Afterglow or Adjustment? Domestic Institutions and Responses to Overstretch

Mark R. Brawley

Columbia University Press

1998

6. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and Military Overcommitment During American Leadership

 

Since the end of World War II, U.S. military commitments have outstripped existing resources. ₁ In the ascendant phase of American leadership, it has failed to fulfill its role adequately. The case resembles Britain’s military overextension in the sense that the country did not devote adequate resources to the military for much of the time under consideration, especially given the enormous geographic range of the obligations involved. The manner in which the military command institutions evolved in the U.S. also shares similarities with the pattern discussed in the previous chapter, although American staff institutions were in place by the time the U.S. began pursuing policies of hegemonic leadership.

According to Jeffrey Record, the constant shortage of resources could have been resolved via four different policies, which correlate with those I outlined in chapter 1. First, U.S. force levels could have been expanded to meet obligations. When the American economy was growing in the 1950s and 1960s, greater resources might have been affordable, so greater expenditures to make up the shortfall would have meant adjustment into the leadership role; once the American economy began to decline relatively, the prohibitive cost of a military buildup would have meant that greater expenditures had equaled unsustained adjustment. Second, the U.S. could have reduced commitments abroad—what would have been underfulfillment of the leadership role if the American economy were growing, or partial adjustment out of leadership once the economy was in relative decline. Reducing foreign commitments was often considered too dangerous a strategy to pursue in a bipolar world, but might very well be feasible today. Third, the leadership could try to get more effective forces out of existing expenditure—doing nothing about resources or commitments, but seeking to stretch existing resources to meet more of the needs. This solution was tried many times, both in adjusting force structures, but also in reforming military organization. Fourth, Record notes there could have been an attempt to shift a greater amount of the burden of defense to allies, as Nixon attempted in 1969, with the Nixon Doctrine. The Nixon Doctrine itself, however, is consistent with what I have termed worsening afterglow, because in it Nixon and Kissinger attempted to maintain commitments while simultaneously cutting back military resources. ₂

Naturally, Record does not identify three other options among those I identify; this is because raising both commitments and resources at the same time (what I refer to as afterglow if commitments are too high to sustain, or simply continuing overstretch if commitments are sustainable) is not a resolution to overstretch—though it is a possible response. The third option I discuss is what I consider true adjustment, but which hinges on my definition of overstretch: reducing commitments (which are unsustainable) while raising resources toward the maximum the state can afford.

Besides the obvious parallels in the nature of the problems and thus the possible policy responses, the U.S. experience shares other common factors with the British case. In most countries, as Samuel Huntington has observed, the military completely dominates strategic planning. This is achieved by a specialized military institution—a general staff. Most countries then suffer from a lack of effective civilian supervision over the military, because the civilian decisionmakers are unable to engage in effective debate on military subjects. Yet in the U.S., as in Britain before, there has historically been a distrust of military command institutions, which limited their early development. To this day in the U.S., truly centralized military strategic planning remains as much in the hands of the civilians as the military. ₃ For this reason one might expect foreign policy and military deployment to be better synchronized in the United States than elsewhere.

Unfortunately, this is not the case, since the civilian control is divided. This contrasts sharply with the British case, and is due to the decentralized nature of the American government. As Arthur Stein has pointed out, civilian participation is a source of incoherence when attempting to balance American military resources and commitments. The President stipulates commitments through foreign policy, which the Senate formally reviews; the Executive Branch is responsible for procuring, deploying, and integrating the military forces, while Congress is responsible for funding these activities. Political disagreements about the necessity of commitments, or even the degree of desire behind them, find voice in the divisions of the government and make an incoherent grand strategy much more likely. ₄ This underlines an important difference between this case and the previous one—the parliamentary system’s concentration of decisionmaking within the cabinet, and the more varied access points for pressure groups in the American system.

While Congress has always been in the position to challenge executive branch decisions on security policy, it has not always utilized that power. Congressional practices concerning military commitments and military budgets were quite loose prior to 1962. Up to that time, Congressional committees played an inconsistent role in overseeing the military. They had largely abdicated their rights to authorize funding by failing to review requests on a consistent annual basis, and by accepting expenditures based on extremely vague terms. Defense Department decisions went essentially unchallenged. The only issue Congressional committees demanded details about prior to 1962 was basing—which had obvious implications for legislators. ₅

Additional Congressional oversight of defense policy after 1962 has created greater policy incoherence, rather than clarified military policies or balanced resources and commitments. Not only does Congressional input often conflict or clash with the policies pursued by the Executive Branch, but also Congressional decisions by themselves often promote overcommitment. Congress is bad at making hard choices—the Congressional way to settle disputes is to accommodate as many interests as possible (to logroll). Congress, unlikely to reduce commitments, or to stop the funding of programs, ₆ is often guilty of expanding commitments and expenditures both.

Elsewhere, Huntington has blamed the failure of the U.S. to formulate a rational, overarching national military strategy on bureaucratic politics. ₇ Huntington in turn draws on the views of General David Jones, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Jones argued that in the past the U.S. has won military victory because it had size on its side. Being so much larger than its opponents, it could afford to make mistakes; size and geographical advantages meant the U.S. had the time and the resources to recover from initial errors. Jones believes the same factors might not save the U.S. in a future conflict.

This discussion also highlights a second point, one raised in the opening of the chapter on Britain’s military institutions. The successful performance of the American military has made it difficult to initiate major institutional reforms. This having been noted, several attempts to reorganize the military, and in particular, to reform the top command institutions have taken place since World War II. In order to discuss the types of institutional arrangements made, the reforms attempted, and the various reactions to the military overstretch of the U.S. since 1945, we need to step back and look at the broader picture of the institutional development of the U.S. military’s high command prior to World War II.

 

Institutional Arrangements Prior to Hegemonic Aspirations

The U.S. Army first established a “General Staff” in 1813. This was, however, not a general staff in the modern sense of the phrase, but merely the designation of a set of officers given the specific administrative duties and responsibilities of running the Army. There was a quartermaster general, an adjutant general, a commissary general of ordnance, a paymaster, and a variety of assistants (including an assistant topographical engineer). ₈ These officers never met as a body to decide overall allotments, or even to coordinate activities. Instead each ran a distinct set of operations and administrative duties.

The Army also had an office of commander in chief, which existed until the 1890s. This post, first established in 1794, was intended to be a military decisionmaker able to stand above the political fray. During the Civil War (1861), this officer was given complete responsibility for command, discipline, and appointments within the Army. He was subject only to outside civilian control. ₉ Despite different experiments with command structures from time to time, there was little permanent change. The U.S. Army maintained roughly the same command institutions throughout the entire nineteenth century. Individual “staff” officers ran their bureaus in isolation. Officers spent their entire careers in one bureau; top officers could use patronage to run each bureau as they saw fit. There was little effort to coordinate the different parts of the Army, let alone cooperate with the Navy.

At about the same time as the British were forced to evaluate their existing command institutions in the wake of the disappointing performance of the British Army in the Boer War, Americans had to reassess their own in the wake of the U.S. Army’s performance in the the Spanish-American War. Both countries had also witnessed the crushing successes of the German military in the later half of the nineteenth century. Despite traditional distrust of the military establishment, both countries began seriously reconsidering the need for stronger command institutions. The poor performance of their militaries also prompted widespread criticism and initiated reform efforts.

In the American case, severe coordination problems between the Army and Navy during the Spanish-American War emerged, while simple supply problems also surfaced. The Dodge Commission, which began meeting in 1899, sought to identify sources of the Army’s wartime difficulties. The Commission focused its judgments on the division of authority within the War Department. Since the department was still being run by individual bureaus, with little overall coordination of their activities, there was little wonder that troops and equipment were sometimes ill-matched, that transport was not well organized, etc. ₁₀

Elihu Root was an outspoken member of the movement afoot to reform the command institutions. Root identified at least four specific areas where the Army command system had failed to work well in the run-up to the Spanish-American War. First, there had been a failure to develop professional studies and military plans. Second, the procurement system and logistics had been inadequate. Third, the higher ranks were filled with older officers who were out of touch with modern operations. Fourth, the military itself had little practice in the movement and operations of large combat formations. Training had never taken place with large formations, and this had presented problems for officers at all levels when they had to execute coordinated movements in wartime. ₁₁

The Army Reorganization Act of 1903 grew out of these assessments. This Act finally established a modern general staff system in the War Department, headed by a Chief of Staff. Root had by then been brought in to run the Department of War, charged with cleaning it up. When Teddy Roosevelt became president, these reforms got added support, because TR—based on his own wartime experiences—was a firm believer in the necessity of change. (Similar reforms in the Department of the Navy, however, were blocked. The Navy was in a different situation, however, since it had created its own command institution—the General Board—in 1900, and had a much clearer vision of its strategic role than the Army, as will be discussed below.) ₁₂

Root took the office of Secretary of War in 1899, without any previous experience in military affairs. The Reorganization Act of 1903 which he pushed through was drafted by Major William Harding Carter, his assistant. Root’s efforts were aimed at not only subordinating the Army more directly under civilian control, but also giving the commanding officers staff support to enhance their ability to plan. The reforms established a general staff and the Army War College, and specified its duties along the lines of those exercised by the German General Staff. In fact, the plan drew much of its inspiration from Spenser Wilkinson’s book The Brain of an Army—a British interpretation of the German General Staff system which had been written as part of Wilkinson’s campaign to support reforms of Britain’s military command. ₁₃

The Reorganization Act of 1903, also known as the General Staff Act of 1903, established the channels for civilian and military heads. The President was at the top, then the Secretary of War, followed by the Chief of Staff, then the various army units. The Chief of Staff was “to supervise” the various army departments. The Chief of Staff would be named by the President, to ensure that everyone was on the same “team.” Despite some fears that the Chief of Staff of the Army might wield too much power outside civilian control, the rules instituted in fact brought the Secretary of War and the Chief of Staff together. Eventually the Chief of Staff’s authority grew, so that the Chief could exercise control over line (i.e., combat) units. The Chief of Staff became the conduit for information flowing up and down from the military to the Secretary. The Secretary began to evolve into a figurehead and lost his direct administrative role as time went on. ₁₄ The entire set of changes was intended to ensure that the military would carry out the political leaders’ wishes more effectively.

Internal reforms were intended to support these changes at the top. Root ended the permanent detailing of officers to a specific bureau. Instead, he rotated officers on the basis of four-year terms. This helped break up the fiefdoms within the bureaus which had grown over the years, and discouraged the creation of new patron-client relations. The general staff was to have such rotations, too. This again reflected the fear that a militaristic political movement could originate within a general staff. The reforms were also aimed at introducing a new professionalism into the U.S. Army, copying that from Germany, but without bringing along all the other features of the German system. ₁₅

Though administrative improvements were achieved, it is debatable whether these reforms led to better military strategizing. The impact of these reforms were never called upon. Even American entry into the First World War presented no true challenge in terms of strategic thinking. American planning was straightforward since there were no doubts about when or where to place priority. The answer to any strategic questions was short and simple: the U.S. would send troops to France to fight the Germans. Thus the General Staff’s role in World War I turned out to be primarily managerial and administrative. ₁₆

The Army chafed a bit under Root’s reforms, and sought out allies in Congress. Army officers argued that the Executive branch was garnering too much control over Army affairs—a complaint Congress took seriously, since it feared ceding control over military affairs to the Executive branch. This eventually led to Congressional efforts to counter certain aspects of Root’s reforms. The National Defense Act of 1920 permitted Army officers to go around their civilian superiors. If they chose, Army officers could take an issue directly to Congressional committees. If the Secretary of War proposed legislation, Congress required him to submit the comments of the General Staff, for or against—unless this was “incompatible with the public interest.” It was an invitation for general staff officers to circumvent the Secretary by making their case before Congress. ₁₇

 

Reforms and the Navy’s Command Institutions

By 1900, the Navy was blessed with certain features the Army lacked. For one, the Navy had a general idea of its mission. Alfred T. Mahan had argued that the duty of a navy was to command the seas. His arguments formed the basis for a navy’s raison d’être, while providing the foundation for a more serious approach to preparations for war. This, combined with the establishment of the Naval War College in 1884, meant that by 1900 the Navy’s top officers had already gained a deep appreciation of the need for strategic thinking.

While Mahan’s works justified the Navy’s importance, it consequently raised serious questions about the best way for the Navy to fulfill its mission. Having command of the seas implied taking it away from someone else, or holding it against threats. Who would the Navy be facing? The Navy needed political guidelines on these issues; it needed some sort of foreign policy referents when formulating plans. Moreover, to justify any increases in naval resources, it needed some sort of political mandate. To provide political guidance, the Navy called for the establishment of a Council of National Defense. Suggested membership of such a council included the Secretaries of War and of the Navy, the Chairmen of the Senate and House Military and Naval Affairs Committees, the Army’s Chief of Staff, the presidents of the Army and Navy War Colleges, and the Navy’s Aide for Operations. Such a body would be in a position not only to coordinate naval policy with foreign policy, but also to bring Army and Navy plans into line. ₁₈ It indicates how much more interested the Navy was in centralizing command than the Army at this time.

Secondly, the Navy differed from the Army because the Navy was affected more obviously by technological change. The advent of new technologies and the lead time necessary to construct warships meant the Navy continually stressed technical research, but more importantly it had to forecast future building programs. Naval budgets were long-term, steady affairs; large-scale expenditures also opened up channels of communication with the private sector. In peacetime, the Navy’s budget was stable, whereas the Army’s tended to shrink or expand as the moment required. The Navy moved closer to society, while in contrast the Army lost touch. After the Civil War, the Army had become a frontier force; with the Spanish-American War the Army became more of a colonial service—while the rest of American society was urbanizing rapidly from 1870 on. ₁₉

These two pressures came together to make the Navy’s position quite different from the Army’s. It was much more interested in centralization of military command than the Army, and it was much more adept at building political support for its positions. It is important to note, however, that both services had clearly shown an ability to use the divisions of the American political system to pursue their own specific goals.

