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By Major General Walter E. Boomer, U.S. Marine Corps
Facing an inevitable drawdown of yet- undetermined severity, the Marines can make a virtue of necessity and exit the decade as winners—as can the larger services—if they are wise enough to recognize the opportunities.
Significant change is just ahead for the U.S. armed forces. It is reasonable to assume that we will have fewer people and less money in the 1990s. What will that mean, in terms of leadership and manpower management issues?
Our ability to deal with a different future will depend to a large degree on our attitude toward change. While the next decade will undoubtedly bring its share of concerns for the armed forces, it will also present us with opportunities, if we are wise enough to recognize them. Some of the opportunities will be bom of necessity. Most, however, should come from intelligent planning, which if done correctly will bring us to the year 2000 as a leaner, better- organized and managed fighting organization, well-positioned to serve our nation.
Once extricated from the Vietnam War, the U.S. armed forces began to reclaim the goodwill of most Americans and have basked in relatively high esteem for the past decade. It is esteem well-earned and deserved, but what psychological effects will military men and women feel when our citizens begin to perceive less need for military power? It is a problem we cannot duck, for most humans share the need to feel wanted and appreciated. It is easy for those in uniform to understand the importance of a well-trained, capable armed force; however, our civilian leadership must work to impress upon all Americans the critical necessity of a strong national defense, and strive to ensure that those who remain in the service are respected by their countrymen.
In the Marine Corps, we have always believed that military service is a calling—not just a job or a great way to start adult life. This subtle but strong feeling, combined with a desire to be challenged and to serve with an elite group, has pointed young men and women toward the Marines for many years. Once on board, they have sensed that they are appreciated in their civilian communities. If this is ever allowed to atrophy, and the perception develops that service in the Corps is no longer viewed as honorable or worthy of their time and sacrifice, then no amount of bonus money will bring these young people to our doors. This must be a matter of concern at the highest levels of government during the next decade because all of our armed forces will be similarly affected.
We are going to have to lead and manage better during the next decade. As leaders, we must push power downward to the young Marines who hunger and thirst for more responsibility—and are quite capable of handling it. The Marines are the leanest of all services in officer-to-enlisted ratio, but we still have too many officers. It is irrelevant whether tables of organization (T/Os) are filled or not, because most T/Os are designed improperly. They were developed during an era when officers were required to become too involved in the details of practically everything, letting the talent and capability of staff noncommissioned officers (SNCOs) and noncommissioned officers (NCOs) lie fallow. In combat, NCOs carry the battle. Is it fair to expect them to do this in war if we have not trained them in peacetime—by allowing them significant responsibility and authority?
We will probably have fewer officers in the 1990s, whether or not everyone agrees that we have too many today. If the Corps is going to function correctly , then, it is time to begin demanding more responsibility from and shifting more authority to our SNCOs and NCOs. Expectations must be high. They will not let us down. Two things are occurring that are positioning us well for this transition: the battle against “zero-defects” thinking and the strengthening of the professional military educational (PME) system for NCOs and SNCOs.
The zero-defects syndrome is an insidious disease that
robs people of initiative and courage. It demands perfec- hon instead of mere excellence and punishes mistakes with reprimands and bad fitness reports, instead of constructive counseling. It creates a military organization Niore interested in: statistics than truth, appearance than reality, form than substance, and inspection results than frue capability. Elimination of the zero-defects mentality ls critical to the success of any effort to share the burden of leadership with less senior Marines. As they learn, trying new things, they are going to make mistakes. We must forgive those mistakes, unless they stem from malfeasance, laziness or lack of integrity.
For decades, we have neglected the professional train- lng and education of our NCOs and SNCOs. Somehow we have expected them to become proficient through a combi- °ation of on-the-job training, osmosis, and miracles. That didn’t work, but things have been changed. After strengthening, reshaping and reinvigorating our PME system, we are going to have NCOs and SNCOs without equal in terms of their military expertise and professional skill. Within a few years, they are going to be ready for a larger share of their Corps, and we should be ready to hand it over to them.
