A recent piece in the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) penned by a retired Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer argues against proposals to revive the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) model for today’s strategic competition environment. In the piece,
the author argues: “Reviving the OSS would add additional bureaucracy without any additional capability and could easily risk intelligence fratricide at a time when the United States needs more focus rather than more capability.” As the co-author of one of the critiqued proposals,
I am compelled to note that this argument ignores two fundamental advantages of reviving an OSS 2.0 construct.
First, the assumption is invalid that any updated OSS proposal requires creating more redundant capabilities or excessive additional bureaucracy,
rather than simply streamlining existing resources, eliminating redundant capabilities and functions, and breaking down organizational barriers between agencies with identical authorities but different cultures. Secondly, there is no acknowledgement of the very real operational fratricide that is already occurring today because of competing interests between organizations vying for missions and resources in an era of increasing government efficiency.
The paralysis this interagency competition causes costs us opportunities that we could better realize through a unitary irregular warfare department under the Department of Defense (DoD).
The Real Opportunity: Streamlining Existing Resources
A modern OSS 2.0 would not require creating entirely new structures from scratch. Instead, it would consolidate and optimize existing resources that are currently fragmented across multiple agencies under the purview of the “Department for Special Operations and Irregular Warfare” (DSOIW), created by redesignating and hyper empowering the DoD’s existing Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict. This is especially critical as recent reports indicate the CIA is planning to cut 1,200 positions over the next several years, even as the Trump administration requests a historic $1 trillion budget for the DoD.
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