 

The Central Command Institutions in World War I

During the Spanish-American War, the Navy had established a Naval Strategy Board to direct and coordinate its military operations. Even after the creation of such a Board, there was a lack of centralized command within the Navy Department. The General Board which grew from this wartime practice functioned primarily as an advisory panel. The real step forward occurred in 1915, when the office of Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) was established to provide centralized command of combat formations. This important position was created without the cooperation of the Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels—who feared losing his own control over the Navy. It was Admiral Bradley Fiske, not Daniels, who went before Congress and argued the need for a Chief of Naval Operations. Congress created the office by amending a Naval Appropriations bill. Daniels got involved with the legislation, if only to ensure that the new post remained subordinate to his own. ₂₀

The CNO was created alongside an existing office that could very well have been modified to play the exact same role: Commander U.S. Fleet. The Commander U.S. Fleet was considered the senior officer afloat. This reflected the Navy’s tradition of giving officers at sea the full range of command—a tradition clearly challenged by the creation of the CNO. Moreover, the Commander U.S. Fleet had direct access to the Secretary of the Navy, as did the bureau chiefs within the Navy. The fact that the CNO was created alongside the post of Commander U.S. Fleet meant the Navy could not speak with one voice to its civilian superior, as the Army now did thanks to the creation of the Army’s Commander in Chief. Moreover, the CNO stood outside the established patterns of relations. Bureaus within the Navy reported to the Secretary of the Navy, but the CNO did not have specific relations to the bureaus. Despite the potential for incoherence this organizational structure presented, the system did not create significant difficulties for operations in World War I. ₂₁ (In order to sort out operational and strategic responsibilities in World War II, however, the posts of CNO and Commander U.S. Fleet would be united in March 1942, only a few months after the U.S. entered the war.)

As already noted, the Army’s general staff had little strategizing to do in World War I. Root’s reforms had centralized authority and administrative duties in the Army within the hands of not just the general staff, but essentially in the hands of the Chief of Staff. This proved to be a mistake in World War I, because the responsibilities were too much for a single individual to bear. The set-up had to be reorganized in 1918. A Division of Purchase, Storage and Traffic was created, which operated directly under the Assistant Secretary of War, thus running in parallel to staff operations. This parallel structure was eliminated during the interwar period. A single vertical structure was again installed, only to be overwhelmed yet again in World War II. In March 1942 responsibilities were again redivided, with the new Army Service Forces created, and placed under the supervision of the Undersecretary of War. ₂₂

Such minor reorganization was typical of the interwar period. Between 1921 and 1945 Congress considered numerous pieces of legislation dealing with the organization of the military. Of all the potentially significant reforms, few ever made it to a vote, and most were handily defeated. Both the War Department and the Department of the Navy actively opposed reform efforts, especially those aimed at integrating command. About the only consequential legal change in the structure of the armed forces dealt with the embryonic air forces. The Air Corps Act of 1926 raised the position of the air units within the Army’s organizational structure. ₂₃ They remained within the Army, unlike the RAF which had already gained organizational independence in Britain.

As we have seen, neither the Army nor the Navy were prepared to integrate their top commands. Each service was still struggling to unify command within their own service. Collaboration between the services could only occur haphazardly. Prior to World War I, there had been some limited efforts to have the two services speak to each other. Alongside Root’s reforms in 1903, the Joint Army-Navy Board was created (reflecting the Navy’s success with its own Board during the Spanish-American War). This Board was intended to enable the two services to conduct planning together, to integrate war strategies. It was composed of four high ranking officers from each service. It was an opportunity to work together which went unexploited. Without any impetus from the participants, the Joint Board did little real work until 1939. ₂₄

 

World War II and the Creation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Harsh necessities changed all that. Cooperation and coordination between the services became a top priority once the U.S. entered World War II. The demands of combat operations quickly spurred the creation of a network of some 75 interservice and interdepartmental committees. Many of these were temporary efforts, and some failed to produce much cooperation, but on the whole the lesson was that effective coordination and cooperation were both necessary and possible. ₂₅ Wartime pressures also led to the integration of the services’ decisionmaking into a single strategizing body. First, there was the problem of presenting a single American viewpoint on strategic issues when negotiating with the British. Thanks to their own Combined Chiefs, the British constantly presented a solid front in discussions between the allies. The American civilian and military leaders quickly realized that the U.S. armed forces chiefs also needed to speak with one voice. Unless the American military could present its viewpoint more effectively, American political and strategic objectives would be subordinated to British goals.

Secondly, there were disputes over service roles. This would naturally have been complicated, with the amphibious nature of the war in the Pacific, but given the anomalous nature of the Army Air Forces it was doubly so. The “island-hopping” strategy employed in the war against Japan demanded a close integration of air, sea, and land forces. Much the same could be said of the plans for seaborne invasions within the European theater. It should also be noted, however, that Pacific operations tended to be handled by direct contact between the Army and Navy commanders in the theater. The JCS did not handle details of operations there, as they did in Europe. Perhaps most importantly, the JCS allocated resources between the main theaters of operations. ₂₆ While President Roosevelt in consultation with the JCS established the basic ratio for the division of resources, the implementation of this ratio into the specific deployment of men and material had to be done by a joint military staff. This complex and difficult task was critical for the success of the overall war effort.

Solving any one of these problems would not necessitate the creation of the JCS as in fact occurred. Alternatives existed. One possible avenue for institutional change was empowerment of the Joint Board, which had existed (largely unused) since 1903. After the American entry into the Second World War, military officers from Britain and the U.S. realized they needed a single commander for Allied forces deployed in South East Asia. To whom would this commander report? At the Arcadia Conference in December 1941 and January 1942, it was decided that a Combined Chiefs of Staff would be established in Washington; combined here refers to the fact that it would be a combination of British and American staffs. In order to coordinate American views in these discussions, and due to the other wartime pressures referred to earlier, the JCS was created (to take the place of the Joint Board). As originally constructed, the JCS was composed of the Army Chief of Staff, the Commanding General of Army Air Forces, the CNO, and a Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief. ₂₇

The creation of the JCS gave the military services direct access to the President for the first time. The armed forces no longer had to report through the departmental secretaries. During the war, secretaries were effectively removed from discussions of strategic matters. ₂₈ (This may also reflect Roosevelt’s preference for handling many of these decisions personally.) The JCS was an institution at a level above that of individual services, which was the level of the highest civilian authorities (the secretaries) save the president. Thus the military officers serving on the JCS were quite powerful, and no civilian authority was created to counterbalance the power of the JCS.

This fits in with a more general trend of the time: the military was able to expand its activities into many different areas traditionally handled by civilians or civilian agencies. As a reflection of the wartime alliance structure, military officers began undertaking diplomacy. The military directly administered territory liberated from the Axis powers, and then the occupied Axis powers themselves. Congress allowed these encroachments, because it was not willing to rein the military in as long as the war continued. (It could hardly have used its most potent weapon against the military—threatening military budgets—while millions of men were in the field and at sea engaging the enemy.) ₂₉

Despite the creation of the JCS, the war aims of the U.S. continued to be determined by civilians. As a result, Roosevelt rarely found himself in direct conflict with the JCS. The goals the White House established were: (1) concentrate on military defeat of the Axis Powers above all else, (2) postpone most major political decisions on the postwar order until after the war, (3) ask for unconditional surrender, (4) place priority on victory in Europe, and only afterward concentrate on defeating Japan. ₃₀ There is no question that the JCS followed these guidelines. It should also be noted that even before the war ended, military commanders and politicians were debating which measures to take in slowing down the homefront’s war effort in anticipation of the peace. They were well aware of the adjustment problems related to returning the military to a peacetime role. This debate naturally touched upon the numerous special committees and agencies set up to serve the high command. The “various extra curricular agencies,” as then Senator Harry Truman referred to them, could be strengthened, maintained, or shut down. ₃₁

General George Marshall, who had been the Army Chief of Staff since 1939, submitted a proposal to the JCS for a “Single Department of War in the Post-War Period” in November 1943. This plan was welcomed by some in the Roosevelt administration, though there were others who supported the continuation of coordinating agencies over centralization. Over time, the War Department came to support Marshall’s position, as did the Bureau of the Budget. The Navy Department resisted, however, setting the stage for the first of many postwar fights over administration of the military. Marshall only pursued this line in his 1943 recommendation because he believed the Navy was becoming more open to the Army’s position. Marshall had gotten this impression, because Admiral Harry Yarnell was undertaking a study of unification. ₃₂ In fact, the initiation of a study on the Navy’s part had not been meant to signal a change of views.

The Navy’s opposition to Marshall’s recommendation for unification led to a wide-ranging discussion on alternative administrative structures. The JCS appointed a Special Committee on Defense Reorganization in the spring of 1944 to interview top commanders from both services. This committee reported its survey April 12, 1945 in support of the Army’s views. Navy brass was apparently upset with the timing of the report’s filing, because it came just as the Navy’s highest officers were consumed with the preparations for the invasion of Japan. ₃₃ The Committee’s report and the ensuing discussions framed the postwar debates about the institutional structuring of military command, with the key focus being the centralization of authority within a single Department of Defense.

 

Trends in Institutional Change Since 1945

The overall pattern of institutional change observed since World War II has fallen roughly into two phases, according to Samuel Huntington. In the first period, from the end of World War II up to the early 1960s, the story is of centralization of authority in civilian hands. Unification into a Department of Defense took place, with decisionmaking powers concentrated in the hands of the new Secretary of Defense. This centralization of authority was based on the National Security Act of 1947 and the Defense Reorganization Act of 1958. These and other reform efforts reflected the initial struggle to respond to military overcommitment. They focused on strategic planning, operations command and the allocation of resources. The 1947 reforms established much of the basic machinery for strategic planning and resources management, but the 1958 reforms were needed to compel the services and the military to conform to the Secretary of Defense’s desires and to coordinate operations more fully. Whereas it took Britain some years to develop military overcommitment, and then many more years to realize the need to react to this problem, the U.S. faced the problem very early on, and responded quickly. The explanation for the more rapid American response lies in the bipolar structure of the postwar world. The U.S. had to be concerned about military overcommitment in the face of Soviet power. Yet the initial response chosen was to do less about resources or commitments, even when the U.S. economy was the strongest in the world, and instead search for greater efficiencies through institutional reforms.

In the second period Huntington identifies, which dates from the 1960s to the 1980s, there was greater consensus among the military participants which gave them the ability to pursue their more narrow bureaucratic service-oriented goals. Consensus is maintained by having each service respect the demands of the others, no matter how high this drives total requests—clearly not a desirable outcome in the national perspective. One break point separating these two periods is the introduction of the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS) by Robert MacNamara, in 1961. McNamara wanted to link the planning and budgeting phases more tightly. In addition, this period has been marked by more intense Congressional oversight of the budget. McNamara’s goals were never fully realized, because the services still resisted complete unification; in exercising their autonomy they continue to undermine efforts to view defense through a single lens. ₃₄ This is also the period when the American economy lost most of its edge over competitors. Huntington’s second phase, then, has all the elements of an adjustment into the leadership role, but also transforming rapidly into an afterglow—increased expenditures to meet extensive commitments, but also a declining ability to pay for expanded armed forces. To get a clearer handle on the policy responses in this period, however, we need to break it down into shorter periods.

Another large trend in the postwar period has been the greater role civilians play in making important decisions about the military—and not simply about its organization and deployment, but about its internal functioning. Subjects which would have been declared “service matters” prior to World War II are routinely handled by civilians in the Department of Defense nowadays. ₃₅

 

Overcommitment and the Initial Reorganization Efforts

Although wartime experience may have proven the desirability of unification of military command, or at least of unification of military strategizing and planning, the two services proposed rather different schemes for placing such a change on a permanent footing. The Army plan called for a single department, with a single civilian secretary of defense, a single military commander (or chief of staff), a single military command structure, and three functionally integrated services. Each service would be responsible for a particular type of warfare: ground, sea, or air. The Navy resisted this definition of missions because it feared losing both the Marine Corps and its naval air units. It also felt the best way to defend these existing elements of its service was to maintain its own department.

The Navy therefore countered the Army’s plan for a single Department of Defense with its own proposal for unification. The Navy plan (of October 1945) suggested less drastic reform, and instead sought to build on wartime experiences. Ferdinand Eberstadt, an old friend of Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, saw the main thrust of any changes as to tighten the government’s coordination of national security overall. Eberstadt’s plan thus stressed using interservice and interagency boards and committees to coordinate intelligence, planning, education and training, logistics, weapons development, and so on. The Navy plan also advocated the creation of a National Security Council to be composed of the President and his senior advisers. This National Security Council (NSC) would be able to provide the military services with overall political direction (something that had always been lacking, and had been so significant to the Navy in the past), and was even thought of in terms of Britain’s CID. The Navy plan thus aimed at better coordination rather than actual unification. ₃₆

Each plan was presented to the Senate Committee on Military Affairs late in 1945. Truman (now President) had experience on similar Senate committees; he preferred the Army’s plan. This was perhaps because he hoped for economies in any reorganization, and unification promised a greater return than simply stepped up coordination. Congress was more difficult to persuade. ₃₇ Neither of the two plans could find a consensus. The two services remained pitted against each other. On May 13, 1946 Truman told Secretary of the Navy Forrestal and Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson to break the deadlock between the two services and reach some sort of agreement. By the end of May Forrestal and Patterson reported back that while progress had been made, four points had not been resolved. First, they disagreed over the idea of placing all services under one secretary and one department. Second, they disagreed over whether or not to create the Air Force as a third service rather than leave it as a corps within the army. Third, they disagreed whether the Navy should operate land-based aircraft. Fourth, they disagreed over the role and mission of the Marine Corps and its air units.

In June 1946 Truman responded by laying out his own preferences concerning these issues. He stated that he wanted a single secretary of national defense. He also made it clear he thought the Air Force should become a third service under a single secretary of defense. But he sided with the Navy’s position on its use of land-based aircraft, and of continuing the land and air operations of the Marine Corps. ₃₈ Truman went on to endorse other parts of the Navy’s proposals. He accepted the idea of a National Security Council, and then proposed some specific interagency and interservice boards. Among the boards he wanted to see established were a national security resources board, a centralized intelligence agency, a single agency for procurement, a single agency for research and development, and a single agency for education and training. He dropped support for the notion of a single military chief of staff, and instead fell back to the idea of a continuation of the JCS. He did advocate placing the JCS on a statutory footing, however.

