By Steve Deal
Without an organized and inclusive national security consortium, one that leverages every element of Vermont’s intellectual and intestinal character, the Green Mountain State misses an opportunity to provide an essential, unified voice in crafting the security strategy of the United States.
After 27 years of active-duty service before making our home in Franklin County, I am convinced that policy making is far more attuned to democratic processes than most would imagine. Our security advising classes and policy creation structures absolutely need access to local values of pragmatism, collective reasoning, and plain old grit to get things done.
They need examples of bipartisanship. Maybe it takes a flatlander like me to say: you may not always feel it, but Vermont is one of the best examples of such values and bipartisanship in the nation.
With so many pressing domestic issues exercising the best efforts of reform-minded citizens, the expenditure of energy on foreign policy, or the size, shape, and capabilities of our armed forces, or on our intelligence posture, or our national military and technological industrial capacity might seem distasteful to some, wasteful to others.
Yet harried within the Washington bubble – from where I recently escaped – even our best leaders are less likely to create a conversation with the country about the nature of foreign policy and national defense, and are more apt to reach for whatever philosophies happen to be nearest when strategic surprise inevitably occurs.
Affecting policy in those critical moments requires a preexisting avenue of trusted advice, not merely a predictable corner of protest.
Looking to history, Vermont has played a tremendous role in shaping essential national security reforms. Sen. Redfield Proctor was an essential supporter of late 19th century reforms led by Secretary of War Elihu Root, which made service more equitable and accessible.
Closer to the modern day, Vermont senators publicly and strongly pushed against fateful decisions like the one to invade Iraq in 2003, a decision that continues to exact an interminable price in terms of fiscal stability, lifelong impacts for Veterans and their families, as well as international and domestic trust in American institutions.
In his treatise on “Perpetual Peace,” Immanuel Kant wrote, “The possession of power is inevitably fatal to the exercise of free reason.” The imperative of public service demands that a source of reason exist outside the realms of power to check its own demise.
Those directing the course of national strategy strive to find achievable ends, ways, and means, yet in their deliberations they may lose sight of the opinions and wisdom of those for whom that very defense is established. A Vermont National Security Consortium could help with that, but what would it look like, and what would it do?
First, it would be bipartisan, setting a ready example for a more apolitical national security class.
Next, it would be a private-public partnership, perhaps hosted by one of Vermont’s state colleges. It would host seminars and councils, inviting national leaders to Vermont to engage in a strategic context.
Finally, it would conduct research for Vermont’s Congressional delegation and state executive government leadership. Viable recommendations that go along with tough questions should be developed on behalf of our Congressional delegation and for cabinet-level leaders, amicus briefs written for exceptional court cases, and most of all, creative ideas generated about virtuous American leadership in a rapidly changing world.
America’s security future desperately needs the long view, well past today’s overweening vitriol and constant crisis. It needs voices of purpose and resolve. In short, it needs a little more Vermont. Stepping coherently into national security strategy creation is a natural, and needed, journey for us all.
Steve Deal, Captain, U.S Navy (Ret,) last served as deputy chief of staff to the Secretary of the Navy and commanded various units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He now resides in St. Albans Town.