This html article is produced from an uncorrected text file through optical character recognition. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected. Artifacts of the scans are misspellings, out-of-context footnotes and sidebars, and other inconsistencies. Adjacent to each text file is a PDF of the article, which accurately and fully conveys the content as it appeared in the issue. The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. We are working now to provide clean text files for the entire collection.
The Development of the Base Force: 1989-1992
Lorna S. Jaffe. Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1993. 60 pp. Notes. $4.50. Order from U.S. Government Printing Office, Mail Stop: SSOP, Washington, D.C. 20402-9328.
Reviewed by Dr. Dov S. Zakheim
Nearly 40 years ago, the distinguished historian Fritz Stern observed “the impossibility of attaining absolute truth heightens the historian’s responsibility. His judgment permeates his work, and with his judgment enter his bias, his aspirations, and threaten to distort the work of reconstruction.”' Writing for the Joint Historical Office, any historian evaluating the past performance of the Joint Staff would be confronted by the challenge of suppressing all-too-natural tendencies toward “his bias, his aspirations” when formulating his judgments. To analyze recent Joint Staff history, and the performance of a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) to whom the historian’s office—and, therefore, the historian—ultimately must answer, poses a greater challenge still. Unfortunately, Dr. Jaffe does not fully succeed in overcoming the difficulties in which the circumstances of her office have placed her.
The Development of the Base Force is more of an encomium to the then-incumbent CJCS, General Colin L. Powell, and to his former Director of Planning, Lieutenant General George L. Butler, U.S. Air Force, than a true history. Like the annales of Roman court historians, it presents General Powell and his senior assistants in the most glowing of terms while painting a less than flattering picture of some of the Joint Staff’s bureaucratic antagonists—notably the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). It is remarkable indeed that, as Dr. Jaffe claims on page 14, in November 1989 General Powell already was predicting “the transformation of the Soviet Union into a federation or commonwealth . . . the demise of both the Warsaw Pact and the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, the reunification of Germany, and the consequent recasting of NATO.” Even more spectacular was General Butler’s conclusion 18 months earlier, in May 1988, that “the Cold War was over, communism had failed, and the world was witnessing a second Russian revolution.” (page 8). To put these proph-
esies in perspective, it should be noted that West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s November 1989 ten-point proposal for the reunification of Germany was summarily rejected by the Soviets a few weeks later. Also, in his Animal Report to the President and the Congress, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney observed in January 1990 that “Soviet policy declarations reflect changes in Soviet intentions, but they are only just beginning to be implemented and are still relatively easy to reverse.” Although, as Dr. Jaffe points out. Secretary Cheney was relatively cautious about changes in the USSR, he reflected a general consensus within the Pentagon that went unchallenged until about mid-1990. Indeed, to the extent that there were calls for a more imaginative U.S. policy, they came not from within the military, but from Congress, the think tanks, and the press.
Generals Powell and Butler most certainly might have held the opinions that Dr. Jaffe attributes to them. Both are capable men; General Powell is more than capable; he has set the standard for his successors to emulate. Being capable is not being prophetic or visionary; however, and it is not enough for Dr. Jaffe repeatedly to refer to General Powell’s “strategic vision” as if it were some mantra.
There is a striking absence of almost any other source of new thinking about the future of the U.S. military in a post- Cold War world. For example. Dr. Jaffe does not mention Discriminate Deterrence, the 1987 report of the Commission on Integrated Long-Range Strategy (co-sponsored by the Department of Defense and the National Security Council), which emphasized the changing security environment and asserted that “we should emphasize a wider range of contingencies than the two extreme threats that dominated our alliance policy and force planning”—namely, an all-out nuclear attack or a war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The single exception to her silence about innovative thought outside the Joint Staff is Senator Sam Nunn, whom she describes as having had a “strategic vision" as well. However, Dr. Jaffe does not describe his views or how they coincided with or differed from those of General Powell. Instead, Senator Nunn is portrayed as the embodiment of the sort of congressional impatience that prompted General Powell to take the lead in developing his Base Force.
Dr. Jaffe asserts that General Powell formulated his vision while still commander of Forces Command (ForsCom), and that, supported by a dedicated staff, he conceived the Base Force concept once he became CJCS. Faced with obtuse bureaucratic opposition from the Office of the Secretary of Defense—notably Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wol- fowitz—and from his own service chiefs—particularly Admiral Carlisle Trost—General Powell used the new powers granted him by the Goldwater-Nichols Act to do an “end run” on the services and convince Secretary Cheney, President GeorgeBush, and ultimately even Mr. Wolfowitz to support his concept.
