Personality or Process: CMR Hits the Blogosphere

William Arkin, a blogger with the Washington Post, issued a piece today at which I take some umbrage. It is about the civil-military relations conference that I attended last week. Arkin was there, and provided several comments, some insightful, many provocative and just plain grumpy
An excerpt from his blog post today gives you a bit of his style and his opinion about the proceedings:

It seemed to me that to the professionals in the room it didn't really matter who was the next president. It didn't matter whether it was John McCain with his goal of "victory" by 2013 or Barack Obama with his pledge of withdrawal in 2009. All that matters is how the transition is managed: how the new secretary of Defense communicates with the uniformed military and reaches out to them as his "trusted advisers"; how the secretary selects his team and how that team expeditiously gets cleared and confirmed by the Senate; how the new team comes in and is respectful of yet not bowled over by the permanent class; how the department establishes good congressional, "interagency" and public relations; how consensus is built about the immediate tasks and a common future; and, above all else, how crisis is averted, first with our enemies and adversaries, then with Congress and the other agencies, then with our allies and with international institutions, and with pundits and the media, and finally with the pesky electorate.

I have to say my interpretation of the event is quite difference from what Mr. Arkin seemed to take away. For one thing, there was substantial mention of the importance of the next President and the next civilian Defense team, including repeated discussion about the degree to which personalities (i.e. the character and approach of particular individuals) matter to the success and health of the civil-military relationship. The academic perspective in the room did tend to look for patterns from administration to administration which gave the discussions a sense of the continuity of the civil-military relationship, but the point was not to imply that leadership has no impact and that business will continue as usual regardless of who occupies the White House and SECDEF’s chair—in fact, the conclusion was quite the opposite. Several of the panelists addressed the legacy of Rumsfeld head-on, and at least two panelists made specific recommendations about the kind of people the next President should appoint to high-level Defense jobs so as to benefit the civil-military relationship in the building.

I also think the emphasis on how the transition should be managed regardless of who wins in November made good sense for two reasons: speculating about who precisely will occupy the critical national security positions in the next administration is still too much of a stretch; and the principles of a healthy civil-military relationship will endure regardless of the next occupant of the Oval Office. Part of the purpose of the day was to consider recommendations for the next President and his/her team on how they can enter office on a good civil-military footing, recommendations that are valid for any President be s/he Republican or Democrat.

In short, I saw the “attitude” in the room as being constructive—based on a concern that the civil-military relationship has been strained in recent years and that any President will need to take positive steps in order to establish a healthy command climate.