GAO's 13 Priority Items for the New Administration

The Washington Post has picked up on a webpage posted by the GAO that apparently is designed to influence and inform the incoming administration about what it considers the top 13 items of concern. (As an aside, one of the top thirteen problems is the conversion to digital TV. Amazing that television technology is equal to defense problems.) The GAO page can be found here: http://www.gao.gov/transition_2009/.

Six of the thirteen items deal with defense issues, and four of the thirteen related to health, the military, and the military health system's efforts in global public health :

-Preparing for a public health emergency
-U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan
-Undisciplined defense spending
-Improving U.S. image abroad

I suspect that the GAO reports that support each of these topic areas do not link or even discuss the military's global surveillance efforts and the effect that it has on preparing the U.S. public for a health emergency (or on the military's energetic efforts in pandemic influenza preparations), for example. But in all honesty I need to read the reports to be sure.

What I do know is the confusion of the post writer in today's paper when he broadly linked DoD's strategic communications efforts and information operations efforts in Iraq with public diplomacy. Here is Walter Pincus' article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/11/AR2009011102122.html?nav=emailpage.

Not to dive in to the unending debate about the difference between strategic communications, public diplomacy and information operations, the point here is that DoD has purposes which tend more toward fighting wars than making people love the U.S. The significance of this is important because the techniques used, money spent and outcomes produced are not the same for DoD as for, say, the Department of State.

Similarly, sometimes when DoD medical personnel perform health missions abroad they are doing so to 'win the war' and not necessarily to better the health of the people they interact with. In fact, I would suggest that most of DoD global health missions are conducted for reasons other than promoting healthy populations abroad. While this seems ethically challenged, the good thing is that in fact the secondary output of these missions is that people receive medical attention. Whether or not their health improves is another question all together. Practitioners from the US AID shudder with this kind of thinking, but in the same breath will say that they are doubtful about DoD's role in global public health.

This same point can be made regarding public diplomacy. DoD has the responsibility to support the development of Iraq and Afghanistan, in concert with other agencies and organizations. The SOFA agreement withdraws all combat forces by June of this year and the entire military by the end of 2011. The Department of State and USAID can remain in country. Just these time lines alone dictate different possible approaches.

Subtleties of purpose are causing great consternation in practice between the agencies. Congressional misunderstanding does not help. Recently, Congress asked the DoD to stop spending so much money on strategic communications in a number of areas. Is the Department of State going to take up the important work in Iraq and Afghanistan, and integrate military missions with messages? Hopefully not. Hence, when Walter Pincus links public diplomacy and DoD's information operations/strategic communications together the danger is that Hill staffers will not understand the important distinctions and add to the challenges of succeeding in Afghanistan and Iraq.