Joint Failure by Andrew Bacevich

Boston Globe
Washington was briefly abuzz last week with the news that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will not recommend the reappointment of General Peter Pace for a second two-year term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gates is instead nominating Admiral Michael Mullen for the post. The political classes reacted first with surprise and then with approval. The New ...
Andrew J. Bacevich
June 17, 2007
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Responsibility for the disaster of Iraq lies not
only with the President of the United States, but also with the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. The president needs expert and candid military
counsel. Not yes-men in uniform.

By Andrew J. Bacevich  |  June 17, 2007

Washington was briefly abuzz last week with the news that Secretary
of Defense Robert Gates will not recommend the reappointment of General
Peter Pace for a second two-year term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. Gates is instead nominating Admiral Michael Mullen for the
post. The political classes reacted first with surprise and then with
approval. The New York Times editorial page declared Mullen a "good choice." Senate confirmation seems assured.

A better idea might be to abolish the position of JCS chairman altogether -- and the entire JCS system along with it.

History will render this judgment of Pace, who succeeded General
Richard B Myers as chairman in September 2005: As U. S. forces became
mired ever more deeply in an unwinnable war, Pace remained a passive
bystander, a witness to a catastrophe that he was slow to comprehend
and did little to forestall. If the position of JCS chair had simply
remained vacant for the past two years, it is difficult to see how the
American military would be in worse shape today.

Softening history's verdict will be this fact: Long before Pace
arrived on the scene the JCS had established a well-deserved reputation
as one of the most ineffective institutions in Washington.
Dissatisfaction with the Joint Chiefs dates virtually from the moment
in 1947 when Congress passed the legislation creating it. Trying to fix
the JCS soon became a cottage industry. The widespread unhappiness with
Pace's performance, culminating in his de facto firing, affirms that
these various reforms have failed.

Expectations that a permanent mechanism for providing military
advice could improve the quality of civilian decision-making inspired
the creation of the Joint Chiefs in the first place. After all, this
had seemingly been the case during World War II, when Franklin
Roosevelt had created a precursor of the modern JCS whose members had
collaborated effectively with FDR in successfully directing a massive
global war.

The creation of a permanent JCS two years after the war was intended
to replicate that success: drawing on the accumulated wisdom of their
profession, the new Joint Chiefs would help the president and Congress
maintain adequate but economical defenses, avoid unnecessary wars, and
wage effectively those wars that proved unavoidable.

Measured by these criteria, over the course of six decades the Joint
Chiefs of Staff have performed miserably. Attempts to fix the
institution only introduced new varieties of dysfunction, culminating
in the rise of General Colin Powell, the most talented -- and most
problematic -- officer ever to preside over the JCS. After Powell,
things would only get worse.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff inhabit the seam at which war, statecraft,
and domestic politics intersect -- an environment saturated with
political considerations. Charged with providing professional advice to
civilian policymakers, they also represent the institutional interests
of the armed services. In pursuit of those interests, the natural
tendency of the chiefs is to encroach on territory ostensibly reserved
for civilians. Likewise, the tendency of strong-willed civilians -- for
example, defense secretaries in the mold of Robert McNamara or Donald
Rumsfeld -- is to encroach on the territory claimed by the generals.

As a consequence, instead of military professionals offering
disinterested advice to help policymakers render sound decisions, the
history of this civilian-military relationship is one of conniving,
double-dealing, and mutual manipulation. As generals increasingly
played politics, they forfeited their identity as nonpartisan servants
of the state. Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and John
F. Kennedy, each for different reasons, came to see the members of the
Joint Chiefs as uniformed political adversaries.

Although himself a five-star general, Eisenhower railed in private
throughout his presidency about members of the Joint Chiefs conspiring
to undermine his policies whenever they happened to collide with
cherished interests of the military services. His Farewell Address,
warning that the "military-industrial complex" could well "endanger our
liberties or democratic processes," amounted to a tacit admission that
as commander-in-chief he had lost control of his generals.

Kennedy, from the outset of his presidency, viewed the JCS with
skepticism. After the Bay of Pigs, skepticism became unvarnished
mistrust. "Those sons-of-bitches with all the fruit salad just sat
there nodding, saying it would work," he complained. As Kennedy later
remarked to a friendly journalist, "The first advice I'm going to give
to my successor is to watch the generals and to avoid feeling that just
because they were military men their opinions on military matters were
worth a damn."

In his now-classic 1997 book, "Dereliction of Duty," Colonel H. R.
McMaster, an active-duty army officer who has served in Iraq with
considerable distinction, described how a civil-military relationship
based on mutual dishonesty and suspicion reached its pre-Iraq low-point
during the US intervention in Vietnam. In his blistering indictment,
McMaster charged the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the early 1960s -- the
"five silent men," he called them -- with complicity in the lies and
deceptions that produced the debacle of that war.

Both before and after Vietnam critics blamed the Joint Chiefs'
failures on rampant parochialism, as interservice rivalry either
paralyzed the JCS or prevented the chiefs from rendering timely and
effective counsel. To address this problem, advocates of reform first
created the office of JCS Chairman in 1949, then steadily vested the
position with more authority. A more powerful chairman, they believed,
would cure the chronic dysfunction by rising above the parochial
concerns of his own service, tending instead to the national interest.

