WORLD PEACE FOREVER

NOW, FEBRUARY, 2025

During the first three weeks of President Trump’s new administration he:

Sent his Secretary of State to Panama to talk sense and send China a message about their intent to control the Canal.

Sent his Secretary of Defense to Europe to talk defense and deterrence.

Sent his Vice President to Europe to speak at the European Security Conference.

Successfully negotiated a prisoner release with Putin.

Planned for a meeting with Putin to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.

Met in the White House with Israeli President Netanyahu.

Met in the White House with India’s President Narendra Modi.

Met in the White House with a long-time friend to the United States,

Jordan’s King Abdullah.

Convinced Mexico President Sheinbaum to send 2,000 troops to help secure the Southern border.

Convinced Canadian Premier Trudeau to implement a set of sweeping new security measures along the U.S. Canadian border.

By suggesting that the U.S. rebuild Gaza he thoroughly embarrassed the terrorist-loving Palestinian nations who have refused to take in the millions of Gaza refugees.

Offered to buy Greenland.

In just a few days’ time, President Trump walked onto the world stage and made it crystal clear that he is not about to exit stage left any time soon. 

 The point being, there is every indication that President Trump is willing and able to think out of the box, think big and think about the welfare of everyone; in this case not just every American but everyone on earth.

Three years ago, I published a concept of operations for establishing world peace forever. Do we need it? As of January 2025, the Russian forces have suffered over 800,000 losses in the war in Ukraine; Again Israel  has had to fight off Palestinians on four fronts in order to survive; Iran is now part of the China/Russia/North Korea cabal; Rebels recently killed nearly 3,000 people in the city of Goma in the Republic of Conge; Iran can be a nuclear power in days or weeks; North Korea has, since 2021, fast-tracked its nuclear missile-delivery capability as a threat to the U.S.; terrorists are at work all over the world.

When the World Peace Forever concept was published, it was, at that time, a total waste of good ink. The entire Biden/Harris administration was incapable of comprehending or leading such an endeavor. 

Back to one of my favorite quotes from Shakespear, There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.”

For sure Biden/Harris had our once-great nation “bound in shallows and in miseries” on the world stage.

It is time for the United States to fix this ugly world and we have a leader hell-bent on doing so. World Peace Forevercan be the center piece.

 BACKGROUND ON WORLD PEACE PROPOSALS

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS: 

With technically-advanced machine guns, tanks, and chemical warfare, World War I was optimistically referred to as “The war to end all wars.”  January 1918, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson outlined an idea for an organization that would be charged with resolving conflicts before they exploded into bloodshed.  In 1919 the structure of The League of Nations was laid out in Paris and the Treaty of Versailles went into effect in January 1920 with 48 member countries. The U.S. Congress failed to ratify our membership in the League.  Between 1920 and World War II there were numerous opportunities to act, but it never did.  The League of Nations was abandoned during World War II.  The League was not necessarily a bad idea, but numerous times, when actions were required, European countries found it too difficult to put together an effective united front against an aggressor to include the rise of Germany.

THE UNITED NATIONS:

In June 1941 representatives from thirteen nations (the U.S. was not included) met in London and signed the Declaration of St. James’s Palace expressing a vision for postwar world order.  The next step was the Atlantic Conference in August 1941, at which President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill laid out a more detailed form of the alliance called The Atlantic Charter. The final step was the Yalta Conference, in February 1945 when Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin agreed on the establishment of the United Nations as well as the structure of the Security Council.   

Despite having endured for 80 years, generally speaking, the UN is a weak-intentioned, expensive, bureaucratic mass that is involved in everything and accomplishes very little.  Case in point, did the UN even bother to responded to the Russian 24th of February invasion of Ukraine?  Yes, on March 3rd they voted overwhelmingly for a resolution deploring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and called for the immediate withdrawal of its forces.  Wow, that must have shaken Putin to his core.

The UN is an established international organization perfectly positioned to be a greater force for the greater good of the collective world.  But in its current condition, it is incapable of deterring or bringing to a close aggression anywhere in the world. We need to completely rethink this issue, right now while at “the flood”.

THE UN AND THE SECURITY COUNCIL TODAY: 

The UN’s number one priority has always been and continues to be, “to insure international peace and security.” How are they doing?

