GAO Testifies to Congress on U.S. Southern Command Reorganization
This post was written by Senior Fellow George Withers and Fellow Lucila Santos at the Washington Office on Latin America.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, has just issued a report evaluating the reorganization efforts of the U.S. Southern Command and the U.S. Africa Command, laying out the challenges, successes and lessons learned so far.
On Wednesday, Rep John F. Tierney (D-Massachusetts), Chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, convened a hearing to receive testimony about the commands’ reorganization efforts from the GAO, the Department of Defense, the State Department, and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
In his opening remarks, Chairman Tierney pointed to some important broad policy questions. “As threats have changed, the concept of ‘national security’ has broadened. As a result, the Department of Defense has taken on an expanding role in areas that have traditionally been allocated to the State Department and USAID, as well as others,” he said. “We must ensure that the right agency takes the lead on each effort – that diplomacy is led by diplomats, that development projects are designed and implemented by development experts, and that military operations are planned and coordinated by the military.”
Testifying on behalf of the GAO was John H. Pendleton, Director of the Defense Capabilities and Management Section. Mr. Pendleton, in his written testimony, said that while the Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) has reorganized its structure to better accommodate interagency coordination, “the 2010 Haiti earthquake response revealed weaknesses in this structure that initially hindered its efforts to conduct a large-scale military operation.”
During the hearing, Representative Judy Chu (D-California) asked how that weakness may have affected the earthquake’s victims. Mr. Pendleton answered that SOUTHCOM had to quickly revert to its previous joint staff structure in order to handle the core responsibilities of logistics and planning, which had been overlooked in the reorganization process. The GAO report recommends that SOUTHCOM again revise its Organization and Functions Manual “to align structure and manpower to meet approved missions.”
In his testimony, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense James A. Schear said that interagency collaboration is very important in facing new transnational threats, that such cooperation needs to be tailored to the region, and that the missions need to be defined in terms of what is needed.
Thomas Countryman, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, stated that his office had never seen such a good level of cooperation between the State and Defense Department. Countryman’s bureau has been largely supportive of the restructuring of SOUTHCOM.
The USAID representative, Susan Reichle, the Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator to the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance, said that her agency is committed to an integrated approach to crises and disasters. US national security has to be protected and promoted through the “3 Ds”: development, defense and diplomacy. USAID seeks to enhance civilian influence over the commands and has established an office on military affairs.
Chairman Tierney expressed his frustration with the question of agency leadership several times during the hearing. “Everyone seems to agree that the interagency approach is good. But I am troubled that DoD leads as opposed to State,” he said. “Why are we leading with our fists?” He asked several related questions during the hearing, as among them:
· Why is DoD leading in non-contingency operations?
· Why is the United States not building the right capacities we need to perform assistance roles?
· How are we going to build these capacities?
The witnesses tried to address these concerns. The GAO representative said that DoD is not the leading agency, but that it is perceived that way. The DoD official, James Schear, explained that the delivery platform, SOUTHCOM, is a DoD organism and thus it seems that DoD is leading. However, he argued, DoD is only in a supportive capacity, prepared to deal with a contingency situation if it were to arise. Susan Reichle, from USAID, said it was a question of perceptions, because it is perceived that DoD was leading although that was not the case, like in Haiti, where USAID, not SOUTHCOM, was in the lead.
Mr. Countryman had earlier explained that the relationship between the U.S. embassies’ country teams, the regional plan and the Department of Defense, bringing its considerable financial and personnel resources to bear, is a mixed blessing, as it gives the appearance that the operational aspects are DoD-led. Chairman Tierney respectfully disagreed, describing the explanation as “a lot of bureaucratic talk.” “It is what it is,” said the Chairman.
At the close of the hearing, Chairman Tierney again stated his view of what the core problem is: “The current structure sends the message that all the U.S. cares about is counterterrorism because the military is out front and center, and that we don’t care nearly as much about the well-being of the various countries themselves.”