115
To buttress her thesis. Dr. Jaffe cites numerous internal Joint Staff memoranda, as well as interviews with various Joint Staff and OSD personnel. At no time, however, does she evaluate the credibility of her sources or provide direct attribution for her assertions so that the reader might do so. Thus, she asserts that while at ForsCom, “General Powell reached conclusions about the reductions that would be necessary in an era of constrained forces,” (page 12) but does not cite anyone as her source. Similarly, she asserts that Dick Cheney “believed not only that the Chairman’s view of the future was too optimistic but that it did not provide sufficient justification for maintaining recommended force levels” (page 35) but does not cite Secretary Cheney or anyone else as a source. How then did Dr. Jaffe determine what he believed? Indeed, Mr. Cheney was not interviewed at all for this study, nor was Under Secretary of Defense for Program Appraisal & Evaluation David Chu, from whom programming for the Base Force allegedly was wrested (page 43). Other than a telephone conversation with Army Chief of Staff General Carl Vuono, none of the service chiefs or their principal deputies were interviewed; however. Dr. Jaffe makes repeated references to their stubborn opposition to the Base Force proposal. Even when Dr. Jaffe cites interviews, she bunches them into groups, so that the reader cannot readily identify the source of any particular assertion. Moreover, her technique of citing footnotes only at the end of paragraphs, some of them rather long and filled with numerous and often contentious assertions, leaves the reader confused as to just which assertions her notes refer.
By 1992, General Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney were all smiles in front of Congress. But a few years earlier, they were divided on a number of issues.
It would also have been useful to the reader if Dr. Jaffe had examined more closely the motives of those who opposed General Powell’s initiatives, as well as the bases for any reversals in their positions that subsequently occurred. For example. Dr. Jaffe tends to write off service opposition as merely a preoccupation with programs. Was that the whole story? She implies that General Vuono finally accepted the Base Force when General Powell agreed to increase his proposal for active Army divisions from 10 to 12 (pages 43-44). On the other hand, she states that Commandant of the Marine Corps General A1 Gray continued to resist General Powell’s plans although General Powell had likewise conceded to the Marine Corps a higher force level than he preferred (page 38). Why was General Gray so stubborn? The reader is left to wonder.
Similarly, it would be interesting to know why exactly Mr. Wolfowitz, after insisting that force planning account for a Soviet threat to southwest Asia, changed his mind and accepted General Powell’s more regionally oriented view of threats to U.S. interests. Dr. Jaffe notes that, after his conversion, Mr. Wolfowitz assigned his staff to examine the implications to strategy and force planning. She cites as the principal figure in this effort retired Army Lieutenant General Dale Vesser, Assistant Deputy Under Secretary for Resources and Plans, who was the Joint Staffs former Director of Planning (page 31). Such assignments do not happen accidentally; often, they are lobbied for. Did General Vesser seek the job? Did the Joint Staff help him get it? Was he chosen precisely because of his ties to the Joint Staff? Was General Vesser instrumental in converting Mr. Wolfowitz? What was the exact reason for the unusual alliance between Secretary Cheney’s Policy Office and the Joint Staff on an issue that reversed their roles—the Policy Office examining strategy and the Joint Staff formulating policy? Dr. Jaffe gives the reader no help.
Finally, what of the National Security Council and the State Department? These agencies are bit players in the story, appearing near the culmination of General Powell’s effort. General Brent Scowcroft, the President’s national security adviser, is mentioned but once on page 36; Secretary of State James Baker, the President’s alter ego, goes unmentioned. In an administration that was
116
noted for the collegiality of its top for- eign policy officials, the absence of General Scowcroft and Secretary Baker from earlier stages of the process is surprising, to say the least, and deserving of some explanation. None is forthcoming.
It is unfortunate that Dr. Jaffe passed up the opportunity to employ her unique status within the Joint Staff and her access to Joint Staff documents and participants in this episode to produce a more complete case study of this very special example of bureaucratic politics. Future students and historians of the U.S. military response to the overwhelming international political and military changes of the late 1980s and early 1990s no doubt will find Dr. Jaffe’s monograph a useful guidepost for their research. Nevertheless, because it is a chronicle written solely from the Joint Staff’s viewpoint, it is no more than a guidepost. The full story has yet to be written.
