COUNCIL OF WAR
COUNCIL OF WAR
A HIstORy OF tHe JOINt CHIeFs OF stAFF
1942– 1991
By Steven L. Rearden
P J H O
O D, J S
J C S
W, D.C.
2012
Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are
solely those of the contributors and do not necessarily represent the views of the
Defense Department or any other agency of the Federal Government. Cleared for
public release; distribution unlimited.
Portions of this book may be quoted or reprinted without permission, pro-
vided that a standard source credit line is included. NDU Press would appreciate a
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First printing, July 2012
Cover image: Meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Sta on November , , in their
conference room at the Pentagon. From left to right: Admiral Forrest P. Sherman,
Chief of Naval Operations; General Omar N. Bradley, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Sta;
General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, U.S. Air Force Chief of Sta; and General J. Lawton Col-
lins, U.S. Army Chief of Sta. Department of the Army photograph collection.
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Cover image: Meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
on November 22, 1949, in their conference room
at the Pentagon. From left to right: Admiral Forrest
P. Sherman, Chief of Naval Operations; General
Omar N. Bradley, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff;
General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, U.S. Air Force Chief
of Staff; and General J. Lawton Collins, U.S. Army
Chief of Staff. Department of the Army photograph
collection.
Contents
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Chapter 1. THE WAR IN EUROPE ...........................................
The Origins of Joint Planning .......................................
The North Africa Decision and Its Impact ..........................
The Second Front Debate and JCS Reorganization ................
Preparing for Overlord ...............................................
Wartime Collaboration with the Soviet Union .....................
Chapter 2. THE ASIA-PACIFIC WAR AND THE
BEGINNINGS OF POSTWAR PLANNING
....................
Strategy and Command in the Pacic
..............................
The China-Burma-India Theater ...................................
Postwar Planning Begins ............................................
Ending the War with Japan .........................................
Dawn of the Atomic Age ...........................................
Chapter 3. PEACETIME CHALLENGES ....................................
Defense Policy in Transition ........................................
Reorganization and Reform .......................................
War Plans, Budgets, and the March Crisis of ..................
The Defense Budget for FY ..................................
The Strategic Bombing Controversy ...............................
Chapter 4. MILITARIZING THE COLD WAR ..............................
Pressures for Change ................................................
The H-Bomb Decision and NSC ...............................
Onset of the Korean War ..........................................
The Inch’on Operation ............................................
Policy in Flux ......................................................
Impact of the Chinese Intervention ...............................
MacArthur’s Dismissal .............................................
Europe—First Again ...............................................
Chapter 5. EISENHOWER AND THE NEW LOOK .......................
The Reorganization
..........................................
Ending the Korean War ............................................
A New Strategy for the Cold War .................................
Testing the New Look: Indochina .................................
v
Cover image: Meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
on November 22, 1949, in their conference room
at the Pentagon. From left to right: Admiral Forrest
P. Sherman, Chief of Naval Operations; General
Omar N. Bradley, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff;
General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, U.S. Air Force Chief
of Staff; and General J. Lawton Collins, U.S. Army
Chief of Staff. Department of the Army photograph
collection.
vi
Confrontation in the Taiwan Strait ................................
The “New Approach” in Europe ..................................
NATO’s Conventional Posture ....................................
Curbing the Arms Race ...........................................
Chapter 6. CHANGE AND CONTINUITY ................................
Evolution of the Missile Program ..................................
The Gaither Report ...............................................
The “Missile Gap” and BMD Controversies .......................
Reorganization and Reform, – ..........................
Defense of the Middle East ........................................
Cuba, Castro, and Communism ....................................
Berlin Dangers .....................................................
Chapter 7. KENNEDY AND THE CRISIS PRESIDENCY ................
The Bay of Pigs ....................................................
Berlin under Siege .................................................
Laos ................................................................
Origins of the Cuban Missile Crisis ...............................
Showdown over Cuba .............................................
Aftermath: The Nuclear Test Ban ..................................
Chapter 8. THE MCNAMARA ERA ........................................
The McNamara System ...........................................
Reconguring the Strategic Force Posture ........................
NATO and Flexible Response ....................................
The Skybolt Aair .................................................
Demise of the MLF ................................................
A New NATO Strategy: MC / ................................
The Damage Limitation Debate ...................................
Sentinel and the Seeds of SALT ...................................
Chapter 9. VIETNAM: GOING TO WAR ...................................
The Roots of American Involvement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Road to an American War ....................................
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident and Its Aftermath ....................
Into the Quagmire .................................................
Chapter 10. VIETNAM: RETREAT AND WITHDRAWAL .................
Stalemate ..........................................................
Tet and Its Aftermath ..............................................
Nixon, the JCS, and the Policy Process ............................
vii
Winding Down the War ...........................................
Back to Airpower ..................................................
The Christmas Bombing Campaign ...............................
The Balance Sheet .................................................
Chapter 11. DÉTENTE ........................................................
SALT I .............................................................
Shoring Up the Atlantic Alliance ..................................
China: The Quasi-Alliance ........................................
Deepening Involvement in the Middle East .......................
Chapter 12. THE SEARCH FOR STRATEGIC STABILITY ...............
The Peacetime “Total Force” ......................................
Modernizing the Strategic Deterrent ..............................
Targeting Doctrine Revised .......................................
SALT II Begins ....................................................
Vladivostok ........................................................
Marking Time .....................................................
Chapter 13. THE RETURN TO CONFRONTATION .....................
Carter and the Joint Chiefs ........................................
Strategic Forces and PD- ........................................
SALT II ............................................................
NATO and the INF Controversy ..................................
The Arc of Crisis ..................................................
Rise of the Sandinistas .............................................
Creation of the Rapid Deployment Force .........................
The Iran Hostage Rescue Mission .................................
Chapter 14. THE REAGAN BUILDUP .......................................
Reagan and the Military ...........................................
Forces and Budgets ................................................
Military Power and Foreign Policy ................................
The Promise of Technology: SDI ..................................
Arms Control: A New Agenda .....................................
Chapter 15. A NEW RAPPROCHEMENT ..................................
Debating JCS Reorganization .....................................
The Goldwater-Nichols Act of ..............................
NATO Resurgent .................................................
Gorbachev’s Impact ................................................
Terrorism and the Confrontation with Libya ......................
viii
Showdown in Central America ....................................
Tensions in the Persian Gulf .......................................
Operation Earnest Will .............................................
Chapter 16. ENDING THE COLD WAR .....................................
Policy in Transition ................................................
Powell’s Impact as Chairman ......................................
The Base Force Plan ...............................................
Operations in Panama .............................................
The CFE Agreement ..............................................
START I and Its Consequences ...................................
Chapter 17. STORM IN THE DESERT ......................................
Origins of the Kuwait Crisis .......................................
Framing the U.S. Response ........................................
Operational Planning Begins ......................................
The Road to War ..................................................
Final Plans and Preparations .......................................
Liberating Kuwait: The Air War ....................................
Phase IV: The Ground Campaign ..................................
The Post-hostilities Phase ..........................................
Chapter 18. CONCLUSION ...................................................
Glossary .........................................................................
Index ............................................................................
About the Author .................................................................
ix
Foreword
Established during World War II to advise the President on the strategic direction of
the Armed Forces of the United States, the Joint Chiefs of Sta (JCS) continued in
existence after the war and, as military advisers and planners, have played a signicant
role in the development of national policy. Knowledge of JCS relations with the
President, the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Council is essential to
an understanding of the current work of the Chairman and the Joint Sta. A history
of their activities, both in war and peacetime, also provides important insights into
the military history of the United States. For these reasons, the Joint Chiefs of Sta
directed that an ocial history of their activities be kept for the record. Its value for
instructional purposes, for the orientation of ocers newly assigned to the JCS orga-
nization, and as a source of information for sta studies is self-apparent.
Council of War: A History of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, 1942–1991 follows in the
tradition of volumes previously prepared by the Joint History Oce dealing with
JCS involvement in national policy, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Adopt-
ing a broader view than earlier volumes, it surveys the JCS role and contributions
from the early days of World War II through the end of the Cold War. Written from
a combination of primary and secondary sources, it is a fresh work of scholarship,
looking at the problems of this era and their military implications. The main prism
is that of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, but in laying out the JCS perspective, it deals also
with the wider impact of key decisions and the ensuing policies.
Dr. Steven L. Rearden, the author of this volume, holds a bachelor's degree
from the University of Nebraska and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University.
His association with the Joint History Oce dates from . He has written and
published widely on the history of the Joint Chiefs of Sta and the Oce of the
Secretary of Defense, and was co-collaborator on Ambassador Paul H. Nitze’s book
From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the Center of Decision—A Memoir ().
This publication has been reviewed and approved for publication by the Depart-
ment of Defense. While the manuscript itself is unclassied, some parts of documents
cited in the source notes may remain classied. This is an ocial publication of the
Joint History Oce, but the views expressed are those of the author and do not
necessarily represent those of the Joint Chiefs of Sta or the Department of Defense.
—John F. Shortal
Brigadier General, USA (Ret.)
Director for Joint History
xi
Preface
Shortly after arriving at Fort McPherson, Georgia, in , to head the U.S. Army
Forces Command (FORSCOM), General Colin L. Powell put up a framed poster of
the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a present from Dr. King’s widow, in the
main conference room. On it were inscribed Dr. King’s words: “Freedom has always
been an expensive thing.” Dr. King had in mind the sacrices of the civil rights move-
ment, of which he had been a major catalyst, in the s and s. But to Powell, a
career Army ocer who would soon leave FORSCOM to become the
th
Chair-
man of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, Dr. King’s words had a broader, deeper meaning. Not
only did he nd them applicable to the civil rights struggle, but also he felt they spoke
directly to the entire American experience and the central role played by the Armed
Forces in preserving American values—freedom rst among them.
For the Joint Chiefs of Sta (JCS), the defense of freedom began with their
creation as a corporate body in January to deal with the growing emergency
arising from the recent Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Thrust suddenly into the
maelstrom of World War II, the United States found itself ill-prepared to coordinate
a global war eort with its allies or to develop comprehensive strategic and logisti-
cal plans for the deployment of its forces. To ll these voids, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt established the JCS, an ad hoc committee of the Nation’s senior military
ocers. Operating without a formal charter or written statement of duties, the Joint
Chiefs functioned under the immediate authority and direction of the President in
his capacity as Commander in Chief. A committee of coequals, the JCS came as
close as anything the country had yet seen to a military high command.
After the war the Joint Chiefs of Sta became a permanent xture of the country’s
defense establishment. Under the National Security Act of , Congress accorded
them statutory standing, with specic responsibilities. Two years later they acquired a
presiding ocer, the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Sta, a statutory position carrying statu-
tory authority that steadily increased over time. While often criticized as ponderous in
their deliberations and inecient in their methods, the JCS performed key advisory
and support functions that no other body could duplicate in high-level deliberations.
Sometimes, like during the Vietnam War in the s, their views and recommendations
carried less weight and had less impact than at other times. But as a rule their advice, rep-
resenting as it did a distillation of the Nation’s top military leaders’ thinking, was impos-
sible to ignore. Under legislation enacted in , the Joint Chiefs’ assigned duties and
responsibilities passed almost in toto to the Chairman, who became principal military
advisor to the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Council.
But even though their corporate advisory role was over, the Joint Chiefs retained their
statutory standing and continued to meet regularly as military advisors to the Chairman.
xii
The history of the Joint Chief of Sta parallels the emergence of the United States
in a great-power role and the growing demands that those responsibilities placed on
American policymakers and military planners. During World War II, the major chal-
lenge was to wage a global war successfully on two fronts, one in Europe, the other in
Asia and the Pacic. Afterwards, with the coming of an uneasy peace, the JCS faced
new, less well-dened dangers arising from the turbulent relationship between East and
West known as the Cold War. The product of long-festering political, economic, and
ideological antagonisms, the Cold War also saw the proliferation of nuclear weapons and
soon became an intense and expensive military competition between the United States
and the Soviet Union. Though the threat of nuclear war predominated, the continuing
existence of large conventional forces on both sides heightened the sense of urgency and
further fueled doomsday speculation that the next world war could be the last. A period
of recurring crises and tensions, the Cold War nally played out in the late s and
early s, not with the cataclysmic confrontation that some people expected, but with
the gradual reconciliation of key dierences between East and West and eventually the
collapse of Communism in Europe and the implosion of the Soviet Union.
The narrative that follows traces the role and inuence of the Joint Chiefs of
Sta from their creation in through the end of the Cold War in . It is,
rst and foremost, a history of events and their impact on national policy. It is also
a history of the Joint Chiefs of Sta themselves and their evolving organization, a
reection in many ways of the problems they faced and how they elected to ad-
dress them. Over the years, the Joint History Oce has produced and published
numerous detailed monographs on JCS participation in national security policy.
There has never been, however, a single-volume narrative summary of the JCS role.
This book, written from a combination of primary and secondary sources, seeks to
ll that void. An overview, it highlights the involvement of the Joint Chiefs of Sta
in the policy process and in key events and decisions. My hope is that students of
military history and national security aairs will nd it a useful tool and, for those
so inclined, a convenient reference point for further research and study.
Like most authors, I have numerous obligations to recognize. For their willing-
ness to read and comment on various aspects of the manuscript, I need to thank Dr.
Samuel R. Williamson, Jr., former Vice Chancellor and Professor of History Emeritus
of Sewanee University; Dr. Lawrence S. Kaplan, Professor of History Emeritus of
Kent State University; Dr. Donald R. Baucom, former Chief Historian of the Ballistic
Missile Defense Organization; Dr. Wayne W. Thompson of the Oce of Air Force
History; and Dr. Graham A. Cosmas of the Joint History Oce. I am also extremely
grateful to the people at the Information Management Division of the Joint Chiefs
of Sta, in particular Ms. Betty M. Goode and Mr. Joseph R. Cook, for their help in
xiii
the documentation and clearance process. I am especially indebted to Molly Bom-
pane and the Army Heritage and Education Center for their outstanding pictorial
support. I would like to thank Richard Stewart of the Center of Military History for
the use of the Army’s art. The production of this book would not have been possible
without the able advice and assistance of NDU Press Executive Editor Dr. Jerey D.
Smotherman and Senior Copy Editor Mr. Calvin B. Kelley.
I am also deeply indebted to Dr. Edward J. Drea and Dr. Walter S. Poole who
contributed in more ways than I can begin to enumerate. Both are long-standing
friends and colleagues whose unrivaled knowledge, wisdom, and insights into mili-
tary history and national security aairs have been sources of inspiration for many
years. I want to thank Frank Homan of NDU Press for his faith in and support
of this project. My heaviest obligations are to the two Directors for Joint History
who made this book possible—Brigadier General David A. Armstrong, USA (Ret.),
who initiated the project, and his successor, Brigadier General John F. Shortal, USA
(Ret.), who saw it to completion. They were unstinting in their encouragement,
support, and human kindness.
Lastly, I need to thank my wife, Pamela, whose patience and love were indispensible.
—Steven L. Rearden
Washington, DC
March
Note
Colin L. Powell, with Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey (New York: Random House,
), -.
British and American Combined Chiefs of Sta with President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill at the Second
Quebec Conference, September 1944. (front row, left to right) General George C. Marshall, Chief of Sta, U.S. Army;
Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Sta to the Commander in Chief; President Franklin D. Roosevelt; Prime Minister
Winston S. Churchill; Field Marshal Sir Alan F. Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Sta; Field Marshal Sir John Dill,
Chief of the British Joint Sta Mission to the United States; (back row, left to right) Major General Leslie C. Hollis,
Secretary of the Chiefs of Sta Committee; General Sir Hastings Ismay, Prime Minister Churchill’s Military Assistant
and Representative to the Chiefs of Sta Committee; Admiral Ernest J. King, Chief of Naval Operations; Air Chief
Marshal Sir Charles Portal; General Henry H. Arnold, Commanding General, Army Air Forces; and Admiral Sir Andrew B.
Cunningham, First Sea Lord.
Chapter 1
The War in europe
During the anxious gray winter days immediately following the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt confronted the most serious crisis of his Presi-
dency. Now engaged in a rapidly expanding war on two major fronts—one against
Nazi Germany in Europe, the other against Imperial Japan in the Pacic—he wel-
comed British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill to Washington on December
22, 1941, for 3 weeks of intensive war-related discussions. Code-named ARCADIA,
the meeting’s purpose, as Churchill envisioned it, was to “review the whole war
plan in the light of reality and new facts, as well as the problems of production and
distribution.”
1
Overcoming recent setbacks, pooling resources, and regaining the
initiative against the enemy became the main themes. To turn their decisions into
concrete plans, Roosevelt and Churchill looked to their senior military advisors,
who held parallel discussions. From these deliberations emerged the broad outlines
of a common grand strategy and several new high-level organizations for coordinat-
ing the war eort. One of these was a U.S. inter-Service advisory committee called
the Joint Chiefs of Sta (JCS).
2
ARCADIA was the latest in a series of Anglo-American military sta discus-
sions dating from January 1941. Invariably well briefed and meticulously prepared
for these meetings, British defense planners operated under a closely knit organiza-
tion known as the Chiefs of Sta Committee, created in 1923. At the time of the
ARCADIA Conference, its membership consisted of the Chief of the Imperial
General Sta, General Sir Alan F. Brooke (later Viscount Alanbrooke), the First Sea
Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, and the Chief of the Air Sta, Air
Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal. They reported directly to the Prime Minister
and the War Cabinet and served as the government’s high command for conveying
directives to commanders in the eld.
3
Prior to ARCADIA nothing comparable to Britain’s Chiefs of Sta Com-
mittee existed in the United States. As Brigadier General (later General) Thomas
T. Handy recalled the situation: “We were more or less babes in the wood on the
planning and joint business with the British. They’d been doing it for years. They
were experts at it and we were just starting.”
4
The absence of any standing coordi-
nating mechanisms on the U.S. side forced the ARCADIA participants to improvise
if they were to assure future inter-Allied cooperation and collaboration. Just before
1
COUNCIL OF WAR
2
adjourning on January 14, 1942, they established a consultative body known as the
Combined Chiefs of Sta (CCS), composed of the British chiefs and their Ameri-
can “opposite numbers.” Since the British chiefs had their headquarters in London,
they designated the senior members of the British Joint Sta Mission (JSM) to the
United States, a tri-Service organization, as their day-to-day representatives to the
CCS in Washington. Thereafter, formal meetings of the Combined Chiefs (i.e., the
British chiefs and their American opposite numbers) took place only at summit
conferences attended by the President and the Prime Minister. Out of a total of 200
CCS meetings held during the war, 89 were held at these summit meetings.
5
U.S. membership on the CCS initially consisted of General George C. Mar-
shall, Chief of the War Department General Sta; Admiral Harold R. Stark, Chief
of Naval Operations (CNO); Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander in Chief, U.S.
Fleet; and Lieutenant General Henry H. Arnold, Chief of the Army Air Forces and
Deputy Chief of Sta for Air. Though Arnold’s role was comparable to Portal’s, he
spoke only for the Army Air Forces since the Navy had its own separate air com-
ponent.
6
Shortly after the ARCADIA Conference adjourned, President Roosevelt
reassigned Stark to London as Commander, U.S. Naval Forces, Europe, a liaison
job, and made King both Chief of Naval Operations and Commander in Chief,
U.S. Fleet. In this dual capacity, King became the Navy’s senior ocer and its sole
representative to the CCS.
7
To avoid confusion, the British and American chiefs
designated collaboration between two or more of the nations at war with the Axis
powers as “combined” and called inter-Service cooperation by one nation “joint.”
The U.S. side designated itself as the “Joint United States Chiefs of Sta,” soon
shortened to “Joint Chiefs of Sta.”
The Origins Of JOinT Planning
Though clearly a prudent and necessary move, the creation of the Joint Chiefs of
Sta was a long time coming. By no means was it preordained. When the United
States declared war on the Axis powers in December 1941, its military establishment
consisted of autonomous War and Navy Departments, each with a subordinate air
arm. Command and control were unied only at the top, in the person of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt in his constitutional role as Commander in Chief. Politi-
cally astute and charismatic, Roosevelt dominated foreign and defense aairs and
insisted on exercising close personal control of the Armed Forces. The creation of
the Joint Chiefs of Sta eectively reinforced his authority. Often bypassing the
Service Secretaries, he preferred to work directly with the uniformed heads of the
military Services. From 1942 on, he used the JCS as an extension of his powers as
THE WAR IN EUROPE
3
Commander in Chief. The policy he laid down stipulated that “matters which were
purely military must be decided by the Joint Chiefs of Sta and himself, and that,
when the military conicted with civilian requirements, the decision would have
to rest with him.”
8
In keeping with his overall working style, his relations with the
chiefs were casual and informal, which allowed him to hold discussions in lieu of
debates and to seek consensus on key decisions.
9
Below the level of the President, inter-Service coordination at the outset of
World War II was haphazard. Ocers then serving in the Army and the Navy were
often deeply suspicious of one another, inclined by temperament, tradition, and
culture to remain separate and jealously guard their turf. Not without diculty,
Marshall and King reached a modus vivendi that tempered their dierences and
allowed them to work in reasonable harmony for most of the war.
10
Their subordi-
nates, however, were generally not so lucky. Issues such as the deployment of forces,
command arrangements, strategic plans, and (most important of all) the allocation
of resources invariably generated intense debate and friction. As the war progressed,
the increasing use of unied theater commands, bringing ground, sea, and air forces
under one umbrella organization, occasionally had the untoward side-eect of ag-
gravating these stresses and strains. According to Sir John Slessor, whose career in the
British Royal Air Force brought him into frequent contact with American ocers
during and after World War II, “The violence of inter-Service rivalry in the United
States in those days had to be seen to be believed and was an appreciable handicap
to their war eort.”
11
Inter-Service collaboration before the war rested either on informal arrange-
ments, painstakingly worked out through goodwill as the need arose, or on the
modest achievements of the Joint Army and Navy Board. Established in 1903 by
joint order of the Secretaries of War and Navy, the Joint Board was responsible for
“conferring upon, discussing, and reaching common conclusions regarding all mat-
ters calling for the co-operation of the two Services.”
12
By the eve of World War II,
the Board’s membership consisted of the Army Chief of Sta, Deputy Chief of Sta,
Chief of the War Plans Division, Chief of Naval Operations, Assistant Chief of Naval
Operations, and Director of the Naval War Plans Division.
13
The Joint Board’s main functions were to coordinate strategic planning be-
tween the War and Navy Departments and to assist in clarifying Service roles and
missions. Between 1920 and 1938, the board’s major achievement was the produc-
tion of the “color” plans, so called because each plan was designated by a particular
color. Plan Orange was for a war with Japan.
14
But after the Munich crisis in the au-
tumn of 1938, with tensions rising in both Europe and the Pacic, the board began
to consider a wider range of contingencies involving the possibility of a multifront
4
COUNCIL OF WAR
war simultaneously against Germany, Italy, and Japan. The result was a new series
of “Rainbow” plans. The plan in eect at the time of Pearl Harbor was Rainbow
5, which envisioned large-scale oensive operations against Germany and Italy and
a strategic defensive in the Pacic until success against the European Axis powers
allowed transfer of sucient assets to defeat the Japanese.
15
To help assure eective execution of these plans, the Joint Board also sought a
clearer delineation of Service roles and missions. A contentious issue in the best of
times, roles and missions became all the more divisive during the interwar period
owing to the limited funding available and the emergence of competing land- and
sea-based military aviation systems. The board addressed these issues in a manual,
Joint Action of the Army and Navy (JAAN), rst published in 1927 and revised in
1935, with minor changes from year to year thereafter. The doctrine incorpo-
rated into the JAAN called for voluntary cooperation between Army and Navy
commanders whenever practicable. Unity of command was permitted only when
ordered by the President, when specically provided for in joint agreements be-
tween the Secretaries of War and Navy, or by mutual agreement of the Army and
Navy commanders on the scene. For want of a better formula, the JAAN simply
accepted the status quo and left controversial issues like the control of airpower
divided between the Services, to be exploited as their respective needs dictated
and resources allowed.
16
After 1938, with the international situation deteriorating, the Joint Board be-
came increasingly active in conducting exploratory studies and drafting joint stra-
tegic plans (the Rainbow series) where the Army and the Navy had a common
interest. For support, the board relied on part-time inter-Service advisory and plan-
ning committees. The most prominent and active were the senior Joint Planning
Committee, consisting of the chiefs of the Army and Navy War Plans Divisions,
which oversaw the permanent Joint Strategic Committee and various ad hoc com-
mittees assigned to specialized technical problems, and the Joint Intelligence Com-
mittee, consisting of the intelligence chiefs of the two Services, which coordinated
intelligence activities. Despite its eorts, however, the Joint Board never acquired
the status or authority of a military command post and remained a purely advisory
organization to the military Services and, through them, to the President.
17
While the limitations of the Joint Board system were abundantly apparent, there
was little incentive prior to Pearl Harbor to make signicant changes. The most ambi-
tious reform proposal originated in the Navy General Board and called for the cre-
ation of a joint general sta headed by a single chief of sta to develop general plans
for major military campaigns and to issue directives for detailed supporting plans to
the War and Navy Departments. First broached in June 1941, this proposal was referred
5
THE WAR IN EUROPE
to the Army and Navy Plans Divisions where it remained until after the Japanese
attack. Public reaction to the Pearl Harbor catastrophe, allegedly the result of faulty
inter-Service communication, awed intelligence, and divided command, led Admiral
Stark in late January 1942, to rescue the joint general sta paper from the oblivion of
the Plans Divisions and to place it on the Joint Board’s agenda. Here it encountered
strong opposition from Navy representatives, its erstwhile sponsors. Upon further
reection, they declared it essentially unworkable. Their main objection was that such
a scheme would require a corps of sta ocers, which did not exist, who were thor-
oughly cognizant of all aspects of both Services. Army representatives favored the plan
but did not push it in light of the Navy’s strong opposition. Discussion of the matter
culminated at a Joint Board meeting on March 16, where the members, unable to
agree, left it “open for further study.”
18
By the time the Joint Board dropped the joint general sta proposal, the Joint
Chiefs of Sta were beginning to emerge as the country’s de facto high command.
This process resulted not from any directive issued by the President or emergency
legislation enacted by Congress, but from the paramount importance of forming
common cause with the British Chiefs of Sta on matters of mutual interest and
the strategic conduct of the war. As useful as the Joint Board may have been as a
peacetime planning mechanism, it had limited utility in wartime and was not set
up to function in a command capacity or to provide liaison with Allied planners.
Though still in its infancy, the Combined Chiefs of Sta system was already exercis-
ing a pervasive inuence on American military planning, thanks in large part to the
easy and close collaboration that quickly developed between General Marshall and
the senior British representative, Sir John Dill.
19
As the CCS system became more
entrenched, it demanded a more focused American response, which only the orga-
nizational structure of the Joint Chiefs of Sta could provide.
The Joint Chiefs held their rst formal meeting on February 9, 1942, and over
the next several months gradually absorbed the Joint Board’s role and functions.
20
To support their work, the Joint Chiefs established a joint sta that comprised a
network of inter-Service committees corresponding to the committees making up
the Combined Chiefs of Sta. Initially, only two JCS panels—the Joint Sta Plan-
ners (JPS) and the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC)—had full-time support sta,
provided by remnants of the Joint Board. Most of those on the other joint com-
mittees served in a part-time capacity and appeared on the duty roster as “associate
members,” splitting their time between their Service responsibilities and the JCS.
A few ocers, designated “primary duty associate members,” were considered to be
full-time. Owing to incomplete records, no one knows for sure how many ocers
served on the Joint Sta at any one time during the war. Committees varied in size,
6
COUNCIL OF WAR
from the Joint Strategic Survey Committee, which had only three members, on up
to the Joint Logistics Committee, which once had as many as two hundred associate
members.
21
Money to support the Joint Chiefs’ operations, including the salaries for
about 50 civilian clerical helpers, came from the War and Navy Departments and an
allocation from the President’s contingent fund.
22
Figure 1–1.
JCS Organization Chart,
Initially modeled on the CCS system, the JCS organization gradually departed
from the CCS structure to meet the Joint Chiefs’ unique requirements. During
1942 the Joint Chiefs added three subordinate components without CCS counter-
parts—the Joint New Weapons Committee, the Joint Psychological Warfare Com-
mittee, and the Oce of Strategic Services (OSS). The rst two were part-time
bodies providing advisory support to the Joint Chiefs in the areas of weapons re-
search and wartime propaganda and subversion. The third was an operational and
research agency that specialized in espionage and clandestine missions behind en-
emy lines. Though the OSS fell under the jurisdiction of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, it
7
THE WAR IN EUROPE
had its own director, William J. Donovan, who reported directly to the President.
23
Between 1943 and March 1945, the JCS organization expanded further to include
the Army-Navy Petroleum Board and separate committees dealing with produc-
tion and supply matters, postwar political-military planning, and the coordination
of civil aairs in liberated and occupied areas.
Wartime membership of the Joint Chiefs was completed on July 18, 1942, when
President Roosevelt appointed Admiral William D. Leahy as Chief of Sta to the
Commander in Chief. The inspiration for Leahy’s appointment came from General
Marshall, who suggested to the President in February 1942 that there should be a
direct link between the White House and the JCS, an ocer to brief the President
on military matters, keep track of papers sent to the White House for approval, and
transmit the President’s decisions to the JCS. As the President’s designated represen-
tative, he could also preside at JCS meetings in an impartial capacity.
24
President Roosevelt initially saw no need for a Chief of Sta to the Com-
mander in Chief. Likewise, Admiral King, fearing adverse impact on Navy interests
if another ocer were interposed between himself and the President, opposed the
idea. It was not until General Marshall suggested appointing Admiral Leahy, an old
friend of the President’s and a trusted advisor, that Roosevelt came around.
25
The
Admiral, who had retired as Chief of Naval Operations in 1939, was just completing
an assignment as Ambassador to Vichy, France. The appointment of another senior
naval ocer was perhaps the only way of gaining Admiral King’s endorsement, since
it balanced the JCS with two members from the War Department and two from
theNavy.
A scrupulously impartial presiding ocer, Leahy never became the strong rep-
resentative of JCS interests that Marshall hoped he would be. In Marshall’s view,
Leahy limited himself too much to acting as a liaison between the JCS and the
White House. Still, he played an important role in conveying JCS recommenda-
tions and in brieng the President every morning.
26
In no way was his position
comparable to that later accorded to the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Sta. In meet-
ings with the President or with the Combined Chiefs of Sta, Leahy was rarely the
JCS spokesman. That role usually fell to either General Marshall, who served as the
leading voice on strategy in the European Theater, or Admiral King, who held sway
over matters aecting the Pacic.
Though considerable, the Joint Chiefs’ inuence over wartime strategy and
policy was never as great as some observers have argued. According to historian
Kent Roberts Greeneld, there are more than 20 documented instances in which
Roosevelt overruled the chiefs’ judgment on military situations.
27
While the chiefs
liked to present the President with unanimous recommendations, they were not
8
COUNCIL OF WAR
averse to oering a “split” position when their views diered and then thrashing
out a solution at their meetings with the President. During the rst year or so of the
war, the President’s special assistant, Harry Hopkins, also regularly attended these
meetings. Rarely invited to participate were the Service Secretaries (Secretary of
War Henry L. Stimson and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox) and Secretary of
State Cordell Hull, all of whom found themselves marginalized for much of the war.
But despite their close association, the President and the Joint Chiefs never devel-
oped the intimate, personal rapport Churchill had with his military chiefs. Between
Roosevelt and the JCS, there was little socializing. Comfortable and productive,
their relationship was above all professional and businesslike.
28
Even though the Joint Chiefs of Sta functioned as the equivalent of a na-
tional military high command, their status as such, throughout World War II, was
never established in law or by Executive order. Preoccupied with waging a global
war, they paid scant attention to the question of their status until mid-1943 when
they briey considered a charter dening their duties and responsibilities. The
only JCS member to evince strong interest in a charter was Admiral King, who
professed to be “shocked” that there was no basic denition of JCS duties and
responsibilities. In the existing circumstances, he doubted whether the JCS could
continue to function eectively. Admiral Leahy took exception. “The absence of
any xed charter of responsibility,” he insisted, “allowed greater exibility in the
JCS organization and enabled us to extend its activities to meet the changing
requirements of the war.” He pointed out that, since the JCS served at the Presi-
dent’s pleasure, they performed whatever duties he saw t; under a charter, they
would be limited to performing assigned functions. Initially, General Marshall sid-
ed with Admiral Leahy but nally became persuaded, in the interests of preserving
JCS harmony, to support issuance of a charter in the form of an Executive order.
29
The Joint Chiefs approved the text of such an order on June 15, 1943, and
submitted it to the President the next day. The proposed assignment of duties
was fairly routine and related to ongoing activities of advising the President,
formulating military plans and strategy, and representing the United States on
the Combined Chiefs of Sta.
30
Still, the overall impact would have been to
place the JCS within a conned frame of reference, and arguably restrict their
deliberations to a specic range of issues. Satised with the status quo, the Presi-
dent rejected putting the chiefs under written instructions. “It seems to me,” he
told them, “that such an order would provide no benets and might in some
way impair exibility of operations.”
31
As a result, the Joint Chiefs continued to
manage their aairs throughout the war without a written denition of their
9
THE WAR IN EUROPE
functions or authority, but with the tacit assurance that President Roosevelt
fully supported their activities.
The nOrTh africa DecisiOn anD iTs imPacT
While the ARCADIA Conference of December 1941–January 1942 conrmed that
Britain and the United States would integrate their eorts to defeat the Axis, it
left many details of their collaboration unsettled. The agreed strategic concept that
emerged from ARCADIA was to defeat Germany rst, while remaining on the
strategic defensive against Japan. Recognizing that limited resources would con-
strain their ability to mount oensive operations against either enemy for a year or
so, the Allied leaders endorsed the idea of “tightening the ring” around Germany
during this time by increasing lend-lease support to the Soviet Union, reinforcing
the Middle East, and securing control of the French North African coast.
32
To augment this broad strategy, the CCS in March 1942 adopted a working
understanding of the global strategic control of military operations that divided
the world into three major theaters of operations, each comparable to the relative
interests of the United States and Great Britain. As a direct concern to both parties,
the development and execution of strategy in the Atlantic-European area became a
combined responsibility and, as such, the region most immediately relevant to the
CCS. Elsewhere, the British Chiefs of Sta, working from London, would oversee
strategy and operations for the Middle East and South Asia, while the Joint Chiefs
of Sta in Washington would do the same for the Pacic and provide military coor-
dination with the government of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in China.
33
British and American planners agreed that the key to victory was the Soviet
Union, which engaged the bulk of Germany’s air and ground forces. “In the last
analysis,” predicted Admiral King, “Russia will do nine-tenths of the job of defeating
Germany.”
34
Keeping the Soviets actively and continuously engaged against Germany
thus became one of the Western Allies’ primary objectives, even before the United
States formally entered the war.
35
Within the JCS-CCS organization that emerged
following the ARCADIA Conference, developing a “second front” in Western Eu-
rope quickly emerged as a priority concern, both to relieve pressure on the Soviets
and to demonstrate the Western Allies’ sincerity and support. Unlike their American
counterparts, however, British defense planners were in no hurry to return to the
Continent. Averse to repeating the trench warfare of World War I, and with the Soviet
Union under a Communist regime that Churchill despised, British planners proved
far more cautious and realistic in entertaining plans for a second front.
10
COUNCIL OF WAR
The Joint Chiefs assumed that initially their main job would be to coordinate
the mobilization and deployment of a large army to Europe to confront the Ger-
mans directly, as the United States had done in World War I. As General Marshall
put it, “We should never lose sight of the eventual necessity of ghting the Germans
in Germany.”
36
By mid-March 1942, the consensus among the Joint Chiefs was that
they should press their British allies for a buildup of forces in the United Kingdom
for the earliest practicable landing on the Continent and restrict deployments in
the Pacic to current commitments. But they adopted no timetable for carrying
out these operations and deferred to the War Department General Sta to come up
with a concrete plan for invading Europe. At this stage, the Joint Chiefs of Sta were
a new and novel organization, composed of ocers from rival Services who were
still unfamiliar with one another and uneasy about working together. As a result, the
most eective and ecient strategic planning initially was that done by the Service
stas, with the Army taking the lead in shaping plans for Europe and the Navy do-
ing the same for the Pacic.
37
The impetus for shifting strategic planning from the Services to the corporate
oversight of the JCS was President Roosevelt’s decision in July 1942 to postpone a
Continental invasion and, at Churchill’s urging, to concentrate instead on the liber-
ation of North Africa. Personally, Roosevelt would have preferred a second front in
France, and in the spring of 1942 he had sent Marshall and Harry Hopkins to Lon-
don to explore the possibility of a landing either later in the year or in 1943. Though
the British initially seemed receptive to the idea and endorsed it in principle, they
raised one objection after another and insisted that the time was not ripe for a land-
ing on the Continent. Pushing an alternate strategy, they favored a combined opera-
tion in the Mediterranean.
38
Based on the production and supply data he received,
Roosevelt ruefully acknowledged that the United States would not be in a position
to have a “major impact” on the war much before the autumn of 1943.
39
Eager that
U.S. forces should see “useful action” against the Germans before then, he became
persuaded that North Africa would be more feasible than a landing in France. The
upshot in November 1942 was Operation Torch, the rst major oensive of the war
involving sizable numbers of U.S. forces.
40
While not wholly unexpected, the Torch decision had extensive ripple eects.
The most immediate was to nullify a promise Roosevelt made to the Soviets in May
1942 to open a second front in France before the end of the year.
41
A bitter disap-
pointment in Moscow, it was also a major rebu for Marshall and War Department
planners who had drawn up preliminary Continental invasion plans. One set, called
SLEDGEHAMMER, was for a limited “beachhead” landing in 1942; another, called
BOLERO-ROUNDUP, was for a full-scale assault on the northern coast of France
11
THE WAR IN EUROPE
in mid-1943.
42
Unable to contain his disappointment, Marshall told the President
that he was “particularly opposed to ‘dabbling’ in the Mediterranean in a wasteful
logistical way.”
43
In Churchill’s view, however, an invasion of France was too risky
and premature until the Allies brought the U-boat menace in the Atlantic under
control, had greater mastery of the air, and American forces were battle-tested. In
the interests of unity, Churchill continued to assure his Soviet and American allies
that he supported a cross-Channel invasion of Europe in 1943. But as a practical
matter, he seemed intent on using the invasion of North Africa to protect British
interests east of Suez and as a stepping stone toward further Anglo-American opera-
tions in the Mediterranean that would “knock Italy out of the war.”
44
Churchill’s preoccupation with North Africa and the Mediterranean reected
a time-honored British tradition that historians sometimes refer to as “war on the
periphery,” in contrast to the more direct American approach involving the massing
of forces, large-scale assaults, and decisive battles. Limited in manpower and indus-
trial capability, the British had historically preferred to avoid direct confrontations
and had pursued strategies that exploited their enemies’ weak spots, wearing them
down through naval action, attrition, and dispersion of forces. In World War I, the
British had departed from this strategy with disastrous results that gave them the
sense of having achieved a pyrrhic victory. Committed to avoiding a repetition of
the World War I experience, Churchill and his military advisors preferred to let the
Soviets do most of the ghting (and dying) against Germany, while Britain and
the United States concentrated on eviscerating Germany’s “soft underbelly” in the
Mediterranean. Although Churchill fully intended to undertake an Anglo-Ameri-
can invasion of Europe, he expected it to follow in due course, once Germany was
worn down and on the verge of defeat.
45
Following the planning setbacks they experienced in the summer of 1942, the
Joint Chiefs sought to regroup and regain the initiative, starting with a clarication
of overall strategy. Their initial response was the creation in late November 1942 of
the Joint Strategic Survey Committee (JSSC), an elite advisory body dedicated to
long-range planning. Composed of only three senior ocers, the JSSC resembled
a panel of “elder statesmen,” representing the ground, naval, and air forces, whose
job was to develop broad assessments on “the soundness of our basic strategic policy
in the light of the developing situation, and on the strategy which should be ad-
opted with respect to future operations.” In theory, Service aliations were not
to interfere with or prejudice their work. The three chosen to sit on the commit-
tee—retired Lieutenant General Stanley D. Embick of the Army, Major General
Muir S. Fairchild of the Army Air Corps, and Vice Admiral Russell Willson—served
without other duties and stayed at their posts throughout the war.
46
12
COUNCIL OF WAR
Early in December 1942, the JSSC submitted its rst set of recommendations,
a three-and-a-half-page overview of Allied strategy for the year ahead. In surveying
future options, the committee sought to keep the war focused on agreed objectives.
Assuming that the rst order of business remained the defeat of Germany, the JSSC
recommended freezing oensive operations in the Mediterranean and transferring
excess forces from North Africa to the United Kingdom as part of the buildup for
an invasion of Europe in 1943. The committee also urged continuing assistance
to the Soviet Union, a gradual shift from defensive to oensive operations in the
Pacic and Burma, and an integrated air bombardment campaign launched from
bases in England, North Africa, and the Middle East against German “production
and resources.”
47
Here in a nutshell was the rst joint concept for a global wartime strategy,
marshaling the eorts of land, sea, and air forces toward common goals. All the
same, it was a highly generalized treatment and, as such, it glossed over the impact of
conicting Service interests. At no point did it attempt to sort out the allocation of
resources, by far the most controversial issue of all, other than on the basis of broad
priorities. Challenging one of the paper’s core assumptions, Admiral King doubted
whether a landing in Europe continued to merit top priority. King maintained that,
with adoption of the Torch decision and the diversions that operation entailed, the
Anglo-American focus of the war had shifted from Europe to the Mediterranean
and Pacic. King wanted U.S. plans and preparations adjusted accordingly, with
more eort devoted to the Pacic and defeating the Japanese.
48
Meeting with the
President on January 7, 1943, the Joint Chiefs acknowledged that they were divided
along Service lines. As Marshall delicately put it, they “regarded an operation in the
north [of Europe] more favorably than one in the Mediterranean but the question
was still an open one.”
49
Despite nearly a year of intensied planning, the JCS had
yet to achieve a working consensus on overall strategic objectives.
The secOnD frOnT DebaTe anD Jcs
reOrganizaTiOn
Faced with indecision among his military advisors, Roosevelt gravitated to the Brit-
ish, who had worked out denite plans and knew precisely what they wanted to
accomplish. At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, he gave in to Churchill’s
insistence that the Mediterranean be accorded “prime place” and that a move against
Sicily (Operation Husky) should follow promptly upon the successful completion of
Operation Torch in North Africa.
50
To placate the Americans, the British agreed to
establish a military planning cell in London to begin preliminary preparations for
13
THE WAR IN EUROPE
a cross-Channel attack. But with attention and resources centered on the Mediter-
ranean, a Continental invasion was now unlikely to materialize before 1944. Know-
ing that a further postponement would not go down well in Moscow, Roosevelt
proposed—and Churchill grudgingly agreed—that the United States and Britain
issue a combined public declaration of their intent to settle for nothing less than
“unconditional surrender” of the Axis powers.
51
A further result of the Casablanca Conference—one with signicant but unin-
tended consequences for the future of the Joint Chiefs—was the endorsement of an
intensive combined bombing campaign against Germany. This decision fell in line
with the recent recommendations of the Joint Strategic Survey Committee and was
widely regarded as an indispensable preliminary to a successful invasion of France.
Under the agreed directive, however, rst priority was not the destruction of the
enemy’s military-industrial complex, as some air power enthusiasts had advocated,
but the suppression of the German submarine threat, which was taking a horric
toll on Allied shipping.
52
Still, American and British air strategists had long sought
the opportunity to demonstrate the potential of airpower and greeted the decision
as a step forward, even as they disagreed among themselves over the relative mer-
its of daylight precision bombing (the American approach) versus nighttime area
bombing (the British strategy). The impact on the JCS was more long term and
subtle. Previously, as the senior Service chiefs, Marshall and King had dominated
JCS deliberations. Now, with strategic bombing an accepted and integral part of
wartime strategy, Arnold assumed a more prominent role of his own, becoming a
true coequal to the other JCS members in both rank and stature by the war’s end.
53
For the Joint Chiefs and the aides accompanying them, the Casablanca Confer-
ence was, above all, an educational experience that none wanted to repeat. Travel-
ing light, the JCS had kept their party small and had arrived with limited backup
materials. In contrast, the British chiefs had brought a very complete sta and reams
of plans and position papers. Admiral King found that whenever the CCS met and
he or one of his JCS colleagues brought up a subject, the British invariably had a
paper ready.
54
Brigadier General Albert C. Wedemeyer, the Army’s chief planner, had
a similar experience. At each and every turn he found the British better prepared
and able to outmaneuver the Americans with superior sta work. “We came, we
listened and we were conquered,” Wedemeyer told a colleague. “They had us on the
defensive practically all the time.”
55
The Joint Chiefs of Sta returned from the Casablanca Conference with less
to show for their eorts than they hoped and determined to apply the lessons
they learned there. In practice, that meant never again entering an international
conference so ill-prepared or understaed. To strengthen the JCS position, General
14
COUNCIL OF WAR
Marshall arranged for Lieutenant General Joseph T. McNarney, Deputy Army Chief
of Sta, to oversee a reorganization of the joint committee system, with special
attention to developing more eective joint-planning mechanisms. The main bot-
tleneck was in the Joint Sta Planners, a ve-member committee that had fallen
behind in its assigned task of providing timely, detailed studies on deployment and
future operations. The new system, introduced gradually during the spring of 1943,
reduced the range and number of issues coming before the Joint Sta Planners and
transferred logistical matters to the Joint Administrative Committee, later renamed
the Joint Logistics Committee.
56
Under McNarney’s reorganization, nearly all the detailed planning functions
previously assigned to the Joint Sta Planners became the responsibility of a new
body, the Joint War Plans Committee (JWPC), which functioned as a JPS working
subcommittee. Thenceforth, the JPS operated in more of an oversight capacity, re-
viewing, amending, and passing along the recommendations they received from the
Joint War Plans Committee. The JWPC drew its membership from the stas of the
chiefs of planning for the Army, the Navy, and the Air Sta. Under them was an inter-
Service “planning team” of approximately 15 ocers who served full time without
other assigned duties. The directive setting up the JWPC reminded those assigned to it
that they were now part of a joint organization and to conduct themselves accordingly
by going about their work and presenting their views “regardless of rank or service.”
57
The rst test of these new arrangements came at the TRIDENT Confer-
ence, held in Washington in May 1943 to develop plans and strategy for operations
after the invasion of Sicily during the coming summer. By then, King had grudg-
ingly resigned himself to the inevitability of a cross-Channel invasion and agreed
with Marshall that further operations in the Mediterranean should be curbed. King
viewed the British preoccupation there as a growing liability that had the potential
of preventing the Navy from stepping up the war against Japan. Based on naval
production gures, King estimated that by the end of 1943, the Navy would begin
to enjoy a signicant numerical superiority over the Japanese in aircraft carriers
and other key combatants. To take advantage of that situation, the CNO proposed
a major oensive in the Central Pacic and secured JCS endorsement just before
the TRIDENT Conference began. But with the British dithering in the Mediter-
ranean and a rm decision on the second front issue still pending, King could easily
nd his strategic initiative jeopardized.
58
At TRIDENT, for the rst time in the war, the Joint Chiefs obtained the use of
procedures that worked to their advantage. Namely, they insisted on an agenda and
some of the papers developed by the Joint War Plans Committee in lieu of those
oered by the British, who had controlled the “paper trail” at Casablanca.
59
As often
15
THE WAR IN EUROPE
as possible during TRIDENT, King tried to shift the discussion to the Pacic. But
the dominating topic was the choice between continuing operations in the Medi-
terranean or opening a second front in northern France. With President Roosevelt’s
concurrence and with Marshall doing most of the talking, the Joint Chiefs pressed
the British for a commitment to a cross-Channel attack no later than the spring of
1944. The deliberations were brisk and occasionally involved what historian Mark
A. Stoler describes as “some private and very direct exchanges.” Six months earlier
British views would probably have prevailed. But with improved sta support be-
hind them, the JCS were now more than able to hold their own.
60
A crucial factor in the Joint Chiefs’ eectiveness was a carefully researched fea-
sibility study by the JWPC showing that there would be enough landing craft to lift
ve divisions simultaneously (three in assault and two in backup), making the cross-
Channel operation feasible.
61
Forced to concede the point, the British agreed to be-
gin moving troops (seven divisions initially) from the Mediterranean to the United
Kingdom. While accepting a tentative target date of May 1, 1944, for the invasion,
the British sidestepped a full commitment by insisting on further study. The JCS also
wanted to limit additional operations in the Mediterranean to air and sea attacks. But
out of the ensuing give-and-take, the British prevailed in obtaining an extension of
currently planned operations against Sicily onto the Italian mainland, in Churchill’s
words, “to get Italy out of the war by whatever means might be best.”
62
A signicant improvement over the Joint Chiefs’ previous performance, TRI-
DENT demonstrated the utility and eectiveness of Joint Sta work over reliance
on separate and often uncoordinated Service inputs. From then on, preparations for
inter-Allied conferences became increasingly centralized around the Joint Sta, with
the Joint War Plans Committee the focal point for the development of the necessary
planning papers and inter-Service coordination.
63
The emerging dominance of the
JCS system was largely the product of necessity and rested on a growing recognition
as the war progressed that at the high command level as well as in the eld, joint
collaboration was more successful than each Service operating on its own.
PreParing fOr OverlOrd
Even though the Joint Chiefs secured provisional agreement at the TRIDENT
Conference to begin preparations for an invasion of France, it remained to be seen
whether the British would live up to their promise. Reports from London indi-
cated that Churchill was “rather apathetic and somewhat apprehensive” about a
rm commitment to invade Europe and that he would press next for an invasion of
Italy, followed by operations against the Balkans.
64
Even though a campaign on the
16
COUNCIL OF WAR
Italian mainland would delay moving troops and materiel to England for the inva-
sion, Churchill had made a convincing argument that Italy would fall quickly and
not pose much of a diversion. With U.S. and British forces currently concentrated
in Sicily and North Africa, the JCS acknowledged that it made sense to take advan-
tage of the opportunity before moving forces en masse to England. Still, they were
adamant that the operation be limited and not go beyond Rome, lest it jeopardize
plans for the invasion of northern France.
65
At the rst Quebec Conference (QUADRANT) in August 1943, Churchill,
Roosevelt, and the Combined Chiefs of Sta conrmed their intention to attack
Italy and attempted to reconcile continuing dierences over a landing on the north-
ern French coast, now code-named Operation Overlord. Despite pledges made at the
TRIDENT Conference, Churchill and the British chiefs procrastinated, prompting
several heated exchanges and some “very undiplomatic language” by Admiral King,
who considered the British to be acting in bad faith.
66
At one point the CCS cleared
the room of all subordinates and continued the discussion o the record. The sense
of trust and partnership appeared to be eroding on both sides. While professing their
commitment to Overlord, the British objected to an American proposal to give the
invasion of France “overriding priority” and wanted to delay the repositioning of
troops as agreed at TRIDENT so campaigns in the Mediterranean could proceed
without serious disruption. Working a compromise, the Combined Chiefs agreed to
make Overlord the “primary” Anglo-American objective in 1944, but couched the
decision in ambiguous language that left open the possibility of further operations
in the Mediterranean.
67
Once back in London, Churchill assured the War Cabinet
that the QUADRANT agreement on Overlord notwithstanding, he would continue
to insist on “nourishing the battle” in Italy as long as he remained in oce.
68
At that stage in the war, Churchill and the British Chiefs of Sta still viewed
themselves as the “predominant partner” in the Western alliance. Yet it was a role
they were less equipped to play with each passing day. By mid-1943, with the mo-
bilization and stepped-up industrial production initiated since 1940 beginning to
bear fruit, the United States was steadily overtaking Britain in manpower and ma-
teriel to become the preeminent military power within the Western alliance. One
consequence was to give the U.S. chiefs a larger voice and stronger leverage within
the CCS system, much to the consternation of the British.
69
Meetings of the Com-
bined Chiefs of Sta, as evidenced by the discussions at TRIDENT and QUAD-
RANT, were becoming more and more confrontational. Clearly frustrated, Sir
Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Sta, lamented that he and his British
colleagues were no longer able “to swing those American Chiefs of Sta and make
them see daylight.”
70
17
THE WAR IN EUROPE
With tensions mounting between the American and British military chiefs
over Overlord, a showdown was only a matter of time. It nally came at the Tehran
Conference in late November 1943, the rst “Big Three” summit of the war. Dur-
ing the trip over aboard the battleship Iowa, the Joint Chiefs had the opportunity
to discuss among themselves and with the President the issues they should raise and
the approach they should take, so when the conference got down to business, the
American position was unambiguous. Stopping in Cairo to meet with Generalis-
simo Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese leader, Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Com-
bined Chiefs of Sta took time out to review the status of planning for the invasion
of France. Though Churchill again paid lip service to Overlord, calling it “top of the
bill,” he also outlined his vision for expanding military operations into northern
Italy, Rhodes, and the Balkans. Roosevelt and the Joint Chiefs, feeling that now was
not the time to debate these issues, simply turned a collective deaf ear.
71
At Tehran, with the Soviets present, the Joint Chiefs left no doubt that launch-
ing Overlord was their rst concern, then sat back while the senior Soviet military
representative, Marshal Klementy Voroshilo, interrogated Brooke and his British
colleagues on why they wanted to devote precious time and resources on “auxiliary
operations” in the Mediterranean.
72
In the plenary sessions with Roosevelt and
Soviet leader Marshal Josef Stalin, Churchill fell under intense pressure to shelve his
plans for the Mediterranean and to throw unequivocal support behind the invasion.
To improve the prospects of success, Stalin oered to launch a major oensive on
the Eastern Front in conjunction with the landings in France. Outnumbered and
outmaneuvered, Churchill grudgingly acknowledged that it was “the stern duty” of
his country to proceed with the invasion. At long last, the British commitment to
Overlord had become irrevocable. Though the JCS were elated at the outcome, the
British chiefs were visibly distraught and immediately began picking away at the
invasion plan’s details as if they could make it disappear or change the decision.
73
Conrmation that Overlord would go forward signaled a major turning point
in the war. The beginning of the end in the West for Hitler’s Germany, it also af-
rmed the emergence of the United States as leader of the Western coalition, with
the Joint Chiefs of Sta rmly ensconced as the senior military partners. Even the
supreme commander of the operation was to be an American. Though General
Marshall had wanted the job, it went instead to a former subordinate and protégé,
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who presided over what became one of the most
truly integrated and successful international command structures in history. All the
same, with the United States contributing the larger share of the manpower and
much, if not most, of the materiel to the operation, British involvement took on a
diminished appearance. Except for a brief gathering in London in early June 1944
18
COUNCIL OF WAR
timed roughly to coincide with the D-Day invasion, the JCS had little need for
further full-dress meetings of the Combined Chiefs of Sta. In fact, they did not
see their British counterparts again until, at Churchill’s insistence, they reassembled
at a second Quebec Conference in September 1944. A year later, with the war over,
the CCS quietly became for the most part inactive. Though it met occasionally over
the next few years, its postwar contributions were never enough to make much dif-
ference, and on October 14, 1949, by mutual agreement, it was nally dissolved.
74
The decision to proceed with Overlord, giving it priority over all other Anglo-
American operations against Germany, marked the culmination of grand strategic
planning in the European theater. Once the troops landed in Normandy on June 6,
1944, it was up to Eisenhower and his British deputy, General Bernard Law Mont-
gomery, and their generals to wage the battles that would bring victory in the West.
Had it not been for the JCS and their determination to see the matter through, the
invasion might have been postponed indenitely, and the results of the war could
have been quite dierent. In a very real sense, the Tehran Conference and the Over-
lord decision marked the Joint Chiefs’ coming of age as a mature and reliable orga-
nization. Out of that experience emerged a decidedly improved and more eective
planning system within the JCS organization and a better appreciation among the
chiefs themselves of what they could accomplish by working together. A turning
point in the history of World War II, the Overlord decision was thus also a major
milestone in the progress and maturity of the Joint Chiefs of Sta.
WarTime cOllabOraTiOn WiTh The sOvieT UniOn
In contrast to the many contacts and close collaboration the Joint Chiefs enjoyed
with their British counterparts through the Combined Chiefs of Sta system, their
access to the Soviet high command remained limited throughout World War II. The
“Grand Alliance,” as Churchill called it, brought together countries—the United
States and Great Britain, on the one hand, the Soviet Union, on the other—which,
until recently, had viewed one another practically as enemies. Divided prior to the
war by politics and ideology, they found it expedient in wartime to concert their
eorts toward a common objective—the defeat of Nazi Germany—and little else.
While idealists like Roosevelt hoped a new postwar relationship would emerge
from the experience, promoting peaceful coexistence between capitalist and Com-
munist systems, realists like Churchill remained skeptical. All agreed that it was a
unique and uneasy partnership that was dicult to manage.
The bond holding the Grand Alliance together was, from its inception, the
unique relationship among its “Big Three” leaders—Roosevelt, Churchill, and
19
THE WAR IN EUROPE
Stalin—who remained in regular direct contact throughout the war. As a rule, Stalin
managed high-level contacts himself and discouraged his generals from becom-
ing overly friendly with their Western counterparts. Churchill followed a similar
practice. While professing friendship and cooperation, he showed little inclination
to share military information with the Soviets or to take them into his condence.
Although Roosevelt was more forthcoming, he too recognized that, at bottom,
the Grand Alliance was a marriage of convenience and declined to bring Stalin in
on the biggest secret of the war—that the United States was building an atomic
bomb—perhaps because he knew that Soviet espionage agents had passed that in-
formation along to Moscow sometime in 1943.
75
Given the ground rules that tacitly governed the Grand Alliance, East-West
military collaboration followed a loose and haphazard course. Though they tried
from time to time, JCS planners could nd little common ground for creating any-
thing comparable to the Combined Chiefs of Sta to help coordinate East-West
military operations.
76
Occasionally, they oated proposals to exchange observers
at the eld command headquarters level. But there was not much interest from
the British and even less from the Soviets.
77
The collaboration that developed de-
rived either from ad hoc arrangements or initiatives mounted through the military
missions assigned to the American Embassy in Moscow and tended to be more
concerned with logistical matters and lend-lease aid than with coordinating the
conduct of the war.
Despite the diculties inherent in dealing with the Soviets, Roosevelt was
determined to demonstrate American goodwill and solidarity of purpose. Brush-
ing aside Churchill’s penchant for caution, he exhorted the Joint Chiefs to explore
ways of helping the Soviets, even if it meant diverting scarce war resources from
other urgent tasks. Yet whatever the JCS could do was limited. As a practical mat-
ter, the Eastern Front was too distant and remote for most of the war for them to
contemplate stationing substantial military forces there. Nor was it clear whether
U.S. forces would have been welcome, given Stalin’s aversion to foreign inuences.
78
Small deployments of aircraft were another matter, however, and from mid-1942 on,
the JCS found themselves peppered with proposals from various sources, includ-
ing the White House, to provide the Soviets with supply planes and to establish an
Anglo-American combat air force in the Caucasus. At the time, German forces had
resumed the oensive and for a while there was a glimmer of interest from Stalin.
But as the Soviet military position improved, Stalin’s enthusiasm waned and the
project died.
79
While the Western powers poured large quantities of material assistance into
the Soviet Union, Stalin insisted that the best help they could provide was opening
20
COUNCIL OF WAR
a second front in Western Europe to draw o some of the pressure on the Red
army in the East. Churchill maintained that, by concentrating on North Africa, Italy,
and the Mediterranean, the Western Allies were already accomplishing much the
same thing. Unconvinced, the JCS regarded these operations as sideshows that were
perhaps annoying to the Germans but a drain on Allied resources and indecisive by
nature. Moreover, the longer the Allies delayed a landing in France, the more op-
portunity it gave the advancing Russian forces to expand and consolidate Moscow’s
political inuence across Europe.
80
After the QUADRANT Conference of August 1943, with the prospects for
Overlord on the rise, the JCS redoubled their eorts to improve contacts and collab-
oration with the Soviet high command, initially to enlist their promised assistance
in diverting German units away from the Normandy invasion area and eventually
to prod them into the war against Japan. With these objectives in mind, they sought
to upgrade their liaison capabilities with the Soviets and in the fall of 1943 named
Major General John R. Deane to head a new joint American military mission in
Moscow, reporting directly to the JCS.
81
At the same time, President Roosevelt
named W. Averell Harriman, who had been instrumental in setting up the lend-lease
program, to replace the ineectual Admiral William H. Standley as Ambassador to
the Soviet Union. Until recently the U.S. secretary of the Combined Chiefs of Sta,
Deane was familiar with the current state of thinking in Washington and the status
of Allied war plans. At the time he arrived, he recalled, collaboration with the So-
viets was “a virgin eld” and military coordination “almost nonexistent.”
82
Though
he found the Soviets to be guarded in their dealings with Westerners, he saw no
reason to doubt their commitment to the war and “felt certain” they would enter
the conict against Japan once Germany was defeated.
83
During the year and a half he spent in Moscow, Deane experienced one frus-
tration after another and kept the Joint Chiefs up to date on every agonizing detail.
Though there were a few modest successes, a shuttle bombing agreement of ques-
tionable military value foremost among them, he never detected any serious interest
on the Soviets’ part in establishing a full military dialogue or partnership. Indeed, as
the war progressed and as victory over the Germans became more certain, Deane
noticed a progressive falling o of Soviet cooperation—so much so that by Decem-
ber 1944 he was expressing serious apprehension over the future of U.S.-Soviet rela-
tions. “Everyone will agree on the importance of collaboration with Russia,” Deane
told Marshall. “It won’t be worth a hoot, however, unless it is based on mutual
respect and made to work both ways.”
84
Impressed by Deane’s sobering assessments,
Marshall passed them along to the White House without any discernible eect.
85
21
THE WAR IN EUROPE
Deane’s sentiments reected a growing sense of unease about the Soviets that
permeated JCS deliberations from late 1943 on. The Joint Chiefs got their rst
close-up look at Stalin and his generals at the Big Three Tehran Conference in No-
vember 1943 and came away with mixed impressions. Though judged to be tough-
minded and determined, the Soviet generals also appalled members of the JCS with
their supercial appreciation of modern military science, most notably their lack
of understanding of the diculties of amphibious operations. As far as Stalin and
his generals were concerned, a cross-Channel attack was like fording a river.
86
But
with a war yet to be won and the Joint Chiefs eager to nail down a Soviet com-
mitment to join the ght against Japan, they were not inclined to judge the Soviets
too harshly.
87
This view began to change during the early part of 1944, as rumors spread
that the Soviets, now on the verge of expelling German troops from their territory,
might seek a separate peace. Also around the same time, the JCS received a barrage
of reports from Harriman and Deane in Moscow and OSS sources, warning of
waning Soviet interest in military collaboration with the West owing to diplomatic
friction over the political makeup of Eastern Europe after the war.
88
With Overlord
only a few months away, the chiefs’ concern was considerable, to say the least. About
the only immediate source of leverage was to curb shipments under the lend-lease
program, which General Marshall described as “our trump card . . . to keep the So-
viets on the oensive in connection with the second front.”
89
President Roosevelt,
however, strongly opposed any avoidable disruptions in assistance, lest they adversely
aect U.S.-Soviet relations or the conduct of the war. In September 1944, with
Overlord a fait accompli, he vetoed any immediate changes in the program.
90
The Joint Chiefs adopted a wait-and-see attitude toward their Soviet allies for
the duration of the war in Europe. By the time of the Yalta Summit Conference in
February 1945, they had come to the conclusion, as General Marshall put it, that
closer liaison with the Soviet general sta would be “highly desirable” but not ab-
solutely essential.
91
Where the JCS still wanted the Soviets engaged was in Manchu-
ria to keep the Japanese Kwantung army there from reinforcing the home islands
against a U.S.-led invasion.
92
Accordingly, they urged President Roosevelt to use his
inuence with Stalin to overcome what they characterized as Soviet “administra-
tive delays” that were thwarting the implementation of “broad decisions” about
U.S.-Soviet collaboration.
93
But with U.S. forces now moving relentlessly across the
Pacic, JCS planners were increasingly skeptical whether access to Soviet air and
naval bases in Siberia—a requirement once thought to be crucial to an invasion of
the Japanese home islands—would make any dierence.
22
COUNCIL OF WAR
The diminished need for Soviet bases and other support was soon reected
in President Harry S. Truman’s “get tough” approach toward the Soviets follow-
ing Roosevelt’s death in April 1945. With a U.S. victory in the Pacic now more
probable than ever, Truman was less forbearing than Roosevelt in putting pressure
on Moscow to live up to its wartime political agreements facilitating free elections
in Eastern Europe.
94
Worried that the new President might go too far, Leahy and
Marshall reminded him that the wartime agreements Roosevelt had reached were
subject to interpretation and that JCS planning still assumed Soviet participation
in the war against Japan. With these caveats before him, Truman soon moderated
his criticism of the Soviets. Yet owing to the sharp tone and substance of some
of his complaints about Soviet behavior, the wartime alliance showed clear signs
of breaking down.
95
That closer wartime cooperation and collaboration between the Joint Chiefs
and the Soviet high command could have helped to avoid this outcome is highly
unlikely. Stalin’s main concerns throughout the war in Europe were to eradicate
the threat posed by Nazi Germany and to solidify as much of hiscontrol as pos-
sible over Eastern Europe, making it in eect a cordon sanitaire between the Soviet
Union and the West. With these objectives in mind, the level of cooperation that
Stalin sought (and was prepared to accept) was always more specic than general
and invariably revolved around the issues of additional aid and the opening of a sec-
ond front in France. While the JCS did what they could to promote better Soviet-
American relations, their options were limited and became even more so as the war
progressed. Eventually, the JCS came to see cooperation and collaboration with
Moscow as a one-way street. As a rule, General Marshall recalled, the Soviets were
“delicate . . . jealous, and . . . very, very hard to preserve a coordinated association
with.”
96
Regarded by Churchill and others as a marriage of convenience to begin
with, the Grand Alliance was probably lucky that it lasted as long as it did and cer-
tainly was not destined to survive much beyond the end of the war.
Notes
1 Churchill to Roosevelt, December 9, 1941, in Francis L. Loewenheim, Harold D. Lang-
ley, and Manfred Jonas, eds., Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence
(New York: Saturday Review Press, 1975), 169.
2 Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance (Boston: Houghton Miin, 1950), 686–687.
3 William G.F. Jackson and Lord Bramall, The Chiefs: The Story of the United Kingdom
Chiefs of Sta (London: Brassey’s, 1992), traces the origins and evolution of the British
Chiefs of Sta. Field Marshal Sir John Dill attended the ARCADIA Conference in
Brooke’s place. Dill then stayed behind in Washington to head the British Joint Sta
23
THE WAR IN EUROPE
Mission. He died in November 1944 and was succeeded by Field Marshal Sir Henry
Maitland Wilson.
4 Quoted in Andrew Roberts, Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in
the West, 1941–1945 (New York: Harper, 2009), 71.
5 Memo by Combined Chiefs of Sta, January 14, 1942, “Post-Arcadia Collaboration,”
ABC-4/CS4, World War II Inter-Allied Conferences (Washington, DC: Joint History Of-
ce, 2003, on CD-ROM). (Hereafter cited as World War II Conference Papers); Jackson
and Bramall, 224; “Combined Chiefs of Sta (CCS) committee,” in I.C.B. Dear and
M.R.D. Foot, eds., The Oxford Companion to World War II (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1995), 254.
6 Admiral King turned down a suggestion to have the Navy’s senior aviation ocer,
Rear Admiral John H. Towers, Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, join the group. King
believed Towers’ presence was unnecessary since naval air units were fully integrated
into the operating eets King commanded.
7 Jerey G. Barlow, From Hot War to Cold: The U.S. Navy and National Security Aairs,
1945–1955 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 4, 13–17.
8 Notes Taken at Meeting in Executive Oces of the President, November 25, 1942, box
29, Map Room File, Roosevelt Library.
9 See William Emerson, “Franklin Roosevelt as Commander-in-Chief in World War II,”
Military Aairs 22 (Winter 1958–1959), 201.
10 See Eric Larrabee, Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and
Their War (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2004), 105–106.
11 John Slessor, The Central Blue: The Autobiography of Sir John Slessor, Marshal of the RAF
(New York: Praeger, 1957), 494.
12 Quoted in Ray S. Cline, Washington Command Post: The Operations Division (Washing-
ton, DC: Center of Military History, 1990 reprint), 44.
13 Vernon E. Davis, History of the Joint Chiefs of Sta in World War II: Organizational Develop-
ment (Washington, DC: Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, Joint Chiefs of Sta, 1972),
I, 28.
14 See Edward S. Miller, War Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897–1945 (An-
napolis: Naval Institute Press, 1991); and Henry G. Gole, The Road to Rainbow: Army
Planning for Global War, 1934–1940 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2003).
15 Louis Morton, “Germany First: The Basic Concept of Allied Strategy in World War
II,” in Kent Roberts Greeneld, ed., Command Decisions (Washington, DC: Center of
Military History, 1984), 11–47.
16 Joint Board, Joint Action of the Army and the Navy (Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Printing Oce [GPO], 1927, rev. ed. 1935). Provisions relating to unity of command date
from changes incorporated in 1938, as directed in J.B. Serial No. 350, November 30, 1938.
17 Cline, 44–47; Davis, I, 27–59.
18 Davis, I, 239 –252.
19 Roberts, 76–78.
20 JCS Minutes, 1st Meeting, February 9, 1942, RG 218, CCS 334 (2-9-42); Davis, I, 229.
21 Davis, II, 506–08.
24
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22 Memo, McFarland to King, January 4, 1945, “H.R. 5604, To Provide for the Permanent
Establishment of the JCS and Joint Secretariat,” CCS 334 (12-80-44).
23 Thomas F. Troy, Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intel-
ligence Agency (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1981), 117–153,
427–428.
24 Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Ordeal and Hope, 1939–1942 (New York: Viking
Press, 1965), 298–301.
25 Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York:
Harper & Bros., 1947), 414.
26 Forrest C. Pogue, “The Wartime Chiefs of Sta and the President,” in Monte D. Wright
and Lawrence J. Paszek, eds., Soldiers and Statesmen (Washington, DC: Oce of Air
Force History, 1973), 71.
27 Kent Roberts Greeneld, American Strategy in World War II: A Reconsideration (Malabar,
FL: Krieger Publishing, 1982 reprint), 51–52.
28 Pogue, “Wartime Chiefs,” 72–73. Marshall recalled that the rst time he visited Hyde
Park, NY, Roosevelt’s home, was for the President’s funeral in April 1945.
29 William D. Leahy, I Was There (New York: Whittlesey House, 1950), 102; Davis, II, 439–
445.
30 “Charter: Joint Chiefs of Sta,” June 15, 1943, JCS 202/24.
31 Letter, FDR to Leahy, July 16, 1943, JCS 415.
32 Maurice Matlo and Edwin M. Snell, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941–1942
(Washington, DC: Oce of the Chief of Military History, 1953), 97–119.
33 Cline, 101–102.
34 Quoted in Larrabee, 187.
35 See Mark A. Stoler, The Politics of the Second Front: American Military Planning and Diplo-
macy in Coalition Warfare, 1941–1943 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977), 14–22.
36 JCS Minutes, 4th Meeting, March 7, 1942, RG 218, CCS 334 (2-9-42).
37 Matlo and Snell, 161; Grace Person Hayes, The History of the Joint Chiefs of Sta in World
War II: The War Against Japan (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1982), 113–114.
38 Roberts, 137–166; George F. Howe, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West
(Washington, DC: Oce of the Chief of Military History, 1957), 10–14.
39 Memo, Roosevelt to Marshall, August 24, 1942, box 4, President’s Secretary’s File, Roo-
sevelt Library.
40 Stimson and Bundy, 425–126; Memo, Roosevelt to Hopkins, Marshall, and King, July
24, 1942, box 4, President’s Secretary’s File, Roosevelt Library.
41 Sherwood, 563.
42 Gordon A. Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack (Washington, DC: Oce of the Chief of
Military History, 1951), 15–16; Matlo and Snell, 177.
43 Minutes, Meeting Held at the White House, December 10, 1942, box 29, Map Room
File, Roosevelt Library.
44 Llewellyn Woodward, British Foreign Policy in the Second World War (London: Her Maj-
esty’s Stationery Oce [HMSO], 1971), II, 462.
25
THE WAR IN EUROPE
45 See Maurice Matlo, “Allied Strategy in Europe, 1939–1945,” in Peter Paret, ed., Makers
of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1986), 677–702; and Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1995), 141.
46 Davis, II, 373–375. At the request of Admiral King, the JSSC’s charter made provision
for a fourth member to represent naval aviation. King failed to follow up, however, and
the position was never lled.
47 Report by JSSC to JCS, “Basic Strategic Concept for 1943,” December 11, 1942, JCS
167.
48 Mark A. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Sta, the Grand Alliance, and U.S.
Strategy in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 90–91.
49 Minutes of a Meeting at the White House, January 7, 1943, President’s Secretary’s File,
Roosevelt Library; U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: Con-
ferences at Washington, 1941–1942, and Casablanca, 1943, 505–514.
50 Winston S. Churchill, The Hinge of Fate (Boston: Houghton, Miin, 1950), 676.
51 Maurice Matlo, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1943–44 (Washington, DC: Of-
ce of the Chief of Military History, 1959), 37; Churchill, Hinge of Fate, 686–687.
52 “Bomber Oensive from the UK,” January 21, 1943, CCS 166/1/D, World War II Con-
ference Papers, 88–89.
53 Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol.
II, Europe: Torch to Pointblank, August 1942 to December 1943 (Washington, DC: Oce of
Air Force History, 1983), 274–307.
54 Hayes, 363.
55 Letter, Wedemeyer to Handy, January 20, 1943, quoted in Davis, II, 436.
56 Cline, 234–242.
57 “Charter: Joint War Plans Committee,” May 11, 1943, JCS 202/14.
58 Ernest J. King and Alfred Muir Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record (New York:
W.W. Norton, 1952), 491–495. See also JPS Report, May 7, 1943, and decision on May
8, 1943, “Strategic Plan for the Defeat of Japan,” JCS 287 and JCS 287/1.
59 Cline, 219–220.
60 Stoler, Allies and Adversaries, 120–121.
61 Matlo, Strategic Planning, 1943–44, 132.
62 Matlo, Strategic Planning, 1943–44, 126–145; Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Orga-
nizer of Victory (New York: Viking Press, 1973), 193–213; CCS Minutes, TRIDENT, 1st
meeting, May 12, 1943, World War II Conferences, 253; “Final Report to the President and
Prime Minister,” May 25, 1943, CCS 242/6.
63 Cline, 222.
64 Minutes of Meeting Held at the White House between the President and the Chiefs of
Sta, August 10, 1943, box 29, Map Room File, Roosevelt Library.
65 Memo, JPS to JCS, August 5, 1943, “Strategic Concept for the Defeat of the Axis in Eu-
rope,” JCS 444; Memo, JSSC to JCS, August 5, 1943, revised per JCS discussion August
6, 1943, “QUADRANT and European Strategy,” JCS 443.
26
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66 Leahy Diary entry, August 14, 1943, Leahy Papers, Library of Congress (microlm);
Leahy, I Was There, 175.
67 Final Report to the President and Prime Minister, August 24, 1943, CCS 319/5, World
War II Conference Papers; Cline, 224–225.
68 David Dilks, ed., The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 1938–1945 (New York: G.P. Put-
nam’s Sons, 1972), 570–571.
69 Roberts, 431–435.
70 Arthur Bryant, Triumph in the West, 1943–1945 (London: Collins, 1959), 59, 71.
71 Sextant Conference, Minutes of 2d Plenary Meeting, held at Villa Kirk, Cairo, Novem-
ber 24, 1943, World War II Conference Papers.
72 Minutes, Military Conference Between U.S.A., Great Britain, and U.S.S.R., November
29, 1943, EUREKA Conference, ibid.
73 Overy, 143; Bryant, 88–101; Pogue, Organizer of Victory, 316–318.
74 JCS Info Memo 687, October 14, 1949, “Dissolution of the Combined Chiefs of Sta
Organization,” U, CCS 334 (2-9-46) sec. 1, RG 218.
75 See Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (New
York: Vintage Books, 1977), 102–104.
76 The most ambitious proposal was a recommendation by the Joint Strategic Survey
Committee in the late summer of 1944 to replace the CCS with a tripartite “United
Chiefs of Sta.” The British gave it a chilly reception and the project quickly died. See
JSSC Report, “Machinery for Coordination of U.S.-Soviet-British Military Eort,”
August 31, 1944, JCS 1005/1.
77 See Memo by U.S. CoS to CCS, August 17, 1944, “Machinery for Coordination of
U.S.-Soviet-British Military Eort,” JCS 1005; and Report by JPS, November 17, 1944,
“Liaison Between Theater Commanders and the Russian Armies,” JCS 1005/3.
78 Adam B. Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence: The History of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–67
(New York: Praeger, 1967), 319.
79 Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York: Enigma Books, 2001), 616;
Matlo and Snell, 329–336.
80 Stoler, Allies and Adversaries, 124–132. See also Annex A, “Relationship of Russia to
U.S. Global Military Situation,” to Memo, JSSC to JCS, September 16, 1943, JCS 506;
Sherwood, 748–749; and James F. Schnabel, The Joint Chiefs of Sta and National Policy,
1945–1947 (Washington, DC: Joint History Oce, 1996), 7–8.
81 “Instructions to Members of U.S. Military Mission to U.S.S.R.,” October 5, 1943, JCS
506/1; Matlo, Strategic Planning, 1943–44, 290–291.
82 John R. Deane, The Strange Alliance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), 47.
83 Stoler, Allies and Adversaries, 166.
84 Letter, Deane to Marshall, December 2, 1944, in Deane, 84.
85 Pogue, Organizer of Victory, 530–531.
86 Comments by Soviet Marshal Voroshilo, Minutes of Military Conference between
U.S.A., Britain, and U.S.S.R., November 29, 1943, World War II Conferences, 539; King
and Whitehill, 518.
27
THE WAR IN EUROPE
87 Pogue, Organizer of Victory, 311–313.
88 Stoler, Allies and Adversaries, 182–183.
89 Memo, Marshall to Roosevelt, March 31, 1944, quoted in Matlo, Strategic Planning,
1943–44, 497.
90 Letter, Roosevelt to Marshall, September 9, 1944, JCS 771/8.
91 Argonaut Conference, Minutes of Meeting Held in the President’s Sun Room, Livadia
Palace, February 4, 1945, box 29, Map Room File, Roosevelt Library.
92 Matlo, Strategic Planning, 1943–44, 500–501.
93 Memo, JCS to President Roosevelt, January 23, 1945, U.S. Department of State, Foreign
Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers—the Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1955), 396–400.
94 John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 198–243.
95 Pogue, 578–581; Stoler, Allies and Adversaries, 237–238.
96 Marshall interview, quoted in Pogue, 574.
Burma Road, 1944–1945
Chapter 2
The AsiA-PAcific WAr
And The Beginnings
of PosTWAr PlAnning
The Joint Chiefs’ greatest accomplishment in World War II was planning and ex-
ecuting a two-front war, one in the European-Atlantic theater and the other in the
Asia-Pacic region. Even though the agreed Anglo-American strategy gave primary
importance to defeating Germany, the attack on Pearl Harbor and Japan’s rapid ad-
vances during the early stages of the war created a political and military environment
that focused heavy attention on the Pacic and Far East. For the rst year or so of the
war, bolstering the American posture there consumed as much, if not more, of the
Joint Chiefs’ energy as Europe. At the same time, the absence of an agreed long-range
wartime strategy made it practically impossible for JCS planners to draw a clear dis-
tinction between primary and secondary theaters. As a result, by the end of 1943, de-
ployments of personnel were practically the same (1.8 million) against Japan as against
Germany.
1
Thereafter, as the United States stepped up its preparations for Operation
Overlord and as the Allies brought the German submarine threat in the Atlantic under
control, the buildup in the United Kingdom accelerated quickly, overshadowing the
allocation of resources elsewhere. But with such a substantial concentration of person-
nel and other assets in Asia and the Pacic from the outset, it was practically impossible
for the Joint Chiefs to draw and maintain a clear distinction in priorities.
Strategy and Command in the PaCifiC
To wage the Pacic war, the Joint Chiefs adopted somewhat dierent command
procedures than they used in the European and Mediterranean theaters. In Eu-
rope, the lines of command and control followed in accordance with the decision
taken by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill immediately after Pearl
Harbor to pool their resources and to pursue a common strategy. For the North
Africa–Mediterranean campaigns and for the invasion of France, the Allies estab-
lished combined unied commands, which operated under directives issued by the
29
30
CounCil of War
Combined Chiefs of Sta. The Supreme Commander for the invasion of Europe,
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, took his orders from the CCS (which were relayed
to him via the War Department) and presided over an integrated sta that was both
multinational and multi-Service in its composition.
2
Command arrangements in the Pacic evolved dierently, owing to the pre-
dominant role played by the Navy in that theater, the Combined Chiefs’ limited
participation, and decisions taken during the initial stages of the war to split the
theater into two parts. Shortly after Pearl Harbor General Marshall persuaded Ad-
miral King to endorse the creation of a combined Australian-British-Dutch-Amer-
ican Command (ABDACOM) for the Southwestern Pacic in hopes of mobiliz-
ing greater resistance.
3
The Japanese surge continued and ABDACOM soon fell
apart, leaving command relationships in the South Pacic in a shambles. From this
unpleasant experience (and a later one involving diculties with the British over
protection of Anglo-American convoys crossing the Atlantic), King resolved never
again to be drawn into a combined or unied command arrangement if he could
possibly avoid it. Unity of command, King insisted, was highly overrated and de-
nitely “not a panacea for all military diculties” as some “amateur strategists”—a
veiled reference to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson—seemed to believe.
4
King’s solution to command problems in the Pacic lay in a division of respon-
sibility, approved by the Joint Chiefs with little debate on March 16, 1942, that created
two parallel organizations: a Southwest Pacic Area command under General Douglas
MacArthur, bringing together a patchwork of U.S. ground, sea, and air forces with
the remnants of the ABDACOM, and a Pacic Ocean Area command under Admiral
Chester W. Nimitz, composed predominantly of Navy and Marine Corps units.
5
In
1944, a third Pacic command emerged, organized around the Twentieth Air Force,
which operated under the authority of the JCS, with General Arnold as its executive
agent. King would have preferred a single joint command for the Pacic, but he knew
that if he pushed for one, it would probably go to MacArthur rather than to a Navy
ocer. MacArthur was practically anathema to the Navy, and Nimitz, the leading Navy
candidate for the post, was junior to MacArthur and still relatively unknown.
6
Unlike
the ABDACOM, which had fallen under the Combined Chiefs of Sta, these new
commands were the exclusive responsibility of the United States and reported directly
to the Joint Chiefs, the presence of Australian and other foreign forces under MacAr-
thur notwithstanding. Though joint organizations, composed of ground, air, and naval
forces, they were not, strictly speaking, “unied” or integrated commands: MacArthur’s
sta was almost entirely Army; Nimitz’s predominantly Navy. One byproduct of the
new command structure was the establishment of the JCS “executive agent” system,
The aSia-PaCifiC War anD The BeGinninGS of PoSTWar PlanninG
31
using the Service chiefs as go-betweens. Thus, in relaying orders and other communi-
cations, Marshall dealt directly with MacArthur and King with Nimitz.
7
From the outset, the two original commands conducted separate and dierent
types of wars. MacArthur’s principal aim was to redeem his reputation and liberate
the Philippines, where he had suered an ignominious defeat early in 1942. Promising
“I shall return,” he launched an ambitious campaign, rst to contain, then to roll back
the Japanese in the Southwest Pacic. With aircraft carriers in short supply, he turned
to Lieutenant General George C. Kenney, commander of the Fifth Air Force, to sup-
ply the bulk of his combat air support from a motley force of land-based ghters and
bombers, many of them cast-os from other theaters.
8
For naval support he relied on
Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, commander of the Seventh Fleet. Working with
limited resources and in a hostile climate where tropical diseases could be as lethal as
the Japanese, MacArthur developed a leap-frog strategy that took him up the north-
eastern coast of New Guinea and eventually back to the Philippines.Nimitz’s concept
of the war centered on the interdiction of Japanese shipping and the destruction of
the Japanese eet as the keys to victory. Cautious and reserved by nature, he was ini-
tially skeptical of the idea—pressed upon him by King after the Casablanca Confer-
ence—that the Navy should, in eect, revive the old War Plan Orange and concen-
trate its eorts on strategic objectives in the Central Pacic. Seeking a war-winning
strategy, King proposed a thrust through the Marshalls and Marianas, spearheaded by
fast carrier task forces and Marine Corps amphibious assault units. Though Nimitz
went along with the idea, he and his planning sta at Pearl Harbor insisted on rene-
ments that included recapturing and holding the Aleutian Islands and neutralizing the
Gilberts to give U.S. warships the benet of land-based air protection.
9
As it turned
out, Nimitz moved more slowly than King originally envisioned, chiey because he
synchronized his advance to progress more or less in unison with MacArthur’s march
up through New Guinea and Admiral William F. Halsey’s campaign in the Solomon
Islands, thereby optimizing his assets and assuring the protection of his western ank.
10
King assured Nimitz as he embarked upon the Central Pacic strategy that he
would enjoy substantial numerical superiority over the Japanese eet. Indeed, a crit-
ical factor in King’s advocacy of the plan was his knowledge that the Navy would
soon have a “new” eet in the Pacic, the product of a naval construction program
inaugurated in 1940 and hurried along after Pearl Harbor.
11
Among the rst of
these ships to take up station in the Pacic during the second half of 1943 were a
half-dozen of the new 27,000-ton Essex-class attack carriers. Built to accommodate
nearly a hundred planes each, these ships gave Nimitz the capability of launching
carrier bombing strikes comparable to land-based aviation. By the end of the year,
32
CounCil of War
he had a force of over 700 carrier-based aircraft, many of them improved models,
and a growing eet of ships, half of them built since the beginning of the war.
12
Additional support for Nimitz’s push into the Central Pacic came from the
Army Air Forces (AAF), who saw an opportunity to use island bases in the Marianas
to launch B–29 attacks against Japan. Until mid-1943, the Air Sta had concen-
trated on China as the primary staging area for its B–29s, which were new high-
altitude, long-distance, very heavy bombers that the AAF expected to deploy in
large numbers against Japan during the second half of 1944. Owing to problems of
supplying bases in China and protecting them against expected Japanese counterat-
tacks, however, Air Sta planners began to look elsewhere. With the emergence of
Nimitz’s Central Pacic strategy, they refocused their eorts there.
13
Although the
Joint Chiefs tried from time to time to develop an overall war plan for the Pacic,
the divided command in the theater made it virtually impossible. Invariably, the de-
cisions that emerged from Washington represented compromises, resulting in “an ad
hoc approach to Pacic strategy.”
14
Friction between MacArthur and Nimitz was en-
demic to the Pacic theater and required frequent intervention from Marshall and
King. At the same time, in CCS meetings with the British, King often pursued what
amounted to a separate agenda. Technically, the CCS exercised no responsibility
for the Pacic, but because the demands of the various theaters regularly impinged
on each other, the Combined Chiefs took it upon themselves to review plans for
Asia and the Pacic while developing strategy for Europe and the Mediterranean.
At the wartime summit conferences and in routine contacts in Washington, King’s
blatant Anglophobia and persistence in promoting the Navy’s interests in the Pacic
became practically legendary. Of the Americans they dealt with, King was by far
the most unpopular with the British. Yet he also proved remarkably eective at get-
ting what he wanted. In Grace Person Hayes’s estimation, he was clearly “the JCS
member whose inuence upon the course of events in the Pacic was greatest.”
15
In contrast to other aspects of the war, there were relatively few sharp dis-
agreements among the JCS over the merits of one course of strategy in the Pacic
over another. Marshall had no objection to the Navy’s Central Pacic strategy as
long as it was logistically feasible and did not crowd MacArthur out of the pic-
ture.
16
Moreover, none of the chiefs wanted to see a stalemate develop that could
prolong the Pacic conict into 1947 or 1948 and lead to war-weariness at home.
By 1943, the JCS agreed that a predominantly defensive posture in the Pacic was
incompatible with American interests and that the tide had turned suciently to
allow for the transition to an “oensive-defensive” philosophy. As the arrival of the
many new ships and planes in the Pacic suggested, increased industrial production
at home was nally making a dierence by oering a broader range of options on
the battle front.
17
These matters came to a head at the rst Quebec Conference
33
The aSia-PaCifiC War anD The BeGinninGS of PoSTWar PlanninG
(QUADRANT) in mid-August 1943. Though the chiefs’ number-one goal at First
Quebec was to rm up the British commitment to Overlord, stepping up the war
in the Pacic was a close second. Applying a mathematical formula approach (a
technique he enjoyed using), King proposed a worldwide boost in the allocation
of resources from 15 to 20 percent in the Pacic, a 5 percent increase that would
translate into one-third more available resources and only a 6 percent drop in sup-
plies to Europe.
18
The British knew that, as a rule, the Joint Chiefs used exceedingly
conservative production and supply estimates, so that in all likelihood an increase
in the allocation to the Pacic would mean little or no change elsewhere. Though
the CCS never ocially approved King’s formula, the British members were well
aware that there was not much they could do if the Americans elected to abide by it.
Turning to an alternative approach, the conference wound up approving an Ameri-
can plan increasing the tempo of operations in the Pacic at such a rate as to assure
the defeat of Japan within 12 months of Germany’s surrender or collapse.
19
Thus, by
mid to late 1943, though not exactly on a par with the war in Europe, the war in the
Pacic was steadily gathering momentum and recognition that the outcome there
was no less important than victory in Europe. The chiefs knew that long, drawn-out
wars tended to sap morale at home and have unforeseen political side-eects. Con-
sequently, they hoped to lay the groundwork for the defeat of Japan well in advance
and make it happen as quickly as possible once Germany surrendered. The chiefs as-
sumed that, to carry out this strategy, they would need to move troops from Europe
to the Pacic as fast as possible and mass forces on an unprecedented scale. Little did
they realize that, when that moment arrived, they would have in their hands a new
weapon—the atomic bomb—that would not only facilitate Japan’s surrender more
abruptly than anyone realized, but usher in a new era in warfare at the same time.
the China-Burma-india theater
With Europe and the Pacic commanding most of the attention and resources, prob-
lems in the China-Burma-India Theater (CBI) took a distinctly secondary place in
the Joint Chiefs’ strategic calculations. Under the division of responsibility adopted by
the Combined Chiefs of Sta in March 1942, the United States provided military co-
ordination with the government of China, while Britain saw to the defense of Burma
and India. The only American combat formations assigned to the CBI during the
war were the Galahad commando unit (Merrill’s Marauders) formed near the end of
1943, and the XX Bomber Command, consisting of four B–29 groups that operated
mainly from Chengtu in southwest China in 1944–1945. Otherwise, the U.S. presence
consisted of noncombat personnel involved in construction projects, training and ad-
visory functions, and logistical support for China under the lend-lease aid program.
34
CounCil of War
China’s need for assistance had grown steadily since the outbreak of its unde-
clared war with Japan in 1937. Forced by the invading Japanese to abandon its capital
at Nanking, the Chinese Nationalist government of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek
had relocated to the interior. Operating out of Chongqing, Chiang had used his well-
established political connections in Washington to mobilize American public opinion
and congressional support for his cause. Prohibited under the 1937 Neutrality Act from
providing direct military assistance, the Roosevelt administration arranged several large
loans that allowed Chiang to buy arms and equipment to bolster his military capa-
bilities. But with graft and corruption permeating Chiang’s government, much of the
nancial help from Washington was wasted. By the time the United States entered the
war in December 1941, Chiang’s regime was near collapse. At the ARCADIA Confer-
ence, with Japanese forces moving practically at will across East Asia and the Pacic,
Roosevelt and Churchill sought to boost Chiang’s morale and shore up his resistance
by inviting him to become supreme commander of a new China Theater. Inclusion
of nonwhite, non-Christian China in the Grand Alliance helped the Western Allies
undercut Japanese propaganda about “Asia for the Asiatics” and reduced the chances of
World War II being seen as a racial conict.
20
The oer carried with it no promise of
additional assistance or immediate support, but it struck Roosevelt as a logical rst step
toward realizing his vision that China should emerge from the war as “a great power.”
Chiang promptly accepted and, to seal the deal, asked the United States to appoint an
American ocer to be his chief of sta, in eect his military second in command.
21
To assist Chiang as his chief of sta, Marshall and Secretary of War Stimson even-
tually settled on Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell, an “Old China Hand” whom
Marshall had once described as “qualied for any command in peace or war.”
22
Gifted
in learning languages, Stilwell was uent in Mandarin Chinese, which he mastered
during his numerous tours of duty in the Far East, dating from 1911, and intensive
language training in the 1920s. But he had a prickly personality and soon grew con-
temptuous of Chiang, whom he regarded as an ineectual political leader and inept
as a general. As the military attaché to the U.S. Embassy in China from 1935 to 1939,
Stilwell had deplored Chiang’s lack of preparedness for dealing with the Japanese
and had developed a tempered respect for Chiang’s Communist rivals, led by Mao
Zedong, who seemed determined to mount resistance to the Japanese with whatever
limited resources they could from their power base in the countryside.
