But even with ideal relations between these two, the objective of clear and reasoned policy guidance will be hard to reach and hold. For the nature of concrete policy issues and the character of governmental action processes push for a pragmatic one-thing-at-a-time-onits-own-terms approach.

PLANNING AND ACTION

A President is concerned with fires and firefighting, and as with fire chiefs everywhere, firefighting has to have priority.

In many ways it is easier, though more nerve racking, to fight fires than to take steps to prevent them. The Government functions best under pressure. When the alarm bell rings, its ponderous machinery begins to move. A task force can be assembled and used to mobilize the resources of the departments and agencies for the job at hand.

But planning in order to stop trouble before it starts is more difficult, in part because it is hard for top officers to give it their attention and in part because of confusion about the nature and purpose of planning. It is not an ivory tower activity, which can be carried on, as some have proposed, far from the hurly-burly of Washington, although it may draw on the ideas of men working at the frontiers of knowledge.

Planning is critically dependent on the unplannable flashes of insight which are usually sparked by worrying and wrestling with actual problems.

The European Recovery Program was not dreamed up on a campus, though it was announced on one. It was the product of the interplay of minds between Marshall, Lovett, Clayton, Acheson, and President Truman, who saw what was happening in Europe and were searching for ways to reverse the trend of events.

The object of planning is not to blueprint future actions-although there may be a limited utility in so-called contingency planning, or thinking of the "what-would-we-do-if" variety.

The object is to decide what should be done now in light of the best present estimate of how the future will look. Planners think about the future in order to act wisely in the present.

Seen in this way, every action is explicitly or implicitly the fruit of planning. One move is chosen in preference to another because its anticipated consequences are preferred. The distinction between the planner and the operator has been overdrawn. If there is one, it is less in the time span with which each is concerned than with the narrowness or breadth of their perspectives. The Air Force or the Navy or the Army looks to the future when it advises on weapons systems, but its perspective is narrower, more nearly that of a special pleader, than the perspective of the President, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense when they, also looking ahead, consider one weapons system in relation to a total defense system and the latter in turn as one component of a total strategy for the defense and advancement of national interests.

It is because of the need for wide perspectives and for fitting the part into the whole that a President and his key advisers have essential roles to play in long-term planning. But this activity competes for their time on unfavorable terms-with planning and action to meet the crises of the day. Who could concentrate on Laos and Cambodia in relation to South Vietnam, or on the Common Market

in relation to NATO, when Cuba threatened to engulf the world in flames?

A continuing administrative problem, which every administration has had to face and none has wholly solved, is how to fit what might be called trouble-avoidance planning into days crowded with crisiscoping plans and operations. There has been a tendency to think that the first could be entrusted to planning councils or boards of one kind or another or perhaps even to "think groups"-and such organizations may make useful contributions. But not the whole contribution, for in the final analysis, a top executive must do his own planning. Otherwise, he will not be truly committed in his own mind to plans that may bear his signature.

One is reminded that the National Security Council study known as NSC 68 was little more than a paper plan until it was ratified in the President's mind by the movement of North Korean troops across the 38th parallel.

III. The President, the Secretary of State, and the Problem of

Coordination

President Kennedy "has made it very clear that he does not want a large separate organization between him and his Secretary of State. Neither does he wish any question to arise as to the clear authority and responsibility of the Secretary of State, not only in his own Department, and not only in such large-scale related areas as foreign aid and information policy, but also as the agent of coordination in all our major policies toward other nations."

McGeorge Bundy, Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, letter to Senator Henry M. Jackson, September 4, 1961

The Office of the Presidency is the only place in which departmental lines of decision and action converge. As a result a President can rarely look to one man or one department for advice and assistance on any major matter and must act as his own Secretary for National Security Affairs. But he cannot do the job alone.

In this fact lies the problem of coordinating national security policy and operations. The budgetary process offers the President unique assistance in controlling the size and composition of the armed services and the size and nature of aid and related programs, and in assigning priorities in the use of resources. But the budgetary process is of little relevance to the day-to-day coordination of national security operations. The President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs can help to keep the President informed about matters that may require his attention and see that he is staffed on issues that he takes into his own hands. With the help of his Office, therefore, the President can coordinate policy and operations-to the extent that he can take command. But when, considering the wise use of his time, he cannot perform the coordinating role or chooses not to do it, who can? The answer is that no one can but someone must.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE'S COORDINATING ROLE

A key question is the proper role of the Secretary of State. Subject to a President's direction, his Secretary of State is charged with responsibility for overseeing the conduct of all aspects of the Nation's relations with other states. In this broad area his interests, though not his authority, are coextensive with the President's.

The Secretary is the President's principal adviser with respect to economic and military aid, cultural and information programs, and policies for the reduction and control of arms, as well as diplomacy, and the President's agent for coordinating all these elements of foreign policy.

But he is not the President's principal adviser on defense policy, and it is the skillful merger of defense and foreign policies that one has particularly in mind when speaking of national security policy.

Yet if planning and operations are to be coordinated, they must be coordinated by someone. And someone is a singular word.

The logical choice for this well-nigh impossible task is the Secretary of State. Of the Cabinet, only a Secretary of State is primarily charged with looking at the Nation as a whole in relation to the world. The nature of his post leads him, more than any other Cabinet officer, to have a perspective closely approximating the President's.

But to have a fighting chance of success, a Secretary will have to command unusual confidence and support of a President. Indeed, the attitude of a President toward his Secretary of State can determine whether he will be a great Secretary. When a President is close to him, confides in him, and relies on him, the Secretary has a chance. A President will have to be reluctant to intervene in those matters he has put into his Secretary's hands, for if another Cabinet officer can frequently obtain Presidential satisfaction when he is disappointed, the Secretary will not be able to do the job a President needs done.