Even with these compromises, Congress remained deadlocked on the issues. After Congress adjourned in November 1946, Forrestal began to operate behind the scenes to bolster support for Truman’s position. Thanks to further agreements reached between Patterson and Forrestal, the Army finally accepted the compromises offered, and the basis for Congressional support was laid. The National Security Act of 1947 resulted. ₃₉

It took further negotiations to settle the disputes between the services permanently. The Key West Agreement was intended to resolve some of the disputes between the services. It represents the services’ formal recognition of the JCS, plus it states quite clearly that one of the JCS’s functions is to provide the Defense Department with integrated and unified plans. The Agreement also attempted to sort out service missions and roles by laying out the specific duties of each, while allowing for some overlap in their secondary functions. ₄₀

 

The National Security Act of 1947 and Other Reorganizations in the Early Postwar Period

Reflecting the compromise Truman effected, the National Security Act of 1947 has several elements that seem to push in different directions. By creating the Air Force as an independent service, it seems to pull the services further apart; by providing for a single Secretary of Defense it seems to unify them. It created a powerful civilian authority over the services with this single Secretary of Defense, but it also set up the NSC, which opened the door for military participation in the formulation of foreign policy. ₄₁ The extent to which the National Security Act of 1947 shook up the existing political-military structure also depended upon how it was implemented. In order to smooth the transition Forrestal, the serving Secretary of the Navy, became the first Secretary of Defense; the old positions of Secretary for each of the services (now including the Air Force) were placed beneath the Secretary of Defense. ₄₂ Thus the Navy’s fears were partly assuaged by having their man placed in the new top position.

The Preamble to the National Security Act, written by the Senate Armed Services Committee, states that the Act is “to provide for the establishment of integrated policies and procedures for the departments, agencies and functions of the Government relating to National security …” and in terms of the three services specifically, “to provide for their authoritative coordination under civilian control but not to merge them; to provide for the effective strategic direction of the armed forces and their operation under unified control and for their integration into an efficient team of land, naval, and air forces.” ₄₃

The role envisioned for the JCS is also clearly spelled out. Congress intended the JCS to be a purely military institution. Only military officers may sit on the JCS. The Secretary of Defense does not have representation there. The responsibilities established for the JCS are entirely military in nature. Nonmilitary functions which the JCS had assumed during World War II were specifically removed from military jurisdiction. National security policy became the responsibility of the civilian NSC. Military research and development was given to the Assistant Secretary of Defense. Intelligence became the responsibility of the CIA, which reported to the NSC, not the military. Nuclear programs were handed to the civilian Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). The military’s administration of Japan and Germany was ended. Responsibilities for economic mobilization planning were given to the President. ₄₄

Of the new institutions created, the NSC was most obviously the one given the responsibility to develop security policies which balanced resources and obligations. The NSC was intended, in Eberstadt’s own description provided to others involved in the drafting of the early recommendations on unification, as “a permanent vehicle for maintaining active, close and continuous contact between the departments and agencies of government responsible for our foreign and military policies, including formulation and coordination of such policies, the assessing and appraising of our foreign objectives, commitments and risks, and keeping these in balance with our military power.” ₄₅ Following this line of thinking, it would be the NSC—and not the JCS—that would be in the best position to manage the policies responsible for the military overstretch.

President Truman never found the NSC appealing, however. He thought the NSC would be outside the powerful channels connecting the White House and Congress; others think he may have seen the NSC as a tool for Congressional dickering in the affairs of the executive branch. Apparently he also feared the NSC would be too elitist. For whichever reasons, Truman largely ignored the NSC, and rarely attended its meetings after its inauguration. ₄₆

Despite the numerous changes afoot, Congress was careful to respect service autonomy, as was seen in the cautious wording in the preamble to the 1947 Act. The National Security Act contained several further safeguards in this respect. Their internal autonomy was protected, since the services retained the status of executive departments. All powers not specifically assigned to the Secretary of Defense devolved to the services. They could appeal any decisions. The Secretary of Defense’s capabilities were limited in the sense that the legislation gave the Secretary permission for only three special assistants, and no independent military support staff, although more civilians could be hired if so desired. (And of course, the Navy got specific guarantees on those issues which it considered so important concerning Naval Aviation and the Marine Corps.) ₄₇

This is not to deny that the whole effort was aimed at creating economies through some level of integration of the armed services. As an example of the sort of gains expected to be made from unifying elements of command and organization, one of Forrestal’s first moves was to create a single Military Air Transport Service (MATS) in June 1948. MATS was created by consolidating the Air Force’s Air Transport Command with the Navy’s Air Transport Service. By eliminating duplication of efforts, it was hoped that expenditures could be cut. ₄₈

Yet Forrestal was not satisfied with the results of the National Security Act of 1947, so he pressed for further reforms in 1948. The same struggle continued, as the Army (now joined by the Air Force) pushed for further centralization which the Navy resisted. Additional reforms did come about in March 1949. The 1947 National Security Act was amended in three areas. A single Department of Defense was created, to enhance the Secretary of Defense’s power and authority over the services. The service secretaries had previously sat on the NSC, and with this change they no longer had that right. One of the Secretary of Defense’s assistants was given the title of “comptroller,” thus stressing the role of the Secretary in budget formulation. This established a rather unique position within the federal government. In almost every other case, budgeting is handled by the Treasury. In this case, Congress was allowing internal budgeting. And finally, the JCS was given a full-time Chairman. The Chairman’s duties were clearly spelled out. The support staff of the JCS was increased from 100 to 210 officers. The 1949 amendments also reiterated the possibility of “legislative insubordination.” As the law states, “no provision of this Act shall be construed as to prevent a Secretary of a military department or a member of the JCS from presenting to the Congress, on his own initiative, after first so informing the Secretary of Defense, any recommendations relating to the Department of Defense that he may deem proper.” ₄₉

As Secretary of Defense, much of Forrestal’s energy was spent suppressing the infighting between the services. Much of the interservice squabbling was becoming public. In the battle over funding the Air Force and Navy had engaged in press leaks over the performance of the B-36 bomber. Forrestal disliked the impression this gave to the public, as well as the fact that this drew the President into the interservice arguments and departmental debates. So in March 1949 he established the Office of Public Information (OPI), to be the sole agency for public information on the military. ₅₀ With the 1949 amendments stressing the role of the Secretary of Defense, and with moves such as the creation of the OPI, Forrestal was trying to consolidate greater powers at the top.

The budget remained the critical battleground, which Forrestal knew from previous experience as Secretary of the Navy. In his own words, it was an “embarrassment” that each service should submit a budget request independent of the other services. To remedy the situation, upon assuming the office of Secretary of Defense he ordered the JCS to submit a joint strategic plan to be used as a basis for a single statement of required forces for the purposes of budgeting, as soon as possible. ₅₁ Here was a perfect opportunity to recognize and perhaps deal with overcommitment. At first, this joint strategic plan would not prove very helpful in Forrestal’s search for cutbacks, but it would reflect the military’s concerns about American commitments, and support their claims to greater resources. Yet in the wake of World War II, when fiscal expenditures were strained by the massive debts so recently incurred, greater assets would not be forthcoming.

The military had been overextended soon after the end of World War II, even before American commitments were openly tested in 1950. In March 1946, the Joint Planning Staff of the JCS was concerned about the repercussions of a British withdrawal from the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East, and elsewhere, since the U.S. would undoubtedly have to increase its commitments in these areas. The Joint Planning Staff asked the State Department for “a political estimate of Russia, and so far as possible, an outline of future U.S. policy with reference to Russia, and implementing action for that policy requiring plans and preparations by the armed forces.” The State Department’s response came in early April, and drew on George Kennan’s “long telegram” from two months before. ₅₂

Early in 1947, the Truman Administration had announced its intention to extend assistance programs to a number of countries, which became known as the Truman Doctrine. This was in response to the news that Britain was withdrawing support from Greece and Turkey—because Britain could no longer afford to support these allies. Britain’s relinquishment of leadership responsibilities forced the U.S. to take on new obligations, even if only indirectly at first. American obligations grew quickly thereafter. Once American forces were drawn into open conflict in Korea, it was decided that some U.S. ground troops would have to remain in Europe indefinitely. This obviously increased assessments of American obligations. In order to keep the need for troops low, the U.S. agreed to station four to six Army divisions in Western Europe only on the condition that West Germany would be rearmed and its military units incorporated into the NATO structure. ₅₃

In the budget discussions of 1948 (for fiscal year 1950), the military made its own recommendations based on plans for a possible war with the Soviet Union. Admiral Leahy put forth the JCS position that they were “working in the dark” as far as foreign policy was concerned. They were still not receiving any direction in terms of national security policy or objectives. The JCS deserved, in Leahy’s words, “information which is a statement of policy, and there is an organization in the Government known as the NSC which is supposed to produce that and get it approved by the President.” Forrestal concurred, and in July 1948 charged the NSC with establishing existing commitments, threats, and resources, as matters of utmost priority. Such information, Forrestal told Truman, would be “indispensable to the National Military Establishment in determining level and character of forces which it should maintain” and that “preparation of realistic budget estimates and final decisions concerning the size of the national budget, and its relative emphasis on different projects, should be founded on such an evaluation.” Truman (with his dislike of the NSC), saw the decisionmaking flowing in the other direction. As he responded to Forrestal, “It seems to me, that the proper thing for you to do is get the Army, Navy and Air people together and establish a program within the budget limits which have been allowed.” ₅₄

With the defense budgets in the late 1940s and early 1950s (up to and including that for FY 1952), it was the civilian planners in the Office of the Secretary of Defense who unified the budget requests, not the JCS. A real unification of strategy was still missing as well. Instead, the civilians unified the budget, and then the JCS cropped their plans to fit those dimensions. This pattern—of the budget driving military planning, rather than the other way around—would continue. ₅₅ The strategic plans produced by the JCS in the late 1940s were fairly straightforward, and reflected the American experience in World War II. The 1948 strategic plan (originally named halfmoon , but then changed to fleetwood ) envisioned the proper response to the outbreak of a global war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. U.S. troops would be deployed in a buildup of forces in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. U.S. military forces would then counterattack Soviet expansionism, and push the USSR back to its pre-World War II borders. The 1949 strategic plan ( trojan ), largely formulated by Eisenhower, varied from the above plan in that it added in potential targets for atomic weapons. offtackle , which grew from trojan , added plans for defensive operations in Western Europe, a U.S. reentry into the Western Mediterranean, and defense of the Middle East. ₅₆

In connecting force structures to such plans, the JCS was already saying in 1948&-;1949 that the U.S. was overcommitted. This comes through most clearly in the early fights over the budget. Truman had instructed Forrestal to plan for a defense program costing less than $14.5 billion in FY 1950. The JCS could not agree on how to allocate such little money, and instead submitted four separate sets of figures. The first represented what they wanted: a total of $29 billion. The second reflected the total they felt they needed to meet minimum levels of readiness: $23.6 billion. The third was simply the total needed to maintain forces at 1949 levels: $18.6 billion. Finally, there was the JCS’s estimate of the absolute minimum needed: $16.9 billion. Note that all are higher than the total Truman and Forrestal were aiming for. In the end, Congress approved even less than that: only $13 billion. ₅₇

The force structure itself was poorly organized for any combat. The postwar demobilization left the military very topheavy. In July 1949, the military had some 1,650,000 soldiers and sailors in uniform, plus another 900,000 civilian employees in the Defense Department. But out of this quantity, only some 200,000 were in combat formations. ₅₈ There were clearly not enough units to match commitments. Even with the added expenditures of the Korean War, and the mobilization of forces which involvement in that conflict entailed, the military was stretched too far. By 1953, the Army’s 20 divisions were clearly not enough to meet existing needs. Seven divisions were deployed in Korea, with another based in Japan. Of the three divisions in the Marine Corps, one was serving in Korea and another was sent to Japan soon after the truce was signed. ₅₉ There weren’t enough troops left over to meet American obligations in Europe or elsewhere.

This led to a number of debates among policymakers in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Some argued caution against making extensive commitments. Hans Morgenthau provided logical arguments for making foreign policy goals consistent with the means at one’s disposal. Just as pointedly, George Kennan argued before the Policy Planning Staff in June 1949 that he did not believe “that our great moment as a factor in world affairs has yet arrived, I fervently hope that it has not.” ₆₀ If the U.S. could not meet extensive obligations, the ensuing debates focused on where the U.S. should make commitments, and where it should eschew them. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in May 1950, argued that priority had to be placed on Europe. “I think we have to start out with the realization that the main center of our activity at present has got to be in Europe. We cannot scatter our shots equally all over the world. We just haven’t got enough shots to do that.” ₆₁

In the first five years after the end of World War II, the various pieces of military overstretch and the ingredients for responding to that problem were coming together. American commitments were still to be outlined. The threat posed by the Soviet bloc was still being evaluated. Institutions such as the JCS and NSC were also being created to identify such problems, and develop the proper response to rectify any shortcomings. It was also clear from the organizational reforms that the politicians were looking for ways to make existing resources go further. In short, the U.S. responded to overstretch in the 1945–1950 period by “doing nothing” about resources and commitments, while seeking instead to make ends meet via numerous organizational changes. It wished to cut back on the military establishment, as it had done after previous wars. The Korean War changed the situation, by forcing expenditures up; yet thanks to the inability of Soviet forces to strike at the U.S. directly, the U.S. could afford to continue debating whether to raise or lower resources and commitments.

 

Eisenhower’s Reforms

Military overstretch also was on the minds of those running for office. On the campaign trail in 1952, Eisenhower promised to reconcile the two goals of “security” and “solvency”—reminiscent of Castlereagh’s wish to “combine security with economy” in Britain after the Napoleonic Wars. Eisenhower argued that these two goals could both be achieved through better management of the defense effort, notably by bringing about greater unification of the services in procurement. In his words, “We must eliminate waste and duplication of effort in the armed services.” Once in office, the men he appointed as Director of the Budget (Joseph M. Dodge) and Secretary of the Treasury (George M. Humphrey) both pushed to reduce expenditures. ₆₂

Eisenhower’s first and most obvious promise was to end the war in Korea. But this was also important in the overall scheme of reducing the federal budget by downsizing the military. Since the armed services accounted for something like 70 percent of the federal budget in those years, the only way to reach “solvency” was to reduce military expenditures. (Though I must note that commitments were probably still at a level sustainable by the American economy in those days.) Only by ending the war in Korea could Eisenhower hope to make substantial reductions in the military. ₆₃ At the same time, reductions in the military would make the problem of overstretch much worse if nothing else was done.