23
Stilwell embarked on his mission with virtually no strategic or operational
guidance. His only instructions were a generalized set of orders issued by the War
Department early in February 1942. While the Army General Sta and the JCS
routinely armed the importance of the CBI, they consistently treated it as a low
priority. Preoccupied with Europe and the Pacic, the JCS had little inclination and
35
The aSia-PaCifiC War anD The BeGinninGS of PoSTWar PlanninG
even fewer resources for waging a war on the China mainland. Only Marshall and
Arnold took a personal interest in Chinese aairs—Marshall because he had spent
3 years in China during the interwar period and was a personal friend of Stilwell’s,
and Arnold because of the AAF’s heavy commitment of men and equipment for
supply operations and planned B–29 deployments. The most important military
uses the JCS could see for China were as a base for future air operations against
Japan and as a source of manpower for confronting and holding down large seg-
ments of the Japanese army. But it was unlikely that the AAF would make much use
of China as a base of operations until the Navy completed its advance across the
Pacic and could provide secure lines of supply and communications. Until then,
as the senior American ocer in the CBI, Stilwell was to oversee the distribution
of American lend-lease assistance, train the Chinese army, and wage war against the
Japanese with whatever U.S. and Chinese forces might be assigned to him.
24
Stilwell arrived in Asia in April 1942, just as the military situation was going
from bad to worse. The success of four Japanese divisions in attacking Burma, rout-
ing the British-led defenders and forcing them back into India, eectively cut the
last remaining overland access route—the Burma Road—to China. For nearly the
remainder of the war, from June 1942 until January 1945, China was virtually iso-
lated from the rest of the world except via air. Though Stilwell had a replacement
route known as the Ledo Road (renamed the Stilwell Road in 1945) under con-
struction by the end of the year, it took over 2 years of arduous work in a torturous
climate and terrain to complete. Of the 15,000 U.S. Servicemen who helped to
build the Ledo Road, about 60 percent were African-Americans.
25
Meantime, sup-
plies and equipment had to be own into China from bases in India over the Hima-
layas (the “Hump”) at considerable risk and cost. Eventually, the eort diverted so
many American transport aircraft that, in General Marshall’s opinion, it signicantly
prolonged the Allied campaigns in Italy and France.
26
Logistics were only one of Stilwell’s problems. Most dicult of all was establish-
ing a working relationship with the Generalissimo, whose autocratic ways, intricate
political connections, and lofty expectations clashed with Stilwell’s coarse manner and
business-like determination. Stilwell may have been the wrong choice for the job,
but whether anyone else could have done better is open to question. Never a great
admirer of Chiang to begin with, Stilwell became even less so as the war progressed.
Rarely did he acknowledge the extraordinary political pressures under which Chiang
operated or what some Chinese scholars now see as Chiang’s accomplishments in the
strategic management of his forces.
27
In Stilwell’s private diary, published after the war,
the full depth of his contempt for Chiang became apparent in his numerous references
to the Generalissimo by the nickname “Peanut.” In fact, Stilwell and Chiang rarely saw
36
CounCil of War
one another. Stilwell spent most of his time in India training Chinese troops, while
Chiang stayed in Chongqing.
The number one task that Stilwell and the JCS faced in China was to develop a
capability to ght the Japanese; for Chiang the situation was more complex. Though he
held the titles of president and generalissimo, he exercised limited authority over a group
of independently minded generals, politicians, and war lords. Apart from the threat posed
by the invaders, he also faced the likelihood of a showdown after the war with his arch-
rival, Mao Zedong, leader of the Chinese Communists, who styled themselves as being
in the forefront of the resistance to Japanese aggression. In fact, Nationalist forces put
up as much if not more resistance to the Japanese than the Communists and suered
signicantly heavier casualties. But on balance, it was Mao who emerged as most com-
mitted to the war. Saving his best troops for the postwar period, Chiang often ignored
Stilwell’s military advice and listened instead to an American expatriate and former cap-
tain in the Army Air Corps, Claire L. Chennault, who convinced Chiang that airpower
could defeat the Japanese. An innovator in tactical aviation during the interwar years,
Chennault led a amboyant group of American volunteer aviators known as the “Flying
Tigers.” Recalled to active duty in April 1942, Chennault was eventually promoted to
major general. Meanwhile, the Flying Tigers were absorbed into the Army Air Forces,
becoming part of the Fourteenth Air Force in 1943. Though technically subordinate
to Stilwell, Chennault often used his close connections with Chiang and his personal
friendship with President Roosevelt to bypass Stilwell’s authority.
28
Despite the frustration and setbacks, Stilwell achieved some remarkable results. His
most notable accomplishment was establishing the Ramgarh Training Center in India’s
Bihar Province, which served as the hub of his eorts to train and modernize the Chi-
nese army. At Ramgarh, Stilwell initiated practices and policies that the JCS adopted as
standard procedure for U.S. military advisory and assistance programs in the postwar
period. By placing American commanders and sta ocers with Chinese units, creating
Service training schools, and indoctrinating Chinese forces in the use of U.S. arms and
tactics, Stilwell helped to bring a new degree of professionalism to the Chinese Nation-
alist army. In the process, he created a system that saw extensive use in Korea, Vietnam,
and other countries in later years. By the time Stilwell was recalled in 1944, he had
trained ve Chinese divisions that he considered to be on a par with those in the Japa-
nese army, and was in the process of producing more, both at Ramgarh and in China.
29
At the rst Quebec Conference in August 1943, the Combined Chiefs of Sta
agreed the time had come to make plans for liberating Burma (thereby reopen-
ing the Burma Road to China) and the other parts of Southeast Asia the Japanese
had conquered the year before. To organize the campaign, the CCS established
a Southeast Asia Command (SEAC), with Lord Louis Mountbatten as supreme
37
The aSia-PaCifiC War anD The BeGinninGS of PoSTWar PlanninG
commander. Earlier, when asked to contribute forces to the operation, Chiang had
indicated that he would never allow a British ocer to command Chinese troops.
To get around this problem, the CCS named Stilwell as Mountbatten’s deputy, thus
adding yet another layer of responsibility to his dicult mission.
30
With the decision
to launch the Burma oensive, the Joint Chiefs, through the CCS, became more
actively and directly engaged in CBI aairs than at any time to that point in the war.
Even so, the British chiefs left no doubt that they were determined to have their
way in Southeast Asia, just as the JCS insisted on running the war in the Pacic.
31
Propping up Chiang, whose importance and role in the war Churchill dismissed as
“minor,” did not t the British agenda. At the Cairo Conference (SEXTANT) in
November 1943, Mountbatten and the British chiefs apprised Chiang of a change of
plans for the Burma operation that would lessen the role of Chinese forces and thus
reduce his projected allocation of shipments over the Hump.
32
To assuage Chiang’s
disappointment, Roosevelt promised to equip and train 90 Chinese divisions, but
avoided setting specic dates for initiating and completing the project.
33
Around this
same time, the Air Sta became convinced that bomber bases in China would be
too vulnerable and dicult to maintain, and began eyeing Formosa or the Marianas
as alternate staging sites for their B–29s. While the deployment of B–29s to China
(Operation Matterhorn) went ahead in April 1944 as planned, the JCS cut the force
in half, from eight bombardment groups to four, due to supply limitations.
34
Coupled with the actions approved earlier at SEXTANT, the chiefs’ decision
curbing B–29 deployments conrmed China’s fate as a secondary theater of the war.
Bitter and indignant, Chiang became ever more critical of Stilwell and insisted—to
Stilwell’s and the Joint Chiefs’ dismay—on micromanaging Chinese military opera-
tions in East China and Burma. Reverses followed on practically every front. At
the same time, Chiang remained intent on preserving his authority and refused to
listen when Stilwell proposed opening contacts with Mao and diverting lend-lease
aid to Chinese Communist forces ghting the Japanese north of the Yellow River.
35
By then, Roosevelt was also having second thoughts about Chiang’s leadership.
At Marshall’s instigation, the President urged Chiang in September 1944 to give
Stilwell “unrestricted command” of all Chinese forces.
36
Though Chiang acknowl-
edged that he might be willing to make concessions, he refused to have anything
more to do with Stilwell and demanded his recall. Seeing no alternative, Roosevelt
reluctantly acquiesced and in October 1944, Stilwell’s mission ended.
37
Following Stilwell’s departure, the Joint Chiefs made no attempt to nd a succes-
sor and decided to abolish the CBI. In its place they created two new commands: the
China Theater, which they placed under Lieutenant General Albert C. Wedemeyer,
Mountbatten’s deputy chief of sta; and the India-Burma Theater, which went to
38
CounCil of War
Lieutenant General David I. Sultan, formerly Stilwell’s second in command. The deci-
sion to break up the CBI was supposed to make Wedemeyer’s task easier, but in reality
it did no such thing. Though Wedemeyer served as the Generalissimo’s chief of sta,
the cooperation he received from Chiang was only marginally better than Stilwell
had gotten. Revised instructions issued by the Joint Chiefs on October 24, 1944, were
largely the product of Marshall’s hand and implicitly urged Wedemeyer to exercise
utmost caution. Barred from exercising direct command over Chinese forces, he could
only “advise and assist” the Generalissimo in the conduct of military operations.
38
Marshall correctly surmised that the wartime problems Stilwell and the Joint
Chiefs experienced with Chiang Kai-shek were only a foretaste of the future. Roo-
sevelt’s desire to make China a great power and Chiang’s eagerness to assume the
leadership role fueled expectations that could never be fullled. Chiang’s regime
was too weak politically and too corrupt to play such a part. Preoccupied with
preparing for the expected postwar showdown with his Communist rivals, Chi-
ang hoarded his resources rather than trying to defeat the Japanese. The JCS were
as interested as anyone in seeing a stable and unied China emerge from the war,
but they were averse to making commitments and expending resources that might
jeopardize operations elsewhere. China, meanwhile, remained a strategic backwater.
While some American planners, Marshall foremost among them, hoped for better
to come after Japan surrendered, they were not overly optimistic as a group.
PoStwar Planning BeginS
Despite setbacks in Asia and the steady but slow progress in pushing the Japanese back
across the Pacic, the Joint Chiefs detected denite signs by mid-1943 that the global
tide of battle was turning in the Allies’ favor and that victory over the Axis would soon
be in sight. Assuming a successful landing on the northern French coast in the spring
of 1944, the Combined Chiefs of Sta at the QUADRANT Conference had estimat-
ed for planning purposes that the war in Europe would be over by October 1944.
39
While this proved to be an overly optimistic prediction, it did help draw attention to
issues that the Joint Chiefs thus far had largely ignored: the need for policies and plans
on the postwar size, composition, and organization of the country’s Armed Forces, and
similar actions on postwar security and other political-military arrangements.
Preoccupied with the war, the Joint Chiefs were averse to rm postwar com-
mitments until they had a clearer idea of the outcome. A case in point was their reti-
cence concerning the postwar organization and composition of the Armed Forces,
an issue they knew was bound to provoke inter-Service friction and sharp debate.
In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor and the other setbacks early in the war, there was a
39
The aSia-PaCifiC War anD The BeGinninGS of PoSTWar PlanninG
growing sense within the military and the public at large that a return to the prewar
separateness of the Services was out of the question and that the postwar defense
establishment should be both bigger and better prepared for emergencies. In assess-
ing postwar requirements, the Joint Chiefs agreed that the country needed a larger,
more exible, and more eective standing force. Where dierences arose was over its
size, the assignment of roles and missions to its various components, and its overall
structure—in short the fundamental issues that dierentiated each Service.
40
The Joint Chiefs of Sta discussed these issues from time to time during the
war but made little headway in the absence of a consensus on postwar defense
organization and the possibility that the Armed Forces might adopt a system of
universal military training (UMT).
41
In consequence, JCS planning to determine
the optimum size, composition, and capabilities of the postwar force amounted to
a compilation of requirements generated by the Services themselves, based on their
own perceived needs and assessments. These uncoordinated estimates projected a
permanent peacetime military establishment of 1.6 million ocers and enlisted
personnel organized into an Army of 25 active and Reserve divisions, a 70-group
Air Force emphasizing long-range strategic bombardment, a Navy of 321 combat-
ant vessels in the active eet, including 15 attack carriers and 3,600 aircraft, and a
Marine Corps of 100,000 ocers and enlisted personnel.
42
Whether the Services would achieve these goals depended, among other
things, on the kind of defense establishment that would emerge after the war. The
most outspoken on the need for postwar organizational reform—and the rst to
propose a course of action—was General Marshall, whose strong views grew out
of his experiences with the hasty and chaotic demobilization that followed World
War I and the Army’s chronic underfunding during the interwar years. Expecting
money to be tight again after the war, Marshall foresaw the return to a relatively
small standing army and endorsed UMT as a means of expanding it rapidly in an
emergency. To make better use of available funds, he also urged improved manage-
ment of the Armed Forces, and in November 1943 he tendered a plan for JCS
consideration to create a single unied department of war. Arguing that the current
JCS-CCS committee structure was cumbersome and inecient, Marshall proposed
more streamlined arrangements stressing centralized administration, “amalgama-
tion” of the Services, and unity of command.
43
Arnold and King were lukewarm
toward the idea and favored tabling the matter until after the war. While Arnold
agreed with Marshall on the need for postwar reorganization, his rst priority was
to turn the Army Air Forces into a separate coequal service. At King’s suggestion,
the chiefs sidestepped the issues Marshall had raised by referring them to the Joint
Strategic Survey Committee for study “as soon as practicable.”
44
40
CounCil of War
By the spring of 1944, emerging congressional interest in postwar military or-
ganization compelled the JCS to revisit the issue sooner than they wanted to. At the
suggestion of the Joint Strategic Survey Committee, the chiefs appointed an inter-
Service fact-nding panel chaired by Admiral James O. Richardson to carry out an
in-depth appraisal.
45
In April 1945, after a 10-month investigation conducted largely
through interviews, the committee overwhelmingly endorsed unifying the Armed
Forces under a single department of national defense. Though composed of separate
military branches for land, sea, and air warfare, the unied Department would have a
single civilian secretary. A uni formed chief of sta would oversee military aairs and
act as the Department’s liaison with the President, performing a role similar to Ad-
miral Leahy’s. The committee’s lone dissenter was its chairman, Admiral Richardson.
As a harbinger of the bitter debates to come, he proclaimed the plan “unacceptable”
on the grounds that a single department was likely to be dominated by the Army
and the Air Force and could end up short-changing the Navy and stripping it of
its air component. Arguing essentially for the status quo, Richardson urged restraint
until the “lessons” of the recent war had been “thoroughly digested.” Until then, he
favored preserving the Joint Chiefs of Sta and their committee structure in their
current form and using that as the basis for expanding inter-Service coordination
after the war.
46
Even though the Joint Chiefs had authorized the Richardson Committee
study, they could reach no consensus on its ndings. Rather than resolving dier-
ences, the study had exacerbated them, revealing a sharp cleavage between the War
Department members (Marshall and Arnold), who favored the single department
approach, and the Navy members (Leahy and King), who preferred the current
system. Unable to come up with a unanimous recommendation, the JCS agreed to
disagree and on October 16, 1945, sent their “split” opinions to the White House.
While the debate over Service unication was far from over, the JCS took no fur-
ther part in it as a corporate body.
47
A similar sense of trepidation characterized the Joint Chiefs’ approach to political-
military aairs. Initially, Admiral Leahy, the President’s military Chief of Sta, believed
it inappropriate for ocers in the armed Services to oer opinions on matters outside
their realm of professional expertise. Convinced that the JCS should tread carefully, he
objected as a rule to military involvement in “political” matters.
48
Actually, Leahy’s posi-
tion at the White House drew him into daily contact with military issues having politi-
cal and diplomatic impact, as had his recent assignment as Ambassador to Vichy, France.
Nonetheless, Leahy’s outlook was fairly typical of military ocers of his generation,
whose mindsets were rooted in a professional ethos and concept of civil-military rela-
tions dating from the late 19
th
century. Once in place, this attitude was hard to dislodge.
49
41
The aSia-PaCifiC War anD The BeGinninGS of PoSTWar PlanninG
The Joint Chiefs became caught up in political-military aairs not because they
wanted to, but because they had no choice. Like his military advisors, President Roo-
sevelt put the needs of the war rst and preferred to relegate postwar issues relating
to a peace settlement and other political matters to the back burner. This approach
worked for a while, but by the Tehran Conference of November 1943, the pressure
was beginning to build for the administration to clarify its position on a growing
number of subjects. As an overall solution, Roosevelt put his faith in the creation of
a new international security organization—the United Nations (UN)—to sort out
postwar problems. But there were many issues that would need attention before the
UN was up and running. At the same time, Roosevelt’s deteriorating health—care-
fully shielded from the public—left him with less and less stamina, so that by the
spring of 1944, his workdays were down to 4 hours or less.
50
In those circumstances,
it was often up to the Joint Chiefs of Sta to help ll the void by contributing to the
postwar planning process.For most of the war, the Joint Chiefs had neither their own
organization for political-military aairs nor ready access to interagency machinery
for handling such matters. At the outset of the war, the only formal mechanism for in-
terdepartmental coordination was the Standing Liaison Committee, composed of the
Army Chief of Sta, the Chief of Naval Operations, and the Undersecretary of State.
Established in 1938, the Standing Liaison Committee operated under a vague charter
that gave it broad authority to bring foreign policy and military plans into harmony.
Its main contribution was to give the military chiefs an opportunity to learn trends in
State Department thinking, and vice versa. Rarely did it deal with anything other than
political and military relationships in the Western Hemisphere. After Pearl Harbor, it
met infrequently, nally going out of business in mid-1943.
51
In the absence of formal channels, coordination between the Joint Chiefs and
the foreign policy community became haphazard. To help bridge the gap, the JCS
accepted an invitation from the State Department to establish and maintain liai-
son through the Joint Strategic Survey Committee, initially to further the work
of State’s Postwar Foreign Policy Advisory Committee.
52
Seeking to expand these
contacts, the Joint War Plans Committee recommended in late May 1943 that the
State Department designate a part-time representative to advise the joint sta, argu-
ing that it was “impossible entirely to divorce political considerations from strategic
planning.” Going a step further, Brigadier General Wedemeyer, a key gure in the
Army’s planning sta, thought State should have an associate member on the Joint
Sta Planners who could also participate in JCS meetings “when papers concerned
with national and foreign policies are on the agenda.”
53
Nothing immediately came of these proposals. But by spring 1944, the chiefs
found themselves taking a closer look at the question of political-military consultation.
42
CounCil of War
Their rst concerns were to provide guidance to the European Advisory Commission
(EAC), an ambassadorial-level inter-Allied committee operating from London, with a
mandate to make recommendations on the termination of hostilities, and to help settle
a growing list of disputes between the Western powers and the Soviet Union over the
future political status of Eastern Europe. In assessing the prospects for a durable peace,
the Joint Chiefs cautioned the State Department in May 1944 that the “phenomenal”
wartime surge in Soviet military and economic power could make for trouble in devis-
ing eective security policies in the postwar period. In particular, the chiefs saw a high
probability of friction between London and Moscow that could require U.S. interven-
tion and mediation. While the chiefs downplayed the likelihood of a conict between
the Soviet Union and the West, they acknowledged that should one erupt, “we would
nd ourselves engaged in a war which we could not win even though the United
States would be in no danger of defeat and occupation.” Far more preferable, in the
chiefs’ view, would be the maintenance of “the solidarity of the three great powers” and
the creation of postwar conditions “to assure a long period of peace.”
54
With growing awareness that postwar problems would require a greater measure
of attention, the Joint Chiefs in June 1944 created the Joint Post-War Committee
(JPWC) under the Joint Strategic Survey Committee, to work with State and the
EAC on surrender terms for Germany and to prepare studies and recommendations
on postwar plans, policies, and other problems as the need arose.
55
The JPWC proved a
disappointment, however, due to its inability to process recommendations in a timely
manner.
56
The problem was especially acute with respect to the development of a co-
herent policy on the postwar treatment of Germany, an issue brought to the fore by
rumors of Germany’s impending collapse in the early fall of 1944 and the intervention
in the policy process of the President’s close personal friend, Secretary of the Trea-
sury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. Lest Germany rise again to threaten the peace of Europe,
Morgenthau proposed severely restricting its postwar industrial base, and at the second
Quebec Conference (OCTAGON), in September 1944, he persuaded Roosevelt and
Churchill to embrace a plan calling for Germany to be converted into a country
“primarily agricultural and pastoral in its character.”
57
There followed a lengthy debate,
with Secretary of War Stimson leading the opposition to the Morgenthau plan, that
left the policy toward Germany in limbo for the next 6 months. Eventually, a watered-
down version of the Morgenthau plan prevailed, in part because its hands-o approach
toward the postwar German economy appealed to the JCS and civil aairs ocers in
the War Department as the easiest and most expeditious policy to administer in light of
requirements for redeploying U.S. forces from Europe to the Pacic.
58
To help break the impasse over the treatment of Germany and to avoid similar
bottlenecks in the future, the Secretaries of State, War, and Navy created a committee
43
The aSia-PaCifiC War anD The BeGinninGS of PoSTWar PlanninG
of key subordinates to oversee political-military aairs. Activated in December 1944,
the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC) operated at the assistant
secretary level and resembled an interagency clearinghouse. By January 1945, it had
functioning subcommittees on Europe, the Far East, Latin America, and the Near
and Middle East. An Informal Policy Committee on Germany (IPCOG), organized
separately to accommodate the Treasury’s participation, handled German aairs. To
simplify administration, SWNCC and IPCOG shared the same secretariat.
59
Though
the JCS played little part in the policy debate over Germany, their command and
control responsibilities gave them authority over the U.S. military occupation, which
was run under a JCS directive (JCS 1067).
60
The postwar treatment of Germany was only one of a growing list of political-
military issues involving the JCS as the war wound down. By the time of the second
Big Three conference at Yalta, in February 1945, the only military-strategic issue of con-
sequence on the chiefs’ agenda was the timing of the Soviet entry into the war against
Japan. Otherwise, as the chiefs’ pre-conference brieng papers suggest, JCS attention fo-
cused either on immediate operational matters growing out of strategic decisions taken
earlier, or pending administrative, political, and diplomatic issues that were expected
to arise from Germany’s surrender, the allocation of postwar zones of occupation in
Germany and Austria, shipping requirements for the redeployment of Allied forces, and
disarming the Axis. Less than 6 months later, when the Big Three resumed their delib-
erations at Potsdam, their third and nal wartime summit conference, political and dip-
lomatic issues clearly dwarfed military and strategic matters. JCS planners, in preparing
for the conference, were hard pressed to nd enough topics to ll the Combined Chiefs
of Sta expected agenda, not to mention a meeting with the Soviet military chiefs.
61
Throughout most of World War II, the Joint Chiefs viewed themselves as, rst
and foremost, a military planning and advisory body to the President. But as they
prepared to enter the postwar era, they found their mandate changing to encompass
not only military plans and strategy, but also related issues with denite political and
diplomatic implications. To be sure, as the postwar era beckoned, the Joint Chiefs
still had an abundance of military and related security matters before them. Never
again, however, would military policy and foreign policy be the separate and distinct
entities they had seemed to be when the war began.
ending the war with JaPan
While addressing problems of the coming peace, the Joint Chiefs of Sta still faced dif-
cult wartime decisions, none more momentous than those aecting the nal stages
of the war in the Pacic. Since the early days of the war, the Joint Chiefs had pursued a
44
CounCil of War
double-barreled strategy against Japan that allowed MacArthur to conduct operations
in New Guinea and the Bismarck Islands, while Nimitz rolled back the Japanese in
the Central Pacic. Under the agreed worldwide allocation of shipping and landing
craft set by the CCS, Nimitz’s operations had a prior claim over MacArthur’s when-
ever there were conicts over timing of operations and the allocation of resources. But
by early 1944, as the two campaigns began to converge, a debate developed on how
and where to conduct future operations. At issue was whether to follow MacArthur’s
advice and make the liberation of the Philippines the primary objective in the year
ahead, or to follow a plan favored by Nimitz of bypassing the Philippines for the most
part and concentrating on the Marianas as a stepping stone toward seizing Formosa,
from which U.S. forces could link up with the Chinese for the nal assault on Japan.
62
Of the options on the table, the Joint Chiefs considered the Formosa strategy
the most likely to succeed in bringing U.S. forces closer to Japan and shortening
the war.
63
To carry it out eectively, however, they would have to reconsider the
dual command arrangements that had prevailed since the start of the war and to
adopt a single, comprehensive Pacic strategy, something that neither MacArthur
nor Nimitz was yet ready to accept. Most intransigent of all was MacArthur. Treat-
ing the Formosa operation as a diversion, MacArthur insisted that the liberation of
the Philippines was a “national obligation.” With a strong personal interest in the
outcome, he was determined to see the expulsion of the Japanese from the entire
Philippine archipelago through to the end.
64
In July 1944, President Roosevelt paid a personal visit to Pearl Harbor for
face-to-face meetings with MacArthur and Nimitz “to determine the next phase of
action against Japan.” The only JCS member to accompany him was Admiral Leahy,
whose part in the deliberations was minor. In fact, the discussions were inconclusive;
by the time they ended, President Roosevelt seemed inclined to support MacAr-
thur’s position. Nimitz took the hint and, shortly after the conference adjourned, he
directed his sta to take a closer look at attacking Okinawa as a substitute for invad-
ing Formosa.
65
While King and Leahy continued to hold out for Formosa, a short-
age of support troops and the prospects of a lengthy campaign there persuaded the
Joint Sta Planners by late summer 1944 that the prudent course was to postpone a
nal decision on Formosa pending the outcome of initial operations in the south-
ern Philippines.
66
This became, in the absence of the Joint Chiefs’ ability to settle on
a better solution, the accepted course of action and more or less assured MacArthur
that he could move on to liberate the rest of the Philippines in due course. The coup
de grace was Nimitz’s decision, which he conveyed to King at a face-to-face meet-
ing in San Francisco in September 1944, to shelve plans for a Formosa invasion and
to focus on taking Okinawa. With this, the die was cast and on October 3, 1944, the
45
The aSia-PaCifiC War anD The BeGinninGS of PoSTWar PlanninG
JCS approved a directive to MacArthur setting December 20 as the target date for
invading Luzon and marching on to Manila.
67
Clearly, in this instance, the views of the theater commanders had prevailed
over those of the Joint Chiefs, an increasingly common phenomenon in the latter
stages of the war and a preview of the inuential role that combatant commanders
would play in the postwar era. Left unresolved and somewhat obscured by the Phil-
ippines-versus-Formosa imbroglio was the nal strategy for the defeat of Japan and
whether to plan a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home islands. Initial discussion
of these issues dated from the summer of 1944 when, in response to a preliminary
review of options by the Joint War Plans Committee, Admiral Leahy mentioned the
possibility of bringing about Japan’s surrender through intensive naval and air action
rather than through a landing of troops.
68
Over the following months, as MacArthur
moved up the Philippines and Nimitz prepared his attack against Okinawa, Japan’s
situation steadily deteriorated. By late 1944–early 1945, with the home islands now
within reach of Twentieth Air Force’s B–29s operating from the Marianas and with
the Navy conducting an unrelenting war at sea and a naval blockade, the outcome
of the conict was no longer in doubt. Though Japan’s armed forces could still
mount tenacious resistance, they were clearly engaged in a losing cause.
As the pressure on Japan mounted, so did conjecture within the joint sta
about the means of achieving victory. Prodded by their superiors, Navy planners
were especially reluctant to consider an invasion inevitable until air and naval at-
tacks and the blockade had run their course. To Leahy, King, and Nimitz, it seemed
“that the defeat of Japan could be accomplished by sea and air power alone, without
the necessity of actual invasion of the Japanese home islands by ground troops.”
69
Weighing the pros and cons, the Joint Sta Planners acknowledged in late April
1945 that while a case could indeed be made for a strategy of blockade and satura-
tion bombardment, prudence dictated moving ahead with preparations for an inva-
sion as the most likely course of action to assure Japan’s unconditional surrender.
70
On May 10, 1945, the Joint Chiefs gave the go-ahead for planning to continue
for the invasion, while noting several objections and reservations raised by Admiral
King.
71
The overall concept (code-named DOWNFALL) was a collaborative eort
between the joint sta and the major Pacic commands. It called for the attack to
take place in two stages: an initial invasion of southern Kyushu (Operation Olympic)
toward the end of 1945, followed by a landing in the spring of 1946 on Honshu (Op-
eration Coronet) in the vicinity of the Tokyo (Kanto) Plain, once reinforcements ar-
rived from Europe. Still to be decided were nal command arrangements, which the
JCS had neatly sidestepped during the Philippines-versus-Formosa debate. Avoiding
the issue once again, the chiefs in early April 1945 approved an interim assignment
46
CounCil of War
of responsibilities, under which MacArthur would serve as commander in chief of all
Army land forces while Nimitz commanded all theater naval forces. Strategic air assets
would remain essentially as they were since the creation of the Twentieth Air Force
a year earlier, under the strategic direction of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, with General
Arnold as executive agent, but available to General MacArthur as needed.
72
The Joint
Chiefs expected the looming invasion of Japan to be their biggest operation of the
war, dwarng the D-Day invasion of Europe. Anticipating strong resistance, Operation
Olympic proposed a 12-division assault force, with 8 divisions in reserve. Coronet would
be even bigger, with 14 divisions in the initial invasion and 11 more in following ech-
elons. By comparison, the D-Day landings at Normandy had involved an initial assault
force of eight divisions—ve American, two British, and one Canadian. Altogether,
Olympic and Coronet would require more than a million ground troops, 3,300 aircraft,
and over 1,000 Navy combatant vessels.
73
Missing from these plans were hard estimates of U.S. casualties. Those under
consideration at the time were extrapolated from earlier Pacic campaigns by the
Joint War Plans Committee, which predicted U.S. losses ranging from 25,000 killed
and 105,000 wounded for an invasion of Kyushu alone, to 46,000 dead and 170,000
wounded for attacks on Kyushu and the Tokyo Plain combined.
74
To draw o de-
fenders, the joint sta in May–June 1945 put together a deception plan (Broadaxe) to
convince the Japanese that there would be no invasion prior to 1946, or until U.S.
forces had consolidated control of Formosa, the China coast, and Indochina, and the
British had liberated Sumatra.
75
Yet even if the deception worked, Admiral King be-
lieved that an invasion of the home islands would still meet stronger resistance than
any previously encountered and that the joint sta should calculate its casualty g-
ures accordingly.
76
In view of the methodological problem Admiral King raised, the
Joint Sta Planners decided to withhold an estimate of casualties, stating only that
losses were “not subject to accurate estimate” but would be at least on a par with
those elsewhere in the Pacic Theater, which tended to be higher than in Europe.
77
dawn of the atomiC age
Also absent from U.S. invasion plans was an assessment of the impact of the atomic
bomb, still a super-secret project outside the purview of the joint sta. Launched in
October 1939, the atomic bomb program had come about as insurance against re-
search being done in Nazi Germany, where scientists a year earlier had demonstrat-
ed a process known as “nuclear ssion.” While the Germans were apparently slow to
grasp the full importance of what they had achieved, their colleagues elsewhere in
Europe and the United States speculated that, under properly controlled conditions,
47
The aSia-PaCifiC War anD The BeGinninGS of PoSTWar PlanninG
nuclear ssion could produce enormous explosive power. Among those alarmed by
the German breakthrough were Leo Szilard, a Hungarian expatriate, and Enrico
Fermi, a refugee from Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, both living in the United States. Un-
able to interest the Navy Department in a program of stepped-up nuclear research,
they persuaded Albert Einstein, the celebrated physicist, to send a letter (written by
Szilard) to President Roosevelt, drawing attention to the German experiment and
suggesting the possibility of “extremely powerful bombs of a new type.” Roosevelt
agreed that the United States needed to act, and from that point forward the pro-
gram grew steadily to become the Manhattan Engineer District (MED), with the
War Department covertly funding and overseeing the eort.
78
The Joint Chiefs of Sta learned of the atomic bomb project individually, at
dierent times during the course of the war. The rst to be brought in on the secret
was General Marshall, who became involved in 1941 as a member of the President’s
Top Advisory Group, which was nominally responsible for overseeing the program.
79
Marshall told Admiral King about the project late in 1943, but according to King, the
subject was still too sensitive to be placed on the chiefs’ agenda or discussed at meet-
ings.
80
General Arnold had suspected for some time that something was afoot, and
received conrmation from the MED director, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves,
in July 1943. Toward the end of March 1944, Groves gave Arnold a more in-depth
description of the project and a list of tentative requirements.
81
The last to learn about
the bomb was Admiral Leahy, who was not apprised until September 1944 when he
attended the second Quebec Conference. Afterwards, he received a full brieng at the
President’s home in Hyde Park, New York, by Vannevar Bush, Director of the Oce
of Scientic Research and Development and scientic coordinator of the project.
82
Whether the Manhattan Project would yield a workable weapon was an open
question for much of the war. Convinced that the project had merit, Bush assured
President Roosevelt as early as July 1941 that the explosive potential of an atomic bomb
would be “thousands of times more powerful” than any conventional weapon and that
its use “might be determining.”
83
Leahy, on the other hand, scoed at Bush’s claims and
thought the eort would never amount to much. “The bomb will never go o,” he
insisted, “and I speak as an expert in munitions.”
84
Even though the other members
of the JCS appeared not to share Leahy’s skepticism, they were still cautious and knew
better than to incorporate a nonexistent weapon into their strategic calculations. Nor
was it clear, even if the bomb worked, exactly when it would be available and in what
quantities. According to Groves, the earliest date for a prototype was around August 1,
1945, with a second bomb to follow 5 months later.
85
As it turned out, the rst atomic
test took place July 16, 1945, 2 months after Germany’s capitulation and well into the
planning cycle for the invasion of Japan. Until then, lacking conrmation of the bomb’s
48
CounCil of War
capability, the JCS could count on nothing more than an expensive program wrapped
in secrecy that might or might not change the course of history.
Despite JCS uncertainty over whether the bomb would work, preparations
for its possible use received top priority from March 1944 onward, when Groves
briefed Arnold on the project. Expecting the bomb to be of considerable size and
weight, Groves speculated that, for delivery purposes, it might be necessary to use a
British Lancaster heavy bomber, the largest plane of its kind in the Allied inventory,
which could carry a payload of up to 22,000 pounds. Arnold strenuously objected
to using a British plane and insisted that the AAF could provide a suitable delivery
platform from a modied B–29. From this discussion emerged Project SILVER-
PLATE, which produced the 14 specially congured B–29s that made up 313th
Bombardment Wing of 509th Composite Group, the unit that carried out the at-
tacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
86
Composed of carefully selected top-rated pilots and crews, 509th was the most
elite unit in the Army Air Forces. Eventually it became part of the Twentieth Air
Force, though for all practical purposes it operated independently and was responsible
to Groves and the MED. As a composite group, 509th carried with it most of its own
logistical support and was by design a stand-alone organization. Training began in ear-
ly September 1944 in utmost secrecy at Wendover Field, an isolated air base in western
Utah within easy reach of the MED’s weapons research laboratory at Los Alamos,
New Mexico. Crews concentrated on learning to drop two dierent weapons—a cy-
lindrical uranium bomb called “Little Boy” and a rotund plutonium bomb called “Fat
Man.” The initial plan was to use nuclear bombs against Germany. But as it became
apparent that the war in Europe might end before they were ready, 509th turned its
attention to the Pacic in December 1944 and spent the next 2 months conducting
test ights over Cuba to familiarize crews with terrain similar to Japan’s. In May 1945,
advance elements of the 509th began arriving at their staging base on Tinian, one of
the Marianas, to dig the pits from which the bombs would be hoisted into the planes.
Pilots and crews arrived soon thereafter and by late July were executing combat test
strikes over Japan with high-explosive projectiles of the Fat Man design.
87
Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945, left the fate of the Manhattan Project in
the hands of his successor, Harry S. Truman. Though a bomb had yet to be manu-
factured and tested, the project was far enough along that Truman was reasonably
certain it would succeed. What remained to be seen was how powerful the explosive
device would be. In early May, on Secretary of War Stimson’s initiative, Truman au-
thorized the War Department to create an interdepartmental Interim Committee to
recommend policies and plans for using the bomb and related issues.
88
Separately, a
committee of technical experts chaired by Groves began to assemble a list of targets.
49
The aSia-PaCifiC War anD The BeGinninGS of PoSTWar PlanninG
Omitted from both groups was any formal JCS representation, though Marshall re-
ceived regular updates from Stimson on the Interim Committee’s progress and even
attended one of its meetings on May 31, 1945. How much, if any, of this information
Marshall conveyed to the other chiefs is unknown. According to Groves, the omis-
sion of the Joint Chiefs was intentional, to preserve security and, no less important,
to avoid having to deal with Leahy’s negative views.
89
With the atomic bomb still in gestation and blanketed in secrecy, the Joint
Chiefs continued to ignore it in their plans for ending the war with Japan. Meeting
with the new President and the Service Secretaries on June 18, 1945, they described
in some detail the preparations for the invasion, discussed the probability of heavy
casualties, and agreed that Soviet intervention would be desirable but not essential
for winning the war. Characterizing Japan’s situation as “hopeless,” the JCS estimat-
ed that it would only worsen under the continuing onslaught of the blockade and
accompanying air and naval bombardment. In Marshall’s opinion, however, air and
sea attacks would not suce to bring about a Japanese surrender, a view in which
Admiral King now grudgingly concurred. What caused King to come around is not
apparent from the ocial record, but it may have been recent ULTRA radio inter-
cepts, to which all at the meeting had access. These indicated an accelerated buildup
of Japanese forces on Kyushu and a feverish determination by the Japanese high
command to mount a last-ditch stand using heavily dug-in forces and suicide air
attacks.
90
Despite sending out peace feelers, the Japanese showed no sign of giving
up. Instead, the military leaders appeared intent on inicting such heavy damage and
casualties on the United States that it would see the futility of further ghting and
seek a negotiated peace. Even skeptics like King seemed to agree that an invasion
was the only viable option for obtaining Japan’s surrender. Truman was visibly dis-
traught over the prospects of a bloodbath, but by the time the meeting broke up he
saw no other choice and ordered planning for the Kyushu operation to proceed.
91
Whether the use of nuclear weapons as a possible alternative to an invasion was
discussed at this meeting is unclear. While the formal minutes make no mention
of the atomic bomb, they indicate an interest on Stimson’s part in nding a politi-
cal solution for ending the war and an o-the-record discussion of “certain other
matters.”
92
Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, who accompanied Stimson,
recalled raising the issue of sending the Japanese an ultimatum, urging them to sur-
render or be subjected to a “terrifyingly destructive weapon.” McCloy remembered
that the JCS were “somewhat annoyed” by his interference and veiled reference to
the bomb, but that President Truman “welcomed it” and directed that such a politi-
cal initiative be set in motion. However, Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal,
50
CounCil of War
who was also present, had no recollection of McCloy’s remarks and reckoned that
the discussion McCloy had in mind took place at another time.
93
Planning for military action against Japan now followed a two-track course, one
along the lines laid out by the Joint Chiefs in preparation for an invasion, the other
driven by the gathering momentum of the Manhattan Project. Both came together
at the Potsdam Conference (TERMINAL) in July–August 1945, where Truman and
the JCS received word of the successful test shot held near Alamogordo, New Mexico.
By then, Truman had also received the recommendations of the Interim Committee,
which favored using the bomb if the experiment succeeded. The expense of having
developed the bomb in the rst place, the potential diplomatic leverage it oered
in dealing with the Russians, and last but not least the elimination of the need for
a bloody invasion, all doubtless weighed heavily on Truman’s mind. Once he had
conrmation that the bomb would work, the decision to use it became almost auto-
matic.
94
Looking back, Leahy and King strongly disagreed with the President’s choice.
Insisting that the enemy’s collapse was only a matter of time, they considered attacks
with atomic weapons excessive and unnecessary. Still, there is no evidence that either
stepped forward to propose a dierent course. If Leahy and King objected at the time,
they kept their reservations to themselves.
95
The only JCS member who seriously considered an alternative course of action
was Marshall. Like King and Leahy, Marshall hoped the Japanese would see the light and
surrender, making use of the atomic bomb unnecessary. The diculty arose in nding
a way of bringing the Japanese around. During the Interim Committee’s deliberations
prior to Potsdam, Marshall and Stimson discussed the possibility of issuing an explicit
warning before dropping the bomb or of conning its use to a demonstration over
uninhabited terrain. But they could see no practical way of assuring that the Japanese
would be suciently awed by either a warning or a demonstration shot to draw the
logical conclusion and concede defeat.
96
According to his biographer, Forrest C. Pogue,
Marshall’s main concern was to wind up the war quickly with as few casualties as pos-
sible to either side; on this basis he came to the conclusion that if the test at Alamogordo
turned out to be a success, the bomb should be used against targets in Japan.
97
The attacks that followed, destroying Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, with the
Little Boy gun-type uranium bomb and Nagasaki, 3 days later, with the Fat Man plu-
tonium implosion bomb, forced Japanese military leaders to acknowledge that they
had no countermeasures to the Americans’ new weapons. In between these attacks, on
August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria. For
years, historians debated whether the atomic bombs were decisive in bringing the war
to an end. Recently, however, a Japanese scholar has conjectured that while it was the
atom bomb that convinced the Japanese high command that the war was lost, it was
51
The aSia-PaCifiC War anD The BeGinninGS of PoSTWar PlanninG
not until the Soviets invaded Manchuria that Japan’s civilian leadership came to the
same conclusion, since without the USSR there was no one left to mediate an end
of the war. In other words, a convergence of events—the atomic bombing of Japan
and the Soviet Union’s entry into the war at the same time—provided the catalyst for
Japan’s surrender.
98
Yet of these two sets of events, it was the use of the atomic bomb
that produced the most lasting impressions—tens of thousands killed and injured, two
cities destroyed, and an entire nation lying at the mercy of another. Without question,
the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki conrmed the predictions of Stimson, Groves,
and others associated with the Manhattan Project that atomic weapons were indeed
more awesome in their destructive power than any existing weapon. Whether they
would revolutionize warfare and produce, as Stimson predicted, “a new relationship of
man to the universe,” was another matter.
99
Shortly after the attacks, at the chiefs’ request, the Joint Strategic Survey Com-
mittee presented its assessment of the atomic bomb’s military and strategic impact.
At issue was whether, as some military analysts were beginning to speculate, atom-
ic weapons would preclude the need for sizable conventional forces after the war.
Though duly impressed with the atomic bomb’s destructive power, the committee
pointed out that these weapons were as yet too few in number, too expensive and
dicult to produce, and too hard to deliver to be used in anything other than spe-
cial circumstances. In view of these unique characteristics, the committee doubted
whether atomic weapons would render conventional land, sea, and air forces obsolete,
though they might change the “relative importance and strength of various military
components.” Any immediate changes were apt to be minor, however, as long as the
United States enjoyed a monopoly on the bomb. This situation could change if other
industrialized countries—the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union—wanted to
devote the time and resources to developing nuclear weapons. The most dangerous
and destabilizing situation that the Joint Strategic Survey Committee could foresee
was if the Soviet Union acquired the bomb. Even so, the committee downplayed the
likelihood of a dramatic transformation in modern warfare resulting from the prolif-
eration of nuclear technology. It pointed out that the development of “new weapons”
had been continuous throughout history and that the advent of one new weapon
invariably produced something equally eective to counter it.
100
Thus, as the war drew to a close, the Joint Chiefs found themselves entering the
uncharted realm of atomic war, somewhat reassured that the apocalypse predicted
by Stimson and likeminded others had been postponed, yet cautious and uneasy at
the same time. No less unsettling was the Joint Chiefs’ own uncertain future as an
organization. At the outset of World War II, the Joint Chiefs of Sta had not existed.
By 1945, they were an established xture atop the largest, most powerful military
52
CounCil of War
machine in history. Despite inter-Service friction and competition, the JCS had
found that working together produced better results than working separately. A cor-
porate advisory and planning body, they reported directly to the President and were
at the center of decision throughout the conict. Operating without a formal charter,
the Joint Chiefs were at liberty to conduct business as needed to meet the require-
ments of the war. With the onset of peace, this free-wheeling style was sure to change.
Still, few seriously contemplated a postwar defense establishment in which the Joint
Chiefs of Sta, or some comparable organization, did not loom large.
Notes
1 Maurice Matlo, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1943–44 (Washington, DC: Of-
ce of the Chief of Military History, 1959), 398.
2 See Forrest C. Pogue, The Supreme Command (Washington, DC: Center of Military His-
tory, 1954), 41–42.
3 “Directive to the Supreme Commander in the ABDA Area as Approved by the Presi-
dent and PM,” January 10, 1942, ABC-4/5; and “Procedure for Assumption of Com-
mand by General Wavell,” January 16, 1942, ABC-4 C/S 3, both in World War II Confer-
ence Papers.
4 King quoted in Robert W. Love, Jr., History of the U.S. Navy, 1942–1991 (Harrisburg, PA:
Stackpole Books, 1992), 14. See also Ernest J. King and Walter Muir Whitehill, Fleet
Admiral King: A Naval Record (New York: W.W. Norton, 1952), 368–372.
5 Minutes, JCS 6th Meeting, March 16, 1942, RG 218, CCS 334 (3-16-42).
6 Louis Morton, “Pacic Command: A Study in Interservice Relations,” in Harry R.
Borowksi, ed., The Harmon Memorial Lectures in Military History, 1959–1987 (Washington,
DC: Oce of Air Force History, 1988), 134.
7 Louis Morton, Strategy and Command: The First Two Years (Washington, DC: Oce of the
Chief of Military History, 1962), 244–250.
8 Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, A War to Be Won (Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2000), 207.
9 Report by JPS, August 6, 1943, “Specic Operations in the Pacic and Far East, 1943–
44,” JCS 446. See also Steven T. Ross, American War Plans, 1941–45 (London: Frank Cass,
1997), 68–69.
10 Henry H. Adams, “Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz,” in Michael Carver, ed., The War
Lords (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1976), 411; E.B. Potter, Nimitz (Annapolis: Naval
Institute Press, 1976), 235–56, 279–297.
11 King and Whitehill, 491–493.
12 Love, II, 199–200; Morton, Strategy and Command, 447–453.
13 Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol.
V, The Pacic: Matterhorn to Nagasaki (Washington, DC: Oce of Air Force History,
1983; reprint), 3–32; Morton, Strategy and Command: The First Two Years, 602–603.
14 Ross, American War Plans, 1941–45, 50.
53
The aSia-PaCifiC War anD The BeGinninGS of PoSTWar PlanninG
15 Grace Person Hayes, The History of the Joint Chiefs of Sta in World War II: The War Against
Japan (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1982), 725.
16 Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Organizer of Victory,1943–1945 (New York: Viking
Press, 1973), 206.
17 Matlo, 231.
18 Minutes, CCS 107th Meeting, August 14, 1943, World War II Conference Papers; King and
Whitehill, 483–484.
19 “Progress Report to the President and Prime Minister,” August 27, 1943, CCS 319/2
(revised), World War II Conference Papers.
20 See Tohmatsu Haruo, “The Strategic Correlation between the Sino-Japanese and Pa-
cic Wars,” in Mark Peattie, Edward J. Drea, and Hans van de Ven, eds., The Battle for
China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945 (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2011), 424.
21 Herbert Feis, The China Tangle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953), 11–13;
Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland, Stilwell’s Mission to China (Washington, DC:
Center of Military History, 2002, reprint), 61–63; Joint Planning Committee Report
to Chiefs of Sta, January 10, 1942, “Immediate Assistance to China,” U.S. ABC-4/6,
ARCADIA Conference, World War II Conference Papers.
22 Quoted in Barbara W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45
(New York: Macmillan, 1970), 125.
23 Eric Larrabee, Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their
War (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1987), 513–515.
24 Hayes, 80; Feis, China Tangle, 15–16.
25 Ulysses Lee, The Employment of Negro Troops (Washington, DC: Center of Military His-
tory, 2000), 610.
26 Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland, Stilwell’s Command Problems (Washington,
DC: Center of Military History, 1987; reprint), 454.
27 See Zang Yunhu, “Chinese Operations in Yunnan and Central Burma,” in Peattie, Drea,
and van de Ven, eds., Battle for China, 386–391.
28 Craven and Cate, I, 504–505; IV, 436–443.
29 Theodore H. White, ed., The Stilwell Papers (New York: William Sloane Associates,
1948), 136–138; Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell’s Mission to China, 212–221; Roma-
nus and Sunderland, Stilwell’s Command Problems, 471.
30 Matlo, 238.
31 Hayes, 518.
32 Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring (Boston: Houghton Miin, 1951), 328; Minutes,
1st Plenary Meeting, Villa Kirk, Cairo, November 23, 1943, World War II Conference Pa-
pers.
33 Matlo, 350–351.
34 Report by JPS, April 6, 1944, and decision on April 10, 1944, “VLR Bombers in the War
Against Japan,” JCS 742/6. Like all B–29 units in World War II, XX Bomber Command
was part of the Twentieth Air Force, which reported to the JCS. Bombing missions
54
CounCil of War
from China began in July 1944 and concentrated initially on Japanese industrial tar-
gets in Manchuria, gradually expanding to targets in Japan as XX Bomber Command
gained experience. Chiang’s government objected, however, to what it regarded as a di-
version of resources; it wanted the fuel and munitions used by XX Bomber Command
to go to Chennault’s air force. By the end of January 1945, B–29 bombing operations
from China ceased owing to the deteriorating security situation. See Craven and Cate,
V, 3–32, 92–131.
35 Feis, China Tangle, 192. In fact, no lend-lease aid ever reached the Communists. See
Zhang Baijia, “China’s Quest for Foreign Military Aid,” in Peattie, Drea, and van de Ven,
eds., Battle for China, 299.
36 Roosevelt to Chiang, September 16, 1944, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations
of the United States: The Conference at Quebec, 1944 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1972), 465.
37 Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell’s Command Problems, 468–471.
38 Feis, China Tangle, 201–202; Pogue, Organizer of Victory, 478–479; Romanus and Sun-
derland, Time Runs Out in CBI (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1999;
reprint), 15.
39 Matlo, 240.
40 JCS Statement, “Basis for the Formulation of a Military Policy,” September 20, 1945,
JCS 1496/3.
41 Army and AAF planners were emphatic that the lack of guidance on UMT and post-
war organization was a major impediment; Navy planners were less convinced. See
Memo, Arnold to JCS, September 7, 1945, “Reorganization of National Defense, JCS
749/17; and Memo, King to JCS, September 10, 1945, “Reorganization of National
Defense,” JCS 749/18.
42 Memo, Marshall to JCS, September 19, 1945, “Interim Plan for the Permanent Estab-
lishment of the Army of the United States,” with enclosures, JCS 1520; Memo, Arnold
to JCS, October 2, 1935, “Interim Plan for the Permanent Military Establishment of the
United States,” JCS 1478/4; Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1945 (Washington,
DC: Department of the Navy, January 10, 1946), 3.
43 Memo, Marshall to JCS, November 2, 1943, “A Single Dept of War,” JCS 560.
44 Memo, King to JCS, November 7, 1943, “A Single Department of War in the Post-War
Period,” JCS 560/1; Herman S. Wolk, The Struggle for Air Force Independence, 1943–1947
(Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1997), 40 and passim.
45 Report by JSSC, March 8, 1944, “Reorganization of National Defense,” JCS 749; En-
closure to Letter, Leahy (for JCS) to Secretaries of War and Navy, May 9, 1944, JCS
749/6. See also the Memo by Richardson Committee, October 19, 1944, “Tentative:
Origin and Activities of the JCS Special Committee for the Reorganization of Na-
tional Defense,” JCS 749/14.
46 The Special Committee’s recommendations and Richardson’s dissenting opinions are
led together in “Report of the Joint Chiefs of Sta Special Committee for Reorgani-
zation of National Defense,” April 11, 1945, JCS 749/12.
47 Memo, Leahy to Truman, October 16, 1945, “Reorganization of National Defense,” JCS
749/29.
55
The aSia-PaCifiC War anD The BeGinninGS of PoSTWar PlanninG
48 See Mark A. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Sta, the Grand Alliance, and
U.S. Strategy in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000),
130, 138.
49 For a fuller discussion, see Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory
and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (New York: Random House, 1957), still the classic
work of the subject. Leahy was not very good at practicing what he preached. Toward
the end of the war, for example, he successfully argued for modication of the Japanese
surrender terms to allow retention of the emperor, an issue heavy in political implica-
tions.
50 See Robert H. Ferrell, The Dying President: Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1944–1945 (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 1998), 72–73 and passim.
51 Ernest R. May, “The Development of Political-Military Consultation in the United
States,” Political Science Quarterly 70 (June 1955), 172–173; Ray S. Cline, Washington Com-
mand Post: The Operations Division (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1990;
reprint), 41–42.
52 Harley Notter, Postwar Foreign Policy Preparation (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of
State, 1949), 76, 124–125.
53 Cline, Washington Command Post, 317.
54 Letter, Leahy to Hull, May 16, 1944, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the
United States: The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference), 1945, 2 vols. (Washington,
DC: GPO, 1960), I, 264–266. This series hereafter cited as FRUS.
55 “Charter: Joint Post-War Committee,” enclosure to Note by the Secretaries, June 7,
1944, JCS 786/2.
56 Cline, Washington Command Post, 325.
57 Memo Initialed by Roosevelt and Churchill, March 15, 1944, U.S. Department of State,
Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conference of Quebec, 1944 (Washington, DC:
GPO, 1972), 466–467. The words were actually Churchill’s, the sentiments Morgen-
thau’s.
58 John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 114–132.
59 Steven L. Rearden, “American Policy Toward Germany, 1944–1946” (Ph.D. Thesis,
Harvard University, 1974), 176–177.
60 Paul Y. Hammond, “Directives for the Occupation of Germany: The Washington Con-
troversy,” in Harold Stein, ed., American Civil-Military Decisions: A Book of Case Studies
(Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1963), 311–460; Earl F. Ziemke, The U.S.
Army in the Occupation of Germany, 1944–1946 (Washington, DC: Center of Military His-
tory, 1975), 98–108, 208–224.
61 Hayes, 713–721.
62 Matlo, 453–459; Hayes, 603–604.
63 Robert Ross Smith, Triumph in the Philippines (Washington, DC: Oce of the Chief of
Military History, 1963), 4–8.
64 Message, MacArthur to Marshall, June 18, 1944, quoted in Hayes, 606.
56
CounCil of War
65 Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 196–198; D. Clay-
ton James, The Years of MacArthur, vol. II, 1941–1945 (Boston: Houghton Miin, 1975),
529–533; Smith, 9–11.
66 Matlo, 484–485.
67 Smith, 16; Hayes, 623–624.
68 Matlo, 487.
69 King and Whitehill, 598; Hayes, 702; William D. Leahy, I Was There (New York: Whit-
tlesey House, 1950), 245, 384–385; and Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power:
The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 172–173.
70 JPS Report, “Pacic Strategy,” April 25, 1945, JCS 924/15.
71 Decision on JCS 924/15, “Pacic Strategy,” May 10, 1946.
72 JCS Directive, April 3, 1945, “Command and Operational Directives for the Pacic,”
JCS 1259/4; Craven and Cate, V, 676–684.
73 Directive to CINC, U.S. Army Forces, Pacic, CINC U.S. Pacic Fleet, CG Twentieth
AF, May 25, 1945, “Directive for Operation ‘Olympic,’” JCS 1331/3; Report by JPS,
June 16, 1945, “Details of the Campaign Against Japan,” JCS 1388. John Ray Skates, The
Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
1994), looks at invasion planning in depth.
74 See Report by the JWPC, June 15, 1945, “Details of the Campaign Against Japan,”
JWPC 369/1, in Douglas J. MacEachin, The Final Months of the War With Japan: Signals
Intelligence, U.S. Invasion Planning, and the A-Bomb Decision (Washington, DC: Center for
the Study of Intelligence, 1998), 11–12 and Document No. 5. See also Barton J. Ber-
nstein, “A Postwar Myth: 500,000 U.S. Lives Saved,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 42
(June–July 1986), 38–40.
75 Thaddeus Holt, The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War (New
York: Scribner, 2004), 746–749.
76 Memo, CNO to JCS, May 2, 1945, “Pacic Strategy,” JCS 924/16.
77 Report by JPS, June 16, 1945, “Details of the Campaign Against Japan,” JCS 1388.
78 Letter, Einstein to Roosevelt, August 2, 1939; Letter, Roosevelt to Einstein, October 19,
1939, Safe File, PSF, Roosevelt Library. See also Leo Szilard, “Reminiscences,” in Perspec-
tives in American History 2 (1968), 94–116.
79 Richard G. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson, Jr., A History of the United States Atomic En-
ergy Commission, vol. I , The New World (Washington, DC: U.S. Atomic Energy Commis-
sion, 1962), 46, 77. The other members of the Top Advisory Committee were President
Roosevelt, who served as chairman, Vice President Henry A. Wallace, Secretary of War
Stimson, Vannevar Bush, and James B. Conant. Never once did the full committee meet.
See McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival (New York: Random House, 1988), 45–46.
80 King and Whitehill, 620–621.
81 Walton S. Moody, Building a Strategic Air Force (Washington, DC: Air Force History and
Museums Program, 1996), 7; H.H. Arnold, Global Mission (New York: Harper and Bros.,
1949), 491; Leslie R. Groves, Now It Can Be Told (New York: Harper and Bros., 1962),
253; and Vincent C. Jones, Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb (Washington, DC:
Center of Military History, 1985), 519.
57
The aSia-PaCifiC War anD The BeGinninGS of PoSTWar PlanninG
82 Leahy, I Was There, 265, 269.
83 Letter, Bush to Roosevelt, July 16, 1941, quoted in Marchtin J. Sherwin, A World De-
stroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), 36–37.
84 Leahy quoted in Harry S. Truman, Year of Decisions (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955),
11. Leahy, I Was There, 429, 440, acknowledges that he misjudged the bomb.
85 Memo, Groves to Marshall, December 30, 1944, “Atomic Fission Bombs,” U.S. Depart-
ment of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers—The Conferences at
Malta and Yalta, 1945 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1955), 383–384.
86 Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 253–254.
87 Jones, 519–528; Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 253–262; “History of 509th Composite
Group, 313th Bombardment Wing, Twentieth Air Force, Activation to 15 August 1945”
(MS, August 31, 1945, Maxwell AFB, Alabama), 45–50.
88 Entry, May 2, 1945, Meeting with Truman, Stimson Diary, Library of Congress (micro-
lm).
89 Hewlett and Anderson, 344–345, 356–357; Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 271.
90 MacEachin, 6–9; Edward J. Drea, MacArthur’s ULTRA: Codebreaking and the War against
Japan, 1942–1945 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 204–210; Richard B.
Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (New York: Random House,
1999), 197–213.
91 Minutes of Meeting Held at the White House, June 18, 1945, led with JCS 1388.
92 Ibid.
93 Walter Millis, ed., The Forrestal Diaries (New York: Viking Press, 1951), 70–71; John J.
McCloy, The Challenge to American Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1953), 40–43.
94 See Robert H. Ferrell, ed., O the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman (New
York: Harper and Row, 1980), 55–56; and entry, July 18, 1945, Stimson Diary, also cited
in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conference of Berlin,
1945, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: GPO), II, 1361.
95 Leahy, I Was There, 441; King and Whitehill, 621.
96 Bundy, Danger and Survival, 75; Herbert Feis, The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War
II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 45–46.
97 Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Statesman, 1945–1959 (New York: Viking Penguin,
1987), 24–25.
98 Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 177–214.
99 Stimson’s comments in Notes of Interim Committee Meeting, May 31, 1945, Misc.
Historical Documents Collection, Truman Papers, Truman Library.
100 Report by JSSC to JCS, October 30, 1945, “Over-all Eect of Atomic Bomb on War-
fare and Military Organization,” JCS 1477/1.
A conference of Secretary of Defense James Forrestal with the Joint Chiefs of Sta was held at the U.S. Naval War
College, Newport, Rhode Island, on August 21–22, 1948. Shown at the conference table are, left to right, Major General
Alfred M. Gruenther, USA, Director, Joint Sta; General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Chief of Sta, U.S. Air Force; Admiral Louis
E. Denfeld, Chief of Naval Operations; General Omar N. Bradley, Chief of Sta, U.S. Army; Secretary of Defense James
Forrestal (at head of table); Lieutenant General Albert C. Wedemeyer, Director of Plans and Operations, U.S. Army; Vice
Admiral Arthur W. Radford, Vice Chief of Naval Operations; and Lieutenant General Lauris Norstad, Deputy Chief of
Operations, U.S. Air Force.
Chapter 3
Peacetime
challenges
World War II conrmed that high-level strategic advice and direction of the Armed
Forces were indispensable to success in modern warfare. These accomplishments,
however, did not assure the Joint Chiefs of Sta a permanent place in the country’s
defense establishment. Indeed, as the war ended, the demobilization of the Armed
Forces and the country’s return to peacetime pursuits pointed to a shift in priorities
that diminished the chiefs’ role and importance. Yet even though the JCS may have
been shorn of some of the power and prestige they enjoyed during the conict, they
remained a formidable organization, served by some of the best talent in the Armed
Forces, and thus a key element in the immediate postwar development of national
security policy.
The postwar fate of the Joint Chiefs of Sta initially rested in the hands of one
individual: President Harry S. Truman. A sharp contrast in style and work habits
to his patrician predecessor, Truman was the epitome of down-to-earth Middle
America. Born and raised in northwest Missouri, he had served as the captain of a
National Guard artillery unit in World War I. After the war, he returned to Missouri,
tried his hand in the haberdashery business, failed, and turned to politics, becoming
a fringe part of the notorious Pendergast “machine” of Kansas City. Elected to the
U.S. Senate in 1934, he worked hard and developed a reputation as a scal conserva-
tive, ever protective of the taxpayers’ money. When Roosevelt decided to drop Vice
President Henry A. Wallace from the ticket in 1944, he turned to Truman to be his
running mate, even though the two barely knew one another. After the election,
they rarely met or conversed by phone.
1
As Commander in Chief, Truman was almost the antithesis to Roosevelt. Pre-
ferring a structured working environment, he conducted business with the Joint
Chiefs on a more formal basis and usually met with them in the presence of the
Service Secretaries or, later, the Secretary of Defense. As a rule, he got along better
with Army and Air Force ocers than Navy ocers. His bête noire was the Ma-
rine Corps, which he once accused as having “a propaganda machine that is almost
59
60
COUNCIL OF WAR
the equal of Stalin’s.”
2
Once the wartime emergency was over, Truman found his
time and attention increasingly taken up with domestic chores, which reduced his
contacts with the chiefs. Still, he had the utmost respect for members of the Armed
Forces and often named retired or former military ocers to what were normally
considered civilian positions.
3
Highest of all in Truman’s estimation was General
George C. Marshall, to whom he turned repeatedly for help as his special represen-
tative to China from 1945 to 1946, as Secretary of State from 1947 to 1949, and as
Secretary of Defense from 1950 to 1951. But he tempered the military’s inuence
with close control of the defense budget and a strong emphasis on civilian authority
in key areas such as atomic energy.
Truman had no intention of keeping the Joint Chiefs of Sta in existence
any longer than it took Congress to enact legislation unifying the armed Services.
Throwing his support behind a War Department proposal drawn up to Marshall’s
specications toward the end of the war, Truman favored replacing the JCS with a
uniformed chief of sta presiding over an “advisory body” of senior military ocers
who would be part of a single military department.
4
The idea had mixed appeal in
Congress, however, where several leading members complained that it could lead
to a “Prussian-style general sta ” and dilute civilian control of the military. Increas-
ingly popular on Capitol Hill was a competing proposal sponsored by Secretary of
the Navy James Forrestal. Under the Navy plan, the JCS would remain intact and
form part of a network of interlocking committees promoting cooperation and
coordination for national security on a government-wide scale.
5
Pending resolution
of the unication debate, Truman opted for the status quo.
Thus, the Joint Chiefs continued to operate much as they had during the war,
though at a reduced level of activity, with fewer personnel in the organization and
with new membership. Having accomplished their job, most of the wartime members
elected to retire soon after the war. Their successors were ocers who had held sig-
nicant U.S. or Allied commands. The rst to leave was General of the Army Marshall,
who stepped down as Chief of Sta in November 1945 to make way for General of
the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower, leader of the D-Day invasion of Normandy and Su-
preme Allied Commander in Europe. A month later, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
succeeded Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King as Chief of Naval Operations. And in March
1946, General Carl Spaatz, Commander of the Eighth and Twentieth Air Forces and
a key architect of the strategic bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan, suc-
ceeded General of the Army Henry H. Arnold as Commanding General, Army Air
Forces. The only hold-over was Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, who continued to
serve until illness forced his retirement in March 1949, at which time the position he
occupied as Chief of Sta to the Commander in Chief lapsed.
PEACETIME CHALLENGES
61
Defense Policy in TransiTion
At the outset of the postwar era in 1945, the Joint Chiefs of Sta viewed the prospects
for an enduring peace with growing apprehension. Even though Germany and Japan
were no longer a threat, a new danger arose from the Soviet Union, now the lead-
ing power on the Eurasian landmass, whose “phenomenal” increase in military and
economic strength gave the JCS cause for concern.
6
Never an overly close partner-
ship, the Grand Alliance began dissolving even before the war was over. Factors that
made the future uncertain in the Joint Chiefs’ eyes included an uneasy modus vivendi
over the postwar treatment of Germany and Soviet insistence on German reparations,
the spread of Communist control in Eastern Europe, disputes over Venezia Giulia at
the northern end of the Adriatic, political instability in Greece, Soviet demands for
political and territorial concessions from Turkey and Iran, and the impasse over the
control of atomic energy. None of these issues alone need have caused undue alarm.
Taken together, however, they formed an ominous pattern that suggested to the chiefs
a fundamental divergence of interests that could result in an adversarial relationship.
7
Unsettled relations with the Soviet Union reinforced what the Joint Chiefs of
Sta had been saying for some time about the need for a strong postwar defense
posture. But in the immediate aftermath of the war, the trend was in the opposite
direction, as the country embarked on one of the most rapid and thorough demobi-
lizations in history. Bowing to strong public and congressional pressure to “bring the
boys home,” the War and Navy Departments discharged veterans pell-mell, shrink-
ing the Armed Forces from 12 million in June 1945 to 1.5 million 2 years later. Op-
erating on a conservative economic philosophy that gave priority to balancing the
budget and reducing debt, President Truman ordered sharp reductions in Federal
spending that included the wholesale cancellation of war-related contracts, curbs on
military outlays, and strict ceilings on future military expenditures.
8
While cutting deeply into the eective combat capabilities of the Armed Forc-
es, the posthaste demobilization and limitations on military spending left the JCS
uneasy over the country’s defense posture. To be sure, the chiefs recognized that
funding for defense would be tight after the war. Convinced, however, that the
United States had been woefully unprepared prior to Pearl Harbor, the JCS be-
lieved that Congress and the American public should be willing to support a level
of military readiness well above that of the interwar period. Under a broad blueprint
of postwar requirements, the JCS argued that U.S. forces should have the resources
to carry out their increased peacetime responsibilities and to respond eectively
during the initial stages of a future war.
9
Some, like General Marshall, saw universal
military training as the solution to the country’s long-term defense needs. But after
62
COUNCIL OF WAR
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, UMT steadily lost ground to more technologically-ori-
ented solutions, with reliance on airpower and “new weapons” like the atomic
bomb foremost among them. Whether that reliance should be on land-based air-
power or carrier-based aviation or both became one of the most contentious de-
fense issues of the immediate postwar period.
At the center of the emerging postwar debate over military policy was the
atomic bomb, a weapon of awesome proven destructive power but uncertain pros-
pects. Despite the enormous wartime eort to develop the bomb, production of s-
sionable materials (uranium-235 and plutonium) dropped quickly once the war was
over, as most of the scientists and technicians recruited for the Manhattan Project
returned to their civilian pursuits. Renements in weapon design virtually ceased
and bomb production slowed to a snail’s pace. Sketchy and incomplete records sug-
gest that by the latter part of 1946 there were between six and nine nuclear cores
in the atomic stockpile—an exceedingly small arsenal by later standards but still a
sucient number, President Truman believed, “to win a war.”
10
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the Truman administration had no
incentive to keep the atomic bomb program at its wartime level of production and
eciency. As the war ended, the prevailing belief in many quarters was that atomic
energy would be taken out of the hands of the military and that nuclear weapons
would be banned, just as poison gas was after World War I. The notion of civilian
control had an appealing ring and gave rise to legislation in 1946 establishing the
Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). A civilian body appointed by the President
with the advice and consent of the Senate, the AEC acquired complete author-
ity over the Nation’s nuclear program, from the production of ssionable material
and the manufacture of bombs to the custody and control of nished weapons. In
support of the commission’s activities, Congress also established a nine-member
General Advisory Committee to provide scientic and technical guidance, and a
Military Liaison Committee (MLC), to assure coordination between the commis-
sion and the Armed Forces.
11
In contrast, the movement to ban the bomb, or at least to place it under some
form of international supervision, produced far less denitive results. Intense policy
debates, starting in the autumn of 1945, extended into the following spring. The
outcome was the Baruch Plan, placed before the United Nations in June 1946, un-
der which the United States oered to give up its nuclear monopoly in exchange
for a stringent regime of international controls and inspections. A magnanimous
gesture, the Baruch Plan was too intrusive to suit the Soviets, who declared it un-
acceptable “either as a whole or in [its] separate parts.” As an alternative, Moscow
proposed a at prohibition on nuclear weapons with a vague promise of inspections
63
PEACETIME CHALLENGES
sometime in the future. A UN special committee voted overwhelmingly to ac-
cept the Baruch Plan, but the Soviet Union and Communist-controlled Poland
abstained, leaving the plan’s fate up in the air.
12
Throughout the deliberations leading to announcement of the Baruch Plan,
the Joint Chiefs maintained a guarded attitude that endorsed international controls
in principle as a desirable long-term goal, but with strong reservations attached to
giving up any atomic secrets until outstanding international issues had been fully
vetted and resolved.
13
This line of reasoning remained the JCS core position on arms
control and disarmament for the duration of the Cold War. But in 1945, the chances
of overcoming the chiefs’ objections and of enlisting their support for a stringent
regime of international control were probably better than they ever were again. Re-
garded by the JCS as a special weapon with limited applications, the atomic bomb
had yet to acquire a permanent niche in their military planning and was in many
ways a disruptive presence that the chiefs could have done without. Later, as the
Services launched expensive acquisition and training programs to integrate nuclear
weapons into their equipment inventories, and as national policy came to rely heav-
ily on a strategy of nuclear deterrence, the chances of making sweeping changes in
the JCS position faded. But until then, the chiefs were actually more exible and
open-minded than most critics gave them credit.
While awaiting the outcome of the international control debate, the Joint
Chiefs sought a clearer picture of the atomic bomb’s military potential. Having
seen from the results of Hiroshima and Nagasaki what nuclear weapons could do
to targets on land, they obtained President Truman’s approval in January 1946 to
explore the atomic bomb’s eect on targets at sea.
14
Planning and preparations for
Operation Crossroads took place under the auspices of the Joint Sta Planners, who
named a six-member ad hoc inter-Service subcommittee headed by Lieutenant
General Curtis E. LeMay to coordinate the eort. Almost immediately, quarrels
erupted between AAF and Navy representatives over the placement of the target
ships and other details, turning Crossroads into yet another arena of inter-Service
strife. A joint task force led by Vice Admiral William H.P. Blandy eventually carried
out the operation, but like the LeMay committee, it had to contend with a good
deal of inter-Service bickering and competition.
15
The Crossroads tests were unique in several respects. First, they were the only
nuclear experiments organized and conducted under the authority of the Joint
Chiefs of Sta; and second, they received an extraordinarily high level of publicity,
in sharp contrast to the restricted nature of subsequent nuclear experiments car-
ried out by the AEC. Despite strong political pressure to cancel the tests lest they
interfere with the debate in the UN, President Truman refused, citing the waste of
64
COUNCIL OF WAR
$100 million if they failed to proceed. The ensuing experiments, involving 42,000
Servicemen, took place in July 1946 at Bikini Atoll in the Pacic and rendered
mixed results. The rst weapon, an air-dropped, Nagasaki-type bomb, missed the
aim point by 1,500 yards. Sinking only a few of the ships in the target area, it did
relatively minor damage to the rest. But a second bomb, detonated under water, was
more impressive and left the members of a JCS evaluation board convinced that
atomic weapons had the potential for achieving decisive results in future wars. “If
used in numbers,” the board found, “atomic bombs not only can nullify any nation’s
military eort, but can demolish its social and economic structure and prevent their
reestablishment for long periods of time.”
16
Still, the Crossroads tests had little immediate impact on JCS plans or military
policy. Although the Joint Chiefs recognized that atomic bombs, like other new
weapons (e.g., jet aircraft and long-range guided missiles), could have a signicant
bearing on the conduct of future wars, the ongoing deliberations in the UN over
international controls, coupled with the limited availability of ssionable materials,
eectively ruled out a defense posture resting to any great extent, if at all, on nuclear
weapons. This did not stop the Army Air Forces, acting on their own, from making
informal arrangements in the summer of 1946 with the British to modify bases in
England for air-atomic missions (the Spaatz-Tedder Agreement).
17
Nor did it deter
the Navy from commissioning design studies for a new generation of ush-deck
“super carriers” dedicated to nuclear warfare.
18
But in looking ahead, the Joint
Chiefs and their Joint Sta Planners clung to the view that wars of the future would
be much like the one they had just nished, engaging large conventional armies,
navies, and air forces. The only major dierence the JCS could see was that the next
time, the enemy would probably be the Soviet Union.
19
reorganizaTion anD reform
Foremost among the issues needing to be addressed in framing a postwar defense
policy was the reorganization of the Armed Forces, including a settlement of the
controversial unication issue, a clarication of command arrangements, and a re-
articulation of Service roles and missions. Unable to arrive at an agreed position on
unication, the Joint Chiefs told President Truman in October 1945 that they had
no corporate wisdom to oer and would defer to Congress and the administration
to make the necessary adjustments.
20
As the senior ocers of their respective Ser-
vices, however, all JCS members remained actively engaged in the debate. Even
Admiral Leahy, who had no Service responsibilities and who viewed himself as
above the fray, took a position from time to time, invariably in support of the Navy.
65
PEACETIME CHALLENGES
In consequence, it was almost impossible for tensions generated by the unication
quarrel not to spill over into JCS deliberations on other matters.
Though the Joint Chiefs sidestepped involvement in the unication contro-
versy, they could not avoid two related matters—the establishment of a unied
command plan, and the redenition of Service functions in light of the experience
of World War II, new technologies, and the changing nature of modern warfare.
In addressing the rst, the chiefs overcame their dierences to establish a exible
command structure which, while far from perfect, proved remarkably adaptable to
the tests of time. But in dealing with the roles and missions issue, they made little
headway and eventually ceded this pivotal responsibility to others.
The unied command plan was the outgrowth of the extensive and generally
successful use of joint and combined “supreme commands” in World War II, and the
realization that, with the occupation of Germany and Japan and other responsibili-
ties, the United States would have joint military obligations abroad for the inde-
nite future. Even before the war ended, the Joint Chiefs envisioned retention of the
unied command system in peacetime, and by June 1945 they were taking steps to
transform General Eisenhower’s combined headquarters in Europe into a unied
U.S. command, a relatively easy task since most of the forces involved were ground
and air units under the War Department.
21
The picture was more complex in the Pacic. There, the impetus for change
came early in 1946 from the Navy, which sought to consolidate what were at the
time far-ung command arrangements. Adopted by the JCS the previous April as
an interim measure, the existing setup adhered to MacArthur’s dictum that “neither
service ghts willingly on a major scale under the command of the other.”
22
Hence,
in allocating command functions, the JCS divided responsibilities between an Army
command for all land forces in the theater, and a Navy command for forces at sea.
Characterizing these divided command arrangements as “ambiguous” and “unsatis-
factory,” Admiral Nimitz wanted the JCS to establish a single command for the Pa-
cic encompassing all forces in the area, excluding China, Korea, and Japan.
23
What
prompted Nimitz to raise the issue is unclear, though it may have been intended to
complement draft legislation submitted by Secretary of the Navy Forrestal asking
for an increase in the peacetime authorized strength of the Navy and the Marine
Corps. A merger of the two commands would have given the Service in charge a
strong claim to a larger budget share. Since the Navy had the predominant interest
in the Pacic, Nimitz thought it only logical that the new command should be in
Navy hands. Seeing the proposed merger as a blatant power grab, MacArthur, from
his headquarters in Tokyo, warned the War Department that it would render Army
or AAF units in the area “merely adjuncts” of the Navy.
24
66
COUNCIL OF WAR
Hoping to avoid a fractious debate, the Joint Chiefs referred the CNO’s pro-
posal to the Joint Sta Planners, whose eorts soon ran aground. The Army and
Army Air Forces members insisted on unity of command by the forces involved,
while the Navy member urged unity of command by area.
25
Eventually, it took pres-
sure from Congress, which wanted to avoid anything resembling the divided com-
mand that existed at Pearl Harbor in 1941, and the direct intervention of Admiral
Nimitz and General Eisenhower to settle the matter. All the same, the compromise
thus achieved did little more than paper over inter-Service dierences that later
reappeared. Accepting the Navy’s basic premise that unity of command should be
by area, Eisenhower proposed extending the system worldwide, to include not only
the Pacic but other regions where the United States had signicant military assets
or military interests. With further ne-tuning by Nimitz, this became the Unied
Command Plan (UCP), approved by President Truman in December 1946.
26
Initially, the UCP called for seven geographic commands and one functional
command (known after 1951 as a “specied” command).
27
Implicit in this ar-
rangement was that a senior ocer representing the Service with the predomi-
nant interest in a particular region or functional activity should head the com-
mand. Thus, in Europe the accepted practice (until 2003) came to be that an Army
or Air Force ocer should exercise command of the theater, while in the Pacic
a Navy ocer was invariably in charge. The sole functional command recognized
in the UCP was the Strategic Air Command (SAC), created by order of General
Spaatz in March 1946. SAC comprised the strategic assets of Eighth and Fifteenth
Air Forces, 509th Composite Group with its air-atomic capability, and air bom-
bardment units not otherwise assigned. Like Twentieth Air Force in World War
II, SAC reported directly to the Joint Chiefs of Sta through the Commanding
General, Army Air Forces (later the Chief of Sta of the Air Force), who acted as
their executive agent.
28
The Services could compromise on the UCP because each gave up very little
in exchange for ocial conrmation of their existing geographical equities. Unfor-
tunately, this approach was infeasible when dening overlapping Service functions
and sorting out the impact of new technologies on traditional roles and missions. An
integral part of the unication debate, the assignment of functions was also highly
instrumental in determining the allocation of budget shares among the Services. It
seemed only logical, as the successor organization to the Joint Board, which had
overseen the assignment of Service functions prior to World War II, that the Joint
Chiefs should carry on this task. But with the changes in warfare that had taken
place during the war, the traditional formula used by the Joint Board for deter-
mining and assigning functions, more or less by the medium in which a Service
67
PEACETIME CHALLENGES
operated, no longer applied. Quite simply, neat distinctions between land, sea, and
air warfare had ceased to exist. But even though the JCS agreed that the old as-
signments were frayed and outmoded, they were hard-pressed to come up with
something better.
The event that brought the roles and missions controversy to a boil was a
report by the Joint Strategic Survey Committee to the JCS in February 1946. In-
tended as a new statement of Service functions, the JSSC report became instead the
catalyst for a prolonged and inconclusive debate among the chiefs. Like the Joint
Board, the JSSC proposed an assignment of functions organized primarily around
the major element in which each Service operated. Where Service functions in-
tersected, however, the committee was often unable to provide unanimous advice.
The most contentious points were the Army Air Force’s insistence on full control
of air transport; the Navy’s claim on access to land-based aviation for antisubmarine
warfare, as it had in World War II; and the Marine Corps’s objections to the Army’s
eorts to bring amphibious operations under its aegis.
29
The quarreling became
so acrimonious and divisive that the Joint Chiefs in June 1946 felt it advisable to
suspend their deliberations on roles and missions until such time as “Presidential or
legislative action requires that consideration be revived.”
30
Despite the impasse, the Joint Chiefs remained under heavy pressure to com-
pose their dierences in order to expedite consideration of a unication bill. Ac-
cordingly, in July 1946 they asked the Operations Deputies—Major General Otto
P. Weyland of the Army, Major General Lauris Norstad of the Army Air Forces, and
Vice Admiral Forrest P. Sherman—to explore a solution.
31
Initially slow work, the
pace quickened following a breakthrough meeting at Secretary of the Navy For-
restal’s home on November 12, 1946, where Assistant Secretary of War for Air W.
Stuart Symington and Vice Admiral Arthur W. Radford, Deputy Chief of Naval
Operations (Air), reached a tentative modus vivendi. Based on the discussion that
afternoon, Norstad and Sherman agreed to develop a fresh formulation of Service
functions and a statement of agreed principles to help jump-start approval of a
unication bill that had stalled in Congress. In January 1947, Norstad and Sher-
man submitted their recommendations to Forrestal and Secretary of War Robert P.
Patterson, who then conveyed them to President Truman. Passage of the National
Security Act of 1947 followed in July, at which time the President issued an accom-
panying Executive order delineating Service roles and missions.
32
The National Security Act was a legislative compromise that combined ma-
jor elements of the centralized organization the War Department favored, and the
decentralized coordinating system the Navy recommended. To unify the armed
Services, Congress created a hybrid organization known as the National Military
68
COUNCIL OF WAR
Establishment (NME) composed of three coequal Service departments (Army,
Navy, and Air Force) and a presiding civilian Secretary of Defense, who had a sup-
port sta limited to three special assistants. Under the Secretary’s authority fell vari-
ous coordinating bodies: the Research and Development Board (RDB) to advise
and assist the Services with policies on scientic research and technology; the Mu-
nitions Board (MB) to coordinate production and supply; and the Joint Chiefs of
Sta. Now endowed with statutory standing, the Joint Chiefs also acquired a list of
assigned functions similar to those in the unused charter of 1943. The law eectively
eliminated the role the JCS played in World War II as the country’s de facto high
command and redened their mission as a strategic and logistical planning and
advisory organization to the President and the Secretary of Defense. Recognizing
the chiefs’ need for permanent support, Congress authorized a full-time Joint Sta
of one hundred ocers, drawn in approximately equal number from each Service.
President Truman had wanted to replace the JCS with a single military head, but
opposition in Congress forced him to drop the idea. The law also created a Cabi-
net-level National Security Council (NSC) to advise the President on foreign and
defense policy, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for the collection, analysis, and
distribution of intelligence, and a National Security Resources Board (NSRB) to
oversee national mobilization in emergencies.
33
Figure 3–1.
JCS Organization Chart,
69
PEACETIME CHALLENGES
The Executive order (EO 9877) that accompanied the National Security Act
was virtually the same statement of Service functions recommended in January by
Norstad and Sherman. Where roles and missions overlapped, EO 9877 called on the
Services to coordinate their eorts with one another to the greatest extent pos-
sible.
34
Between the drafting of the Executive order in January and the passage of the
National Security Act in July, however, Congress inserted language into the law that
guaranteed the Navy access to “land-based naval aviation” and the Marine Corps a
role in amphibious warfare. The net eect was to render key parts of EO 9877 ob-
solete, opening the door to renewed inter-Service bickering. Secretary of the Navy
Forrestal, who became the rst Secretary of Defense in September 1947, recognized
the problem immediately but needed two contentious conferences with the Joint
Chiefs—one at Key West, Florida, in March 1948, and a second at Newport, Rhode
Island, the following August—to resolve the problem. These conferences also reaf-
rmed the practice dating from World War II of allowing the Joint Chiefs to des-
ignate one of their members as executive agent for a unied command, a function
that eectively preserved the JCS in the chain of command. Drawing on Forrestal’s
frustrating experience, future Secretaries of Defense relied less on JCS guidance in
sorting out roles and missions, and more on the Services to take the necessary steps
to reconcile and adjust their dierences.
35
War Plans, BuDgeTs, anD The march crisis of 1948
The National Security Act came into eect on September 18, 1947, a time of es-
calating tensions with the Soviet Union and dramatic change in American for-
eign policy. The previous March, in response to the Communist-led insurgency in
Greece and Soviet pressure on Turkey, the Truman administration had launched the
Greek-Turkish aid program, in the President’s words, to prevent “the extension of
the iron curtain across the eastern Mediterranean.”
36
The following June, Secretary
of State Marshall proposed the European Recovery Program (ERP), a large-scale
assistance eort aimed at the broader problem of arresting the deteriorating eco-
nomic and social conditions in Western and Central Europe that were playing into
the hands of Communist agitators and Soviet sympathizers. Commenting pub-
licly on these initiatives and the escalation of tensions between Washington and
Moscow, journalist Walter Lippmann proclaimed the onset of a “Cold War” between
East andWest.
37
As he sought to stem the spread of Communism abroad, President Truman
also ordered major changes in the U.S. atomic energy program. Frustrated by the
impasse in the United Nations over the Baruch Plan, the President directed the new
Atomic Energy Commission in early April 1947 to restore production facilities and
70
COUNCIL OF WAR
to resume the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The President’s decision had the
strong endorsement of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, who agreed that the time had passed
for international control and that the only choice was to resume the production
of atomic bombs. Procedures in eect at the time called for the JCS to conduct an
annual review of nuclear stockpile requirements and to convey their recommenda-
tions, through the Military Liaison Committee, to the AEC. The chiefs tailored their
military requirements, stated in numbers of bomb cores, to be roughly commen-
surate with the AEC’s estimate of its annual production capabilities, the standard
practice for xing the size of the nuclear stockpile for the next several years.
38
With the emerging “strategy of containment” toward the Soviet Union came
a sense of unease among the Joint Chiefs over the deterioration of the Nation’s
military capabilities. Other than resuming the production of nuclear weapons, lit-
tle had been done since World War II to modernize U.S. forces or improve their
eectiveness. The American Military Establishment had shrunk dramatically since the
war, and the forces that remained by 1947 were generally understrength, indierently
equipped and trained, and scattered around the globe. Soviet military power, in con-
trast, was concentrated on the Eurasian landmass and appeared to be largely intact and
organized around an estimated ground force of 175 divisions, a gure derived from the
order of battle pieced together by German intelligence in World War II.
39
Long-range
threat projections developed by the Joint Intelligence Committee between late-1946
and mid-1947 credited the Soviet Union with possessing an overwhelming numerical
superiority in conventional forces and the capacity for acquiring nuclear weapons by
the early 1950s, if not before. Some in the scientic community thought it would take
longer for the Soviets to duplicate the American achievement in atomic energy, but by
and large the emerging consensus was that the Soviets were determined to become a
nuclear power and that sooner or later they would realize their goal.
40
Despite the danger signs, the Truman administration initially downplayed the
possibility that growing East-West antagonisms and steps taken by Washington to
curb Communist expansion might escalate into a military confrontation. The reign-
ing expert on the Soviet threat immediately following World War II was George F.
Kennan, a Foreign Service Ocer with long experience in the Soviet Union and
Director of the State Department’s elite Policy Planning Sta. It was Kennan whose
1947 article in Foreign Aairs, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” had given rise to the
term “containment” to describe what the administration was trying to achieve vis-
à-vis the Soviet Union. Kennan believed that if the United States exerted sucient
economic, political, and diplomatic pressure, it would elicit signicant improve-
ments in Soviet behavior. Though Kennan acknowledged that military forces were
a vital diplomatic tool, he doubted whether the United States and the Soviet Union
71
PEACETIME CHALLENGES
would ever go to war. Warning against excessive reliance on armed strength, he pre-
ferred small, mobile strike forces that could intervene quickly in crisis situations. For
sizing purposes, he favored a defense establishment that could operate eectively
in two separate theaters simultaneously, a rule of thumb that would inuence U.S.
force requirements for decades to come.
41
Given the Truman administration’s preference for nonmilitary solutions and
the limited military assets available at the time, the Joint Chiefs saw no urgent need
for approving a strategic plan of action against the Soviet Union. During the latter
part of World War II, in considering the hypothetical possibility of a future East-
West conict, the Joint Chiefs had concluded that while there was little chance
the United States would lose such a war, the likelihood of winning it was exceed-
ingly remote.
42
Acting on its own initiative, the Joint War Plans Committee (JWPC)
launched a series of studies code-named PINCHER late in 1945 to explore the
problems of waging a war against the Soviet Union. The rst fruit of this exercise
appeared on March 2, 1946, when the JWPC forwarded a broad concept of opera-
tions to the Joint Sta Planners. With renement, this became the basic concept
of operations around which strategic planning revolved for the next several years.
Dealing only with the opening stages of a conict, PINCHER envisioned war
breaking out in the eastern Mediterranean or Near East and spreading rapidly across
Europe.
43
Arguing that it would be futile for the United States and its allies to try to
match Soviet strength on the ground, the JWPC favored a strategic response “more
in consonance with our military capabilities and in which we can exploit our su-
periority in modern scientic warfare methods.” Even if such a response failed to
defeat the Soviet Union, it would buy time for the United States to mobilize forces,
check the Soviet advance, and mount counterattacks.
44
The rst Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, was an ardent proponent of the
new get-tough policy toward the Soviet Union and wanted to give it as much mili-
tary support as possible. But he was under orders from President Truman to hold the
line on defense spending.
45
Hoping to satisfy both requirements, Forrestal looked
to the Joint Chiefs to provide an integrated statement of Service requirements for
meeting essential national security objectives and an agreed strategic concept, tai-
lored to t within approved spending limits, to justify those forces.
46
In Forrestal’s
view, the JCS were the key to the successful implementation of the new unication
law, for it was primarily through them that he intended to extend his authority as
Secretary of Defense down into the Services.
47
While it looked good on paper, Forrestal’s reliance on the Joint Chiefs proved
awed in practice. Even though the JCS organization had a reputation for highly
procient planning, it had lost much of its edge and eciency by 1947 through
72
COUNCIL OF WAR
the attrition of veteran personnel and a dwindling pool of suitable replacements.
Though the JCS were less aected than other joint agencies (i.e., the MB and
the RDB), many able ocers were averse to joint duty in Washington lest it cost
them command experience in their Services and derail their careers.
48
Limited
by law to one hundred ocers, the once-mighty Joint Sta now operated at a
reduced pace through three groups—the Joint Intelligence Group, Joint Logistics
Group, and Joint Strategic Plans Group (formerly the Joint War Plans Committee).
With an enormous backlog of business and new requests coming in almost daily
from Forrestal’s oce, the Joint Sta soon found itself with more taskings than it
could handle. To augment the Joint Sta, the JCS continued to rely on part-time
inter-Service committees of senior ocers—the Joint Strategic Plans Committee
(which replaced the Joint Sta Planners), the Joint Logistics Committee, the Joint
Intelligence Committee, and the Joint Strategic Survey Committee. At Forrestal’s
urging, Congress increased the size of the Joint Sta from 100 to 210 ocers when
it amended the National Security Act in 1949. But despite the increase, there always
seemed to be more work than the Joint Sta could handle.
The most serious aw in Forrestal’s system lay in the chiefs themselves, whose
internal disagreements sapped their cohesion and eectiveness. Some of their quar-
rels were carryovers from the unication debate or earlier disagreements, like the
ongoing battle between the Army and the Marine Corps over amphibious opera-
tions. But by far the most visible and contentious issues were those between the Air
Force and the Navy over whether long-range, land-based bombers or carrier-based
aviation should serve as the country’s rst line of defense. Now that the production
of nuclear weapons had resumed, it seemed clear that the atomic bomb would play
a growing role in strategic planning and that the Service with the nuclear mission
would get the lion’s share of the defense budget. Some, including key gures in
Congress and the members of the Finletter Commission, a fact-nding body set up
by the White House in 1947 to report on the future of military aviation, assumed
that the Air Force had the job sewn up.
49
In fact, the issue was far from settled. While
the Air Force had a nuclear-delivery system derived from the SILVERPLATE B–
29s of World War II, its capabilities were limited to a handful of planes; thus, its posi-
tion was not immune to challenge by the Navy.
50
These disputes were precisely the kinds of quarrels Forrestal had hoped to stie
with an integrated budget process keyed to the development of joint strategic plans.
Yet they were practically unavoidable, given the strict spending limits Truman had
imposed and Forrestal’s reluctance to test his powers as Secretary of Defense against
the Joint Chiefs. As Secretary of the Navy, Forrestal had been in the vanguard of
those who opposed a closely unied defense establishment. As Secretary of Defense,
73
PEACETIME CHALLENGES
he found himself in the awkward position of implementing a compromise law he
helped to craft but only half-heartedly believed in. Initially, he described himself as
a “coordinator” and, in the interests of promoting harmony among the Services,
promised to make changes through “evolution, not revolution.” He probably never
should have taken the job of Secretary of Defense, but when Truman oered it (after
Secretary of War Patterson turned it down for personal reasons), he felt duty-bound
to accept.
51
Based on his discussions with the Joint Chiefs and his personal assessments of
the international situation, Forrestal became convinced that the President’s bud-
get ceilings were too low to fund essential military requirements and to provide a
credible defense posture. During his 18 months as Secretary of Defense, he asked
Truman twice for more money—in the spring of 1948 and, again, toward the end
of the year. On the rst occasion, with the help of a crisis atmosphere abroad, he
was successful in persuading Truman to lift the ceiling; on the second, despite con-
tinuing tensions in Europe, he failed, thereby inadvertently undermining his own
authority and credibility.
The immediate occasion that prompted Forrestal’s rst request for more
money was the “March Crisis” of 1948 that followed the Soviet-directed coup
against the government of Czechoslovakia the month before. The only country
liberated by the Red army that had thus far remained democratic and independent
of Soviet domination, Czechoslovakia had tried to steer a course of nonalign-
ment but faced growing pressure from Moscow to curb its contacts with the West.
Not only did Czechoslovakia share a common border with the Ukraine; it was
also the principal source of high-grade uranium ore for the Soviet atomic bomb
project.
52
Beset with growing political turmoil and a general strike organized by
Communist-controlled unions, the Czech president, Eduard Beneš, had dismissed
his cabinet and turned over all important government posts to Communists, except
the foreign ministry, which remained under Jan Masaryk, a popular gure in the
West. Within a fortnight, on March 10, Masaryk’s body was found on the cement
courtyard of the foreign ministry beneath his oce window. Czech authorities
promptly labeled his death a suicide, but the speculation in the West was that Soviet
agents murdered him.
