Amid the turmoil of this multipolar, post-Cold War world, U.S. defense officials face a number of new challenges: tendencies toward joint force integration and reduced force structure, accompanied by reduced forward posturing that requires a greater capability to project power from the continental United States. These difficulties are accompanied by mounting fiscal constraints. Yet despite such staggering change, the basic unified command structure of U.S. military forces has not been altered appreciably to meet future challenges.
The Unified Command Plan (UCP) describes the organizational linkages of the combatant commanders-in-chief (CinCs) to other elements of the Department of Defense and is the vehicle through which the National Command Authorities assign missions to the combatant commands. It defines the CinCs’ responsibilities and establishes the command architecture through which operational missions are accomplished. Many influential reports and studies have fostered debate over the nation’s military command structure.1 The “National Security Strategy of Enlargement and Engagement,”2 its accompanying National Military Strategy of “Flexible and Selective Engagement,”3 and the recent report of the Commission on Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces have renewed the debate over the ability of the existing UCP to address future requirements. These reports and studies4 provide a departure point to adjust the UCP to respond to changes in the international security environment and to exploit opportunities to improve joint capabilities.
Background
The 1947 National Security Act authorized the establishment of joint commands to direct, plan, and coordinate U.S. military operations worldwide. The services, then dominant in national security decision-making, structured the UCP to institutionalize command arrangements evolving from World War 11. Since then, changes in the international security environment and advances in technology have brought about today’s structure, which includes five geographic and four functional unified commands. The geographic structure stems from a Cold War imperative: ensuring contingency planning coverage for all areas in which U.S. and Soviet interests might clash, along with worldwide military representation to nurture security relationships. The functional structure reflects the increased influence of joint institutions and greater authority granted the combatant CinCs, as directed by the Goldwater-Nichols Act.
Over the past decade, two major developments increased pressure to adjust the nation’s senior military command structure. In 1986, the Goldwater-Nichols Act provided momentum and an opportunity to focus more clearly on joint—rather than service-driven—concepts of organization and operations. Three years later, the end of the Cold War brought fundamental alterations in the national security strategy and a call for more joint organization and operations.
At the same time, the United States has reduced defense expenditures, which has led to major decreases in the total force structure, reduced overseas stationing, and greater reliance on forces based in the United States. Nevertheless, these major changes in the national security strategy and in available forces have brought few changes in the UCP. The primary evolutionary changes since 1990 have been the realignment of missions for the Atlantic Command, disestablishment of Forces Command as a specified command, and the formation of Strategic Command to centralize control of nuclear defense and deterrence forces. The other geographic and functional commands created prior to 1990 remain essentially unchanged.
Changes in the international security environment highlight both the enduring strengths of the unified command system and held-over weaknesses from a bygone era. The unified command structure cannot be described as completely broken, because several clear strengths endure. The structure has adjusted to changes in international security for nearly a half-century, preserving strong relationships between regional CinCs and the senior foreign military and political officials upon whom we rely for base access, transit rights, support arrangements—and allies—in time of crisis and war. Despite these enduring qualities, however, the current UCP has problems.
Problems with the Unified Command Structure
Problem 1: Current unified command structure boundaries complicate coordination and execution of a regional security strategy, impede joint training and operations, and dissipate the focus of commanders and staffs charged with addressing the nation’s more serious security concerns.
Geographic boundaries between unified commands, drawn along crisis fault lines during the Cold War, complicate the coordination of U.S. military activities aimed at attenuating regional problems. For example:
- Two CinCs deal with Israel and its neighbors, complicating the coordination of U.S. politico-military relations in the region. There once were sound political reasons for keeping security relationships with these regional governments divided, but today’s Mideast regional strategy and the ongoing peace process might not be served best by maintaining yesterday’s boundaries.
- Two CinCs must deal with the Indo-Pakistani dispute. CinC-cultivated relationships with military and civilian leaders in both countries can help attenuate regional tensions. The benefits of a coordinated, regional strategy may offset previous historical arguments for keeping these nations in separate theaters.
