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One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy

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"The American homeland is the planet." - 9/11 Commission Report

Very rarely do I read a "policy wonkish" book in which I so clearly agree with the diagnosed problem, but feel like the solutions offered leave me completely at sea.

Allison Stanger's One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy is such a book.

Stanger is no slouch. She is Middlebury College's Russell Leng `60 Professor of International Politics and Economics, and directs the college's Rohatyn Center for International Affairs. Her clear, concise, and thoughtful new book is "blurbed" by some high-powered people, including USMC General Anthony Zinni (who calls Stanger's analysis "a superb work on government outsourcing and contracting"); Canadian Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff ("a clarion call to bring the business of government under more effective public control"); and Harvard University professor Joseph Nye ("well-reasoned").

But her book's conclusions left me scratching my head.

Stanger sets out to answer a big and crucially important question: In an age in which governments around the world have "outsourced" nearly everything to private for-profit corporations, how do citizens reestablish effective oversight over private-public partnerships? This outsourcing problem is so vast and extensive that even the Establishment New York Times, an overexuberant cheerleader for U.S. foreign policy if ever there was one, referred to contractors as a "fourth branch of government" in 2007, a sign of just how troublesome things have become.

Stanger's extended case-study is the United States, a "republic-turned-Empire" (to her credit, Stanger is willing to entertain the use of the term "empire" to describe U.S. activities abroad) of 300 million citizens that has emerged over the past several decades as the richest, most powerful, most influential nation in the world, with as many as 1,000 military bases networked across more than 130 countries across the planet, 10,000 nuclear warheads, and an annual "defense" budget (read: "war-making") larger than the next twenty countries combined.

Her conclusions?

What once was considered public oversight (the domain of Congress, the State Department, and other somewhat-publicly-accountable government organizations) for maintaining this emerging global "Empire of Bases" is increasingly being governed by the dictates of private for-profit corporate interests. In her book, Stanger examines what she calls "the evolution of military outsourcing," including the privatization of U.S. matters diplomatic (which she rightly traces to the 1947 Congressional passage of the National Security Act), a process that has emerged in full dysfunctional flower with the 2001 creation of the so-called Department of Homeland Security, as well as the "slow death" of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Stanger is at her best when chronicling the waste, fraud, and abuse that has accompanied ongoing outsourcing. The U.S. government's six year invasion and occupation of Iraq is the most recent reminder of just how nasty things can get: more than 1 million Iraqi lives lost, billions of dollars "disappeared," U.S. tax-supported private corporate armies waging a mercenary war against entire Mesopotamian cities (Fallujah, anyone?) while U.S. diplomats hole up inside the so-called "Green Zone," home to the new U.S. embassy in downtown Baghdad: the largest, most extensive, and most expensive embassy compound the world has ever seen.

And Iraq is just the tip of the "outsourcing" iceberg.

While I appreciated her diagnosis of the "outsourcing" problem, I have two big issues with Stanger's book.

The first is her continual acceptance (not unusual for a U.S. scholar/policy wonk) of the U.S. government's officially stated "party line" on all matters diplomatic. When she asserts, for example, that the U.S.'s primary interest in invading and occupying Iraq was to help bring "democracy" to the Middle East, I found myself scrawling the word "nonsense" in the book's margin. Her unwillingness to push beyond presidential rhetorical rationales for U.S. actions abroad - Oil? Support for Israel? Profit for "Defense" Corps like Halliburton and KBR? - deeply undercuts the credibility of her argument.

Second, and more troubling, are her "solutions," packed into the last few pages of the book, which seem utopian to the extreme, even for this idealist. She speaks of "cultivating an emerging market for virtue" built on the "creativity of free individuals"; of "radical transparency in all government financial transactions" (and oddly, points to Wall-Street-Bankster-Backscratcher President Obama as a model here); of "loosening the grip of special interests on American politics" (yawn); and more to the point, of "restricting the use of no-bid contracts" and "demilitarizing U.S. foreign policy," both wonderful ideas that any D.C. insider will be the first to tell you will never happen.

