Follow the Money: A Balanced National Security Toolbox?
| Location | Senate Capitol, Room SC 115 |
Gordon Adams, Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, will join us for a discussion on rebalancing the national security tool box. The Defense Department has emerged as the dominant tool of US statecraft over the last 40 years. The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review noted that the lack of deployable specialists has left the DOD as the default responder for post conflict situations. Adams argues that across the US Government there has been little effort to define a broad strategic mission integrating all the tools of statecraft. In particular, the splintering of foreign assistance has resulted in a patchwork quilt of incoherent efforts. Why is our national security apparatus so badly out of kilter with our current threats and challenges? What can we do to integrate and synergize our efforts? What reforms are necessary inside agencies and across the wider government to enhance national security?