by Tom Clancy
I was particularly impressed with our CINC, General Jack Galvin, USA — probably the finest soldier-statesman I’ve known… the best we’ve had since George Marshall. Though his talents and accomplishments never got the recognition they deserved (they were probably lost in the rush of events like the Gulf War), if those events had not turned out as they did, he would have had the kind of recognition and stature Marshall enjoys. His vision, his depth of strategic understanding, his insightfulness, his statesmanship, his military competence, and his exceptional intellect were unsurpassed among CINCs I’ve known. Just as with Marshall, when you were around him, you sensed you were in the presence of somebody who’s really great.
Galvin was a soldier’s soldier, older than his peers. An enlisted medic in the Second World War, he had worked his way up through the ranks. When I got to Europe, he had been the CINCEUR for nine years, a long time.
Our deputy CINC was General Jim McCarthy, USAF. McCarthy’s a brilliant, high-energy guy, with exceptional organizational skills — qualities I’ve always admired. But I especially admired his openness… he was never set in his ways. He never met a new idea he didn’t like; they were all worth pursuing… even the wildest schemes would bring an open response: “Well, let’s think about that,” he’d say. “Let’s talk about it.”
The other reason he impressed me: He was the first true joint officer I met. The DCINC is a full general, a four-star, the same rank as the CINC. Since CINCEUR is a full-time, all-consuming job, the DCINC runs EUCOM. This puts a lot of distance between him and a lowly Marine brigadier general. But Jim McCarthy never paid the slightest notice to that distance. He looked at you and not the uniform you wore or the badge of rank on your collar. Air Force officers can be parochial (so can Marines and officers of all the other services), or, worse, hung up on “Air Power Doctrine” (bombing is the war-winning strategy par excellence), but McCarthy was never caught up in that kind of stuff. He was always totally open to all the possibilities and capabilities all the services could contribute. He took what you had to offer, regardless of your service. I learned a lot about being a general officer from him.
Our chief of staff was Lieutenant General Bob Chelberg, a very personable Army artillery officer, who, like McCarthy, had superior organizational skills.
The EUCOM staff was overflowing with strong personalities. They were like bumper cars, slamming into each other… challenging each other. Chelberg kept all these big egos working smoothly; he held the staff together. He also had a gift for picking talent, and for encouraging everybody. He made you eager to work for him on his team; and he paid attention to morale, to the troops. He knew we were working long hours; he and McCarthy glued us together socially and created a strong sense of unit camaraderie that was remarkable in a joint environment.
My immediate boss, the director of operations, was Rear Admiral Leighton Smith, USN — better known as “Snuffy.” Snuffy Smith was the embodiment of the positive spirit that kept us going. He brimmed over with energy and was intellectually brilliant, yet nobody was quicker to laugh; he kept us smiling with his humor and animation. At the same time, he demanded the highest degree of professionalism and commitment, and he set the example by demanding no less from himself. He would go on to earn four stars and become a CINC in NATO.
These four officers provided me with an incredible learning experience.
On the EUCOM staff, I was operating at a totally new level. I was no longer dealing with just Marine Corps operations. Almost from the moment I arrived, we were doing joint planning, executing joint missions, forming joint task forces; and we were kluging together Air Force, Navy, Army, Marine, and Special Operations units to do these missions.
These were the consummate pros in these areas. They knew everything there was to know about them… And in some cases we were plowing ground nobody had been into before.
Just watching them operate, watching them explore options and poke into new and untried ways, watching them encourage and apply innovative thinking and refuse to get bound up by old paradigms… all of these things really left a deep mark in me.
One example sticks hard in my memory: In the 1990-91 Gulf War, EUCOM was behind the opening of a second, air front, attacking Iraq out of Turkey. We would never have opened up that front if it hadn’t been for General McCarthy.
Some young USAFE majors had come up with the idea and put together the basic work. But CENTCOM didn’t seem that interested in it. And I thought for sure it would be pooh-poohed away. But McCarthy said, “No, let’s pursue this. Let’s see what these guys can do.” And he kept pressing until Schwarzkopf came around. The second front made a difference.
The operations shop is normally the part of a military staff that’s responsible for training, for exercises, for oversight on exercises, and for contingency planning. They also run the Op Center — the command center — and all its associated communications. We also had some unique duties. We ran the EUCOM flight detachment, for example — a few C-21 and C-12 VIP aircraft and helicopters.
When I arrived, the J-3 command center had just been renovated. It was in a big room, with computers and data centers, screens for videoconferencing, CNN, and such, and spaces for charts and maps from the areas and regions where ops were taking place. There we’d get updates and briefs and would then process the information. It was an information center, intelligence center, and reaction center all in one. And this was where we would fuse all the information together and plan our response when a CAT was stood up in times of crises. (The function of a Crisis Action Team — CAT — was to handle a short-term event. You’d stand it up, deal with the event, and then it would go down.)
