Marshall To Retire From Net Assessment Office in January

By VAGO MURADIAN and PAUL McLEARY

Oct. 17, 2014 

Andrew Marshall has run the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment since 1973. (Department of Defense)

WASHINGTON — Andrew Marshall — a Pentagon institution who influenced policy makers from the Cold War to today — has signaled his intention to step down in January, according to sources.

Marshall, 93, heads the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), which months ago was spared the budget ax as part of a restructuring of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Having founded the Pentagon’s internal think tank in 1973, Marshall is the only director it has ever known. His influence over the decades on defense policy analysis in Washington has been vast.

Pentagon leaders such as Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work, Director of Cost Assessment Jamie Morin and Undersecretary for Intelligence Mike Vickers have all worked for Marshall, as have dozens of other leading national security thinkers spread through think tanks and policy shops.

As of Friday evening, a spokesman for the Pentagon was unable to comment on Marshall’s departure.

Once Marshall vacates his Pentagon office, questions will invariably arise over the small organization’s future; speculation over who will step in to run the office will likely be intense.

“The function of that office needs to be retained,” said Andrew Krepinevich, president of the Center Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), who worked for Marshall as an Army officer and whose organization still does work for the ONA.

“In order for that office to perform successfully, you need a person who understands the analytic approach to net assessment,” Krepinevich added. “It also requires a significant budget, and the independence to decide what will be studied.”

What is seen as ONA’s greatest strengths — Marshall’s ability to keep it independent of political or bureaucratic influence from inside or outside the building — could be difficult to maintain without him at the helm, however.

Richard Danzig, former Navy secretary who is now the vice chairman of RAND and a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, maintains that one of the key attributes that Marshall’s eventual successor must have is to be “a person who thinks long term and with originality. That successor doesn’t necessarily have to be someone who comes out of the community of Andy’sprotégés,” he said.

“Andy is so unique and so idiosyncratic in his style that I wouldn’t try to replicate him, but attempt to find someone with his virtues of far-sightedness, rock solid integrity, and original thought,” Danzig said.

After a reorganization late last year, the office lost a bit of its independence when it was decided that it would begin reporting to the undersecretary of defense for policy. But Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel promised in December that “we will preserve ONA as a distinct organization with direct links to the secretary of defense, but this change will better ensure that its long-range comparative analyses inform and influence DoD’s overall strategy and policy.”

A taste of what ONA does can be seen in an announcement issued in May seeking proposals to look at everything from “military competition on and under the surface of the sea,” to future precision-strike capabilities; potential policy fallout from increased nuclear proliferation; and military competition in space.

Over the summer, the office issued research contracts worth more than $10 million to a variety of organizations like CSBA, Booz Hamilton, the Hudson Institute and IHS International to carry out these projects over the next several years.

“An interesting consideration some years from now would be the benefits of longevity,” Danzig said. “Would we want Andy’s successorto stay five years or 35? That question is probablybest answered five years after the successor has been on the job.”

Overall, Krepinevich — author of the forthcoming book “The Last Warrior: Andrew Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense Strategy” with fellow ONA alum and CSBA senior analyst Barry Watts — mused that Marshall “was fortunate that defense secretaries saw the need to have an office to do this kind of work without having to go though all the bureaucratic coordination that takes the sharp edge off of ideas ... that sort of intellectual freedom is needed to think strategically, and challenge the conventional wisdom.” ■

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