The Costs of War: More Than Blood and Treasure

“We don’t make the choice, we do what we are told.”[1]

While individual service members do not make the choices,

however, they are the ones that deal with the lasting consequences.

After studying a range of national security topics, here I extrapolate a few lessons that are important to me individually and should be of particular interest to US national security. I will use an interview conducted with an Iraq veteran as a case study emphasizing the human costs of war. The lessons from the case study will then be tied to broader issues of maintaining the force, treatment by Veterans Affairs and the Weinberger Doctrine. In accordance with the Weinberger Doctrine, I assert that the United States only goes to war when the mission is worth the causalities. Acting on the contrary results in a ‘fiasco’ on both a large and a very personal scale. 

The experience of the veteran that I interviewed, unfortunately, is not unique; many aspects are representative of the larger population of veterans. A similar story is found in the memoir: The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell. Both accounts are of a college student, less than a semester from graduating, deployed to Iraq, prepared to do what he signed up to do and coming back changed forever.[2] The psychological costs of war are real; the veteran I interviewed is battling PTSD from events that occurred over a decade ago. He is plagued by flashbacks of a suicide car bomb that occurred at the checkpoint he was manning.

 I ask: Did those that determined to initiate the Iraq war evaluate the human costs ex-ante? From Fiasco, I gather that decision makers disobeyed Murphy’s Law and were far too optimistic in how the war would progress. It did not take long for the Iraqi people to see the international forces as occupiers instead of liberators.[3] This failure to plan strategically for what would happen after the Saddam regime fell was a key component to the rise of the insurgency; an insurgency that raised the costs of the war exponentially.

The Weinberger Doctrine is a realist perspective on foreign policy. Born out of the lessons learned from the Vietnam War and the 1983 bombings in Lebanon, it limits when military troops should be used. Ironically, General Collin Powell (who played a key role in the formation of the Weinberger Doctrine) was used to sell the Iraq war to the UN.[4] In the case of Iraq, the criterion “U.S. troops should only be committed wholeheartedly and with the clear intention of winning, otherwise, troops should not be committed”[5] was ignored. Had the criteria of the Weinberger Doctrine been evaluated in determining if the military was to be used in Iraq, a fiasco would have been diverted.

From my case study, the veteran interviewed has received treatment by the over-worked Veterans Affairs. He related that overall the care has been adequate but had he been diagnosed with PTSD upon returning home, he would have been able to deal with the issue much earlier and consequently progressed further on his road to recovery. The need to maintain the force shines through on a number of levels.

“The military is very good at systematically building people up to be soldiers but they don’t then systematically bring them back down to be human again.”[6] The inability to reintegrate servicemen and women back into society is unacceptable and adds to the costs of war. PTSD, while the terminology may be contemporary, has been around forever, but those that fight the United States’ wars are still coming home without the support they need.

Maintaining the force is normally looked at from two perspectives. In regards to lengthening deployments from a year to fifteen months, President Bush presented somewhat of a callous perspective when he stated “Why do people join the military if they don't want to fight and defend the country.”[7] The other side is overly reverent for military service and is presented in an Executive Summary: The U.S. Military: Under Strain and at Risk, where on a number of occasion lauds the military service as superb.[8] The latter viewpoint is consistent with the idea presented in The Tragedy of the American Military by James Fallow, that the lack of proximity to the military leads to the inability to constructively criticize and evaluate performance.[9]

             Due to his experiences, I suspected that the veteran I interviewed would choose the route many veterans take: a dove approach to foreign policy and even become anti-war. The individual interviewed, a reservist, was attached to a Special Forces unit and related that he understood that the US is conducting operations throughout the world at any one time. Due the security threats that the United States faces, it is not realistic to not engage in military force.

Therefore, in a world where military force is needed, the Weinberger Doctrine must factor into decision-making.  When the criteria are met and force is needed, maintaining the forces is essential. Failure to do so raises both the financial and psychological costs. The costs are real and personal. Following the Weinberger Doctrine has dual benefits. It places you only in conflicts that are winnable, but also allows service members to better assimilate into civilian life upon returning from war. Veterans, like the rest of society, need to feel they have a purpose. The Weinberger Doctrine not only prevents getting tangled in an never ending conflict, but also sends the clear message that the mission is worth the sacrifice, even the ultimate sacrifice.

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[1] Interview with veteran on April 12, 2015

[2] John Crawford. 2005. The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account Of The War In Iraq.

[3] Ricks, Thomas E. Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. New York: Penguin Press, 2006. 98.

[4] Ricks, 90.

[5] Caspar W. Weinberger. “The Uses of Military Power”. November 28, 1984.

[6] Interview with veteran on April 12, 2015

[7] Robert Gates. Duty: A Memoir of a Secretary at War.

[8] The U.S. Military: Under Strain and at Risk A paper for the National Security Advisory Group II Executive Summary. Jan. 2006

[9] Fallows, James. "The Tragedy of the American Military." The Atlantic. December 28, 2014. Accessed April 16, 2015. http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/12/the-tragedy-of-the-american-military/383516/.

Drug Enforcement Administration

As indicated in The Drug Enforcement Administration 2016 Performance Budget Congressional Submission, the DEA supports The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) number one goal to “prevent terrorism and promote the nation’s security consistent with the rule of law.”[1] In reality, the organization focuses its efforts on the 2014 National Drug Control Strategy. In an attempt to measure the success of their efforts and determine if their strategy is working, the DEA employs a number of measurements to track projected and actual performance, including:

·      The number of disrupted and dismantled drug organizations

·      Monetary value of currency, property, and drugs seized (drug trafficker revenue denied)

·      Number of international students trained

Data from 2014 will be the focus of the analysis, but I evaluate data from 2010-2013 in order to grasp an understanding of the occurring trends.

