The Goldwater-Nichols Act Of 1986: Resurgence In Defense Reform And The Legacy

The Goldwater-Nichols Act Of 1986: Resurgence In Defense Reform And The Legacy Of Eisenhower
CSC 1989
SUBJECT AREA - History

WAR IN THE MODERN ERA SEMINAR
The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986:
Resurgence In Defense Reform And
The Legacy of Eisenhower
Major Greg H. Parlier, USA
15 May 1989
Marine Corps Command and Staff College
Marine Corps Combat Development Center
Quantico, Virginia 22134
ABSTRACT
TITLE: THE GOLDWATER-NICHOLS ACT OF 1986: RESURGENCE IN
DEFENSE REFORM AND THE LEGACY OF EISENHOWER.
AUTHOR: Major Greg H. Parlier, United States Army
DATE: 15 May 1989
The recently enacted Department of Defense
Reorganization Act of 1986 has been described as comprehensive
in scope, far-reaching in impact, and, as so much of the recent
rhetoric suggests, "dramatic" in its effect upon our national
defense apparatus. Such descriptive phrases end to reinforce
the popular notion that this law, commonly referred to as the
"Goldwater-Nichols Act", mandates "revolutionary" reform of our
national defense organization. A natural inclination would be
to counter this "revolutionary" hypothesis by suggesting the Act
to perhaps embody a more "evolutionary" change to process and
procedure, in contrast to genuine organizational reform.
The purpose of this paper, however, is to challenge both
of these arguments by conducting a through analysis of the
larger historical context of defense reform issues extending
back to World War II. A chronological approach is used to
develop recurrent themes and trends in the attempt to "unify"
the defense establishment, beginning with the Arcadia Conference
when the Joint Chiefs of staff concept was created by FDR
shortly after America declared war on Japan. The analysis
includes the divisive interservice rivalries that emerged after
the war and are reflected in both the pre- and post-1947
National Security Act debates. Special emphasis is placed upon
Eisenhower's role as Army Chief of Staff after the war, problems
confronting him as "presiding officer" of the JCS in 1948, and
his criticism and reform proposals in 1953 and 19 58 when
President. The historical chronology concludes in early 1982
when proposals for defense reform were advocated publicly by two
encumbent members of the JCS, resurrecting issues that had
remained "dormant" since 1958. A thematic approach is then used
to explain a confluence of events that occurred beginning in
1979 shaping the form of the new legislation and providing
impetus for eventual passage of the Act: recent joint military
operations; procurement and acquisition problems; the military
"reform" movement; fear of an American "General Staff", and the
influence of key military and Congressional personalities during
the debate preceding passage of the law in September 1986.
References used to prepare this paper include
autobiographies, biographies, official defense and legislative
histories, Senate and House Armed Services Committee hearings,
Congressional reports, numerous study and commission reports,
books focused on national security issues, journal and newspaper
articles concerning the 1986 Act, recent joint doctrinal
publications, Service and Congressional documents, letters and
memoranda, and of course the law itself.
My research reveals the debate preceding passage of the
Goldwater-Nichols Act in 1986 to be neither "revolutionary" nor
"evolutionary" in content but rather more accurately described
as a "resurgence" of interest in reform measures proposed a
quarter-century earlier by President Eisenhower. I conclude
that Ike probably would be pleased with most of the contents in
the new Act, impressed with the momentum for reform that had
developed and was reflected in the final near-unanimous vote,
but distressed that his earlier proposals had taken so long, at
such great cost to the Nation, to finally be accepted.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
I. INTRODUCTION: REVOLUTION, EVOLUTION, OR RESURGENCE IN
DEFENSE REFORM 1
II. GENESIS OF AN AMERICAN NATIONAL MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT
(1942-1947) 8
CREATING AN AMERICAN WARTIME HIGH COMMAND.
INTERSERVICE RIVALRY AND THE UNIFICATION EFFORT
DURING WORLD WAR II.
EISENHOWER AS ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF (1945-1947).
III. THE NATIONAL SECURITY ACT OF 1947 AND THE UNIFICATION
DRAMA (1947-1952) 23
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ACT OF 1947.
THE THREE "ACTS" OF THE POSTWAR UNIFICATION "DRAMA."
IV. EISENHOWER'S REFORMS AND THE DRIVE FOR UNIFICATION
(1953-1958) 40
REORGANIZATION PLAN NO. 6 OF 1953.
THE DEFENSE ORGANIZATION ACT OF 1958.
V. LEGISLATIVE DORMANCY (1958-1982) 62
CHANGING CIVIL-MILITARY POWER RELATIONSHIPS.
STUDIES, MORE STUDIES BUT NO ACTION.
VI. DECADE OF THE `80'S: MANDATES FOR ACTION 72
THE RECORD OF RECENT MILITARY PERFORMANCE: COMMAND
AND CONTROL PROBLEMS.
PROCUREMENT AND ACQUISITION CHAOS.
INTERSERVICE RIVALRY THE MILITARY REFORM MOVEMENT,
AND THE "POLITICIZATION OF STRATEGY."
VII. THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS (1982-1986) 86
GENERAL JONES, GENERAL MEYER, AND THE DEFENSE
ORGANIZATION PROJECT.
ALTERNATIVES FOR REFORM.
FEAR OF THE "GENERAL STAFF" MODEL.
THE LAW: EISENHOWER'S LEGACY AND GOLDWATER'S
INFLUENCE.
VIII. CONCLUSIONS 117
AFTERMATH AND TRENDS.
FINAL THOUGHTS.
TABLE OF CONTENTS (CONTINUED)
Page
ENDNOTES 125
BIBLIOGRAPHY: PRINCIPAL SOURCES 144
BIBLIOGRAPHY: ADDITIONAL SOURCES 151
APPENDIX A: CHRONOLOGY OF DEFENSE REFORM 1942-1982 155
APPENDIX B: LEGISLATIVE CHANGES TO THE JCS 158
APPENDIX C: EVOLUTION OF THE JOINT STAFF 159
APPENDIX D: LEGISLATIVE HISTORY OF THE GOLDWATER-NICHOLS
ACT 160
APPENDIX E: SUMMARY OF MAJOR PROVISIONS OF 1986 ACT 161
APPENDIX F: CURRENT ORGANIZATION FOR NATIONAL SECURITY 168
APPENDIX G: THE JOINT STAFF: 1989 169
FIGURES
1. TRUMAN'S DEFENSE REORGANIZATION PLAN (COLLINS PLAN) 18
2. NATIONAL SECURITY ORGANIZATION PROPOSED BY WAR AND
NAVY DEPARTMENTS 21
3. THE CHAIN OF COMMAND BEFORE AND AFTER THE
REORGANIZATION ACT OF 1958 56
4. ALTERNATIVE JOINT REFORM OPTIONS 95
The Congress shall have power...
To Make Rules for the Government and Regulation
for the land and naval Forces; [clause 14]
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and
proper for carrying into Execution the
foregoing Powers... [clause 18]
The Constitution
Article I, Section 8

Chapter I
INTRODUCTION: REVOLUTION EVOLUTION,
OR RESURGENCE IN DEFENSE REFORM?
These final years of the 20th Century are indeed
interesting and exciting times. Perhaps this is true because
they are so replete with dilemma, contradiction, and
paradox. A vivid example is the recent Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty which eliminated an entire class
of nuclear weapons from Europe. Ironically, this was
possible only after the historic Reagan defense build-up
initiated to close the "window of vulnerability." The great
paradox, of course, was the necessity to first deploy our own
nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and Pershings in order to
negotiate their subseguent removal. It was this
manifestation of Western resolve that ultimately led to the
Treaty, reversing the otherwise sorry tale of endless arms
control negotiations spanning the previous two decades which
settled little. Now the stage has been set for potential
deep cuts in land-based "heavy" ICBMs. Few would have
thought such an event possible when Ronald Reagan was first
elected to the Presidency.
We have also witnessed during this decade an
unprecedented revival in strategic thinking. The larger
defense debate has been invigorated by disparate, almost
bizarre, elements ranging from self-proclaimed military
"reformers" to our own Catholic Bishops, and is reflected in
the astonishingly rapid climb in 1988 to "best-seller" status
of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Professor Paul
Kennedy. This widespread interest has now been given
tangible form with the passage in September 1986 of the
landmark Defense Reorganization Act symbolizing renewed
concern for national purpose, strategic objectives and goals,
and military capabilities.
At the same time, there has been a seemingly endless
litany of "waste, fraud, and abuse" episodes in the Pentagon
suggesting a need for acguisition and procurement reform.
Although recent incidents have dominated front-page
headlines--the $700 hammer, the $640 toilet seat cover, the
air defense gun that allegedly locked onto a latrine fan, and
the latest financial scandal involving high government
officials--the root causes of the current defense debate
extend back to the late 1940s. That period culminated a
four-decade rapid ascent to great power status of the United
States.
World War II had a revolutionary impact on U.S.
strategic thinking. As former Under Secretary of Defense for
Policy Robert W. Komer has pointed out:
It marked our definitive entry into balance of
power politics, further confirmed the value of
overseas force projection, [and] also saw the
birth of elaborate joint and combined planning
mechanisms... For the first time, serious strategic
differences between the services.. .were hashed out
in the new Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) forum that
was created in 1942 to facilitate development of
U.S. positions vis-a-vis the British Chiefs of
Staff (the model for the JCS). [1]
The end of the war also demonstrated the advent of nuclear
weapons and long-range delivery systems which enabled us
shortly thereafter to adopt a doctrine of "deterrence" and,
with large standing forces semi-permanently deployed
overseas, to formalize for the first time a grand strategy of
"containment" outlined in NSC 68 in 1950. Although different
nuclear doctrines would prevail--initially "massive
retaliation", then "assured destruction", and finally the
paramount strategic contradiction of the nuclear age,
"mutually assured destruction" (MAD) --those basic strategic
objectives of nuclear deterrence and containment specified in
NSC 68 have remained unchanged for four decades. There have
been no major military conflicts between the two superpowers
and the United States has not lost any assets truly vital to
our interests. Without trivializing regional conflicts in
Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, the 44 years since World
War II represents one of the longest periods without war
between major states of the developed world since the days of
the Roman Empire. However, up until the late 1970's we were
able to procure "defense-on-the-cheap" through nuclear
weapons and, as a consequence, "no comparable attention has
been paid to non-nuclear strategy since 1945." [2] More
recently, the loss of our comfortable cushion of nuclear
superiority accompanied by a series of less-than-spectacular
conventional military operations in Vietnam, Iran, Lebanon,
and Grenada has prompted a growing public interest in
national security issues. In no small way, the Defense
Reorganization Act of 1986 reflects this interest and the
debate preceding its passage resurrected issues which had
been neglected and dormant for nearly 30 years.
