Published
Airpower
Journal -
Fall 1996
DISTRIBUTION
A:
Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
DR DON M. SNIDER
INTERSERVICE RIVALRY is a vivid part of American military history stretching forward from the earliest days of the Republic.1 The most intense period of rivalry occurred at the close of World War II. Drawing on the lessons of that war and only after years of agonizing political turmoil fueled by service rivalries, President Truman prodded Congress to pass the National Security Act of 1947 as well as its first amendment in 1949. This legislation established the fundamental postwar defense organization for the United States. They created, among other entities, a new Department of Defense (DOD), "unifying" the earlier Departments of War and Navy and creating for the first time an independent air force as a third military department within DOD.2
From the "revolt of the admirals," which occurred during the unification debates of the late 1940s to Sen Sam Nunn's (D-Ga.) call in 1992 for "the elimination of redundancy among the nation's four air forces,"3 accepted wisdom has held that interservice rivalry is bad, even though very logical explanations have been made, both for its existence and for its ebbs and flows over time.4 In very broad terms, this "wisdom" has rested, over the last decade or so, on the twin beliefs that interservice rivalry has produced some of our nation's most ignominious military disasters, such as Desert One, and that it inherently causes an inefficient allocation of resources across what are often redundant capabilities-a luxury America can no longer afford.5 In sum, the wisdom holds that such rivalry is responsible for forces that are often grossly ineffective and almost always very expensive.
Now, as America's armed forces are being reduced and reshaped after the cold war,6 a countervailing idea is gaining credibility-the idea that interservice rivalry is not inherently bad. Rather, when seen as the flip side of the post-Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act process of increasing jointness, it is a "good" thing. Most recently, this thesis, which confounds historically accepted wisdom, has been strongly advanced by a respected bipartisan body-DOD's Commission on Roles and Missions. In its final report, Directions for Defense, the commission boldly claims that it is time to "set aside outdated arguments" about "who should do what" among the US military services and instead, given the joint structure in which America now fights wars, it is time to focus on "who needs what" from the perspective of the unified commander.7 The true challenge now, it concludes, is finding a way to "ensure that the right set of capabilities is identified, developed and fielded to meet the needs of unified commanders."8
In view of the commission's having contradicted 40 years of conventional wisdom, its rationale for "setting aside outdated arguments" is, perhaps, even more important than its individual conclusions. Basically, in delineating this rationale, the commission, I believe, has taken account of the changed roles that both the services and the commanders in chief (CINC) now play in America's military establishment. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, roles and missions were bitterly debated because the services themselves executed with their forces the missions over which they fought. That is no longer the case. Now, independent CINCs, reporting only to the secretary of defense and to the president, execute all military missions-in peace and war.9 The role of the services under Title 10 has evolved into a quite limited one: "to man, equip, and train" the forces that are subsequently assigned to the CINCs for the execution of missions received from the secretary of defense and the president.10 Thus, if each service focused in this context on its unique "core competencies"-delivering to the CINCs the best possible set of its specific air, land, or sea capabilities as building blocks for joint forces-the commissioners felt confident in concluding that "a conventional criticism of the services, unrestrained parochialism and duplication of programs, is overstated. This is not to say that there is no parochialism and duplication, there is. But our investigation persuaded us that these issues are largely a result of insufficient focus on the real problem of the department-effective joint military operations."11
Why did the commission decide to buck such strongly held conventional wisdom about the nature of interservice rivalry? What evidence might exist in support of its determination that the roles of the military departments and of the CINCs had evolved to the point that historical arguments were no longer valid?
This article addresses a portion of the latter question by maintaining that major progress towards true jointness has been made since the Goldwater-Nichols legislation of 1986, particularly within functions of the military departments that are considered "inputs" to military capabilities (i.e., in manning, equipping, and training). When one considers progress in these areas, which has occurred largely out of the public eye, in the correct context, as provided for by the Goldwater-Nichols legislation, one can consider the residual interservice rivalry-as the commission subsequently did-a "good" thing, controllable and constructive within current ranges. This is truly a historic conclusion, if correct.