53
Shortly after the Czech coup, rumors circulated that the Soviets would turn
their sights on occupied Germany and try to force the Allied powers out of their
enclaves in Berlin. Lending substance to these reports were ominous signs of Soviet
troop movements in eastern Germany suggesting a buildup for an invasion of the
West. Later, U.S. analysts concluded that these bellicose gestures were a ruse and that
there was no “reliable evidence” the Soviets intended military action. All the same,
74
COUNCIL OF WAR
the Intelligence Community refused to rule out the possibility of “miscalculation”
by one side or the other leading to an incident that could spark a war.
54
Toward the end of February 1948, the Director of Army Intelligence, Lieuten-
ant General Stephen J. Chamberlin, paid an unexpected call on General Lucius D.
Clay, U.S. Military Governor of Germany, at his Berlin headquarters. Concerned
over recent events in Czechoslovakia and Soviet behavior in general, Chamberlin
urged Clay to use his considerable inuence with the Joint Chiefs and others in
Washington to send a “strong message” to stimulate support in Congress for re-
instituting the draft and for bolstering other military programs. Clay replied that
he had no concrete evidence the Soviets were planning a move. But after sleep-
ing on the matter, he decided to act. On March 5, 1948, he cabled Chamberlin
conrming that, while the signs were far from conclusive, he had detected “a
subtle change in Soviet attitudes which I cannot dene but which now gives me
a feeling that [war] may come with dramatic suddenness.” Clay’s “war warning”
message soon leaked to the press, setting o a war scare that had Washington on
edge for several weeks.
55
Based on the intelligence crossing his desk, Truman had known for some time
that the Soviets were up to something.
56
Still, Clay’s war-warning message caught
the President o guard and gave Forrestal and the Joint Chiefs the opportunity to
seek an increase in the military appropriations bills for Fiscal Year 1949 then pending
in Congress. By then, General Omar N. Bradley had replaced Eisenhower, General
Hoyt S. Vandenberg had been named to succeed Spaatz, and Admiral Louis Denfeld
had replaced Nimitz. But even with a fresh set of faces the quarreling continued,
with the size of the increase and the allocation of funds among the Services the
main points in dispute. Some in Congress wanted any additional money to be de-
voted exclusively to strengthening the Air Force’s strategic bombing capability. But
it was Forrestal’s and Truman’s view that the country should have a “balanced” force
posture in which all three Services participated on roughly equal terms.
The Joint Chiefs agreed that balanced forces were a laudable objective, but hav-
ing yet to agree on an integrated strategic concept, they had no basis for identifying
deciencies or recommending an overall plan on how additional money should be
allocated. By default, they wound up recommending what each Service unilaterally
calculated it needed, a sum well in excess of anything the White House or the Bu-
reau of the Budget (BOB) found acceptable on economic grounds. With an election
looming in the fall, Truman was more afraid of ination at home, fueled by increased
military spending, than he was of the Soviets. Nevertheless, the additions he eventu-
ally approved in May 1948 increased the military budget by nearly a third and showed
Forrestal and the JCS that the President’s budget ceilings were not so rm after all.
57
75
PEACETIME CHALLENGES
In addition to boosting the military budget, the March Crisis produced several
other outcomes. First, it heightened awareness both in Europe and the United States
that the Soviet Union was a potential military threat and needed to be addressed
accordingly. Until then, except for a limited military aid program to Greece and
Turkey, the Truman administration and Congress had relied on political, economic,
and diplomatic initiatives to contain communism and Soviet expansionism; but
with the March Crisis came the realization on both sides of the Atlantic that closer
military collaboration was a necessary accompaniment to the European Recovery
Program.
58
Passed by Congress in May 1948, the Vandenberg Resolution urged the
administration to explore a collective security agreement with willing partners in
Europe, a process that culminated in April 1949 with the creation of the North At-
lantic Treaty Organization (NATO). A major departure from the nonentanglement
policy of the past, NATO would be a key element in the Joint Chiefs’ military as-
sessments and strategic planning throughout the Cold War and beyond.
The March Crisis also led the JCS to expedite completion of an integrated
strategic concept, a major step toward a unied defense budget. The agreed plan,
called HALFMOON (later renamed FLEETWOOD), was an outgrowth of the
PINCHER series and called for the Strategic Air Command to launch “a powerful
air oensive designed to exploit the destructive and psychological power of atomic
weapons against the vital elements of the Soviet war-making capacity.” Navy car-
riers would conduct a secondary air oensive from the eastern Mediterranean. But
with atomic bombs in short supply, there was no assurance that the Navy would
participate in the nuclear phase of the air oensive. Arguing that HALFMOON was
overly dependent on SAC’s ability to mount nuclear operations, the Navy accepted
it only on condition that the JCS treat it as an “emergency” war plan (EWP) and
not for long-term force planning beyond the next budget cycle.
59
A key feature of HALFMOON was the need for overseas bases in Newfound-
land, the United Kingdom, and the Cairo-Khartoum area of Northeast Africa from
which to mount strikes against the Soviet Union. Keeping alive the “special relation-
ship” developed in World War II, the Joint Chiefs hosted a meeting in Washington for
senior British and Canadian planners from April 12 to 21, 1948, to discuss U.S. access
to British and Canadian staging points.
60
An inevitable byproduct of U.S. planning,
these tripartite discussions were to some extent premature, since President Truman
had yet to consent to the HALFMOON plan, transfer the custody of any nuclear
weapons from the AEC to the military, or authorize their use. After receiving a JCS
brieng on the plan on May 5, 1948, the President asked the Joint Chiefs to prepare
a nonnuclear alternative, code-named ERASER. But because of budgetary limita-
tions, Forrestal viewed ERASER as a low priority and later ordered work on it
76
COUNCIL OF WAR
suspended.
61
Conrming the course of action previously discussed, a U.S. Air Force
mission of senior ocers and planners visiting London later in May assured their
RAF colleagues that “all planning was to be based on the use of atomic bombs from
the outset including the use of the UK as a base for USAF carrying such bombs.”
62
As the March Crisis wound down, the Joint Chiefs were gradually making
progress toward integrating their requirements and developing a strategic concept
to serve as the basis for a postwar defense policy. The emerging centerpiece of this
process was the atomic bomb, with the threat of strategic bombardment serving as
the country’s principal deterrent. While dierences persisted among the Services
over how this strategy should be interpreted and applied, the overall thrust of what
would constitute the American response to Soviet aggression was no longer in
doubt. Given the limitations on weapons and equipment under which the Services
operated, the JCS were still a very long way from the “massive retaliation” doctrine
of the 1950s. Slowly but surely, however, they were moving in that direction.
The Defense BuDgeT for fy 1950
Following President Truman’s approval of the supplemental defense increase in the
spring of 1948, Forrestal and the Joint Chiefs turned their attention to the military
budget for Fiscal Year 1950 (July 1, 1949, through June 30, 1950). As the rst full set of
estimates to be developed since the passage of the National Security Act, the FY50
budget would be a clear test of the chiefs’ ability to perform their assigned strategic
planning functions of producing an integrated defense plan within approved spending
limits.
63
At a meeting with Forrestal and the JCS in May 1948, Truman stated that he
wanted new obligational authority (i.e., cash and new contract authority) held under
$15 billion. Acknowledging that defense requirements could uctuate, the President
told the chiefs that he would review the situation in September and again in Decem-
ber and make adjustments as needed.
64
At Forrestal’s request, Truman also authorized
the new National Security Council to develop a broad statement of national objec-
tives to assist the JCS in developing their estimate of military requirements.
65
But he
cautioned Forrestal against using NSC guidance to override spending limits. “It seems
to me,” Truman told him, “that the proper thing for you to do is to get the Army,
Navy and Air people together and establish a program within the budget limits which
have been allowed. It seems to me that is your responsibility.”
66
Whether the international situation would cooperate to hold down military
spending remained to be seen. Not only were the Soviets continuing to put pres-
sure on Berlin, but there were also problems in the Middle East that threatened to
embroil the United States in a conict over Palestine, currently a British mandate.
77
PEACETIME CHALLENGES
Zionists had long sought to create a Jewish homeland there, and survivors of the
Holocaust poured into the area by the thousands in the aftermath of World War II.
The partitioning of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states had strong popular
appeal in the United States and quickly became a crucial part of President Truman’s
campaign strategy for the 1948 election.
67
The Arab states of the Middle East, how-
ever, vowed to resist the Jewish inux with force. Fearing an anti-American back-
lash across the Arab world, the Joint Chiefs warned against U.S. support of partition
on the grounds that it could “gravely prejudice” future access to Middle Eastern oil
and compel the United States to wage “an oil-starved war.”
68
For the Joint Chiefs, the issue of most immediate concern was the declared in-
tention of the British to end their mandate in Palestine prematurely and withdraw
their forces, which had been serving as a buer between the Arabs and the Jews. If
the British withdrew, the JCS expected the United States to come under intense
pressure to intervene as part of a UN peacekeeping operation to prevent Arab armies
from slaughtering Jewish refugees and settlers. As it turned out, Jewish defense forces
proved more than able to hold their own in defending the new state of Israel. But in
the spring of 1948, the threat of another Holocaust appeared imminent.
In what would become a recurring theme for the next several decades, the
Joint Chiefs strenuously opposed practically any deepening of U.S. involvement in
the Middle East, especially if the United States appeared to be siding with Israel
against the Arab states. Based on the size of the British presence in Palestine, the
Joint Chiefs estimated that the UN would need to deploy a minimum peacekeeping
force of over 100,000 troops (about half from the United States), supported by ap-
propriate air and naval units. To raise the U.S. contribution to such a force, the chiefs
notied the President that he would need to seek supplemental appropriations, re-
introduce the draft, and order partial mobilization of the Reserves.
69
Suspecting that
the chiefs were overdramatizing the situation and inating their estimates, President
Truman refused to rule out the possibility of U.S. intervention. But he took a cau-
tious approach which more or less validated the chiefs’ preference for avoiding
involvement in the increasingly sensitive Arab-Israeli conict.
70
While the situation in Palestine argued for a exible defense posture resting on a
sound conventional base, persistent tensions in Central Europe played into the hands
of those who favored reliance on strategic airpower and atomic weapons. Unsuc-
cessful in exacting concessions from the Western powers or forcing their withdrawal
from Berlin during the March Crisis, the Soviets turned to more direct measures. On
June 19, 1948, they blockaded all access other than by air into the city. General Clay
immediately organized an airlift to keep the western sectors of the city in essential
supplies, but the longer the stando went on, the more ominous it became.
78
COUNCIL OF WAR
By the end of June, the consensus in Washington was that the Western occupy-
ing powers—Britain, France, and the United States—should concert their eorts
around a show of force and buy time for negotiations backed by a military buildup.
Clay wanted to mount an armed convoy to test Soviet resolve, but the Joint Chiefs
assessed the risk as too high and Allied forces as too weak to prevail should the
Soviets resist.
71
On the other hand, the JCS had no objection to British Foreign
Secretary Ernest Bevin’s suggestion of a visible reinforcement of American airpower
in Europe with B–29s.
72
Approved by President Truman in July, the B–29 augmen-
tation would, in Forrestal’s view, give the Air Force much-needed experience and
make the presence of these planes “an accepted xture” to the British public.
73
Encouraged by the success of the operation, Lieutenant General Lauris Norstad, the
Air Force Deputy Chief of Sta for Operations, visited Britain in September and
arranged to make the deployment permanent, with one B–29 group and one ght-
er group to be stationed in England at all times. Out of these discussions emerged a
tentative agreement by the Air Force to “loan” Britain’s Bomber Command an un-
specied number of B–29s, and Bomber Command’s pledge to place its assets “im-
mediately” under SAC’s coordination in the event of war with the Soviet Union.
74
None of the SAC aircraft deployed to Europe during the Berlin blockade crisis
was equipped for atomic operations, a fact the Soviets could easily have deduced
from the appearance of the planes, which lacked the enlarged underbelly to ac-
commodate atomic bombs. Even so, it was well known that B–29s carried out the
attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The implied threat these planes represented
elevated nuclear weapons to a new level of importance in national policy. Here
in embryonic form was the doctrine of nuclear deterrence in practice for the rst
time. Though the threat may have been hollow, it was sucient to give the Soviets
pause before increasing the pressure and, as one senior Soviet ocer later put it,
risking “suicide” over Berlin.
75
Still, without direct access to or control over nuclear weapons, the Joint Chiefs
were apprehensive about what could happen if the Soviets called the American
blu. As a result of the stepped-up production program the AEC had initiated the
year before, the atomic stockpile stood at around fty nuclear cores by the summer
of 1948.
76
Preliminary results of the recent SANDSTONE experiments, a series of
test explosions held at Eniwetok in the Pacic the previous April–May, suggested
the feasibility of new design techniques that could increase the size of the stockpile
faster than expected and vary the yield of weapons. By demonstrating the feasibility
of the “levitated” core, the SANDSTONE experiments conrmed the possibility
of yields up to two and a half times larger than the Nagasaki bomb, using less s-
sionable material. The days of atomic scarcity and handmade bombs were drawing
79
PEACETIME CHALLENGES
to a close. Thenceforth, the Joint Chiefs would have at their disposal a stockpile of
assembly line–produced weapons, more plentiful in number than previously esti-
mated and more varied in type and design.
77
With U.S. war plans increasingly dependent on the early use of nuclear weap-
ons, the SANDSTONE tests provided the reassurance of a larger and more versatile
atomic arsenal than previously imagined. To make the most of the opportunity,
Forrestal and the Joint Chiefs became convinced that the time had come to change
the custody and control arrangements of nuclear weapons. But after a lengthy White
House meeting to examine the matter on July 21, 1948, Truman ruled that custody
of nuclear weapons would remain in the hands of the Atomic Energy Commis-
sion. A few days later, he told Forrestal that “political considerations” relating to
the upcoming Presidential election barred a change of policy at that time.
78
All the
same, Truman accepted Forrestal’s basic premise that eventually the Services would
need more direct access to weapons, and in September he raised no objection when
the National Security Council conrmed (NSC 30) that the Armed Forces should
expand their training for atomic warfare and integrate nuclear weapons into their
regular military planning.
79
NSC 30 removed the nal obstacle to making the air-atomic strategy the
centerpiece of postwar American defense policy. Now assured of increased access
to weapons and training for their personnel, the Air Force and the Navy moved
quickly to expand and rene their capabilities for atomic warfare. For the Navy, this
meant pressing ahead with plans for laying the keel of the rst in a new generation
of super carriers; for the Air Force, it meant bolstering the Strategic Air Command,
which continued to have a monopoly on the nuclear mission. A critical factor in
preserving the Air Force’s dominant position was the appointment of a new SAC
commander, Lieutenant General Curtis E. LeMay, who took charge in October
1948, bringing with him a reputation for solving problems and getting results. The
architect of the devastating conventional “re bomb raids” against Japan in World
War II, LeMay also had helped to coordinate the 1946 Crossroads tests in the Pa-
cic and had thus acquired a working familiarity with nuclear weapons. When he
assumed command, SAC had only about 20 atomic-modied B–29s t for duty.
Concentrating on expanding SAC’s nuclear capability, LeMay set about eliminating
equipment deciencies and training personnel one group at a time, starting with
restoring the 509th to its wartime level of eciency.
80
Meanwhile, the budget process for FY 1950 plodded along, with the Berlin
situation and the presumed intimidating power of the atomic bomb overshadowing
Palestine and other trouble spots where the need for conventional forces predomi-
nated. Forrestal continued to favor balanced capabilities, but a detailed analysis of
80
COUNCIL OF WAR
Service estimates by the Budget Advisory Committee, a tri-Service panel of senior
ocers chaired by General Joseph T. McNarney, USAF, revealed an enormous gap
between the requirements for a balanced force posture and the resources available
under the President’s budget ceiling.
81
To narrow the dierence, the Joint Chiefs
reduced the scale and scope of planned operations under the FLEETWOOD (for-
merly HALFMOON) strategy by eliminating certain Army and Air Force units and
deleting the naval air oensive in the eastern Mediterranean. No matter how they
priced it, however, the savings from these cuts failed to produce a military budget
within the President’s spending limit. Convinced that the chiefs had done their best
and realizing that they were deadlocked, Forrestal told them on October 15 that he
would entertain the proposal of an “intermediate” budget somewhat larger than the
President had said he would allow.
82
To justify the increase, the Joint Chiefs hastily compiled a catalog of commit-
ments that the military budget would have to support. This list was the rst in a long
line of such statements that the Joint Chiefs would routinely produce during the Cold
War to support Service requirements. While the chiefs amply documented the wide
range of military obligations the country faced, they fell short of providing a useful
framework for assessing military spending. At no point did they put a price tag on
U.S. commitments, attempt to link them directly to force requirements, or establish an
order of priority for military programs. Given these shortcomings, the chiefs’ catalog,
while informative, was not very useful as budgetary guidance. Later iterations of these
joint planning documents would be similarly defective and would come under sharp
criticism from the Oce of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the White House for
failing to sort out and prioritize military requirements. But in view of the consensus-
oriented rules under which the JCS operated and the diculties these procedures
posed in allocating resources, a better product was probably unattainable.
83
A more practical tool for assessing Service requirements was the NSC’s evalu-
ation of national security policy (NSC 20/4), which appeared toward the end of
November 1948. Prepared mainly by Kennan and State’s Policy Planning Sta in re-
sponse to Forrestal’s request for guidance, NSC 20/4 predicted an indenite period
of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. Cautioning against
“excessive” U.S. armaments, the report urged “a level of military readiness which
can be maintained as long as necessary as a deterrent to Soviet aggression.” These
recommendations were not much help to Forrestal in evaluating the relative merits
of competing weapons systems or strategic concepts. But they left no doubt that a
defense establishment tailored for the long haul and a posture of deterrence would
be more in keeping with security needs than one with large, immediate increases
for ghting a war that might not materialize.
84
81
PEACETIME CHALLENGES
On December 1, 1948, Forrestal submitted his defense budget for FY50. Actu-
ally, he submitted two budgets—one for $14.4 billion that fell within the President’s
spending ceiling; and a second for nearly $17 billion. (Forrestal dismissed as excessive
and unrealistic a third set of estimates, prepared by the JCS, totaling nearly $24 bil-
lion.) The rst budget, Forrestal explained, would allow for a defense establishment
of 10 Regular Army divisions, 287 combatant ships in the Navy, and a 48-group Air
Force. The second, which the Secretary of Defense personally endorsed as prefer-
able for national security purposes, would support a defense establishment of 12 di-
visions, 319 combatant vessels, and 59 air groups. Forrestal added that he had shown
these gures to Secretary of State George C. Marshall, who concurred that the
larger budget would provide better support for the country’s foreign policy.
85
All the
same, Truman was unimpressed. Buoyed by his recent come-from-behind victory at
the polls, he told the Bureau of the Budget to ignore Forrestal’s larger submission. “I
don’t know why he sent two. The $14.4 billion budget is the one we will adopt.”
86
Refusing to accept the President’s decision as nal, Forrestal tendered an
amended request on December 20 that proposed adding $580 million to fund six
additional air bombardment groups in the Air Force. In line with the emerging reli-
ance on air-atomic power as the country’s rst line of defense, Forrestal argued for
the money as the most practical way of addressing the threat posed by “our most
probable enemy.” Whether he agreed or not with Forrestal’s reasoning, Truman
continued to give scal considerations priority and turned down the Secretary’s
request without giving it a second thought.
87
Early the following year, in testifying
to Congress on the President’s 1950 budget, the Joint Chiefs expressed skepticism
that it would assure proper readiness in an emergency, but declined to criticize the
President for his decision to hold down military spending for scal and economic
reasons. According to Admiral Denfeld, the budget was “the best division of funds
that we could agree on at the time.”
88
The sTraTegic BomBing conTroversy
The strategy and budget debates of 1948 left no doubt that the United States was
moving toward a defense posture centered on strategic bombardment with nuclear
weapons. While Truman, Forrestal, and other senior administration gures contin-
ued to pay lip service to the need for balanced forces, the reality was quite dierent.
Not everyone agreed that reliance on strategic bombing was a sound course to
follow, certainly not the Navy, which had its own competing view of strategy and
weapons. But in practical terms, the air-atomic strategy had considerable appeal.
An intimidating threat, it seemed feasible within the limits of existing technology,
82
COUNCIL OF WAR
had strong bipartisan support in Congress, and could be priced to t virtually any
reasonable spending limit the White House might set. Assuming he had a mandate
to proceed, LeMay set about transforming the Strategic Air Command into an all-
atomic strike force that grew from a handful of atomic-capable aircraft when he
took over in October 1948 to more than 250 a year and a half later. Most of the
bombers in SAC’s inventory were medium-range B–29s or B–50s (an upgraded
version of the B–29), which required overseas bases to reach Soviet targets. A grow-
ing number, however, were B–36s that could reach targets in the Soviet Union from
bases in the United States.
89
Armation of the air-atomic strategy put major stresses on the JCS, revealing
vital shortcomings in their ability to function as a deliberative corporate body. In
assessing the chiefs’ performance, Forrestal believed a key weakness was the absence
of a presiding ocer, or chairman, to steer the deliberations. As the only member
without Service responsibilities, Admiral Leahy had performed something approxi-
mating this function in World War II, but after the war his role and inuence had
diminished as his health declined. To ll the void, Forrestal persuaded General of the
Army Dwight D. Eisenhower, the president of Columbia University in New York,
to return to Washington on a part-time basis as his “military consultant.” Eisen-
hower met o and on with the chiefs between mid-December 1948 and late June
1949 and devoted most of his time to war plans and budget matters.
90
Eisenhower’s appointment was a stop-gap measure until Congress could cre-
ate a permanent position, one of a list of reforms that Forrestal deemed essential for
unication to succeed. In December 1948, declaring that his views had changed,
Forrestal came out strongly for giving the Secretary of Defense enhanced powers and
assistance. Among the measures he proposed was legislative authority to appoint a
“responsible head” of the JCS and to increase the size of the Joint Sta.
91
The result-
ing amendments to the National Security Act took eect in August 1949 and con-
verted the NME into the Department of Defense. In the legislation, Congress added
a Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Sta, and gave him “precedence” over all other ocers
in the Armed Forces. His statutory responsibilities were to preside at JCS meetings,
set the agenda, and notify the Secretary of Defense of any disagreements. The Chair-
man could not vote in JCS deliberations nor could he command any military forces.
Clarifying the JCS role in the policy process, Congress designated the Chairman and
the Joint Chiefs of Sta collectively as the “principal military advisers” to the Presi-
dent, the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Council.
92
By the time the 1949 amendments became law, Forrestal was dead, the vic-
tim of an apparent suicide. Frustrated, overworked, and mentally exhausted, he had
reluctantly stepped down as Secretary of Defense in March 1949 to make way for
83
PEACETIME CHALLENGES
his successor, Louis Johnson. A prominent West Virginia attorney, Johnson had been
Assistant Secretary of War in the Roosevelt administration and Truman’s principal
fund-raiser for the 1948 campaign. Johnson’s mandate from the President was to
bring order and discipline to the Pentagon and make the Services and the JCS toe
the line on military spending. Even without the 1949 amendments, Johnson felt he
had the power and authority to accomplish his mission. Using the Joint Chiefs less
and less, Johnson embraced budgetary procedures that relied more on his own sta
to make the tough decisions on military spending and the allocation of resources.
93
Johnson’s rst major action as Secretary of Defense came in April 1949, when
he cancelled the Navy’s new super carrier, the USS United States. Incorporating de-
sign features derived from the Crossroads tests, the United States was to be a 65,000-
ton, ush-deck carrier capable of accommodating aircraft carrying a 10,000-pound
payload, roughly the same as an atomic bomb. Though Johnson strongly endorsed
the air-atomic strategy, he acted on economic grounds and believed the Navy’s
super carrier needlessly duplicated the Air Force’s strategic bombing function. His
rst and foremost aim was to hold down military spending, a goal that became all
the more imperative in the summer of 1949, when President Truman disclosed that
the defense budget for FY51 would have to come down to $13 billion to help stave
o a recession. An escalation of the quarrel between the Air Force and the Navy
soon followed, producing charges and countercharges about the relative merits of
long-range bombers versus super carriers, and culminating in a highly publicized
congressional investigation. By the autumn of 1949, the senior echelons of the Navy
were in open revolt against Johnson’s policies and authority.
94
While these controversies swirled in the public arena, the Joint Chiefs were
trying to develop a more rational framework for analyzing the strategic environ-
ment and the competing Service claims for rival weapons systems. The impetus
behind this eort came from a request by Forrestal in October 1948 for an analysis
of two issues: the chances of success of delivering the strategic air oensive con-
templated in current war plans, and an evaluation of the eects of SAC’s planned
air oensive on the Soviet Union’s war eort.
95
Forrestal hoped to use the results to
help defend his FY50 budget submission to the President. But owing to the com-
plexity and sensitivity of the issues raised, the Joint Chiefs wanted more time to as-
sure thorough examinations. Initially, the JCS assigned the weapons eects study to
an ad hoc body that reported to the Joint Strategic Plans Committee, and the other
study, on the chances of success for the air oensive, to the Air Force. When the Air
Force replied in December 1948 with a highly generalized boilerplate response, the
JCS asked the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG), a new technical sup-
port organization, to step in.
96
84
COUNCIL OF WAR
Lieutenant General Hubert R. Harmon, USAF, a member of the U.S. military
sta to the United Nations, chaired the ad hoc weapons-eects study group. A
classmate of Eisenhower’s and Bradley’s at West Point, Harmon had served briey
as commander of Thirteenth Air Force in the South Pacic in World War II. Ex-
actly how or why Harmon came to chair the eort is unclear; however, he had a
reputation for being tactful and fair-minded that enhanced the study’s objectivity
and credibility. To assist him, Harmon assembled an inter-Service team of one Air
Force ocer, two Navy ocers, and two Army ocers.
97
The Harmon committee looked only at SAC’s role and the atomic phase of
the air oensive, which would take place at the outset of a war. It made no attempt
to evaluate the impact of a planned follow-on oensive with conventional bombs,
nor did it look at possible Navy contributions under the plan since there was no
assurance that the Navy would be allocated nuclear weapons or have the requisite
capabilities for delivering them.
98
The committee conrmed that SAC’s attacks un-
der the current JCS-approved emergency war plan (now code-named TROJAN)
would exact a heavy toll on the Soviet Union. SAC’s targets were 70 urban-indus-
trial complexes, with the destruction of Moscow and Leningrad the top priorities.
Should all planes and bombs reach their targets (an assumption the WSEG study had
yet to test), casualties from the initial attack would be in the vicinity of 2.7 million
killed and another 4 million injured. Life for the 28 million survivors in the target
areas would be “vastly complicated.” The Air Force estimated that the destruction
inicted by the bombing would reduce Soviet industrial production for war-related
purposes by 50 percent, with the heaviest impact falling on the petroleum industry.
Based on its own separate assessments, the Harmon committee pared this estimate
to a drop in production of 30 to 40 percent.
The committee doubted whether the atomic oensive would “seriously im-
pair” ongoing Soviet operations in Western Europe, the Middle East, or the Far East.
Large stockpiles of war reserves would allow Soviet forces to operate for some time
before the eects of the disruptions to industry caused by the bombing reached the
battleeld. Nor was the committee convinced that the planned air attacks would
undermine the will and capacity of the Soviet population to resist, a key objective of
the EWP. Nevertheless, the committee concluded that the atomic bomb remained
“a major element of Allied military strength” and would constitute “the only means
of rapidly inicting shock and serious damage to vital elements of the Soviet war-
making capacity.” Even if not initially decisive, the crippling eects of nuclear weap-
ons would tilt the balance sooner or later in favor of the West.
99
Though the Joint Chiefs received the Harmon report in May 1949, they waited
until late July to give it to the Secretary of Defense. The reason for the delay was a
85
PEACETIME CHALLENGES
disagreement over how to handle Air Force objections to the committee’s analysis of
collateral damage, which failed to consider the impact of res started by the bomb-
ing. General Vandenberg, the Air Force Chief of Sta, wanted the report amended
to address this and several other issues the Air Force had raised, whereas Admiral
Denfeld thought it should go up the chain of authority as written. Eventually,
the Secretary of Defense received the report unchanged, but with a covering note
explaining the Air Force’s dissenting views.
100
Only the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs, and their immediate aides saw
the Harmon report. President Truman never received a copy, though he knew of its
existence and expressed an interest in seeing it and the WSEG study as well.
101
While
Truman wanted economy in defense spending, he also remained a rm believer in
a balanced force posture. At this juncture, the President was uneasy over a proposed
reapportionment in the Air Force budget to free funds for the procurement of ad-
ditional B–36s, despite reports that the planes were experiencing signicant engine
problems. Prodded by the Bureau of the Budget and by his White House naval aide,
Rear Admiral Robert L. Dennison, Truman inquired in April 1949 about the status
of these studies, telling his sta that he wanted to avoid “putting all of our eggs into
one basket.” Secretary of Defense Johnson assured the President that when the time
was right he would receive a full brieng, but that it could take up to a year for the
Pentagon to complete its evaluations.
102
As Johnson’s response suggests, the WSEG study had fallen behind schedule ow-
ing to WSEG’s start-up problems and disagreements between the Air Force and the
Navy over the intelligence data the study should use. WSEG was the brainchild of
Vannevar Bush, President Roosevelt’s chief scientic advisor on the atomic bomb in
World War II and rst Chairman of the Research and Development Board (RDB)
when that agency acquired statutory status in 1947. According to his biographer, Bush
regarded WSEG “as the epitome of the professional partnership between soldiers and
scientists that he had tried to foster since 1940.”
103
Having worked closely with the
JCS in World War II, Bush seriously doubted that they could detach themselves from
Service interests and responsibilities, act as a unitary body of strategic advisors, or
deal intelligently and eectively with scientic and technical matters. Advocating a
greater role for science and scientists in defense aairs, he called for “dispassionate,
cold-blooded analysis of facts and trends,” and persuaded Secretary Forrestal that there
should be “a centrally located, impartial and highly qualied group” to provide the
JCS with “objective and competent advice” on current and future weapons systems.
104
Initially, the Joint Chiefs were concerned that the new organization Bush pro-
posed might infringe on their functions. The Joint Strategic Survey Committee
was especially uneasy and warned lest “technical evaluations” become “operational
86
COUNCIL OF WAR
evaluations” that could encroach on JCS responsibilities.
105
But after lengthy dis-
cussions with Forrestal and Bush, the JCS nally accepted the WSEG proposal at
the Newport Conference in August 1948. Even so, it took until December for the
JCS, Forrestal’s oce, and the RDB to agree on a directive laying out the terms of
reference for the group’s work, and 6 months more for WSEG to recruit a mixed
military-civilian sta. WSEG took up oces in the Pentagon, within the secure
restricted area set aside for the Joint Sta and other JCS components on the second
level. Many of those who worked for WSEG were alumni of the Manhattan Project
in World War II, an indication of how the new organization viewed its mission and
where it expected to concentrate its eorts.
106
Even though the strategic delivery study rated top priority on WSEG’s agenda,
it did not receive authorization to go forward until late August 1949, when the JCS
nally approved intelligence data for the study.
107
At issue was the Air Force conten-
tion that Soviet air defenses were technologically substandard and spread too thin to
pose a signicant obstacle to attacking U.S. bombers.
108
Citing a “dearth of reliable
intelligence,” Admiral Denfeld challenged this notion and insisted that the Joint
Intelligence Committee (JIC) conduct a review.
109
The JIC’s preliminary analysis
concurred with Denfeld that the Air Force had oversimplied the situation. But in
a detailed follow-up report, the committee agreed with the Air Force that by and
large Soviet air defenses were second rate. Still, it also pointed to recent improve-
ments in air defense radars that suggested a more complex and eective Soviet air
defense environment than the Air Force was anticipating.
110
In view of the uncertainties surrounding Soviet air defenses, WSEG leaned
toward the side of caution and produced a less than favorable report (WSEG R-1)
on the chances of success for the planned air oensive. Knowing President Truman’s
interest in the subject, Secretary Johnson arranged for the WSEG director, Lieuten-
ant General John E. Hull, USA, to hold a brieng at the White House on January
23, 1950, immediately prior to submitting R-1 to the JCS. While calculating that
70 to 85 percent of the attacking aircraft would reach their targets, Hull cited gaps
in intelligence and logistical deciencies that would reduce the eectiveness of the
operation. Among SAC’s vulnerabilities were a limited aerial refueling capability,
competing demands for transport aircraft, and heavy dependence on overseas oper-
ating and staging bases. Overall, WSEG estimated that SAC could carry out its mis-
sion, but not to the full extent envisioned in current war plans without correcting
identiable deciencies.
111
Even though the Hull report presented a conservative view of the chances of
complete success for the air oensive, there was no immediate rush to overhaul U.S. war
plans or devise a new strategy. Developments on other fronts—the creation of NATO
87
PEACETIME CHALLENGES
linking the security of Europe to the United States, the recent Communist victory in
China, and the discovery that the Soviets had acquired an atomic capability—were shift-
ing the debate on defense and military policy to broader global issues. In many respects,
the war plans the Joint Chiefs had so painstakingly developed and rened were becom-
ing irrelevant and obsolete. On the other hand, the preparation of these plans gave the
Joint Chiefs a better appreciation for the problems of waging war against the Soviet
Union and underscored yet again the critical importance of inter-Service cooperation.
Notes
1 Robert H. Ferrell, Harry S. Truman: A Life (Columbia: University of Missouri Press,
1994), 162–176.
2 Letter, Truman to Gordon McDonough, August 29, 1950, Public Papers of the Presidents
of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 1950 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1965), 617–618, here-
after cited as Truman Public Papers.
3 See Dale R. Herspring, The Pentagon and the Presidency: Civil-Military Relations from
FDR to George W. Bush (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), 54.
4 Message to Congress, December 19, 1945, in Alice Cole et at., eds., The Department of
Defense: Documents on Establishment and Organization, 1944–78 (Washington, DC: His-
torical Oce, Oce of the Secretary of Defense, 1978), 7–17.
5 U.S. Senate, Committee on Naval Aairs, Unication of the War and Navy Departments
and Postwar Organization for National Security, 79:1 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1945).
6 See letter, Leahy to Hull, May, 16, 1944, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the
United States: The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference), 1945 (Washington, DC:
GPO, 1960), I, 265.
7 Walter S. Poole, “From Conciliation to Containment: The Joint Chiefs of Sta and the
Coming of the Cold War,” Military Aairs 42 (February 1978), 12–16; James F. Schnabel,
The Joint Chiefs of Sta and National Policy, 1945–1947 (Washington, DC: Joint History
Oce, 1996), 7–32.
8 Robert A. Pollard, Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945–1950 (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 20–23.
9 JCS Military Policy Statement, “Basis for the Formulation of Military Policy,” Septem-
ber 20, 1945, JCS 1496/3.
10 Christian Brahmstedt, ed., Defense’s Nuclear Agency, 1947–97 (Washington, DC: Defense
Threat Reduction Agency, 2002), 1–13; Eban A. Ayers Diary entry, October 14, 1946, in
Robert H. Ferrell, ed., Truman in the White House: The Diary of Eban A. Ayers (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 1991), 161; David Alan Rosenberg, “U.S. Nuclear Stock-
pile, 1945 to 1950,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 38 (May 19, 1982), 25–30.
11 Richard G. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson, Jr., A History of the United States Atomic
Energy Commission, vol. I , The New World (Washington, DC: U.S. Atomic Energy Com-
mission, 1962), 408–427, 482–530.
12 McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival (New York: Random House, 1988), 166; Hewlett
and Anderson, The New World, 582–597.
88
COUNCIL OF WAR
13 Letter, JCS to President, October 23, 1945, “Military Policy as to Secrecy Regarding the
Atomic Bomb,” JCS 1471/4.
14 Hewlett and Anderson, 581–582.
15 Lloyd J. Graybar, “The 1946 Atomic Bomb Tests: Atomic Diplomacy or Bureaucratic
Inghting?” Journal of American History 72 (March 1986), 888–907.
16 Brahmstedt, 13–14; JCS Evaluation Board for Operation Crossroads, “The Evaluation
of the Atomic Bomb as a Military Weapon: Final Report,” June 30, 1947, President’s
Secretary’s File (PSF), Truman Library.
17 Walton S. Moody, Building A Strategic Air Force (Washington, DC: Air Force History
and Museums Program, 1996), 141–142; Ian Clark and Nicholas J. Wheeler, The British
Origins of Nuclear Strategy, 1945–1955 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 116.
18 Jerey G. Barlow, Revolt of the Admirals: The Fight for Naval Aviation, 1945–1950 (Washington,
DC: Naval Historical Center, 1994), 106–107; David Alan Rosenberg, “American Postwar Air
Doctrine and Organization: The Navy Experience,” in Alfred F. Hurley and Robert C. Eh-
rhart, eds., Airpower and Warfare (Washington, DC: Oce of Air Force History, 1979), 245–278.
19 Schnabel, 70–72.
20 Memo, Leahy to Truman, October 16, 1945, “Reorganization of National Defense,” JCS
749/29.
21 Ronald H. Cole et at., The History of the Unied Command Plan,1946–1999 (Washington,
DC: Joint History Oce, 2003), 11.
22 Quoted in Walter S. Poole, “Joint Operations,” in Jacob Neufeld, William T. Y’Blood,
and Mary Lee Jeerson, eds., Pearl to V-J Day: World War II in the Pacic (Washington,
DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 2000), 19.
23 Memo, CNO to JCS, February 1, 1946, “Command Structure in the Pacic Theater,”
JCS 1259/6.
24 Quoted in Poole, “Joint Operations,” 18.
25 Schnabel, 81–82.
26 Memo, CSA to JCS, September 17, 1946, “Unied Command Structure,” JCS 1259/12;
Memo, CNO to JCS, December 5, 1946, “Unied Command Plan,” JCS 1259/26;
Memo, JCS to President, December 12, 1946, enclosing Unied Command Plan, JCS
1259/27. Truman approved the plan on December 14, 1946.
27 History of the UCP, 11–13. The seven original geographic commands were Far East
Command, Pacic Command, Alaska Command, Northeast Command, Atlantic Fleet,
Caribbean Command, and European Command.
28 J.C. Hopkins and Sheldon A. Goldberg, The Development of Strategic Air Command, 1946–1986
(Outt Air Force Base, NE: Oce of the Historian, Strategic Air Command, 1986), 2–3.
29 JSSC Report to the JCS, February 20, 1946, “Missions of the Land, Sea and Air Forces,”
JCS 1478/8.
30 Schnabel, 113.
31 Herman S. Wolk, Planning and Organizing the Postwar Air Force, 1943–1947 (Washington,
DC: Oce of Air Force History, 1984), 157.
32 Walter Millis, ed., The Forrestal Diaries (New York: Viking Press, 1951), 221–223; letter,
Patterson and Forrestal to Truman, January 16, 1947, in Cole et al., Documents on Defense
89
PEACETIME CHALLENGES
Organization, 31–33. See also Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley, Driven Patriot:
The Life and Times of James Forrestal (New York: Knopf, 1992), 341–343.
33 National Security Act of 1947, July 26, 1947, PL 253, in Cole et al., Documents on Defense
Organization, 35–50.
34 EO 9877, “Functions of the Armed Forces,” in Cole et at., Documents on Defense Orga-
nization, 267–270.
35 Steven L. Rearden, History of the Oce of the Secretary of Defense: The Formative Years,
1947–1950 (Washington, DC: Historical Oce, Oce of the Secretary of Defense,
1984), 385–402.
36 Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, vol. II, Years of Trial and Hope (Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1956), 100.
37 Walter Lippmann, The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Harper and
Row, 1947).
38 Richard G. Hewlett and Francis Duncan, A History of the United States Atomic Energy
Commission, vol. 2, Atomic Shield, 1947–1952 (Washington, DC: Atomic Energy Commis-
sion, 1972), 53–55, 196–148; Schnabel, 133–135.
39 Matthew A. Evangelista, “Stalin’s Postwar Army Reappraised,” International Security 7
(Winter 1982/1983), 110–138. Evangelista argues that the JCS consistently overesti-
mated Soviet strength. He attributes this error to a lack of reliable information rather
than to an intentional eort to deceive.
40 Samuel R. Williamson, Jr., and Steven L. Rearden, The Origins of U.S. Nuclear Strategy,
1945–1953 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 193; Steven T. Ross, American War Plans,
1945–1950 (London: Frank Cass, 1996), 54; Donald P. Steury, “How the CIA Missed
Stalin’s Bomb,” Studies in Intelligence, 199:1 (2005), 19–26.
41 John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982),
39–40; see also David Mayers, George Kennan and the Dilemmas of U.S. Foreign Policy
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 122–123; and John Lewis Gaddis, George F.
Kennan: An American Life (New York: Penguin, 2011).
42 Letter, Leahy to Hull, May 16, 1944, derived from JCS 838/1.
43 For the details, see Ross, American War Plans, 25–52.
44 Schnabel, 70–75.
45 Millis, 351–352; Melvyn P. Leer, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Tru-
man Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992),
221–226. Leer sees Truman as an essentially ambivalent gure who provided less than
dynamic or credible leadership. While committed to preserving the preponderant U.S.
position in world aairs, he ignored the gap between commitments and capabilities.
46 During the unication debate, both Forrestal and Secretary of War Patterson had rec-
ommended that Congress give the JCS the responsibility under the law to “make
recommendations for integration of the military budget.” For unexplained reasons,
Congress failed to include this provision in the statement of JCS functions when it
passed the National Security Act in July 1947.
47 Rearden, Formative Years, 311.
48 Ibid., 89–115.
90
COUNCIL OF WAR
49 U.S. President’s Air Policy Commission, Survival in the Air Age (Washington, DC: U.S.
President’s Air Policy Commission, January 1, 1948).
50 Moody, 125–127; Barlow, 105–121.
51 Rearden, Formative Years, 35–36; Hoopes and Brinkley, 351–153.
52 Jonathan Haslam, Russia’s Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 99.
53 See William R. Harris, “March Crisis 1948, Act I,” Studies in Intelligence 10, no. 4 (Fall
1966), 1–22; and William R. Harris, “March Crisis 1948, Act II,” Studies in Intelligence 11,
no. 2 (Spring 1967), 9–36 (RG 263, Records of the Central Intelligence Agency, Na-
tional Archives). Written largely from interviews, these articles, now declassied, pro-
vide fascinating insights into the origins of the Czech coup, the March Crisis, and the
inner workings of Soviet and U.S. intelligence leading up to the 1948 Berlin blockade.
54 Memo, Hillenkoetter to Truman, March 16, 1948, PSF, Truman Library. See also Donald
P. Steury, “Origins of CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union,” in Gerald K. Haines and
Robert E. Leggett, eds., Watching the Bear: Essays on CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union
(Langley, VA: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2001), 1–14.
55 Jean Edward Smith, Lucius D. Clay: An American Life (New York: Henry Holt and Co.,
1990), 166–167; Cable, Clay to Chamberlin, March 5, 1948, in Jean Edward Smith, ed.,
The Papers of General Lucius D. Clay: Germany, 1945–1949, 2 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1974), II, 568.
56 Memo, Hillenkoetter to Truman, December 22, 1947, PSF, Truman Library.
57 Rearden, Formative Years, 316–330.
58 Lawrence S. Kaplan, NATO 1948: The Birth of the Transatlantic Alliance (Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littleeld, 2007), 192–144, 199–159.
59 “Brief of Short-Range Emergency War Plan ‘HALFMOON,’” May 6, 1948, JCS
1844/4; Memo, CNO to JCS, April 5, 1948, “Planning Guidance for Medium-Range
Emergency Plan,” JCS 1844/2.
60 Kenneth W. Condit, The Joint Chiefs of Sta and National Policy, 1947–1949 (Washington,
DC: Oce of Joint History, 1996), 156.
61 Diary Entry, May 6, 1948, Leahy Papers, Library of Congress; Memo, Leahy to JCS, May
13, 1948, “Brief of Short-Range Emergency Plan “HALFMOON,” JCS 1844/6; Millis,
158, 161–162; David Alan Rosenberg, “Toward Armageddon: The Foundations of United
States Nuclear Strategy, 1945–1961” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1983), 110.
62 Notes of an informal meeting between Vice chief of the Air Sta and Maj. Gen. Rich-
ard C. Lindsay, May 10, 1948, quoted in Stephen Twigge and Len Scott, Planning Ar-
mageddon: Britain, the United States and the Command of Western Nuclear Forces, 1945–1964
(Amsterdam: Harwood, 2000), 30–31.
63 Warner R. Schilling, “The Politics of National Defense: Fiscal 1950,” in Warner R.
Schilling, Paul Y. Hammond, and Glenn H. Snyder, Strategy, Politics, and Defense Budgets
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), 155–164.
64 Millis, 135–138.
65 Memo, Forrestal to NSC, July 10, 1948, “Appraisal of the Degree and Character of
Military Preparedness Required by the World Situation,” FRUS, 1948, I, 589–592; letter,
Forrestal to Truman, July 10, 1948, ibid., 592–593.
91
PEACETIME CHALLENGES
66 Memo, Truman to Forrestal, July 13, 1948, PSF, Truman Library.
67 Alonzo L. Hamby, Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1973), 209–211.
68 Memo, JCS to SECDEF, October 10, 1947, “Problem of Palestine,” JCS 1684/3.
69 Memo, JCS to Truman, April 19, 1948, “Provision of U.S. Armed Forces in Palestine,”
JCS 1685/13.
70 Rearden, Formative Years, 187–194; Condit, 51–57.
71 Memo, JCS to SECDEF, July 22, 1948, “U.S. Military Course of Action with Respect
to the Situation in Berlin,” JCS 1907/3.
72 Douglas to SecState, June 26, 1948, FRUS, 1948, II, 923–924.
73 Millis, 457.
74 Clark and Wheeler, British Origins of Nuclear Strategy, 128–129.
75 John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1997), 198.
76 Rearden, Formative Years, 139.
77 Hewlett and Duncan, Atomic Shield, 161–165, 174–176; Robert S. Norris, Thomas B.
Cochran, and William M. Arkin, “History of the Nuclear Stockpile,” Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists (August 1985), 106–109. Barlow, 127, discusses the impact of the levita-
tion method.
78 Millis, 460–461; Rearden, Formative Years, 425–432.
79 Minutes, 21st Meeting of the National Security Council, September 16, 1948, PSF,
NSC Series, Truman Library; NSC 30, “U.S. Policy on Atomic Warfare,” September 10,
1948, FRUS, 1948, I, 624–628.
80 Moody, 229–233.
81 Condit, 124; Rearden, Formative Years, 342.
82 Ibid., 124–131.
83 Memo, JCS to SECDEF, November 2, 1948, “Existing International Commitments
Involving the Possible Use of Armed Forces,” circulated at NSC 35, November 17, 1948,
FRUS, 1948, I, 656–662.
84 NSC 20/4, November 23, 1948, “U.S. Objectives with Respect to the USSR to Coun-
ter Soviet Threats to U.S. Security,” FRUS 1948, I, 662–669.
85 Letter, Forrestal to Truman, December 1, 1948, FRUS 1948, I, 669–672.
86 Memo, Truman to Webb, December 2, 1948, PSF, Truman Library.
87 USAF CoS Memo, ca. December 16 or 20, 1948, quoted in Williamson and Rearden,
Origins of U.S. Nuclear Strategy, 95.
88 Denfeld testimony, February 16, 1949, U.S. Congress, Senate, Hearings: National Military
Establishment Appropriations Bill for 1950, 81:1, Pt. 1, 17.
89 Moody, 265. Other sources give larger numbers. Using JCS historical materials, Ross,
American War Plans, 1945–50, 139, says that SAC had 521 atomic-capable aircraft by the
end of 1949. Actually, as the JCS source makes clear, this was the total number of bomb-
92
COUNCIL OF WAR
ers in SAC’s inventory at the time. Ross erroneously assumes that all SAC bombers had
been converted.
90 Diary entry, December 13, 1948, in Robert H. Ferrell, ed., The Eisenhower Diaries (New
York: W.W. Norton, 1981), 150–151; Condit, 139–152.
91 U.S. National Military Establishment, First Report of the Secretary of Defense (Washington,
DC: GPO, 1948), 3–4.
92 National Security Act of 1947 as Amended and Approved, August 10, 1949, PL 216, in
Cole et al., eds., Documents on Defense Organization, 84–106.
93 Rearden, Formative Years, 369–376.
94 Paul Y. Hammond, “Super Carriers and B–36 Bombers: Appropriations, Strategy and
Politics,” in Harold Stein, ed., American Civil-Military Decisions: A Book of Case Studies
(Birmingham, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1963), 465–564, though dated, is still
the best overview of the controversy; Moody, 286–313, is a measured account from the
Air Force perspective; Barlow, 182f, and Paolo E. Coletta, The United States Navy and
Defense Unication, 1947–1953 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1981), give the
Navy perspective.
95 Memo, SECDEF to JCS, October 23, 1948, “Evaluation of Current Strategic Air Of-
fensive Plans,” JCS 1952; Memo, SECDEF to JCS, October 25, 1948, “Evaluation of
Eect on Soviet War Eort Resulting from Strategic Air Oensive,” JCS 1953.
96 John Ponturo, Analytical Support for the Joint Chiefs of Sta: The WSEG Experience, 1948–
1976 (Arlington, VA: Institute for Defense Analyses, 1979), 52–53. For the Air Force re-
sponse, see the Appendix to Memo, CoS USAF to JCS, December 21, 1948, “Evaluation
of Current Strategic Air Oensive Plans,” JCS 1952/1.
97 Note by the Secretaries to the JCS, October 25, 1948, JCS 1953; Moody, 295.
98 Details of the planned oensive are in Report, JSPC to JCS, December 13, 1948,
“Atomic Weapons Supplement to TROJAN,” JCS, 1974.
99 Report by the Ad Hoc Committee (Harmon Committee), May 12, 1949, “Evaluation
of Eect on Soviet War Eort Resulting from the Strategic Air Oensive,” JCS 1953/1.
100 Memo, CoS USAF to JCS, July 8, 1949, JCS 1953/4; Memo, CNO to JCS, July 19, 1949,
JCS 1953/5; Moody, 295.
101 Truman, Years of Trial and Hope, 305.
102 Rearden, Formative Years, 406–407.
103 G. Pascal Zachary, Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century (New
York: Free Press, 1997), 340.
104 Ponturo, 23–25.
105 Report, JSSC to JCS, February 27, 1948, “Proposed Directive to the RDB,” JCS 1812/5.
106 Ponturo, 27–48.
107 Note by the Secretaries to JCS, August 25, 1949, “Joint Intelligence Estimate,” JCS
1952/8.
108 See the appendix to Memo, CoS/USAF to JCS, December 21, 1949, “Evaluation of
Current Strategic Air Oensive Plans,” enclosure to JCS 1952/1.
93
PEACETIME CHALLENGES
109 Memo, CNO to JCS, January 11, 1949, “Evaluation of Current Strategic Air Oensive
Plans,” JCS 1952/2.
110 Rpt, JIC to JCS, March 3, 1949, “Intelligence Aspects of Evaluation of Current Stra-
tegic Air Oensive Plans,” JCS 1952/4; Report, JIC to JCS, August 25, 1949, “Joint
Intelligence Estimate for Basing Operational Evaluation Success of the Strategic Air
Oensive,” JCS 1952/8.
111 WSEG R-1, “Report on Evaluation of Eectiveness of Strategic Air Operations,” Feb-
ruary 8, 1950, JCS 1952/11; Ponturo, 74–75, summarizes the White House brieng.
President Harry S. Truman meeting General Douglas MacArthur, USA, Wake Island, October 1950
Chapter 4
Militarizing
the Cold War
Between 1945 and 1950, relations between the United States and the Soviet Union
underwent a 180-degree transformation. Erstwhile allies in the war against Germa-
ny and Japan, they became antagonists in a new global rivalry marked by the omi-
nous expansion of Communist power and inuence. While the Joint Chiefs of Sta
repeatedly urged stronger military power to deal with this situation, their warnings
had had limited eect on the Truman administration’s scal or defense policies.
Exercising tight control over military spending, Truman preferred to address the
Communist challenge with political, economic, and diplomatic initiatives. Bow-
ing to these realities, the JCS fashioned a defense posture and war plans oriented
toward a single contingency—an all-out global conict. Maintenance of balanced
conventional forces with exible capabilities gave way to reliance on strategic bom-
bardment with nuclear weapons as the country’s principal deterrent and rst line
of defense. Not everyone agreed that this was a sound course or that it adequately
addressed the country’s increasingly diverse security needs. But at the time, reliance
on strategic bombing with nuclear weapons was the country’s most practical, eec-
tive, and aordable form of defense.
Pressures for Change
While nonmilitary responses to Soviet expansion had generally met with success,
the growing intensity of the Cold War by 1950 was steadily pushing the Truman
administration toward an expansion of U.S. military power. Despite its best eorts
to avoid it, the “militarization” of the Cold War loomed larger than ever as pressures
converged from three directions at roughly the same time: from Europe, where
the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in April 1949 created a new transatlantic
community of security interests; from China, where the collapse of Chiang Kai-
shek’s Nationalist regime ushered in a Communist People’s Republic headed by
Mao Zedong with apparent designs on extending its power and inuence across
95
96
CounCil of War
Asia; and from the Soviet Union, where the detonation of a nuclear device in late
August 1949 ended the American monopoly on the atomic bomb years ahead of
predictions. Any one of those events could have triggered substantial alterations in
American foreign and defense policy. Taken together, they were the catalysts for a
wholesale transformation that would, with the sudden outbreak of the Korea con-
ict in June 1950, interject military power into the forefront of American responses
to the escalating Cold War.
Prior to the Korean War, the administration’s only clear-cut commitment em-
bracing the possible use of military force to thwart Communist expansion was
the North Atlantic Treaty. During preliminary consideration of the Alliance in the
spring of 1948, the Joint Chiefs had endorsed the broad concept of a mutual se-
curity pact between Europe and the United States, but had warned against “major
military involvement” without adequate preparations.
1
The White House and State
Department noted the chiefs’ concerns, but as Undersecretary of State Robert A.
Lovett explained it, the Alliance’s primary function was consultation in support of
possible collective action. Like an insurance policy, its immediate role was to bolster
Europe’s condence, expedite completion of the Economic Recovery Program,
and deter the Soviets.
2
The principal military component associated with the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) was the Mutual Defense Assistance Program (MDAP), a
companion measure enacted in October 1949 to help rearm the European allies.
3
When the State Department unveiled the program, the Joint Chiefs balked out of
concern that the Services might have to pay for MDAP out of their own budgets.
4
Though assured that assistance to NATO through MDAP would be a separate ap-
propriation, the JCS remained uneasy lest it quickly deplete the dwindling war
reserves left over from World War II and divert funding for routine military appro-
priations. In part to guard against NATO becoming a drain on American resources,
the Joint Chiefs proposed an elaborate structure of councils, committees, boards,
and regional planning groups to give the JCS detailed oversight powers of NATO’s
activities.
5
Secretary of State Dean Acheson acknowledged that as NATO became
more established, pressures were bound to arise for a larger U.S. military role and a
more complex organization. But for the time being he saw no pressing need and ve-
toed the chiefs’ plan in preference for a simpler alliance structure that played down
direct American military involvement and responsibility.
6
Meanwhile, the disintegration of Nationalist rule on the China mainland was re-
shaping the security situation in the Far East. Given the leadership problems and poor
performance of Nationalist Chinese forces during World War II, Chiang Kai-shek’s
collapse came as no surprise to the Joint Chiefs, who never had much condence
MiliTariZinG THE ColD War
97
in the Generalissimo’s ability to lead China out of the war as a great power. But
because of China’s strategic location, large population, and latent military potential,
the JCS were also averse to a Communist takeover of the country and a loss of U.S.
inuence. As a result, throughout the postwar period, they consistently supported
infusions of military aid to prop up the Generalissimo’s regime, even as Chiang’s
rule began to crumble.
Of the President’s various advisors, the most reluctant to come to Chiang’s
rescue was former Army Chief of Sta General George C. Marshall. In November
1945, President Truman had persuaded Marshall to go to China as his special repre-
sentative. Marshall had served in China in the 1920s as a junior ocer, and during
World War II he had suered through Stilwell’s ordeal with Chiang. Like Stilwell, he
had little condence in the Generalissimo’s leadership, reliability as an ally, or capac-
ity to make eective use of U.S. assistance. But as a loyal soldier he felt duty-bound
to accept the mission. Through Marshall’s good oces, Truman hoped to broker a
power-sharing agreement between Chiang and his Communist rival, Mao Zedong,
a nominal ally of the Soviet Union, that would buy time for Chiang to strengthen
his position and, with U.S. assistance and logistical support, move his troops into
positions where they could eectively confront Mao’s forces.
7
Chiang ignored Mar-
shall’s advice to seek a political compromise and sought to use his three-to-one
advantage in troop strength to achieve a military solution. Exuding condence, he
overextended his forces into North China and Manchuria where they suered one
setback after another.
8
By 1949, Chiang’s military fortunes had declined to such an extent that he
was taking steps to relocate his regime from the mainland to the island of Taiwan
(Formosa) for what appeared to be a last stand. Short of massive U.S. intervention,
the Joint Chiefs saw nothing that might turn the tide. Though they hoped to keep
Taiwan (with or without Chiang there) from falling into Communist hands, they
did not consider it suciently important to merit large-scale military action. The
most they would recommend was the deployment of a few ships for deterrence
purposes and the use of diplomatic leverage.
9
Since the Nationalist regime had
strong political support in Washington, however, the JCS cautioned against aban-
doning Chiang altogether “at the eleventh hour” and urged the continuation of
military assistance as long as Nationalist armies oered organized resistance.
10
Above
all, they wanted to keep an American military presence on the China mainland and
fought a losing battle with the State Department and the White House to keep the
U.S. naval base at Qingdao (Tsingtao) open. Secretary of State Acheson thought the
United States should disengage from Chiang as soon as possible and direct its eorts
toward a rapprochement with Mao and the Communists. Counseled by the State
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CounCil of War
Department’s “China Hands,” Acheson believed it feasible “to detach [China] from
subservience to Moscow and over a period of time encourage those vigorous inu-
ences which might modify it.”
11
But he faced an uphill battle convincing Congress
and overcoming the “China Lobby,” which wanted stronger measures to resist the
spread of communism in the Far East and additional support to save what remained
of Chiang’s regime.
The h-BomB DeCision anD nsC 68
The third and most fateful development that went into reshaping U.S. security per-
ceptions was the discovery, reported to President Truman on September 9, 1949, that
the Soviet Union had detonated a nuclear device similar in design to the implosion
bomb the United States dropped on Nagasaki 4 years earlier. Without warning, the
American nuclear monopoly had ended. The Intelligence Community later deter-
mined that the test—“Joe 1”—had taken place on August 29, 1949.
12
While analysts
at the Central Intelligence Agency had known for some time that the Soviet Union
had an atomic energy program, they miscalculated the Soviet Union’s capacity to
produce ssionable materials and failed to appreciate either the high priority Stalin
attached to acquiring nuclear weapons or the crucial role Soviet espionage played
in expediting the project.
13
As a result, they consistently underestimated both the
extent of the Soviet eort and when it would come to fruition. Prior to Joe 1, the
most recent interagency assessment of the Soviet program, dated July 1, 1949, placed
the “probable” date for a Soviet atomic capability in the mid-1953 range, with the
“possibility” of a nuclear test as early as mid-1950. Weighing the evidence, the con-
sensus of the Intelligence Community was that the Soviet Union’s “rst atomic
bomb cannot be completed before mid-1951.”
14
While the White House downplayed the achievement, the danger posed by
growing Soviet military power was impossible to ignore. Up to that time, the Tru-
man administration had relied implicitly, if not explicitly, on its nuclear monopoly
to underwrite its policies. “As long as we can outproduce the world, can control the
sea and can strike inland with the atomic bomb,” Secretary of Defense Forrestal had
once observed, “we can assume certain risks otherwise unacceptable.”
15
With that
formula now rendered suspect, it was no longer clear whether the United States
could continue to mount eective deterrence and containment of the Soviet Union
with the military capabilities it had on hand.
The most urgent need was to reassert the American lead in atomic energy. At
issue was whether the United States should embark on a “quantum jump” into the
unexplored realm of nuclear fusion and the development of “super” bombs based
99
MiliTariZinG THE ColD War
on hydrogen or thermonuclear design. Such weapons in theory could produce
yields a thousand times greater than ssion bombs. In November 1949, seeking
advice on how to proceed, President Truman turned to the “Z Committee” of
the National Security Council (NSC), composed of Secretary of State Acheson,
Secretary of Defense Johnson, and the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commis-
sion, David E. Lilienthal.
16
As the committee’s military advisors, the Joint Chiefs
acknowledged that high-yield super bombs would be hard to deliver and therefore
would have limited military applications. All the same, the chiefs believed that for
political and psychological reasons, it was absolutely imperative to proceed with a
determination test. “Possession of a thermonuclear weapon by the USSR,” the JCS
insisted, “without such possession by the United States would be intolerable.”
17
Lil-
ienthal, however, harbored misgivings. Believing the H-bomb morally repugnant,
he found the military’s growing dependence on nuclear weapons deeply troubling
and became convinced that the United States needed increased conventional ca-
pabilities and a renewed commitment to obtaining international control of atomic
energy more than it needed thermonuclear weapons.
18
On January 31, 1950, President Truman approved a compromise crafted by
Acheson. As the rst step, the President directed the AEC to explore the feasibil-
ity of the H-bomb, thus setting in motion a research and development program
that would culminate on November 1, 1952, with the world’s rst thermonuclear
explosion—a 10 megaton device that completely vaporized the Pacic atoll where
the test was held. Meanwhile, he instructed the State and Defense Departments
to review the country’s basic national security policy.
19
Acheson shared Lilienthal’s
concern over the military’s growing dependence on nuclear weapons, not least of
all because he felt it limited diplomatic exibility. But he also thought the United
States had to have the H-bomb because “we do not have any other military pro-
gram which seems to oer over the short run promise of military eectiveness.”
20
In
recommending a review of basic policy, Acheson later explained, he hoped to nd
some middle ground that would restore greater balance to the country’s military
posture and expand its ability to meet unforeseen contingencies.
21
The Joint Chiefs embarked on the review with no such preconceptions or
expectations. The previous November, Secretary of Defense Johnson had removed
Admiral Louis Denfeld as Chief of Naval Operations on grounds of insubordina-
tion for his role in the “Revolt of the Admirals,” which had challenged Johnson’s
authority through highly publicized attacks on his economy measures and the Air
Force’s strategic bombing capabilities.
22
Since then, Johnson had further tightened
his control of the Defense Department and military spending. Conrming rumors
and press reports, Johnson notied the Joint Chiefs in late February 1950 that the
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military budget for FY52 would remain at approximately the same level as that
projected for FY51. Since the Secretary’s estimates made no allowance for ination,
except for the Air Force, Johnson’s hold-the-line spending policy amounted to a net
decrease in programs for the Army and Navy. Using the Secretary’s budget guidance
as their frame of reference, the Joint Chiefs initially had to assume that any changes
the State-Defense review might recommend would be modest at best.
23
State’s participants in the review had other ideas. Though ostensibly a collabor-
ative eort, the dominant inuence throughout was the new director of the Policy
Planning Sta, Paul H. Nitze. A Wall Street bond trader before World War II, Nitze
was well versed in statistics, which, as Vice Chairman of the U.S. Strategic Bombing
Survey, he used to great eect in analyzing the results of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
1945. Joining the State Department after the war, he had emerged as one of State’s
senior economic analysts and was instrumental in developing the Marshall Plan. A
pragmatist and problem-solver by nature, Nitze gave a higher priority to the role of
military power in foreign policy than his academically-minded predecessor, George
F. Kennan, who had fallen out of favor with Acheson.
24
JCS contributions to the review group’s work came via the Joint Strategic
Survey Committee (JSSC), represented by its Air Force member, Major General
Truman H. Landon. Nitze recalled that initially Landon presented modest propos-
als to correct minor deciencies in the existing force posture. He soon realized,
however, “that we were serious about doing a basic strategic review and not just
writing some papers which would help people promote special projects of one kind
or another.” From the quick change in Landon’s outlook, Nitze detected that “there
was, in fact, a revolt from within” brewing at the Pentagon against Johnson’s scal
policies and strategic priorities.
25
The review process stretched from mid-February to early April 1950, when the
State-Defense review group presented its ndings (NSC 68) to the National Se-
curity Council. About a third of the report was a close analysis of the Soviet threat,
drawn from intelligence estimates that indicated an inordinately large investment by
the Soviet Union (up to 40 percent of its gross national product) in military pow-
er and war-supporting industries. By mid-1954—the “year of maximum danger”
in the report’s estimation—the Soviets would have a nuclear stockpile that could
threaten serious damage to the United States. Extrapolating motives from capabili-
ties, NSC 68 concluded that “the Soviet Union has one purpose and that is world
domination.” To frustrate the “Kremlin design,” the paper urged the adoption of “a
comprehensive and decisive program” resulting in “a rapid and sustained buildup
of the political, economic, and military strength of the free world.” While NSC 68
strongly endorsed the maintenance of eective nuclear capabilities for deterrence
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MiliTariZinG THE ColD War
purposes, it also called for signicant expansion of conventional air, ground, and sea
forces “to the point where we are militarily not so heavily dependent on atomic
weapons.”
26
Missing from NSC 68 were any cost estimates for the buildup or a projected al-
location of resources among the armed Services. Both omissions were intentional—
the rst, in order not to frighten o President Truman from accepting the report,
the second, to avoid provoking competition and friction within the Pentagon. Ac-
cording to one of his biographers, Acheson wanted to avoid overwhelming Truman
with “programmatic details” by oering him instead “a general analysis oriented
toward action.”
27
Privately, Nitze and others who worked on NSC 68 estimated that
it would require expenditures of $35 billion to $50 billion annually over the next 4
years. While Nitze made these calculations known to Acheson, there is no evidence
that the Secretary of State conveyed them to Truman. The report conceded that the
program would be “costly” and probably would require higher taxes to avoid decit
budgets. But it did not dwell on these points.
28
Truman, for his part, continued to treat costs as his uppermost concern. Im-
mediately after receiving NSC 68, he directed the creation of an ad hoc committee
of economic experts to go over its ndings and recommendations.
29
The consen-
sus of this group was that, while the report’s proposed course of action would be
expensive, it would not place undue burdens on the economy as long as adequate
safeguards were in place. The lone dissenting view was from the Bureau of the Bud-
get, which saw adverse consequences for the economy should military spending
rise sharply.
30
Truman agreed and said as much during a meeting with his budget
director, Frederick J. Lawton, on May 23, 1950. “The President indicated,” Lawton
noted in his minutes of the meeting, “that we were to continue to raise any ques-
tions that we had on this program and that it denitely was not as large in scope as
some of the people seemed to think.” Translating the President’s guidance into hard
numbers, the BOB projected NSC 68 increases of $1 billion to $3 billion annually
over the next 2 to 3 years.
31
At the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs were under similar pressure from Louis John-
son to curb expectations that NSC 68 would result in dramatic increases in military
spending. Though Johnson paid lip service to the report, he resented its implied con-
clusion that the country’s defense posture had become enfeebled under his trusteeship
and took oense at what he saw as Acheson’s unwarranted interference in Defense
Department business. Going through all the proper motions, he directed the JCS and
the Services to assemble estimates of the “general tasks and responsibilities” mandated
under NSC 68, but to bear in mind that until the President indicated otherwise,
guidelines and ceilings previously established for the FY52 budget remained rmly in
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place.
32
Condent that he had the matter in hand, Johnson left Washington on June
12, 1950, accompanied by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (CJCS) General Omar N.
Bradley, USA, for a tour of the Far East to discuss security arrangements for a Japanese
peace treaty with General Douglas MacArthur, the theater commander.
On the eve of the Korean War, the fate of NSC 68 remained uncertain. Presi-
dent Truman had yet to approve the report and there were unmistakable signs that
if and when he did, it would produce a considerably smaller buildup than its au-
thors intended. The American defense establishment was already far larger and more
costly than any country had ever known in peacetime, and to propose signicant
increases could have provoked a divisive national debate. Although NSC 68 oered
ample evidence that the Soviet Union posed a growing threat to Western security,
nothing in the report conrmed that spending three, four, or even ten times more
on defense would aord better insurance against a Soviet attack than the existing in-
vestment of resources. Only after the outbreak of the Korean War would it become
clear that the existing defense posture had failed to deter Communist aggression.
onseT of The Korean War
Like the Soviet nuclear test the previous August, the North Korean invasion of
South Korea on June 25, 1950 (Korea time), caught ocial Washington o guard.
Even though NSC 68 had warned policymakers and military planners to be on the
alert, no one expected a blatant act of aggression so soon. With most of its limited
assets concentrated on Europe, the Intelligence Community had paid relatively little
attention to the Far East prior to the North Korean attack. As one Army intel-
ligence ocer described the situation, “North Korea got lost in the shue and
nobody told us they were interested in what was going on north of the 38th paral-
lel.” If war broke out or if a Communist takeover occurred, intelligence analysts
expected Indochina rather than Korea to be the target.
33
Gathering information on Korea posed special diculties. Wary of outsiders,
MacArthur had banned the OSS from his theater in World War II and was suspi-
cious of allowing its successor, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), into his midst
after the war. Operating under severe restrictions, the Agency came up with gen-
eralized estimates that credited North Korea with limited capabilities for military
aggression. As late as June 19, 1950, the CIA predicted that the Communists would
conne their actions against the south to propaganda, inltration, sabotage, and sub-
version.
34
An Army (G-2) intelligence report generated around this same time was
more precise in identifying signs of enemy troop movements and the like, but by the
time this information reached Washington, the war was in full swing.
35
103
MiliTariZinG THE ColD War
Carefully planned and executed, the North Korean invasion had Stalin’s bless-
ing and support and involved approximately 90,000 North Korean troops, armed
and trained by the Soviet Union. Early reports were vague, but as the ghting
intensied it was apparent that this was no mere border skirmish, as initial reports
suggested, but an all-out assault with the ultimate aim of destroying the American-
supported Republic of Korea (ROK) in the south and absorbing the Korean Pen-
insula into the Communist orbit.
36
Despite the seriousness of the situation, the Joint Chiefs initially saw no grounds
for American military intervention, since at the time the United States had no for-
mal defense commitments with South Korea. Divided in 1945 as an expediency at
the 38th parallel to facilitate the disarming of Japanese troops by U.S. and Soviet
forces, Korea had evolved into two distinct political entities—a Communist regime
in the north headed by the Moscow-trained and Soviet-supported Kim Il-song, and
a more democratic, U.S.-backed government in the south led by Syngman Rhee.
37
While aware of South Korea’s vulnerability, the Joint Chiefs needed the occupation
forces stationed there for duty elsewhere and wanted to limit further U.S. involve-
ment. In September 1947, they declared the country to be of “little strategic interest”
to the United States, the rst step toward withdrawing U.S. troops. Completed in
the spring of 1949, the withdrawal left behind large stockpiles of war materiel and
a 500-member U.S. Korean Military Advisory Group (KMAG) to train and equip
ROK forces against any threat from the north.
38
A few days prior to the invasion,
during his trip to Tokyo in June 1950 with Secretary of Defense Johnson, General
Bradley discussed the situation with Brigadier General William L. Roberts, USA,
who had recently stepped down as KMAG’s chief. “The ROK Army,” Roberts as-
sured the Chairman, “could meet any test the North Koreans imposed on it.”
39
The Communist success in routing the ROK forces shattered these comfort-
able assumptions and forced a hasty rethinking of U.S. policy. Like his predecessor
during the early stages of World War II, President Truman met regularly with his top
advisors and took a hands-on approach to the crisis; but unlike Roosevelt, he turned
for advice more to civilians (in this case Secretary of State Dean Acheson) than to
the Joint Chiefs of Sta. Owing to earlier decisions leading to the withdrawal of
U.S. forces and the downgrading of South Korea’s strategic importance, the JCS
had not given much thought to the possibility of military action on the Korean
Peninsula. When the crisis erupted, they lacked contingency plans for dealing with
the emergency and had to improvise with impromptu assessments, personal opin-
ions, and hastily drawn orders for mobilizing and moving forces.
40
Exactly why the
Joint Chiefs were so unprepared and slow to respond remains unclear, but it doubt-
less reected to some extent their continuing indierence toward Korea’s strategic
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CounCil of War
importance and the personnel ceiling under which the Joint Sta operated at the
time. Even though the 1949 amendments had doubled the size of the Joint Sta, it
remained a relatively small organization with limited capabilities.
Acheson, in contrast, appeared at these meetings with the President fully
briefed and prepared, invariably bearing detailed memorandums and lists of recom-
mendations that reected dedicated sta work. Within hours of the news of the
attack, he placed before the President proposals to expedite additional assistance
to the South Koreans, to establish a “protective zone” around South Korea with
U.S. air and naval forces, and to mobilize international opinion against the attack
through the United Nations. Over the next several days, Acheson oered more
recommendations, all moving inexorably toward large-scale U.S. military interven-
tion under UN auspices. Six months earlier, Acheson, like the JCS, had more or less
written o Korea and the rest of the East Asian mainland. But under the pressure
of new events and still smarting from Republican attacks that his policies had “lost”
China to the Communists, he had had a change of heart and saw the North Korean
attack as a test of American will. “To back away from this challenge, in view of our
capacity for meeting it,” he wrote in his memoirs, “would be highly destructive of
the power and prestige of the United States.”
41
The Joint Chiefs agreed that the North Korean attack challenged American
resolve. But they accepted the need for military intervention with the utmost re-
luctance and initially hoped that air and naval power would suce. The most read-
ily available ground forces in the region were those of the Eighth Army, whose
four divisions were all below authorized strength and short of critical weapons and
equipment.
42
More aware than anyone of the constraints imposed by years of frugal
defense budgets, the JCS made no attempt to disguise their belief that all-out inter-
vention would be a highly risky business, requiring the mobilization of Reserve and
National Guard units and emergency appropriations at a minimum. Should the war
spread, warned the Air Force Chief of Sta, General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, the use of
nuclear weapons would be the next step, a view shared by other senior command-
ers.
43
Above all, the JCS hoped to avoid committing U.S. ground troops but stopped
short of recommending against such a move. Later, in explaining to Congress how
the decision to send troops into Korea had come about, Louis Johnson observed
that he and the Joint Chiefs had “neither recommended it nor opposed it.”
44
On Truman’s shoulders rested all nal decisions. While accepting Acheson’s
advice that the United States needed to make a forceful stand in Korea, he moved
cautiously and intervened in incremental steps. Starting with the authorization of
air and sea operations below the 38th parallel on June 26 (Washington time), he
progressed to the commitment of U.S. ground forces 4 days later. Showing renewed
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MiliTariZinG THE ColD War
interest in the fate of Taiwan, he ordered elements of the Seventh Fleet to take up
station in the Formosa Strait to deter a resumption of the conict between Chiang
and the Chinese Communists.
45
While accepting the need for action, Truman resisted the notion that the cur-
rent emergency might compel a military buildup on the scale proposed in NSC
68. Sidestepping the problem, he inadvertently trivialized the dangers of interven-
tion by publicly describing the North Korean attack as the work of “a bunch of
bandits” that a “police action” could handle.
46
His description made it appear the
United States could turn back the North Koreans and comfortably meet defense
obligations elsewhere. But with the situation continuing to deteriorate, the Presi-
dent notied Congress on July 19, 1950, that at the urging of his military advisors,
he was calling up units of the National Guard and would need additional military
appropriations and authority to remove the ceiling on the size of the Armed Forces.
Even so, he continued to defer action on adopting NSC 68 as administration policy
and asked the National Security Council to reassess the report’s requirements, with
a view to providing recommendations by the beginning of September. Despite the
ongoing conict, he told the Bureau of the Budget that he did not want to place
“any more money than necessary at this time in the hands of the Military.”
47
The inCh’on oPeraTion
Truman believed that if the war in Korea could be contained and won quickly, he
might get by with relatively modest increases in defense spending and other secu-
rity programs. What he did not take into account was General Douglas MacArthur’s
penchant for independent and unpredictable behavior. American military policy
had traditionally given commanders in the eld wide latitude to deal with situ-
ations as they deemed appropriate. In MacArthur’s case, however, there were in-
herent liabilities in extending this practice too far. During World War II, when
the JCS had functioned as a high command, they had been able to exercise a
degree of control over MacArthur through the allocation of resources and through
the powers they derived from their unique relationship with the President.
But from 1947 on, the JCS no longer had such sweeping authority. Meantime,
MacArthur operated from his headquarters in Tokyo with a lengthening list of
titles, including all-encompassing powers as head of the American occupation and
Commander in Chief, Far East (CINCFE), which gave him authority over U.S.
land, sea, and air forces throughout the theater. As of July 8, 1950, he also served as
the United Nations commander (CINCUNC) in accordance with a UN Security
Council resolution.
48
106
CounCil of War
In Korea, MacArthur found himself waging a war heavy in political over-
tones which, despite his vast authority, imposed limits on his military exibility.
He responded by treating the policy pronouncements and directives he received
from both Washington and the UN as advisory and thus subject to interpretation.
Seeking to stem the enemy advance, he ordered the destruction of North Korean
airelds a day before President Truman authorized it. By early August 1950, he had
antagonized the White House and the State Department with a trip to Taiwan
and public statements afterwards (including a proposed message to the Veterans of
Foreign Wars, later withdrawn at Truman’s insistence) suggesting the restoration of
military collaboration and a de facto alliance between Chiang Kai-shek’s regime
and the United States. His repeated requests for more U.S. combat troops to shore
up the South Koreans reected not simply the gravity of the situation, but also his
longstanding contention that policymakers in Washington misunderstood the Far
East and underestimated its strategic signicance. By and large, the Joint Chiefs were
in accord with MacArthur’s assessments. But they could sense a showdown coming
between MacArthur and the Commander in Chief and had no desire to be caught
in the middle.
49
Despite their dierences, Truman and MacArthur both saw the war in Korea
as a diversion from larger issues and wanted it brought to a swift conclusion. With
this end in mind, MacArthur proposed a counterattack involving a risky large-scale
amphibious landing in the enemy’s rear. After the contretemps over Taiwan, Truman
was so irritated with MacArthur that he gave “serious thought” to replacing him
with Bradley. But he dropped the idea because he thought the Chairman would
consider it a demotion.
50
Even though he disliked MacArthur personally, Truman
needed the general’s expertise to execute the counterattack. During World War II,
MacArthur had developed and perfected amphibious operations to a ne art, and he
proposed to apply his skills again to rout the North Korean People’s Army.
The most questionable part of the operation was MacArthur’s choice of
Inch’on, a port west of Seoul, as the landing site. While a successful invasion there
would put UN forces astride enemy supply lines and block a North Korean retreat,
extensive mud ats and tidal variations made landing conditions treacherous. “I real-
ize,” MacArthur observed at one point while planning the operation, “that Inchon
is a 5,000 to 1 gamble, but I am used to taking such odds. We shall land at Inchon
and I shall crush them.”
51
In fact, the odds were better than MacArthur let on.
Thanks to a hastily arranged signals intelligence (SIGINT) intercept program, U.S.
code breakers in Washington had succeeded in penetrating North Korean commu-
nications in late July 1950. From that point on, MacArthur and the JCS had a fairly
full picture of the North Korean order of battle and knew that after weeks of heavy
107
MiliTariZinG THE ColD War
ghting, the North Koreans were running low on replacements and supplies. Most
important of all, the intercepted messages disclosed that there were no large enemy
units in the Inch’on area to oppose a landing.
52
Coordination between MacArthur and the JCS for the Inch’on operation was
haphazard. In early July 1950, the Joint Chiefs began hearing rumors that MacAr-
thur was planning a counterattack. Despite repeated requests for details, it was not
until July 23 that he apprised the JCS of his intentions.
53
MacArthur planned the
attack, code-named Chromite, for mid-September and needed additional reinforce-
ments which, if granted, would leave only the 82d Airborne Division in the strategic
reserve. There followed a succession of high-level conferences at the Pentagon and
the White House culminating in the decision to send a JCS delegation headed by
General J. Lawton Collins, Army Chief of Sta, and Admiral Forrest P. Sherman,
Chief of Naval Operations, to Tokyo to discuss the matter with MacArthur and his
sta. Reassured that the Inch’on landing was feasible, albeit risky, they returned to
Washington and persuaded their colleagues to agree to allocate the additional units
MacArthur wanted. On September 7, the JCS notied MacArthur that he had the
authority to proceed.
54
From this point on, citing operational security needs, MacArthur rarely com-
municated with the JCS until after the Inch’on operation on September 15, 1950.
With access to the same SIGINT that MacArthur and the JCS had, President Tru-
man later insisted that he was not in the least bothered by MacArthur’s behavior and
had the “greatest condence” the landing would succeed.
55
As a precaution, how-
ever, should the operation fail and a change of commanders become necessary, he
gave Bradley a fth star, rearming his authority. At the same time, in a move that
many observers considered long overdue, he replaced Louis Johnson as Secretary of
Defense and named General George C. Marshall as his successor. An admirer and
personal friend of MacArthur’s, Johnson was too closely identied with the general
for President Truman’s comfort, while his economy measures and disagreements
with Acheson had become a distinct liability. With the Inch’on operation looming,
the President used the occasion to put his house in order for the larger tasks that
lay ahead.
56
As MacArthur predicted, Chromite was a stunning success that quickly turned
the tide of battle against the North Korean invaders. By the time the operation took
place, MacArthur had at his disposal a UN force of nearly 200,000 ground combat
troops, including 113,500 Americans, 81,500 South Koreans, and 3,000 British and
Filipinos. Within a week, his forces had driven to the outskirts of Seoul, the South
Korean capital. On September 27, they linked up with Lieutenant General Walton
H. Walker’s Eighth Army, which had pushed north from where it had taken up
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CounCil of War
defensive positions near Pusan on the southeastern coast. Seoul fell to the United
Nations Command (UNC) on September 28, and the next day MacArthur restored
the government of President Syngman Rhee to its capital. By the end of the month,
the North Korean army had ceased to exist as an organized ghting force. Still, as
much as a third of the 90,000 North Koreans who had participated in the attack and
most of the North Korean high command made their way north across the border
and began to regroup. At great cost and eort, the UN coalition had thrown the
aggressors back, but it was in no position yet to declare total victory.
57
PoliCy in flux
The greatest military triumphs of MacArthur’s long career, the Inch’on landing
and the ensuing rout of the North Koreans were also a huge relief to Truman and
the Joint Chiefs, who had thrown practically everything into the attack the United
States could muster on such short notice. The victory, however, left the cupboard
bare. Realizing that forces would need to be replenished and rebuilt, both to nish
the job in Korea and for general rearmament, President Truman on September 29
took the step he had long postponed—approving NSC 68 and referring it to the
Executive departments and agencies “as a statement of policy to be followed over
the next four or ve years.”
58
Whether President Truman would actually implement NSC 68 to the full ex-
tent its authors envisioned remained to be seen. Prior to Inch’on, the Joint Chiefs
had assumed that there would probably be an extended conict in Asia and an open-
ended emergency requiring large-scale augmentation elsewhere of the Armed forc-
es. To meet estimated requirements, they projected an active duty defense establish-
ment by the end of FY54 of 3.2 million uniformed personnel (double the current
strength) organized into an Army of 18 divisions, a Navy of nearly 400 combatant
vessels (including 12 attack carriers), and an Air Force of 95 wings, with a third of
them dedicated to strategic bombardment.
59
But given the Inch’on success, Truman
began to doubt whether a defense establishment of such size was needed. When he
approved NSC 68, he told the National Security Council, with General Bradley
present representing the JCS, that “costs were not nal” and that “there were certain
things that could be done right now, while others should be studied further.”
60
Truman’s ambivalence reected the continuing uncertainty surrounding the
situation in Korea and its impact on American defense obligations elsewhere, Eu-
rope especially. Even though MacArthur had the North Koreans on the run, his
failure to deliver the coup de grace meant that the conict could go on indenitely.
The Joint Chiefs had no desire to keep large numbers of U.S. forces tied down in
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MiliTariZinG THE ColD War
Korea, but they did not want U.S. troops to leave until the campaign had run its
course. At issue was whether to seek modest objectives, such as restoration of the
status quo ante, or the complete destruction of the North Korean armed forces
and the reunication of Korea under UN authority. Anticipating that UN forces
would eventually regain the initiative, State and the JCS had debated this matter at
length during July and August 1950, but had been unable to come up with a deni-
tive answer. The best they could recommend was a wait-and-see policy. All agreed,
however, that the longer the ghting lasted, the greater the chances of Soviet or
Chinese intervention, that the risk would increase signicantly if or when UN
forces approached the Chinese and Soviet borders, and that MacArthur should be
cautioned against launching major military operations north of the 38th parallel
without consulting the President.
61
Inch’on and the ensuing rout of the North Korean army created opportuni-
ties that seemed too good to pass up. Toward the end of September 1950, Secretary
Marshall advised MacArthur to feel free to continue operations north of the 38th
parallel, with the implied objective of liquidating the remnants of the North Korean
army. A week later, on October 7, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution
rearming its desire to unify Korea. Nonetheless, Truman remained uneasy over
the possibility of Soviet or Chinese intervention. Unable to persuade MacArthur to
return to Washington for consultations, Truman agreed to y to Wake Island in the
Pacic—a 15,000 mile trip—for a hastily arranged review of plans and strategy on
October 15. General Bradley was the only JCS member to accompany the President.
Though it lasted barely 2 hours, the Wake Island conference was perhaps the
most fateful meeting of the war. Despite SIGINT intercepts indicating a massing
of Chinese troops in Manchuria just north of the Yalu River, MacArthur dismissed
the possibility that the Chinese might intervene. Should they do so, he was con-
dent that he could defeat them with airpower. “If the Chinese tried to get down to
Pyongyang,” he said, “there would be the greatest slaughter.” Bradley was skeptical,
but since the SIGINT intercepts were inconclusive on Chinese intentions, he had
no basis for challenging MacArthur’s analysis. Convinced that the North Koreans
were beaten, MacArthur predicted the end of organized resistance by Thanksgiving,
the withdrawal of the Eighth Army to Japan by Christmas, and the redeployment of
one of its divisions to Europe in January 1951, leaving two U.S. divisions in Korea
for security.
62
Proclaiming the Wake Island meeting “successful,” Truman returned to Wash-
ington “highly pleased” with the outcome.
63
Despite its brevity and superciality,
the meeting produced two important results. First, it gave MacArthur a green light
to proceed with military operations above the 38th parallel and, implicitly, to use his
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forces to reunify Korea. And second, it reassured Truman that he had made the right
decision to hold back on military spending in anticipation that the war would soon
be over. NSC 68 notwithstanding, Truman believed that the buildup had peaked
and that the time had come to level o. By early November 1950, the Oce of the
Secretary of Defense was pressing the Joint Chiefs to reconsider their force-level
projections for FY52 and to reduce manpower requirements to t within “a realistic
military budget.”
64
Meanwhile, MacArthur’s spectacular earlier successes were about to prove
short-lived. The rst hint that he had underestimated the enemy threat came in
late October 1950 as UN armies approached the Manchurian border. In a sur-
prising new development, ROK units encountered Chinese forces that expertly
concealed their real strength. Based on prisoner interrogations, the Central In-
telligence Agency distributed ndings in early November 1950 conrming that
the Chinese had begun inltrating around mid-October and now had one and a
half or two divisions operating in Korea.
65
(The correct gure was 18 divisions.)
MacArthur initially assumed that these troops were part of a limited covert in-
tervention, but within a few days came fresh evidence, as MacArthur character-
ized it, that the Chinese were “pouring across” the border from Manchuria into
North Korea.
66
MacArthur wanted to isolate the invading Chinese by using U.S. B–29s to
bomb the bridges spanning the Yalu River, Korea’s frontier with China. In the view
of some critics, MacArthur’s intention was to expand the war and turn it into a cru-
sade against communism in the Far East. The Joint Chiefs never subscribed to this
thesis, but they did worry that an aggressive air campaign extending into Manchuria
might give the Soviets an excuse to intervene alongside the Chinese. Consequently,
even though the JCS gave MacArthur a free hand to bomb below the Yalu River,
they cautioned him to exercise “extreme care” to avoid hitting targets in Manchuria
or violating Chinese air space.
67
While MacArthur and the JCS debated how to handle the Chinese, the UNC
advance continued, with some Allied units reaching the Yalu by November 21. Di-
saster struck 4 days later as the People’s Liberation Army unleashed a full-scale
oensive, inicting heavy casualties. As General Bradley described the situation to
the President, the Chinese had “come in with both feet.”
68
Seeing no other choice,
MacArthur ordered an immediate withdrawal back down the peninsula. On No-
vember 28, he notied the JCS that he now confronted as many as 200,000 Chinese
and 50,000 North Koreans and “an entirely new war.”
69
An easy march north to
destroy the remnants of the North Korean army and to reunify Korea now became
a headlong retreat south.
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MiliTariZinG THE ColD War
imPaCT of The Chinese inTervenTion
The Chinese intervention changed everything. Almost overnight, JCS planners
found themselves scrapping plans to curtail the buildup and developing new ones
to accelerate the rearmament program and to expand its base. Instead of using
mid-1954 (NSC 68’s “year of maximum danger”) as their culmination point, the
Joint Chiefs, working with OSD and the National Security Council, moved the
date up to mid-1952 and reprogrammed manpower and force targets accordingly.
Truman, fearing that the costs would bankrupt the country and send the economy
into recession, hesitated to commit to a stepped-up eort. But by the end of No-
vember 1950, with the Communist onslaught in high gear, he acknowledged that
the situation required sweeping action. What was needed, he said, was a more rapid
expansion of military power, to “prevent all-out world war and [to] be prepared for
it if we can’t prevent it.”
70
The ensuing buildup became the largest “peacetime” rearmament in American
history up to that time, later surpassed only by the Reagan buildup of the 1980s.
From a FY50 base of around $12 billion, defense outlays rose to $20 billion the fol-
lowing year, to $39 billion in FY52, and to $43 billion in FY53, the last budget en-
acted under the Truman administration. During this same period, Active-duty mili-
tary personnel increased from 1.4 million to 3.5 million, the Army expanded from
10 to 20 divisions, the Navy grew from 238 major combatant vessels to 401, and the
Air Force more than doubled in size from 48 to 98 wings. While the emphasis on
nuclear retaliation remained, signicant improvements in conventional capabilities
signaled the return to a more robust, balanced force posture. In addition, the mili-
tary assistance program, atomic energy, foreign intelligence, the Voice of America,
and Radio Free Europe all received substantial funding increases. Overall, the allo-
cations for defense and related national security programs climbed from 5.1 percent
of the country’s gross national product (GNP) in FY50 to 14.5 percent in FY53.
71
With greater resources becoming available, the JCS directed the Joint Sta to
step up the preparation of strategic plans that looked beyond the immediate budget
cycle in the annual Joint Outline Emergency War Plan (JOEWP). These longer range
plans attempted to anticipate the scale of eort for a global war with the Soviet
Union and its allies years in advance. The most fully developed long-range plan,
known as DROPSHOT, was under consideration when the Korean War began
and projected a large-scale conventional mobilization for a war fought along World
War II lines in 1957. Never approved, DROPSHOT was withdrawn in February
1951 and superseded by REAPER, a mid-range plan that anticipated a war in 1954.
Among its innovations, REAPER attempted to incorporate an active defense of
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Europe and to take into account the impact of a nuclear exchange between the
United States and the Soviet Union. Inter-Service dierences over the allocation of
assets, however, left REAPER’s approval in limbo. Increased defense spending could
ease—but not eliminate—the inter-Service competition for funds and resources.
72
Given the diculties of reaching inter-Service agreement and the complexi-
ties of trying to develop individual plans to cover all contingencies, the Joint Chiefs
decided in July 1952 to phase in new procedures to meet their strategic planning
obligations. Under the new system, the JCS embraced a “family” of plans, each
updated annually: the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP), which replaced the
JOEWP, indicating the disposition, employment, and support of existing forces
available to the unied and specied commanders to carry out their missions; the
Joint Strategic Objectives Plan (JSOP), estimating Service requirements for the next
3 years; and the Joint Long-Range Strategic Estimate (JLRSE), a 5-year projection
of force requirements emphasizing research and development needs.
73
Though sub-
jected to frequent renements and adjustments, these formats remained the joint
strategic planning system until the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act
of 1986 compelled a reassessment of planning procedures resulting in the adoption
in 1989 of new arrangements vesting sole responsibility for discharging JCS strate-
gic planning functions in the CJCS.
74
A further consequence of the Korean War buildup was to restore the Joint
Chiefs of Sta to a close approximation of the prestige and inuence they had
enjoyed during and immediately following World War II. With a war in progress,
the President needed reliable military advice, and in the aftermath of the Chinese
intervention, as MacArthur’s views and recommendations became increasingly sus-
pect, Truman turned more and more to the JCS. In fact, the President had been
moving in this direction ever since approving a series of reforms in the summer
of 1950 to enhance the role of the National Security Council and to improve its
coordination with the JCS. Prior to these reforms, the Joint Chiefs had operated on
the Council’s periphery, with their role conned mainly to commenting on NSC
papers referred to them by the Secretary of Defense. Nor had Truman, who had
never wanted the NSC in the rst place, made more than limited use of it.
75
But
with the advent of NSC 68 and the expectation that it would generate additional
expenditures, the President decided to upgrade the NSC’s capabilities to assess and
coordinate programs.