In normal times, when not much was happening, we kept a simple watch in the command center, with a duty officer and a few people. But in time of crisis, when we stood up a CAT, the number could rise to ten or fifteen or more, and we’d man it full-time (in eight-hour watches) with people from different sections, like logistics, plans, and intelligence — keeping tabs, keeping things updated, communicating with the people operating in the field, processing information, developing briefs and options, issuing orders… all the things that planners and operators do. This put a great demand on the staff, as they had to do their regular jobs and man the CAT as well. The numbers also depended on the kind of team we needed for a particular mission. For example, some events — like humanitarian relief — required the participation of Civil Affairs elements.
If the crisis grew big enough, or if we had multiple crises, the numbers would be higher still. And if the crisis got really serious — like the Gulf War — the CAT would transform into a Battle Staff, and we’d man it with as many as fifty or sixty people. Before 1990, the EUCOM J-3 shop had never done this; but 1990 brought a state of constant crisis, and we had to dust off and set up all these procedures. That responsibility fell on me. As deputy J-3, one of my jobs was to be the director of the Crisis Action Team and the Battle Staff. The CAT was in being for the entire two years of my tour of duty. (The more elaborately manned Battle Staff was up for a significant part of that time.)
When I checked in, the Operations Directorate was already bustling with activity. We had just started what is called a NEO (Non-combatant Evacuation Operation) of our embassy in Liberia — Operation Sharp Edge. Ships were off the coast, and a CAT had been formed. Meanwhile, the embassy had decided to call off the evacuation and hold out, so we now had to support and protect them in that mess.
Liberia wasn’t an isolated case. All sorts of challenges were starting to show themselves on the other margins (meaning outside the NATO area).
But the NATO area also brought its share of headaches: The end of the Cold War brought with it a “peace dividend” drawdown of forces — not an easy transition to plan and implement. Some Cold War armaments, like chemical munitions, were no longer needed. That meant moving them out of Europe on to destruction sites on Johnston Island in the Pacific — a dangerous and delicate operation (which was called “Operation Steel
Box”). Arms reduction agreements with the former Soviet Union required inspections and verification of the destruction of weapons of mass destruction. We were involved. We were running the “Beirut Air Bridge” (security, supplies, and transport for our newly reestablished embassy in Lebanon had to be airlifted by Army helicopters from Cyprus). And General Galvin was beginning to push visionary ideas about starting military-to-military connections with the Russians and Eastern Europeans. The operations shop had a big part in managing all of these.
Very soon after I came to EUCOM, listening to the daily intelligence briefings, I began to get the sense that all this wasn’t going to be an aberration but a sign of the way things were going to be happening for a while. For instance, some of the really sharp intelligence analysts had begun to suggest that the Balkans might start coming apart. Though this tragedy was still months away, we would have been stupid not to start thinking about the possible consequences. As this and other impending crises began to show up on our radar screens, we came to realize that what we were getting into with, say, Operation Sharp Edge might not be all that unusual. The unusual might become the usual.
All this manifested itself in increased day-to-day tasks. The Crisis Action Team that had been put together for Operation Sharp Edge was left in place to deal with all of these ongoing crises and operational missions.
One of my first orders from Snuffy Smith was to get out and visit our components — the four service and the special operations subordinate commands. “Spend most of your time with the Army, Air Force, and Special Operations people,” he said. “You already know the Navy and the Marine Corps.”
I didn’t know it then, but Snuffy’s “get out and get acquainted” directive was the start of something, launching me on a series of trips that took me pretty regularly out of the nest: I spent most of my time at EUCOM away from our home base. It turned out that there was always some exercise, conference, or crisis area where they needed to send somebody on the staff, and only a general would do. I always volunteered for these. Since I always wanted to get the whole experience, I was willing to travel wherever I could get it; so I was constantly on the road. And I enjoyed the hell out of it. I just loved it.
I used to kid my wife Debbie. “You’re a bachelorette,” I told her. She took it well, though. She’s a resourceful, independent woman.
Since we had our own airplanes and helicopters and could travel easily, during my first weeks on the job I would take a day or two here and a day or two there to visit our components. I didn’t have a lot of time because the crises started hitting fast and hard, but I had enough to get out and get a sense of who we were working with — how they functioned, how they were organized, what they were like, and what were their capabilities.
As I traveled about, I got to see the vestiges of the Cold War — the massive prepositioned stocks in storage sites throughout Europe (including caves in northern Norway); the vast complex of bases and caserns around the continent; and the total orientation toward fighting a major land and air war in the center of Europe. This Cold War construct had served us well for half a century, but it was a difficult paradigm to restructure. Time and events were passing it by.
I wasn’t sure we could adjust fast enough.
Probably the high point of these visits was my first encounters with two splendid officers, Brigadier General Dick Potter and Major General Jim Jamerson. Potter ran the Special Operations Command at EUCOM — SOCEUR. Jamerson was the director of operations at the U.S. Air Force Europe (USAFE) headquarters. During the coming months he went on to command several joint task forces on EUCOM missions. (He later became a four-star general and the DCINC of EUCOM.)
