DOD, State Department Present Budgets to Senate

WASHINGTON, March 10, 2011 — Con­cepts of secu­ri­ty are chang­ing, and it is just as impor­tant to invest in diplo­ma­cy and devel­op­ment as it is to invest in ser­vice mem­bers and their equip­ment, Deputy Defense Sec­re­tary William J. Lynn III told the Sen­ate Bud­get Com­mit­tee today.
Lynn and Deputy Sec­re­tary of State for Man­age­ment Tom Nides tes­ti­fied togeth­er before the com­mit­tee. It marked the first time the two depart­ments had tes­ti­fied about their bud­gets togeth­er, and it under­scored the strong part­ner­ship that exists between them, Lynn said.

“We at DOD view the secu­ri­ty assis­tance activ­i­ty as a vital instru­ment that can pre­vent or atten­u­ate insta­bil­i­ties that oth­er­wise might draw the Unit­ed States into con­flicts,” Lynn said. “If prop­er­ly applied in a time­ly man­ner, secu­ri­ty assis­tance is like­ly to be more deci­sive and less cost­ly than direct mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion after a prob­lem has become a cri­sis. Our coop­er­a­tion with the State Depart­ment is, there­fore, an impor­tant com­po­nent of our nation­al defense.” 

Lynn called on the sen­a­tors to ful­ly fund the State Department’s fis­cal 2012 bud­get request of $59.5 bil­lion. The request includes fund­ing for the U.S. Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Development. 

The two men tes­ti­fy­ing togeth­er mir­rored what hap­pens dai­ly around the world, as sol­diers, sailors, air­men and Marines often work side by side with State Depart­ment and USAID personnel. 

“We at the Depart­ment of Defense strong­ly believe that a full and robust fund­ing of our for­eign pol­i­cy oper­a­tions is an effec­tive means of meet­ing our nation­al secu­ri­ty,” Lynn said. “Indeed, if we pro­mote secu­ri­ty and respon­si­ble gov­er­nance as crises are brew­ing, we will be able to avoid lat­er in the cri­sis the deploy­ment of U.S. mil­i­tary forces.” 

The Defense and State depart­ments have com­ple­men­tary skills, Lynn said. 

“We want to sup­port the part­ner­ship,” he said. “We believe the mix of com­pe­ten­cies between the State Depart­ment, the Depart­ment of Defense, as well as USAID, is what is need­ed to address the kinds of secu­ri­ty crises, the kinds of insta­bil­i­ties, the kinds of con­flicts that spark up around the world, and to do those at the ear­li­est pos­si­ble warning.” 

The deputy defense sec­re­tary said the Defense and State depart­ments and USAID are work­ing togeth­er on coun­ternar­cotics pro­grams and in train­ing of Afghan law enforce­ment offi­cers. “We pro­pose, with con­gres­sion­al con­cur­rence, an Afghan infra­struc­ture pro­gram that will meld the DOD respon­si­bil­i­ties for coun­terin­sur­gency with [USAID] and State respon­si­bil­i­ties for devel­op­ment [in a way] that is more inte­grat­ed than in the past,” Lynn said. 

The plan, he said, inte­grates the long-term devel­op­ment efforts in Afghanistan with deal­ing with imme­di­ate threats via the mil­i­tary cam­paign in the country. 

State and Defense work togeth­er in oth­er areas of the world, Lynn said, not­ing DOD works with State on deliv­er­ing secu­ri­ty assis­tance wher­ev­er Amer­i­can inter­ests are at stake. 

“We’ve devel­oped over the past sev­er­al years some joint author­i­ties, some dual-key coop­er­a­tive author­i­ties, such as the Pak­istan coun­terin­sur­gency capa­bil­i­ty fund,” Lynn said. The agen­cies work close­ly on author­i­ties to train and equip part­ner nations in the coun­tert­er­ror­ism fight, he noted. 

“This year, we’re request­ing fund­ing for an Office of Secu­ri­ty Coop­er­a­tion in Iraq,” Lynn said. “This would be a remain­ing DOD pres­ence as we tran­si­tion to a State Depart­ment lead in Iraq.” 

In Mex­i­co, the two depart­ments joint­ly address sur­veil­lance, inter­dic­tion, air and mar­itime oper­a­tions and plan­ning through a vari­ety of ini­tia­tives, Lynn said. The depart­ments also work to train part­ner mil­i­taries in more than 100 coun­tries through pro­grams such as the Inter­na­tion­al Mil­i­tary Edu­ca­tion and Train­ing pro­gram, and the new­ly pro­posed Glob­al Peace Oper­a­tions initiative. 

“For fis­cal 2012, we’re also request­ing a new, path-break­ing pro­gram which would involve pooled fund­ing — where State and DOD would con­tribute to a fund where we would seek to antic­i­pate secu­ri­ty issues wher­ev­er they are in Africa, Latin Amer­i­ca [or] Asia, and to joint­ly tar­get assis­tance for devel­op­ment fund­ing for eco­nom­ic assis­tance and secu­ri­ty assis­tance in an inte­grat­ed way in an effort to antic­i­pate grow­ing crises and reduce them before they get start­ed,” Lynn said. 

The deputy sec­re­tary also spoke strong­ly in favor of the State Department’s plan to switch to receiv­ing its fund­ing via the Over­seas Con­tin­gency Oper­a­tions fund. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

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