For anyone seeking benefits that will come from a smaller Marine Corps, this is a place to concentrate. Broadening the leadership base will result in a happier, better-run organization. A close bond will exist among officers from general to corporal, and the statement, “SNCOs are the backbone of the Corps,” will no longer be an anachronism.
Diminishment of U.S. military strength will be hastened by any continuation of bloated, bureaucratic headquarters staffs—which by their very nature stifle human initiative and spirit. It seems probable that, as our armed forces are drawn down, the huge Washington-based bureaucracies will instinctively protect themselves, by first making the “easy” cuts that hack away at the muscle of our defense. On the other hand, if our leadership has the
courage to reduce dramatically the vast non-productive segment of our defense establishment that has evolved during the past 40 years, we have the opportunity to get better as we grow smaller.
Pentagon and Congressional staffs are not the only ones that need carving up. Our own plethora of military headquarters needs reducing. Anyone who has dealt with bureaucracies understands the reason. Generally speaking, excessively large or numerous headquarters will create unnecessary work and complicate relatively simple problems. It is not because those serving on staffs are inferior or lacking in intellect. Like their counterparts at sea or in the field, they thrive on work and action. But when work and action are not at hand, they create some to maintain their own sense of self-worth, and sometimes to protect their jobs. The reports they design and the mindless questions they frequently ask are needed to keep them busy. Who bears the burden of this useless work and flood of mind-numbing paper it generates? You guessed it—the divisions, squadrons, ships and battalions!
If you examine a Marine division, you soon discover that it, like most operational units, needs relatively little guidance. All it takes to operate with minimal bureaucratic meddling is mission-type orders, if commanders are so
. . if our leadership has the courage to reduce dramatically the vast non-productive segment of our defense establishment that has evolved during the past 40 years, we have the opportunity to get better as we grow smaller."
inclined. For example, eliminating 22 reports did not affect the efficiency of the 4th Marine Division, except to improve it. There are at least 22 more reports that should also disappear, but it is impossible to break the chain at division level. Congress demands reports and statistics, creating unnecessary work for the Department of Defense staff, which is usually capable of creating enough of its own. The paperwork is multiplied and the snowball grows as it rolls through secretariats and service headquarters, until it lands on the desks of the people who should be totally occupied with the training, welfare and morale of their troops. The reason paperwork-reduction efforts have failed is that headquarters themselves have not been reduced. If mandated reductions are first applied at the top of the bureaucratic chain, we will become more effective, more efficient and better prepared. If not, we will truly become paper tigers as we grow smaller.
As an institution, the Marine Corps is not immune from the problem of staff growth. In the Fleet Marine Forces we currently have two force headquarters, three Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) headquarters, five Brigade (MEB) headquarters and four Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) headquarters. This is in addition to division/wing, group/ regiment and battalion/squadron headquarters. We cannot justify such an abundance of staffs in the face of looming structure cuts. The Commandant has recognized the problem and has convened a study group to examine the predicament.
The combat-tested Marine air ground, task force (MAGTF) approach to fighting tends to drive us to more staffs. In time of plenty, our current organization might make sense. But we face a dramatically different future. Our thinking must be bold, and a willingness to explore new concepts and organizational concepts is necessary. The Commandant’s study group has already suggested some radical departures from our current architecture. Their early suggestions—to imbed MEF staffs in force headquarters, and for division staffs to absorb some of the MEB headquarters—are likely to be implemented rather quickly. The most important point, however, is that we are going to be proactive instead of reactive, because of sound early planning.
