Paul Ryan's National-Security Plan Won't Work

Daniel L. Davis

Security, United States

He's got great goals, but his proposed ways to reach them may have the opposite impact.

At an event with the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington on Thursday, the Speaker of the House Rep. Paul Ryan introduced a new Republican proposal to strengthen U.S. national security. In his opening remarks, he said his plan would “keep Americans safe at home, defeat the terrorists, advance America’s interests abroad, and renew our national security tools.” If this plan is adopted, however, it is likely none of those hopes will be realized.

The paper is full of tough-sounding rhetoric about how the Republican plan will keep America safe, and makes a number of assertions without bothering to provide any evidence that the prescriptions can actually accomplish their intended goals—or considering likely second- and third-order effects. There are a number of problems with the sixty-seven policy points in the plan outlined by Ryan and other members of the House National Security Task Force. Here I’ll address three of the more problematic.

First, as Ryan repeated at the CFR event, the GOP plan asserts the United States must take “the fight against terrorism to the enemy.” The paper adds that “one of America’s most pressing national security missions is to defeat these groups—including ISIS…” It takes little examination to recognize defeating ISIS (the Islamic State) “over there” is unattainable using the tools and tactics advocated.

For any strategic plan to work, it has to be attainable at the tactical and operational levels. It can’t just sound good in Washington and New York. Meaning in this case, if the Republican’s goal is to defeat ISIS in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and other areas where they’ve carved out a presence, the plan’s authors must be able to articulate how they’re going to employ military power on the ground in support of that mission and how it will eradicate the movement.

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