By the same token, a Secretary must be willing to assert his own position and exercise his proper influence across the whole front of national security matters, as they relate to foreign policy. He should also, of course, be quick to refer matters to the President when his decision is needed.

All this depends therefore on a special relationship of trust and easy understanding between a President and his Secretary of State. Given this, a Secretary will seldom have difficulty in working with a Secretary of Defense and will be able to assist his chief in coordinating plans and operations for national security.

A question of importance is whether the Department of State, and particularly the Office of the Secretary, is staffed and organized to support the Secretary in exercising this responsibility. A complicating factor is that the responsibilities of the Secretary are wider than those of his Department.

One hears a good deal these days about organizing the Secretary's office around action-forcing processes. Much of the talk, however, centers on analogies that are not necessarily apt.

The foreign affairs budget, for example, does not provide the same leverage for the coordination of foreign policies that the defense budget provides the Secretary of Defense. Although a Comptroller for Foreign Affairs would therefore not be able to serve the Secretary of State

as the Comptroller of Defense serves the Secretary of Defense, the possibility of using budgetary control as a coordinating device might well be studied.

Some have drawn an analogy to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But although the Secretary of State, the Administrator of AID, the Director of USIA, and the Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency might coordinate foreign policies as the JCS coordinates military policies, they could not integrate defense and foreign policies.

What are the action-forcing processes that might be more effectively employed? Two suggest themselves: the preparation of recommendations for the President on national security policies and the sending of instructions to U.S. missions and military commanders overseas. In the early days of the National Security Council the Secretary of State acted as chairman whenever the President did not take the chair, and was responsible for preparing recommendations to the President. One proposal is that this arrangement might be reestablished-and applied also in any Executive Committee of the NSC.

Another proposal relates directly to the coordination of defense and foreign policy. It is that better means should be found to insure that instructions to U.S. missions and military commanders overseas are consistent, are issued in such a way as to have the authority of the President behind them, and are known to, and binding upon, all departments and agencies concerned. This might call for a review of all outgoing messages by an appropriate staff.

A third proposal is that the Secretary of State should play the key role in the management of interagency task forces which are not led by the President himself, and that his office should be staffed to handle their management.

THE INTERAGENCY TASK FORCE

The present administration has made much use of the interagency task force as a device for the day-to-day handling of complex and critical operations.

The Berlin task force is an interagency group whose members have major responsibilities in their departments for the kinds of operations which might be used to meet the crisis. It is chaired by State (originally by Defense) and reports to the President through the Secretary of State. It is concerned with ongoing planning and operations for the maintenance of the Western position in Berlin, including the coordination of American policy and action with the major European allies and with NATO.

The Counterinsurgency task force is chaired by State (originally by the President's military representative) and reports to the President through the Secretary of State. It is concerned with planning and operations to prepare the United States for intensified warfare where conventional military forces and operations are not the full answer.

Recently the Executive Committee of the NSC, with the President himself in active command of planning and operations, was in effect a task force for the Cuban crisis.

An interagency task force is therefore an interdepartmental coordinating committee. It is a flexible device, participation in which can be adjusted to the needs of the situation. It may bring together the highest officers of the Government or officers at the second or third

level in the departments involved. For the time being they give overriding or even exclusive priority to the task at hand.

At the same time, every improvisation, such as the creation of a Berlin task force or an executive committee of the NSC, is an acknowledgment that existing ways of doing business have proved inadequate, and that the President has had to spend time devising ad hoc methods of making and executing policy.

The task force differs from the usual interdepartmental committee in that it has a specific, limited job of great interest to the President and goes out of active existence when the job is done, is actionoriented, and puts a strong chairman-in some cases the President himself over strong members who can get things done in their departments.

Superficially the interagency task force seems to provide the answer to the problem of coordination, at least for critical issues. But the experience touched on here has been mixed. Some have been successful; others have been disappointing. The record is extensive enough so that it should be possible to find out why one works but not another.

It may be worth asking how a task force can be prevented from becoming just another interdepartmental committee, with a production of paper inversely proportional to its influence. Is one requirement that there be strong Presidential interest in its work? Should a place at the table go only to responsible officers of departments and agencies which have genuine authority and responsibility for executive operations? Should the task force chairman be an Assistant Secretary of State or higher ranking officer who enjoys the confident trust of the Secretary of State and the President and has access to them? At what point does the membership of a task force grow too large?

Also, it is worth asking what would have happened if the Executive Committee of the NSC had had to maintain the pace of the Cuban crisis for 2 or 3 more weeks, with other important issues piling up, and a whole new system of Executive Committee subcommittees beginning to blanket the executive branch.

It would be folly to conceive a government in which every interagency task was assigned to a special force. On the other hand, a satisfactory scheme of organization will surely provide something like task forces to deal with certain problems that do not fit tidily within departmental jurisdictions.

IV. The Ambassador and the Country Team

In regard to your personal authority and responsibility, I shall count on you to oversee and coordinate all the activities of the United States Government in

You are in charge of the entire U.S. Diplomatic Mission, and I shall expect you to supervise all of its operations. The Mission includes not only the personnel of the Department of State and the Foreign Service, but also the representatives of all other U.S. agencies which have programs or activities in

*** As you know, the U.S. Diplomatic Mission includes service attachés, military assistance advisory groups, and other military components attached to the Mission. It does not, however, include U.S. military forces operating in the field where such forces are under the