Less than a month in office, Eisenhower set up the President’s Advisory Commission on Governmental Organization (better known as the Rockefeller Commission). The Rockefeller Commission reported in April 1953. ₆₄ Eisenhower began reorganizing the military strategizing and command structure on the basis of those recommendations. Along the same lines as the Commission suggested, Eisenhower wanted to shake up the organization of the JCS, in order to break the members’ links to the services. Having served on the JCS, he knew first hand of its problems. As he described the reforms under Reorganization Plan No. 6 (1953), “My objective was to take at least one step in divorcing the thinking and the outlook of the members of the Joint Staff from those of their parent services and to center their entire effort on national planning for the overall common defense of the nation and the West.” ₆₅ (It is interesting also to note that he saw the JCS’s responsibilities covering not just the U.S. but the allies it led as well.)

In the 1953 Defense Reorganization Plan and the 1958 Defense Reorganization Act, Eisenhower attacked four basic characteristics of the military decisionmaking apparatus which he considered the source of most of its shortcomings. These four characteristics prevented an effective integration of military decisionmaking. ₆₆ First, the chairman of the JCS did not have true independence; instead he was seen as simply the spokesperson for the JCS as a group, as a liaison between the JCS and civilian authorities. It was no surprise, therefore, that the armed services left unification of the budget up to the civilians in the Defense Department. Second, the JCS members were “double-hatted”; they wore both the “hats” of independent service chiefs and the “hats” of the Joint Chiefs (which was supposed to be a body above the services). Thus they were charged with defending their branches of the armed forces as well as unifying them—it was unreasonable to expect them to work at cross purposes. Third, and because of the second point, the services dictated to the JCS, rather than the JCS commanding the services. Fourth, officers in charge of any combat operations (the unified and specified commanders) were in a weak position within the entire structure.

The 1953 reforms were meant to give the Chairman of the JCS enough authority to manage the staff system more effectively. The Chairman would then be able to direct the subordinate structures associated with the JCS, but the JCS’s main role as an advisory group was not altered. The 1958 reforms were supposed to build on this pattern, but full Congressional approval was lacking. Without the full set of reforms as recommended by the Executive branch, military decisionmaking was kept divided—suggesting that Congress wanted to maintain such divisions. ₆₇

Eisenhower also tried to reduce the JCS’s workload. He wanted to encourage the JCS to delegate more of their work. As one step in this direction, he cut the JCS out of the operational chain of command. The flow was now from the President to the Secretary of Defense to the military departments to operational commands. This was to stress that the JCS’s function was planning and advising, not command. The 1958 reorganization returned the JCS to the operational chain of command however, by placing it as the operational staff assisting the Secretary of Defense. Individual specified commands and the unified commands were to report to the Secretary of Defense directly, with the JCS only involved as the Secretary’s staff. ₆₈ The 1958 reforms also allowed the JCS to expand the joint staff to 400 officers (from 210). This helped the JCS execute more work. At the same time, Congress stressed in the legislation that the JCS was not intended to be an overall general staff for the armed forces. This is another piece of evidence suggesting to many observers that Congress wants to keep the services at loggerheads in the JCS, so as to play one off against another. Then, as now, Congress intended to keep the service chiefs wedded to their own services. ₆₉

As for the NSC, Eisenhower was much more comfortable with the commission than Truman had been. Because Eisenhower regularly attended its meetings, they became a forum where advisers could deal with the President directly. He also placed the Secretary of the Treasury and the budget director on the NSC, so that budgetary matters could be related to strategic issues. The NSC began holding regularly scheduled meetings with a standardized agenda. The agenda and all discussion papers were circulated to participants in advance. All of this shaped the way the NSC scrutinized decisions. The financial impact of each decision was reviewed much more closely as well. ₇₀ The NSC could now perform a role much closer to that originally intended.

 

The Resulting Policies under Eisenhower: The New Look

In terms of the policies pursued, the Eisenhower Administration had to change the military’s posture if it was to strike a new balance between commitments and achieve the reduction in expenditures on the military. This meant challenging some of the planning done under the previous administration. In July 1952 the JCS approved a Memorandum of Policy (MoP 84) on a “Joint Program for Planning.” It categorized three types of planning for either peace or war: long-, medium-, and short-range plans. The long range plans were forecasts of the next ten years, covering items such as likely areas of conflict, probable types of war, and the requirements needed to meet such situations. The idea was to link needs, strategy, and research efforts. The Joint Program for Planning was meant to coordinate such efforts. ₇₁

Due to the thinking engendered by the evaluations of the Soviet Union in NSC-68, the Truman Administration had developed the notion of a “year of maximum danger.” The analysts had projected that the Soviet Union would develop its economic and military resources for several years, then peak around 1954. The analysts therefore expected the Soviet Union to generate international crises as its power crested. The Truman Administration and military commanders planned their weapons procurement and operational readiness for that anticipated period of crises. Eisenhower dispelled such notions. Instead of building for a particular target date, one that would soon arrive, he viewed the rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union as an enduring competition. According to Eisenhower, the U.S. needed to invest in its own economy, so as to beat the Soviets over the “long haul.” Thus military reductions would not be merely acceptable, they would actually be the correct response. ₇₂

When Eisenhower took office, the U.S. had commitments—commitments so extensive that the U.S. might already have been reaching a level beyond its ability to meet them. Explicit arrangements included three multilateral pacts (the 1947 Rio Treaty, the 1949 NATO pact, and the 1951 ANZUS arrangement), a bilateral defense treaty with the Philippines, plus two defense obligations via executive agreement (one with Iceland, the other with Greenland). ₇₃ The U.S. was also committed to Japan’s defense. There was little suggestion from any source that the U.S. should significantly reduce these commitments.

Yet the U.S. military was clearly unable to meet the vast majority of these obligations simultaneously. Ground forces, in particular, were too few in number. In the assessments of future Army needs made in 1954, the Strategic Plans Committee foresaw a need for 24 divisions in total (including the National Guard divisions). They would be deployed in the following manner: three in the Far East, two spread out in static defenses, five tied up in recruit training, one as the Western Hemispheric Reserve, which left 13 for a strategic reserve to deploy in support of NATO. While this sounds adequate, in fact the U.S. was pledged to support NATO with 17 divisions, four more than could possibly be on hand. ₇₄

In its budget requests for FY 1955, the JCS maintained roughly the same figures as previously outlined under the Truman Administration. The JCS argued that the military required the same $42 billion in expenditures as delineated earlier because the Eisenhower Administration offered neither any change in the level of threats the country faced, nor change in commitments, nor change in the employment of weaponry. When the budget request went before the NSC (October 13, 1953), Secretary of the Treasury Humphrey and budget director Dodge were visibly upset. JCS Chairman Admiral Arthur Radford, who was sympathetic to the Administration’s economic goals, suggested that changes in the rules on the use of nuclear weapons might allow for a lower budget. If military commanders were allowed to plan on using nuclear weapons from the very start of any future war, the costs of keeping conventional forces at a high level of preparedness could be reduced. The result was a further meeting of the NSC on October 30, 1953, where NSC 162/2 was adopted. ₇₅

NSC 162/2 was the basis for a change in military strategy and deployment known as the “New Look.” The New Look promised the possibility of going beyond simply “doing nothing” about overcommitment of the military or just searching for greater efficiency in expenditures through reorganization, because it held out the prospect of actually reducing expenditures while maintaining American commitments in the face of the threats posed by the Soviet bloc. By agreeing to strategic planning on the basis of U.S. first use of nuclear weapons, the U.S. could make its existing forces adequate for the defense of the interests of the U.S. and allied countries—adjusting to fulfill leadership.

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was testifying before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations at the same time as the first “New Look” budgets were being debated in Congress. He was called on to defend the changes in expenditure, and his words give an excellent interpretation of the Administration’s thinking:

If you put all your strength into a military establishment so that your own economy begins to decline, you are unable to be a vigorous economic center of the world which will help sustain the viable economies in other countries, that could be just as disastrous as not having any military establishment at all. ₇₆

Decisionmakers recognized the gap between resources and commitments but were responding to it. NSC 162/2, approved by the President in October 1953, stated explicitly that “the armed forces of the U.S. are overextended,” but went on to argue that strategic withdrawal from Europe or Asia would be too harmful to American interests to advocate. The memo also pointed out a choice if the military was to meet America’s defense requirements: greater reliance on allies, or a massive increase in the defense budget. ₇₇

In their telling assessment of deterrence in postwar American policy, Alexander George and Richard Smoke argue that three interrelated factors contributed to the development of the the New Look, and the military doctrine of Massive Retaliation which the New Look entailed. First, the U.S. did not want to be drawn into any other ground conflicts such as Korea. At the same time, the U.S. chose to maintain the policy of containing the Soviet Union, which entailed extensive, geographically diverse commitments. Second, the Eisenhower Administration sought areas to reduce fiscal expenditures, which included possible cuts in defense expenditures. Third, the U.S. had a growing stockpile of nuclear weapons, and developments in technology promised advances in the capability of delivering them. As George and Smoke point out, all three factors show up in Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’s speech announcing “Massive Retaliation” on January 12, 1954. ₇₈

With Massive Retaliation, the U.S. essentially identified the territories and regions where it considered its primary interests to lie, and then told the Soviet Union that an attack on these interests would be treated as an attack on the U.S. itself. The U.S. would respond with its nuclear military forces. The peace would be kept and American commitments defended through the threat of nuclear assault. The practice of “brinksmanship” was born. Brinksmanship was explained by Secretary of State Dulles to Life magazine interviewer James Shepley thusly:

You have to take risks for peace just as you must take chances in war. Some say that we were brought to the verge of war. Of course we were brought to the verge of war. The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost. ₇₉

Brinksmanship was less risky between 1945 and 1960, when the U.S. had an effective monopoly in the area of nuclear weapons. In the first part of this period the U.S. had an actual monopoly; even after the Soviets exploded their first nuclear bombs, they lacked a vehicle for delivering those weapons to North America. Only after the development of Sputnik did the credibility of the U.S. nuclear deterrent begin to erode. During the 1950s, much of the American strategic planning for a war in Europe could afford to emphasize the use of nuclear weapons, naval power, and long-range air power. The Europeans were expected to contribute the bulk of the ground forces and the tactical air forces. ₈₀ For a time, then, Massive Retaliation and the New Look did reduce the need for a large-scale buildup of American forces to meet its political commitments. The model developed in chapter 1 would expect that in a situation where the U.S. had a relatively balanced budget, and faced the growing Soviet threat, it would react to fulfill its needs as a leading state: as long as the economy could afford it, greater resources should have been expended on a military buildup. Yet the attitude from the Eisenhower Administration was that spending more on defense was not healthy for the U.S. economy. The reliance on nuclear weapons in the New Look and the doctrine of Massive Retaliation provided a way not only to avoid higher expenditures but also increase resources to meet obligations.

The change in military doctrine clearly altered the nature of budgetary conflicts between the services. Because of the importance of the nuclear weapons in the overall defense plan, the Air Force started to claim the lion’s share of the defense budget. Even within the Air Force, the distribution of funds was skewed toward the specified command which took pride of place in the New Look: the Strategic Air Command (SAC). SAC received approximately 45 percent of the overall military budget in the late 1950s. ₈₁ Initially, the advent of the New Look/Massive Retaliation concept also reduced the budget claims of the other services. The new doctrine undercut any offensive role for the Navy. There was no place in the entire scheme for the premier fighting ship of the Navy—the aircraft carrier. The Navy thus fought even harder to get the carriers a role in any envisioned strategic bombing campaign. ₈₂ (This is comparable in some ways to the debates between the British Army and Royal Navy over Imperial Defense; the Royal Navy was able to expand its funds, but only at the expense of the Army.)

The improvements in the U.S. military position were bound to be short-lived, however. An assessment of the military situation by the JCS in May 1954 recognized the inevitable erosion of the American ability to deter possible Soviet aggression with nuclear weapons alone. The likelihood of general war would fall, but not that of lower-intensity conflicts:

Increasing Soviet atomic capability will tend to diminish the deterrent effect of U.S. atomic power against peripheral aggression. With respect to general war, the attainment of atomic plenty by both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. could create a condition of mutual deterrence in which both sides would be strongly inhibited from initiating general war. Under such circumstances, the Soviets might well elect to pursue their ultimate objective of world domination through a succession of local aggressions, either overt or covert, all of which could not be successfully opposed by the allies through localized counter-action, without unacceptable commitment of resources. ₈₃

This and other assessments led some high-ranking officers to challenge the wisdom of pursuing the New Look and implementing the planning for Massive Retaliation at all. As outgoing Army Chief, General Matthew Ridgway argued against the New Look. Instead, he proposed expending funds to develop an expeditionary force—a forerunner of the Rapid Reaction Force. As he wrote in a letter to one senator in June 1955:

Present U.S. military forces cannot support fully America’s diplomacy. It is my view that the commitments which the U.S. had pledged create a positive requirement for an immediately available mobile joint military force of hard hitting character in which the versatility of the whole is emphasized and the preponderance of any one part is deemphasized. ₈₄

In short, Ridgway was arguing that the military should have at its disposal forces of varying character, to allow it to respond to different situations in different ways.

