What Is Old Is New Again
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was established by President Franklin Roosevelt on July 11, 1941, to consolidate capabilities distributed across the U.S. government to prevail in the Second World War. After the war, the National Security Act of 1947REF dissolved the OSS and redistributed its components across departments and agencies with mixed results during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Threats have evolved, and so should our strategic capabilities.
The challenge of a new Cold War with the Chinese Communist Party CCP)REF requires that the Department of Defense (DOD) consolidate and expand its unique capabilities, authorities, and infrastructure to conduct a global campaign to deter conflict and, if necessary, defeat threats to our interests. No other department or agency of our government has the capability and capacity to do so.
The systematic neglect of our armed servicesREF since victory in the Cold War with the Soviet Union makes it necessary that a new strategic service be created that can reduce the risk of conventional confrontation and buy the time required to reconstitute our armed forces and strategic deterrent: both the bridge to and a complement for a more viable deterrent. Far from making conflict more likely, this initiative will make conflict less likely by ensuring a more effective deterrent. We possess tremendous capabilities, but they are dispersed across fractured organizations, which limits their effectiveness, and are not fully leveraging existing authorities.
Defense capabilities are uniquely suited to the conduct of special operations and sensitive activities that the nation needs and can be better organized, resourced, and employed both to reduce the risk of conventional conflict, thereby making it less likely that it will occur, and to prevail in the new Cold War with the CCP and manage the risk from rogue states that threaten our interests and whose actions could cause us to divert our critical resources.
The National Security Act of 1947 presumed that the successful conclusion of the Second World War allowed for an evolution that relieved the War Department (now Department of Defense) of the responsibility for many OSS activities and operations with the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The division of labor was a recurring challenge and may no longer be viable.REF Meanwhile, those agencies that can engage in a broader range of activities against the CCP now lack the scale, organization, and in some instances the culture, expertise, and experience to conduct the full range of special operations and sensitive activities that this conflict requires so that we can avoid, not propel ourselves into, a larger conventional conflagration.
The CCP publicly claims that it does not want a “new Cold War” but has been actively engaged in unrestricted warfare against the U.S. and other Western economies, societies, corporations, and scientific establishments—on an industrial scale—for at least the past decade. Conversely, U.S. policymakers and military leaders talk publicly about how we are already in a new Cold War but have done little of a practical nature to meet the threat from China.
The Past Informs the Present
Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. struggled to compete with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, or Soviet Union), and “hot” wars would often result from the USSR’s asymmetric advantage as it employed surrogates like Vietnam and Cuba to confront the U.S. and its allies. While the DOD resurrected its special operations capabilities in the 1950s, their scope was mostly limited to direct support for conventional operations in armed conflict.REF
The Vietnam War expanded the scope of DOD’s ability to support unconventional warfare and improve partners’ capabilities to defend against lawlessness and insurgency.REF By the 1980s, significant military resources supported an unconventional warfare campaign against the Soviets in Afghanistan, contributing to their withdrawal and ultimate collapse.REF
A series of failures to anticipate and prevent significant threats to our interests—for example, the fall of the Shah in Iran, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and its collapse, and the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Pakistan and North Korea—were unaddressed and became systemic. The Goldwater–Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986REF and the Nunn–Cohen Amendment sought to address the lack of unity of effort within DOD following the sub-optimal results">REF identified by the Holloway CommissionREF after Operation Eagle Claw, the failed attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran, and internal DOD reviews after Operation Urgent Fury, the invasion of Grenada in October 1983. Special Operations Command was established as a Unified Combatant Command and consolidated many of the capabilities distributed across the department after the dissolution of the OSS in 1947. Many capabilities, including those related to sensitive intelligence collection in denied areas, remained outside the command.
Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (or 9/11) the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act of 2004 (IRTPA) compelled closer post-9/11 coordination between defense and intelligence agencies but has not successfully aligned resources and authorities and has left tremendous capabilities underemployed, focused on lower priorities, and unintegrated with emerging capabilities such as cyber and space. As a result, we are unable to address the risk and range of threats from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Russia, Iran, and North Korea effectively.REF
The 9/11 Commission report identified the gap and recommended that paramilitary capabilities be returned to and consolidated within DOD,REF but this was abandoned. The scope of the challenges that confront us exceeds the scope of those that resulted in the recommendation, and it should be reviewed.
