Overview
For this assignment, your role is the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy preparing the Secretary of Defense for a Principals Committee Meeting.
Review the materials from the module and your lecture notes, with particular emphasis on the Panter article of April 6, 2021 and the Smith article of February 16, 2021.
Write a Briefing Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense’s participation in a Principals’ Committee meeting to recommend to the President whether and to what extent the U.S. Navy should conduct freedom of navigation exercises in the South China Sea during the next year.
Include:
The likely positions to be taken by key members of the Principals’ Committee either in support of or objecting to the recommendation.
The consequences of the decision for larger Pentagon responsibilities with respect to China and Russia.
This memo should be in the format of the model memorandum; this time please include a page of talking points. Since this is a memo from the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy to the Secretary of Defense, you should drop the State Department header and, instead, use 'Office of the Secretary of Defense, Pentagon, Washington, D.C. 20301.' The 'To' line on the memo should read: 'The Secretary of Defense.' The 'from' line should read: 'USD/P --' followed by your first name, middle initial, and last name.
There's no need to include a drafting and clearing page, but this memorandum would be drafted by the desk officer responsible for freedom of navigation issues on the staff of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, cleared by the Assistant Secretary as well as the Deputy Assistant Secretaries of Defense for China, South and Southeast Asia, and East Asia; appropriate officers working for the Chief of Naval Operations; appropriate staff for the Secretary of the Navy; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of the Joint Staff, and the senior JCS officer responsible for the Indo-Pacific region, DoD's General Counsel, as well as likely many others. Since the Pentagon is such a large agency and this is such an important issue, there would be many people working this memo.