Three days later, Obama kept the surprises coming, announcing his intention to nominate Carter as the Pentagon’s procurement czar. Carter is a physicist and Harvard academic whose only previous Pentagon stint was in a mid-level policy post from 1993 until 1996 under the Clinton administration. Carter will be asked to quickly weigh in on difficult decisions concerning at least 10 major defense programs, while also instantly dissecting the procurement system’s ailments so he can advise the administration on its Pentagon acquisition reform agenda, which will be headed by his boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Carter oversaw defense acquisition issues for the Obama transition team. Gates announced a fiscal 2010 budget plan that would drastically alter Pentagon priorities, shifting money away from expensive, elaborate weapons programs to ones better suited to today’s unconventional warfare. The White House in also plans for a $130 billion war supplemental request that promised to closely examine all major military programs for waste and relevance to 21st century warfare.
Dr. Carter grew up in Philadelphia. After graduating from Yale, he studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar and earned a doctorate in theoretical physics. He is/was also a Harvard professor.
Also from WhoRunsGov.com:
In 1979, Carter reached a turning point in his career: he was persuaded to join the Congressional Office of Technology to study threats from potential Soviet missile strikes on the U.S. He became interested in world affairs, and joined the systems analysis directorate in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
After some at Defense, he joined the Kennedy School’s Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. He became CSIA director in the early 1990s. When Bill Clinton won the presidential election that year, his friend, William Perry, became defense secretary and asked him to re-enter the Pentagon. He became the assistant secretary of defense for international security policy from 1993 until 1996. Following that stint, he returned to Harvard and became chairman of the international and global affairs faculty of the John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Carter will oversee a ‘weapons-buying system’ that Obama has at the top of his agenda – he will attempt to reign in DOD spending and slash costs. Let’s hope it is not at the expense of our overall national security… He has penned opeds with Senator Luger (R.) – not sure that that is a feather in his political cap.
The Preventive Defense Project (PDP) is a research collaboration of Stanford University and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, co-directed by William J. Perry and Ashton B. Carter. The Project focuses on key problems of national and international security with the aim of preventing possible threats from becoming actual threats. The Project promotes the concept of preventive defense as critical to the formulation of American defense strategy in the post-Cold War era, where, in the absence of an imminent, major, traditional military threat to American security, today’s leaders are presented with a unique challenge and opportunity to prevent future Cold War-scale threats to international security from emerging. Inasmuch as a preventive dimension is systematically underrepresented in institutional debates over national security policy, the Project seeks to redress this imbalance by contributing the best outside analysis and policy ideas to those in government – American or foreign – who are in a position to take preventive action.
In pursuit of these objectives, the Project’s current efforts are directed towards engaging an emerging China, responding to nuclear crises in North Korea and Iran, combating the evolving threats posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and catastrophic terrorism, reforming the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) system, developing sustainable cooperative security relationships with U.S. allies and international organizations, and examining the structural and organizational capacity of the U.S. national security establishment to deal with 21st century security challenges Through intense personal interaction with political and military leaders around the world, the Project nourishes a highly informed but non-governmental “track-two” dialogue that explores opportunities for international innovation, agreement, and cooperation. In doing so, PDP seeks to devise creative new policy approaches that reflect a preventive defense posture.
Let me translate – that is modern-day diplomacy. All talk and no stick folks… Doesn’t exactly inspire a warm and fuzzy trust in me as far as our national security goes.
Ashton B. Carter is the Harvard physicist who first cast cold water on President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” plan to build a missile shield to protect the U.S. from nuclear attack.
He is an outspoken advocate of arms control, who helped draft the legislation to safeguard the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal after the Cold War.
A friend asked today if the title ‘Czar’ was actually attached to these individuals. Officially, no – not for many of them. But in reality, it is what they are. Here is a great definition from BizPlusBlog:
Czars are nothing new and have been seen by many Presidents over several decades. These individuals could be described as “super administrators” who work directly with the President and, in many previous Administrations, dictate policy to the various Departments. What is unique about Obama’s Czars is the number of them: 28. More than all previous Administrations combined and more than all the Czars of the Romanov family that covered a span of 300 years (18 over 3 centuries). The biggest concern is the lack of Congressional accountability that these Czars have.
The rationale for creating “Czar” positions is that such individuals can rise above the usual DC turf wars, knock heads together, and make disparate bureaucracies achieve ambitious, overarching goals. Done well, this can demonstrate an administration’s higher level of interest and dedication to an issue. But this ceases to be true when these exalted positions become so commonplace that it’s hard to see where ordinary bureaucracy ends and the extraordinary begins.
Other roles Dr. Carter has been a part of – from Wikipedia:
Carter had been a longtime member of the Defense Science Board and the Defense Policy Board, the principal advisory bodies to the Secretary of Defense. During the Bush administration, he was also a member of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s International Security Advisory Board, co-chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Policy Advisory Group, a consultant to the Defense Science Board, a member of the National Missile Defense White Team, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on International Security and Arms Control. In 1997 Dr. Carter co-chaired the Catastrophic Terrorism Study Group with former CIA Director John M. Deutch, which urged greater attention to terrorism. From 1998 to 2000, he was deputy to William J. Perry in the North Korea Policy Review and traveled with him to Pyongyang. In 2001-2002, he served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Science and Technology for Countering Terrorism and advised on the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. He has testified frequently before the armed services, foreign relations, and homeland security committees of both houses of Congress.
In addition to his public service, Carter was a Senior Partner at Global Technology Partners and a member of the Board of Trustees of the MITRE Corporation, and the Advisory Boards of MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and the Draper Laboratory. He has been a consultant to Goldman Sachs and Mitretek Systems on international affairs and technology matters, and speaks frequently to business and policy audiences. Carter was also a member of the Aspen Strategy Group, the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Physical Society, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Carter was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Carter’s research focuses on the Preventive Defense Project, which designs and promotes security policies aimed at preventing the emergence of major new threats to the United States.
From 1990-1993, Carter was Director of the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Chairman of the Editorial Board of International Security. Previously, he held positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, and Rockefeller University.
Dr. Carter has a very impressive educational and professional pedigree. While I do not agree with many of his positions on national security, you have to give him his due. More can be read on Dr. Carter here and here…
