The CSPC Dispatch - Jan. 31, 2025
Welcome to The CSPC Dispatch!
This edition features contributions from CSPC Senior Fellow James Kitfield on the challenges awaiting newly confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Senior Fellow Ethan Brown on how success in the Pentagon may ultimately be defined by financial accountability. We also highlight analysis from CSPC interns Bridget Peach and Caleb Mann, who examine Georgia’s democratic trajectory and the evolving role of the vice president in an era of closely divided Senates. Additionally, we share a timely piece from Andy Keiser on the importance of securing the U.S. semiconductor supply chain, as well as a look at the state of election polling from Jeanne Sheehan Zaino.
CSPC Senior Fellow James Kitfield appeared on NPR's 1A Program, Friday News Roundup - International Edition on January 31, 2025.
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Determining success for a Hegseth-led Pentagon
By Ethan Brown
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivers remarks to the press during his arrival at the Pentagon, on January 27, 2025 (DOD Photo by Benjamin Applebaum- CC BY 2.0).
With his confirmation, Pete Hegseth now assumes cabinet authority over the most powerful entity in human history. His appointment and eventual senate confirmation has had its fair share of controversy, only passing with the Vice-President’s tiebreaking vote, which is only the second time in history that such a narrow consummation has occurred.
With relative certainty in place (remember, during Trump’s first term, he went through three secretaries of defense), we can now look ahead to what a Hegseth-led department of defense might achieve and how it can roadmap itself to success. There is a path to genuine success for this era of the Pentagon, despite the immediate controversy which has entered the institution's hallowed halls.
Hegseth’s testimony before the Senate confirmation committee was rife with bold assertions about the nature of the Defense Department under his watch, and the recurring theme which emerged from the then-nominee included “meritocracy,” “warrior mindset,” “lethality” and “readiness.” In CSPC roundup blogs of yesteryear, I’ve lambasted the defense department's obsession with buzzwords that brief well but aren’t backed up by a clear policy, grand strategy, or coherent scheme of maneuver which gives the men and women in uniform an end state to strive for. Having said that, while the buzzwords pose well on C-SPAN, Secretary Hegseth has an opportunity to do something none of his predecessors managed to do, and it would indeed cement a legacy as civilian leader of the world’s more powerful enterprise.
Shortly after the election passed, amid November’s swirling media churn, American’s probably missed the fleeting headlines showing that the Pentagon failed its seventh audit in a row. For historical context, the U.S. government passed the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990, which was later expanded as the Government Management Reform Act of 1994. Per that law, 24 major executive branch departments and agencies are “required to prepare annual financial statements and have them audited.” In 2002, the Accountability of Tax Dollars Act further expanded the provisions of the previous laws to all federal executive agencies or departments, and were only exempt from doing so with specific, application-based approval by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director (with zero deputy authority for exemptions under any circumstances).
Somehow, the Defense Department managed to avoid conducting this federally mandated financial examination until 2018, wherein the Pentagon’s first audit was a resounding failure across all components. Then Under-Secretary Patrick Shanahan attempted the proverbial silk purse-sow’s ear comparison by telling reporters that “we failed the audit, but we never expected to pass it,” while lauding the substantial accomplishment of simply auditing an organization holding – in 2018 – $2.7 trillion across assets and liabilities.
Today’s Pentagon total value is even more immense, and this most recent audit accounted for $3.8 trillion in assets, and $4 trillion in liabilities across all 50 domestic States and more than four thousand use-sites around the world. Those dollars are spread across 28 total components, and yet only nine received an “unmodified audit opinion,” meaning they cleared the books. 15 components received a disclaimer rating, basically meaning they failed to pass muster. That figure was the result of the DoD not being to account for every dollar of its then-$824 billion budget. The leading culprits were the National Security Agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. With so much of those agencies working under severe classification constraints owing to their mission charter, those will be significant hurdles to overcome in future audits which must be publicly presented to congressional review.
The ultimate goal for the DoD has been to clear its books and account for 100% of assets and liabilities by 2028, the ten-year anniversary of the department honoring its federal mandate. That is where Pete Hegseth’s legacy could be made and made positively. This medium won’t address the character issues which surrounded much of the secretary’s confirmation hearing and won’t depart the thesis by reviewing the more controversial possibilities on how personnel could be managed under Hegseth’s leadership. Instead, the potential for the most bipartisan-approved outcome in SECDEF history is now a clear objective for Hegseth: Balance the DoD’s budget and pass an audit.
