By Eric Endelman, Defense Undersecretary for Policy
U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations  Print     Share  

WASHINGTON, D.C., 

Jul 31, 2008 — During a congressional hearing July 31, 2008, senior Pentagon and State Department officials discussed the "militarization of Foreign Policy," attributing the increased need for military assistance to the lack of resources and staffing within civilian agencies.

Following is the transcript from the testimony of Defense Undersecretary for Policy Eric Edelman:

Good afternoon, Chairman Biden, Senator Lugar, members of the Committee. I am pleased to be here today to discuss the role of civilian and military agencies in foreign assistance. I am also pleased to be here alongside my friend and Foreign Service colleague, John Negroponte. The fact that DoD and State are here to testify jointly is itself a testament to the more collective, integrated process we have been institutionalizing in our two departments.

Let me begin by offering my thanks for your decision to hold this hearing. Even though I have spent the last several years as an Under Secretary of Defense, as a career (and still serving) member of the Foreign Service, I have long been concerned about funding for State Department programs, having worked first-hand with our nation's "soft power" tools in my stints as an Ambassador and in other embassy posts. In testifying before this committee today, I am lucky to have what we in the bureaucracy call "top cover," in that my current boss, Secretary Gates, has been at the forefront of calls to increase funding for the State Department and USAID - what he calls a "man bites dog" story.

The fact that a Secretary of Defense, who manages the tools of "hard power," is a leading voice for increasing our soft power funding speaks volumes about where we have come as a country. And he has not made this call just once: Secretary Gates' appeal for increased State Department funding has become a refrain, delivered in such fora as the "Landon Lecture" at Kansas State University, the first-ever joint Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State testimony on this topic before the House Armed Services Committee, a breakfast meeting with the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and speeches at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Brookings Institution, Business Executives for National Security, and, just two weeks ago, the US Global Leadership Campaign.

I am here to reprise many of his same themes, and perhaps dispel a few myths. Let me begin on this last score right away - and it is important that you hear this not just from State, but from Defense - by setting the record straight: we all agree that it is not in our national interest to have a "militarized" foreign policy. As the Secretary said before the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign, this is a reasonable concern. Such an agenda would be counterproductive, wasteful, and dysfunctional. It would send exactly the wrong message to states and societies who strive to build effective democracies that emphasize civilian oversight, and who seek to partner with the United States as responsible international players.

Some media coverage of Secretary Gates' speech earlier this month suggested that he had "warned" of a potential "creeping militarization" in U.S. foreign policy. His concern is legitimate, even if his remarks were quoted out of context. His concern should be our focus today, and, in my view, we should consider the origins of this potential problem: from where does the danger of militarization arise? Secretary Gates -- and I very much agree with him on this -- believes this risk comes not from DoD activities, as some would have you believe. Rather, it stems from a need to invest in civilian agencies to increase their capability.

His attempt at a balanced speech designed to shift the status quo is being used - perversely - to bolster the status quo. So let me be clear. DoD has acted in some cases not because it wanted to, but because at that point in time it was best positioned to, and in so doing avoided increased risk to the life and limb of U.S. forces and civilian populations. The nation would have been worse off if DoD had not acted in such cases, but we do need increased civilian capacity to assume these burdens, while institutionalizing the lessons of recent years so that DoD is prepared to act when others cannot.

Other DoD activities - in particular the training, equipping, organizing, and advising of other militaries - represent military requirements for DoD to fulfill its core legal responsibility to provide for the nation's security. These are activities DoD must build and institutionalize for our future defense. This is the lesson that I believe we, and the American people, should take away from the hearing today.

Put another way, I suggest the question of differentiating the respective roles of our civilian and military agencies cannot be adequately answered until we first ask "what is the national need, and how can it be realistically met?" Taking an inherently bureaucratic rather than strategic line of inquiry leaves this first and most critical question unanswered. Therefore, I suggest that we step beyond the rhetoric of jurisdictional lines and turf debates to first focus on the challenges facing our country, and the ways that DoD and State are working together to confront these challenges.

Together, we have made significant strides. TheAdministration has succeeded in more than doubling Official Development Assistance worldwide since 2001 and introduced innovative new approaches to foreign assistance such as the Millennium Challenge Corporation. In the FY2009 budgethe President has requested an additional 1,100 new Foreign Service officers and 300 new USAID officers. Secretary Rice undertook a Transformational Diplomacy initiative, repositioning the diplomatic corps globally to align it with today's global landscape, with stations located in more difficult operating environments. And just two weeks ago, Secretary Rice launched the stand-up of the Civilian Response Corps, with strong support from DoD. The American people owe you and the Congress as a whole a debt of gratitude for your role in supporting these important initiatives.

