Posts by JosephCerami:

    What Do We Really Want in an American President?

    July 31st, 2017

    By Joseph R. Cerami.

     

    What qualities do we want in our American president?  Do we look for style or substance, experience or potential, skills or knowledge, vision or values, or all of the above?  Some ideas from leadership studies can assist in guiding our thinking about our important roles as informed and engaged citizens.

    For instance, former Harvard Kennedy School Dean, Joseph Nye, has popularized the notion of smart power. That idea is to blend the soft power skills of emotional intelligence, communications and vision, with the hard power skills of building organizations and coalitions, along with broad political skills to understand evolving environments, capitalize on trends to meet follower’s needs. Nye also strongly argues that in a democratic nation good leadership means being both effective and ethical.

    Stanford Business School’s Robert Sutton popularized the idea of what he has come to term, in polite company, a no “boss-hole” rule–or how to lead without being or becoming a jerk.  Other leadership writers have referred to the idea of “toxic” leadership, or those who rely solely on commanding and pacesetting styles, as opposed to more nuanced visionary, coaching, democratic and affiliative styles.  Emotional intelligence (EI) experts suggest that the research is clear–over the long haul, toxic leaders are bad for your and their own health and are likely to contribute to organizational disasters.

    And there are expectations for senior leaders meeting the highest standards of accountability. As former Secretary of Defense and President of Texas A&M Robert Gates has said in quoting Theodore Roosevelt at a university commencement speech: “The average … cannot be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very much higher.” To hold those high standards, in full knowledge of the exposure to personal attacks, Gates goes on to point out that leaders at times have to have the courage “to chart a new course,” “to do what is right,” and to “stand alone.” Speaking truth to power is difficult, and so is speaking truth to organizations that are not performing up to their capabilities.

    Sutton agrees when he writes: “Greatness comes only through dogged effort, doing many small things well, getting up after each hard knock, and helping your people press forward at every turn. The best bosses don’t ride into town, save the day with a bold move or two, declare victory, and then rest on their laurels.” So leaders must be effective and ethical to be good.

    President George H.W. Bush, 41, is noted for saying that “public service is a noble calling.” And good leadership, leadership that Nye points out must be both effective and ethical, requires “dogged effort” and also calls for leaders of character. These thoughts are also reflected in Gates 2007 speech, upon returning to Texas A&M University, after once again being called by a president to serve his country: “In our heart of hearts, [public servants] are romantics, idealists and optimists. We actually believe we can make a difference, make the lives of others better.”

    People who report on those who have worked with Bob Gates will tell you that he is grounded, pragmatic, and realistic rather than romantic, idealistic and optimistic. In short, his reflections hold a reverence for American political institutions and its public servants at all levels of government.

    In a sober assessment of the highs and lows of public service, Gates writes:

    “The White House is a poignant place….. And it seems to me that those who live and work there, if they are completely honest with themselves, with rare exception the most the most vivid memories are not of victory and joy but of crisis and defeat—and, for the fortunate few, of one or two occasions of historical importance. This is why character counts for so much in a President. In the White House, the elation of victory is fleeting and the burden of responsibility is enduring.”

    In sum, the smart leader knows how to adapt to the reality of their environment and at the same time to inspire followers, and future leaders, to press forward and to be prepared get back up after hard knocks—and continually face the burden of responsibility.  For citizens then, for this and every generation, we need to reflect on the essential role of American presidents as leaders who understand that there are both burdensome responsibilities and true nobility in the meaningful work of public servants.

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    An alternative to war: WMD counterproliferation in Syria

    December 20th, 2013

    By Joseph Cerami.

    Joseph Cerami

    The partnership between the U.S. and Russia to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal is promising, says a Texas A&M University national security professor. History, however, shows that strong international leadership, interagency collaboration and Congressional oversight are key for the plans to work.

    After the Cold War, thousands of “loose nukes” remained in the former Soviet Union. Joint efforts between the U.S. and Russia to eliminate them were very successful, says Joseph Cerami, a senior lecturer at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service. The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction programs, named for Senators Sam Nunn (D-GA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) who sponsored the 1992 initiative during the George H.W. Bush Administration, were designed to secure and dismantle WMDs in the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

    “The Nunn-Lugar programs were, and continue to be, effective because they were cooperative U.S.-Russian efforts, with strong U.S. executive, bureaucratic and Congressional leadership,” says Cerami, who specializes in policymaking and leadership studies. “In particular, if you want an effective U.S. policy over the long run, you have to have Congress involved. Also William Perry, Clinton’s secretary of defense, was very effective and fully engaged; he took numerous trips to the former Soviet Union to oversee implementing the policies.”

    In Cerami’s book “Leadership and Policy Innovation – From Clinton to Bush: Countering the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction,” he studied the policy effectiveness of the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and their Secretaries of Defense, in providing innovative policies for countering nuclear WMD proliferation. In addition to analyzing Nunn-Lugar, Cerami examined two other counterproliferation programs: the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework and U.S.-U.N efforts in Iraq after the First Persian Gulf War.