Recruiting is where it all begins—in the schools and on the streets of our nation. As we face the next decade, we cannot forget this axiom. We have proved time and again that our recruit training, good as it is, cannot turn unintelligent, poorly motivated, physical wrecks into Marines. Recruiting high-quality applicants for the Corps is terribly expensive, but the price of not doing it is disaster. Fine young men and women can be recruited only by good Marines. We must be able to bear the pain of having to do without our best and brightest while they serve a tour on recruiting duty. Otherwise, we mortgage our future, with bankruptcy an eventual certainty. Unfavorable demographic trends will make recruiting even more difficult during the early 1990s. We can face this challenge in two ways: lower our quality, or maintain the same standards we have insisted upon for the last decade—and work harder. Only the latter is acceptable. The short-term price may be that even more recruiters must hit the pavement to acquire the good people we need. Or we can opt for a lower-cost solution of maintaining our present recruiting force levels at the expense of other force structure. We cannot cut our recruiting program and still obtain the high- quality recruits we must have through the decade.
Every combat veteran can identify with this passage from Goodbye Darkness by William Manchester:
Men I now know, do not fight for flag or country, I for the Marine Corps, for glory or any other distraction. They fight for their friends. Any man in combat who lacks comrades who will die for him or for whom he is willing to die, is not a man at all. He is truly damned.”
If we know this to be true, then unit cohesion and personnel stability should be the most important goals of our manpower policy. This is particularly true for a force that is expeditionary in nature. It seems probable that contingencies of the 1990s in which we are likely to be employed will require a force that can fight effectively from the first minute after H-hour. Marines who have trained together for years, not months, and who have become friends and brothers-in-arms will acquit themselves well. Other than recruiting the men and women we need in adequate numbers and quality, nothing will be more important in the manpower business than putting Marines in
Attending an “open house” at the Camp Pendleton base, these children show great pride in their country and in their father, a Marine gunnery sergeant. But many of the 43% of all enlisted Marines now married are less than ten years older than this ten-year-old girl, and maintaining family stability despite reduced funding for family services will be a major problem of the coming decade.
units and letting them stay there.
There has always seemed to be too much moving and too much turbulence in our Corps. Moving is often a function of available money, so if reduced funding for permanent changes of station causes more stability, so much the better. We can leam to live with four- and five-year tours of duty in one geographic location and be a better organization as a result. This does not endorse a trend toward “homesteading.” The Commandant’s wrath has been properly focused on those who somehow manipulate the system and stay forever at one duty station while the rest of the Corps swirls around them. Four or five years, for example, would enable a Marine to serve a split tour at a division and a base, doing justice to both assignments. All of this still would not mean a static, less forward-leaning Corps. There are still enough shorter tours, of three years or less, to keep the pot at a healthy simmer.
The other benefit of more stability is happier families. Our wives and children adjust to the nomadic life of Marines in marvelous fashion, but moving takes its toll—in dollars, heartache, and mental well-being on occasions. Most families could not help but benefit from a slightly more stable life. Our children are growing up in risky times. As a result, parents go to great lengths to provide a good school environment and are afraid to tinker with success if a satisfactory school situation exists. The result is often split families—dad a geographical bachelor, while Johnny and Jane finish their last two years at the high school they entered as freshmen. It is hard to fault the parents, but the result is bachelor officers’ quarters and SNCO barracks overflowing with absentee fathers, and the attendant strain on already stressed families. Of course, no manpower system could be totally responsive to the needs of the Corps and every family at the same time, but how much better would things be if Marine parents could look forward to four to five years in one location? How much might the case loads at family service centers be reduced? Everyone can win on this one.
The 1990s will see a renewal of family as we relearn its role in stopping our country’s downward spiral into drugs, crime, self-centeredness and wretched manners. Even now, in most Marine families, children are the primary concern and basic life decisions must center on them. As we have seen, community schools, not community convenience dictate home location, and for many parents, finding adequate child care is the most worrisome problem they face. Many wives need or wish to work and single parents have no choice. We must continue to focus our attention and money on the Marine family and those things that contribute to making it a stable, productive, and healthy unit. If we do not, good Marines will leave us for the sake of their families. Forward-looking civilian firms—
our competition for the best and brightest—are beginning to understand the importance of family to their employees. A North Carolina National Bank survey found child care the number one issue among its employees, men and women. Many of their work force were leaving, after the company had made a large investment in their training, because they could not find or afford adequate child care. In January 1990, the bank began offering to pay half the child care bills—as much as $35 a week per child—to employees with household incomes of $24,000 a year or less.