76
In June–July 1950, he approved a reorganization of the NSC
sta that included naming former ambassador to Moscow W. Averell Harriman as
his special assistant for national security aairs and creating two new interdepart-
mental advisory bodies—the NSC Senior Sta and a mid-level support group, the
Sta Assistants—both with JCS representation. As a result, the Joint Chiefs gained
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MiliTariZinG THE ColD War
direct access to the NSC’s inner workings and a regular voice in the development
of NSC products.
77
Among the reforms that President Truman ordered were curbs on the number
of participants at NSC meetings. Convinced that the presence of too many subor-
dinates inhibited discussion, Truman conned attendance to the Council’s statutory
members and a handful of senior advisors. Rather than having all the chiefs (in-
cluding the Commandant of the Marine Corps who acquired limited participation
in JCS deliberations in 1952) present, Truman asked that only the CJCS, General
Bradley, attend on a regular basis.
78
This practice did not bar the Service chiefs from
attending as needed, but it did underscore the Chairman’s emerging role as their
spokesman and his importance as a key high-level advisor in his own right. Brad-
ley was initially uncomfortable addressing problems from anything other than “a
military point of view.” But according to Acheson, he gradually came to realize that
political, diplomatic, and military issues at the NSC level were often indistinguish-
able and needed to be dealt with accordingly.
79
maCarThur’s Dismissal
Korea was the last war in which the Joint Chiefs were in the chain of command.
Under a practice initiated in World War II and rearmed by the 1948 Key West
agreement, the Service chiefs functioned as executive agents for the JCS. During
the Korean War, the Army Chief of Sta, General J. Lawton Collins, served as their
executive agent to the Far East Command. It was through him that MacArthur
received his orders. But after the Chinese intervention, communications between
MacArthur and the JCS became somewhat erratic, and the general’s reports were
less reliable, requiring Collins to play a more direct and personal role. Collins, soft-
spoken with a boyish appearance, was as serious as they came in discharging his
duties. A veteran combat commander who had fought in Europe and the Pacic in
World War II, Collins was not easily misled or swayed. He visited the theater fre-
quently, toured the battle front, and brought back sound and impartial analyses that
the other chiefs and senior policymakers usually found eminently more useful and
reliable than MacArthur’s often sketchy and slanted reports.
Based on Collins’s reports and other information reaching them, the JCS be-
came increasingly skeptical of MarAthur’s capacity to discharge his responsibilities.
Overly condent after the stunning success of the Inch’on landing, MacArthur was
psychologically and militarily unprepared for the setbacks of November–December
1950 brought on by the Chinese intervention. Seeking a freer hand to retaliate, he
proposed to bomb targets in Manchuria and to impose a naval blockade against
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Communist China. The alternative, he argued, was evacuation of UN forces from
Korea. MacArthur never directly requested authority to use atomic weapons, but he
implicitly raised the possibility with the JCS on several occasions. He presumably
knew of President Truman’s decision in the summer of 1950 to stockpile nonnuclear
components (bombs minus their nuclear cores) on Guam. Under the current JO-
EWP, the JCS intended the Guam stockpile for attacks by the Strategic Air Com-
mand against Vladivostok and Irkutsk in the event of general war. But at the rst
signs of Chinese intervention, the Army General Sta started exploring the tactical
use of these weapons in or around Korea and sounding out the State Department
on the diplomatic ramications.
80
The Joint Chiefs sympathized with MacArthur’s predicament and did what
they could to protect his freedom of action. But after the Chinese intervention,
they were under heavy pressure from the White House and the State Department
to localize the war and avoid escalating the conict. Though they had studied the
use of nuclear weapons since the war began, they generally agreed that there were
too few targets and too few bombs to make a dierence unless faced with a looming
“major disaster.”
81
Furthermore, administration policy stressed international coop-
eration and collaboration through the UN, where opinion favored the reunication
of Korea, but not if it involved taking risks that could widen the war. The British
were especially uneasy, as evidenced by Prime Minister Clement R. Attlee’s hasty
visit to Washington in early December 1950 in response to rumors that the United
States was contemplating the use of nuclear weapons in Korea. Having only begun
to develop a nuclear capability, the British saw themselves as yet in no position to
take on the Soviets, even as part of an American-led eort.
82
Denied permission to
launch operations outside the Korean Peninsula, MacArthur became progressively
more frustrated and outspoken, and told the press at one point that his orders from
the President and the Joint Chiefs were “an enormous handicap, without precedent
in military history.”
83
By late January 1951, Lieutenant General Matthew B. Ridgway, USA, the new
commander of the Eighth Army, had reenergized UNC forces with a limited of-
fensive that was driving the enemy north. As of mid-March, UN armies were again
in possession of Seoul and had established a relatively stable line across Korea in the
vicinity of the 38th parallel. In view of the success of Ridgway’s campaign, MacAr-
thur became convinced that, despite their superior numbers, the Chinese were far
from invincible and could still be driven out of Korea. Acheson, however, saw the
situation dierently and persuaded Truman that the time was ripe for negotia-
tions, with the aim of restoring the status quo ante.
84
Around the end of March,
MacArthur eectively scuttled Acheson’s initiative by publicly issuing a virtual
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MiliTariZinG THE ColD War
ultimatum that gave the Chinese the choice of an immediate ceasere or a rapid
expansion of the conict aimed at toppling their regime. MacArthur’s statement
violated administration policy across the board and set the stage for a showdown
with the President. But before the full impact could settle in, another incident oc-
curred—the release on April 5 by House Republican Leader Joseph W. Martin, Jr.,
of a letter he had recently received from MacArthur urging “maximum counter-
force” in Korea and a second front against the Communist Chinese launched from
Taiwan. The letter closed with MacArthur’s celebrated exhortation: “There is no
substitute for victory.”
85
Characterizing MacArthur’s letter as the “last straw,” Truman moved to relieve
him of command on grounds of insubordination.
86
On April 6, 1951, the President
met with Acheson, Marshall, Harriman, and Bradley to explore a course of action.
Harriman wanted MacArthur’s immediate dismissal. But Bradley, deeply distressed,
was skeptical whether MacArthur’s behavior constituted insubordination, as dened
in Army regulations. Buying time, he persuaded Truman to let him discuss the mat-
ter with his JCS colleagues as soon as the Army Chief of Sta, General Collins,
returned to town.
87
MacArthur’s conduct put the Joint Chiefs in a dicult position. All signs indi-
cated that Truman was going to sack MacArthur. If the chiefs recommended against
his relief, they would only be fueling the controversy. In fact, the JCS had lost con-
dence in MacArthur’s leadership and judgment, and wherever feasible were taking
steps to work around him. Toward the end of March 1951, they received intelligence
that the Soviets had transferred three divisions to Manchuria and were massing
aircraft and submarines for a possible attack on Japan or Okinawa. Fearing a major
escalation of the war, the Joint Chiefs asked the President to transfer custody of
nine nuclear cores from the Atomic Energy Commission to the military for deploy-
ment to the western Pacic and to approve an order authorizing CINCFE to carry
out retaliatory strikes against enemy air bases in Manchuria and China should the
Soviets attack. On April 6 (the same day he met with his senior advisors to discuss
MacArthur’s future), President Truman approved the draft order and the custody
transfer. But instead of placing the bombs under MacArthur’s control, he turned
them over to the Air Force Chief of Sta, General Hoyt S. Vandenberg. Ordinarily,
the JCS would have dispatched the retaliation order immediately to CINCFE. This
time, they elected to withhold it and to keep it secret out of concern, as Bradley put
it, that MacArthur might “make a premature decision in carrying it out.”
88
The chiefs assembled on Sunday afternoon, April 8, in Bradley’s Pentagon
oce rather than the “Tank” where they conducted ocial business. Though
informal, the proceedings resembled those of a court of inquiry. Weighing the
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evidence, they talked for 2 hours. In the end, they concluded that, while MacAr-
thur may have been guilty of poor judgment, the case against him for insubor-
dination did not stand up. Even so, they believed the President would be fully
within his rights as Commander in Chief to remove MacArthur in the interest
of upholding the principle of civilian control of the military. If the President
wanted to re MacArthur, the JCS would not stand in the way. The next morning
Bradley and Secretary Marshall conveyed the chiefs’ views to the President. Two
days later, on April 11, the White House press oce revealed that MacArthur was
being recalled and that Ridgway would replace him as CINCFE and commander
of UN forces.
89
MacArthur at this time was still a popular and widely respected gure in the
United States—a national hero in some circles—and his ring provoked a good deal
of outrage. A congressional investigation ensued and for the second time in as many
years the Joint Chiefs found themselves explaining and defending their actions on
Capitol Hill. This time, however, the hearings were closed to the public. As the in-
quiry progressed and the substance of its proceedings became known through leaks
and edited transcripts, popular support for MacArthur began to sag. The Korean
War was dragging on longer than anyone expected and, with casualties and costs
continuing to mount, MacArthur’s repeated calls for “victory” envisioned sacrices
that fewer and fewer Americans deemed worthwhile. More in line with majority
opinion was the administration’s determination to seek a negotiated settlement.
Attempting to put the matter in perspective, General Bradley told Congress that
MacArthur’s prescription for victory would have invited an open-ended conict on
the Asian mainland. Had MacArthur’s advice prevailed, Bradley added, the United
States would have found itself in “the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong
time, and with the wrong enemy.”
90
euroPe—firsT again
Following MacArthur’s dismissal, the Korean War gradually receded from the fore-
front of the Joint Chiefs’ agenda, where a backlog of other defense and security
problems, mainly relating to Europe, clamored for attention. More attuned to the
thinking in Washington than MacArthur had been, Ridgway knew that the Presi-
dent and the JCS wanted him to limit the conict and avoid any actions that might
provoke “a worldwide conagration.”
91
Abandoning the quest for Korean reunica-
tion, the Joint Chiefs issued new orders on June 1, 1951, that essentially instructed
Ridgway to maintain the status quo. Though he remained free to mount opera-
tions to protect his forces and to keep pressure on the enemy, he was to restrict his
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MiliTariZinG THE ColD War
activities to a defensive line in the vicinity of the 38th parallel while military talks
explored a ceasere.
92
The decision to settle for a stalemate in Korea reected not only the realities of
a war gone sour, but also the deeply held belief of many in the Truman administra-
tion, Secretary of State Acheson foremost among them, that vital American interests
were more at jeopardy in Europe than in Asia. In Acheson’s view, the dynamics of
the Cold War centered in Europe; it followed that America’s “principal antagonist”
was the Soviet Union, not Communist China.
93
The Joint Chiefs believed that
Acheson’s assessment underestimated China’s potential threat and capabilities. But
they agreed that, owing to limited resources, the United States should not allow
Cold War conicts in places like Korea and Indochina to become the catalysts for
a general war with China.
94
Adopting a frame of reference much like the one that
had guided their predecessors in World War II, they accorded the defense of Europe
rst priority.
Though it predated the Korean War, the European defense buildup had barely
begun when ghting broke out in Korea in June 1950. Bureaucratic delays in initi-
ating the Mutual Defense Assistance Program and prolonged debate over NATO’s
organizing defense plan had slowed European rearmament to a crawl. The basic
blueprint was a strategic concept (DC 6/1), adopted by NATO’s governing body,
the North Atlantic Council (NAC), in January 1950. Written to JCS specications,
DC 6/1 was almost a mirror image of U.S. defense policy at the time, with strategic
bombardment provided by the Strategic Air Command (and augmented by British
Bomber Command) forming the rst line of defense and retaliation. Though the
NAC decided against including any specic reference to nuclear weapons, their
use was clearly implied. In eect, NATO’s members now fell under the extended
deterrence protection of the American “nuclear umbrella.” The European members’
main contribution would be to supply the “hard core” of the Alliance’s conventional
ground, air, and coastal defense forces. Though the Europeans went along with this
division of labor, it was an arrangement that few particularly liked since it made
no allowance for them to participate in the command, control, or targeting of the
strategic forces that formed their primary protection. Not without justication,
some Europeans worried that they were now more than ever the potential target of
a Soviet nuclear attack.
95
Before the Communist invasion of South Korea, the Joint Chiefs had neither
the inclination nor the resources to mount an active defense of Europe. Exploratory
eorts to incorporate such a defense into U.S. emergency war plans in the spring of
1949 resulted in such high projected costs that the JCS dropped the idea. The war
plan they later adopted (OFFTACKLE) called for the evacuation of the two U.S.
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divisions on occupation duty in Germany and Austria at the rst sign of a large-
scale Soviet attack. Aware that the planned withdrawal undercut the U.S. commit-
ment to NATO, Army planners pressed for “retardation bombing” of advancing
Soviet forces as part of the strategic air oensive, to give the Europeans a better
chance of defending themselves and U.S. forces a better chance of getting out. Air
Force and Navy planners viewed the Army’s proposal as a diversion of resources
from the primary objective of destroying the Soviet Union’s war-making capabili-
ties. But through persistence, the Army’s position prevailed. Retardation bombing
was included, both in the OFFTACKLE plan and in a revised targeting scheme
adopted by the Joint Chiefs in August 1950. Even so, the immediate benets for
NATO were uncertain. Retardation bombing remained at the bottom of the JCS
priorities list and, because planes and bombs were limited, SAC balked at allocating
the necessary assets to anything other than strategic objectives. Bombing military-
industrial targets in the Soviet Union, SAC planners insisted, would in the long run
retard the Soviet advance as much as anything.
96
After the outbreak of the Korean War, as funding constraints eased, the JCS
reassessed their position and agreed not only to expand the scale and scope of SAC’s
operations in Europe, but also to bolster NATO’s conventional posture by enlarging
the U.S. commitment in Germany by up to four divisions. In July 1950, at the same
time he ordered the deployment of nonnuclear components to Guam, President
Truman approved a similar deployment to facilities in the United Kingdom and
accepted a JCS recommendation to send two additional B–29 wings to the UK, tri-
pling the size of the in-country medium bomber force. A secret agreement reached
earlier, in April 1950, between the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom and
Britain’s Air Ministry cleared the way for the deployment.
97
By January 1951, JCS
planners had earmarked 60 nuclear bombs for NATO retardation purposes. How-
ever, SAC commanders winced at even this limited allocation of assets. As one put
it, SAC was “not designed for close or general support of ground forces.” Rather, it
was an organization dedicated to delivering “an atomic oensive against the heart
of an enemy wherever that may happen to be.”
98
Having established broad criteria for target selection, the Joint Chiefs left it
up to the new NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), General
Dwight D. Eisenhower, USA, and his air deputy, General Lauris Norstad, USAF, to
develop a working arrangement with the Strategic Air Command. A veteran of the
roles and missions quarrels after World War II, Norstad easily perceived that unless
the Air Force paid closer attention to retardation bombing and other nonstrategic
missions, it would open opportunities for the Army and the Navy to develop their
own “tactical” nuclear capabilities and challenge the Air Force’s dominant position
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MiliTariZinG THE ColD War
in atomic warfare. Eventually persuaded to cooperate, the SAC commander, Gen-
eral Curtis E. LeMay, met in late 1951 with Eisenhower and Norstad in Europe to
coordinate their respective roles in “retardation operations.” The agreement reached
allowed SACEUR to determine the military signicance and priority of targets,
but vested command and control of operations in a new Air Force headquarters
element in Europe known as SAC ZEBRA, which dealt only with Norstad and
designated U.S. ocers. Based on this accord, the Joint Chiefs authorized Eisen-
hower to prepare atomic annexes for NATO war plans and to carry out indepen-
dent exercises simulating the use of atomic weapons in support of NATO strategy.
In May 1953, SACEUR and SAC conducted the rst combined test of their ability
to coordinate an atomic operation.
99
Equally, if not more, frustrating for the Joint Chiefs were the diculties they
encountered in trying to shore up NATO’s conventional strength. While atomic
weapons and strategic airpower were still the West’s most formidable means of re-
taliation, U.S. nuclear capabilities were as yet too limited to protect Western Europe
from an all-out Soviet invasion. As General Bradley put it, “We don’t have enough
atomic weapons to plaster all of Europe.”
100
The initial (pre-Korean) NATO war
plan was DC 13, the Medium Term Defense Plan (MTDP), built on the principles
in the NAC-approved strategic concept. An ambitious 4-year eort, the MTDP re-
ceived ocial sanction in the spring of 1950 and called for the creation of a largely
European army of 90 Active and Reserve divisions whose job would be to hold
attacking Soviet forces as far to the east as possible in Central Europe. Skeptical
whether the plan was economically feasible, the Joint Chiefs urged NATO planners
to take a closer look at their requirements and to explore a “radical revision down-
ward” of force goals. But since few NATO leaders took these numbers seriously,
treating them instead as a “rst approximation,” there was little discernible incen-
tive for a more realistic assessment. Planning and preparations for a NATO buildup
proceeded at a leisurely pace.
101
Concern that the Communist attack against Korea might be the prelude to
a similar invasion of Western Europe nally prompted a reevaluation of NATO
plans and timetables. Not only did it galvanize the European Allies—Britain and
France, especially—into stepping up the tempo of their rearmament programs, but
it also led them to make new requests for additional military assistance, an increase
in U.S. troop strength in Europe, and the creation of an integrated high command.
A condition of key importance to the Joint Chiefs in acting on these measures was
that the Europeans in return accept the rearmament of West Germany, which the
JCS had been studying for some time. Though fully aware that German rearma-
ment was bound to be controversial, the chiefs had come to the conclusion that a
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German contribution was unavoidable if NATO was to ll the gaps in its Medium
Term Defense Plan and confront the Soviets with a credible defense in Central
Europe. Anticipating European resistance, the State Department proposed a North
Atlantic or European defense force incorporating German forces under direct
Allied command.
102
Insisting on an all-or-nothing approach, the Joint Chiefs persuaded Secretary
of State Acheson to adopt a “one package” negotiating stand that linked the creation
of the combined command and increases in U.S. troop strength to European accep-
tance of German rearmament and progress toward meeting MTDP force goals. Pre-
sented to the NAC in September 1950, the U.S. package provoked a livid reaction
from the French, who were as irritated by the rigidity of the American proposal as
by its contents.
103
Given NATO’s need for manpower and materials, German rear-
mament was only a matter of time. But for many (if not most) Europeans, it was too
soon after the War to accept such a prospect. While the French showed a icker of
interest in State’s European army concept, the idea needed to gestate and over the
next several years it reappeared in several guises, the most well-known being the
French-sponsored Pleven Plan, which eventually gave rise to the European Defence
Community (EDC). Meanwhile, the only large-scale eort to put Germans back in
uniform and under arms was that initiated by the Soviets in the eastern zone.
Unable to achieve a breakthrough on German rearmament, the Joint Chiefs
bided their time and turned their attention to the appointment of a supreme Allied
commander and the creation of an international command structure. Authorized
at the September 1950 NAC meeting, these measures were the rst concrete steps
toward transforming NATO from a paper alliance into a functioning military or-
ganization. The key to the entire enterprise was Eisenhower’s willingness to serve
as NATO’s military head, with Britain’s Field-Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery
as his deputy. Recommended by the Joint Chiefs in October 1950 and announced
that December, Eisenhower’s appointment as SACEUR placed him back in a job
comparable in many ways to the one he held in World War II, but without the same
sweeping authority or resources. From oces hastily constructed on the outskirts of
Paris, Eisenhower presided over the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe
(SHAPE), a multinational headquarters sta charged with planning and coordinat-
ing the land and air defense of Western Europe. Though Eisenhower took his orders
from the NATO Military Committee via the Standing Group, a select interallied
body of senior ocers, he also communicated regularly with the Joint Chiefs of
Sta and the Secretary of Defense.
104
Based in Norfolk, Virginia, a separate supreme Allied commander, SACLANT,
handled naval planning for the North Atlantic. Though authorized by the NAC in
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December 1950, the Atlantic Command did not become active until nearly a year
and a half later owing to a bitter contest for control between the British Chiefs of
Sta and the JCS. The resolution of this issue in favor of the JCS position was as
much a reection of Britain’s demise as a world power as it was NATO’s heavy de-
pendence on the United States. Clearly, it was a blow to British pride that needed
assuaging. Awarding the Channel Command (ACCHAN) overseeing air and naval
operations in the English Channel to the British in February 1952 was meant to
serve this purpose. In 1953, the British also received the NATO Mediterranean
Command (CINCAFMED), headquartered at Malta. Established as part of SHAPE
and not, as the British hoped, as a third supreme command, CINCAFMED had
limited assets and authority and exercised no control over the U.S. Sixth Fleet, the
most powerful naval force in the area.
105
Under Eisenhower’s guidance and energizing presence, the NATO buildup
in Europe gathered momentum quickly. From a force of 15 divisions (in varying
degrees of readiness) and fewer than 1,000 aircraft in April 1951, NATO grew to 35
active and reserve divisions and nearly 3,000 planes by the end of the year. During
the same time, Congress increased funding for military aid, training for European
forces improved, and there were combined eld maneuvers to test coordination.
106
Perhaps most important of all, in April 1951, following the “Great Debate” on
Capitol Hill, the Senate adopted a resolution sanctioning the deployment of four
additional U.S. divisions to Europe, in eect sealing the American commitment
under the “transatlantic bargain.” Eisenhower had hoped for an infusion of up to
20 American divisions and seemed let down when neither Secretary of Defense
Marshall nor the Joint Chiefs would support his request. Aware of Eisenhower’s
disappointment, the JCS advised him in May 1951 that they were working on plans
to make up to 14 divisions available to NATO in an emergency, but cautioned that
these numbers were for planning purposes and did not constitute an allocation
to SHAPE.
107
Equally important to NATO’s future were Eisenhower’s eorts to develop a
more coherent strategy for Europe’s defense. During his tenure as acting JCS Chair-
man in 1949, Eisenhower had discussed this problem at length with the Joint Chiefs
and, since then, had steadily rened his views. The plan he proposed—a “forward
strategy” designated MC 14/1 when formally adopted in December 1952—aimed
at blocking invading Soviet forces and stabilizing military ground action as far to
the east as possible with a strong conventional defense. NATO’s last line of defense
would be along the Rhine-Ijssel. Air and naval forces operating from the North Sea
and Mediterranean would then hit the invaders “awfully hard from both anks.”
The admission into NATO in 1952 of Greece and Turkey—two countries with
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little in common other than their geographic proximity and antipathy for one an-
other—was meant in large part to bolster this strategy.
108
The main dierence between NATO’s initial strategic concept of 1949–1950
and Eisenhower’s forward strategy was the increased emphasis on defense by con-
ventional means. Though Eisenhower would not rule out the use of nuclear weap-
ons to augment NATO repower and delay Soviet forces from advancing, it was
well known within the Alliance that the smaller members (Denmark, Norway, and
the Benelux countries) were extremely uneasy over the prospect of being caught
in a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. For those
countries, a war involving the use of nuclear weapons on their territory could mean
annihilation. By stressing the role of conventional forces and each country’s contri-
butions, Eisenhower sought to ease those anxieties and give the Allies a united frame
of reference and stronger sense of common purpose.
109
In assessing NATO’s prospects for implementing the forward strategy, the Joint
Chiefs believed that Alliance members possessed adequate actual and potential re-
sources “to discourage, if not deter, aggression in Western Europe.”
110
They were less
sure, however, whether the Europeans had the political will to support and sustain a
rearmament eort much beyond the current level. Studies by various NATO fact-
nding and advisory bodies raised similar questions, giving rise to speculation that
the Europeans put their economic welfare ahead of security. As a result, the JCS
were uneasy over the chances of a successful defense, and toward the end of 1951
they adopted contingency plans separate from NATO’s that made provision for a
possible retreat by U.S. forces from the Rhine to the Pyrenees and evacuation to
the United Kingdom via Cotentin-Cherbourg in the event of a NATO collapse.
Though Eisenhower was privy to these plans, the JCS insisted that they not be
shown to anyone at SHAPE other than U.S. personnel since they clearly conicted
with NATO strategy.
111
Whether the Joint Chiefs seriously intended to carry through with the evacu-
ation of U.S. forces in an emergency is unclear. The logistics alone were daunting,
and it was unclear what would happen to U.S. dependents. More than likely, these
plans were meant to “leak” and serve notice to the Europeans in a subtle yet con-
vincing way that they should not take the United States for granted and expect U.S.
forces to carry the main burden of defending Europe. The JCS wanted the Euro-
peans to understand that they needed to shoulder more responsibility for their own
security by stepping up their rearmament and by accepting a German contribution
to NATO.
Gaining the cooperation of the French was hardest of all. Of France’s 15 army
divisions, 10 were tied down ghting the Communist Viet Minh insurgency in
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MiliTariZinG THE ColD War
Indochina. Implying that what American military planners wanted was excessive,
the French government suggested a deal: cooperation on German rearmament in
exchange for increased American aid to cover more of the cost of the Indochina
war and to guarantee France a military force in Europe on a par with Germany’s.
Eventually, Washington’s acceptance of this oer would lead to a huge jump in U.S.
security support assistance to France and additional aid underwriting over half the
French war eort against the Viet Minh. But it was a price the Joint Chiefs and the
Truman administration were happy to pay if it would bring the German rearma-
ment question to a favorable resolution and bolster the U.S. strategic position in the
Far East at the same time.
112
Matters came to a head in late February 1952 at the North Atlantic Council’s
Lisbon meeting, which resulted in three major actions: the admission of Greece
and Turkey into NATO, thus potentially increasing the conventional force base; the
armation of NATO force-level objectives for 1954 comparable to those in the
MTDP; and a breakthrough in negotiations on a continental European Defense
Community under NATO command, with a German contribution of 12 divisions.
To ease the nancial strain of the buildup, the NAC agreed that less expensive re-
serve units could make up the bulk of NATO’s divisions. Yet even with these relaxed
requirements and German rearmament, the Joint Chiefs remained skeptical about
the Alliance’s capacity to meet its objectives. Within the Oce of the Secretary of
Defense and the Joint Sta, the operating assumption was that NATO would do
well to achieve 80 percent of the Lisbon force goals.
113
An important postscript to the Lisbon Conference was the signing of the ill-
fated Treaty of Paris in May 1952. Symbolic of the evolving Franco-German rap-
prochement, the treaty’s stated purpose was to pave the way for creation of the EDC
and, within it, a rearmed West Germany.
114
Though the JCS regarded the treaty as
a step in the right direction, they found it to be of no immediate help for lling
the gaps in NATO’s defenses, which only seemed to widen as the year progressed.
Faced with balance of payments decits, declining industrial production, and rising
unemployment, the Europeans treated their economic diculties as far more urgent
and worrisome than falling behind on their defense obligations.
A further blow to NATO’s fortunes was Eisenhower’s departure as SACEUR
in April 1952, and the arrival of his successor, General Matthew B. Ridgway, a month
later. Ridgway was the rst American ocer to serve in what became a routine dual
capacity—as the military head of NATO through his role as SACEUR, and as the
U.S. Commander in Chief, Europe (USCINCEUR). Though highly regarded as
a battleeld commander, Ridgway lacked not only Eisenhower’s prestige but also
his tact and feel for coalition diplomacy. At SHAPE, he alienated many Europeans
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CounCil of War
by surrounding himself with a mostly American sta. With Eisenhower’s departure,
Field Marshal Montgomery recalled: “The crusading spirit disappeared. There was
the sensation, dicult to describe, of a machine which was running down.”
115
NATO, in brief, was at a crossroads. Despite signs of substantial progress since
the Korean War erupted, much remained to be done if the Alliance were to become
a credible and eective bulwark against the Soviet Union. According to General
Hastings Ismay, NATO’s rst Secretary General, the Alliance still had only 18 ready
divisions by late 1953, half the number called for in the Lisbon goals, facing an es-
timated 30 Russian divisions in Eastern Europe.
116
Thus far, the burden had fallen
most heavily on the United States to provide much of the military power and arms
aid to give NATO substance, and to show leadership to set the Alliance on course.
While the Joint Chiefs had considerable experience with coalition warfare in World
War II, they never had to deal with such problems in peacetime or under an alliance
system comprised of so many diverse interests as they faced in NATO. Adjusting
took time and would, in fact, prove to be one of the most dicult and continuing
Cold War challenges the JCS faced.
The Korean War period was a crucial turning point for the Joint Chiefs of
Sta. While it conrmed and strengthened their high-level advisory duties, it also
resulted in institutional changes, at the NSC especially, that thrust them and their
organization into the mainstream of the policy process. Though not as powerful and
inuential as they were in World War II, the Joint Chiefs were again at the center of
decision. Most important of all was the emergence of the CJCS as their principal
representative and spokesman. Functioning in a de facto role that went beyond his
ocial job description, he was a key advisor to the Secretary of Defense, the Presi-
dent, and the NSC in his own right. Much of the enhanced authority and inu-
ence that the Chairman—and by extension, the entire Joint Chiefs of Sta—came
to enjoy during the Korean War years was the result of General Bradley’s presence.
Quiet and thoughtful, he projected a common sense approach to problems and a
thoroughly professional image that helped overcome the chiefs’ reputation for petty
quarreling and parochialism in the aftermath of World War II.
Above all, the Joint Chiefs had begun to nd their niche and to create for
themselves a new institutional role more adapted to Cold War realities. No longer
the architects of grand strategy as they had been in World War II, the JCS were part
of an interdepartmental “team,” functioning within a policy process increasingly
dominated by interagency deliberations through the various mechanisms of the
National Security Council. Driven by the Soviet A-bomb and the war in Korea,
a new consensus had emerged, both at home and abroad, that the containment of
communism required a heavier investment in military forces and related programs
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MiliTariZinG THE ColD War
than anyone had imagined. Not the most ecient organization for dealing with
these problems, the Joint Chiefs as a rule worked well enough together, overcoming
or papering over their dierences as the need arose to keep the military buildup on
track. Whether the chiefs would continue to perform at this level once the pressure
relaxed and a more “peacetime” atmosphere returned remained to be seen.
Notes
1 Memo, JCS to SECDEF, April 23, 1948, “Position of the United States with Respect to
Support for Western Union and Other Related Free Countries,” JCS 1868/1.
2 Steven L. Rearden, History of the Oce of the Secretary of Defense: The Formative Years,
1947–1950 (Washington, DC: Historical Oce, Oce of the Secretary of Defense,
1984), 471–472; Lawrence S. Kaplan, NATO 1948: The Birth of the Transatlantic Alliance
(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleeld, 2007), 75–103.
3 Though aimed mainly at Europe, MDAP was a comprehensive program and includ-
ed funding for military assistance to Iran, Korea, Latin America, and the Philippines.
See Chester J. Pach, Jr., Arming the Free World: The Origins of the United States Military
Assistance Program, 1945–1950 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991),
88–159; and Lawrence S. Kaplan, A Community of Interests: NATO and the Military As-
sistance Program, 1948–1951 (Washington, DC: Historical Oce, Oce of the Secretary
of Defense, 1980), 16–34.
4 Rearden, Formative Years, 462–463.
5 Kenneth W. Condit, The Joint Chiefs of Sta and National Policy, 1947–1949 (Washington,
DC: Oce of Joint History, Oce of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, 1996),
204–212.
6 Rearden, Formative Years, 477.
7 Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Statesman, 1945–1959 (New York: Viking Penguin,
1987), 64–66.
8 James F. Schnabel, The Joint Chiefs of Sta and National Policy, 1945–1947 (Washington,
DC: Joint History Oce, Oce of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, 1996),
200–201. Tang Tsou, America’s Failure in China, 1941–50 (Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1963), is the standard treatment of Chiang’s demise.
9 Memo, JCS to SECDEF, November 24, 1948, “Strategic Importance of Formosa,” U.S.
Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949 (Washington, DC: GPO,
1974), IX, 261–262; Memo, JCS to SECDEF, February 10, 1949, “Strategic Importance
of Formosa,” ibid., 284–86. Hereafter cited as FRUS, with year and volume.
10 Memo, JCS to SECDEF, December 16, 1948, “Current Position of U.S. Respecting
Delivery of Aid to China,” JCS 1721/17.
11 Memcon between Acheson and Truman, November 17, 1949, quoted in Nancy Bernkopf
Tucker, “China’s Place in the Cold War: the Acheson Plan,” in Douglas Brinkley, ed., Dean
Acheson and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 110.
12 Memo by Director of Central Intelligence (Hillenkoetter), September 9, 1949, no sub-
ject, PSF, Intelligence File, Truman Papers, Harry S. Truman Library (HSTL).
126
CounCil of War
13 Donald P. Steury, “How the CIA Missed Stalin’s Bomb: Dissecting Soviet Analysis,
1946–50,” Studies in Intelligence 49:1 (2005); David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The
Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994),
134–149.
14 OSI/SR-10-49, Central Intelligence Agency, “Status of the USSR Atomic Energy
Project,” July 1, 1949, PSF, Intelligence File, Truman Papers.
15 Letter, Forrestal to Chan Gurney, December 8, 1947, in Walter Millis and E.S. Dueld,
eds., The Forrestal Diaries (New York: Viking Press, 1951), 350–351.
16 Richard G. Hewlett and Francis Duncan, A History of the United States Atomic Energy
Commission: Atomic Shield, 1947–1952 (Washington, DC: U.S. Atomic Energy Commis-
sion, 1972), 394.
17 Memo, JCS to SECDEF, November 23, 1949, “U.S. Military Position with Respect to
the Development of the Thermonuclear Weapon,” RG 218, CCS 471.6 (12-19-49), sec.
1; portions reprinted in K. Condit, JCS and National Policy, 1947–49, 292. See also Memo,
JCS to SECDEF, January 13, 1950, FRUS, 1950, I, 503–511.
18 David E. Lilienthal, The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, vol. II, The Atomic Energy Years,
1945–1950 (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 580–633.
19 Letter, Truman to Acheson, January 31, 1950, FRUS, 1950, I, 141–142.
20 Memo by Acheson, December 20, 1949, FRUS, 1949, I, 612.
21 Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1969), 348–49.
22 Keith D. McFarland and David L. Roll, Louis Johnson and the Arming of America: The
Roosevelt and Truman Years (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 185–186.
23 Doris M. Condit, History of the Oce of the Secretary of Defense: The Test of War, 1950–1953
(Washington, DC: Historical Oce, Oce of the Secretary of Defense, 1988), 244.
24 John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American
National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 83–90; Steven L.
Rearden, “Paul H. Nitze and NSC 68: ‘Militarizing’ the Cold War,” in Anna Kasten
Nelson, ed., The Policy Makers: Shaping American Foreign Policy from 1947 to the Present
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleeld, 2009), 5–28.
25 Quote from Oral History Interview No. 4 with Paul H. Nitze, by Richard D. McK-
inzie, August 4, 1975, Northeast Harbor, Maine, Oral History Collection, Truman
Library; see also Paul H. Nitze, with Ann M. Smith and Steven L. Rearden, From Hi-
roshima to Glasnost: At the Center of Decision—A Memoir (New York: Grove Weidenfeld,
1989), 93–95.
26 NSC 68, “United States Objectives and Programs for National Security,” April 14, 1950,
PSF, Truman Papers, HSTL. Unfortunately, the version published in FRUS, 1950, I,
234–292 is awed, with unintended deletions.
27 Robert L. Beisner, Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2006), 238–239.
28 Warner R. Schilling, Paul Y. Hammond, and Glenn H. Snyder, Strategy, Politics, and De-
fense Budgets (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), 321; Nitze, From Hiroshima
to Glasnost, 96–97.
127
MiliTariZinG THE ColD War
29 Minutes, 55th Meeting of the National Security Council, April 20, 1950, PSF, Truman
Papers, HSTL; Memo, Lay to SecState et al., April 21, 1950, “United States Objectives
and Programs for National Security,” NSC Records, Truman Papers, HSTL.
30 Memo, BoB to NSC, May 8, 1950, “Comments of the BoB [on NSC 68],” FRUS, 1950,
I, 298–306.
31 Memo for the Record, May 23, 1950, “Meeting with the President,” Papers of Freder-
ick J. Lawton, HSTL; Michael J. Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins
of the National Security State, 1945–1954 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1998), 304.
32 Memo, SECDEF to SecArmy et al., May 25, 1950, “Military Requirements Under
NSC 68,” JCS 2101/7.
33 Quote from Matthew M. Aid, The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Secu-
rity Agency (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009), 26. For overall estimates of the situa-
tion, see John Patrick Finnegan, Military Intelligence (Washington, DC: Center of Mili-
tary History, 1998), 113–14; and James F. Schnabel, United States Army in the Korean War:
Policy and Direction—The First Year (Washington, DC: Oce of the Chief of Military
History, 1972), 62–63.
34 ORE 18–50, “Current Capabilities of the Northern Korean Regime,” June 15, 1950, in
Woodrow J. Kuhns, ed., Assessing the Soviet Threat: The Early Cold War Years (Washington,
DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 1997), 390; see
also John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997), 75.
35 Schnabel, Policy and Direction, 64.
36 James F. Schnabel and Robert J. Watson, History of the Joint Chiefs of Sta: The Joint Chiefs
of Sta and National Policy—The Korean War, 1950–1951 (Washington, DC: Oce of Joint
History, Oce of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, 1998), 25–41.
37 Soon Sung Cho, Korea in World Politics, 1940–1950 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1967), 61–91.
38 Rearden, Formative Years, 255–67.
39 Omar N. Bradley and Clay Blair, A General’s Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983),
530.
40 Schnabel and Watson, 25–45; D. Condit, 47–55.
41 Acheson, Present at the Creation, 405.
42 Matthew B. Ridgway, The Korean War (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967), 34.
43 Vandenberg’s views in Jessup Memcon, June 25, 1950, FRUS, 1950, VII, 159. See also
Roger Dingman, “Atomic Diplomacy and the Korean War,” International Security 13
(Winter 1988–1989), 53–54.
44 Schnabel and Watson, 43; Johnson quoted in D. Condit, 54.
45 Truman, Years of Trial and Hope, 336–344; Schnabel and Watson, 36–53.
46 “President’s News Conference, June 29, 1950,” in Public Papers of the Presidents of the
United States: Harry S. Truman, 1950 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1965), 504. Hereafter cited
as Truman Public Papers.
128
CounCil of War
47 Minutes, 62d Meeting, National Security Council, July 27, 1950, PSF, NSC Series, Tru-
man Papers; D. Condit, 226–227.
48 John W. Spanier, The Truman-MacArthur Controversy and the Korean War (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), 65–66.
49 Richard F. Hayes, The Awesome Power: Harry S. Truman as Command-
er in Chief (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973), 177;
Spanier, 70–77; Walter S. Poole, The History of the Joint Chiefs of Sta: The
Joint Chiefs of Sta and National Policy, 1950–52 (Wilmington, DE: M. Glazier, 1979/1980),
202–204.
50 Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, vol. II, Years of Trial and Hope (Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1956), 355–356.
51 Quoted in D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur, vol. III, Triumph and Disaster, 1945–
1964 (Boston: Houghton, Miin, 1985), 470.
52 Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945–1989, Book I, The
Struggle for Centralization, 1945–1960 (Washington, DC: Center for Cryptologic History,
National Security Agency, 1995), 43 (redacted); Aid, 28–29.
53 Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2001), 346.
54 Roy E. Appleman, United States Army in the Korean War: South to the Naktong, North to the
Yalu (June–November 1950) (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2000, reprint),
488–502; Schnabel and Watson, 84–89; James, Triumph and Disaster, 464–474.
55 Truman, Years of Trial and Hope, 358.
56 Truman red Johnson on September 12, 1950; he ocially stepped down on September
19. Bradley recalled that he learned of his promotion at “the beginning of September”
but because the action required congressional approval it did not become eective until
September 22. See Bradley and Blair, 552–553.
57 Appleman, South to the Naktong, 502–606; D. Condit, 66.
58 Minutes, 68th Meeting, National Security Council, September 29, 1950, PSF, NSC Se-
ries, Truman Papers; NSC 68/2, “Note by Executive Secretary to the National Security
Council on United States Objectives and Programs for National Security,” September
30, 1950, FRUS, 1950, I, 400.
59 Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1950–52, 30.
60 Memo for the President, October 2, 1950, [Summary of Discussion at 68th Meeting,
NSC, September 29, 1950], PSF, NSC Series, Truman Papers.
61 NSC 81/1, “United States Courses of Action with Respect to Korea,” September 9,
1950, FRUS, 1950, VII, 712–721.
62 Johnson, American Cryptology during the Cold War, I, 44 (redacted); MacArthur, Reminis-
cences, 360–363; Bradley and Blair, 574–579; Truman, Years of Trial and Hope, 364–367;
Ferrell, ed., O the Record, 200; “Substance of Statements Made at Wake Island Confer-
ence on October 15, 1950,” FRUS, 1950, VII, 948–960.
63 Memo by Acheson of Meeting with the President, October 19, 1950, Dean Acheson
Papers, Truman Library.
64 D. Condit, 244–245; Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1950–52, 33–34.
129
MiliTariZinG THE ColD War
65 NIE–2, November 6, 1950, “Chinese Communist Intervention in Korea,” in Tra c k-
ing the Dragon: National Intelligence Estimates on China During the Era of Mao, 1948–1976
(Washington, DC: National Intelligence Council, 2004), 69–80.
66 Schnabel, Policy and Direction, 233; D. Condit, 74–77; Message, CINCFE to DA, No-
vember 6, 1950, quoted in Schnabel and Watson, 126.
67 Schnabel and Watson, 127.
68 Quoted in Eric F. Goldman, The Crucial Decade and After: America, 1945–1960 (New York:
Vintage Books, 1960), 179.
69 Message, CINCFE to JCS, November 28, 1950, FRUS, 1950, VII, 1237–1238.
70 D. Condit, 245–246; Truman quoted in Memo, November 24, 1950, [Summary of Discus-
sion at 72d Meeting of the NSC, November 22, 1950], PSF, NSC Series, Truman Papers.
71 Budget and GNP gures from U.S. Department of Defense, National Defense Budget
Estimates for FY88/1989 (Washington, DC: Oce of the Assistant Secretary of Defense,
Comptroller, 1987), 101, 128; manpower and force levels from Poole, JCS and National
Policy, 1950–52, 71.
72 Ross, American War Plans, 1945–50, 119–132; Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1950–52,
88–90.
73 Walter S. Poole, The Evolution of the Joint Strategic Planning System, 1947–1989 (Washing-
ton, DC: Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, Joint Sta, 1989), 2–3.
74 JCS MOP 84, February 1, 1989, “Joint Strategic Planning System,” U, JHO 08-0022.
75 See Alfred D. Sander, “Truman and the National Security Council: 1945–1947,” Journal
of American History 59 (September 19, 1972), 369–388.
76 Memo for the President, April 21, 1950, [Summary of Discussion at 55th Meeting of the
National Security Council, April 20, 1950], PSF, NSC Series, Truman Papers.
77 Anna Kasten Nelson, “President Truman and the Evolution of the National Security
Council,” Journal of American History 72 (September 19, 1985), 360–378; James S. Lay, Jr.,
and Robert H. Johnson, Organizational History of the National Security Council during the
Truman and Eisenhower Administrations (Washington, DC: GPO, 1960), 16–18. The JCS
representative to the NSC Senior Sta was Rear Admiral E.T. Wooldridge, Deputy
Director, Joint Sta for Politico-Military Aairs, whose previous experience in inter-
agency aairs included having helped develop the 1947 Greek-Turkish aid program.
78 Letter, Truman to Acheson, July 19, 1950, FRUS, 1950, I, 348–349.
79 Acheson, Present at the Creation, 441.
80 U.S. Department of Defense, History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons:
July 1945 Through September 1977 (Washington, DC: Oce of the Assistant to the Secre-
tary of Defense—Atomic Energy, February 19, 1978), 16, and Appendix B (declassied);
James, Triumph and Disaster, 579–581; Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1950–52, 87; Nitze
Memcon of Meeting with BG Herbert B. Loper, USA, November 4, 1950, FRUS, 1950,
VII, 1041–1042.
81 Schnabel and Watson, 168–169.
82 Ian Clark and Nicholas J. Wheeler, The British Origins of Nuclear Strategy, 1945–1955 (Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 139–145.
130
CounCil of War
83 Interview with MacArthur, published in U.S. News & World Report, December 1, 1950,
quoted in Schnabel and Watson, 239.
84 Acheson, Present at the Creation, 518.
85 Spanier, 197–205; see also Richard F. Haynes, The Awesome Power: Harry S. Truman as
Commander in Chief (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973), 232–234.
86 Ferrell, ed., O the Record, 210.
87 Truman, Years of Trial and Hope, 447, says Bradley agreed that MacArthur’s actions were a
“clear cut case of insubordination.” Bradley and Blair, 631–632, corrects the record. See
also Acheson, Present at the Creation, 521–522.
88 Roger M. Anders, ed., Forging the Atomic Shield: Excerpts from the Oce Diary of Gordon E.
Dean (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 127–138; Robert F. Futrell,
The United States Air Force In Korea, 1950–1953 (Washington, DC: Oce of Air Force His-
tory, 1983, rev. ed.), 287–301; Schnabel and Watson, 246; Bradley and Blair, 629–631.
89 Schnabel and Watson, 247–248; “Statement and Order Relieving GEN MacArthur,”
April 11, 1951, Truman Public Papers, 1951, 222–223.
90 Quoted in Schnabel and Watson, 254.
91 Ridgway, 162.
92 Message, JCS to CINCFE, June 1, 1951, cited in Billy C. Mossman, United States Army
in the Korean War: Ebb and Flow, November 1950–July 1951 (Washington, DC: Center of
Military History, 2000), 490.
93 Quoted in Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, 115.
94 Memo, JCS to Marshall, November 28, 1950, “Possible Future Action in Indochina,”
FRUS, 1950, VI, 947–948.
95 DC 6/1, “Strategic Concept for the Defence of the North Atlantic Area,” December 1,
1949, in Gregory W. Pedlow, ed., NATO Strategy Documents, 1949–1969 (Brussels: North
Atlantic Treaty Organization, 1997), 57–64; Rearden, Formative Years, 481–482.
96 K. Condit, JCS and National Policy, 1947–49, 159–163. The targeting scheme adopted in
August 1950 listed priorities as follows: “blunting” of the enemy’s atomic energy capa-
bilities (BRAVO), “destruction” of industrial facilities (DELTA), and “retardation” of
advancing forces (ROMEO). See Moody, Building a Strategic Air Force, 357.
97 Ken Young, “No Blank Cheque: Anglo-American (Mis)understandings and the Use of
the English Airbases,” Journal of Military History 71 (October 19, 2007), 1143.
98 Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1950–52, 79; Moody, Building a Strategic Air Force, 342–360;
Letter, MG Emmett O’Donnell, Jr., to Gen Hoyt S. Vandenberg, January 26, 1951, Van-
denberg Papers, Library of Congress.
99 Moody, Building a Strategic Air Force, 366–368; Robert S. Jordan, Norstad: Cold War NATO
Supreme Commander: Airman, Strategist, Diplomat (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 81–
83; Robert A. Wampler, NATO Strategic Planning and Nuclear Weapons, 1950–1957 (College
Park, MD: Center for International Security Studies at Maryland, 1990), 5–6.
100 Quoted in Memo of Discussion of State-Mutual Security Agency—JCS Meeting, Jan-
uary 28, 1953, FRUS, 1952–54, V, 714 .
101 DC 13, “North Atlantic Treaty Organization Medium Term Plan,” April 1, 1950, in
Pedlow, 107–177; D. Condit, 311–314; Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1950–52, 95.
131
MiliTariZinG THE ColD War
102 NSC 71, “Views of JCS with Respect to Western Policy Toward Germany,” June 8,
1950, FRUS, 1950, IV, 686–687; Memo by SecState of Meeting with the President, July
31, 1950, FRUS, 1950, III, 167–168; State Department Paper, “Establishment of a Euro-
pean Defense Force,” ca. August 16, 1950, ibid., 212–219.
103 Acheson, Present at the Creation, 437–440. See also Lawrence S. Kaplan, NATO and the
United States: The Enduring Alliance (rev. ed.; New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994), 43–46.
104 Robert J. Wood, “The First Year of SHAPE,” International Organization 6 (May 19, 1952),
175–191; Lord Ismay, NATO: The First Five Years, 1949–1954 (Paris: North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, 1954), 37–38, 70–72; Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1950–52, 117.
105 Poole, JCS and National Policy, 120–25, 145–47; Ismay, First Five Years, 73–77.
106 Ismay, First Five Years, 102.
107 D. Condit, 339–341; Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1950–52, 126.
108 Notes on White House Meeting, January 31, 1951, FRUS, 1951, III, 454; D. Condit, 370;
MC 14/1, “NATO Strategic Guidance,” December 9, 1952; Pedlow, 193–228.
109 See the discussions between Eisenhower and European leaders resulting from Eisen-
hower’s tour of Europe, January 1951, in FRUS, 1951, 402–449.
110 Memo, JCS to SECDEF, January 26, 1951, “Means at the Disposal of the Western Pow-
ers to Discourage . . . Aggression,” JCS 2073/115.
111 Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1950–52, 159.
112 Thomas Alan Schwartz, America’s Germany: John J. McCloy and the Federal Republic of
Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 252–253. See also Bruce to
Acheson, December 17, 1951, FRUS, 1951, IV, 455–459; Bohlen, Memcon with Jean
Daridan, Minister Counselor of French Embassy, February 7, 1952, FRUS, 1952–54, V,
610–611.
113 Final Communiqué, 9th Session North Atlantic Council, February 26, 1952, FRUS,
1952–54, V, 177–179; Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1950–52, 151, 157–158.
114 See Edward Fursdon, The European Defence Community: A History (New York: St. Mar-
tin’s Press, 1980), 150–188.
115 Bernard Law Montgomery, The Memoirs of Field-Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of
Alamein (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1958), 462.
116 Ismay to Churchill, February 12, 1954, cited in Kaplan, NATO and the United States,
48–49.
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Admiral Arthur W. Radford, USN, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Sta, 1953–1957
Chapter 5
EisEnhowEr and
thE nEw Look
Dwight D. Eisenhower’s election in November 1952 presented the Joint Chiefs of
Sta with the prospect of the most radical changes in American defense policy since
World War II. A scal conservative, Eisenhower saw the heavy military expenditures
of the Truman years bankrupting the country. Assuming that the Cold War might
go on indenitely, he sought to develop a sound, yet cheaper, defense posture the
United States could maintain over the long haul. The result was a strategic con-
cept known as the “New Look,” which incorporated a broader than ever reliance
on nuclear weapons and nuclear technology. Indeed, by the time Eisenhower was
nished, military policy and nuclear weapons policy were practically synonymous.
Some called it simply “more bang for the buck.”
The rst military professional to occupy the White House since Ulysses S.
Grant, Eisenhower was, like Grant, a national hero. Commander of the Allied force
that had invaded France and defeated Nazi Germany on the western front in World
War II, he had served after the War as Army Chief of Sta, president of Columbia
University, unocial Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, and NATO Supreme
Commander in Europe. To many Americans, he seemed the natural leader to guide
them through the increasingly dense thicket of the Cold War.
Eisenhower’s advent had a larger and more lasting impact on the JCS than any
Commander in Chief until Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Entering oce with un-
rivaled experience in military aairs and the advantage of personally knowing how
the JCS system operated, he knew rst-hand how inter-Service competition and
parochial interests could thwart agreement among the chiefs on common military
policies. Internal dierences, he later observed, “tended to neutralize the advisory
inuence they should have enjoyed as a body.”
1
While the JCS had pulled them-
selves together and worked fairly well as a team during the Korean War, they had
functioned more or less as their predecessors had done in World War II—with elas-
tic budgets and under the pressure of events that concealed their internal rivalries
and frictions. Anticipating an end to the hostilities in Korea, Eisenhower foresaw a
133
134
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postwar transition period of spending cuts and changes in strategy and force struc-
ture leading to renewed inter-Service strife and competition.
The 1953 ReoRganizaTion
In Eisenhower’s view, revising the Nation’s defense strategy and improving the ef-
fectiveness and eciency of the Joint Chiefs went hand in hand. Knowing that
rapid and radical changes could cost him the cooperation of the chiefs and of their
supporters on Capitol Hill, he started slowly with modest adjustments. The blue-
print he used was a Defense-wide reorganization derived from suggestions oered
by former Secretary of Defense Robert A. Lovett and the recommendations of an
advisory panel headed by Nelson A. Rockefeller, Eisenhower’s protégé. Presented
to Congress in April 1953, these changes, known as Reorganization Plan Number
6, took eect under an Executive order in June and required no further legislative
action in the absence of congressional objections.
One of Eisenhower’s principal objectives was to strengthen the powers of the
Chairman, whose de facto role and authority increasingly outweighed the statu-
tory description of his duties. To bring theory and reality more into line, the 1953
reorganization gave the CJCS the beginnings of his own power base by conferring
on him authority to manage the work of the Joint Sta and to approve the selec-
tion of its members. To get the JCS to concentrate on their advisory and planning
functions, the President removed the JCS from the operational chain of command
by ending the practice, sanctioned under the 1948 Key West Agreement, that had
allowed the Joint Chiefs to name one of their members as the executive agent for
each unied or specied command. Henceforth, it would be up to the Service Sec-
retaries to designate these executive agents. The President said that in taking these
actions he intended to “x responsibility along a denite channel of accountable
civilian ocials as intended by the National Security Act.” Eisenhower would have
gone further in reforming the JCS, but he recognized that the attempt would have
aroused vigorous opposition on Capitol Hill, where the prospect of a more power-
ful Chairman and a stronger, more independent Joint Sta continued to conjure
images of a “Prussian general sta.”
2
The appointment of a new set of Service chiefs and a new Chairman accom-
panied these structural changes. The “old” chiefs who were in place at the end of
the Truman years—Bradley, Army Chief of Sta J. Lawton Collins, Chief of Naval
Operations William M. Fechteler, and Air Force Chief of Sta Hoyt S. Vanden-
berg—were all either close personal friends of Eisenhower or well known to him by
reputation. Many of the President’s key political supporters, however, accused them
EiSEnHoWEr anD THE nEW looK
135
of having aided and abetted a no-win strategy in Asia and run-away defense spend-
ing at home. Since most of their terms expired in the spring and summer of 1953, it
was easy for the President to make a nearly clean sweep. The “new” chiefs included
Admiral Arthur W. Radford, previously Commander in Chief, Pacic (CINCPAC),
as Chairman, General Nathan F. Twining as Air Force Chief of Sta, General Mat-
thew B. Ridgway, Eisenhower’s successor at SHAPE, as Army Chief of Sta, and
Admiral Robert B. Carney, formerly the commander of NATO forces in Southern
Europe, as Chief of Naval Operations. The only holdover was General Lemuel C.
Shepherd, Jr., Commandant of the Marine Corps, who served on the JCS in a
limited capacity under legislation enacted in June 1952 allowing the Commandant
to participate in JCS deliberations when matters of direct concern to the Marine
Corps were under consideration.
3
Radford’s appointment as Chairman sent a powerful political message intend-
ed to promote inter-Service unity and cooperation. A naval aviator, Radford had
opposed Service unication after World War II and spoken out repeatedly against
Louis Johnson’s defense policies during the 1949 “Revolt of the Admirals.” While
selecting a one-time opponent of unication raised more than a few eyebrows,
Radford assured the President that his views on defense organization had changed
and that he was now fully behind the aims of the National Security Act. Beyond
this, he and Eisenhower shared a similar concern for the long-term eects of exces-
sive military spending. Radford’s familiarity with the Far East was a further asset at
a time when that part of the world seemed to produce one major foreign-policy
problem after another. To make the Joint Chiefs into a more eective corporate
body, free of Service biases, Eisenhower admonished the admiral to lead the way
by divorcing himself “from exclusive identication with the Navy.” As an incentive,
Eisenhower promised that Radford would have clearer responsibilities and greater
authority than his predecessor, General Omar Bradley. Radford would have pre-
ferred to be Chief of Naval Operations, and at times he likened his role as CJCS to
that of “a committee chairman,” as if it were a demotion. But he worked hard on
the President’s behalf, got along well with Eisenhower’s other senior advisors, and
did a commendable job of rising above Service interests.
4
Less successful were Radford’s eorts to instill these virtues in his JCS col-
leagues and forge a consensus among them on basic plans embodying administra-
tion policies. During the Indochina and Quemoy-Matsu crises of 1954–1955, he
tried to steer the JCS in the direction of military responses that conformed to
declared White House positions on the use of nuclear weapons; for his eorts, he
wound up being cast in the awkward guise of “party whip.”
5
Despite the increased
authority the Chairman exercised under Eisenhower, Radford actually had limited
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CounCil of War
inuence and control over strategic planning, the Joint Chiefs’ key function, which
remained a corporate responsibility. Integral to the allocation of resources, strategic
planning was a continuing source of inter-Service rivalry. Interminable haggling
over phraseology as well as the “force tabs” attached to war plans to lay out the size
and composition of forces needed to carry out missions became commonplace.
Unable to agree on a single unied strategy, the JCS resorted to compro-
mises built on broad statements of tasks and objectives that gave something to each
Service. Out of this process (known derisively as “log-rolling”) the Joint Strategic
Capabilities Plan (JSCP) emerged as little more than a yearly inventory of forces
available to each joint command in an emergency, while the mid-range Joint Strate-
gic Objectives Plan (JSOP) resembled a compilation of individual Service require-
ments, assembled in no order of priority. Intended to help the Secretary of Defense
and the President project future budgetary needs, the JSOP routinely fell short of its
goal and quickly acquired the reputation of being a “wish list” of Service require-
ments. Occasionally, in this and other areas, Admiral Radford was successful in inter-
vening to mend “splits.” But by and large, his most eective weapon in overcoming
Service dierences was to digest the views of his colleagues and convey them to the
President in his own interpretation of JCS advice.
6
In view of his background and experience, Eisenhower did not hesitate to
take matters into his own hands, behaving as Secretary of Defense, Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs, and National Security Advisor all in one. Aware of JCS limitations,
he frequently took over military planning and issued detailed guidance and direc-
tion as the situation warranted. All signs are that he enjoyed these tasks. Yet he still
looked to his Secretaries of Defense to attend to day-to-day Pentagon chores and
expressed irritation when they failed to measure up.
7
The three who served under
him as Secretary of Defense—Charles E. Wilson, Neil H. McElroy, and Thomas S.
Gates, Jr.—were business executives in private life and more adept at administration
and scal management than military aairs. With the exception of Gates, who was
Under Secretary and Secretary of the Navy before becoming Secretary of Defense
in 1959, their experience in defense matters was exceedingly limited. Wilson, the
rst, had the hardest time. Formerly the head of General Motors, he was unfamiliar
with the ways of the Pentagon and struggled to carry out the President’s policies,
many of which involved unpopular budget cuts. With Wilson obviously needing
help, Eisenhower spent an inordinate amount of time on defense matters to help
shore up the Secretary’s position, and in the process established a pattern of hands-
on involvement that lasted throughout his Presidency.
8
The Joint Chiefs’ most frequent contacts with the President were through
the National Security Council, which Eisenhower used as his principal forum for
137
EiSEnHoWEr anD THE nEW looK
debating and deciding high-level policy. As such, the NSC was a convenient mecha-
nism for double-checking the Chiefs’ advice and requirements. The practice that
had developed during the Truman years of ltering JCS recommendations through
the NSC remained in eect under Eisenhower and became even further insti-
tutionalized with the creation of new coordinating mechanisms—an interagency
Planning Board, similar to the NSC Senior Sta of Truman’s day but with broader
powers to review and rene actions going up the “policy hill” to the President and
the NSC; and an Operations Coordinating Board (OCB), to deal with intelligence
operations and assure the implementation of NSC decisions. All functioned under
the discreet and watchful eye of a Special Assistant for National Security Aairs who
reported directly to the President. The net eect was a highly structured system of
integrated policy review and collective decisionmaking that subjected JCS and Ser-
vice requests and recommendations to minute scrutiny.
9
Over time, the Joint Chiefs became highly procient at working within this
system and making it serve their needs. One benet for them was that it provided
reliable lines of communication with other government agencies, especially the
State Department. Extremely useful to the chiefs was the administration’s practice
of conducting annual reviews of basic national security policy, resulting in com-
prehensive statements of policy that established guidelines and priorities for the
development of military and related programs. Exceedingly detailed, these national
policy papers emerged only after lengthy discussion and negotiation, with signi-
cant inputs from the Treasury and Bureau of the Budget. After laying out the ad-
ministration’s overall policy objectives, these papers virtually guaranteed that once a
Service program was adopted, it would enjoy indenite funding and political sup-
port. A major criticism of this system was that it allowed little exibility in the face
of changing international conditions and defense needs. But it suited the Services
and the Joint Chiefs by providing them with a predictable platform for assessing
requirements and a viable rationale for justifying their claims on resources.
ending The KoRean WaR
Eisenhower’s rst order of business as President was to fulll his campaign promise
and bring the Korean War to a swift and honorable conclusion. Stalemated since
mid-1951, the war was a growing drain on troops, resources, and the patience of the
American people. For the Truman administration, it had become an onerous politi-
cal liability. Lest the eects linger, Eisenhower wanted an expeditious settlement that
would allow the United States to withdraw some, if not most, of its forces. Out of
the ensuing eorts to develop a strategy for ending the war emerged many of the
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CounCil of War
key policy strands for the new administration’s subsequent basic national security
policy—the “New Look.”
When Eisenhower took oce in January 1953, the principal obstacle to an
armistice was the prisoner of war issue. Even though the 1949 Geneva Conven-
tion called for mandatory repatriation of POWs, the Truman administration, acting
on JCS advice, had embraced a nonforcible repatriation policy. Behind this policy
was the chiefs’ desire to avoid repeating the unpleasant experience after World War
II when the Western allies forcibly repatriated sizable numbers of POWs held by
the Germans to the Soviet Union. Reports reaching the West later revealed that
Stalin executed many of these POWs and threw others into labor camps. During
the Korean conict, screening done by the UNC conrmed that over 75 percent
of the Chinese POWs and a lesser percentage of North Koreans were unwilling to
return voluntarily. Having had these gures accidentally revealed to them, Chinese
and North Korean negotiators summarily rejected nonforcible repatriation. The
armistice talks bogged down and on October 8, 1952, the U.S. chief negotiator,
Major General William K. Harrison, Jr., USA, declared an indenite recess until the
Communists tendered a “constructive proposal.” Almost immediately, the ghting
escalated.
10
As early as February 1952, the Joint Chiefs had begun to examine alternative
courses of action in case the negotiations failed or became prolonged. By the fol-
lowing autumn, the consensus within the JCS organization in Washington and at
UNC headquarters in the Far East was that an armistice was unlikely as long as
North Korean and Chinese forces continued to occupy the heavily fortied de-
fensive positions they had constructed across the Korean Peninsula. To break the
impasse, both the Joint Strategic Plans Committee (JSPC) and General Mark W.
Clark, USA, the commander of UN forces in Korea (CINCUNC) recommended
a buildup of forces and a large-scale oensive to “carry on the war in new ways
never yet tried in Korea.”
11
The JSPC’s plan incorporated the use of tactical atomic
weapons against enemy targets in Korea, China, and Manchuria. Initially, Clark did
not include nuclear weapons in his planning. Upon learning of the nuclear provi-
sions in the JSPC’s plan, however, he asked for authority to use them if the need
arose. In the past, the JCS had shied away from recommending the use of nuclear
weapons in Korea for political reasons and because of the limited size of the U.S.
nuclear stockpile. But by late 1952, with bomb production up to over 400 assemblies
per year, these supply restrictions were less inhibiting.
12
The Joint Chiefs reviewed General Clark’s plans and assured him that they
would be given due consideration.
13
The previous summer, anticipating events, the
JCS had initiated a buildup of nonnuclear components at storage facilities on Guam
139
EiSEnHoWEr anD THE nEW looK
and aboard aircraft carriers operating in the Western Pacic.
14
With President Tru-
man’s knowledge and approval, the JCS had also taken steps to identify stockpiles of
mustard gas and nerve agents at storage depots in the United States for possible use
in dislodging the Chinese and North Koreans from their caves and bunkers along
the front line in Korea. But with a new administration about to take oce, the JCS
held further measures aecting a buildup in abeyance.
15
Meantime, accompanied by General Bradley, Admiral Radford, and Secretary
of Defense-designate Wilson, President-elect Eisenhower went on a fact-nding
tour of Korea in early December 1952. He returned convinced that stepped-up
military pressure held the key to ending the conict. Soon after the inauguration, he
terminated the U.S. naval blockade of Taiwan, ostensibly “unleashing” Chiang Kai-
shek to wreak havoc on mainland China, and gave the nod to intensify a conven-
tional bombing campaign against North Korea that the Air Force had launched the
previous October. Among the targets the President authorized were hydroelectric
power plants on the Yalu River, industrial facilities in congested urban areas, and
irrigation dams used in rice production, nearly all of which the previous administra-
tion had treated as o limits to bombing for humanitarian reasons.
16
Between March and May 1953, Eisenhower considered further ratcheting up
the military pressure in Korea and asked the Pentagon to come up with plans for
a more aggressive campaign involving nuclear weapons, depending “on the ad-
vantage of their use on military targets.”
17
Uneasy over the direction in which the
President seemed headed, the JCS initially hesitated to propose a single course of
action and oered instead a choice of six escalating options based on the planning
done by the JSPC and CINCUNC. At the low end of the scale was a continuation
of the existing level of military activity, followed by successive stages of stepped-up
military pressure, culminating in a “major oensive” extending beyond the Korean
Peninsula. At this point, all restrictions on the use of chemical and nuclear weapons
would be removed.
18
The Planning Board tendered a slightly reworked version of
these options (NSC 147) to the NSC in early April, but the Council sent it back
with instructions that the JCS provide a specic course of action.
19
Finally, on May 20, 1953, General Bradley presented an oral report to the NSC
that left Eisenhower and the other Council members stunned. Assuming the pri-
mary goal to be a military solution, Bradley was convinced that the United States
might be “forced to use every type of weapon that we have.”
20
Accordingly, he out-
lined a plan for an all-out oensive in Korea, spearheaded by the use of chemical
and tactical nuclear weapons, that would involve taking out targets in China and
Manchuria. “We may also,” he warned, “be risking the outbreak of global war.” In
his memoirs, Bradley suggested that the President had known the gist of the chiefs’
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CounCil of War
proposals for some time and that he and Eisenhower had discussed these matters
privately on previous occasions. Still, the President seemed taken aback by the ag-
gressive tone of the Chairman’s presentation and treated it as a hypothetical inquiry,
to be acted upon “if circumstances arose which would force the United States to
an expanded eort in Korea.” Among the numerous issues yet to be addressed, he
mentioned the “disinclination of our allies to go along with any such proposal as
this” and the obvious need “to inltrate these ideas” into their minds.
21
While Eisenhower elected to hold a major escalation of the Korean War in
abeyance, he still believed that military pressure held the key to a truce, and in the
weeks following Bradley’s presentation to the NSC, conventional air attacks against
Communist targets in the north intensied. Irrigation dams received the most at-
tention.
22
Through diplomatic channels, meanwhile, and at the armistice talks in
Korea, U.S. representatives served notice that even “stronger” measures were in the
ong. These “mued warnings,” as political scientist McGeorge Bundy later char-
acterized them, were an unmistakable threat to use nuclear weapons, but whether
they had the impact on the Communist side that Eisenhower claimed remains
a matter of conjecture.
23
In any case, the negotiations showed sucient promise
of resolving the POW and other issues for Eisenhower to hold further threats in
abeyance and to turn his attention to securing the cooperation of South Korea’s
recalcitrant President Syngman Rhee.
24
Finally, in July the two sides signed an ar-
mistice which avoided the forced repatriation of prisoners and left Korea divided
along a demilitarized zone at approximately the same line as where the ghting
began in 1950.
The ceasere brought a respite but did not end JCS involvement in Korean
aairs. Although the ghting subsided, tensions between north and south remained
high, causing the JCS to keep the situation under constant and close review. For
years after the armistice, the United States maintained about 50,000 air and ground
forces in Korea under a UN command, while deploying large naval forces nearby
and funding a military assistance program to train and equip a South Korean army
of 700,000 troops. Next to Western Europe, Korea hosted the largest permanent
overseas concentration of U.S. forces during the Cold War. In an increasingly com-
mon outcome of Cold War confrontations, neither side scored a clear-cut victory
during the Korean conict, nor did either side suer a clear-cut defeat.
a neW STRaTegy foR The Cold WaR
Ending the Korean War was the nal major task of the “old” chiefs. To the “new”
chiefs who succeeded them in the summer of 1953 fell the job of converting the
141
EiSEnHoWEr anD THE nEW looK
Armed Forces to a peacetime footing. Despite their ambiguous contributions to
ending the Korean War, Eisenhower increasingly viewed nuclear weapons as the
key to the country’s future security. Stepped-up production of ssionable materi-
als initiated during the Truman years and design improvements leading to new,
more purpose-tailored weapons, from high-yield bombs for strategic use to tactical
and battleeld weapons, created unprecedented opportunities that Eisenhower pro-
posed to exploit to the fullest. Given the choice, he probably would have preferred
a balanced defense posture, in which atomic weapons and conventional forces g-
ured on a roughly equal basis. But from his recent experience in defense matters,
as acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs in the late 1940s and as SACEUR, he lacked
condence in being able to overcome the scal and political diculties, either at
home or abroad, that raising and maintaining a peacetime conventional force of
sucient size entailed.
25
Like Truman, Eisenhower viewed a strong defense and a sound economy as the
twin pillars of national security. A scal conservative, he recoiled at the budget de-
cits that had accumulated under his predecessor and attributed them in large part
to proigate military spending. He pledged to follow “a new policy which would
continue to give primary consideration to the external threat but would no longer
ignore the internal threat” of an economy weakened by heavy defense expendi-
tures.
26
Assuming a Cold War of indenite duration, the President rejected the radi-
cal changes in national strategy suggested in a high-level study (Project SOLARI-
UM) carried out during the early months of his Presidency, in favor of continuing
the practice of containing Soviet power and inuence.
27
Eisenhower also wanted to
avoid the “feast or famine” uctuations in defense programs that the Armed Forces
had experienced since the 1920s by establishing a stable level of military spending.
To do so, he abandoned the Truman administration’s practice of pegging defense
programs to a “year of maximum danger,” and opted for a military posture that the
country could sustain over the “the long pull” without jeopardizing the economy.
For this purpose, increased reliance on nuclear weapons was almost ideal.
28
Eisenhower found the Joint Chiefs to be among the most persistent and irri-
tating obstacles he faced in carrying out his plans. Insisting that the current posture
was “sound and adequate,” they resisted cuts in conventional strength and argued
that uncertainty over the use of nuclear weapons compelled them to retain substan-
tial general purpose forces. Threatening the use of nuclear weapons was one thing;
actually carrying through was quite another. The JCS acknowledged the primary
importance of nuclear weapons in assuring national security, but wanted a clearer
weapons-use policy, removal of the remaining impediments imposed during the
Truman years on the military’s access to nuclear weapons, and preservation of viable
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CounCil of War
conventional capabilities as backup in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack.
29
While
the United States continued to hold a comfortable lead in atomic bombs, intel-
ligence estimates available to the JCS indicated that the Soviets were catching up
and that they would have enough weapons by the mid-1960s to match the United
States in destructive power.
30
Wholly unexpected was the Soviet detonation in Au-
gust 1953 of a 400-kiloton thermonuclear device—signicantly smaller in explosive
power than the U.S. test of the previous November, but with design characteristics
that gave the Soviets a deliverable hydrogen bomb (about the same physical size as
a “Fat Man” implosion bomb) ahead of the United States.
31
Eisenhower was well aware that the course he proposed had drawbacks and
limitations. But he also knew, as did the Joint Chiefs, that the accuracy of intel-
ligence on Soviet capabilities was questionable and subject to change depending
on the available information and how the Intelligence Community interpreted
it.
32
Barring an arms control breakthrough, Eisenhower accepted the proliferation
of nuclear weapons as essentially unavoidable and sought to turn it to best advan-
tage. He believed the quickest and easiest way was “to consider the atomic bomb
as simply another weapon in our arsenal.”
33
To those who argued that crossing
the nuclear threshold risked all-out war, he replied that applying “tactical” atomic
weapons against military targets was no more likely to trigger a “big war” than the
use of conventional 20-ton block-busters.
34
Eective deterrence, he believed, meant
having not only the capability but also the will to use nuclear weapons. The internal
debate surrounding these issues and their impact on defense policy stretched from
the summer into the fall of 1953 and revealed sharp dierences of opinion. But in
the end, the President’s views prevailed, at least on paper. The upshot was a new
basic national security policy (NSC 162/2) authorizing the Armed Forces to treat
nuclear weapons “for use as other munitions” and to plan their force posture ac-
cordingly, with “emphasis on the capability of inicting massive retaliatory damage
by oensive striking power.”
35
Admiral Radford publicly described the administration’s defense policy as a
“New Look” in national security; others, seizing on language used by Secretary of
State John Foster Dulles in a 1954 speech, called it “massive retaliation.” Eisenhower
considered such descriptions misleading because they implied a more sweeping
change in the composition of the Armed Forces than he intended.
36
Rather than
restructure the military establishment, he wanted to make it more ecient, more
up-to-date with the latest technologies, and more economical. “His goal,” historian
John Lewis Gaddis observed, “was to achieve the maximum possible deterrence of
communism at the minimum possible cost.”
37
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EiSEnHoWEr anD THE nEW looK
Most of the savings Eisenhower achieved occurred during his rst 2 years in
oce and came largely from budgets inherited from Truman, whose own plans
called for similar reductions at the end of the Korean War. Once the Korean War
“bulge” disappeared, Eisenhower faced steadily mounting costs owing to ination
and pressures arising from intelligence estimates pointing to greater-than-expected
increases in Soviet strategic air and missile capabilities. Using essentially the same
budgeting techniques as the Truman administration, Eisenhower insisted that mili-
tary requirements t within xed expenditure ceilings. To make the money go fur-
ther, he stretched out procurement and the implementation of approved programs.
His major accomplishment was to reduce the rate of growth in military spending,
not its overall size. As the largest item in the Federal budget, national security con-
sumed on average about 10 percent of the country’s GNP during Eisenhower’s
presidency. At the end of the administration’s 8 years in oce, total obligational
authority for defense stood at just over $44 billion, roughly the same as when Eisen-
hower entered the Presidency.
38
The principal beneciary under the New Look was the Air Force, whose Stra-
tegic Air Command reaped the largest rewards. Force planning for the post–Korean
War period done in the waning days of the Truman administration had pointed in
this direction.
39
Under Eisenhower’s more restricted budgets, the process acceler-
ated. Though Air Force leaders recoiled at some of the funding cuts Eisenhower
initially imposed, they soon found themselves enjoying a privileged position. On
average, the Air Force received 46.4 percent of the defense budget during the Eisen-
hower years, compared with 28.3 percent for the Navy and Marines and 25.3 per-
cent for the Army. During this same period, strategic forces (predominantly those
under SAC) increased their claim on the total defense budget from 18 percent to
nearly 27 percent.
40
A formidable deterrent, the Strategic Air Command now became the coun-
try’s undisputed rst line of defense and retaliation. Relying primarily on manned
bombers during the 1950s, SAC retired its propeller-driven B–29s and B–50s by the
middle of the decade in favor of faster jet aircraft: the medium range B–47 and the
intercontinental B–52, which replaced the problem-plagued B–36. By the time the
Eisenhower administration left oce, SAC had an operating force of 1,400 B–47s
and 600 B–52s, supported by 300 KC–135 jet tankers for aerial refueling. Early B–52
models (the A through F series) had an unrefueled range of more than 6,000 miles
while carrying as many as four gravity-fall atomic bombs; later models (the G and
H series) had an unrefueled range of 7,500 to 8,000 miles and could carry up to
eight nuclear weapons.
41
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CounCil of War
SAC’s main weakness during the 1950s was the increasing vulnerability of its
bombers to a Soviet surprise attack. Initially, the threat came from the Soviet long-
range air force, and later from Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The
detonation of the Soviet H-bomb in the summer of 1953 and signs the following
year that Moscow might have a larger and more sophisticated strategic bomber
program than previously suspected, gave rise to a variety of increased requirements.
Based on limited evidence, the Air Force projected a Soviet advantage of up to two-
to-one in long-range bombers by the end of the decade. The other Services and the
CIA suspected that the Air Force was playing fast and loose with its numbers to pad
its budget requests. The give-and-take continued into 1956 when, with the help of
U–2 photographs, it became clear that the “bomber gap” grossly exaggerated Soviet
capabilities and the matter was laid to rest, but not before the Air Force had acquired
additional funding to augment its bomber eet.
42
At the same time, to reduce SAC’s
vulnerability to bomber attack, the Eisenhower administration resorted to a series
of costly countermeasures, including dispersed basing of SAC’s planes, the deploy-
ment of an integrated system of missiles and air defense interceptors, extension
of the distant early warning (DEW) line, and the creation in 1958 of a combined
U.S.-Canadian command and control organization known as the North American
Air Defense Command (NORAD). Nonetheless, SAC’s vulnerability persisted and
gave rise to ever-increasing requirements to allow it to “ride out” an enemy attack,
a process that kept alive and aggravated tensions within the Joint Chiefs over the
allocation of resources.
43
The Navy, defying all predictions, adjusted remarkably well to the New Look.
While Navy leaders made no secret of their disdain for the pro–Air Force orienta-
tion of Eisenhower’s defense program, there was no repetition of the nasty sniping
after World War II and no second “revolt” of the admirals. Radford’s presence as
Chairman eased the situation considerably, as did the leeway the Navy received to
conduct both a high-prole missile R&D eort, which eventually gave rise to the
Polaris eet ballistic missile system, and a shipbuilding program that included con-
struction of a new generation of heavy carriers. Dating from the Korean War, the
carrier program was the brainchild of Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Forrest
P. Sherman and initially envisioned replacing the Navy’s World War II Essex-class
carriers with larger Forrestal-class ships at a rate of one a year for 10 years. While the
pace slowed during the 1950s, the eventual goal remained the same. By the end of
the Eisenhower years, the Navy had commissioned four new Forrestal-class carriers
and had a fth (the nuclear-powered Enterprise) nearing completion. Out of 26 car-
riers then in service, 15 were large attack carriers (Essex-class or bigger), a number
that remained nearly constant for the duration of the Cold War.
44
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EiSEnHoWEr anD THE nEW looK
The size and design of the Forrestal-class “super carriers” meant they could
embark nuclear-capable aircraft. To avoid renewed accusations of competition with
the Air Force, the Navy assigned them a general purpose role. Sherman envisioned
these ships serving primarily in the Atlantic or Mediterranean, delivering con-
ventional and atomic attacks against Soviet naval bases and airelds in support of
NATO.
45
But because of continuing tensions in the Far East and better port facili-
ties in the Pacic, Admiral Carney persuaded President Eisenhower to modify this
strategy. Thus, the carriers came to be concentrated in the Pacic, with the proviso
that in a European emergency the Navy would redeploy them as needed to assist
NATO. Navy planners were never comfortable with this “swing strategy,” and in
1955 Carney’s successor, Admiral Arleigh A. Burke, launched a campaign to abolish
it. Once in place, however, the swing strategy became a rm xture of NATO force
planning. A symbol of the American commitment, it survived to the dying days of
the Cold War, despite one eort after another by the Joint Chiefs to eliminate it.
46
The JCS member least enamored with the New Look was General Matthew
B. Ridgway, who openly disparaged many aspects of the President’s defense policy
throughout his 2-year term as Army Chief of Sta. Ridgway’s main objections to
the New Look were that it failed to preserve an adequate mobilization base for
rapid Army expansion in an emergency and that it gave undue emphasis to nuclear
weapons without fully vetting the concept.
47
His successor, General Maxwell D.
Taylor, was, if anything, even more censorious of administration policy. Ridgway
knew that the New Look would take a heavy toll on the Army, but he professed to
be shocked by the full impact, which involved reducing Army personnel strength
by more than 500,000 and slimming down from 20 to 14 Active-duty divisions by
1957.
48
As an economy measure, Eisenhower also wanted the Army to redeploy as
many units as possible from NATO and other overseas theaters to the United States,
but shelved his plans in the face of strong political and diplomatic objections. As a
result, force levels in Europe remained essentially unchanged, while the two divi-
sions left in Korea after the armistice, the one in Hawaii, and those stateside in the
Strategic Reserve routinely operated at reduced strength.
49
Looking ahead, Eisenhower challenged the Army to recongure itself around
smaller, more mobile divisions designed specically for the nuclear battleeld.
Eisenhower believed that, with the advent of nuclear weapons, no infantry division
needed to be bigger than 12,000 men.
50
Studies done at the U.S. Army Infantry
School and exercises conducted by the Army Field Forces (later, the Continental
Army Command) indicated, however, that combat in a nuclear environment would
require divisions to be larger rather than smaller. Eorts to address this problem led
in 1956 to the adoption of the “pentomic” division as the blueprint for the Army
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CounCil of War
of the future. Organized into ve battle groups, pentomic divisions resembled the
structure of the airborne divisions that Ridgway and Taylor commanded in World
War II. Each pentomic division had approximately 11,500 men rather than the
17,000 in a post–Korean War “triangular” infantry division. Rated as “dual capable,”
a pentomic division incorporated conventional repower and an array of nuclear
weapons, from atomic artillery to nuclear-tipped rockets and missiles, and—most
unique of all—the “Davy Crockett,” a spigot mortar (often erroneously described
as a recoilless rie) adapted to re a sub-kiloton nuclear warhead. Further study
and eld tests soon demonstrated that pentomic divisions would lack staying power
in a conict and that much of the hardware and weaponry on which these units
depended was not up to the job. By 1960, Army leaders were exploring yet another
divisional reorganization scheme.
51
Even though the pentomic division failed to measure up and soon disappeared,
it served a useful purpose by drawing the Army’s attention to the impact of new
technologies. What the New Look taught Army leaders as much as anything was
that, if they were to protect their budget share and remain competitive with the Air
Force and the Navy, they had to move beyond an “unglamorous” arsenal of tanks,
artillery, and small arms and devote more research and development to guided mis-
siles and other sophisticated weapons. To avoid becoming marginalized, the Army
needed to broaden its mission. Taking this lesson to heart as the 1950s progressed,
Army leaders used their small but aggressive R&D program to solidify their claim
to old functions and lay claim to new ones.
52
In some ways, the Army succeeded
too well, for in the process Service roles and missions were again left in disarray. By
1957, the Army was the rst Service to test a land-based intermediate-range ballistic
missile (IRBM), known as JUPITER, forging ahead of the Air Force’s THOR pro-
gram, and was on the verge of seizing control of the anti-intercontinental ballistic
missile (ABM) function with its planned NIKE-ZEUS interceptor missile. This last
development was a critical step toward the Army acquiring a major role in strategic
warfare and would have reverberations that would echo to the end of the Cold War
and beyond.
TeSTing The neW looK: indoChina
While the Joint Chiefs were still digesting the impact of the New Look, events
abroad were testing its basic premise that nuclear weapons held the key to the coun-
try’s future security. No sooner had the dust begun to settle in Korea than the Cold
War shifted to Indochina, where the protracted struggle between the French and
the Communist Viet Minh appeared to be entering a new and decisive phase. Even
147
EiSEnHoWEr anD THE nEW looK
though the French had yet to suer a major setback, war-weariness at home and the
inability of French Union troops (predominantly Vietnamese) to sustain the initia-
tive suggested a shift in momentum in favor of the Viet Minh.
53
Finding the war was
no longer winnable, the French government notied Washington in July 1953 that
it would follow the example of the United States in Korea and end the Indochina
conict as soon as possible, preferably through a negotiated settlement. Expecting
the worst, U.S. intelligence sources warned that a Viet Minh victory in Indochina
“would remove a signicant military barrier” and open the way for communism to
“sweep” across Southeast Asia into the Indian subcontinent and beyond.
54
The Eisenhower administration’s initial response was to continue its predeces-
sor’s practice of bolstering indigenous forces in Indochina and elsewhere with ad-
vice and assistance. Policies adopted in 1953–1954 by the National Security Council,
however, indicated a strong willingness to ght to protect U.S. interests in the West-
ern Pacic and to curb the further expansion of Chinese Communist power and
inuence. JCS contingency planning based on these policies assumed the use of nu-
clear weapons.
55
But at a ve-power sta planners conference hosted by CINCPAC
at Pearl Harbor in September–October 1953, the British, French, Australian, and
New Zealand military representatives balked at giving prior approval to any military
action involving “weapons of mass destruction.” A none-too-subtle expression of
worry over radioactive contamination from recent atomic weapons tests, the allies’
objections also appeared to reect their growing concern for the potentially adverse
impact on Asian opinion that the use of nuclear weapons in that part of the world
could have. Even so, the Joint Chiefs reminded CINCPAC after the conference that
the exclusion of nuclear weapons, even for planning purposes, was contrary to ap-
proved U.S. policy, and directed the Strategic Air Command to develop an atomic
attack plan against selected targets in China and Manchuria should Communist
Chinese forces intervene in Indochina. Yet, given the reluctance of the other powers
in the region to associate themselves with U.S. retaliatory plans, it was likely that in
an extreme emergency the United States could nd itself acting unilaterally.
56
While the possible use of nuclear weapons was ever-present throughout the
crisis, the larger and more immediate issue facing the Joint Chiefs was whether to
get involved at all.
57
Forced to accept sizable budget and troop reductions and hav-
ing only recently concluded the conict in Korea, the Service chiefs—Ridgway
especially—were uneasy about being drawn into another Asian war. Keeping his
options open, President Eisenhower never categorically ruled out direct interven-
tion. But he shared his military advisors’ concerns about the costs and consequences,
and assured them that he could not imagine putting U.S. ground forces anywhere in
Southeast Asia “except possibly in Malaya,” where the British and Australians were
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CounCil of War
involved in suppressing a Communist insurgency. Playing down the possibility of
U.S. intervention, he likened the American role to xing “a leaky dike,” and in Janu-
ary 1954 he approved policy guidelines limiting retaliation in Indochina to air and/
or naval power should the French falter or the Chinese intervene.
58
Even though the President had seemed to rule out the use of ground troops,
events in Indochina conspired to keep the issue alive, and over the next several
months Joint Sta and Army planners continued to pay it close attention. The im-
mediate concern was the gathering crisis over Dien Bien Phu, a French redoubt on
the Laotian frontier, which had come under siege. By the beginning of 1954, the
Viet Minh had the French completely surrounded and wholly dependent on air-
delivered reinforcements and supplies. In developing U.S. responses to the ensuing
crisis, Eisenhower often bypassed the Service chiefs, nding it more expedient to
deal directly with Admiral Radford. Familiar with the Far East, Radford tended to
be more open-minded than his JCS colleagues in addressing French requests for as-
sistance and more exible on the issue of American military intervention, so much
so that Indochina was sometimes seen as “Radford’s war.”
Conrmation that the Chairman was now part of Eisenhower’s “inner circle”
came from his appointment to the President’s Special Committee on Indochina,
created in January 1954 to develop a program for aiding the French without overt
U.S. participation. The others on the panel were Director of Central Intelligence
Allen Dulles, Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith, Deputy Secretary of De-
fense Roger M. Kyes, and C.D. Jackson, the President’s special advisor on psycho-
logical warfare. As the composition of the committee suggests, Eisenhower hoped to
avoid direct American military involvement in Indochina through the alternative of
covert operations, an increasingly common Cold War practice that in this instance
had the strong encouragement and endorsement of the Joint Chiefs of Sta.
59
But
as the Viet Minh tightened their siege of Dien Bien Phu, doubts grew whether
covert operations as planned would be sucient, causing the Special Committee to
speculate that “direct military action” might be required to safeguard U.S. interests.
60
Toward the end of March 1954, General Paul Ely, chief of the French Armed
Forces sta, arrived in Washington appealing for help to stave o a collapse at Dien
Bien Phu. Ely estimated the chances of avoiding defeat at fty-fty. Convinced
that the situation was dire, Radford advised the President that the United States
needed “to be prepared to act promptly and in force” to relieve the pressure on
Dien Bien Phu.
61
According to Ely’s recollections, Eisenhower instructed Radford
(in Ely’s presence) to make priority responses to all French requests to assist Dien
Bien Phu.
62
Ely returned to Paris condent that the United States would provide
land- and sea-based air support for a pending operation (code-named Vulture) to lift
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EiSEnHoWEr anD THE nEW looK
the siege. He apparently believed the United States would employ nuclear weapons.
By now, the Joint Sta had several attack plans under consideration—one involving
the use of conventional munitions dropped by B–29s, and another plan, derived
from Army G-3 sta studies, that envisioned the use of up to six tactical nuclear
weapons delivered by Air Force or Navy ghter-bombers. But at a meeting of the
Joint Chiefs on March 31, Radford encountered uniformly strong opposition led by
Ridgway. Even Twining, who normally backed up Radford in JCS debates, would
give only guarded support to the operation, leaving the Chairman isolated as the
only JCS member fully favoring armed U.S. involvement.
63
This meeting was, for all practical purposes, the high-water mark of planning
for intervention and for the possible use of nuclear weapons in Indochina. Though
Radford continued to promote the project, his better judgment told him it was a
lost cause. Unable to carry his JCS colleagues with him, his arguments rang hollow.
Indeed, as word “leaked” that the Joint Chiefs were at odds over a plan of action,
support for intervention among congressional leaders and within the internation-
al community collapsed almost overnight. The French continued to assume that
American help was on the way. But as the days passed and no American relief mate-
rialized, Dien Bien Phu’s fate became certain. On May 7, 1954, after heavy ghting,
the garrison capitulated. Later that summer at Geneva, the major powers concluded
an agreement ending French rule in Indochina and dividing Vietnam, like Korea
and Germany, into Communist and non-Communist states.
Had the Joint Chiefs supported intervention, the course of events assuredly
would have been dierent. But with the long and indecisive involvement in the Ko-
rean War a vivid memory and postwar budget cuts eroding force levels, the Service
chiefs were averse to embarking on what Ridgway termed “a dangerous strategic di-
version of limited United States military capabilities.”
64
To them, as to the American
public, the use of nuclear weapons, even for limited tactical purposes, still implied a
major conict transcending traditional norms. Administration policy and preferences
notwithstanding, the JCS, excluding Admiral Radford, remained uncomfortable with
the notion that nuclear weapons were simply another part of the arsenal. Looking
back on the crisis, Eisenhower found it “frustrating” that he had not achieved more
success in educating the public, his military advisors, or the international community
“on the weapons that might have to be used” in future wars.
65
ConfRonTaTion in The TaiWan STRaiT
As the Indochina crisis neared an end, the next test of the New Look was already in
the making over a looming confrontation in the Taiwan Strait. At issue was the fate
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CounCil of War
of three small island groups (Tachen, Matsu, and Quemoy) lying a few miles o the
China mainland, which the Nationalists had occupied since 1949. The Nationalists
used these islands for intelligence gathering, early-warning radar bases, and jumping-
o points for commando raids against Communist positions on the mainland. Most
U.S. military analysts agreed that the strategic value of these islands was negligible.
But after the stalemate in Korea and the French collapse in Indochina, Admiral Rad-
ford insisted that the United States could not aord to give up more ground. Indeed,
he saw their loss as having “far reaching implications” of a political, psychological,
and military nature that could undermine resistance to Communism on Taiwan and
throughout the Far East. With air and naval superiority in the area, the Chairman
argued, the United States enjoyed distinct advantages that it had not had during the
Indochina crisis.
66
Weighing the pros and cons of defending the islands, Eisenhower,
though skeptical whether they were of much value militarily, gradually came around
to Radford’s point of view that their political importance was overriding.
67
The situation turned critical on September 3, 1954, when the Communist
Chinese launched a heavy artillery bombardment of Quemoy. As the confrontation
was taking shape, Eisenhower seemed more prepared than ever to entertain a nucle-
ar response and speculated at one point that the People’s Republic of China’s eet
of junks would make “a good target for an atomic bomb” if the Communists tried
to invade Taiwan.
68
Throughout the crisis, he and Radford remained convinced that
the use of nuclear weapons in such situations was only a matter of time and that the
United States needed to accept the idea in order to be better equipped and ready.
But despite tough talk, the administration initially leaned toward a guarded re-
sponse, and for the rst few months of the crisis the United States fell back on more
traditional means of applying pressure—the signing of a formal defense treaty with
Taiwan in December 1954, obtaining declarations of support for Taiwan from Con-
gress, and a buildup of conventional U.S. air and naval forces in the Taiwan Strait.
The administration’s caution and restraint reected, among other things, the
continuing “split” among the Joint Chiefs over the New Look’s practical application,
reinforced by an underlying worry (common to military and civilian policy-plan-
ners alike) that the use of nuclear weapons in Asia could provoke an anti-American
backlash and charges of racism. Such thinking may have inuenced deliberations
during the Indochina crisis, but it was not until the Taiwan Strait episode—when
the use of nuclear weapons would undoubtedly have resulted in thousands of Chi-
nese casualties—that the full impact became apparent. Still, it did not stop either
Eisenhower or Radford from seriously considering the nuclear option.
69
Having
failed to rally JCS support during the Indochina episode, Radford made a deter-
mined eort from the outset of the Taiwan Strait crisis to develop a consensus within
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EiSEnHoWEr anD THE nEW looK
the JCS that the oshore islands should be defended, leaving aside the question of
the means for the time being. A majority of the chiefs, including Twining, Carney,
and Shepherd, agreed that the United States had valid security interests at stake and
should be prepared to act in their defense. But they refused to hand Radford a blank
check and insisted that “available forces,” with minor augmentation, could do the
job. To Ridgway, however, even a token involvement seemed excessive. Insisting that
the oshore islands were of “minuscule importance,” he viewed a decision to defend
them as folly. If, however, the administration went ahead, it should realize the risks
involved and be ready to take “emergency actions to strengthen the entire national
military establishment and to prepare for war.”