‘Fritz Stem, “Introduction,” in Fritz Stem, ed., The Varities of History (Cleveland, OH: Meridian, 1956), p. 26.
A former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Dr. Zakheim is the chief executive officer of SPC International, an adjunct scholar of the Heritage Foundation, and a senior associate of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Shield of the Republic:
The U.S. Navy in an Era of Cold War and Violent Peace:
Volume I, 1945-1962.
Michael T. Isenberg. New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1993. 928 pp. Bib. Ind. Maps. Notes. Photos. $35.00 ($31.50).
Reviewed by Eric Grove
This is a very long book, unnecessarily long. Of course, there is much to be said about the story of the postwar U.S. Navy. There is a need for a proper scholarly survey that explains in detail the interplay of technology, politics, and strategy that makes up the history of the most important fleet of the period since 1945.
It would be nice to say that the major tome of Dr. Michael Isenberg, an asso
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE (R. D. WARD)
ciate professor of history at the U.S. Naval Academy, fills that gap. It is clearly the product of an enormous research effort—the source notes alone take up 87 pages. He has chosen a broad canvas for his study, and devotes considerable attention to areas such as education and training and the treatment of women and racial minorities by the Navy. These long chapters undoubtedly are the main strength of the book and, for their sake alone, the book is worthy of purchase.
However, the very comprehensiveness of these accounts taken separately from the overall span of the work bring us to the book’s first serious overall flaw. Professor Isenberg cannot resist going off on tangents; he gives his readers long historical introductions to all the subjects he surveys. The chapter on racial minorities is a complete history of their treatment in the Navy going back to the American Revolution. Perhaps, the most extreme example of this approach is the chapter on Admiral Arleigh Burke’s tenure as Chief of Naval Operations in which no less than 13 pages are devoted to the admiral’s career before 1945! Such background is not totally irrelevant, but it blurs the focus of the overall study.
The next problem is the author’s style. He writes in a strange, “salty” form of English that grates after a only a few pages and becomes positively infuriating after almost a thousand. This is not just a problem of American versus British forms of the language. There are many sentences like: “In fact, Ike was thoroughly tired of the nattering among his Joint Chiefs and their obvious reluctance to play team ball.” Such a style may be suitable for a Naval Academy classroom, but it will frustrate many readers—in the United States and elsewhere—who seek a serious analysis of the problems of coordinating interservice strategy and policy in the mid-1950s. Professor Isenberg’s arguments are persistently weakened by unnecessary hyperbole and colloquialism. He clearly needed an editor with sharper scissors. Professor Isenberg is a retired naval officer, which gives his “old sea dog” style more legitimacy than some might think; however, the style detracts from the book’s intellectual weight and adds still further to its physical obesity.
Proceedings/ April 1994
The content of the book is generally sound as far as it goes but, given the problems outlined above, it would be surprising if the analytical wood was not sometimes hard to distinguish from the narrative trees. Detail that, at best, is partially relevant squeezes out that which should have been included. For example, the reader looking forward to a treatment of the Sixth Fleet’s leaning on the Anglo- French task force off Suez in 1956 will find the account of the former’s activities tails off unsatisfyingly after the description of the Fleet’s evacuation operations. The discussion of the Lebanon landings in 1958 also needs more on what the operation’s actual objectives if it is to make complete sense to the reader.
The author’s use of sources is slightly worrisome; there is rather too much emphasis placed on ephemeral journalism, oral history, and secondary sources as compared to basic documentary research. Even when sources are cited, they are sometimes misused. Professor Isenberg seems to have read my book Vanguard to Trident (Naval Institute Press, 1987), which appears a number of times in his footnotes, but too much of his rather weak commentary on British naval policy reflects at best a misunderstanding of what I wrote. In general. Professor Isenberg reveals only a partial understanding of the evolution of the U.S. Navy’s greatest ally in the period he reviews.
The key to 20th century naval history is a good grasp of technology and strategy and this is not as firm here as it ought to be. The author’s critique of the battleship’s role and traditional Mahanian thinking is an annoyingly superficial reflection of recent modish critiques of the importance of both. Later on, he skirts over important technical facts with little or no analysis in depth. Because of an apparently insufficient grasp of the facts in these areas, there are statements about such issues as the reactivation of reserve ships and the types of aircraft used by aircraft carriers that are unhelpful at best and misleading at worst. Crucial policy initiatives—such as the Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization program—are skimmed over with no detail as to their size, evolution, and technical logic. It is here that the author’s undisciplined style and approach has its most serious impact.
