An official of the Biden Dod warns that trying to manage the Pentagon as a business is a bad idea.
Mara Karlin, who was previously deputy defense secretary for strategy, plans and capacities, wrote in a comment for foreign affairs that ignores the harsh realities of the way the risk works in the army could turn against him.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he hoped that the Government Ministry, led by the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, could bring “real professional effort to the government”.
Karlin said the need for DOD reform is not in dispute – the Pentagon is known for waste, and the ministry has failed seven consecutive audits. It is widely recognized in defense circles that the ministry needs serious reform, but treating the Pentagon as a company is not the answer, she said.
“Pentagon is not a business,” said Karlin.
For beginners, the DOD workforce, compromised with a fully voluntary force and legions of civilian civil servants for life, is 40% larger than the next US employer, and it is often based on institutional knowledge due to the complexity of the ministry.
And unlike a company, the DOD does not have its own CEO or its own board of directors which can force a rapid change.
The US army board of directors is the hundreds of members of the Congress, which has still not succeeded in resolving the continuous broken resolution process, temporary judgments that hamper the capacity to finance contracts for everything, the maintenance of ammunition and equipment.
It is the congress that oversees the massive DOD budget, a figure of $ 850 billion which should grow and finally decides where this money is spent.
In addition, the Pentagon is not able to easily revise its own organizational structure, and it cannot alone decide to promote tons of its own people. They also need the congress.
This alone is the key to the reason why the Ministry of Defense is “important” and “heavy”, wrote Karlin, but another reason why the military is not exactly like a company is its unique relationship with national security.
There is another type of risk in the DOD compared to private sector companies, said Karlin. In the business world, if a startup fails, investors lose money and people lose their jobs. But the risk is different in the DOD, she said. If the army fails, people die.
“The challenges for taking risk in defense” are “particularly high,” wrote Karlin, who is now a professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and Brookings Institution. She said that the DOD must consider the risk “much more sober and carefully than in the business world”.
The difference between the department and private sector companies means that “attempts to operate the Pentagon as a company will turn around,” said Karlin. “If Hegseth and Doge continue as they started”, they can fail and potentially “harm the American soldiers in the process”.
“The Pentagon needs a change, but an effective reform will require the uniqueness of the organization. So far, the signs are not encouraging,” she said.
Karlin warned that the assault of the Doges against the DOD could find itself worse than “could turn terrifyingly, as at the Ministry of Energy. There”, Doge forced to get out of many employees who manipulated nuclear matters before the Trump administration realizes how critical of these posts have canceled most of the dismissals, “she said.
For the moment, the leadership of the Pentagon has focused on reducing what they consider to be unnecessary expenses. Earlier this month, HegSeth announced that the DOD had reduced “$ 5.1 billion in spilling contracts from the Defense Department”.
businessinsider