In short, to this decentralist reader, Stanger's book is right in its diagnosis of what ails the United States, but wrong on the cure. Only a radical devolution of political and economic power away from the center (Washington, D.C. and Wall Street) and towards the periphery (Main Street and individual states, with Vermont leading the way, perhaps) will be able to stanch the "outsourcing" and the complete collapse of this once-great constitutional republic at the hands of those wringing a profit from its ruin.

To explore that phenomenon, however, Ms. Stanger may have to write another book.

Allison Stanger has written a tour de force -- the first book that succinctly and accurately describes the new reality of 21st Century foreign policy -- and the urgent need for our government to adapt. Dr. Stanger lays out in lucid prose and deeply researched detail the outsourcing of American government -- not only in the well-documented military sphere, but in our development aid, diplomacy, and even homeland security arenas. She shows how our government has given up much of our ability to implement foreign policy -- and how we have lost the ability to oversee the implementers, private and nonprofit, whom we have hired. For anyone who longs for "smaller government" Dr. Stanger shows the results of those policies in reducing American power worldwide.

Dire as these problems are for America's continued strength, Dr. Stanger's conclusion is wise. She understands what many activists do not -- that private businesses and nonprofit organizations are now part and parcel of foreign policy worldwide, and that the movement towards a more open world in which private citizens make a significant impact on world affairs can't be stopped. The clock can't be turned back, she says: we live in a world where Bill and Melinda Gates can do more for malaria in Africa than most governments, and where the decisions of Walmart affect trade more than the demands of most countries. These are facts on the ground--they are caused by globalization, increased wealth, and the internet--they can't be reversed without returning to totalitarian states or a world of reduced connections between countries that would impoverish billions. Dr. Stanger thoughtfully concludes that when change cannot be fought, it should be understood, and managed. Government must decide what functions are inherently governmental and must be made in the public interest: trigger-pullers in war, for instance, and bring those functions back inside. And it must then regain the capacity to manage, oversee, and police the rest.

One Nation Under Contract should be required reading for everyone serving in government, and everyone who wants to understand today's world. I run an organization that trains young leaders, and believe that every single one of them needs to understand the crucial points this book makes.

The intent of this book is to highlight the implications of privatizing government policy, that present practice is scandalous, and that undoing government privatization is not the answer. Unfortunately, Stanger's overly academic treatise fails in all three missions, though her anecdotes and documentation of some of the numbers involved make the book worthy of a quick skim.

The Dept. of Defense is a good place to start. Stanger points out that the Pentagon's acquisition workforce shrank 25% between 1990-2000, while the volume of contracting increased 7X, and that between 2002-2005, the number of its contract employees rose from 3.4 million to 5.2 million. A key point here is that the simplest way to handled increased contracting with reduced staff is to issue giant contracts that allow subcontracting as desired - including evaluations. Thus, we end up with contracts that generate sub-contracts that generate sub-contracts, etc., for as many as five layers - adding costs at every layer. Then there's the missing billions in Iraq. Another typical problem is that various reports on procurement estimate that at least half of these contracts take place without full and open competition. Thus, there is no need for surprise when Stanger points out that a school costing ASAID $25,000 to build in Afghanistan could have instead be built for $50,000 by local Afghans (and probably generated good feelings for the U.S. at the same time). As for quality - shoddy electrical work by KBR is blamed for the deaths of at least 18 soldiers in Iraq, and Blackwater Security severely damaged U.S. credibility when it killed 17 civilians in Baghdad.

Sranger is correct that private contracting weakens control over government policy, but she does not account for some of the major mechanisms by which this occurs. A major source of the problem is that creative people can always find their way around a government contract; this problem is sometimes further acerbated intentionally by government managers, and the fact that government contract positions are not attractive to anyone with high skills and initiative. Then there's the 'revolving door problem. A USAToday article (11/16/09) pointed out that 158 retired general officers now consult for the Pentagon, and most also work for private industry - all at salaries far exceeding their former military pay. Clearly, the potential lure of those jobs can skew thinking of today's active-duty leaders. My own experience with contractors and consultants is that they spend about half their time looking for ways to extend and expand their scope of work, are much harder to get rid of than to bring in, and become a crutch for weak managers to lean on and hide behind - as a result, their advice must always be taken with a grain of salt. Another problem is that bringing in contractors usually reduces flexibility (eg. the outsourced warehouseman can no longer be asked to pitch in to help with a delivery crisis) and unforeseen changes in technology and/or task requirements create never-ending 'discussions' over who is responsible. Another problem with privatization is that it creates a powerful never-ending incentive to for private contractors to lobby for more government services etc., and a major new source of campaign donations.

