ORGANIZATION FOR NATIONAL POLICY PLANNING IN THE UNITED STATES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86T00268R000700130015-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 12
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 22, 2013
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: September 22, 1959
• Content Type: REPORT

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41
ORGANIZATION FOR NATIONAL POLICY
PLANNING IN THE UNITED STATES
PAUL H. NITZE
President, Foreign Service Edcuational
Foundation
Prepared for delivery at the 1959 Annual Meeting of
The American Political Science Association, Washington,
D. C., Mayflower Hotel, September 10-12, 1959
Policy can be roughly defined as agreement on the ob-
jectives of action and on the means of achieving those objec-
tives -- on where you want to go and how you propose to get
there. The making of American national policy involves im-
mensely complex and often messy procedures. Different Ameri-
can administrations have approached the task with quite dif-
ferent concepts of the nature of the policy process and of
the techniques to be preferred.
In recent years, we have witnessed an increasing reli-
ance by the Eisenhower Administration on a series of "distin-
guished citizens committees," composed mainly of prominent
private citizens and established to review past policies and
to make recommendations as to the objectives and courses of
future American action. Two years ago, the Gaither Committee
made its report to the President on certain parts of our de-
fense program. This year, there have been several groups engaged
in reviewing other important aspects of our foreign policy.
The Draper Committee, for example, examined the objectives
and programs of military assistance in relation to economic
assistance. Another committee, selected from the Business
Advisory Council and under the chairmanship of President
Harold Boeschenstein of Owens Corning Fiberglas, looked into
the problem of the Soviet economic offensive and the policies
appropriate to meeting it. Again, the Straus group reported
on the assistance that private groups, business or other, can
give to our policies in the underdeveloped countries.
The growing emphasis on the "distinguished citizens com-
mittee" technique raises a number of questions about the policy
process that are worth examining. How have past administra-
tions attempted to mobilize fresh ideas on American national
policy, to evaluate these ideas, and to translate them into
action? What are the most effective methods of drawing on
the experience and resources of individuals and groups out-
side the Executive Branch of the government? What are the
relative advantages or disadvantages of relying heavily on
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Paul H. Ni
non-governmental committees for policy recommendations?
What are the requirements of the policy process that affect
its procedures of operation?
If we start with the last -- and more general -- ques-
tion, we first need to clarify and give more specific content
to what we mean by policy. I have already offered one defi-
nition: agreement on the objectives of action and the means
of achieving those objectives. To this, I would add the fur-
ther qualification that a policy can hardly be taken seriously
unless the courses of action chosen are actually executed and
reasonably achieve their intended effects.
For the sake of analysis, three different phases of the
policy process can be distinguished from one another, al-
though, of course, in practice the demarcation lines between
them will be fuzzy and the phases will overlap. Roughly,
these may be described as the formulation phase, the decision
phase, and the execution phase. The first is an intellectually
creative process in which a policy is suggested and a program
of action proposed that is calculated most effectively to
achieve the specific objectives of that policy. The second
phase involves not only that of arriving at a coordinated and
authoritative decision but also the politically essential and
often arduous task of marshalling a consensus behind the pro-
posed policy and program. During the course of this phase,
the policy may be subjected to greater or lesser modifications,
but necessary if the policy finally decided upon is to command
wide enough support to ensure its eventual execution. The
final and perhaps most difficult phase is putting the chosen
policy and program into action which includes the problems
of meeting unforeseen obstacles and of capitalizing on unfore-
seen possibilities. This final phase of execution often takes
on continuing elements of the first and second phases. Objec-
tives and methods of procedure are modified in the light of
actual practice. Action builds a measure of consensus among
those who are acting together. A periodic check and audit of
the action process by those who made the original decision
is often necessary sometimes to assure that necessary action
is promptly gotten under way, sometimes to restrain the built-
in momentum of an action program and to keep the program in
proper relationship to the broader aspects of overall policy.
On the other hand, too detailed back-seat driving of an action
program can stultify it.