    Cerami argues that where Nunn-Lugar succeeded, efforts in Iraq and North Korea mostly failed. “Under Nunn-Lugar, the role of engaged congressional leadership and oversight is more pronounced than in either the Agreed Framework or the Iraq case,” he writes in the book.

    Under the Agreed Framework, North Korea pledged to dismantle their nuclear reactor that was suspected of being part of a covert nuclear weapons program. In exchange, the U.S., South Korea, Japan and others were to build two “light water,” proliferation-resistant, nuclear power reactors.

    “The negotiations were a success,” Cerami says, “and the diplomats involved worked effectively in producing the agreement. There were good intentions and a “framework,” but no effective follow-up. No one rose up within the U.S. Senate or Department of Defense to champion the efforts. You have to have champions for major policy implementation, such as Perry, Lugar and Nunn.”

    He says North Korea did put one reactor out of action as agreed, but, “they had a separate program they didn’t tell us about. We know now that they have enough nuclear material to make bombs, but not the delivery capability. Nevertheless, North Korea is the most unpredictable regime on the planet.” He contends the framework would have been helped by stronger inspection efforts as well as more engaged administration officials, diplomats and Congress members to continue negotiations and strengthen the agreement over time. He adds that since the framework collapsed, there has been no progress in halting North Korea’s nuclear weapons and long-range missile development.

    Cerami’s third case study involved counterproliferation efforts in Iraq after the Persian Gulf War (1990-1991) during the Clinton Administration and continuing into George W. Bush’s first term, which resulted in the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein, but failed to uncover any nuclear WMDs.

    The professor says two U.N. inspection teams looked for WMDs in Iraq, the first led by Ambassador Richard Butler right after the Gulf War, “but Hussein kicked them out in ’98,” he says. “The second team was led by Hans Blix (from 2000 to 2003), former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Both U.N. inspections teams did their job remarkably well under very difficult conditions.”

    One of the problems, Cerami contends, was that the Bush administration didn’t let the Blix team finish their inspections. “It seems reasonable to have waited for the inspectors to have completed the work,” he notes. “They were reporting that they couldn’t find any WMDs, but they weren’t able to complete inspections of all of the suspected sites. The backdrop was the failure with North Korea − that there were reasonable expectations that Saddam Hussein’s regime was able to hide their weapons from the U.N. and the U.S. Especially after 9/11, we didn’t want to be fooled again.”

    Cerami, a retired Army colonel who taught at the Army War College and at West Point, says many would now argue there was a rush to war with Iraq without enough evidence of WMDs. “What I said at the time was that I’m was skeptical and I think the case needs to be stronger,” he recalls. “Blix was asking for more time and he should’ve gotten it. There wasn’t an imminent threat at the time. Hindsight is 20/20; it’s easy to say now ‘we should’ve known.’ But war should have been the last resort.”

    In examining counterproliferation efforts during the Clinton and Bush terms, Cerami concludes there was an overall decline in effective policymaking, except in the case of Nunn-Lugar. Overall, he finds in the North Korea and Iraq cases, there were significant gaps in pursuing counterproliferation policy initiatives.

    In future policymaking, Cerami says he hopes to see collaboration with academia. “There are good ideas in the academic community that policymakers can draw on and those academics need to be consulted when major policies and decisions are being made,” he notes.

    Innovation in policymaking is critical, he says, explaining, “The landscape of national security changed after the Cold War and again after 9/11. Today we have concerns about WMDs in terrorist hands, cyber security, biological weapons, border security and other emerging threats. Policymakers must be innovative in developing and implementing new approaches as these new threats evolve.”

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    “Cooperating with Russia on WMD Counterproliferation in Syria? We Have Done This Before”

    October 4th, 2013

     

    By Joseph Cerami.

     

    Actually, the United States and Russia have cooperated, in very recent history, in the removal and destruction of weapons of mass destruction. Under what are known as Nunn-Lugar programs, the US has worked closely with Russia, and other countries, in removing weapons of mass destruction with remarkable efficiency and effectiveness. Syria will be different, but the US has much recent experience to build on.

    The efforts by Senators Sam Nunn (Democrat of Georgia) and Richard Lugar (Republican of Indiana) in US-Russian Cooperative Threat Reduction Programs were key to the effectiveness of the Counterproliferation Policy Initiative that was launched during the first Clinton Administration.

    Government policymakers, national security experts, scientists and engineers were among the first to seize the opportunity for forming new relationships among the United States, Russia, and the former Soviet republics (FSR) following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Initially, President George H.W. Bush’s notion of a new world order (see George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed) was significant for the executive branch and especially the State and Defense Departments’ promotion of new initiatives.