In another section, Stanger points out that U.S. interests in the Mexican embassy were (and probably still are) promoted by representatives from 32 different agencies, that in 2005 the federal government had contractors in every U.N.-recognized country but Bhutan, Nauru, and San Marino, and we have military bases in 130+ countries. This gets to an even bigger problem - the size, reach, and complexity of American government. We end up with spaghetti-like organization and flow charts, never-ending coordination meetings, and obvious silliness such as the Director of Homeland Security giving briefings on the availability of swine flu vaccine. More important, it just doesn't work - both 9/11 and the Ft. Hood shooting took place despite numerous warnings, government's response to Hurricane Katrina was horribly botched, Madoff's Ponzi scheme was missed until he turned himself in, our financial system nearly collapsed last year, and pupil test scores and dropout rates have stagnated for decades,

Bottom Line: I doubt that any 'super-manager' (eg. a composite of Peter Drucker, Andy Grove, Steve Jobs, Jack Welch and anyone else you might want) would even want to try managing the federal government as it now stands. Significantly improving government performance requires that we first stop digging holes - the most obvious example is the link between our overly-biased support for Israel and the ensuing increased motivation for terrorism. A second is staying out of the affairs of other nations - our own 'bought and paid for' democracy is an embarrassment, as well as our financial management, and we need to stop telling others how to run their affairs - especially China and Russia. A third is reducing our dependence on foreign oil and associated interference in Iran, Iraq, and (formerly) Saudi Arabia. Fourth, get out of Afghanistan and Iraq - there is no reason to be there. At that point we need to implement a major government downsizing - eg. at least 50% in the Pentagon (we already spend about as much as the rest of the world combined), 75%+ in Departments of Commerce, Labor, State, and others; this would need to be accompanied by significantly reducing the accompanying rules and regulations. Then, reconsider restructuring. Only then does it make sense to consider Stanger's question of "What should be privatized?" Perhaps nothing.

Very insightful and informative book. The subject is detailed and explained well, for every reader to feel the
impact that our country experiences with using businesses within government to operate. The association is a two edged
effect, and has implications far beyond stated public political policies. A must read for any American!

This book was a good read, gets fairly well into the subject. Only complaint I have is that now I'm pissed off about the massive waste. LOL

This book has a lot of problems:

1. Poorly written -- the author saps the life out of what could be a very interesting topic with boring prose and endless repetition of stock phrases that the book fails to imbue with any concrete meaning. (e.g., "We need smart privatization that leverages public-private cooperation.")

2. It doesn't even bother to explain the details of how contracting actually works. It would have been helpful to provide a few examples of defense contracts and show how they are procured, negotiated, and executed (including the sub-contracting). It might also have been interesting to hear from some military veterans who switched over to the private sector, or some of the larger defense contractors (to at least give them a chance to argue that they provide a net benefit to the nation).

3. The author does not seriously attempt to assess whether contracting is in fact economically efficient, although this would have been difficult because so much of the details about individual contracts (both the cost and the services provided) are not public.

4. Much of the book is not even about contracting at all (e.g., the USAID and DHS chapters spend more time on those agencies respective histories than on how they use contractors).

5. The author's much repeated suggestion that contractors should not be tasked with oversight of contractors is pretty self-evident (although it is indeed troubling that the government pays millions of dollars to contractors so they can evaluate other contractors).

Some of the talking points and statistics in this book are quite interesting to learn about. I feel however that the book is too textbook - Statistics and graphs and redundant points get tiresome. Of course, this is partly my fault since I was not aware of the authour's writing style prior to buying the book.

