ULLMAN: President’s challenge

OPINION:

OP-ED:

How do governments predict and then respond to prevent crisis? The answer is they usually don’t. The current financial and economic calamities are classic cases in point. Despite warnings of clear and present danger, nothing happened beforehand.

There are good and bad reasons why governments are invariably caught short and surprised by crises. No one has a working crystal ball. It takes courage to bring a leader bad news. Denial, as with LBJ and Vietnam and President Bush with Iraq until late 2006, pervades White Houses. And those who cry wolf are usually dismissed as obsessively pessimistic or simply out of touch with reality. Consider economists who have been rightly accused of predicting hundreds of the last five real recessions.

That said, and as vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden made clear, the next president will be challenged from day one. The World Trade Center was attacked in 1993 shortly after Bill Clinton took office. An EP-3C reconnaissance aircraft was knocked down over Hainan Island less than three months after Mr. Bush became the nation’s 43rd chief executive. And then September 11 arrived. Under these circumstances, what can the next administration do to anticipate crises and take preventative measures to mitigate or stop crises from happening in the first place?

Virtually each agency and arm of government has an office or organization geared up for this purpose. The CIA, Defense Department and the Joint Counter Terrorist Centers are all designed to look for warning signs and to sound appropriate alarms regarding direct threats to the nation. But so, too, do Justice, Treasury, Energy and Health and Human Services and other departments - have early warning capacity. And members of Congress are regularly bombarded with doom-filled prophecies.

At least two actions are necessary. First, a White House group must be explicitly chartered with the task of early warning both for short and long-term contingencies. Second, and more importantly, there needs to be a grading system, say from zero to 10, on which offices stake their judgments and reputations on predicting danger with 10 being absolute certainty and 0 no probability. Of course the former is exactly what happened in Iraq with the certainty of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - a case study that should inform us on avoiding similar misjudgments in the future.

Here are three examples of explosive crises that, without intervention - divine or otherwise - will become 10’s: Afghanistan, Pakistan and future U.S. military power. In Afghanistan, the collective “we” are losing, meaning that the country is well on the way to becoming a failed or a badly fractured state with disastrous consequences for the battle against religious extremism, NATO’s future as a functioning alliance and for stability in the region.

Likewise, unless a great deal of external effort and support are supplied immediately to Pakistan, the future of democracy as well as stability there is in grave and even irreversible danger. And the Department of Defense (DoD) faces a strategic, operational and fiscal tsunami that could implode the Pentagon and the nation’s future military strength.

In Afghanistan, the crucial issue is civil-sector reform. Physical security is clearly needed. However, without job creation, establishment of the rule of law, a functioning and fair judiciary and police force, reduction of crime and corruption and a cogent anti-narcotics campaign that must include selective illicit purchase of drugs along with other actions to control that trade are put in place soon, the government in Kabul will be replaced by a country controlled by war lords, Taliban, al Qaeda and gangs. That will give terrorists a free hand to train and find sanctuary.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are irreversibly joined. Unless the tribal areas in Northwestern Pakistan can be sanitized, insurgents, militants and terrorists will have free reign. However, to get there, extraordinary effort will be needed in coordinating action, finding resources and enhancing trust among the internal and external players particularly the governments of Pakistan, Afghanistan, America and NATO members.

Regarding defense, the DoD has an annual budget appetite of about $700 to $800 billion. The costs of buying its major weapons systems have more than doubled in real terms. It cannot fund what it currently needs. Magnified by the economic crisis, future spending will be cut by hundreds of billions. Left unchecked, the effect will be to implode military strength.

Without action now, these three crises in the making will metastasize into perfect “10s.” The reasons are self-evident. Much trickier will be predicting crises that arise suddenly and shockingly such as the current economic meltdown did. But the next president had better have his transition team hard at work on the effort. If not, here is a “10” prediction. No matter who wins next week, in 2012 there will be a different face in the White House.

Harlan Ullman is a columnist for The Washington Times.