    In the following Clinton administration, in reflecting on his experiences as Secretary of Defense, William Perry notes the significance of the post-Cold War period for establishing an “effective U.S. partnership with Russia in the security sphere.”

    In their history of these early counterproliferation programs, defense department officials, Ash Carter (the current Deputy Secretary of Defense) and William Perry (Clinton’s first Secretary of Defense, now with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University) point to the early post-Cold War discussions urging Russia’s policy elite to become “integrationists” to achieve a new, “self-respecting place in the world order.”

    In their book, Preventive Defense, Carter and Perry discuss early administration approaches and their experiences as Defense Department officials in the first Clinton administration. The George Bush (41) and then Clinton administrations, in supporting Senators Nunn and Lugar’s initiative, responded quickly to the new threat of nuclear armed former Soviet republics.

    Under the authorizing Nunn-Lugar legislation, Defense Department policymakers addressed “loose nukes” issues with programs to eliminate nuclear weapons and fissile material in the Ukraine, and then in Kazakhstan, and Belarus. Special projects, such as Project Sapphire removed weapons grade plutonium and enriched uranium from Kazakhstan and included internal US collaboration among the Departments of Defense, Energy, State, and the CIA.

    Other factors in the Nunn-Lugar bargaining do stand out. Traditional Cold War concerns about security and secrecy had to be overcome. Information about compliance arrangements was crucial for building trust and confidence for continuing the program. The complexity and high degree of transparency necessary insured that each side had to step up to new challenges for continuing to shape a new post-Cold War relationship.

    There is a real case to be made for using the Syrian WMD disarmament project for promoting legal norms, legitimate claims, and preferences for positive interactions and change. Early Nunn-Lugar barriers included overcoming fifty years of Cold War mistrust with the Russians.

    Carter and Perry’s account includes the significance of President Clinton and Vice President Gore’s interventions to develop trust with the new governments of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus. The Nunn-Lugar programs successes were tied to the larger issues regarding building a community of shared norms, values and identities in terms of international institutions, arms control, and multilateral organizations.

    Carter and Perry do note some of the costs and consequences of Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reductions Programs in terms of budgetary issues and performance results. For instance, they highlight $2.4 billion in funding as of mid-1998. They go on to point to the success of 40 engineering projects in to build safeguards for existing stockpiles, dismantle weapons and missiles and convert defense industry to civilian purposes.

    Carter and Perry also write of the success of destroying 4800 nuclear weapons, removing nuclear weapons from all non-Russian former Soviet republics and eliminating proliferation threats in Belarus, Kazakhstan and the Ukraine. Perry and Carter stress that they “never expected this astounding degree of success” and credit Nunn-Lugar initiatives for no early post-Cold War loose nukes problems. In addition, Carter and Perry attribute part of these great successes to the extraordinary cooperation inside the Washington policy making community.

    Whether the ongoing efforts between the US, Russia and the United Nations can meet the high standards of the Nunn-Lugar programs remains to be seen. In retrospect, “denuclearizing” the Ukraine, Belorussia and Kazakhstan, has contributed to their region’s stability and security. Bringing the same degree of effectiveness for similar outcomes is a worthy goal for US counterproliferation efforts in Syria, as well as for the future security of the Middle East and the world.

     Dr. Joe Cerami is a Senior Lecturer in National Security at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. This opinion editorial is an excerpt from his book, Leadership and Policy Innovation—From Clinton To Bush: Countering the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Routledge (2013) http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415527828/

     

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    Mideast issues the candidates should address

    September 8th, 2013

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    Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney visits the Wailing Wall, also called the Western Wall, in Jerusalem on July 29, 2012.

    By Joseph R. Cerami

    Special to the American-Statesman

    A recent column by David Brooks of The New York Times was titled the “Dullest Campaign Ever.” Perhaps.

    To those who follow American politics, especially on the internet, C-SPAN, cable news and talk radio, the election season seems like it has been going on forever. And actually — if the election cycle follows past patterns — the “issue focus” part should begin in earnest after Labor Day. In thinking about our Middle East policy, let me offer topic areas that I would propose for each candidate to consider.

    To oversimplify, international relations scholars tend toward emphasizing world views. Realists, like Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice, suggest seeing international relations through the lens of realism; that is, individual nation-states focused on “great power” relationships and the pursuit of national self-interest.

    Madeleine Albright and others of the American left follow a (Woodrow) Wilsonian idealist, internationalist perspective, stressing common values and multilateral approaches.

    Let me frame some questions regarding the top 10 current Middle East flashpoints. Allow me to suggest that journalists and pundits attempt to clarify for our citizens what each candidate would propose regarding U.S. policy toward:

    1. Syria and human security and humanitarian assistance; and aiding “rebels” in civil wars.

    2. Lebanon and Hezbollah and the U.S. role in ethnic conflicts.

    3. Yemen and Somalia and failed, failing or fragile states, especially those with active al-Qaida operatives.

    4. Tunisia, Libya and Egypt and the U.S. role in promoting democracy as well as economic and social development after the Arab Spring.

