SECRETARY CARTER CALLS FOR "FULL-COURT PRESS" TO ADDRESS NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUES

FROM:  U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT

Right:  Defense Secretary Ash Carter provides remarks on the national security budget and the relationship between the Defense and State departments at the Global Chiefs of Mission conference at the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., March 26, 2015. DoD screen shot.  

Carter Calls for ‘Full-Court Press’ on Security Challenges
By Jim Garamone
DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, March 26, 2015 – Defense Secretary Ash Carter called for a “full-court press” within government to tackle the pressing national security issues of the day.

Carter spoke today at the State Department’s Global Chiefs of Mission Conference. He is the first defense secretary to address the conference.
Carter called on Congress to put money into the effort. “We can’t just theorize and strategize,” he said. “We have to invest in the whole-of-government way.”

Sequestration Would Harm Defense, Partner Agencies

The secretary said he and other military leaders “have been vocal and specific about the damage that sequestration-level budgets would inflict on the need to restore readiness, on badly needed technological modernization, and on keeping faith with troops and their families.

“And I want to emphasize that current proposals to shoe-horn DoD’s base budget funds into our contingency accounts would fail to solve the problem, while also undermining basic principles of accountability and responsible long-term planning,” Carter said.

And, as the defense secretary, Carter said he cannot ignore cuts in partner agencies such as State, Homeland Security and Treasury.

“I cannot be indifferent to the vital national security responsibilities across our government, just as I cannot be indifferent to my own at DoD,” he said.

‘Whole-of-Government’ Approach

The secretary stressed that most of the national security issues facing America require resources from a number of different agencies working together.

Diplomatic, economic, information and military aspects must be fully integrated for U.S. policies to succeed, he said. Cuts in the State Department budget, for example, affect the Defense Department and vice versa, Carter added.

In recent years, many have been calling for “whole-of-government” approaches to world problems. They also talk about “smart power” -- meaning using more than just the military to effect change. These terms, Carter said, are relatively new, but the basic concept has “been around from Sung China to the Holy Roman Empire -- the idea of leveraging all resources of state is an enduring principle of strategy and statecraft.”

The United States used the whole-of-government approach in crafting and executing the Marshall Plan after World War II, Carter said. That plan, he added, laid the foundation for the Common Market and now the European Union.

Interagency Operations Vital

But harnessing the power of the government has not always been easy, Carter said. Since World War II, State and Defense have often been working at cross purposes, he said, but that has changed.

“We work with a generation of national-security professionals in both agencies, who are actually steeped in interagency cooperation,” the secretary said. “Most of today’s senior officials cut their teeth in the multidimensional policy challenges we faced in Haiti and the Balkans in the 1990s, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and against terror brought even closer interagency cooperation.”

Carter noted that then-Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates testified before Congress in 2010 in support of the State Department’s budget request, and he has done the same.

“Senior Defense Department officials have become some of the most vocal constituents for greater civilian involvement not just in conflict zones but … also in what I have called ‘preventive defense,’ or the influencing of the strategic environment to prevent and deter conflict in the first place,” he said.

Military personnel also recognize that ensuring victory requires much more than guns and steel, the secretary said.

“In conflict zones, it requires good governance, reconciliation, education and the rule of law,” he said. “And in addressing the wider catalog of strategic challenges, it requires marrying the threat of force with financial and diplomatic leverage.”

Coalition ‘Putting ISIL on the Defensive’

Operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are a case in point, Carter said. “Today, our global coalition's military campaign is putting ISIL on the defensive,” he said. “Just yesterday [in Iraq] the coalition that many of you in this room have built began conducting airstrikes around Tikrit. But we know that lasting defeat of ISIL requires an integrated campaign with equally potent political and economic maneuvers.”

A lasting defeat of ISIL, he said, requires DoD to work closely with the State Department to support the government of Iraq and the nascent Syrian opposition, and to assemble and then fully leverage the commitment and resources of a vast coalition. It also requires the U.S. Agency for International Development to work closely with regional and global partners, as refugees continue flowing into Jordan and Turkey, he added.

