Twice within the life-span of many living Americans, the military and industrial might of this country has proved decisive in winning world wars. Yet, appraised in the balance sheet of aggrandizement, territory gained, indemnities received, economic stability, and loss of real resources, the United States emerges only slightly better off than the vanquished. Therein lies proof of our slogans that we fought only to defend our “way of life,” conceivably even our national existence. Nevertheless, those slogans, hackneyed by endless repetition, did accurately represent the American war temper. In 1917 we sincerely intended to “make the world safe for democracy”; the second struggle we devoutly prayed was “the war to end wars.”
How can we explain the ironical results which grew from those lofty purposes? In the twenty years following World War I, dictatorships became more powerful than mankind had ever groaned under. Fascist Italy repudiated democracy less than five years after the treaty of Versailles had been signed. From the Bolshevik Revolution, sired by war, an empire vaster and far more despotic than ancient Rome grew in Russia. A military clique hiding behind the “divine figure” of the Mikado developed in Japan. Finally, Hitler mesmerized Germany to accept his Nazi gangsters as the vanguard of a super race. The world disease of dictatorships broke out in varying degree in scores of lesser countries in both hemispheres. Amazed, morally repulsed, the United States reacted with isolationism, seeking to live in the world but not of it.
While we withdrew into our shell, limited, but in many cases far from small, wars flared in portions of the world from Armistice Day in 1918 until World War II lit the entire civilized horizon. Turks fought Greeks; Italians conquered Abyssinia; French and Spaniards subdued the African Riffs; Japan and Russia waged an undeclared war on the Chinese deserts, and Japan invaded China during these uneasy years of the peace which so manifestly had not made the world safe for democracy.
The happenings of the six years since V-J Day are fresh in all our minds. Conflicts, undignified by the title of war, have raged almost ceaselessly. The United States had been reluctantly forced to build a military establishment surpassing any “peacetime” organization in our history. American casualties on “unofficial” battlefields approach half of the total incurred in World War I.
Viewed coldly, our “victories” in two tremendous conflicts appear far less than triumphs. The twin menaces we fought, autocracy and its tool, aggressive war, threaten us no less today than in 1917 or 1941.
“America wins the war and loses the peace” has been so prevalent an expression of cynical pessimism that it deserves critical analysis. Is it not probable that, in our invariable rush to throw hastily trained and equipped forces into battle, the preparation of our leaders has been limited to winning only the war, not the peace that should be our real purpose in fighting? Where in the American manner of waging two world wars is evidence of over-all policy directed toward achieving a lasting peace? In this modern age any nation which fails during peace to integrate its foreign and military policies to prevent conflict can scarcely improvise amid a life and death struggle the thoughtful direction its fighting forces must have in war. Only far-seeing, long-term guidance can make our Armed Services responsive instruments of the national will, not mere bludgeons to batter the enemy of the moment. Only over-all guidance can coordinate global warfare fought as bitterly in the realms of ideas or economics and in the “underground” as in the ceaseless clash of armed forces. It is the burden of this discussion to show that such guidance will not be forthcoming until we develop a national war staff in Washington. Nor will such guidance be effectively applied if we continue to operate under the theater commander concept now being taught at our service schools and regarded as sacrosanct by the very departments whose proper functions will be vitiated by it.
The American Theater Commander
It is an odd truth that the United States theater commanders in war, although military representatives of a democratic country, enjoy far greater powers than those delegated to the military chieftains of most European nations. Had MacArthur been the Senior Commander of France or England, or especially of the Soviet Union, the celebrated controversy between him and President Truman would never have occurred. European nations have developed ways and means of regulating their commanders in the field which give these officials much less latitude than the United States Theater Commanders. At the same time no nation since ancient Rome has placed such imposing responsibilities upon its military “pro-consuls.” It is paradoxical that a country which plays so heavily upon the theme of civilian supremacy over the military, which guards civilian prerogatives with so much jealousy should, in time of war, indiscriminately heap upon its field commanders the widest conceivable range of political and economic as well as military power. The concept of the American Theater Commander’s role during and since World War II represents an astounding reversal of our historic tradition. Worse yet, that reversal occurred without the preparation which might have softened the impact of its shock. In fact, there seemed to be no realization, save among harassed theater staffs, that it had happened. Naturally, mistakes were made when soldiers attempted, frequently against their will, to determine policy in fields alien to their education and experience.