The Security Council consists of five permanent members, the U.S., China, Russia, France, and the UK (allies during WW II), and ten elected member nations.  The presidency of the Council rotates among the fifteen members, each serving for one month.  Is anyone surprised that Russia was president of the Security Council in February 2022 when they attacked Ukraine? But it gets worse. All important issues and initiatives in the UN pass through the Security Council for a vote of approval. To pass, there must be 9 of the 15 votes for approval and the nine must include all five of the permanent members.  Stated another way, any single permanent member can vote “no” and the issue is dead. With Russia and China as permanent members, nothing positive rarely passes.

Under the United Nations Charter, the principal function of the Security Council is to also “Ensure international peace and security.”

Given these clearly articulated responsibilities and authority, we can conclude that the UN in general and the Security Council, in particular, have been abject failures for eight decades. 

First of all, can you imagine a large international company CEO having fifteen Executive Vice Presidents, each allowed to lead for a month every fifteen months; thereby allowing each to bring his or her biases and priorities to the forefront? It’s at least stupid if not also insane.

CONCLUSIONS TO THIS POINT

The world is a tinder box ready to explode.

Neither the United Nations nor the Security Council  have not, can not and will never be able to take on its priority mission, “to ensue international peace and security.”

We need a new way to think about and then to accomplish continued peace and security for the whole world. President Trump can make this happen.

HOW PRESIDENT TRUMP SHOULD PROCEED

First, what not to do.  Do not turn this over to the State or Defense Departments; it will immediately have a staff of hundreds doing nothing productive. Do not get Congress involved yet.

The president should initially work this action within the White House with a small team set up in the National Security Advisor’s office.  Keep it close hold initially.

The way ahead is for President Trump to get a few national leaders on face time or teams meet. Begin with our long-serving allies through the Cold War; UK, France, Canada, Germany and Italy.

PRESIDENT TRUMP’S TALKING POINTS TO EXPLAIN THE CONCEPT OF OPERATIONS FOR UNITED FOR WORLD PEACE, UWP.

Thank you for taking my call. As we speak, my people are sending a document to your offices which lays out the who, what, when, where, why and how to achieve and sustain world peace forever. My intent today is to talk you through the concept of operations and take your questions at the end.

Some facts bearing on the issue:

In the past year hundreds of thousands of military and civilian persons have been killed or wounded by warring factions.

For the past eighty years the United Nations has had as it number one priority mission to “insure international peace and security”. They have failed 100%.

The world is currently a powder keg in Europe, the Middle East and in Africa. We can and should end this.

I am NOT proposing we attempt to fix the UN; that is impossible with the one-vote veto available to Russia and China on the all-powerful Security Council.

What I am proposing is the creation of a new global organization absolutely and completely separate from the UN that will have as its only mission, continuous international peace and security. The mission, in a word, is deterrence. I will refer to the organization as United for World Peace, UPW.  I envision having at least 150 member nations.

The concept of operations is for every member nation to be prepared, at all times, to rapidly deploy their highly trained piece of the overall global deterrent force. For nation X their contribution might be a mechanized brigade with tanks, mechanized infantry, supporting field artillery and a support battalion.  For nation Y it could be tactical air.  For nation Z it could be naval forces or it could be special operations forces. For the 36 nations without a defense budget, there will be requirements for logisticians, medical personnel, police or provide a forward-based airfield that can support tac-air and cargo planes. For the U.S. the contribution could be its entire fleet of 900 military cargo aircraft to rapidly move forces to designated hot spots; a critical capability that no other nation can provide.  

There should be a small United for World Peace (UWP) headquarters led by a president elected by the member nations.  The staff will conduct daily operations by video with the Ambassadors from each nation who are routinely at their home-station. 

There will be a separate military headquarters with an experienced 4-star military officer nominated by the UWP president and approved by a majority vote of the member nations.

The military element will be referred to as the IDF.  Not to be confused with the Israeli Defense Force, the “D” for our organization stands for Deterrence.  This International Deterrence Force will have zero “defense” functions.  This force will be about continuous deterrence and massive rapidly deployable offensive capabilities when it becomes necessary to immediately overwhelm an aggressor nation or aggressor group.