In 1986, these efforts culminated in the passage of the
Goldwater-Nichols Act, which designated the chairman (no longer the
Joint Chiefs collectively) as principal military adviser to the
president and the secretary of defense. In effect, Goldwater-Nichols
demoted the service chiefs while greatly expanding the clout and
standing of the chairman.

The result was Colin Powell. Appointed chairman in 1989, Powell
proved himself in short order to be the savviest, most charismatic, and
most influential officer ever to occupy that post. In some respects, he
was enormously effective, seemingly fulfilling the expectations of the
reformers who had devised Goldwater-Nichols. In the end, however, he
overplayed his hand.

Politically, Powell posed a problem. As he skillfully exploited his
superstar status to insert himself into a range of controversial
issues, Powell demonstrated a capacity and willingness to preempt the
politicians, limiting their options and investing his own policy
preferences with an almost irresistible authority.

Powell proved that the JCS chairman could now in effect tie the
president's hands. During Operation Desert Storm, he convinced
President George H. W. Bush to end the ground war after just 100 hours;
he insisted that U. S. forces after the Cold War retain the capability
to fight two large-scale conventional wars simultaneously; he
questioned the wisdom of humanitarian intervention in the Balkans and
elsewhere; and he torpedoed President Bill Clinton's efforts to permit
gays to serve openly in the military.

The ultimate testimony to Powell's influence lies in the "Powell
Doctrine" -- the general himself defining the criteria for when and how
the United States would fight its wars. By 1993, with the Clinton
administration stumbling as it left the gate, the JCS chairman had
established himself as perhaps the dominant figure in Washington, a
situation that persisted until Powell's second two-year term expired
that fall and he retired.

Having learned from Powell's tenure that a talented, high-powered
JCS chairman can produce big-time political headaches, the
administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have opted for
officers who could be counted on not to make waves. They have done so
by selecting anti-Powells to serve as JCS chairmen -- officers who,
whatever their other admirable qualities, have possessed few of the
attributes that made Powell so formidable. Since 1993, the position of
JCS chairman has been filled by a succession of colorless, compliant
generals -- honorable and good soldiers to the man, but none
demonstrating anything approaching Powell's smarts, flair, and
shrewdness. Mediocrity can be a cruel word, but as a description of
those who have succeeded Colin Powell as the nation's top military
officer, it is apt.

When Donald Rumsfeld served as defense secretary, silent assent
became an absolute requirement, as army chief of staff Eric Shinseki
learned, to his chagrin. When Shinseki testified, during the run-up to
the Iraq invasion, that occupying the country might require many more
troops than were available, Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz went
out of their way to humiliate and discredit the general for having the
temerity to venture an independent opinion. The message to the senior
officer corps was clear: those interested in getting ahead were
expected to toe the party line.

Pace exemplifies this breed. Only once during his time as chairman
has Pace asserted himself -- and that, somewhat bizarrely, was to
express his view that homosexuality is immoral. Apart from that
uncharacteristic outburst, he has loyally accommodated himself to
whatever the boss has wanted, even to calamitous policies that have
done immeasurable harm not only to the country but to the armed
services to which he has devoted his life.

Perhaps symbolic of that willingness to accommodate, even as Iraq
continued to unravel, Pace found time to write a pre-sentencing letter
on behalf of convicted perjurer Lewis "Scooter" Libby, assuring the
trial judge that Libby is a selfless team player. Pace's involvement in
an issue so tinged with partisan overtones was at the very least
unseemly, and raises troubling questions about his priorities, if not
about the hierarchy of his loyalties.

Let there be no mistake: primary responsibility for the failure of
US policy in Iraq lies with civilian policymakers, beginning with the
president. As Mr. Bush rightly insists, at the end of the day he
remains "the decider." Yet senior military advisers like Pace cannot
fully absolve themselves of responsibility for the disasters that have
occurred on their watch. To charge Pace with something akin to
"dereliction of duty" may go too far. He has, after all, served
precisely as his civilian masters wished him to serve. And yet for
precisely that reason, his dismissal is richly deserved.

The armed forces deserve top-notch professional leadership. Civilian
policymakers need expert military counsel, offered clearly and
candidly. Yet to charge one small group of senior officers with
fulfilling both functions makes it unlikely that either will be
adequately performed. The dismal saga of the Joint Chiefs has
demonstrated this in spades. At the highest levels a line should exist
between the senior officers who advise on matters of national security
policy and those expected to implement policy decisions. One way to
draw that line might be to select advisers from the ranks of retired
generals and admirals, independent-minded "wise men" no longer involved
in running their services.

Secretary Gates has described Pace's successor as an officer of
"vision, strategic insight, and integrity." No doubt similar words were
spoken when Pace himself was appointed chairman, perhaps with equal
sincerity.

Yet whatever personal attributes Admiral Mullen may possess -- even
if he ends up being more like a Powell than another Pace -- the real
problem lies with the institution over which he will preside. Six
decades of trying to fix the Joint Chiefs of Staff have produced little
positive effect. Further tinkering will only waste more money and,
alas, more lives.

The JCS lies beyond salvaging. Before you build a new house, you
tear the old one down. For the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it's
wrecking-ball time. A chairman possessing vision, strategic insight,
and integrity ought to be the first to acknowledge that.

Andrew J. Bacevich, professor of history and international
relations at Boston University, is editor of "The Long War: A New
History of U.S. National Security Policy Since World War II," published
this month by Columbia University Press.