This outcome impacts more than merely budgets and spend thriftiness, but instead would demonstrate to the American people that the defense has evolved beyond the bottomless pit for their tax dollars. It goes beyond merely ensuring good effective monetary policy for the single-largest entity of the Federal Government. Achieving a clean audit forces defense contractors – where most of the DoD’s budget vanishes – to be accountable for delivering on negotiating goods and services which, to be frank, is a surly record going back decades. Large contractors like Lockheed Martin routinely fail to deliver promised goods, leading to lost funds which must yet again be negotiated in DoD budgets in the following fiscal year. Last year, the Government Accountability Office discovered that the Navy spent nearly $2 billion on modernizing Ticonderoga-class missile cruisers which are no longer usable in the fleet. A $22 billion missile program, mismanaged by the Navy, will be years late on the receipt of Constellation-class guided missile frigates. The list goes on and usually ends in ‘billions’ when discussing losses, and only ‘millions’ when speaking about recovered, fraud-related assets.
There is a tragic loss of public faith and trust in the U.S. government, made worse by partisan loyalties and the continued calcification of party priorities over the good governance of America. The military is continually and increasingly being dragged into partisan issues and in this instance, should Secretary Hegseth and his leadership hierarchy within the Pentagon pull off the impossible and achieve a clean audit before his tenure ends, that would be a tremendous achievement and would dramatically improve the DoD’s standing in the public eye.
Ethan Brown is a senior fellow for the CSPC.
Congratulations Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth – You Just Inherited a World of Woes
By James Kitfield
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivers recorded remarks on the tragedy involving a U.S. Army helicopter at Ronald Reagan National Airport on January 30, 2025 (DoD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander Kubitza).
After becoming only the second cabinet secretary ever confirmed in a tie-break vote in the Senate, newly minted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth just completed his first week in charge of America’s 3.5 million service members and civilians. As a candidate Hegseth leaned heavily into culture war issues, promising to reestablish a “warrior ethos” by abolishing “woke” DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs, and reconsidering the role of women in combat. With global instability on the rise and threat clouds gathering from nearly every direction, however, he is likely to find his other priorities of “rebuilding the military and reestablishing deterrence” far more urgent and challenging.
As a means of preparation, Hegseth could do much worse than create time in his busy schedule for a thorough reading of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy released last summer. These Congressionally mandated reports periodically examining U.S. defense strategy and budgeting are typically dry documents running over a hundred pages, filled with acronyms and bureaucratese as befits audits of a globe-spanning defense enterprise that employs millions of people and consumes nearly $1 trillion in national treasure annually.
The Commission on the National Defense Strategy (NDS) report recently released in June 2024, however, dropped nearly all pretense of normality, bluntly stating that a long-forecast “train wreck” in America’s national security posture may soon be upon us. “The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945 and include the potential for near-term major war,” the report begins, noting that the United States has not fought such a global conflict since World War II, nearly 80 years ago, and last prepared for such a contingency during the Cold War, 35 years ago. “It is not prepared today.”
Ambassador Eric Edelman was vice-chairman of the recent Commission on the National Defense Strategy, and he has served on similar commissions dating back a decade. “We’re in a crisis right now, with the largest land war in Europe since World War II, a significant conflict in the Middle East that has seen Iran for the first time fire missile barrages at a U.S. ally, and a tightening collaboration between China, Russia, North Korea and Iran that is as close to an adversarial axis as we have faced since World War II. We also face a growing North Korean nuclear weapons force that could soon be larger than Great Britain’s, with Iran also knocking on the door [of nuclear weapons capability],” Edelman told the Defense Writers Group.
America’s “unfortunate history” is to wait until disaster strikes before reacting, Edelman noted, whether it was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor at the outset of World War II; the decimation of the U.S. military’s “Task Force Smith” early in the Korean War; the unexpected Soviet Union technological surprise with the launch of the first “Sputnik” satellite in 1958; the near decimation of the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division in the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley at the outset of the Vietnam War in 1965; and the surprise terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland on September 11, 2001 that presaged the United States’ longest wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“We’re trying to create a national discussion with this report before catastrophe strikes, because what we’re really talking about is restoring the United States’ ability to deter conflict,” said Edelman. “And failure to deter a conflict is always more expensive than spending the money necessary to provide for the common defense, which under the Constitution is Congress’ number one obligation.”
