Battle Ready

by Tom Clancy

  The mood back in the United States has been deeply frustrating, and that is: We have to make our force presence in the world one hundred percent safe for our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. And if one soldier, sailor, air-man, or Marine is injured or lost to a terrorist activity, then we have to find somebody on our side to blame for it.

  I can’t think of a more dysfunctional way to run military operations.

  The job of implementing Downing Commission findings consumed much of Zinni’s time during the next year—and after.

  IN THE MEANTIME, CENTCOM was a beehive of activity.

  Containing Iraq was always a primary order of business; several flare-ups with Saddam after the Gulf War had required military responses. Usually these occurred while enforcing the no-fly and no-drive zones in Iraq. Iraqi tankers, however, were also smuggling sanction-busting oil down the gulf. U.S. Maritime Intercept Operations had grabbed a number of smugglers; but most had proved very hard to stop; they avoided American naval patrols by using Iranian territorial waters (and paying tolls to the Iranians).

  The command had continued the longtime U.S. containment policy toward Iran (the other regional hegemon); and tensions there remained high. U.S. naval forces in the Gulf daily confronted hostile and aggressive Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard naval forces; their harassments and provocations could easily have sparked major confrontations.

  The Gulf was not the only hot spot. There were others in East Africa and Southwest Asia. And the forever-crisis between Israelis and Palestinians impacted every country in the region, though it was not itself in CENTCOM’s AOR. The command constantly had to reevaluate and adapt itself to ever-changing realities and challenges.

  After the Gulf War, Marine General Joe Hoar, the CENTCOM CINC who followed General Norman Schwarzkopf, launched a major effort to create strong relationships between the U.S. and friendly nations in the region; and built a solid foundation for military cooperation.

  General Peay added to this foundation by enhancing America’s force presence in the region. This had to be done carefully; basing U.S. military forces there jarred local sensitivities. He skirted that problem by structuring a force that combined prepositioned equipment and rotational units,71 spreading the forces throughout the Gulf area, using joint facilities to conduct operations,72 and placing a select few headquarters of subordinate commands in the region to run day-to-day operations. These actions demonstrated America’s intent to share the military burden and gain local cooperation and support for its military missions . . . while not building U.S. bases in the region or basing dedicated forces there. As an added benefit, they allowed flexibility in the size and composition of U.S. forces.

  These new directions created far greater capabilities for meeting the emerging challenges in this vital area of the world. Tony Zinni was the beneficiary of the innovative and tireless work of Generals Hoar and Peay.

  FROM HIS first day on the job, Zinni got himself up to speed militarily by immersing himself in briefings, intelligence reports, and conversations with commanders who had experience in the region. But he knew this was not enough. There was nothing like being there. He already knew how important it was to see a place firsthand, and to spend enough time there to build critical relationships.

  General Peay made frequent trips to the region. While he was away, Zinni stayed behind, keeping the home fires burning, as the nature of his job dictated (the CINC goes forward and the DCINC stays back). Yet each time Peay returned, his increased insight and wisdom amazed Zinni. You can’t acquire such things from briefings and readings at headquarters.

  Several months after his arrival at CENTCOM, Zinni at last made a trip to the region. His primary orientation was to check out the forces—what were out there, what they were doing, seeing them on the ground, getting briefs. But he also visited senior military commanders and national leaders.

  During his visit, he attended a number of social events with Arabs . . . he would attend many others over the next years. People in that part of the world don’t sharply distinguish business from social.

  Zinni:

  In the Arab world, they conduct business far more casually than we do at home—or in Europe, the Pacific, and other places where I’d served. In America or Europe, the meetings are structured. There’s a timetable and an agenda. You limit small talk—and feel guilty when you indulge in it. You tick off items that must be covered. And once they’re covered, you instantly move on.

  That’s not the way Arabs like to do business. They don’t jump directly into the “big issues”; they prefer a far more casual mix . . . and not because they don’t understand the issues. Rather, it’s the way they connect and take the cut of a man. Personal relations and trust built out of friendship are more important than just signing paper agreements. They’ll sit around a room and drink coffee, eat some nice food, laugh a little, and have an easygoing conversation about their families, hunting, the weather, or anything else that doesn’t seem terribly important. In time, they’ll subtly work their way toward the business at hand and deal with it. But don’t try to rush them.

  When Westerners have tried that—even CINCs—it’s led to problems.

  Our way of conducting business just doesn’t work there. When we try it, we’re not well received. Yet politeness, graciousness, and hospitality are so inbred in Arabs that we may not recognize that they’ve turned off to us. They will always be polite to guests. Hospitality is more than just a nice civility in that part of the world; it’s a duty and obligation. To be inhospitable or impolite is a sin. On the other hand, they really take to people who like their kind of personal interaction. But doing that right is truly an art.

  An art I’ve always enjoyed practicing.

  It’s interesting to watch Washington insiders out there dealing with Arabs. In Washington, everyone is comfortable with formality. That’s how they do business. It goes with the pin-striped suits.