 

The Development of the Doctrine of Flexible Response

By 1956, prominent figures within political and military circles were going beyond challenging the viability of Massive Retaliation, and started to create a rival military doctrine. One of Massive Retaliation’s best known early critics was General Maxwell Taylor. As the Army Chief of Staff, Taylor criticized the idea that American credibility—so central to the success of Massive Retaliation—would be upheld in low-intensity, low-stakes confrontations. He began speaking of the need for a doctrine of “Flexible Response” in 1956. Another prominent critic was Harvard University professor Henry Kissinger. Kissinger’s 1957 book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy also questioned the credibility of U.S. retaliation. Kissinger argued that the threat of nuclear weapons was useful in some situations, but entirely inappropriate in others, seconding the thinking of General Ridgway. Both men argued that America needed a military which could offer policymakers a variety of options when faced with different sorts of threats. ₈₅

This sort of thinking had already crept into military planning. Conventional forces were no longer to be neglected or replaced by strategic forces. NATO plans developed in 1957 called for the future placement of some 30 divisions along the central front, to ensure that the Soviet Union would not be able to deliver a knockout blow in Europe employing only conventional forces. Even in a conventional attack, the Soviets and Americans both would get a chance to think about their options before unleashing a nuclear strike. ₈₆

In anticipation of the loss of strategic nuclear superiority, coupled with the overall erosion of extended deterrence, U.S. military planners reassessed their force postures. The Soviet threat would now extend not only to encompass American allies, but the continental U.S. itself. This required a rethinking of strategy. Theater deterrents had to be reinforced, which would mean more spending on the Army and Navy. So in FY 1963 through FY 1965 funding for conventional forces had to be raised. ₈₇ At the same time, strategic forces would also undergo a rapid buildup.

The Kennedy Administration did not have faith in Massive Retaliation, and also believed that the U.S. could afford to expand defense expenditures. Thus it responded to overstretch by allocating more resources to meet American commitments. Commitments would continue to be met, if not expanded. This was made abundantly clear in Kennedy’s inaugural speech, where he proclaimed the U.S. was prepared to meet any threat, ready to rise to any challenge. General Maxwell Taylor was called out of retirement, first to serve as Kennedy’s “Presidential Military Adviser for foreign and military policy and intelligence operations,” then in July 1962 as Chairman of the JCS. Ironically, Taylor not only oversaw the construction of conventional forces for the doctrine of Flexible Response, but also the construction of a massive strategic weapons arsenal (to be discussed below). ₈₈

In order to implement the changes necessary to make Flexible Response work, the military grew substantially between 1961 and 1964. The Army went from 11 active divisions to 14 (a total of 859,000 troops), and then to 16 divisions (and 927,000 troops). The Army’s readiness and training was also improved. The number of combat ships in the Navy rose from 624 to 754 (and personnel grew from 627,000 to 668,000). Air Force personnel rose only slightly (from 821,000 to 857,000) and the number of aircraft actually fell—though new types were introduced, so that the quality (and cost) per plane rose. ₈₉

The Kennedy Administration increased the level of resources needed to meet American commitments in other ways than simply adopting the doctrine of Flexible Response. The Kennedy Administration developed the “Two and a half war” concept. In other words, it meant to plan for (and build the required military forces for) the simultaneous conduct of one minor and two major wars. (The specific thinking was that the U.S. should have the forces to meet the Soviets in Europe, the People’s Republic of China in Asia, and also prevail in a minor conflict elsewhere—all at the same time.) Despite this planning, the force-levels remained far short of the JCS requests. Pentagon estimates asked for 28.3 Army and Marine Corps divisions, plus 41 Air Force and Marine Corps tactical air wings. Thus these levels look much like those laid out by the JCS after NSC-68. The plans for conducting “Two and a half wars” could be met only by having large forces held in the continental U.S. to be transported to meet contingencies elsewhere. ₉₀ This illustrated how even with the increased military assets, existing formations could not meet requirements simultaneously.

What is even more striking however, is the massive buildup of strategic forces the Kennedy Administration undertook. Combined with the expansion of conventional forces, it was one of the largest and swiftest military buildups in peacetime in U.S. history, totaling an additional $17 billion on top of the Eisenhower Administration’s projected expenditures. Whereas Eisenhower had argued that the U.S. would only need an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force of about 200–255 operational units, the Air Force had continually argued in the late 1950s for many more. The Navy also asked for more than twice the number of nuclear-missile-armed Polaris submarines than the Eisenhower Administration approved. The services would begin to have their requests answered under the Kennedy Administration. ₉₁

Part of the massive buildup was a response to the so-called “missile gap” of the late 1950s. Information that the Soviet Union was ahead in not only technology but also production capabilities brought on fears that the U.S. would soon be vulnerable to a surprise nuclear missile attack. Given that the U.S. had not developed much of a missile arsenal yet, and that Strategic Air Command bombers in 1959 were based at a total of 44 major airfields world-wide, Air Force planners feared that a Soviet missile force of only 200–300 weapons could be enough to take out the entire SAC nuclear delivery system. While they knew the Soviets did not have that many missiles in 1959, many were projecting a Soviet arsenal that large in 4–5 years. ₉₂

The “missile gap” was used to justify the buildup of strategic military forces by the Kennedy Administration. It had been a major theme in their criticism of the previous Republican Administration during the 1960 campaign (it was even discussed in the Democratic party platform), though once in office the Administration quickly realized the gap was nonexistent. Confusion remained over the likely future capabilities of the Soviet Union in this area however. The National Intelligence Estimate produced two sets of numbers: one reflected an “orderly” production program, the other a “crash” development program the Soviets might be capable of making. Still other numbers were produced by the CIA, the Air Force, and the other armed services. (This encouraged the new Administration to attempt to achieve some unity in intelligence in the Defense Intelligence Agency, and to standardize the way information was reported and the various estimates developed, so as to prevent such large discrepancies in the future.) ₉₃ With so many different numbers floating around, and numbers ranging from dozens to a thousand or more, every potential side in the debate over U.S. force levels could find some sort of official statistics for support.

There is no doubt that after the expenditures, the U.S. was much less vulnerable to any sort of surprise attack. By the mid-to-late 1960s, the number of submarines armed with ballistic missiles had increased to 19, and the Minuteman ICBM was being deployed. The Minuteman was a vast improvement over previously deployed intercontinental and even medium range ballistic missiles, not only because it was more reliable, but also because it was based in dispersed underground silos, making a large number much more likely to survive an attack. ₉₄ Combined with the increased firepower of the Polaris submarine force, the U.S. had a powerful second-strike capability.

Desmond Ball’s analysis of the sources of the Kennedy Administration’s buildup is telling. He finds little evidence to support any sort of argument that rides on the importance of societal pressure. Kennedy’s campaign promises may very well have hemmed in the policy options of the new president in 1961, but given that the program continued much longer than voters’ memories, and that the issue itself was hardly one that swung a majority of voters in either support or opposition, public pressure seems to have been a minor factor in the decisions taken. Promises to the military, to Congress, and to the industries directly involved may have been more important. One point that is certainly clear in Ball’s conclusion, however, is that the Kennedy Administration did not see the military buildup as an economic problem. The President and his key advisers believed that much more could be spent on defense, and that in the prevailing conditions of 1961, the additional expenditures would provide a Keynesian stimulus to the economy. In their view, resources were still below a level the economy could sustain. Yet the fiscal constraints would reemerge in the planning for FY 1965 and FY 1966. ₉₅

In view of the Kennedy Administration’s greater expenditures, its willingness to maintain commitments, and adoption of Flexible Response—plus the “two and a half war” planning assumptions—it is clear the U.S. was certainly closing the gap between the level of its realized resources and its commitments. Just as we would expect, the response now that the Soviets posed a threat to the U.S. itself (and with the budget in rough balance, so that the Treasury was willing to accept higher expenditures) was to increase expenditures on the military. The fulfillment of leadership came just as the American economy was about to begin its relative decline. The budget would soon lapse into chronic deficit, making it difficult to continue extensive military expenditures.

 

From the Vietnam War to the Nixon Doctrine

The massive buildup in conventional forces and the development of the doctrine of Flexible Response sowed the seeds for American involvement in the Vietnam War. Though popular mythology has it that if President Kennedy had served his full term, U.S. entry into the ground war in Vietnam would have been averted, it is rather clear that the Kennedy Administration had from the beginning adopted policies whose natural conclusion was the deployment of American conventional forces to defend a peripheral ally from Communist aggression. (Important allies were still protected by the American nuclear deterrent, which the Kennedy Administration had also built up.) The rationale behind Flexible Response was to engage in combat below the nuclear threshold to protect less important allies, such as occurred in Vietnam.

The Johnson Administration escalated the military effort over the years, and this included raising the size of and expenditures on conventional military forces. During the 1960s the emphasis on strategic weapons procurement gradually slowed, but the defense budget remained large because of the war in Vietnam. Moreover, the U.S. economy would soon stop growing so strongly; the balance of trade would no longer be positive, and questions about the health of the economy would move to the fore. The U.S. was nearing a position where afterglow was likely—the economy would not be able to support greater expenditures to continue closing the gap between military commitments and resources.

The Presidential campaigns in 1968 revolved around the issue of the war in Vietnam, much as the 1952 campaign had revolved around the war in Korea. And once again, a conservative Republican won the election on a platform promising peace, while stressing security and savings. Since Nixon entered the White House with an agenda that included reduced expenditures on the military, ending U.S. involvement in Vietnam would have to be part of that strategy. The plan for making these alterations came to be known as the Nixon Doctrine.

The Nixon or Guam Doctrine was first expounded in 1969. In the formal foreign policy report of February 1970 which explained Nixon’s ideas in writing, three central elements emerge. The three pieces combine to illustrate how budgetary concerns were finally present, and would push the U.S. into a partial adjustment out of the leadership role. A coldly rational risk-averse assessment would have highlighted the need to reduce American commitments. Yet one of the first points in Nixon’s foreign policy report in 1970 was that the U.S. would not be reducing its formal commitments. (Its informal commitments were not noticeably reduced either.) It would continue to support all its allies. The nature of its commitments would change, however, as explained in the third point. Second, the nuclear deterrent would continue to cover all its allies protected in that way in prior years. Third, the U.S. would send military assistance to its allies in need, but now such assistance would be limited in nature. Only the appropriate material would be sent—the U.S. would no longer provide the manpower to fight a ground war. ₉₆

At the same time as the nature of the military commitments were being reduced, Nixon moved to scale down American armed forces. Existing military formations were downsized and redeployed. Overall force levels in Vietnam were drastically reduced from 542,000 in January 1969 to 45,600 in July 1972. As the Nixon Doctrine implied, the U.S. intended to hand the ground war over to Vietnamese forces. One of the two U.S. ground divisions in South Korea was withdrawn as well. With the troop redeployments and the slashing of the ground forces’ role in Vietnam, the overall size of the Army could be cut almost in half—from its Vietnam-era high of 1,570,000 in 1968, to 811,000 in 1972. ₉₇

Kissinger’s foreign policy maneuvers also altered the military calculations. Recognition and exploitation of the Chinese-Soviet split through the rapprochement with China and then the end of U.S. involvement in Vietnam allowed for defense planners to draw back from the “Two and a half war” force posture to a “One and a half war” concept—another sign of the reduction of both forces and commitments. As Kissinger pointed out in his memoirs, the idea that the U.S. would be fighting two major ground wars at the same time—one against the Soviets in Europe and another against the Chinese in Asia—was now unlikely, and always would have been foolhardy. Thus in his mind, the changes involved in the adoption of the Nixon Doctrine were overdue.

First of all, it harmonized doctrine and capability. We had never generated the forces our two and a half war doctrine required; the gap between our declaratory and our actual policy was bound to create confusion in the minds of potential aggressors and to raise grave risks if we attempted to apply it. ₉₈ By scaling back its strategic plans, the U.S. was attempting to engage in adjustment; both commitments and resources were being lowered.

In fact, however, political commitments remained as extensive as ever, despite the changing nature of the U.S. promise of support. Military planning adjusted to reduced force levels, but the possibility remained that U.S. forces would be called in to defend allies in a wide variety of regions spanning the globe. In the early 1970s, the U.S. had explicit defense commitments to 43 countries, via eight different security treaties. Besides the explicit treaties, the U.S. also had several informal commitments, especially to countries where American military forces were based, such as Spain. Many of these informal commitments were much more likely to be challenged, since these included obligations to Israel and Taiwan. ₉₉

These explicit and implicit commitments were maintained by the Nixon Administration, while the strength of American armed forces was reduced. The main reduction, however, came from lowering the number of Army divisions. The Nixon Administration reduced the Army from 19.7 divisions to 16. The Navy and Air Force suffered some cutbacks, but maintained approximately the same number of combat units. ₁₀₀ Thus the military maintained much of its actual fighting ability, and the hope was that U.S. airpower could be used in conjunction with allied ground forces in future conflicts. In other words, the Nixon Doctrine sought to adjust commitments to a sustainable level, and bring expenditures down further than the actual fall in resources.

At roughly this same time, however, the Soviet Union’s military posture was changing. By the late 1970s, the USSR was meeting the U.S. in terms of intercontinental-range nuclear weapons (ICBMs). In terms of theater-range nuclear weapons in Europe, the Soviets went from inferiority to superiority. Ground forces in Eastern Europe and the Western half of Russia were expanded and modernized. Soviet tactical air units were also modernized, shifting their role from short-range interception to offensive support by arming them with longer-range multipurpose aircraft. The Soviet Navy developed its “blue water” capabilities as well. Throughout the Soviet defense establishment, the military did its best to exploit new technologies. ₁₀₁ If anything, the Soviet threat to the U.S. was becoming more potent during the 1970s, just as the U.S. was reducing military budgets.

 

The Widening Gap Between Resources and Commitments, and the Development of the Carter Doctrine

Jimmy Carter came into office with a campaign pledge of his own concerning defense spending. He had promised that he would cut $18 billion from the military’s budget (which was approximately $123 billion in total). This would free the government to pursue Keynesian policies stimulating the economy. Once in office however, he concluded quite early on that defense cuts of the magnitude outlined in the campaign would be difficult to achieve without harmful consequences. Vice President Fritz Mondale and other advisers continued to push for the cuts; the B-1 bomber became the focus of their attention. ₁₀₂

Despite the maintenance of a “One and a half” war strategy, there was little agreement as to the proper level of forces necessary to fulfill requirements. As Secretary of Defense in the Carter Administration, Harold Brown tried to shift the Navy’s operational strategy to make better use of reduced forces. Rather than maintaining the mandatory “swing strategy,” which would have had the Navy focus its efforts entirely in one theater (so that in case of war in Europe, Pacific forces would have been redeployed to the Atlantic), Brown suggested that carrier battlegroups should be used in sequential operations, rather than simultaneous strikes. ₁₀₃ Such debates raised questions about how closely the Carter Administration was linking defense budgets with military strategic planning.

