Unwieldy and irrelevant: why is the military clinging to outdated and ineffective command structures?

Washington Monthly, Oct, 1997 by Robert Worth

When a truck bomb exploded outside the Khobar Towers military complex in Saudi Arabia on June 25, 1996, killing 19 American airmen and injuring hundreds more, it seemed like the nd of external threat that even a superpower cannot prepare for. But after more than a year of investigation and acrimony, the moral of Khobar Towers has been reversed so that it now seems to stand for the internal threat of turmoil and confusion in the armed services.

The immediate problem, according to the Defense Department report filed by retired Army Gen. Wayne Downing, was local Air Force commander Terryl Schwalier's failure to take proper anti-terrorism precautions, such as installing a Mylar shield on the front of the compound. But Downing also found that the chain of command at Khobar Towers had gone haywire. He concluded that "the Department of Defense must clarify command relationships ... to ensure that all commanders have the requisite authority to accomplish their assigned responsibilities." The commander in chief of CentCom (the regional command for the Middle East) rarely spent time in the field, and he chose to let the services wield the authority instead of exercising command from his headquarters in Riyadh. As a result, CentCom regressed into the same state of bureaucratic torpor that left it wide open to terrorist attack in 1983, when another truck bomb killed 241 Marines sleeping in their Beirut barracks.

So far, Secretary of Defense William Cohen's only response to Downing's findings has been to block Terryl Schwalier's promotion (which provoked Air Force Chief of Staff Ronald Fogleman to resign in anger). But a number of defense analysts and top brass believe that Knobar Towers is a warning sign that should not be ignored. They see it, not as an isolated event, but as an inevitable result of the military's failure to adapt its top-heavy command structure to the post-Cold War world.

Like all U.S. military compounds on foreign soil, Khobar Towers falls under the authority of a regional "unified" (multi-service) command. These commands reflect the Pentagon's view of the world as divided into "spheres of influence" -- regional aspects of the global struggle to contain communism. Known as the Unified Command Plan, the system is a legacy of the 1947 National Security Act. There are commands corresponding to Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific and Asia, South America, the continental U.S., and the Middle East/Africa, in addition to commands in charge of space, transportation, special operations, and nuclear weapons. Each of these commands has its own elaborate structure, known derisively to Pentagon officials as "Christmas trees," on which each service hangs its own confusing array of officers and units -- despite the fact that several of these commands may be unnecessary.

All Chiefs and No Indians

The breakdown in accountability at Khobar Towers is just the latest tragic chapter in the U.S. military's fine history of bureaucratic dysfunction. Whatever its benefits, our multi-branched armed forces, each service with its own complex chain of command, often makes for less-than-efficient military operations (not to mention military spending as each branch vies for the biggest chunk of the funding pie). Periodic attempts have been made over the years to reduce the confusion and interservice rivalry among the groups -- with limited success. The very formation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the wake of World War II was aimed at transcending service politics by imposing a central authority. During the war, Eisenhower and other top generals had seen how vital it was to maintain a clear and coordinated chain of command over the services. Yet, only a year after the National Security Act of 1947 established the JCS, Eisenhower warned his fellow four-stars that the Act provided little more than "a weak confederation of sovereign military units" Sadly, history has proven him right. Some of the most notorious military disasters of the post-WWII years -- including countless episodes in Vietnam and the failed Desert One Iranian hostage rescue of 1980 -- were direct effects of service infighting.

Another major attempt to address the problem, this time by Congress, resulted in the Goldwater-Nichols reforms of 1986. Ironically, these down the confusion during wartime by circumventing the JCS, stripping the service chiefs of all battle authority and clarifying the power of the secretary of defense to direct war efforts. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs was also granted power to independently advise the president and defense secretary, rather than simply reporting the "consensus" view of the chiefs (which had often proved useless in the past). These changes, forced by Congress on a kicking, screaming Pentagon, played a major role in U.S. success during the Gulf WAR. JCS Chairman Colin Powell could brief President Bush and Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney independently from the other service chiefs. And the chain of command for operations ran cleanly and directly from Cheney to Powell to the regional commander in charge of Desert Storm, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf. As such, the Gulf War marked the first time that a regional commander could plan his attacks without worrying about "service equity" on the battlefield.