70
Also weighing into the debate was Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Eisen-
hower’s most trusted advisor. One of the original architects of the New Look,
Dulles was well known for his “hawkish” views on combating communism and as
author of the “brinksmanship” concept linking proactive diplomacy to the threat-
ened large-scale use of nuclear weapons. But by the fall of 1954, Dulles was having
second thoughts and had come to the conclusion that the use of nuclear weapons
short of all-out war would lack popular support at home, alienate U.S. allies in Eu-
rope, and hand the Communist Chinese a propaganda issue they could exploit for
years to come. The United States, he warned, “would be in this ght in Asia com-
pletely alone.” Though he supported defending Taiwan, Dulles questioned the stra-
tegic value of the oshore islands and persuaded Eisenhower to avoid provocative
actions that might turn world opinion against the United States or make it exceed-
ingly dicult to use nuclear weapons later when they might make a dierence.
71
Tensions in the Taiwan Strait, meanwhile, continued to escalate. In January 1955,
the Communists began ratcheting up the pressure, rst against Tachen, which the
Nationalists at U.S. urging evacuated in early February, and then opposite Quemoy
and Matsu, where the People’s Republic of China (PRC) appeared to be massing
troops for an invasion. By March, believing a showdown to be imminent, Radford
was laying the groundwork for a nuclear response. “Our whole military structure
had been built around this assumption,” he told the NSC. “We simply do not have
the requisite number of air bases to permit eective air attack against Communist
China, using conventional as opposed to atomic weapons.” Likely targets identied
by the Joint Sta and CINCPAC included Communist Chinese airelds adjacent
to Quemoy and Matsu and petroleum storage facilities as far away as Shanghai and
Guangzhou (Canton). To minimize collateral damage, Radford insisted that only
“precision atomic weapons” would be used.
72
By then, Radford had a majority of the Service chiefs behind him in support of
some form of military action, with Ridgway the lone dissenting voice.
73
Believing
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CounCil of War
that talk of war had gotten out of hand, Eisenhower rejected the JCS majority view
favoring “full-out defense of Quemoy and Matsu,” and sought instead a cooling o
period, as much to reassure nervous allies in Europe as to head o a confrontation
with China.
74
He seemed to feel, given the uncertainty of the situation, that the use
of atomic weapons was becoming more and more a course of last resort.
75
In late
April, he sent Admiral Radford and Assistant Secretary of State Walter S. Robertson
(both of whom knew Chiang Kai-shek personally) to Taipei to explain the situa-
tion.
76
The Communist Chinese also appeared to be having second thoughts, and at
the Bandung conference on April 23, Premier Zhou Enlai declared the PRC’s read-
iness to discuss “relaxing tensions” in the Far East, “especially in the Taiwan area.”
77
By the end of May 1955, an informal ceasere had settled over the oshore
islands, causing the issue to drop o the JCS agenda. A revival of tensions in 1958
produced a second oshore islands crisis, replete with renewed bombardment of
Quemoy and Matsu, a buildup of forces by both sides, and invasion threats from the
PRC. Once again, the Joint Chiefs considered a possible nuclear response but held
a decision in abeyance pending a clearer picture of the situation. The crisis ended,
like the rst, inconclusively and was the last time the Eisenhower administration
contemplated the use of tactical nuclear weapons against the People’s Republic
of China.
78
Only on two further occasions—during the 1961 Laotian crisis and
the 1968 siege of Khe Sanh during the Vietnam War—did the JCS again actively
consider recourse to nuclear weapons in Asia. In both instances, the advantages to
be gained seemed incompatible with the risk.
79
Seizing on the many advances in
nuclear technology in the decade following World War II, the New Look gave the
Joint Chiefs access to unprecedented power and a wealth of innovative tools for
waging war. But it did not do much to clarify how or in what circumstances they
might be applied.
The “neW appRoaCh” in euRope
Doubts and uncertainty among the JCS notwithstanding, the Eisenhower admin-
istration remained rmly committed to developing a military posture that stressed
nuclear weapons. Nowhere was this commitment more strongly pursued than in
Europe where the New Look took the form of the “New Approach,” adopted by
the North Atlantic Council in December 1954 as MC 48, the new basic blueprint
for NATO strategy. While MC 48 armed the continuing need for conventional
forces, it cited superiority in atomic weapons and the capacity to deliver them as
“the most important factor in a major war in the foreseeable future.” At the time,
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EiSEnHoWEr anD THE nEW looK
NATO had a mere handful of atomic weapons at its disposal; within a decade,
largely as a result of steps taken by the Eisenhower administration, it would have a
dedicated arsenal of 7,000 nuclear bombs and warheads.
80
NATO’s embrace of a nuclear response to Soviet aggression in Europe stood
in marked contrast to the Allies’ opposition to the Eisenhower administration’s
threatened use of such weapons in Asia. The explanation for this paradox lies in
NATO’s underlying philosophy of deterrence and defense, and the historic role
nuclear weapons had played in NATO strategy. For the European Allies, actually
using nuclear weapons and threatening their use were two wholly dierent matters.
Nuclear weapons had been a fundamental part of NATO’s politico-military culture
since the Alliance’s inception in 1949 and had grown steadily in importance. As
Stanley R. Sloan and others have shown, not only were nuclear weapons essential
for military purposes as NATO’s primary deterrent and rst line of defense; they
were a key ingredient in the political bond holding the Atlantic Alliance together.
The U.S. commitment to come to Europe’s protection in the event of a Soviet inva-
sion, exposing itself to nuclear retaliation on Europe’s behalf, was central to what the
American diplomat Harlan Cleveland called the “transatlantic bargain,” a commu-
nity of reinforcing interests. American nuclear weapons, in eect, sealed the deal.
81
Nonetheless, prior to the Eisenhower administration, the JCS had tried to play
down NATO’s dependence on nuclear weapons, partly because they remained few
in number and out of concern that increased reliance might discourage European
conventional rearmament. With the impending advent of nuclear plenty, however,
views began to change. The rst to acknowledge the opportunities were the British
Chiefs of Sta, whose 1952 “white paper” on global strategy oered an alternative
course linked directly to the utility of a growing arsenal of nuclear weapons in
lieu of conventional capabilities.
82
As British defense planners described it, the aim
would be “to increase the eectiveness of existing [NATO] forces rather than to
raise additional forces.”
83
With the exception of the Air Force, the military Services in the United States
paid little attention to these proposals, believing it premature to write o conven-
tional rearmament eorts. But by the summer of 1953, a combination of factors—the
ongoing review of U.S. defense policy that included discussions of withdrawing U.S.
troops from Europe, planned cutbacks in U.S. military aid, a slumping European
economy, and an embryonic initiative by the British to place their own version of
the New Look before NATO—put pressure on the JCS to reexamine their posi-
tion and to come up with fresh ideas on how to satisfy European security needs.
The chiefs agreed that because of the European Allies’ economic diculties, there
was little likelihood of NATO meeting declared force goals on time and that a
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reexamination of NATO strategy would certainly be in order. But there was no una-
nimity on what the United States ought to suggest.
84
Earlier, as SACEUR, General
Ridgway had requested ve battalions of the new 280-mm cannon, which could
re either conventional or atomic shells, and had initiated studies on using tactical
nuclear weapons to bolster NATO’s forward defense strategy and to oset reductions
in troop strength. However, the results of these inquiries, based on sketchy data and
limited familiarity with nuclear weapons, had disappointed those seeking a relatively
cheap and convenient replacement for expensive conventional forces. Now, as Army
Chief of Sta, Ridgway shied away from the further nuclearization of NATO and
enlisted Admiral Carney in support of keeping the status quo until completion of the
U.S. military review then underway. General Twining, the Air Force member, was the
only Service chief who ventured to speculate that the solution to NATO’s problems
might require a sharp departure from current policy and doctrine.
85
Unable to elicit unanimous advice from the Joint Chiefs, President Eisen-
hower gave Secretary of State Dulles a free hand to come up with a plan of action.
Moving quickly to avoid being preempted by the British, Dulles achieved high-
level interagency agreement by late September 1953 on a “new concept” to expand
NATO’s application of tactical nuclear weapons. At Admiral Radford’s request, the
State Department postponed a nal decision until the JCS had a chance to review
the plan.
86
But the chiefs’ response, when it came on October 22, skirted the issue by
suggesting that the matter be held over for review by the NATO Standing Group,
where a nal recommendation might have been held up indenitely.
87
Ignoring
the chiefs’ proposal, Dulles sounded out his British and French counterparts at the
Bermuda conference in December 1953. He then put the issue before the North
Atlantic Council, which adopted a resolution instructing NATO’s top commanders
to review their strategy and force structure, taking account of recent breakthroughs
in military technology.
88
As a result of these actions, the initiative shifted from the JCS in Washington
to NATO planners in Paris working under the direction of General Alfred M.
Gruenther, USA, Ridgway’s successor as SACEUR, and his air deputy, General
Lauris Norstad, USAF. Gruenther, a former Director of the Joint Sta, was also one
of Eisenhower’s closest personal friends. Using fresh intelligence and doctrinal and
tactical assumptions in line with the known eects of nuclear weapons, Gruenther
and his sta recast the studies Ridgway had done.
89
It was from these “New Ap-
proach” studies that MC 48, a 3-year plan for reorganizing NATO’s forces, emerged.
The key nding was that while the level of M-day forces would remain essentially
unchanged, the substitution of nuclear weapons for conventional repower would
cause requirements for follow-on reserve forces to go down.
90
Midway through the
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EiSEnHoWEr anD THE nEW looK
NATO review, in August 1954, the French Assembly voted to defer action on the
European Defence Community (EDC), eectively killing the project and throwing
the whole question of German rearmament into confusion. Gruenther had always
said that, even with an enhanced nuclear capability, NATO would still need a cred-
ible conventional “shield” to prevent Western Europe from being overrun. For this
reason, he remained a staunch proponent of a full German contribution to NATO
and a strong conventional component. But with the EDC a shambles, NATO’s
credibility now rested more than ever on sharpening its nuclear “sword.”
91
While the Joint Chiefs endorsed the New Approach, two members—Ridgway
and Carney—did so with reservations, warning that the collateral damage from
nuclear weapons to cities and civilians would be almost catastrophic. They embraced
the New Approach and, in the Army’s case, the pentomic divisions and other para-
phernalia that went along with it, not because they thought these changes would
improve European security or save money, but because they were convinced that
nuclear weapons would inevitably be used in a major conict. Plausible deterrence,
in the JCS view, therefore dictated that NATO had to be prepared to ght both a
conventional and a nuclear war.
92
At the time, deterrence theory rested largely on
balancing the raw military power of one side against that of another. Intelligence
conrmed that the Soviets continued to devote high priority to their atomic energy
program, and following Stalin’s demise, there were mounting indications that, like
the Eisenhower administration, the Soviet Union’s new leaders were shifting the
burden of defense from conventional forces to nuclear weapons to cut costs.
93
The Joint Chiefs expected to be busy for years sorting out how the New Ap-
proach should be interpreted and applied. Though convincing the NAC to accept
the idea came more easily than expected, there remained a distinct anxiety among
the Europeans over who would have the authority to order the use of tactical
nuclear weapons if deterrence failed. Since the United States was the only NATO
power at the time with a signicant nuclear capability (British forces began receiv-
ing production nuclear bombs late in 1954), the fate of Western Europe could well
rest in U.S. hands. The solution favored by the Joint Chiefs was to give NATO’s
supreme commanders preexisting approval to carry out agreed defense plans in
full.
94
Recognizing the need for greater exibility but unwilling to go quite so far,
the Eisenhower administration in December 1953 liberalized its policy on sharing
atomic energy information with other countries where legally permissible.
95
A new
Atomic Energy Act, which cleared Congress in the summer of 1954, paved the way
for closer collaboration.
96
The Joint Chiefs allocated nuclear weapons as needed to satisfy NATO re-
quirements and stockpiled them at various locations in Western Europe under the
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custody and control of the American theater commander (USCINCEUR), also
serving as SACEUR.
97
This arrangement allowed Europeans access to U.S. weap-
ons for planning purposes and ostensibly a voice in deciding how and where these
weapons would come into play during a conict. But it did not go far enough to
suit some, and by the end of the decade there was growing talk on both sides of the
Atlantic of creating a “NATO common stockpile.” Proponents contended that the
Alliance should have the capacity to operate independently with its own nuclear
assets, including not only tactical weapons but also land- and/or sea-based IRBMs
that could threaten strategic targets in the Soviet Union.
98
The Joint Chiefs opposed
such a move since it would unhinge U.S. war plans from NATO’s and duplicate
some targeting. But as the Eisenhower administration drew to a close, the momen-
tum within the Alliance was moving toward creation of a NATO-led multilateral
nuclear force.
99
naTo’S ConvenTional poSTuRe
Despite the increased emphasis on nuclear deterrence, most of the weapons NATO
needed for its new strategy did not reach Europe in appreciable numbers until the
late 1950s and early 1960s. Until then, conventional “shield” forces remained the
core of NATO’s defense posture. Over the course of the decade, the limited intro-
duction of improved tanks, armored personnel carriers, and heavy, self-propelled
artillery gradually transformed NATO from a largely foot infantry force into a
modern, combined-arms force.
100
Overall, however, these qualitative improvements
were insucient to provide a credible conventional alternative. Nor did they pre-
vent NATO’s capabilities from eroding as assets previously allocated for a con-
ventional role (e.g., tactical aircraft) were recongured for nuclear missions and as
Alliance members unilaterally reduced their contributions in the expectation that
nuclear weapons would ll the gaps. The largest and most signicant reductions
were by the French, whose growing concern over the insurgency in Algeria from
1954 on prompted the eventual transfer of ve divisions from NATO to North
Africa. By the end of the decade, France had 500,000 troops tied down in Algeria
and the equivalent of only one division dedicated to NATO, instead of the 15 to 20
once envisioned.
101
Other members failed to pick up the slack. As long-time proponents of Ger-
man rearmament, the JCS expected the admission of the Federal Republic of Ger-
many (FRG) to NATO in 1955 to go far toward solving manpower problems.
However, they were taken aback when, a year later, the FRG decided to slow its
rearmament program by shortening the length of service for draftees and to seek
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EiSEnHoWEr anD THE nEW looK
access to nuclear weapons. The planned structure of the Bundeswehr remained 12 di-
visions and 40 air squadrons, but manpower would be cut by roughly one-third and
the target date for completion of the buildup would be moved from 1961 to 1965.
102
Around the same time, bowing to scal constraints, Britain, Belgium, and the Neth-
erlands also began to prune their conventional contributions to NATO.
103
In May
1957, the NAC adopted a new formal strategy statement (MC 14/2) conrming that
tactical nuclear weapons would be NATO’s mainstay against a Soviet invasion, and
tentatively set new conventional force goals (formally approved in 1958 as MC 70)
of 30 ready divisions in the Central Region for lesser contingencies. But with only
about 19 divisions on hand, NATO was still well below its goal.
104
Even the United States, by far the strongest member of the Alliance, had trou-
ble meeting its commitments. Though U.S. deployments held steady at around six
division-equivalents, Army units were often under strength and unevenly equipped.
Only the Air Force maintained a level of preparedness consistent with agreed force
goals.
105
Uneasy over NATO’s prospects, the JCS continued to incorporate provi-
sions in U.S. war plans (as distinct from NATO plans) for a withdrawal of American
forces to defensive positions along the Alps and the Pyrenees should the Rhine-
Ijssel line be breached.
106
Among Europeans, speculation was rife that the Eisen-
hower administration had secret plans to reduce its commitment to NATO and that
it intended to rely more than ever on Reserve units based in the United States and
swing forces in the Pacic to meet its obligations.
Matters came to a head in the summer of 1956 when, in a money-saving move,
Admiral Radford attempted to persuade the JCS to accept a radical restructuring of
the Armed Forces that included reducing U.S. troops in Europe by 50,000 and re-
organizing American ground units into small atomic-armed task forces. The Service
chiefs acknowledged the need to reduce overseas deployments, but they could see
no place in either the Far East or Europe where this could be done without enor-
mous risks.
107
Secretary of State Dulles and Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson
backed the plan, and in October 1956 President Eisenhower added his concur-
rence. However, unauthorized “leaks” making it appear that the United States was
preparing to abandon NATO soon followed, provoking an international incident.
Embarrassed and chagrined, the administration hastily backtracked, and most of the
proposed reductions were restored during the nal mark-up of the defense budget
at the end of the year, keeping U.S. forces in Europe more or less intact.
108
Fortunately for NATO, Soviet bloc forces around this time were no bet-
ter prepared than those in the West, and in certain categories they were probably
weaker. Neither side appeared to possess decisive conventional power. Estimates of
Soviet capabilities originated within the Services’ intelligence oces and focused
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on counting units and equipment. Owing to a lack of reliable data, these estimates
tended to be on the high side and paid little attention to manning levels or the
quality, training, and readiness of enemy forces. Studies done in the West routinely
depicted the Soviets overrunning NATO even with the Allies using nuclear weap-
ons.
109
The benchmark gure of 175 Soviet divisions remained intact and did not
come under close scrutiny until the end of the decade, when the CIA found Soviet
divisions to be at various levels of preparedness. Most of those opposite NATO in
East Germany proved to be fully ready front-line units. However, only about a third
of the Soviet divisions fell into this category, and the rest were either under-strength
reserve units or cadres.
110
The creation in 1955 of the Warsaw Pact, an alliance domi-
nated by Moscow, increased the scope of Soviet strategic control in East Europe
but probably added little to the Kremlin’s immediate capabilities. Political instability
within the satellite countries, highlighted by the 1953 East German uprising and
the 1956 Hungarian rebellion, cast doubt on the reliability of non-Soviet Warsaw
Pact forces.
111
In sum, NATO planning during the Eisenhower years yielded mixed results.
Shaped by essentially the same philosophy and budgetary pressures that were driv-
ing defense policy in the United States, the New Approach promised a powerful
deterrent against all-out Soviet aggression and a convenient way for NATO’s mem-
bers to save money on defense, but it limited their ability to cope with lesser con-
tingencies. While it did not do away with conventional forces, the New Approach
denitely downplayed their role. Missing from this strategy was any provision for
a “nuclear pause” or “rebreak” during a crisis to avoid rapid escalation. It was
largely for these reasons—the threat of unforeseen consequences and the absence
of exibility—that the Joint Chiefs split over whether a nuclear-oriented strategy
signicantly improved NATO’s defense posture and European security. Radford did
his best to promote the President’s cause, but he repeatedly ran into strong resistance
from the Army and Navy. Though both Services eventually signed o on the New
Approach, they did so reluctantly, sensing that they had no choice, and because they
knew they would not get the larger conventional forces they wanted.
CuRbing The aRmS RaCe
With nuclear weapons in the forefront of American defense policy during the 1950s,
the size, composition, and readiness of the U.S. nuclear stockpile became a matter
of utmost JCS concern. The Joint Chiefs had conducted a detailed annual review
since 1947 to make sure the stockpile was satisfying military requirements. Bowing
to JCS requests, the Truman administration in 1949, 1950, and 1952 approved three
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EiSEnHoWEr anD THE nEW looK
separate increases in the production capacity for ssionable materials. According to
historian David Alan Rosenberg, these decisions recast the country’s defense pos-
ture by launching the United States into an era of “nuclear plenty” and by generat-
ing a construction program capable of providing U.S. forces with nuclear weapons
for the duration of the Cold War and beyond.
112
Without the production increases
initiated during the Truman years, the New Look would never have been conceiv-
able. From a base of around 1,100 weapons when the Eisenhower administration
took oce, the nuclear stockpile grew to about 22,000 by the time the President
stepped down. Though the Soviets kept the details of their atomic energy program
a closely guarded secret, retrospective estimates compiled in the West suggest that
their nuclear stockpile increased from a handful of weapons in 1950 to between
1,700 and 4,500 ten years later.
113
Ironically, this rapid and sustained growth in nuclear weapons production came
at a time when the United States and the Soviet Union were taking the rst serious
steps in nearly a decade to nd common ground for resuming arms control and dis-
armament negotiations. While the JCS had no objection to arms control per se, they
were constantly on guard against ill-considered and unenforceable schemes that
could compromise national security. With memories of the ill-fated Baruch Plan as
a constant reminder, they resisted renewed calls for international control of atomic
energy and turned a cold eye on measures that might stie the development of the
nuclear stockpile, like India’s 1954 call for a moratorium on atmospheric nuclear
testing. Popular and international pressure to curb the “arms race,” however, kept
the arms control and disarmament issue very much alive and compelled the Joint
Chiefs to revisit it more often than they would have preferred.
114
Eisenhower and the JCS agreed that a signicant improvement in the inter-
national situation and concrete demonstrations of Soviet goodwill should precede
major reductions in either conventional or nuclear arms. Convinced that the Sino-
Soviet bloc’s vast reservoir of manpower gave it a distinct advantage in a conict,
they believed that the West’s most eective counter was its lead in technology—
most of all, its superiority in nuclear weapons. The ability of the Soviet Union to
duplicate American achievements, including most recently the H-bomb, and to de-
velop delivery systems comparable to those in the U.S. inventory, may have diluted
the West’s advantage, but it did not, in Eisenhower’s or the chiefs’ view, negate or
lessen the fundamental importance of nuclear weapons to national security. Nuclear
weapons, the JCS argued, gave the United States an “indeterminate advantage” over
the Soviet Union and its allies that should be nourished and preserved at all costs.
115
When the Eisenhower administration took oce in 1953, ongoing multina-
tional disarmament negotiations before the United Nations still concentrated on
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CounCil of War
sweeping proposals to eliminate conventional and nuclear weapons. While Presi-
dent Eisenhower professed a strong personal interest in arms limitation, the ab-
sence of reliable verication measures and the administration’s decision to structure
the country’s defense posture around nuclear weapons raised serious questions of
whether the United States should continue to participate in these kinds of negotia-
tions. Lengthy NSC discussions of this issue yielded the armation in August 1954
that, from a public relations standpoint, the United States had no choice and needed
to be seen as still favoring “a practical arrangement for the limitation of armaments
with the USSR.”
116
Still, the consensus within the administration was that the time
for such agreements had passed and that a more sensible alternative was to pursue
limited objectives. While the Joint Chiefs oered no specic opinion during the
administration’s internal debate, this approach seems to have accorded more closely
with their preferences than any other.
117
Indicative of the administration’s shift in focus was the increasing use of “arms
control” rather than “disarmament” to describe the goals of American policy. The
initial test of the limited-objectives strategy was President Eisenhower’s “Atoms for
Peace” speech to the United Nations in December 1953. Sidestepping the stalled
disarmament debate, the President stressed the peaceful potential of nuclear power
and the need to “hasten the day when fear of the atom will begin to disappear.”
To coordinate peaceful applications, he proposed the creation of an International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a watered-down version of the international con-
trol body envisioned under the Baruch Plan. Based in Vienna, Austria, the IAEA
began operating in 1957.
118
The administration’s most ambitious initiative, unveiled by the President on
July 21, 1955, at the Geneva summit, was the “Open Skies” proposal to allow aerial
photography of U.S. and Soviet military installations. Devoid of any direct arms
control content, the proposal aimed to build trust and condence and to improve
the prospects for verication, which Eisenhower and his senior advisors regarded
as an essential prerequisite to an eective and credible arms control agreement.
119
Though the precise origins of the oer remain vague, Eisenhower claimed that it
arose from studies done by his assistant, Nelson A. Rockefeller, in the weeks lead-
ing up to the conference, on avoiding a surprise attack through a system of mutual
inspections.
120
The threat of a Pearl Harbor with atomic weapons was practically an
obsession within the Eisenhower administration, and over the years it had given rise
to numerous schemes to penetrate the veil of secrecy surrounding Soviet military
programs and possible preparations for a surprise attack. With the exception of an
Air Force–run program to monitor Soviet nuclear experiments, none of these ef-
forts had yielded much useful information.
121
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EiSEnHoWEr anD THE nEW looK
By the mid-1950s, the most promising means of acquiring reliable data on
Soviet capabilities and intentions was the U–2, a photo-reconnaissance plane that
Lockheed Aircraft was building on a crash basis for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Intelligence analysts assumed that orbiting satellites in outer space would someday
provide the bulk of the information they needed. But space-based reconnaissance
satellites seemed years away and, until then, manned aircraft were the best option. A
jet-powered sailplane, the U–2 incorporated design features allowing it to y above
Soviet radar and take pictures with a special high-resolution camera.
122
The Joint
Chiefs knew of the U–2, and through the CJCS, who sat on the program’s inter-
agency oversight committee, they stayed closely abreast of its progress.
123
The development of a relatively invulnerable aerial reconnaissance capability
was increasingly a source of friction between the CIA and the Air Force. Around the
same time as the CIA initiated the U–2, the Air Force came up with a competing
proposal using a Bell Aircraft design known as the X–16. Eisenhower, however, op-
posed putting the military in charge of such a program. His main concern was that
if uniformed personnel ew the planes over the Soviet Union, the United States
might be committing an act of war. He also suspected that if the Defense Depart-
ment got involved and tried to manage it, the project would become “entangled in
the bureaucracy” and mired in “rivalries among the services.”
124
Taking these factors
into account, Eisenhower decided in late November 1954 that the CIA would have
overall authority and that the Air Force would provide assistance as needed to get
the planes operational. Moving quickly to exercise its mandate, the CIA redoubled
security on all aspects of the U–2, both because of its sensitivity and to minimize
what the agency saw as the danger of Air Force encroachment.
125
By early spring 1955, the U–2 program was nearing the point of its rst ight
test. Around this same time, the Technological Capabilities Panel (TCP), a select sci-
entic advisory body chaired by James R. Killian, Jr., president of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, tendered a new, top secret threat assessment to the NSC.
Addressing the problem of surprise attack, the TCP warned of dire consequences
should the Soviets launch a preemptive strike. “For the rst time in history,” it
found, “a striking force could have such power that the rst battle could be the nal
battle, the rst punch a knockout.” To avoid such a calamity, the panel urged the
administration to increase its intelligence gathering, expand its early warning capa-
bilities, and accelerate previously planned improvements in oensive and defensive
strategic capabilities.
126
In a separate annex on intelligence available only to the
President, the CJCS, and a handful of others, the TCP conrmed the U–2 program’s
progress and the potential of a follow-on system involving space-based satellites.
127
Though Rockefeller appears not to have been privy to this annex, he probably
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CounCil of War
suspected its gist from his access to the main report and from having attended a
brieng given by Killian and Edwin H. Land, designer of the U–2’s camera, to the
NSC on March 17, 1955.
128
At the President’s request, Rockefeller organized a special “vulnerabilities pan-
el” made up of social scientists and intelligence experts to assess the prospects for
improved verication. The group met at the Quantico, Virginia, Marine Corps base
in early June 1955, and it was from these discussions that the aerial inspections pro-
posal emerged.
129
With time running short, Rockefeller made no attempt to solicit
JCS views. Instead, he met a few days prior to the Geneva conference in Paris with
Radford and Gruenther to discuss the plan. Both agreed that the United States
stood to gain more than it would lose. According to Secretary of State Dulles, who
was also present, Radford was “in complete accord and indeed enthusiastic.”
130
With foreknowledge of the U–2, Eisenhower presented the Open Skies pro-
posal, certain that he would have access to information derived from overights of
the Soviet Union with or without Soviet cooperation. The Joint Chiefs’ rst op-
portunity to comment as a corporate body did not come until after the conference
when Secretary of Defense Wilson asked them for suggestions on how to imple-
ment the Open Skies proposal. But by then, Soviet Communist Party leader Nikita
Khrushchev had vetoed the plan, making any further action on it rather pointless.
131
The U–2 made its rst test ight in early August 1955 and began reconnais-
sance of the Soviet Union 11 months later, on July 4, 1956. Though never directly
involved in the program, the JCS provided advisory and logistical support and as-
signed a representative to the Ad Hoc Requirements Committee, chaired by the
CIA, which decided the planes’ missions.
132
Little more was heard of the Open Skies
plan and it survives mainly as a footnote to history. At the time, however, it seemed
a daring and ambitious initiative and a possible turning point in the Cold War. “I
wonder,” recalled Ray S. Cline, a veteran intelligence ocer who had been with
Eisenhower at Geneva, “if [the Soviets] ever regretted it in the following years as the
U–2s began doing unilaterally over the USSR what Eisenhower had proposed they
do on a reciprocal basis.”
133
Despite Soviet rejection of the Open Skies proposal, Eisenhower persisted in
exploring ways of mitigating the threat of a surprise attack, and by September 1958
he persuaded the Soviets to participate in a conference of technical experts to ad-
dress the issue.
134
By then, however, the focus of arms control eorts had shifted.
Widespread public fear of radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear testing now
overshadowed the danger of another Pearl Harbor and forced the United States to
contemplate a moratorium, resisted by the JCS, on above-ground testing.
135
At the
same time, with the information gleaned from U–2 ights over the Soviet Union,
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EiSEnHoWEr anD THE nEW looK
the JCS and the President had far better photographic intelligence on Soviet ca-
pabilities than ever before. The threat of surprise attack remained, but increasingly
it took the form of a Soviet long-range missile program of as yet indistinct pro-
portions, against which existing countermeasures were of questionable value. The
strategic environment was again in ux by the mid-to-late 1950s, and as it changed
it put renewed pressure on the chiefs to devise appropriate responses.
Notes
1 Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953–1956 (Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1963), 455.
2 Alice C. Cole et al., eds., The Department of Defense: Documents on Establishment and Or-
ganization, 1944–1978 (Washington, DC: Oce of the Secretary of Defense, Historical
Oce, 1978), 149–159.
3 Robert J. Watson, The Joint Chiefs of Sta and National Policy, 1953–1954 (Washington,
DC: Historical Division, Joint Chiefs of Sta, 1998), 14–15.
4 Eisenhower quoted in Michael T. Isenberg, Shield of the Republic: The United States Navy
in an Era of Cold War and Violent Peace (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 589; Arthur
W. Radford, From Pearl Harbor to Vietnam (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1980),
305–318; and Richard M. Leighton, History of the Oce of the Secretary of Defense: Strategy,
Money, and the New Look, 1953–1956 (Washington, DC: Historical Oce, Oce of the
Secretary of Defense, 2001), 36–37.
5 Maxwell Taylor, The Uncertain Trumpet (New York: Harper & Row, 1959), 21; Paul R.
Schratz, “The Military Services and the New Look, 1953–1961: The Navy,” in David H.
White, ed., Proceedings of the Conference on War and Diplomacy, 1976 (Charleston, SC: The
Citadel, 1976), 141.
6 Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan, August 14, 1953, JCS 1844/151, approved and reissued
with amendments under SM-285-54, April 2, 1954 as JCS 1844/156; and the rst Joint
Strategic Objectives Plan for July 1, 1961 (JSOP-61), April 13, 1957, and Decision on
January 3, 1958, JCS 2143/69. For the development of these plans, see Watson, JCS and
National Policy, 1953–54, 94–109; Byron R. Fairchild and Walter S. Poole, The Joint Chiefs
of Sta and National Policy, 1957–1960 (Washington, DC: Oce of Joint History, Oce
of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, 2000), 36–37; and Poole, “Evolution of the
Joint Strategic Planning System,” 3–5.
7 Fred I. Greenstein, “Dwight D. Eisenhower: Leadership Theorist in the White House,”
in Fred I. Greenstein, ed., Leadership in the Modern Presidency (Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1988), 91.
8 E. Bruce Geelhoed, Charles E. Wilson and Controversy at the Pentagon, 1953 to 1957 (De-
troit: Wayne State University Press, 1979), 19, 37–39; Leighton, 44–45 and passim; and
Dale R. Herspring, The Pentagon and the Presidency: Civil-Military Relations from FDR to
George W. Bush (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), 88–89.
9 Robert R. Bowie and Richard H. Immerman, Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped
an Enduring Cold War Strategy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 83–95; and
Stanley L. Falk, “The National Security Council under Truman, Eisenhower, and
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Kennedy,” Political Science Quarterly 79 (September 1964), 403–434, are excellent overviews
of the NSC during the Eisenhower years. See also John Prados, Keepers of the Keys: A His-
tory of the National Security Council from Truman to Bush (New York: William Morrow and
Co., 1991), 57–65; David J. Rothkopf, Running the World (New York: Public Aairs, 2005),
65–75; and Henry M. Jackson, ed., The National Security Council: Jackson Subcommittee Pa-
pers on Policy–Making at the Presidential Level (New York: Praeger, 1965), 33–38.
10 D. Condit, Test of War, 139–153.
11 Mark W. Clark, From the Danube to the Yalu (New York: Harper & Bros., 1954), 267.
12 James F. Schnabel and Robert J. Watson, History of the Joint Chiefs of Sta: The Joint Chiefs
of Sta and National Policy—The Korean War, 1950–1951 (Washington, DC: Oce of
Joint History, Oce of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, 1998), Pt. 2, 190–193.
Atomic weapons production gures derived from U.S. Department of Defense and
Department of Energy, “Summary of Declassied Nuclear Stockpile Information,”
DOE Oce of Public Aairs, August 22, 1995.
13 Schnabel and Watson, 193.
14 History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons: July 1945 Through September 1977
(Oce of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Atomic Energy, February 1978),
19 (declassied).
15 Memo, CoS, USA to JCS, March 12, 1953, “Overseas Deployment of Toxic Chemical
Agents,” JCS 1837/46; Conrad C. Crane, American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 1950–1953
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000), 153–154; Schnabel and Watson, 192–193.
16 Bradley and Blair, A General’s Life, 658–659; Robert Frank Futrell, The United States Air
Force in Korea, 1950–1953 (Washington, DC: Oce of Air Force History, 1983, rev. ed.),
617–629, 666–667; Crane, American Airpower in Korea, 157–162.
17 Memo, Cutler to Wilson, March 21, 1953, FRUS, 1952–54, XV, Part I, 815.
18 Memo, JCS to SECDEF, March 27, 1953, “Future Course of Action in Connection with
the Situation in Korea,” JCS 1776/367; Schnabel and Watson, 200–203.
19 Memo of Discussion, 143d Meeting of the NSC, May 6, 1953, FRUS, 1952–54, XV, Part
I, 975–978.
20 Memo of Substance of Discussion at State-JCS Meeting, March 27, 1953, ibid., 818.
21 Schnabel and Watson, 203–207; Memo, JCS to SECDEF, May 19, 1953, “Courses of
Action in Connection with Situation in Korea,” FRUS, 1952–54, XV, 1059–64; Memo
of Discussion, 145th Meeting of the NSC, May 20, 1953, ibid., 1064–1068; Bradley and
Blair, A General’s Life, 658–661.
22 Futrell, 666–670.
23 McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years
(New York: Random House, 1988), 242–244. See also Rosey J. Foot, “Nuclear Co-
ercion and the Ending of the Korean Conict,” International Security 13 (1988–1989),
92–112; and Barry M. Blechman and Robert Powell, “What in the Name of God Is
Strategic Superiority?” Political Science Quarterly 97 (Winter 1982–1983), 589–602.
24 Clayton D. Laurie, “A New President, a Better CIA, and an Old War: Eisenhower and
Intelligence Reporting on Korea, 1953,” Studies in Intelligence 54, no. 4 (Unclassied
Extracts, December 2010), 7–8.
165
EiSEnHoWEr anD THE nEW looK
25 Glenn H. Snyder, “The ‘New Look’ of 1953,” in Warner R. Schilling, Paul Y. Ham-
mond, and Glenn H. Snyder, Strategy, Politics, and Defense Budgets (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1962), is still the best treatment of the origins of Eisenhower’s defense
policy. See also Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, 127–163; Saki Dockrill, Eisenhower’s
New Look National Security Policy, 1953–61 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 19–47;
and Samuel F. Wells, Jr., “The Origins of Massive Retaliation,” in Robert H. Connery
and Demetrious Caraley, eds., Nuclear Security and Nuclear Strategy (New York: Academy
of Political Science, 1983), 52–73.
26 Notes by L.A. Minnich, Jr., on Legislative Leadership Meeting, April 30, 1953, Eisen-
hower Papers, Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary, Eisenhower Library.
27 Leighton, 148–151; Watson, JCS and National Policy, 1953–54, 11–14.
28 Interview with General Andrew J. Goodpaster, Jr., USA, by Malcolm S. McDonald,
April 10, 1982, Eisenhower Library Oral History Collection.
29 Watson, JCS and National Policy, 1953–54, 17–20; Leighton, 151–167.
30 SE–46, “Probable Long Term Development of the Soviet Bloc and Western Power
Positions,” July 8, 1953, in Scott A. Koch, ed., Selected Estimates on the Soviet Union,
1950–1959 (Washington, DC: History Sta, Central Intelligence Agency, 1993), 159.
31 David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 307. The rst test of a deliverable U.S. ther-
monuclear weapon took place on March 1, 1954.
32 See, for example, Memo, CJCS to SECDEF, July 14, 1955, “Comparison U.S. and USSR
Technical and Production Capabilities,” Nathan F. Twining Papers, box 81, 1955 SecAF
(1) folder, Library of Congress.
33 Memo of Discussion, 143d Meeting of the National Security Council, May 6, 1953,
Eisenhower Papers, Ann Whitman File, NSC series, Eisenhower Library.
34 Eisenhower quoted in Memo of Conference with the President, May 24, 1956, Eisen-
hower Papers, Ann Whitman File, Diary Series, Eisenhower Library.
35 NSC 162/2, October 30, 1953, “Review of Basic National Security Policy,” FRUS,
1952–54, II, Pt. 1, 577–97.
36 Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 449.
37 Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, 164.
38 U.S. Department of Defense, National Defense Budget Estimates for FY 1988/1989 (Wash-
ington, DC: Oce of the Assistant Secretary of Defense [Comptroller], May 1987),
68–69, 122.
39 See D. Condit, 285–305; and Wells, “Origins of Massive Retaliation,” 68–72.
40 National Defense Budget Estimates FY 1988/89, 76, 107.
41 Marcella Size Knaack, ed., Encyclopedia of U.S. Air Force Aircraft and Missile Systems, vol.
II, Post–World War II Bombers, 1945–1973 (Washington, DC: Oce of Air Force History,
1988), 292–293 and passim.
42 John Prados, The Soviet Estimate: U.S. Intelligence Analysis and Russian Military Strength
(New York: Dial Press, 1982), 38–45; Lawrence Freedman, U.S. Intelligence and the Soviet
Strategic Threat (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986, 2d ed.), 65–67.
166
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43 David Alan Rosenberg, “The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American
Strategy, 1945–1950,” International Security 7 (Spring 1983), 3–71, gives in-depth treat-
ment of SAC’s problems. See also William S. Borgiasz, The Strategic Air Command: Evolu-
tion and Consolidation of Nuclear Forces, 1945–1955 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996), 128–133
and passim.
44 Robert W. Love, Jr., History of the U.S. Navy, 1942–1991 (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole
Books, 1992), 378; Lawrence S. Kaplan, Ronald D. Landa, and Edward J. Drea, History
of the Oce of the Secretary of Defense: The McNamara Ascendancy, 1961–1965 (Washington,
DC: Historical Oce, Oce of the Secretary of Defense, 2006), 496.
45 George W. Baer, One Hundred Years of Sea Power: The U.S. Navy, 1890–1990 (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1994), 334–335.
46 Love, 372–379.
47 See Matthew B. Ridgway, Soldier (New York: Harper, 1956), 286–294.
48 Memo, Discussion at 176th Meeting of the NSC, December 16, 1953, Eisenhower Pa-
pers, Ann Whitman File, NSC Series, Eisenhower Library.
49 John B. Wilson, Maneuver and Firepower: The Evolution of Divisions and Separate Brigades
(Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1998), 250–254.
50 Goodpaster Memcon, October 2, 1956, FRUS, 1955–57, IV, 100.
51 A.J. Bacevich, The Pentomic Era: The U.S. Army Between Korea and Vietnam (Washington,
DC: National Defense University Press, 1986), 103–127 and passim; Ingo Trauschweizer,
The Cold War U.S. Army: Building Deterrence for Limited War (Lawrence: University Press
of Kansas, 2008), 81–113; and Wilson, Maneuver and Firepower, 263–290. Army sources
are inconsistent and give various gures for the size of pentomic divisions, ranging
from 11,000 to 13,500.
52 Leighton, 478–482; Trauschweizer, 56.
53 NIE 91, “Probable Developments in Indochina Through Mid-1954,” June 4, 1953,
FRUS, 1952–54, XIII, 592–602.
54 Special Estimate prepared by the CIA (SE-52), “Probable Consequences in Non–
Communist Asia of Certain Possible Developments in Indochina Before Mid–1954,”
November 16, 1953, ibid., 866–867.
55 Watson, JCS and National Policy, 1953–54, 248–251; and Joint Chiefs of Sta and the First
Indochina War, 1947–1954 (Washington, DC: Oce of Joint History, Joint Chiefs of Sta,
2004), 152.
56 “Report by Sta Planners to the Military Representatives of the Five Powers on the
Conference Held 21 Sept–2 Oct 1953 at Pearl Harbor,” n.d., and Message, JCS 956811
to CINCPAC, February 9, 1954, both in JCS 1992/274; Message, JCS 955782 to COM-
SAC, January 19, 1954, JCS 2118/62.
57 See John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries Into the History of the Cold War (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 130.
58 Memo of Discussion, 179th Meeting of the NSC, January 8, 1954, FRUS, 1952–54,
XIII, 947–954; NSC 5405 (formerly NSC 177), January 16, 1954, “U.S. Objections and
Courses of Action with Respect to Southeast Asia,” ibid., 971–976.
59 JCS and Indochina War, 147.
167
EiSEnHoWEr anD THE nEW looK
60 “Report by the President’s Special Committee on Indochina,” March 2, 1954, FRUS,
1952–54, XIII, 1116.
61 Memo, Radford to Eisenhower, March 24, 1954, quoted in JCS and Indochina War, 155.
See also Ronald H. Spector, Advice and Support: The Early Years, 1941–1960 (Washington,
DC: Center of Military History, 1983), 191–194.
62 Laurent Césari and Jacques de Folin, “Military Necessity, Political Impossibility: The
French Viewpoint on Operation Vautour,” in Lawrence S. Kaplan, Denise Artaud, and
Mark R. Rubin, eds., Dien Bien Phu and the Crisis in Franco–American Relations, 1954–
1955 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1990), 108–109. Ely’s recollections are the
only surviving record of this meeting.
63 Spector, Advice and Support, 200–202; Watson, JCS and National Policy, 1953–54, 253.
64 Memo, Ridgway to JCS, April 6, 1954, “Indo–China,” FRUS, 1952–54, XIII, 1270.
65 Memo, Discussion at 209th Meeting of the NSC, August 5, 1954, FRUS, 1952–54, II,
706–707.
66 Memo, CJCS to SECDEF, September 11, 1954, “U.S. Policy Regarding O–Shore Is-
lands,” FRUS, 1954, XIV, 598–600.
67 Memo of Discussion, 221st Meeting NSC, November 2, 1954, FRUS, 1952–54, XIV, 836.
68 Memo of Discussion, NSC Meeting, August 5, 1954, ibid., 519.
69 See Matthew Jones, After Hiroshima: The United States, Race and Nuclear Weapons in Asia,
1945–1965 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 240–288.
70 Memo, CJCS to SECDEF, September 11, 1954, “U.S. policy regarding o-shore Is-
lands held by Chinese Nationalist Forces, NSC Action 1206–f,” FRUS, 1952–54, XIV,
598–609.
71 FRUS, 1952–54, XIV, 619, 699. See also Jones, After Hiroshima, 269–273; Gaddis, Long
Peace, 134–135; H.W. Brands, Jr., “Testing Massive Retaliation: Credibility and Crisis
Management in the Taiwan Strait,” International Security 12 (Spring 1988), 124–151; and
Bennett C. Rushko, “Eisenhower, Dulles and the Quemoy–Matsu Crisis, 1954–1955,”
Political Science Quarterly 96 (Fall 1981), 465–480.
72 Memo of Discussion, 240th Meeting NSC, March 10, 1955, FRUS, 1955–57, II, 349;
Memo of Discussion, 243d Meeting NSC, March 31, 1955, ibid., 432–433; Kenneth W.
Condit, The Joint Chiefs of Sta and National Policy, 1955–1956 (Washington, DC: Histori-
cal Oce, Joint Sta, 1992), 205–206.
73 Memo, JCS to SECDEF, March 27, 1955, “Improvement of the Military Situation in
the Far East in the Light of the Situation Now Existing in the Formosa Area,” JCS
1966/100; FRUS, 1955–57, II, 406–408.
74 Diary entry, March 26, 1955, in Ferrell, ed., Eisenhower Diaries, 296; Memo, Eisenhower
to John Foster Dulles, April 5, 1955, “Formosa,” FRUS, 1955–57, II, 445–450. Emphasis
in original.
75 MFR by Cutler, March 11, 1955, “Meeting in President’s Oce,” ibid., 358–359.
76 Message, Hoover to Robertson and Radford, April 22, 1955, ibid., 501–502.
77 Quoted in Dockrill, Eisenhower’s National Security Policy, 112. See also Gordon H.
Chang, “To the Nuclear Brink: Eisenhower, Dulles, and the Quemoy–Matsu Crisis,”
International Security 12 (Spring 1988), 96–123.
168
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78 Fairchild and Poole, 209–215.
79 See Richard K. Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises (Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1977), 106–107.
80 MC 48, “Report by the Military Committee on the Most Eective Pattern of Military
Strength for the Next Few Years,” November 22, 1954, approved December 17, 1954,
NATO Strategy Documents, 1949–1969, 246. For NATO nuclear stockpile gures, see
below, chapter 8.
81 Stanley R. Sloan, NATO’s Future: Toward a New Transatlantic Bargain (Washington, DC:
National Defense University Press, 1985), 74–76 and passim.
82 “Defence Policy and Global Strategy: Report by the Chiefs of Sta,” June 17, 1952,
reprinted in full in Alan Macmillan and John Baylis, eds., A Reassessment of the Global
Strategy Paper of 1952 (College Park, MD: Center for Internal and Security Studies at
Maryland, 1994), 19–63.
83 Joint Planners’ Minute, February 6, 1953, quoted in Dockrill, Eisenhower’s National Secu-
rity Policy, 86.
84 Memo, JCS to SECDEF, September 11, 1953, “Certain European Issues Aecting the
United States,” JCS 2073/634.
85 Robert A. Wampler, NATO Strategic Planning and Nuclear Weapons, 1950–1957 (College
Park, MD: Center for International Security Studies at Maryland, 1990), 10–11; Watson,
JCS and National Policy, 1953–54, 290–291, 298; Memo, CoS/AF to JCS, August 31, 1953,
“Certain European Issues Aecting the United States,” JCS 2073/633.
86 Message, Acting SecState to U.S. Embassy France, October 15, 1953, FRUS, 1952–54, V,
444–446.
87 Memo, JCS to SECDEF, October 22, 1953, “U.S. Guidance for 1953 Annual Review,”
JCS 2073/671.
88 Watson, JCS and National Policy, 1953–54, 299–301.
89 Wampler, 12–13.
90 For a summary, see SG 241/3, “Report by the Military Committee to the NSC on the
Most Eective Pattern of NATO Military Strength for the Next Few Years,” August 19,
1954, enclosure to JCS 2073/900.
91 Robert S. Jordan, ed., Generals in International Politics: NATO’s Supreme Allied Com-
mander, Europe (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1987), 57–60; Steven
L. Rearden, “American Nuclear Strategy and the Defense of Europe, 1954–1959,” in
David H. White, ed., Proceedings of the Conference on War and Diplomacy, 1976 (Charleston,
SC: The Citadel, 1976), 133–138; Watson, JCS and National Policy, 1953–54, 305–306.
92 Memo, JCS to SECDEF, September 24, 1954, “NATO Capabilities Studies,” with at-
tachment, JCS 2073/900.
93 NIE 11-5-54, June 7, 1954, “Soviet Capabilities and Main Lines of Policy Through Mid-
1959,” in Scott A. Koch, ed., Selected Estimates on the Soviet Union, 1950–1959 (Washing-
ton, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1993), 209–211.
94 Memo, JCS to SECDEF, June 11, 1954, “Use of Atomic Weapons,” JCS 2073/823.
95 NSC 151/2, December 4, 1953, “Disclosure of Atomic Information to Allied Coun-
tries,” FRUS, 1952–54, II, 1256–1284.
169
EiSEnHoWEr anD THE nEW looK
96 Richard G. Hewlett and Jack M. Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 1953–1961: Eisenhower
and the Atomic Energy Commission (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989),
113–143.
97 “The Basis for the U.S. Position on the Provision of U.S. Atomic Weapons for the
Common Defense of the NATO Area,” Appendix to Enclosure A to Memo, CJCS to
JCS, November 9, 1957, “Provision of Atomic Weapons to Non–U.S. NATO Forces,”
JCS 2019/257. For a more detailed discussion, see Fairchild and Poole, 104–105.
98 The most ardent advocate of giving NATO an independent nuclear capability was
Gruenther’s successor as SACEUR, General Lauris Norstad. See Robert S. Jordan,
“Norstad: Can the SACEUR Be Both European and American?” in Jordan, ed., Gener-
als in International Politics, 79–82.
99 Fairchild and Poole, 104–112.
100 See Richard L. Kugler, Commitment to Purpose: How Alliance Partnership Won the Cold War
(Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1993), 98.
101 John S. Dueld, Power Rules: The Evolution of NATO’s Conventional Force Posture (Stan-
ford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), 141–142; Kugler, 92.
102 Fairchild and Poole, 114–115; James L. Richardson, Germany and the Atlantic Alliance (Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), 40–48; Stanley M. Karanowski, The German Army
and NATO Strategy (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1982), 43–49.
103 Dueld, 137–42.
104 Kugler, 89, 95.
105 K. Condit, 134–135.
106 See Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan July 1, 1955 to July 1, 1956, March 2, 1955, approved
April 13, 1955, JCS 1844/178.
107 Leighton, 664–666; Discussion at 307th Meeting of the NSC, December 21, 1956,
Whitman File, DDE Papers.
108 FRUS, 1955–57, IV, 93–95, 99–102; Robert J. Watson, History of the Oce of the Secretary
of Defense: Into the Missile Age, 1956–1960 (Washington, DC: Historical Oce, Oce of
the Secretary of Defense, 1997), 501–502.
109 See for example the 1955 study (WSEG 12) done by the Weapons Systems Evaluation
Group, summarized in Wampler, 19–21; and Radford’s Brieng on WSEG Report No.
12, undated, available at <http://www.alternatewars.com/WW3/WW3_Documents/
JCS/WSEG_12.htm>.
110 Raymond L. Gartho, “Estimating Soviet Military Force Levels,” International Security
14 (Spring 1990), 93–116.
111 James D. Marchio, “U.S. Intelligence Assessments and the Reliability of Non–Soviet
Warsaw Pact Armed Forces, 1946–89,” Studies in Intelligence 51 (Extracts, December 19,
2007), 17–18.
112 David Alan Rosenberg, “U.S. Nuclear War Planning, 1945–1960,” in Desmond Ball and
Jerey Richelson, eds., Strategic Nuclear Targeting (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1986), 41.
113 U.S. stockpile gures from U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Energy,
“Declassied Nuclear Stockpile Information,” DOE Oce of Public Aairs, August
170
CounCil of War
22, 1995. Soviet stockpile gures are those compiled by Albert Wohlstetter, summarized
in Thomas B. Cochran et al., Nuclear Weapons Databook, vol. IV, Soviet Nuclear Weapons
(New York: Harper & Row, 1989), 25.
114 Watson, JCS and National Policy, 1953–54, 193–194.
115 Memo, JCS to SECDEF, April 30, 1954, “A Proposal for a Moratorium on Future Test-
ing of Nuclear Weapons,” JCS 1731/98.
116 NSC 5422/2, August 7, 1954, “Guidelines Under NSC 162/2 for FY 1956,” FRUS,
1952–54, II, 717.
117 For the gist of JCS thinking, see Memo, JCS to SECDEF, June 23, 1954, “Negotiations
with the Soviet Bloc,” FRUS, 1952–54, II, 680–686; and Watson, JCS and National Policy,
1953–54, 197–198.
118 “Address Before the General Assembly of the United Nations on Peaceful Uses of
Atomic Energy,” December 8, 1953, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States:
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1960), 813–822.
119 John Prados, “Open Skies and Closed Minds,” in Günter Bischof and Saki Dockrill,
eds., Cold War Respite: The Geneva Summit of 1955 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Uni-
versity Press, 2000), 216–220.
120 Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 519–520.
121 Gaddis, Long Peace, 197.
122 Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, The CIA and the U–2 Program, 1954–
1974 (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1998), 24–37.
123 Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956–1961 (Garden City,
NY: Doubleday, 1965), 544–545. The other members of the oversight panel were the
Secretaries of State and Defense, the Director of Central Intelligence, and Richard M.
Bissell, Jr., of the CIA, the program’s manager.
124 Eisenhower quoted in James R. Killian, Jr., Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower (Cam-
bridge: MIT Press, 1977), 82.
125 Pedlow and Welzenbach, CIA and the U–2, 36–37; Richard M. Bissell, Jr., Reections of
a Cold Warrior (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 108–110. See also William E.
Burrows, “Satellite Reconnaissance and the Establishment of a National Technical In-
telligence Apparatus,” in Walter T. Hitchcock, ed., The Intelligence Revolution: A Historical
Perspective (Washington, DC: Oce of Air Force History, 1991), 233–250, which traces
the evolution of the Air Force–CIA rivalry.
126 Technological Capabilities Panel of the Science Advisory Committee, Oce of De-
fense Mobilization, “Meeting the Threat of Surprise Attack,” (MS, February 14, 1955),
Vol. I, 5, 14, Eisenhower Papers, Ann Whiteman File, NSC Series, DDEL.
127 Killian, 79–82; R. Cargill Hall, “The Eisenhower Administration and the Cold War:
Framing American Astronautics to Serve National Security,” Prologue 27 (Spring 1995),
62.
128 Memo by J. Patrick Coyne, March 18, 1955, “Discussion at 241st Meeting of the NSC,
March 17, 1955,” Eisenhower Papers, Ann Whitman File, NSC Series, DDEL.
129 Prados, “Open Skies,” 220–221.
130 Message, Dulles to State Department, July 21, 1955, FRUS, 1955–57, V, 4 3 4 .
171
EiSEnHoWEr anD THE nEW looK
131 Philip Taubman, Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America’s Space
Espionage (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 141–142; K. Condit, 97–98.
132 Anne Karalekas, History of the Central Intelligence Agency, S. Report. No. 94–755 (Wash-
ington, DC: GPO, 1976), 59.
133 Ray S. Cline, The CIA Under Reagan, Bush and Casey (Washington, DC: Acropolis
Books, 1981), 181.
134 Held in Geneva between November 10 and December 7, 1958, the conference was
largely unproductive. While the Soviets’ rst concern was the threat of a surprise attack
coming from West Germany, the U.S. delegation concentrated on the danger posed
by Soviet strategic systems. See Robin Ranger, Arms and Politics, 1958–1978 (Toronto:
Macmillan of Canada, 1979), 31–39.
135 JCSM-337-59 to SECDEF, August 21, 1959, “Study of Nuclear Tests,” JCS 2179/183.
General Nathan F. Twining, USAF, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Sta, 1957–1960
173
Chapter 6
Change and
Continuity
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union stunned the world by sending an articial satel-
lite, “Sputnik I,” into orbit around the Earth. This achievement was the rst of its kind
and followed the successful launch of a Soviet multistage intercontinental ballistic
missile (ICBM) the previous August. It would be more than a year before the United
States successfully tested an ICBM.
1
Suggesting a higher level of Soviet technological
development than previously assumed, Sputnik I and the Soviet ICBM cast doubt
on a key assumption that had shaped U.S. national security policy since World War
II—that America’s supremacy in science and technology gave it a decisive edge over
the Soviet Union. Not since the Soviets tested their rst atomic bomb in 1949 had the
United States seemed so unprepared and vulnerable. According to James R. Killian, Jr.,
President Eisenhower’s assistant for science and technology, Sputnik I “created a crisis
of condence that swept the country like a windblown forest re.”
2
A dramatic wake-up call, Sputnik was actually one of several indications of the
larger strategic transformation taking place. Around the world, other forces were at
work laying the foundations for a new international order in which the underdevel-
oped countries of the Third World would play a larger and more active part. The most
striking changes were those resulting from the end of European colonialism and a
rising tide of Third World nationalism and socioeconomic discontent. Starting in Asia,
the process had spread to the Middle East and Africa by the mid to late 1950s, creat-
ing new security problems as it went along. Meanwhile, a surge of anti-Americanism
in Latin America presented fresh challenges there. Most Third World countries were
too preoccupied with internal diculties or regional rivalries to take much interest in
the ongoing ideological struggle between East and West. But they were not averse to
playing o one superpower against another if they saw it to their advantage.
During this period of transformation, the need for reliable military advice and
sound strategic planning continued to place heavy demands on the Joint Chiefs of
Sta. Nonetheless, they were slow to rise to the challenge. Quarreling over Ser-
vice functions and the allocation of resources continued to hobble their ability to
174
COUNCIL OF WAR
174
address problems of a cross-Service nature and to present consensus recommenda-
tions. Rarely did the JCS speak with a single voice on key issues of national strategy
and military policy. Despite extensive organizational and administrative reforms in-
troduced in 1958, the JCS system was slow to embrace more ecient and eective
ways. While there was some progress toward improving operational planning, clash-
es and disagreements among the chiefs persisted. Frustrated, the President looked
elsewhere for advice in addressing key politico-military problems.
Evolution of thE MissilE PrograM
The most urgent question raised by Sputnik was whether the United States was as
far behind the Soviets as it seemed. When the Eisenhower administration adopted the
New Look in 1953, it assumed that while the Soviets would continue to modernize
their armed forces, they would be in no position to rival U.S. superiority in nuclear
weapons or sophisticated delivery systems for up to 5 years. The initial challenge to
this assumption came almost immediately with the detonation of the Soviet H-bomb
in the summer of 1953, a smaller-yield but more usable weapon than the H-bomb as-
semblies in the U.S. arsenal.
3
A year later, the rst signs appeared that the Soviets might
be developing a long-range heavy bomber force signicantly larger than previously
believed. Fears of a “bomber gap” eventually proved unfounded. But the episode drew
attention to a potentially serious weaknesses in the administration’s defense posture
and its ability to assess Soviet capabilities. Never again would the Eisenhower admin-
istration be quite so sure of its long-term strategic superiority over the Soviets.
By the mid-1950s, concern had shifted from the Soviet Union’s long-range
bombers to its ballistic missile program. In assessing the Soviet missile eort, the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Radford, warned that it could pose “a ma-
jor danger” to the continental United States and give Moscow sucient leverage
“to force a showdown” by the end of the decade.
4
To counter that threat, the JCS
agreed that the United States needed to step up its development of oensive ballistic
missiles, but they were at odds over the objective size and conguration of the U.S.
missile force. Seeking to check further growth in the Air Force share of the budget,
Army and Navy leaders favored a dispersed missile force tailored to a variety of stra-
tegic and tactical missions. For deterrence, they argued, the required force could be
kept fairly small as long as it had a high degree of survivability against a Soviet attack
and the ability to inict unacceptable area damage against Soviet cities in retaliation,
in eect a posture of “minimum deterrence” resting on “countervalue” targeting.
The Air Force took a more expansive view of missile requirements. Dismissing
minimum deterrence as ineectual, its leaders argued for a “counterforce” posture
175
CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
composed of bombers and missiles that accorded rst priority to the destruction of So-
viet war-making capabilities. Air Force planners expected manned bombers to remain
the principal weapon for this purpose for the foreseeable future, partly owing to a short-
age of funds for missile development and also because the size and weight of nuclear
weapons limited their application.
5
But with the conrmation in February 1954 by
the Teapot Committee, an Air Force scientic advisory panel, that high-yield thermo-
nuclear warheads could be miniaturized, Air Force attitudes began to change in favor of
giving ballistic missiles a larger role.
6
Based on the Teapot Committee’s ndings, Trevor
Gardner, the Secretary of the Air Force’s special assistant for research and development
(R&D), projected an initial operational capability (IOC) of 100 ICBM-type missiles
deployed at 20 launch sites around the United States by the end of the decade.
7
Limited intelligence left U.S. policymakers guessing about the status of Soviet
ballistic missile development for most of the 1950s. Citing Moscow’s reliance on
German scientists to bolster native resources, the Intelligence Community rou-
tinely insisted that the Soviets could one day match the United States in missile
technology. But lacking hard data, intelligence analysts hedged the date when the
Soviet strategic missile program would pose a direct danger. Early estimates, cali-
brated from the progress in U.S. research programs, placed the IOC for a Soviet
ICBM in the 1960–1963 timeframe.
8
But as they gradually pieced together the
available information, analysts became concerned that the Soviets might be catch-
ing up faster than expected. Prior to the availability of U–2 photographs, practi-
cally everything the Joint Chiefs and senior policymakers knew about the Soviet
missile program derived from a worldwide complex of seismic and infrared sensors
built and maintained by the National Security Agency (NSA).
9
By the mid-1950s,
the NSA had detected that the Soviets were testing an intermediate range ballistic
missile (IRBM), which many scientists considered the rst step in developing an
ICBM. In a national intelligence estimate (NIE 11-5-57) issued a few months prior
to the Soviet ICBM test of August 1957 and Sputnik, the Intelligence Community
predicted that by 1959 the Soviets “probably” would have an IRBM that could
strike targets in Western Europe and Japan, and an ICBM prototype for limited
operational use against the continental United States by 1960−1961.
10
Accepting the need to accelerate U.S. missile programs, President Eisenhower
decided in September 1955 to make the development of both an ICBM and an
IRBM a top priority, but set no target date for acquiring either capability.
11
Later,
the Air Force projected that it could have an IRBM ready for deployment in Eu-
rope and the Near East by mid-1959 and a small operational force of ICBMs by
March 1961.
12
Eisenhower was a committed proponent of ballistic missiles, but not
a very enthusiastic one. Hoping to avoid a costly missile competition with the
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Soviets, he downplayed the need to preserve strategic superiority and publicly spoke
of settling for a posture of “adequacy” or “suciency” in overall nuclear capabilities.
Though the changes he had in mind were more matters of emphasis than substance,
some observers detected the emergence of a “new” New Look that would no lon-
ger strive to maintain strategic superiority over the Soviets.
13
On several occasions,
Eisenhower denigrated the military value of ballistic missiles and stated that he
backed them only for their “psychological and political signicance.”
14
Other times,
he questioned whether much more than a demonstration capability was needed and
oered no objection when Secretary of Defense Wilson once estimated that, given
the high yield of thermonuclear weapons, “one hundred and fty well-targeted
missiles might be enough.” By and large, Eisenhower regarded long-range ballistic
missiles as redundant. “We must remember,” he told associates, “that we have a great
number of bombardment aircraft programmed, and great numbers of tankers that
are now being built, and we must consider how to use them.”
15
Eisenhower cautioned against overemphasis on ballistic missiles not only be-
cause they were a new and unproven technology, but also because he saw as yet no
clear-cut assignment of Service responsibilities for their development and ultimate
use. His main regret, he later admitted, was that he had allowed missile development
to remain under Service control and had not made it a direct responsibility of the
Secretary of Defense.
16
Under the original assignment of functions approved by
Secretary of Defense Wilson in November 1955, the Air Force had developmental
authority for two rst-generation liquid-propellant ICBMs (the Atlas and a backup,
the Titan) and an IRBM (the Thor). The Army and Navy were to share responsibil-
ity for a fourth missile, a 1,500-mile liquid-propellant medium-range ballistic mis-
sile (MRBM) named Jupiter, for launch from land or at sea.
17
Almost immediately, the Services quarreled over the allocation of resources and ac-
cess to production facilities. Strife between the Air Force and Army was especially acute.
Meanwhile, the Navy lost interest in Jupiter and within a year had shifted its attention
to a new missile, the solid-propellant Polaris. More versatile than the Jupiter, the Polaris
could be carried aboard submarines and launched from underwater, making the system
practically invulnerable. Its principal drawbacks were a limited range (1,000 to 1,500
miles), a relatively small warhead, and questionable accuracy and reliability. Recognizing
the advantages of solid-propellant missiles, the Air Force began developing several of its
own, including a second-generation ICBM known as Minuteman.
18
The Joint Chiefs ordinarily conned their participation in R&D to setting gen-
eral goals and identifying broad categories for exploration. After the1949 Navy and Air
Force clash over airpower, the JCS shied away from participating in decisions assign-
ing specic weapons-development responsibilities to one Service or another. But in
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CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
August 1956, with the missile program degenerating into a free-for-all, Secretary
Wilson requested JCS help in sorting out functional responsibilities. Not since
the Key West and Newport conferences of 1948 had a Secretary of Defense re-
lied so heavily on the JCS to help him resolve a roles-and-missions question of
such importance.
19
Wilson was, of course, asking a lot, since the Joint Chiefs (except the Chair-
man) served both as military advisors to the Secretary and the President and as
the uniformed heads of their Services, in which capacity they were under a moral
obligation to defend the interests of their organizations. The ensuing deliberations
yielded no consensus that might have pointed to a long-term solution, but they did
nd the Chairman, the Air Force, and the Navy in basic agreement that three stra-
tegic missile programs were too many and that the logical course was to eliminate
or curb the Army program. Secretary Wilson agreed and in November 1956 set a
range limit (loosely enforced) of 200 miles on future Army missiles and turned the
Jupiter over to the Air Force.
20
While Wilson’s clarication of Service functions restored a semblance of order to
the ballistic missile program, it left the door open to a resumption of conict between
the Air Force and Navy for control of the strategic bombardment mission. Clearly,
the Air Force was in no immediate danger of being displaced. Nor was the Navy’s
Polaris force, once it became operational in the 1960s, apt to rival the Strategic Air
Command’s reach and striking power. But as the Services proceeded down the path
laid out in the mid-1950s, the country was again heading toward the development of
two strategic forces—one run by the Air Force and the other by the Navy—with all
the overlapping and duplication of eort separate systems implied. The JCS had yet
to address this issue, and, if the past were any guide, they would do everything in their
collective power to avoid it. Yet sooner or later the day of reckoning would arrive.
thE gaithEr rEPort
With the U.S. missile program mired in inter-Service rivalry, feuding, and confu-
sion, the task of formulating an eective response to Sputnik became all the more
challenging. As it happened, it took an outside inquiry by a group of experts known
as the Gaither Committee to break the logjam. The ndings, summarized in a top
secret report, reached the President and NSC in early November 1957, barely a
month after the rst Sputnik. Taking a broad-brush approach, the Gaither Commit-
tee conrmed the need for vigorous steps to counter Soviet progress in space and
ballistic missiles and suggested that U.S. vulnerability might be even greater than
previously supposed.
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The Joint Chiefs resented intrusions by outsiders like the Gaither Committee but
were virtually powerless to do much about it. The panel’s origins lay in growing pressure
from congressional Democrats who wanted the Eisenhower administration to do more
in the area of civil defense against the threat of a Soviet nuclear attack. At issue was a
Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) plan, presented to the President in Janu-
ary 1957, urging large-scale civil defense improvements, including a $32 billion nation-
wide shelter program in lieu of a less expensive evacuation plan.
21
Some administration
ocials dismissed the shelters as a diversion of resources; others, including former Secre-
tary of the Army Gordon Gray, now the director of the Oce of Defense Mobilization
(ODM), considered them a valuable contribution to deterrence.
22
Adopting a neutral position, the Joint Chiefs concurred in the NSC Planning
Board’s nding that the shelter system needed further study. Seizing on this ap-
proach, President Eisenhower arranged in the spring of 1957 with H. Rowan Gaith-
er, a West Coast attorney and chairman of the boards of the Ford Foundation and
the RAND Corporation, to conduct an inquiry under ODM auspices. Ocially
designated the Security Resources Panel (SRP), the group was commonly known
as the Gaither Committee. After Gaither fell ill in August, Robert C. Sprague, an
electronics company executive who specialized in air and missile defense problems,
and former Deputy Secretary of Defense William C. Foster, co-chaired the panel.
23
Soon after agreeing to head the eort, Gaither persuaded the President’s na-
tional security advisor, Robert Cutler, to expand the scope of the panel’s investigation.
Gaither argued that to place civil defense in its proper perspective, he and his com-
mittee needed to examine the whole range of the country’s preparations for oensive
and defensive strategic warfare, much as the Killian Report had done 2 years ear-
lier.
24
Armed with an expanded writ, the SRP launched a wholesale inquiry into the
country’s strategic posture. Oering limited cooperation, the JCS turned down the
committee’s request for a list of documents but did provide three briengs—a general
review of the Soviet threat, a status report on continental defenses, and an analysis of
U.S. retaliatory capabilities.
25
For most of its data, the committee relied on the military
Services, the Intelligence Community, and government “think tanks.” James Phinney
Baxter, the president of Williams College and author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning
book, Scientists Against Time (1947), the ocial history of the Oce of Scientic Re-
search and Development in World War II, oversaw the preparation of the nal report.
Unable to devote full time to the project because of his college duties, Baxter
depended on two associates: Colonel George A. Lincoln, USA, a senior planner on
General Marshall’s sta in World War II and since 1947 a member of the U.S. Mili-
tary Academy faculty, and Paul H. Nitze, who as director of the State Department’s
Policy Planning Sta helped write NSC 68 and orchestrate the Truman rearmament
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CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
program. Lincoln was detached and impartial; Nitze was anything but. An outspoken
critic of the Eisenhower administration’s heavy reliance on nuclear weapons, he was a
leading proponent of the emerging doctrine of exible response that would reshape
American defense policy during the Kennedy-Johnson administrations.
26
Written in a style reminiscent of NSC 68, the Gaither Report examined the
entire panorama of U.S.-Soviet relations. The heart of the report was its assessment
of the ominous progress of the Soviet ICBM program, which in the committee’s
estimation exposed U.S. retaliatory forces to unprecedented risk. “By 1959,” the
report warned, “the USSR may be able to launch an attack with its ICBMs carry-
ing megaton warheads, against which the Strategic Air Command (SAC) will be
almost completely vulnerable under present programs.” To address this threat, the
committee recommended a $44 billion eort spread over 5 years—$19 billion to
expand and upgrade oensive capabilities and $25 billion for active and passive de-
fense programs—with future allocations giving roughly equal priority to oensive
and defensive capabilities. Even with these improvements, the committee doubted
that the United States could achieve complete security. Looking into the future,
it predicted “a continuing race between the oense and the defense” and “no end
to the technical moves and countermoves” to gain an advantage. Only through “a
dependable agreement” limiting arms and “other measures for the preservation of
peace” did the panel see any prospect of ending this vicious cycle.
27
Despite the Gaither Report’s foreboding tone, neither President Eisenhow-
er nor his military advisors saw cause for panic. U–2 photographs (which were
o-limits to the Gaither Committee because of their sensitivity) showed a Soviet
ICBM capability limited to a single above-ground launch pad at a previously unde-
tected test site near Tyuratam.
28
Whether this information would have changed the
Gaither Committee’s ndings is uncertain. But it made a strong impression on the
President’s thinking. “Until an enemy has enough operational capability to destroy
most of our bases simultaneously and thus prevent retaliation by us,” Eisenhower
believed, “our deterrent remains eective.”
29
Having access to the same intelligence
as the President, the Joint Chiefs agreed that the Gaither Committee had exagger-
ated the threat. Finding little new or unusual in the report, they dismissed its recom-
mendations as excessive, overdrawn, and probably underpriced.
30
thE “MissilE gaP” and BMd ControvErsiEs
Though classied top secret, key ndings of the Gaither Report soon “leaked” to
the press, giving rise to speculation that the United States had fallen uncomfortably
behind the Soviet Union in missile technology. Under pressure from Congress and
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the media, President Eisenhower grudgingly requested small increases for missile de-
velopment and other measures mentioned in the report. Hoping to keep critics at bay,
he merely whetted their appetite for more. The ensuing controversy, known as the
“missile gap,” dogged the Eisenhower administration until it left oce. A serious im-
pediment to maintaining stability in military spending, the missile gap also became a
major issue in the 1960 Presidential campaign. In fact, Soviet space and missile accom-
plishments tapered o after a second Sputnik launched in November 1957. However,
a well-orchestrated propaganda and deception campaign spearheaded by Soviet leader
Nikita S. Khrushchev gave the impression that Soviet missiles were coming o assem-
bly lines “like sausages” and could devastate the United States and Western Europe on
a moment’s notice. Eisenhower recalled that “there was rarely a day when I failed to
give earnest study to reports of our progress and to estimates of Soviet capabilities.”
31
Struggling to hold the line, the White House received relatively little support or
cooperation from the two sources—the Intelligence Community and the Joint Chiefs
of Sta—that might have given the debate a more rational framework. Closely linked
in their day-to-day activities, the JCS organization and the Intelligence Community
used much of the same information but tended to interpret the data dierently. While
all agreed that that the United States still held a commanding lead in strategic nuclear
power, there was no consensus on how long it would last. Sputnik had severely rattled
the Intelligence Community, and in its aftermath intelligence analysts scrambled to
gure out where they went wrong. Generally speaking, their assessment of the So-
viet submarine-launched ballistic missile program was always fairly accurate.
32
But
having underestimated Soviet ICBM capabilities earlier, they now compensated by
overestimating what the Soviets could do. The most excessive estimates were those
of Air Force intelligence, which depicted the Soviets as having a more robust missile
program than the United States, purposefully designed to produce capabilities for
launching a disarming rst strike by the early to mid-1960s.
33
Based in part on these divergent interpretations of intelligence, “splits” persist-
ed among the Joint Chiefs over how the United States should respond in allocating
resources. Though hardly conclusive, the best visual evidence the JCS found came
from U–2 photographs. For diplomatic reasons, however, President Eisenhower de-
cided in March 1958 to suspend U–2 ights over the Soviet Union, a suspension
that lasted until July 1959.
34
Thus, the JCS for all practical purposes were “blind” to
the progress in Soviet missile technology for well over a year. Even so, the evidence
collected up until the suspension oered uneven support for the Air Force’s high-
end estimates and its contention that the Soviets were building the infrastructure for
a rst-strike ICBM force. Not only did launch facilities appear limited to a handful
of above-ground pads, but also there was no designated organization to plan and
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CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
carry out nuclear delivery missions until the formation of the Strategic Rocket
Forces (SRF) command in December 1959.
35
A key gure in eventually settling these debates was General Nathan F. Twin-
ing, USAF, who succeeded Admiral Radford as CJCS in August 1957. Twining was
not the most forceful or innovative Chairman, but he was well versed in strategic air
warfare and did his best to function as an impartial arbiter in settling disputes. The
Soviet missile program’s ominous potential notwithstanding, Twining believed that
the most serious threat to the United States was still the Soviet Union’s long-range
air force, estimated at 110–115 planes.
36
Looking at these numbers and at the U–2’s
ndings, Twining agreed with his Army and Navy colleagues that there was no need
for the “crash” program of ICBM development the Air Force favored. Oering an
interim solution, he proposed allowing the missile program to proceed at a mea-
sured production rate until the United States had a better picture of the threats it
faced and its strategic needs.
37
After further give and take, it was largely on this basis
that the Eisenhower administration framed its response to the missile gap.
38
Meanwhile, an even larger controversy was brewing over the allocation of re-
sources for ballistic missile defense (BMD), one of the programs identied in the
Gaither Report as being in urgent need of bolstering. Prior to Sputnik, the Defense
Department supported two competing BMD systems: an Air Force program for wide-
area defense known as “Wizard” and the Army’s Nike-Zeus for point defense, the
outgrowth of an earlier antiaircraft missile-radar system. Though both were essentially
drawing-board concepts, the Army’s was more rened, making it the frontrunner in
the competition.
39
Alarmed by the success of Sputnik, Secretary of Defense Neil H.
McElroy told President Eisenhower that it might be necessary to launch an initia-
tive comparable to the World War II Manhattan Project to produce an anti-ICBM as
quickly as possible.
40
Raising objections, the Air Force and the Navy argued that no
program was as yet suciently advanced to warrant such action.
41
But with the pres-
sure building, McElroy decided in January 1958 to end further debate by giving the
Army primary responsibility for developing an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system.
42
Having won the battle for control of the ABM mission, the Army now wanted
Nike-Zeus elevated to the same national priority enjoyed by the Air Force and the
Navy in oensive missile programs. Projecting deployment by the early 1960s, Army
planners sought to move from R&D into full production as quickly as possible. But
the high cost of a deployed Nike-Zeus system, estimated at $7 billion to $15 billion,
invited further technical analysis which the JCS assigned to the Weapons Systems
Evaluation Group (WSEG). While WSEG found Nike-Zeus to have “signicant”
potential, it also cited the need for more information on technical problems, includ-
ing the eects of high-altitude nuclear explosions, decoy discrimination, and the
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vulnerability of incoming nuclear weapons.
43
Bowing to strong congressional pressure
to overlook the system’s shortcomings, an OSD technical steering group urged the
Secretary of Defense in November 1958 to approve a limited production budget.
44
At
this stage, a rm, unanimous, and unambiguous response from the Joint Chiefs might
have settled the matter. But under the consensus rules that governed JCS delibera-
tions, no such answer emerged. The only area of agreement among the chiefs was that
there should be further R&D, a course that McElroy and Eisenhower, hard-pressed to
hold down military spending, found more appealing than deployment.
45
By chance, the President’s decision to forego BMD production coincided with a
surge in Soviet propaganda and assertions of nuclear superiority. Many Democrats in
Congress and some members of the Intelligence Community accepted Soviet claims
at face value. An added complication was that the Soviet Union carried out no ICBM
tests between May 1958 and March 1959, a hiatus that produced new disputes among
intelligence experts. The CIA and most other intelligence organizations interpreted the
moratorium on testing as a sign that the Soviet program was having technical diculties.
Air Force intelligence disagreed, however, arguing that an equally plausible explanation
was that the Soviets had ceased testing because they had solved their technical problems
and were now gearing up for mass production.
46
To settle the matter, McElroy and
Twining appealed to the President to resume U–2 overights of the Soviet Union. At
rst, the President refused, fearing that the possible loss of a U–2 might provoke a diplo-
matic incident or worse. Apprised that the reconnaissance satellite project was “coming
along nicely” and that the A–12, a faster and more sophisticated spy plane than the U–2,
was waiting in the wings, he preferred to wait. But at the urging of both the CIA and
State Department, the President changed his mind and in July 1959 authorized a single
mission directed against the ICBM test facility at Tyuratam.
47
The mission found no trace of launch sites other than at the Tyuratam test facil-
ity but could neither conrm nor deny whether the Soviets had a large-scale ICBM
buildup under way. Still, the absence of new sites was reassuring news and led to a
gradual reappraisal of the Soviet missile program. A new NIE, appearing in January 1960,
downplayed the likelihood of a Soviet crash program to produce and deploy ICBMs.
Based on these ndings, George B. Kistiakowsky, the President’s special assistant for sci-
ence and technology, concluded that “the missile gap doesn’t look to be very serious.”
48
The new estimate (NIE 11-8-59) projected a deployed Soviet force of 140 to
200 ICBMs by mid-1961, with the Joint Sta endorsing the higher number.
49
At the
President’s request, General Twining, Secretary of Defense Thomas S. Gates, Jr., and
Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Allen W. Dulles appeared before Congress to
explain the new intelligence. All agreed that the fresh data cast doubt on the missile
gap. Unfortunately, however, their testimony was poorly coordinated and diverged
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CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
on critical details, most notably the number of missiles the Soviets might deploy. In
closed hearings, Gates and Dulles stressed the lower numbers while Twining stood
by the Joint Sta’s gures. Seizing on this and other discrepancies, some congressio-
nal Democrats questioned the reliability of the administration’s assessments, keeping
the missile gap controversy alive and well despite growing evidence that the Soviet
lead was overblown.
50
Determined to end the missile gap debate, DCI Dulles persuaded President
Eisenhower to increase the frequency of U–2 ights over the Soviet Union. Even
before the program began in 1956, Richard M. Bissell, Jr., the coordinator of the
eort, had predicted that the U–2 would be able to y over the Soviet Union with
impunity for only about 2 years.
51
Hence, the development of the A–12, a faster
plane that could cruise at 90,000 feet. Based on Bissell’s estimate, by 1960 the U–2
was living on borrowed time. Increasingly uneasy, Eisenhower reluctantly supported
Dulles in hopes of bringing the controversy to a denitive conclusion. The result
was a new series of ights, culminating in Francis Gary Powers’ ill-fated mission of
May 1, 1960, which the Soviets ended abruptly with an SA–2 missile.
52
In addition
to wrecking a summit conference between Eisenhower and Khrushchev, the down-
ing of Powers’ plane brought an immediate cessation of U–2 ights over the Soviet
Union. Thus ended the most reliable source of information the Joint Chiefs and
the Intelligence Community had on the Soviet missile buildup until the Discoverer
satellite program began to provide detailed pictures later that summer.
53
Even with the missile gap issue unresolved, the U.S. response was well formed,
with much of it in place by the time the Eisenhower administration left oce. Un-
able to agree on an overall strategic blueprint, the Joint Chiefs let the Services pur-
sue their own often overlapping interests and left it up to the Secretary of Defense
and the President to resolve conicts. The result was a fairly predictable allocation
of functions that essentially allowed each Service to push its preferred programs—
ICBMs and IRBMs for the Air Force, Polaris for the Navy, and Nike-Zeus for the
Army. A new strategic buildup driven by dynamic advances in missile technology
and energized by arguable claims of Soviet accomplishments had begun.
rEorganization and rEforM, 1958–1960
The inter-Service rivalry and competition that plagued the missile program left
President Eisenhower more convinced than ever that the Department of Defense—
and in particular the Joint Chiefs of Sta—needed fundamental organizational re-
form. Despite the changes made in 1953, Eisenhower was far from satised with the
results. While the 1953 reforms had streamlined and strengthened the Oce of the
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COUNCIL OF WAR
Secretary of Defense, they had produced only limited improvements in JCS perfor-
mance. The central problems, in Eisenhower’s view, continued to be the institutional
weakness of the Chairman and the inuence of “narrow Service considerations” in
JCS deliberations. The “original mistake in this whole business,” he believed, had
been the failure to create a single Service in 1947.
54
Ideally, he wanted the Chair-
man to have broader powers and the authority to make decisions in the absence
of unanimity among the chiefs. He also wanted to simplify lines of command and
control, make the JCS members of the Secretary’s sta, and turn the Joint Sta into
an integrated, all-Service organization similar to the combined stas he had com-
manded in Europe in World War II and at SHAPE in the early 1950s.
55
The Joint Chiefs recognized that their internal dierences threatened serious con-
sequences for their role and inuence. By failing to reconcile their dierences, warned
the Air Force Chief of Sta General Thomas D. White, the JCS were placing themselves
in jeopardy of ceding important military policy functions to civilians in OSD.
56
Despite
the risk, however, none of the chiefs, including White, favored a sharp departure from
current practices and procedures; only the Chairman, General Twining, showed signi-
cant interest in organizational reform. The most determined of all to preserve the status
quo was Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh A. Burke, who openly denounced
“public pressures toward centralization and authoritarianism in defense.”
57
To help make
their case, the JCS in December 1957 appointed an ad hoc inter-Service panel headed
by Major General Earle G. Wheeler, USA, who would later become Chairman of the
JCS. Working quickly, the committee came up with an interim report in less than a
month, but its ndings, which were generally in line with the view that radical changes
were to be avoided, proved too little too late to aect the ensuing debate.
58
The opening salvo in the administration’s drive to reform the Pentagon came
on January 9, 1958, in the President’s State of the Union address. Insisting that defense
reorganization was “imperative,” he called for “real unity” among the Services, clear
subordination of the military to civilian control, improved integration of resources,
simplication of scientic and industrial eort, and an end to inter-Service rivalry and
disputes.
59
To translate the President’s goals into specic recommendations, Secretary
of Defense McElroy turned to Charles A. Coolidge, a former assistant secretary, who
had worked on defense organizational problems in the past. For assistance, Coolidge
formed an advisory group that included General Twining, his two predecessors, Ad-
miral Radford and General Bradley, and General Alfred M. Gruenther, USA (Ret.),
the former NATO commander and the rst director of the Joint Sta.
60
Drawing on the ndings of the Coolidge group, Eisenhower submitted reform
recommendations to Congress on April 3, 1958. Declaring that “separate ground, sea
and air warfare is gone forever,” the President called for legislation to facilitate closer
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CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
inter-Service unity and cooperation. Among the changes he sought were author-
ity for the Secretary of Defense to transfer, reassign, consolidate, or abolish military
functions; a simplied chain of command; enhanced authority for the Secretary to
carry out military research and development through a director of defense research
and engineering; removal of the ceiling on the size of the Joint Sta; and stronger
powers for the Chairman, allowing him to vote in JCS deliberations and to select
(subject to the Secretary’s approval) the Joint Sta ’s director.
61
Opponents of the President’s plan rallied behind Democratic Representative
Carl Vinson of Georgia, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a
longtime supporter of the Navy.
62
A critic of Service unication, Vinson knew that
more power for the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman meant less power and
authority for him and his committee. To blunt the President’s initiative, he accused
the administration of seeking a “blank check” to remake the Joint Sta and revived
arguments that the White House was irting with a Prussian-style general sta.
Eventually, he sent proposed legislation to the House oor that fell short of meeting
administration requests for changes. Stymied in the House, the administration relied
on the Senate to produce a bill more to its liking and trusted a conference com-
mittee to iron out the dierences in its favor. Although many in Congress shared
Vinson’s concerns to one degree or another, the overriding sentiment among leg-
islators was that the Commander in Chief should have the latitude to organize the
Department of Defense as he saw t. The resulting compromise, signed into law on
August 6, 1958, gave the President nearly everything he sought, but retained a ceil-
ing on the size of the Joint Sta (increased from 210 to 400 ocers) and banned its
use in any capacity approximating “an overall Armed Forces General Sta.”
63
While most of the President’s reforms required enabling legislation from Con-
gress, those aecting the internal organization and operation of the JCS were largely
carried out under the existing authority of the Secretary of Defense. Expressing no
particular preferences, McElroy left the details to be worked out by the Joint Chiefs
themselves. Foremost among the changes thus made was the creation of a conven-
tional military sta structure, which replaced the Joint Sta ’s committee-group sys-
tem. In April 1958, Director of the Joint Sta Major General Oliver S. Picher, USAF,
suggested establishing functional numbered directorates: J-1 (personnel), J-2 (intel-
ligence), J-3 (operations), J-4 (logistics), J-5 (plans and policy), and J-6 (communica-
tions and electronics). The most innovative feature under this arrangement was the
creation of the operations directorate, J-3, which had no corresponding organiza-
tion under the old group system. President Eisenhower had often said that he want-
ed the JCS more involved in operational matters, but he had never been specic.
64
Arguing that the Joint Sta would be exercising executive authority, Admiral Burke
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COUNCIL OF WAR
and Commandant of the Marine Corps General Randolph McC. Pate objected to
these new arrangements, but oered no alternative other than retention of the status
quo. In view of the caveats inserted by Congress into the nal legislation, Twining
and McElroy agreed that the problems Burke and Pate envisioned appeared highly
unlikely, and in late August 1958 they assured Eisenhower that the restructuring of
the Joint Sta would proceed as planned.
65
The 1958 amendments also streamlined relationships under the unied command
plan. As the President had stated, a major goal of the reorganization was to establish a
more direct chain of command by ending the designation of a military department as
the executive agency for each unied command. Under the new law, the chain of com-
mand ran from the President to the Secretary of Defense to the unied and specied
commanders. The intent was that all combatant forces should operate under the control
of a unied or specied commander who would be responsible directly to the Secretary
of Defense. The Secretary would exercise control by orders issued through the Joint
Chiefs of Sta. In consonance with this intention, the 1958 amendments deleted exist-
ing provisions that had authorized a Service chief to command the operating forces of
his Service. From this point on, each military department was to organize, equip, train,
support, and administer combatant forces but not direct their operations.
66
Implementing these provisions fell to Secretary McElroy, who issued a revised ver-
sion of DOD Directive 5100.1, “Functions of the Department of Defense and its Major
Components,” on December 31, 1958. The directive designated the Joint Chiefs of Sta
as the Secretary’s “immediate military sta” and described the chain of operational com-
mand as extending from the President to the Secretary via the Joint Chiefs to the unied
and specied commanders. In eect, the JCS became the conduit through which the
National Command Authority, or NCA (i.e., the President, the Secretary of Defense,
and the NSC), communicated with the combatant commanders. The new directive
also charged the Joint Chiefs with responsibility for recommending to the Secretary of
Defense the establishment and force structure of unied and specied commands, the
assignment to the military departments of responsibility for providing support to these
commands, and the review of the unied commanders’ strategic plans and programs.
67
No less important than the reforms enacted in 1958 was the creation, 2 years later,
of the Joint Strategic Target Planning Sta (JSTPS). An administrative extension of
the JCS, the JSTPS’s function was to plan and coordinate strategic nuclear targeting, a
key part of the Joint Chiefs’ statutory responsibility for strategic planning. Though the
majority of the ocers serving on the JSTPS were from the Air Force, it also included
naval ocers and representatives from each major combatant command allocated nu-
clear weapons. The origins of the JSTPS lay in the growth of the missile program and
the need for better command, control, and coordination of targeting. At issue was how
187
CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
Figure 6–1.
JCS Organization Chart,
to integrate the Navy’s Polaris submarine eet with other strategic forces when the
Polaris boats began deployment in the early 1960s. Initially, there were two competing
plans on the table—an Air Force plan to centralize the control of all strategic nuclear
forces under an overarching U.S. Strategic Command that would replace SAC, and a
Navy plan, supported by the Army and the Marine Corps, to place the Polaris boats
under the command and control of unied commanders with major naval forces
(Commander in Chief, Atlantic; Commander in Chief, Pacic; and U.S. Commander
in Chief, Europe).
68
During the early months of 1959, the debate became, as one se-
nior Air Force planner described it, “an all-out battle” that could shape budget shares
and the control of forces and missions for decades to come.
69
Despite the 1958 reforms, unity among the Joint Chiefs remained more a hope
than a reality, frustrating the possibility of an early resolution of the Polaris issue. In
May 1959, the Joint Chiefs notied the Secretary that they could only produce a split
recommendation on command and control of strategic forces.
70
Absent on medical
leave, General Twining had played no part in the chiefs’ deliberations. When he re-
sumed his duties that summer he set about nding a solution to the problem, which
he identied as essentially the selection of targets, the development of appropriate
plans, and the right allocation of resources.
71
Since the Strategic Air Command had
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COUNCIL OF WAR
most of the assets and experience in these matters, Twining expected any solution to
center around SAC. Viewing the creation of a new unied command as the last resort,
he preferred to start with the development of a comprehensive target list and a jointly
prepared single integrated operational targeting plan. All Polaris submarines would
remain under the Navy’s tactical control, but the targeting of their weapons would be
a joint endeavor, to avoid overlap and unnecessary duplication with other forces. It
was from this blueprint that the JSTPS eventually emerged.
72
Twining urged the Secretary and the President to defer action until they had
the results of an ongoing review of targeting priorities by the Net Evaluation Sub-
committee (NESC), an inter-Service technical advisory body under the NSC. While
the NESC had conducted limited inquiries of this nature before, this was the most
in-depth examination of targeting policy since the Joint Chiefs systematized target-
ing categories in the summer of 1950. Such a review should have been an in-house
function, but because of the Joint Sta ’s limited size, the JCS had yet to develop
a war-gaming capability. For technical analysis, they relied on the NESC, WSEG,
RAND, the Defense Atomic Support Agency (DASA), and the Services.
73
The key
question was whether to concentrate strategic attacks against targets that were primar-
ily military (the preferred Air Force approach), primarily urban-industrial (the Army
and Navy view), or an “optimum mix.” Toward the end of October 1959, the NESC
recommended adopting the latter approach, thereby covering all bases.
74
At this point,
a lengthy and acrimonious debate ensued among the Joint Chiefs over the organiza-
tional arrangements that should be adopted to implement the NESC report. Resisting
pressure from the Air Force, Admiral Burke insisted that there should be no merger of
strategic forces and that SAC should have no authority over Polaris.
75
To accommo-
date Burke’s objections, the new Secretary of Defense, Thomas S. Gates, Jr., pushed the
idea of a separate joint targeting sta—the JSTPS—responsible to the JCS. Gates told
the President that, to reach this point, he had held 15 meetings with the Joint Chiefs.
76
Patience paid o, and on August 11, 1960, despite continuing objections from
Admiral Burke, President Eisenhower gave the go-ahead for the integration of stra-
tegic targeting. The decision came at the end of a contentious 2-hour White House
meeting involving the President, Gates, and the Joint Chiefs. The most heated ex-
changes were between Twining, who accused the Navy of habitually operating on
its own agenda and outing the principles of unied command, and Burke, who
counterattacked that the proposed targeting system undermined JCS authority and
was nothing more than a thinly disguised attempt by the Air Force to seize con-
trol of Polaris. Agreeing with Burke that strategic targeting should remain a JCS
responsibility, President Eisenhower reminded the chiefs that they should keep the
189
CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
matter under close periodic review. But he found the behavior of all involved in the
controversy appalling and admonished them “to try to make arrangements work.”
77
Activated about a month later, the JSTPS operated from Strategic Air Command
headquarters at Out Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska, where it had access to
SAC’s computers and vaults of targeting data. The head of the organization was the
commander in chief, Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC), an Air Force four-star
general who served as the director of Strategic Target Planning (DSTP). Under him
was a Navy vice admiral deputy director in charge of day-to-day management. The
JSTPS had an initial strength of just over 200 ocers—half the size of the Joint Sta at
the time—of which roughly 15 percent were from the Navy.
78
The DSTP communi-
cated directly with the JCS through a liaison oce in the Pentagon.
79
Broadly speak-
ing, the JSTPS had two tasks: to maintain and update a comprehensive list of targets,
known as the National Strategic Targeting List (NSTL); and to prepare a Single Inte-
grated Operational Plan (SIOP) for the execution of strategic operations against the
Soviet Union, Communist China, and the Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe.