As noted earlier, the organizational behavior known as interservice rivalry has been around for a long time. One useful model of the phenomenon holds that to understand such behavior, "it is necessary to understand the interaction of organizational interests (status, force levels, and missions) and organizational ideologies (strategic and tactical doctrines) of each of the four services."12 The ideologies referred to are, of course, ingrained in organizational cultures usually associated with the main tenets of the service's strategic doctrine. The Air Force, for example, believes that strategic aerial bombing can severely cripple an enemy's homeland, interdict strategic lines of communication, severely damage or destroy an enemy at the front, and generally serve as an effective coercive tool, independent of other military operations. The other services have equally explicit ideologies derived from their historic and traditional roles in providing combat capabilities for a specific type of warfare-the Army for land warfare and the Navy and Marine Corps for maritime warfare.13
Interservice rivalry occurs when the services, each following its own interests and ideology, compete within DOD for peacetime roles and wartime missions-and thus for resources-that they believe accrue to their unique strategic approach to war fighting. Such competition, though frequently criticized by civilian analysts for divisiveness, inefficiency, and confusion in defense policy, "during the first fifteen years of the cold war enhance[d] civilian control by deflecting conflict away from civilian-military lines."14 Such organizational behavior is also manifested outside DOD when the services carry their individual issues to Congress, often finding support to exploit divisions between political leaders there and within the administration.15 Periods such as the current transition, during which the nation undergoes a realignment of basic national security strategy that contradicts existing service interests and ideologies, are most likely to produce this form of interservice rivalry-as we are now seeing.
The most succinct definition of jointness is that offered by Gen Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS): "We train as a team, fight as a team, and win as a team." He considers jointness to be a fourth major factor that contributes to the high quality of our armed forces, though "less tangible than training or weaponry, or the quality of the best and the brightest of young Americans that are our volunteers."16 Joint Publication 1, Joint Warfare of the US Armed Forces, presents Powell's philosophy of jointness in some detail. Notably, the document emphasizes the idea that unity of effort at the combatant command level is the essence of jointness, noting that this has been true of many military engagements in the nation's history-starting with the joint campaigns of the Civil War.17
Adm William Owens, recently vice-chairman of the Joint Staff, goes further, defining jointness as one of the four ongoing revolutions that mark this transition as a watershed in American military history. The other three revolutions cited by Owens are (1) the changes in the world political and economic structures since the end of the cold war; (2) the revolution in the defense budget-down 45 percent in real terms since the peak of the cold war but in an uneven manner, with variable costs and capabilities (combat forces or "tooth") now receiving only 35 percent of defense appropriations, while fixed costs and capabilities (support forces and structures or "tail") receive about 65 percent; and (3) the operational-technical changes occurring within the "revolution in military affairs," which refers to the broad implications of information dominance for future conflict and for US armed forces.18
To Owens this "revolution" in jointness-best described as achieving higher joint combat effectiveness through synergy from blending particular service strengths on a mission basis-was facilitated by the Goldwater-Nichols reforms. These measures greatly strengthened the roles of the combatant commanders vis-à-vis the service chiefs-as well as by subsequent experiences in the Gulf War.19 The most recent manifestation of this revolution is the current role of the Joint Staff and unified commanders in planning and programming for new military capabilities (e.g., the role of the enhanced Joint Requirements Oversight Council [JROC], which the vice-chairman himself heads).20
Other officers define jointness in more traditional terms of military strategy and
doctrine-as a response to the evolving nature of warfare. Accepting the postulate that in
the future the services will fight and operate jointly-even in lesser
contingencies-Frederick Strain elaborates on jointness as embodying the increasing
synergism of modern military forces-complementary operations built around a key force
(instead of key service) required to spearhead the effort, and so forth.21
Contrary to older ideas of the uniqueness and completeness of each service's capabilities,
Strain holds that "no single weapon or force reaches its full potential unless
employed with complementary capabilities" of the other services.22
As these few definitions show, jointness means different things to different people. But all of them tend to focus on the efficient integration of service capabilities at the level of the joint force commander (JFC). Therefore, they apply to the services' activities that occur on the "input" side of their individual force-generation processes. The term input, as noted earlier, refers to the services' Title 10 authorities to man, equip, and train their units-to be assigned subsequently to a joint force for employment by the JFC.
