releases: https://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/floor-statements?ContentRecord_id=773f4f38-6876-4e1b-a790-29e6c6279b98
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| https://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/floor-statements?ContentRecord_id=773f4f38-6876-4e1b-a790-29e6c6279b98 | OPENING STATEMENT BY SASC CHAIRMAN JOHN McCAIN AT HEARING ON IMPROVING PENTAGON POLICY, STRATEGY & PLANS | 2015-12-08 | 2015 | 2015-12 | Republican | House | AZ | John McCain | M000303 | www.mccain.senate.gov | legacy | Washington, D.C. U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, delivered the following opening statement today at a hearing on improving the Pentagons development of policy, strategy and plans: The Committee meets today to continue our series of hearings on defense reform. We have reviewed the effects of the Goldwater-Nichols reforms on our defense acquisition, management, and personnel systems. In our most recent hearings we have considered what most view as the essence of Goldwater-Nichols: the roles and responsibilities of the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the service secretaries and service chiefs, and the combatant commanders. This morning we seek to understand how these civilian and military leaders formulate policy, strategy, and plans, as well as how to improve the quality civilian control of the military and military advice to civilian leaders. We are fortunate to have with us a distinguished panel of witnesses who will offer their views based on many years of service to our nation: The Honorable Michle Flournoy, Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, who is currently CEO of the Center for a New American Security; The Honorable Michael Vickers, Former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, who also previously served as a Special Forces officer and a CIA operations officer; and Commander Jeffrey W. Eggers, Former Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, who served both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and was previously a U.S. Navy SEAL Officer. As we have heard in previous hearings, Goldwater-Nichols emerged from concerns about the unity of command and the ability of our military to operate jointly. However, another primary concern was poor military advice, which former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, said at the time had grown so bad that it was generally irrelevant, normally unread, and almost always disregarded. Thats why the Goldwater-Nichols Act elevated the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the principal military adviser to the President and Secretary of Defense and created the position of Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The intent of these reforms is that the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would be better able to promote a department-wide perspective that could integrate activities and resources comprehensively across the military services. Goldwater-Nichols also sought to improve the process of developing policy, strategy, and plans by requiring the President to submit a national security strategy and provide guidance to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the combatant commanders for the preparation and review of contingency plans. These were all important reforms. But thirty years later, how do we evaluate their effectiveness? If we base that on the quality of so-called strategy documents, such as the National Security Strategy or Quadrennial Defense Review, I fear we may have a serious problem. The QDR process has grown so bad that Congress created an independent panel to review the Pentagons work. In 2010, that panel concluded, Instead of unconstrained, long term analysis by planners who were encouraged to challenge preexisting thinking, the QDRs became explanations and justifications, often with marginal changes, of established decisions and plans. The poor quality of the DODs strategic planning documents may suggest a deeper, more troubling problem: that despite the Goldwater-Nichols reformsor in some cases, perhaps unintentionally because of themthe development of policy, strategy, and plans in the DOD has become paralyzed by an excessive pursuit of concurrence or consensus. Innovative ideas that challenge the status quo rarely seem to survive the staffing process as they make their long journey to senior civilian and military leaders. Instead, what results too often seems to be watered-down, lowest common denominator thinking that is acceptable to all relevant stakeholders precisely because it is threatening to none of them. I would cite again our recent experience in Iraq. Regardless of what we think about the circumstances by which we went to war in Iraq, the fact is that our nation was losing that war for three and a half years, with disastrous consequences for our national security if we did fail. And yet, the development of a new strategy that finally stabilized the situation was not produced by the system, but rather by a group of outside experts and insurgents within the system going around the system. In many ways, this question of strategy is the crux of our current review. The main problem that Goldwater-Nichols sought to address thirty years ago was primarily an operational onethe inability of the military services to operate as one joint force. It is impossible to dispute that, at a tactical and operational level, the U.S. military today is unrivaled in the world and far more capable than it was three decade ago, thanks in no small part to 14 consecutive years of sustained combat. The problem today, however, seems to rest far more at the level of strategy. Our adversariesfrom ISIL, to Iran and North Korea, to China and Russiaare inside our decision cycle. They are capable of responding to events, deciding, and acting faster than we are. Instead, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. government more broadly, appears increasingly incapable of adapting and innovating at speeds sufficient to maintain the initiative and keep us a step ahead of our adversaries. The DOD also appears increasingly challenged by strategic integrationintegrating thought and action across regions, across domains of military activity, and across short-term and long-term requirements. Perhaps this should not be surprising when, as previous witnesses have testified, the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary of Defense are the only two leaders in the Department with directive authority to mandate this kind of strategic integration. All of these problems are compounded by the fact that civilian control and oversight of the military has increasingly become confused with civilian micromanagement of the military. This is not an attempt to condemn an organization just because some disagree at times with its conclusions. This is a broader problem. Our defense organization has consistently been too slow in adapting to the threats and challenges we face today, and will face tomorrow. And there are real questions as to whether our current defense organization, which has long assumed that the wars it would fight would be short and largely one-sided, is optimally set up to succeed in long-term strategic and military competitions with great power rivals and non-state actors like ISIL. Part of this problem may lie, as previous witnesses have testified, in how the Department educates and develops its civilian and military leaders when it comes to strategy. I will be eager to hear our witnesses thoughts on how to improve the Departments development and management of its people in this regard. And yet, we must always remember that bad organizations all too often trump good people. Ultimately, we must get this right because we have never confronted a more complex, uncertain, and numerous array of worldwide threats, and our margin for error as a nation is not what it once was, and indeed, is dramatically diminishing relative to our competitors. We have largely weathered the consequences of our previous failures, but without changes, we may not remain so fortunate for long. ### | 1 | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z |