In drafting this legislation lawmakers grappled with
traditional issues of civil-military relations and the
dilemma inherent in democratic societies requiring the
counterbalancing of an admittedly effective and highly
efficient military organization on one side of the scale with
civilian control and dominance over the uniformed military
establishment on the other. This has been particularly
difficult in the United States, as noted military
correspondent and author Richard Halloran argues, because
"Americans, since the early days of the Republic, have had
difficulty reconciling military power with democracy." [3]
In at least one aspect this balance has been impossible to
achieve because proposals for organizational reform that
might attain such a level of efficiency inevitably smack of
creating a "German General Staff." With all that this term
implies in the Anglo-American political culture, such a
concept is still, in America at least, as politically
infeasible today as it is completely misunderstood and
historically misrepresented. Furthermore, as General Emory
Upton discovered last century, attempting to impose
revolutionary reforms upon an unwilling military bureaucracy
can prove futile even if there is great merit in the
proposals. [4]
Nonetheless, Public Law 99-143: "The Department of
Defense Reorganization Act of 1986," commonly referred to as
the "Goldwater-Nichols Act," has been widely heralded as
constituting the most comprehensive and sweeping reform of
the National Defense Establishment since the National
Security Act of 1947. The new law directed a "complete
overhaul" of existing defense organization by increasing the
authority of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and
the respective unified commanders, giving them greater
latitude and full authority to organize assigned forces as
they deem necessary. Additionally, the law requires
substantial changes in the organization, size, and
relationships among other principal elements of the defense
establishment. All of this became necessary because, in the
words of the Act's principal architect, Senator Barry
Goldwater, the defense establishment "is broke, and we need
to fix it." [5]
The current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Admiral William J. Crowe, has acknowledged the new law's
penetrating impact by citing the Act as an "important
impetus" toward ensuring "that we do a better job of
organizing and employing our military forces." [6]
Nonetheless, aspects of the legislation have proven bitterly
controversial. For example, the previous Army Chief of
Staff, General John A. Wickham, Jr., testifying before the
House Armed Services Committee, stated that "the law is so
micro-detailed, you have hobbled us... [and it is]...going to
ravage the field Army...We've got 50,000 regular field grade
officers in the Army who are disturbed about this law." The
current Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Carlisle A. H.
Trost, has been equally vocal in addressing the dramatic
impact the law will have upon U.S. Navy operational
capabilities. [7] The rhetoric and concern, which today
still continue unabated, tend to suggest that the
Goldwater-Nichols Act does indeed mandate revolutionary
change in our defense structure and organization.
The primary purpose of this research endeavor,
however, is to present a contrary argument. Although the
Goldwater-Nichols Act is indeed comprehensive in scope,
far-reaching in impact, and, as so much of recent rhetoric
tends to suggest, "dramatic" in effect, these descriptive
phrases tend to reinforce the popular notion that the Act
mandates "revolutionary" reforms in national defense. I
contend that this impression is not true and can be plausible
only if one disregards the longer American historical context
of the defense debate which extends over much of this
century. This paper will provide that historical context in
an attempt to illuminate the fallacy of those contemporary
beliefs which suggest that this recent defense reform
legislation contains "revolutionary" measures.
A natural inclination, then, would be to counter this
"revolutionary" argument by hypothesizing perhaps a more
"evolutionary" change of process and procedure, in contrast
to genuine organizational reform of our vast, bureaucratic
national security apparatus. Again, to the contrary, I
believe a thorough analysis of the larger historical context
will reveal the debate preceding passage of the
Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 to be neither "revolutionary"
nor "evolutionary" in content. Rather the recent debate can
be more accurately described as a "resurgence" of interest in
reform measures first proposed by President Eisenhower.
However, those issues would remain dormant thereafter only to
be resurrected again a quarter-century later. As Senator
Goldwater persuasively warned his fellow legislators in early
1985, referring to his colleagues who occupied the same
Senate chamber three decades earlier, "They should have
listened to Ike."
Chapter II
GENESIS OF AN AMERICAN NATIONAL MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT (l942-1947)
CREATING AN AMERICAN WARTIME HIGH COMMAND
The National Security Act of 1947 would later embody
the World War II experience by codifying into law the
national military command structure which was created during
that war and which still exists today: the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, the Joint Staff, and the unified and specified
commands. President Roosevelt had initially established the
JCS following the outbreak of war to facilitate U.S. -British
military cooperation and coordination. At the Arcadia
Conference held in Washington in late December 1941 and early
January 1942, Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill agreed
upon the Combined Chiefs of Staff as the "supreme military
body for strategic direction of the Anglo-American effort."
At that time the U.S. had no established high command
structure for providing advice on defense policy as a whole.
The British, however, had earlier created in 1924 a "Chiefs
of Staff Committee" which provided administrative
coordination, tactical control, and strategic direction to
British forces. The British Chiefs of Staff, consisting of a
service chief for each of the air, land, and sea services
were supported by planning and intelligence staffs and also
were charged, as a corporate body, for giving military advice
to both the War Cabinet and the Prime Minister.
The U.S., in sharp contrast to the established British
system, had no comparable structure capable of coordinated
staff work to provide input into a Combined Chiefs of Staff
arrangement. Consequently, in 1942 an American "unified high
command" was adopted and, patterned after the British, became
informally known as the U.S. Chiefs of Staff.
This first Joint Chiefs of Staff worked throughout
the war without legislative sanction or even
formal Presidential definition, a role that
President Roosevelt believed preserved the
flexibility required to meet the needs of the
war. The first members of the Joint U.S. Chiefs
of Staff were the "opposite numbers" to the
British Chiefs of Army, Navy, and Royal Air Force
(an autonomous and co-equal military
organization): Admiral William D. Leahy,
President Roosevelt's special military adviser,
with a title of Chief of Staff to the Commander in
Chief of the Army and Navy; General George C.
Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army; Admiral
Ernest J. King, Chief of Naval Operations and
Commander in Chief of the U.S. Fleet; and General
Henry H. Arnold, Deputy Army Chief of Staff for
Air and Chief of the Army Air Corps. [1]
Under Roosevelt's leadership, this new command arrangement
grew in influence to become the primary agent in coordinating
and providing strategic direction to the Army and Navy.
Roosevelt regarded the JCS as immediately responsible to him
as Commander in Chief and dealt with them directly, without
using the service secretaries as intermediaries. The JCS
operated on the basis of unanimity, on the premise that if
decisions were not unanimous they were not truly joint
decisions and consequently not decisions of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. Directives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were
issued to the senior military executive of the Service
responsible for seeing that they were carried out, who
functioned, in effect, as the executive agent for the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. In December 1944 all four JCS members were
promoted to five-star rank and by the end of the war their
authority had expanded to include primary responsibility for
setting military strategy and directing military operations.
Much of this authority, granted by Roosevelt for effective
prosecution of the war, was later withdrawn from JCS control.
Though the British at the outbreak of World War II
were far ahead of the U.S. in their efforts to merge the
different military services into a coherent joint planning
staff and to allocate resources and provide strategic
direction, their experience offered a premonition of a
similar problem the U.S. would soon encounter and which
continues to persist nearly a half-century later. The
problem, now referred to as "dual hatting", was reflected in
a letter to Prime Minister Churchill in 1942 from the former
British Director of Military Operations in 1918, Sir
Frederick Maurice, who wrote:
The one defect in the present [British] system, as
I view it from outside, is the Joint Planning
Committee. My experience is that the members of
this committee are, ex officio, too much occupied
with the affairs of their own Services to give
their minds to joint planning, and that when they
meet they are disposed rather to find difficulties
in, and objections to, proposals for action than
to initiate such proposals... [2].
The forerunner of the current Joint Staff was also
created in 1942, but consisted of a series of twelve
interlocking committees, boards, and agencies rather than a
single joint staff. This ad hoc creation did
evolve during the war, more in response to
immediate needs than in fulfillment of any
conscious design. The structure that arose was
not an independent, multiservice staff responsible
directly to the JCS, but, rather...consisted of
service representatives who were temporarily
detailed (to these committees) from the service
staffs. [3]
The third element of the new joint military structure
was the establishment of a system of unified operational
commands. These commands were established in each combat
theater during the war and, although intended to facilitate
joint and combined operations and planning, were arranged in
such a way that a single service dominated each.
By the end of the war, the United States
had. . established five operational commands, each
of which was identified with a particular
service: the European and Southwest Pacific
commands with the Army; the Pacific Ocean command
with the Navy; and the two bomber commands with
the Army Air Force. The sponsoring service
provided the commander and the bulk of the
operating forces. It also acted as an executive
agent for the command, and transmitted the
directives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The
World War II command arrangements resulted in a
system in which each of the commands was, in
effect, an operating arm of one of the services.
[4]
Immediately after the cessation of hostilities, first
in Europe and then in the Pacific, the need for some form of
joint command structure was apparent in order to manage the
immense occupation tasks and to develop rational security
policies to guide America in her new-found, although
unsought, role as the singular global power rising from the
ashes of a war-ravaged world. The JCS system provided just
such a structure and, following its formalization by the
National Security Act of 1947, laid the foundation for a
series of legislative and executive changes that have
ultimately produced today's defense organization. However,
the road toward a formal unified command organization would
prove long and, to say the least, controversial.
INTERSERVICE RIVALRY AND THE UNIFICATION EFFORT
DURING WORLD WAR II
Following the war several military study groups
recommended shifting more authority from the individual
services to a joint military structure and establishing a
single armed forces chief of staff to preside over the JCS.
The central issue was whether the U.S. should unify the
military departments (then called the War and Navy
Departments) into a single department of defense. In General
Marshall's view, "the lack of real unity has handicapped the
successful conduct of the war" and the JCS had proven "a
cumbersome and inefficient method of directing the efforts of
the Armed Forces." Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson
declared the JCS to be "an imperfect instrument of top-level
decision" because "it remained incapable of enforcing a
decision against the will of any one of its members." [5]
The initial unification debate did not, however, occur
immediately after the war, but rather during it.
As early as November, 1943, Marshall had become
convinced of the need for a unified department and pushed
within the JCS for agreement on the general idea of a single
military establishment as a basis for organizational
planning, leaving for later resolution service differences on
roles and missions. Marshall's convictions were a result of
the Pearl Harbor disaster which closer interservice
coordination at Oahu might have prevented; chaotic war
production planning caused by service interests which led the
Navy, for example, to favor battleship and carrier production
over amphibious shipping and landing craft resulting in the
LST shortage which forced the postponement of OVERLORD; and
the growth of a large air force which had simply become too
unwieldy for the Army to administer. One of his biographers
would write in 1947:
Marshall looked at the organization of which he
was a member--the Joint Chiefs of Staff--Marshall,
Leahy, King, Arnold. Their achievements had been
great; but there had been failures, too, and the
weakness of the group was that, despite himself,
each member had been caught by the fears and
ambitions of service prestige and made an advocate
of special, instead of national, interest. When
that happened there was no one short of the
President to render a decision on what was, after
all, a purely military problem... The national
security is a single problem, and it cannot be
provided for on a piecemeal basis, [had been
Marshall's] summation. [6]
Marshall concluded that warfare had become so complex that a
unified command arrangement, rather than mutual cooperation,
had become necessary.
In the Spring of 1944, a House Select Committee on
Postwar Military Policy, chaired by Representative Clifton A.
Woodrum [Democrat, Virginia], considered a proposal to
establish a single department of armed forces. Although the
Army, reflecting Marshall's views, was strongly in favor of
the proposal, then Under Secretary of the Navy James V.
Forrestal effectively blocked the idea, contending that the
"whole question of military organization deserves and should
receive an objective and thorough study. " [7] Navy testimony
was construed as implied opposition to a single department
and the Woodrum committee recommended the matter be put off
until the end of the war.
In May 1944, as Woodrum's committee was disbanding,
the JCS created a "Special Committee for Reorganization of
National Defense." Despite basic agreements which
accommodated the creation of an Air Force Service and allowed
the Navy to retain the Marine Corps and "requisite" naval
aviation and the Army to keep its "specialized" aviation, the
JCS committee, after conducting world-wide interviews with
senior military leaders, delivered a split report.
The majority endorsed a single department of the
armed forces, with the Air Force assigned a
position coordinate with the Army and Navy. The
department would be headed by a civilian
Secretary. Under him there would be a single
Commander of the Armed Forces who would also act
as Chief of Staff to the President. The Commander
would be provided with an Armed Forces General
Staff, and he would coordinate laterally with an
Under Secretary who would serve as overall manager
of the business side of the military Services.
