One day, twenty-four lieutenant colonels got RIF (Reduction in Force) orders: “Go home. We don’t need you anymore.” Great young sergeants, with careers ahead of them, who wanted to stay in, were given an ultimatum: “Get out now and we’ll give you fifteen thousand dollars. Stay in and take your chance. You could be riffed, cut, and get nothing.”
“What to do?”
The officers were all in the same boat. “I don’t know what to tell you,” they said to the NCOs when they asked.
By good luck, the thoughts about disbanding NATO remained only thoughts. Though NATO had been born out of the conflict with the communists, it had come to fill many other essential needs. The alliance had to be maintained not just for the defense of the participating countries, but because it had become an organization where competent, responsible nations working closely together could actually get important things done that they could not accomplish on their own. In so doing, they were showing the rest of the world how to do it. NATO had become an irreplaceable model for everyone else.
Disbanding it was exactly the reverse of what had to be done. We needed to enlarge it. Fortunately, we did that. Later events in the Balkans and the NATO expansion to the east proved the continued importance of this vital institution to the stability of Europe.
Thank God for General Galvin. This World War Two enlisted man who’d risen through the ranks had the wisdom, experience, and prestige to keep us ahead of the dynamic challenges. Of all our leaders facing the new, post-Soviet world, he was the one who came closest to the vision George Marshall had given us fifty years before.
General Galvin did what he could to stop the slide in our troop strength: “We’re still going to have troop requirements in Europe,” he said, in essence. “Let’s figure out what they are going to be before we bring everybody home. Let’s figure out what new missions we are going to have. Maybe we ought to think about leveling off at 150,000 troops. Wait awhile, think everything through, maybe readjust NATO’s structure.”
The people back in Washington hit back at him: “Bullshit. 150,000’s nothing. That’s just a point on the way down. We’re cutting a lot deeper than that.”
“Wait a minute,” he replied. “We can’t go down to zero here. We have a position in Europe and NATO that we can’t abandon. How many troops do we need to make that credible? Is it 100,000? Is it a corps? Is it part of a corps? Should these forces be integrated?” (That is, for example, a corps composed of both German and American divisions.) “What’s the purpose of NATO? What do we need it for? How do we have to support that?”
The debate went back and forth, the Washington end of it was real down and dirty (as is the custom too often in Washington)… and the effect on our forces in Europe was devastating. With all the disruption and uncertainty, you could forget about morale.
But General Galvin kept plugging away. He was always the gentleman, yet always relentless, in the best Army tradition.
He knew NATO could not remain as it had been. It had to be reshaped. But he had a clear idea what form that should take (and it eventually took that form): He saw that NATO would grow to include the Eastern Europeans, that it would restructure its mission and begin to look at “out of area” operations — operations away from what had been its main objective.[36] He saw the importance of a continuing American leadership role in the alliance.
Meanwhile, he worried about Russia. The situation there remained troubling. The challenge from Russia was no longer about global hegemony but about the continued uncertainty over what was actually going on there, and what would come out of that. He felt the growing desperation in the former Soviet Union. He was deeply concerned that cutting it off from the West and letting it go adrift to sort itself out could bring serious problems.
His solution: First, to use NATO and the NATO context to connect with the FSU — and particularly with the military (to ensure the process of change was orderly and headed toward democratization). NATO had been their enemy. But that was no longer the case. Now NATO would be their guide on the road to positive change. Second: He realized that we needed a new Marshall Plan for the FSU. This would not have been a gift but an investment in future peace, stability, and prosperity.
Tragically, much of his vision was ignored. Washington was initially blind to his ideas about connecting with the Russians and the Warsaw Pact, the new Marshall Plan, and the restructuring of NATO… though later, in a different environment, many of his ideas were realized. They should have listened. He had his finger firmly on what had to be done.
A remarkable individual.
In the fall of 1990, General Galvin realized his goal of connecting NATO with the military of what was still (just barely) the Soviet Union, by arranging a series of conferences — primarily in Moscow — between NATO flag officers and their Russian counterparts to discuss the role of the armed forces and military service in a democracy. The DCINC, General McCarthy, was tasked to lead the U.S. delegation, and to pick one other flag or general officer to assist him. Zinni got the call.
General Galvin had both overt and unspoken aims in this:
Because he wanted to communicate to the Russians that the real winners of the Cold War were the Soviet peoples, he did not want the NATO representatives to approach their counterparts like gloating victors dictating surrender terms. This wasn’t a victor-and-vanquished situation. This was fellow soldiers helping their new friends make the adjustment to democracy and a better, peaceful existence.
Galvin’s unspoken aim was to get a read on the role the Russian military intended to play in the fluid and erratic situation that was emerging in Moscow.
While the western side of the collapsing Iron Curtain enjoyed a peace dividend, the eastern side suffered a peace catastrophe. The sudden reductions in overseas deployment and the base closings that seemed such a windfall on one side were a potential source of political instability to the other. The Soviets were bankrupt. There was no dividend, because there was no capital… no money for the military, no money even for paychecks. High- status military officers had become nonpersons.
The Russian troops in Germany could not go home because there was no place to go. Back in Russia, families of senior officers were living in boxcars or begging on the streets.
This very unstable situation could easily blow up. There was a real worry that the once-proud Soviet military, fearing they were losing control over a country turning increasingly chaotic, would go into the streets and snatch back power from the obviously shaky Russian democracy, either returning the country to communism or instituting a hard-line military dictatorship.
The first of the conferences was held in Moscow late in 1990. It opened in the Russian Ministry of Defense (the Russians’ Pentagon). The visit — a first for American militaries — was a thrilling moment for Zinni.
The delegation entered the building through the ceremonial entrance, which opened into an enormous marble-walled hall. White marble tablets along the sides displayed the Order of Lenin and all the other awards of the Soviet Union. After a brief wait, tall doors at the far end of the hall swung open and out came an impressive phalanx of uniforms, Russian generals and marshals, led by the Defense Minister, Marshal Shaposhnikov, all large men, all marching in unison, their stomping tread making loud echoes as they approached. They were so formal and official, Zinni wondered for a moment if they hadn’t gotten their script wrong and come expecting a surrender ceremony. But the thought passed.
There were formal greetings and Russian-style handshakes (very stiff, very deliberate, and very hearty), and then the NATO officers were ushered into a conference room and seated at a long table.
The initial discussions, led by General McCarthy, focused on General Galvin’s message: The NATO delegation had come to celebrate a great victory for the Soviet people and to work hand in hand with the Russian military.
