Battle Ready

Pendleton the following summer. This was exciting; he couldn’t wait to move on to the division.

He didn’t know that other plans were in the works.

In the early spring of 1994, he was made president of a Reserve General Officer Promotion Board at Marine Corps headquarters. At the conclusion of their work, the board members took their recommendations to General Mundy. When they were done, he asked Zinni to stick around.

“What do you want as your next assignment?” he asked, after all the others had left.

This seemed an odd question, since he had already been told he would get a division command. “Is the question just a formality?” he asked himself.

“I want a division,” he told the commandant, bearing that last thought in mind.

“Which one do you want?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Zinni answered. “Any Marine division is just fine with me.”

At that point, the commandant handed Zinni a folder. “Well,” he said, “I think there’s a division in here somewhere.”

Zinni, who was by then enormously confused, opened the folder: It was a nomination for promotion to lieutenant general and appointment as commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF).

He was shocked. He’d just been promoted to major general, and here he was moving immediately to three stars… and skipping over division command. That was a bummer; he’d wanted to command a division. On the other hand, it was a very big honor to command I MEF — and also pretty exciting.

Zinni’s recollection of his next moments is blurry. He mumbled his thanks to General Mundy, then left his office wrapped in shocked confusion.

A few months later, in June, he assumed command of the largest Marine operational force, I MEF, at Camp Pendleton, California. I MEF had in its ranks over 45,000 Marines and sailors, with its main components being a Marine division, an air wing, and a logistics group. Units were spread over bases in California and Nevada, but many of its forces were constantly deployed all over the world. The MEF had responsibilities that involved six different Unified and Sub-unified commands from Korea (where they were given a major new commitment), to the Western Pacific, to Latin America, to Europe, to the Middle East, and to the United States itself. During Zinni’s two years in command, the MEF had forces involved in security and counter-drug operations in Central and South America; in humanitarian operations in Africa; in peacekeeping operations in Bosnia; in human remains recovery operations in Vietnam; in sanctions enforcement operations in the Persian Gulf; and in disaster relief and counter-drug operations in the western United States. They were involved in over one hundred major military exercises around the world and in hundreds of smaller training events.

The MEF’s most substantive new effort was a crisis response assignment in Korea. Though the Okinawa- based III MEF already had a commitment there, they were now greatly augmented by I MEF. The new role was particularly challenging in that the joint and combined forces they’d be assigned in their envisioned Korean missions would be significant. According to the war plan, the MEF in Korea would become a combined Marine Expeditionary Force. That is, Zinni would command two Marine divisions — the 3rd Marine Division would be added to his own 1st Division — two Marine air wings, a Korean Marine division, a Korean Army division, and the U.S. Army’s 101st Air Assault Division.

The commander in chief in Korea, U.S. Army General Gary Luck, was a brilliant operator who taught Zinni a great deal about war fighting at this highest level of operations. Fighting a war in Korea would be much like fighting Desert Storm, but on a much larger scale. The whole business of theater logistics, movement and integration of forces, the relationships between air components and ground components, working with coalition forces, fighting a strategic battle with deep strike and close combat, and integrating all these on a large and difficult battle space, took on for Zinni a new and far larger significance.

Meanwhile, he continued to exercise his growing skills in peacekeeping and humanitarian interventions. He had become one of the few senior-level military experts on “Operations Other Than War” (OOTW).

For obvious reasons, General Binnie Peay, the new commander of CENTCOM (one of the Unified Command CINCs the MEF answered to), gave the MEF the mission to respond to peacekeeping and humanitarian crises in his theater. To better accomplish that mission, Zinni retooled a major exercise, called “Emerald Express,” to develop his unit’s humanitarian and peacemaking capabilities. Since he didn’t have to worry about tactical-level field capabilities (his MEF had those down pat), he reshaped Emerald Express into a comprehensive conference to address issues like planning, coordination, and integration, especially at the operational and policy levels, and to direct special emphasis to coordination with relief agencies, international organizations, coalitions, and political organizations.

In a short time, Emerald Express became the most significant and effective effort to promote integration of military, political, humanitarian, economic, and reconstruction functions in Operations Other Than War.

Zinni’s growing OOTW expertise brought him to testify frequently before the Senate Foreign Relations and Senate Armed Services Committees. His testimonies on specific interventions (such as in Bosnia), on U.S. humanitarian and peacekeeping policy, and on the nature of OOTWs in general, were not always encouraged by the administration or particularly the Pentagon leadership: General Shalikashvilli, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, did not relish OOTW missions. Zinni did his best to steer clear of problems with the chairman and other superiors, but he had strong feelings about these missions that he did not hesitate to express. He began to earn a reputation as outspoken — a reputation he thinks is undeserved. He has always maintained he has only done what Marines always do: Tell it like it is.

By the time he took command of the MEF in June 1994, U.S. forces were out of Somalia, and the UN mission was sputtering out. Though Zinni did not forget the lessons of Somalia, he didn’t expect to return to that country.

In a few months, he was thrown into the Somalia disaster for a third time.

UNITED SHIELD

Tony Zinni:

During the summer of 1994, the UN decided to end the UNOSOM mission and withdraw UN forces from Somalia. The date set for the withdrawal was March 1995.

This was going to be a complicated move: Since forces from several countries would be involved, there would be coordination problems; since the pullout would be phased, the last forces to leave were vulnerable to attack; and credible — though unsubstantiated — reports of handheld surface-to-air missiles made a withdrawal by air risky. As a result of these threats, the UN requested U.S. protection for the withdrawal. Though the Clinton administration was not excited about renewing its involvement in Somalia, the international forces on the ground had accepted the mission at our request. The administration felt responsible for their safety.

That August, less than two months after I took command, I MEF received a warning order that we were to lead a Combined Task Force to protect the UN withdrawal. I MEF was the obvious choice for the mission: We already had responsibility for crisis response in their portion of Africa; the SAM threat required an amphibious withdrawal; and I MEF had conducted Operation Restore Hope in 1993, so the staff was already familiar with the situation.

We knew it would be a difficult assignment. The international forces would have to execute extremely complex tactical tasks (tough even for U.S. units); and interoperability problems with doctrine, procedures, equipment, and language could compound the difficulty.

The good news was the planning time. We’d have five months to plan, coordinate, and practice the mission.

“Plans are nothing, but planning is everything,” Eisenhower said, possibly apocryphally. Whether he said it or not, the saying is true. We had a lot of time. I wanted to use it all to plan exhaustively, think through every possibility, and cover every contingency (or branches and sequels, in military terms). One innovation in our