    5. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States and the oil economy.

    6. Turkey, our NATO ally, and its role in regional politics in the Middle East as well as the Caucuses and Eurasia.

    7. Afghanistan and the U.S. and NATO drawdowns, state building and roles in counterinsurgency warfare.

    8. Pakistan and Southwest Asia regional politics, as well as in countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

    9. Israel and Palestine, and supporting Israel while promoting Palestinian statehood.

    10. Iran and sanctions, diplomacy, nuclear proliferation and … the potential for war?

    Joseph R. Cerami is director of the Public Service Leadership Program at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.

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    Robert Gates: Smart Leader, Good Boss and … Noble Public Servant

    September 4th, 2013

     

    By Joseph R. Cerami.

    How to … Educate and Develop Leaders?

    Different Paths, Different Styles, Different Times

     

    In what turned out to be a relatively long goodbye for a high-level federal official, Robert Gates orchestrated a thoughtful farewell tour.  After letting President Obama know about his desire to retire as Secretary of Defense sometime in 2011, he made a number of significant speeches to core military groups — Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines — as well as the defense industry, leaving each with a blunt assessment his views on their current state of affairs, as well as some tasks to think about for the future of their service and the long-term security of the nation.  (Note: Leon Panetta replaced Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense on July 1, 2011).  A question then is: What does Robert Gates’ career and leadership style help us to understand about educating and developing the next generation of effective and ethical public servants?

    For perspectives on Gates’ performance, observers have drawn stark contrasts with his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld.  The images are part of conventional wisdom: the steady, straight-talking Kansas Eagle Scout versus the strong-willed, mercurial, Chicago-bred Princeton wrestler (who, for the record, was also an Eagle Scout).   After early military tours (Gates in Air Force intelligence, Rumsfeld as a Navy pilot) their ascents to the top were marked by government service, but of very different sorts.

    Perhaps too much is made of these comparisons [see the section below for additional details].  Importantly, the international and domestic political environments in which they operated were very different. One often repeated story is of the British prime minister who, when asked about what shaped foreign policy, is said to have remarked, “Events dear boy, events.” After all, immediately following 9/11, and serving in the George W. Bush Administration, it may be more likely than not that Gates, like Colin Powell (also a foreign policy “realist” and veteran of the Bush-41 Administration) would have participated in a similar manner in the pre-invasion planning (in sending in too few troops) and the post-invasion chaos (in being too slow to recognize the nature of the counterinsurgency).  In national security policymaking, the decision making context probably matters more than the decisonmakers personalities and their leadership styles and skills.  Nevertheless, in style and substance, the comparisons are inevitable, Bob Gates gets good-to-great reviews, and, in many quarters, Don Rumsfeld does not.  What accounts for these differences in the perceived failure and success of leadership at the highest levels of government?  Recent research on effective senior leadership provides important ideas in recognizing the elements for success.  To sum up a large literature, Robert Gates can be characterized as a “smart” leader, a “good” boss and a “noble” public servant.

    The Smart Leader

    Harvard University professor and former Harvard Kennedy School Dean, Joseph Nye has popularized the notion of smart power. That idea is to blend the soft power skills of emotional intelligence, communications and vision, with the hard power skills of building organizations and coalitions, along with  broad political skills (he calls this contextual intelligence) to understand evolving environments, capitalizing on trends, and adjusting you leadership style to followers needs.  At a 2003 Pentagon press briefing, when asked about whether he was considering using more “soft power” in the US approach in Iraq, Rumsfeld brusquely responded: “I don’t know what it means.”

    Gates on the other hand followed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s adoption of smart power as part of her emphasis on 21st Century Statecraft.  The new 3 D’s of Diplomacy-Development-Defense interagency cooperation between Gates and Secretary of State’s Condoleezza Rice, and then between Gates and Hillary Clinton marked an abrupt turnaround.  Memoirs by Bush-43 officials are all consistent in pointing out the frosty relationship and open warfare between Rumsfeld and both Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.  While far from perfect, the Gates-Clinton public partnership has contributed to the more positive relationship among the State Department, the Agency for International Development, and the Defense Department, as well as a more balanced consideration of blending diplomacy, economics and military force in American national security policy.  While the bureaucratic turf battles between the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom have continued, as usual, in the struggles for resources and missions, there has been a marked ascendance of the idea of smart power and this in large measure should be credited to Gates’ adaptive leadership style and coalition building skills – those that Nye would prescribe as essential to good leadership.