Focus on the input side is important for several reasons. Historically, as well as during the current defense transition, the most visible and audible rivalries among the services have occurred on the "output" side (e.g., most recently in the debate during 1994 and early 1995 over combat roles and missions leading up to the commission's Directions for Defense report-essentially arguments over "who did what most effectively in the last war"). There is always significant coverage of interservice rivalries on the output side of the debate. More importantly, since the end of the cold war, many changes towards increased jointness have occurred on the input side, but most have been out of the eye of the public and largely unevaluated or even commented on in the academic literature. Among them there are, I believe, grounds for understanding and accepting the new view that in the context of increased jointness, interservice rivalry is not such a bad thing.
By means of three military activities on the input side, each service, until recently, has fulfilled its responsibilities in a very individualistic manner with little cooperation or jointness with the other services: (1) the formulation of military strategy, (2) the development of joint doctrine, and (3) the design and implementation of joint training and training evaluations. These three activities provide credible evidence to support the thesis of this article. At the same time, they hold the greatest potential, along with improved joint professional military education (PME), to make permanent the observable changes in service cultures-changes in the direction of establishing a widely acceptable, overarching joint culture.
Formulation of Military Strategy
In the latter years of the cold war, during the Reagan buildup, individual service strategies were still dominant. For example, Secretary of the Navy John Lehman's "600-ship maritime strategy" caused intense interservice rivalry over resources needed to execute the Navy's military strategy of horizontal escalation.23 Since that time, during the two phases of the post-cold-war defense transition (Bush phase: 1988-92; Clinton phase: 1992-96), a number of influences have been identified that effectively ended the era of service dominance in formulating multiple-often incompatible-military strategies. In so doing, these influences also ended a major point of contention that had for decades been fueling interservice rivalry.
The first influence occurred during the Bush administration. Under the leadership of the Pentagon team of Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and General Powell, an unclassified, joint national military strategy was published in 1991-probably the first in the Republic's history.24 It was a post-cold-war strategy focused on regional, conventional warfare conducted by the unified CINCs, developed in conjunction with and as the strategic rationale for the "base force" of the Bush administration.25 As such, it was more of a "force building" strategy to legitimize the first phase of the post-cold-war demobilization than it was a war-fighting strategy, though it was applied to a remarkable degree in the preparation of the unified campaign plan for the Gulf War. More to the point for this discussion, it became the strategic basis for planning and programming within DOD, thereby supplanting the earlier, individual strategies of the services.
The second influence-a particularly strong one-against independent service war-fighting strategies was the success of joint operations in the Gulf War. Conducted almost entirely as a coalition operation, with US forces organized and commanded totally within a unified structure, the war left little doubt that individual service operations (therefore individual service war-fighting strategies) were a thing of the past-and for good reason. The devastating synergy created within the theater of operations by the careful integration and orchestration of only the needed building blocks of each service told the whole story.26
Nothing speaks as loudly to the American people as success. Operation Desert Storm conclusively demonstrated that the expensive military buildup during the late cold war period had purchased the most technologically advanced and capable military services in the world. Further, Gen Norman Schwarzkopf's unified command structure competently integrated these forces, leading them to an astounding victory with remarkably few American casualties. At that point, both civilian and military leaders accepted the idea that no service should go to the elected representatives of the American people to request resources for anything other than the creation of joint war-fighting capabilities.
However, as time passed and administrations changed, the services did return during 1993-94 to publishing separate "strategies" to defend their unique roles and missions: "From the Sea" for the Navy and Marine Corps, "Land Warfare in the 21st Century" for the Army, and "Global Presence" for the Air Force. Undoubtedly, the services created these strategies in anticipation of the work to be done by the Congressional Roles and Missions Commission in 1994-95.
Even then, however, a very noticeable difference existed between these service strategies and those of the earlier cold war period: they all accepted the execution of their services' core responsibilities under joint command structure, usually integrated with and complemented by capabilities of the other services. Jointness-in operational war-fighting strategy at least-was the framework in which a much more circumscribed interservice rivalry would proceed for programmatic and budgetary purposes. No longer was the rivalry to be over mutually exclusive military strategies of each service, as it was in the early years of the cold war. Now, within an accepted joint strategy of power projection in response to regional contingencies, the services will vie over the effectiveness and efficiencies of alternative military contributions to that common strategy.27 This type of interservice competition provides civilian leaders in the Pentagon and Congress the opportunity to maximize the return on taxpayer dollars spent on defense and to increase military effectiveness.