The military staff will consist primarily of experienced operators who will lay out a vast number of potential aggressor contingencies that could possibly occur. Then they will tailor an IDF force from the coalition nations’ contributions that will, when deterrence fails, be trained to rapidly deploy to counter attack the aggressor with an overwhelming strike force.  The underlying concept for tailoring the force is, “never take a knife to a knife fight”. Always plan to overwhelm the enemy with a superior force.

Secondly, in the IDF headquarters, there will be intelligence experts pulling applicable intel from all the member nations and keeping it current for every region and every individual nation that may have a high potential for aggressor activities.

The IDF conditions will be as follows:

IDFCON 1:  Normal peacetime condition.  A completed deployment plan will be in place for every member nation.  Readiness standards will be clearly articulated and be enforced for every IDF element.

IDFCON 2:  The UWP president and IDF Commander, having identified a potential threat to a member nation, will tailor a force for deployment and place them on 24-hour alert.

IDFCON 3:  All personnel and equipment for the designated units will move to assembly areas.  Deployment aircraft will move to their first pick-up airfield. Forward deployment airfields will be manned and prepared for 24/7 operations.

IDFCON 4:  Deploy all designated IDF elements to the target area and prepare to initiate an overwhelming counteroffensive.

Let me be very clear at this point. Neither the UWP nor the IDF will necessarily be led by the United States. What I intend is for the U.S. to lead the formation of the organization and make the two headquarters functional.

Will this concept of a coalition of nations with a military mission actually work?  Yes, for example, as you know NATO was formed in 1949 with 12 members and successfully deterred the Soviet Union from its intended end state of world domination and the destruction of the U.S. until its collapse in 1991.

Can a coalition of nation rapidly deploy and launch a successful counter offensive. Yes, it has already been done. I want to refer you to the document that should be arriving at your location about now. Please study the part about the coalition action in 1990 and into 1991.

You will recall in 1990 Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces attacked, defeated and occupied Kuwait. In January 1991 a 39-nation coalition attacked and defeated Saddam Hussien’s vaunted “Mother of All Armies” in just six weeks of air and ground operations. The U.S.-led coalition of nations in a very short period of time deployed a massive air and mechanized army of about a half a million strong to conduct a counter offensive. The ground war lasted about 100 hours during which Iraq lost about 3,700 tanks, 70,000 soldiers taken prisoner and over 100,000 killed.

Funding would be by member nations for two small UWP and IDF headquarters. But, in reality your overall military budget could actually be reduced.  Formation of this organization could potentially reduce world-wide military spending by trillions of dollars per year. Member nations  do will not need to maintain a defensive force; that is what the IDF deterrence is for.

Most nations today have a full complement (air/ground/naval) force structure.  In reality, what each nation will need under this concept is to support only their element of the entire IDF.

The power in this concept of operations will be the inclusion of Article 5 borrowed from the NATO Treaty which declares that an attack on one member is an attack against all members. That is the ultimate deterrent.

With this coalition in being, potential aggressors will have to contemplate that on day-one of an attack they will face odds of 1 against potentially 150. 

With the UWP in place as Russia was deploying a massive invasion force to the Ukraine border in late 2021 and early 2022, the President of UWP and the Commander of IDF would have visited Putin and explain to him that if the first shot is fired, he would be, within 7 days, facing a massive counter offensive that would destroy his military and likely take down his government. Ukraine would not have happened; millions of casualties would have been avoided and Ukraine would not be faced with rebuilding its cities.

With the UWP in place Israel would not have been fighting invaders on four fronts for its very existence.

If UWP was in place, Rwanda-backed rebels would not now be killing Republic of Congo citizens in central west Africa. The origin of the current fighting can partly be traced back to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 when about 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered by ethnic Hutu extremists; 30 years of senseless killing.

What I have discussed to this point has to do with a conventional battlefield. But in the world today we must also be aware of the destruction that can be brought to bear with ciber attacks. Imagine the loss of life involved if, for example, the entire power grid of your country was taken down and could not be restored for months or years. Nations must expend continuous efforts internally to take down ciber attack capability or face the consequences of a counter ciber attack from the IDF.

Finally, there is significant discussion today about “a new world order”. It is within the art of the possible that the new world order could be world peace forever.

Thank you for listening, your questions please.