The Swinging Pendulum
The rise of the United States to world preeminence makes it imperative that we try to eliminate errors, so potentially cataclysmic in their results. Lack of wisdom at the peace table is widely blamed for failures to secure a “just and lasting peace.” Yet in truth, many seeds of future wars are sown by the actual conduct of the fighting. At one extreme lies the Third Punic War, in which Rome swore the total destruction of Carthage; at the other, the American Civil War, whose end was the preservation of the Union.
Both of these wars were fought in a manner consistent with the end in view. On the other hand, ideological conflicts, exemplified by the Thirty Years’ War, are fought with religious fanaticism, with an almost blind disdain for any future harvest. The people of the United States have shown a dangerous tendency toward acquiring a similar blindness. Hating war as they do, they eventually embrace it with religious, albeit reluctant, zeal. They insist upon idealistic motives for killing but shun, as sordid business, common sense attempts to win lasting peace at the smallest possible cost. All foes who have forced the peace-loving American populace into war must be vile beyond belief, just as any nation which fights on our side must be as perfect as the “cause” with which we identify ourselves. Admirable as such idealism may be, it smacks of the immaturity of childhood, not the adult man’s estate demanded by this country’s world position.
That we do not yet recognize our emotional attitude toward international affairs is appallingly apparent in the command and planning phases of our present “partial mobilization.” We must also consider these problems of command as we work to rebuild an unchallengeable military establishment.
General Emery Upton’s profound and long-ignored Military Policy of the United States proved with cool statistics what it had cost our nation to ignore the advice of our first President, “In time of peace, prepare for war.” Never until recent months have we honored that advice. Even now we mobilize principally under the same concept as of ten years past.
Only very recent have been the voices that warn us this preparation must delve deeply into the heart of our governmental machinery. Munitions and manpower, however vital, are but a single element in total conflict. Equally important is governmental organization. Ours must be so designed that the principle of military subordination will be wisely and consistently applied both in Washington and in American outposts overseas. That even this principle requires common sense application can be gleaned from Sumner Welles’ Seven Decisions That Shaped History. In this book the veteran diplomat expressed repeated annoyance at “Army and Navy attempts [in 1939] to oppose” policies which might provoke hostilities without a moment’s reflection that the United States’ Army was at that time about the equal of Paraguay’s, while our State Department’s behavior was that of a world power. Mr. Welles, in fact our nation as a whole, was trying to “make a foreign policy out of morality and neutrality alone,” to borrow Herbert Feis’ apt phrase (Road to Pearl Harbor). That was indeed enforcing the supremacy of the civil power with fanaticism; yet when World War II began, the civil power virtually abdicated in favor of politically unguided military commanders.
Our mental blindness to practical, attainable war aims has been noted. Equally impulsive and overwhelming is our national dependence upon the military the moment a war begins. All burdens are shifted to the uniformed shoulders of our commanders— particularly those overseas.
To the extent that “back seat driving” is not conducive to able field generalship, as Hitler demonstrated to our immense gain, that emotional shift was sound. But in the fields of non-military or even para-military strategy, it places an impossible weight upon one man. How, for example, can the overseas chief be expected to determine sagely, in the heat of campaign, the far-reaching effects of national policy toward conquered and liberated peoples and their de facto governments?
In European countries, where another concept prevails, these questions do not plague the theater commander. There long and bitter experiences have operated to give the military commanders a high role in the execution of policy, but retained the formulation of that policy in civilian hands. The last two global wars have brought to us a wealth of experience which should be analyzed to determine the most appropriate relationship between our overseas commanders and the entire governmental hierarchy in Washington.
Once this is done, a clear understanding of the super-human burden we now place upon military commanders will be realized. It will be seen that we charge our commanders with an overwhelmingly complicated task. Unless we redefine their role, they will be handicapped performing their purely military function, let alone the effective supervision of the innumerable political, economic, and psychological forces focused around them.