Development of Joint Doctrine
Military doctrines are useful and important to the services, far beyond the degree generally understood by an outside observer. As Barry Posen points out in his classic treatment of the subject, their importance derives from two facts: (1) "by their offensive, defensive, or deterrent character, doctrines affect the probability and intensity of arms races and of wars" and (2) "by both the political and military appropriateness of the means employed, a military doctrine affects the security of the state that holds it."28 As Posen notes, states can be negatively affected by their military doctrine under a number of circumstances (e.g., if it is not integrated with the political objectives of the state's grand strategy or if it is insufficiently innovative for the competitive dynamics of the state's security environment, and so forth).29 In our own history, inappropriate military doctrine, particularly on the part of the US Army, contributed directly to national failure in Vietnam.30
States can be negatively affected by their military doctrine under a number of circumstances....In our own history, inappropriatemilitary doctrine, particularly on the part of the US Army, contributed directly to national failure in Vietnam.
Historically, the development of military doctrine has been the domain of the services; unsurprisingly, each service executed doctrine in a different manner. At the extremes are the Navy, which used "a fragmented, bottom-up, fleet-driven process," and the Army, which has always been a top-down, doctrine-driven organization with branch schools and even major commands charged with doctrine development.31 As mentioned earlier, until it became painfully obvious in Desert One, Grenada, and Lebanon that unrelated service doctrines were a major impediment to successful joint operations, little impetus existed for the creation of joint doctrines. As noted in the Locher report, "the absence of JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff] emphasis on joint doctrine means that Service doctrine dominates operational thinking. This becomes a problem because services are diverse and have different approaches to military operations. When US military forces are jointly employed, service doctrines clash."32
Key to post-cold-war development of joint doctrine and to its teaching through the joint PME system was the Goldwater-Nichols legislation of 1986. For the first time, it provided the CJCS both the singular responsibility and the authority for the development of "doctrines for the joint employment of US armed forces."33 Over time, this authority facilitated the expansion of the Joint Staff-in particular, the Operational Plans and Interoperability Directorate (J-7) and in 1987, the establishment of the Joint Doctrine Center at Norfolk, Virginia. As expected, the creation of these institutions, along with a top-driven process for the development and review of joint doctrine, heightened service interest in the same areas.
In 1993 the Navy and the Air Force established their own centers for doctrine development at Norfolk Naval Base and Langley Air Force Base (AFB), Virginia, respectively (the Army had for decades maintained a command for training and doctrine in the same vicinity at Fort Monroe, Virginia). Centralizing the development of naval war-fighting doctrine represented a major step for the Navy-one that followed bitter, Gulf War lessons of the price to be paid by an institution out of touch with the war-fighting doctrines of the other services.34 Lastly and more recently (in 1994), the Joint Warfighting Center was established at Fort Monroe and subsumed the activities of the earlier Joint Warfare Center (Florida) and the recently established Joint Doctrine Center. This completed the creation of joint institutions for the development of both joint doctrine and joint training procedures, as well as their integration.
Much has been accomplished already by this new process. Several capstone documents35 of joint doctrine have been completed, and almost 200 other joint doctrinal publications are under development.36 But all this activity has not been without problems. The overall process is still incomplete by some standards, in that it is not yet well integrated with historical research of joint operations and the incorporation of lessons learned.37 It also has been slow in developing joint operational concepts and necessary simulations for their evaluation that accurately reflect joint warfare. No less than the current CJCS, Gen John Shalikashvili, has lamented the absence of such capabilities: "Yet, despite the importance we have attached to simulations, nobody has yet developed a single fully-tested, reliable, joint warfighting model."38 Further, the writers of joint doctrine still reside largely within the services, since the new joint institutions are not manned for such a load. This has allowed the services in effect to delay or simply not complete the development of doctrines not wanted-a passive way of forestalling jointness in selected areas.39
The process has also created several instances of real interservice conflict over the content of the new joint war-fighting doctrines. Not surprisingly, many of these issues are direct descendants of those fought over by the services in the late 1940s but updated for current capabilities.40 Examples include the authority of the joint force air component commander (JFACC) (how and under whose authority will the JFC integrate the capabilities of Air Force and Navy/Marine air?); battlefield interdiction (who will the JFC designate to conduct the interdiction campaign, and with what assets?); and close air support (how will the Army's helicopter capabilities for close air support be integrated with those of the air component commander?). Notwithstanding these current conflicts, however, these new controversies clearly are occurring within a totally accepted framework-that of the JFC. In other words, interservice rivalry in the area of joint doctrinal development has "progressed" to a new and much more circumscribed arena, where the focus is how best to support one joint commander in mission accomplishment. To anyone familiar with American war-fighting experiences, this is indeed progress in jointness.