When read closely, the most recent National Defense Strategy report amounts to a profound indictment of the entire post-Cold War system by which the United States translates national security strategy into policies and budgets and ultimately military capability. To be successful, Hegseth will have to substantively reform that complex system.
Highlighted nodes of failure begin in the Oval Office, according to the NDS report, where successive commanders-in-chief from both parties have failed to use the bully pulpit to alert the public to the mounting dangers and the sacrifices necessary to meet them head-on [“The American public have been inadequately informed by government leaders to the threats to U.S. interests – including to people’s everyday lives – and what will be required to restore American global power and leadership.”]; to the halls of Congress, where lawmakers have continually prioritized tax cuts, entitlement spending and “hot-button” social issues over providing for the common defense [“Very little progress will be possible without Congress, where a relatively small number of elected officials have imposed continual political gamesmanship over thoughtful and responsible legislating and oversight…[weakening] our ability to manage strategic competition with our peer adversaries”]; to the Pentagon E-Ring where Hegseth will have his office, and where bureaucrats responsible for executing acquisition and procurement programs reflect a mindset from a more peaceful and benign era [“DoD’s business practices, byzantine research and development (R&D) and procurement programs, reliance on decades-old military hardware, and culture of risk avoidance reflect an era of uncontested military dominance.”]; to the boardrooms and shop floors of a defense industrial base that has dangerously atrophied in the decades since the end of the Cold War, with insufficient manufacturing capacity and inadequate workforces [“The U.S. defense industrial base is unable to meet the equipment, technology, and munitions needs of the United States and its allies…[and] a protracted conflict, especially in multiple theaters, would require much greater capacity to produce, maintain and replenish weapons and munitions.”].
Retired Congresswoman Jane Harman, D-CA., former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, served as chair of the recent Commission on the National Defense Strategy. “We have to find a way to convey the urgency of this moment and get ahead of this problem, because there was consensus that this is our most dangerous moment since World War II, much more dangerous than the 9/11 attacks even, which I lived through. In that case we were also unprepared, and our response failed to meet the moment,” she said in an interview with the Defense Writers Group.
“So wouldn’t it be nice if we could create a 9/11-like sense of urgency before a 9/11 type attack? We now have a new administration, and some different leaders in Congress, and we’re urging leaders to take this opportunity to use the bully pulpit to educate the public,” she said. In the event of a conflict with China over Taiwan, she noted, “there will be a major cyberattack on our critical infrastructure. When the lights go out in our cities, and our ports close, and our transportation systems melt down, people will start to pay attention. So maybe we can help them pay attention ahead of that [catastrophe].”
James Kitfield is a senior fellow for the CSPC.
Distancing from the West: Georgia’s 2024 Presidential Election
By Bridget Peach
Former President Zourabichvilin speaking to the European Union in December 2024 shortly before the inauguration of President Kavelashvili (CC-BY-4.0: © European Union 2024– Source: EP).
Last year, when Georgia’s increasingly autocratic government introduced the so-called “Foreign Agents Law,” massive protests erupted in the streets of the capital. Dubbed “the Russian law” by opponents, it was clearly patterned after Vladimir Putin’s similar 2012 law that foreshadowed a brutal crackdown on civil society organizations. Opponents clearly understood the law represented a potentially decisive turn of the Georgian government away from the democratic West and into the arms of the autocrat in the Kremlin. Sadly, those fears were realized in last October’s presidential election.
October 28 brought presidential election results, sparking outrage throughout the country from voters protesting its validity. The election, which ushered in the Georgian Dream party candidate Mikheil Kavelashvili, was tense from the start. Elected by a direct popular vote in 2018, incumbent Salome Zourabichvili used her time as president to promote pro-Western policies and distance the country from Russia’s grasp. Kavelashvili, however, was elected by parliament and local officials, not Georgia’s traditional vote. Despite a poll of Georgian voters prior to the election showing 85 percent of respondents favored integration with the European Union (EU), Georgia Dream prevailed in a vote marred by alleged vote rigging and ballot stuffing. Protesters and voting organizations claim the election was fraudulent, and even the European Parliament called on Georgia to re-run the election. To protesters and outside observers, the country appears to be drifting away from democracy.
Furthermore, the Georgian Dream representative’s rhetoric throughout his campaign and early presidency has been contradictory. Kavelashvili contended that the pro-Western opponents would drag Georgia into the Russia-Ukraine war, while championing Georgia’s efforts to join the EU under the candidate status they were granted in 2023.