With finite resources, the DEA has to carefully allocate resources for pursuing its mission of disrupting and dismantling the world’s “Most Wanted” drug traffickers. Are the indicators that the DEA employs to measure its performance appropriate? Do these indicators suggest that they are reaching their targets and equally as important, do their targets correctly correlate with their objectives? The results of the assessment have national security implications because if the indicators are flawed, how can the DEA know if the policy is working?

The DEA

An organization’s mission incorporates its interests as well as its objective.[2] The mission provides focus and captures the essence (how the organization ideally sees its self) of the organization. Simply put, the essence of the DEA is seizing drugs and shutting down drug cartels. The DEA focuses on both enforcing regulations domestically and assisting foreign counterparts to reduce the availability of illicit drugs on the international market.  The mission of the DEA states that they aim to “enforce the controlled substances laws and regulations of the United States and bring offenders before the criminal and civil justice system of the United States.” [3]

Their strategy to accomplish such lofty goals are outlined in the 2014 National Drug Control Strategy, including: disrupting domestic drug trafficking and production, strengthening international partnerships, improving information systems for analysis, assessment, and local management.[4] The DEA focuses its disrupting and dismantling efforts on identified Priority Target Organizations (PTO), interdiction of contraband, and training international counterparts. The DEA lacks authority to investigate unilaterally overseas, so it depends on host nation law enforcement cooperation.

The Role of Indicators

Indicators are not the same thing as quantitative goals[5] and should not be seen as a benchmark. Similar to quantitative goals, indicators are quantitative and measurable, but also have a directional component, which ideally captures performance as the indicator increases or decreases. Additionally, indicators are time-based. This allows decision maker not only to identify trends, but also see the rate of change of an indicators.[6] Indicators, in theory, are used to see if the strategy is accomplishing the mission. 

Analysis of Indicators used by The DEA

In 2014, the DEA disrupted 211 and dismantled 96 Priority Target Organizations (PTOs), confiscated $3.9 billion worth of drug revenue and trained 3,937 international students. These figures represent the dominant indicators for the DEA. However, these numbers on their own do little to inform decision makers if their strategies are working and if the strategy employed is accomplishing the mission.  First, we must get a better understanding of performance by seeing if these indicators increased or decreased from the previous year and at what rate of change. Secondly, we must analysis if the indicators selected are able to appropriately assess the DEA strategy.

We see the upward trend of the DEA’s indicators from 2010 to 2015. The amount of organizations disrupted and dismantled in 2010 is an outlier in that it is unusually large. Also, the value of the revenue that was denied is unavailable for 2010. Using OxMetrics, I scaled the graph to the indicators' means and ranges.  From 2011 to 2012 all of the indicators increased. More interestingly, from 2012 to 2013 the indicators continued to increase, but did so at faster rate.

I find that the DEA is using the most appropriate indicators for their overall mission and in their dominant indicator set they capture two of the three components of their strategy. The first two measurements, the number of disrupted and dismantled organizations and drug revenue denied, are in sync with the strategy to “disrupt domestic drug trafficking and production.” The measurement of international students trained captures the DEA effectiveness of their 2014 National Drug Control Strategy to “strengthen international partnerships.”[7] However, the third component of the 2014 Drug Control Strategy, to “improve information systems for analysis, assessment, and local management” was completely omitted in the set of dominant indicators.

Despite this omission, the organization employed the best indicators available. I reason that they are in fact utilizing the best indicators because, in an environment where so much is happening, they are able to capture some portion of what is actually going on. The supply of drugs is influenced by a wide array of noise, but the DEA's indicators are able, in part, to distinguish a significant amount of signal, which is the impact and effectiveness of the chosen strategy.[8] Ultimately, the indicators are useful because as they vary, the chosen strategy can be assessed. From the indicators, the figures suggest that the strategy of the DEA is working and they are on track to accomplish their mission.

Conclusion

Besides concentrating on the 2014 National Drug Control Strategy, in an attempt to stay relevant, the DEA nested its strategy with that of their parent organization, The Department of Justice, in hopes of procuring part of the counterterrorism funding. The DOJ’s strategic objective 1.1 is to “prevent, disrupt, and defeat terrorist operations before they occur by integrating intelligence and law enforcement efforts to achieve a coordinated response to terrorist threats.”[9] While the DEA is part of the US Intelligence Community and is a law enforcement agency, the emphasis on preventing terrorists attacks is absent from the DEA's mission, strategy, and indicators.

The indicators used to judge if the strategy is working are significantly influenced by the essence and desired prestige of the organization, but this serves the organization by drawing them back to their mission. The chosen indicators, as a vehicle to judge the progression of the strategy, are adequate and insightful. The national security implications of this essay suggest that the three performance indicators focus the mission of the DEA and make the US safer through choking the supply of drugs that make it into the US.  However, I question the DEA’s ability to monitor the progress of the chosen strategy effectiveness in preventing terrorism.

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[1] U.S. Department of Justice Drug Enforcement Administration (2016). Performance Budget Congressional Submission. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

[2] Gartner, Scott Sigmund. Strategic Assessment in War. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997. 45.

[3] "Mission Statement." DEA.gov. Accessed April 7, 2015. http://www.dea.gov/about/mission.shtml.

[4] DEA, FY 2016 Performance Budget Congressional Submission, 4.

[5] Gartner, 44.

[6] Gartner, 52.

[7] United States. Office of National Drug Control Policy. National Drug Control Strategy. Washington, D.C.: Executive Office of the President, Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2014. Print.

[8] Gartner, 47.

[9] DEA, FY 2016 Performance Budget Congressional Submission, 4.