Design and Implementation of Joint Training
Training combat forces and evaluating them to ensure that training standards have been met and maintained are among the most important and cherished responsibilities of the military services. To provide a "trained and ready Army" has been the favorite phrase of a series of Army chiefs of staff. During the cold war, this responsibility made sense strategically. War plans then required massive forces, both in forward defense and for reinforcement from the continental United States (CONUS). These trained and ready forces were, therefore, frequently sent overseas to their planned theater of employment, where they reinforced forward-deployed forces and exercised in the field under control of the regional CINC, who-in an actual short-notice war-would receive those forces and fight the theater campaigns. Return of Forces to Germany (REFORGER) exercises in Europe were well known during the latter three decades of the cold war, with Army divisions and Air Force wings annually deploying to Germany to exercise with NATO allies.
Centralizing the development of naval war-fighting doctrine represented a major step for the Navy-one that followed bitter, Gulf War lessons of the price to be paid by an institution out of touch with the war-fighting doctrines of the other sevices.
But with the passing of that era, the scope of trained and ready forces needed at any one time has been greatly reduced, as have US forward-deployed forces in many regions of the world. In the future, the military will rely on critical mobility assets to project military power for regional conflicts. Unfortunately, as forward-stationed forces have been drawn down, combatant commanders (CINCs) have less capability in-theater to receive and organize these "response" forces for combat. In many cases-as in Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, and Bosnia-there may be few to no forward-deployed forces already in-country. Thus, stateside "force packages" must be flexible in their composition yet already integrated and ready to fight as a joint team before they deploy from the United States as a power-projection force. Indeed, some may have to fight their way in. Thus, knowledge of joint war-fighting doctrines and high states of joint training readiness in executing those doctrines are characteristics that will provide US forces the needed competitive edge in this new environment.41
Recognizing this changed environment, General Powell initiated major changes for joint training in his last triennial report on roles and missions (February 1993). He recommended that the Unified Command Plan (UCP) be changed to put certain forces in CONUS under a single joint commander for purposes of ensuring joint training and readiness of power-projection forces. The secretary of defense approved the plan in April 1993. Implementation included the phaseout of four unified or component commands and the creation of new missions for one joint command-US Atlantic Command (USACOM).42
Implementation of these changes towards increased jointness in peacetime has created numerous conflicts. One such conflict is outlined here since it represents how the trend towards jointness (in this case, the peacetime, stateside integration of smaller, joint-force packages) has come astride of deeply held Title 10 authorities of the services. In the case of training, the authorities are deeply held, both because of the enormous resource implications as well as the need for the services to retain, in light of external strategic ambiguity, a very high degree of flexibility in war planning-specifically the assignment of "below the line" forces to CINCs.43
In this case, the issue concerned how the CINC was to ensure, under his new authorities, the joint-training readiness of projection forces if it was not known in peacetime which forces would be assigned in wartime. This situation led, naturally, to a request that those forces be assigned to the unified command in peacetime. Both the services and the reserve components recognized that the resource implications of such a move were enormous. The services viewed this request as a potential raid on the huge appropriation (i.e., the operations and maintenance appropriation) granted annually to them to train their forces and, thus, as a direct infringement on their Title 10 authorities.
