The Flournoy Doctrine: “Mend & Modernize.” Interview with former Undersecretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy

Michèle Flournoy is widely rumored to be on the top of many lists to be the 28th United States Secretary of Defense when the Biden Administration takes over on January 20, 2021. She most certainly has the resume to sit in the seat: former Defense official in the Clinton and Obama Administrations; founder of the Center for a New American Security, a national security think tank; co-founder and managing partner of West Exec Advisors, a risk management firm. But managing one of the world’s largest organizations, with nearly 3 million civilian employees and uniformed service members, requires more than just an understanding of nuclear throw-weights and the merits of fifth-generation fighter aircraft—she spent much of our conversation discussing change management, diversity, and diplomacy.

Thomas Gary: Despite advances in some areas, it is still uncommon to have women in leadership positions in the Defense and National Security space. Can you talk about the imperative of diversity in the national security space?

Miche`le Flournoy: I start with the premise that, as a democracy, we should seek to make every cadre in government as representative as possible of the total population they are meant to be serving—and national security is no exception. We now know that more diverse leadership teams and decision-making bodies actually have higher performance records.

I’ve certainly witnessed this in President Obama’s Situation Room. First of all, when you have a diversity of views at the table, you avoid the dangers of groupthink. Second, you get different perspectives, insights, and angles on a hard problem. Even when a decision-maker ultimately goes in a different direction, knowing where the dissent lies means they know there is a risk to be managed. And you can manage that risk much more effectively when you have that diversity. I routinely saw it lead to better decision-making if the diversity of views is coupled with a leadership climate that welcomes different views or dissent.

But it’s not just recruiting. I sat on the diversity task force advisory board at the CIA when I came out of the Obama Administration. Every year, they actually recruited 50/50 gender balanced classes. The problem, though, was that ten years in, only 23% of the promotion pool were women. So the question becomes, “What is happening in these ten years? Why are we losing so much of our female talent?”

You need to look at institutional obstacles and barriers—how promotions work, how career paths work, how mentorship and sponsorship works, and so on—to really cultivate a healthy and diverse talent pipeline at every stage of the process.

The last thing is: if we’re talking about gender diversity, why in the world would we cut ourselves off from 50% of the talent pool? Even when we’re talking about other forms of diversity, the more you open up opportunity to the full range of people, the bigger and richer the quality of the talent pool. I think it just makes sense.

The Defense Department is one of the world’s largest employers. How do you build out some of those small-scope management concepts to something that is agency-wide?

In my experience, the part that is often forgotten in change management is realigning the incentive structure, and I can give you a very simple example from my time as Undersecretary. We did a human capital study in the Under Secretariat of Defense for Policy because we really felt that the best way to improve our performance was to invest in our people.

It was a time of two wars and global counter-terrorism operations; people were just exhausted. And no one had had any professional development and training, it seemed, since 9/11. So, one of the things we said was, “Look, we have got to start re-investing in our people, their skills, their professional development, and their growth.” And all of their supervisors said, “Yes, yes, yes! This is a great idea!”

And then nothing happened. No training requests.

So, I went back to them and said, “This is really, really, important. Do you understand?”

And, again, they said, “Yes, yes…”

And again, nothing.

It wasn’t until later I realized that the only way to get supervisors to let their best people go to training was to change the incentives. So, I said, “Supervisors, if you don’t get 80% of your people to the OPM standard of two weeks of training this year, you cannot get a five on your performance score.” Five is the highest score that you can receive on a performance report; everybody wants a five.

Oh my goodness! Three weeks later, I had hundreds of training requests on my desk.

So, if you want to change behavior, you have to realign the incentives to the objectives. Then measure it, track it, and hold people accountable. Celebrate what’s working, hold people accountable for what’s not.

I believe it was US Air Force Colonel John Boyd, a military strategist from the late 20th century, who emphasized, “People, ideas, and equipment—in that order.”

There’s another great example of this, if I may: If you think about what we have to do to sharpen the US military’s edge to successfully deter a rising China, given all of its technology investments and military growth, most people are focused on the technology question. “How do we adopt more artificial intelligence, or unmanned systems? Or networks-of-networks? Or this or that technology?” And that is really important.

But even more important: how do you evolve the ways in which we deter and, if necessary, fight in the future? The power of new technology is when you allow it to change how you operate. You’re not going to get those new technologies or operational concepts adopted with speed and scale unless you create new opportunities for people to think outside the box and break out of current doctrine. The incentives, the career paths, up-skilling the workforce for the future; these are all very important pieces in the forefront of my mind.

And yet, over the last few years, we’ve been attracted to the latest shiny objects: we’ve created a sixth service branch of the Armed Forces, US Space Force; we’re looking at moving the headquarters of US European Command from Stuttgart, Germany to Belgium. How do you see these kinds of matters?

I share your skepticism about redrawing the boxes on the organizational chart. That tends to be the first lever that either the Pentagon or Congress pulls to try to “change something” to move the organization around. But that would tend to be low on my list of levers; pull only when necessary. We need to think really hard about these changes because during the reorganization, most of the bandwidth is actually taken off the mission and focused on the bureaucratic turf battles of dividing up people and resources.