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Paul H. Nitze
In the field of national policy, the last phase -- the
execution of chosen courses of action -- is clearly the re-?
sponsibility of the Executive Branch of the government. Fur-
thermore, the job of formulating policies and programs -- the
first phase, in which new policies are thought through and
proposed for decision -- has also become largely an Executive
Branch function, particularly as to those aspects of national
policy which involve foreign policy and defense. The Legis-
lative Branch plays an important role mainly in the second
phase. Only if the Congress becomes part of the consensus
behind a given line of policy is there any prospect that the
tools necessary to its execution will be forthcoming. And
Congress must participate in the periodic check and audit of
the action program.
How does the Executive Branch go about developing national
policy and programs? The process involves a most varied, com-
plex, ill-defined, and often ad hoc collection of procedures.
The role of the Secretary of State, is, of course, crucial.
Within our working constitution, he is not only the Minister
for Foreign Affairs, but he is also in part the Prime Minister
as well -- unless, as did Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roose-
velt, the President choose to be his own Prime Minister,
Presidents rarely overrule the recommendations of their Secre-
taries of State, and, conversely, a policy is usually dead
if it does not receive the approval of the Secretary of State.
The role of the Secretary of State in the national policy
process has, of course, its limits: he cannot himself gene-
rate and check for feasibility and consistency all the recom-
mendations for policies and programs bearing on the position
of the nation in the world as a whole. In the Truman Admini-
stration, the usual procedure on national security matters --
matters involving a mixture of political, military, economic
and psychological considerations -- was to put together a small
LI hoc group of the best informed, imaginative, and practical
people to be found at the working levels of the principally
concerned departments and agencies of the government, relieve
them of their regular duties, and ask them to work out the
best polic, proposal they could devise. The original stimu-
lating idea might come from almost any source -- from our
people overseas, from a newspaper commentator, from the Presi-
dent, from the Secretary of State, from someone in the Policy
Planning Staff or in the Pentagon. I remember one occasion,
when I was with the Policy Planning Staff, on which Colonel
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Paul H. Nitze
George Lincoln, now of West Point, called me on the phone and
raised considerable cain with me personally and the State De-
partment in general because we hadn't come up with something
for Asia comparable to the Marshall Plan for Europe. His
call was one of the several events which led to a process
that, in the end, produced Point Four.
After a proposal for a new policy or for a policy shift,
with related programs, was mapped out, at least in general
outline form, it was subjected to the long and laborious pro-
cedure of the decision-making phase. Before a proposal could
be gotten through the National Security Council, and, if
necessary, Congress, an enormous task of consensus building
was necessary at many different levels within and outside
the Executive Branch. This procedure was often elaborate
and time-consuming, although it could be speeded up by a firm
expression of support from the Secretary of State or from the
President. But in most cases a shift of policy was subjected
to a lengthy process of tugging and hauling before it was
given authoritative approval and put into execution.
Under the Eisenhower Administration, new approaches have
been made to the process of policy formulation and decision.
Initially this Administration decided that greater reliance
should be placed on the National Security Council, that the
machinery of the N.S.C. should be strengthened, and that its
policy role should be broadened to include the first as well
as second phase. It can be argued that this move was wrong
in theory and abortive in practice. The essential function
of the National Security Council is to assist the President
in resolving the Executive will. It is a decision-making body.
It is involved in the second phase of the policy process and
so heavily involved that it does not perform well when asked
to take over the functions of the first phase -- the develop-
ment of proposals for new policies and programs. Imagination
becomes stifled by jockeying and compromising for departmental
advantages in the final decision.
To develop a policy proposal adequate to meet a new and
important problem requires a high degree of objectivity and
ruthless intolerance for one-sided or prejudiced views. It
requires a concentrated and extended effort of the imagination
to fit the myriad pieces of the problem together into a new
pattern of policy which will fit the real situation and which
can, in practice, be executed with a fair prospect of achiev-
ing its objectives. Most men are able to do such work only
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Paul H. Nitze
under favorable conditions. When they are subjected to the
full pressures of inter-service and inter-departmental ri-
valries -- in the very arena of decision-making where the
President is to make the final and authoritative decision --
the conditions for objectivity and for extended creative and
imaginative work are usually not present. Jockeying for de-
partmental advantage in such a forum begins at the first mo-
ment that a new policy problem comes up for discussion. Com-
promises begin even at the information-gathering stage. Imagi-
nation is stifled.
