The Greening of the U.S. Military: Environmental Policy, National Security, and Organizational Change

Preface

Preface This book is a parable rife with practical lessons about the challenges, choices, and opportunities involved when contests over “principles and practicality” arise in the American political system. Moreover, it is a tale of a kind of reform that despite its implications for principles and practicality has garnered scant attention from scholars in the fields of public management, public administration, public policy, and political science. Specifically, the book’s focus is on an epic and ongoing struggle to build a corporate sense of responsibility within the United States military for ensuring that its day-to-day operations promote national security without putting public health, safety, and the environment at risk. It is, in the process, a saga of the thrust-and-parry politics accompanying efforts to “green” the armed forces that began episodically during the Cold War, took on heightened salience and vigor during the Clinton years, and today competes during the George W. Bush presidency for attention and funding amid the War on Terror, insurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a proposed and costly transformation of the military. It is also a cautionary tale showing how change is less about the power of ideas than about the protection and pursuit of political, organizational , and personal prerogatives. As such, this book is pregnant with implications for those interested in protecting national security in these challenging times without compromising public health, safety, and the environment in the process—and vice versa. This book also is a story rife with implications for scholars concerning the adequacy of leading theories of large-scale organizational change when applied to public organizations. With a small but growing set of exceptions in the public management literature, most of what we think we know about large-scale organizational change is predicated on theoretical perspectives culled largely from research on private sector organizations. Moreover, even that literature is plagued by a variety of competing theoretical perspectives. Given this situation, the book discerns from the patterns of politics witnessed during efforts to green the U.S. military a polity-centered framework for understanding and studying large-scale change in public organizations in this and other policy domains. I culled the data informing my analysis from documents afforded by the agencies and interest groups involved; congressional hearings; Government Accountability Office (formerly known as the General Accounting Office) and Congressional Budget Office testimony and reports; studies by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council; and books, studies, and monographs by academic and military writers. In addition, I systematically reviewed all articles appearing between 1993 and 2005 in the leading industry newsletter on military affairs and the environment, the Defense Environment Alert (DEA). The DEA’s reputation is unparalleled for its neutrality, accuracy, and commentary. Also informing the study are articles appearing in the Washington Post, the New York Times, local newspapers near military facilities where issues have arisen, a variety of law and military journals, and the Federal Facilities Environmental Journal. I supplemented these data with interviews (and follow-up interviews) conducted between 1990 and 2006 with more than one hundred individuals in the public and private sectors either working in, or authorities on, the greening of the U.S. military. Interviewees included top-, mid-, and field-level officials in the Pentagon, in the military services, in regulatory agencies at the federal and state levels of government, in national and grassroots environmental organizations, and in academia. Confidentiality was offered to each of these interviewees, and most took advantage of that offer. I opted for this arrangement after realizing from initial interviews that this would be necessary in order to get candid assessments by insiders, especially from those with ties to the Pentagon. For those desiring anonymity, I typically cite organizational affiliation only. Those who waived this offer are cited by name in the book. This said, readers should keep several points in mind. First, my occasional use of the terms “reform” or “reformers” does not connote support for any particular greening initiative. As public administrationists Sergio Fernandez and Hal Rainey argue, “Some ideas for change are simply ill conceived, unjustified, or pose harmful consequences for members of the organization.”1 Rather, the book assesses how well or ill suited the participants’ actions are for discerning how best to ensure national security without compromising public health, safety, and the environment in the process. As such, I do not assume the military is wrong or right in resisting environmental protection...