Ultimately the book fills us in on the laissez-faire going-ons of the U.S. government. Some of it is I'm sure well-known fact and some it may well surprise some of you who do not necessarily follow politics closely. I personally feel the issues posed in this book are bound to be replicated in future administrations just as government really has not changed in the last 70 to 100 years, so ultimately I believe the readers of this book will become jaded a week after reading.

Then again...perhaps I am a pessimist?

NOTE: I just noticed that I reviewed the paperback edition by accident - I purchased the Kindle Edition - It doesn't change my review of the book of course; however, I would point out that the Kindle Edition suffers from some poor formatting.

The book give us a clear picture about the enormous problems that the goverment is facing because the abnoxious influence of the special interest and the corrupt politicians that are at their service...geed is the name of the game.

Allison Stanger's new book, One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power And The Future of Foreign Policy, is must reading for anyone concerned with the architecture of foreign policy. It is particularly valuable for those of us whose public service predates the outsourcing explosion of recent years. Prof. Stanger paints her picture of the wholly transformed landscape that statesmen inhabit in the 21st century with stunning hard data meticulously collected and analyzed. It is this grounding of her argument in numbers that pierced the shell of experiential knowledge that blinded me to the transformation of institutions I once worked in and now study.

Her argument is that the U.S. government has embraced outsourcing its overseas agenda as a solution for every international problem, with disastrous unintended consequences. That combined with a simultaneous explosion of creative initiatives bubbling up from below, both in the for-profit and not-for profit sectors, have real foreign policy impact. For her, the transformation of the politics and process of foreign policy elevates the "how" above the "what" and means that implementation defines the substance and has led to a militarization of American foreign policy. Finally, she situates these power shifts of the disaggregated state within the context of a private sector populated by corporations with unprecedented global muscle.

As a gardener, I understand the importance of surging plant material in the landscape. When I began gardening in earnest on Cape Cod in 2004, I planted native shrubs, like Red Osier Dogwood, to quickly fill the gaps until the specimen trees I had planted to replace our beloved but dying Pitch Pines could mature. For years the Red Osier performed beautifully. Then, I noticed that they were overwhelming the garden scheme by suckering and fountaining. Suckers, as any good gardener knows, are often undesirable because "the plant's energy is diverted to the sucker rather than to crown growth." The solution is to prune those suckers and, every few years, reshape the plant to constrain its growth and conform its shape to the desired landscape.

Allison Stanger has the same advice for the U.S. government: get out those loppers. Collaboration with private sector entities in pursuit of national security is essential in this networked world and certain naturalizing of government functions in the private sector is healthy. The foreign affairs landscape is changing organically and cannot be returned to some old-fashioned topiary filled parterre. But, if the national interest and the public good are to be served rather than private profit, principals in the foreign affairs agencies need to get out their shears and prune those suckers!

Stanger's book was a huge disappointment. It was dry, disorganized, and tedious, covering the very obvious in depth. Plus there were bunches and bunches of serious typos in the ebook version which was highly annoying. The chapter on the USAID completely lost me. It was so poorly organized, I couldn't figure out what she was getting at or what reaction she expecting from her readers. Our government routinely wastes billions and billions of our hard-earned dollars, starting with the pointless wars and military actions our leaders love to start, so how is this noteworthy? Stanger's reportage was just one long, dull "dog bites man" story in my opinion.

Besides the obvious, much of what Stanger discusses in her book is the inevitable devolution of the federal government into a shell that merely manages contracts, that farms out nearly everything. This is helpful I suppose in that it illustrates the arbitrary distinction between essential government services and peripheral tasks that can be contracted out, but this has always been the case.

I'm not sure how other reviewers decided that her suggested solutions to this problem were incorrect. Most of her "solutions" were so vague and overly generalized that I found it difficult to criticize or evaluate any of them. What I can criticize is the dry, wonkish language she overuses that disguises statements of the obvious as great and wise pronouncements. More than anything, I would say that her book adds to the confusion rather than offering any realistic advice on how anyone might remedy the "problems" she brings up.

This is a very complex subject that doesn't lend itself to the simplistic manner in which Stanger attempts to cover it. Much of what she discusses is hardly sinister or foreboding but mere business as usual, a matter of routine process without which nothing would get done. My final impression was that she had bit off far more than she could cogently and efficiently chew.