The DNA of corruption
Chuck Spinney has an exceptionally interesting post at Defense and the National Interest, which begins:
Over the course of my 33 year career in the Defense Department, first as an Air Force officer, then as a civilian, the central thrust my efforts evolved without design into a focus aimed at understanding why the Pentagon bureaucracy, the American military, the Congress, and the defense industry (i.e. the military-industrial-congressional complex or MICC) could not, and indeed would not, adapt to changing conditions in order to extricate themselves from what was clearly an ever more expensive death spiral of shrinking forces, aging weapons, continual pressure to reduce its readiness fight, should a war. I came to appreciate some general qualities are intimately associated with this intractable and ultimately self-destructive non-adaptive behavior.
The qualities impeding the decision-making system from making a rational adaptation to a clearly visible system of dysfunctional behavior included:
- The intimidating effects of increasing complexity (in terms of technological, conceptual, organizational, managerial, and political complexities) Complexity being defined as a quality of the “whole” that relates the number and arrangements of the “parts” to one’s ability ability to understand the “whole.” It follows, therefore, that increasing complexity runs up the number of parts and multiplies the variety of arrangements among those parts. This naturally decreases one’s ability to comprehend the whole. The increased difficulty of comprehension makes it more difficult to understand and identify what corrective measures are really needed and more difficult to reorient the whole by changing the large number and rearranging the variety of connections among the parts in a way that brings about the coherent adaptation to the problem. Viewed this way, a status quo devoted to increasing complexity can use that complexity to protect itself from change.
- Increasing giantism that leads to a an implicit condition of being too big to fail. This also thwarts the impulse to change. It is difficult to terminate humongous weapon systems like the F-22 or missile defense system when the dollars and jobs are flowing to hundreds of congressional districts usually spead throughout 40+ states. Increasing giantism is also reflected in increasing concentration in the industrial base into a smaller number of bigger industrial contractors who wield more political power.
- Increasing politicization — e.g, a hall of mirrors built by deceptive bureaucratic gaming practices, like those explained here. Politicization is also sustained and increased by the ease with which high and mid-level managers and military officer move back and forth through the revolving door between government and the private sector.
- Crony capitalism — or the condition where government-industry partnerships put industry interests ahead of public interests. As Eisenhower said in his farewell address, “the danger of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
- And perhaps most importantly, the existence of mind-numbing belief systems that have evolved to justify the current course of action, even in the presence of evidence to the contrary — e.g. the ubiquitous ideology that emerging technological advances will remove the fog and friction of war and thereby reduce the conduct of war to the equivalent of an engineering problem.
Now with the Pentagon’s self-destructive qualities in mind, read Simon Johnson’s essay in the current issue of The Atlantic. He explains why …