Even more important are the effects on the rest of the
Executive Branch of the decision to concentrate in the N.S.C.
machinery the responsibility for the formulation of new na-
tional policy ideas. One result is to relieve others of a
full sense of their responsibility. It becomes unnecessary
for those in the State Department or Defense Department who
are not part of the N.S.C. machinery to worry much about new
national policy ideas.
Furthermore, giving the N.S.C. the job of policy formula-
tion tends to cut off cross-fertilization of ideas between the
departments and the services. Each department is fighting a
battle in the N.S.C. for what it considers its point of view.
It therefore mobilizes the information in its possession for
presentation to the N.S.C. in a manner that will support and
show off the departmental viewpoint to best advantage. This
approach tends to restrict the practice of extensive cross-
contact between the personnel of different departments since
such contacts may give another department the information with
which one's own departmental viewpoint can be rebutted. In
sum, very unhealthy processes can be put in chain. In any
case, the decision "to strengthen the N.S.C." does not seem
to have produced results wholly satisfactory even to those who
had instituted the change.
Not satisfied with the N.S.C. technique, the Eisenhower
Administration has turned more and more to rely on outside
groups or committees of private citizens, appointed to assist
in the tasks of policy review and formulation -- the commit-
tees I mentioned earlier. But I am concerned that this
technique, too, will be found inadequate.
The advantage of the non-governmental committee is its
freedom from the inter-departmental squabbles, pulling and
hauling, and compromise that have characteristically inhibited
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Paul H. Nitze
such bodies as the National Security Council. But there are
disadvantages to the "distinguished citizen committee" tech-
nique that may outweight the value of the relatively free
atmosphere in which it is able to operate. The most serious
of these is the possibility that the committee may be too far
removed from Executive Branch responsibility to be fully ef-
fective. Those members of the Executive Branch who are actu-
ally responsible for carrying out policy -- the thiniaspect
of the policy process -- feel, perhaps rightly, that such
groups are out of touch with the real problems with which the
officials, in the end, must always deal. In any case, it is
obvious that the committee, once its report has been presented,
is in a poor position to help fight its recommendation through
the decision stage. Both of these difficulties characterized
the reception of the Gaither Report two years ago and may well
similarly affect the reception of the Draper Committee's re-
port now.
Let us now examine a few of the other proposals which
have been made recently for improving the organization of
the United States government for national policy planning.
There is one school of thought that believes that our
difficulty is that we have too much organization, too much
staff work, too many committees, too little delegation and
concentration of power and responsibility in specific indi-
viduals. I tend to agree with much that these critics of
governmental over-organization have to say. Government by
committee can result in lack of decision, fuzzy decisions,
delays, frustration and such a defusion of power that it is
impossible to hold anyone responsible for non-action, delayed
action or wrong action. But it is impossible to run an organi-
zation as complex as the U.S. government without some resort
to the committee technique. Policy and action have to be co-
ordinated. The views of interested departments and agencies
have to be heard. In other words some form of committee
technique must be resorted to.
How can these dilemmas be resolved or at least mitigated?
One line of approach is to cut down, as far as possible, the
number of issues which rise to the Presidential, or N.S.C.
level, for resolution. Perhaps a distinction can be made
between national strategy and national policies and programs.
Obviously national policies and programs must be consistent
with, must support, and must be adequate to carry out, the
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Paul H. Nitze
national strategy. But is it essential that the great bulk
of these policies and programs go to the Presidential level
for resolution? Must the President be asked to decide on the
policy papers with respect to each country or with respect to
every functional program? If the President isn't to decide
them, who is to do so? In most instances more than one depart-
ment or agency is involved.
If the President is prepared to look upon his Secretary
of State as being more than a Secretary for Foreign Affairs
if he is prepared to look upon him as having some of the at-
tributes of a Prime Minister in the British system, then it
is possible to delegate to the Secretary of State some of the
decisions which otherwise must of necessity clog the N.S.C.
machinery. The Secretary of State may be able in turn to
delegate a portion of these decisions to subordinates in whom
he has confidence.
