When together we pool our resources and share responsibility for the common defense, individual nations' security burdens become lighter. This has been demonstrated right now, today, for example, by over 70 nations and international organizations of the Defeat-ISIS campaign that is successfully conducting operations in the Middle East. And again, the 40-odd nations that stand shoulder-to-shoulder in NATO's mission in Afghanistan.
To strengthen and work jointly with more allies, our organizations, processes and procedures must be ally-friendly. The department will do more than just listen to other nations' ideas. We will be willing to be persuaded by them, recognizing that all not -- that not all good ideas come from the country with the most aircraft carriers.
This line of effort will bolster an extended network capable of decisively meeting the challenges of our time. So we're going to make the military more lethal, and we are going to build and strengthen traditional alliances, as well as go out and find some new partners -- maybe nontraditional partners -- as we do what the Greatest Generation did, coming home from World War II, when they built the alliances that have served us so well, right through today.
Our third line of effort serves as the foundation for our competitive edge:reforming the business practices of the department to provide both solvency and security, thereby gaining the full benefit from every dollar spent, in which way we will gain and hold the trust of Congress and the American people.
We are going to have to be good stewards of the tax dollars allocated to us, and that means results and accountability matter.
To keep pace with our times, the department will transition to a culture of performance and affordability that operates at the speed of relevance. Success does not go to the country that develops a new technology first, but rather, to the one that better integrates it and more swiftly adapts its way of fighting.
|