We have made improvements within DoD as well. We've worked closely with State to create Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan and Iraq. We have invited State in unprecedented fashion to provide inputs to the creation of DoD strategic guidance and campaign plans; State has likewise increased opportunities for DoD to participate in their effort to develop country-specific foreign assistance strategies. My office has refined its guidance for humanitarian assistance to ensure that military projects are aligned with wider U.S. foreign policy objectives and do not duplicate or replace the work of civilian organizations. And DoD and "InterAction" - the umbrella organization for many U.S.-based NGOs - have, for the first time, jointly developed rules-of-the-road for how the military and NGOs should relate to one another in hostile environments.

These are important developments. But they are only a first step. As Secretary Gates often notes, the entire Foreign Service is still less than the number of personnel required to man one of DoD's Carrier Strike Groups. The entire State Department budget amounts to roughly what DoD spends on healthcare. USAID, once 15,000 strong, is now a 3,000 organization for a "Development" mission President Bush has rightly put on par with "Diplomacy" and "Defense."

All too often, our military will find itself in a position of having to assume some missions for which it is not best placed. We have seen this in Iraq and Afghanistan, and many other conflicts throughout our history. Faced with no civilian alternative, our soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen have filled the gap admirably. But in these situations, there is no substitute for civilian experience and expertise.

Let me stop here for a moment to clear up another often repeated myth. Defense Department critics often assert that DoD's share of Official Development Assistance rose from 3.5 percent in 1998 to 21.7 percent in 2005. But these numbers ignore a critical change in circumstances between 1998 and 2005. In 2005, and today, we are in the midst of two wars, wars that require DoD to play a significant role in reconstruction and stabilization in order to counter insurgencies. It is inevitable that DoD's share of Official Development Assistance (ODA) would rise under these circumstances. I asked my staff to determine DoD's share of ODA in 2005, when ODA was at its peak, excluding Afghanistan and Iraq. The result: DoD's portion is a modest 2.2%. That number speaks for itself. DoD's share of ODA has since remained relatively constant.

In this context, it is also worth responding to concerns that some have raised about the new Africa Command. The intent behind the creation of Africa Command was never to militarize foreign policy, or to diminish humanitarian or development space efforts in the region. The goal from the command's very inception to today has been to create rather than a traditional war fighting command one with sufficient civilian experience and expertise to focus on preventing problems before they become crises. Once we have to deploy troops to react to a major crisis or catastrophe, it's too late: the costs - both material and human - are vastly higher at that stage of engagement. But the goal of that command structure was to provide support for our civilian counterparts operating on the continent, acting under the authority of the Ambassadors. The presence of this civilian experience and expertise, therefore, is to better help the command provide support to USAID, for example, as the lead U.S. agency in humanitarian response, so that DoD's role is fully integrated in the larger effort when requested, so that we are able to support U.S. government leadership outside DoD effectively. And this assistance would be in areas where DoD possesses the appropriate expertise, for example in logistics and communications. I understand that some have suggested that this command represents DoD's desire to move into areas where it lacks the appropriate authorities and expertise, but that is simply not the case.

At the same time, as Dr. Gates said earlier this year at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, it is unclear that DoD will ever be able to avoid reconstruction and stabilization missions entirely. From Winfield Scott's campaigns in Mexico in the 1840s to General Eisenhower's administration of North Africa in the 1940s, virtually every major deployment of U.S. forces has led to a military presence to maintain stability. It is for that reason that even as Secretary Gates presses for greater civilian resources and capabilities, he has made clear that the Department of Defense must seek to institutionalize hard, in some cases searing, lessons we have learned over the last several years.

As both Secretary Gates and Secretary Rice have made clear, these new requirements are not going away. We no longer face a clean division between war and peace; the future before us is one in which our national security requires capability not only on the battlefield and at the negotiating table, but also in the gray area between war and peace. Unlike earlier eras where the primary threat to peace emanated from state-on-state conflict, many of today's threats originate not from states themselves, but from ungoverned or undergoverned spaces within them. Many of these states are not our enemies, but our friends. At the same time, many of the threats we face defy solution by US military force alone. Non-state actors and organizations can exploit under-governed spaces and establish informal networks that cannot be countered by traditional measures.