The Marine Corps has made tremendous strides in taking care of our families, but we must do even more. New ideas and approaches are necessary. For example, we focus tremendous energy, manpower and money on post exchanges that have difficulty competing with the K-Marts and Wal-Marts just outside the base. Would young Marine families prefer to shop at civilian stores wherever they are convenient, and have the Corps attempt to assist them in other ways? Or have we bothered to ask? A Corps-wide survey designed to ascertain our families’ concerns and needs might produce interesting results. Times have changed, and the venerable greybeards that were necessities in earlier years may now be anachronisms that continue because of bureaucratic inertia. This change is best illustrated by the fact that in 1990, 43% of our enlisted Marines are married. The Commandant’s thesis is simply this: unhappy and unstable Marine families degrade readiness, reduce retention, and tear at the fabric of
our brotherhood.
Regarding marriage, we are rapidly approaching the point where our policies must be reexamined with a view toward what is best for the nation and the Corps. To suggest that we should think about requiring Marines to attain a certain rank before marrying brings an outcry from many quarters, but the idea shouldn’t be discounted too quickly. We were barely able to provide adequate family services for our Marines during a decade of plenty, and adequate housing has never been available in sufficient quantity for most junior Marines. In addition, our profession is stressful—for reasons that are well-understood and need not be elaborated upon. This stress takes its toll on older, more mature couples, and it can be devastating to the young and unprepared. Would young men and women continue to volunteer for a Marine Corps that asked them not to marry until a point later in their careers, perhaps noncommissioned officer rank? Marine security guards agree to abstain from marriage until they complete their tour of duty with the State Department, and the program works very well. Whether such a policy could be implemented Corps-wide remains to be seen, but it shouldn’t be heresy to discuss it. The idea has many advantages and many drawbacks, but as we face dramatically reduced funding, we can’t duck such issues simply because they are controversial. More important, we must provide quality family services during the next decade, and that may mean reducing the number of families to be served.
The status of single parents is another sensitive, vexing issue. The Marine Corps—because of the nature of its business, the tempo at which it operates, and the requirement for worldwide deployment—is one of the most difficult professions in the world for a single parent. It probably will not become any easier. This many-faceted issue requires sensitivity and common sense. But does it make sense to allow single Marines who become pregnant to remain in the Corps? Are we equipped and funded to provide them the support they require, and can our personnel needs be met by them? Most commanders would probably say, “no!”
I have raised these two tough issues because in redesigning our force for a very different future, we have to talk about such things. We should listen to everyone’s suggestions, but then go on to design policies that allow us to serve our nation and provide for our Marines in the best way possible.
Sometimes, it seems that our nation is losing a grip on the strong unwritten code of ethics that was the underpinning of our forefathers. The Marine Corps is not immune to this perplexing situation. The strong familial and religious underpinning of yesterday has eroded, producing some cracks in our moral foundation. Tremendous power can be unleashed by Marines in combat, and great influence over subordinates is exerted by Marines in peacetime. We need a code of ethics to guide us in carrying out our duties and for our daily lives. In the past, one argument against such a code has been that the oaths of office and enlistment, combined with such things as the law of land warfare and code of conduct, provided adequate ethical guidelines. Some years ago, perhaps this was true. But in earlier times, almost all children were taught right from wrong—and it was reinforced at home, at school and at church. This is too often not the case today, and I don’t foresee dramatic improvement in this decade. We need a code of ethics that can be taught to Marines, around which we can build our personal and professional lives. Each of us might stray from time to time, because we are human, but we would do so with better understanding of how far and in which direction we were straying. Earlier informal guides, such as The Band of Brothers, which circulated widely throughout the Corps in the 1970s, were a cry for something to fill a void. If we are truly professionals we need to get on with the task of developing a code of ethics.