Defeating ISIL requires the U.S. Treasury to choke off the terror group’s resources, “while Homeland Security, the intelligence community and law enforcement together keep watch on our borders” and deter attacks on the United States and its friends and allies, Carter said.

Unified Approach Needed for Diverse Challenges

The same whole-of-government effort is needed against Iran’s nuclear program, he said, and against Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and continued operations inside Eastern Ukraine.

A full-court press also is needed in the aftermath of disasters, he said. “We’ve worked across our government, demonstrating that in an hour of need, the United States shows up for our closest allies and friends,” Carter said.

The secretary pointed to the U.S. response to the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor accident in Japan as an example. “This effort powerfully reinforced the U.S.-Japan alliance, demonstrating to Japanese citizens just how deep and broad that alliance really is,” he said.

Securing cyberspace requires the efforts of many U.S. agencies and international partners, Carter said. DoD is working with the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, the Department of Commerce and the Department of Homeland Security on protecting this new domain. The State Department is leading an effort to build international agreements on norms of state conduct in cyber space, he said.

“To pack the fullest strategic punch, we need to do a better job developing joint strategies and pooling our resources to execute them,” Carter said to the State Department audience. “We need to adequately fund and empower your mission as our nation's top envoys.”

Those in national security, the secretary said, need to “think big and anew, even re-imagining the future of our national security machinery to address classic strategic challenges, such as those in Asia, alongside campaigns that we’re conducting in the Middle East, while also tackling transnational challenges like global health security and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”
The full-court press needs to be applied not only to challenges, but to opportunities as well, he said.

“We need to put a whole-of-government muscle not only behind our challenges, but also behind our beckoning opportunities, from strengthening and modernizing our longstanding alliances to advancing our shared prosperity through new trade agreements with Europe and Asia, to building new partnerships with rising powers like India,” Carter said.

PRESIDENT OBAMA, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER ABBOT MAKE REMARKS AFTER MEETING

FROM:  THE WHITE HOUSE 

Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Abbott of Australia After Bilateral Meeting

Oval Office

12:16 P.M. EDT

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Well, it’s wonderful to have an opportunity to visit with Prime Minister Abbott.  We had a chance to meet when I had the great honor of addressing the Australian Parliament.  And we are so glad to be able to return the favor in the Prime Minister’s first visit here to the Oval Office.

We don’t have a better friend in the world, as well as the Asia Pacific region, than Australia.  They are a treaty ally.  We cooperate on a whole range of issues.  Historically, there hasn’t been a fight that the United States was in that Australia wasn’t standing shoulder to shoulder with us.  And most recently, in Afghanistan, Australian troops have made enormous contributions and made enormous sacrifices, and we’re very grateful to them for that.

We had the opportunity this morning to discuss a wide range of issues, many of them focused on the importance of the Asia Pacific region.  We discussed the security cooperation that is continuing to deepen between our two nations as treaty allies.  In addition to the Marines that are now in Darwin and the rotations that have been established, we actually have arrived at additional agreements around force postures that will enhance the bilateral cooperation between our militaries and give us additional reach throughout this very important part of the world.  And we’re grateful for the cooperation there.

I should note that Australia, under the Prime Minister’s leadership, is increasing its defense budget, even under tough times, recognizing that we all have to make sure that we’re doing our fair share to help maintain global order and security.

We had an opportunity to discuss the strong commercial ties between our two countries.  And both of us have been very invested in trying to bring the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the TPP, to a successful outcome.  Negotiations continue, but Australia has been a very constructive partner in that process, and we both agree that not only can this agreement help to bring about jobs and growth for our respective populations, but it will also help establish the kinds of norms and free market principles throughout the region that will be important for our long-term prosperity.

We had an opportunity to discuss the work that we try to do in the region with organizations like ASEAN to maintain basic rules of the road when it comes to maritime issues, the South China Sea.  Obviously, both the United States and Australia have enormous trade relationships with China, and we both agree that it’s important to continue to see China prosper and rise.  But what’s also important is that as China emerges as this great world power that it also is helping to reinforce and abide by basic international law and norms.