In these situations, success is less about imposing our will than shaping the environment. But for the past 15 years, we have tried to do so with processes and organizations designed in the wake of the Second World War. After nearly seven years in Afghanistan, U.S. departments and agencies are only now beginning to develop the tools required to combat these challenges. While our adversaries rapidly deploy terror and effective information, economic and social campaigns to challenge us around the globe, we act slowly and often with limited strategic coherence. Though our national strategic guidance and our military plans proclaim as imperative integrated efforts along military and non-military lines, legacy structures and processes allow anything but.

On this score, Secretary Gates has made several points that I would like to underscore. First, success in such conflicts will take years - the accumulation of patient successes - and will extend beyond any one agency. We cannot afford to make bureaucratic distinctions between war and the use of armed forces and the essential peacetime activities once the sole purview of diplomats, but must integrate our political and military tools into a cohesive national effort. And second, success in the future will require more than rebuilding the structures of the past. New approaches and new institutions are required; bureaucratic barriers that hamper effective action should be rethought and reformed. The disparate strands of our national security apparatus, civilian and military, should be prepared ahead of time to operate together. And so even as DoD has supported increasing the State Department's resources, the challenges we have confronted have forced DoD to consider the core activities and new missions required to meet its responsibilities to provide for the nation's security, in an environment where the direct application of force may be politically untenable, requiring action by, through, and with partners.

These so-called "indirect approaches" are central to the Department's campaign plans to achieve the end-states assigned to it and missions directed to achieve them. As the Secretary remarked to the Association of the United States Army:

"[A]rguably the most important military component in the War on Terror is not the fighting we do ourselves, but how well we enable and empower our partners to defend and govern their own countries. The standing up and mentoring of indigenous armies and police - once the province of Special Forces - is now a key mission for the military as a whole."

Despite this central military requirement, the United States lacked the flexible authorities and funding streams required, operating instead with two to four year budget cycles designed for long-term assistance and cooperation but ill-suited to meeting shifting challenges by networked adversaries, and competing processes and jurisdictional structures that encourage monopolies of control rather than combined efforts overseas.

Our problem was not only one of flexibility. We faced a fundamental mismatch of authorities, resources, and capabilities. DoD had the military requirement, historical knowledge, and the core competency for training and equipping partners in the profession of arms, but lacked the foreign policy and human rights expertise that must accompany such decisions. We also had what wargamers call "strategic overmatch" in budgetary resources, but lacked authority to carry out these missions.

To meet this need, the Administration, with the authorization and support of Congress, created the Global Train-and-Equip program - known as Section 1206 - to provide commanders a means to fill longstanding U.S.-identified capability gaps in an effort to help other nations build and sustain capable military forces to conduct counterterrorist operations, or to operate with our forces in stability operations. This program allows Defense and State to act in months, rather than years, to address urgent needs among partner nations. It focuses on places where we are not at war, but where there are emerging threats or opportunities, thereby decreasing the possibility that U.S. troops will be used in the future. Combatant commanders have found the Global Train-and-Equip program to be a vital tool in the war on terror beyond Afghanistan and Iraq. And it's a dual-key approach that has become a model of interagency cooperation between State and Defense - both in the field and in Washington, D.C.

Some have asked why this requirement isn't being funded and executed by the State Department. Can't we just increase State's funding to the point where it can take over this responsibility from DoD? Secretary Gates has explained the rationale behind this program well:

"[B]uilding partner capacity is a vital and enduring military requirement - irrespective of the capacity of other departments - and its authorities and funding mechanisms should reflect that reality. The Department of Defense would no more outsource this substantial and costly security requirement to a civilian agency than it would any other key military mission. On the other hand, it must be implemented in close coordination and partnership with the Department of State."

Put simply, these are military requirements and it is only proper that DoD fund them. At the same time, in designing these tools, we have ensured that the Secretary of State retains her prerogatives to ensure all activities accord with U.S. foreign policy objectives.

This point has been made before. I would like to offer another. That DoD would one day need to devote major attention to building partner capacity, rather than wage major combat, to fulfill its mission is something few envisioned. The attacks of 9/11 and the operations that followed around the globe reinforced to military planners that the security of America's partners is essential to America's own security. As borne out in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other theaters large and small, success in the war on terror will depend as much on the capacity of allies and partners in the moderate Muslim world and elsewhere as on the capabilities of our own forces. We ignored this fact for far too long. But these are core missions, not distractions. Letting DoD off the hook on this would be a shame, and far more costly in lives and treasure in the long run.

