America is at the dawn of a new era in history. China’s aggressive activities pose the greatest ongoing challenge to the rules-based international order since the end of World War II. While military capability and military poise will remain essential — as Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has reminded the world — the geopolitical milestones of this new era will be shaped by the intense and growing economic and technological rivalry between the United States and China.
To thrive in this new era, the United States could create a civilian equivalent of the Joint Chiefs of Staff charged with effectively and efficiently managing the growing role of U.S. civilian departments in geopolitical and economic competition.
In 1947, at the dawn of the last comparable turning point in history, the United States enacted a series of important structural reforms that President Harry Truman called for “the best means of preserving the peace.” The National Security Act of 1947 formalized Truman’s vision, establishing the National Security Council, the Secretary of Defense, and structures to ensure “coordination of the activities of the National Military Establishment with other departments and agencies of government concerned with national security.”
The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) was one of the coordinating structures formalized in 1947 and decades later would help lay the groundwork for victory in the Cold War. Although the JCS was originally founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt shortly after Pearl Harbor, the National Security Act of 1947 gave this body a formal peacetime mandate. For the next four decades, the JCS would function as a “corporate advisory board,” advising the president on military matters and, in President Truman’s words, “coordination and unified leadership… [to prevent] future aggression against world peace.”
A civilian JCS – which might include at least the Secretary of Commerce, State and Treasury – could be modeled after the vision President Truman had for the JCS after World War II. He articulated this vision in a 1946 letter to the U.S. Congress, stating that the responsibility of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was:
“To formulate strategic plans, allocate logistical responsibilities to support services, integrate military programs, make recommendations for military budget integration, and provide strategic direction for the United States Armed Forces.”
Today’s civilian cabinet leaders have stressed the need for such a new approach. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo concluded that the United States “operates in a fundamentally different strategic environment” that “compels us to defend our businesses and workers — and those of our allies and partners.” Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has stressed the need to “maintain and expand our economic and technological clout” to “compete with China to defend our interests and build our vision for the future.” And Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has indicated that “it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate economic issues from broader considerations of national interests, including national security.”
This new civilian “Economic JCS” (E-JCS) could provide an effective mechanism to—as our RAND colleague Ambassador (retired) Charles Ries characterized it—“increase the vision, efficiency and effectiveness with which [the United States] utilizes the instruments of national power.” And it could empower the National Economic Council (NEC) in much the same way that the military JCS aids the National Security Council: the NEC would retain its broader mandate for “US and global economic policy,” while the E-JCS would focus solely on competition.
The central task of this new E-JCS would be to strengthen the internal integration and external effectiveness of the actions of the top US civil departments in today’s geopolitical rivalry. These departments could be better positioned, positioned and supported if they are to be successful in their essential new roles. This could require the development of coherent, strategic plans that can inform necessary organizational adjustments, the effective allocation of significant new funding, and the recruitment and hiring of new staff necessary for the expanded responsibilities of these departments.
Aware of the growing threat from China, the US Congress has already committed hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 to help the US pivot towards this new… Shape to support geopolitical competition. If the Cold War is any indication, this type of spending will remain robust and prove to be central to US strategic success. Currently, the United States lacks the necessary coordination structures to ensure that this massive infusion of new funds is distributed in a way that is both efficient and effective to advance US strategy toward China.
International engagement would be a crucial element of the E-JCS. The United States and like-minded allies may need to expand their ever-closer synchronization of the use of economic and technological tools, the effectiveness of which has been demonstrated by the US’ recent deal with Japan and the Netherlands to restrict technological exports to China.
The United States today finds itself in a geopolitical landscape that prioritizes the effective and coordinated use of economic and technological tools to protect U.S. national security and promote shared democratic values against an aggressive, expansionist authoritarian power that already has global reach has.
Despite a number of useful policy initiatives, the United States is not yet set to succeed in the new and very different landscape of this emerging era.
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As in previous eras, the United States could recalibrate its governmental structures and processes to compete effectively. A new civilian E-JCS, featuring the secretaries of trade, state and finance, sustained support and resourced, could prove extremely important in ensuring that the geopolitical outcomes of the current era are more favorable to the American way of life, and less so for the authoritarians.
Barry Pavel is Vice President of the RAND National Security Research Division at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.
Daniel Egel is Senior Economist at RAND, Professor at Pardee RAND Graduate School and Portfolio Manager for RAND’s Department of State.
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