80
By the end of 1960, the JSTPS had produced the rst SIOP, designated SIOP–
62. A hurry-up job, it contained only one “plan,” which was meant for execution as
a whole. Though it supposedly conformed to the NESC “optimum mix” philoso-
phy, SIOP–62 was essentially a recapitulation of previous SAC war plans, oriented
toward massive retaliation, with the assets of available Polaris boats added in. Eighty
percent of the planned attacks were against “military targets.” These included not
only atomic energy facilities, ICBM sites, air bases, and other military installations,
but also factories turning out military equipment located in urban-industrial cen-
ters. Planners acknowledged that it was practically impossible to distinguish an at-
tack against a military target from an attack against an urban-industrial target.
81
Eisenhower’s reaction to SIOP–62 was that it did not appear “to make the most
eective use of our resources.” He said that if the planning had been in his hands, he
would have held the Polaris boats in reserve for follow-on attacks. Though Eisenhower
still approved the plan, his science advisor, George B. Kistiakowsky, thought the next
administration should subject it to a “thorough revision.”
82
Herbert F. York, director of
Defense Research and Engineering and a key gure in the development of strategic
weapons, agreed. York recalled that the programmed attacks were so indiscriminate that
their purpose seemed to be “simply to strip-mine much of the USSR.”
83
Eisenhower wanted the targeting controversy settled and the JSTPS up and running
before he left oce; he did not want to saddle his successor “with the monstrosity we
now see in prospect as Polaris and other new weapons come into operating status.”
84
But
like other organizational reforms initiated toward the end of his Presidency, it was hard
to predict how successful the new targeting procedures would be. As the inter-Service
190
COUNCIL OF WAR
quarreling over guided missiles and targeting policy demonstrated, it would take more
than an act of Congress to instill unity of spirit and action among the Services. The 1958
reforms had taken the Joint Chiefs of Sta about as far as they could go without dis-
carding the concept of an inter-Service corporate advisory body, creating a full-blown
general sta, and giving the Chairman complete control. But at the same time, these
reforms had not done much to make the JCS a more ecient and eective entity.
dEfEnsE of thE MiddlE East
As the Joint Chiefs struggled with the impact of guided missiles, new security
problems were emerging abroad. At the outset of the Eisenhower administration,
the principal Cold War battlegrounds were in Europe and East Asia. But by the
mid-1950s, attention turned increasingly to the Middle East, where continuing fric-
tion between Israel and the Arab states and a growing Soviet presence created new
concerns. To the Joint Chiefs, the strategic importance of the Middle East was self-
evident. It contained the largest petroleum reserves in the world, the Suez Canal,
and ideal locations for military bases from which to launch strategic air and missile
attacks against the Soviet Union in the event of general war. Were the Middle East
to become part of the Sino-Soviet block, the results would doubtless have a seri-
ously adverse impact on American interests and the strategic balance.
In considering defense arrangements for the Middle East, the Joint Chiefs moved
with caution, partly because of limited resources and partly because British interests
and inuence predominated there. While the United States had formidable capabili-
ties nearby—the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean and air bases in Morocco, Libya,
and Turkey—the only U.S. forces assigned to the Middle East were the MIDEAST-
FOR, a task force of four or ve ships in the Persian Gulf under the control of
the Commander in Chief, U.S. Naval Forces, Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean
(CINCNELM).
85
Considerably larger, the British presence included a network of
military and naval bases, economic holdings, and intelligence assets scattered across
the region. Most of the initial defense planning thus occurred in London, where the
British Chiefs of Sta took the lead. The organizing concept that emerged from these
discussions was the Baghdad Pact, a loose coalition created early in 1955 that included
Britain, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan. With NATO to the west and the Southeast
Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) to the east, the Baghdad Pact completed “a globe-
girdling wall of containment against communist expansion.”
86
The JCS favored full
U.S. adherence to the Baghdad Pact, but ran into opposition from the State Depart-
ment, which worried that U.S. membership would complicate American eorts to
191
CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
ease Arab-Israeli tensions. Eventually, the JCS had to settle for “observer” status, which
gave them back-door access to the Pact’s military planning.
87
Conceived as an anti-Communist alliance, the Baghdad Pact’s main military func-
tion was to block a Soviet invasion of the Middle East and Southwest Asia. At Iran’s in-
sistence, the Pact adopted a strategy to defend a line along the rugged Elburz Mountains
stretching from the borders of Armenia to the Caspian Sea. JCS planners assessed the
concept as “sound” in theory, but found it needing closer coordination than Alliance
members seemed prepared to accept.
88
At bottom, the members of the Baghdad Pact
had little in common other than their desire for U.S. military assistance, which Iran and
Iraq appeared to want to prop up their regimes and preserve internal order rather than
to ght the Soviets. Easily destabilized monarchies ruled in both countries, and neither
was keen on developing a defense establishment that might become a rival for power.
Rating Iran and Iraq of dubious reliability, the JCS viewed a successful defense of the
Middle East as resting on Turkey (a NATO ally) and Pakistan, owing to their strategic
locations, historic anti-Communism, and commitment to a strong defense posture.
89
JCS eorts to fashion a credible defense under the Baghdad Pact were further
complicated by the rising tempo of anti-Zionism in the Muslim world and the
intensication of Arab nationalism. The leading political gure in the region was
now Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of Egypt, who had maneuvered his way into
power following a 1952 putsch that had toppled the dissolute King Farouk. Nasser
aspired to unite the Arab world and mounted unrelenting propaganda campaigns
against Israel and the Baghdad Pact. He also aided and abetted Palestinian guerrilla
raids into Israel from the Gaza Strip and threatened major military action to wipe
out the Jewish state. For support, he turned to the Soviets who obligingly sold
him arms through Czechoslovakia. Recognizing Nasser’s growing popularity in the
Third World, Eisenhower thought it necessary to “woo” him and hesitated to put
too much overt pressure on Egypt lest it provoke an anti-American backlash in the
Muslim world “from Dakar to the Philippine Islands.” Normally, the Joint Chiefs
would have agreed. But according to Admiral Burke, the consensus among the
chiefs was that one way or another Nasser needed to be “broken.”
90
Nasser’s most audacious move was to nationalize the British-owned Suez Canal
on July 26, 1956, in retaliation for the withdrawal of American and British nanc-
ing of the Aswan Dam project. In Admiral Radford’s view, Nasser was “trying to be
another Hitler.”
91
With tensions between Israel and Egypt also escalating, the JCS
and the British chiefs quietly began sta talks on possible combined military action
in the Middle East in the event of another Arab-Israeli war.
92
After nationalization,
the British signaled that they would welcome a collaborative eort along these
lines to regain control of the canal.
93
Assuming the President would support the
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COUNCIL OF WAR
British, the JCS proposed moving ahead with contingency planning under which
the United States would contribute economic and logistical support to a combined
operation against Egypt in the event diplomacy failed. Should “third parties” (i.e.,
the Soviets) intervene, the JCS favored an immediate commitment of U.S. combat
forces.
94
Eisenhower, however, refused even to look at such plans. Unless there was a
major threat to the Persian Gulf oil elds, he could not perceive U.S. interests to be
seriously at risk and had no desire to be accused of coming to the rescue of Anglo-
French colonialism. While he acknowledged that “there may be no escape from
the use of force” in the current crisis, he did not want the United States directly
involved in a confrontation that could draw in the Soviets.
95
Instead of direct military action, Eisenhower favored weakening Soviet inu-
ence and undermining Nasser’s regime through covert operations under a com-
bined Anglo-American plan (code-named OMEGA), which he sanctioned in late
March 1956. Limited initially to political and economic pressure, the plan’s pur-
pose, as Eisenhower described it, was to “help stabilize the situation” in the Middle
East and “give us a better atmosphere in which to work.”
96
Though the JCS had
no direct role in OMEGA, Admiral Radford was in on the planning and aware
of the details practically from its inception.
97
OMEGA’s chances of success, how-
ever, were far from certain, and as planning progressed there were veiled hints that
the President’s British counterpart (and personal friend) Prime Minister Anthony
Eden might take preemptive action on his own. Months before the nationaliza-
tion, Eden was “quite emphatic that Nasser must be got rid of.” But despite their
shared antipathy for Nasser, Eden could not persuade the President to participate
beyond OMEGA.
98
Unable to enlist anything other than nominal American support, Eden turned to
the French and Israelis and began secretly organizing a military operation against Egypt.
Known as MUSKETEER, the British plan called for Israel to feign an invasion of Egypt,
giving France and Britain an excuse to intervene, take control of the Suez Canal, and
install a new regime in Egypt “less hostile to the West.”
99
As preparations for the operation
unfolded, the National Security Agency intercepted a new and unfamiliar French code,
followed by a “vast increase” in cable trac between the French and the Israelis.
100
Sus-
pecting something was afoot, President Eisenhower authorized U–2 ights that detected
unusual concentrations of British forces on Malta and Cyprus and early signs of Israeli
mobilization.
101
An elaborate deception plan mounted by British intelligence sought to
convince the CIA and President Eisenhower that the Israeli mobilization was aimed
against Jordan, not Egypt, and that the British buildup was to protect Jordan, with whom
the UK had a security treaty. Eventually, the Intelligence Community and the Joint
Chiefs uncovered the ruse, but by that time it was too late to make much dierence.
102
193
CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
The invasion began on October 29, 1956, when an estimated six Israeli bri-
gades crossed into the Sinai, breaking through Egyptian defenses. Shortly after hos-
tilities commenced, the Joint Chiefs increased the alert status of selected U.S. forces
and deployed additional naval units to the eastern Mediterranean, some to assist in
the evacuation of U.S. citizens from Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Syria. But beyond this,
the JCS adopted a low prole and played a limited role in the crisis. In line with
declarations from the White House calling on the invaders to cease and desist, the
JCS were careful to avoid giving the appearance that the United States was taking
sides. Still, the mere presence of increased American forces in the region had the de
facto eect of working to the advantage of the Anglo-French-Israeli coalition.
103
Initially, the attack was a stunning success. Within days, having easily routed the
Egyptians, the Israelis were astride the Suez Canal. But after the landing of British and
French troops at Port Said on November 6, the invasion began to lose steam. Eden as-
sumed that once the operation was under way, Eisenhower would see the opportunities
it presented and throw his support to Britain, France, and Israel.
104
Eden, however, was
wrong. The fatal aw in the allies’ plan was that, while the operation seriously crippled
Nasser’s military machine, it failed to undermine his popularity or bring down his re-
gime. Persuaded that Nasser would survive the setback and that further eorts to unseat
him could only harm U.S. interests in the Third World, Eisenhower insisted that the co-
alition halt its operations, accept an immediate ceasere, and promptly withdraw. Eden
reluctantly agreed, knowing that he would be admitting defeat and have to resign his
premiership with no chance of ever regaining control of the canal.
The Suez crisis coincided with two other major events: a popular uprising in
Hungary against Soviet domination, which eventually failed to dislodge Communist
rule; and the Presidential election in the United States, which Eisenhower won hand-
ily. As it turned out, the Hungarian uprising kept the Soviets so preoccupied that they
were in no position to provide much help to the Egyptians. Based on the information
available at the senior levels in Washington, there was little likelihood that Moscow
would intervene on Egypt’s behalf. Though Moscow at one point rattled its nuclear
sabers against the invaders, Eisenhower dismissed the threats as bluster aimed more at
shoring up Moscow’s bona des with Nasser than at inuencing decisions in London,
Paris, or Tel Aviv. As a precaution, the Joint Chiefs recommended to the President on
November 6—election day—that the Strategic Air Command increase its readiness
status for an emergency. Eisenhower, however, saw no need.
105
In the aftermath of the Suez crisis, there emerged a politico-military vacuum
in the Middle East which the United States and the Soviet Union rushed to ll—
the Soviets by stepping up arms aid and political backing for their major clients,
Egypt and Syria, and the United States by oering similar benets and planning
194
COUNCIL OF WAR
advice to the members of the Baghdad Pact. The operative U.S. policy, unveiled in
January 1957, was the “Eisenhower Doctrine,” a broad promise of economic and
military help for any Middle East country threatened with a Communist take-
over.
106
Developed to give the President greater leverage in a future Middle East
crisis, the doctrine emerged without even a pro forma review by the Joint Chiefs
and had only tepid support in Congress. Even so, it lled an obvious void and gave
the JCS a better idea of how far they could go in formulating plans and strategy.
107
With British inuence on the wane, the United States emerged as the de facto
leader of the Baghdad Pact. By the summer of 1957, JCS representatives were working
directly with pact planners to coordinate defense of the region with assigned taskings
for U.S. forces under the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan. While oering air and naval
support, the JCS sought to avoid a commitment of U.S. ground troops and looked
to indigenous forces, primarily those of Turkey and Pakistan, to lead the ght on the
ground.
108
However, the CINCNELM, Admiral Walter F. Boone, who exercised op-
erational planning responsibility for the region, envisioned a signicantly broader U.S.
commitment. Citing the Eisenhower Doctrine, Boone requested authority at the rst
signs of escalating tensions to insert elite combat forces and enlarged military advisory
units into the Middle East.
109
In preparation, Boone held exploratory talks with Army
commanders at his headquarters in London in September 1957, and in November
he hosted a joint conference of Army, Navy, and Air Force representatives to develop
joint plans for airborne operations and air transport support in the Middle East.
110
Several members of the Joint Chiefs expressed concern that Boone was moving
too far too fast. Citing the limited availability of resources, the Army and Air Force
chiefs of sta questioned the feasibility of Boone’s plans and suggested that he had
exceeded his authority by presuming to interpret U.S. policy needs under the Eisen-
hower Doctrine.
111
In February 1958, Boone and the JCS reached an understanding
that restricted CINCNELM’s planning for intervention to Lebanon and Jordan. Later,
the JCS extended this mandate to include the prevention of a coup d’état, rumored to
have Egyptian support, aimed at toppling the government of Saudi Arabia.
112
The rst test of these plans came in Lebanon where in May 1958 a Muslim-led
revolt broke out against the pro-Western Christian government of Camille Cham-
oun. Earlier that same year, Egypt and Syria had joined forces to form a United Arab
Republic (UAR). Suspecting UAR involvement in the disturbances, President Eisen-
hower ordered Marines with the Sixth Fleet to be prepared to intervene. But by the
end of the month, tensions in Lebanon had eased and U.S. forces stood down. Fear-
ing the unrest would resume and spread, King Hussein of Jordan requested assistance
from his cousin, King Faisal II of Iraq. Faisal ordered the Nineteenth Brigade to go
to Hussein’s aid. Instead of marching on Jordan, dissident units loyal to Brigadier
195
CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
Abdul-Karim Kassim staged a rebellion in Baghdad against the monarchy. On July
14–15, the insurgents murdered Faisal, his family, and Premier Nuri al-Said and estab-
lished a military regime allied with Egypt and Syria. Alarmed, Chamoun requested
immediate U.S. military intervention under the Eisenhower Doctrine, and on July 15 a
Marine battalion landing team went ashore south of Beirut in the rst phase of Opera-
tion Blue Bat. At the same time, demonstrating that it was still a power to be reckoned
with, Britain deployed 3,000 paratroopers to Jordan to shore up Hussein’s rule.
In contrast to the debates over Korea, Indochina, and the Chinese o-shore is-
lands, the decision to launch Operation Blue Bat was relatively quick and easy. Hav-
ing ironed out most of their dierences during the planning phase, the Joint Chiefs
were able to move promptly when the time arrived. Though there was some talk of
mounting a combined operation with the British, events moved too quickly for the
necessary arrangements to be nalized and put into eect. While brieng congres-
sional leaders immediately before U.S. troops landed, General Twining speculated
that involvement in Lebanon might require intervention elsewhere in the region.
113
Still, the uneasiness of Congress over an expanded operation, the absence of overt
Soviet, Egyptian, or Syrian involvement, and President Eisenhower’s own reluctance
to make open-ended commitments conned the operation to Beirut. Finding no
concrete evidence of Communist involvement, the President declined to justify
U.S. intervention as a function of the Eisenhower Doctrine.
The Lebanon incident was the only time during his Presidency, other than dur-
ing the nal months of the Korean War, that Eisenhower resorted to the use of mili-
tary power. Among other things, Operation Blue Bat served to rebut critics (including
Army Chief of Sta General Maxwell D. Taylor) who argued that the administration’s
cutbacks and reallocation of military resources under the New Look had eviscerated
the country’s conventional forces. To be sure, some of the equipment used in the
operation was obsolescent. But within 2 weeks, the JCS were able to deploy the bulk
of the Sixth Fleet o-shore and a division-equivalent of Marines and Army troops in
and around Beirut, with two more Army divisions standing by in Germany.
114
Initially,
Admiral James L. Holloway, Jr., who had succeeded Admiral Boone as CINCNELM
in February, directly commanded the entire operation.
115
Evolving quickly into a joint
enterprise, the growing scale and scope of the intervention necessitated an expanded
command structure, with an Air Force major general in charge of tactical support
and air transport operations and an Army major general commanding ground forces
ashore. Holloway remained in charge overall.
116
As historian Stephen E. Ambrose later
observed: “Lebanon, in short, was a show of force—and a most impressive one.”
117
The Lebanon intervention was the nal episode in a fast-paced 2 years since
the Suez crisis that witnessed dramatic changes in the political, strategic, and
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COUNCIL OF WAR
military makeup of the Middle East. From this point until the Six Day War of 1967,
the Middle East seemed to quiet down. Even so, the alignment of Egypt and Syria
with the Soviet Union, the overthrow of the pro-Western government in Iraq and,
with it, the eective collapse of the Baghdad Pact (replaced by a rump alliance call-
ing itself the Central Treaty Organization, or CENTO, in 1959), and continuing
tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors, all made for a sensitive situation that
the Joint Chiefs continued to watch carefully. The United States had yet to make
a major military commitment to the Middle East. But from the seeds sown in the
1950s, something along those lines seemed unavoidable sooner or later.
CuBa, Castro, and CoMMunisM
Like the Middle East, Latin America experienced growing social, economic, and
political turmoil during the 1950s. Building steadily as the decade progressed, these
pressures culminated in 1959 in the Cuban revolution, which brought to power a
Marxist regime under Fidel Castro. Denouncing the United States, Castro eventu-
ally aligned his country with the Soviet Union. At the time these events were taking
shape, the Joint Chiefs of Sta had one overriding strategic concern in Latin Ameri-
ca—the security of the Panama Canal. They also assisted in training military ocers
at Defense Department schools and in establishing military advisory programs to
assist friendly governments. But as a rule, the JCS dedicated few forces to the region
and exercised limited inuence over U.S. policy there during the Eisenhower years.
If the President needed advice or information, he usually relied on a small circle that
included his brother, Milton Eisenhower, a specialist on Latin America, Secretary of
State John Foster Dulles, and Allen W. Dulles, the Director of Central Intelligence.
Throughout Eisenhower’s years in oce, it was axiomatic that a Communist
presence in the Western Hemisphere would be intolerable and that the United
States should do all it could to prevent Moscow from making inroads. The pre-
ferred approach was to use diplomatic channels or covert operations. Prior to the
Cuban revolution, the most serious challenge to U.S. policy came from Guatemalan
strongman Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, a former military ocer with leftist political
sympathies. Installed as president in 1951 after a controversial and violent elec-
tion, Árbenz adopted tolerant policies toward Communists and made overtures to
the Soviet Union, which reciprocated by sending Guatemala a shipload of small
arms. Convinced that Árbenz was “merely a puppet manipulated by Communists,”
Eisenhower gave the Central Intelligence Agency the go-ahead to mount a “black”
propaganda campaign against Árbenz’s authority and to organize and arm a para-
military group that ousted Árbenz from power in June 1954.
118
197
CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
Following the overthrow of the Árbenz regime, the Eisenhower administration
set about bolstering anti-Communist governments in Latin America through, among
other things, expanded military training and assistance.
119
The Joint Chiefs supported
the administration’s overall goal but objected to State Department eorts to micro-
manage these programs.
120
As time went on, friction over this issue centered increas-
ingly on assistance to Cuba, where dissidents under Fidel Castro, a lawyer turned
revolutionary, had been waging a guerrilla war against the country’s heavy-handed
dictator, Fulgencio Batista, since 1953. Having lost condence in Batista’s honesty and
leadership, the State Department charged him with improperly diverting American
aid earmarked for hemispheric defense to internal security functions, mainly to ght
Castro. In March 1958, without consulting the JCS, State suspended all arms ship-
ments to Cuba.
121
A furious Admiral Burke accused the State Department of commit-
ting an “unfriendly act” toward the Cuban government that amounted to aiding the
rebels.
122
However, legislators on Capitol Hill supported the State Department, and
in the summer of 1958 Congress tightened the terms under which American military
assistance could be used for internal security functions in Latin America. The JCS
hoped to work around these restrictions, but by the end of the year the tide had so
turned in Castro’s favor that lifting the arms embargo would have had little eect. On
January 1, 1959, Batista ed the country, leaving it in the hands of the rebels.
123
Castro’s almost overnight rise to power ushered in a turbulent era in Cuban-
American relations, leading to mutual hostility that would outlive the Cold War. Cit-
ing Castro’s Marxist rhetoric and anti-American diatribes, the Joint Chiefs were in-
clined from the beginning to regard him as a Communist who would someday ally
himself with the Soviet Union. Others, however, including key gures in the Intel-
ligence Community, found the evidence inconclusive. Not until early 1960, when
Cuba and the Soviet Union concluded a series of trade and technical support deals,
was Castro’s alignment with the Eastern Bloc conrmed beyond all doubt. From that
point on, the United States and Castro’s Cuba were in a virtual state of war.
In light of the Castro regime’s hostility toward the United States and reliance on
the Soviet Union, the Joint Chiefs began looking at military options, with Admiral
Burke and the Navy in the forefront of advocating a forceful policy. Convinced that
a Communist Cuba would be anathema to U.S. interests across the Western Hemi-
sphere, Burke saw military action against Cuba as practically unavoidable, and in Feb-
ruary 1960 he suggested that the JCS consider steps to topple Castro’s regime. Burke
envisioned three possible scenarios: unilateral overt action by the United States; mul-
tilateral overt action through the Organization of American States (OAS); and covert
unilateral action.
124
The JCS agreed that Burke’s suggestions merited a closer look,
and by mid-March the Joint Sta had generated preliminary plans to reinforce the
198
COUNCIL OF WAR
defenses around the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay while initiating a naval block-
ade of Cuba and landing an invasion force of two Army airborne battle groups.
125
Like the Joint Chiefs, President Eisenhower wanted Castro—a “little Hitler” as
he called him—out of the way and was not averse to “drastic” action to achieve his
goal.
126
Realizing, however, that Castro appeared as “a hero to the masses in many
Latin American nations” and the “champion of the downtrodden,” he feared an ugly
anti-American backlash across Latin America if U.S. forces became directly involved
in Castro’s overthrow.
127
Alerted to Eisenhower’s concerns, the CIA in January 1960
began assembling plans and supervisory personnel for covert action against Castro,
using the Árbenz operation as a model. The original concept envisioned a modest
venture in which a small force of Cuban expatriates would invade the island, establish
a perimeter, and hold until a provisional government could declare itself and be rec-
ognized. Other guerrilla forces would intensify their operations in anticipation that
these activities, coupled with unspecied U.S. pressure, would produce a mass uprising
leading to Castro’s ouster. At a White House conference on March 17, 1960, attended
by Admiral Burke, President Eisenhower approved the CIA’s plan in principle, noting
that he knew of “no better plan for dealing with the situation.” It was from this deci-
sion that the ill-fated Bay of Pigs operation evolved a little over a year later.
128
Coordination and oversight for planning Castro’s overthrow fell to the super-
secret 5412 Committee. Composed of the President’s assistant for national security
aairs, Undersecretary of State, Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Director of Cen-
tral Intelligence, the 5412 Committee routinely reviewed and advised on covert op-
erations. Despite earlier discussions of including the JCS in the panel’s deliberations,
President Eisenhower had seen no need, apparently hoping to keep the committee’s
activities as closely held as possible.
129
From the outset of planning, the JCS were ex-
cluded from direct involvement in the operation. The division of labor that emerged
over the summer and autumn of 1960 gave the CIA exclusive jurisdiction over
organizing, training, and arming the Cuban exile force, while the Joint Chiefs con-
centrated on improving security around Guantanamo and in the adjacent airspace.
On August 18, 1960, President Eisenhower approved approximately $13 million for
the operation and sanctioned the limited use of DOD equipment and personnel for
training purposes. At the same time, he reiterated his rm opposition to involving
the United States in a combat role.
130
The Joint Chiefs were nally “read into” the CIA’s plans for Cuba on January
11, 1961. Now scheduled for March, the operation had grown from a limited para-
military venture meant to arouse opposition to the Castro regime into a full-blown
invasion involving a “brigade” of 600 to 750 Cuban exiles with their own air support.
An ambitious enterprise, the CIA’s plan had yet to identify who would take power
199
CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
in Cuba should the invasion succeed, or how to deal with the situation should it fail.
At this point, the Joint Chiefs were convinced that a Communist Cuba would pose
an intolerable situation and that a failed invasion, leaving Castro in place, would make
matters worse. Persuaded that the current plan was seriously awed, they ordered the
Director of the Joint Sta to prepare an alternative course of action. Drawing on Ad-
miral Burke’s earlier plan and inputs from the Air Force, the Joint Sta recommended
closer politico-military coordination and a reassessment of U.S. military support to as-
sure the operation’s tactical success.
131
With a new administration about to take oce,
however, and with pressure building to move ahead, it was unclear what impact the
JCS proposals would have. Eisenhower had set the wheels in motion; it would be up
to John F. Kennedy to make the decision to proceed.
BErlin dangErs
At the same time the Joint Chiefs were contemplating actions against Cuba, they
faced renewed Soviet pressure on Berlin, a source of East-West friction since the
city was placed under four-power rule in 1945. The most serious are-up had been
the blockade crisis of 1948–1949, which had nearly provoked a nuclear response
from the United States. Since then, even though tensions had eased, the status of the
city remained one of the most contentious issues of the Cold War. “Berlin,” Nikita
Khrushchev reportedly said, “is the testicles of the West. Every time I want to make
the West scream, I squeeze on Berlin.”
132
The source of pressure this time was the Soviet Union’s demand of November
27, 1958, that the Allies terminate their occupation of Berlin within 6 months and
convert the city into a demilitarized zone. If not, the Soviets threatened to conclude
a separate agreement with East Germany, end the occupation, and nullify allied ac-
cess rights to the city. In light of the recent apparent surge in Soviet missiles and
nuclear power, it looked as if the Kremlin was trying to ex its muscles and test
how far it could go in using its newly found power to exact concessions. Refusing
to be blackmailed, the Western powers issued a sti diplomatic rejection and invited
the Soviets to explore a peaceful resolution of the problem through negotiations.
133
Should diplomacy fail, it would be largely up to the United States to take the
lead in formulating a fall-back position. Existing preparations for a replay of the Ber-
lin crisis centered on a set of contingency plans maintained by the U.S. European
Command (USEUCOM). Derived from policies adopted in the National Security
Council, these plans reected U.S. thinking at the time that limited wars were to be
avoided and that the threat of massive retaliation should be the primary deterrent to
aggressive Soviet behavior. Approved by the Joint Chiefs in May 1956, USEUCOM’s
200
COUNCIL OF WAR
plans envisioned a narrow range of American and/or allied responses. Assuming that
another full-scale airlift would be impractical, USEUCOM proposed to mount a lim-
ited resupply by air and initiate a test of Soviet intentions using a platoon of foot sol-
diers. Rather than risk a reght that might escalate, the platoon would have orders to
withdraw at the rst sign of trouble.
134
But by late 1958–early 1959, the Service chiefs
regarded these plans as obsolete. Basking in the success of the Lebanon operation, they
saw a reemerging role for conventional forces as a means of applying pressure without
threatening all-out nuclear war. Urging a policy of rmness in the current crisis, they
recommended heightened security along the Autobahn into Berlin and a large-scale
mobilization of conventional forces by the Western Allies to demonstrate resolve.
135
Both the JCS Chairman, General Twining, and President Eisenhower were
skeptical of this assessment and did not believe that a conventional buildup would
do much to impress Soviet leaders. Both felt that it might instead inadvertently re-
sult in a confrontation that could escalate out of control. Convinced that the Service
chiefs—Taylor especially—favored a buildup for budgetary reasons, the President
dismissed their advice as self-serving and alarmist and told Twining to remind his
JCS colleagues that they were “not responsible for high-level political decisions.”
Adopting a low-key approach, the President authorized limited military prepara-
tions, sucient to be detected by Soviet intelligence but not so great as to cause
public alarm, and declared his intention of relying on a combination of diplomacy
and deterrence based on “our air power, our missiles, and our allies.”
136
Instead of the JCS, Eisenhower looked to General Lauris Norstad, USAF, the
NATO Supreme Commander (SACEUR) since 1956, to handle further military
planning. The architect of NATO’s air defense system and a key gure in plan-
ning NATO’s nuclear-oriented New Approach, Norstad stood very high on Eisen-
hower’s list of talented ocers. Indeed, when scandal forced his top administrative
aide Sherman Adams to resign in September 1958, Eisenhower considered bring-
ing Norstad into the White House as his chief of sta. He realized, however, that
Norstad was more valuable in Europe where he enjoyed the absolute trust and con-
dence of the NATO allies. An ardent proponent of giving NATO its own nuclear
stockpile, Norstad treated the New Approach as the rst step in that direction. But
he also recognized that overreliance on nuclear weapons could have drawbacks and
worked assiduously throughout the Berlin crisis to develop and rene other options
that would satisfy the both White House and the Joint Chiefs.
137
Norstad’s mechanism for dealing with the crisis was a tripartite (U.S.-UK-
French) planning body known as “Live Oak.” Established in April 1959, with oces
at USEUCOM headquarters outside Paris, Live Oak reported directly to Norstad
and operated on its own, separate from NATO, the Joint Chiefs, or any national
201
CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
command structure. Recognizing that the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG)
had a major interest in the outcome, Norstad and his Live Oak sta maintained
close liaison with West German military planners through the FRG’s representative
to SHAPE.
138
While Norstad endorsed the concept of a military buildup, he pro-
posed conning it to a token increase of 7,000 troops.
139
Like the Chairman and the
President, he was concerned that a large augmentation of allied forces would appear
provocative and exacerbate tensions. Above all, he wanted the authority to coor-
dinate the operation as he saw t and to use minimal conventional force to keep
access routes open. He repeatedly cautioned, however, that any military action had
to be backed by nuclear weapons and the willingness to use them to be eective.
140
By late summer 1959, Live Oak’s planning was starting to bear fruit. Many of
the measures Norstad endorsed avoided the direct use of military power and ap-
plied pressure on the Soviets through other means, including covert operations and
stepped-up propaganda. Norstad wanted to divert Soviet attention from Berlin by
sowing unrest and political instability in the East European satellite countries. Con-
vinced that direct retaliatory measures would only escalate the conict, he preferred
to respond with naval operations that harassed Soviet shipping in a tit-for-tat fash-
ion. Norstad had no doubt that sooner or later a sizable military buildup followed
by an “initial probe” might be necessary to determine the extent of Soviet and/or
East German resistance should trac into Berlin be impeded. But he wanted to
explore other avenues rst to throw the Soviets o balance.
141
The Service chiefs, meanwhile, continued to take an opposing view. Believing
that Eisenhower and Norstad both underestimated the seriousness of the Soviet
threat, they were averse to risking nuclear war without a back-up plan. Even though
a nuclear confrontation might eventually prove unavoidable, they could see no bet-
ter way of avoiding one than through a conventional buildup—a concrete demon-
stration of the West’s resolve to defend its rights. But until such time as their advice
carried more weight, their only choice was to bide their time and treat Norstad’s
recommendations as “a suitable basis” for further planning.
142
Whether the Live Oak plans would be used remained to be seen. Letting the
6-month ultimatum deadline pass without taking action, Khrushchev accepted an
invitation to visit the United States, where he and Eisenhower conferred for 2
days in September. While generally unproductive, the meeting seemed to signal a
mild improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations and a cooling-o of the Berlin crisis.
In January 1960, however, Khrushchev revived his threat to sign a separate peace
treaty with the East Germans. A quadripartite summit meeting, held in Paris in May,
ended in disarray over the U–2 incident and Khrushchev’s tirade denouncing the
United States for clandestine overights of the Soviet Union. Berlin thus became
one of a list of high-prole Cold War issues—others being Cuba, the smoldering
202
COUNCIL OF WAR
Middle East, tensions in Asia, and an escalating competition in ballistic missiles—
that the Eisenhower administration passed to its successor.
At the outset of his Presidency, Eisenhower was cautiously optimistic that he
could rely on the Joint Chiefs to play a major role in national security aairs, from
participating in crisis management to meeting the “long haul” needs of the Cold
War by developing a defense posture that would not cripple the economy. But by
the end of his administration, he had practically given up using the JCS for those
purposes. Increasingly, he turned elsewhere for politico-military advice and assis-
tance that the JCS should have rendered. One side eect was to nudge the adminis-
tration toward covert operations and the use of surrogates, recruited and organized
by the CIA, in lieu of regular military forces and military planners. Though the
chiefs had some notable successes (e.g., Lebanon), they were too few and far be-
tween to alter the overall picture. Far more typical were the fractious debates that
accompanied the Joint Chiefs’ deliberations on the guided missile program and
related issues like nuclear targeting. The reforms of 1953 and 1958 notwithstanding,
there was more dissatisfaction with the Joint Chiefs’ performance by the end of the
Eisenhower administration than at any time to that point in their history.
Notes
1 The Air Force ight-tested an Atlas ICBM for the rst time in June 1957, but the
launch went awry and technicians had to destroy the missile after less than 1 minute in
the air. On November 28, 1958, the Air Force nally conducted a fully successful Atlas
test that covered a 5,500 nm range.
2 James R. Killian, Jr., Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower: A Memoir of the First Special As-
sistant to the President for Science and Technology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977), 7.
3 David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 303–312.
4 Radford’s comments in Memo of Discussion, June 4, 1954, “200th Meeting NSC, June
3, 1954,” Eisenhower Papers, Ann Whitman File, NSC Series.
5 Jacob Neufeld, The Development of Ballistic Missiles in the United States Air Force, 1945–1960
(Washington, DC: Oce of Air Force History, 1990), 95–118. George F. Lemmer, “The Air
Force and Strategic Deterrence, 1951–1960” (USAF Historical Division Liaison Oce, De-
cember, 1967), traces the evolution of Air Force strategic conceptual planning in the 1950s.
6 Max Rosenberg, “USAF Ballistic Missiles, 1958–1959” (USAF Historical Division Liaison
Oce, July 1960), 2–3; Robert Frank Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: Basic Thinking in the
United States Air Force, 1907–1984, 2 vols. (Maxwell AFB: Air University Press, 1989), I, 489–490.
7 Memo, Trevor Gardner to Talbot and Twining, March 11, 1954, “Intercontinental Bal-
listic Missile System Acceleration Plan,” Nathan F. Twining Papers, Library of Congress.
8 See Peter Hofmann, “The Making of National Estimates during the Period of the ‘Mis-
sile Gap,’” Intelligence and National Security 1 (September 1986), 336–356.
203
CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
9 Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945–1989, Book I, The
Struggle for Centralization, 1945–1960 (Washington, DC: National Security Agency, 1995),
177 (declassied).
10 John Prados, The Soviet Estimate: U.S. Intelligence Analysis and Russian Military Strength
(New York: Dial Press, 1982), 35–36; NIE 11-5-57, “Soviet Capabilities and Probable
Programs in the Guided Missile Field,” March 12, 1957, in Donald P. Steury, ed., Inten-
tions and Capabilities: Estimates on Soviet Strategic Forces, 1950–1983 (Washington, DC:
Central Intelligence Agency, 1996), 59–62.
11 NSC Action No. 1433, September 13, 1955, FRUS, 1955–57, XIX, 121.
12 Robert J. Watson, Into the Missile Age, 1956–1960 (Washington, DC: Historical Oce,
Oce of the Secretary of Defense, 1997), 166–167.
13 See Eisenhower Public Papers, 1955, 303; Eisenhower Public Papers, 1956, 463–466; NSC
5602/1, March 15, 1956, “Basic National Security Policy,” FRUS, 1955–57, XIX, 246–
247; and Samuel P. Huntington, The Common Defense: Strategic Programs in National
Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), 88–105.
14 Memo of Discussion, December 2, 1955, “Meeting of the National Security Council,
December 1, 1955,” Eisenhower Papers, Whitman File, NSC Series.
15 Memo by Goodpaster, December 15, 1956, “Meeting with SECDEF Wilson and Oth-
ers, December 7, 1956”; and Goodpaster Memcon, December 20, 1956, “Conference
with the President December 19, 1956,” both in DDE Diary Series, Ann Whitman File,
Eisenhower Papers.
16 Memo by Goodpaster, February 6, 1958, “Conference with the President, February 4,
1958,” DDE Diary Series, Ann Whitman File, Eisenhower Papers.
17 Neufeld, 119–147.
18 Harvey M. Sapolsky, The Polaris System Development: Bureaucratic and Programmatic Suc-
cess in Government (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 21–34; I.J. Galantin,
Submarine Admiral: From Battlewagons to Ballistic Missiles (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1995), 227–232; Neufeld, 182.
19 K. Condit, JCS and National Policy, 1955–56, 71. Advising the Secretary on Service func-
tions was not a JCS statutory responsibility; it was an assigned function under the 1948
Key West agreement, rearmed in DOD Directive 5100.1, March 16, 1954, “Functions
of the Armed Forces and the Joint Chiefs of Sta.” Since Key West, however, Secretaries
of Defense had rarely approached the JCS to help resolve roles and missions questions.
20 K. Condit, 66–72; Memo, SECDEF to AFPC, November 26, 1956, “Clarication of
Roles and Missions,” in Alice Cole et al., The Department of Defense: Documents on Estab-
lishment and Organization, 1944–1978 (Washington, DC: Historical Oce, Oce of the
Secretary of Defense, 1978), 311.
21 Harry B. Yoshpe, Our Missing Shield: The U.S. Civil Defense Program in Historical Perspec-
tive (Washington, DC: Federal Emergency Management Agency, 1981), 225–234.
22 Memo of Discussion, 318th Meeting NSC, April 4, 1957, FRUS, 1955–57, XIX, 460.
23 Morton H. Halperin, “The Gaither Committee and the Policy Process,” in Thomas
E. Cronin and Sanford D. Greenberg eds., The Presidential Advisory System (New York:
Harper and Row, 1969), 185–187; David L. Snead, The Gaither Committee, Eisenhower,
and the Cold War (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999), 43–49.
24 Robert Cutler, No Time for Rest (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965), 354–355.
204
COUNCIL OF WAR
25 Prados, 69; Snead, 97.
26 Paul H. Nitze, with Ann M. Smith and Steven L. Rearden, From Hiroshima to Glasnost:
At the Center of Decision—A Memoir (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989), 166–167.
27 Security Resources Panel of the Science Advisory Committee, Deterrence & Survival in
the Nuclear Age (Washington, DC: GPO, 1976), 14, 17, and passim.
28 Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, The CIA and the U–2 Program, 1954–
1974 (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1998), 135–139.
29 Memo by Goodpaster, February 6, 1958, “Conference with the President, 4 February
1958,” DDE Diary Series, Ann Whitman File, Eisenhower Papers.
30 Memo, JCS to SECDEF, December 4, 1957, “Report to the President by the Secu-
rity Resources Panel of the ODM Science Advisory Committee,” with appendix, JCS
2101/284.
31 Michael Mihalka, “Soviet Strategic Deception, 1955–1981,” Journal of Strategic Studies
5 (March 1982), 40–48; Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace,
1956–1961 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), 390.
32 Peter J. Roman, Eisenhower and the Missile Gap (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1995), 46–47.
33 Prados, 66–95; Lawrence Freedman, U.S. Intelligence and the Soviet Strategic Threat (Princ-
eton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986; 2d ed.), 74–77.
34 Pedlow and Welzenbach, 144.
35 Johnson, Struggle for Centralization, 175–177.
36 Memo by John S.D. Eisenhower, February 10, 1959, “Conference with the President,
February 9, 1959,” DDE Diary Series, Ann Whitman File, Eisenhower Papers.
37 CM-407-59 to SECDEF, October 12, 1959, “Minuteman Program,” 1st N/H to JCS
1620/277.
38 Watson, 363–379; Fairchild and Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1957–60, 45–51; Snead,
137.
39 Benson D. Adams, Ballistic Missile Defense (New York: American Elsevier Publishing,
1971), 22–27.
40 Memo by Goodpaster, October 11, 1957, “Conference with the President, October 11,
1957,” DDE Diary Series, Ann Whitman File, Eisenhower Papers.
41 Memo, JCS to SECDEF, December 16, 1957, “Anti–Intercontinental Ballistic Missile
Developments, JCS 1899/372.
42 History of Strategic Air and Ballistic Missile Defense: Volume II, 1956–1972 (Washington, DC:
Center of Military History, ca. 1975, reprint), 179–182; Adams, Ballistic Missile Defense,
27–28; Donald R. Baucom, The Origins of SDI, 1944–1983 (Lawrence: University Press
of Kansas, 1992), 11.
43 Appendix, “WSEG Final Report No. 30: Oensive and Defensive Weapons Systems,”
[July 15, 1958], 10, JCS 1620/189.
44 Watson, 379.
205
CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
45 Memo, JCS to SECDEF, November 24, 1958, “Guided Missile Systems,” JCS 1620/204;
Memo by John S.D. Eisenhower, December 9, 1958, “Conference with the President
November 28, 1958,” DDE Diary Series, Ann Whitman File, Eisenhower Papers.
46 Freedman, 70.
47 Pedlow and Welzenbach, 159–163. David Robarge, Archangel: CIA’s Supersonic A–12 Re-
connaissance Aircraft (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 2007), treats the ori-
gins and development of the A–12, precursor of the SR–71. Neither the A–12 nor the
SR–71 was ever used for its intended purpose: reconnaissance over the Soviet Union.
The A–12 was retired in the mid-1960s; the SR–71 continued to y until 1997.
48 George B. Kistiakowsky, A Scientist at the White House: The Private Diary of President
Eisenhower’s Special Assistant for Science and Technology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1976), 219.
49 NIE 11-8-59, February 9, 1960, “Soviet Capabilities for Strategic Attack Through Mid-
19 64,” FRUS, 1958–60, III, 378; Steury, Intentions and Capabilities, 71–107.
50 Watson, 354–355; Roy E. Licklider, “The Missile Gap Controversy,” Political Science
Quarterly 85 (December 1970), 608–609.
51 Pedlow and Welzenbach, 148.
52 Ibid., 165–177. The suspicion at the time was that the Soviets had shot down Powers’
plane with a surface-to-air missile. Conrmation came in March 1963 when the U.S.
air attaché in Moscow learned that that the Sverdlovsk SA–2 battery had red a three-
missile salvo which, in addition to disabling Powers’ aircraft, also scored a direct hit on
a Soviet ghter aircraft sent aloft to intercept the U–2.
53 Discoverer was one of two U.S. spy satellite programs at the time. The other was SA-
MOS (Satellite and Missile Observation System). Between October 1960 and Decem-
ber 1961, there were ve SAMOS launchings, only two of which went into orbit. The
pictures they provided were of poor quality. See Freedman, 72–73.
54 Memo by John S.D. Eisenhower, July 6, 1960, “Conference with the President: Secre-
tary Gates, July 6, 1960,” DDE Diary Series, Ann Whitman File, Eisenhower Papers.
55 Memo for the Record by Goodpaster, November 6, 1957, [Meeting of November 4,
1957, with JCS and Service Secretaries], Eisenhower Papers, Ann Whitman File, Diary
Series; Eisenhower, Waging Peace, 245–250; Watson, 247–248.
56 CSAFM-306-57 to JCS, December 10, 1957, “Reorganization of the Department of
Defense,” JCS 1977/24.
57 Watson, 249–251.
58 Report by Ad Hoc Committee to JCS, January 24, 1958, “Organization of the Depart-
ment of Defense,” JCS 1977/26; Fairchild and Poole, 5; and Watson, 250, 252.
59 “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union,” January 9, 1958, Eisen-
hower Public Papers, 1958, 7–9.
60 Watson, 251–252. Gruenther served only in a part-time capacity.
61 President’s Message, April 3, 1958, in Alice Cole et al., The Department of Defense: Docu-
ments on Establishment and Organization, 1944–1978 (Washington, DC: Historical Oce,
Oce of the Secretary of Defense, 1978), 175–186.
62 Years later, in recognition of Vinson’s faithful service, the Navy named a nuclear-pow-
ered supercarrier in his honor.
206
COUNCIL OF WAR
63 DOD Reorganization Act of 1958, August 6, 1958 (PL 253), Cole et al., Defense Docu-
ments, 218. Watson, 264–275, summarizes the legislative origins of the 1958 amendments.
64 As J-3 evolved, its principal functions were to synchronize operational planning and to
monitor the execution and conduct of military operations.
65 Memo by Goodpaster, August 30, 1958, “Conference with the President, August 28,
1958, Following Cabinet Meeting,” DDE Diary Series, Ann Whitman File, Eisenhower
Papers. See also Fairchild and Poole, 6–7.
66 JCS Chronology, “Substantive Changes to the Unied Command Plan, 1958–1969,”
undated, 1–2, JHO 7-0014.
67 DOD Directive 5100.1, December 31, 1958, “Functions of the Department of Defense
and its Major Components,” Military Documents Collection, Pentagon Library.
68 Fairchild and Poole, 51–52; David Alan Rosenberg, “The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear
Weapons and American Strategy, 1945–1960,” International Security 7 (Spring 1983), 60–
61.
69 Letter, Maj. Gen. Hewitt T. Wheless to Maj. Gen. Charles B. Westover, May 12, 1959,
Thomas D. White Papers, Library of Congress.
70 JCSM-171-59 to SECDEF, May 8, 1959, “Concept of Employment and Command
Structure for the POLARIS Weapon System,” JCS 1620/257.
71 “History of the Joint Strategic Planning Sta: Background and Preparation of SIOP–
62” (History and Research Division, Headquarter, Strategic Air Command, n.d.), 7
(declassied).
72 CM-380-59 to SECDEF, August 17, 1959, “Target Coordination and Associated Prob-
lems,” JCS 2056/131.
73 Watson, 479. In 1960, to ll the gap, the Joint Chiefs established the Joint War Games
Agency which operated outside the Joint Sta. In 1968 it became part of J-5 and in
1970 it merged with the Chairman’s Special Studies Group to form the Studies, Analy-
sis, and Gaming Agency (SAGA), reconstituted as the Joint Analysis Directorate (JAD)
in 1984.
74 Net Evaluation Subcommittee, National Security Council, “Appraisal of Relative
Merits, from the Point of View of Eective Deterrence, of Alternative Retaliation Ef-
forts,” October 30, 1959, Enclosure to JCS 2056/145; Fairchild and Poole, 52.
75 Rosenberg, “Origins of Overkill,” 4–5, 61; Watson, 485–490.
76 Fairchild and Poole, 52–53; Memo by John S.D. Eisenhower, July 6, 1960, “Conference
with the President: Secretary Gates, July 6, 1960,” Eisenhower Papers, Ann Whitman
File, Diary Series.
77 Memo by Goodpaster, August 13, 1960, “Conference with the President, August 11,
1960,” DDE Diary Series, Ann Whitman File, Eisenhower Papers; Rosenberg, “Origins
of Overkill,” 3–4.
78 “History of the JSTPS and SIOP–62,” 14. Considered a separate entity, the JSTPS did
not fall under the personnel ceiling that governed the size of the Joint Sta.
79 Memo, SECDEF to CJCS, August 16, 1960, “Target Coordination and Associated Prob-
lems,” Enclosure A to JCS 2056/164.
207
CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
80 SM-810-60 to DSTP et al., August 19, 1960, “Implementation of Strategic Targeting
and Attack Policy,” Enclosure C to JCS 2056/165. See also Desmond Ball, “Develop-
ment of the SIOP, 1960–1983,” in Desmond Ball and Jerey Richelson, eds., Strategic
Nuclear Targeting (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 58–61.
81 See “Brieng for the President by CJCS on the Joint Chiefs of Sta Single Integrated
Operational Plan 1962 (SIOP-62),” September 13, 1961, JCS 2056/281 (sanitized).
82 Memo by Goodpaster, December 1, 1960, “Conference with the President, November
25, 1960,” DDE Diary Series, Ann Whitman File, Eisenhower Papers.
83 Herbert F. York, Making Weapons, Talking Peace (New York: Basic Books, 1987), 185.
84 Goodpaster Memcon, August 13, 1960, loc. cit.
85 Michael A. Palmer, Guardians of the Gulf: A History of America’s Expanding Role in the
Persian Gulf, 1833–1992 (New York: Free Press, 1992), 46–49. Known as the Middle East
Force (MEF), the U.S. otilla operated out of a British base in Bahrain.
86 Fairchild and Poole, 167.
87 K. Condit, 151–160.
88 Report by JSPC to JCS, June 29, 1956, “Force Requirements for Defense of the Bagh-
dad Pact Area,” JCS 1887/220.
89 Memo of Discussion, 231st Meeting of the NSC, January 13, 1955, FRUS, 1955–57, XII,
687.
90 Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984),
331; Memo by Goodpaster of Conference with the President, July 31, 1956, FRUS,
1955–57, XVI, 64.
91 Memo of Discussion at 292d Meeting of the NSC, August 9, 1956, FRUS, 1955–57, XVI, 174.
92 K. Condit, 169–174.
93 Cole C. Kingseed, Eisenhower and the Suez Crisis of 1956 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1995), 47.
94 Memo, JCS to SECDEF, July 31, 1956, “Nationalization of the Suez Maritime Canal
Company by the Egyptian Government,” JCS 2105/38; Memo, JCS to SECDEF, Au-
gust 3, 1956, “Nationalization of the Suez Canal; Consequences and Possible Related
Actions,” JCS 2105/39.
95 Letter, Eisenhower to Anthony Eden, September 8, 1956, in Eisenhower, Waging Peace,
669–671.
96 Memo, Dulles to Eisenhower, March 28, 1956, “Near Eastern Policies,” FRUS, 1955–57,
XV, 419–421; Diary entry, March 28, 1956, in Robert H. Ferrell, ed., The Eisenhower
Diaries (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981), 323–324.
97 See FRUS, 1955–57, XV, 421–424.
98 W. Scott Lucas, Divided We Stand: Britain, the U.S. and the Suez Crisis (London: Hodder
& Stoughton, 1991), 109–113 and passim; Diary entry, March 12, 1956, in Evelyn Shuck-
burgh, Descent to Suez: Diaries, 1951–56 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986), 346.
99 Lucas, 160.
100 Ambrose, 353; Eisenhower, Waging Peace, 82.
101 Pedlow and Welzenbach, 112–117.
208
COUNCIL OF WAR
102 Ricky-Dale Calhoun, “The Musketeer’s Cloak: Strategic Deception During the Suez
Crisis of 1956,” Studies in Intelligence 51, no. 2, 47–58 (unclassied edition); K. Condit, 185.
103 Watson, 60–61; K. Condit, 186–188.
104 Christopher Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only (New York: HarperPerennial, 1996), 227.
105 K. Condit, 189.
106 “Special Message to the Congress on the Situation in the Middle East,” January 5, 1957,
Eisenhower Public Papers, 1957, 6–16.
107 Ambrose, 381–383; Fairchild and Poole, 135–136.
108 Report by Joint Middle East Planning Committee, “Strategic Guidance and Concept
for the Development and Employment of the Middle East Baghdad Pact Forces,” Oc-
tober 18, 1957, and decision on October 23, 1957, JCS 2268/6.
109 CINCNELM, “Annual Report 1 January 1959 to 31 December, 1959,” 2–4, copy in
JHO Collection, summarizes the scale and scope of planned operations. CINCNELM
was the Navy component commander to USCINCEUR; he functioned also as Com-
mander in Chief, U.S. Specied Command, Middle East (CINCUSSPECOMME). In
February 1960 CINCNELM became Commander in Chief U.S. Naval Forces Europe
(CINCNAVEUR) and CINCSPECOMME was discontinued.
110 “The U.S. Army Task Force in Lebanon” (Headquarters, U.S. Army, Europe, 1959), 9.
111 Memo, CNO to JCS, November 7, 1957, “Draft CINCSPECOMME Operation Plan
215-58,” JCS 2034/34; CSAM 183-57 to JCS, November 14, 1957, same subject, JCS
2034/36; CSAFM 291-57 to JCS, November 20, 1957, same subject, JCS 2034/38.
112 Report by JSPC to JCS, January 31, 1958, “Military Planning for the Middle East,” and
decision on February 5, 1958, JCS 1887/433; Message, JCS to USCINCEUR et al.,
March 22, 1958, enclosure A to JCS 1887/438; Fairchild and Poole, 140–142.
113 Memo of Conference with the President, July 14, 1958, FRUS, 1958–60, XI, 225.
114 H.H. Lumpkin, “Operation Blue Bat” (Paper Prepared by Oce of Command Histo-
rian, USEUCOM, November 4, 1958), 2–3, JHO Collection.
115 Holloway’s son, James L. Holloway III, also participated in the Lebanon operation as a
naval aviator. Later, from 1974 to 1978, he served as Chief of Naval Operations and a
member of the JCS.
116 Fairchild and Poole, 156–158; Bernard C. Nalty, “The Air Force Role in Five Crises,
1958–1965,” USAF Historical Division Liaison Oce, June 1968, 13.
117 Ambrose, 472.
118 Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 421–427; Richard H. Immerman, “Guatemala as Cold
War History,” Political Science Quarterly 95 (Winter 1980–81), 629–653.
119 NSC 5432/1, September 3, 1954, “United States Objectives and Courses of Action
With Respect to Latin America,” FRUS, 1952–54, IV, 81–88.
120 FRUS, 1955–57, VI, 266–268, 270, 294–295, 297–298; FRUS, 1958–60, VI, 117–119.
121 Jules R. Benjamin, The United States and the Origins of the Cuban Revolution (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 151–153.
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CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
122 Memo, CNO to JCS, April 19, 1958, “Suspension of Delivery of Military Equipment
and Military Sales to Cuba,” JCS 1976/243; Memo of Discussion at DoS–JCS Meeting,
June 27, 1958, FRUS, 2958–60, VI, 118.
123 Fairchild and Poole, 179–180.
124 Memo, CNO to JCS February 19, 1960, “U.S. Action in Cuba,” JCS 2304/2.
125 Memo of Discussion 437th Meeting of the NSC, March 17, 1960, FRUS, 1958–60, VI,
857; Watson, 763–764.
126 Ferrell, ed., Eisenhower Diaries, 379; Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only, 252.
127 Eisenhower, Waging Peace, 525.
128 Goodpaster Memo of Conference with the President, March 17, 1960, FRUS, 1958–60,
VI, 861–863. For the approved plan, see 5412 Committee Paper, March 16, 1960, “A
Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime,” ibid., 850–851.
129 Ambrose, 507.
130 Memo of Meeting with the President, August 18, 1960, FRUS, 1958–60, VI, 1057–1060;
Watson, 764.
131 Report by Director, Joint Sta to JCS, January 24, 1961, “U.S. Plan of Action in Cuba,”
JCS 2304/19.
132 Khrushchev quoted in Gaddis, We Now Know, 140.
133 Jack M. Schick, The Berlin Crisis, 1958–1962 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1971), 10–27 and passim.
134 Fairchild and Poole, 125–126.
135 See JCSM-16-59 to SECDEF, January 13, 1959, “Berlin Situation,” JCS 1907/162;
JCSM-82-59 to SECDEF, March 11, 1959, “U.S. Position on Berlin,” JCS 1907/175;
Talking Paper Approved by JCS for Conference on March 14, 1959, JCS 1907/179; and
JCSM-93-59 to SECDEF, March 16, 1959, “Statement of Policy on Berlin and Ger-
many,” JCS 1907/180. See also Fairchild and Poole, 126–129.
136 Eisenhower, Waging Peace, 341; Memo by John S.D. Eisenhower of Conference with the
President, March 9, 1959, quoted in Ambrose, Eisenhower the President, 515–516. See also
Fairchild and Poole, 128.
137 Eisenhower, Waging Peace, 318. Robert S. Jordan, Norstad: Cold War NATO Supreme
Commander: Airman, Strategist, Diplomat (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 103–136.
138 H.H. Lumpkin, “Live Oak: A Study in Thirty Months of Combined Planning: Febru-
ary 1959–September 1961” (Study prepared at Headquarters U.S. European Command,
August 19, 1961), 25–26; Jordan, Norstad, 157.
139 FRUS, 1958–60, VIII, 423.
140 Jordan, 155–166.
141 Live Oak Planning Group Paper, July 24, 1959, “Berlin Contingency Planning: More
Elaborate Military Measures,” JCS 1907/231.
142 JCSM-355-59 to SECDEF, August 21, 1959, “Berlin Contingency Planning: More Elab-
orate Military Measures,” JCS 1907/237.
Confrontation in Berlin, 1961
Chapter 7
Kennedy and the
Crisis PresidenCy
For an organization that did not adapt easily to change, John F. Kennedy’s Presidency
was one of the most formidable challenges ever to face the Joint Chiefs of Sta. Rep-
resenting youth, enthusiasm, and fresh ideas, Kennedy entered the White House in
January 1961 committed to blazing a “New Frontier” in science, space, and the “unre-
solved problems of peace and war.”
1
As a Senator and Presidential candidate, Kennedy
had been highly critical of the Eisenhower administration’s defense program, faulting
it for allowing the country to lag behind the Soviet Union in missile development
and for failing to develop a credible conventional alternative to nuclear war. “We have
been driving ourselves into a corner,” Kennedy insisted, “where the only choice is all
or nothing at all, world devastation or submission—a choice that necessarily causes us
to hesitate on the brink and leaves the initiative in the hands of our enemies.”
2
Instead
of threatening an all-out nuclear response, Kennedy advocated graduated levels of
conict tailored to the needs of the situation and the degree of provocation, in line
with the “exible response” doctrine put forward by retired General Maxwell Taylor,
former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and others.
Rening and implementing the President’s concepts fell mainly to the new
Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, who served both Kennedy and his suc-
cessor, Lyndon B. Johnson. President of the Ford Motor Company before coming
to Washington, McNamara had no prior experience in defense aairs other than
his service as a “statistical control” ocer in the Army Air Forces during World War
II. Applying an active management style, McNamara soon became famous for his
aggressive, centralized administrative methods and sophisticated approach toward
evaluating military programs and requirements. To assist him, McNamara installed
a management team that mixed experienced ocials with younger “whiz kids”
adept at “systems analysis,” a relatively new science based on complex, computer-
ized quantitative models. The net eect by the time McNamara stepped down in
1968 was a veritable revolution in defense management and acquisition and an
unprecedented degree of civilian intrusion into military planning and decision-
making. “I’m here to originate and stimulate new ideas and programs,” McNamara
declared, “not just to referee arguments and harmonize interests.”
3
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212
CounCil of War
As the McNamara revolution unfolded, the Joint Chiefs looked on with a mix-
ture of awe and apprehension. Made up initially of holdovers appointed by Eisen-
hower, the JCS were generally older than McNamara and his entourage and skeptical
of making abrupt changes to practices and procedures built on years of experience,
painstaking compromise, and meticulous planning. To the incoming Kennedy admin-
istration, the JCS seemed overly cautious, tradition-bound, and impervious to new
ideas. Inclined to give McNamara the benet of the doubt, Chief of Naval Operations
(CNO) Admiral Arleigh A. Burke at rst lauded the Secretary’s “sharp, decisive” style
and expected him to be “extremely good.” By the time he retired as CNO in August
1961, however, Burke saw McNamara and the JCS as working at cross purposes. Air
Force Chief of Sta General Thomas D. White agreed. In White’s opinion, McNamara
and his sta were “amateurs” who had little or no appreciation of military aairs. Most
uneasy of all was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Lyman L. Lemnitzer,
USA, an Eisenhower appointee steeped in “old school” ways. Though McNamara
promised not to act on important matters without consulting his military advisors,
he oered no assurances that he would heed their views. All too often, Lemnitzer
recalled, the JCS would deliberate “long and hard” to resolve a problem and reach
a consensus, only to have McNamara turn their recommendations over to a systems
analysis team “with no military experience” to reshape their advice.
4
In addition to their diculties with McNamara, the JCS faced an uphill struggle
to retain inuence at the White House. Believing the National Security Council sys-
tem had become unwieldy and unresponsive under Eisenhower, Kennedy opted for
a simplied organization and a streamlined NSC Sta with enhanced powers. The
principal architect of the new system was Kennedy’s assistant for national security af-
fairs McGeorge Bundy, who believed that simplied methods would give the Presi-
dent a broader range of views. “[T]he more advice you get,” he assured the President,
“the better o you will be.”
5
Soon to go were the Planning Board, the Operations
Coordinating Board, and the other support machinery created by Eisenhower that
had given the JCS direct and continuous access to the top echelons of the policy
process. As one sign of their diminished role, the Joint Chiefs closed their oce of
special assistant for national security aairs, which they had maintained in the White
House since the early 1950s, and conducted business with the NSC through a small
liaison oce located next door in the Old Executive Oce Building.
6
Under Kennedy, the NSC became a shadow of its former self. Cutting sta by
one-third, he abandoned the practice of developing broad, long-range policies in
the NSC and used it primarily for addressing current problems and crisis manage-
ment. Meetings followed an irregular schedule and were informal compared with
the two previous administrations. In addition to the statutory members, regular
KEnnEDY anD THE CriSiS PrESiDEnCY
213
participants at NSC meetings came to include the President’s brother, Attorney
General Robert F. Kennedy, and White House political consultant Theodore C.
Sorensen. By law, the JCS remained advisors to the council, but under the new
structure and procedures they were further removed than ever from the President’s
“inner circle.” Still, whatever problems or weaknesses Kennedy’s deconstruction of
the NSC may have introduced, there was no rush to correct them under the suc-
ceeding Johnson administration, which seemed content with the status quo.
7
A further blow to the Joint Chiefs’ inuence was Kennedy’s decision in the
aftermath of the Bay of Pigs asco in April 1961 to give retired Army Chief of Sta
General Maxwell D.Taylor an oce in the White House as the President’s Military
Representative (MILREP). The President originally had Taylor in mind to succeed
Allen Dulles as Director of Central Intelligence, but after the Bay of Pigs embar-
rassment, Kennedy wanted an experienced military advisor close at hand to avoid
another “dumb mistake.”
8
Taylor’s position was analogous in some ways to Admiral
Leahy’s during World War II, though Taylor did not participate in the Joint Chiefs’
deliberations or represent their views. Upon taking the job as the President’s MIL-
REP, Taylor assured Lemnitzer that he did not intend to act as a White House “road-
block” to JCS recommendations.
9
His assigned tasks were to provide the President
with an alternative source of military advice, to review recommendations from the
Pentagon before they went to the Oval Oce, and to serve as the President’s liaison
for covert operations.
10
Taylor’s appointment actually worked out better than the
JCS expected because they now had someone between McNamara and the Presi-
dent. According to Henry E. Glass, who served as special assistant to the Secretary
of Defense, McNamara resented having his advice second-guessed and eventually
persuaded Kennedy that Taylor would be more valuable at the Pentagon as Chair-
man of the Joint Chiefs (where McNamara would have control over him) than at
the White House. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., historian-in-residence at the White
House, had a dierent view. He characterized Taylor’s appointment as a temporary
measure until General Lemnitzer’s term expired and Kennedy could move Taylor
to the Pentagon as CJCS. In any event, on October 1, 1962, Taylor became Chair-
man, replacing Lemnitzer, who went to Europe as NATO Supreme Commander.
11
The Bay of Pigs
Kennedy’s early months in oce were the formative period in his relationship with
the Joint Chiefs and left an indelible impression on all involved. His primary aim in
defense policy was to move away from Eisenhower’s heavy reliance on nuclear weap-
ons by developing a more balanced and exible force posture. Most of the JCS at the
214
CounCil of War
time—the Army and Navy especially—agreed with Kennedy’s basic objective and
welcomed his eorts to make changes. However, the JCS soon found McNamara’s
methods of carrying out the President’s orders heavy-handed and counterproduc-
tive to the development of smooth and ecient civil-military relations. Eorts to
convince McNamara and his sta that it would take time and patience to implement
the changes the President wanted initially met with strong quizzical objections. The
honeymoon between the administration and the JCS was brief. Rumors of growing
tensions and discontent at the Pentagon surfaced within weeks after the inauguration.
No episode more aptly captured these diculties of adjustment than the Joint
Chiefs’ role in the Bay of Pigs operation, the ill-fated attempt by the Central Intel-
ligence Agency (CIA), using Cuban expatriates, to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel
Castro in the spring of 1961. By the time Kennedy took oce, the Bay of Pigs inva-
sion had been in gestation for nearly a year, though few outside the CIA knew of
the program’s existence. Not until early January 1961 did the Joint Chiefs ocially
became privy to the details, though even then, by Admiral Burke’s account, they were
“kept pretty ignorant” and told only “partial truths.” All the same, what the CIA re-
vealed of its preparations up to that point was far from reassuring and left the Joint
Chiefs and their special operations sta decidedly uneasy over achieving stated goals.
12
Similar misgivings had raced through President-elect Kennedy’s mind when he
rst learned of the operation during a CIA brieng on November 18, 1960.
13
On the
eve of the inauguration, realizing that Kennedy had doubts, Eisenhower assured him
that nothing was rm and that it would be up to the new administration to decide
whether to proceed. Taking Eisenhower at his word, Kennedy gave the matter top
priority and during his early days in oce he held a round of meetings with the Di-
rector of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles, the Joint Chiefs, and other senior advisors
to examine the details and explore options. Much to the President’s surprise, the CIA
described plans and preparations that were substantially farther along than Eisenhower
had let on, leaving the distinct impression that it might be too late to turn back.
14
Indications are that, at this stage, Kennedy looked to the Joint Chiefs to provide
him with ongoing analysis of the invasion plans and to apply a brake on any ill-con-
ceived actions by the CIA. With the new administration still organizing itself, Kennedy
had practically nowhere to turn other than the JCS for the professional expertise and
insights he needed. Somewhere along the way, however, lines of communication broke
down. Having had limited involvement in the operation from its inception and know-
ing only what the CIA chose to disclose to them about the invasion force, the Joint
Chiefs were uncomfortable oering much more than a general assessment. Weight-
ing one thing against another, Joint Sta planners (J-5) rated the chances of success as
“very doubtful.”
15
But in their formal submission to the Secretary of Defense and the
215
KEnnEDY anD THE CriSiS PrESiDEnCY
President, the JCS appeared to oer a more upbeat evaluation and suggested that the
operation as originally conceived stood a “fair chance of ultimate success.” The chiefs
neglected to mention, however, that “fair chance” meant one in three.
16
Perhaps sensing his military advisors’ uneasiness over the operation, Kennedy
continued to evince misgivings. The initial plan presented to him by the CIA called
for the exiles to land in force near the town of Trinidad, a popular seaside resort
on Cuba’s south-central coast. But at the State Department’s urging, the Presi-
dent agreed to tone down the operation lest it provoke adverse reactions in Latin
America and the United Nations. Terming the Trinidad plan too “spectacular,” he
directed the CIA to nd a “quiet” site for the landing. The upshot was the selection
of the Bay of Pigs, a swampy but relatively secluded area in Cuba’s Zapata region to
the west.
17
After examining the amended plan, Admiral Burke upped the odds for
success slightly and told the President he thought they were about fty-fty. Burke,
however, was oering a personal opinion. Later, Kennedy complained that the JCS
had let him down by not giving him better warning of the risks and pitfalls.
18
The landing, which took place on April 17, 1961, was probably doomed before
the invaders hit the shore. Inadequately equipped, ill-trained, and ineptly led, the 1,400
Cuban expatriates in the invasion force were no match for Castro’s larger veteran army.
Poorly coordinated air attacks launched from bases in Central America failed to suppress
the Cuban air force. The action was over in 3 days. Whether a more hospitable landing
site and/or stronger air support would have changed the outcome is a matter of conjec-
ture. The Joint Chiefs had taken a dim view of moving the landing from Trinidad to the
Bay of Pigs and had considered eective air support the key to the entire operation. But
they had never pressed their views in the face of the President’s obvious determination
to minimize overt U.S. involvement. Nor had McNamara, still new to dealing with the
military, insisted that the JCS be more forthcoming and specic. Never again would he
hesitate to second-guess the chiefs or to oer an opinion on their advice.
To sort out what went wrong, President Kennedy persuaded General Taylor
to oversee an investigation. Assisting him were Attorney General Kennedy, Director
of Central Intelligence Dulles, and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Burke. Dur-
ing the inquiry, General Taylor and Robert Kennedy developed a close and lasting
friendship. Taylor and the study group took extensive testimony from those who had
been in on the planning and decisionmaking. On June 13, 1961, they presented their
ndings to the President. Written almost exclusively by Taylor, the group’s nal report
took the Joint Chiefs to task for not critiquing the CIA’s plan more closely and for
not being more forthcoming in oering the President options. “Piecing all the evi-
dence together,” Taylor recalled, “we concluded that whatever reservations the Chiefs
had about the Zapata plan . . . they never expressed their concern to the President in
216
CounCil of War
such a way as to lead him to consider seriously a cancellation of the enterprise or the
alternative of backing it up with U.S. forces.”
19
Despite the study group’s ndings, Kennedy never publicly blamed anyone other
than himself for the debacle. Seeking to avoid similar incidents, he told the chiefs that
in the future he expected them to provide “direct and unltered” advice and to act
like “more than military men.”
20
All the same, it was Taylor’s impression that the whole
experience “hung like a cloud” over Kennedy’s relations with the JCS. Attempting to
clear the air, Kennedy met with them in the Pentagon on May 27, 1961. Though no
detailed records of the meeting survived, Kennedy at one point apparently lectured
the chiefs on their responsibility for providing him with unalloyed advice, drawing on
a paper Taylor wrote earlier. But the response he got was “icy silence.”
21
Henceforth,
Kennedy remained respectful but skeptical of JCS advice. “They always give you their
bullshit about their instant reaction and their split-second timing,” he later remarked,
“but it never works out. No wonder it’s so hard to win a war.”
22
Berlin under siege
No sooner had the fallout from the Bay of Pigs begun to settle when a more
ominous crisis arose over access rights to Berlin. Kennedy knew that the city was
a frequent ashpoint and had named former Secretary of State Dean Acheson as
his special advisor on NATO aairs in February 1961, with the Berlin question
part of his mandate.
23
Existing plans for defending Western access rights to the city
rested on NATO doctrine of the 1950s, stressing the early use of nuclear weapons,
and bore the strong imprint of the NATO Supreme Commander General Lauris
Norstad, USAF, a leading proponent of deterrence through the threat of massive
retaliation. In a preliminary assessment that reached the Oval Oce in early April
1961, Acheson dismissed these plans as dangerous and ineectual and urged Ken-
nedy to call the Soviets’ blu by pursuing a combination of diplomatic initiatives
and nonnuclear military options that involved, among other things, sending a heav-
ily armed convoy down the Autobahn to Berlin.
24
The Joint Chiefs recommended a more cautious response. Given the limitations
of U.S. conventional forces at the time, they would not rule out possible recourse to
nuclear weapons if the crisis escalated, though as a practical matter they seemed to
feel that with skillful diplomacy the situation need not go that far. Treating Acheson’s
proposals as overly provocative, they assured the President that they had already ex-
plored the convoy idea and similar military actions and had reached the conclusion
that the use of substantial ground forces “even if adequately supported by air is not
militarily feasible.” A smaller probe, they argued, would serve just as well as a test of
217
KEnnEDY anD THE CriSiS PrESiDEnCY
Soviet intentions and would be far less confrontational than a heavily armed convoy.
Two years earlier, with strengthening deterrence their main objective, the JCS had
recommended a large-scale conventional buildup in Europe, both to impress the So-
viets with the West’s resolve and to be better prepared if a showdown did occur. This
continued to be the Joint Chiefs’ preferred approach to addressing the crisis.
25
To be eective, the Joint Chiefs’ recommended strategy would have required a
mobilization of forces, increased defense spending, and an acceptance that, should all
else fail, recourse to nuclear weapons might be unavoidable. As yet, President Kennedy
was unprepared to go quite that far. With memories of the Bay of Pigs still fresh, he
was doubly cautious in listening to JCS advice or endorsing a course of military ac-
tion. But after his disastrous Vienna summit meeting with Khrushchev in early June, he
steadily revised his thinking. Hoping the Vienna meeting would lay the groundwork
for a peaceful settlement, Kennedy was instead taken aback by Khrushchev’s bullying
and refusal to engage in serious negotiations. When Khrushchev nished brow-beating
Kennedy, he placed another ultimatum on the table, threatening to sign a treaty with
the East Germans by the end of the year. “I’ve got a terrible problem,” Kennedy ob-
served afterwards. “If [Khrushchev] thinks I’m inexperienced and have no guts, until
we remove those ideas we won’t get anywhere with him.”
26
In late June 1961, con-
vinced that a showdown was coming, Kennedy created an interdepartmental Berlin
Task Force to coordinate overall policy and directed McNamara to take a closer look
at military preparations to counter Khrushchev’s ultimatum.
27
The ensuing review conrmed that the United States had yet to achieve a
credible exible-response force posture. In a rough estimate of requirements, the
Joint Chiefs recommended a supplemental appropriation of $18 billion, mobiliza-
tion of Reserve units, and an increase in the size of the Armed Forces by 860,000.
Yet even with these increases in strength, “main reliance” would still come down
to a nuclear response.
28
Meeting with McNamara, Lemnitzer, Taylor, and Secre-
tary of State Dean Rusk at his Hyannis Port home on July 8, Kennedy declared
the chiefs’ recommendations to be unacceptable and said he wanted a “political
program” backed by enhanced conventional military power “on a scale sucient
both to indicate our determination and to provide the communists time for second
thoughts and negotiation.”
29
With the President’s goals further claried, the Joint
Sta assembled revised estimates that became part of the discussion at a series of
ad hoc meetings involving McNamara, Acheson, Rusk, and senior White House
sta.
30
The upshot was the President’s nationally televised speech on July 25 warn-
ing of grave dangers over Berlin and calling for a supplemental budget increase of
$3.2 billion to augment the Armed Forces by 217,000, with most of the increase in
ground troops.
31
218
CounCil of War
Congress acted quickly to give the President practically everything he wanted.
But the need to develop an agreed position with U.S. allies and problems associ-
ated with mobilizing the Reserves posed unexpected delays. Moreover, from con-
versations between McNamara and Norstad in Paris in late July, it was clear that
SACEUR lacked a workable plan for assuring access to Berlin using solely or even
primarily conventional forces.
32
Until these problems were resolved, the adminis-
tration had no choice but to fall back on the nuclear-oriented posture it inherited
from Eisenhower, a decision that became almost automatic after the increase in
tensions precipitated by erection of the Berlin Wall on August 13. Seeing the wall
as a major escalation of the crisis, Kennedy resolved to meet the challenge head on,
telling McNamara that the time had come to adopt “a harder military posture.”
33
Behind the President’s decision to toughen his stance over Berlin was a grow-
ing body of credible evidence debunking the missile gap and the articial con-
straints it imposed on the administration’s behavior. As early as February, a skeptical
McNamara had acknowledged that the missile gap was probably more myth than
reality during a background brieng for reporters. But he retracted his statement
under pressure from the White House.
34
Based on information provided by Colonel
Oleg Penkovskiy, the CIA’s “mole” inside the Soviet General Sta, and photos from
the Discoverer satellite program, it became apparent over the summer that earlier
intelligence estimates had overstated Soviet long-range missile capabilities and that
the United States retained overall strategic nuclear superiority. Though Kennedy
refused to treat the new evidence as conclusive, there was no denying that the gap,
if it existed at all, was far less extreme than previously assumed.
35
On September 13, 1961, the Joint Chiefs gave President Kennedy his rst formal
brieng on SIOP–62, the current war plan for strategic bombardment of the Sino-
Soviet bloc. Afterwards proclaiming the plan to be overly rigid, he ordered changes
(already initiated by McNamara) that would allow greater choice in the selection of
targets and the timing and sequence of attacks.
36
At the same time, however, knowing
that the United States retained the edge in strategic power, Kennedy and key aides
adopted a signicantly tougher line toward the Berlin crisis, both to reassure U.S.
allies and to pressure the Soviets. Thus, in the weeks following the SIOP brieng,
McNamara, Rusk, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell L. Gilpatric all made
high-prole public appearances in support of administration policy. Echoing the poli-
cies of the previous 8 years, they rearmed the President’s determination to stand fast
and their certainty that the United States had the resources to prevail. “Our nuclear
stockpile,” McNamara conrmed, “is several times that of the Soviet Union and we
will use either tactical weapons or strategic weapons in whatever quantities wherever,
whenever it’s necessary to protect this nation and its interests.”
37
219
KEnnEDY anD THE CriSiS PrESiDEnCY
The blueprint for carrying out these declarations was National Security Deci-
sion Memorandum (NSDM) 109, a compendium of phased responses for the defense
of Western rights to Berlin, also known as the “poodle blanket” paper. The rst three
phases involved pressure through diplomatic channels, economic sanctions, and mari-
time harassment, followed by or in conjunction with military pressures and escalation
to the full use of nuclear weapons. Adopted by the NSC in late October 1961, NSDM
109 was largely the product of the Oce of International Security Aairs in OSD,
headed by Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul H. Nitze. “In case one response failed,”
Nitze recalled, “we would go to the next and then the next, and so on.” Many of the
proposed measures in the “preferred sequence,” such as the use of diplomatic protests,
small unit probes, and the coercion of Soviet shipping in retaliation for obstruction
of access to Berlin, resembled the options compiled the year before by Norstad’s Live
Oak planners in Paris. But as far as Nitze and his sta were concerned, Live Oak had
barely scratched the surface. Early drafts of NSDM 109 listed so many possible courses
of action that the joke around Nitze’s oce was that it would take a piece of paper the
size of a horse blanket to list them all. A condensed version reduced the horse blanket
to the size of a “poodle blanket.” Hence the paper’s nickname.
38
Although the Joint Chiefs belatedly oered their own “preferred sequence”
paper, it was almost entirely oriented toward military sanctions and too detailed, in
the opinion of Deputy Secretary Gilpatric, to serve as policy guidance.
39
Moreover,
during a meeting with the President on October 20, it slipped out that the JCS
had yet to reach full agreement on how their preferred sequence plan should be
implemented. In a scene reminiscent of their internal quarrels over Laos (see below),
Lemnitzer and Army Chief of Sta General George H. Decker wanted to move
quickly with the deployment of forces once mobilization reached its peak, while Air
Force Chief of Sta General Curtis LeMay and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral
George W. Anderson, Jr., urged patience and delay. Assured by McNamara that a -
nal decision need not be taken until November, Kennedy politely shrugged o the
matter as an honest dierence of professional opinion.
40
A week later, on October 27–28, the crisis peaked with the dramatic confron-
tation between U.S. and Soviet tanks at “Checkpoint Charlie,” a key transit point
between the Soviet and U.S. sectors in Berlin. Anticipating trouble, the Joint Chiefs
had taken steps to bolster the city’s garrison but had warned the President that there
was little chance allied forces could hold against a determined Soviet attack. Taylor
agreed, describing it as “a hell of a bad idea” to try to defend the city.
41
Despite
the face-o, however, neither side seemed eager for a ght and the incident ended
peacefully, with Soviet tanks the rst to withdraw. From that point on, though the
wall remained, tensions gradually relaxed.
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CounCil of War
Exactly why the Soviets backed down may never be known. But thanks to
the limited opening of Soviet and East European archives following the end of the
Cold War, the explanation that suggests itself is that the Warsaw Pact high command
lacked condence in the ability of its forces to prevail in a showdown. On Septem-
ber 25, 1961, with the crisis gathering momentum, the Warsaw Pact announced that
over the next few weeks it would conduct a command post exercise called BURIA.
The Warsaw Pact’s largest exercise to date, BURIA simulated a military conict
arising from ongoing tensions over Berlin and tested the Eastern Bloc’s ability to
conduct unied operations. With the exercise under way, the CIA assessed BURIA’s
purpose as two-fold: to convince the West of the Soviet bloc’s military strength,
readiness, and determination in the current crisis, and to increase pressure on the
West to make concessions or to acquiesce to Communist demands.
42
BURIA lasted from September 28 to October 10, 1961, and proved a disap-
pointment to the Warsaw Pact high command. Once ghting erupted, the Soviets
and their East European allies were supposed to shift quickly from a defensive to
an oensive posture. Using tactical nuclear weapons and fast-moving tank divisions
to spearhead the assault, Warsaw Pact forces planned to smash through NATO de-
fenses and occupy Paris within a fortnight. But as the exercise unfolded, it encoun-
tered unexpected command and control, mobilization, transportation, and logistical
problems. Assuming nuclear retaliation by the West, Soviet army doctors reckoned
a 50 percent loss of strength in front line units. A shortage of interpreters and faulty
radio equipment crippled coordination among East German, Soviet, Polish, and
Czech commanders. Communications between land and sea forces o the north
German coast were practically nonexistent. Soviet maps provided to East European
forces proved largely useless because they were written in Russian.
43
Whether Kennedy and the Joint Chiefs paid much attention to BURIA is
unclear. Even though Western intelligence monitored the exercise, there are few
references to it in subsequent estimates. Still, those in Washington with access to the
intelligence on BURIA knew that Warsaw Pact forces were poorly organized and
in a relatively weak position to risk a military confrontation with the West. About
their only option would have been to use nuclear weapons, a dangerous course that
the Joint Chiefs expected the Soviets to avoid unless they felt seriously threatened.
Precipitating a nuclear conict was never the U.S. intention in any event. Despite
their dierences over the scale and scope of the Western military buildup, Kennedy
and the JCS agreed that its fundamental purpose was to pressure the Soviets into
respecting the status quo. With the exception of the Berlin Wall, which remained
in place for nearly three decades, they by and large succeeded. “It’s not a very nice
solution,” Kennedy conceded, “but a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.”
44
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KEnnEDY anD THE CriSiS PrESiDEnCY
laos
At the same time President Kennedy and the Joint Chiefs were wrestling with So-
viet threats to Berlin, there loomed an equally grave crisis on the other side of the
world, in the small, remote kingdom of Laos, formerly part of French Indochina.
Like Cuba and Berlin, Laos was another of the unresolved problems passed from
Eisenhower to Kennedy. At issue was a steadily escalating political and military con-
ict between the Communist Pathet Lao, supported by neighboring North Viet-
nam, Communist China, and the Soviet Union, and the U.S.-backed Royal Lao
Government (RLG) dominated by General Phoumi Nosavan. By the beginning of
1961, the two sides were locked in a see-saw battle for control of the Laotian admin-
istrative capital of Vientiane. In alerting Kennedy to the situation as he was leaving
oce, Eisenhower warned of larger implications: “If Laos is lost to the Free World,
in the long run we will lose all of Southeast Asia.” By comparison, the gathering
conict in neighboring South Vietnam was a mere sideshow.
45
The Joint Chiefs initially advised the incoming administration to do all it could
to keep Laos from going Communist, up to and including unilateral U.S. interven-
tion with “sizable” military forces.
46
Even though the Laotian army (Forces Armées
de Laos, or FAL) had seldom made eective use of U.S. assistance, Kennedy agreed
to consider increasing American help. But he strongly opposed the go-it-alone ap-
proach and leaned toward a negotiated settlement that would neutralize the country
under a coalition government. Above all, he wanted it understood that intervention
with U.S. combat troops was a last resort. Apparently not expecting the President to
take such a rm stand, General Lemnitzer assured him that the JCS did not advocate
the deployment of “major U.S. forces” and that their main concern was to bolster
“indigenous” capabilities. Guarding his options, Kennedy directed the JCS to con-
tinue to study U.S. intervention but indicated he would hold a decision in abeyance
until eorts to reach a diplomatic solution ran their course.
47
Throughout the crisis, the Joint Chiefs and their superiors had less than reli-
able intelligence on the situation inside Laos. SIGINT was virtually nonexistent and
U–2s had limited applicability.
48
The information the JCS received came mainly
from the U.S. Embassy in Vientiane and U.S. military advisors working with the
FAL. In early March 1961, with the military balance tipping in favor of the Com-
munists, the President approved an interagency plan (MILL POND) for limited
overt and covert assistance to the RLG and its allies.
49
Over the next several weeks,
Pacic Theater Commander (CINCPAC) Admiral Harry D. Felt stepped up the de-
livery of arms and equipment to the FAL. At the same time, he began assembling a
command sta and earmarking U.S. units for a joint task force (JTF 116) that would
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form the nucleus of a Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) Field Force
should he be ordered to intervene. Estimates assembled by the Joint Sta projected
an intervention force of some 60,000 U.S. troops, augmented by token units from
nearby SEATO countries. Anything smaller, JCS planners insisted, would fail to im-
press or pressure either the Soviets or North Vietnamese and could draw the United
States into an open-ended war on the Asian mainland.
50
Despite preparations to intervene, the preferred U.S. solution remained a diplo-
matic settlement. As Secretary of State Dean Rusk described the administration’s strat-
egy, “Even if we move in, the object is not to ght a big war but to lay the foundation
for negotiation.”
51
During talks with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan toward
the end of March, Kennedy acknowledged that he did not accord much strategic
importance to Laos and was prepared to accept “anything short of the whole of Laos
being overrun.” Should intervention become unavoidable, he was thinking of deploy-
ing four or ve U.S. battalions to hold Vientiane and a few bridges across the Mekong
River long enough to reach an agreement. But he had yet to settle on a specic course
of action and looked to the British to help nd a solution through diplomacy.
52
Convinced that the President was underestimating the seriousness of the situ-
ation and Laos’ importance, the Joint Chiefs of Sta continued to favor a strong
show of force as the only way of avoiding a larger conict. But as time passed with
no new decisions from the White House and as the FAL suered one setback after
another, the JCS saw the opportunity for eective action slipping away. With large-
scale intervention appearing unlikely, they advised staying out. At a pivotal meeting
on April 29 with the Secretary of Defense and Attorney General Kennedy, they
made their concerns known and urged shelving plans for intervention, provoking
McNamara to remark snidely that “we had missed having government troops who
were willing to ght.” Most cautious of all was Army Chief of Sta Decker, who
considered a conventional war in Southeast Asia a losing cause. Decker oered one
reason after another why going into Laos at this point had drawbacks. Ultimately, in
his view, it came down to a question of whether the results would be worth the cost.
“[I]f we go in,” he said, “we should go in to win, and that means bombing Hanoi,
China, and maybe even using nuclear bombs.”
53
Decker’s reference to the use of nuclear weapons was not the rst time the
subject came up with respect to Laos, but it put the potential consequences of an
escalating and widening conict in Southeast Asia into sharper focus than ever be-
fore. Whether the JCS had a specic plan for mounting nuclear operations in Laos
is unclear. Detailed planning for a Laotian operation was a function of Admiral
Felt’s sta, which produced several operational and concept plans during the crisis,
none involving nuclear weapons other than against the threat of large-scale Chinese
223
KEnnEDY anD THE CriSiS PrESiDEnCY
intervention.
54
But in light of the nuclear-oriented tactics and strategy introduced
during the Eisenhower years, it was practically routine for the use of nuclear weap-
ons to be considered at one point or another in the planning process. The Kennedy
administration had vowed to change that practice, but its preferences had yet to aect
the planning guidance employed by the Joint Sta and the combatant commanders.
55
The use of nuclear weapons was thus present, if not explicit, in policymakers’ and
military planners’ minds throughout the Laos crisis. Yet the decisive factors that steered
Kennedy away from military intervention were the absence of congressional support
for military action and his own concern, in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, about
the quality and soundness of JCS advice. In early May, Kennedy polled the chiefs for
their views. All, to one degree or another, still favored the application of some form
of military power, but speaking individually, they oered no coherent courses. Instead,
they described a series of separate measures which, taken together, might invite a full-
scale war with North Vietnam and Communist China.
56
With the Joint Chiefs unable
to oer a credible military option, Kennedy continued to rely on diplomacy to yield
a settlement. “Thank God the Bay of Pigs happened when it did,” he later remarked.
“Otherwise we’d be in Laos by now—and that would be a hundred times worse.”
57
Meanwhile, a fragile ceasere descended on Laos, opening the way by mid-May
for the 14-nation Geneva Conference to reconvene work on a negotiated settlement.
Without the continuing threat of U.S. and/or SEATO military intervention, the Joint
Chiefs doubted that there could ever be an agreement that did not favor the absorp-
tion of Laos into the Sino-Soviet bloc. W. Averell Harriman, the senior U.S. represen-
tative to the Geneva talks and, in President Kennedy’s eyes, a highly respected author-
ity on negotiating with the Communists, took a similar view.
58
Consequently, as the
talks went forward, the Joint Sta, with White House approval, continued to review
plans and preparations to insert U.S. or SEATO forces into Laos. But by September,
the administration’s preoccupation with Berlin and the diversion of military assets to
meet the crisis there left the Joint Chiefs skeptical of achieving a favorable outcome at
the bargaining table. JCS eorts to interest senior policymakers in a limited SEATO
buildup in the region, backed by U.S. air, sea, and logistical support, met with the cold
rebu from OSD that such actions might “dilute other deployments.”
59
The Laotian situation heated up again in the spring of 1962. Blatantly dis-
regarding the ceasere, Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese troops laid siege to the
provincial capital of Nam Tha. As the crisis unfolded, General Lemnitzer and Sec-
retary McNamara were in Athens for a NATO ministerial meeting. Ordered by
Kennedy to take a rst-hand look at the situation, they arrived in Southeast Asia
soon after Nam Tha had fallen to the Communists, with the remnants of the FAL
in full retreat. An aerial inspection conrmed that the Mekong River oered little
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or no defense against a Communist invasion of either Thailand or South Vietnam.
Arriving back in Washington on May 12, McNamara and Lemnitzer immediately
debriefed the President and the NSC and urged a prompt but restrained show of
force in line with “precautionary steps” recommended by Admiral Felt. This time
Kennedy agreed, giving CINCPAC the go-ahead to move a Marine battalion with
its helicopters and other air support to Thailand and to shift a U.S. Army battle
group already there for maneuvers to the strategically important town of Ubon.
60
Should the Communist advance fail to stop, Kennedy sanctioned planning for a
larger intervention, mainly to protect South Vietnam. The JCS and CINCPAC were
still working out the details when, in mid-June 1962, the warring parties in Laos
announced agreement on a coalition government, ending the crisis but leaving
Laos eectively partitioned along lines that gave the North Vietnamese avenues to
inltrate troops and weapons into South Vietnam and to threaten Thailand as well.
61
The battle for Laos was essentially over, and for all practical purposes the Com-
munists had won. Gaining what they had wanted all along, they now had unfettered
access into South Vietnam and beyond. Once again, the Joint Chiefs and President
Kennedy had failed to see eye-to-eye on a crucial issue. After the Bay of Pigs Ken-
nedy never fully trusted JCS advice. As a result, JCS eorts to persuade Kennedy to
take a strong stand on Laos fell largely on deaf ears until it was too late. Unlike the
President, the JCS never regarded Laos as expendable. Rather, they saw it as a small
but strategically important country whose fate would determine that of its neigh-
bors. In the chiefs’ view, once Laos was lost it was only a matter of time before the
United States faced larger conicts in South Vietnam, Thailand, and beyond.
origins of The CuBan Missile Crisis
The last major foreign crisis of Kennedy’s presidency was the October 1962 con-
frontation with the Soviets over their deployment of strategic nuclear missiles in
Cuba. By then, Kennedy had replaced the military advisors he inherited from
Eisenhower with people of his own choosing. Two of these personnel changes came
on October 1, when General Earle G. Wheeler replaced Decker as Army Chief of
Sta and Maxwell Taylor returned to active duty, succeeding Lemnitzer as Chair-
man. Earlier, Anderson had replaced Burke as CNO and General Curtis E. LeMay
had succeeded Thomas D. White as Air Force Chief of Sta. In Taylor’s view, LeMay
was a superb operational commander, as demonstrated by his accomplishments in
World War II and during the years he ran the Strategic Air Command. But his ap-
pointment as Air Force Chief of Sta was a “big mistake.” Kennedy, on the other
hand, felt he had no choice. Though he found LeMay coarse, rude, and overbearing,
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KEnnEDY anD THE CriSiS PrESiDEnCY
he felt he had to promote him in view of the general’s seniority and strong popular
and congressional following.
62
In contrast, President Kennedy regarded Taylor as “absolutely rst-class.” In-
deed, he was one of the few military professionals he respected and felt comfortable
with.
63
To his JCS colleagues, however, Taylor’s return to the Pentagon was less than
welcome owing to the political overtones surrounding his appointment, his identi-
cation with administration policies, and his criticism of the Joint Chiefs following
the Bay of Pigs. As Chairman, he saw himself mainly as the agent of his civilian
superiors and tried to craft military recommendations that harmonized with civil-
ian views and administration programs. Aware that the JCS were losing inuence,
he attributed this situation in part to the Joint Sta, which he characterized as only
“marginally eective” because of its “inherent slowness” in addressing issues and
providing timely responses.
64
Some of the Service chiefs believed they could not
always count on Taylor to convey their views fairly and accurately to the President.
Nor could they rely on him to report precisely what the President or other senior
ocials said, a problem that Taylor’s hearing diculties may have exacerbated.
65
Taylor was still in the White House as the President’s military representative when
the Cuban missile crisis unfolded. Its origins went back to the spring of 1961, in the
aftermath of the Bay of Pigs episode, when the Kennedy administration resolved to
isolate Castro’s Cuba and to undermine its authority and inuence. The Joint Chiefs’
contribution was a set of plans for a swift and powerful U.S. invasion of Cuba to over-
throw Castro’s government in an 8-day campaign.
66
Meeting with Secretary McNa-
mara and Admiral Burke on April 29, 1961, President Kennedy concurred in the gen-
eral outline of the plan.
