NSC and Cabinet Talk, Cont.

Been mulling it over a bit more and I suppose I'll ramble a bit, not sure I'll get done before I have to go somewhere.

I talked about line units and staff, and the federal government doesn't quite map on to that. 

In the military... Well, there's a reason they say good generals talk about logistics, logistics, logistics. 

Yes, we need our combat arms. Our shooters. Infantry, cavalry. The king of battle (artillery). I'm mostly talking army here but also jet fighters and battleships and the like. But as that book about the eastern front showed rather horrifically, your soldiers - no matter how brave - won't be able to fight well if they're starving. Or don't have bullets. Or their tanks get broken and they don't have the equipment to repair it. The classic 'beans and bullets' 

Which is why a very, very, very large portion of our armed forces are really support for the shooters.

Most of the line units are the shooters. And then there's all sorts of bureaucracy tied up with assigning the right type of support (maintenance, engineers, finance, etc).

Military intelligence, for example, doesn't have that many platoons and battalions and the like. Most of them are assigned staff positions with the line units rather than forming a unit of their own. Many officers actually start in another branch, where they get to be a platoon leader as part of the typical officer pipeline, before changing branches. (I requested my transfer from Air Defense, but many did something similar as part of the plan.)

The maneuver units have some pretty predictable planning requirements, hence the staff titles. S1 for personnel. S2 for intelligence. S3 for operations. S4 for supply. S6 for communication. And so on and so forth (J1, J2, etc at the joint level, but the same breakdown. They may have other numbers since they may require things at that level that a battalion or brigade don't.)

So there's the line units, and then there's all the stuff tied up with getting them in the right place at the right time with the right equipment and training and resources to succeed. 

Now, with the federal government we don't generally have that sort of thing. Well, other than the armed forces themselves. The rest of the federal government is not tied up with outfitting and mobilizing units. 

You could maybe say FEMA are like that, though iirc it's more like deploying a staff to help organize local resources on the ground. With some logistics thrown in for federal resources. 

The executive branch is supposed to execute, that is make the legislation passed by Congress actually happen. But quite a bit of that is the military, ofc, or the paperwork involved in funding medicare or social security. Or paying for the secret service or IRS. Or managing national parks. 

Its not really operations. 

Well, and then there's the State Department, which definitely doesn't fit any of the stuff I just described. It has bureaucracy ofc. Plenty of it. And there are diplomats 'deployed' for key negotiations (could we call a deployment of diplomats a bale? Since some turtles live in swamps, so they'd fit right in to the Foggy Bottom?)

I digress. The state department reflects the nation as a whole. Embassies are considered the territory of their government after all. So even though there's lots of staff functions, they're really more like the face we present to the rest of the world. And they should have a coherent foreign policy that reflects our collective goals. ('should' is carrying a lot of weight there).

So, in that sense the whole line unit/staff distinction doesn't really fit.

However. We do have a cabinet, with secretaries ostensibly serving the president (who should reflect our collective will, and is putting into practice the wishes we agreed enough on to actually legislate).

Tbh, I kind of thought the NSC was a little strange when I heard about it. It seemed like a way of working around the cabinets rather than fixing them. It seemed to work well enough for Harry Truman, but it also seems to have done what almost any organization does when given a chance.. Grow larger and take on more duties. I understand a small core of special advisors that can help coordinate across cabinets, but why weren't the cabinet heads able to do that themselves?

That's mostly idle rambling on my part though. I am not an expert on how things work in DC, so maybe I just don't understand what their proper roles are.

Anyways. According to the White House website there are 15 executive departments. Headed by the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, and the Attorney General.

They won't map onto military staff functions, but make sense for things a nation should worry about: defense, the economy, food, trade, energy, finances. And quite a bit that overlaps with those (ie transportation actually helps trade and the economy, but is specialized enough to be its own thing. Labor and education are similar.)

I suppose I need to clarify - ultimately all of this is about taking care of the American people and serving our collective interests. A good economy generally does that, though as economic critiques of common measurements show its not always one and the same. Also, if too many of the benefits of that economy go to the 1%, then it doesn't actually reflect our collective well being. But it used to be a fairly decent way of measuring such things. (people inevitably start playing to the metrics so they might not any more. But you can get an economist to go into that in greater detail).

So the economy matters for two reasons - as a rough measurement for how well we're doing, and because a strong economy is important for national security. That goes back to the beans and bullets... You can have ships and planes and tanks and trucks, but those things get destroyed rather quickly in a war. To sustain and last, you need an economy that can continue to build said ships and tanks and planes. As well as the food to keep feeding your troops, and the people who are making those ships and tanks and planes.

That's part of why I keep saying national security is very broad. You have to have the resources, plus the ability to sustain your efforts. Plus a population educated enough, in all the right ways. Not just for military might, but for the type of economy that can support it. And they have to be healthy enough to do so. (not that these aren't worthy goals in their own right, and I care about education etc for the public goods they provide us in peacetime. Just... They also are extremely important if we ever get into a sustained total war. Same thing for racial tension. An army could fall apart pretty quick if you're forces hate each other. Got to nip that racism shit in the bud or you never know when your forces might fall apart. Seriously, it's very frustrating that people in power don't seem to see white supremacy for the serious threat it is). 

I'm digressing again though, and I'll probably have to leave soon. 

15 executive departments that, for better or worse, are supposed to help implement our laws and the various things we've collectively decided are important. Even if certain people in power think they know better, and actively sabotage them. 

Maybe they need a department of operations to coordinate their efforts. Maybe that's what the NSC essentially has become. 

I get the impression, though, that they're all a tangled hodgepodge of a mess that's grown in fits and starts over our nation's history. (with a large part of the population that resents that entirely, and hinders any effort at making it work).