern technical wizardry; a revitalized Special Operations Command that was the key to our rapid initial success in Afghanistan. Rumsfeld restructured our 40-year-old budget process to focus on how money was spent, not just on how we planned to spend it. He laid special emphasis on key weapons such as unmanned aerial vehicles, which had been stifled by the services for decades. And he initiated the forced merger of thousands of Defense business systems to bring coherence to a chaotic and wasteful enterprise.

The job of sorting out the management mess at the Pentagon is still far from complete. But in Gordon England you have a deputy who is probably the most capable chief operating officer the Pentagon has seen since the 1960s. He is not a policy wonk; he is a true manager. He overhauled the Navy’s management processes and is doing the same for the department as a whole. Persuade him to stay on the job.

Coming into an administration in its last two years is not easy. Managing the conduct of two bloody and costly wars is a far cry from the halls of academe that you have frequented most recently. You have a military and a civilian staff that is ready, willing and able to help you, and a country that prays for your success. Good luck and Godspeed.