    The Good Boss

    Stanford Business School’s Bob Sutton achieved notoriety with his popularizing the idea of what he has come to term, in polite company, a no “boss-hole” rule–or how to lead without being or becoming a jerk.  Other leadership writers have referred to the idea of “toxic” leadership, or those who rely solely on commanding and pacesetting styles, as opposed to more nuanced visionary, coaching, democratic and affiliative styles.  No doubt, Rumsfeld would be characterized as commanding and pace-setting and, most likely, would see that as a compliment.  Emotional intelligence (EI) experts, like Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee tell us that the research is clear–over the long haul, toxic leaders are bad for your and their own health and are likely to contribute to organizational disasters.  EI and executive development coaches, like Sutton, will tell you to develop a golf bag filled with a variety of styles that are appropriate for different contexts.

    The contrast of the perceived single-minded Rumsfeld and the multidimensional Gates again is interesting in terms of gauging the relative effectiveness of senior executives.  For instance, the late term Bush-43 Iraq surge, during Gates’ early tenure as Secretary of Defense, is seen as saving the US effort in Iraq.  In contrast, the Rumsfeld 2003 post-war “stabilization” period has been critically reviewed as a “fiasco.”

    In terms of accountability, Gates is known to have fired or replaced more senior military officers and defense officials than did Rumsfeld.  Recent articles critical of Gates, by national security experts such as Lawrence Korb and Paul Pillar, point out several senior officials that Gate replaced.  Examples include the removal of the Middle East regional commander and Afghanistan field commander over troop-level policy disputes.  The Army’s senior civilian official and surgeon general were removed after the Washington Post wrote a series of articles about the inadequate support for wounded soldiers at Walter Reed.  The Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff were also removed after a series of incidents, including mistaken loading of nuclear warheads in 2007 on a from North Dakota to Louisiana.  Gates also raised concerns about the slow response of the Air Force to increasing the production and deployment of drones for the counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.  No doubt these actions, difficult in peacetime or wartime, will be open to debate in case studies of senior leader “accountability” for years to come in public affairs programs as well as business schools.  Nevertheless, as Gates said in quoting Theodore Roosevelt at a recent commencement speech: “The average … cannot be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very much higher.”  To hold those high standards, in full knowledge of the exposure to personal attacks, Gates goes on to point out that leaders at times have to have the courage “to chart a new course,” “to do what is right,” and to “stand alone.”  Speaking truth to power is difficult, and so is speaking truth to organizations that are not performing up to their capabilities.

    The need to speak bluntly about the strengths and weaknesses about leadership and organizations is one area where I think that Gates and Rumsfeld would agree.  Nevertheless, Donald Rumsfeld, despite his many tough decisions, such as restructuring the Cold War military, if not wholly “transforming” the Defense Department as he intended to do, and responding to the rapid changes of the post 911 world, will continue to be criticized by many inside and outside the DC beltway as a toxic leader and a bad boss.  For instance, Condoleezza recently broke her silence on the Rumsfeld criticism of her performance as Bush-43’s national security advisor, by characterizing Don Rumsfeld as just plain old “grumpy.”

    Yet, despite both secretaries continual battling with the Pentagon bureaucracy and the Congress in calling for major reforms to enhance the Defense Department’s effectiveness, in comparison to Donald Rumsfeld, Bob Gates will be known as the good boss.  In essence, the sometimes overly dramatic press coverage of the wrestler Rumsfeld and the Eagle Scout Gates oversimplify the reality of life at the highest levels of government.

    As Sutton writes: “Greatness comes only through dogged effort, doing many small things well, getting up after each hard knock, and helping your people press forward at every turn.  The best bosses don’t ride into town, save the day with a bold move or two, declare victory, and then rest on their laurels.”  Gates’ recent, glowing 60 Minutes profile, in pointing out his reputation as the “Soldiers’ Secretary,” will only add to the good boss commentary.  No doubt, future Defense Secretaries will be encouraged, probably repeatedly, to think: What would Bob Gates do?

    The Noble Public Servant: Grounded, Pragmatic, and Realistic; and Romantic, Idealistic and Optimistic

    Gates is also widely recognized for publically promoting the ideal of the nobility of public service.  George H.W. Bush is noted for saying that “public service is a noble calling.”  And good leadership, leadership that Nye points out must be both effective and ethical, requires “dogged effort” and also calls for leaders of character.  It was at the 41st President’s insistence that the university that was to house his presidential library had to commit to building a graduate school of public and international affairs.  Furthermore, the unique naming of the school was to be a school of “government and public service.”  As the prominent Interim Dean, Robert Gates was engaged directly in the Bush School’s emphasis on designing an academic program devoted to educating principled leaders for careers of public service – a mission and priority that all subsequent Bush School deans have endorsed.  These thoughts are reflected in Gates own words in his 2007 speech, upon returning to Texas A&M University, after once again being called by a president to serve his country: “In our heart of hearts, [public servants] are romantics, idealists and optimists.  We actually believe we can make a difference, make the lives of others better.”