Prior to World War II it was generally accepted that “soldiers don’t make or direct wars, they only fight them.” Yet, because of what virtually amounted to a cessation of civilian policy guidance from Washington, our military commanders overseas became by force of circumstances the political spokesmen, as well as the military executors, of our foreign policy. The reality of our conduct of that war was much different from the theory that military men should only advise but not participate in the formulation of national policy.
The Range of Command
If, as we have often learned to our sorrow, the military must extract us from unsought, unanticipated war, is there any sound reason for wonder that, after the close of the conflict, civilian administrators find the military has handed back to them political, economic, and psychologic mixups to untangle? The record shows that our federal government is not yet organized to prescribe timely policy for dealings between our military abroad and foreign factions, often at variance among themselves. Consequently, in the political field alone, theater commanders had to decide on the spot which faction to support, and “Military Government” too long remained supreme. Our only reaction as a nation was to attack bitterly the military occupation record or the commander’s political choices, as in the Darlan episode in North Africa.
Doubtless Darlan was an unsavory figure, in the light of American idealism, yet the swift “pacification” of French Africa was a major triumph for Allied arms. A “military victory” blasting Oran and Algiers off the map might have cost us the later triumph in Tunis. For that campaign, at least, more than purely military planning had been at work.
There were many other political type decisions made either consciously or unconsciously by our commanders in the field in response to the complicated situations they faced. These decisions invariably arose because those commanders faced acute problems which had to be resolved. Unfortunately, the national machinery for resolving these problems presented to Washington by frantic transoceanic requests seldom produced policy decisions in time to be of any value to the commander at the other end of the cable. Consequently, the man on the spot had to act and by his action established policy. Even when the theater commander did receive some policy guidance, it was generally so broad in character as to be of little help in solving specific problems which frequently arose.
The situation was aggravated when theaters passed from a state of active hostilities to one of occupation. Many types of political questions can be submerged while the big show is going on, only to crop up with renewed vigor the moment the last volley has been fired. Our experiences in both Germany and Japan testify to the need for better Washington mechanism by which the theater commander can fulfill his occupation mission within the specific framework of national policy.
Carefully selected commanders of the three military services, the Joint Chiefs, represent our best in experience and judgment on military matters. They are not, however, suitably trained or staffed to deal with all vital aspects of war. Whence, for example, can the Joint Chiefs of Staff instantly derive the economic genius to determine precisely how the nation can best support a major conflict, as the basic implications of their broad strategic plans invariably do?
Because the emergency transcended the military during the last war, the United States had in existence, albeit hastily conceived, organizations covering all conceivable phases of a truly national struggle. Agencies were thrown together to plan and direct subversive operations in enemy territory, economic pressure was applied by another agency, the Treasury master-minded financial warfare, psychological warfare both “white” and “black” was staffed, schools for military government officials sprang up at a dozen universities. Nowhere was this welter of effort adequately coordinated to prevent duplication, or worse yet, contradicting policies. Much of it was unknown to theater commanders who consequently took a dim view of those restricted aspects which came to their attention. Very little of it was tied into the strategic concepts of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and not one iota had the prerequisite background of peacetime planning and organization to make it fully effective. However, much was learned. After V-J Day we promptly scrapped most of our Rube Goldberg total-war machine along with the “emergency” organizations themselves.
In the face of this rather complex history and in the knowledge of the vast and complicated responsibilities which fall into the hands of any theater commander, the normal “school solution” description of his duties taught by all Service institutions is singularly over-simplified. It all boils down to making the theater commander responsible for everything. Only in a very limited sense of the term responsibility is this solution workable or even accurate. True, the office of the theater commander is the focal point for all action undertaken within the theater, but the overseas commander cannot be the direct master of everything that goes on.
It can be effectively argued that the theater commander’s military efficiency could be greatly increased, could he be relieved of the vexing policy questions that plagued Eisenhower during the last war. The uncontested proclivity to give the theater commander the broadest sort of guidance and to require him to solve most of his problems on the ground has grave limitations.
Every military leader in our Armed Services rightly looks to his next higher commander for essential guidance in all matters for which he is responsible, every one, that is, except chiefs of overseas theaters. As long as the present concept continues, these latter will receive only a broad combat directive typified by Eisenhower’s mission: “Invade the continent of Europe and destroy the German military forces.”