The Secretary, the Commander, and the military
commanders of the three Services would constitute
the "United States Chiefs of Staff", whose job it
would be to advise the President on military
strategy and budgetary matters. There would also
be a council, composed of representatives from the
Department of Armed Forces and the Department of
State, "to correlate national policies and
military preparedness." [8]
The senior committee member, retired Admiral James O.
Richardson, dissented from this majority view remaining
unconvinced of the need for a separate air force while
contending that an overall "Commander of the Armed Forces"
would exercise too much power. Above all, Richardson feared
"that the establishment of a single department would hamper
the full and free development of the Services... [His] dissent
reflected the growing misgivings within the Navy about the
threatened loss of its air arm to the Air Force and possibly
even the loss of its Fleet Marine Force to the Army." [9]
EISENHOWER AS ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF: 1945 - 1947
Dwight Eisenhower assumed duties as Army Chief of
Staff in December 1945. Two weeks later, President Truman
submitted his proposal for an armed forces unification plan
to the Congress. Earlier, then-Senator Truman had served as
chairman of a special Senate committee investigating national
defense programs. This experience significantly influenced
his views on service unification:
I had not fully realized the extent of the waste
and inefficiency existing as a result of the
Operation of two separate and uncoordinated
military departments until I became chairman of
the special Senate committee created in 1941 to
check up on the national defense program. I had
long believed that a coordinated defense
organization was an absolute necessity. The
duplications of time, materiel, and manpower
resulting from independent Army and Navy
operations which were paraded before my committee
intensified this conviction. [10]
Though Ike had just assumed his Chief of Staff role, the plan
had been developed largely by the Army and presented to the
Congress earlier on October 19 by his Chief of Information
(Public Relations), Lieutenant General J. Lawton Collins.
Fortunately, though they never became close friends, Truman
and Ike had compatible views regarding unification and other
defense propositions as well, such as the need for a
universal military training (UMT) program. [11]
Eisenhower's wartime experience deeply affected his
views on the need for better interservice coordination at the
strategic level. In his wartime memoirs, reflecting on the
aftermath of the Normandy invasion and service cooperation
during OVERLORD, he wrote:
...The accomplishment in Europe of the three
services operating under unified command strongly
influenced my determined advocacy of a similar
type of organization in postwar Washington. [12]
Eisenhower appreciated Truman's genuine concern for
unification of the armed forces and spent much of his time as
Army Chief of Staff arguing publicly for its serious
consideration. He was such a strong advocate of unification
that he proposed a single uniform for the armed services, and
a service academy exchange program sending cadets to
Annapolis and midshipmen to West Point during their third
year. Both Ike and Truman also
shared the general Army prejudice against the
Marine Corps, and, although neither could ever say
so publicly, they would have liked to eliminate
the Corps (indeed, according to the Marines, that
was the chief objective of unification). [13]
Truman's unification proposal (the Collins plan)
which implicitly assumed that interservice rivalry was the
greatest barrier to more effective defense planning, was
indeed timely and
coincided with the [postwar] congressional
investigation of the Pearl Harbor debacle, which
each day seemed to uncover further shocking
examples of the need for service unification.
Truman's unification proposal thus rose on a
groundswell of favorable public opinion. [14]
In his message to Congress of December 19, 1945, he argued
that "there is enough evidence now at hand to demonstrate
beyond question the need for a unified department." During
the war, unified direction or command in Washington never
really existed leaving the President alone as the sole
arbitrator of disputes between the War and Navy Departments.
Even in the field, despite the creation of the unified
operational commands, Truman believed that
our unity of operations was greatly impaired by
the differences in training, in doctrine, in
communication systems, and in supply and
distribution systems, that stemmed from the
division of leadership in Washington. [15]
The President cited nine critical reasons for combining the
two existing departments, including a need for "integrated
strategic plans and a unified military program and budget,"
the "strongest means for civilian control of the military,"
"parity for air power," "unity of command in outlying bases,"
and "consistent and equitable personnel policies" among the
services. Truman's reorganization plan included the
proposals listed in Figure l.
Click here to view image
1. Creation of a single "Department of National
Defense."
2. Designation of a cabinet-level "Secretary of
National Defense," assisted by one civilian Under
Secretary and several civilian Assistant Secretaries.
3. Three co-equal branches: one for land forces, one
for naval forces, and one for air forces, each under
an Assistant Secretary with the Marine Corps
remaining an "integral part of the Navy."
4. A single "Chief of Staff" of the Department of
National Defense" to serve a relatively short tenure
but with operational command authority who, together
with the service department chiefs, would constitute
an "advisory body to the Secretary of National Defense
and to the President." [author's emphasis added]
5. The creation of a "State-War-Navy Coordinating
Committee" to address the "formulation of a
comprehensive national security program."
Figure 1. Truman's Defense Reorganization Proposal (Collins
Plan) [16]
Despite Truman's strong plea backed by the prestige
and power of his office and the tremendous public esteem for
Eisenhower, the Navy effectively neutralized his proposals.
Using the Eberstadt Report, which concluded that the JCS
system had performed well during World War II, the Navy again
argued that the adoption of a single chief of staff with
command authority--which the Army contended was consistent
with the principle of war referred to as "Unity of
Command"--placed too much power in the hands of a single
individual. Ferdinand Eberstadt, Forrestal's personal friend
who had played a distinguished role in the resource
mobilization effort during the war first as civilian chairman
of the Army-Navy Munitions Board and later as vice chairman
of the War Production Board, argued that planning
difficulties were not due to interservice rivalry but a lack
of civilian-military interagency coordination. Navy
partisans in Congress were able to generate sufficient
political emotion to effectively checkmate Truman's
proposal. As historians Alan Millett and Peter Maslowski
commented:
Led by the redoubtable [Navy Secretary] James V.
Forrestal, [the Navy] fought the Army plan to a
standstill in the White House and Congress, for it
saw the War Department plan as a blueprint for the
end of its maritime security mission. Forrestal
knew the unpublished assumptions of the War
Department proposal: cuts in naval aviation, the
transfer of land-based naval air to the Air Force,
no Navy nuclear weapons, the reduction of the
Marine Corps to minor peacetime security
functions. A future war, probably with the Soviet
Union, would not involve major naval campaigns,
since the Russians did not have a global navy.
Therefore, so the Army and AAF planners thought,
the Navy should finally relinquish its role as the
first line of defense, surrendering that function
to the Air Force. [17]
For almost two years (1945-47), coinciding with
Eisenhower's 27-month stint as Chief of Staff of the Army,
two coalitions of defense reorganization battled furiously.
General Omar N. Bradley, Administrator of the Veterans
Administration at the time, described the period as follows:
Truman's proposal led to lengthy congressional
hearings in the spring of 1946. These hearings
broadened to examine such questions as "Why do we
need a Navy at all?" "Why do we have separate
ground forces in the Marine Corps and Army?" "Why
do we have three air forces--Army, Navy, and
Marine Corps?" By that time, the Navy and Marine
Corps, sincerely fearing they would be diminished
to ceremonial forces, were passionately and
publicly opposing unification. The admirals made
sensational anti-Army and anti-Air Force charges
in the hearings. For example, it was revealed
that Ike wanted to reduce the Marine Corps to a
few lightly equipped regiments for "minor
operations" and Spaatz wanted control of all
guided missiles in the future. The new Chief of
Naval Operations, Admiral Chester Nimitz, charged
that "the ultimate ambition of the Army Air Force
[is] to absorb naval aviation in is entirety and
set up one large air force." The Navy and Marine
Corps testimony was so heated and controversial
that Truman was forced to fall back and regroup.
He asked the new Secretary of the Navy, James V.
Forrestal, and the new Secretary of War, Robert P.
Patterson, to seek a compromise solution for
presentation to Congress the following year. [18]
Truman and the Congress, exhausted and increasingly wary of
Russia, finally forged a compromise solution in the National
Security Act of 1947, signed into law on July 26 of that year.
The national security organization finally agreed to by both
Secretary Forrestal and Secretary Patterson is shown in
Figure 2.
Click here to view image
Throughout this ordeal, as biographer Stephen Ambrose
observed, Eisenhower
had urged the principle of unity of command for
American armed forces in the various theaters
around the world; he had advocated unification of
the armed forces, not through a loose federation
at the top (as happened with the creation of the
Department of Defense in July 1947) but through a
real integration that would stretch from the high
command in Washington to the smallest unit in the
field; he had fought against a pell-mell,
helter-skelter demobilization; he had argued for
universal military training, with every American
boy (and girl too, in his view) spending his or
her eighteenth year either in the armed services
or in some form of national service job; he had
supported the idea of international control of
atomic energy, if it could be achieved consistent
with America's security interests. .. [20]
However, when General Bradley relieved him in early February,
1947, Ike had lost on every point. He retired bitter and
"fed up" with the "long succession of personnel, budgetary,
and planning problems" from a job he characterized as being
"as bad as I always thought it would be." He spent six
months writing the account of his wartime experiences,
published under the title Crusade In Europe, and then
accepted the Presidency of Columbia University.
Chapter III
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ACT OF 1947
AND THE UNIFICATION DRAMA (1947-1952)
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ACT OF 1947
The Congress, in finally passing the National Security
Act of 1947, settled the unification issue largely in favor
of the Navy by legislating the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a
committee of "principal military advisors." The Act did not
establish an informal "Chairman" although it retained Admiral
Leahy's position as "Chief of Staff to the Commander in
Chief." It provided the JCS a "Joint Staff" of 100 officers
to assist them in preparing joint strategic and logistic
plans and provided for establishing unified commands in
strategic areas. By late 1947 seven unified geographic
commands and two specified commands would be established but,
almost from the beginning, the debate of service dominance
over the JCS structure surfaced. [1] Within each unified
command, at least theoretically, Army, Navy, and Air Force
troops were under commanders of their respective services and
under the overall supervision of a commander in chief
designated from one of the services by the Joint Chiefs. In
practice, however, the principle of unity of command under
this single unified commander was not really achieved.
The Act created the Air Force as a co-equal service, a
Secretary of Defense to exercise direction over the three
services, the Central Intelligence Agency, and a National
Security Council to assist the President with national
sevurity policy formulation. As Millett and Maslowski note:
The new defense organization--labeled the
"national military establishment"--was not a
centralized, "unified" system, but a federation of
the World War II model. The Secretary of Defense,
aided by a small staff, had only general,
coordinating powers.. .The law specified service
roles and missions, particularly for the navy and
Marine Corps, which saved all naval aviation
functions and the Fleet Marine Force by inspired
lobbying with Congress. Interservice relations
remained bound to tbe JCS system of military
negotiation...Navy partisans were even more
pleased with what had been avoided. Secretary of
War Robert Patterson would not accept the new
defense post, [so Navy Secretary] Forrestal became
the first Secretary of Defense. General
Eisenhower did not become a single, powerful
military defense chief and could only function
informally as a presidential advisor. [2]
Each of the three military services retained much of their
former autonomy. Although the new Secretary of Defense,
accorded cabinet rank, was clearly intended to be the central
figure in coordinating the overall National Military
Establishment, the service secretaries retained authority for
administration, training, and supporting their respective
forces. All three were designated executive department heads
and, though they lacked cabinet rank, had direct access to
the President. In effect, the Secretary of Defense, with
only coordinating powers, a small staff, and no single
principal military advisor, was "held hostage" to the
services. Army Chief of Staff General Bradley expressed his
dismay with the final result:
I had supported and testified for Truman's
original unification plan and was not very happy
with the final outcome. The act had been so
watered down to mollify the Navy that the end
result was not truly "unification" but rather a
loosely structured "federation." [3]
The Army's official history would later reinforce Bradley's
views in assessing flaws in the new organizational structure:
The signal weakness of the act, however, was not
that it left the armed forces more federated than
unified, but that the Secretary of Defense,
empowered to exercise only general supervision,
could do little more than encourage cooperation
among the departments. Furthermore, the direct
access to the President given the three service
secretaries tended to confuse the lines of
authority. [4]
THE THREE "ACTS" OF THE POSTWAR UNIFICATION "DRAMA"
In his memoirs, A General's Life, Bradley neatly
divides the "drama of postwar unification and interservice
planning...into three acts or phases, the `Forrestal Phase,'
the `Ike Phase,' and the `Louis Johnson Phase.'" Between
March 1948 and October 1949, initially at Forrestal's
direction, the JCS attempted to develop, for the first time,
a "unified" war plan and military budget to support Truman's
defense policy while also providing sufficient atomic forces
to defeat the Soviet Union in all-out war. Bradley describes
this 18-month attempt as the
bitterest "interservice war" in our history. It
resulted in a revolt of the Navy and a near-revolt
of the Air Force. The acrimony and pressures led
many distinguished military men and top defense
civilians to commit career suicide, and the taxing
battle helped bring on Forrestal's real suicide.