By slowing or cancelling weapons procurement programs for the Air Force and Navy, the Carter Administration was forcing these services to share part of the burden of lower defense expenditures after the Army had taken its cuts. But did the Carter Administration realize how inconsistent this was with the Nixon Doctrine? After all, the Nixon Doctrine had laid out the forms of assistance the U.S. was willing to provide its allies. Ground troops were out, but other forms of military help were possible—indeed, direct help from American air and naval units was critical for making American military assistance credible. Yet the Carter Administration cut the Air Force’s plans back by canceling the B-1 bomber in 1977 and then went on to cancel an additional carrier for the Navy in the 1978 budget. ₁₀₄

The Carter Administration also saw economic and military aid in a different light than the Nixon Doctrine intended. According to the Carter Administration, economic aid was to be given on the basis of social and economic targets, rather than strategic aims. The Carter Administration advocated channeling more of such aid through multilateral institutions, and sought to cap military aid at $8.5 billion per year. While there might be a great rationale for each of these decisions, and the goals of the Carter Administration were clearly admirable (development of human rights issues turned out to be very important for the eventual breakdown of the Soviet bloc, for instance), the results undercut the effectiveness of the Nixon Doctrine—without the Carter Administration declaring an intention to do so. ₁₀₅

The Navy’s opposition to cuts was voiced in numerous forums. In March 1978, the Navy conducted a major conference on strategy at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Participants urged the creation and maintenance of a combat-ship force of 600 vessels. The Executive branch countered with its own speakers—the key being Edward R. Jayne II, who was from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). ₁₀₆ The dispute was noticed by Congress, which then called the various parties in to testify before the Seapower Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee.

As force levels were established at levels military planners thought were too low, the planners began arguing for new strategic schemes that would get the most from their combat units. In 1979, Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, speaking to a Congressional hearing as CNO, argued that the Navy needed to adopt an offensive “Maritime Strategy” in any conflict versus the Soviet Union. “The geographic range of the Navy’s responsibilities is too broad, and its forces far too small, to adopt a defensive, reactive posture in a worldwide conflict with the Soviet Union,” he explained. ₁₀₇

The idea that U.S. forces would have to be ready for ground involvement in a conflict outside Europe or Korea were raised toward the end of Carter’s Administration. First, there was the unraveling of the Nixon Doctrine. This had begun when the U.S. had not intervened with airpower to support South Vietnam, but the most serious blow came with the fall of the Shah of Iran. The U.S. had been counting on local allies such as Iran; the fall of the Shah not only knocked a key support out from under the Nixon Doctrine, but also created a new regional threat. Second, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan originally raised fears that the Soviets might be in a position to threaten Pakistan, or exert even more pressure on Iran. At the very least, the Soviets would have been in a better position to intervene in Iran if the revolutionary government there had collapsed.

Such fears led Carter to develop his own Doctrine, though this was really an affirmation of the U.S. commitments to countries within the Middle East. More specifically, the U.S. was suggesting that Soviet incursions into the Persian Gulf would not be accepted. To back up this commitment with some force, the Carter Administration established the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force. This was later renamed the U.S. Central Command (or CENTCOM) January 1, 1983. It was initially created to organize forces capable of rapidly moving into a war zone, with the specific concerns of the time focusing on Iran, the Persian Gulf, and Southwest Asia more generally. The Carter Doctrine had alerted potential enemies to the American willingness to step up and retake commitments that had previously fallen to regional allies such as Iran. This was worsening afterglow—an administration set on reducing military resources, yet also willing to defend or even to expand U.S. commitments.

The forces placed at the disposal of CENTCOM (for planning purposes) included three Army divisions, one Marine Amphibious Force, five Air Force wings, and three carrier task forces. To support these forces in the field, negotiations concerning bases in the Middle East were begun, and equipment was prepositioned on vessels in the Indian Ocean and at Deigo Garcia. As time passed, more units were made available. ₁₀₈ New units were not created, but equipment was obtained, and then stored where it might be needed. By relying on prepositioned material and extensive lift capabilities, the U.S. was hoping to maintain troops at roughly existing levels, but meet the commitments made under the Carter Doctrine. There is no other way to think of this situation than worsening afterglow—remaking commitments while maintaining the services at reduced levels.

 

Afterglow and the Reagan Administration

The first images we all have of the Reagan Administration’s defense policies are the increased defense expenditures: the resurrection of the B-1 bomber, the development of stealth aircraft, the battleships pulled from the mothball fleets and sent to sea again. At least one writer has noticed that the Reagan Administration was operating under similar assumptions as those guiding NSC-68, and later the Kennedy Administration—additional defense expenditures were affordable. One might even add that some in the Administration believed that if the U.S. spent more on defense, other allies would be encouraged to do the same. Spending (in terms of budget authority and outlays) was doubled from $132.8 billion in 1980 to $265.8 billion in 1986. Assumptions about a future war being “short” were also adjusted, so that munitions stocks were increased from 30 days to 90 days. ₁₀₉

To match the doubling of expenditures, military planners expanded their vision of strategic operations. The Reagan Administration adopted the concept of a “world-wide war” (or “three wars,” in the earlier terminology). Instead of viewing a potential conflict in the Persian Gulf as a limited affair, this strategic assumption was that any localized conflicts were likely to spread rapidly into a conflict of world-wide proportions. At first blush, such thinking sounds as if the U.S. was suddenly preparing to meet all its commitments at once—which would have required an even more massive buildup than actually took place, or indeed, could ever have been afforded. The “world-wide war” plan did not mean dispersing forces on so large a scale, however. Instead, it was a way of maintaining U.S. declared commitments, but giving the military a free hand in how to react in an emergency. Rather than viewing each possible conflict with the Soviet Union in isolation, it begins with the notion that responses would be judged in terms of priorities. It in effect tacitly admitted the U.S. could not meet all its obligations at once, without saying so out loud. ₁₁₀ In that sense, it shares less with the military buildups of the Kennedy and Truman Administrations, and much more with the Eisenhower Administration’s reliance on Massive Retaliation (though the Eisenhower Administration was looking to reduce expenditures).

The military commanders naturally supported the buildup. Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 1982, Army Chief of Staff General Edward C. Meyer warned, “We are accepting tremendous risks with the size of forces that we have to do what we have pledged to do.” Admiral Thomas Hayward (CNO from 1978 to 1982) complained that the Navy had only enough ships to cover one and a half oceans—though it was committed to operating in three. He said this because the Navy could only keep four of its 12 carriers in forward service in the Mediterranean (Sixth Fleet) and Western Pacific (Seventh Fleet). Once it was called on to provide an additional carrier group for the Indian Ocean for possible use in the Persian Gulf or around Afghanistan, the only available groups had to be taken from the Sixth and Seventh fleets. ₁₁₁

The early 1980s were also a time of doctrinal change in tactics. In 1982, the Army introduced a revised operational manual, FM 100–5, best known for its early conceptualization of the Air-Land Battle. (One might note that this was an Army document not endorsed by the Air Force, and that it was later transformed into the eventual tactical operations attempted in Desert Storm.) That same year the Navy put forth its own revised strategy based on a 600-ship Navy. Both reforms reflected post-Vietnam debates within the military, the budget cuts endured under the Carter Administration and the advent of new technologies. ₁₁₂

The military buildup increased the size and effectiveness of each of the services. The number of active army divisions was raised from 16 to 18 (though the number of Army personnel remained roughly the same), the Air Force went from 36 to 40 wings all told, and the Navy’s carrier task groups increased from 12 to 15. ₁₁₃ The expansion of the Army’s divisions was achieved by the development of the new light infantry divisions, which concentrated more men in the fighting elements of large formations. It should be noted that these units were developed for conflicts outside of Europe.

Even with the new forces, the military services continued to make greater and greater demands. In the early 1980s, Pentagon requests were quite beyond possible levels. The Navy asked for 23 carriers (as compared to the 14 they were then operating); the Air Force wanted 40 air wings (rather than their existing 26); and, including reserve forces, the Army asked for 33 divisions (instead of its 24). ₁₁₄ According to some estimates, the modernization effort of the Reagan Administration did little to resolve specific imbalances. In terms of the forces actually deployed there, the European theater remained little changed by the spending and buildup of the 1980s. ₁₁₅ This gave rise to assessments noting that U.S. forces were apparently still vulnerable to a Soviet attack. Such accounts undoubtedly underestimated the technical and qualitative advantages the U.S. forces held over the Soviet bloc forces, but they kept the pressure on to increase military budgets. Something was clearly wrong with the decisionmaking system, since ever greater expenditures seemingly failed to lessen the gap between commitments and the resources the military planners considered necessary to meet those obligations.

 

Strategic Planning and the Budget

To argue that the budgeting and planning systems were failing would hardly have been news, either then or now with all the advantages of hindsight. Evaluations of the workings of the military advisory and decisionmaking processes found flaws long before the Reagan Administration’s buildup and long after it as well. The 1960 Report of the Committee on the Defense Establishment executed for President Kennedy (also known as the Symington Report), the 1970 Blue Ribbon Defense Panel Report for President Nixon (also known as the Fitzhugh Report), and the 1978 Report on the National Military Command Structure for President Carter (also known as the Steadman Report), all pointed fingers at the same sorts of problems. The ineffectiveness of the joint structure hurt not only planning and operations, but also the utility of the advice given. The last of these reports, the Steadman report, claimed that the JCS fell short of its ideal role whenever service interests clashed. Thus it argued that the JCS had difficulty formulating national military strategy, allocating service roles and missions, establishing functional and geographic responsibilities, and allocating resources. ₁₁₆

Congressional oversight has hardly helped. The Armed Services and Defense Appropriations Subcommittees in the House and Senate have overlapping jurisdictions, and can pull the services and their budgets in opposite directions. Some scholars suggest that these committees increasingly engage in “micromanagement” rather than oversight. Nearly two-thirds of the Pentagon’s line item requests are adjusted by each chamber of the Congress. Oversight of overall policy is lost, while the fine-tuning of minor programs goes on at an increasing rate. ₁₁₇ Since the JCS fails to prioritize between the services, such activities fall to other actors. The Office of the Secretary of Defense tries to conduct such prioritization in the budget-programming (particularly through the Planning Programming and Budgeting System, or PPBS). This leaves the programming as a major factor or constraint on strategizing—rather than the other way around. Ideally, the JCS would formulate strategy and then programming would follow. ₁₁₈

The PPB System was established (and largely designed by) by Robert McNamara and Charles Hitch (then the Comptroller). Their goal was to develop a system of information and analysis that would give executive branch and congressional officials a better grasp of the overall long-run picture of Pentagon spending. The point was not to consider one year budgets in isolation any longer, or even to focus on a single project at a time, but rather to investigate and consider the overall plan for expenditures over the longer term. The PPB System initiated a new way to decide on budget matters. First attention was directed to broad plans, then multiyear programs were considered, and then finally, detailed single year budgets could be formulated. ₁₁₉

Yet as its critics point out, the PPBS fails to achieve its intended goals. “The first P in PPBS is silent,” some say, because the planning phase never lives up to expectations. Objectives remain vague, or are so overly ambitious that they could never provide a serious basis for evaluation. Secondly, it has proven nearly impossible to compare allocations across programs. Third, the separation of missions among the services has been inflexible, and left with outdated patterns. Fourth, like much of the rest of the Federal government, outdated accounting procedures are the norm. Fifth, long-term plans are still primarily geared to five-year periods, even though weapons development and purchasing programs today typically span decades. ₁₂₀

Much of this can be traced back to the lack of any truly centralized authority in the military, and to the fact that no strong actors actually want a centralized authority. The services themselves are wary of centralization which might put them under the control of one of the other services. Congress wants to maintain its oversight over the military, fearing not only a military it cannot control, but also a military too responsive to the White House. And even from the Executive branch, associated bodies such as the Office of the Secretary of Defense fear that a truly centralized military leadership might be beyond their control. ₁₂₁

The NSC was the other possible source for policy evaluations which might ensure that the gap between resources and commitments is never too large. Such policy evaluations were clearly part of the NSC’s mandate, and this was one of the only bodies that brought together top people from the executive branch, including the military and the Treasury. The NSC has played very different roles under different administrations. Kennedy had used the NSC as a staff assigned to the President. In his administration, NSC members were given duties independent from the organizations they were ostensibly representing in NSC meetings. Although the NSC held regular meetings in Johnson’s presidency, much of the decisionmaking in the area of security policy was done outside that arena. ₁₂₂ Nixon and Ford did not ask the NSC to meet regularly. Neither one relied on the NSC for much advice when they were formulating or executing their foreign policies. Eventually, the NSC was asked to define its own tasks. Based on this self-evaluation, the NSC itself was broken down into subcommittees with specific responsibilities. The NSC as a whole began to meet only occasionally, as its constituent responsibilities were handled independently by constituent parts.

For his own part, Reagan rarely chaired NSC meetings. He is described by one NSC participant as having been “underinvolved”—which in fact describes his role in most of the foreign-policy decisionmaking if one looks at the descriptions flowing from the Iran-Contra adventure. NSC meetings became relatively unstructured as well. ₁₂₃ Thus from its initial conception as a body where the most important decisions regarding the balancing of resources and commitments could be made with overall foreign policy objectives in mind, by the mid-1980s the NSC had devolved into a set of subcommittees unable to reach the difficult decisions expected of it.