If the view be taken that specific guidance could be a help rather than a hindrance, what form should this guidance take? No categorical answer can be given without application to a specific situation, yet the following general elements of Washington- Theater instruction can be established. In a global war, the overseas commander should receive sufficient explicit direction so that he can coordinate his operations effectively with other allied theaters and with the operations of the Strategic Air Command. This guidance should include his zones of operations, the timing by which his major undertakings should take place, and their phasing with other current operations. He should be instructed concerning our policy respecting relations with, and among, our Allies.
These policies cannot all be delegated to the theater commander to be improvised by him on the spot, especially when Allies have global relationships transcending his theater’s boundaries. Local relationships must be formulated in accord with the over-all pattern. The theater commander should monitor, but not absolutely control, psychological and other unconventional operations of a strategic nature within his theater. These operations, although comparatively intangible, have a relationship with his military operations somewhat analogous to that of the far-flung efforts of the Strategic Air Command. Financial and economic matters may be of vital importance to the theater commander in the execution of his mission, but these almost invariably will include aspects beyond as well as under the theater commander’s direct control.
But where is the source of this total guidance, since we have as yet no agency with full authority to plan a total war or to direct one after it begins? We are geared primarily for strategic military action. We pay lip service, but little real consideration, to the broader sphere where arms do not provide all the answers. Yet it is precisely in this “grey” zone that some decisive battles of a total war will be fought.
Right now, there is no government quarterback empowered and prepared to blend the diplomatic moves of State with Defense’s military deployment or the foreign activities of other agencies with both State and Defense. This lack is the missing element in our total war planning.
A total war is fought with a vast array of forces, some of them intangible. Nevertheless, the complex of American political, psychological, and economic power must be made capable of operating as a unit in the vital battle zones of tomorrow.
National, no less than military, unity of command is essential in the winning of war. National unity of command calls for a supervisor who can view the needs and capabilities of diplomatic, military, economic, and psychological forces. Such a supervisor requires the establishment of a national command agency. The President, of course, is supreme over all government departments. But he, as an individual, lacks the staff group essential to discharge his manifold command functions.
The President of the United States will need a tested, carefully organized staff to help him weigh the military, economic, and diplomatic factors involved in planning or fighting a total war. A staff of this kind would submit balanced recommendations for setting the national course in such dangerous times.
The National Security Council cannot do this. Its procedures are too slow for war. The agencies it represents are too loosely coordinated to mobilize efficiently all the nation’s effort toward a common goal. The National Security Council functions as a committee, and the fallacy of conducting warfare by the committee method has often been demonstrated. Besides, the department heads who comprise the National Security Council are burdened with the operation of large departments. These responsibilities prevent their being available for the full time task involved.
Finally, it has always been, and always will be, impossible for any department secretary to see the inadequacy of a national program from the viewpoint of a single department. These inadequacies can be seen and improvements proposed only by individuals who regard the work of separate departments from an over-all point of view.
The President should have a staff to which he can look for more than advice. He must have one, a truly national staff, through which he can form his orders and instructions for every battlefront or diplomatic sector of a total war. The lack of central direction in a total war may spell disaster.
The first task of the President’s Command Staff should be to prepare a general statement of over-all national strategy. The goal of this national strategy will be to gain the aims of war with the least drain on our resources—human and material.
If the National Staff is to function, it must have knowledge of all significant political, military, economic, and propaganda activities. Since the forces of international power are thoroughly intertwined with each other in a total war, there will be no such thing as a purely military (political, economic) action. Every significant military action or movement affects political, and economic questions. These, in turn, are modified by actions undertaken in the other fields.
In Washington today the departments and agencies having charge of a particular field of endeavor often appear to act as if the interest of other departments did not exist. Thus we are still plagued with military strategies, political maneuvers, psychological and economic programs, designed on a narrow basis rather than in accordance with the national need.
