Peter wrote an incredible book. He writes three separate histories to very conclusively make his point that the Pentagon won’t be improved by fiat, but instead that hard work and careful management are required to get more out of the Building while spending less. His analyses of the transition to and from the National Security Personnel System, the long history of acquisition reform efforts, and the many failed attempts to audit the Pentagon all reaffirm his thesis that defense leaders and managers need to know very specifically what problems they wish to solve and how to solve them, develop tailored solutions, and then build consensus to achieve their intended outcomes. Anyone who retorts that these conclusions are obvious hasn’t read the book, which demonstrates that decades of defense leaders have been lured into magical thinking about fixing thorny defense problems overnight with the wave of a legislative or regulatory wand. If only.
While the book is written through the analytical frame of defense management, any of the book’s three histories could stand up separately and on its own which itself is a pretty incredible accomplishment. The book’s telling of the history of the National Security Personnel System is the narrowest and most tactical of the three. I would compare the narrative retelling of the history of acquisition reform to Fox’s “Defense Acquisition Reform 1960-2009: An Elusive Goal,” except this history also includes the outcomes of the Weapons System Acquisition Reform Act and the enactment of the Thornberry-McCain acquisition reform initiatives of the last decade. And the book’s coverage of Pentagon audit initiatives is an original, complete, and completely convincing description of how and why the Pentagon has failed to achieve a clean audit after decades of attempts, and why a clean audit is probably not the right goal.
The highest praise I can offer the book is that it is well-written, concise given the amount of ground that it covers, and very interesting. To write a book entitled "Defense Management Reform" that is interesting, at least to a reader given to consider such subjects interesting, is itself a monumental achievement. If you have any reason at all to read about or study these subjects, do yourself a favor and buy this book. You won't regret it.
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