Has the Pentagon's Strategy Shop Gone MIA? By Gordon Lubold, Foreign Policy.
When then U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates began a series of meetings in 2009 on overhauling the Pentagon's budget, he made sure that Michèle Flournoy, his powerful policy chief, was a key player in the negotiations. After all, strategy is supposed to drive financial choices in the Pentagon. And the office of the undersecretary of defense for policy has long been seen as the Pentagon's strategy house.
Four years later, current Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has called for a strategic review of the Pentagon's budget. But Flournoy's successor, James Miller, isn't in control.
Instead, Christine Fox, director of cost assessment and program evaluation at the Pentagon -- who's known for her budgetary and programmatic acumen -- is in charge of this so-called "Strategic Choices and Management Review." ...