Potter was a tough and colorful old Special Forces (SF) soldier, a consummate pro with more operational experience than anyone I knew, including major combat experience in Vietnam. His wealth of knowledge and experience had made him one of the premier people in Special Forces circles.
He was very operationally oriented and combat savvy in a straightforward, no-nonsense way (he didn’t tolerate fools). He got difficult things done efficiently, effectively, and thoroughly; and he’d put together an extremely competent staff; his people accomplished their missions extremely well. (Snuffy and I had tremendous respect for him.)
I liked Dick instantly. We were kindred souls, both of us brigadiers, sharing nearly identical views on operational issues. And since it happened that we were neighbors, our families got to know each other. So we hit it off right away and became close friends.
Jim Jamerson was the Air Force guy we dealt with day to day, and was one of the best joint officers. The first time I met him I could see that he really had his stuff together; he was sharp and perceptive, yet cooperative, responsive, and very easy to deal with.
I got to know him a lot better later on, working with him when he commanded Operation Proven Force — the joint task force air strikes and Special Operations missions we launched into Iraq out of Turkey during the First Gulf War. I worked under him as his deputy when he commanded Provide Comfort — the humanitarian relief effort that saved the lives of tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees after the Gulf War. Both experiences convinced me of his skills and brilliance. Like Potter, he was a great operator, with tremendous strength of character, a great leader, and always willing to accept new ideas and innovate.
We also became close friends.
I experienced many strange adventures with these two warriors over the next two years.
Big changes continued to pile up faster than anyone could handle them — German reunification, troop reductions, peace dividends, opportunities and problems rising from the opening to the east, a restructuring of NATO, a restructuring of Europe… and of course the New World Order (whatever that meant). It was all very heady.
So heady that very few noticed the fundamental conflict between what was called the “peace dividend” and the actual work it would take to reorder the world.
By late summer of 1990, what I was hearing from our leaders made it clear that the peace dividend was far more important to them than the reordering. They were looking at the fall of the Soviet Empire as though it was a winning lottery ticket that would let us cut defense spending, cut our troops and bring them home, close down overseas military bases, and use the money saved for all kinds of worthy projects (or tax cuts). The free world had triumphed, nobody ever again would suffer under the threat of communism, and all would be right with the world.
What I didn’t see was anybody trying to ensure that this new order would actually come into existence. Order doesn’t come out of chance. Somebody has to design it and make it happen.
Before the collapse of the USSR, the twentieth century had passed through two major democratic attempts to reorder the world — President Wilson’s after World War One and President Truman’s and George Marshall’s after World War Two. We were now embarked on the third. But now no one was trying to shape the new order. No one seemed to think we needed a vision. It would all work out on its own.
I could only wonder at that.
It seemed to me that our “victory” in the Cold War over the Soviet Union, or the Communist World, or whatever we might want to call it, had presented challenges similar to those we took on in Europe and Asia after World War Two. (The failure to address the challenges presented by World War One had led to the continuation of that war twenty years later.) Marshall and other visionaries had recognized the need to reshape the conditions that had given birth to the war, knowing that failure might make us again have to repeat it.
Now, as then, we were in a postwar situation. But here, the challenge wasn’t necessarily to reshape the conditions that had led to the war. The new threats were not going to emerge from out of the Soviet Union. Rather, the challenge was to reshape the world in the absence of the bipolar structure that had held all the other potential competing — or disruptive — forces in check. We had to replace the bipolar world order with a new structure that would create new balance, control, and
justice. The alternative — the disorder — would unleash uncontrollable horrors… a chaos of failed states armed with WMD and exporting terror.
It was clear that the bipolar environment we had lived under for half a century had suppressed forces few politicians, statesmen, and foreign affairs analysts had paid much attention to. But now that the bipolar containment was off, the threats had broken loose.
During the Cold War, no one ever let a little remote country in the middle of nowhere go wobbly, because every little country was involved in the competition between the Soviets and the Free World. Each side invested whatever it took to keep the little countries in their camp. Though these investments went by names like “foreign aid” and “humanitarian assistance,” they were actually payoffs. These ended with the end of the bipolar world structure. There wasn’t a lot of support for humanitarian assistance and nation building once the Soviet Union had faded away.
The East-West competition had suppressed an underlying conflict (that emerged most visibly toward the latter part of the century): the North-South competition between the first world and the third world. This competition had never appeared serious because the East-West competition kept it suppressed. But when that was gone, it was immediately evident that the third world (South) had a serious quarrel with the first world (North).
Every world crisis we face today is a manifestation of that. Whether it’s the drugs and the political failures and instability in Latin America, the turmoil of extremism and violence as the Islamic world adapts to modernity, or the chronic health problems, deprivations, and violent anarchy in Africa… all of these were brewing as the last century neared its end. They were there; but kept down. They were secondary to the East-West struggle, which effectively suppressed the concerns of those who served the first world; namely, the third world. When the East-West struggle died, the third world came out fighting… but in unexpected ways.
