FP: Will Barack Obama read this report?

JL: I’m hopeful he will read the executive summary, which is just 15 pages. There are lots of people around the president-elect who are familiar with our work, so we’re hopeful.

This is a great time for our report to come out. [We have a] new administration that’s talking about changes, and a huge economic crisis which means that we need to learn how to do more with less—to be much more efficient. Right now, because of our organizational dysfunction, we have wasted and lost resources.

FP: So it sounds like you definitely see the political will to get this moving in the next administration?

JL: I think the events of the last seven or eight years have led lots of people to believe that something’s really wrong—that we have all of these resources, that we have all of this capability in our national security departments, and yet we’re having trouble handling these challenges. Our methodology is very much focused on what’s wrong. You cannot really fix something until you know what needs to be fixed. Washington often is too impatient to fully understand the problems.

FP: Some of the people rumored to be in the incoming administration—people such as James L. Jones and James Steinberg—served as members on the “guiding coalition” of this project. Do you hope they will be advocates for the work that you’ve been doing?

JL: I’m hopeful they will, but I can’t speak for them. I think the people who are going into the administration will go in with the understanding that those problems.

One challenge is that almost everybody only knows the system we’ve had for 60 years, and there is no sense of how outmoded it is. Today is very different from 1947, and some people have a very strong attachment to the current system. We need a new arrangement, and it will take time for people to get used to that. This is the end of the beginning, and there will be a long debate in [Washington] about all of these things.

There are three avenues of reform we can pursue. First is an executive order. President Obama could establish a new system on January 21. It wouldn’t be total, but it would be a start. Second, we could amend House and Senate rules. Congress is as stovepiped as the executive branch. Congress never had its own National Security Act of 1947 [to clarify its role in U.S. foreign policy]—not even its own mechanism for oversight. Finally, we need a new National Security Act.

FP: What is the one takeaway that you would like people to remember from your work?

JL: The one takeaway is that national security reform must happen. The gap between the demands on our government and our ability to address them effectively is widening—the world is changing faster than our ability to evolve. If we don’t reform now, we will experience very painful setbacks. National security reform is not something that would be “nice to do.” National security reform must occur.

The stakes are enormous. When I am asked what is the number one national security issue, national security reform is it. You might ask, “How can you say that?” Our ability to formulate policy in all situations depends on our system—and more, is undermined by it. We have organizational dysfunction, and until that is fixed, we will not be able to consistently form policy, resource our agencies, or make critical decisions.

James R. Locher III is executive director of the Project on National Security Reform and a former U.S. assistant secretary of defense.