Though the recent election highlighted the rift between political parties, divisions have been deepening within Georgian politics for some time now. In May of 2024, President Zourabichvili vetoed the “foreign agent” law, which required non-governmental organizations receiving foreign funding of 20% or more to register as entities “pursuing the interests of a foreign power.” Kavelashvili’s Georgian Dream party introduced and passed the law in parliament just weeks before her veto. The foreign agent law, deemed by Zourabichvili as “fundamentally Russian,” was indeed reminiscent of Putin’s 2015 law condemning purportedly undesirable organizations. While Georgian Dream’s foreign agent law simply requires the identification of such organizations, a future of prohibition and silencing–as in Russia–may lie ahead. In response, the United States paused $95 million in aid to Georgia, refusing to support the anti-democratic interests. The EU also suspended $126 million in aid to the country, explaining that the Georgian Dream’s activities are barriers to membership.
U.S.-Georgia relations date back to 1992, when the two countries first established diplomatic relations. In 2008, upon the Russia invasion of Georgia, the United States openly supported Georgia’s sovereignty. Then, in 2009, U.S. and Georgian representatives instituted the U.S.-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership, dedicated to mutual cooperation and the promotion of democracy. During her time as president, Zourabichvili attempted but failed to contact then-President Biden. With the new Trump administration now in office, she now seeks to promote Georgian democracy through U.S. foreign policy and personal connections with U.S. representatives. Zourabichvili obtained an inauguration invitation and has conversations with President Trump scheduled for February, but domestic forces in Georgia are working against her.
On November 28, Prime Minister and Georgian Dream party member Irakli Kobakhidze announced a suspension of Georgia’s accession into the EU until 2028. Kobakhidze’s announcement stands in contrast with the country’s efforts to join the international organization over the past two decades. Protesters were met with violence and arrests coupled with torture, spurring the EU to call for an end to police violence and underscore the importance of human rights in a potential European future. In response to Kobakhidze’s decision, the United States suspended the U.S.-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership created just 15 years prior. The United States and several European nations view the delay as one step further from democracy backsliding and one step closer to a Russian takeover of Georgia.
Despite promises made during his campaign, Kavelashvili is now strengthening ties with Russia and China, pushing Georgia away from EU membership and the Western integration. His actions are consistent with the founder of the Georgian Dream party, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who has deep ties in Moscow and amassed his fortune through Russian banking and metal industries. Since the establishment of the party in 2012, trade, both exports and imports, has substantially increased between Russia and Georgia. China’s relationship with Georgia has also flourished in recent years. The countries signed the Sino-Georgian Strategic Partnership in 2023, and China has proposed participation in the Anaklia Deep Sea Port project. Prime Minister Kobakhidze has openly encouraged cooperation between Georgia and China, especially through economic ties. The two countries also signed free trade agreements in 2024 and connected through China’s Belt and Road initiative, considered “debt diplomacy” by many Western observers.
When angry voters took to the streets recently to once again protest Georgia’s democratic backsliding, even a small sticker expressing frustration on a street sign proved enough to warrant an arrest. A once pro-Western society, Georgia is now clearly being driven by new leadership into the arms of autocratic Eastern powers.
Bridget Peach is an intern at CSPC and junior at the University of Georgia majoring in International Affairs and Russian.
Breaking the Tie in a Closely Divided Senate
By Caleb Mann
J. D. Vance speaking with attendees at The People's Convention earlier this year (Photo by Gage Skidmore- CC BY SA 2.0).
For just the 302nd time in the history of the American republic, a tie in the Senate has given the vice president the ultimate vote. Though constitutionally decreed as the President of the Senate, the Vice President is rarely required to actually cast a vote. As laid out in the Constitution, the vice president shall preside over the Senate but shall only receive a vote if the chambers are “equally divided”, as outlined by Article 1, Section 3 [Clause 4].
When controversy and high tensions threatened to sink Pete Hegseth’s bid for Secretary of Defense, Vice President J.D. Vance thus became the 37th vice president to issue a tie-breaking vote. With Senate Republicans boasting a slim 53-47 majority, the former Fox News host could afford to lose no more than three GOP Senators. Following a preliminary vote in which Senators Murkowski (R-AK) and Collins (R-ME) voted against confirming Hegseth, former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) became the third and final member to defect from party lines. That left the Senate floor deadlocked at 50-50, paving the way for the former Senator from Ohio to break the tie.