President Trump should within a few days quickly repeat this small-group discussion with Japan/South Korea/Australia/India and perhaps a couple Southeast Asian nations. Then another European non-Nato group, a Middle East group, Latin American nations and Africa.  By then the word will have leaked out.  To attempt to quiet the uninformed naysayers the President should speak to the nation with a formal address that will be picked up by the remainder of potential member nations.

Following that, President Trump should begin asking nations to commit to membership in United for World Peace and proceed to establish the two required headquarters. Make all that happen within a two -week period and build international momentum.  

WE HAVE BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

A coalition of nations can be rapidly formed to counter an aggressor. Here are the numbers associated with the 1990-91 Gulf War. it is worth going over the numbers a couple times to get a sense of the enormity of the air-lift and how quickly the nations molded into a far-superior offensive force.  

Coalition member nations: 39 countries, of which 28 contributed combat forces.

Force size: Approximately 670,000 troops from 28 countries, 425,000 of which were from the United States.

Coalition air component size: 2,250 combat aircraft, 1,800 of which were American.

Coalition airlift: 509,129 passengers and 594,730 tons of cargo carried.

Coalition sorties flown: 100,000+.

Aerial refueling: 15,434 sorties that dispensed 110.2 million gallons of fuel.

Number of dumb bombs dropped: 210,000.

Number of smart bombs dropped: 9,342.

30mm depleted uranium rounds fired by A-10 manned aircraft (tank-killers): 782,514.

Duration of air campaign before ground invasion: 39 days.

Iraqi tanks lost during the war: 3,700 out of 4,280 in inventory.

Number of U.S. Carrier Battle Groups on station: 6.

Coalition POWs taken during the war: 26.

Iraqi POWs taken during the war: 70,000+.

U.S. combat related deaths: 147

Iraqi military deaths: 100,000+.

Ground war duration: 100 hours.

This all happened between August and the following February. Beyond the magnitude of the war-fighting personnel and equipment, just think about the daily logistics of delivering food, water, millions of tons of ammunition being moved and handling 70,000 POWs all of it happening in the Saudi Arabian desert. Simply remarkable.

CONCLUSIONS

With the IDF in place, global defense spending could probably be reduced by trillion of dollars per year.  

There will no longer be a need for nations’ bilateral treaties for mutual defense. 

With world peace assurances in place, the next step could be a world without nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, or biological weapons.

The UN “peacekeeping force” budget for 2021 was $6.38 billion.  With active worldwide deterrence and an overwhelming rapidly-deployable counter-offensive force, peace will be the standard day-to-day condition.

This is also an opportunity to innovate when dealing with the possibility of World War III with China. Here is a plausible scenario that demonstrates the versatility and power of the UWP concept. 

 China continues to threaten Taiwan with aggressive air and naval operations. It is determined by the IDF Commander that the demonstrations are a rehearsal for an actual attack. President Biden once declared publicly that if attacked by China, the U.S. would provide military aid to Taiwan.  A naval showdown with China could become the U.S. worst nightmare.

 Recognizing that China’s Achilles heel is imported oil, about 11 million barrels per day, the IDF Commander could Inform China that a combined naval force from all IDF member nations is in route to the South China Sea to create an impenetrable blockade of all incoming gas and oil tankers. Additionally, missiles and aircraft capable of taking out the gas and oil pipelines from Russia will be immediately forward deployed.  This scenario could shut down China in a few weeks.  The UWP President will request China publicly sign a pledge to acknowledge that forevermore Taiwan will be considered an independent nation free of all ties to China and provocative military actions against Taiwan are forbidden. Deterrence in action in support of world peace. Deterrence in action; not a shot fired.

PROOF OF CONCEPT

One of the problems associated with a new idea is dealing with the naysayers, change and fear of the unknown. But with this initiative we have proof of concept, a rare advantage. 

With respect to the issue of deterrence, NATO vs the Soviet Union for decades is proof of concept.

The U.S. led counter offensive against Iraq in 1991-1992 is proof of concept with respect to the formation and rapid deployment of an overwhelming counter offensive force.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Mr. President, you are currently, “The leader of the free world” in name only.  Here is an opportunity to lead the world towards sustained world peace not for the sake of the United States but for the sake of the world.   Make it your number one, non-political priority. 

Author’s note:  I would not expect all of you reading this to agree with all of the details. But if you at least agree with the concept, please forward it to your Senators and Representative in Washington.  Perhaps someone with a national voice will take up the challenge.