    People who report on those who have worked with Bob Gates will tell you that he is grounded, pragmatic, and realistic rather than romantic, idealistic and optimistic.  His essential realistic and pragmatic nature comes through repeatedly in his autobiography, From the Shadows, about his CIA career.  Even then he clearly recognized the political nature of national security policymaking in terms of a public servant’s working cooperatively with the executive and legislative branches of government while ultimately serving the nations interests.  In short, his reflections hold a reverence for American political institutions and its public servants at all levels of government.  In a sober assessment of the highs and lows of public service, Gates writes:

    The White House is a poignant place….. And it seems to me that those who live and work there, if they are completely honest with themselves, with rare exception the most the most vivid memories are not of victory and joy but of crisis and defeat—and, for the fortunate few, of one or two occasions of historical importance.  This is why character counts for so much in a President.  In the White House, the elation of victory is fleeting and the burden of responsibility is enduring. (p. 574)

    In sum, the smart leader knows how to use “common sense” to adapt to the reality of their environment, and at the same time to inspire followers, and future leaders, to press forward and to be prepared get back up after hard knocks—and continually face the burden of responsibility.  The record of Robert Gates as a smart leader, good boss, and public servant will be assessed and argued by a variety of historians and pundits has begun and will continue for years to come.  For future generations, I believe that in Robert Gates we have an example of one of the most influential leaders of this generation–a senior leader who will continue to stress that there are both burdensome responsibilities and true nobility in the meaningful work of public servants. Reportedly we can look forward to the publication in the near future of two books: one on his experience as Secretary of Defense; and a second on his lessons learned on change management in complex organizations like the Department of Defense and Texas A&M University.  It will be most interesting to read how he encourages educational institutions and agencies to lead and to develop leaders to manage change in these turbulent strategic and domestic environments.

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    Rumsfeld versus Gates: The Inevitable Comparison

    Government careerist Robert Gates rose through the Central Intelligence Agency to become the Deputy National Security Advisor under President George H.W. Bush.  Gates was known for loyally serving as number 2 under the highly regarded Brent Scowcroft, who is widely viewed as a consummate national security professional and one of the best national security advisors in US history.  Gates then capped his time in the Bush-41 Administration as CIA Director, the first career intelligence analyst to ever achieve the spy agency’s top slot.

    Donald Rumsfeld rose through Chicago politics (on the Republican side of course) with a surprising win, as a 30 year old in his first political campaign, for a north side Congressional seat.  Leaving Congress, he then rose through a series of administrative posts in the hardball Nixon Administration, including a short stint as the US Ambassador to NATO in Brussels, and then to Chief of Staff for President Ford (where he developed a strong relationship with the young Dick Cheney).  Ford named Rumsfeld as his secretary of defense, the youngest in US history.

    After serving in the Ford Administration, Rumsfeld returned to Chicago to become CEO of a pharmaceutical and other private sector firms, became known as a turnaround specialist, and became a rich man in the process.  Rumsfeld was called up by the Reagan Administration to serve as a Middle East envoy, where he made a now well-known outreach effort (along with a famous handshake photograph with Saddam) in a failed attempt to engage Saddam Hussein against the Iranians. In the 1990s, Rumsfeld worked on several defense and intelligence commissions and became a founding member the Project for a New American Century, the think tank that called for regime change in Iraq, and that is normally seen as a founding moment for the neoconservative movement.  Rumsfeld is of course noted for his combative, adversarial style – the wrestler metaphor is always highlighted in his profiles.

    After leaving the CIA, Gates served on corporate boards, wrote an autobiography, and became the Interim Dean of the newly forming Bush (Bush-41) School of Government and Public Service, at Texas A&M University. After a short break, he competed to become the President A&M.  Gates’ participatory and consensus-building style at A&M is recalled with affection (a recent piece of advice for the Aggie president was to always ask: What would Bob Gates do?).   Just prior to being named the Secretary of Defense, Gates served on the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton, Iraq Study Group that suggested a way forward (and out of Iraq) in 2006.


     

    An earlier version of this opinion-editorial was published by the Austin American Statesman at Statesman.com June 18, 2011, “Texas A&M expert, on why Robert Gates is so good.” [http://www.statesman.com/news/news/opinion/texas-am-expert-on-why-robert-gates-is-so-good-1/nRbyg/]

     

    Joseph Cerami is a Senior Lecturer in National Security and Director of the Public Service Leadership Program, at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University [http://bush.tamu.edu/pslp].

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    How to fix the policy machine: Iraq, just the latest of U.S. foreign affairs errors, again shows the need to rebuild our planning system

    August 22nd, 2013

     

     

    By Joseph Cerami – Special to the American-Statesman

     

    The U.S. War in Iraq launched in 2003 gives us much to think about. Richard Haass, an experienced State Department, Defense Department and National Security Council policymaker called it a war of “choice,” as opposed to a war of “necessity.” According to Haass, Afghanistan was a necessary war, needed to defeat the regime that supported the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. Iraq on the other hand was a war of choice, chosen for less than vital national interests to eliminate an evil dictator and his weapons of mass destruction programs, and redirect the Middle East towards democratic governance and capitalism.

