By Carlo Munoz
The Pentagon’s planning process in determining future force options for U.S. European Command (EUCOM) does not fully account for potential impacts to operational costs or interagency cooperation resulting from any change to the command, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report.
That planning blueprint, known as the Theater Posture Plan, lacks “comprehensive information” on what the financial impacts of drawing down the U.S. military presence in Europe would have on the department, according to the Feb. 22 report. The Theater Posture Plan for EUCOM is one part of the department’s overarching Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan, currently under revision by Pentagon and Joint Staff officials.
By excluding such information, “DoD’s posture planning process and reports will continue to lack complete information on the financial liabilities associated with DoD’s posture, and potential opportunities to obtain greater cost efficiencies may not be identified,” GAO analysts suggest.
While the department may be put at a fiscal disadvantage due to that lack of information, its interagency partnerships associated with EUCOM may also be put in jeopardy. Since DoD’s own picture of potential financial impacts tied to proposed command changes in Europe, “it will remain limited in its ability to…collaborate with interagency partners” when assessing possible reductions to the EUCOM footprint, the report states.
“Without guidance from the EUCOM commander that clarified the [interagency] roles and responsibilities…[DoD] may miss opportunities to fully leverage its posture investments to support a whole-of-government approach to missions and activities for building partner capacities,” it adds.
The GAO’s assessment coincides with Pentagon-led efforts to restructure, and possibly scale down, U.S. forces in Europe. Proponents of a drawdown argue the current EUCOM force structure is rooted in a Cold War era strategy, designed to counter threats from the former Soviet Union and its proxies in Eastern Europe.
But without a comprehensive assessment of what a reduction in forces could mean to DoD and the other governmental agencies associated with EUCOM, any potential benefits a drawdown would bring are speculative at best, according to the GAO assessment.
To help the department gain the necessary clarity into what, if any, changes to EUCOM would mean writ large, GAO is calling for a complete reassessment of the Theater Posture Plan to account for the gaps identified by the government auditors.
The reassessment would include mandates calling for the assessment of “cost of operating and maintaining existing [EUCOM] installations and the costs associated with the initiatives that would alter future posture,” the report states. Further, the overall Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan should also be reworked to include metrics for combatant commanders to assess those financial impacts, it adds.
To address the interagency issue, GAO auditors want DoD, the Joint Staff and the EUCOM leadership to “develop a process through which interagency perspectives can be obtained throughout the posture planning process” and the eventual Theater Posture Plan.
For their part, Pentagon officials concurred with the report’s recommendations and have already taken steps to address some of those issues. DoD has already included requirements for cost assessments in the theater-level and joint-level posture assessment plans, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy said in the department’s official response.
The Pentagon has established a four-pronged process to weigh the cost benefits for proposed force posture changes. The criteria assess fiscal impacts to political/military issues, force structure and force management, command operations and overall cost, according to Flournoy. These criteria have been included in the ongoing revision efforts on the Theater Posture Plan for EUCOM and the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan. However, the DoD policy chief warned that even with those criteria in place, the information generated may not reach the level of specificity sought by the GAO.
“There are limits to combatant commanders’ abilities to include this information, as these costing efforts are inherently a service function,” Flournoy wrote. “Where [operations and maintenance] costs are known, combatant commands should include then in their Theater Posture Plans.”
When those figures are incomplete “but required for the purposes of posture oversight and decision making” DoD will require that the services provide the “appropriate…cost detail” associated with the specific force structure change being reviewed.