 

The 1986 Pentagon Reorganization

In order to improve military effectiveness out of the greater expenditures taking place, Congress moved to initiate reforms. On October 1, 1986, Congress passed another reorganization of the Pentagon, perhaps as fundamental as those of 1947, 1949, and 1958. The law reflected the legislative branch’s bipartisan interests, being supported by Senators Barry Goldwater (R., Arizona) and Sam Nunn (D., Georgia), and House Armed Services Subcommittee Chairman Bill Nichols (D., Alabama). Unlike the case of the previous reforms, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and the sitting JCS members resisted Congressional efforts. House Armed Services Committee Chairman (and later Secretary of Defense in the Clinton Administration) Les Aspin (D., Wisconsin) called the 1986 Defense Reorganization Act “probably the greatest sea-change in the history of the American military since the Continental Congress created the Continental Army in 1775.” ₁₂₄

The Congress was able to pass the legislation overwhelmingly (406–4 in the House, 95–0 in the Senate), despite opposition from the services and the Executive branch. There were several reasons for this powerful bipartisan support. ₁₂₅ First, official investigations continued to point out problems with the organization of the military. Between 1944 and the time of the legislation, at least 20 major official studies had been undertaken (some of the more important ones were mentioned above). But despite the investigations and recommendations that flowed from them, little had been done to change the way the JCS operated. The Reagan Administration opposed the legislation, but had undercut its own position by establishing the Packard Commission. In June 1986, in the middle of the Congressional debates, Reagan’s own investigative commission unleashed a report recommending changes. As the Commission recounted

There is a great need for improvement in the way we think through and tie together our security objectives.…Today, there is no rational system whereby the Executive Branch and the Congress reach coherent and enduring agreement on national military strategy, the forces to carry it out, and the funding that should be provided—in light of the overall economy and competing claims on national resources.

Of the Defense Department’s PPBS, the Packard Commission stated “there is a need for more and better long-range planning to bring together the nation’s security objectives, the forces needed to achieve them, and the resources available to support those forces.” ₁₂₆ The Packard Commission recommended changes at the front end of the planning process, which the Goldwater-Nichols Act tried to implement.

Second, the military’s combat performance in the early 1980s raised important questions about its overall organization, and the ability of the services to cooperate. There was the failed attempt to rescue the hostages held in Iran in 1980, which involved a team composed of the various services; while the invasion of Grenada in 1983 was a success, operational problems were highlighted, such as the inability of the different services to communicate with each other in combat situations; then that was followed by the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut. Some of the problems highlighted in these operations could potentially be solved by reforming the organizational structure and the planning systems.

Third, retired officers came out in favor of reforms. While sitting members of the JCS opposed them, several important retired officers—namely General David Jones, who had served on the JCS longer than any other officer—called for reorganization and a change in the mandate and responsibilities of the JCS. Other former Army and Air Force Chiefs seconded the positions Jones took.

Congress recognized that one key problem with the JCS (and Pentagon) was the continued dominance of the individual services. As a centralizing agency, the JCS was relatively too weak. The solution sought in the legislation was centralization through greater empowerment of the Chairman of the JCS (CJCS), which was backed up by civilian oversight. The CJCS is now the principal military adviser to the president, the NSC, and the Secretary of Defense. The joint staff was made answerable to the JCS chairman, rather than the individual services, for instance. To support the CJCS, the position of vice chairman was created. But on the whole, the real solution to the problems of coordination and integration of the services and of planning was sought through greater civilian oversight. ₁₂₇

The new duties of the CJCS include preparing strategic plans in line with information giving by the Secretary of Defense on available resources; providing net assessments of the U.S. military position (including alliance forces) versus those of potential adversaries; advising the Secretary of Defense on programming and budgeting; submitting to the Secretary of Defense alternative budget proposals (within existing fiscal constraints); assessing the military’s requirements for future weapons acquisitions; developing joint military doctrines (for training the services to work together, as well as for their actual employment in a unified manner); and to prepare and review contingency plans. ₁₂₈

The 1986 Act requires the Secretary of Defense to provide the Chairman of the JCS annual policy guidance for contingency planning. Thus it was ordering through law a process one might have assumed was going on already, but in fact often was not. It was expected that this might prevent some of the command and control problems that emerged in the invasion of Grenada, as well as reduce the amount of errors in linking logistics to missions. By laying out the civilian leadership’s expectations in terms of potential operations and resource constraints, it was intended to force budgeting, programming, and operational planning to come together. The Goldwater-Nichols Act also aimed at clarifying the chain of command, which would now be a clear single thread from the President to the Secretary of Defense, from the Secretary to the Chairman of the JCS, to the commanders in chief of the unified and specified commands. The commanders in chief were given explicit powers and responsibilities (such as organizing forces under their command, directing operations, training, administration, etc.) and charged with accountability for operations in the field. ₁₂₉

 

The JCS and Overstretch After the Cold War

The 1993 budget projections included the termination of many different programs, and a large overall reduction in the base force structure of the U.S. armed forces. A comparison between the 1990 existing forces and the projected forces for 1997 shows a striking fall in the number of ground forces and air force units. The Army will go from 18 active divisions to 12, and the Air Force from 24 active wings to 15.5. Reserve divisions in the National Guard will also fall (from 10 to 6). The Navy maintains its main active fighting units, falling from 13 carrier groups to 12. The overall number of ships will drop however from 547 to 435. ₁₃₀

Presently, the JCS serve as the principal military advisers to the President and Secretary of Defense. The JCS recommends the force structure to be built and maintained, and they allocate resources to specific commands. Since the 1986 Act, its primary role is to prioritize. This occurs through three “Systems.” The Joint Strategic Planning System handles strategy, the Joint Operation Planning System develops war plans, and the Planning Programming and Budgeting System deals with resource prioritization. ₁₃₁ Yet most of the strategic planning takes place in the Pentagon, and not through the JCS. The Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation (McNamara’s old PPBS) and the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy carry out the most thorough strategic planning functions. Presumably it is good that someone does these calculations, but the fact that the bodies created to carry out these computations have not done as good job as intended has meant the proliferation of posts and agencies that undertake the same duties from different perspectives. ₁₃₂

Yet the ideal technical solution remains a single general staff, separate from the individual services. Only then will there be decisions by individuals who are not tied to a single service, thus avoiding old bureaucratic ties. A single overall military viewpoint could then emerge. ₁₃₃ And perhaps the best way to reach this ideal would be to create a general staff corps—an idea that still faces extreme opposition. Moreover, the NSC continues to fail to fulfill its intended role as the body where political and military needs can be balanced and matched. ₁₃₄

 

Conclusions: American Responses to Military Overcommitment

Despite the presence of a military institution designed to allocate resources among the services and deploy the units in a rational manner from a single overarching view (the JCS), and the creation of a body to calculate and coordinate political and military policies (the NSC), the U.S. has failed to resolve its problems with military overcommitment. During its entire period of hegemonic leadership, the U.S. has been, to a greater or lesser degree, overstretched militarily.

A quick glance at the number of ground troops during the post-World War II period shows how the U.S. has tried from time to time to develop the resources to meet political commitments. The highpoints after 1945 are, not surprisingly, in 1953 and 1968, when troops were engaged in combat. The two low points were in 1960 and 1972 (table 1), after the Eisenhower and Nixon Administration cutbacks. These high and low points remind us of the different periodizations developed in the descriptions laid out in this chapter.

Table 1
U.S. Active Ground Forces (Army and Marine Divisions) ₁₃₅

1945—95	1960—17	1976—19
1950—12	1968—23	1980—19
1953—23	1972—16	1985—20

In the first few years after World War II, the U.S. maintained extensive commitments, while drastically reducing the number of effective military units. The nature of the Soviet threat to the U.S. and American interests was unclear, and the Soviets were largely wrapped up in recovering from the war. Yet even after the threat became known, and the U.S. began to take on more commitments as Britain withdrew from the Mediterranean and elsewhere, military forces remained low. This was perhaps because the Soviet threat was largely aimed at American allies, and not directly at the U.S.; the model presented here would have expected more extensive efforts to build up the U.S. military. Instead, steps were taken in these first years to increase the effectiveness of existing resources through centralization and integration of the military commands. This was doing something while “doing nothing” about the gap between resources and commitments.

The attitude of the Truman Administration had been that the U.S. could afford greater military expenditures, without serious problems for the budget. Once the U.S. had to honor one of its commitments (in Korea), the military had to expand; war expenditures increased the budget tremendously. Yet at the time, the American economy was still growing and the ability to pay for a large military establishment existed. This counts as adjustment into the leadership role. There were those who believed such expenditures would hurt the American economy in the long run, however, and this thinking dominated the Eisenhower Administration. Once the Eisenhower Administration had ended the Korean War, it sought to reduce military expenditures to keep the government’s budget roughly balanced. Rather than expanding resources to meet commitments at a time when the U.S. should have been able to afford it, they sought to maintain obligations while reducing or capping expenditures but creating the requisite resources in the “New Look.” Only with the launch of Sputnik, and the develop of Soviet rocket forces did the U.S. become truly threatened by the Soviet Union, causing Massive Retaliation to fall apart and evoking a real change in the American policy.

Once the Soviet threat to the U.S. itself arose, the U.S. responded with policies reflecting the fulfillment of the military obligations associated with international leadership. The Kennedy Administration moved to expand both conventional and strategic forces; because resource levels were only then reaching the maximum point of sustainability, the budget could take these additional costs (figure 13 and figure 14).

Figure 13: U.S. Responses to Military Overstretch When Commitments were Sustainable

 

Figure 14: U.S. Responses to Military Overstretch Once Commitments were Unsustainable

The budgetary problems that followed once the U.S. economy began to falter, however, forced later administrations to reduce military expenditures even though U.S. commitments were still honored. This mix of goals is clear in the Nixon Doctrine. The Carter Doctrine then showed the next step of worsening afterglows: reaffirming commitments without raising military resources to honor them. Finally, the Reagan Administration devoted even more resources to the military, though the gap between resources and commitments remained immense, and the ability to pay for such resources was missing: an afterglow in the military sphere.

The size of the gap between resources and commitments is most apparent in the military planners’ preparations for a “world-wide” war. As became obvious in the Gulf War, when a large percentage of U.S. forces had to be deployed to defeat Iraq, the U.S. could not have conducted extensive combat operations in more than two regions at once. If the U.S. planners thought merely of forces capable of fighting “one and a half” wars, a regional conflict such as that against Iraq would have been considered the “half” war—yet considerably more than a third of the U.S. military’s equipment in terms of armored and air forces were employed. Given the continuation of extensive commitments and the budget deficit, the end of the Soviet threat suggests that the U.S. now has the opportunity to respond to overcommitment via adjustment. The lessening of threats to Europe means that American commitments are for practical purposes lower than before; yet for real adjustment to take place, the U.S. needs to engage in a more vigorous reduction in American commitments. While military forces are being pared down in the hopes of generating an economic “peace dividend,” the matching of resources with commitments remains poorly executed.

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Endnotes

Note 1: Jeffrey Record, Revising U.S. Military Strategy: Tailoring Means to Ends (New York: Pergamon/Brassey’s, 1984), pp. 2, 5–7, 11.  Back.

Note 2: Note that this is different from my interpretation of the Nixon Administration’s actions in the monetary sphere. By “closing the gold window” and allowing the fixed exchange rate regime to collapse, the U.S. was closing the gap between resources and commitments by ending specific obligations. In the Nixon Doctrine, the aim was to reduce expenditures on resources but maintain commitments.  Back.

Note 3: Samuel P. Huntington, “Defense Organization and Military Strategy,” in Bureaucratic Politics and National Security: Theory and Practice, ed. David C. Kozak and James M. Keagle (Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 1988), p. 415.  Back.

Note 4: Arthur A. Stein, “Domestic Constraints, Extended Deterrence and the Incoherence of Grand Strategy: The US, 1938–1950,” in The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy, ed. Arthur A. Stein and Richard Rosecrance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 97.  Back.

Note 5: Barry M. Blechman, The Politics of National Security: Congress and U.S. Defense Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 29–30.  Back.

Note 6: Blechman, The Politics of National Security, p. 55.  Back.

Note 7: Samuel Huntington, “The Evolution of US National Strategy,” in U.S. National Security Strategy for the 1990s (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), pp. 14, 18.  Back.

Note 8: Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil Military Relations (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 200.  Back.

Note 9: Ibid., p. 46.  Back.

Note 10: Paul Y. Hammond, Organizing for Defense: The American Military Establishment in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 11.  Back.

Note 11: Ibid., p. 17.  Back.

Note 12: Ibid., pp. 10–11. Also see Kenneth C. Allard, Command, Control and the Common Defense (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 70–73, 77.  Back.

Note 13: Hammond, Organizing for Defense, p. 12, Allard, Command, Control and the Common Defense, p. 77.  Back.

Note 14: Huntington, The Soldier and the State, pp. 251–253, 298–299.  Back.

Note 15: Hammond, Organizing for Defense, p. 16.  Back.

Note 16: Ibid., pp. 39–40.  Back.

Note 17: Fred J. Cook, The Warfare State (London: Jonathon Cape, 1963), pp. 43–44; Huntington, The Soldier and the State, pp. 182–183.  Back.

Note 18: Hammond, Organizing for Defense, pp. 63–67.  Back.

Note 19: Ibid., Chapter 3; and Huntington, The Soldier and the State, pp. 227–228.  Back.

Note 20: Huntington, The Soldier and the State, pp. 202, 250–251; Allard, Command, Control and the Common Defense, pp. 70–71. Daniels referred to the CNO as an effort to “Prussianize the American Navy.”  Back.

Note 21: Ibid., pp. 301–303.  Back.

Note 22: Ibid., pp. 299–301.  Back.

Note 23: Hammond, Organizing for Defense, p. 98.  Back.

Note 24: Allan R. Millett, “The Organizational Impact of Military Success and Failure: An Historical Perspective,” in The Reorganization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: A Critical Analysis (Washington: Pergamon/Brassey’s, 1986), pp. 6–7.  Back.

Note 25: Steven L. Rearden, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. I, The Formative Years 1947–1950 (Washington: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1984), p. 17.  Back.

Note 26: Hammond, Organizing for Defense, pp. 161–162.  Back.

Note 27: Huntington, The Soldier and the State, pp. 317–318.  Back.

Note 28: Ibid., pp. 318–321, 428–429.  Back.

Note 29: Ibid., pp. 322–325.  Back.

Note 30: Ibid., p. 332.  Back.