- Nearly all CinCs support counternarcotics efforts. The interaction among multiple commanders in the Western Hemisphere (Atlantic Command and Southern Command), both conducting similar missions, brings unnecessary complication.
- Four CinCs deal with sub-Saharan Africa—causing possible fragmentation of U.S. regional planning.
- The UCP fragments responsibility for Latin America and the Caribbean among three CinCs. The present system produces predictable difficulties and complications in coordinating operations and stands in contrast to the way Latin America and the Caribbean are treated as a coherent entity in Presidential Decision Directive-28.
Training and coordination efforts are fragmented by dividing the world into unified commands composed of predominantly land or water. Geographic boundaries drawn at the water’s edge require the coordination of military activities ranging from support of counter-narcotics efforts to combat operations. Water’s edge boundaries in South America and Central America, Africa, and Southwest Asia demonstrate the problem.
Responsibilities of geographic CinCs are uneven. This presents an opportunity for redistributing geography in ways that could sharpen attention to the nation’s most important security concerns and ease coordination in times of crisis:
- Increasingly serious problems in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and North Africa demand the European Command’s full attention. Sub-Saharan Africa is an area more directly related to Central Command’s area of responsibility and interests.
- Tensions in Korea, the Taiwan Straits, and Southeast Asia warrant the Pacific Command’s concerted attention, without distraction from South Asia and the Indian Ocean.
- The Central Command, with a small area of responsibility and few deployed forces, coordinates its water’s edge boundary with the Pacific Command, splits responsibility with the Pacific Command for the volatile Indian subcontinent, and splits responsibility for the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa with the European Command.
- Also complicating operations in the Pacific is the imposition of two sub-unified commands (U.S. Forces, Korea, and U.S. Forces, Japan) between deployed forces and the region’s senior commander in a part of the Pacific where tensions are greatest. The Commander, U.S. Forces, Korea, wears multiple hats as Commander-in-Chief, U.N. Command, and is therefore an autonomous warfighter when designated, creating a troublesome de facto water’s edge boundary within the Pacific Command.
- U.S. armed forces currently interact with NATO through two coequal commands, the Atlantic Command/ Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic, and the European Command/Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. The Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic Command’s uniquely diverse responsibility—as a major NATO commander, combined with his counter-narcotics efforts around Central America and South America, and his force integrator role at home—argues for shifting one or more of those roles to other CinCs.
- The boundary between the Southern and Atlantic Commands complicates coordination of military support to counter-narcotics operations, and poses a water’s-edge coordination problem that undercuts effective engagement of Latin American navies by either CinC.
Areas of the world traditionally not assigned to unified commands are taking on increasing importance in regional operations. This suggests a need for greater flexibility in assignments to regional commands.
- Mexico’s current security situation and tendency to be used as a narcotics transportation corridor to the United States strongly suggests assigning planning responsibility for Mexico to a CinC. Such assignment does not imply a confrontational position toward Mexico, but instead suggests a closer, formal relationship for security cooperation.
- At present, many of the former Soviet Union’s states are not included in any CinC’s area of responsibility. In view of the great expanse of these territories, and their relationship with U.S. regional commanders, there is a valid requirement for closer interaction with the European, Pacific, and Central Commands.
Geographic boundaries established by the UCP are at variance with the regional office boundaries of the Joint Staff, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and State Department, which complicates the coordination and implementation of national security policy and strategy. There are strong arguments for maintaining some variation in the organization of the respective departments, but the shift to a more regionally focused strategy suggests an even greater need for alignments that promote synergistic interagency cooperation.
Problem 2: Today’s security environment emphasizes missions that are not adequately accommodated by the current unified command structure.
Counterproliferation has gained importance as a national interest in the aftermath of the Cold War, but no CinC is assigned as focal point for guiding and directing military counterproliferation efforts. The Strategic Command has an obvious deterrent role; the Space Command has an explicit surveillance role; the Southern Command has implicit training and operational responsibilities for interdiction, surveillance, and site attack missions; and theater CinCs have implied “be prepared” missions to execute and support counterproliferation operations.