And we had an opportunity to discuss some of the hotspots and international concerns that are on the front page of the papers over the last several weeks and months.  I shared with him my views after my trip to Europe about the situation in Ukraine and the possibility of still resolving that issue in a diplomatic fashion, but thanked the Australians for joining with us and being firm with the Russians about their need to abide by international law and the application of sanctions and other consequences when they do not.

We discussed the situation in the Middle East, and obviously the concerns that we have around Iraq and Syria.  Both our countries are potentially threatened by jihadists and freedom fighters, as they call them, that are going into Syria, getting trained in terrorist tactics and then potentially coming back to our countries and could end up being a significant threat to our homeland, as well.

And we also had an opportunity to talk about North Korea and the continuing threat there and the importance for us to maintain vigilance, including additional coordination around protection from potential missile strikes from North Korea.

Finally, I indicated to the Prime Minister that I’m very much looking forward to visiting Australia -- one of my favorite countries to visit -- for the G20.  And I assured him that we want to cooperate in any ways that we can to ensure that Australia’s renowned hospitality is also coupled with a very productive set of G20 meetings to talk global growth. 

So I think that the Prime Minister and I share a whole range of concerns, but we also see a whole range of opportunities out there for increased cooperation.  And I’m very glad that he’s had the chance to come by today and have a very productive meeting. 

So thank you, Tony.

PRIME MINISTER ABBOTT:  Well, thank you so much, Barack.  This has been a really full and thorough engagement over the last hour or so.  Obviously, I’m here to thank the United States for its deepening engagement in our region.  I’m here to further entrench our security and our economic cooperation.  I’m here to celebrate the extraordinary friendship between the Australian and the American peoples.  And I’m thrilled to have you coming to the G20 in November, because we have a very important job in November in Brisbane to accelerate economic growth around the world so that we have more prosperity and more jobs.

Obviously, right now, there are a whole range of security issues which the United States is leading on and where Australia is doing our part to secure the freedom and the safety of the world and its citizens.  I want to assure the President that Australia will be an utterly dependable ally of the United States.  The United States has had to bear many burdens, many burdens.  The United States has paid a very high price to secure freedom and prosperity for many countries, not just itself.  And the United States should never have to do all that work on its own. 

So it’s been a terrific discussion.  And I think that many good things will come from this meeting today.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Thank you, Tony.  I’m going to take just one question.  Nedra. 

Q    Mr. President, are you considering drone strikes or any sort of action to stop the insurgence in Iraq?

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Well, this is an area that we’ve been watching with a lot of concern not just over the last couple of days but over the last several months, and we’ve been in close consultation with the Iraqi government.  Over the last year, we have been providing them additional assistance to try to address the problems that they have in Anbar, in the northwestern portions of the country, as well as the Iraqi and Syrian border.  That includes, in some cases, military equipment.  It includes intelligence assistance.  It includes a whole host of issues.

But what we’ve seen over the last couple of days indicates the degree to which Iraq is going to need more help.  It’s going to need more help from us, and it’s going to need more help from the international community. 

So my team is working around the clock to identify how we can provide the most effective assistance to them.  I don’t rule out anything, because we do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in either Iraq or Syria, for that matter. 

Part of the challenge -- and I’ve said this directly to Prime Minister Maliki, and Vice President Biden has said this in his very frequent interactions with the Iraqi government -- is that the politics of Shia and Sunni inside of Iraq, as well as the Kurds, is either going to be a help in dealing with this jihadist situation, or it’s going to be a hindrance.  And frankly, over the last several years, we have not seen the kind of trust and cooperation develop between moderate Sunni and Shia leaders inside of Iraq, and that accounts in part for some of the weakness of the state, and that then carries over into their military capacity.

So I think it’s fair to say that in our consultations with the Iraqis there will be some short-term, immediate things that need to be done militarily, and our national security team is looking at all the options.  But this should be also a wakeup call for the Iraqi government.  There has to be a political component to this so that Sunni and Shia who care about building a functioning state that can bring about security and prosperity to all people inside of Iraq come together and work diligently against these extremists.  And that is going to require concessions on the part of both Shia and Sunni that we haven’t seen so far. 