While activities like 1206 are core missions, as I mentioned earlier, others are not, but DoD is supporting them because they are necessary and the civilian capacity is absent or still being created. We need to be clear about which activities are which. In this latter category is Section 1207 authority, which allows the Secretary of Defense to transfer up to $100 million to the State Department to provide civilian stabilization and reconstruction assistance. Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has now famously said that he'd happily give a portion of his budget, if employed correctly, to the State Department. This authority was created in that spirit. We recently agreed with State to seek a five-year extension and an increase in the authority to $200 million. As Secretary Gates explained, Da touchstone for DoD is that 1207 should be for civilian support for the military "either by bringing civilians to serve with our military forces or in lieu of them." Over time, State should be given adequate funds within its own budget, without cuts to its other vital activities.

Besides core missions DoD must undertake and missions for which DoD has had to fill gaps there is perhaps a third category. Experience is a powerful teacher. As we learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are dangerous operating environments where DoD will be required to operate alone and, because of the security environment, perform missions that would otherwise fall to civilian agencies. Make no mistake: whenever possible, civilian agencies should have the lead for these activities. But even after our current conflicts subside, we should want DoD to maintain a capability to act where civilians cannot, because it will be needed in the future. As Dr. Gates has warned, it would be a mistake to allow this capability "to wither on the bureaucratic vine."

With both 1206 and 1207, we are achieving tangible results. Lebanon is a case study on the critical role these tools have played in achieving U.S. national security objectives. Following decades of Syrian occupation, Lebanon stands on shaky ground as it struggles to build the foundations of democracy. We recently witnessed the brave battle that the Lebanese Army confronted when they took on the al Qaeda-affiliated group Fatah al Islam, which was operating from a Palestinian refugee camp. But the Lebanese army, as well as Lebanon the country, has a long road ahead to transition from fragility to stability. Rebuilding the Lebanese military capability represents a tremendous challenge, especially given the support Iran is providing to Hezbollah. It has not been in our strategic interest to delay in implementing near and long-term solutions designed to bolster Lebanon's ability to exercise its sovereignty and provide security to its populace.

Since fiscal year 2006, Section 1206 has allowed us to act with speed, giving us the ability to quickly provide the Lebanese Armed Forces about $40 million in trucks, spare parts, small arms, ammunition, and night vision goggles. The programs were designed to help the Lebanese Army and Special Forces defend against, disrupt, and attack terrorist organizations within their own territorial boundaries and to help improve their border security. The mobility we gave to the Lebanese Army through 1206 allowed the LAF to maintain the offensive at the Nahr al Barid camp and ultimately stabilize the area.

Section 1207 played an equally important role in fostering non-military stability in Lebanon. As a result of impending civil disorder at the end of 2006, the Lebanese Police requested an immediate delivery of civil disorder management equipment from the U.S. Embassy, as well as funding for the removal of unexploded ordnance. 1207 funding helped the Embassy recruit Mine Action Teams and train them, ultimately clearing 2,170,915 m2 of mines and removing 11,642 pieces of unexploded ordnance. Nearly 450,000 residents now live free from land-mines as a result of this funding.

And there are many other examples. We have seen a great return on our investments in Pakistan, where limited visibility training provided through 1206 has helped with the rapid planning and execution of Pakistani counterterrorist special operations raids in the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) and border region to fight terrorists and anti-coalition militants. For example, Pakistani helicopter pilots from the 21st Quick Reaction Squadron were recently involved in a FATA combat mission when they were hit mid-flight by a rocket propelled grenade, severing a hydraulic fluid cable and spraying hot fluid on the co-pilot and SSG unit seated in the rear. Using limited visibility training received under 1206, they not only finished the mission but were able to safely land the helicopter.

