The Pentagon is making the CIA and State Department obsolete, Ryan Landry argues:
The State Department and CIA have been anxious since election night, not just because of the threat of a change of policy, but because these agencies now face an existential threat on some level.
As Trump’s cabinet was assembled in late fall, the nervousness grew as Blue Empire realized how many generals and former generals would serve in high-ranking positions. Unbeknownst to most Americans, the fear is based on change within Red Empire. The Pentagon’s growth into a one-stop shop for policy formulation and implementation threatens Blue’s existence and at a minimum, influence.
Since the planes flew into the Twin Towers, the Department of Defense has been in a steady growth mode not strictly limited to increases in spending and budgets. The very scope and nature of the DOD has changed. America’s wars of choice, the imperial wars after World War II, have forced the Pentagon to send a first-world military into regions with zero infrastructure. The U.S. military had to change and find ways to support such a military in many undeveloped areas from scratch. Random reports by American media outlets repeat the same phrase over and over. The Pentagon has become a one-stop shop for the presidency to seek advice, consider policies, and execute plans. For all the recent talk of a Deep State, the Pentagon has grown into a fully operational imperium in imperio.
If the president inquires, the Pentagon offers a soup to nuts service for policy that extends beyond warmaking. As one of the largest users of oil and oil products, the Pentagon needed to focus on securing oil, and therefore energy policy advisers and researchers sprung forth. The Pentagon has a budget and a literal army of individuals to enact policy with speed that other departments can only dream of enjoying. The need to defend America’s computer networks has had secondary consequences of a private ex-military IT network of contractors and systems experts.
Mission creep has created recent open reactions from rivals at State and CIA. CIA’s fear of former national security adviser Michael Flynn was not due to his supposed Russia connections, but rather because of his approach to intelligence. Flynn voiced concerns and criticism with the CIA’s approach. Flynn also built the Defense Intelligence Agency up to integrate intelligence units and analysis directly with Army units for faster, more efficient operations. CIA was out to get Flynn as part of a turf battle and legitimate fear of reform. If not reform, simple reorientation of who is used when and where in the empire.
Defense has also spent a generation pushing its officers into furthering their education. This is not simple credentialism, but also creating a corps of officers that could rival their mirror images in State.
Proconsuls.
This idea occurred to me several years back.
Why bother going to a Foggy Bottom Ambassador for policy assurances or bureaucrats at Commerce and Treasury for import and financial permissions when you can go to the Combatant Commander for one-stop shopping?
SOCOM does most of the wet ops for CIA’s Directorate of Operations these days. NSA is part of DoD. Deemphasizing CIA and bulking up DIA is doable. Trump’s approach seems to be castrating but not eliminating bureaucracy as conservative dogma demands. The Left’s defenses aren’t optimized to oppose that shift in tactics.
DHS never really ended up as the American MI5 it needed to be. FBI doesn’t like the COIN role and is of questionable reliability. BATFE could be rebuilt into FBI 2.0 for a national policing and internal security role. FBI 1.0 would go bonkers over the challenge to their portfolio and the competition would create results for quite a few decades.