Note 31: Jeffrey M. Dorwart, Eberstadt and Forrestal: A National Security Partnership, 1909–1949 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991), p. 69.  Back.

Note 32: Ibid., pp. 70, 77; Allard, Command, Control and the Common Defense, pp. 112–113.  Back.

Note 33: Dorwart, Eberstadt and Forrestal, pp. 78, 86.  Back.

Note 34: Samuel P. Huntington, “Defense Organization and Military Strategy,” pp. 410–412, 419.  Back.

Note 35: Millett, “The Organizational Impact of Military Success and Failure,” p. 13.  Back.

Note 36: Rearden, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. I, pp. 18–19; Hammond, Organizing for Defense, p. 213.  Back.

Note 37: Rearden, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. I, p. 20.  Back.

Note 38: Ibid., p. 21.  Back.

Note 39: Ibid., p. 22.  Back.

Note 40: Hammond, Organizing for Defense, p. 237.  Back.

Note 41: Adam Yarmolinsky, The Military Establishment: Its Impact on American Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 29.  Back.

Note 42: Rearden, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. I, p. 1.  Back.

Note 43: Ibid., p. 24.  Back.

Note 44: Huntington, The Soldier and the State, pp. 432–435; Allard, Command, Control and the Common Defense, p. 112.  Back.

Note 45: Dorwart, Eberstadt and Forrestal, p. 106.  Back.

Note 46: Ibid., p. 155; and John E. Endicott, “The National Security Council - Formulating National Security Policy for Presidential Review,” in American Defense Policy, ed. John E. Endicott and Roy W. Stafford Jr. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), p. 316.  Back.

Note 47: Rearden, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. I, p. 25.  Back.

Note 48: Ibid., p. 36.  Back.

Note 49: Ibid., pp. 19–43, 53–55; and Huntington, The Soldier and the State, pp. 416, 422, 431, 438; Yarmolinsky, The Military Establishment, p. 29; Allard, Command, Control and the Common Defense, p. 127.  Back.

Note 50: Rearden, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. I, p. 81.  Back.

Note 51: Ibid., p. 311.  Back.

Note 52: Michael A. Palmer, Origins of the Maritime Strategy: The Development of American Naval Strategy 1945–1955 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1988), p. 22.  Back.

Note 53: Rearden, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. I, p. 9; Record, Revising U.S. Military Strategy, p. 19.  Back.

Note 54: Rearden, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. I, pp. 339–341.  Back.

Note 55: Hammond, Organizing for Defense, pp. 252, 307. This point is also one of the major conclusions of Douglas Kinnard’s book, President Eisenhower and Strategy Management: A Study in Defense Politics (New York: Pergamon/Brassey’s, 1989); see pp. xiii, 126.  Back.

Note 56: Rearden, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. I, p. 365.  Back.

Note 57: Stein, “Domestic Constraints, Extended Deterrence and the Incoherence of Grand Strategy,” pp. 116–117.  Back.

Note 58: Cook, The Warfare State, p. 113.  Back.

Note 59: Robert J. Watson, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Vol. V., The JCS and National Policy 1953–1954 (Washington: Historical Division of the JCS, 1986), pp. 229–230.  Back.

Note 60: John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 68.  Back.

Note 61: Ibid., p. 76.  Back.

Note 62: Watson, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Vol. V, p. 4; Hammond, Organizing for Defense, p. 262; Kinnard, President Eisenhower and Strategy Management, pp. 2–3; and Cook, The Warfare State, p. 9. The consistency with which Eisenhower pursued this balance is laid out in Peter J. Roman, Eisenhower and the Missile Gap (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995).  Back.

Note 63: Kinnard, President Eisenhower and Strategy Management, pp. 2–3.  Back.

Note 64: Hammond, Organizing for Defense, p. 262.  Back.

Note 65: Watson, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Vol. V, p. 107.  Back.

Note 66: William J. Lynn, “The Wars Within: The Joint Military Structure and Its Critics,” in Reorganizing America’s Defense: Leadership in War and Peace, eds. Robert J. Art, Vincent Davis and Samuel P. Huntington (New York: Pergamon/Brassey’s 1985), pp. 174–175; Allard, Command, Control and the Common Defense, p. 127.  Back.

Note 67: Lynn, “The Wars Within,” p. 175.  Back.

Note 68: Millett, “The Organizational Impact of Military Success and Failure,” pp. 13–14. Also see Lynn, “The Wars Within,” p. 176.  Back.

Note 69: Lynn, The Wars Within,” p. 178; Yarmolinsky, The Military Establishment, p. 19.  Back.

Note 70: Endicott, “The National Security Council,” pp. 316–317; Kinnard, President Eisenhower and Strategy Management, pp. 14–16.  Back.

Note 71: Watson, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Vol. V, pp. 89–90.  Back.

Note 72: Kinnard, President Eisenhower and Strategy Management, p. 8.  Back.

Note 73: Ibid., p. 12.  Back.

Note 74: Watson, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Vol. V, p. 75.  Back.

Note 75: Kinnard, President Eisenhower and Strategy Management, p. 24.  Back.

Note 76: Ibid., p. 33.  Back.

Note 77: Watson, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Vol. V, pp. 24–25.  Back.

Note 78: Alexander George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), pp. 11–34.  Back.

Note 79: As quoted by Gaddis in The Long Peace, p. 140. Originally in Life XL, January 16, 1956.  Back.

Note 80: Record, Revising U.S. Military Strategy, p. 14.  Back.

Note 81: Ibid., p. 15.  Back.

Note 82: Palmer, Origins of the Maritime Strategy, pp. 90–92.  Back.

Note 83: Watson, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Vol. V, p. 43.  Back.

Note 84: Ibid., p. 87.  Back.

Note 85: Kinnard, President Eisenhower and Strategy Management, pp. 42, 45.  Back.

Note 86: Though it should be noted that NATO forces took some time to reach the suggested levels. See Kinnard, President Eisenhower and Strategy Management, p. 70.  Back.

Note 87: Richard Cohen and Peter A. Wilson, Superpowers in Economic Decline: US Strategy for the Transcentury Era (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1990), p. 146.  Back.

Note 88: Desmond Ball, Politics and Force Levels: The Strategic Missile Program of the Kennedy Administration (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), p. 81.  Back.

Note 89: Record, Revising U.S. Military Strategy, pp. 22–23; David C. Hendrickson, The Future of American Strategy (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1987), p. 146.  Back.

Note 90: Record, Revising U.S. Military Strategy, pp. 24–25.  Back.

Note 91: Ball, Politics and Force Levels, pp. xix, 44–45; Roman, Eisenhower and the Missile Gap, Chapter 6.  Back.

Note 92: Ibid., p. 9.  Back.

Note 93: Ibid., pp. 11, 18–19, 94–95.  Back.

Note 94: Ibid., pp. 46, 51.Back.

Note 95: Ibid., pp. 239–240, 262.  Back.

Note 96: Record, Revising U.S. Military Strategy, pp. 29–32.  Back.

Note 97: Hendrickson, The Future of American Strategy, p. 149.  Back.

Note 98: The quote is from White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), pp. 221–222. Also see Record, Revising U.S. Military Strategy, pp. 29–32; Hendrickson, The Future of American Strategy, pp. 146–148; and Roland A. Paul, American Military Commitments Abroad (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1973), pp. 198–199.  Back.

Note 99: Paul, American Military Commitments Abroad, pp. 8–10.  Back.

Note 100: Ibid., pp. 198–200.  Back.

Note 101: Record, Revising U.S. Military Strategy, pp. 33–34.  Back.

Note 102: Edward R. Jayne II, “Office of Management and Budget and National Security Policy in the Carter Administration,” in Bureaucratic Politics and National Security: Theory and Practice, ed. David C. Kozak and James M. Keagle (Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 1988), pp. 159–160.  Back.

Note 103: Robert W. Komer, “Strategymaking in the Pentagon,” in Reorganizing America’s Defense: Leadership in War and Peace, ed. Robert J. Art, Vincent Davis and Samuel P. Huntington (New York: Pergamon/Brassey’s, 1985), p. 221.  Back.

Note 104: There has been some suggestion that the B-1 performed so far below expectations and expenditures on other programs were already so large that the Air Force didn’t mind seeing the purchases ended. See James G. Burton, The Pentagon Wars (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1993), p. 35.  Back.

Note 105: Hendrickson, The Future of American Strategy, p. 152.  Back.

Note 106: Jayne, “Office of Management and Budget and National Security Policy in the Carter Administration,” p. 162.  Back.

Note 107: Palmer, Origins of the Maritime Strategy, p. 1.  Back.

Note 108: Record, Revising U.S. Military Strategy, p. 37; Hendrickson, The Future of American Strategy, p. 87.  Back.

Note 109: Hendrickson, The Future of American Strategy, pp. 34–35, 155–157.  Back.

Note 110: Record, Revising U.S. Military Strategy, p. 44. As Hendrickson mentions in The Future of American Strategy, p. 164, there are some serious questions to pose about this thinking. South Korea and Taiwan had drastically improved their abilities to defend themselves, raising doubts about the need for U.S. ground forces in Asia, for instance.  Back.

Note 111: Record, Revising U.S. Military Strategy, p. 3; Hendrickson, The Future of American Strategy, p. 161.  Back.

Note 112: Palmer, Origins of the Maritime Strategy, p. 3.  Back.

Note 113: Hendrickson, The Future of American Strategy, pp. 145, 166.  Back.

Note 114: Huntington, “Defense Organization and Military Strategy,” p. 419.  Back.

Note 115: Cohen and Wilson, Superpowers in Economic Decline, p. 175.  Back.

Note 116: Lynn, “The Wars Within,” p. 181  Back.

Note 117: Robert J. Art, “Congress and the Defense Budget: Enhancing Policy Oversight,” in Reorganizing America’s Defense: Leadership in War and Peace, eds. Robert J. Art, Vincent Davis and Samuel P. Huntington (New York: Pergamon/Brassey’s, 1985), p. 406.  Back.

Note 118: Komer, “Strategymaking in the Pentagon,” pp. 220–221.  Back.

Note 119: Philip Odeen, “A Critique of the PPB System,” in Reorganizing America’s Defense: Leadership in War and Peace, eds. Robert J. Art, Vincent Davis and Samuel P. Huntington (New York: Pergamon/Brassey’s 1985), pp. 375–376.  Back.

Note 120: Odeen, “A Critique of the PPB System,” pp. 376–378.  Back.

Note 121: Vincent Davis, “The Evolution of Central US Defense Management,” in Reorganizing America’s Defense: Leadership in War and Peace, eds. Robert J. Art, Vincent Davis and Samuel P. Huntington (New York: Pergamon/Brassey’s, 1985), pp. 159–160.  Back.

Note 122: Endicott, “The National Security Council,” pp. 316–318.  Back.

Note 123: Duncan L. Clarke, American Defense and Foreign Policy Institutions: Toward a Sound Foundation (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), p. 7.  Back.

Note 124: John G. Kester, “The 1986 Defense Reorganization: A Promising Start,” in Bureaucratic Politics and National Security: Theory and Practice, eds. David C. Kozak and James M. Keagle (Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 1988), pp. 378–379; and Clarke, American Defense and Foreign Policy Institutions, p. 104.  Back.

Note 125: These are drawn from Clarke, American Defense and Foreign Policy Institutions, pp. 104–106.  Back.

Note 126: Ibid., p. xiv; and James A. Blackwell Jr. and Barry M. Blechman, “The Essence of Reform,” in Making Defense Reform Work, eds. James A. Blackwell Jr. and Barry M. Blechman (New York: Brassey’s, 1990), pp. 12–13, 15.  Back.

Note 127: Kester, “The 1986 Defense Reorganization,” pp. 382–383; and Clarke, American Defense and Foreign Policy Institutions, pp. 118–120.  Back.

Note 128: Clarke, American Defense and Foreign Policy Institutions, pp. 124–126; Lt. Gen. John H. Cushman (USA Ret.), “The Planning, Command and Conduct of Military Operations: An Assessment of DoD Performance, 1986–1988,” in Making Defense Reform Work, eds. James A. Blackwell Jr. and Barry M. Blechman (New York: Brassey’s, 1990), pp. 107–108.  Back.

Note 129: Kester, “The 1986 Defense Reorganization,” pp. 386–387; Blackwell and Blechman, “The Essence of Reform,” p. 11; Cushman, “The Planning, Command and Conduct of Military Operations,” pp. 108–110.  Back.

Note 130: Figures are drawn from the tables and discussion in Kenneth R. Mayer, “Congressional—DoD Relations After the Cold War: The Politics of Uncertainty,” in Downsizing Defense, ed. Ethan B. Kapstein (Washington: Congressional Quarterly, 1993), pp. 44–45. Mayer draws on 1991–1992 material from the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of the Secretary of Defense.  Back.

Note 131: Bernard E. Trainor, Lt.Gen. USMC (Ret.), “The JCS Deliberate Planning Process,” in The Reorganization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: A Critical Analysis (Washington: Pergamon/Brassey’s, 1986), p. 42.  Back.

Note 132: Huntington, “Defense Organization and Military Strategy,” p. 415; Hammond, Organizing for Defense, pp. 307–308. A good example would be the current manner in which departmental responsibilities overlap. The Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs operates essentially as the foreign-policymaking arm of the Department of Defense. This office is responsible for establishing the Department’s position on foreign military affairs, on international organizations, negotiates basing rights and Mutual Defense Assistance Programs, and participates in the NSC and Operations Coordination Board.  Back.

Note 133: Huntington, “Defense Organization and Military Strategy,” pp. 417–418.  Back.

Note 134: For a recent call for the NSC to return to a focus on its original mandate, see Carnes Lord, “Managing National Security,” in U.S. Defense Policy in an Era of Constrained Resources, eds. Robert L. Pfaltzgraff Jr. and Richard H. Schultz Jr. (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1990).  Back.

Note 135:  Back.Hendrickson, The Future of American Strategy, Exhibit 10, p. 150 (based on statistics drawn from William P. Mako, U.S. Ground Forces and the Defense of Central Europe (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1983), and Budget of the U.S. Government Fiscal Year 1987, pp. 5–12).