The disputes raged inside the Pentagon for two years (1993-94), over two administrations, and two CJCSs; two Congresses ultimately offered changes to Title 10 to preserve their own options in determining who receives which appropriations. The issue was finally resolved in late 1994, when the CINCs received a new type of peacetime authority-"training readiness oversight"-over assigned service and reserve component units. The new authority did not, however, change the role of the services in determining the training status of their units-in no case could a unit of a service be deployed until validated for deployment as "trained and ready" by its parent service.44
Notwithstanding this dispute and others, USACOM has enjoyed steady progress in implementing the new authorities by creating a joint training program that allows units from all services "to train as they will fight."45 At both the tactical and operational levels, regional CINCs specify the joint tasks they consider mission-essential in the new environment, and the service forces assigned to USACOM form into joint task forces for exercise and evaluation at multiple levels of integration. The three-tier training and evaluation program allows services to evaluate their units on tactical and operational missions and allows USACOM to exercise and evaluate joint forces at the operational level, as well as train and evaluate JFCs and staffs in a variety of scenarios and by a variety of means (e.g., traditional field exercises, hybrid exercises with some live play in the field, constructive or virtual simulations, command post exercises [CPX] in synthetic environments, academic seminars with retired flag-officer mentors, and computer-assisted instruction).46
In other areas of military training, progress towards jointness is also apparent, particularly in what was previously known as interservice training. Under the impetus of Powell's roles and missions report of 1993, as well as subsequent decisions by Les Aspin-then the secretary of defense-interservice approaches to the initial skills training of new service recruits have accelerated.47 Nearly 400 joint courses are offered today, most for individual or advanced-individual skill training. The Air Force now sends 29 percent of its boot-camp graduates to a multiservice environment for initial technical training, and the level is expected to rise to 50 percent in coming years. By 1997 the Joint Primary Aircraft Training System (JPATS) will be in place, offering initial fixed-wing training to pilots of all services, followed by a four-track, follow-on training structure for different aircraft/missions-but still on a strict interservice basis. No longer are the Army and Navy-or even the Air Force-"growing their own" pilots.
On the "input" side of current military activities, the three areas surveyed demonstrate a marked degree of increased jointness: a common war-fighting strategy, an increasing number of joint doctrines flowing from newly organized institutions, and joint training evaluations institutionalized to provide more effective joint-force packages for future power-projection missions. However, appearances may confuse the reality of what has been done with what remains to be done. The current CJCS, in fact, believes there is still a huge gap when "one compares the way the services train and prepare forces to perform service missions and the way the joint world prepares its forces to operate."48
Simply put, although interservicerivalry still exists, it is now focused on a much more refined and more important issue-how best to provide military capabilities for the common purpose of enhancing the war-fighting effectiveness of the JFC.
As expected, on the flip side of increased jointness is a continuation of interservice rivalry. This includes recurring conflicts among the services and between the services and the Joint Staff and CINCs over sensitive Title 10 authorities that the services use as a barrier to further encroachment by joint activities. But I believe it is also fair to conclude that the type of interservice rivalry found in these input areas is of a different qualitative character because of its circumscription by the joint framework increasingly imposed on all players by the Goldwater-Nichols legislation. Simply put, although interservice rivalry still exists, it is now focused on a much more refined and more important issue-how best to provide military capabilities for the common purpose of enhancing the war-fighting effectiveness of the JFC.
Undoubtedly, other factors beyond the scope of this article are also at work influencing the level and character of interservice competition. One of the most prominent is the tight budgetary climate within DOD; another is the unresolved strategic ambiguity in national security planning. In my judgment, both of these factors have tended to heighten interservice rivalry. This tendency makes it all the more remarkable that the influences of the Goldwater-Nichols legislation in such areas as strategy, doctrine, and training are demonstrating significantly increased "jointness," along with a new character of interservice rivalry.
It remains to be seen whether this new type of interservice rivalry is constructive over the longer run, particularly when budgetary and strategic factors may change. Some observers believe it can be, citing the creative aspects of such competition to foster innovation, efficiencies, and savings in a time of fiscal austerity.49 Others, drawing on the experiences of history and the more recent Gulf War, express caution. Casting the current dynamics as the slow creation of a new joint culture, they believe it would be well to proceed slowly-particularly at the operational and tactical levels in the field-lest proven service cultures be eroded without anything of substance to replace them.50
My own judgment is that the evidence cited on the input side of the services'
activities points clearly to the creation of a new joint culture, one built around
increasingly defined and accepted ways of integrating the war-fighting capabilities of the
services. Thus, although historical criticisms of the organizational behavior known as
interservice rivalry perhaps were valid in earlier eras, they are not valid now.
Presently, very constructive forces are at work, especially as they complement earlier
reforms in joint PME that also have contributed to the new culture. Creation of a true
joint culture will take decades; for now, progress is being made, and this constructive
brand of interservice rivalry is a net positive influence on it.51 The Roles
and Missions Commission, in that regard, had it right.