  During one of our crises with Saddam Hussein, Secretary Cohen and I went to several countries in the region to obtain permission to bomb Iraq. Okay, our way of doing things: You hand them the paper and they read the fine print and sign on the dotted line. No problem. . . . Only, that’s not how Arabs operate. They don’t directly tell you yes or no. They have ways of signaling their intention, but the signals aren’t clear unless you understand them.

  In one country, Secretary Cohen pressed and pressed and he got nowhere; they didn’t want to give an answer. But as we were leaving, they said, “You must always know we are your friends.”

  After we walked out, Cohen said, “Did we get an answer?”

  “Yes, we did,” I said. “We can do it.”

  “I didn’t hear that.”

  “Yes, in the end when they told you they’d always be our friends, that was their answer. That meant they were telling you to go ahead and do it. Don’t make an issue of it.”

  In another country, we were told, “Please, don’t ask us to do this.”

  This really meant: “Do what you’ve gotta do. No one’s going to interfere. But don’t ask us the question that we don’t want to answer, either way.”

  Americans are of course always looking for the hard-and-fast no-yes.

  In many other cultures, such as the Israelis’, people are frank, blunt, and to the point; and they see anything less than that as a sign of less than full friendship. With good friends, you should be that honest and open. You’re only polite to people you’re not close to or don’t like.

  Each culture ticks differently. It isn’t that the basic values are different, it’s that there are cultural subtleties and cultural sensitivities that you really need to understand.

  Early in 1997, General Peay was approaching the end of his tour as CINC. Though it was customary to alternate the job between Army and Marines, Zinni did not expect to be offered the job. No one ever before had risen from the DCINC position at CENTCOM to become commander. So Zinni was knocked off his feet when General Krulak told him he was nominating him
as General Peay’s successor. . . . It was a surprise; yet there was no job in the world Zinni would rather have had. It was the part of the world where his fighting experience, cultural experience, personal connections, and knowledge could be best used by his country.

  But first a big obstacle had to be passed.

  Zinni was informed that General Shalikashvilli, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, opposed his nomination, supporting instead his good friend Butch Neal (whose credentials for the job were superb), on the grounds that Zinni was far too “outspoken” and could not be “controlled.” Zinni had a hard time understanding the chairman’s objections (they had worked well together during Operation Provide Comfort), but he took a stoic approach to the situation: If the chairman didn’t support his nomination, it wouldn’t go through. Live with it.

  That meant his career was effectively over. He told his wife to make quick retirement plans; he took the transition course for retiring military personnel; they bought property in Virginia, and talked to architects and contractors about building their retirement home.

  General Krulak and the Secretary of the Navy, John Dalton, submitted both names, Zinni’s and Neal’s. Zinni was grateful, but convinced it wouldn’t matter. He went through what seemed to be a pro forma interview with the Secretary of Defense, Bill Cohen, and waited for the inevitable moment when he would call Butch Neal with his congratulations.

  A few weeks later, Zinni got hit with another stunner: Secretary Cohen called to tell him he was the administration’s pick for CINC of CENTCOM; his nomination had been forwarded to the Senate for approval.

  Tony Zinni:

  After getting over the shock, I set about gathering advice about the emerging challenges of the command and its future direction in the dynamic environment we faced in our AOR. In time I expected these ideas would contribute to a new CENTCOM strategy for our region; I had thoughts on that score that I wanted to develop.

  Of all the advice I received, three people—Joe Hoar, Binnie Peay, and Ed Fugit—gave me the wisest counsel.

  General Hoar emphasized relationships. “In that part of the world, personal relationships are often more important than formal agreements,” he told me. “Remember our days as advisers in Vietnam. There we knew the value of building trust and friendship.”

  The outgoing CINC’s political adviser (POLAD) reinforced General Hoar. Ed Fugit, an experienced diplomat and deeply familiar with our region, advised me to connect personally with both the leaders and the people. “But you can take that even farther,” he continued, “by showing interest in their culture and society. Do that and you build trust and confidence.”

  I warmed to this approach. Too often we get caught up in crises, rushing around with requests, programs, and policy positions, without taking the time to listen to the concerns of the people who have to live with our decisions.

  “And choose your POLAD well,” he concluded. “It’s the most important personnel decision you’ll make.” He was right; and I had the good fortune to select as my POLAD Larry Pope, a former ambassador, Arabic speaker, and brilliant diplomat . . . and my right hand for the next three years.

  General Peay’s advice came on the final day of his command. “Be your own man,” he told me, “and don’t feel obliged to follow my strategy. The AOR is dynamic. You’ll have to reevaluate and update the command’s strategy and policies. You must take a fresh look, as all new CINCs should, and put your own personal touch on our tasks.”

  I was grateful for his encouragement . . . and his blessing. Binnie Peay had become a friend and mentor. He had sought my input on every issue, trusted me to make critical decisions, and left me with a command in excellent condition to meet the many crises and threats we later had to face. His focus on building our war-fighting capabilities is still paying off.