Mister President, this will be your legacy, perhaps the greatest in U.S. history. Become the global peacemaker.

TAKING DOGE ONE STEP FURTHER ON A DUAL TRACK

From what we have seen so far, the new Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE appears to be concentrating on spending.  That’s good, they are reportedly uncovering some massive government waste, fraud and abuse of power.

What is “spending”?  Spending is the end state of the entire, huge budgeting process.  Determining the federal spending parameters begins with the development of the President’s Budget submitted to Congress every year in early February. Congress then begins a well-defined but normally almost completely and irresponsibly ignored specific timelines to determined what will be spent, when and by whom during the next fiscal year.  

While DOGE is into spending, we must also have an in-depth look at budgeting if DOGE is to be completely successful.

President Trump can accomplish both simultaneously, efficiently and effectively and thereby arrive at the desired end state.  Keep in mind that every successful strategic plan must begin at the end; that is, by defining the end state.  But if the president does not also launch a look into the entire Executive Branch budgeting piece, the overall plan will be only half-baked. 

GROUND TRUTH:

A mammoth, sprawling, uncontrollable, federal government currently numbering over 4 million employees plus hundreds of thousands of contract personnel was never the vision or intent of the Founding Fathers.  Organizations have a propensity to grow to a point of diminishing returns; cease to be efficient, effective, and/or no longer perform the functions for which they were created.  At that point, a large organization will tend to look inward and become self-perpetuating rather than value-added for the greater good.

Some or all of that applies today to the Departments and agencies in the Executive Branch of the federal government. This results in three major problems that desperately need to get fixed.

One, it costs hundreds of billions of dollars annually to maintain and sustain office space, salaries, health care and long-term retirement pay and benefit to the massive Executive Branch.

Second, and more importantly, the annual U.S. budget boils up out of this massive organization. Every government-funded program is maintained and sustained inside these bureaucracies.  These programs are this organization’s product.  General Motor’s product is vehicles; the Executive Branch’s product is taxpayer-funded programs.  The question is, what is the value added of those programs?  An in-depth review will undoubtedly find programs that have existed for decades, their original purpose no longer relevant; programs that sounded good at their inception but have failed in execution; programs to solve a problem that should have been the purview of state or local officials; programs initiated to solve a short-term problem but have lived on forever.  The list is long.  President Reagan summed up the problem with this statement, “Government is like a baby, an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”

Why specifically do all of the organizational elements in the Executive Branch exist? For the most part they are formed to support a law, a regulation and/or an internal rule or one sent down from Congress or the White House. There is an interesting measure of an administration’s regulatory activity; it’s called The Federal Register. it is a daily journal of federal government activity that includes presidential documents, proposed and final rules, and public notices. It is a common measure of an administration’s regulatory activity.

Some recent administrations’ Federal Registry activity: According to government data, the Federal Register hit an all-time high of 95,894 pages in 2016, during the last year of the Obama/Biden administration (the Affordable Care Act contains about 17,000 pages of regulations). The first year of the Trump administration, 2017, there were 61,950 pages, the lowest recorded page total since 2001. In Bidens last 12 months in the White House, his administration created 3,248 new “rules” and finished out the year by publishing 107,262 pages in the Federal Register.

We are a regulation nation; an administrative state and it must get cleaned up.

In his first days in office, President Trump has declared that for every new regulation federal agencies must delete ten existing regulations. Not good. There is a quote that sums up that directive, “For every complex problem, there is a simple solution and it is usually wrong.”  The point being, the process of deleting regulations needs to be a critical element in the bottom-up Executive Branch review wherein there will be direct and thoughtful linkage of regulations to organizations to budget to value added and then a thoughtful decision can be made as to whether the executing organization and regulation should go, stay or be altered.

HOW TO PROCEED WITH THE BOTTOM-UP PART OF DOGE

First recognize this will be a difficult process because we are talking about change, massive change, within each Executive Branch organization. We must recognize that for any large organization, especially one as large as the Executive Branch, change is very difficult. Fear of the unknown is a powerful human force, especially in government with an entrenched, layered bureaucracy that is stiff, stifling, and, in many respects, self-serving.

How does all this get accomplished? It will be a months-long tedious but critically important process. There are no viable shortcuts to re-thinking, re-designing, and re-structuring large organizations and making them be all they can and should be. 