An existing, but increasing area of concern is military operations other than war (MOOTW). Theater CinCs all have implied MOOTW roles, as do the Southern and Transportation Commands. In areas where such operations are likely, CinC boundaries and responsibilities need to be adjusted to minimize coordination problems. Because the types of military operations U.S. forces must be prepared to execute show trends toward an increase in MOOTW, it is prudent to organize and plan for them as likely future missions.
Problem 3: Opportunities may exist to reduce the number of unified commands by consolidating geographic areas of responsibility or functional responsibilities.
The Central Command’s demonstrated ability to project power from the United States with minimal forces permanently stationed in its area of responsibility provides a model for greater reliance on U.S.-based rapid response joint task forces and a smaller number of geographic unified commands. Despite dramatic force and budget reductions since 1989, however, unified commands and associated service component commands have remained roughly constant.
The Transportation, Space, and Southern Commands, as providers of support and trained forces to other CinCs, fall into a category similar to that of the Atlantic Command. This suggests the possibility of bringing them together as sub-unified commanders under the Atlantic Command, to better integrate all military assets supporting the geographic commands and the Strategic Command. Even though the change would entail little more than resubordination and would save few, if any, billets or dollars, it would give the services a single joint point of contact as force providers and would ease the coordination of priorities, resourcing, and joint force integration.
Problem 4: The Atlantic Command’s role as joint force integrator and provider has not been adequately developed, and is perceived as an unnecessary link between that CinC and the services for training and task-organizing forces.
With a strategy emphasizing contingency operations launched primarily from the United States, the need for forces to be trained as joint task forces before deploying overseas has assumed increasing importance. Ad hoc responses to short-notice contingencies often are less than satisfactory. With deep reductions in deployed forces and training funds, the need for joint training at home has never been greater. All CinCs retain statutory responsibility for joint training of assigned forces, but the establishment of the Atlantic Command as the U.S.-based, joint force integrator was intended to focus greater attention on these significant training and exercise needs.3
Other geographic CinCs believe they should retain sole responsibility for training and task organizing forces apportioned or allocated to their theaters. They are accustomed to dealing with the services as force providers, as specified in Title 10, U.S. Code, and they do not perceive a need for an intermediate command to train and package forces tasked to their theaters. The issue is further complicated by many U.S.-based units being tasked to multiple theaters, confronting them with conflicting training demands from more than one CinC.
The Atlantic Command’s concern with its area of responsibility could become an inherent detractor from its force-integrator role. This raises fears that other CinCs’ training needs will receive inadequate attention. Further complicating matters is the fact that these force integrator responsibilities are defined in guidance documents that include the UCP, Forces for Unified Commands, DoD Directive 5100.1 (Functions of the Department of Defense and Its Major Components), and the U.S. Atlantic Command Implementation Plan in ways subject to widely varied interpretation and misgivings.
Adjusting the Unified Command Plan
The Goldwater-Nichols Act and the end of the Cold War are catalysts that form the basis for change to the unified command structure and provide a framework for assessing necessary changes to that structure. Before any potential changes to the UCP can be evaluated, however, it is imperative that a vision of the future security environment be established. The following assumptions serve as guidelines for establishing a baseline from which potential changes to the UCP can be examined.
- The shift in the national security strategy from a global to a regional focus anticipates the future security environment.
- U.S. armed forces will be required to maintain the capability to fight globally, or in regional conflicts, as well as in a range of contingency operations, and to conduct routine forward-presence missions and involvement in MOOTW.
- As a superpower with global influence and interests, the United States cannot afford to abandon the regional focus afforded by geographic CinCs.
- Reductions in the permanent forward deployment of U.S. armed forces will require adoption of a force-projection strategy from the United States.
- The increased basing in the United States and the reduction in forces available for overseas commitment require a greater level of joint training and interoperability to meet the force requirements of all CinCs.
- The U.S. basing of joint forces creates the opportunity to improve joint force training under unified command and direction.
- CinCs will continue to plan for and execute joint operations in support of regional interests and objectives ranging from major regional contingencies to humanitarian assistance.