67
But after further review, the NSC decided against military
intervention at that point and elected to put pressure on Castro through diplomatic
and economic means and a covert operations program known as MONGOOSE. To
coordinate the eort, the President turned to his brother, Robert, who preferred to
draw on Taylor—a family friend—rather than the JCS for military advice.
68
Like the struggle for Laos, the Kennedy administration’s growing obsession
with Cuba reected a fundamental shift in the focus of Cold War politics. Dur-
ing the late 1940s and 1950s, Europe and Northeast Asia had been at the center
of the Cold War. But by the early 1960s, despite occasional are-ups over Berlin
and along the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, the contest for
control in these areas was essentially over and a stalemate had settled in. Realizing
that further gains in the industrialized world were unlikely, the Soviets turned their
attention to the emerging Third World countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America
where Khrushchev in a celebrated speech of January 6, 1961, proposed to unleash
a wave of Communist-directed “liberation wars.” President Kennedy referred to
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CounCil of War
Khrushchev’s speech often and considered it clear evidence that the United States
needed to pay more attention to the Third World. In particular, he stressed the de-
velopment of aid programs to improve living conditions and the acquisition of more
eective tools for counterinsurgency warfare.
69
Khrushchev found the temptation of establishing a strong Soviet presence in
Cuba, 90 miles from the southern coast of the United States, irresistible. Not only
would these weapons counterbalance the deployment of American forces in Europe
and the Near East, but Cuba would also serve as a hub for spreading Communism
throughout Latin America. Less clear is why Khrushchev risked losing his foothold
in Cuba by placing strategic nuclear missiles there, a provocation that was almost
certain to draw a sharp U.S. response. In his memoirs, Khrushchev justied his ac-
tions as providing Castro with deterrence against American attack. “Without our
missiles in Cuba, the island would have been in the position of a weak man threat-
ened by a strong man.”
70
The missiles in question, however, were strategic oensive
weapons, not defensive ones, which would have aorded Cuba better protection.
Though there may also have been a handful of Soviet tactical nuclear weapons in
Cuba at the time, the evidence of their presence is sketchy and has never been posi-
tively conrmed. Nor is it clear who, if anyone, had authority to use them.
71
The
most plausible explanation for Khrushchev’s actions is that he was trying to bolster
the Soviet Union’s strategic posture and overplayed his hand. The consensus among
Kennedy loyalists like diplomat George Ball was that Khrushchev was a “crude”
thinker who miscalculated that he could push the President around with impunity.
According to Ball, Khrushchev’s decision to place oensive missiles in Cuba result-
ed from his desire to “bring the U.S. down a peg, strengthen his own position with
respect to China, and improve his standing in the Politburo with one bold stroke.”
72
Whatever the reasons, Khrushchev was adept at rening and carrying out his plan.
The decision to deploy missiles in Cuba emerged from an informal meeting in the
spring of 1962 between Khrushchev and Marshal Rodion Malinovskiy, the minister of
defense, at Khrushchev’s dacha in the Crimea. Malinovskiy complained about the pres-
ence of 15 U.S. Jupiter medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) in Turkey and the
need to redress this situation. The Jupiters had been operational for about a year. While
not in Malinovskiy’s view a serious military threat, they were an irritant requiring a di-
version of resources. One thing led to another and it was from these conversations that
Khrushchev seized on the idea of putting strategic missiles in Cuba.
73
To implement his policy, Khrushchev relied on the Soviet General Sta to con-
coct an elaborate deception scheme. Code-named ANADYR, the operation involved
assembling and outtting in total secrecy over 50,000 soldiers, airmen, and sailors,
calculating the weapons, equipment, supplies, and support they would need for a
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KEnnEDY anD THE CriSiS PrESiDEnCY
prolonged stay in Cuba, nding 85 freighters for transportation, and completing the
mission in 5 months.
74
Apparently, senior members of the Soviet Defense Council
initially resisted the idea, but as a practiced expert in bullying people, Khrushchev
got his way.
75
Toward the end of May, a high-level Soviet military delegation, posing
as engineers, visited Havana and secured Castro’s agreement to the plan. Preparations
continued over the summer, and on September 8, 1962, the rst SS–4 MRBMs were
unloaded in Cuba. Their nuclear warheads began arriving a month later, though their
presence went undetected by U.S. intelligence.
76
Despite tight security and elaborate deception measures, the Soviets could not
fully conceal their activities. By summer, rumors were rife within intelligence circles
and the Cuban exile community in south Florida that the Soviets were up to some-
thing. Attention focused on an apparent buildup of conventional arms, which the
CIA conrmed in July and August through U–2 photographs, HUMINT sources,
and NSA surveillance of Soviet ships passing through the Dardanelles.
77
The CIA
also detected increased construction activity for SA–2 antiaircraft missile installa-
tions (the same weapon used to shoot down Gary Powers’s U–2 in 1960) and a
partially nished surface-to-surface missile complex at the Cuban coastal town of
Banes, reported to President Kennedy on September 7. The Banes installation was
for short-range anti-ship cruise missiles and did not pose a serious threat to U.S.
vessels, but the discovery caused President Kennedy to impose tight compartmen-
talization on all intelligence dealing with oensive weapons. Earlier, he had imposed
similar constraints on the dissemination of SA–2 surface-to-air missile (SAM) infor-
mation. These precautions severely limited the distribution of intelligence data, even
among high-level ocials and senior intelligence analysts. Whether they prevented
critical intelligence from reaching the JCS is unclear.
78
As part of the deception operation, the Soviets maintained that they had no plans
to deploy oensive nuclear missiles in Cuba. Until U–2 pictures proved otherwise,
the Intelligence Community accepted these assurances at face value.
79
Monthly U–2
overights of Cuba had been routine since the Bay of Pigs and by September 1962,
with reports of increased Soviet activity, the Kennedy administration fell under grow-
ing pressure to step up surveillance. But as more SA–2 sites became operational, the
U–2s were increasingly vulnerable, raising fears of a repetition of the Powers incident.
Over CIA objections, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy and Secretary of
State Dean Rusk persuaded President Kennedy in mid-September to suspend U–2
ights across Cuba and to approve new routes along the periphery of the island. To
gloss over the loss of coverage, the White House termed these “additional” ights,
which technically they were. But the overall result, as one CIA analyst characterized
it, was “a dysfunctional surveillance regime in a dynamic situation.”
80
228
CounCil of War
These procedural changes took place at the very time Soviet oensive missiles
were starting to arrive in Cuba and delayed their discovery by a full month. As late as
September 24, however, General Lemnitzer still considered U.S. surveillance of Cuba
to be “adequate” in light of current policy and military requirements.
81
Though the
JCS were well aware of the danger posed by the growing Soviet presence in Cuba,
it was Castro’s stubborn hold on power despite ongoing economic, diplomatic, and
covert eorts to loosen his grip that concerned them even more. Convinced that
the time was fast approaching when only a military solution would suce, the JCS
continued to focus on various contingency plans to cripple or topple Castro’s regime.
By the end of September, their attention had settled on three concepts: a large-scale
air attack (OPLAN–312–62); an all-out combined arms invasion (OPLAN–314–61)
that would take approximately 18 days to organize; and a quick reaction version of the
invasion plan (OPLAN–316–61) that could be launched with immediately available
forces in 5 days.
82
Also on the table was a Joint Strategic Survey Council proposal to
impose a naval blockade of Cuba. However, the JCS paid less attention to this option
than the others because there was no guarantee it would assure Castro’s downfall.
83
Treating these plans as exceedingly sensitive, the Joint Chiefs did not discuss
them in any detail with senior administration gures outside the Pentagon. Conse-
quently, their possible political and diplomatic impact remained unassessed. The Presi-
dent’s views, insofar as they were known to the JCS, favored continuing surveillance of
the island and avoidance of a military confrontation.
84
As a concession to preparedness,
Kennedy asked Congress in September for authority to call up 150,000 Reservists,
and in early October he and McNamara discussed the possibility of an air strike to
take out the SA–2 sites.
85
But before taking further action, the President wanted bet-
ter information. On October 12, with the SA–2 threat still his uppermost concern, he
transferred operational command and control of U–2 ights over Cuba from the CIA
to the Strategic Air Command and authorized the resumption of direct overights,
limited to the western tip of the island for the time being. Two days later, SAC’s rst
U–2 mission conrmed that the Soviets were deploying SS–4 medium-range surface-
to-surface missiles on the island. Subsequent ights revealed that the Soviets were also
constructing SS–5 intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) sites.
86
showdown over CuBa
The discovery that the Soviets were deploying oensive strategic missiles in Cuba
and that the weapons were on the verge of activation presented Kennedy with the
most serious foreign policy crisis of his Presidency. Militarily, the MRBMs and
IRBMs the Soviets were deploying in Cuba were comparable to the Thor and
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KEnnEDY anD THE CriSiS PrESiDEnCY
Jupiter missiles the United States had deployed to Britain, Italy, and Turkey the pre-
vious few years. With ranges of up to 1,200 miles for the MRBMs and 2,500 miles
for the IRBMs, the Soviets could threaten most of the eastern half of the United
States with nuclear destruction. By themselves, these weapons may have done little
or nothing to change the overall strategic balance since the United States continued
to hold a substantial lead in ICBMs and long-range strategic bombers. All the same,
the threat was much too large and close to home to ignore. With the congressional
mid-term elections looming, a decisive response became all the more certain.
To manage the crisis, Kennedy improvised through an ad hoc body known as
the Executive Committee, or ExCom. Hurriedly assembled, ExCom operated for se-
curity reasons with no pre-set agenda and initially consisted of Cabinet-level ocials,
a handful of their close aides, and a few outside advisors.
87
As time passed, the list of
attendees steadily grew to more than seventy people, mostly civilians. Even though
the Joint Chiefs were actively engaged in contingency planning throughout the crisis,
they were not directly privy to ExCom’s deliberations or even much of the informa-
tion that passed through it. General Taylor was the sole JCS member on the ExCom
and one of its few members with signicant military experience. During the crisis, the
Joint Chiefs met privately with the President only once—on October 19. The rest of
the time, Taylor or McNamara acted as intermediary. In his memoirs, Taylor acknowl-
edged that some of the chiefs distrusted him. He added, however, that over the course
of the crisis he repeatedly volunteered to arrange more meetings with the President,
but that none of the Service chiefs showed any interest.
88
The main advantage of a larger and more conspicuous JCS presence in the Ex-
Com would have been closer coordination. Policymakers would have had a clearer
understanding of the military options and the Joint Chiefs a fuller appreciation of the
political and diplomatic dimensions of the problem.
89
In the JCS view, the deployment
of oensive missiles in Cuba was a serious provocation that more than justied Castro’s
removal from power by force if necessary. Thus, from the onset of the crisis, the JCS
(including Taylor) favored a direct and unequivocal military response to eliminate all
Soviet missiles from Cuba and, in the process, to “get rid” of Castro.
90
It was a position
Kennedy found both too extreme and too risky. During the Bay of Pigs, he had wanted
the Joint Chiefs to speak out more. By the time of the Cuban missile crisis, he had little
interest in what they had to say. By keeping them at arm’s length, he could acknowl-
edge their suggestions but ignore them as well. “The rst advice I’m going to give my
successor,” he later observed, “is to watch the generals and to avoid feeling that just
because they are military men their opinions on military matters are worth a damn.”
91
The Joint Chiefs came to their position during the early days of the crisis and
stuck to it. Throughout their deliberations, there was little repetition of the squabbling
230
CounCil of War
that had exposed their disunity and marred their eectiveness during the Berlin and
Laos episodes. Treating military action as inevitable, their initial preference was for
a strong air attack to take out all known IR/MRBM sites, SA–2 installations, and
other key military facilities, followed by implementation of the quick-reaction inva-
sion plan (OPLAN–316). From mid-October on, the JCS carried out a steady buildup
of airpower in Florida, reaching a strength of over 600 planes, and positioned supplies
and ammunition for an invasion. They also designated Admiral Robert L. Dennison,
Commander in Chief, Atlantic, a unied command, to exercise primary responsibility
for Cuban contingencies. Facing a shortage of conventional munitions, McNamara
authorized U.S. combat aircraft to y with nuclear weapons.
92
While treating an invasion as unavoidable, the Joint Chiefs accepted McNamara’s
advice and conned their presentation to the President on October 19 to the air attack
phase. Predictably, the most ardent advocate of this course was LeMay, the Air Force
chief, who doubted whether a naval blockade or lesser measures would permanently
neutralize the missile threat. Kennedy seemed to like the idea of a “surgical” air strike
against the IR/MRBM sites alone. However, a large-scale air campaign (especially
one that might involve tactical nuclear weapons) was another matter, and in explor-
ing options with the JCS, he expressed concern that it might invite Soviet reprisals
against Berlin. “We would be regarded,” he said, “as the trigger-happy Americans who
lost Berlin.” And, he added: “We would have no support among our allies.” Kennedy
also feared that an American attack of any sort on Cuba with the Soviets there could
escalate into a nuclear exchange. “If we listen to them and do what they want us to
do,” Kennedy later said of the Joint Chiefs, probably with LeMay in mind more than
any of the others, “none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong.”
93
If it resolved anything, the President’s meeting with the Joint Chiefs left Ken-
nedy more convinced than ever that he urgently needed to nd an alternative to
direct military action. The next day, after a rambling 2-hour ExCom session, the
President decided to put both an air campaign and an invasion on hold and to
impose a blockade, or “quarantine” as he publicly called it since a blockade amount-
ed to a declaration of war in international law. During the ExCom debate, General
Taylor strenuously defended the JCS position in favor of air strikes and played down
the possibility that the use of nuclear weapons against Cuban targets would invite
nuclear retaliation from the Soviets.
94
Afterwards Taylor returned to the Pentagon
to brief his JCS colleagues. “This was not,” he told them, “one of our better days.”
In explaining the President’s blockade decision, Taylor said that the decisive votes
had come from McNamara, Rusk, and UN Ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson, all of
whom strongly opposed air attacks. Pulling Taylor aside as the meeting broke up,
the President had added: “I know that you and your colleagues are unhappy with
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KEnnEDY anD THE CriSiS PrESiDEnCY
the decision, but I trust that you will support me in this decision.” The Chairman
assured him that the JCS would back him completely.
95
Kennedy and the Joint Chiefs were not, in fact, as far apart as it seemed. Even
though the President preferred the quarantine, he had not categorically ruled out
either an air attack or an invasion, and over the next several days, while the Navy
was organizing the quarantine, he directed the Joint Chiefs to proceed with the
military buildup opposite Cuba. As part of the show of force, the Joint Chiefs or-
dered the Commander in Chief, Strategic Air Command, to begin generating his
forces toward DEFCON 2 (maximum alert) and to launch SAC bombers up to
the “radar line” where the Soviets would detect them. Shelving OPLAN–314 for a
large-scale invasion, the Joint Chiefs instructed Admiral Dennison on October 26 to
concentrate his preparations on OPLAN–316, which he could execute on shorter
notice. By leaving the invasion and other military options open, McNamara told the
ExCom, the United States would “keep the heat on” the Russians. Kennedy thus
found military power indispensable, even if at times he felt events were taking over.
But to go beyond a show of force, as he demonstrated time and again during the
crisis, was out of the question without the most extreme provocation.
96
As the showdown approached, the accompanying tensions further exacerbated
the already strained relationship between the Joint Chiefs and their civilian superi-
ors. The most serious clash was between McNamara and Chief of Naval Operations
Admiral George Anderson. Though Anderson professed the utmost respect for ci-
vilian authority, he vehemently objected to the intrusion of civilians into the man-
agement of naval operations, as evidenced by the run-in he had with McNamara
on October 24. The night before, the Oce of Naval Intelligence (ONI) had re-
ceived unconrmed reports that, rather than risk inspections under the quarantine,
many Soviet merchant ships heading for Cuba, including some suspected of car-
rying missiles, had slowed, changed course, or turned back. However, ONI insisted
on visual verication from U.S. warships and reconnaissance aircraft before giving
the information wide distribution. As a result, it was not until noon the next day
that Secretary McNamara and the White House nally received the information.
Furious at the delay, McNamara confronted Anderson that evening in the Navy’s
Flag Plot command center in the Pentagon where, according to one account, he
delivered “an abusive tirade.” Anderson declined to explain why it had taken so long
for the information to reach McNamara and took umbrage at the Secretary’s man-
ner. Tempers ared and the Secretary of Defense stalked out, resolving as he left to
be rid of Anderson at the earliest convenient opportunity.
97
A similar communications lapse took place a few days later, on October 27,
during the height of the crisis, as chances for a negotiated settlement seemed to
232
CounCil of War
dwindle. At issue was a truculent letter from Khrushchev linking the removal of the
U.S. Jupiter MRBMs from Turkey to the removal of Soviet oensive missiles from
Cuba.
98
Deployed above ground at “soft” xed sites, the Jupiters were vulnerable
to a preemptive attack and had a low level of readiness because they used nonstor-
able liquid fuel. Kennedy had never attached much military value to them and,
treating them as “obsolete,” was inclined to deal. But there was little support in the
ExCom, where the prevailing opinion held that such a trade could seriously harm
U.S. relations with Turkey and perhaps drive a wedge between the United States
and NATO.
99
That evening back at the Pentagon, Taylor briefed the chiefs on the
stalemate regarding the Jupiters and added: “The President has a feeling that time is
running out.” At this point the Joint Chiefs began making preparations to go to the
White House the next morning to bring the President up to date on the status of
war plans and to secure his approval to initiate direct military action.
100
Unknown to Taylor and the Service chiefs, Secretary of State Rusk had come
up with a scheme to break the impasse, and early that evening he and the President
held a short meeting in the Oval Oce. Others present were McGeorge Bundy, Mc-
Namara, Gilpatric, Robert Kennedy, George Ball, Theodore Sorensen, and Llewellyn
E. Thompson, the former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow. It was at this gathering that
Kennedy approved a secret initiative, which his brother Robert conveyed to Soviet
Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin a short while later.
101
The oer was in two parts. The
rst was a pledge by the United States not to invade Cuba or to overthrow Castro in
exchange for removal of the Soviet missiles; the second, at Rusk’s instigation, was an
informal assurance that in the not-too-distant future the United States would quietly
remove its Jupiter missiles from Turkey. The concession on the Jupiters appears to
have been unnecessary since an oer to discuss the matter at a later date probably
would have suced. But in his eagerness to avoid coming to blows, Kennedy chose
to sweeten the deal and give Khrushchev fewer grounds for objecting.
102
The Joint Chiefs were never consulted, nor were they given an opportunity to
comment on the strategic implications of this settlement. General LeMay was dis-
appointed that the President, with a preponderance of strategic and tactical nuclear
power on his side, had not demanded more concessions from the Soviets. “We could
have gotten not only the missiles out of Cuba,” LeMay insisted, “we could have got-
ten the Communists out of Cuba at that time.”
103
The rst inkling the chiefs had
of the deal ending the Cuban missile crisis came the next morning from a ticker
tape news summary announcing Moscow’s acceptance of the American no-invasion
pledge in exchange for the withdrawal of Soviet oensive missiles.
104
Little by little
over the next few days the Joint Chiefs learned more about the deal and about “a
proposal” to withdraw the Jupiters from Turkey and to assign Polaris boats in their
233
KEnnEDY anD THE CriSiS PrESiDEnCY
place. The consensus on the Joint Sta was that the United States had come out
on the poorer end of the bargain. Not only did the Jupiters make up one-third of
SACEUR’s Quick Reaction Alert Force, they also carried a much larger payload
than Polaris and were more reliable and accurate. Believing withdrawal of the Jupi-
ters to be ill-advised, the Joint Chiefs considered sending the Secretary of Defense
a memorandum recommending against it. But upon discovering that it was a done
deal, they let the matter drop. Kennedy had what he wanted most of all—removal
of the Soviet missiles from Cuba—and the crisis was winding down.
105
afTerMaTh: The nuClear TesT Ban
By the time the Cuban missile crisis ended, relations between the Kennedy admin-
istration and the Joint Chiefs of Sta (Taylor excepted) were at an all-time low. In
contrast, Kennedy’s public stature and esteem had never been higher. Lauded by his
admirers and critics alike for showing exemplary statesmanship, fortitude, and wis-
dom in steering the country through the most dangerous confrontation in history,
the President emerged with his credibility and prestige measurably enhanced. But
to end the crisis he made compromises and concessions that his military advisors
considered in many ways unnecessary and excessive. Worst of all, in the chiefs’ view,
the United States had left Castro’s regime in place. The presence of an outpost of
communism in the Western Hemisphere left the JCS no choice but to continue
allocating substantial military and intelligence resources for containment purposes.
Looking back, McGeorge Bundy acknowledged that Kennedy had kept the Joint
Chiefs “at a distance” throughout the crisis, sensing that their perception of the
problem “was not well connected with his own real concerns.” “The result,” Bundy
added, “was an increased skepticism in his view of military advice which only in-
creased the diculty of exercising his powers as commander in chief.”
106
Despite the estrangement between Kennedy and his military advisors, the only
member of the Joint Chiefs to become a casualty of the episode was Admiral An-
derson, whose 2-year term as Chief of Naval Operations expired in August 1963
and was not extended. Sending Anderson to Portugal as U.S. Ambassador, Kennedy
selected the more even-tempered David L. McDonald to be CNO. Well liked and
highly respected among his peers, McDonald was serving with NATO at the time
of his selection and would have preferred to stay in London.
107
Kennedy and Mc-
Namara might have gone further in purging the chiefs, but they knew that LeMay,
the other candidate for removal, had strong support in Congress and was virtually
untouchable. Furthermore, in the aftermath of the missile crisis, the administration’s
foreign policy agenda began to move away from the confrontational approach that
234
CounCil of War
had characterized its rst 2 years, toward a rapprochement with the Soviets based
on the negotiation of outstanding dierences. The Cuban missile crisis settlement
was the opening wedge.
To realize his policy goals, Kennedy knew he would need the agreement if not
the outright support of the JCS. Central to Kennedy’s quest to improve relations with
the Soviet Union was the nuclear test ban, a measure that had been on the back burn-
er since the waning days of the Eisenhower administration. Before winning the White
House, Kennedy had spoken in favor of curbs on nuclear testing and in his inaugural
address he listed “the inspection and control of [nuclear] arms” as a major objective
of his Presidency.
108
But at his meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961, he
had been unsuccessful in enlisting the Soviet leader’s cooperation. The United States
was then observing a voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing both above and below
ground that Eisenhower had introduced in October 1958. Without progress in nego-
tiations, however, Kennedy knew that at some point he would face concerted pressure
from Congress, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the JCS to resume testing.
The Joint Chiefs had been urging Kennedy to resume testing almost from the
moment he took oce, if not in the atmosphere then underground, underwater,
and in outer space. Some of their arguments were highly technical, but their overall
position was relatively simple and straightforward: without testing they could nei-
ther verify the eectiveness of the existing nuclear deterrent nor be assured of new
weapons to protect future security.
109
After the Soviets resumed atmospheric testing
in September 1961, Kennedy gave in.
110
One of the experiments the Soviets con-
ducted, on October 30, 1961, was a colossal “super bomb” nicknamed Tsar Bomba
(King of Bombs) that had an explosive yield of 58 megatons, the largest nuclear de-
vice ever detonated. Seeing no practical military requirement for a bomb that size,
the Joint Chiefs dismissed the test as a stunt, designed for propaganda purposes and
to intimidate other countries.
111
The U.S. testing program resumed in a less amboyant fashion, getting o to
a shaky and slower start. Owing to the moratorium, U.S. expertise in conducting
nuclear experiments had “gone to pot,” as one of those in charge put it, causing delays
and diculties during the rst round of underground tests (Operation Nougat) in
Nevada during the fall of 1961. Problems persisted into the spring of 1962, when the
AEC and the Defense Atomic Support Agency (DASA), the organization in charge of
proof-testing weapons, resumed atmospheric testing in the Pacic (Operation Domi-
nic). Near the outset of the series, several important experiments connected to the de-
velopment of an antiballistic missile system went awry. Subsequent tests were notably
more successful. For the rst time, a Polaris submarine launched one of its missiles
and detonated the nuclear warhead. Other experiments demonstrated the feasibility
235
KEnnEDY anD THE CriSiS PrESiDEnCY
of increasing the yield-to-weight ratio and the shelf life of warheads. From these data
eventually emerged a new generation of more advanced nuclear weapons.
112
Ending in November 1962, with its nal experiments carried out during the
Cuban missile crisis, Dominic was the last series of atmospheric tests the United
States conducted. As the missile crisis wound down, Kennedy and Khrushchev
expressed interest in reducing international tensions, starting with a renewed eort
to reach a nuclear test ban. A major stumbling block then and for years to come
was the need for reliable and eective verication. Khrushchev’s agreement to per-
mit aerial inspections by the United Nations to verify the removal of the missiles
from Cuba was for some in the Kennedy administration a promising sign that the
Soviets were becoming more open-minded about accepting reliable verication
measures.
113
The Joint Chiefs were less optimistic, and in formulating a negotiating
position they raised numerous objections.
114
While he went along with his col-
leagues’ recommendations, Taylor felt increasingly frustrated and wanted to do more
to further the President’s agenda. Seeking to put a positive face on the chiefs’ ap-
proach to the problem, he asked the Joint Sta what would constitute an “accept-
able” agreement to the JCS. But to his disappointment, the Joint Sta found each
option to contain shortcomings “of major military signicance.”
115
Uncertain whether the Joint Chiefs would support a test ban, Kennedy worked
around them as he did during the Cuban missile crisis. Conspicuously absent from
the 13-member U.S. delegation that went to Moscow in July 1963 to do the nego-
tiating was a JCS representative.
116
Kennedy would have preferred a comprehensive
agreement barring all forms of testing. But he realized that there was insucient
support for such an accord either at home or in the Kremlin. A complete ban would
have been tantamount to proscribing new nuclear weapons. Curbing his expecta-
tions, he authorized his chief negotiator, W. Averell Harriman, to pursue a treaty
banning atmospheric, outer space, and underwater explosions.
117
With the negotia-
tions entering their nal stage, Kennedy summoned the Joint Chiefs to the White
House on July 24, 1963, to urge their cooperation. As Taylor recalled, the Service
chiefs reacted with “controlled enthusiasm.”
118
At the time, the Joint Chiefs were
considering a draft memorandum to the Secretary of Defense urging rejection of
the accord unless “overriding nonmilitary considerations” dictated otherwise. Yield-
ing to pressure from Taylor and the President, the chiefs shelved their objections and
during Senate review of the treaty they grudgingly endorsed it.
119
Signed in Moscow on August 5, 1963, the Limited Test Ban Treaty entered into
force the following October. A major breakthrough in arms control, it helped set
the stage for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) later in the decade. Weak
as it was, JCS support was crucial to the treaty’s passage and rested on acceptance
236
CounCil of War
by Congress and the President of four safeguards: an aggressive program of un-
derground testing; maintenance of up-to-date research and development facilities;
preservation of a residual capability to conduct atmospheric testing; and improved
detection capabilities to guard against Soviet cheating. Had the Joint Chiefs op-
posed the treaty, it almost certainly would have failed of adoption.
120
Taylor’s role, both personally and as Chairman, was crucial to the treaty’s ap-
proval. Without his persistence in nudging the Service chiefs along and keeping
them in line, the outcome almost certainly would have been dierent. Institution-
ally, the test ban episode demonstrated that power and inuence within the JCS
organization were moving slowly but surely into the hands of the Chairman, as
Eisenhower’s 1958 amendments had largely intended. No longer merely a presiding
ocer or spokesman, the Chairman emerged from the treaty debate as a key gure
in interpreting the chiefs’ views and in shaping their advice and recommenda-
tions. Henceforth, the Chairman would become more and more the personication
of the military point of view, and thus his interpretation of his colleagues’ advice
would be the nal word.
In contrast, the overall authority, prestige, and inuence of the Joint Chiefs of
Sta as a corporate advisory body had never been lower than by the time the test
ban debate drew to a close. Though JCS views still carried considerable weight
on Capitol Hill, the same was not true at the White House and elsewhere in the
executive branch. Having lost faith in the Joint Chiefs after the Bay of Pigs, Ken-
nedy never regained condence in his military advisors. Except for Taylor, a trusted
personal friend, he kept the JCS at arm’s length. Rarely ever openly critical of their
superiors, the Joint Chiefs accepted these ups and downs in their fortunes as part
of the job. Reared in a tradition that stressed civilian control of the military, they
instinctively deferred to the Commander in Chief ’s lead and were not inclined to
challenge his decisions lest it appear they were impugning his authority. But in so
doing, it became increasingly dicult for them to maintain their credibility and to
provide reliable professional advice.
Notes
1 Kennedy rst used the phrase “New Frontier” in his acceptance speech at the 1960
Democratic National Convention. See Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (New York:
Bantam Books, 1966), 187–189.
2 John F. Kennedy in Allan Nevins, ed., The Strategy of Peace (New York: Harper, 1960), 184.
3 Quoted in Joseph Kraft, “McNamara and His Enemies,” Harper’s Magazine (August
1961), 42.
237
KEnnEDY anD THE CriSiS PrESiDEnCY
4 Lawrence S. Kaplan, Ronald D. Landa, and Edward J. Drea, History of the Oce of the Sec-
retary of Defense: The McNamara Ascendancy, 1961–1965 (Washington, DC: Historical Of-
ce, Oce of the Secretary of Defense, 2006), 10–11; Charles A. Stevenson, SECDEF:
The Nearly Impossible Job of Secretary of Defense (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006),
30; and L. James Binder, Lemnitzer: A Soldier for His Time (Washington, DC: Brassey’s,
1997), 279.
5 Andrew Preston, The War Council: McGeorge Bundy, the NSC, and Vietnam (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2006), 41.
6 Steven L. Rearden, “The Secretary of Defense and Foreign Aairs, 1947–1989” (MS,
Study Prepared for the Historical Oce, Oce of the Secretary of Defense, December
1995), chap. IV, 3–5; Chronology of JCS Organization, 1945–1984 (Historical Division,
Joint Secretariat, Joint Chiefs of Sta, December 1984), 178.
7 Sorensen, 284; John Prados, Keepers of the Keys: A History of the National Security Council
from Truman to Bush (New York: William Morrow, 1991), 102; and Stanley L. Falk, “The
National Security Council Under Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy,” Political Science
Quarterly 79 (September 1964), 428–433.
8 Edgar F. Raines, Jr., and David R. Campbell, The Army and the Joint Chiefs of Sta
(Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1986), 106–108; H.R. McMaster, Derelic-
tion of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Sta, and the Lies That
Led to Vietnam (New York: Harper Perennial, 1997), 8–9.
9 Binder, 285.
10 Memo, Bundy to CJCS, June 28, 1961, “Functions of the Military Representative to the
President,” and Letter, Kennedy to Taylor, June 26, 1961, both attached to JCS 1977/141.
See also Maxwell D. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972),
195–203.
11 Interview with Henry E. Glass by Maurice Matlo et al., October 28, 1987, OSD His-
torical Oce, cited in Kaplan et al., 6, 556 (note no. 18); Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A
Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Cambridge, MA: Houghton, Miin,
1965), 297.
12 Memo of ADM Burke’s Conversation with CDR Wilhide, April 18, 1961, in Mark J.
White, ed., The Kennedys and Cuba: The Declassied Documentary History (Chicago: Ivan
R. Dee, 1999), 33; Walter S. Poole, The Joint Chiefs of Sta and National Policy, 1961–1964
(Washington, DC: Oce of Joint History, Oce of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Sta, 2011), 109–111.
13 Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, 232–233. Also see An Analysis of the Cuban Operation
(Study prepared by the Deputy Director [Plans], Central Intelligence Agency, January
18, 1962), sec. IV, 4 (declassied).
14 Sorensen, 331; Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1984), 615; Kaplan et al., 176.
15 Enclosure C to Report by the DJS to JCS, January 24, 1961, “U.S. Plan of Action in
Cuba,” JCS 2304/19.
16 JCSM-57-61 to SECDEF, February 3, 1961, “Military Evaluation of the CIA Para–Mili-
tary Plan, Cuba,” FRUS, 1961–63, X, 67–78; Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 89.
238
CounCil of War
17 Haynes Johnson, The Bay of Pigs (New York: W.W. Norton, 1964), 65–66; “Narrative of
the Anti–Castro Operation Zapata,” June 13, 1961, 8–10, JHO 16–0061, JHO Collec-
tion.
18 Kaplan et al., 176–177, 183; Sorensen, 341–342; Taylor, 189.
19 Taylor, 188.
20 NSAM 55, June 28, 1961, “Relations of the JCS to the President in Cold War Opera-
tions,” Kennedy Papers, National Security Files, JFK Library.
21 Taylor, 189; Mark Perry, Four Stars (Boston: Houghton Miin, 1989), 115.
22 Quoted in Richard Reeves, President Kennedy: Prole of Power (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1993), 363.
23 Douglas Brinkley, Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years, 1953–71 (New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1992), 117.
24 Memo, Acheson to Kennedy, April 3, 1961, “Berlin,” JCS 1907/293.
25 JCSM-287-61 to SECDEF, April 28, 1961, “Berlin,” JCS 1907/295; Kaplan et al., 148–
49.
26 Kennedy quoted in John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 146.
27 Note by Secretaries to JCS, July 1, 1961, “Berlin Planning,” JCS 1907/315; Report by
J5 to JCS, July 9, 1961, “Berlin Contingency Planning,” JCS 1907/318; Paul H. Nitze,
with Ann M. Smith and Steven L. Rearden, From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the Center of
Decision—A Memoir (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989), 196–202.
28 JCSM-464-61 to SECDEF, July 1, 1961, “Berlin Planning,” JCS 1907/316; JCSM-476-61
to SECDEF, July 12, 1961, “Partial Mobilization,” JCS 1907/321; Kaplan et al., 152–153.
29 Schlesinger, Thousand Days, 388–389.
30 J-5 Report on Partial Mobilization, July 12, 1961, JCS 1907/321.
31 Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1961–64, 145–147; “Radio and Television Report to the
American People on the Berlin Crisis,” July 25, 1961, Public Papers of the Presidents of the
United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1962), 535.
32 Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, 200–201.
33 Memo, Kennedy to McNamara, August 14, 1961, Kennedy Papers, NSF, quoted in Fred
Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 298.
34 Kaplan et al., 12–13.
35 NIE 11-8/1-61, [September 21, 1961], “Strength and Deployment of Soviet Long
Range Ballistic Missile Forces,” in Donald P. Steury, ed., Intentions and Capabilities: Esti-
mates on Soviet Strategic Forces, 1950–1983 (Washington, DC: History Sta, Center for the
Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 1996), 121–138; Jerrold L. Schecter
and Peter S. Deriabin, The Spy Who Saved the World (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1992), 271–283.
36 “Brieng for the President by the CJCS on the JCS Single Integrated Operational
Plan 1962 (SIOP–62),” September 13, 1961, JCS 2056/281 (sanitized). Scott D. Sagan,
“SIOP-62: The Nuclear War Plan Brieng to President Kennedy,” International Security
12 (Summer 1987), 22–51, reproduces the brieng in full.
239
KEnnEDY anD THE CriSiS PrESiDEnCY
37 “Interview with Peter Hackes,” September 28, 1961, in Alice C. Cole, ed., Public State-
ments of the Secretaries of Defense: Robert S. McNamara, 1961 (Washington, DC: Histori-
cal Oce, Oce of the Secretary of Defense, n.d.), III, 1443. See also Kaplan et al.,
161–162; and McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival (New York: Random House, 1988),
378–383.
38 NSDM 109, October 23, 1961, “U.S. Policy on Military Actions in a Berlin Conict,”
Kennedy Papers, NSF, JFK Library; Letter, VADM John Marshall Lee, USN (Ret.) to
author, May 18,1984, Nitze Papers, Library of Congress; Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glas-
nost, 202–204.
39 JCSM-728-61 to SECDEF, October 13, 1961, “Preferred Sequence of Military Actions
in a Berlin Conict,” JCS 1907/433; Memo, DepSECDEF to CJCS, October 17, 1961,
“Preferred Sequence,” JCS 1907/435.
40 Bundy, Memo of State-Defense Meeting, October 20, 1961, FRUS, 1961–63, XIV, 517.
41 Quoted in John Newhouse, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1989), 156.
42 SNIE 11-10/1-61, October 5, 1961, “Soviet Tactics in the Berlin Crisis,” in Donald P.
Steury, ed., On the Front Lines of the Cold War: Documents on the Intelligence War in Berlin,
1946 to 1961 (Washington, DC: CIA History Sta, Center for the Study of Intelligence,
1999), 621–622.
43 Matthias Uhl, “Storming on to Paris: The 1961 Buria Exercise and the Planned Solution
of the Berlin Crisis,” in Vojtech Mastny, Sven G. Holtsmark, and Andreas Wenger, eds.,
War Plans and Alliances in the Cold War (London: Routledge, 2006), 52–71. Uhl’s analysis
of the exercise makes no mention of the role of airpower in Warsaw Pact plans.
44 Quoted in Gaddis, 149.
45 Memo, McNamara to Kennedy, January 24, 1961, [Meeting with Eisenhower, January
19, 1961], FRUS 1961–63, XXIV, 41–42. Eisenhower may also have advised intervention
with ground troops, but the various records of the meeting are unclear on this point.
See Fred I. Greenstein and Richard H. Immerman, “What Did Eisenhower Tell Ken-
nedy about Indochina? The Politics of Misperception,” Journal of American History 79
(September 1992), 568–587.
46 JCSM-34-61 to SECDEF, January 24, 1961, “Courses of Action in Laos,” JCS 1992/903.
47 Memo, Nitze to McNamara, January 23, 1961, “White House Meeting on Laos, January
23, 1961,” FRUS 1961–63, XXIV, 26–27; Goodpaster Memo, January 25, 1961, “Confer-
ence with Kennedy,” ibid., 42–44.
48 Pedlow and Welzenbach, CIA and the U–2 Program, 221.
49 Memo, CJCS to JCS, March 16, 1961, “Funding for Mill Pond Operations,” JCS
1991/932; Kaplan et al., 237.
50 CINCPAC Command History 1961, Pt. II, 83–84; Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, 332.
51 MFR by Nitze, March 21, 1961, “Discussion of Laos at White House Meeting,” FRUS
1961–63, XXIV, 95.
52 Harold Macmillan, Pointing the Way, 1959–1961 (New York: Harper and Row, 1972),
337–338.
240
CounCil of War
53 Memcon, April 29, 1961, “Laos,” FRUS, 1961–63, XXIV, 150–154; Kaplan et al., 242;
Richard K. Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises (Cambridge: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1977), 178.
54 See “Concept for the Recapture of the Plaine des Jarres,” March 9, 1961, JCS 1992/929;
and CINCPAC Command History 1961, Pt. II, 85–89.
55 Victor B. Anthony and Richard R. Sexton, The War in Northern Laos, 1954–1973 (Wash-
ington, DC: Center for Air Force History, 1993), 46; a previously classied USAF study
released in 2008 asserts that the JCS had plans to use nuclear weapons, but it cites only
unclassied sources.
56 JCS views summarized in editorial note, FRUS 1961–63, XXIV, 169–170. See also Poole,
JCS and National Policy, 1961–64, Pt. II, 104–109; and Kaplan et al., 242–243.
57 Quoted in Sorensen, 726.
58 See Kaplan et al., 243.
59 JCSM-688-62 to SECDEF, September 29, 1961, “Military Intervention in Laos,” JCS
2344/14; Memo, DepSECDEF to CJCS, October 3, 1961, “Planning for Southeast
Asia,” JCS 2344/17.
60 Chronological Summary of Signicant Events Concerning the Laotian Crisis, Sixth Installment:
1 May 1962 to 31 July 1962 (Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, Joint Chiefs of Sta,
n.d.), 33–34, 53–54.
61 Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1961–64, Pt. II, 126–140.
62 Taylor quoted in Dino A. Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban
Missile Crisis, Robert F. McCort, ed. (New York: Random House, 1990), 266; Reeves,
182–183.
63 Benjamin C. Bradlee, Conversations with Kennedy (New York: Pocket Books, 1976), 117.
64 Letter, Taylor to McNamara, July 1, 1964, FRUS, 1964–68, X, 97–98.
65 Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises, 68–69; and McMaster, 22–23. Jerey G.
Barlow, “President John F. Kennedy and His Joint Chiefs of Sta” (Ph.D. Diss., Univer-
sity of South Carolina, 1981), 202, points out Taylor’s hearing problems.
66 Memo, SECDEF to CJCS, April 20, 1961, no subject, JCS 2304/29; JCSM-278-61 to
SECDEF, April 26, 1961, “Cuba,” JCS 2304/30.
67 Memo, SECDEF to JCS, May 1, 1961, “Cuba Contingency Plans,” JCS 2304/34.
68 Memo, SECDEF to SecArmy et al., May 9, 1961, “U.S. Policy Toward Cuba,” JCS
2304/36; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (Boston: Houghton,
Miin, 1978), 476–477.
69 Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, 302–304.
70 Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, trans. and ed. by Strobe
Talbott (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 511.
71 The notion that the Soviets had tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba comes from Gen-
eral Anatoli I. Gribkov, head of the operations directorate of the Soviet General Sta
in 1962, speaking at a 1992 conference in Havana. For an elaboration of his views,
see Anatoli I. Gribkov and William Y. Smith, Operations ANADYR: U.S. and Soviet
Generals Recount the Cuban Missile Crisis (Chicago: Edition Q, Inc., 1994), 4–7, 63–68.
Mark Kramer, “Tactical Nuclear Weapons, Soviet Command Authority, and the Cuban
241
KEnnEDY anD THE CriSiS PrESiDEnCY
Missile Crisis,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 3 (Fall 1993), 40–46,
debunks the notion that the Soviets were preparing to use tactical nuclear weapons.
Other than Gribkov, no Soviet ocial ever mentioned the presence of these weapons
in Cuba. Nor do the documents Gribkov cites conrm that tactical nuclear weapons
had actually reached Cuba at the time of the crisis.
72 James G. Blight and David A. Welch, eds., On the Brink: Americans and Soviets Reexamine
the Cuban Missile Crisis, 2d ed. (New York: Noonday Press, 1990), 33–34.
73 Steven Zaloga, “The Missiles of October: Soviet Ballistic Missile Forces During the
Cuban Crisis,” Journal of Soviet Military Studies 3 (June 1990), 307–308. Aleksandr Fur-
senko and Timothy Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy,
1958–1964 (New York: Norton, 1997), 171, suggest that the idea of putting missiles in
Cuba was Khrushchev’s all along.
74 Gribkov and Smith, 23–24. Anadyr was the name of a river in the extreme northeastern
Soviet Union.
75 Fursenko and Naftali, 180–182.
76 James H. Hansen, “Soviet Deception in the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Studies in Intelligence
46, no. 1 (2002), 49–58 (unclassied edition).
77 Matthew M. Aid, The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency
(New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009), 65.
78 Pedlow and Welzenbach, CIA and the U-2 Program, 200–201; Current Intelligence Mem-
orandum, September 13, 1962, “Analysis of the Suspect Missile Site at Banes, Cuba,” in
Mary S. McAulie, ed., CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 (Washington,
DC: History Sta, Central Intelligence Agency, 1992), 71–73; Dino A. Brugioni, Eyeball
to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Random House, 1990),
120–126.
79 See SNIE 85-3-62, September 19, 1962, “The Military Buildup in Cuba,” in McAulie,
ed., Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, 91–93.
80 Max Holland, “The ‘Photo Gap’ that Delayed Discovery of Missiles in Cuba,” Studies in
Intelligence 49, no. 4 (2005), 21 (unclassied edition).
81 CM-977-62 to SECDEF, September 24, 1962, “A U.S. Position for Presentation to the
Foreign Ministers of the American States,” JCS 2304/61.
82 Report by J3 to the JCS, October 14, 1962, “Cuba,” JCS 2304/69.
83 Memo, JSSC to JCS, September 19, 1962, “Cuban Situation,” JCS 2304/58; 1st N/H to JCS
2304/58, October 3, 1962. Also see Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1961–64, Pt. II, 231–232.
84 JCS Meeting, October 15, 1962, Notes Taken by Walter S. Poole on Transcripts of Meet-
ings of the JCS, October–November 1962, dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis, JHO
07-0035 (declassied and released 1996), hereafter cited as “Poole Notes.” Why the
President specied 3 months is unknown, but it would have taken him beyond the
November elections and into the new Congress.
85 Letter to President of the Senate and Speaker of the House Transmitting Bill Authoriz-
ing Mobilization of Ready Reserve, September 7, 1962, Kennedy Public Papers, 1962, 6 65;
Memo, McNamara to Kennedy, October 4, 1962, “Presidential Interest in SA–2 Missile
System and Contingency Planning for Cuba,” Kennedy Papers, National Security File,
Kennedy Library.
242
CounCil of War
86 Pedlow and Welzenbach, CIA and the U–2 Program, 207–208.
87 NSAM 196, October 22, 1962, “Establishment of an Executive Committee of the
National Security Council,” Kennedy Papers, National Security Files, JFK Library.
Though not ocially constituted until October 22, 1962, ExCom began functioning
on October 16.
88 Taylor, 269.
89 See the roundtable discussion of this issue in Blight and Welch, eds., On the Brink,
85–86.
90 See JCSM-828-62 to SECDEF, October 26, 1962, “Nuclear-Free or Missile-Free
Zones,” JCS 2422/1, a good overall summary of the JCS position.
91 Quoted in Bradlee, Conversations with Kennedy, 117.
92 Kaplan et al., 206 and 582, fn. 48; Bernard C. Nalty, “The Air Force Role in Five Cri-
ses, 1958–1965” (Study done for USAF Historical Division Liaison Oce, June 1968),
39–40 (declassied).
93 “Meeting with the JCS on the Cuban Missile Crisis,” October 19, 1962, in Timothy
Naftali and Philip Zelikow, eds., The Presidential Recordings: John F. Kennedy—The Great
Crises, Volume Two (New York: W.W. Norton & Co.: 2001), II, 580–599; Reeves, 379.
94 “NSC Meeting on the Cuban Missile Crisis,” October 20, 1962, Naftali and Zelikow,
eds., Presidential Recordings, II, 605.
95 JCS Meeting, October 20, 1962, Poole Notes. See also Walter S. Poole, “The Cuban
Missile Crisis: How Well Did the Joint Chiefs of Sta Work?” (Paper presented to the
Colloquium on Contemporary History, Washington, DC, September 22, 2003); and
editorial comments in Naftali and Zelikow, eds., Presidential Recordings, II, 614.
96 Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1961–64, Pt. II, 281–296; McNamara quoted in “ExCom
Meeting of the NSC on the Cuban Missile Crisis,” October 27, 1962, in Philip Zelikow
and Ernest May, eds., The Presidential Recordings: John F. Kennedy—The Great Crises, Vol-
ume Three (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), 360.
97 Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945–1989: Book II—Cen-
tralization Wins, 1960–1972 (Washington, DC: National Security Agency, 1995), 329 (de-
classied); Aid, Secret Sentry, 73–76; Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, 398–400; and Deborah
Shapley, Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert S. McNamara (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1993), 176–178.
98 Letter, Khrushchev to Kennedy, October 27, 1962, FRUS 1961–63, XI, 257–260.
99 Memo by Bromley Smith, “Summary Record of NSC Executive Committee Meeting
No. 7, October 27, 1962, 10:00 AM,” Kennedy Papers, National Security File, Kennedy
Library.
100 JCS Meeting, October 27, 1962, Poole Notes.
101 Memo, Robert F. Kennedy to Rusk, October 30, 1962, FRUS 1961–63, XI, 270–271.
102 Bundy, 432–434.
103 LeMay Interview in Richard H. Kohn and Joseph P. Harahan, eds., Strategic Air Warfare
(Washington, DC: Oce of Air Force History, 1988), 114.
104 JCS Meeting, October 28, 1962, Poole Notes.
243
KEnnEDY anD THE CriSiS PrESiDEnCY
105 Draft Memo, JCS to SECDEF, enclosure to Report, J5 to JCS, October 29, 1962, “Pro-
posal for Substitution of Polaris for Turkish Jupiters,” JCS 2421/73. In mid-November
1962, Kennedy sought to reopen the deal he had cut with Khrushchev by including
Soviet IL–28 ghter-bombers as among the weapons banned from Cuba. The Soviets
agreed to remove their IL–28s, but oered no pledge not to reintroduce them or some
similar plane.
106 Bundy, 458.
107 Interview with McDonald by Harold Joiner, June 1, 1963, for Atlanta Journal-Consti-
tution, available at <http://victorianmaysville.com/history/notables/dlm/1963_story.
htm>.
108 “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1961, Kennedy Public Papers, 1961, 2.
109 JCSM-99-61 to SECDEF, February 21, 1961, “Resumption of Nuclear Testing,” JCS
2179/230; JCSM-182-61 to SECDEF, March 23, 1961, “Nuclear Arms Control Mea-
sures,” FRUS, 1961–63, VII, 21–27; JCSM-445-61 to SECDEF, June 26, 1961, “Proposed
Letter to the President on Resumption of Nuclear Weapons Testing,” JCS 1731/466.
110 “Statement by the President on Ordering Resumption of Underground Nuclear Tests,”
September 5, 1961, Kennedy Public Papers, 1961, 589–590. On November 30, 1961, Ken-
nedy approved the resumption of atmospheric testing but delayed announcing the
decision until March 1962 just as tests were scheduled to begin.
111 SNIE 11-14-61, November 1961, “The Soviet Strategic Military Posture, 1961–1967,” in
Gerald K. Haines and Robert E. Leggett, eds., CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1947–
1991: A Documentary Collection (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence,
2001), 234–235; Glenn T. Seaborg, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Test Ban (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1981), 114; Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1961–64, Pt. I,
371.
112 Christian Brahmstedt, Defense’s Nuclear Agency, 1947–1997 (Washington, DC: Defense
Threat Reduction Agency, 2002), 160–163.
113 Seaborg, 176.
114 See JCSM-160-63 to SECDEF, February 22, 1963, “Draft Treaty Banning Nuclear
Weapon Tests in All Environments,” JCS 1731/672; JCSM-234-63 to SECDEF, March
19, 1963, “Draft Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons Tests,” JCS 1731/684; JCSM-241-63
to SECDEF, March 21, 1963, “US/USSR Weapons Capabilities,” JCS 1731/668; and
JCSM-327-63 to SECDEF, April 20, 1963, “Nuclear Test Ban Issue,” JCS 1731/696.
115 CM-643-63 to DJS, June 4, 1963, “Test Ban Hearings before the Stennis Subcommit-
tee,” JCS 1731/707; Report, Special Assistant to JCS for Arms Control to JCS, June 11,
1963, “JCS Views on Important Aspects of the Test Ban Issue,” JCS 1731/707–3.
116 Ronald J. Terchek, The Making of the Test Ban Treaty (The Hague: Martinus Nijho,
1970), 22.
117 “Instructions for Hon. W. Averell Harriman,” July 10, 1963, FRUS 1961–63, VII, 786.
118 Taylor, 285–287.
119 Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1961–64, Pt. I, 399–402.
120 “Statement of Position of the Joint Chiefs of Sta on the Three–Environment Nuclear
Test Ban Treaty,” August 12, 1963, Enclosure A to JCS 1731/711–30. See also Seaborg,
269–270.
Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense, 1961–1968
Chapter 8
The McNaMara era
The assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, shook the Joint
Chiefs as much as the country at large and left a void that the new President, Lyn-
don B. Johnson, moved quickly to ll. To reassure the Nation and to promote stabil-
ity, he pledged continuity between his administration and Kennedy’s. “I felt from
the very rst day in oce,” he recalled, “that I had to carry on for President Ken-
nedy. I considered myself the caretaker of both his people and his policies.”
1
One of
those who stayed on was Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. The dominant
gure at the Pentagon before Kennedy’s death, McNamara would exercise even
more power and authority during Johnson’s Presidency.
By the time Johnson became President, the Joint Chiefs were grudgingly com-
ing to terms with McNamara’s policies and methods. Under Kennedy, McNamara
had rmly established his authority, using it to carry out two major revolutions
within the department—one, to redesign the military strategy and Armed Forces of
the United States to achieve greater exibility and eectiveness; the second, to install
new methods of analysis and decisionmaking in the areas of planning, management,
and acquisition.
2
Like Kennedy, McNamara grew to be skeptical of JCS advice and
once characterized the Joint Chiefs as “a miserable organization” hamstrung by col-
legial and parochial interests.
3
For analytical support, he established his own group
of advisors known as the “whiz kids,” made up predominantly of young and eager
civilians who routinely checked and double-checked the programmatic recommen-
dations of the military Services and the Joint Chiefs of Sta. Out of this process
emerged both a new approach to solving defense problems and a signicant expan-
sion of the power and authority vested in the Oce of the Secretary of Defense.
The McNaMara SySTeM
By late 1963, when the Johnson administration assumed oce, McNamara had largely
accomplished what he initially set out to do—transform the Department of Defense
into a more tightly knit and ecient organization. The original impetus for these
changes lay in the increased defense spending during the nal years of the Eisenhower
administration in response to Sputnik and the perceived Soviet lead in missile tech-
nology. To cope with these issues, Eisenhower had backed away from the rigid budget
245
246
CounCil of War
ceilings he had imposed earlier and began accepting increases in military spending
that soon threatened to get out of hand. Further additions to defense spending at
the outset of the Kennedy administration exacerbated the situation. In assessing the
underlying causes of the problem, McNamara and his sta identied two principal
culprits: a compliant Congress, which was prone to overspend on defense programs;
and the Joint Chiefs of Sta, whose elaborate but ineectual strategic planning process
had failed to apply the necessary discipline in determining military requirements, curb
excessive expenditures, and eliminate unnecessary duplication in Service programs.
Though there was not much McNamara could do to reform Congress, he used his
newly minted authority under the 1958 amendments to the National Security Act to
bring defense planning and programming under his direct control.
The system McNamara imposed during the rst 2 years of the Kennedy adminis-
tration came into eect with limited consultation between the Secretary’s oce and the
Joint Chiefs of Sta. Kennedy wanted a more robust defense posture, which he expected
McNamara to achieve, in part, through better management. At the heart of McNamara’s
reforms was the use of computer modeling techniques known as “systems analysis,”
which the Secretary and his sta used to develop 5-year projections of military spending
based on “program packages” in various functional areas such as strategic nuclear forces,
general purpose forces, continental defense, and airlift and sealift forces. The organizing
mechanism was the planning, programming, budgeting system (PPBS), a sophisticated
decisionmaking apparatus for integrating Service requirements and national objectives.
Recommendations to the President took the form of draft Presidential memorandums
(DPMs) detailing force levels and their funding for the upcoming scal year and pro-
jections for the next 4 years. Initially in 1961, McNamara submitted two DPMs for the
President’s consideration; by 1968, when he stepped down, he was submitting 16.
4
Through renements to the Joint Program for Planning, the JCS had tried,
with mixed success, to develop something similar in the 1950s. The focus of the JCS
eort had been the Joint Strategic Objectives Plan (JSOP), a mid-range projection
of military requirements.
5
When the Joint Chiefs adopted the JSOP format in the
early 1950s, they envisioned it serving as a statement of integrated requirements that
would be updated annually to assist in smoothing out the ups and down of the bud-
get cycle. But because of disagreements over basic strategy—especially the relative
balance between strategic and general purpose capabilities—the Services were con-
stantly at odds over force-level recommendations, known in JCS parlance as “force
tabs.” By the end of the decade, the Joint Chiefs had given up trying to produce an
integrated plan and had turned the JSOP into a compilation of unilateral Service
estimates, organized in no particular order of priority, as their projection of future
needs. Invariably, these estimates exceeded available funding.
6
THE MCnaMara Era
247
As a rule, McNamara and his sta paid little serious attention to the JSOP, which
they and other critics of the JCS system dismissed as a “wish list.” In the spring of 1962,
McNamara introduced an alternative means of calculating requirements known as the
Five-Year Defense Program (FYDP), a mission-oriented projection of future costs and
manpower. To justify the estimates in the FYDP, the Oce of the Secretary of Defense
prepared a lengthy and detailed analysis known as the Secretary’s “posture statement.”
Under Lemnitzer’s leadership, the Joint Chiefs sought more generalized guidance and
supported the adoption of a broad basic policy paper, similar to those generated under
the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. However, after General Maxwell Taylor’s
arrival as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the JCS position changed. Finding little practi-
cal value in such papers, Taylor prevailed in getting the project cancelled.
7
In January
1963, President Kennedy conrmed that the project was dead and indicated that the
Secretary’s posture statement, along with other “major policy statements” by senior of-
cials, would constitute the country’s basic national security policy.
8
McNamara hoped that, using his posture statement as guidance, the Joint Chiefs
would turn the JSOP into “a primary vehicle for obtaining the decisions on force
structure necessary for validating the ensuing budget.”
9
The rst Chairman to take
up the task was General Taylor, whose eorts yielded mixed results. Knowing how
intractable the JCS system could be, Taylor had no illusions and told Joint Sta of-
cers assigned to preparing the JSOP that reaching a consensus on the rationale for
force requirements was imperative, no matter how dicult the task. As a rst step, he
ordered the JSOP redesigned to incorporate some of the same supporting rationales
as in the Secretary’s DPMs. But even though there was some progress toward harmo-
nizing Service interests, neither he nor his successor, General Earle G. Wheeler, USA,
could ever totally eliminate Service “splits” and present the Secretary with a fully in-
tegrated statement of military requirements. On the contrary, instead of going down,
the number of splits went up, from 13 in 1962 to 43 in 1963 and 47 a year later.
10
From
the mid-1960s on, with Wheeler in charge and attention focused on meeting require-
ments in Vietnam, the Joint Chiefs lost interest in trying to reform the JSOP and left
it as it was—a compilation of Service estimates in no particular order of priority that
routinely averaged 25 to 35 percent above authorized levels.
11
recoNfiguriNg The STraTegic force PoSTure
McNamara’s most ambitious reforms were in reconguring the size and composi-
tion of the strategic nuclear deterrent. Kennedy wanted a more exible force pos-
ture with less emphasis on nuclear retaliation, but he had also campaigned for the
Presidency on claims that the United States had fallen behind the Soviet Union in
248
CounCil of War
ICBMs. Though McNamara suspected soon after taking oce that the infamous
“missile gap” was overstated, it was not until August–September 1961 that Kennedy
came to a similar view.
12
In consequence, during the administration’s early months,
McNamara was under heavy pressure from the White House to make “quick xes”
to bolster strategic forces that would shore up the defense posture. Paying little at-
tention to the slow-moving Joint Chiefs, he turned to his systems analysis experts
to produce the program he needed. Drawing heavily on work done earlier at the
RAND Corporation and in the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group, McNamara
and his sta promptly assembled a list of remedial measures—acceleration of the
Polaris missile submarine program, increased production of Minuteman ICBMs,
and improved alert measures for portions of the manned-bomber eet.
13
To help
oset the cost of these improvements, McNamara accelerated the phase-out of old-
er systems (notably the Atlas and Titan I ICBMs, the Snark intercontinental cruise
missile, and the B–47 bomber, long the work horse of the Strategic Air Command)
and ordered a closer look at several other high-prole programs. Most prominent
among the latter was the B–70 supersonic bomber, the planned follow-on to the
B–52, which McNamara canceled over strenuous objections from Air Force Chief
of Sta General Curtis E. LeMay.
14
McNamara was concerned that “some in the U.S. Air Force” were striving
under the massive retaliation doctrine for nothing less than a rst-strike capabil-
ity that would completely disarm the Soviet Union.
15
Persuaded that such a force
posture was neither sound nor practicable, he asked the Joint Chiefs to develop a
“doctrine” ending reliance on massive retaliation and establishing in its place a set of
controlled responses allowing for pauses to negotiate an end to nuclear exchanges.
16
The JCS cautioned that acquiring the requisite capabilities would be expensive;
in April 1961 they added a further caveat that to pursue the matter at the present
time could “gravely weaken” nuclear deterrence.
17
These replies seem only to have
whetted McNamara’s interest all the more, and for the next several years he and the
Joint Chiefs engaged in a running battle to redene U.S. strategic doctrine. Much
of the conict centered on the particulars of the SIOP—the Single Integrated Op-
erational Plan for nuclear retaliation against the Sino-Soviet bloc—but there were
also broader considerations aecting the worldwide disposition of forces and the
design and acquisition of new weapons systems. By the time all was said and done,
the United States had adopted a new principle as the basis for its nuclear strategy.
Known as “assured destruction,” the new concept rested on a “triad” of land-based
ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and long-range bombers.
Assured destruction was part massive retaliation and part controlled re-
sponse. As McNamara described it to President Johnson in December 1963, assured
249
THE MCnaMara Era
destruction was “our ability to destroy, after a well planned and executed Soviet
surprise attack on our Strategic Nuclear Forces, the Soviet government and military
controls, plus a large percentage of their population and economy (e.g., 30 percent
of their population, 50 percent of their industrial capacity, and 150 of their cities).”
Damage beyond those levels, McNamara believed, would be gratuitous and not
cost-eective.
18
McNamara would have preferred a more controlled and measured
execution of strategic options, and on two occasions—at a closed meeting of the
NATO ministers in Athens early in 1962 and publicly at Ann Arbor, Michigan,
that spring—he lofted the trial balloon of a “counterforce/no-cities” doctrine that
downplayed attacks on urban-industrial areas in favor of retaliation against high-
priority politico-military targets. Yet the counterforce doctrine, as McNamara con-
ceived it, failed to catch on. Considered impractical by the Joint Chiefs, it received
an even cooler reception in Europe, where many leaders viewed it as weakening
deterrence by relieving the Soviets of the threat of wholesale nuclear destruction.
19
Khrushchev, for his part, suspected a ruse. Upon learning of the Ann Arbor speech,
he thought McNamara was trying to conceal a secret expansion of America’s nu-
clear arsenal.
20
JCS skepticism rested on the high demands that the counterforce/no-cities
doctrine would place on strategic assets. Except for LeMay, a die-hard proponent of
massive retaliation, the Joint Chiefs were amenable to adding exibility to the SIOP
and to strategic plans in general.
21
But they insisted on rm assurances of having
the time and money to make the necessary changes in plans and force structure. To
execute something as complex as the no-cities strategy, the JCS estimated, would
involve expanded requirements for weapons and supporting command, control,
communications, and intelligence (C3I) that would necessitate funding well above
current and foreseeable levels. Though McNamara and his systems analysts routinely
picked apart the JCS numbers, they were never able to overcome the chiefs’ funda-
mental argument that it would take an unstinting dedication of resources extended
over a period of years, if not decades, to achieve reasonable condence of success. In
consequence, McNamara gave up on seeking sweeping revisions in the SIOP and
settled for piecemeal changes resulting in the gradual introduction of greater ex-
ibility and more selective targeting options.
22
To meet the Secretary’s targeting requirements, the Commander in Chief,
Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC), General Thomas S. Power, estimated that
SAC would need 10,000 ICBMs by the end of the decade.
23
Favoring quantity
over quality, Power wanted as many weapons as possible with which to threaten the
Soviets.
24
Taking a more reserved approach, the Joint Chiefs recommended between
1,350 and 2,000 deployed ICBMs.
25
Comparing JCS estimates with the intelligence
250
CounCil of War
on existing and projected Soviet capabilities, McNamara concluded that the deci-
sive factor was the number of targetable bombs and warheads, not delivery vehicles.
Operating on this premise, he persuaded President Johnson to accept the eventual
leveling-o of strategic programs at 41 ballistic missile submarines with a total of
656 launchers, 1,054 ICBMs, and approximately 600 long-range (B–52) bombers.
According to those familiar with McNamara’s thinking, the numbers he chose were
arbitrary, but to give them greater credibility he paired them with the concept of
assured destruction.
26
Air Force leaders, who were most directly aected by the new force structure,
were dismayed and openly critical. Having struggled for years to gain a decisive ad-
vantage over the Soviet Union, they saw their eorts coming to naught. As one later
put it, McNamara and his OSD sta “did not understand what had been created and
handed to them. SAC was about at its peak. We had, not supremacy, but complete
nuclear superiority over the Soviets.”
27
Yet to McNamara, nuclear superiority was an
ephemeral thing, perhaps attainable for a short while but dicult if not impossible
to perpetuate without an open-ended commitment of resources. Convinced that
neither side could ever “win” a nuclear war, he opted for lesser capabilities, which
he thought would do more to save money, promote deterrence, and achieve a stable
strategic environment in the long run.
The impact of these decisions extended well beyond restructuring the strategic
deterrent. First, it ended the Joint Chiefs’ exclusive monopoly on strategic nuclear
planning, a function they had exercised without serious challenge as one of their
statutory responsibilities since World War II. Henceforth, insofar as basic policy and
targeting doctrine were concerned, strategic nuclear planning became a shared re-
sponsibility of the JCS and civilian analysts in OSD. Only the actual preparation of
SIOP remained rmly under JCS control. Second, it brought about a reordering
of spending priorities that dramatically reshaped both the military budget and the
Pentagon’s claim on resources. From consuming nearly 27 percent of defense spend-
ing when the Kennedy administration took oce in 1961, strategic forces declined
to slightly over 9 percent by the end of the decade. During this same time, national
defense (comprising the Department of Defense and related security programs)
dropped from 9.1 percent of the country’s gross national product, to 7.8 percent.
McNamara hoped that, out of the savings realized from cuts in strategic programs,
he could bolster conventional capabilities. Yet the demands of the Vietnam War and
competition for funds from President Johnson’s “Great Society” and other civilian-
sector programs disrupted his plans. As a result, spending on general purpose forces
increased only slightly over the decade, from 33 percent to just under 37 percent of
the military budget.
28
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THE MCnaMara Era
Still, when McNamara was nished, the country’s defense posture was vastly
dierent from when he became Secretary. Most notably, strategic doctrine placed
less emphasis on carrying out preemptive attacks than at any time since the end of
World War II. In terms of size, composition, and destructive power, U.S. strategic
nuclear forces functioned largely as a second-strike deterrent geared toward inict-
ing punishing retaliation. Meanwhile, as the United States was reining in its strategic
programs, the Soviet strategic buildup was starting to surge with the deployment
of a second generation of ICBMs (see below). In consequence, by the early 1970s
the two sides had reached approximate parity in strategic nuclear power. With the
United States then preoccupied in Vietnam, the loss of strategic superiority was
barely noticed at the time other than by the Joint Chiefs, a few astute Members
of Congress, and a small coterie of academics and strategic analysts. But from that
point on, the Joint Chiefs’ condence in being able to confront and deal with the
Soviets would never be the same.
NaTo aNd flexible reSPoNSe
The quest for greater choice and exibility that drove the Joint Chiefs to accept
changes in U.S. strategic doctrine also inspired the Kennedy and Johnson admin-
istrations to seek a reordering of military priorities in Europe. During the 1961
Berlin crisis, President Kennedy had set great store in a nonnuclear buildup, both
to impress upon the Soviets the seriousness of Western resolve and to expand the
range of plausible military options to lessen the need for early recourse to nuclear
weapons. But he had had trouble explaining to the Joint Chiefs and to the European
Allies what he wanted to do and how. While exible response was well formed in
theory, it was less rened in practice. As a deterrent, its reliability and eectiveness
were untested. In contrast, the concept of nuclear deterrence was widely known
and accepted, and while it entailed great risks, it was also far more aordable to
Europeans than a conventional defense, since the United States shouldered most of
the costs of nuclear forces. Despite its ominous implications and potential dangers,
a nuclear-oriented defense posture continued to enjoy strong support in Europe.
At the outset of the 1960s, NATO strategy (MC 14/2) rested on the Eisenhow-
er era concept of massive retaliation and made no allowance for trying to defend
Europe by ghting a large-scale conventional war.
29
The product of painstaking ne-
gotiation and delicate compromise, MC 14/2 embodied the “trip wire” theory, un-
der which the primary function of conventional forces was to delay a Warsaw Pact
invasion until NATO could mount a nuclear response. Some of the nuclear weap-
ons at NATO’s disposal were British, in accordance with a pledge made by Prime
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CounCil of War
Minister Clement R. Attlee in December 1950 dedicating his country’s nuclear
arsenal (once it came into being) to NATO.
30
But the bulk of the Alliance’s atomic
capabilities consisted of American bombs, warheads, and delivery systems assigned
and/or deployed to Europe under bilateral agreements with the host countries and
targeted by SACEUR in collaboration with the Joint Strategic Target Planning Sta
in Omaha.
31
At the time, the United States still had Thor IRBMs in the United
Kingdom and Jupiter MRBMs in Italy and Turkey. While the missiles were in the
operational hands of the host governments, their warheads were under a “dual key”
system, according to which the United States and the host country shared custody
and control.
32
Looking beyond the current situation, General Lauris Norstad, USAF,
who served as SACEUR until 1962, and his successor, General Lyman Lemnitzer,
USA, both subscribed to the view that NATO should eventually have its own or-
ganic nuclear capability. With this end in view, the United States had come up with
the idea of a multilateral nuclear force (MLF) in the late 1950s.
33
Under the revised (exible response) strategy that McNamara proposed, the
trip wire would give way to a conventional defense as far forward as possible to
meet and defeat Soviet aggression near the point of attack. McNamara could see
no practical application for tactical nuclear weapons and lacked condence in using
them without risking escalation to a full-scale nuclear exchange. Rather than rely-
ing on tactical nuclear weapons, he stressed the security NATO enjoyed under the
protective “umbrella” of the U.S. strategic deterrent, a concept known as “extended
deterrence.” But with U.S. policy and doctrine in ux, European leaders wanted
more concrete assurances of nuclear support. Hence their continuing interest, now
stronger than ever, in achieving something along the lines of the MLF. On both sides
of the Atlantic, military planners continued to believe that tactical nuclear weapons
were NATO’s rst line of defense and that selective use of atomic repower, even
though it might heighten risk, would not necessarily result in total war. Weighing
one thing against another, the Joint Chiefs urged McNamara to move cautiously in
making changes in NATO’s strategy and defense posture and to observe “a proper
balance between nuclear and non-nuclear forces.”
34
Had this been the Truman or Eisenhower administration, there probably would
have been an in-depth interagency study, with detailed inputs from the Joint Chiefs
and other agencies, coordinated through the NSC, to develop a master plan of ac-
tion. But neither President Kennedy nor those close to him, including McNamara,
had the patience for what they considered the tedious consensus-building and hair-
splitting sta work of the past. As usual, McNamara paid less attention to profes-
sional military advice than to his civilian systems analysts. First up for review was
the Soviet Order of Battle. Using computerized models, OSD analysts concluded
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THE MCnaMara Era
that it was practically impossible for the Soviet economy to train, equip, and sustain,
along with other forces, 175 front-line divisions, the benchmark gure applied by
Western intelligence since the late 1940s for “sizing” the Soviet army. Applying dif-
ferent methods, the CIA reached a similar conclusion. Based on a reexamination of
evidence accumulated over the past decade, the CIA calculated that instead of 175
divisions, the Soviets had closer to 140, with at least half at reduced strength, some
no more than cadres. Persuaded that previous estimates had exaggerated the Soviet
threat, McNamara became convinced that with modest increases in Alliance spend-
ing (about $8.5 billion spread over 5 years) and technical improvements, NATO
could carry out a “forward strategy” and hold its own in a conventional confronta-
tion with the Warsaw Pact.
35
While McNamara had some valid points, he and his sta presented their argu-
ments clumsily to the Europeans. In so doing they antagonized the NATO allies
and made them more resistant than ever to change. As a result, the Europeans be-
came suspicious of the Kennedy administration’s whole approach to nuclear deter-
rence, from its contemplated shift at the strategic level to a counterforce/no-cities
doctrine, to its proposed curbs on theater and tactical weapons.
36
What most Euro-
pean political leaders and military planners wanted was more nuclear support, not
less, and greater control over the assets at hand in case the United States reneged on
its commitments. McNamara, conversely, was set on limiting both.
The SkybolT affair
Throughout the debate over Europe’s nuclear future, the Joint Chiefs found them-
selves increasingly marginalized as McNamara and his whiz kids took matters more
and more into their own hands. While it was one thing for the JCS to be ignored,
it was quite another to have a majority recommendation blatantly overruled as
happened with the “Skybolt” program, which McNamara decided to cancel in No-
vember 1962. Initiated under Eisenhower, Skybolt was a strategic air-to-surface
ballistic missile being developed by the Air Force in collaboration with the British,
who planned to use it to prolong the active service life of their obsolescent Vulcan
bombers. Late in 1959, seizing on an oer from Washington to codevelop Skybolt,
the British shelved a similar program (“Blue Streak”), which they had been pursu-
ing on their own.
37
With a planned range of over 1,000 miles, Skybolt’s mission was
to carry out stand-o attacks against targets inside the Soviet Union. By the end of
the Eisenhower administration, however, technical problems and rapidly escalating
costs threatened the program’s future. Aware that these issues could scuttle Skybolt,
President Kennedy saw an opportunity to pressure the British into phasing out their
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CounCil of War
nuclear deterrent, in keeping with the administration’s policy of curbing nuclear
proliferation. In April 1961, he authorized McNamara to explore such a possibility if
the missile failed to measure up.
38
McNamara continued to nurse the project along,
but in August 1962 both the OSD Comptroller, Charles J. Hitch, and the Direc-
tor of Defense Research and Engineering, Harold Brown, advised McNamara to
terminate Skybolt. From the technical data laid before him, McNamara concluded
that Skybolt was “a pile of junk.”
39
Despite his growing skepticism concerning Skybolt, McNamara hedged a nal
decision on the program’s future. On November 8, he told the British ambassador
that the United States was “reconsidering” the program, but conveyed the impres-
sion that any action was conditional upon the receipt of JCS views.
40
As part of
their annual review of the Secretary’s budget submission, the Joint Chiefs weighed
in with a split recommendation. Insisting that Skybolt was necessary to maintain a
“clear margin of superiority,” the Service chiefs unanimously favored retaining the
program. However, the Chairman, General Taylor, disagreed. The newest member
of the JCS, Taylor had no vested interests to protect and felt that he could view
the situation more objectively. Terming Skybolt “a relatively marginal program,”
he shared the prevailing view in OSD that the money could be better spent on
other systems.
41
In the past, upon receiving a split recommendation, the Secretary of Defense
invariably sided with the majority or sought a compromise. But in this case, Taylor’s
lone dissent prevailed. While taken on technical and cost-eectiveness grounds, Mc-
Namara’s decision to cancel Skybolt nevertheless had strong geopolitical overtones.
Without Skybolt, McNamara knew that the only readily available alternative the
British had was the Blue Steel Mk I, an air-launched missile with limited range and
penetration capabilities. Lacking a more up-to-date and eective system, Britain’s
entire nuclear weapons program would face an uncertain future.
42
In early Decem-
ber, McNamara ew to London and presented British Minister of Defence Peter
Thorneycroft with three options—continue Skybolt as a solely British program,
adopt a less capable U.S. weapon, the “Hound Dog,” or participate in whatever ar-
rangements emerged from ongoing discussions to create an MLF. Lurking in the
background was a fourth possibility—British acquisition of Polaris technology. But
to McNamara’s surprise, Thorneycroft did not raise it. In fact, the British Ministry
of Defence had explored this option earlier but considered it too costly and incom-
patible with Britain’s overall weapons and shipbuilding program.
43
Just before Christmas, at a mini-summit between President Kennedy and
Prime Minister Harold Macmillan at Nassau, a solution emerged. In preparation
for the meeting, Taylor asked McNamara whether he should attend to assure the
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THE MCnaMara Era
availability of a senior military advisor should the need arise. McNamara told the
Chairman to stay home since “substantive discussions” appeared unlikely.
44
Whether
McNamara simply misread the situation or was purposefully excluding the CJCS is
unclear. Yet even if Taylor had been there, the outcome doubtless would have been
the same. Conceding that Skybolt was a lost cause, Macmillan agreed that acquir-
ing Polaris was the only choice that made sense if Britain were to remain a stra-
tegic nuclear power. While the British would supply their own nuclear warheads,
the boats and missiles would conform to U.S. design. The decision was technically
without prejudice to the future of the UK’s independent deterrent, but it came with
strings attached that severely limited British freedom of action. Most constraining
of all was the requirement that all forces acquired by the UK under the agreement
be “assigned and targeted” as part of a NATO nuclear force in keeping with current
practice. Only if Britain’s “supreme national interests” were at stake could it with-
draw its Polaris boats from NATO command and control.
45
deMiSe of The Mlf
Over the long run, the Nassau agreement probably created more problems than
it solved. Not only did it show the Kennedy administration backtracking from its
declared policy of curbing nuclear proliferation; it also resurrected the notion of a
U.S.-UK “special relationship,” which the French, Germans, and other Europeans
resented. In fact, the close links forged between Washington and London in World
War II were long gone. But by agreeing to share some of its most sensitive military
technology with the British—technology to which no other Alliance member had
comparable access—the Kennedy administration had left itself vulnerable to charges
of favoritism.
Earlier, anticipating that problems of this sort might arise, the Kennedy White
House had endorsed a variation on the theme of a NATO-wide multilateral force.
The original MLF concept of the late 1950s had the strong personal imprint of
the Supreme Allied Commander, General Lauris Norstad, who envisioned a mix
of land- and sea-based medium-range ballistic missiles to replace aging aircraft and
the obsolescent Thor and Jupiter missiles in the United Kingdom, Italy, and Tur-
key.
46
Had Norstad’s conception of the MLF prevailed, NATO would have be-
come, in eect, the fourth nuclear power, alongside the United States, the United
Kingdom, and the Soviet Union. But with the advent of the Kennedy adminis-
tration, Norstad’s vision faded almost immediately. Determined to reduce nuclear
proliferation, President Kennedy discouraged the creation of an autonomous nu-
clear force under NATO and proposed in May 1961 that NATO concentrate on
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CounCil of War
strengthening its conventional forces rather than its nuclear posture. To minimize
the risk, he rearmed an oer made by President Eisenhower that the United States
would dedicate ve U.S. Polaris submarines to NATO and move toward the next
stage—the creation of a full-blown MLF—“once NATO’s nonnuclear goals have
been achieved.”
47
Though McNamara and the Joint Chiefs saw no compelling military need
for the MLF, they went along with the idea largely in deference to the enthusiastic
backing it had among Kennedy loyalists in the State Department. To this group,
the MLF was a crucial component of the President’s “Grand Design” for Euro-
pean political, military, and economic integration, and another step toward eventu-
ally achieving European union. The Pentagon’s main contribution was to push the
concept in the direction of a predominantly, if not exclusively, sea-based system to
expedite the project and to minimize costs through the use of existing technologies.
The proposed force would comprise 25 surface vessels armed with 200 Polaris A–3
missiles, manned by multinational crews and funded collectively by contributions
from NATO members. Costs would be limited to 1 to 5 percent of a nation’s mili-
tary budget. Though SACEUR would have operational command and control of
the ships and their missiles, the United States would retain custody of the warheads
and exercise ultimate veto power over their use. Many Europeans disparaged these
arrangements as being not much better than the current system.
48
The Kennedy administration’s recasting of the MLF concept encountered no
strong objections from the JCS. Lukewarm toward the MLF from the start, the
chiefs supported it as long as it posed no excessive drain on American resources and
caused no major diversion of assets from SAC or other major commands. Their most
serious concerns had to do with the composition of the force. Siding with Norstad,
they repeatedly urged McNamara to include mobile land-based MRBMs in the
MLF, along with Polaris. More accurate and reliable than sea-based missiles, land-
based MRBMs would give NATO a broader range of capabilities and options and
help dissuade the FRG and others from developing independent nuclear capabili-
ties outside of NATO.
49
McNamara, however, believed that a European land-based
missile force would drive up costs and duplicate functions already assigned to U.S.
strategic forces. Still, in deference to growing pressures, he agreed to think about it
and acknowledged to NATO leaders in May 1962 that a land-based MRBM might
be acceptable to the United States under the right conditions.
50
Despite eorts by Washington to come up with an acceptable plan, European
opponents of the MLF, led by the French, continued to make headway. Turning
their back to a multilateral solution, the French remained focused on acquiring
an independent nuclear force de frappe. A low-key aair for much of the 1950s, the
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THE MCnaMara Era
French nuclear program grew out of theoretical studies dating from 1951 and gath-
ered momentum quickly in the aftermath of the Suez aair when the United States
failed to support Britain, France, and Israel in their attack on Egypt. Convinced
that the Americans were capricious friends, the French sought a “trigger” that was
certain to bring U.S. nuclear power to bear regardless of American policy. Denied
American assistance, France pursued collaboration with Italy and West Germany.
With the return to power of General Charles de Gaulle in 1958, this brief partner-
ship ended and France embarked on unilateral development. In February 1960,
France detonated its rst atomic explosion, a plutonium bomb, in the Sahara desert.
At rst, the French relied on air-delivered weapons using Mirage IV bombers. But
as the 1960s progressed, they expanded their arsenal to include silo-based IRBMs
and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
51
For de Gaulle, the force de frappe was part of a larger eort to restore France’s
faded power, glory, and international prestige. Leader of the Free French in World
War II, de Gaulle had emerged from his wartime experience feeling that the British
and Americans had slighted him. According to diplomatic historian Erin R. Mahan,
de Gaulle carried “a smoldering animosity toward les Anglo-Saxons” practically his
entire adult life.
52
Dismissing the MLF as “a web of liaisons,” he opposed any mea-
sure that did not give France a veto over the use of nuclear weapons. In place of the
MLF, he wanted a tripartite (Anglo-French-American) directorate, with each coun-
try having an equal voice in decisions on when and where to use nuclear weapons.
After the Nassau conference, he became convinced that NATO was in the hands of
an Anglo-Saxon cabal and redoubled his eorts to assure France its independence
in foreign and defense aairs, a process leading eventually to the announcement in
February 1966 that French forces would cease to operate under NATO’s integrated
command.
Never excessively strong to begin with, the momentum behind the MLF
slowed to a crawl in the face of unrelenting French resistance and the lukewarm
support of other NATO members. Scrambling to salvage what he could, President
Kennedy sent veteran diplomat Livingston Merchant to Europe in the spring of
1963 to mobilize British and West German support for the beleaguered MLF. De-
spite Merchant’s upbeat reports, he achieved no major breakthroughs.
53
About the
same time, under pressure from McNamara, the Joint Chiefs oered a tepid en-
dorsement of the MLF, not for its military value (which they assessed as negligible)
but as a brake on nuclear proliferation. The chiefs’ support, however, made little dif-
ference. By the time of Kennedy’s assassination, the MLF was practically moribund,
the victim of its own muddled objectives and shortcomings and waning interest on
both sides of the Atlantic.
54
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CounCil of War
Learning from his predecessor’s experience, President Johnson distanced him-
self from the MLF and never seriously pursued it.
55
Nevertheless, on the o chance
that there might be a revival of the idea, McNamara asked the Joint Chiefs in the
summer of 1964 for a fresh analysis of the MLF’s command and control procedures,
with particular attention given to the prevention of an unauthorized or accidental
detonation. McNamara wanted to reassure anxious Members of Congress that a
“pilot project” involving a NATO crew operating a U.S. guided-missile destroyer,
USS Claude V. Ricketts, would not compromise the custody and control of any U.S.
nuclear weapons.
56
But even though the Navy rated the Ricketts experiment a suc-
cess, it failed to generate any appreciable renewed support for the MLF. Dropped
from further discussion at NATO meetings, the MLF passed into the history
books sometime in late 1964 or early 1965, with the exact date of its obsequy still
unknown.
a New NaTo STraTegy: Mc 14/3
Following the MLF’s demise, the Johnson administration sought other arrangements
for nuclear sharing and coordination. The JCS wanted to explore closer cooperation
through military channels between U.S. and French nuclear forces, with the goal of
eventually integrating the force de frappe into NATO.
57
But as it became apparent
that Paris was determined to pursue an independent course, not only in nuclear
aairs but in all aspects of military planning, the United States dropped eorts to
placate de Gaulle and refocused on strengthening neglected ties with the FRG and
other NATO members. Meanwhile, with McNamara in the forefront, the Johnson
administration continued to push for formal adoption of a forward defense strategy
resting on exible response. The upshot during 1966–1967 was the creation of a
new high-level consultative body, the Nuclear Planning Group (NPG), to guide the
Alliance in nuclear matters, and a reconguration of basic NATO strategy around
a new policy directive (MC 14/3) that nally brought the era of massive retaliation
to a close.
Overshadowing these accomplishments was a perceptible diminution of
American power and inuence within the Alliance, accelerated by the American
preoccupation with Vietnam and the attendant diversion of resources. Unable to
give NATO the time and attention accorded it in the past, the Johnson administra-
tion struggled to preserve U.S. leadership. The most serious challenger remained
de Gaulle, whose assault on the U.S. dollar and unrelenting criticisms of American
foreign policy left the Alliance in tension and disarray until February 1966, when
France announced the withdrawal of the last of its forces from NATO command.
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THE MCnaMara Era
By any measure, de Gaulle’s decision to secede from the NATO military structure
(the rst and only defection of its kind until Greece withdrew its forces in 1974 over
the Cyprus issue) was a severe blow to Alliance solidarity and to American pres-
tige. Summarily evicted from its facilities in France, NATO’s weighty military and
civilian bureaucracy had to scramble to nd new oces and headquarters. Though
relocating to Belgium proved less dicult than the Joint Chiefs expected, it was
still a major disruption that left the Alliance dependent in the short term on hastily
organized and largely untested lines of support and communication.
58
The erosion of the American presence in Europe was especially apparent from
the shrinking size and quality of the U.S. forces committed to NATO. As of the
mid-1960s, just as the Vietnam buildup was beginning, the United States had almost
5 Army divisions, 3 regimental combat teams, and 28 combat air squadrons assigned
to Europe. But because of rising costs, the French drain on U.S. gold reserves, and
growing requirements in Southeast Asia, it was only a matter of time before the
United States reassessed its military role in Europe. The Joint Chiefs invariably op-
posed cutbacks in U.S. forces. Arguing that it would weaken NATO’s defenses,
they saw any lessening of the U.S. presence as setting a poor example and making
it harder for the United States to elicit troop contributions from the European Al-
lies. As time passed, however, and as the requirements for Vietnam grew, the chiefs’
position became increasingly untenable. The solution pushed by McNamara and his
systems analysts was “dual-basing”—the prepositioning of supplies and equipment
in Europe and the rotation of selected units between there and the United States.
Initially opposed to the idea, the JCS became more amenable when Presidential
preferences for McNamara’s approach left them no choice. The near-term practical
results were a 10 percent troop reduction and the withdrawal from Europe of two
combat brigades of the 24th Mechanized Division and three tactical air squadrons.
Pleading nancial diculties, the British, Dutch, and Belgians soon followed suit
with similar troop reductions.
59
Pressures on the force structure complicated the work of NATO planners
in translating exible response into concrete plans. Once skeptical of the whole
idea, the Joint Chiefs had gradually come to accept it as long as it did not rule
out recourse to nuclear weapons should a defense with conventional repower
falter.
60
Accordingly, throughout the 1960s, the Joint Chiefs continued to stockpile
tactical-sized nuclear weapons and delivery systems in Europe. By the end of the
decade, the nuclear arsenal earmarked for NATO had doubled in size to more than
7,000 bombs and warheads.
61
At the same time, because of overriding priorities in
Vietnam, U.S. reserves available to NATO declined drastically. In 1961 when Ken-
nedy and McNamara began talking about exible response, the United States had a
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CounCil of War
strategic reserve force of one infantry and two airborne divisions earmarked for im-
mediate deployment to Europe. By 1968, the NATO-committed reserve was down
to two airborne brigades available by M+30 and one airborne, one mechanized,
and two infantry brigades by M+60. Time and again, from the mid-1960s on, the
Joint Chiefs urged a call-up of Reservists and an increase in Active-duty strength
to overcome the shortfall. For scal and political reasons, President Johnson turned
them down.
62
Meanwhile, eorts to achieve a nonnuclear defense continued to meet strong
resistance from NATO’s European members. The most dicult to convince (once
the French took themselves out of the debate by withdrawing from NATO’s Mili-
tary Committee in 1966) were the West Germans, who feared that exible response
would increase the risk of a conventional conict. Clinging to the defense doctrines
of the 1950s, West German military leaders contended that threatening the Soviets
with the early use of nuclear weapons constituted “the very nature of the strategy
of deterrence.” Operating on this premise, they insisted that nuclear weapons con-
tinued to be “the most signicant political instrument for the defense of NATO
Europe.”
63
But under persistent American pressure, their resistance gradually wore
down, paving the way for NATO planners to reconcile dierences and adopt the
new exible response strategy in December 1967.
A tribute to McNamara’s hard work and determination, MC 14/3 was the
most far-reaching revision of NATO strategy since adoption of the original strate-
gic concept in 1950. Ending primary reliance on nuclear weapons, it mandated an
initial defense “as far forward as is necessary and possible,” supported by “sucient
ground, sea and air forces in a high state of readiness.” While MC 14/3 did not dic-
tate exclusive reliance on conventional arms, it clearly stated that the “rst objective”
should be to “counter the aggression without escalation.”
64
In interpreting these
instructions, the rule of thumb for Alliance planners was that NATO should be ca-
pable of mounting sustained conventional operations for up to 30 days.
65
According
to Sir Michael Quinlan, Britain’s leading nuclear strategist and a key participant in
the debate leading up to the adoption of MC 14/3, one of the purposes behind the
new strategy was to send a clear signal to the Soviets. “We rightly believed,” Quinlan
later related, “[that] Soviet Intelligence would obtain accounts of the policy discus-
sions that had taken place behind closed doors, so we tried to ensure that two key
messages got through to Moscow—rst, NATO had faced up to the tough issues
of nuclear use; and second, NATO would not take provocative or hasty action.”
66
A companion document—MC 48/3—dealt with implementation measures.
Framed in broad language, MC 48/3 called for improved intelligence, coordina-
tion, readiness, and logistical support to increase NATO’s capacity for exibility in
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THE MCnaMara Era
response to aggression. Unlike earlier exhortations, however, this one fell mostly on
deaf ears and remained unapproved in NATO’s military committee system for the
next several years.
67
A more accurate barometer of NATO sentiment was the Harm-
el Report, adopted in conjunction with MC 14/3. Named for Belgian Foreign
Minister Pierre Harmel, the chairman of the committee that produced it, the report
addressed “future tasks which face the Alliance” and reected a distinctly European
perspective in urging a dual policy of defense and détente. As part of this process, it
suggested exploring condence-building measures to improve East-West relations
and stepped up eorts toward arms control and disarmament. “Military security and
a policy of détente,” the report argued, “are not contradictory but complementary.”
Given the overall tenor of the Harmel panel’s ndings, it was clear that, while the
European Allies accepted exible response in principle, they viewed it as a less than
credible form of deterrence unless accompanied by a fundamental change in the
East-West political climate. Before proceeding much further in implementing ex-
ible response, they wanted to explore relaxing tensions and improving relations with
the Soviet bloc.
68
Whether exible response would reduce the dangers of a nuclear war never
ceased to be a hotly contested issue. With the United States preoccupied in Viet-
nam and with many European Allies skeptical of the American commitment, the
link between the security of NATO territory and nuclear weapons was as strong
and as close as ever, the adoption of MC 14/3 notwithstanding. Acknowledging
as much, McNamara told President Johnson that, despite “years of eort,” NATO
still had a long way to go “to deal successfully with any kind of nonnuclear attack
without using nuclear weapons ourselves.” Concurring with this assessment, the
Joint Chiefs continued to see no other choice than “early selective employment of
nuclear weapons” to counter even a limited Warsaw Pact attack. An agreed concept
on paper, exible response still had a long way to go before becoming an attainable
objective on the battleeld.
69
The daMage liMiTaTioN debaTe
NATO’s adoption of exible response marked a major turning point in Alliance
strategy. In theory, it moved away from dependence on massive retaliation and, by
positing a broader range of conventional responses, lessened the dangers of a nuclear
war in Europe. But by the mid-1960s, the larger and more urgent problem facing
the Joint Chiefs and other Western military planners was the relentless expansion of
the Soviet ICBM force. As these deployments continued, they threatened to negate
the U.S. advantage in strategic nuclear power and, with it, the concept of extended
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deterrence on which transatlantic security ultimately rested. With their own strate-
gic force levels eectively frozen, the JCS sought qualitative enhancements to U.S.
capabilities, largely in two areas. One was a new system of multiple independently
targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs, which enhanced the capabilities of a single
long-range missile by increasing the number of warheads it could carry. The other
was the advent of improved interceptors and tracking radars for ballistic missile
defense, which made an American ABM a more credible and attractive option for
countering the growing Soviet missile force. Out of the debate over these issues,
summarily referred to by the Joint Chiefs as “damage limitation” measures, emerged
not only a series of fateful decisions aecting renements in the strategic posture,
but also a new realm of negotiations with the Soviets—the Strategic Arms Limita-
tion Talks (SALT).
MIRV appealed to McNamara and the JCS alike, but for dierent reasons.
For the Joint Chiefs, MIRV was a way of upgrading strategic capabilities while
staying within the limits of the programmed missile force, which the Secretary of
Defense had capped at 1,054 ICBMs and 41 ballistic missile submarines. For Mc-
Namara, it was a convenient way of fending o JCS requests for new systems—an
advanced manned strategic bomber (the AMSA, later the B–1) to replace the
obsolescent B–52 and a larger, more powerful ICBM (the MX)—on the grounds
that, with MIRV factored in, programmed delivery systems would more than sat-
isfy targeting requirements. As McNamara saw it, in other words, MIRV enhanced
the Services’ capabilities, but it was also a mechanism for imposing restraint on
the acquisition process.