Under such a system the President and the N.S.C. would
be continuously concerned with the broad lines of national
strategy, with particular issues which arise on the moving
front of developing strategy, and with issues raised on appeal
from the Secretary of State's decision by other departments
and agencies. The number of such appeals to the President
could be held to reasonable proportions if practice had demon-
strated that the President could normally be expected to
back up his Secretary of State's decisions.
But is the staff work available to the Secretary of State
adequate to enable him competently to carry these responsi-
bilities in addition to those which his functions as Secre-
tary for Foreign Affairs place upon him? A strong case can
be made that it is not. Where can properly equipped and pro-
perly trained staff for this function be found? The Wristoni-
zation of the State Department may have improved the prospects
for developing an effective Foreign Service. But the Wriston
program was not designed specifically to develop the qualities
required for the type of staff work involved in working on
national policy issues.
Perhaps consideration should be given to the selection
and training of a special corps of national policy staff as-
sistants. Those selected from the Foreign Service might be
given tours of duty with the Joint Staff of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, with the Bureau of the Budget, or with the Treasury
before being assigned to national policy staff positions.
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Those selected from the military services might be given tours
of duty with the State Department, with the C.I.A. or with
the office of the President's Scientific Advisor. Once such
a corps of specialists in national policy -- but generalists
with respect to the various parts of the national policy pro-
blem -- was developed, members thereof could be assigned to
strengthen the staff of the N.S.C., to assist the Secretary
of State, perhaps as members of the State Department's Policy
Planning Staff, to work on the staff of Secretary of Defense
or that of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Interna-
tional Security Affairs.
Another school of thought favors the creation of addi-
tional machinery to improve the coordination of staff work
between the State Department and the Pentagon. It is their
thesis that most of the shortcomings of national policy plan-
ning have arisen in the area Which is neither purely political
or purely military and which falls between the clear responsi-
bilities of the Secretary of State and the Secretary of De-
fense. Part of the difficulty has arisen from periodic pro-
hibitions by Secretary of Defense or by the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff on exchange of information and views
at lower levels between the Pentagon and the State Department
without specific prior authorization from the top. Another
part of the difficulty is that the State Department is not
well equipped with people who have an adequate understanding
of current military matters to enable them effectively to
deal with problems having both political and military aspects.
Increased coordination, contact and exchange of informa-
tion between the State Department and the Pentagon is hardly
a question of organization. If such contact is at any time
inadequate, a word from the President, at the request of
either of the Secretaries shouldbeadequate to correct the
situation. The more difficult question is that of making the
contact and exchange of information useful in improving the
quality of national policy planning.
It has been suggested that just as each of the service
departments and the Department of Defense is assisted by
specialized outside technical assistance, the State Department
-- or the N.S.C. should be similarly assisted. The Air
Force has the assistance of the RAND Corporation, the Army
of the Operations Research Office of Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity, the Navy of the Applied Physics Laboratory and the De-
partment of Defense of I.D.A., the Institute of Defense
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Analyses. These institutions dispose over large numbers of
highly qualified men not only in the physical sciences, but
in the social sciences as well. Everyone who deals seriously
with military-political problems avails himself as best he
can of their expertise. Their primary responsibility, however,
is to the department or service which employs them. Shouldn't
those who are dealing with national policy problems at the
highest level have available to them expert talent of at least
the same quality? One possibility is that an organization
similar to I.D.A. but more heavily oriented toward political,
economic, and psychological expertise be attached organiza-
tionally to the State Department but housed with I.D.A. so
that there could be continuous cross-fertilization of ideas
between the weapons-systems experts and the polttical experts.
A third school of thought advocates the creation of ad-
ditional national policy machinery outside of the Executive
Branch of government. Various proposals have been made for
a National Policy Academy or for a continuing high level com-
mission of ex-Presidents, representative distinguished citi-
zens, etc., to work on problems of national policy.
? In my view, there is a general presumption against the
creation of additional national policy machinery outside of
the ExecutWe Branch. Such an institution will not always
see eye to eye with the Executive Branch. It may constitute
-one more hurdle which those responsible for action have to
overcome before action becomes possible. The net result may
be one more step toward assuring, through excessive division
of power and responsibility, a national policy of massive
passivity.