The pressures felled others--Ike for one--with
severe illnesses. [5]
Forrestal Phase: The need to develop a short-range
emergency war plan was prompted by the Czech coup in
February 1948 along with the combined effects of the Berlin
Blockade and occupation commander General Lucius Clay's
Shocking statement that war could come "with dramatic
suddenness." Operation HALFMOON was prepared to counter a
Soviet invasion of Europe by using Air Force-delivered atomic
bombs on Russia, followed by the Army's mobilization to
occupy both Europe and the Soviet homeland in order to "help
restore law and order and stable governments." The plan was,
in effect, the precursor to the "massive retaliation"
strategy that would constitute the basis for deterrence in
the early years of the new Eisenhower administration.
However, agreement among the Joint Chiefs on the allocation
of Truman's $14 billion budget ceiling proved impossible.
The new Air Force Secretary, W. Stuart Symington, and
Air Force Chief of Staff, General Hoyt S. Vandenberg (whose
uncle was a prominent Republican Senator) openly defied
Truman by seeking congressional support for a
disproportionate share of the limited defense budget that
would enable the Air Force to provide a "cheap-easy-
victory-through-air power-alone" plan for HALFMOON.
Forrestal, quickly losing Truman's confidence because of his
inability to counter this "brazen Air Force end run," now
realized he needed more high-level military advice in his
small office than was authorized by the `47 Act. At the same
time, the Navy, which had gradually been losing prestige
since the war, became acrimonious and bitter about the lack
of naval power envisioned in HALFMOON. The Air Force-Navy
rivalry spilled over into an "unseemly semi-public brawl."
Since Bradley, as Army Chief of Staff, had not yet become
involved in-the feud, Forrestal asked him to serve as his
"principal" military advisor, a sort of "dispassionate
referee" to assist him, without violating existing law, in
somewhat the same capacity that Admiral Leahy had served
President Roosevelt.
Ironically, Secretary of Defense Forrestal, who had
earlier opposed an independent JCS first as Under Secretary,
then as Secretary of the Navy, now "condemned their inability
to offer integrated advice on any matter involving important
service interests, particularly defense budget issues." [6]
He now supported creating the position of "chairman" to the
JCS, an idea recommended in November 1948 by the Committee on
National Security Organization. President Truman obviously
concurred
and proposed a chairman to head the Joint Chiefs
of Staff and to act as the principal military
advisor to the president and the secretary of
defense. Turman thus attempted to move from a
service-dominated joint structure toward a system
in which an independent chairman would assure that
the joint structure produced military planning and
advice that rose above individual service
interests. He did not return, however, to the
earlier Army proposals that called for an even
stronger joint military leader--an armed forces
chief of staff, who would both chair the JCS and
command military operations. Indeed, the Truman
Administration made no proposals to reduce service
dominance of the operational commands. [7]
The administration's reluctance to push for the single
chief of staff proposal was also due to strong opposition by
legislators who preferred the model established by Admiral
Leahy during World War II. Although anointed as Roosevelt's
special military advisor with the title "Chief of Staff to
the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy," Admiral Leahy
had not in any sense been a "commander" and in daily practice
had operated as a liaison between the JCS and civilian
leadership. Though the senior member and JCS "presiding
officer," he occupied a position that was in no way superior
to that of General Marshall and Admiral King. In fact,
Congress was emphatic in rejecting any suggestion that the
establishment of a chairman meant acceptance of an armed
forces chief of staff or an armed forces general staff
system. Later, in a 1949 Amendment to the original Act,
Congress would specifically prohibit any such notions by
amending the National Security Act's Declaration of Policy:
In enacting this legislation, it is the intent of
Congress to provide... [for] the effective
strategic direction of the armed forces and for
their separation under unified control and for
their integration into an efficient team of land,
naval, and air forces but not to establish a
single chief of staff over the armed forces nor an
armed forces general staff... [8]
Congress thus precluded the new chairman from exercising
command authority over either the JCS or any of the military
services although it did provide for an increase in the size
of the Joint Staff to 210 officers.
Though he would later become the first occupant of the
JCS "Chairman" position created by the `49 Amendment, Bradley
now turned down this initial offer to serve as Forrestal's
"dispassionate referee." According to Secretary of the Army
Kenneth C. Royall, he could not be "spared at this crucial
point in the Army's history" especially since he had been
Chief of Staff for only three months, but also because of the
political uncertainty of the upcoming 1948 election.
Forrestal further sought to moderate the increasingly
vehement interservice squabbles by gathering the chiefs
together at Key West in March 1948 and again in August at the
Naval War College, Newport, in an effort to secure a
gentlemen's agreement on service roles and missions. The
Army was to retain primary responsibility for land
operations, for providing a ground-based air defense
capability to defend the United States against air attack,
and for occupation forces and overseas security garrisons.
The newly created Air Force would receive sole jurisdiction
over strategic air warfare, air transport, and combat air
support for the Army. The Navy would retain responsibility
for surface and submarine operations and control of its own
sea-based aviation and the Marine Corps with its organic
aviation. Although the Navy would be allowed to develop
nuclear weapons to support all phases of a naval campaign, it
was not to develop a "strategic air force." And though the
Marines were to retain air-ground amphibious forces, they
were precluded from creating a "ground army." Forrestal,
however, was ultimately unable to curb the interservice
rivalries or to develop a consensus due to service and
Congressional pressures. The final Key West "Agreement"
proved to be little more than a description of service
capabilities as they actually existed in 1948. [9] One
provision of the agreement required designating a member of
the JCS as "executive agent" for each of the unified
commands. This soon caused considerable confusion in command
relationships and lines of authority.
Ike Phase: Following his re-election in late 1948,
Truman decided to bring two strong allies into his defense
camp. He persuaded Eisenhower to take a leave of absence
from Columbia in January 1949 for the purpose of coming back
to Washington for two or three months as a military
consultant to Forrestal, a sort of "Presiding Officer" over
the JCS. Truman needed Ike's prestige, hoping that he "would
exercise his legendary conciliatory magic over the JCS,
persuading [them] to agree unanimously on war plans, `weapons,
and budgets, thus heading off a brawl in Congress." At this
time the JCS included Chief of Staff of the Army (CSA)
General Bradley, Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral
Louis E. Denfield, and Air Force Chief of Staff General
Vandenberg.
Simultaneously, Truman made preparations to replace
the ailing Forrestal with a staunch campaign supporter,
millionaire lawyer Louis A. Johnson. By early 1949,
Forrestal had completely lost Truman's confidence. Bradley
noted Forrestal's "increasingly irrational behavior. He had
sunk into deep depression and was on the verge of a nervous
breakdown." And when Eisenhower arrived in January he was
"shocked" at seeing Forrestal, noting in his private diary
that "Jim is looking badly" as a result of his own anxiety
and "terrific, almost tragic, disappointment in the failures
of professional men to `get together'...." [10] Ike felt
that Forrestal greatly exaggerated any help that he could
provide in the task of "unifying" the services and, after two
weeks with the JCS wrote:
Except for my liking, admiration, and respect for
[Forrestal's] great qualities I'd not go near
Washington, even if I had to resign my commission
completely. [11]
Eisenhower was dismayed by the intensity of the budget
controversy and the near insubordination of the Air Force and
Navy leaders, noting:
Some of our [military] seniors are forgetting that
they have a Commander in Chief. They must be
reminded of this, in terms of direct, unequivocal
language. If this is not done soon, some day
we're going to have a blowup... [12]
Ike was determined to be fair-minded. Even CNO
Admiral Denfield later wrote that Ike's "effort to be an
impartial presiding officer met with success." [13]
Nonetheless, he still thought the Marine Corps was an
"unwarranted and expensive duplication of the Army" and
shared Bradley's views that the Navy's budget should be cut.
He recommended that Truman cut certain Navy programs, such as
the new supercarrier [USS United States, CV-58], in order to
obtain more money to support the strongest possible Air
Force. He did not agree with the air power zealots that all
carriers be eliminated but thought ten or so carriers would
be "our greatest asset" in the first months of a war.
However he had in mind using existing carriers already built
and did not believe hundreds of millions should be spent on
the new supercarrier program, believing that a supercarrier
would just be a "super" target.
Despite Eisehower's logic, charm, reputation, and his
good intentions, the JCS could not come to agreement on a new
plan to replace HALFMOON, now renamed OFFTACKLE in deference
to Ike's football background! The divergence in proposed
military forces, however, proved so great as to defy
reconciliation. Ike became disenchanted with the constant
"split" JCS decisions caused by the intransigence of both CNO
Denfield and Air Force Chief Hoyt Vandenberg, writing in
March in his diary:
The situation grows intolerable...I am so weary of
this interservice struggle for position, prestige
and power that this morning I practically `blew my
top'...The bitter fight still goes on...The whole
performance is humiliating--I've seriously
considered resigning my commission, so that I
could say what I pleased, publicly. [14]
On March 21, Ike became gravely ill and bedridden,
suffering from chronic ileitis. At Truman's suggestion, lke
spent three weeks recuperating first at the Winter White House
in Key West, then for another month in Augusta. Although he
returned briefly to Washington in late summer to assist new
Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, he asked to be relieved of
his assignment, recommending that Bradley take the newly
legislated JCS Chairman position that he refused to accept.
Ike returned to Columbia "convinced that Washington would
never see me again except as an occasional visitor." [15]
Johnson Phase: One week after Ike became ill Louis
Johnson became Secretary of Defense. Forrestal was now barely
able to attend his own farewell ceremony in the
Pentagon courtyard. In early April, while resting in
Florida, he broke down completely and was placed in the
psychiatric ward at Bethesda Naval Hospital. A month and a
half later, on May 22, Forrestal climbed through an unguarded
window on the 16th floor and leaped to his death.
Louis Johnson's major goal was to work a miracle in
the Pentagon by bashing heads, cutting budgets, and stopping
the interminable interservice rivalry by truly unifying the
services. Completely opposite to Forrestal in character,
many felt the flamboyant and outspoken Johnson had his eyes
on the White House. In Bradley's view, he doubted
seriously if Johnson knew much about military
strategy or weapons systems. He was probably the
worst appointment Truman made during his
presidency. In a little more than a year, he too
would be gone, a victim of his own ambition and
excesses. [16]
Gradually, Truman and others became suspicious of
Johnson's public behavior. Truman later acknowledged that
Something happened. I am of the opinion that
Potomac fever and a `pathological condition' are
to blame. Louis began to show an inordinate
egotistical desire to run the whole government.