The recent drama over Hegseth’s nomination illustrates how the office of the Vice President has evolved since its inception nearly 250 years ago. Contemporary scholars and political scientists might categorize the vice presidency as the President’s chief advisor or ‘top lieutenant,’ but this was not always the case. Before the 1950’s, and especially throughout the 19th century, the vice president’s foremost responsibility was presiding over the Senate. This mandate was met with varying levels of commitment. Some vice presidents took the time to study parliamentary rules and remained active as President of the Senate. Others, such as Henry Wilson, vice president to Ulysses S. Grant, took the time to write a three-volume manuscript opposing slavery.
The decision to place the second-highest ranking member of the Executive branch atop the Legislative branch was opposed by some of the framers as an affront to the separation of powers. In the words of Massachusetts delegate Elbridge Gerry, “you might as well put the President himself as head of the legislature.” Despite his criticisms, Gerry later served as vice president to James Madison during his second term, issuing nine tie-breaking votes between 1813 and 1814. That tied Gerry with Harry Truman’s Vice President Thomas Marshall for 10th most tie-breaking votes.
The frequency of the vice president’s deciding vote is not always directly tied to periods of close divisions in party control. For instance, both Vice Presidents George Dallas and Schuyler Colfax, the 11th and 17th vice presidents respectively, enjoyed comfortable majorities within the Senate during their tenures. Yet they ended up breaking over a dozen ties each, with Dallas ranking 4th (19) and Colfax just behind at 5th (18) on the all-time tie-breaking list.
Recent experience suggests, however, that vice presidents may be drafted into more tie-breaking votes in times of heightened partisanship. Former Vice President Kamala Harris cast a record 33 votes, as vice president to Joe Biden. With an evenly split chamber, Harris notably issued the final vote on the consequential Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, effectively ending the stalemate.
Harris’ predecessor Mike Pence became the first vice president to break ties on cabinet and judicial appointments. This shift was due in large part to rule changes in 2013 and 2017, which reduced the 60-vote threshold to invoke cloture on a vote to just a simple majority. As a result, Pence took on a pivotal role in shaping the confirmation process during the first Trump administration. Less than a month into office, Pence confirmed Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education in 2017. Just a year later, he cast the first judicial tie-breaking vote, confirming Jonathan Kobes to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Facing similar margins as Harris, Pence cast a total of 13 tie-breaking votes during his term, placing the former governor 8th all-time, but 2nd most since the end of the 19th century.
As the nation approaches its 250th birthday next year, vice presidents continue to play an evolving and often underappreciated role in presiding over the Senate. Once considered a largely ceremonial position within the executive, vice presidents have in recent years assumed key decision-making authority. Whether striking down critical legislation or eking out a high-level cabinet confirmation, modern vice presidents are putting their indelible stamp on American politics. “I thought I was done voting in the Senate,’ joked Vice President Vance, who took to X last Friday night after his historic vote. With a tightly divided Congress and a historically assertive Executive, Vance will likely be called to return to the floor of the Senate in the years to come, emphasizing the enduring significance of the tie-breaking vote.
Caleb Mann is an intern at CSPC and junior at Virginia Tech majoring in History with a minor in Political Science.
CSPC In the news
The U.S. Needs a Secure, Reliable Semiconductor Supply Chain
By Andy Keiser
Originally published in Real Clear Policy on January 18, 2025
The Chinese Communist Party, led by President for Life Xi Jinping, has created what amounts to a policy of supply chain warfare against the United States.
Smart hedging by the U.S. and our allies to restrict access to next generation technologies with dual military uses like telecommunications infrastructure, and advanced artificial intelligence and semiconductors, has been met in Beijing with baseless retaliatory efforts in kind.
The US presidential election shows the limits of the ‘science’ of polling
By Jeanne Sheehan Zaino
Originally published in the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Blog on January 16, 2025
Was 2024 was a good year for US election polls?
Nate Silver writes, “polling did not experience much of a miss and had a reasonable year.” It’s a view that’s widely shared by everyone from John Zogby and Mike Traugott to Christopher Wlezien and G. Elliot Morris. Among the findings, polling error at the state level was the lowest in 25 years and, at <3%, the overall error rate was small by historical standards.
Their upbeat assessment, however, is not shared by the public.