The lives of Marines are dramatically affected by their commanding officers. In combat they hold all the cards. Stupid or wrong decisions can lead to death, disfigurement and defeat. Even in peacetime, inadequate commanders can bring on tragedy and certainly create unhappy, dispirited Marines. In an uncertain and, in some ways, disquieting future, Marines will need stable, mature leadership more than ever. Therefore, no avenue should be overlooked in the search for officers who are good commanders. Once identified, they should be placed in command and left there for two years.
Vietnam provided the perfect example of how not to do it. The system of routinely changing commanders every six months bordered on immorality. It took weeks, sometimes months for a commander to learn the terrain and the enemy, and become skilled at killing that enemy with minimum loss to his own unit. No sooner was an experienced commander in place, than someone else was given the
opportunity ’ to command and the learning process began all over again. And Marines died as commanders learned. Even today, the belief that every Marine officer should have a chance to command remains strong. It is based on a false sense of fairness and the myth that every Marine officer can be a good commander. The fairness we should be concerned with is how Marines fare under a particular officer, not how many officers have a chance to exercise command. Our Marines come first! And not just in the chow line.
Those who believe that every Marine officer can be a good commander are not very observant. Many cannot command, for a variety of reasons—and a significant number really do not wish to, ever. But they feel obliged to try because they perceive it to be a threshold they must cross to be promoted.
How, then, do we ensure that our Marines receive the best leadership available in the Corps? Command selection is an anathema to many, the Holy Grail to others. It is time for the Corps to adopt some type of command selection. Our current system does not always place the best- qualified in command. The usual methods are to pick those the reporting senior knows, or those recommended by friends and colleagues, or simply ensure that everyone who is eligible and present for duty somehow gets an opportunity. None of these ways is inherently bad, but none is the best way. It is impossible for general officers to know, for example, more than a small percentage of the lieutenant colonels, much less their strengths, weaknesses and previous performance as commanders. Sometimes, the only personal acquaintance comes purely from social contact—hardly enough observation to make a decision that affects hundreds or thousands of Marines. We do not promote officers on the basis of personal friendship or hearsay, but require a rigorous examination of their record by a group of officers who swear an oath to fairness and objectivity. Those placed in command should receive the same scrutiny.
The primary outcry I hear against command selection is that it would create two classes of officers. This doesn’t have to be the case. We all have different strengths and weaknesses. If our manpower system attempted to capitalize on an officer’s strengths when making an assignment, and we promoted on the basis of how well he did in that assignment, regardless of what it was, the argument would soon disappear. It would allow those whose skill and expertise do not lie in commanding still to contribute to the organization and to have their contributions recognized through promotion.
The worst thing the armed forces can do as we grow smaller during the 1990s is to turn inward and isolate ourselves from the mainstream of America, as happened during the period between World War I and World War II. If we allow that to occur, public support for a strong defense and for the Marine Corps will slowly erode as we fade from public consciousness, and we will find it increasingly difficult to recruit the caliber of young people we require.
Popular mythology notwithstanding, most Marines are rather self-effacing and do not seek opportunities to tell their fellow citizens about the Corps. We have always done more for less, and that trait will have even more appeal to Americans as they seek a larger and larger “peace dividend.” It will become incumbent for us to reach out to the communities and demonstrate to them through words, pictures and action that we can spend their tax dollars efficiently and obtain results that will satisfy them. For indeed, they are the ones we serve. Our large grass-roots support, which has existed among the veterans of World War II and Korea, is slowly fading away. The exploits of Marines at Iwo Jima, Tarawa and Inchon are not engraved in the consciousness of today’s young Americans. We must demonstrate to them anew our professionalism and our ability to manage wisely that part of the Nation’s treasure entrusted to us. We should begin a national campaign to put Marines, active and reserve, into the spotlight to tell our story because it is a good one, and we should keep ourselves before the people as a matter of course. Within reason, our bases must be open so taxpayers can see for themselves what we do, how we live, and how we care for the land provided for our use. The 1990s should not be a decade of isolation and retrenchment for the military, but a period of openness and demonstration of our contribution to the long-term well-being of the nation.
General Boomer is the Commanding General, 4th Marine Division.
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