He offended every member of the cabinet. . .He never
missed an opportunity to say mean things about my
personal staff. [17]
Secretary of State Dean Acheson regarded Johnson's conduct as
"too outrageous to be explained by mere cussedness." A few
years later, Johnson had a brain tumor removed. Regrettably,
as Bradley remarks in his memoirs, Truman had "unwittingly
replaced one mental case with another." [18]
Johnson was an airpower advocate, determined to remove
the Navy from the strategic air mission. He did so by
cancelling construction of the supercarrier USS United States
on April 23, 1949. This act caught the Navy completely by
surprise and the reaction was one of outrage: Navy Secretary
Sullivan resigned in protest, Truman's naval aide described
the decision as "criminal," and the now infamous "Revolt of
the Admirals" ensued.
On August 10, Congress enacted Public Law 81-216:
"The National Security Act Amendments of 1949" which amended
portions of the original National Security Act. Key
provisions were the renaming of the "National Military
Establishment" as the "Department of Defense," redesignating
the services as "military departments" as opposed to
"executive departments," and the removal of the service
secretaries from the National Security Council. This 1949
Amendment also created the position of "Chairman," JCS and
abolished Admiral Leahy's former billet "Chief of Staff to
the Commander in Chief. " The Chairman, JCS, would serve a
two-year term with the possibility of only one
reappointment. Amazingly, however, he was deprived of any
formal "vote" among the JCS.
After Ike rejected Johnson's offer to serve as the
first Chairman, the Secretary of Defense then turned to
Bradley although the general had earlier indicated he did not
want the job. But Bradley now changed his mind and agreed to
serve in the position for one term, later explaining why:
The main reason for my change of heart was my deep
concern about the state of the military
establishment. Owing to the cancellation of the
supercarrier, there was a vicious mutiny afoot in
the Navy. With his crazy bull-in-the-china-shop
approach, Johnson was in no way fitted to deal
with it. A Navy mutiny could conceivably tear
apart the Department of Defense, possibly tempting
the Kremlin to capitalize on our military
disarray. A firm but fair JCS Chairman, assisted
by a neutral Army general (my replacement as Army
Chief of Staff), might be the moderating force
that could prevent a crippling brawl. [19]
On August 16, 1949, Omar Bradley was sworn in as the first
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. However, like Ike before him,
he would prove ineffective as a "moderating" chairman and
could prevent neither a "crippling brawl" nor the Navy
"vicious mutiny" from occurring.
The issue which sparked the "Revolt of the Admirals"
surfaced in June 1949. The Navy charged that the Air Force's
new B-36 intercontinental bomber was a "billion dollar
blunder" and was being produced only because Louis Johnson
and Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington had financial ties
to the contractor, Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft. Navy
supporter Congressman James E. Van Zandt then demanded a
congressional investigation. Van Zandt, a Pennsylvania
Republican, had been called to active naval duty as a
Congressman during the war and served in both the Pacific and
North Atlantic before being discharged as a captain in early
1946. Carl Vinson, Georgia Democrat and chairman of the
newly created House Armed Services Committee (HASC), who had
earlier chaired the Committee on Naval Affairs, broadened the
scope by launching a sweeping investigation into the national
military establishment, its decision-making processes,
strategic doctrine, and roles and missions of the services
which lasted for three months.
During the HASC hearings the Navy, led by aviator
Admiral Arthur Radford, attacked Johnson, the B-36 and the
Air Force, and the validity of strategic bombing, arguing
that a strategy comprised of a "single atomic blitz" was both
foolhardy and immoral. The Navy further argued that a plan
to completely abolish the Marine Corps was being prepared
and, evidenced by their support of the decision to cancel the
new supercarrier, contended that neither Bradley nor
Vandenberg had any understanding of sea power. Bradley,
"shocked" and "angered" at these accusations, felt that the
Navy's senior leaders had been "completely dishonest":
For the Navy to raise public doubt about the
effectiveness--or morality--of atomic bombs was
the height of hypocrisy. Ever since I had been a
member of the JCS the Navy had been fighting
relentlessly not to be excluded from utilizing
nuclear weapons. The principal purpose of the
supercarrier was to accommodate aircraft large
enough to carry atomic bombs. The cancellation of
the supercarrier had, in effect, denied the Navy a
decisive role in nuclear bombardment. This
denial, in fact, was the main cause of the Navy's
revolt.
Bradley insisted that charges of a plan to eliminate
the Marine Corps were also "dishonest" especially since a
provision in the 1947 Act protected the Corps. Bradley felt
that this charge had been "designed to incur the sympathy of
the millions who regarded the Marine Corps as sacrosanct as
motherhood." Like Ike, however, he did believe that the
Marine Corps was far too large and a wasteful duplication of
the Army's mission. Hence Bradley, as he later wrote,
had proposed deep cuts in its size. But these
cuts were more or less proportional to the cuts
proposed for the Army and did not represent an
attempt to abolish the Marine Corps. Moreover,
Marine Corps aviation was still wildly out of
balance, consisting as it did of twenty-one
squadrons, which was the equivalent of seven Air
Force tactical support groups. At the peak of
Twelfth Army Group operations in the ETO, we never
had more than fourteen groups supporting
twenty-eight to thirty divisions in the line.
Bradley was "furious about the grievous psychological
damage" caused by the Navy, believing that
The crybaby attitude of the naval aviators and
Marines had been, in my opinion, gravely damaging
both at home and abroad. The admirals were
insubordinate, mutinous.
Bradley, now discarded his "moderator" image and lashed
back. Testifying before Vinson's committee, he predicted
that "large scale amphibious operations will never occur
again... [because] the atomic bomb properly delivered almost
precludes such a possibility" and reminded the HASC that at
Sicily and Normandy, "two of the largest amphibious assaults
ever made in history," not a single Marine was present. He
concluded his "hard hitting" remarks with:
many in the Navy are completely against unity of
command and planning as established in the laws
passed by the Congress of the United States.
Despite protestations to the contrary, I believe
the Navy has opposed unification from the
beginning, and they have not, in spirit as well as
deed, accepted it completely to date. As a
policy, yes, but as the final and authoritative
vehicle for planning our collective defense, no.
World War II should have taught all military men
that our military forces are one team--in the game
to win regardless who carries the ball. This is
no time for `fancy Dans' who won't hit the line
with all they have on every play, unless they can
call the signals. Each player on this
team--whether he shines in the spotlight of the
backfield or eats dirt in the line--must be All
American.
The admirals' "revolt" had no effect on Truman's
budget and the supercarrier remained cancel led. The
principal outcome was the "professional death" of CNO
Denfield. He was replaced by Admiral Forrest P. Sherman who
had remained close-mouthed during the "revolt," but Sherman
would die of a heart attack in less than two years.
By late August these headlines were replaced with news
of the Soviet explosion of their first atomic bomb, believed
to have occurred on or about August 29, and the Communist
victory in China forcing the Nationalist Chinese under Chiang
Kai-Shek to withdraw to Formosa. These two events provoked a
reappraisal of our foreign and military policy, culminating
in April 1950 with NSC 68. This document was prepared
largely by Paul Nitze who had been selected by Secretary of
State Dean Acheson to replace George Kennan as head of the
State Department's Policy Planning Staff during the summer of
1949. It has become the enduring philosophical statement
behind the post-War transformation of American strategic
policy and the adoption of "containment."
Although the "Revolt of the Admirals" was overshadowed
by these global events and soon the Korean War, the defense
issues which surfaced during this turbulent period would
constitute recurrent themes that would link future reform
efforts and even now, four decades later, still dominate the
defense debate:
1. DOD civilian relations with industry and ethical
issues involving favoritism and influence for
political or financial gain as well as inevitable
Congressional pork-barreling.
2. Bickering over "roles and missions" resulting in
an increased tendency toward competitive rather than
complementary service relationships.
3. Interservice rivalries which thwarted a "unified"
defense effort and "politicized" strategic issues.
4. The abhorrence of adopting a general staff system
and establishing unity of command at the highest
military level for fear, respectively, of the "German
example" and the "man on a white horse" syndrome.
5. Above all, problems of civil-military relations in
a democracy and the absolute need to assure civilian
control of the military.
As Millet and Maslowski conclude, all of this had one major
continued consequence:
For the armed forces, the functional and
organizational disputes of the late 1940s helped
create an environment that encouraged civilian
intervention in military affairs, even in matters
that might have been narrowly interpreted as
"internal, professional" matters. The postwar
years opened an area of controversy about the
relationship of the armed forces to reform within
American society. In 1949 Congress approved the
Uniform Code of Military Justice, which extended
civilian substantive and procedural legal
principles to the armed forces,... [and] created
the all-civilian Court of Military Appeals. [20]
And so, despite the incredible human toll and his own
extraordinary effort during the great unification "drama,"
when Dwight Eisenhower assumed the presidency three years
later, the JCS still "continued to operate on the World War
II model as a weakly led committee of service
representatives, with only a small service-dominated Joint
Staff." [21]
Chapter IV
EISENHOWER'S REFORMS AND THE DRIVE FOR UNIFICATION (1953-1958)
Eisenhower had severely criticized the inadequacies of
the joint structure during the 1952 Presidential campaign.
He took office in 1953 intent on reforming it, stating
shortly after his inauguration:
As a former soldier who has experienced modern war
at first hand, and now as President and Commander
in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States,
I believe that our Defense Establishment is in
need of immediate improvement. [1]
Under Eisenhower's "New Look," following the termination of
operations in Korea, defense expenditures and the Armed
Forces were to be reduced with the military brought under
greater subordination to civil authority and policy.
In 1953 and again in 1958 President Eisenhower
proposed measures to improve the performance of each of the
three components of the joint structure. However, efforts to
increase the authority of the chairman, for example, by
giving the chairman the right to vote in JCS proceedings and
control of the Joint Staff, were only partially successful.
Eisenhower sought to clarify the division of labor between
the services and the operational commands by separating
administrative responsibilities from operational control of
the forces, the former belonging to each of the services and
the latter to the various CINCs. His attempts to create a
truly independent military staff and to reduce service
influence over the Joint Staff were also largely
unsuccessful. Although the committee system was eliminated,
it was replaced by elaborate staffing procedures which
required service concurrence with all Joint Staff papers.
Thus, the staff was kept a "captive of the services [which]
lacked the independence to provide broad, cross-cutting
advice and recommendations." [2]
REORGANIZATION PLAN NO. 6 OF 1953
To assist the transition to a new Republican
administration and provide a bipartisan foundation for
subsequent reform measures, President Truman asked his
outgoing Secretary of Defense, Robert A. Lovett, to prepare
an assessment of organizational shortcomings. Lovett's
letter of November 18, 1952 acknowledged the necessity for
civilian control and "evolutionary" improvements to the
overall unification effort but stressed the inadequacy of the
existing joint structure. Regarding the JCS, Lovett wrote:
I do not consider the present organization
adequate, not only because it leaves certain
responsibilities obscure but also because in its
present form it does not provide the type of
military guidance needed if the full benefits of
unification are to be attained...By their very
makeup it is extremely difficult for the Joint
Chiefs of Staff to maintain a broad non-service
point of view. Since they wear two hats--one as
Chief of an Armed Service and the other as a
member of the Joint Chiefs, it is difficult for
them to detach themselves from the hopes and
ambitions of their own Service without having
their own staff feel that they are being let down
by their Chief. The maintenance of an impartial,
nonpartisan position becomes increasingly
difficult in times of shortage of either men,
money, or material...
It is extremely difficult for a group composed
of the Chiefs of the three Military Departments
and charged, with the exception of the Chairman,
with heavy responsibilities placed upon them by
law with respect to each individual Service, to
decide matters involving the splitting of
manpower, supplies, equipment, facilities,
dollars, and similar matters.