Notes
1. See Allan R. Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America (New York: Free Press, 1994), particularly 92-100 and 498-507.
2. Definitive studies of this period include Paul Y. Hammond, Organizing for Defense: The American Military Establishment in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961); Demetrios Caraley, The Politics of Military Unification: A Study of Conflict and the Policy Process (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966); and Samuel P. Huntington, The Common Defense: Strategic Programs in National Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961). For a more recent history, see Thomas D. Boettcher, First Call: The Making of the Modern U.S. Military, 1945-1953 (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1992).
3. Sen Sam Nunn, "The Defense Department Must Thoroughly Overhaul the Services' Roles and Missions," 2 July 1992 (mimeograph).
4. For the definitive explanation, based on the separation of powers between Congress and the executive branch, see Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957). For a new and interesting extension of older theories, see Deborah D. Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from Peripheral Wars (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994).
5. The most comprehensive study that supports these conclusions also laid the foundation for the reforms of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. See Senate, Defense Organization: The Need for Change: Staff Report to the Committee on Armed Services, 99th Cong., 1st sess., 16 October 1985, Senate Print, 99-86 (hereafter referred to as the Locher report). See pages 354-60 for six historical examples of DOD operations, including Desert One and Grenada, in which service rivalries had decidedly negative consequences.
6. For a recent written debate on the current state of post-cold-war defense reductions, including the impact on interservice rivalry, see Don M. Snider et al., "The Coming Defense Train Wreck . . . and What to Do about It," Washington Quarterly 19, no.1 (Winter 1996): 89-128.
7. Directions for Defense: Report of the Commission on Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, 24 May 1995), ES-1 to ES-5; 1-1 to 1-4.
8. Ibid., preface by Mr John P. White, commission chairman.
9. Military departments are still considered "executors" of a few domestic support missions, such as the Army's responsibility to support civilian agencies in domestic disaster-relief operations (e.g., during Hurricane Debbie in Florida in 1993).
10. See DOD Directive 5100.1, Functions of the Department of Defense and Its Components, 25 September 1987 (mimeograph), 11-13.
11. Directions for Defense, 1-4.
12. Richard K. Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 116.
13. See Carl H. Builder, The Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).
14. Betts, 116.
15. Huntington discusses the same behavior, but from the perspective of the influence of the separation of powers and the resulting strategic, organizational, and budgetary pluralism within DOD. See The Soldier and the State, 400-27.
16. Gen Colin L. Powell, "A Word from the Chairman," Joint Force Quarterly, Summer 1993, 5.
17. Joint Publication 1, Joint Warfare of the US Armed Forces, 11 November 1991.
18. Author's discussion with Admiral Owens following the admiral's presentation to a Capitol Hill Club seminar, Washington, D.C., April 1995.
19. Adm William A. Owens, "Living Jointness," Joint Force Quarterly, Winter 1993-1994, 7-14.
20. Adm William A. Owens, "JROC: Harnessing the Revolution in Military Affairs," Joint Force Quarterly, Summer 1994, 55-57.
21. Lt Col Frederick R. Strain, "The New Joint Warfare," Joint Force Quarterly, Spring 1993, 17-24.
22. Ibid., 22.
23. See chapter 7 of the Locher report for an analysis of the causes of weak strategic planning within the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff, as well as the services' ability to exploit the weak strategic goals that resulted.
24. See Gen Colin L. Powell, National Military Strategy of the United States, January 1992 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1992).
25. See Don M. Snider, Strategy, Forces and Budgets: Dominant Influences in Executive Decision Making, Post-Cold War, 1989-1991, Professional Readings in Military Strategy, no. 8 (Carlisle Barracks, Pa.: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, February 1993).
26. There are many good histories and analyses of the Gulf War. One of the best is Rick Atkinson's Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1993).
27. For an excellent discussion of the nature and demands of the new military strategy, see L. Benjamin Ederington and Michael J. Mazarr, eds., Turning Point: The Gulf War and US Military Strategy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994), particularly chap. 9, "Force Projection/Crisis Response," by Jeffery Record; chap. 10, "The Future of Command and Control: Toward a Paradigm of Information Warfare," by C. Kenneth Allard; and chap. 14, "Military Strategy for an Era of Transition," by Martin van Creveld.
28. Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984), 15-16.