The last point I’ll make -- what’s happened over the last couple of days I think underscores the importance of the point that I made at my West Point speech:  the need for us to have a more robust regional approach to partnering and training partner countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa.  We’re not going to be able to be everywhere all the time, but what we can do is to make sure that we are consistently helping to finance, train, advise military forces with partner countries, including Iraq, that have the capacity to maintain their own security.  And that is a long and laborious process, but it’s one that we need to get started. 

That’s part of what the Counterterrorism Partnership Fund that I am going to be calling for Congress to help finance is all about, giving us the capacity to extend our reach without sending U.S. troops to play Whac-A-Mole wherever there ends up being a problem in a particular country.  That’s going to be more effective.  It’s going to be more legitimate in the eyes of people in the region, as well as the international community.  But it’s going to take time for us to build it.  In the short term, we have to deal with what clearly is an emergency situation in Iraq.

PRIME MINISTER ABBOTT:  Perhaps, Barack, I might take one question.

Q    Mr. President, just on that point you made there about limitations of American power -- what would it take for militarization, be it in the Middle East, be it in the Asia Pacific region?  Where is the line drawn?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I gave a very long speech about all this, so I probably would refer you to that as opposed to repeating it.  But the basic principle obviously is that we, like all nations, are prepared to take military action whenever our national security is threatened.  Where the issues have to do with the broader international order -- humanitarian concerns, concerns around rights to navigation, concerns around our ability to deal with instability or fragile states or failed states, and the consequences for populations there and refugee flows -- those sorts of international issues, wherever we can, our preference should be to partner with other countries.  We’re going to be more effective if we can work with other nations.

Q    What does --

THE PRESIDENT:  And that’s why -- well, that’s part of where Australia is so important to us.  There are a handful of countries in the world that we always know we can count on, not just because they share our values, but we know we can count on them because they’ve got real capacity.  Australia is one of those countries.  We share foundational values about liberal democracies and human rights, and a world view that’s governed by international law and norms.  And Aussies know how to fight, and I like having them in a foxhole if we’re in trouble.  So I can’t think of a better partner.  

Part of our task now in a world where it’s less likely that any particular nation attacks us or our treaty allies directly, but rather more typically that you have disorder, asymmetric threats, terrorist organizations -- all of which can be extraordinarily disruptive and damaging, but aren’t the traditional types of war that so often we’ve been equipped to fight -- it becomes that much more important for us to start building new partners who aren’t going to be as capable as the Australians, aren’t going to be as capable as our own troops.  And that’s going to take some time.  It’s going to take some resources, but we need to start now.  We’ve learned some lessons over the last decade and we need to start applying them. 

Thank you, everybody.

END

DOD REPORT ON SEQUESTRATION IMPACT ESTIMATES

FROM:  U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT 

DOD Releases Report on Estimated Sequestration Impacts

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, April 15, 2014 – Defense Department officials today released a report that documents the cuts to military forces, modernization and readiness that will be required if defense budgets are held at sequester-levels in the years beyond fiscal year 2015.

The report fulfills a commitment made by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel “to provide details on the effects of these undesirable budget cuts,” officials said in a news release announcing the report.

The report says sequester level budgets would result in continued force-level cuts across the military services. The Army would be reduced to 420,000 active duty soldiers, along with 315,000 in the National Guard and 185,000 in the Army Reserve. The Marine Corps would drop to 175,000 active duty personnel. The Air Force would have to eliminate its entire fleet of KC-10 tankers and shrink its inventory of unmanned aerial vehicles. The Navy would be forced to mothball six destroyers and retire an aircraft carrier and its associated air wing, reducing the carrier fleet to 10, the report says.

Modernization also would be significantly slowed, according to the report. Compared to plans under the fiscal 2015 budget, the department would buy eight fewer ships in the years beyond fiscal 2016 -- including one fewer Virginia-class submarine and three fewer DDG-51 destroyers – and would delay delivery of the new carrier John F. Kennedy by two years.

The services would acquire 17 fewer joint strike fighters, five fewer KC-46 tankers, and six fewer P-8A aircraft, the report says, adding that many smaller weapons programs and funding for military construction also would see sharp cutbacks.

