1858 



Present institutions of the U.S. Government concerned with peace- 

 keeping and the national security need the expertise or means of 

 coordination to deal effectively with these emerging technological 

 problems and opportunities. One weakness may be that both executive 

 and legislative institutions are so enmeshed in short-term problems of 

 reaction to external stresses that they can spare no time or energy for 

 problems and issues of the longer-range future. Unfortunately, the 

 reactive mode of planning consumes too much time, for it must 

 anticipate and plan for an infinity of exigencies. By contrast, the 

 initiative mode of planning, being more self-contained, is more eco- 

 nomical of time while also more appropriate to a longer time frame. 

 But the initiative mode of planning requires a means of injecting 

 technological, economic, and social concepts of the future opera- 

 tionally into the decisionmaking structure. 



It is suggested, therefore, that a new mode of planning, of wider 

 scope and longer time span, needs to be adopted to deal with the com- 

 plex factors that make up the national security in the modern, inter- 

 dependent, technologically oriented system of nations. Among the 

 factors to be addressed would seem to be the following: 



1. A reexamination of the definition of national security in the 

 modern technological and interdependent world, including a state- 

 ment of the national goals that are implied by the new definition. 



2. A re testing of traditional military assumptions regarding 

 priority programs in the light of the new definition of national 

 security. 



3. Examination of alternative modes of planning — in particu- 

 lar, the reactive and initiative modes — to determine how future 

 U.S. strategy of national security should be formulated. 



4. Determination of the scope of the interface of national secur- 

 ity with technology, and of diplomacy with technology. 



5. Examination of the machinery of government available to 

 serve the purposes of the national security as newly defined, and 

 to achieve progress toward the national goals it implies, in order 

 to derive preliminary specifications for institutions to plan, to 

 decide, to authorize and fund, to implement, to coordinate, and 

 to assess results. 



Corporate Attitudes Toward Long-Range Planning 



An attitude of hostility to public planning is often ascribed to 

 leaders of private industry and corporate businesses. However, a 

 recent article in an industry-oriented journal took a new reading 

 of business attitudes toward long-range centralized economic planning 

 by the Federal Government, and concluded that "not all businessmen 

 are revolted by the idea." ^** The main thrust of the article was that 

 those responsible for the planning should not be given authority 

 also to implement the plans. Thus: "Plans and planners exist to help 

 those who properly bear the responsibility for decision-making, and 

 to help them make their decisions based on better information and 

 on as accurate a look ahead as humans can devise." Another point 

 made by the article was that information, properly used, helped to 

 reduce uncertainties: "So the information needs study, to see what 

 it may say. Hence the need for analysis, forecasting, selection of 

 desired goals — and plans to achieve them," 



»« George A. Weimer: "Is Central Planning Needed or Wanted?" Iron Age, July 14, 1975, pp. 17-19, 20t 

 25-26. 