  ON AUGUST 13, 1997, I became the sixth commander in chief of the United States Central Command.

  STRATEGY, POLITICS, AND THE NEW AMERICAN EMPIRE

  Tom Clancy: Tony Zinni will take the rest of the chapter.

  My immediate priority as CINC was to reshape our strategy in the light of our ever-changing AOR and the emerging global strategy of the Clinton administration. We needed a structure, a horizon, and goals to meet the many challenges in this most risky part of the world. Without these, our day-to-day work would have no focus.

  CENTCOM had twenty countries in its AOR (soon to be twenty-five) —a diverse region that spanned an area from East Africa through the Middle East to Southwest and Central Asia and into the Indian Ocean. Yet the command’s near-total focus was on the Persian Gulf and our long-standing problems with Iran and Iraq—our major threats in the region. We were operating under a national security strategy called “Dual Containment,” whose objective was to protect Gulf energy resources, contain both Iraq and Iran, and maintain local stability. We were the only unified command with two major “theater of war” requirements (as we say in the military): fight Iraq, or fight Iran.

  These threats were not about to go away. Yet other parts of the AOR were heating up, requiring us to broaden our focus beyond the Gulf States.

  Weapons of mass destruction were proliferating all through the region. The Iraqis had used them in the ’80s. The Iranians were acquiring them. Pakistan and India were in serious conflict over Kashmir and tossing ever louder threats at each other (Pakistan was in CENTCOM’s AOR; India was in PACOM’s); our relationship with Pakistan had soured for all sorts of political reasons; and both countries were nuclear powers.

  Afghanistan was a catastrophe.

  East Africa—Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia—were trouble spots.

  Terrorist activity was picking up.

  We’d had little recent contact with Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Somalia. Developing relationships with Yemen, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and the Seychelles required new engagement programs. Long-standing relationships with Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman had to be maintained and strengthened. We had to rebuild our shaky relations with Pakistan. And a little later, most of the Muslim states of Central Asia that had split off from the Soviet Union—Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan—were added to CENTCOM’s AOR. Each had its own special problems (including a civil war in Tajikistan).

  CENTCOM found itself in a bubbling pot of crises from one end to the other. We had to develop a CENTCOM strategy to handle them . . . without necessarily using military force—or else only as a last resort. We needed to help build stability in this troubled region, in my view, or we would pay the price in the long run.

  A regional conference was scheduled at CENTCOM headquarters for early 1998, and I wanted to firm up the strategy by then.

  We were not approaching this process with a blank slate. Since ours was probably the most volatile region in the world, we were starting with thirteen preexisting war plans, an exceptionally large number for a unified command. These come out of taskings from the Secretary of Defense to prepare to counter either a specific threat or sometimes more generic situations, like what we call “consequence management.” Let’s say somebody explodes a nuclear device or uses other WMD. We had operational plans to police up these situations. Other plans dealt with Iraq or Iran. Others were aimed at generic missions such as “keeping the Gulf open for the free flow of oil.” And so on. Each plan had a real possibility of execution, given the nature of the region.

  These plans gave us a war-fighting orientation that we were well postured to deal with, thanks to the work of General Peay. We now needed to expand and broaden the strategy beyond that dimension.

  In order to get a better fix on all the issues, I talked first to my commanders, then sought input from friendly leaders of the nations in our AOR and from U.S. diplomats with expertise in the area, to ensure that we were all working in sync.

  For the bigger picture, we turned to President Clinton’s emerging National Security Strategy, with its stress on engagement
and multilateral-ism. The military implementation of this strategy is the job of the Secretary of Defense, whose National Military Strategy looks at the National Security Strategy from a specifically military point of view. Every four years, the Secretary of Defense presents to Congress and the President what is called “the Quadrennial Defense Review,” which offers still more specifics about how the military side of defense is going to execute the National Security Strategy. It directs the Unified Commands to build new strategies for our assigned regions based on these concepts. The QDR directed the CINCs to “shape, respond, and prepare.” This reflected not only the war-fighting responsibilities (respond, prepare), but the new charge to “shape” our areas of responsibility.

  The Secretary of Defense also directed the CINCs to prepare Theater Engagement Plans for our AORs. This is our strategy for engaging with the countries with whom we have relations on a day-to-day basis. Specifically, it is our plan for helping friendly countries build their militaries, for cultivating and building coalitions for security cooperation, and for welding together viable multilateral teams to deal collectively with the chronic problems we face and to better stabilize the region. In other words, it is the “friendly” side of our overall strategy.

  THE FIRST problem CENTCOM had to fix was the near-total focus on the Persian Gulf. To that end, I decided to “subregionalize” our strategy, by breaking the AOR into four subregions—East Africa, the Persian Gulf, Central and Southwest Asia, and Egypt and Jordan—and developing a strategy and programs for each. This approach would ensure that our Gulf-centric tendency did not detract from the programs and relationships we developed in other areas. Though I knew this would not be a clean separation—many interests overlapped—I felt we could accommodate that.