The collapse of NDU: A view from inside

By “A. Puzzled Prof”

Best Defense guest columnist

I read your piece
on the resignation of Hans Binnendijk, the head research guru of the National Defense University and
one of America's leading strategic thinkers. It comes amidst much turmoil
imposed on the university from the top. It isn't pretty, and it will
surely not serve the national interest. I am not directly involved in it,
but this is what I have been told by many who are.

The new uniformed
leadership of the Armed Forces, i.e., General Dempsey and his staff, apparently
intend to prune NDU back to where it was a few decades ago. There will be
some modest resource savings, but since the entire university budget doesn't
amount to the cost of a single joint strike fighter, one has to wonder what is
motivating all of what is happening here. In the cuts that have been
discussed, Dempsey's deputy, Marine Lt. Gen. George J. Flynn has wielded the
meat axe, often with the aid of micromanaging action officers. No one
here in the rank-and-file is sure if the urbane chairman is on board with the
details of all of this. (Ironically, both the chairman and J-7 are NDU
graduates with advanced degrees.)

This set of changes
took place in stages. First, while very few general or flag officer slots
were cut in the armed forces, the three-star president of the university slot
was downgraded to two, and the school commandants, downgraded from two to one
star. No big deal, one might say, but one would be wrong, very
wrong. A three star in Washington can go head-to-head with a principal on
the joint staff or a senior OSD bureaucrat to protect the university. To
compound the problem, the last three star president was retired in the spring
and the university was left for a few months under the command of a senior
foreign service officer, a former ambassador, a woman of great diplomatic
talent and experience with no clout in the Pentagon. The new commandant
--- a highly regarded Army two-star --- will not report until deep into June,
when all or most of the cuts have been set in concrete. (Interesting
question: can an employee of the State Department legally or even virtually
assume command of a DoD organization?)

Second, the university was moved from a direct report to the chairman of the joint chiefs
to reporting through the J-7, Lt Gen Flynn, whose staff section is nearly as
big as the rest of the joint staff. This move violated the old SOP of
commanders reporting to commanders, not staff officers. It also made the
J-7 the ersatz president of the university during a period of severe resource reductions.

A new "charter" was
subsequently published by the Chairman. It focused the university on
joint professional military education and training, which in itself, is a good
thing. Immediately, however, the research and outreach activities of the university, often more focused on national strategy than military affairs, came
under intense scrutiny. These outfits had grown way beyond their original
charters and had become effective and highly regarded servants of a wider
interagency community. Much of their work was not done for the joint staff but for OSD Policy, and some of that in conjunction with civilian
think-tanks. The research arm of the university was productive, even if
not always useful in a practical way to the joint staff. It also was
helpful to the colleges in a much more proximate and direct fashion than other
think tanks, like RAND.

Third, a series of
this-year and next-year budget cuts were announced. The J-7, armed with
the new charter, pushed the university to take most of the cuts in the
research, gaming, and publications sections, all of which had grown
significantly in the last two decades. The mantra became, in effect, that
if this or that did not directly support the war colleges, it was wrong and
needed to be eliminated or cut way back. No one, of course, spoke to the
need for out of the box thinking on future national security subjects. Fundamental research -- which has to operate miles and years ahead of war
college coursework -- had no powerful friends in the leadership of the
operating forces.

The research,
gaming, and publications arms of the university -- a major part of the
big-think, future concepts and policy business here -- will be cut to
somewhere between half and a third of their original sizes. To make
things worse, many of the specific cuts appear to have been crafted in the
Pentagon, and nasty emails have come down from on high, about how the university is bankrupt and going into receivership, which was never the
judgment of the military and civilian accrediting officials, who inspect us
regularly and have generally given the university high marks.

All of this
represents the systematic destruction of well respected institutions, three
decades in the making, all in the name of very small savings and
right-sizing. The position of the senior vice president for research and
related things will be eliminated. The future-oriented, big picture
research program will shrivel, the number of academic books coming through the
NDU Press will be cut to a small fraction of this year's production, and gaming
will be severely restricted. The university will no longer support the
popular, interagency-oriented journal, PRISM. The Information Resources
Management College and other non-war or staff college schools are in jeopardy
of being zeroed out. Sadly, OSD policy has not come to the rescue of any of
these institutions which have labored hard on its behalf and that of the
interagency community.

Worse than functional
changes, many government employees, especially senior professionals hired under
yearly contracts, so-called Title X professionals, will lose their jobs. Firing them by not renewing their contracts is much easier than firing tenured
civil servants. This takes some financial pressure off of the colleges,
but not much. All of the savings will go to meet predetermined cuts,
conceived ahead of time on the Joint Staff or passed on to them by the
departmental comptroller.

One has to wonder
why this is going on here. Sequestration is not upon us. No one is
forcing the joint staff to dismember a significant part of this institution.
There are no great dollar savings to be had here. Certainly, no academic
or management expert would think that dismantling the research, publications,
and gaming arms of a policy-oriented university is progress.

In times of great
stress and famine, a roach will eat itself, starting with its hind legs. Without such stress or famine, the leadership of the joint staff has decided to
consume part of the lobes of its brain. This is an organizational tragedy
that will not help us adapt to a challenging future.

So, that's what's
going on over here, and I wonder why civil experts aren't writing more about
it, and why Congress -- long the guardian angel of the university -- isn't
getting involved.

"A.P. Prof" is just that.