In over-simplified form, one of the major
difficulties with the present Joint Chiefs of
Staff organization is that they are grievously
overworked [and] too deeply immersed in day-to-day
operations, frequently of an administrative
character, to have adequate time to devote to
their major responsibilities--the preparation of
overall, joint and combined strategic plans, the
development of logistic plans, the review of such
plans in the light of the material and personnel
situation and the effect of new weapons... [This
is] aggravated by the fact that the Secretary of
Defense has no military staff... [3]
Lovett viewed the Joint Staff to be little more than a
"clearing house for papers," contending that
Fear of an "Armed Forces General Staff" again
seems to have dominated our thinking. The broad
national service point of view, as compared with
the single service point of view, is not merely a
problem of the individuals making up the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, but is more likely in the Joint
Staff which prepares the papers and submits the
analyses and studies to the Joint Chiefs of
Staff. This Staff, by law, consists of officers
of approximately equal numbers from each of the
three Armed Services. They are of relatively
junior grades and their future careers and
promotions lie in their separate services. It is
not unnatural therefore, that they should from
time to time become the advocate of their own
Service's point of view. There is, furthermore, a
natural temptation to indulge in the indoor sport
of "back-scratching." [4]
He offered two alternatives to enhance unification. The
first consisted of strengthening the role of the Chairman,
JCS while relieving the dual-hat burdens of the service
chiefs by delegating powers for day-to-day operations to the
Vice Chiefs of each service. As part of the same proposal,
Lovett advocating the creation of a General Staff Corps to
provide a cadre of officers, immune from service retribution,
to man the Joint Staff. Lovett readily admitted that this
proposal appeared to violate the legal prohibition against an
"Armed Forces General Staff." For that reason, which
resulted from the inherent Anglo-American assumption that
part of the cause of the war had been the power and influence
of Germany's General Staff, the proposal was politically
untenable.
Lovett's second proposal, admittedly "radical" and
therefore "disruptive," called for former service chiefs to
become members of a "Combined Staff" forming a body of
national military advisors rising above parochial service
interests in areas of "strategic planning, logistic planning,
military requirements, and overall military policies." [5]
Lovett also warned against the bureaucratic tendency towards
increasing layers of headquarters and argued, as had both
President Truman and Eisenhower when he was Chief of Staff of
the Army, the peacetime need for Universal Military Training
(UMT):
The problem of the number of Headquarters in the
field as well as in the zone of the interior is
steadily growing. There are, in my opinion, far
too many levels of headquarters in the Military
Services thus adding to the overhead and inevitably
causing delay. One of the most promising areas of
reduction of cost lies, in my opinion, in keeping
the standing military forces to a minimum to
protect against disaster while having immediately
available a basically trained Reserve. The only
satisfactory method of accomplishing this desired
result, that I am aware of, is through a system of
Universal Military Training and Service. I believe
that steps should be taken promptly to make this
system effective. [6]
Given the new President's personal views and repeated
frustration earlier as Army Chief of Staff after the war, as
"presiding officer" of the JCS in 1949, and his recent
experience as SACEUR in NATO (January 1951 - May 1952),
Eisenhower could especially appreciate Secretary Lovett's
departing observations.
Shortly after assuming the Presidency, Ike constituted
a standing committee, chaired by Nelson Rockefeller and
including, among others, both former Secretary Lovett and
General Bradley (still JCS chairman), to review the basic
organization and procedures in the Defense Department.
Recommendations from this "Committee on DOD Organization"
formed the basis of Eisenhower's "Reorganization Plan No. 6"
and were presented to Congress on April 30, 1953. Objectives
included:
1. A "clear and unchallenged responsibility in the
Defense Establishment."
2. "Maximum effectiveness at minimum cost."
3. The "best possible military plans." [7]
Eisenhower sought to clarify lines of authority and
strengthen civilian responsibility within DOD. As he
explained in his transmittal message to Congress:
The provision of the Key West agreement, under
which the Joint Chiefs of Staff designate one of
their members as an executive agent for each
unified command, has led to considerable confusion
and misunderstanding with respect to the
relationship of the [JCS] to the Secretary of
Defense, and the relationship of the military
chief of each service to the civilian Secretary of
his military department. [8]
To fix responsibility along a definite channel of accountable
civilian officials, Ike directed the Secretary of Defense to
Designate in each case a military department to
nerve as the executive agent for a unified
command. Under this new arrangement the channel
of responsibility and authority to a commander of
a unified command will unmistakably be from the
President to the Secretary of Defense to the
designated civilian secretary of a military
department. [9]
To provide for greater economic efficiency within the
Department of Defense, Reorganization Plan No. 6 abolished
the "unwieldy board" system which Eisenhower considered "too
slow and too clumsy to serve as effective management tools
for the Secretary." The boards were replaced with six new
Assistant Secretary positions and a General Counsel to
"provide authoritative legal opinions and interpretations."
Ike also directed special studies to examine each of the
service departments, believing that "improvements are badly
needed in the Departments of the Army, the Navy, and the Air
Force." In an unprecedented intrusion into traditional
service matters, he directed service secretaries to instruct
officer promotion boards
To give the same weight to service in the Office
of the Secretary of Defense and the efficiency
reports from that Office as to service in the
military department staff and to efficiency
reports of departmental officers. These actions
are desirable in order to reward military officers
equally for service on behalf of the Department of
Defense and service on the staff of a military
department. [10]
Finally, Eisenhower set out to improve the strategic
planning machinery by enhancing the military advisory role of
the corporate JCS. He did so by removing the service chiefs
from their "executive agent" roles to the unified commands
and by increasing the chairman's authority. Reorganization
Plan No. 6 gave the JCS Chairman responsibility for selecting
the Director of the Joint Staff, subject to Secretary of
Defense approval, and authority to both manage the Joint
Staff and approve those officers selected by the other
service chiefs to serve on the Joint Staff. Amazingly, up
until 1953, the senior military officer in the United States,
despite his great responsibilities, did not have the
authority to approve officer assignments to either his own
staff or its director or even to manage the day-to-day
activities of the Joint Staff!
THE DEFENSE REORGANIZATION ACT OF 1958
During the mid-1950's, new tensions were generated
within the defense establishment as a result of radical
changes in warfare brought on by scientific and technological
advances and the rising costs of new weapon systems.
Controversies erupted over tactical air support, airlift for
Army ground forces, anti-missile missiles, intermediate-range
ballistic missiles, carrier vs. land-based aviation, and the
adequacy of existing military organizations for meeting
future problems. In 1956, the House Appropriations Committee
attacked the continuing problem of interservice rivalry:
Each service, it would seem, is striving to
acquire an arsenal of weapons complete in itself
to carry out any and all possible missions. It is
the firm belief of the committee that this matter
of rivalry is getting completely out of control.
It is expensive and undesirable, and points up the
need for more effective control and direction. A
sincere and self-sacrificing effort must be made
by all concerned to substitute real unification
for the present loose federation. [11]
Critics increasingly charged that the parochial attitudes of
individual service chiefs made it difficult for the Secretary
of Defense to receive impartial military advice. Again the
plea was made for an armed forces general staff with a single
chief of staff from whom authoritative military advice could
be obtained.
In his January 9, 1958 State of the Union address,
Eisenhower told the Congress that additional defense reforms
were "imperative" and acknowledged the revolutionary impact
science and technology was having on warfare:
Some of the important new weapons which technology
has produced do not fit into any existing service
pattern. They cut across all services, involve
all services, and transcend all services, at every
stage from development to operation. In some
instances they defy classification according to
branch of service. [12]
Shortly before his address Eisenhower had received a report
from Rockefeller's standing advisory committee.
Recommendations included "organizing operational forces as
truly unified commands and running the chain of control from
the President through the Secretary of Defense (and Joint
Chiefs of Staff) directly to commanders of each unified
force, rather than through the service Secretaries." The
committee also urged further strengthening of the JCS
Chairman's role and consolidating research and development
activities under the Secretary of Defense. [13]
Unlike the 1953 changes, which had been accomplished
under a 1949 provision that allowed the President to
reorganize the executive branch unless reversed by
congressional veto, any new proposals in 1958 would now
require affirmative congressional action. Eisenhower has
written in his memoirs of the battle that lay ahead during
1958:
The most spectacular legislative battle of that
year involved the reorganization of the Department
of Defense. When, in my State of the Union
message, I had said America wanted interservice
rivalries stopped, the line had drawn enthusiastic
approval. Yet reorganization was to be neither
easy nor automatic...Military organization was a
subject I had long lived with; while I had
definite ideas of the corrective measures that
needed to be taken, I heartily approved of an
objective exploration of the widest possible
scope, in the hope--which proved vain--that with a
report from such a distinguished body of broadly
experienced individuals a bill could be drawn that
could command my approval and overwhelming support
in the Congress. [14]
In his message of April 3, accompanying his legislative
proposals to Congress, he predicted--wishfully in
retrospect--that:
Separate ground, sea, and air warfare is gone
forever. If ever again we should be involved in
war, we will fight it in all elements, with all
Services, as one single concentrated effort.
Peacetime preparation and organizational activity
must conform to this fact. [15]
In his proposals, Ike contended that four existing
joint structure characteristics inhibited the Department from
effectively performing as an integrated force:
1. The chairman's lack of independent authority.
2. Dual-hatting of service chiefs as members of the
JCS and as military leaders of their services.
3. Dominance of the individual services in Joint
statf actions.
4. Weakness of the unified and specified commanders.
First, to enhance the authority of the chairman,
Eisenhower proposed a repeal of the provision that denied the
chairman the right to vote. Even though the JCS, in fact,
did not function by vote, this provision seemed to suggest
that the chairman was somehow inferior to the service
chiefs. He proposed other measures as well. However, in
enacting the 1958 Act, Congress substantially weakened
Eisenhower's proposals.
The act assigned the chairman greater
responsibilities, but did not endow the position
with the independent authority that the president
had requested. Congress repealed the provision
that denied the chairman a vote in JCS
proceedings, but carefully circumscribed his
authority over the joint staff. Instead of
granting the chairman exclusive authority to
assign duties to the joint staff, Congress
retained a parallel authority to select the
director of the joint staff, but only in
oonsultation with the JCS. Moreover, the
chairman's previously unencumbered authority to
manage the joint staff was qualified in the 1958
act by the phrase `on behalf of the Joint Chiefs
of Staffs' [16]
Second, he tried to reduce the JCS workload by
legislation that would shift much of their service-specific
administrative duties to their vice chiefs. The Secretary of
Defense could then "require the chiefs to use their power of
delegation to enable them to make their Joint Chiefs of Staff
duties their principal duties." [17] However, Eisenhower's
objective of a nonparochial JCS was never realized either.
One frequently cited article, consistent with Secretary of
Defense Robert Lovett's earlier observations, explains why:
The measures that allowed the service chiefs
greater authority to delegate their service duties
did not address the primary source of the chiefs'
inability to put joint interests over service
interests... A service chief's authority over his
service derives largely from how effectively he
represents its interests in outside forums, such as
the JCS. At the same time, the service chief's
power and stature within the joint arena, the
defense department, and before the Congress, derive
primarily from the resources and personnel that he
controls as the military leader of his service.
Moreover, in formulating joint positions, a service
chief relies on the staff that works exclusively
and directly for him--the service staff, which
itself has strong incentives to ensure that
important service interests are not sacrificed in
the joint forum. Since the 1953 and 1958 reforms
did nothing to alter these organizational
realities, they had little affect on the character
or content of JCS decisionmaking. [18]
The third focus of the 1958 reforms was on the
structure and procedures of the joint staff. Eisenhower
believed that the existing joint decision procedures
subverted the development of integrated military positions.
