by Tom Clancy
The Clinton administration’s engagement policies had the added effect of building on a process that the Goldwater-Nichols Act and the end of the Cold War had already started — the expansion of the role of the CINCs in their regions. Goldwater-Nichols, passed in the mid-’80s, gave more power to the CINCs, but primarily as war fighters. By the end of the ’90s, Goldwater-Nichols had come into bloom; the CINCs had become far more than war fighters; and the Clinton administration gave the CINCs all around the world a mission to shape their regions and use multilateral approaches in ways that went beyond the CINCs’ traditional military role.
This was not simply a wish. The administration strongly promoted and stressed this change; and they made it very clear that they wanted the CINCs to implement it.
But not everyone welcomed it, including the CINCs themselves. The change came because there was no other choice. No one else could do the job.
When I took over as commander of CENTCOM, I found a tremendous void in the diplomatic connections in our AOR. There was a void in expanding the personal relationships that Generals Hoar and Peay had worked hard to create. There was a void in establishing and implementing policy.
The void came from several causes.
One, the State Department had not been given the resources they needed to do their job. The neo-isolationists had cut foreign aid, leaving the State Department without the wherewithal — the people, the money, the programs — to make the impact they should have been making.
Two, while the end of the Cold War had greatly diminished any chances of a world-spanning conflict, crises had begun to pop up all over the place; and the military found itself involved in confronting all of them, even those that were not totally military problems.
Three, the CINCs now had resources the State Department did not have; the power of the CINCs was now growing (a reality recognized throughout our region); and the CINCs soon became the chief conduit to personal connections and to the resources State did not have. Much of what got done was done through the CINCs.
During my time as a CINC, I was asked to carry out presidential and other diplomatic missions that would normally have fallen to diplomats. I’m sure such things frustrated the State Department, but I don’t think they disapproved. In fact, they were very supportive. It was more a case of: “Well, if we can’t do it, at least somebody is taking care of it. If it’s the CINCs, then God bless them.”
Like most CINCs, I tried to work very closely with the State Department. In every country, our ambassador is the President’s representative. I never did anything that an ambassador did not know of and approve.
Moreover, the CINCs often had more personal presence and far more connections than the ambassadors. In many countries in CENTCOM’s region, for example, the senior government leadership is also the senior military leadership. This is not our system (and the downsides are obvious), yet the fact had practical consequences. They were usually more comfortable with soldiers than with diplomats in many cases.
In fact, more often than not, the ambassadors were very glad we were there. We not only brought them the connections we’d made, but we provided them with the ability to get things done they couldn’t ordinarily do… some small, some larger.
Anything we did for the ambassadors had to have some military overlap. We couldn’t simply blatantly set up an aid program. But even here we had some room to maneuver. In Africa, for example, we might be engaged in teaching a country’s military how to conduct peacekeeping or humanitarian operations, and we might set up training exercises in the villages. I would send out my military veterinarians, dentists, and doctors (who needed the training; they needed to practice these kinds of operations) to go into the villages with the African country’s military, and they’d conduct the exercises together. In the context of the military exercise, we’d build an orphanage or paint a school or set up a clinic as a Civic Action project. We’d be providing our guys with useful training while showing the African troops actually how to do it; and at the same time, we were benefiting needy people. When the exercises were over, we would have the American ambassador cut the ribbon for the new clinic. It was important, in my mind, to always demonstrate civilian leadership of our military and the close cooperation between our diplomats and soldiers.
The countries of Central Asia are prone to frequent and often devastating natural disasters such as earthquakes and mud slides (made all the more devastating because buildings are often made from mud bricks). When disasters hit, the normal procedure in these countries is to call in the military to preserve order and help pick up the pieces. We take care of this mission in a very different way. Our national military normally does not get involved. Rather, our National Guard units in the states are trained to handle the aftermath of earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and the like.
We decided to hold conferences on disaster assistance in some of these countries. They brought their fire, police, emergency service units, and military; we brought experts from the U.S., who showed them how to intermix the civilian and military and cooperate with each other; and we did all this in the name of the U.S. ambassadors.
We held other conferences in the region on environmental security issues — justifying them from the point of view that the military had to be good stewards of the environment, too. (We actually have many restrictions aimed at protecting the environment; and, of course, military training can damage it.) And sometimes the military is called in to police the environment — oil spills, violation of protected fisheries, hazardous waste, and so on.
In organizing environmental security conferences, the term “security” was key. An “environmental” conference on disposing of hazardous waste, for example, would not have played well back at the Pentagon. We had to have a “military” or “security” connection. Armed with that, we could bring in the EPA to talk about how to deal with hazardous waste material. Then I could bring in the ambassador and expand the conference to other issues — even human rights. (Human rights issues are very important militarily when you are trying to teach the importance of “winning hearts and minds” to military forces with no history of these considerations in their operations.)