- Crisis response will remain a primary responsibility of regional combatant commands.
- Limited defense resources will constrain the number and availability of forces for joint military operations.
- Reduced force structure will limit the assignment of dedicated forces to specific regions.
Any adjustments to the unified command structure must preserve proven keys to success and confine changes to areas with evident problems. With no pressing threat to the nation’s security, we have an opportunity to streamline the unified command structure, improve its focus on the integration of joint capabilities, and align it more closely with the imperatives of a changed strategic environment. Moreover, adjustments should be based on the types of problems identified in the employment of joint forces and on the requirement to adapt unified command and control to changing world events and redirection in strategy. Finally, changes to the UCP should be crafted within the context of a set of well-defined criteria, which should incorporate the following characteristics:
- Responsiveness—The ability to identify, evaluate, and react to fast-paced changes in global and domestic conditions.
- Dynamic effectiveness—The combination of the benefits of competition and the effects of innovation, particularly with respect to the following:
Competition—The development of promising alternatives with the services, as well as among services and components to produce more efficient and effective forces.
Innovation—The creation and exploitation of new organizational and technological capabilities and organizational concepts.
- Interoperability and military cooperation—The creation of an organization emphasizing the development of trust and the ability of forces to work together across a broad range of missions.
- Static efficiency—The combination of a number of measures, to include the following:
Span of control
Redundancy
Unity of effort
Complexity of assignment
Duplication
Cost
Conclusions
First, the unified structure assigned by the UCP must match geographic command alignment with the regional focused provisions of the national security strategy. The potential value of adjusting the assignment of the former Soviet Union states, India-Pakistan, Israel-Syria-Lebanon, and Mexico within the CinCs’ areas of responsibility must be examined with regard to the possible benefits to national interests and strategy. Moreover, the possibility of employing sub-unified commands to better focus on regional matters in Northeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin and South America also should be considered.
Second, the UCP should be reviewed for geographic modifications that would eliminate impediments to the smooth transition of joint forces across theater boundaries, and would maximize CinC warfighting efforts in the air, sea, and land battlespace. Possible changes should include adjusting the lines of demarcation if the European, Southern, and Central Commands areas of responsibility.
Third, functions and responsibilities assigned in the UCP must add increased emphasis to functional and geographic CinC participation in counterproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and military operations other than war.
Finally, the role of the U.S. Atlantic Command as joint force integrator should be evaluated, and if still considered critical to the improvement of joint warfighting capabilities clearly articulated, specifically with respect to its relationship with the other CinCs and its function in areas of shared responsibility with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the services. If the CinC, Atlantic Command—or a specifically created functional CinC—is tasked to provide integration of joint forces at an intermediate level, transiting service-unique skills and theater CinC specific requirements, that responsibility should include authority over all U.S.-based forces, and sufficient budgetary control to ensure an appropriate joint training and exercise program.
1 They include: Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Senator Sam Nunn’s floor speech of 2 July 1992; defense analyst Barry Blechman’s work for the Henry L. Stimson Center, Key West Revisited; defense analyst John Collins’s 1993 Congressional Research Service study, National Military Strategy, the DoD Base Force, and U.S. Unified Command Plan-, a 1989 GAO Report, Defense Reorganization: Progress and Concerns at JCS and Combatant Commands', the 1993 Science Applications International Corporation Report, Evolution of the Unified Command Plan, prepared for the Army; and General C. L. Powell’s 1993 CJCS Report, Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces of the United States.
2 A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement, Washington, the White House, U.S. GPO, February 1995.
3 National Military Strategy of the United States of America, Washington, Office of the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1995.
4 They include: 1960 Symington Committee Report, 1970 Fitzhugh Commission Report, 1978 Steadman Report, 1985 Locher Report, 1986 Packard Commission Report, 1988 Vunder Schaaf Report, and the 1993 Rand Arroyo Center Report: Evaluation Framework for Unified Command Plan.
Captain Loren, a surface warfare officer, currently is serving with the congressionally mandated independent Commission on Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces and is ordered to report as Commander, Destroyer Squadron 28.