We are the last-man-standing superpower. No other nation or combination of nations can seriously threaten the existence of the United States (though people who can grievously hurt us are working night and day to accomplish that aim). History suggests that the eight-hundred-pound gorilla among nations will eventually yield to the temptation to defend itself, protect its interests, maintain stability, and keep itself on top by gradually taking ever greater control (direct or indirect) beyond its immediate borders. It begins to impose its will by direct force, unilaterally. Because it has the power to change distasteful situations or governments on its own, it asserts that power. The gorilla metamorphoses into an octopus, with ever-stretching tentacles. It becomes an empire.[75]
“Is that the destiny of the United States?” many have asked.
In my view, it’s not likely… I pray not.
The truth is more subtle and complex.
True, the United States is now in a situation that is historically unprecedented. No nation has ever wielded such physical power, and the capability to project that power
Yet, also true, no great power has ever before existed in such interdependence with so many other nations. No nation today can go it alone — economically, politically, diplomatically, culturally, or religiously.
The word
For the CINCs, our strategies are operational models — policy where the boots hit the ground. Once the CINCs have drawn their regional strategies out of the realities of their AORs and the global strategy of the President, they then have to implement them. Since doing that depends on the vicissitudes of Washington politics and the often dysfunctional Washington bureaucracy, and not on the intent of the President, executing our strategy was, at times, a frustrating process. We’d have a charter from the President that told us to go out somewhere and do such and so, and then we’d get our knees cut out from under us before we could go out and do it. Since the Congress tended to fall more in the isolationist camp, they usually resisted the President’s engagement policies… meaning, practically, that we didn’t get the resources we needed to do what the President wanted done or we would get ill-thought-out sanctions or restrictions that were counterproductive and limited our ability to engage.
Though I’ve had many disagreements with the Clinton administration, its basic global strategy was right. I was out in the world and saw the needs, the newly emerging conditions, and how we can help to change them. I also saw that if we failed to change them, we were doomed to live with the tragic consequences.
I believe that military force does not solve every problem, nor is it our only form of power. There are other kinds of pressure and other kinds of support. In order to achieve our national goals, we have to combine every capability in our national bag in the most artful mix possible. But that’s hard when the political infighting spills over into the implementation end of policy.
The Washington bureaucracy was too disjointed to make the vision of all the strategies, from the President’s to the CINCs’, a reality. There was no single authority in the bureaucracy to coordinate the significant programs we CINCs designed. The uncoordinated funding, policy decisions, authority, assigned geography, and many other issues separated State, Defense, Congress, the National Security Council, and other government agencies and made it difficult to pull complex engagement plans together.
To further complicate matters, the CINCs don’t control their own resources. Their budgets come out of the service budgets; and these are controlled by the Service Chiefs (who are also double-hatted as the Joint Chiefs), who, understandably, don’t want to give up their resources to the CINCs. The Service Chiefs have minimal interest in, and little insight into, engagement programs. They’re trying to run their services, and that job’s hard enough without other burdens. Their purpose and function is to train, organize, and equip forces for the CINCs, but what they actually want to do is provide these forces where, when, and how they see best. In other words, CINCs are demanding forces and resources for purposes that the Service Chiefs may not support. Thus the CINC is an impediment — and even a threat — and the rising power of the CINCs reduces the powers of the Service Chiefs. It’s a zero-sum game.
Looking at the problem from the other side, the CINCs see the Service Chiefs as standing in the way of what they desperately need; and they are frustrated by the chiefs’ inability to fully cooperate with them or support their strategies. The CINCs want to see their money identified and set aside in a specific budget line, so they know what they have. For all kinds of reasons, the Department of Defense is reluctant to do this.
The result is constant friction between the CINCs and Washington.
This is
This frustration was often voiced by the CINCs at their conferences in Washington, but to no avail. Washington issues and Service Chiefs’ issues seemed to take priority over the CINCs’ concerns.
I’d like to suggest changes that might fix the system.
First, I would change the composition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I’d make them truly “joint.”
Currently, the Joint Chiefs are simply the Service Chiefs wearing another hat now and again during the week. They’re not really “Joint” Chiefs; they’re Service Chiefs. Their first priority is to look out for their own services. Most of them have had no real “joint” experience in actual joint operations.
A better way to select Joint Chiefs would be to create a separate body, choosing it from former Service Chiefs and former CINCs, after they’ve served their tours. That would allow people with top-level experience from both worlds to pull the system together.
Looking at this idea more closely, you obviously can’t have serving CINCs as Joint Chiefs of Staff. They’re already all over the world doing their thing. Service Chiefs likewise have a full-time job in Washington as Service Chiefs (though they’ll fight hard to keep their Joint Chiefs hats, because a lot of power comes with the job). But by selecting the Joint Chiefs of Staff out of the pool of former CINCs and former Service Chiefs, you would create a full-time dedicated organization without most of the temptations to which both CINCs and Service Chiefs can fall victim. Yet you would benefit from the enormous wealth of knowledge and experience they all represent. And they would be truly joint. This body would advise the Secretary of Defense, testify before Congress, and bring together all the relevant issues.
Two, where the CINCs’ resources and their engagement programs are concerned, I think we ought to bite the bullet and identify the money and set the budget for whatever we want to call engagement. It should be out there, transparent, and separate from the service budgets. That way the CINCs would know exactly what they have, and the services would know exactly what they have.
Three, we need mechanisms to pull all the separate elements together. We need a body to oversee coordination, set priorities, and manage results. That way, if somebody comes in with a program (a CINC, an ambassador, etc.), that body reviews and approves it, and is responsible for making sure the other agencies of government meet the time lines and the commitment to get it done. Thus, our programs would no longer be disparate and fragmented, we’d be looking at them in a holistic way.
In other words, we would be doing for government what the Goldwater-Nichols Act did for the military. We’d be making government joint.
In late January 1998, my CENTCOM conference in Tampa put the final touches on the new strategy. Attendees included our commanders, staff, security assistance personnel,[76] and diplomats assigned to the region and from the State Department. Many U.S. ambassadors were present, as were the Assistant Secretaries of State who directed the regional sections at the State Department that involved our AOR.[77]
By the end of the conference, we had full agreement on the new strategy.
