OUR NATION'S ability to foresee and respond to increasingly complex and networked threats is handicapped by an archaic and compartmentalized interagency system that dates from the Cold War. While the current system is already hard-put to keep up with ongoing and near-term matters, it is especially deficient in planning for major, long-range contingencies. Some of these contingencies may seem remote, but they arguably have the power to shake the United States to its core. They demand our attention by virtue of their consequences.
The current organizational basis for conducting national security affairs is a legacy from the early Cold War. Because we now face a radically different constellation of problems, it follows that the strategy and management systems we use for dealing with them must be significantly readjusted.
During the Soviet period, the problem we faced was essentially confined to a point-source: the threat to our national existence presented by the conventional and nuclear forces of the USSR. This is a vast simplification, of course, but there was an underlying truth to it. The implications were profound. Because of our perception of a unitary Soviet threat, we prioritized the national security agenda around it into a hierarchy, and, associated with that hierarchy, we developed a pyramidal approach to the management of national security. Information about the nature of the Soviet threat existed within a relatively narrow and specialized domain, and the management of our response to that threat radiated from the president to the international security cabinet officers and out through the command system.