In the Pacific, 1206 projects for Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and the Philippines have been a model for 1206 design and execution. Embassies and the Pacific Command have worked hand-in-hand in identifying threats and opportunities. In Sri Lanka, 1206 was used to install a maritime and coastal radar system, which only months after it was brought on-line was used by the Sri Lankan Navy to engage Tamil Tigers as they exploited ungoverned waters to smuggle weapons. And in the Straits of Malacca, where 1206 has provided radars, command and control centers, and surveillance systems, attacks in the first half of this year have dropped 80 percent from 2003 levels. As Vice Admiral Doug Crowder, Commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet, recently told USA Today, --If it wasn't safe to bring cargo through the Strait of Malacca, the U.S. Navy would go there and make it safe" - a mission now rendered unnecessary for U.S. forces, in part because of 1206.

These examples demonstrate what can happen when the United States strategically applies resources to build partner capacity based on US-identified needs. These are not "programs traditionally conducted by the State Department," as my hearing invitation suggests. We have never conducted programs like this before. In some ways, these programs are among our only "needs based" tools in our arsenal. In programs like FMF, the allocation of resources is impacted by host-nation preferences and political engagement. There is a legitimate - even critical - role for such tools in the Secretary of State's foreign policy toolkit, which can help build relationships, access and influence, and incentivize behavior in the US interests.

But it is not the same as the direct, strategic application of resources to meet US-identified threats. When sheltered from political ups-and-downs and applied strictly to military capability gaps, the capacity we build can have a profound effect. The examples of 1206 I presented earlier gave us only a taste of what is possible; for proof of concept, look no further than Colombia, where three American contractors are now free of FARC control and back on US soil as a result of a robust US capacity building effort, kept above the political fray and backed by bi-partisan Congressional support. This is one of what Secretary Gates likes to call "quiet successes" required for long-term victory.

Moreover, the world is not standing still. We must build the capacity of our partners, because others are involved in the same activities, sometimes contrary to US interests. In the 1980s, Iran started building up Hezbollah in Lebanon. Look at the damage to Lebanon that Hezbollah has done, the toll it has taken against Americans in the past, and the war they started against Israel in 2006. And while more recent reporting has suggested a drop in activity, unclassified reporting last year suggested Iran was spending about $3 million per month to train Shia militia members for activities in Iraq. China's full court press to establish influence and connections in Africa and Latin America may be seismic in its future implications for the US. Unlike some competitors, we will only do so with legitimate partners, and in accordance with all human rights requirements.

Instead of standing on the sidelines, we can instead be building reliable, professional, interoperable, and reliably capable partners. As my examples earlier show, capacity building can have immediate impact. But the long-term benefits will accrue to the Secretaries of State and Defense of future Administrations. Over time, as partners take on more of their own security burdens, or deploy effectively alongside US forces, we will reduce stress on our own military. Even with the added end-strength of the Army and Marine Corps, US forces are and will always be finite. We will need global partners standing alongside us, and by building their capacity to handle their own security early, we reduce the aggregate risk of the need for future U.S. military interventions as well. These savings accrue in U.S. Servicemember lives saved, ultimately reducing burdens on the treasury and the taxpayer - and will be crucial to our long-term security. My colleague Lieutenant General Sattler, who recently retired as the J-5 from a long and distinguished career in the United States' Marines, may have put it best when he said that how much you back these efforts is tantamount to "how many O's you want in your Long War."

As Secretary Gates has made clear, fundamentally new approaches are required to achieve security in today's environment. These are the types of integrated, "dual-key" approaches we have forged through difficult experience, and will need in the future. As Dr. Rice said in her April testimony with Dr. Gates before the House Armed Services Committee:

"We have created many of these tools as tools that came out of necessityyyyyÃBut let me just say that I'm a firm believer that it is often out of exigent circumstances, out of efforts to respond to new contingencies, out of efforts of this kind that we build our best capacity and that we build our best institutions."

As everyone here is well aware, this Administration ends in only six months. These tools may be important now, but they will be crucial in the next Administration. It is critical that the next President have these tools in place rather than having to create them anew. Providing them for the incoming team should be a bipartisan priority. Just as President Truman and the Congress created the tools that would serve every President until the Berlin Wall came down, we must set in place the right set of tools to set the country on the right long-term footing, so that it can never be said that a US citizen or Servicemember suffered harm because we did not build partner capacity.

In closing, the discussion we will have today is understandable, even healthy, for our country. We are all better off because we live in a country where military involvement in any area is thoughtfully considered and taken with the utmost care. Without such discussions, DoD and our armed forces will not be able to perform our national security mission if we do not have the trust and support of the American people. Thank you for holding this important hearing.

For a summary of the testimony, visit http://www.africom.mil/getArticle.asp?art=1959.