‘Accepting Risk’ In U.S. National Defense Is No Longer Acceptable
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Logically, it is not possible to do more with less, as the current Defense Secretary once asked of his department.
Dan Goure [2]
Washington is a city that loves euphemisms. All difficult issues and troublesome subjects are couched in simple, banal terms that decision makers hope the American people will think they understand but that actually mean something different. So “revenue enhancement” is what one says when they really mean increased taxes and fees. “Undocumented immigrants,” a term which sounds as if someone just left their wallet in another pair of pants, is employed to avoid using the word illegal. How about “violent extremists” to refer to ideologically-driven, organized and armed terrorists? Then there is the term “misspeaking,” popular among politicians of all stripes wishing to avoid having to admit they out-and-out lied.
The Department of Defense is the master of speaking in code words. In about a minute I came up with the following examples: kinetic operations, collateral damage, enhanced interrogation techniques, overseas contingency operations, effects based operations and green on blue incidents. The worst of the lot is the term “accepting risk.” Accepting risk is a legitimate term taken from the field of risk management to describe a strategy of not spending money to mitigate the effects of low probability events. Since there is always an element of uncertainty with respect to the identity of future adversaries or their propensity to initiate hostilities against the United States, some degree of risk is inevitable in defense planning.
Source URL (retrieved on October 30, 2016):
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/%E2%80%98accepting-risk%E2%80%99-national-defense-no-longer-acceptable-18204?utm_source=RealClearDefense%20Morning%20Recon&utm_campaign=4283b20ff8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_10_27&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_694f73a8dc-4283b20ff8-81835773
