Inter-departmental Coordination And The Benghazi Incident

This paper attempts to seek explanations for the inability of the U.S.government to respond to Benghazi attack by analyzing the problems exposed by the U.S.government' s response to the interagency process of the Benghazi attack.The Pearl Harbor incident became the direct impetus for the reform of the US national security system after the end of World War II.President Roosevelt's experiments in the wartime national security institutions provided useful experience for the post-war reforms.The result of the post-war national security system reform was the National Security Act of 1947.The National Security Council established under the Act was the core of the post-war national security system.The formal interagency security policy coordination mechanism was also accompanied by the establishment of the National Security Council.As a result,the interagency process mechanism has gradually matured after more than half a century of development,forming a "three-tier committee model." Through the study of this paper,it was found that after the incident in Benghazi,the U.S.government took advantage of an interagency process mechanism to cope with this incident.The problems that occurred in interagency process led to the ineffectiveness of the U.S.government in responding to the Benghazi attack.The existing research on the poor performance of the US government in Benghazi has always focused on the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.Which believes that the underperformance of the State Department under her administration is the main reason for this tragedy.It is understandable that it is normal for Republicans to splash this pot of “dirty water” to Clinton in order to win the 2014 Congressional and 2016 general elections.The Democratic Party's counterattack is excusable: there are many departments involved in the Benghazi incident.With the power of the State Department,it is impossible to cause this tragedy.The poor performance of the government must be complicated and multifaceted.This article seeks to seek an explanation from the perspective of the US government's inability to deal with the Benghazi attack.After the Benghazi attack,the U.S.government used interagency process to cope with the crisis.Several meetings held at the White House were a concrete manifestation of the government's use of interagency process to solve problems.Through research,the paper found that there are three serious problems in interagency process responses to incidents: poor leadership;lack of necessary communication and exchange among departments;and the interposition of departmental interests in the coordination of decision-making goals.These three issues led to the government responded poorly to the attack in Benghazi.