Vice President Vance should lead this effort in concert with what Elon Musk and his team are doing on the spending issues. Vance should first set up a senior task force consisting of the deputies of all the departments, agencies, and commissions. They will be the change-agents and become the junkyard dogs of Washington.

Define the end state for this campaign. For example, the Vice President might say, “Over the next few months our task force will look inside every organizational element of the Executive Branch.  We will assess their mission (is it relevant today), their structure (too many or too few people), layering (is it OK or dysfunctional), can the organization integrate (communicate) vertically and horizontally efficiently and effectively on a day-to-day basis? Is the organization as a whole agile (able to deal with change as a matter of course) and is there overall value-added for the government and especially for the American taxpayer?”

The process begins in every named organization by putting together a very detailed organization chart. That’s the essential visual element for the task force and it provides an immediate sense of size, complexity, and layering.  Why the organization chart?  Because it allows the task force to begin the analysis and restructure at the bottom of the organization. Without the org chart the process will just not work effectively.

Using the Department of Agriculture as an example, there are 65 different organizational elements that come under the headings of departments, agencies, councils, institutes, programs, foundations, services, authorities, offices of, boards and facilities.  Inside them are departments, directorates, branches, sections, cells, and individual elements.  Every one of those becomes a “box” in the organization chart.  Each organizational box must list the name of the element, number of employees, and the grade of the leader, GS 10, 12, whatever.

Within the Department of Agriculture, for example, the Deputy Secretary, part of the VP’s senior task force, will form his/her own internal departmental task force. The Department Task Force’s first action will be to send out an internal memo to the leaders of every “box” to submit, in one week, “a no-more-than-two-page, font 12” report to the Deputy Secretary.  The report format should include, as a minimum these six elements:

First, a one or two-sentence mission statement that describes what it is that element collectively does; for example, responsible for writing, executing, and enforcing Department Regulation 135, Beef Export Program, and reporting results quarterly to ………

Keep in mind that there are undoubtedly tens of thousands of worthless reports written every year by an entrenched bureaucratic mass that lives on forever sucking up tax dollars, stifling initiative, and being a roadblock to progress.

Second, the report should describe the grade structure of all the employees in the box.

The Department task Force will look at the grade structure for each of the boxes in the organization chart.  Is it commensurate with the degree of complexity of the mission? Could two or more similar “boxes” be combined with fewer total people?

Third, describe a typical work week to include the number of meetings and amount of travel.  

This can reveal a lot about an organizational element and its leader.  Many meetings are just to fill up time, or are a daily social coffee clutch, or make the person in charge feel like he/she is actually “leading”.  Many are a colossal waste of time. If employees have time to attend too many meetings, they probably are not very busy to begin with. Is the travel critical to success, nice to have, or perhaps just to fill up the workweek? Travel is very expensive and too many times it is the recipients’ worst nightmare, “I’m from the federal government and I’m here to help.”

Fourth, what laws, rules and/or regulations guide that organization’s work? 

This is a critical element in the review.  Has this organization been acting out a scenario that is unnecessary or at least should better reside at the state or local level?

Fifth, a list, in single sentences, of major accomplishments in the past twelve months.

The task force will then determine if the accomplishments are in line with the mission or are just doing busy work?

Sixth and finally, a short statement of value-added. For example, without us the Department would not/could not do the following………

The Department Task Force will begin a detailed review of every input report. Their job is to ask, do we need Regulation 135 (Beef Export Program) any longer?  If so, could this be done with fewer people?  Could the same number of employees also be responsible for regulation 246 (Pork Export Program)? Do we need the report quarterly? And most importantly, what is the value-added of that organizational element to the overall Department’s mission? Was it formed long ago to solve a problem that no longer exists?  Is it in fact harmful?  Does anyone up the chain actually need the quarterly report or is it just a nice-to-know information?

By bringing together the three critical elements (the guiding law/regulation/rule, the number of people involved and the value added), the Department team then comes to the conclusion that there are not sufficient reasons to justify keeping that “box”.

Two things just happened. One, part of the Executive Branche’s annual budget just got cut out.  Multiply that equation by perhaps thousands of similar actions and the President’s budget will be reduced by billions of dollars.  Secondly, when the box goes away, so does the regulation/rule that caused it to exist. This reduces the regulation nation in a logical way.

