The Winston Wolf of Public Management

An interesting profile of US Defense Secretary;

In his memoir Speech-less, Matt Latimer, a speechwriter for both Rumsfeld and Bush, describes Gates as "our Winston Wolf," the Harvey Keitel character in Pulp Fiction who comes to dispose of the bodies and take care of the bloody mess after an accidental killing. "Wolf was a case study of robotic efficiency, overseeing an elaborate cleanup while calmly drinking a cup of coffee," writes Latimer. "That's what President Bush wanted — a cold-blooded competent cleaner."

The cleaner quickly went to work. He walked into the Pentagon alone. Inheriting many former Rumsfeld aides, Gates told them on his first day that he wouldn't be firing anyone. There was no time for confirmations, and he was leaving that day for Iraq. Gates brought a sense of relief, a feeling that an adult was back in charge...

One of the things his staffers love about him is his common sense, I-don't-get-it attitude toward the stupidity of bureaucracy. Now that he's past worrying about climbing within that bureaucracy, he has the confidence to break it. At the height of the Iraq surge in 2007, which Gates supported, more than 100 soldiers a month were dying. It's almost impossible as an outsider to understand why the Pentagon would not want to build the mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, known as MRAPs, that would have saved many of those soldiers' lives. Instead of budgeting for MRAPs, the Pentagon was still spending money on outdated weapon systems. So Gates bypassed the normal procurement process, created a special task force, went to Congress and got the money to build them. "Those vehicles saved hundreds of lives and limbs," says a senior Pentagon official...

The list of mindless bureaucratic obstacles that were hampering the war effort was dizzying. For example: military officers complained that there were not enough drones, Predators and unmanned reconnaissance in the air to help target insurgent cells. The holdup? Air Force pilots are taught to fly real planes, not drones. Each pilot costs about $1 million to train. And yet some staff sergeants in the Army had started operating the drones at a fraction of the price, with far fewer crashes. "If the Army is doing it safer and cheaper and able to produce more pilots faster, why aren't we doing it to that standard?" Gates asked. "This requires a cultural revolution in the Air Force," explained one of his staffers — which it got in 2008, after Gates fired the civilian and military leaders of the service for other reasons. Now the Air Force licenses junior officers to fly unmanned aircraft, and Gates has tripled the number of drones operating in the war zones...

Gates is a man of old-school habits: a Grey Goose at the end of the day and preferably steak or bacon cheeseburgers for lunch and dinner. He doesn't use a cell phone. He asked me during our interview if there was tape in my digital recorder. Gates keeps a box filled with index cards of quotes and anecdotes and one-liners he's collected over the years. His favorite comedians are both dead — George Carlin and W.C. Fields. Their sensibilities suit Gates' own — taking down institutions, puncturing pomp. He's even adopted some of their style. He loves to tell the same jokes about egos in Washington — "where people say, I'll double-cross that bridge when I get to it," and "the only place in the world you can see a prominent person walking down lovers' lane holding his own hand."...

At the height of the Iraq surge, Gates gave a speech to the Marine Corps Association. He began in Johnny Carson fashion with a long, meticulously timed story about Nixon's Secretary of Defense Mel Laird on a trip to see the Pope.

Laird was smoking a cigar, and Henry Kissinger told him to at least put it out before they went inside. "A couple of minutes into the Pope's remarks, Kissinger heard this little patting sound, and he looked over, and there was a wisp of smoke coming out of Laird's pocket. The Secretary of Defense was on fire. The American party heard this slapping and thought they were being cued to applaud. And so they did. And Henry later told us, 'God only knows what His Holiness thought, seeing the American Secretary of Defense immolating himself, and the entire American party applauding the fact.' "...

Like Obama, Gates can consume reams of information. His photographic memory is legendary. He is a voracious reader of history, spy novels and pulp fiction. He's subscribed to the Book-of-the-Month Club for 50 years. And he is careful, meticulously so. One decades-long colleague told me Gates will cancel a briefing if he hasn't done his homework. "Preparation for him is a cathartic experience," says his spokesman Morrell. He vents brutal answers to imaginary questions so he can be more diplomatic on the Hill. He's vigilant about the stagecraft of statecraft, even taking his own messy handwritten notes to meetings so his preparation can be seen...

What did Gates ask the President-elect? "I asked him if he could trust me."

Economic Geography of the Military Industrial Complex

An excellent talk on economic geography of Pentagon's secrete programs-



Highly Recommended the first 10 minutes.

Stiglitz on Iraq War

How would an MTEF be like in Middle Ages

Even restricting the application of the principle of opportunity cost to just one facet, such as castle building in the High Middle Ages, involves many difficulties. Taxation, budgeting, and spending in the Middle Ages can only be described as haphazard, or at least they appear so because of the paucity of records.

It would be very interesting to know the sums spent by medieval monarchs on fortifications in their countries. It is known that cities gave enormous sums for building walls and ramparts, and for digging moats. Unfortunately there is a total lack of information about costs for this period.

This quotation, from a standard work on the military history of the age, reveals some frustration of the study of the period. Fortunately, progress has been made, and even as debate regarding the exact numbers will continue, a number of deductions can be made about the labor and capital cost necessary to construct medieval fortifications. About the overall cost there is little dispute. Medieval rulers had the greatest difficulties in paying for their wars, and powerful monarchs had no less trouble despite initially starting with more. “All were driven to desperate expedients to make ends meet.” Worse, possession of more power and territory gave one more to defend. Castles and troops were both necessary, and this led to every conceivable way being devised to raise money. “Since the time of Cicero and Tacitus to the fifteenth century and beyond, authors often asserted that the tranquility of nations was impossible without armies, armies without soldiers’ wages, or wages without tribute.”

The result of the search for funds has been described as “less a system of taxation than a system of plunder,” and this was no metaphor. In England, for example, goods were sometimes seized from merchants and only released after “tax” was paid. And it was never enough. Despite the most vigorous tax collections England had ever known, Edward I (r. 1272–1307) constantly outran his financial resources. Between 1294 and 1297 wars with Scotland, France, and Wales required such heavy war levies that laity and clergy alike rebelled, leading to a major constitutional crisis. This was not the result of mere royal greed; bad policy is another matter. In Edward’s last years, the Wardrobe, as the department that paid the army’s bills was called, rarely had a thousand pounds at any given moment, while earlier in his reign it had been able to send its paymasters sums as large as £5,000 at once.

Credit was no permanent solution. Since the twelfth century credit had been steadily expanding across Europe. Tempted, Edward I took two steps: he borrowed, usually from Italian bankers, and he did not repay them, at least not completely. His first bankers, the Riccardi, failed to collect some £18,924; the Frescobaldi firm was shorted some £25,000. It did little good. At his death, Edward I left a debt of some £200,000, almost four times the entire annual royal revenue. Justly, some of this could be attributed to the policies of a king who not only made war constantly but pursued policies almost guaranteed to lead to further wars. Unsurprisingly, periods of peace led to dramatic improvements in the condition of the treasury. But there was more to the matter than the behavior of an overly, and overtly, aggressive king. Far more interesting about Edward I is that, despite running repeated campaigns in France, Wales, and Scotland, he nevertheless chose to plow fortunes into the building of castles

Source: Castles, Battles, and Bombs: How Economics Explains Military History
Jurgen Brauer and Hubert van Tuyll

Recommended;
INTEGRATING DEFENSE INTO PUBLIC EXPENDITURE WORK