All this said, there is much to praise in this magnum opus, which clearly is the fruit of much industry and time. As a reference work and commentary on the Cold War-era U.S. Navy, it is an essential component of any naval library. Some of its narrative is excellent—including the description of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis with which it concludes.
Nevertheless, for all its physical size and weight. Shield of the Republic does
not do full justice to its subject. Having plowed through the whole tome at great length, my advice to readers is to buy the book and then put it on the shelf to be dipped into on occasion. Do not attempt to read the whole thing continuously. To the author, I give full marks for effort but recommend that he do three things before he completes Volume Two: Get a skilled editor; approach a more technically and strategically minded U.S. expert for comment; and, finally and most important, reconsider his writing style. He might then produce a great book, rather than merely an important but frustrating one.
Eric Grove is Lecturer in International Politics and Deputy Director of the Centre for Security Studies at the University of Hull. He is a well-known naval analyst and historian and the author of Vanguard to Trident (Naval Institute Press, 1987), the standard account of post-1945 British naval policy.
A History of Warfare
John Keegan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. 392 pp. Bib. Ind. Maps. Notes.
Photos. $27.50 ($24.75).
Reviewed by Rear Admiral W. J.
Holland, Jr., U.S. Navy (Retired)
It is easier to recite some of the things this book is not than to describe clearly what it is. It is not a history in the sense of a recitation of events. It is not for beginners; the more one knows about military history before one reads A History of Warfare, the more one will appreciate it. It is not easy reading. It most certainly is a rich and sophisticated feast, and as such it is not easily digested. Nevertheless, the careful reader will be rewarded with unique and profound insights wrapped in a fascinating and literate narrative. A History of Warfare is likely to be the most important book about war. culture, and change since Bernard Brodie. Herman Kahn, and Albert Wohlstetter created the underpinnings of the Cold War’s deterrence doctrines.
Most military historians are content to be tale bearers. Too few of them care about the technical details that are vital when discussing innovation and change. John Keegan’s comprehension and explanation of the multiplicity of factors that go into military improvements has grown with each of his books. Here, that appreciation is impressive. Mr. Keegan understands the influences and practices of technology and appreciates the ingredients necessary to effect change. Using many examples from the earliest ages, he demonstrates that there are no single causes or magic solutions, but multiple ingredients in any development. Because he understands the mechanics. Mr. Kee
gan can explain—not just recite—the changes in organizations and processes that must accompany technical changes in order to make them useful.
John Keegan brings an engineer’s eye to history as well as a poet’s tongue, and these attributes alone make the book a treasure. He demonstrates how invention has driven tactics and tactics strategy since the earliest ages—not the other way around, as some political scientists might like to have it. He also again demonstrates his unique ability to describe military mores and culture—here, delivering a broad narrative of their generation, development, and variations. He shows how the military culture influences and reacts with that of the world around it and the various outcomes created by this interaction. Early on, he declares his belief that, “culture is as powerful a force as politics in the choice of military means and often more likely to prevail than political or military logic.”
Mr. Keegan repeatedly attacks General Karl von Clausewitz as his counterpoint, arguing that “. . . to perceive war as the continuation of politics .... [is] incomplete, parochial and ultimately misleading." He makes too much of Clausewitz’s dictums, however, ascribing to him a concreteness and claim to infallibility which the Prussian soldier did not make for himself. Nevertheless. Mr. Keegan’s underlying thesis about warfare in the future has vast weight and relevancy, unlike the arguments of the current Fourth Generation Warfare school, which declare that the end of interstate war is at hand.
Most survey military histories start with the Peloponnesian Wars, but here the Greeks don’t arrive until page 254. The temptation to skip over such dreary details as the Easter Islanders is overpowering. Mr. Keegan's announced themes do not offer good guideposts to his real points for professional officers— which remain disguised until the last pages. Getting there requires a certain amount of faith that the points will become clear and a certain amount of endurance to plow on through long sentences. But press on! All of this provides the foundation for his lessons—lessons needed for the new world order, especially in peacekeeping and peacemaking operations—which become clear in the last paragraph.
This book is bound to be quoted more often than read. This will be unfortunate because Keegan’s messages are done a profound disservice when reduced to one- liners. To be content with citations will be like nibbling no more than the antipasto at a great Italian restaurant.
117
Admiral Holland is the president of the Education Foundation of the Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association.