Additionally, this type review and action will fly under the radar and not create Democrat or radical-left media hysteria about MAGA-reductions.

WHAT CAN GO WRONG?

Some of the Vice President’s senior task force may not be completely on board.  Agriculture Department Deputy Secretary to Vice President Vance, “I’ve taken a look at the 100,000 end-strength in the Department of Agriculture and believe it is about right.”  That person must be immediately replaced; they are part of the problem.  

Some of the reports from the “boxes” to the Department task force will not be two pages in length.  The box leader will want to make an impression and he/she will send in a 15-page tome.  The senior task force leader must immediately scribble a note on the front page, “What is it you don’t understand about 2-page limit.  Back on my desk by close of business.”

The point being, the Vice President and every leader on the senior task force must send a hard message about change; get with the program or be immediately replaced. 

This process, will consume much of VP Vance’s time for a few months. He should routinely go to all the Departments and be satisfied they completely understand that their review of the input from the bottom-up is all about policy, practices, process, grade structure commensurate with overall responsibility, span of control, layering, and value-added. Are they tough enough, too tough, thorough enough, on the right track, or being overly protective of the status quo?  

 By frequently visiting the subordinate task forces, VP Vance will also be able to pick up strong points and failures and pass them along to other Departments as best/worst practices. 

The leaders of the Executive Departments along with the VP’s senior task force members will conduct a monthly in-progress-review for President Trump where they will lay out their findings to date and get marching-orders for continued work.

WHY DO ALL THIS WORK?

 One the most common attempts at downsizing, in my experience used numerous times over the past decades, have been to declare a hiring freeze and/ or order an across-the-board, for example, ten percent personnel cut, neither of which make any sense nor achieve any lasting positive results. 

Second, what I have described above has never been done before.  We have just allowed the Executive Branch to grow without ever undertaking a necessary pruning process

CONCLUSIONS

Once the task force has worked its way up from the bottom, looking at every element, their individual mission, and value added, then and only then will they be capable of looking back and seeing how many subordinate elements are off track, irrelevant, unnecessary or even counterproductive.  They will then be capable of restructuring, re-aligning, re-tasking, reorganizing the subordinate elements to create an organization that is more focused, aligned, responsive, innovative, agile, and rid of pockets of resistance.

Having reached the top of the organization chart it is possible the Vice President’s senior task force could conclude that an entire department’s continued existence should be questioned.  A prime example is the Department of Education.  We know that education in America is a national disgrace and not getting better in spite of (or because of) the 4,400 employees and a 2024 budget of $79 billion; an $11 billion increase over 2023.

The task forces must be especially mindful of the phrase, “we provide oversight.”That is a red flashing light that an organization does not, in and of itself, produce anything of value. They simply exist to grade papers, expand their purview, inhibit progress and expend tax dollars. 

During the process, it is important to not lose sight of the two-fold objectives.  First, the objective is NOT to reach some specific lower end-strength number of federal employees.  The objective is to rid the government of boxes” in the organization charts that have no valueadded, they just exist because they have always been there.  The end state is an organization that is leaner, more focused, more efficient, more effective, and agile. The second objective is to end up with an organization that has a much smaller and more realistic annual budget.

When completed, many positions, perhaps thousands of them, will be eliminated. It will then take a couple years of shuffling the deck by the Office of Personnel Management to get folks reassigned or retired, but it is within the art of the possible and worth the effort. 

There is also a states’ rights issues in all of this.  As the federal government grows, a natural outcome is that they over-reach into areas that are better and more effectively handled at the local and state levels.  Federal over-reach tends to result in a one-size-fits-all approach to problem-solving and creates a stifling regulation-nation.

BOTTOM LINE:

Getting spending and hence debt under control will resonate with Americans and fit perfectly with the Trump movement for necessary governmental change.

We need to accomplish a number of really big things in order to move towards a balanced budget and away from continuously approving another debt-limit increase.

This dual VP Vance/Elon Musk DOGE undertaking is one of the keys to success and is clearly within the art of the possible. Without it, DOGE will be incomplete.

President Reagan got it right when he reminded us that:

“Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.”

“Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

“Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.”

Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of two books, Vision to Execution and Fix the Systems, Transform America as well as the author of a blog, WeThePeopleSpeaking.com.