The Joint Staff Function
Only when a National Staff provides a total strategic concept can our overseas commanders receive the integrated guidance they need. How will the creation of a National Staff Group affect the wartime role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? The guidance issued the theater commander must come from a single source, and the JCS remains the logical organization for the issuance of this guidance. The instructions issued to the overseas theater commander must be comprehensive in nature, involving both the military and non-military aspects of his mission. Yet the Joint Staff itself is competent to originate only the military element of these instructions.
The primary task of the JCS in war is to provide the concise military directions which the theater commander must have if his activities are to support a truly global military strategy. At the same time, the JCS must act as the national command post through which instructions originating in other departments or agencies are transmitted to the theater commander in a single package. If a National Staff were created, its influence upon the activities undertaken in the various overseas commands would be expressed through the JCS—the national wartime command post. This would not relieve the JCS of their essential responsibility for quarterbacking all the military campaigns of the war and providing their theater commanders with the guidance required for them to do their job. Such a development would assist our military chieftains by relieving them of headaches that belong elsewhere.
At the present time, .the JCS is not fully designed to perform even its military function, let alone act as a national command post. The JCS still operates as a triumvirate on top of three almost autonomous military services. Total war will require that we weld together our land, sea, and air operations into the framework of a single military strategy with which to merge our political, psychological, and economic campaigns. Yet at the very top of our military structure the concept of joint direction rather than unified command of our armed forces prevents the formation of a unified military strategy.
The dangers in a triple-headed military command have been apparent to many. The creation of the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Staffs was a partial attempt to correct this deficiency in our highest military echelon. It does not, however, provide for unified wartime command.
Actually, such a de facto mechanism existed during World War II when General Marshall—working in close concert with Admiral Leahy—was for all intents and purposes the authoritative, though unofficial, Chief of Staff to the President for all of our Armed Forces. As part of our preparation for total war, we must make provisions for changing the status of the Chairman of the Joint Staff from that of a peacetime nonvoting member of the Staff to its recognized wartime Chief. By this device, we will be assured of having a unified military strategy which can be coordinated at the National Staff level with the political, economic, and psychological campaigns devised by other departments of the government.
These arrangements will enable the theater commander to receive a comprehensive set of marching orders. Among these the designation of theater boundaries is only the first step in defining a commander’s responsibilities. Assignment of an area establishes a central point for the conduct of all national activities within given geographical bounds. It provides coalescence within the theater of both the military and non-military operations which will be underway during total war. For some actions the theater commander will be directly responsible; for others he will be in a position of a monitor, since certain activities taking place in his sphere of responsibility will be global in nature. Others such as the mounting of an invasion may start in his area and pass ultimately to another theater command. A third class of activities might take place exclusively in his own region but have dynamic effects in another region—witness the impact of the Nazi defeat on Japan.
For all these reasons, the guidance furnished the theater commander from Washington must be more specific in character than that which is normally provided by the present theater commander concept. It all must come to him as a coordinated package. No military instructions should be issued to him without parallel and accompanying instructions for dealing with the political, economic, and psychological consequences of a given military operation. The same applies to political and psychological and economic instructions, which might have an influence on the theater commander’s military campaign, developed by other Washington departments. Although the theater commander will retain full responsibility for the execution of these non-military instructions, he will delegate most of these operations into the hands of top-flight assistants provided by civilian agencies of the government.
Conclusions
The truth of the matter is that the overseas theater commander wears many hats. He is, in fact, more than a soldier—he is also a statesman, an economist, and a psychologist. The closest approximation to him was the Roman Pro-Consul. In a total war our overseas military commander has imposed upon him responsibilities and obligations far vaster than Caesar did in subduing and governing Gaul. The theater commander has a role which far transcends his military obligations to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is, in fact, a representative of the President and carries overseas a full projection of the executive function of the United States government.
It is time to recognize the reality of our overseas commander’s role, to abandon the narrow concept of the theater commander now taught in our Service schools, and to provide in time of peace for those national command arrangements which will permit the most effective conduct of total war.
Two steps are needed. We must create now a national staff to assist the President in the command and coordination of our total foreign affairs program. This staff must also be designed to help formulate and supervise the execution of a total national strategy in time of war. The JCS will issue the guidance derived from the National Staff to our far-flung commanders overseas. Armed with such timely coordinated national instructions, our Theater Commanders may be able to forge the framework of peace on the anvil of total war.