     

    The George W. Bush administration also highlighted the ethical arguments, with the war justified as a moral obligation – for a great power to bring regime change to a hostile and bloody Iraq suffering under a dictator who had murdered, tortured and even gassed his own people.

     

    The difficult decisions over war and peace are among the most well-researched by historians, political scientists and international relations scholars. The national security team advising Bush included Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice – all highly experienced in foreign and defense policymaking and war. Rumsfeld and Cheney had served in Congress and as White House chiefs of staff in the Ford administration.

     

    Rumsfeld was the youngest secretary of defense in U.S. history under Ford, and Cheney was defense secretary during the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War. Powell had been the national security advisor to President Reagan and was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first Persian Gulf War. The resume of the one professor in the president’s inner circle – Condoleezza Rice, now at Stanford University – included real-world experience on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Security Council. The efforts of the George H.W. Bush national security team on U.S.-Russia relations during German reunification were truly transformational in world affairs. So the question remains: How did so many smart – and experienced – people get it so wrong? What accounts for these failures?

     

    Is the U.S. government not effective at long-term policy, strategy and planning?

     

    Experienced practitioners have argued for years that there is no effective strategy office – one that aligns and integrates the U.S. diplomatic, military and economic instruments of statecraft – within and across the U.S. government. The once highly regarded State Department Policy Planning Staff has been relegated from the heights of the critical thinking done by containment architects George Kennan and Paul Nitze immediately after World War II to a speech writing and internal think tank. Containment is viewed with nostalgia by Cold War historians and security specialists. Historian John Lewis Gaddis of Yale points to Kennan’s late-1940s approach to “containing” the Soviet threat as a “great” grand strategy, one that the U.S. has not been able to replicate in the post-Cold War or post-9/11 periods. Gaddis (a University of Texas Ph.D.) points out the success in terms of the four decades of no wars with the Soviet Union, and no appeasement of Soviets expansionist aims.

     

    For more current policy reviews, just ask Haass, the current president of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, who ran the State Department policy shop for Powell during the planning for the 2003 war. Haass’s account in “War of Necessity, War of Choice” includes a declassified, secret, “failed” policy paper on the problems expected in the reconstruction of Iraq. Haass laments that he, as well as Secretary Powell, was out of the loop and ineffectual in contributing to the core administration decision-making process. So if not in the State Department where should major policies be debated and analyzed? In the National Security Council – subject to presidential decision making styles and experiences, time constraints and electoral pressures?

     

    Does current Washington partisanship paralyze government decision-making?

     

    Sure, partisanship between Democrats and Republicans may be at an all-time high in the capital – and the political bickering clearly doesn’t stop at the water’s edge. But have we forgotten the Vietnam War when people reflect on the “bipartisanship” of the Cold War era? Or the Church Committee review of the CIA in the 1970s. Among other things, the agency was accused of experiments in mind-control drugs, foreign assassinations and domestic spying. Consider Iran-Contra during the Reagan administration? Recall the episodes involving national security staffer, Oliver North, running covert operations out of the White House, to trade arms with Iran for freeing American hostages in Lebanon, as well as violating congressional intent and U.S. laws to fund Nicaraguan Contra forces. Note that of the 14 people charged criminally in Iran-Contra, four received felony convictions after jury trials, and seven pleaded guilty to felonies or misdemeanors.

     

    There are plenty of other examples of failed policy and decision-making throughout the post-Cold War and other periods of American history. What about the post-Persian Gulf War period that resulted in the Iraqi Shiite and Kurds being left to the mercy of Saddam Hussein in 1991? How about the Clinton era? In the failed state of Somalia, the well-intentioned George H.W. Bush administration efforts at famine relief were followed by the “Blackhawk Down” chase for a rogue warlord during Clinton’s first term. Rwanda, also during the Clinton administration, included the tragic U.N. and U.S. failures to prevent the slaughter of 500,000 to 1 million people. In sum, the U.S. record in foreign affairs remains mixed in Democratic and Republican administrations. Political partnership or bipartisanship in Washington cannot account for policy successes or failures.

     

    For another more recent update, check out former State Department Iran expert Vali Nasr’s book, “Dispensable Nation,” about the policymaking muddle among the White House, the military, the CIA and the State Department. Democratic political appointee Nasr bluntly criticizes the Obama administration for ignoring the pragmatic approach of the late Richard Holbrooke, a seasoned diplomat who was chief architect of the Dayton accords that ended the war in the former Yugoslavia and became Obama’s special envoy for Afghanistan-Pakistan. Nasr pointedly criticizes the White House for seeking to pivot towards Asia and away from the very real threats and challenges of the Muslim world, and for placing electoral politics ahead of national security concerns.

     

    Are national security affairs in an age of globalization just too complicated?

