Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Paul Brinkley straddles the territory between U.S. military and diplomatic efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan as director of the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations.
The task force was created to marshal U.S. economic assistance to create jobs and restore war-ravaged industries in Iraq and Afghanistan. But when he isn’t dealing with factory owners angry about unreliable power, unemployed workers pleading for their pre-war jobs or combatants trying to blow up his convoy, Brinkley faces criticism from the diplomatic corps and aid organizations about the appropriateness and legality of his work. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, calls economic stability a crucial element of counterinsurgency.
Paul Brinkley
Current Position: Deputy Undersecretary of Defense (since 2006)
Boss: Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn
Brinkley’s philosophy is that if people are at work, they are less likely to be out laying roadside bombs.
“America is the predominant actor in terms of projecting economic prosperity. But we’ve seen in places like Iraq and Afghanistan a synchronous linkage of violence and economic deprivation.” Brinkley told the McKinsey Quarterly in March 2010. “I don’t think it’s an either/or, and I don’t think security necessarily creates economic development or vice versa, but to say there’s no relationship between economics and security is, I believe, very naïve.”
Path to power
Brinkley joined the Department of Defense in 2004 as a special assistant to the undersecretary of defense and was given the task of modernizing business practices and overseeing investment in Iraq. At the time, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was committed to streamlining the Pentagon.
Brinkley established the Business Transformation Agency in 2005 with the goal of using it to perform a corporate-style turnaround d of DoD’s contracting and military support services. He intended the agency to speed up the Defense Department’s response to troops’ needs, develop teamwork across the department and improve service every six months for the 10 years the transition authority was planned to exist. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced the disbandment of the agency on Aug. 10.
In 2006, Brinkley was promoted to deputy undersecretary of defense and established the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations. Its original operations were in Iraq, but have since expanded to Afghanistan.
Before joining the Defense Department, Brinkley, 42, was a technology executive in Silicon Valley. His final position in private industry was chief information officer and senior vice president at JDS Uniphase, a communications technology company based in San Jose Calif.
Brinkley has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in industrial engineering from Texas A&M University. He is the recipient of four U.S. patents.
The issues
Policy and Coordination— Economic development activities taking place alongside combat operations are a relatively new concern for the U.S. military; the U.S. government has initiatives but lacks a unifying policy for such situations (CSIS June 2010). Weak or ill-defined coordination among U.S. and foreign departments, agencies and organizations hampers efforts to create jobs and restore industrial production.
Markets — As enthusiasm for the war in Iraq cooled, Brinkley’s team had difficulty finding retailers who would buy goods made in Iraq to sell in their stores (Washington Post Aug. 24, 2007).
Afghanistan— Part of Brinkley’s work in Afghanistan will be in developing mineral wealth scattered around the country (Defense Department briefing, June 14 2010).
The Network
Then-Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England appointed Brinkley, initially to work with contractors providing military support in Iraq. (TechNews July 10, 2006)
Petraeus has spoken favorably of Brinkley’s work. Petraeus sees economic development as a vital component of counterinsurgency.