He criticized the extent of service dominance over the joint
staff inherent, for example, in the requirement for each
service to review and approve each joint paper at multiple
levels. Resulting plans, he later wrote in his memoirs,
"were little more than a worthless scheme to balance various
service considerations and prejudices" [19] and in his
April 3 message to Congress he stated:
These laborious processes exist because each
military department feels obliged to judge
independently each work product of the Joint
Staff. Had I allowed my interservice and
interallied staff to be similarly organized in the
theaters I commanded during World War II, the
delays and resulting indecisiveness would have
been unacceptable to my superiors. [20]
To abolish the practice of implicit single service vetos in
joint staff actions, the Secretary of Defense was directed to
reform joint staff structures and procedures, the joint staff
committee system was eliminated, and Congress was asked to
eliminate or raise the statutory limit of 210 officers on the
joint staff. Eisenhower's intent was to transform the joint
staff from that of a "broker for service views" into an
"independent military staff with a unified national
perspective." [21]
However, his proposals drew emotional charges of
another attempt to create a "Prussian-style" general staff.
Carl Vinson, previously mentioned as a staunch naval
supporter and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee,
was one of his strongest critics. Two weeks after forwarding
his proposals, in an appearance before the American society
of Newspaper Editors, Eisenhower responded to Vinson's
charges:
It will also be said that [it sets up] a monstrous
general staff--usually called "Prussian." I am
always amused when I hear that word, because I
nearly always ask the individual to explain it to
me by telling me what he thinks a Prussian general
staff was. Few can do it. In any event, they
fear that this monstrous staff will be set up to
dominate our armed forces and in due course will
threaten our liberty. This is nonsense... There
will be:
--no single chief of staff;
--no Prussian staff;
--no czar;
--no forty-billion-dollar blank check;
--no swallowing up of the traditional services;
--no undermining of the constitutional powers of
Congress. [22)
When finally signed into law on August 6, the 1958 Act
authorized an increase in Joint Staff strength to 400
officers. The committee system structure which had existed
since 1942 when Roosevelt first created the JCS was replaced
by a "unified joint staff" organization patterned after the
practice of creating directorates in the unified command
staffs. However, the law placed specific restrictions on
Joint Staff authority and organization to prevent the
emergence of a "general staff corps" of officers.
Section 143(d) of Title 10, United States Code states:
The Joint Staff shall not operate or be organized
as an overall Armed Forces General Staff and shall
have no executive authority.
To prevent the emergence of anything even remotely resembling
such an elite, and presumably dangerous staff, duty was
limited by law to a maximum of three years after which the
same officer could not be reassigned back to the Joint Staff
for a minimum of three years. In the case of the Director of
the Joint Staff, the law specifically prohibited his
reassignment to the Joint Staff in any capacity whatsoever.
Additionally, even though the committee system had earlier
been disbanded the single service veto remained through
elaborate staffing procedures that continued to circulate
papers to the military departments for approval at each level
of preparation. Thus, the 1958 reforms reorganized the joint
staff, but they did not substantially change the procedures
that prevented it from operating independently of the
services. It continued to serve as an executive secretariat
that coordinated, rather than integrated, service views.
The fourth and overriding objective of the 1958
proposals was the necessity of reducing the services' grip on
the combatant commands by establishing a more unified
structure that would promote integrated operations and
planning while also asserting greater civilian control over
the operational chain of command. In his April 3 message
Eisenhower stated:
The need for greater unity today is most
acute at two points--in the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, and in the major operational
commands responsible for actual combat in the
event of war... We must organize our fighting
forces into operational commands that are truly
unified, each assigned a mission in full accord
with our over-all military objectives. This
lesson, taught by World War II, I learned from
firsthand experience. With rare exceptions, as I
stated before, there can no longer be separate
ground, sea, or air battles... Because I have
often seen the evils of diluted command, I
emphasize that each unified commander must have
unquestioned authority over all units of his
command. Forces must be assigned to the command
and be removed only by central direction--by the
Secretary of Defense or the Commander in
Chief--and not by orders of individual military
departments. Commands of this kind we do not have
today... We must recognize that by law our
military organization still reflects the
traditional concepts of separate forces for land,
sea, and air operations, despite a Congressional
assertion in the same law favoring `their
integration into an efficient team of land, naval,
and air forces...' This separation is clearly
incompatible with unified commands whose missions
and weapons systems go far beyond concepts and
traditions of individual services. Today a
unified command is made up of component commands
from each military department, each under a
commander of that department. The commander's
authority over these component commands is short
of the full command required for maximum
efficiency. In fact, it is prescribed that some
of his command powers shall take effect only in
time of emergency. [23]
Later in his memoirs, he elaborated on the influence of his
own experience and the need for "unquestioned authority" in
the unified commander:
Our overseas forces had operated under
so-called "unified commands" since the early days
of World War II. But the component units,
divisions, carriers, and wings were normally
assigned to the specified commander for tactical
operations only; for other functions the separate
services were in a controlling position. In some
respects the authority sought for unified
commanders was even more sweeping than that I
exercised over all the American Forces assigned to
OVERLORD in World War II.
In my own experience in the European Theater
I had found little difficulty with a loose theater
organization, partly because of the spirit of
cooperation existing in wartime and partly because
I was also the administrative commander of by far
the largest single component force in Europe, the
United States Army, which included the Air Force.
At SHAPE in 1951, likewise, President Truman had
been careful to spell out that the Sixth Fleet
operating in the Mediterranean was directly under
my command. But my experiences, I well realized,
were not universal... I have always believed that a
nation's defense would be most efficiently
conducted by a single service, comprising elements
of land, sea, and air. I did not (and do not)
join those who insist that a system of "checks and
balances" among services contributes to a nation's
security. Successful defense cannot be conducted
under a debating society. [24]
Toward this end, Ike proposed greater clarity in the
division of labor between the military departments and the
operational commands. The unified commands, organized
geographically, and the specified commands, organized
functionally, would "command and operate" the forces while
the military departments, still organized along the
traditional distinctions between land, sea, and air warfare,
would be responsible for the "maintaining functions
including recruiting, organizing, training, and equipping the
forces. As a result, the military departments were to have
only administrative responsibility, relinquishing operational
responsibility over deployed forces. This scheme represented
an attempt to press "the task force concept applied with such
great success in World War II to its logical conclusion [and]
sought to relegate the services to supporting functions
roughly equivalent to what the Army Service Forces and Army
Ground Forces commands did" during the war. [25]
In the 1958 Act, Congress, at Eisenhower's request,
repealed the statutory authority that the service departments
previously held, as "executive agents," to command forces.
At the same time Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy issued a
directive establishing two command chains: an operational
chain of command for deployed forces and an administrative
chain for support. The operational chain would now run from
the president to the secretary of defense, through the JCS
for transmittal of orders, then to the unified and, specified
commanders. The support chain would run from the president
to the secretary then to the service secretaries and,
finally, the service components in each operational command
as shown Figure 3.
Click here to view image
Finally, in his 1958 reform effort, Eisenhower again
sought to further strengthen the power of the Secretary of
Defense. Increased authority was needed to further enhance
civilian control over budgetary matters and to eliminate the
incessant interservice rivalry and perennial disputes over
strategy, force levels, and funds which he knew from his
earlier frustrating experiences, did little to promote
effective unification and rapid decision-making that the
Nation now required. In his April 3 message he outlined the
budgetary problems in DOD:
I regard it as fundamental that the Secretary, as
civilian head of the Department, should have
greater flexibility in money matters, both among
and within the military departments. Firmly
exercised, it will go far toward stopping the
services from vying with each other for
Congressional and public favor... Today most of
our defense funds are appropriated not to the
Secretary of Defense but rather to the military
departments... the Secretary of Defense needs
greater control over the distribution of functions
in his Department. His authority must be freed of
legal restrictions derived from pre-missile,
pre-nuclear concepts of warfare. Various
provisions of this kind becloud his authority.
Let us no longer give legal support to efforts to
weaken the authority of the Secretary. On this
point the law itself invites controversy. On the
one hand, the National Security Act gives the
Secretary of Defense `direction, authority, and
control' over his entire Department. Yet the same
law provides that the military departments are to
be `separately administered' by their respective
Secretaries. This is not merely inconsistent and
confusing. It is a hindrance for efficient
administration. The contradictory concept,
however, that three military departments can be at
once administered separately, yet directed by one
administrator who is supposed to establish
`integrated policies and procedures' has
encouraged endless, fruitless argument. Such
provisions unavoidably abrade the unity of the
Defense Department...I suggest that we be done
with prescribing controversy by law. [27]
Eisenhower's intent in 1958 represented an effort to
end one major aspect of the traditional role of the military
departments since they were no longer to have any part in the
directing of combat operations. The JCS and the unified
commanders were to occupy stage center, while the defense
secretary and his assistants were to exercise tighter control
of service functions though increasing budgetary and
management supervision. [28] In practice, however, the
reform effort failed to remove the services from operations
and the division between operating and maintaining functions
would prove largely cosmetic. The arrangements that
eventually prevailed frustrated the original intentions of
the proposed reform measures. Although subordinate service
component commanders in a unified command were now
responsible to the CINC for "operational" matters, they were
still responsible to their respecitve chiefs of service for
essentially everything else, which, in peacetime, is almost
everything of importance. Even 25 years after the 1958 Act
former component commander and later JCS Chairman, Air Force
General David C. Jones, expressed his experience in testimony
before the Senate Armed Services Committee:
I received all my money, all my airplanes, all my
people, my people got promoted and were reassigned
by the Chief of Staff of the Air Force. I
received nothing in the way of money or equipment
from my Joint Commander (the CINC); therefore, my
service chief had much more influence on me and my
command than did the joint system. [29]
In future years, the military services would use "their
control of the budget and administration of the forces to
maintain their dominance over the unified commands" and, as a
result, the "statutory division of labor between the military
services and the unified and specified commands has never
been fulfilled in practice." [30]
Eisenhower's inability to incorporate his strong
views, based upon his own wartime experiences, into the
defense establishment resulted both frog widespread
bipartisan Congressional Concern about undercutting civilian
control over the military and also more partisan concerns
about Congressional control over military budgets and
activities. Regarding the former, Senator Hubert Humphrey's
views captured these sentiments in 1956:
It is my firm conviction that there has never been
a greater example of the inherent genius of our
governmental institutions than the American
developed Joint Chiefs of Staff concept.
Later, in 1959, Senator Humphrey went on to explain why:
The Joint Chiefs of Staff concept is the only
system for military planning at the seat of
government which possesses superior military
effectiveness and at the same time does not clash
with the concepts of the type of democratic
government it is a part of and supports. [31]
Regarding Congressional influence and control, Eisenhower
wrote in his memoirs about the battles he had with the
Democratic HASC Chairman, Carl Vinson, who, according to Ike:
viewed with suspicion any proposal which might
diminish the degree of control which he and his
committee and the Congress exercised over military
activities, many of which were matters of detail
only. Recognizing my determination to bring about
a modernization of Defense organization, he let it
be known that he was going to try to defeat the
effort. [32]
Eisenhower patiently explained to Vinson, who had been in
Congress since 1914 and had served as Chairman of the Naval
Affairs Committee from 1931 to 1949:
All we're trying to do is to set up an
establishment that will function in peacetime, as
it necessarily must in wartime, under the
Secretary of Defense. [33]
Vinson, however, remained unconverted. When
Eisenhower finally signed the bill into law on August 6, 1958
it contained a few provisions inserted by Vinson that Ike had
earlier described as "legalized insubordination." [34]
Despite his disappointment he felt that "traditional inertia"
had been overcome with "remarkable results" and informed his
close associates that the Reorganization Act of 1958:
Was just another step toward what the majority of
experienced military men knew was necessary. Not
only would new developments demand further
revision, but it was quite clear that the members
of the Congress, only a few of whom are
knowledgeable in the principles of military
organization and operations, normally display too
much concern for the old, even the obsolete. [35]
Among those close associates who witnessed his remarks was
Eisenhower's staff secretary, then Brigadier General Andrew
Jackson Goodpaster. Ironically, appearing before the HASC a
guarter-century later, Goodpaster would transmit Ike's
intentions and perceptions regarding defense reform measures
as the Congress of a later era deliberated on another Defense
Reorganization Act--ultimately to be known as the
Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986.