In considering this class of proposal, it is important
to be clear as to the functions which it is proposed that
, the new institution is to fill. Some have proposed that its
primary functions be basic research on issues fundamental to
'national policy and the formulation of new proposals for policy.
It is not clear to me why these functions cannot be better
performed by institutions part of, or more closely affiliated
with, the Executive Branch. Others have proposed that the
new institution should stimulate and bring continuous pressure
upon the Executive Branch so that it will develop more dyna-
mic, more far-sighted, in any case "better", national policies.
But the question of what are "better" national policies is
exactly what is at issue.
If the proposal is to create an institution whose major
function is to contribute to the building of a firmer and
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deeper public concensus behind those policies that are finally
decided upon and are to be executed by the responsible agencies
of government, then perhaps there is more to be said in favor
of making the attempt. It is hard, however, to see how the
.previously mentioned pitfalls are to be wholly avoided even
if the institution's prime function is thus limited.
A fourth school of thought sees the major bottleneck to
improved national policy planning as residing in what they
allege to be the current dominance of the fiscal controllers
over the effective policy making process. They see current
N.S.C. policy papers as being of importance only as they give
a peg to the Bureau of Budget and its minions to assert ap-
proved policy in support of their control over expenditures'.
Again there is much to be said in favor of this viewpoint.
But what is to be done to improve the situation. At any
level of fiscal expenditures there are bound to be competing
demands for resources. Allocations have to be made and in
peace time those allocations can generally he most cony-
niently controlled through the allocation of money. The
largest expenditures are in the sphere of defense. Perhaps
improvements can be made in defense organization to bring
the subsidiary parts of that organization more into line with
a logical division of the functions which the national stra-
tegy calla upon the defense organization to fulfill and thus
to facilitate some decentralization of responsibilities and
powers, including within limits, those of planning and fiscal
control. But this is no easy or simple matter.
In my view it is erroneous to cut the Gordian Knot of
the high cost of defense by a simple N.S.C. decision fixing
an arbitrary five year ceiling on the aggregate of Defense
Department requests for appropriations. But no matter what
aggregate is finally decided upon, problems of fiscal alloca-
tion and fiscal control will remain.
A fifth school of thought sees the bottleneck to improved
national policy planning in the failure of those in the high-
est positions of responsibility to resolve, or to resolve cor-
rectly, certain basic issues of policy which only they can
resolve. Three crucial issues are usually sighted. 1. Is
the scale of the effort we are making in support of our
foreign policy and defense objectives adequate in the light
of the threats which we face? Can we afford to put 10 or
12% of our national effort into support of our national ob-
jectivesviz a viz the outside world when the Soviet Union
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is putting two or three times as great a percentage of its
resources into support of opposing objectives? 2. Are we
justified in putting such heavy reliance for the military sup-
port of our foreign policy objectives upon nuclear armaments,
the use of which mould seem to controvert the very political
purposes they are supposed to support? A crucial component
of this question is the degree to which we should rely upon
a capacity to initiate the use of nuclear weapons in limited
wars to shore up Our inadequate conventional military capa-
bilities to support our objectives in such wars. 3. Are we
devoting sufficient effort and resources to the non-military
components of our national policy?
It is asserted that these questions are so basic that
they do not lend themselves to staff work of the type usually
implied when one speaks of policy planning. It is asserted
that the President and his principal cabinet advisors have
to express their judgment on these basic issues before policy
planning in the usual sense can proceed. I would suggest that
the principal task of national policy planning at the N.S.C.
level, the level of the State Department Policy Planning
Staff and of the Dffice of the Secretary of Defense and the
Joint Chiefs of Staff is to provide the President and his
principal cabinet officers with the data on Which they can
more intelligently come to a decision on just such basic
questions of national strategy.
In sum, I see no easy and simple road to improving the
quality of national policy planning. I believe such can and
should be done. But that much involves doing a host of Ben,
sible but relatively minor things at a large number of signi-
ficant and relevant points in a most complex process.
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