As indicated above, the OSS was established by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1942 to collect and analyze information for the Joint Chiefs and conduct special operations not assigned to other agencies. This model recognized that the scope and scale of its activities exceeded those of all other departments and agencies and required significant support and coordination in support of wartime military objectives. With a scale and infrastructure that made it uniquely capable of supporting, sustaining, and effectively conducting a global campaign, the OSS was responsible for “the planning, development, coordination and execution of the military program for psychological warfare” and “the compilation of such political, psychological, sociological and economic information as may be required by military operations.”REF
The OSS “was given authority to operate in the fields of sabotage, espionage, and counterespionage in enemy-occupied or controlled territory, guerrilla warfare, underground groups in enemy-occupied or controlled territory and foreign nationality groups in the United States.”REF The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, resulted in a shift across much of Defense Special Operations toward counterterrorism.REF
As we enter a new Cold War with the CCP, we might well consider a more practical distribution of our resources toward counterproliferation and unconventional and irregular warfare while retaining a counterterrorism focus according to the constellation of threats we face. Consolidating our forces would reduce redundancy and enable greater efficiency. This would include the still-developing capabilities in the space and cyber domains, which would allow for innovation and integration with existing special operations and sensitive activities on the emerging frontiers of conflict.REF Naturally, the resulting operations and activities would be conducted in coordination with and would fully support the work of other departments and agencies such as the Departments of State, Commerce, and Treasury as appropriate.
What Needs to Be Done
The challenge from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the emerging “Axis of Evil” requires consolidation and expansion so that we can employ our unique capabilities to conduct special operations and sensitive activities more effectively to deter conflict and successfully manage competition to prevail in the new Cold War with China.
The National Security Act of 1947REF dissolved the OSS and redistributed its components across departments and agencies. A great deal of coordination was required to guide and effectively employ capabilities and authorities on an ad hoc basis amid competing agendas and conflicting priorities among divided hierarchies. Threats have evolved, and so should our national security apparatus just as it did during the previous Cold War.
After the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion and the resulting investigation led by General Maxwell Taylor,REF it was determined that the scope of the endeavor grew beyond the CIA’s capacity and capability, thereby contributing to its failure. A comprehensive review of activities resulted in Operation Switchback and the transfer of CIA paramilitary activities in Vietnam to the newly formed Military Assistance Command Vietnam’s Studies and Observation Group, established in January 1964. The resulting partnership demonstrated the effectiveness and limitations of combined operations.REF
The Goldwater–Nichols Act of 1986REF took critical steps but remains imperfect. For example, the Assistant Secretary for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (ASD SOLIC) does not control special operations resources and personnel and cannot challenge the generals it purports to oversee. Similarly, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004REF addressed significant shortfalls that contributed to the 9/11 attacks but fell short of the recommendations made by the commission that was created to investigate the attacks.REF Both legislative efforts sought to correct the deficiencies introduced in the dispersal of strategic capabilities following the Second World War, but more remains to be done.
Our ability to conduct special operationsREF and sensitive activitiesREF has yielded results greater than the resources committed and would be vital in deterring conflict and prevailing if deterrence were to fail. Consolidation of the elements responsible for conducting them is required—and can be operational—immediately without revision of existing law or allocation of new resources. This will not exclude other departments or agencies but will provide a more comprehensive effort in collaboration with other components of our government and those of our partners and allies, which DOD is uniquely capable of conducting.
Conclusion
It is time to complete the consolidation of Defense Special Operations and sensitive activities and refocus them to prevail in the new Cold War with China. In short, it is time to rebuild the OSS—not as it was, but as it now ought to be—based on the ever-evolving nature of conflict and our experience since the OSS’s dissolution.
Robert Greenway is Director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for National Security at The Heritage Foundation.