In addition, the report says, the Defense Department would invest about $66 billion less in procurement and research funding compared with levels planned in the fiscal 2015 budget.

The report notes that sequester-level budgets would worsen already-existing readiness shortfalls across the force and would delay needed training to prepare the joint force for full-spectrum operations.

Overall, the report says, sequester-level cuts would result in a military that is too small to fully meet the requirements of its strategy, thereby significantly increasing national security risks both in the short- and long-term.

“As Secretary Hagel has said, under sequester-level budgets, we would be gambling that our military will not be required to respond to multiple major contingencies at the same time,” officials said in the release announcing the report.

U.S. ADMIRAL WINNEFELD SPEAKS OF U.S. DEFENSE STRATEGY AND BUDGET

PEARL HARBOR (Nov. 21, 2012) The guided-missile destroyer USS Michael Murphy (DDG 112) arrives at its homeport of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam for the first time.

FROM:  U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
　
Winnefeld Discusses Defense Strategy, Budget Link
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Nov. 28, 2012 - The fiscal 2014 defense budget request will be a chance for the department to adjust funding to support the defense strategic guidance issued in January this year, Navy Adm. James A. Winnefeld Jr., the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said here yesterday.

The admiral spoke at the Atlantic Council's Commanders Series.

"We are continuing to filter and refine the decisions we made ... last year," Winnefeld said. "It is going on now and it is going on pretty well."

Winnefeld took office the same day that Congress passed the Budget Control Act -- Aug. 4, 2011. "I arrived in this job at the high-water mark of the defense budget for the last 20 years," he said.

Defense leaders had already termed the national deficit as a threat to national security, he said, noting that DOD will do its part to reduce it. "We would forcefully state that we are not necessarily the cause of this problem, but we all need to pitch in," he said.

Since 9/11, the department had virtually unlimited resources, the admiral said.

"Now we're in a different place, and as Winston Churchill said, 'Gentlemen, we're out of money, and now we have to think,'" he added.

Under the old strategy, cutting $489 billion out of the department over 10 years increased the risk to the nation, Winnefeld said. DOD leaders needed to work together to examine the department's core missions, he said, and how to accomplish those missions with declining resources..

"We knew we had to link strategy with the budget-making process," the admiral said.

At the same time, leaders had to account for changes in warfare, he said. This included changes across the range of combat bred by the efficacy of networks to speed awareness. It also included understanding the benefits interagency partners provide to the military and the importance of cross-service cooperation at all levels.

On the equipment side, the strategy had to consider the effect of unmanned vehicles, cyber capabilities, stealth technology and the contributions of "the best people we have ever had in the U.S. military," Winnefeld said. The talent that young people bring to the military was actually folded into the new strategy, he said.

The plan made a number of changes in a shift to the Pacific, the emphasis on cyber operations, being able to project power and increased emphasis on efficiency in the department, he said. The strategy keeps the counterterrorism force robust and retains the nuclear deterrent, Winnefeld noted.

The strategy calls for less emphasis on long-term stability operations, the admiral said.

"The way President [Barack] Obama has put it was, 'Give me fewer Iraqi Freedoms and more Desert Storms,'" Winnefeld said. "The point was, go in, do the 'defeat,' and get the job done. Don't end up there for 10 years trying to do nation building. We're just not going to be allowed to do that. We can't afford it."

The guidance took three months to publish, and then leaders used this guidance to build the fiscal 2013 DOD budget request. "It was the first time in my career that I have seen such a tight connection between the strategy document ... to 'means' decisions -- the things we were going to buy or not buy," the admiral said.

The bottom line, he said, is that the strategy covers national interests -- the security of the United States and its citizens; a strong U.S. economy; respect for universal values; and an international order that promotes peace, stability and security through stronger cooperation.

Senior leaders measure their decisions against this strategy, Winnefeld said, and will continue to do so with the new budget.

Winnefeld said he's optimistic that Congress will avoid sequestration, but if it takes place and the department has to cut another $500 billion from the budget, then the strategic guidance could be made moot. A new plan would have to be drawn up, increasing the risk to the nation, the admiral said.