Cleaning House

Great article by David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His most interesting suggestion for a post-Bush national security infrastructure involves the Department of Energy:

And as America's national security priorities shift away from the post-9/11 singular focus on terrorism, perhaps the most significant change the next president can quickly make is to raise the profile of the Department of Energy within the national security establishment. The department has existed, largely underutilized and often ignored, since the 1970s. But it is where many of the country's greatest security challenges will intersect, particularly the need for a committed, urgent move away from dependency on foreign oil. The department is home to the national energy laboratories that can be the centerpiece of the national effort to wean the country off of fossil fuels. It will be essential to the energy diplomacy that will be so important in the decades ahead--for example, working together with countries like China to make carbon capture and sequestration a reality. The department also has a central role to play in our heretofore-unsuccessful efforts to contain the proliferation of nuclear weapons technologies worldwide--a critical component of our national security strategy. Our next president can empower the department to address these challenges by promoting those who run it to a leading role in the new administration, within the National Security Council, and on the daily schedule of the president.