     

    There is an argument that the issues of war and peace, in an age of globalization with the threats of shadowy terrorists, with the deep-seated sectarian and ethnic divisions, make it just too complicated to do much better. After all, the foreign policy elites and government officials mentioned above are all smart people. Many have spent their adult lives in foreign and defense agencies as well as in military service. Surely if there were answers they would know.

     

    But time after time we find out that they really don’t know. See the CIA’s reports on the “intelligence” drawn from “Curveball” the Iraqi taxi driver in Germany, who is now described as a habitual liar intent on personally bringing down the Iraqi regime. We now know that Curveball, identified as former Iraqi chemical engineer Rafid Amed Alan al-Janabi, invented the claims about Iraq weapons of mass destruction that became part of Powell’s narrative in his 2003 U.N. Security Council briefing, as well as the intelligence community’s pre-2003 war National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.

     

    See also the decisions by Paul Bremer, head of the Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority, in ignoring his staff and disbanding the Iraq Army, firing Baathist Iraqi government officials and having to reverse course in short order after planning for a longer reign as America’s proconsul. See Powell’s mea culpa over his misleading U.N. testimony.

     

    Or read the 9/11 Commission Report on systemic government failures before, during and after 9/11. Recent scorecards by a variety of experts, including the “Tenth Anniversary Report Card” by the 2001 Hamilton-Kean 9/11 Commission, continue to site the government’s failing grades in meeting the recommended changes to policy, strategy, and organizational reforms.

     

    Perhaps no one really knows how to fix these problems?

     

    Iraq in 2003, unfortunately, is not the exception that proves the rule. It is a prime example of why some argue that major reforms are long overdue or, as most agree, that at the very least these problems are worthy of serious presidential attention. The Project on National Security Reform, in two volumes of case studies of the post-World War II era, concludes that the national security system is antiquated and dangerous and undermines the tireless efforts of the talented men and women charged with protecting U.S. national security. After two years of serious study, recommendations in the project’s final 2011 report include the critical needs for improving: “comprehensive strategy; foresight and anticipatory governance; strategic management; interagency high-performance teaming; integrated and flexible national security resourcing; the role of Congress; public-private partnering and global networking; and our greatest strength – human capital.” That document, and others including a comprehensive study for building an integrated national security professional system, is online atpnsr.org. On July 31, 2012 they posted a press release pointing out that their efforts to transform the national security system had failed.

     

    One dimension of the problem is that in the planning, programming and budgeting processes designed for ordinary times we have more internal, government red tape than would ever be tolerated in the private sector. Just read the reports of the Special Inspector General of Iraq Reconstruction on the waste, fraud and abuse in the spending of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq or in the corresponding program evaluations in Afghanistan (online at sigar.mil). In the rush to begin the necessary military operations in Afghanistan and the war of choice in Iraq, there was no time to get the accountants, contractors, auditors and lawyers on board.

     

    Congressional oversight and its constitutional responsibilities to provide critical and timely assessments of administration policy, strategy, and operations, all are cited in the need for national security policy reforms. In general, the cost of opposition to a popular war, in a time of national emergency, clearly requires a strong political will as well as expertise in foreign and defense affairs. It has been argued that overwhelming congressional votes in support of 2003 executive branch initiatives (such as the use of force Iraq, the Patriot Act, etc.) in the immediate post-9/11 period reflects lessons learned from administration opponents in 1990 – those who opposed the Persian Gulf War and suffered the political consequences of nay votes.

     

    The George W. Bush themes have now been turned into caricatures, screening out much of the real substance over the policy debates and lessons to be learned. So, of course, the litany of wrong statements bears repeating. Cheney warned of threatening Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Rice raised concerns about uncertainty over Iraq WMD programs leading to a future mushroom cloud. The Director of Central Intelligence called the case for Iraq weapons of mass destruction a slam dunk. At the United Nations, Powell warned of secretive mobile biological weapons laboratories. Deputy of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (a former ambassador, Senate staffer, political science professor and international affairs school dean) forecast U.S. troops being met as liberators and greeted with flowers. He also projected using Iraq oil revenues to finance their own reconstruction. I could go on.

     

    In the end, however, it is still fair to ask why senior government officials didn’t know better than to think, or even say, that it would be relatively easy to overthrow a long-term dictator, reestablish a government, reconstruct a devastated country, create a civil society and depart in short order. It is also relevant and important to also ask why the national security systems, interagency processes and ultimately the U.S. government – institutions, organizations and people – all failed. Lessons should be learned, or the potential for real learning to develop a deeper understanding of the recurring problems, as well as the opportunities for pragmatic reforms to improve future effectiveness, will surely be lost.

     

     Joseph Cerami is a senior lecturer in national security and director of the Public Service Leadership Program at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. He joined the Bush School in 2001 after a 30-year Army career. He has a doctorate from the Penn State School of Public Affairs and a master’s in government from the University of Texas. Cerami is the author of the book ‘Leadership and Policy Innovation – From Clinton to Bush Countering the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction.’

     

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