Brent Scowcroft Center Nonresident Senior Fellow James Joyner writes for RealClearDefense on why President Obama’s recently released National Security Strategy was a missed opportunity:
President Obama released the first National Security Strategy in five years last Friday. As I’ve argued elsewhere, it’s more a wish list than a strategy. That’s a shame because Obama has articulated a much more nuanced view of national security in various speeches and interviews and this was a missed opportunity to put that vision down on paper. Given that it serves as the basis for crafting our National Defense Strategy and dozens of other policy documents across the interagency, that’s a problem.
Section 603 of the Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 – commonly known as the Goldwater-Nichols Act – directs that, “the president shall transmit to Congress each year a comprehensive report on the national security strategy of the United States” that “shall be transmitted on the date on which the president submits to Congress the budget for the next fiscal year.”