But, on the question of Space Force, the question you have to ask is: Are we at the point where we need to create a new force? For instance, if there has been a track record of trying and failing to create space professionals and operators. Or a need to approach acquisition differently, or to approach the building of different technical skill sets differently. If these have not worked very well thus far in the traditional service structure of Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, it may be necessary so that you can actually change the career paths, promotion incentives, technical training, and criteria for recruiting.

I think what led to the Space Force was the sense that it was too much the stepchild within the Air Force, so it wasn’t getting the attention and focus that are urgently needed to be able to build out that cadre over the next decade. But this issue is one where—and I’ve been on the outside—I’m willing to look deeply at it.

I would like to shift to thinking about defense within the larger context of American foreign policy. We say we are focused on creating a large space for diplomatic action to happen (and we have said this for decades), but we have not matched this with actions. For instance, DOD gets the lion’s share of the budget compared to State Department.

I think US foreign policy tends to be most successful in advancing and protecting American interest when we take a “diplomacy-first” approach that then leverages coercive instruments—whether it’s economic sanctions, the military, or so forth—to make our diplomacy more effective.

I think we do have one instrument that’s been on steroids. Frankly, I like a strong defense, because a strong defense gives us a better shot at deterring and keeping the peace. But it doesn’t work very well when all the other instruments are on life support.

The truth is that we need to rebuild the State Department, so that it has a larger professional foreign service corps who can help us show up around the world and influence things, whether it is in our relationships and alliances, or larger institutions where norms and standards that really matter to us are being set.

One of the key concepts I’d love to see in that rebuilding is a rotational base, or an educational and training float, for the diplomatic corps. Whenever we do overseas operations as a US government, we hear the military people complain, “Where are the diplomats? They’re not showing up. They’re not here in the numbers that we need them.” And the truth is that Congress has never funded the State Department to be able to sustain long periods of people forward in operational roles. If we want a more robust and resilient diplomatic corps, we actually have to structure and fund it to sustain a higher level of activity overseas.

The good news is that you can do all of this for a fraction of what we spend on defense—a tiny fraction of what we spend on defense. You’re not buying fifth-generation aircraft, or the latest submarines, to equip the State Department. It’s really people. It’s paying for the recruitment, training, and retention of people.

I have read statements and papers from our Baltic allies that what sustained them over the long period of Soviet occupation was a memo known as the “Welles Declaration,” which stated that the United States would not recognize any forcible change in international borders and governments. Have we taken that to heart as a lesson that can be applied in the 21st century?

It is a very powerful tool. And when you talk about deterrence and reassurance, people tend to go right towards, “What are the military capabilities that you’re willing to bring to bear?” Certainly, that is an important part of the equation.

But equally, if not more importantly: What statements and actions are you willing to make to communicate your resolve, or your commitment to a certain set of interests and allies or partners? That is a very important diplomatic piece that communicates to potential adversaries, “This is what we are committed to defend. So be careful.”

And then you need the ability to show them that you will actually back up those words with actions. If you have a lot of capability but people are uncertain where the line is, then you’re going to undermine deterrence substantially. And I think that’s one of the biggest areas of gain we can make in the next four years: creating better clarity with countries like Russia, China, and Iran on what the US is willing to defend and showing up consistently to show that resolve.

How does that look, not just as a statement but in action, in global leadership? Some might argue it’s seeking to restore us to status quo ante, turning the clock back to 2015.

I don’t think we can go back, given all that has happened. I think we have to go forward.

First of all, it means showing up diplomatically. The US has been AWOL at a number of critical forums and has left critical diplomatic posts open and unfilled. It means re-committing to our allies and partners. Those partnerships are a unique and incredible source of strategic advantage for us.

There are a whole host of actions that come with that: from personnel decisions to filling diplomatic posts with the best possible talent quickly, to showing up at the key regional forums, to leading on the conversation when it comes to standards- or rules-setting.

But there is a very actionable agenda that can be undertaken, not just to reset to the status quo ante, but to really breathe new life into American leadership—but in a different way, with a different agenda going forward.

Does that include reengaging treaty negotiations on strategic weapons? And looping in our allies on some of these broader matters that will affect our national security indirectly, such as climate?

Yes. There’s a phrase that I’ve used: “Mend & Modernize.”

Let’s get back into the Paris Agreement, and then have the critical conversation with India and China and others on how we can make faster progress in addressing climate change.

We’ve got to get back with Russia and say, “Of course, let’s extend the New START Treaty at least a year, which the treaty allows.” This buys us time to have the strategic discussion about what the next round of arms control looks like.

It means reopening a strategic dialog with China. Yes, they are a competitor; yes, we have to deter their bad behavior. But we also have to cooperate with them on things like climate change, non-proliferation, and preventing the next pandemic. And never, since the Nixon Administration, have we had a period without a strategic dialog with China—even as we’re dealing with various forms of competition with them—until these last four years. That has got to be reopened.

There’s just a whole range of these things where we have to reengage, but we also have to reset the agenda and raise the bar to where we want to be in the future.