Thus, the last of the Eisenhower reforms in 1958
culminated the postwar development of the joint military
establishment.
The 1953 and 1958 reforms succeeded in
strengthening some of the joint military actors
and reducing service influence in the joint
system. But they fell far short of achieving
Eisenhower's objective of a more independent and
integrated joint military structure, in which
unburdened service chiefs, led by a strong
chairman and supported by an independent joint
staff, operated as a unified military planning and
advisory ... In short, despite the concerted
efforts of the Eisenhower Administration, the
joint system continued to operate on the World
War II model of a service-dominated, committee-
coordinated structure. [36]
As the official Legislative History of the Goldwater-Nichols
Act notes, the structure that emerged in 1958, with only
minimum changes, is the same system that was operating up
until passage of this recent Reorganization Act in
1986. [37] The perceived deficiencies in the system--which
was not modified for nearly 30 years--are indeed the legacy
of the incomplete reforms that had been sought during
Eisenhower's presidency.
Chapter V
LEGISLATIVE DORMANCY (1958-1982)
Although the period between the Department of Defense
Reorganization Act of 1958 and its successor in 1986 did not
include any fundamental statutory changes related to defense
organization, these intervening years did contain a
proliferation of studies and inquiries into the Defense
Department--at least one for every White House occupancy
change. Two other significant events during this period are
worth noting. Although legislative action on the great
unification issues of the Eisenhower era would lay "dormant"
during this next quarter-century, Kennedy's appointment of
Robert S. McNamara as Secretary of Defense would profoundly
impact upon civil-military power relationships, especially
regarding defense budgeting matters. At the same time,
Congress refused to enhance the authority, influence, and
prestige of the JCS Chairman despite consistent study
recommendations to do so.
CHANGING CIVIL-MILITARY POWER RELATIONSHIPS
In his 1958 proposals Eisenhower, in order to provide
greater unity of military effort, had sought increased
authority for the JCS Chairman including greater control over
the Joint Staff. However, Congress had viewed such proposals
with misgivings since the role of the service chiefs in the
JCS would simultaneously be diminished. Service parochialism
and JCS "splits," from the Congressional perspective, were
not necessarily undesirable. One argument
advanced to support this view is the following:
Under the Constitution, Congress shares
responsibility for the national defense with the
executive branch. Since Congress lacks direct
military staff assistance and military expertise
of its own, it wants a range of alternatives to
consider. The JCS system, based as it is on the
three separate military Services, does promote the
generation of alternative views. In a single
staff system such would not be the case. [1]
Consequently, in 1963, when Major General Goodpaster,
previously Ike's White House staff Secretary from 1954
through 1961, was nominated to occupy the new position of JCS
"Deputy Chairman," Congress refused to grant the appointinent
believing that creation of such a position would excessively
enhance the power and prestige of the JCS Chairman. This
rejection was certainly not a reflection on Goodpaster's
qualifications, so an accommodation was reached by instead
naming him as "Assistant to the Chairman," JCS. [2] Later he
would advance to four-star rank and occupy, like his former
commander-in-chief, the NATO post of Supreme Allied Commander
in Europe.
In contrast, Eisenhower's proposals to invest greater
civilian control over the military were more successful. The
1958 Act strengthened the Secretary of Defense by giving him
the authority to enhance overall defense "effectiveness,
ecomony, or efficiency" by consolidating "any supply and
service activity common to more than one military department"
[3]. The Act also clarified the relationship between the
service secretaries and the secretary of defense.
Previously, the service departments were, by law, "separately
administered by their respective Secretaries." Eisenhower
had referred to this as "legalized insubordination" because
the law encouraged--literally required--the service
secretaries and chiefs to present their respective cases to
the President directly and to personally testify before
Congress. The 1958 Act changed this provision to read:
"Each military department... shall be separately
organized under its own Secretary and shall
function under the direction, authority, and
control of the Secretary of Defense. The
Secretary of a military department shall be
responsible to the Secretary of Defense for the
operation of such department as well as its
efficiency..." [4]
Despite the increased authority provided to the Secretary of
Defense by the 1958 Act, the full power now legally available
was not to be fully exercised until the next decade beginning
with John F. Kennedy's appointment of Robert S. McNamara as
Secretary of Defense. McNamara would ruthlessly exercise
this power using new decision-making tools that had not been
available to his predecessors.
Systems analysis was introduced by Secretary McNamara
in 1961 as a school of strategic thought. He and his key
assistants regarded the selection of strategies and weapons
systems as "fundamentally an economic problem... "[5] The
attempt, for the first time, to answer the question "How much
is enough?" captured some of the very "best and brightest"
and completely transformed defense decision-making. However,
both the phrase and the problem of relating strategy to
resources had been addressed in the preceding decade during
the second Eisenhower administration. Ironically, this was
done not by an economist but by a military professional and
World War II hero, then Army Chief of Staff General Maxwell
D. Taylor. Taylor, later recalled by Kennedy to active duty
for appointment as JCS Chairman, argued that the
determination of U.S. strategy had "become a more or less
incidental byproduct of the administrative processes of the
defense budget:"
President Eisenhower has well said, `The waging of
war by separate ground, sea, and air forces is
gone forever.' This statement means to me that we
should organize our fighting forces on the task
force principle, allocating a proper balance of
Army, Navy, and Air Forces to the field commanders
in consonance with the tasks to be accomplished.
It is an anomaly that while thus thinking in terms
of aggregate forces balanced for combat, we still
`buy' our forces, so to speak, in terms of the
Army, Navy, and Air Force. As a result, no one
really knows what the United States is getting for
its money in terms of combat power from any single
budget or from any series of budgets in
combination... Nowhere in the machinery of
government is there a procedure for checking
military capability against political
commitments... How much of these forces is enough?
[Others] have argued that these military matters
cannot be submitted to scientific or engineering
analysis [because] there are too many
imponderables... It will never be possible for the
JCS to produce an agreed tabulation of the forces
needed for our security without first settling the
basic question of how much is enough in the
various operational categories. These yardsticks
of sufficiency are the building blocks necessary
to provide a solid foundation for defense
planning. ..[6].
Secretary McNamara, formally President of Ford Motor
Company and a statistician by training, created the Office of
Systems Analysis and staffed it with mathematical economists
who had been developing concepts such as systems analysis
and parametric cost estimation techniques at RAND's
Theoretical Economics and Cost Analysis divisions. This
young, brilliant and motivated group quickly developed the
capability to relate objectives to costs as General Taylor
had suggested. They established a Five Year Plan which laid
out, in matrix form, Congressional budget categories
segmented by "function" (such as strategic nuclear,
conventional, airlift/sealift, base operations, etc.) over
time. This defense management system focused on outputs and
tried to relate requirements to least possible cost.
President Kennedy was kept well informed by McNamara and his
"Presidential Memoranda" formed the basis of Congressional
testimony and DOD decisions.
The creation of the new defense financial management
system, known as Planning-Programming-Budgeting (PPBS),
seemed ideally suited for systems analysis with its economic
efficiency-oriented approach and its ability to quantify
trade-offs in a government where decision-making usually
turns on budgetary questions and, frequently, specific line
items. Their view, expressed best by Charles J. Hitch, the
new Comptroller, was that "we regard all military
problems...as economic problems in the efficient allocation
and use of resources." [7]
Systems Analysis became the decision-making process
because of its ability to quantify and lay out life-cycle
costs to support PPBS and especially its capacity to relate
objectives to costs. The Office of Systems Analysis under
Assistant Secretary Enthoven, an MIT-trained mathematical
economist, became extremely powerful and some of its early
decisions were devastating to the military services. Great
friction developed between the two as McNamara's "whiz kids"
early on "proved" the U.S. Navy's proposed nuclear powered
aircraft carrier to be cost-ineffective and reduced the Air
Force's proposed 10,000 Minuteman ICBM force to only 1,000
missiles. Consequently, enormous power was transferred from
the services to the Office of the Secretary of Defense
(OSD). Externally, OSD also successfully challenged the
State Department as the dominant power source in American
policy formulation:
Systems analysis allowed Hitch, Enthoven, and
their colleagues to compare (at least on a cost
basis) the relative value of weapons programs that
performed the same or similar missions... Applied
with messianic energy by a new office, the
Assistant Secretary of Defense (Systems Analysis),
the new technique found many applications. It
became a marvelous tool for dismissing service
requests and nonquantifiable professional military
judgements... In practice, OSD, in collaboration
with the NSC staff, challenged the State
Department as the primary agency in determining
American policy whenever that policy appeared to
have military significance. For almost a decade
the most powerful knights of "Camelot" were the
civilians and military officers who marched under
McNamara's banner. [8]
Some of the important outgrowths of NcNamara's systems
analysis "regime" include: inculcating a habit of explicitly
quantifying as many factors as possible during the course of
analytical "due process" in Congress, OSD, and the services;
a decision-making process that today ironically resembles
judicial advocacy rather than scientific objectivism; a
process in military policy planning which now pervades not
only OSD but the services as well (some have argued that a
bizarre inversion has occurred between the two) and seems to
be irrevocably entrenched in a symbiotic relationship with
PPBS. In addition to the aims of increasing civilian
control, standardizing service budgeting, and estimating
life-cycle costs while, in general, relating strategy to
resources, the systems analysis approach endorsed a greater
investment in logistics support such as sea and air cargo
transport and prepositioned stocks. This new approach was to
especially have long-term impact as a result of increased
attention to strategic nuclear policy and arms control.
McNamara also quickly seized his authority, granted by
the 1958 Act, to enhance defense "effectiveness, economy, or
efficiency" by consolidating any "supply and service activity
common to more than one department." Within a year of his
appointment, he established the Defense Supply Agency and the
Defense Intelligence Agency, and, later in 1965, the Defense
Contract Audit Agency. [9]
Successive secretaries would continue further this
consolidation process to increase efficiency by avoiding
service duplication. For example, Melvin Laird established
the Defense Security Assistance Agency, Defense Mapping
Agency, Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, and Defense
Investigative Service. However, the evolution of McNamara's
Systems Analysis Office reveals how contentious that original
source and focus of power would prove in subsequent years:
by 1965 the office was elevated to the statutory position of
"Assistant Secretary of Defense" under McNamara; in 1973
Elliot Richardson downgraded the office to the non-statutory
position of "Director, Program Analysis and Evaluation;" in
1974 James Schlesinger re-elevated the office to "Assistant
Secretary of Defense (Program Analysis and Evaluation);" in
1976 Donald Rumsfeld redesignated the position as "Director
of Planning and Evaluation;" and in 1978 Harold Brown
redesignated the office again as "Assistant Secretary of
Defense (Program Analysis and Evaluation)." [10]
STUDIES, MORE STUDIES BUT NO ACTION
During subsequent administrations following the 1958
Act a series of study groups and "blue ribbon" panels
continued to scrutinize defense organization and practices.
These studies are noteworthy for their consistency and also
because they were not, with the notable exception of the
recent Packard Commission, incorporated into law or ex