All of these forms of engagement build strong relationships with the various countries. They tie in important military and nonmilitary programs. And from there we are able to move on to more sophisticated joint training and military assistance projects that promote strong military-to-military relationships and build better capabilities. Everybody benefits.
Not everybody back home saw things that way. The struggle went on and on between those longing to lean forward into the world and to do what we could to shape it, and the isolationist passion to block all that.[74]
During the nearly fifteen years since the end of the Cold War, talking heads and op-ed writers have spilt a lot of words on the “emergence of the American Empire.”
We are the last-man-standing superpower. No other nation or combination of nations can seriously threaten the existence of the United States (though people who can grievously hurt us are working night and day to accomplish that aim). History suggests that the eight-hundred-pound gorilla among nations will eventually yield to the temptation to defend itself, protect its interests, maintain stability, and keep itself on top by gradually taking ever greater control (direct or indirect) beyond its immediate borders. It begins to impose its will by direct force, unilaterally. Because it has the power to change distasteful situations or governments on its own, it asserts that power. The gorilla metamorphoses into an octopus, with ever-stretching tentacles. It becomes an empire.[75]
“Is that the destiny of the United States?” many have asked.
In my view, it’s not likely… I pray not.
The truth is more subtle and complex.
True, the United States is now in a situation that is historically unprecedented. No nation has ever wielded such physical power, and the capability to project that power quickly anywhere in the world.
Yet, also t
rue, no great power has ever before existed in such interdependence with so many other nations. No nation today can go it alone — economically, politically, diplomatically, culturally, or religiously.
The word empire does not cover this case. I don’t know of any word that does. We are not an empire of conquest, occupation, or colonies. We are in a new relationship with a new kind of world. If I were to risk putting a label on America’s new position in this world, I’d call us “an empire of influence.”
For the CINCs, our strategies are operational models — policy where the boots hit the ground. Once the CINCs have drawn their regional strategies out of the realities of their AORs and the global strategy of the President, they then have to implement them. Since doing that depends on the vicissitudes of Washington politics and the often dysfunctional Washington bureaucracy, and not on the intent of the President, executing our strategy was, at times, a frustrating process. We’d have a charter from the President that told us to go out somewhere and do such and so, and then we’d get our knees cut out from under us before we could go out and do it. Since the Congress tended to fall more in the isolationist camp, they usually resisted the President’s engagement policies… meaning, practically, that we didn’t get the resources we needed to do what the President wanted done or we would get ill-thought-out sanctions or restrictions that were counterproductive and limited our ability to engage.
Though I’ve had many disagreements with the Clinton administration, its basic global strategy was right. I was out in the world and saw the needs, the newly emerging conditions, and how we can help to change them. I also saw that if we failed to change them, we were doomed to live with the tragic consequences.
I believe that military force does not solve every problem, nor is it our only form of power. There are other kinds of pressure and other kinds of support. In order to achieve our national goals, we have to combine every capability in our national bag in the most artful mix possible. But that’s hard when the political infighting spills over into the implementation end of policy.
The Washington bureaucracy was too disjointed to make the vision of all the strategies, from the President’s to the CINCs’, a reality. There was no single authority in the bureaucracy to coordinate the significant programs we CINCs designed. The uncoordinated funding, policy decisions, authority, assigned geography, and many other issues separated State, Defense, Congress, the National Security Council, and other government agencies and made it difficult to pull complex engagement plans together.
To further complicate matters, the CINCs don’t control their own resources. Their budgets come out of the service budgets; and these are controlled by the Service Chiefs (who are also double-hatted as the Joint Chiefs), who, understandably, don’t want to give up their resources to the CINCs. The Service Chiefs have minimal interest in, and little insight into, engagement programs. They’re trying to run their services, and that job’s hard enough without other burdens. Their purpose and function is to train, organize, and equip forces for the CINCs, but what they actually want to do is provide these forces where, when, and how they see best. In other words, CINCs are demanding forces and resources for purposes that the Service Chiefs may not support. Thus the CINC is an impediment — and even a threat — and the rising power of the CINCs reduces the powers of the Service Chiefs. It’s a zero-sum game.
Looking at the problem from the other side, the CINCs see the Service Chiefs as standing in the way of what they desperately need; and they are frustrated by the chiefs’ inability to fully cooperate with them or support their strategies. The CINCs want to see their money identified and set aside in a specific budget line, so they know what they have. For all kinds of reasons, the Department of Defense is reluctant to do this.
The result is constant friction between the CINCs and Washington.