29. For a more recent study of the influences of military doctrines on the innovativeness of military organizations, see Stephen P. Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), particularly chap. 1.
30. For support for this conclusion, see chap. 3 of Avant; and Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).
31. See Rear Adm Frederick L. Lewis, "Naval Doctrine Command," Joint Force Quarterly, Autumn 1993, 113-16; and Robert A. Doughty, "Reforming Joint Doctrine," Joint Force Quarterly, Summer 1993, 40-47.
32. See Locher report, 165.
33. House, Report no. 99-824: Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, 99th Cong., 2d sess., 12 September 1986, conference report to accompany H.R. 3622.
34. Lewis, 113-16.
35. Capstone documents cover broad functional areas such as joint operations, intelligence, logistics, and so forth.
36. "Joint Doctrine Publications," Joint Force Quarterly, Summer 1993, 112-13.
37. Doughty, 40-47.
38. Gen John Shalikashvili, "A Word from the Chairman," Joint Force Quarterly, Autumn-Winter 1994-1995, 7.
39. Robert B. Adolph, Charles W. Stiles, and Franklin D. Hitt, "Why Goldwater-Nichols Didn't Go Far Enough," Joint Force Quarterly, no. 7 (Spring 1995): 48-53.
40. Michael Leurs, "Joint Doctrine: New Pubs, Old Controversies," Joint Force Quarterly, Summer 1994, 111-15.
41. Edward C. Ferriter, "Which Way Joint Doctrine?" Joint Force Quarterly, no. 8 (Summer 1995): 118-19.
42. Paul David Miller, "A New Mission for Atlantic Command," Joint Force Quarterly, Summer 1993, 80-87.
43. This arcane issue of military war planning results from the fact that in peacetime, US active duty forces-particularly the Army-are not balanced. There are more force packages of "fighters" (infantry, armor, etc.) than there are complementary packages of "supporters" (logisticians, engineers, communicators, etc.). Therefore, the services will not assign support units to a CINC until just before a force package deploys, retaining their flexibility to respond to the needs of more than one CINC. Additionally, as has happened in every major deployment of US forces since the end of the cold war, some units for combat support packages have to be activated from reserve components to correct this imbalance, making planning more problematic by the vagaries of political decision making on reserve call-ups.
44. Col Robert Hart, Military Fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C., interview with author, June 1995.
45. Clarence Todd Morgan, "Atlantic Command's Joint Training Program," Joint Force Quarterly, no. 8 (Summer 1995): 120-23.
46. Ibid.
47. Gen Henry Viccellio, Jr., "The Joint Challenge to Interservice Training," Joint Force Quarterly, no. 7 (Spring 1995): 43-47.
48. Shalikashvili, 4-7.
49. Stephen Peter Rosen, "Service Redundancy: Waste, or Hidden Capability?" Joint Force Quarterly, Summer 1993, 36-39.
50. Bernard Trainor, "Jointness, Service Culture, and the Gulf War," Joint Force Quarterly, Winter 1993-1994, 71-73.
51. One should note that this is not the first time in American postwar history that
interservice rivalry changed from an unhealthy character to a constructive one.
Interestingly, both changes occurred towards the end of a period of ambiguity in strategic
guidance to the military from political, civilian leaders. See Samuel Huntington,
"Interservice Competition and the Political Roles of the Armed Services," in
Henry A. Kissinger, ed., Problems of National Strategy: A Book of Readings (New
York: Praeger Publishers, 1965).
Neither a wise nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.
-Gen Dwight D. Eisenhower
Contributor
Dr Don M. Snider (MS, University of Wisconsin; PhD, University of Maryland) holds the Olin Chair of National Security Studies at the US Military Academy. During his career in the Army, he served as an infantryman for three combat tours in Vietnam; chief of plans for Theater Army in Europe; joint planner for the Army chief of staff; Federal Executive Fellow at the Brookings Institution; and director of defense policy for the National Security Council. He also served in the Office of the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1990 he retired at the rank of colonel. After retirement, he joined the Center for Strategic and International Studies as military analyst and director of political-military research. Dr Snider has published in Survival, Washington Quarterly, Command, and Parameters, and is coauthor of Desert Storm: The Gulf War and What We Learned (1992), and coeditor of US Civil-Military Relations: Transition or Crisis (1995).
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
[ Back Issues | Home Page | Feedback? Email the Editor ]