Office of Net Assessment
The Department of Defense's Office of Net Assessment, "the Pentagon's internal think tank,"[1] was "created and Andrew Marshall was named its first director in 1973, and Marshall has been reappointed by every administration and Secretary of Defense since then. The accomplishments of the office are legion. In the 1970s, it produced the analyses of U.S. and Soviet military investment that compelled the Carter administration to reverse the decline in American military spending. It produced the analysis that moved the U.S. nuclear posture away from massive retaliation and towards a strategy that would better deter Soviet nuclear aggression. It was also the office that persistently called attention to the vast overestimates of the Soviet GNP that were put out by the CIA during the Cold War. It was the first to develop the idea that the American military can be transformed by the revolution in information technology. Every Secretary of Defense for twenty-five years, regardless of party, has kept Andrew Marshall close to him, because Marshall spoke truth to power." --Gary J. Schmitt, Project for the New American Century, November 10, 1997.[2]
According to "Our Man In ONA" by Ken Silverstein, The Nation, October 7, 1999:
"In 1972 Henry Kissinger hired Marshall to work at the National Security Council, and he was soon appointed head of the Pentagon's newly created ONA, which was charged with rating the threat to national security posed by the Soviet Union. One of his earliest studies proclaimed that the CIA was seriously underestimating Soviet military spending and power. Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger promptly used the report to bludgeon Congress into allocating more money to counter the Russian bear.
"During the Ronald Reagan years Marshall helped write a secret document that called for the United States to have the ability to fight and win a nuclear war with Russia. 'Well ahead of most Sovietologists, Mr. Marshall noticed weaknesses of Soviet society,' reads the Journal profile. 'In 1977, he focused on the environmental and demographic crises that were undermining the Soviet system.' Associates of his have no recollection of Marshall's ever having expressed such views. The ex-Pentagon man says, 'Until the very end he was a major promoter of the line that 'The Russians are coming and they're 10 feet tall.'
"Late into 1989--after the fall of the Berlin wall and shortly before Mikhail Gorbachev's ouster in the Soviet Union--Marshall was insisting that high levels of military spending were as urgently needed as ever. 'I don't think I've ever seen so much uncertainty about the future as there is today,' he said.
"Since the collapse of Communism, Marshall has spent much energy hunting for a suitable threat to replace Boris the Bear. He first turned his attention to North Korea, with a 1991 ONA report concluding that in the event of war, Pyongyang's troops could wipe out Seoul within ten days and US forces would be unable to do much to stop them. After it became apparent that North Korea was on the verge of mass starvation and collapse, Marshall turned his attention to China. An ONA study from the mid-nineties stated that Beijing's military was modernizing so rapidly that the People's Liberation Army would soon be able to defeat the United States in a regional conflict in Asia. A second ONA report, prepared for the agency by [the] RAND Corporation, estimated that Beijing is spending about $140 billion a year on defense. That figure is more than twice as high as other high-end estimates and seven to eight times higher than commonly accepted low-end ones. In 1997 yet another ONA-sponsored study ominously concluded that China viewed the United States as a declining superpower and was scheming to exploit America's military weakness.
"Such conclusions are highly dubious. China's military capabilities are modest. The country's ground-troop strength has been cut in half--to 2 million--since the seventies, and most of its soldiers field weapons that are a quarter-century old. Beijing's air force doesn't have a single long-range bomber, and according to a story in Time this past June, its entire nuclear arsenal 'packs about as much explosive power as what the U.S. stuffs into one Trident submarine.'
"Marshall has also been an enthusiastic supporter of Star Wars and related schemes. Just last year he gave secret testimony before the Rumsfeld Commission, which issued a report stating that the United States could face a ballistic missile threat from countries such as Iraq and North Korea within a very short time. Its recommendations led to legislation, signed by President Clinton [in 1999], mandating the deployment of a multibillion-dollar ballistic missile shield 'as soon as technologically feasible.'
"Marshall's pivotal position in the military gravy train became clear in 1997, when incoming Defense Secretary William Sebastian Cohen proposed downgrading the ONA's status. A group of Congressional hawks and defense executives led by James Roche, a former Marshall aide now at Northrop Grumman, immediately mounted a fierce counterattack to protect their man. Marshall's friends in the press also weighed in, with letters and articles appearing in outlets such as the Washington Times, Aviation Week, the Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal. 'Americans don't go to sleep at night worrying about how we'll win the next war,' Paul Gigot wrote in the Journal. 'Andy Marshall does, which is why Americans ought to worry that he's being banished to outer Siberia by a witless and bureaucratic Pentagon.' Cohen swiftly backed off and Marshall remains at his post."
Other SourceWatch Resources
External Links
- U.S. and India Consider 'Asian NATO', May 29, 2003: "The Office of Net Assessment, the Pentagon's key think tank, conducted its first seminar in India last year with counterparts from India's Integrated Defense Staff, the connection that led to this week's discussions on an Asian version of NATO."