This is not a case of good guys and bad guys. The CINCs and the Service Chiefs are all fine men, doing the best jobs they can do. The Service Chiefs have a legitimate case. They’re responsible for training, organizing, and equipping their forces. The CINCs have a legitimate case. They’re responsible for employing or fighting their forces and for finding the resources to implement the President’s policies out in the world day to day. These two responsibilities don’t come together. The Washington bureaucracy has not been able to devise a coherent, cohesive way to make the system work.
This frustration was often voiced by the CINCs at their conferences in Washington, but to no avail. Washington issues and Service Chiefs’ issues seemed to take priority over the CINCs’ concerns.
I’d like to suggest changes that might fix the system.
First, I would change the composition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I’d make them truly “joint.”
Currently, the Joint Chiefs are simply the Service Chiefs wearing another hat now and again during the week. They’re not really “Joint” Chiefs; they’re Service Chiefs. Their first priority is to look out for their own services. Most of them have had no real “joint” experience in actual joint operations.
A better way to select Joint Chiefs would be to create a separate body, choosing it from former Service Chiefs and former CINCs, after they’ve served their tours. That would allow people with top-level experience from both worlds to pull the system together.
Looking at this idea more closely, you obviously can’t have serving CINCs as Joint Chiefs of Staff. They’re already all over the world doing their thing. Service Chiefs likewise have a full-time job in Washington as Service Chiefs (though they’ll fight hard to keep their Joint Chiefs hats, because a lot of power comes with the job). But by selecting the Joint Chiefs of Staff out of the pool of former CINCs and former Service Chiefs, you would create a full-time dedicated organization without most of the temptations to which both CINCs and Service Chiefs can fall victim. Yet you would benefit from the enormous wealth of knowledge and experience they all represent. And they would be truly joint. This body would advise the Secretary of Defense, testify before Congress, and bring together all the relevant issues.
Two, where the CINCs’ resources and their engagement programs are concerned, I think we ought to bite the bullet and identify the money and set the budget for whatever we want to call engagement. It should be out there, transparent, and separate from the service budgets. That way the CINCs would know exactly what they have, and the services would know exactly what they have.
Three, we need mechanisms to pull all the separate elements together. We need a body to oversee coordination, set priorities, and manage results. That way, if somebody comes in with a program (a CINC, an ambassador, etc.), that body reviews and approves it, and is responsible for making sure the other agencies of government meet the time lines and the commitment to get it done. Thus, our programs would no longer be disparate and fragmented, we’d be looking at them in a holistic way.
In other words, we would be doing for government what the Goldwater-Nichols Act did for the military. We’d be making government joint.
In late January 1998, my CENTCOM conference in Tampa put the final touches on the new strategy. Attendees included our commanders, staff, security assistance personnel,[76] and diplomats assigned to the region and from the State Department. Many U.S. ambassadors were present, as were the Assistant Secretaries of State who directed the regional sections at the State Department that involved our AOR.[77]
By the end of the conference, we had full agreement on the new strategy.
My concluding direction to all was to make the strategy real. It couldn’t be a nicely worded document that sat on the shelf and had no relationship to our daily actions. We had to live it day to day. Everything we did had to be related to our articulated strategic goals.
PUTTING OUT FIRES
My years at CENTCOM ranged from eventful, to hectic, to tumultuous — with crisis as our “normal” operating condition. We had the WMD inspectors’ crisis with Iraq; India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons, fighting continued in Kashmir, and a coup in Pakista
n brought General Pervez Musharraf to power; Ethiopia and Eritrea went to war; Al Qaeda swaggered onto the world stage with embassy attacks in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam (followed up by the bombing of the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen, soon after I left CENTCOM); the running sore of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict directly affected every country in the region; and the region was simmering with lesser destabilizing crises such as border and ethnic disputes.
I met with local people from all levels of society to get a variety of views on issues. I didn’t just want the views of leaders. Our ambassadors were very helpful in getting me these contacts and arranging the meetings that gave me a full sense of the key issues in the region.
Managing the many crises we faced often required my presence close to the scene. But I also traveled frequently to the region on “listening” trips, building personal relationships, and experiencing the various cultures firsthand (following Joe Hoar’s advice). I spent over seventy percent of my time as CINC on the road; and I truly enjoyed my trips to the region. My visits to Washington were not so enjoyable, though the meetings with Pentagon staff, the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of Defense, Congress, and the President were necessary… and sometimes productive. But it was always good to get back to CENTCOM after Washington trips. I couldn’t have asked for better bosses or supporters in D.C. (especially Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Hugh Shelton); but, as ever, the system, bureaucracy, and politics were not for me.
