Interagency Role Model

In 1986, the US Congress passed the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act (GNA), streamlining the military chain of command and promoting jointness and unity of effort within the US military and DoD. Capitalizing on lessons learned from previous eras and military operations, the architects of the GNA accurately envisioned the power a well-organized and structured joint military force could project, and set into motion the groundwork for what today is the most lethal and synergistic military in the world. As the United States continues to address emerging complex contingency operations, the DoD has certainly benefited from that [GNA] reorganization, but has struggled to integrate with a legacy interagency process. The existing dichotomy between the DoD and the interagency process could perhaps be alleviated through a GNA-like restructure for the interagency process. Recently, there have been many proposals and studies detailing such reorganization. Those details aside, any initiative for the US interagency national security policy planning and execution process should be structured along the lines reflecting the salient characteristics of military organization.