Proposals for deploying multiple warheads on a missile dated from the late
1950s. The earliest missile that actually incorporated a multiple warhead design was
the Navy’s Polaris A–3, rst tested in 1962 and declared operational aboard sub-
marines 2 years later. Capable of carrying three 200 kiloton warheads, the A–3
employed a system of multiple reentry vehicles (MRVs) that, instead of being inde-
pendently targeted, applied a “shotgun” pattern against a single target. Since SLBMs
were less accurate and reliable than land-based ICBMs, targeting planners in Omaha
generally held them in reserve for follow-on attacks against “soft” targets like troop
concentrations and urban-industrial facilities.
70
Fully developed MIRV systems came along later, emerging from design stud-
ies done by the Air Force’s Ballistic Systems Division in the early 1960s and the
Navy’s Special Projects Oce. More sophisticated and versatile than the A–3, a
MIRVed reentry vehicle (known as a “bus”) could attack several separate targets
simultaneously or one target redundantly. The Joint Chiefs considered it impera-
tive to develop a submarine-launched MIRV missile (the Poseidon), and indicated
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THE MCnaMara Era
that they would also welcome MIRVed versions of the Minuteman ICBM (known
as Minuteman III), which the Air Force planned to deploy in the late 1960s.
71
To
increase the versatility and eectiveness of programmed forces, the JCS sought and
obtained penetration aids, improvements in command and control, and increased
missile accuracy. However, they were unsuccessful in persuading McNamara to ac-
cept higher-yield warheads and other qualitative improvements that would have
further boosted counterforce potential by threatening “hardened” targets like So-
viet missile silos and command bunkers. Although McNamara conceded that these
measures would limit damage to the United States, he refused to embrace damage-
limitation as his overriding priority.
72
McNamara believed that were he to accept the full range of the Joint Chiefs’
proposed enhancements and make damage limitation a high-priority objective, he
would be signaling to the Soviets that the United States was striving for a rst-
strike capability. The result, he feared, would destabilize relations with Moscow and
increase the risk of a Soviet preemptive attack in a crisis. Thus, as plans and prepara-
tions for MIRV deployment went forward, McNamara continued to think in terms
of assured destruction. For Poseidon, he rejected a counterforce MIRV package
consisting of warheads in the three-megaton range, and opted instead for the C–3
reentry vehicle, which could deliver a large number of relatively small warheads and
was best suited for urban-industrial attacks. He likewise insisted that the Air Force’s
Minuteman III use a three-warhead “light” version of the MK–12 RV, a congura-
tion the Air Force considered best suited for attacking soft targets, rather than the
MK–12 “heavy” design (also known as the MK–17), which could have delivered a
larger payload.
73
Unable to make much headway with McNamara in conguring oensive
forces for damage-limitation purposes, the Joint Chiefs eyed recent advances in
ballistic missile defense technology to help achieve their goals. By 1965, the JCS
had changed their minds about ABM and now embraced it as an essential strategic
requirement in the JSOP, their annual mid-range estimate of military programs.
74
What sparked the shift in the JCS position is not clear. British historian Lawrence
Freedman explains it as a reaction within the military to McNamara’s policies, a
feeling that the time had come to challenge his whole strategic philosophy.
75
Mor-
ton H. Halperin, who served on McNamara’s sta, remembered it more as the
product of tradeos between the Services and bureaucratic politics.
76
Personalities
also played a part. As Air Force Chief of Sta, LeMay had never had much con-
dence in ABM being able to cope with a large-scale enemy attack. Preferring to
invest in oensive weapons, LeMay had probably done as much as anyone other
than McNamara to block JCS endorsement of the ABM program. However, his
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successor, General John P. McConnell, USAF, who joined the JCS in February 1965,
was more open-minded and exible on the missile defense issue.
77
Also, with Tay-
lor’s departure in July 1964 to become Ambassador to South Vietnam and General
Earle G. Wheeler’s appointment as Chairman, the JCS were again under “one of
their own,” in whom they had greater condence to present their views and argue
their case with the Secretary and the President.
Whatever their motivations, the Joint Chiefs had a strong incentive, based on
intelligence reports, to review and change their position on missile defense. From
about 50 ICBM launchers in mid-1962 and a handful of ballistic missile submarines,
Soviet capabilities had increased to an estimated strength to 350–400 ICBMs and
36 ballistic missile submarines by the mid-1960s. As part of this buildup, the Soviets
had phased out their rst generation SS–6 ICBMs, and were proceeding posthaste
with the deployment of a more eective and easier-to-use second generation (the
SS–7, the SS–9, and the SS–11). Though about 40 percent of the Soviet ICBM
force remained above ground in “soft” congurations, all new deployments were
in hardened underground silos. The Intelligence Community projected Soviet ca-
pabilities of approximately a thousand ICBM launchers by the end of the decade
(equal in number to the programmed U.S. deployment) and 40–50 ballistic missile
submarines.
78
No less unsettling was evidence that the Soviets were pursuing a well-dened
ballistic missile defense R&D program, which could complicate U.S. targeting and
reduce the attainment of assured destruction goals. Like the Soviet ICBM program
a few years earlier, Soviet BMD development had become a source of intense con-
troversy within the Intelligence Community. The Army and Air Force saw the So-
viets engaged in a massive BMD eort, while the CIA, State Department, National
Security Agency, and Naval Intelligence reserved judgment.
79
Under study were the
characteristics and capabilities of three known systems: one around Leningrad, appar-
ently started as an air-defense system, which the Soviets suddenly dismantled in 1964
prior to completion; a second, known as the “Tallinn Line,” also for air defense with
discernible ABM capabilities; and a third, known as “Galosh,” the most advanced and
sophisticated, under construction around Moscow. All three exhibited design features
seen at the Soviet ABM development and test center at Shary Sagan.
80
Worried that the Moscow system might give the Soviets a critical advantage,
the Joint Chiefs recommended in early December 1966 that Secretary McNamara
and President Johnson begin full-scale ABM production and deployment without
delay.
81
The ABM the Joint Chiefs proposed to eld was the Nike-X, successor to
the Army’s earlier Nike-Zeus, which oered initial protection for up to 25 Ameri-
can cities. In contrast to the point defense concept used in Nike-Zeus, Nike-X was
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THE MCnaMara Era
a layered defense with area-wide applications. Employing the basic Zeus missile (lat-
er renamed Spartan) for long-range interception, it would use a second interceptor,
the Sprint, to destroy whatever leaked through the rst line of defense. The prin-
cipal advantage of Nike-X over any of its predecessors was its phased array radar,
a major breakthrough in battle management pioneered by the Advanced Research
Projects Agency (ARPA; later, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)
under a set of studies known as Project Defender. Faster and more accurate than
the manually operated Nike-Zeus radar system, phased array radar used solid-state
electronics and high-capacity computers to process large amounts of data quickly,
track multiple reentry vehicles, and guide interceptor missiles to their targets all at
the same time. While there were still serious “bugs” in the system, not the least of
which was its limited capacity to distinguish decoys from real warheads, Nike-X
seemed a giant stride toward more eective missile defense.
82
Nike-X had originally been McNamara’s idea, an outgrowth of his eorts dur-
ing the Kennedy administration to nd a more reliable and cost-eective alternative
to Nike-Zeus.
83
But as he drifted away from the counterforce/no-cities doctrine
and became increasingly committed to the assured destruction concept, he lost
interest in pursuing strategic defense and related damage-limitation options such as
civil defense.
84
“It is our ability to destroy an attacker,” he argued, “. . . that provides
the deterrent, not our ability to partially limit damage to ourselves.”
85
For advice, he
turned to scientists who opposed the whole notion of ABM and contractors who
doubted whether Nike-X was suciently advanced for deployment.
86
Contrary
assessments, like the 1964 Betts Report, an internal DOD study that endorsed mis-
sile defense as both feasible and compatible with the preservation of mutual nuclear
deterrence, had no apparent impact on his thinking.
87
Indeed, McNamara became
rmly convinced that the pursuit of BMD by both sides was provocative and de-
stabilizing and that it represented an open-ended invitation to a costly escalation of
the arms race. He seemed to feel also that the responsibility for showing restraint
fell more on the United States than the Soviet Union. “Were we to deploy a heavy
ABM system throughout the United States,” he maintained, “the Soviets would
clearly be strongly motivated to so increase their oensive capability as to cancel out
our defensive advantage.”
88
The showdown over Nike-X came during the nal markup of the FY 1968
defense budget in early December 1966, shortly after the JCS recommended pro-
ceeding with deployment. By now, the Moscow “Galosh” ABM was public knowl-
edge, and there was growing support for missile defense among key Democrats in
Congress. Among these were some of the President’s closest friends, including Sena-
tors Richard Russell, Jr., Henry M. Jackson, and John C. Stennis, whose continuing
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CounCil of War
cooperation the White House needed in the face of mounting opposition to the ad-
ministration’s Vietnam policies.
89
While the President shared McNamara’s concerns
over an expensive and dangerous arms race with the Soviets, he leaned toward the
JCS position that the time had come to settle the ABM debate.
Matters reached a head at a budget review meeting attended by McNamara,
the Joint Chiefs, and the President in Austin, Texas, on December 6, 1966. Though
aware that the decision could go either way, the JCS had good reason to be con-
dent that the momentum was moving in their favor. Taking steps to outmaneu-
ver them, McNamara oered a compromise that consisted of two components—a
token deployment of Nike-X in the mid-1970s against an as-yet nonexistent (but
expected) Chinese ICBM threat, to show the Soviets and critics alike that the ad-
ministration was serious about missile defense, in tandem with exploratory talks
to see if Kremlin leaders would be interested in a negotiated “freeze” on future
ABMs. The deal was too good for Johnson to pass up. Not only would it conrm
the administration’s determination to respond to an increasingly dangerous situa-
tion, it would also save money at a time when the costs for the Vietnam War were
becoming onerous. Above all, both elements of the compromise would shore up the
President’s image as a peacemaker. Making no secret of their disappointment, the
Joint Chiefs acquiesced.
90
The President’s decision proved neither rm nor nal. Returning to Wash-
ington, he met in early January 1967 with a group of distinguished scientists who
convinced him (apparently without much diculty) that even a limited ABM de-
ployment would accelerate the arms race, undermine the chances for arms control,
and be “extremely dangerous.”
91
Johnson accepted the scientists’ advice and in his
budget message to Congress toward the end of the month he announced his in-
tention to continue “intensive development” of Nike-X, but to hold production
and deployment in abeyance pending exploratory talks with the Soviets to curb or
freeze ABMs.
92
Whether the talks with the Soviets would be productive remained to be seen.
Until then, arms control negotiations involving the United States and the Soviet
Union had yielded only two agreements—the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty ne-
gotiated under Kennedy, and a pending Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT),
with key clauses still in draft form. Doubtful whether the NPT would signicantly
improve U.S. security, the JCS hoped the administration would not “aggressively
pursue” it.
93
In the case of the proposed freeze on ABMs, as with practically all
other arms control matters, the Joint Chiefs’ uppermost concern was the adequacy
and eectiveness of verication measures. To avoid any misunderstanding of their
position, they notied McNamara that they would resist “any proposal” that might
267
THE MCnaMara Era
foreclose deployment of missile defenses or prevent planned improvements to of-
fensive forces.
94
Seeking a breakthrough, President Johnson and Secretary McNamara arranged
a meeting with Soviet Premier Alexei N. Kosygin at Glassboro, New Jersey, in late
June 1967, while Kosygin was in the United States addressing the UN General As-
sembly. A showy, impromptu aair, the Glassboro summit beneted from none of
the detailed sta work and prior exchanges that might have narrowed dierences
and paved the way for an agreement. Neither side brought along any senior military
representatives. Despite a vigorous presentation of his views, McNamara failed to
convince Kosygin that a freeze on ABM deployments was in the best interests of all
concerned. By stressing curbs on missile defense, he apparently misled Kosygin into
believing that the United States was indierent toward restraints on oensive arms.
McNamara and Johnson rushed to assure Kosygin that this was not so. But the dam-
age was irremeable. As McNamara recalled the scene, Kosygin “absolutely erupted.”
Turning red in the face, he pounded the table. “Defense is moral,” he declared, “of-
fense is immoral.” Concluding that the Soviet leader probably lacked the authority
to make a deal, Johnson and McNamara shrugged o their disappointment and
returned to Washington empty-handed.
95
SeNTiNel aNd The SeedS of SalT
If it accomplished nothing else, the Glassboro summit conrmed that the adminis-
tration had no choice but to move ahead on ABM. Indeed, once Kosygin rejected
American overtures for a freeze, deployment by the United States became virtually
certain. In addition to the Soviet threat, there was now the danger posed by the
Communist Chinese, who had detonated a thermonuclear device the week before
the Glassboro summit. Speculation was rife that even if the administration opted
against a “heavy” ABM aimed against the Soviets, it would still deploy a “thin” de-
fense against the Chinese.
96
A heated debate developed in Congress, while at the
Pentagon the Joint Chiefs put renewed pressure on McNamara to lift the prohibi-
tion on deployment and approve the heavy system they had recommended earlier.
The JCS rarely prioritized military or Service programs. But in this instance, they
told McNamara that they could think of “no other action . . . more necessary” to the
Nation’s security than full production and deployment of Nike-X. Not only would
a rm decision remove all doubt about American resolve, they maintained, but
also it “would either stimulate Soviet participation in meaningful negotiations or
disclose their lack of serious interest in this matter.” Here in a nutshell was the co-
nundrum of Cold War arms control: to convince the other side to curb or eliminate
268
CounCil of War
weapons, one had rst to demonstrate one’s readiness to bear the risk and expense
of acquiring them, if only to see them later negotiated away as a bargaining chip.
97
With the JCS and powerful gures in Congress pushing for deployment, McNa-
mara launched a feverish search for a credible alternative. Above all, he wanted to pre-
serve the arms control option and avoid giving the Soviets an excuse to increase their
oensive arsenal. For budgetary planning purposes, he notied the JCS in early August
1967 that he was still leaning toward a limited ballistic missile defense to deal with the
emerging Chinese threat and, as a bonus, to provide a small degree of protection for
Minuteman missile elds.
98
The JCS did not doubt the potential threat posed by the
Chinese, but they saw that threat as rather remote and could nd no urgent need for the
protection of missile elds, given the imperfect accuracy of Soviet missiles and the hard-
ness of U.S. silos. They continued to believe that the rst order of business should be a
full-scale nationwide ABM deployment.
99
As far as McNamara was concerned, however,
the matter was closed. In a well publicized speech in San Francisco on September 18,
1967, he conrmed that the United States was going ahead with a limited ABM deploy-
ment aimed against Communist China rather than the Soviet Union. While this was
a volte-face from his previous position on missile defense, McNamara insisted that his
strategic objectives were unchanged and that preserving assured destruction (“the very
essence of the whole deterrence concept”) remained his paramount concern.
100
Attempting to put the best possible interpretation on the Secretary’s decision,
the Joint Chiefs treated it not as the beginning of the end for ABM, but as the end
of the beginning.
101
Nonetheless, ABM faced an uncertain future and over the ensu-
ing year it remained the subject of intense legislative debate, diplomatic maneuver-
ing, and Pentagon inghting. As he was leaving oce in February 1968, McNamara
was still cautioning against an anti-Soviet ABM and insisting that assured destruc-
tion constituted the only reliable and eective form of deterrence. Skeptical, the
Joint Chiefs in April 1968 urged McNamara’s successor, Clark M. Cliord, and his
deputy, Paul H. Nitze, to approve a nationwide ABM system (now dubbed Sentinel)
for full deployment by FY77. Their eorts, however, were no more successful with
Cliord and Nitze than they had been with McNamara.
102
Even though the Army
began acquiring Sentinel deployment sites during this time, it remained to be seen
whether the incoming Nixon administration would carry the program forward.
103
As the Johnson Presidency drew to a close, it was increasingly likely that the
fate of ABM would be decided at the negotiating table, as McNamara had hoped.
Though the Glassboro summit had failed to achieve a breakthrough, behind-the-
scenes talks held afterwards in conjunction with the nal negotiation of the NPT
yielded broad agreement between Washington and Moscow that the time was ripe
to address larger arms controls issues. On July 1, 1968, in conjunction with the
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THE MCnaMara Era
signing of the NPT, the two sides announced their intention to discuss limiting
oensive and defensive strategic weapons systems.
104
The date and place of these
talks were about to be announced when, on August 20, Warsaw Pact forces invaded
Czechoslovakia, crushing that country’s nascent democracy and causing the Johnson
administration to postpone arms control negotiations indenitely. But as the Nixon
administration was taking oce on January 20, 1969, the Soviet Foreign Ministry
expressed renewed interest in limitations on strategic arms. The long-anticipated
SALT negotiations were soon to begin.
For the Joint Chiefs, as for others in the military establishment, McNamara’s
departure and the end of the Johnson administration constituted a watershed. In the
corridors of the Pentagon it was said that the history of the Defense Department fell
into two periods—before McNamara and after. Not only did the administrative and
managerial reforms he instituted reshape Pentagon business practices; they also had
profound eects in the areas of weapons procurement, force structure, and military
doctrine. More than any other Secretary of Defense, he fundamentally transformed
the way the country thought about and approached armed conict. Prior to Mc-
Namara, the decisions aecting the force structure, its composition, and the strategic
concepts under which it operated had been largely in the hands of military profes-
sionals—the Joint Chiefs of Sta—who worked under broad guidance from the
President, the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Council. But during
McNamara’s tenure, such decisions became a joint function of the JCS organization
and analysts in the Oce of the Secretary of Defense, with the latter often having
the nal word. Combined with the handling and political repercussions of the war
in Vietnam, the net eect was a dramatically reduced role and inuence for the
military in national security aairs, to a level not seen since the 1930s.
Notes
1 Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963–1969 (New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 19.
2 William W. Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 2–3.
3 Interview with Stephen Ailes by Maurice Matlo, June 6, 1986, 22–23, OSD Oral His-
tory Collection, OSD Historical Oce.
4 Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, How Much Is Enough? Shaping the Defense Pro-
gram, 1961–1969 (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 54.
5 Report, J-5 to JCS, May 29, 1959, “Joint Program for Planning,” JCS 2089/13. Limited
to 3 years at rst, the JCS extended the timeframe of the JSOP to 5 years because, by
the late 1950s, that was about the length of time it took to develop and eld a new
weapon. In the mid-1960s, it was extended to 8 to make it more comprehensive.
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CounCil of War
6 See Memo, JCS to SECDEF, June 6, 1958, “JSOP for July 1, 1962,” JCS 2143/78; and
Byron R. Fairchild and Walter S. Poole, The Joint Chiefs of Sta and National Policy,
1957–1960 (Washington, DC: Oce of Joint History, 2000), 37–42.
7 Walter S. Poole, The Joint Chiefs of Sta and National Policy, 1961–1964 (Washington, DC:
Oce of Joint History, Oce of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, 2011), 20–23.
8 Lawrence S. Kaplan, Ronald D. Landa, and Edward J. Drea, The McNamara Ascendancy,
1961–1965 (Washington, DC: OSD Historical Oce, 2006), 296–297. From FY72 on,
the term “posture statement” applied to the annual threat assessment submitted to
Congress by the CJCS.
9 CM-109-62 to DJS, November 14, 1962, “Planning Directive for Reorienting JSOP-
68,” JCS 2143/177.
10 JCS Decision Statistics, 1958–1982, JCS “Splits” folder, JHO 14-003.
11 Walter S. Poole, The Evolution of the Joint Strategic Planning System, 1947–1989 (Washing-
ton, DC: Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, Joint Sta, 1989), 7–8; Enthoven and
Smith, 94–95.
12 See Lawrence Freedman, U.S. Intelligence and the Soviet Strategic Threat, 2d ed. (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 73, 205 fn. 36.
13 Memo, SECDEF to SecArmy et al., February 10, 1961, “Military Budgets and Nation-
al Security Policy,” JCS 1800/401; Letter, McNamara to Kennedy, February 20, 1961,
FRUS, 1961–63, VIII, 35–48.
14 Memo, SECDEF to Director BoB, March 10, 1961, “Revisions to Defense FY 1962
Budget,” FRUS,1961–63, VIII, 56–65.
15 Robert S. McNamara, Blundering into Disaster (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987), 51.
16 Item No. 2, “Projects Within the Dept of Defense Assigned 8 March 1961,” enclosure to
Memo, SECDEF to Secretaries Military Departments et al., March 8, 1961, JCS 2101/413.
17 JCSM-153-61 to SECDEF, March 11, 1961, “Foreign Policy Considerations Bearing
on the U.S. Defense Posture,” JCS 2101/412; CM-190-61 to SECDEF, April 18, 1961,
“Doctrine on Thermonuclear Attack,” JCS 1899/640.
18 DPM, December 6, 1963, “Recommended FY 1965–1969 Strategic Retaliatory Forc-
es,” FRUS,1961–63, VIII, 549. See also Edward J. Drea, McNamara, Cliord, and the Bur-
dens of Vietnam, 1965–69 (Washington, DC: Historical Oce, Oce of the Secretary of
Defense, 2011), 347.
19 See Kaplan et al., 305–309; and Janne E. Nolan, Guardians of the Arsenal: The Politics of
Nuclear Strategy (New York: Basic Books, 1989), 74–77.
20 Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an
American Adversary (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), 442.
21 See JCSM-252-61, April 18, 1961, “Doctrine on Thermonuclear Attack,” JCS 1899/640.
22 Desmond Ball, “The Development of the SIOP, 1960–1983,” in Desmond Ball and
Jerey Richelson, eds., Strategic Nuclear Targeting (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1986), 57–70; David Alan Rosenberg, “U.S. Nuclear Strategy: Theory and Practice,”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (March 1987), 23–26; and Kaplan et al., 310–311, 316–319.
23 McNamara Interview in Michael Charlton, From Deterrence to Defense: The Inside Story
of Strategic Policy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 9–10. The 10,000 missile
gure was apparently Powers’ personal estimate and had no ocial Air Force standing.
271
THE MCnaMara Era
24 Bernard C. Nalty, “USAF Ballistic Missile Programs, 1962–1964” (Study Prepared for
the USAF Historical Division Liaison Oce, April 1966), 10–11.
25 JSOP FY 68–70, Vol. I, Pt. I, April 19, 1963, JCS 2143/201; Kaplan et al., 123.
26 Robert S. McNamara, The Essence of Security (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 51–67;
author’s conversations with Paul H. Nitze, Henry Glass, and others.
27 Interview with General David A. Burchinal, USAF, in Richard H. Kohn and Joseph P.
Harahan, eds., Strategic Air Warfare (Washington, DC: Oce of Air Force History, 1988),
113.
28 U.S. Oce of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), National Defense Budget
Estimates for FY 1985 (Washington, DC: DOD, March 1984), 80, 128.
29 See Fairchild and Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1957–60, 96–97.
30 Humphrey Wynn, The RAF Strategic Nuclear Deterrent Forces: Their Origins, Roles, and
Deployment, 1946–1969 (London: HMSO, 1994), 104.
31 Report, J-5 to JCS, April 24, 1961, “NATO-U.S. Targeting,” JCS 2305/462.
32 Oce of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense (Atomic Energy), “History of the
Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons: July 1945 through September 1977”
(February 1978), 59–61, 83–91 (declassied). Available at http://www.dod.gov/pubs/
foi/reading_room/306.pdf.
33 Kaplan et al., 386–387.
34 JCSM-175-61, with Letter, JCS to Acheson, March 20, 1961, JCS 2305/414; Poole, JCS
and National Policy, 1961–64, 188; Kaplan et al., 360–362.
35 Enthoven and Smith, 132–142; Raymond L. Gartho, “Estimating Soviet Military
Force Levels,” International Security 14 (Spring 1990), 93–116; Poole, JCS and National
Policy, 1961–64, 189–190.
36 See Jane E. Stromseth, The Origins of Flexible Response: NATO’s Debate over Strategy in the
1960s (New York: St. Martin’s, 1988), 48–53; Kaplan et al., 362 and passim; and Edward
Drea, “The McNamara Era,” in Gustav Schmidt, ed., A History of NATO: The First Fifty
Years (London: Palgrave, 2001; 3 vols.), III, 183–195.
37 Wynn, 373–402.
38 Memo, Acting Exec Sec NSC to NSC, April 24, 1961, “NATO and the Atlantic Na-
tions,” JCS 2305/466.
39 Richard E. Neustadt, “Skybolt and Nassau: American Policy-Making and Anglo-Amer-
ican Relations” (Report to the President, November 15, 1963, sanitized), 4–9 (copy in
Kennedy Library); McNamara quoted in Kaplan, 376, from an Oral History Interview by
Alfred Goldberg and Maurice Matlo, April 3, 1986, 25–26, OSD Oral History Collection.
40 Kaplan et al., 380; Neustadt, 18.
41 JCSM-907-62 to SECDEF, November 20, 1962, “Recommended FY 1964–FY 1968
Strategic Retaliatory Forces,” JCS 1800/644; CM-128-62 to SECDEF, November 20,
1962, same subject, JCS 1800/649. See also Neustadt, 22.
42 See Wynn, 403–441.
43 Peter Nailor, The Nassau Connection: The Organization and Management of the British
POLARIS Project (London: HMSO, 1988), 3–7.
44 Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1961–64, 201.
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CounCil of War
45 Harold Macmillan, At the End of the Day, 1961–1963 (New York: Harper & Row, 1973),
356–361; Kaplan et al., 402–403; Wynn, 420–421.
46 All Thors and Jupiters were retired in 1963. Removal of the Jupiters from Turkey was
part of the settlement ending the Cuban missile crisis. See above, chap. 7.
47 “Address Before the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa,” May 17, 1961, Kennedy Public
Papers, 1961, 385.
48 SM-763-63, June 13, 1963, “Basic Elements of Future MLF Agreement,” enclosure
to JCS 2421/434; Lawrence S. Kaplan, “The MLF Debate,” in Douglas Brinkley and
Richard T. Griths, eds., John F. Kennedy and Europe (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1999), 52–55; Stromseth, 79–81.
49 See JCSM-407-61 to SECDEF, June 15, 1961, “NATO Force Requirements for 1966,”
JCS 2305/498; and Appendix to JCSM-594-61 to SECDEF, August 30, 1961, “NATO
Force Requirements for End–1966,” JCS 2305/578.
50 Kaplan et al., 393–397. The missile in question did not actually exist. Barely a drawing-
board concept, it became known in NATO circles as “Missile X.” Later, McNamara
backtracked and told the JCS that he would resist a new MRBM for Europe. See
Memo, SECDEF to CJCS, September 11, 1965, “DPM on NATO,” JCS 2450/77.
51 Georges–Henri Soutou, The French Military Program For Nuclear Energy, 1945–1981, trans.
by Preston Niblack (College Park, MD: Center for International Security Studies at
Maryland, 1989), 1–5; Wilfrid L. Kohl, French Nuclear Diplomacy (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1971), 84; Beatrice Heuser, NATO, Britain, France and the FRG: Nuclear
Strategies and Forces for Europe, 1949–2000 (London: Macmillan, 1997), 93–123.
52 Erin R. Mahan, Kennedy, de Gaulle and Western Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2002), 14.
53 Kaplan, “MLF Debate,” 60–62.
54 JCSM-350-63 to SECDEF, May 2, 1963, “Multilateral Seaborne Ballistic Missile Force,”
JCS 2421/434; Kaplan, “The MLF Debate,” 62–65.
55 Philip Geyelin, Lyndon B. Johnson and the World (New York: Praeger, 1966), 159–180.
56 Kaplan et al., 414.
57 JCSM-1014-64 to SECDEF, December 4, 1964, “French Nuclear Weapons Program,”
JCS 2278/78-4.
58 Walter S. Poole, The Joint Chiefs of Sta and National Policy, 1965–1968 (Washington, DC:
Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, Joint Chiefs of Sta, May 1985), Pt. I, 285–317.
59 Poole, JCS and National,1965–1968, Pt. I, 323–337; Johnson, Vantage Point, 308–309;
Richard L. Kugler, Commitment to Purpose: How Alliance Partnership Won the Cold War
(Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1993), 207, 220.
60 See Stromseth, 71–72.
61 Stockpile gures from McNamara’s unclassied statement accompanying his FY69
budget submission in U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Hearings
on Authorization for Military Procurement, Research and Development, Fiscal Year 1969, and
Reserve Strength, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 1968, 183.
62 Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1965–68, Pt. I, 111–198, 395–396.
273
THE MCnaMara Era
63 Letter, Heinz Trettner (Inspector General of the German Army) to Wheeler, May 13,
1966, JCS 2124/370.
64 See MC 14/3 (Final), January 16, 1968, “Overall Strategic Concept for the Defense of
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Area,” in Gregory W. Pedlow, ed., NATO Strat-
egy Documents, 1949–1969 (Brussels: North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 1999), 345–370.
65 Ivo H. Daalder, The Nature and Practice of Flexible Response: NATO Strategy and Theater
Nuclear Forces since 1967 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 74–76.
66 Quoted in Gordon S. Barrass, The Great Cold War: A Journey Through the Hall of Mirrors
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 194.
67 MC 48/3 (Final), December 8, 1969, “Measures to Implement the Strategic Concept for
the Defence of the NATO Area,” in Pedlow, ed., NATO Strategy Documents, 371–400.
68 “The Future Tasks of the Alliance (The Harmel Report),” December 1967, reprinted in
Stanley R. Sloan, NATO’s Future: Toward a New Transatlantic Bargain (Washington, DC:
National Defense University Press, 1985), 219–222.
69 McNamara quoted in Drea, McNamara, Cliord, and the Burdens of Vietnam, 391; JCS
assessment from SM-863-67, December 12, 1967, enclosing Joint Strategic Capabilities
Plan, July 1, 1968–June 30, 1969 (JSCP–69), JCS 1844/488.
70 Graham Spinardi, From Polaris to Trident: The Development of U.S. Fleet Ballistic Missile
Technology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 66–67.
71 JCSM-131-65 to SECDEF, March 1, 1965, “Joint Strategic Objectives Plan for FY
1970–74 (JSOP–70),” JCS 2143/248.
72 Kaplan et al., 319–320; Drea, McNamara, Cliord, and the Burdens of Vietnam, 346–356;
Jerome H. Kahan, Security in the Nuclear Age: Developing U.S. Strategic Arms Policy (Wash-
ington, DC: Brookings, 1975), 105–106.
73 Spinardi, 89–94; Ted Greenwood, Making the MIRV: A Study of Defense Decision Making
(Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing, 1975), 3–11, 64–65; Bernard C. Nalty, “USAF
Ballistic Missile Programs, 1964–1965” (Study Prepared by the USAF Historical Divi-
sion Liaison Oce, March 1967), 34–37 (declassied).
74 See JCSM-131-65 to SECDEF, March 1, 1965, loc. cit.
75 Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1983), 253.
76 Morton H. Halperin, The Decision to Deploy the ABM: Bureaucratic Politics in the Johnson
Administration (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1973), 67–69, 83–84, 93.
77 Ernest J. Yanarella, The Missile Defense Controversy: Strategy, Technology, and Politics, 1955–
1972 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1977), 92–93.
78 See NIE 11-8-62, [July 6, 1962], “Soviet Capabilities for Long Range Attack,” in Don-
ald P. Steury, ed., Intentions and Capabilities: Estimates on Soviet Strategic Forces, 1950–83
(Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1996), 181–183; and NIE 11-
8-66 [October 20, 1966], amended by M/H NIE 11-8-66, “Soviet Capabilities for
Strategic Attack,” ibid., 209–224.
79 Prados, Soviet Estimate, 155–157; Freedman, U.S. Intelligence and the Soviet Strategic Threat,
86–94; NIE 11-3-65, November 18, 1965, “Soviet Strategic Air and Missile Defense,”
FRUS,1964–68, X, 330–332.
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80 Donald R. Baucom, The Origins of SDI, 1944–1983 (Lawrence: University Press of Kan-
sas, 1992), 27–30; NIE 11-3-66, November 17, 1966, “Soviet Strategic Air and Missile
Defenses,” FRUS,1964–68, X, 446–550.
81 JCSM-742-66 to SECDEF, December 2, 1966, “Production and Deployment of the
NIKE–X,” JCS 2012/283-1 and FRUS,1964–68, X, 458.
82 Baucom, 15–20; Richard J. Barber Associates, “The Advanced Research Projects Agency,
1958–1974” (Unpublished Study Prepared for the Advanced Research Projects Agency,
December 1975), chaps. IV–VI (unclassied).
83 Kaplan et al., 123–125.
84 Harry B. Yoshpe, Our Missing Shield: The U.S. Civil Defense Program in Historical Perspec-
tive (Washington, DC: Federal Emergency Management Agency, 1981), 362–375.
85 McNamara statement to House Armed Services Committee, January 23, 1967, quoted
in David Goldscher, The Best Defense: Policy Alternatives for U.S. Nuclear Security from the
1950s to the 1990s (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 181.
86 John Newhouse, Cold Dawn: The Story of SALT (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Win-
ston, 1973), 85.
87 Yanarella, 104–106; Baucom, 22–23.
88 McNamara, Essence of Security, 64.
89 Morton H. Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings
Institution, 1974), 298.
90 “Notes on Meeting with the President,” December 6, 1966, FRUS,1964–68, X, 459–
464; JCSM-804-66 to SECDEF, December 29, 1966, “Production and Deployment of
Nike–X,” JCS 2012/283/2 and FRUS,1964–68, X, 510–511.
91 James Killian quoted in Memo by Walt Rostow of Meeting with President Johnson,
January 4, 1967, “ABMs,” FRUS,1964–68, X, 526–531.
92 “Annual Budget Message to the Congress, Fiscal Year 1968,” January 24, 1967, Public
Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1967 (Washington, DC:
GPO, 1968), Pt I, 48.
93 JCSM-602-65 to SECDEF, August 5, 1965, “ACDA Memorandum for the Committee
of Principals, Paper on Nonproliferation Agreement, 16 July 65,” JCS 1731/878-2.
94 JCSM-143-67 to SECDEF, March 14, 1967, “Proposal on Strategic Oensive and De-
fensive Missile Systems,” JCS 1731/966-2.
95 Johnson, Vantage Point, 485; Kosygin’s comments paraphrased by McNamara in Mi-
chael Charlton, From Deterrence to Defense: The Inside Story of Strategic Policy (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1987), 27. Memorandum of Conversation, June 23, 1967,
“Luncheon given by President Johnson for Chairman Kosygin,” FRUS,1964–68, XIV,
528–531, gives a less vivid account of the discussion.
96 Baucom, 34.
97 JCSM-425-67 to SECDEF, July 27, 1967, “Initiation of Nike-X Production and De-
ployment,” JCS 2012/308-1; FRUS,1964–68, X, 562–564.
98 Draft Memo, SECDEF to President, August 1, 1967, “Strategic Oensive and Defen-
sive Forces,” enclosure to Memo, SECDEF to CJCS, August 2, 1967, same subject, JCS
2458/272.
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THE MCnaMara Era
99 JCSM-481-67 to SECDEF, August 28, 1967, “DPM on Strategic Oensive and Defen-
sive Forces,” JCS 2458/272–2.
100 Robert S. McNamara, “The Dynamics of Nuclear Strategy,” September 18, 1967, in
Department of State, Bulletin 57, no. 1476 (October 9, 1967), 443–451.
101 See JCSM-481-67 to SECDEF, August 28, 1967, loc. cit.
102 Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1965–68, Pt. I, 104–109; and Drea, McNamara, Cliord, and
the Burdens of Vietnam, 371–373.
103 Baucom, 39–40.
104 “Remarks at Signing of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,” July 1, 1968, Public Papers
of the President: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968-69 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1970), Pt. II, 349.
Chopper Pick Up, by Brian H. Clark (Courtesy of the Center of Military History)
Chapter 9
Vietnam:
GoinG to War
The scene was reminiscent of many amphibious operations of World War II. On
the morning of March 8, 1965, with a light mist reducing visibility, elements of
9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade landed on a sandy beach near Da Nang, South
Vietnam. Wading ashore with their gear, they encountered reporters, photographers,
the mayor of Da Nang, and their commander, Brigadier General Frederick J. Karch,
whom local school girls had laden with garlands in celebration of the occasion. A
cordial welcome, it belied the presence of Viet Cong guerrillas a few miles away.
Climbing into waiting trucks, the Marines were transported to the nearby Ameri-
can air base to take up security duties. The vanguard of a larger U.S. presence yet
to come, these Marines were the rst American combat troops to arrive in Viet-
nam. “Americanization” of the Vietnam War had begun.
1
It was a policy the Joint
Chiefs of Sta had helped to shape, but not one that gave them much satisfaction
or sense of condence. The war in Vietnam was entering a new phase, and with it
came growing uncertainty among the JCS whether they would have the tools and
resources at their disposal to make that policy succeed.
The RooTs of AmeRicAn involvemenT
By the time U.S. combat troops began to deploy to Vietnam in 1965, the United
States had been involved there ghting Communism for more than a decade and a
half. With the escalation of Cold War tensions brought on by the Korean War, the
Truman administration funneled massive support to the French eort in Indochina
(Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) against the Communist Viet Minh. In 1954, after
the Viet Minh victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu, an international confer-
ence in Geneva agreed to a settlement that resulted in the division of Vietnam
between a Communist regime in the North and a non-Communist one in the
South. The Joint Chiefs of Sta viewed the Geneva accords as a major setback for
U.S. interests in Southeast Asia. But given the American public’s war-weariness in
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CounCil of War
the wake of the Korean conict and the Eisenhower administration’s reallocation
of resources limiting the size and capabilities of general purpose forces, they ruled
out recommending direct military involvement to change the outcome. Elections
leading to unication were never held owing to chronic political instability in the
South (much of it instigated by agents from the North) and the intransigence of
South Vietnamese Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem, a stalwart anti-Communist,
whose rejection of the vote the United States fully supported.
After the French withdrawal in 1954–1955, the United States assumed major
responsibility for South Vietnam’s economic welfare, political stability, and military
security. Expecting continuing pressure from the North, the Joint Chiefs saw a
Korean War-style invasion, assisted by the Chinese, as the most serious threat that
South Vietnam might face. Since the Joint Sta lacked the requisite personnel and
resources at the time, the JCS relied on ad hoc fact-nding committees or the
Army General Sta for assessments and recommendations. The results of one such
inquiry in 1955 credited the South Vietnamese with a limited capacity for oering
resistance and estimated that it would take up to eight U.S. divisions, two to three
tactical air wings, a carrier task force, and a Marine landing force to defeat a full-
scale North Vietnamese invasion.
2
The Eisenhower administration had no desire to
become involved in Vietnam on such a scale and turned instead to heavy infusions
of political, economic, and military assistance to buttress South Vietnam’s position.
But by the end of the decade an increase in assassinations, terrorism, and guerrilla
activity by the Viet Cong (successor to the Viet Minh) pointed to the need for
stronger measures to avert a Communist takeover. In April 1960, at JCS instigation,
the Commander in Chief, Pacic (CINCPAC) assembled a group of senior U.S.
ocers on Okinawa to take a fresh look at the problem. Based on supposed lessons
learned in the recent insurgencies in Malaya and the Philippines, the conference
recommended a counterinsurgency plan (CIP) that included increases in military
strength for the South Vietnamese armed forces and paramilitary units, and major
political and administrative reforms in the Diem government.
3
Action on the CIP was still pending when the Kennedy administration took
oce in January 1961. By then, insurgency and terrorism had grown into the most
ubiquitous forms of conict worldwide. In the aftermath of Khrushchev’s speech
of January 6, 1961, welcoming “wars of national liberation,” the new President had
all the more reason to be concerned. The development of countermeasures, how-
ever, was still in its infancy. Among the JCS and elsewhere within the military there
was considerable debate over strategy and doctrine. One of the leading gures in
counterinsurgency warfare was Brigadier General Edward G. Lansdale, USAF, who
had been instrumental in defeating the Communist Hukbalahap in the Philippines
ViETnaM: GoinG To War
279
after World War II. Turning to Lansdale for advice and guidance, President Ken-
nedy decided to expand the use of covert operations and to increase the size of U.S.
Army Special Forces (the “Green Berets”). The JCS alternative for dealing with the
crisis at the time in neighboring Laos seemed to be a costly and politically risky
large-scale military buildup, the prelude to possible intervention. The Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs, General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, USA, lacked the President’s con-
dence in special forces and disputed the notion that current programs in Vietnam
were insucient and ineective against the guerrilla threat. But in the aftermath of
the Bay of Pigs episode, Kennedy paid little attention to JCS advice. In April-May
1961, he approved a series of counterinsurgency measures using the Green Berets
to spearhead the eort.
4
Along with increased military activity, Kennedy sought political and economic
reforms from Diem to bolster his regime’s credibility and popularity. This process
of attempting to develop a “balanced” policy lasted, with mixed success, from Ken-
nedy’s Presidency into Lyndon Johnson’s. But as early as the autumn of 1961 it was
clear that without a major improvement in the security situation, eorts to achieve
political and economic reform would fall short of the goal. Military power by itself
might not determine the outcome of the struggle for Vietnam, but the side without
it in preponderance was unlikely to prevail.
The catalyst for the rapid and sustained expansion of the American military
presence in South Vietnam was the Taylor-Rostow report, the product of a fact-
nding mission jointly headed by the President’s MILREP, General Maxwell D.
Taylor, USA (Ret.), and Walt W. Rostow, an economist on the NSC Sta who
specialized in underdeveloped countries. Delivered to President Kennedy in early
November 1961, the report painted a bleak picture of the situation in South Viet-
nam and recommended an “emergency program” of additional assistance, to include
allowing U.S. trainers and advisors to “participate actively” in planning and execut-
ing operations against the Viet Cong. The most controversial part of the report was
its call for the introduction of an 8,000-man “task force” to boost security while
ostensibly assisting in ood repair and other civic action projects in the Mekong
Delta. Later, as Ambassador to South Vietnam in 1964–1965, Taylor was apprehensive
about the introduction of U.S. combat troops, arguing that it could undermine the
government’s commitment to the war. In 1961, however, he saw things dierently
and insisted that “there was a pressing need to do something to restore Vietnamese
morale and to shore up condence in the United States.”
5
The Joint Chiefs agreed that the situation was critical, but they believed that if
the United States intervened, it should do so wholeheartedly and without illusion.
In General Lemnitzer’s view, the “8000-man force,” once in place, would be too
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CounCil of War
thinned out to make much dierence.
6
Working in collaboration with CINCPAC,
the JCS came up with an alternative contingency “Win Plan” that would involve
the use of up to six divisions and put heavy military pressure directly on North Viet-
nam with air and naval power.
7
Initially, McNamara seemed to prefer the JCS Win
Plan to the limited course outlined in the Taylor-Rostow report. But upon further
reection, he and Secretary of State Dean Rusk concurred that even though the
introduction of U.S. combat troops might someday become unavoidable, there was
no immediate need to go quite so far, a conclusion Kennedy gladly embraced.
8
On
November 15, 1961, leaving the question of combat troops in abeyance, Kennedy
approved a revised Vietnamese assistance policy (characterized as a “rst phase” pro-
gram), which authorized an increase in the number of U.S. advisors and specialized
support units and an expansion of their role.
9
Kennedy’s decision entirely reshaped the U.S. commitment in Vietnam. From
a strength of around 1,000 advisors in 1961, the U.S. military advisory presence
grew to over 5,000 by the end of the following year. To increase the mobility of
government troops, the United States also sent nearly 300 helicopters and trans-
port planes to Vietnam.
10
In February 1962, to oversee the expanded eort, Presi-
dent Kennedy authorized a new command structure—the U.S. Military Assistance
Command, Vietnam (COMUSMACV)—a subordinate unied command which
reported through CINCPAC to the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of Defense, and
the President.
11
Ocially, U.S. policy drew the line at the direct involvement of
American advisory personnel in combat operations. The reality, however, was dif-
ferent. Having previously served in rear echelon training areas and command posts,
U.S. advisors now fanned out into the countryside, operating at the battalion level
or lower. Some advisors actually fought alongside government troops; others ew
combat missions.
12
But with Berlin, Cuba, and other hot spots capturing the head-
lines, Vietnam remained a remote and distant war for policymakers and the Ameri-
can public alike.
By the start of 1963 the surge of American advisors and assistance appeared to
be having the desired eects of reinvigorating the South Vietnamese armed forces
and placing the Viet Cong on the defensive. By now there were over 11,000 U.S.
military personnel in Vietnam. Condent of ultimate success, McNamara told the
JCS to plan on U.S. advisors being out of the country in 3 years.
13
But just as the war
appeared to be looking up, it took a turn for the worse, owing to unexpected set-
backs suered by the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN), increased political protests
against Diem by the Buddhists and other noncommunist groups, and stepped up
inltration of men and supplies from the North. By the summer of 1963, the prog-
ress of the previous year was a fading memory. Knowing the President’s aversion to
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ViETnaM: GoinG To War
the use of combat troops, the Joint Chiefs, CINCPAC, and the CIA came up with
a plan (later designated OPLAN 34A) to bring the war home to North Vietnam
through a campaign of sabotage and covert operations.
14
However, it was too late
for any improvement in the course of the war to save Diem’s crumbling regime,
which fell victim in early November 1963 to a bloody coup d’état fomented, with
American encouragement, by disgruntled South Vietnamese generals. Weapons, tac-
tics, and equipment meant to ght the Viet Cong were used instead to settle old
scores and to prop up the new military junta.
Shortly before his death, President Kennedy said publicly that he was condent
most U.S. advisors could leave Vietnam in the foreseeable future and turn the war
over to the ARVN.
15
But he had no fall-back strategy in case he found withdrawal
ill advised and remained averse to putting pressure on North Vietnam, other than
through limited, indirect means, to cease and desist its support of the Viet Cong.
Though the Joint Chiefs grudgingly accommodated themselves to the President’s
wishes, they had yet to be convinced that a policy of restraint would succeed. What
they saw evolving was an ominous repetition of the stalemate in Korea—a remote
war, oering no sign of early resolution, consuming precious resources, and diverting
attention from larger threats. Hence their support for a more aggressive, immedi-
ate strategy to confront the enemy directly with strong, decisive force. Militarily,
the chiefs’ solution had much to recommend it. The United States still possessed
overwhelming strategic nuclear superiority and could have used that power as an
umbrella for large-scale conventional operations against North Vietnam. But it was a
strategy fraught with enormous political risks that Kennedy was unwilling or unpre-
pared to take. It would be up to his successor to try to nd a more durable solution.
The RoAd To An AmeRicAn WAR
By the time Lyndon Johnson entered the Oval Oce in November 1963, the situa-
tion in South Vietnam had clearly deteriorated to the point that a Communist take-
over seemed more probable than ever. Remembering the backlash against Truman
over the “loss” of China after World War II, Johnson was determined not to become
tagged as the President who “lost” Vietnam. While professing continuity with Ken-
nedy’s policy, he quietly abandoned his predecessor’s timetable for the withdrawal
of U.S. advisors and told General Maxwell Taylor, the new Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs, to treat Vietnam as “our most critical military area right now.” Identifying
the problem as one of insucient will and commitment, he exhorted Taylor and the
JCS to pay close attention to the selection of personnel and to send only “our blue
ribbon men” to Vietnam as advisors.
16
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CounCil of War
By early 1964, it was apparent from the continuing political turmoil in Vietnam
and a surge in Viet Cong activity that reducing the U.S. presence could have adverse
consequences. General Wallace M. Greene, Jr., Commandant of the Marine Corps,
believed the situation had reached the point where the United States needed “a
clear-cut decision either to pull out of South Vietnam or to stay there and win.”
17
Embracing the latter course, the Joint Chiefs oered a ten-point program of “in-
creasingly bolder actions in Southeast Asia” that amounted to a virtual take-over of
the war. Among the recommended measures were overt and covert bombing of the
North, increased reconnaissance, large-scale commando raids, the mining of North
Vietnamese harbors, operations in Laos and Cambodia, and the commitment of
U.S. forces “as necessary” in direct actions against North Vietnam.
18
An expansion of
the war at this time, however, was the last thing President Johnson wanted. Meeting
with the Joint Chiefs on March 4, 1964, he stated that he remained committed to
keeping South Vietnam out of Communist hands, but would do nothing that might
involve the country in a war before the November elections. “We haven’t got any
Congress that will go with us,” he told them, “and we haven’t got any mothers that
will go with us in the war.”
19
Until the election, then, Johnson all but ignored JCS advice on Vietnam, nd-
ing it excessively focused on applying overwhelming military power.
20
Limiting his
contacts with the chiefs, he saw only Taylor on a regular basis and turned to a small
circle of civilian advisors for guidance on the war. Increasingly preeminent within
this group was McNamara, who remained condent that the careful and selective
application of military power (as opposed to the sweeping intervention favored
by the JCS) could produce the desired results. Applying the lessons he had drawn
from the Berlin and Cuban Missile crises, McNamara viewed a successful outcome
in Vietnam in relatively narrow terms that involved applying precisely the right
amount of pressure to achieve the withdrawal of North Vietnamese support for the
Viet Cong without escalating the war into a superpower confrontation. With this
strategy in mind, he returned from a fact-nding trip to Saigon around mid-March
1964, cautioning against large-scale U.S. military action against North Vietnam and
favoring only a limited buildup of American airpower, “tit for tat” reprisal air strikes
by the South Vietnamese, and stepped-up commando raids against the North.
21
A key gure in developing the exible response doctrine, Taylor shared McNa-
mara’s view that the graduated application of nely tuned military pressure would
produce the desired results in Vietnam and avoid the need for large-scale interven-
tion. Urging his JCS colleagues to support the Secretary’s plan, Taylor defended it
as a suitably aggressive, yet measured, response. But to the Service chiefs it smacked
of more of the same and did not go nearly far enough to satisfy them.
22
“We are
283
ViETnaM: GoinG To War
swatting ies,” complained Air Force Chief of Sta General Curtis LeMay, “when
we ought to be going after the manure pile.”
23
Intelligence reports supported the
Service chiefs’ contention that North Vietnam would be largely impervious to the
limited raids and retaliatory attacks McNamara had in mind. Yet despite the draw-
backs, President Johnson preferred McNamara’s plan over a full-blown war, and on
March 17, 1964, he decided to put it into action.
24
Shortly after the President’s decision, in April 1964 the Joint Chiefs conducted
a wargaming exercise (SIGMA I–64) to test McNamara’s hypothesis that a strategy
of graduated pressure against the enemy would turn the war around. Organized un-
der the JCS Joint War Games Agency, SIGMA I involved military ocers from the
lieutenant colonel to the brigadier general level, their civilian equivalents, and rep-
resentatives of the Intelligence Community. Described by historian H.R. McMaster
as “eerily prophetic,” the exercise’s main nding was that steadily escalating military
pressure failed to have any signicant deterrent eect on North Vietnamese behav-
ior.
25
On the contrary, as the game progressed, it led to both a stiening of North
Vietnamese resistance and a worsening of the political-military situation in the
South that narrowed American options to two unappealing alternatives—a greatly
expanded war against the North that risked Chinese intervention, or a humiliat-
ing withdrawal with a marked loss of U.S. credibility and prestige worldwide. As
one participant in the game later observed: “The thesis of escalated punishment of
North Vietnam had again been tested by interagency experts and found wanting.”
26
With their doubts about a strategy of graduated pressure steadily growing, the
Joint Chiefs, less General Taylor, continued to urge the use of large-scale military
force to thwart the North Vietnamese and to curb the insurgency. But without Tay-
lor’s support and endorsement, their ideas and recommendations stood little chance
of having much impact.
27
On July 1, 1964, Taylor stepped down as Chairman to
take up new duties as Ambassador to Saigon. His departure came as a relief to the
Service chiefs who believed, almost without exception, that he could have done a
more eective job representing them and conveying their views to the Secretary of
Defense and the President.
Whether his successor, General Earle G. Wheeler, USA, would be a more
forceful spokesman for JCS views remained to be seen. The third army ocer in a
row to serve as CJCS, Wheeler came to the job largely on Taylor’s recommendation.
Having once been Director of the Joint Sta, he knew the ins and outs of the JCS
system as well as anyone. As Army Chief of Sta immediately prior to becoming
Chairman, Wheeler had been critical of the administration’s emerging strategy of
graduated response in Vietnam, but he had been far less outspoken than the other
chiefs.
28
Throughout his years at the Pentagon prior to becoming CJCS, he had
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CounCil of War
always gotten along well with his superiors. Though he might not always agree, they
could count on him, once a decision was taken, to implement it without complaint.
Perhaps the most obvious shortcoming in his otherwise distinguished résumé was
his limited combat experience (conned to a few months as chief of sta to an
infantry division in Europe in World War II), a drawback in the eyes of some of his
peers, but not a great concern to either McNamara or President Johnson.
29
The Gulf of Tonkin incidenT And iTs AfTeRmATh
Wheeler was still settling into his job as Chairman when in early August 1964 the
fateful Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred. At the time, it seemed that North Viet-
namese torpedo boats had launched two separate attacks 2 days apart against two
U.S. destroyers operating in international waters o North Vietnam. The rst attack,
against USS Maddox, occurred August 2; the second, involving both the Maddox and
USS Turner Joy, appeared to follow 2 days later. Both ships were part of the Desoto
Patrol Program, a JCS-authorized eort conducted by the Seventh Fleet to collect
intelligence on Sino-Soviet bloc electronic and naval activity. Since mid-December
1962, Desoto Patrols had paid regular visits to the Gulf of Tonkin. Despite a loose
system of coordination, Desoto Patrols and the covert missions mounted by Com-
mander, U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (COMUSMACV) against
North Vietnam under OPLAN 34A were separate and independent of one another.
Thus, the possibility of one set of operations overlapping or interfering with the
other was ever-present. Matters came to a head in late July 1964 when South Viet-
namese commandos, part of the 34A program, carried out a pair of raids along the
North Vietnamese coast. Apparently in response to these raids, the North Vietnam-
ese attacked the Maddox, mistaking it for part of the raiding force.
30
The role of the Joint Chiefs in this episode was relatively minor and consisted
mainly of drawing up a list of targets for retaliatory air strikes following reports of
the second attack. As was increasingly the custom, the only member of the Joint
Chiefs to attend face-to-face meetings with the President was the Chairman, Gen-
eral Wheeler. To expedite matters, McNamara at several critical points bypassed the
Joint Chiefs and dealt directly with CINCPAC. On the morning of August 4, while
McNamara was attending an emergency NSC meeting with the President, the JCS
prepared their recommendations and forwarded them to the White House, urg-
ing severe retaliation against North Vietnamese naval bases and petroleum, oil, and
lubricants (POL) storage in the Vinh area. That afternoon, McNamara returned to
the Pentagon and told the JCS that the President had approved their recommenda-
tions, with several notable modications. In a foretaste of the micromanagement of
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the air war yet to come, the President had added two base areas to the target list
but had decided that, except for striking the storage tanks, the U.S. attacks would
be mounted against boats only, not against the bases or port facilities. The next day
carrier-based aircraft executed the mission.
31
Soon after the Tonkin Gulf incident, questions arose over whether the second
attack had actually taken place. The issue was especially relevant since it was on the
basis of the second attack that President Johnson had decided not only to order re-
taliatory air strikes against North Vietnam, but to seek authorization from Congress
for further military action in the event of additional provocations. Had there been
only one attack, the President said, he was prepared to dismiss the incident with
a diplomatic protest.
32
Years later, a reexamination of the evidence conrmed sus-
picions that the North Vietnamese never mounted a second attack, though it may
have appeared so at the time to Sailors aboard the Turner Joy. According to a detailed
study by Robert J. Hanyok, a historian for the National Security Agency, errors in
the translation of North Vietnamese radio trac and the Navy’s mishandling of
SIGINT led to the misidentication of a North Vietnamese salvage operation as a
second attack. Hanyok found nothing to indicate that the Navy, the National Se-
curity Agency, or the White House had manipulated the data or acted improperly.
But under the pressure of events, those monitoring the situation interpreted the
evidence as pointing to two separate incidents.
33
The most important long-term consequence of the Gulf of Tonkin episode was
a joint congressional resolution giving the White House practically carte blanche in
Southeast Asia. The idea of seeking such authority had apparently originated with
Walt W. Rostow, then serving in the State Department, who began discussing the
matter with members of the NSC Sta as early as December 1963. By June 1964,
Rostow’s suggestion had attracted the attention of McGeorge Bundy, the President’s
National Security Advisor, who felt that a congressional resolution would “give ad-
ditional freedom to the Administration in choosing courses of action.” President
Johnson agreed, but with the election looming, he was reluctant to tarnish his image
as the “peace” candidate unless the situation warranted.
34
The Tonkin Gulf episode had a galvanizing eect on administration policy to-
ward Vietnam. With the White House unsure how far it could go in Vietnam, it be-
came the rallying point for testing support of the war and mobilizing congressional
backing. Leading the charge in the Senate was J. William Fulbright, Chairman of the
Foreign Relations Committee. Later, as the war degenerated into a stalemate, Ful-
bright became one of the administration’s harshest critics and a key gure in the an-
tiwar movement on Capitol Hill. But at the time of the Tonkin Gulf incident, he was
still a strong advocate of taking rm action to curb the “aggressive and expansionist
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ambitions” of the North Vietnamese. The upshot was a unanimous vote in the House
and overwhelming support in the Senate to give the White House a free hand to re-
taliate—the closest the United States came to a formal declaration of war.
35
Following the Gulf of Tonkin episode, the Johnson administration launched yet
another review of its Vietnam policy. In light of the recent congressional resolution
and the stepped-up pace of military activity, the Joint Chiefs now viewed direct U.S.
intervention as inevitable, though they were split over the form it should take. Con-
dent that airpower could be decisive, LeMay downplayed the need for large-scale
troop deployments and urged an intensive bombing campaign against 94 high priority
military and industrial targets across North Vietnam. “All of his experience,” one of
LeMay’s colleagues recalled, “taught him that such a campaign would end the war.”
36
The intent, as the Joint Chiefs described it to the Secretary of Defense, would be to
deal the enemy “a sudden sharp blow.” If it failed, the United States could reconsider
whether to commit a large ground force.
37
However, the new Army Chief of Sta,
General Harold K. Johnson, doubted whether the increased use of airpower, without
accompanying increases on the ground, would have the desired impact on the insur-
gency in the South. In Johnson’s view, expanding the war in the air and on the ground
should go hand in hand.
38
Unable to achieve a full reconciliation of their dierences,
the chiefs papered them over and in late August recommended a program of “prompt
and calculated responses” emphasizing “air strikes and other operations” against en-
emy targets in North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
39
The JCS found their advice for expanding the scale and scope of the war no
more welcome now than earlier. Having decided to cast his Republican Presiden-
tial opponent, Senator Barry Goldwater, in the role of warmonger, Johnson often
went out of his way to avoid making it appear that he was under the military’s spell
or inuence. The result, however, was a policy that seemed to straddle two stools.
“I haven’t chosen to enlarge the war,” the President declared publicly. “Nor have
I chosen to retreat and turn [Vietnam] over to the Communists.”
40
Gathering his
key advisors at the White House on September 9, he heard a report by Ambassador
Taylor on the unsettled political situation in Saigon and a reiteration of JCS views
on the air campaign—“this bombing bullshit,” the President called it.
41
The next
day he approved increasing the military pressure against North Vietnam but limited
it to low-prole activities that included the resumption of Desoto naval patrols
in the Gulf of Tonkin and covert operations by the South Vietnamese against the
North. He also approved discussions with the Laotian government to allow South
Vietnamese air and ground operations in the Lao panhandle, and preparations for
an “appropriate” response (i.e., a further build-up of air power in the South and o
the coast) should the North Vietnamese resume attacks on U.S. forces.
42
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ViETnaM: GoinG To War
With “graduated response” becoming the accepted strategy, the Joint Chiefs
decided to take another look at its probable eects. The upshot was a second round
of war games known as SIGMA II–64. Conducted in mid-September 1964, SIGMA
II–64 occurred at the same time the President was reviewing proposals to step up
operations in Vietnam. Organized this time to include senior ocials, SIGMA II
produced about the same results as SIGMA I. Not only was the graduated applica-
tion of military power, including bombing of the North, unlikely to stop the North
Vietnamese; it was also apt to draw the United States more deeply into an incon-
clusive war. But despite the exercise’s disturbing ndings, McNamara paid little at-
tention and later dismissed SIGMA II as further evidence that the JCS were looking
for an excuse to ramp up the war. Interpreting the ndings somewhat dierently, he
chose to see them as conrmation that an expanded and more intensied bombing
eort would be a largely pointless waste of lives and resources.
43
Increasingly frustrated and troubled, the Joint Chiefs made no attempt to con-
ceal their dissatisfaction with the current policy or the limited inuence of their
advice. Soon, reports of “considerable unhappiness” among the JCS over their ex-
clusion reached McGeorge Bundy and were a source of concern to the President’s
sta. In mid-November, with the election now out of the way, Jack J. Valenti, a
White House aide who handled liaison with Congress, urged Johnson to have the
Joint Chiefs “sign on” before taking further actions in Vietnam because their inclu-
sion in presidential decisions would help to shield the administration from pos-
sible congressional recriminations. If the Joint Chiefs participated at pertinent NSC
meetings, Valenti believed, “they could have their views expounded to the Com-
mander-in-Chief face to face.” He added, “That way, they will have been heard, they
will have been part of the consensus, and our ank will have been covered in the
event of some kind of ap or investigation later.” Johnson agreed and at a November
19 White House meeting he informed his top civilian advisors that in the future
no decisions on Vietnam “would be made without participation by the military.”
44
While the President was willing to give the chiefs the opportunity to say their
piece, he was no more inclined than before to accept their advice that the strategy
of graduated response was awed. Johnson had no interest in a full-scale war. But as
the situation in Vietnam deteriorated, with the Viet Cong escalating attacks against
Americans, he knew it was only a matter of time before the United States moved in
with more of its military power. Exactly when the President came to this realization
is unclear, but between the election in November 1964 and the Viet Cong attack on
Pleiku in early February 1965, deliberations with his top advisors were almost nonstop.
What he wanted from them was a consensus recommendation. The options under
consideration fell into three general categories: 1) continuation of the present policy
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of support for counterinsurgency in the South and limited pressure on the North;
2) a graduated increase in military pressure on the North Vietnamese meshing at
some point with negotiations; and 3) an intensive bombing campaign of the North as
recommended earlier by the JCS, known variously as the “hard knock” or “fast, full
squeeze” option, which might or might not include the use of nuclear weapons.
The ensuing debate followed the “Goldilocks principle” that if the rst and third
choices appeared either inadequate or too extreme, the middle course was just right.
45
Assistant Secretary of State William P. Bundy, an ardent advocate of graduated response,
denounced the JCS position as an “almost reckless” invitation to Chinese intervention.
46
Arguing that it would keep the commitment of U.S. prestige and resources from get-
ting out of hand, Bundy and likeminded others, including Walt Rostow, now director
of State’s Policy Planning Council, Assistant Secretary of Defense John T. McNaughton
(McNamara’s most trusted advisor), and White House assistant Michael Forrestal, all in-
sisted that the graduated application of military power would give the United States the
exibility to negotiate or withdraw should things go sour.
47
Anticipating the debate’s
outcome, McNamara ordered Wheeler to have the Joint Sta draw up a military plan to
support a graduated bombing campaign. Wheeler complied, but in submitting the plan,
the JCS expressed little condence in it and urged the Secretary to develop a “clear set of
military objectives before further military involvement in Southeast Asia is undertaken.”
48
McNamara refused the chiefs’ request to pass their views to the President. The
reason he gave at the time was that their recommendations would become known
at the White House in due course as part of an interagency review.
49
Later, however,
he acknowledged that he had lost condence in JCS advice, feeling that it was too
extreme. “The president and I were shocked,” McNamara recalled, “by the almost
cavalier way in which the chiefs . . . referred to, and accepted the risk of, the pos-
sible use of nuclear weapons.”
50
Be that as it may, the inclusion of nuclear weapons
in contingency planning, especially in connection with large-scale operations, was
then still a well-known routine practice, so it seems odd that McNamara and the
President were somehow surprised. The Joint Chiefs, as they saw it, were merely
doing their job and presenting the available options.
Still, the Joint Chiefs must have known that they were engaged in a losing cause.
Arrayed against them were the President’s best and brightest senior advisors, nearly all
of whom—McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, and Maxwell Taylor—favored some form
of the graduated response option. So, too, did the COMUSMACV in Saigon, General
William C. Westmoreland, USA. Unprepared to take on a full-scale war, Westmoreland
hoped that with a modest increase in pressure, he could buy time until the South Viet-
namese were better able to hold their own.
51
Practically the only support for the JCS
position was that of the CINCPAC in Hawaii, Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp, who thought
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ViETnaM: GoinG To War
the time was ripe to “hit hard” and turn the war around. But like the Joint Chiefs, his
views made little dierence.
52
Compelled to retreat, the JCS grudgingly concurred in
what they characterized as a “controlled program” of “intense military pressure” against
North Vietnam, “swiftly yet deliberately applied.” A lukewarm endorsement, it left the
door open to the proposal of stronger measures should the need or opportunity arise.
53
President Johnson had yet to be convinced that bombing, controlled or oth-
erwise, would produce the desired results, and after listening to Secretary of State
Rusk and George W. Ball, the veteran diplomat, he decided in early December 1964
to postpone overt military action against North Vietnam for at least 30 days to give
the State Department time to explore the possibility of negotiations and to round
up contributions of troops and support from other countries. Depending on the
responses, decisions could be taken to conduct U.S. and South Vietnamese air strikes
against North Vietnam during the next 2 to 6 months, starting with targets south of
the 19th parallel and working northward. Mining of North Vietnamese ports and a
naval blockade could follow in due course. The approved policy made no mention
of inserting U.S. combat units, but neither did it rule out such a possibility. A partial
victory for the Joint Chiefs, the President’s decision acknowledged that military
power remained a key component of American policy in Southeast Asia. But it
further postponed the “hard knock” that the JCS believed to be necessary, sooner
or later, to win the war.
54
While the 30-day period specied by the President elapsed in mid-January, new
decisions on military action were held in abeyance owing to political instability in
Saigon. Then, on February 7, 1965, the Viet Cong attacked the U.S. military advisory
compound near Pleiku in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, killing 8 U.S. Ser-
vicemen, wounding more than 100 others, and destroying 20 U.S. aircraft. The next
day President Johnson ordered reprisal raids (code-named FLAMING DART) and
gave the Joint Chiefs the go-ahead to prepare an 8-week bombing campaign of the
North.
55
For reprisal purposes, the Joint Chiefs recommended immediate large-scale
air attacks against seven enemy targets which, after review, the President whittled to
two. Both were army barracks complexes used by the North Vietnamese to resup-
ply the Viet Cong. Initial reports indicated the eects of the bombing as “moderate
to good” in destroying enemy facilities. Upon closer inspection, however, it became
clear that FLAMING DART had fallen short of expectations, and within days, enemy
operations in the targeted areas were back to normal.
56
The modest success of the FLAMING DART raids left the Joint Chiefs more
persuaded than ever that if airpower were to be eective, it needed to be concentrated
in repeated heavy doses. Hoping to move policy in that direction, the JCS secured
the Secretary’s approval to transfer an additional 325 aircraft, including 30 B–52s, to
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the Western Pacic. Sustained bombing of the North (Operation Rolling Thunder),
initially disguised as retaliation, began on March 2, but followed no coherent strategy
or consistent political objectives. Seeing an opportunity to revive the hard-knock
strategy, the new Air Force Chief of Sta, General John P. McConnell, proposed a
28-day campaign to destroy all 94 targets on the Joint Chiefs’ earlier target list. At the
same time, Admiral Sharp recommended an “eight week pressure program” against
the enemy’s logistical lines.
57
Putting these proposals together, the Joint Sta came up
with a revised bombing plan for a four-phase, 12-week air campaign for the system-
atic destruction of North Vietnam’s rail network, ports, and war-production facilities,
culminating in heavy attacks on key military-industrial targets in the vicinity of Hanoi
and Haiphong.
58
Sharp and McConnell were convinced that over time a concerted
bombing campaign would signicantly degrade North Vietnam’s capacity and will-
ingness to support the Viet Cong. However, Wheeler and Johnson (the Army Chief of
Sta) were skeptical and would sanction only the program’s initial phases, which were
underway by early April. Straddling two stools, Wheeler told McNamara that while
the bombing thus far had not reduced North Vietnam’s military capabilities in “any
major way,” he was condent that eventually it would cause a “serious stricture.”
59
An expansion of the U.S. ground role in the South accompanied the enlarged
bombing campaign against the North. The heralded arrival in early March of the
Marines at Da Nang was in response to General Westmoreland’s request the month
before for additional security around U.S. air bases and coincided with Army Chief of
Sta General Harold K. Johnson’s fact-nding visit to Saigon, instigated at the request
of the White House to “get things bubbling.” Clearly, the momentum was building
for a larger commitment of U.S. forces. By far the most cautious member of the JCS
at the time, Johnson was also the least enthusiastic about the air war and further U.S.
involvement in general. A survivor of the Bataan death march in World War II and
a veteran of Korea, he knew the rigors and pitfalls of waging war in the Far East as
well as anyone. Johnson had been in Vietnam 3 months earlier and was astonished by
the rapid deterioration of security at the local level. Persuaded that the situation was
critical, he dismissed as “ctional” General Omar Bradley’s admonition against U.S.
involvement in wars on the Asian mainland. Upon returning to Washington, he se-
cured prompt endorsement from the President for 21 stop-gap measures (“band aids
of a sort,” the general called them) aimed at strengthening the existing advisory and
support eort.
60
For the longer term, he believed it imperative that U.S. combat forces
assume major responsibility for defending towns and installations and for operating
oensively against the Viet Cong. Ultimately, he speculated, it might take as many as
500,000 troops and 5 years to complete the mission. “None of us,” McNamara re-
called, “had been thinking in anything approaching such terms.”
61
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ViETnaM: GoinG To War
General Johnson’s unsettling assessment seemed to conrm what the Joint
Chiefs had been saying all along—that without a wholehearted U.S. commitment,
Vietnam was lost. Even so, his predictions of what would be required and the length
of time it would take to turn the situation around exceeded anything the Joint
Chiefs had thus far envisioned. Despite their tough talk about a buildup of forces
and delivering “hard knocks” to the enemy, the JCS had not looked much beyond
a 3- or 4-month campaign. If the Chief of Sta was right, the United States faced
a long, expensive, and arduous war. With that possibility in mind, General Wheeler
began laying the groundwork the day after Johnson’s return for an expanded con-
ict by having the Joint Sta initiate studies of the various administrative, funding,
and logistical adjustments that would have to be made.
62
Among the Chairman’s JCS colleagues, however, there was not much inclination
to look beyond the immediate crisis. As sobering as Harold Johnson’s warnings of an
open-ended conict may have been, they were slow to sink in. Indeed, not even John-
son himself had thought far beyond the current situation, except in highly generalized
terms. As a result, instead of trying to devise a long-range strategy, the JCS turned
to hashing out dierences among themselves over near-term solutions—the size and
composition of the ground force, where to insert it, and whether it or the air war
should have priority. Resorting eventually to compromise, they agreed that stepping up
the air war and deploying forces on the ground (one full Marine division, one Army
division, and one division from the Republic of Korea, if it could be arranged) should
proceed in tandem and be aimed at achieving “an eective margin of combat power.”
63
Earlier studies done by the Joint Sta estimated a minimum requirement of
six divisions to defend Southeast Asia, so the deployment of two to three divisions
would not be much more than a foot in the door.
64
Nonetheless, the decision to
intervene in force, even at this critical stage of the conict, was far from automatic.
While he supported graduated bombing of the North, Ambassador Taylor resisted
the introduction of U.S. combat troops, arguing that it would shift the burden on to
the United States and weaken South Vietnamese resolve. Others, including McNa-
mara, Secretary of State Rusk, and the NSC’s McGeorge Bundy, increasingly be-
lieved that the United States had no choice, though in making their case they urged
the President to show restraint and hold down the number of committed troops.
Knowing that he would be hard pressed to mobilize public and congressional back-
ing for an immediate deployment of the size the Joint Chiefs of Sta proposed,
President Johnson opted in early April for a lesser gure of 20,000 logistical troops
and two Marine battalions with tactical air support—a token commitment that
barely disguised the fundamental shift in administration policy. Even more signi-
cant, he broadened the Marines’ mission “to permit their more active use” against
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CounCil of War
the enemy.
65
General Wheeler promptly advised Admiral Sharp and General West-
moreland that this decision meant a change in employment from “static defense”
to “counterinsurgency combat operations.”
66
By the end of April 1965, U.S. forces
were engaging the Viet Cong in reghts; by June they were regularly conducting
oensive operations around their bases. For the United States, the advisory phase of
the war was essentially over and a new, more deadly combat phase was beginning.
inTo The QuAGmiRe
The President’s decision of April 1965 committing organized units of U.S. ground
troops to combat ushered in a rapid expansion of the American role in the war.
Shortly after the President’s action, General Wheeler accompanied Secretary Mc-
Namara to Honolulu for a 1-day conference on April 20 to take stock of the situ-
ation and to discuss future deployments. The other key participants were Admiral
Sharp, Ambassador Taylor, and General Westmoreland. It was at this meeting that the
broad outlines of basic strategy for the next 3 years emerged. If the meeting accom-
plished nothing else, McNamara wanted to win over Taylor’s support for a stepped-
up air and ground war in the South, on the assumption that this was where the war
would be decided. Dominating the discussion, McNamara sought to impress upon
the others his view that destruction of the Viet Cong, rather than pressure on the
North, was crucial to a successful outcome and that land-based tactical air should be
completely at Westmoreland’s disposal for this purpose. Rolling Thunder, the coercive
air campaign against the North, assumed a secondary role.
67
Afterwards, without
much discussion, the JCS recommended eight U.S. battalion equivalents, with ap-
propriate air and logistical support, for immediate reinforcement of the ground ef-
fort, with an additional twelve battalions earmarked for deployment at a later date.
68
As it happened, these decisions coincided with the onset of a smaller but still
alarming crisis in the Dominican Republic, brought on by a long-simmering power
struggle between rival political factions. Convinced that the threat of a Communist
coup loomed large, President Johnson in late April directed U.S. military interven-
tion to restore order.
69
As General Wheeler explained to his immediate sta, the
President had made up his mind to use “the force necessary” to prevent another
Cuba in the Caribbean.
70
Moving quickly, the Joint Chiefs deployed nearly 24,000
troops (Marines and Army airborne) in a matter of days and by late May the situa-
tion was under control. A quick, hard-hitting operation, mounted as a joint eort,
the American show of force in the Dominican Republic seemed to do its job with
relative ease and barely a whi of inter-Service friction.
71
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ViETnaM: GoinG To War
Whether the U.S. venture in Vietnam would enjoy the same success as the opera-
tion in the Dominican Republic remained to be seen. One skeptic, Army Lieutenant
General Bruce Palmer, Jr., commander of U.S. forces in the Dominican Republic,
hinted darkly that American intervention in Vietnam, undeniably a far bigger aair,
might be too little too late.
72
However, very few, if any, of his colleagues agreed. In-
deed, by now, a race was on between the United States and North Vietnam to see who
could put the most troops into Vietnam in the shortest possible time to gain the ad-
vantage. Gathering momentum over the summer of 1965, the U.S. buildup accelerated
rapidly as logistical capabilities improved. From around 60,000 troops in mid-1965,
American military strength in Vietnam increased to 185,000 by the end of the year. A
year later, it had grown to 385,000, and by the end of 1967, it reached 490,000. Ameri-
can combat casualties also mounted—28,000 killed in action by the time the Johnson
administration left oce and 18,000 more before the ceasere took eect in 1973.
73
Contrary to what the JCS expected or hoped to see, the American buildup came
with vague war aims and constrained methods of achieving them. Since the 1950s,
the stated goal of American involvement in South Vietnam had been to preserve the
country’s independence and prevent it from falling into Communist hands. A widely
accepted hypothesis held that an enemy victory would set o a chain reaction of
Communist takeovers across Asia (the “domino theory”). The Joint Chiefs fully sub-
scribed to the domino theory and under the Johnson administration it became the
most often cited rationale for U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
74
Given the high stakes
involved, however, the White House remained uncommonly restrained in authoriz-
ing the application of military power, in contrast to the JCS position that the United
States should hit hard and fast. In the summer of 1965, as the administration was
contemplating how to manage the buildup, the Joint Chiefs assumed that the Presi-
dent would order a national emergency, mobilize the Reserves and National Guard,
and seek supplemental appropriations. Nothing less, General Wheeler argued, would
convince the American people “that we were in a war and not engaged in some
two-penny military adventure.”
75
For political reasons, however, the President decided
otherwise. Treating social reforms at home (the “Great Society”) as his rst priority,
he believed that a declared emergency and a call-up of the Reserves would divert at-
tention and resources from his domestic agenda.
76
He thought he could downplay the
war, juggle funds from current appropriations, and rely on volunteer enlistments and
the draft to supply the necessary manpower. A “guns and butter” approach, the Presi-
dent’s decision eectively stripped the war eort of experienced noncommissioned
ocers (NCOs) and over the long run played a large part in turning public opinion
against the conict by focusing anti-war sentiment on the draft.
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CounCil of War
The strategic concept governing the deployment of U.S. forces further under-
scored the restrained nature and limited aims of the American commitment. As de-
scribed by Secretary McNamara at a Cabinet meeting in June 1965, a military victory
in the traditional sense was not the U.S. objective. Rather, the function of American
forces was to produce a “stalemate” that would convince the Viet Cong and the North
Vietnamese that even if they continued ghting, they could never win. “We think that
if we can accomplish that stalemate,” McNamara contended, “accompanied by the
limited bombing program in the North, we can force them to negotiations, and ne-
gotiations that will lead to a settlement that will preserve the independence of South
Vietnam.”
77
Translating these broad objectives into a military strategy, Westmoreland
came up with what amounted to a war of attrition which he formally presented to the
Secretary of Defense and the Chairman in July 1965. While the ARVN protected the
population centers, U.S. forces would conduct “search and destroy” missions to take
back captured territory, restore government authority, and wear down the enemy.
78
The Joint Chiefs endorsed this strategy, but pointed out (largely at the insis-
tence of the Air Force and the Navy) that the only way it could achieve signicant
results was in conjunction with heavy pressure from air and naval power on North
Vietnam to cease directing and supporting the Viet Cong.
79
From the start, however,
the White House insisted that operations on the ground be conned as much as
possible to the South. The only exceptions were occasional commando raids against
the North and into neighboring Cambodia and Laos where the Viet Cong and
North Vietnamese Army (NVA) had their supply lines and base camps. Although
CINCPAC had contingency plans for invading North Vietnam, they were rarely men-
tioned in high-level discussions and never used. On the contrary, as Undersecretary
of State George W. Ball, the President’s friend and condent, acknowledged, the ad-
ministration went out of its way to send signals “that we do not seek to bring down
the Hanoi regime or to interfere with the independence of Hanoi.”
80
The air campaign was the most guarded of all. Part of the reason was the per-
sistent lack of a consensus among the Joint Chiefs over whether the air war or the
ground war should have priority. These dierences had hobbled the Joint Chiefs in
developing clear-cut positions during the advisory phase and continued into the
combat phase, with the Army favoring emphasis on land operations, the Air Force
arguing for an intensive air campaign, and the Navy and Marine Corps somewhere
in between.
81
Yet even if the JCS had been united, it probably would have made
little dierence. While CINCPAC coordinated Navy and Air Force attacks against
the North under the Rolling Thunder campaign, COMUSMACV controlled tactical
air operations over South Vietnam and had rst call on air assets under the allocation
of resources decided at the April 1965 Honolulu conference. Dominated by Army
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ViETnaM: GoinG To War
ocers, even with the presence of an Air Force deputy, Westmoreland’s command
in Saigon regarded airpower as the handmaiden of the ground forces and used it for
close air support, escort operations, and interdiction of inltration routes.
82
The principal impediment to a more eective air war remained the President
himself. Near the outset of the buildup, President Johnson made a conscious decision
not to exploit the full potential of the air campaign against the North lest it invite
Soviet or Chinese intervention, alienate opinion abroad, or encourage further dissent
at home. “In Rolling Thunder,” observes Air Force historian Wayne Thompson, “the
Johnson administration devised an air campaign that did a lot of bombing in a way
calculated not to threaten the enemy regime’s survival.”
83
By avoiding certain targets
while delaying or moderating attacks on others, the administration allowed the ini-
tiative to pass to the enemy. NVA air defenses quickly became a formidable obstacle,
costing the United States dearly in pilots and planes. A few years earlier, when the
Joint Chiefs had begun urging stronger measures, the United States had had undis-
puted superiority in strategic nuclear power over the Soviet Union and might have
carried out operations against North Vietnam with minimal worry for the wider
consequences. But by 1965-1966, U.S. nuclear superiority was on the wane, leaving
both McNamara and the President convinced that if they pushed too hard against
North Vietnam, they would invite serious trouble with China or the Soviet Union.
84
The most controversial aspect of the air war was the choice of targets for U.S.
planes to bomb. A professional function customarily the domain of the Joint Chiefs,
target selection came to be closely controlled and managed by the President in col-
laboration with McNamara, Rusk, and his other top civilian advisors at his “Tues-
day lunch.” As the Joint Chiefs became accustomed to the process, their targeting
recommendations came to hinge as much on arbitrary assessments of what the Pres-
ident might accept as on what was needed to achieve military results.
85
For reasons
never fully explained, the CJCS did not become a member of the Tuesday lunch
group until late 1967. Until then, Secretary of Defense McNamara was the military’s
sole voice at these sessions, at which the President would go over JCS-proposed
target sets in minute detail, approve, disapprove, or amend the selections, schedule
attacks, and review the results of previous raids. Until the summer of 1966, Hanoi
and Haiphong were o limits to bombing and U.S. planes were prohibited from
approaching any closer than 30 miles to the Chinese border. Believing that attacks
on the North by B-52s would appear provocative, President Johnson limited their
use to bombing in the South and along the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating
North from South Vietnam.
86
“This piecemeal application of airpower,” one senior
Air Force commander recalled, “was relatively ineective because it still avoided
many of the targets that were of most value to the North Vietnamese.”
87
296
CounCil of War
The restraint shown by Washington in prosecuting the war contrasted sharply
with the all-out commitment and well-honed objectives of the Viet Cong and the
North Vietnamese and the support they received from Communist Bloc countries.
As revealed in documents captured by U.S. forces in Cambodia in 1970, the North
Vietnamese Communist Party made a binding decision in December 1963 to do
whatever it took to “liberate” the South and to reunify it with the North under
a Communist regime. Militarily, this meant increasing assistance to the Viet Cong,
transitioning from guerrilla warfare to “big unit” tactics involving regimental-sized
operations, and sending regular NVA units into the South along the Ho Chi Minh
Trail. Thus, while Washington thought it was still dealing with a guerrilla war, North
Vietnam was gearing up for a full-scale conict which it intended to win at any cost.
Implementation of this strategy started slowly owing to disagreements within the
party over tactics and the reluctance of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to sanc-
tion and assist the intensication of the conict. But after Khrushchev’s ouster from
power in October 1964, Moscow became more amenable to providing stepped-up
assistance to the Communist insurgency in the South and weapons, including so-
phisticated air defense systems, to protect North Vietnam against U.S. retaliation.
88
While U.S. intelligence detected NVA formations in South Vietnam as early as
April 1965, the battle of the Ia Drang Valley that November was the rst solid conr-
mation of large-unit North Vietnamese involvement. Like the Chinese intervention
in Korea in late 1950, the bloody combat in the Ia Drang Valley that left nearly 300
Americans dead was a shocking experience. Gilding over the losses, Westmoreland
treated the battle as a major victory. Yet it should have been a wake-up call for the Joint
Chiefs to push for a reexamination of U.S. tactics and strategy, to assess whether a war
of attrition was realistic and feasible against a well-armed enemy increasingly com-
posed of highly trained and disciplined North Vietnamese regulars. But by then, with
Westmoreland and McNamara fully in control of military strategy, the Joint Chiefs
were in no position to raise such questions or make many demands. Projecting a self-
assured air, Westmoreland insisted he would prevail and took the President at his word
that he could have all the resources he needed. A strategic review of sorts did take
place, in mid-January 1966 in Hawaii, with President Johnson himself chairing some
of the sessions. But it treated an inordinately broad range of topics, from combat op-
erations to agricultural reform under the pacication program, and was so large (over
450 U.S. and South Vietnamese military and civilian participants) that it more properly
resembled a pep rally. The outcome was a resounding rearmation of the current
course and a full endorsement of Westmoreland’s plan to add 102 maneuver battalions
(79 of them American) to his force structure over the coming year.
89
297
ViETnaM: GoinG To War
Immediately following the Hawaii Conference, the Joint Chiefs resumed their
eorts to convince the President and the Secretary of Defense to mobilize the Re-
serves, all to no avail. By now, there was serious concern among the JCS that they
were losing control over the strategic direction of U.S. military forces, not only in
Southeast Asia but worldwide, as the burgeoning demands of Vietnam were begin-
ning to erode force levels everywhere. Should a crisis erupt in Europe or Korea, the
JCS warned, the United States would be hard put to mount an eective response.
90
Though fully aware of the situation, McNamara and the President regarded it as
an acceptable risk. The mobilization of the Reserves would have required approval
by Congress, where anti-war sentiment was on the rise. Even though the measure
doubtless would have passed, it probably would have fallen well short of the re-
sounding support shown for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution a year and a half earlier.
While deteriorating support for the war at home was rarely an explicit factor in
JCS decisions and recommendations, it was ever-present in the background of their
deliberations and impossible to ignore. Indeed, antiwar demonstrations soon became
an almost daily occurrence on the steps of the Pentagon. Meanwhile, as the war
dragged on, it seemed to acquire a life of its own, an open-ended conict with no
clear resolution in sight. Westmoreland’s strategy of attrition may have looked sound
on paper, but it was costly, time-consuming, and hard to assess in terms of its success.
One method of evaluation was a controversial practice known as the “body count”
of enemy dead, which the command in Saigon published weekly, claiming it to be
evidence of progress in destroying the enemy. The numbers ran into the thousands,
though whether they were accurate became a matter of some dispute. The theory was
that eventually the VC and NVA would tire of taking heavy losses and cease their ag-
gression. But with U.S. losses averaging around 1,300 per week killed and wounded,
the evidence was mixed as to whether the American eort was making much head-
way toward its goal. The war of attrition, in other words, could cut both ways.
91
A further complication was the continuing indierence of both Secretary Mc-
Namara and President Johnson toward JCS advice and their preference for deal-
ing directly with Westmoreland in managing the conict. A subunied command
to CINCPAC, the COMUSMACV was several steps down the chain of command.
Yet almost from the start, McNamara and the White House treated Westmoreland as
being on a par with his superiors and normally put greater credence in COMUS-
MACV’s assessments than those of the theater commander, Admiral Sharp, or the JCS.
In fact, Westmoreland’s views and those of the JCS were often practically identical,
with the JCS sometimes even coaching Westmoreland on what to say or how to pres-
ent it. Yet in the day-to-day handling of the war, Johnson and McNamara seemed to
298
CounCil of War
believe that because Westmoreland was closer to the situation, he was more familiar
with the nuances and tempo of the conict, making his advice more authoritative.
Whether Westmoreland’s reportage and evaluations were in fact accurate and reliable
became one of the most hotly debated issues of the conict. Looking back, McNa-
mara acknowledged that some of their discussions and the information he received
were “supercial.” But he never suggested that he considered Westmoreland’s advice
unsound or that he made a mistake by not paying more attention to the JCS.
92
In these circumstances, it was almost inevitable that the Joint Chiefs of Sta
would exercise limited inuence on high-level decisions and the strategy and tactics
used in the war. That they stuck it out, refusing to resign in protest as some have
argued they should have, underscores their willingness to persevere (their “can do”
spirit, as General Bruce Palmer, Jr., called it), and their sense of duty in the face
of mounting adversity.
93
A shrewd politician, Lyndon Johnson thought he could
handle the JCS like he had handled his political competitors over the years, by of-
fering them compromises and meeting their proposals halfway. But in facing up
to a confrontation with the North Vietnamese and, by extension, their Soviet and
Chinese allies, the Joint Chiefs realized something the President did not: that half-
way measures would never suce and that waging a war against such an enemy
meant accepting great risks or getting out. From the outset, the JCS had wanted
a more vigorous response than President Johnson was willing to contemplate; for
that reason, he and McNamara elected to ignore the Joint Chiefs and to follow a
dierent path. Though it led ultimately to the same destination—a massive military
commitment in Southeast Asia—it had more twists and turns and brought power to
bear in increments that the enemy had less trouble absorbing.
Notes
1 Jack Shulimson and Charles M. Johnson, U.S. Marines in Vietnam: The Landing and the
Buildup, 1965 (Washington, DC: History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S.
Marine Corps, 1978), 9–15.
2 Ronald H. Spector, Advice and Support: The Early Years, 1941–1960 (Washington, DC:
Center of Military History, 1983), 270.
3 Jack Shulimson, The Joint Chiefs of Sta and The War in Vietnam, 1960–1968 (Washington,
DC: Oce of Joint History, 2011), Pt. 1, 25; Lawrence S. Kaplan, Ronald D. Landa, and
Edward J. Drea, History of the Oce of the Secretary of Defense: The McNamara Ascen-
dancy, 1961–1965 (Washington, DC: Historical Oce, Oce of the Secretary of Defense,
2006), 262; Spector, 357–368.
4 Kaplan et al., 266–269; Shulimson, Pt. 1, 33–38.
5 Maxwell D. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972), 238–242. The
full Taylor–Rostow Report is in FRUS, 1961–63, I, 477–532.
299
ViETnaM: GoinG To War
6 MFR February 6, 1961, “Meeting to discuss the recommendations of the Taylor Mis-
sion to South Viet–Nam,” ibid., 534.
7 CINCPAC Command History, 1961, 20–22, 170–171; Memo, McNamara to Kennedy,
November 8, 1961, “South Vietnam,” FRUS, 1961–63, I, 559–561.
8 Memo, Rusk and McNamara to Kennedy, November 11, 1961, Pentagon Papers, Book
11, 359–366; Robert S. McNamara with Brian VanDeMark, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and
Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Times Books, 1995), 38–39.
9 NSAM 111, “First Phase of Viet–Nam Program,” February 22, 1961, John F. Kennedy
Papers, National Security Files, JFK Library.
10 Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 288; Shulimson, 193–196.
11 Graham A. Cosmas, MACV: The Joint Command in the Years of Escalation, 1962–1967
(Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2006), 21–29.
12 Robert F. Futrell, with Martin Blumenson, The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia:
The Advisory Years to 1965 (Washington, DC: Oce of Air Force History, 1981), 135–149.
13 Cosmas, MACV, 1962-67, 79–80.
14 Richard H. Shultz, Jr., The Secret War Against Hanoi (New York: Perennial, 1999), 35. For
CIA cooperation, see Memo, Krulak to Taylor, June 6, 1963, “Conversation with Mr.
John A. McCone,” Taylor Papers, box 7, NDU.
15 “The President’s News Conference,” November 14, 1963, Public Papers of the Presidents
of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1964), 846.
16 Memo, Johnson to Taylor, December 2, 1963, no subject, Johnson Papers, LBJ Library;
Futrell and Blumenson, 195.
17 CMCM 12-64 to JCS, February 24, 1974, “Situation in Vietnam,” JCS 2343/326-2.
18 JCSM 46-64 to SECDEF, January 22, 1964, “Vietnam and Southeast Asia,” JCS
2339/117-2; Futrell and Blumenson, 198.
19 Johnson quoted in H.R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty (New York: Harper Perennial,
1997), 70. See also Memo by Taylor of Conversation Between JCS and the President,
March 4, 1964, FRUS, 1964–68, I, 129–130.
20 See Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Harper & Row,
1976), 242.
21 Memo, McNamara to Johnson, March 16, 1964, “South Vietnam,” FRUS, 1964–68, I,
153–167; Johnson, Vantage Point, 66–67.
22 McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 76–77. See also CSAFM 164-64, February 21, 1974, “Re-
vitalized South Vietnam Campaign,” JCS 2343/326/1; CMCM 12-64, February 24,
1974, “Situation in Vietnam,” JCS 2343/326-2; and CNOM 59-64, February 24, 1974,
“U.S. Policy Toward Southeast Asia,” JCS 2443/326/3.
23 LeMay quoted in Futrell and Blumenson, 201.
24 Memo on Vietnam by DCI, March 3, 1964, FRUS, 1964–68, I, 120–127; NSAM 288,
March 17, 1964, “Implementation of South Vietnam Programs,” ibid., 172–173.
25 H.R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 90. See also H.R. McMaster, “The Human Ele-
ment: When Gadgetry Becomes Strategy,” World Aairs (Winter 2009).
26 Harold P. Ford, CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers: Three Episodes, 1962–1968 (Washington,
DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1998), 57.
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27 CM-1450-64 to SECDEF, June 2, 1964, “Transmittal of JCSM-471-64,”; and JCSM-
471-64 to SECDEF, June 2, 1964, “Objectives and Course of Action—Southeast Asia,”
both derived from JCS 2343/394-1.
28 See statement of Army views in Enclosure B to Report by the SACSA to JCS, Febru-
ary 11, 1974, “Revitalized South Vietnam Campaign,” JCS 2343/317-1.
29 See, for example, the observations on Wheeler in Lewis Sorley, Honorable Warrior: Gen-
eral Harold K. Johnson and the Ethics of Command (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,
1998), 182–183; and McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 108–111.
30 Edward J. Marolda and Oscar P. Fitzgerald, The United States Navy and the Vietnam
Conict, vol. II, From Military Assistance to Combat, 1959–1965 (Washington, DC: Naval
Historical Center, 1986), 393–436.
31 Joint Chiefs of Sta, The Joint Chiefs of Sta and the War in Vietnam, 1960–1968 (Wash-
ington, DC: Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, Joint Chiefs of Sta, July 1970), Pt. I,
chap. 11, 22–23.
32 Johnson, Vantage Point, 113. See also Edward J. Drea, “‘Received Information Indicating
Attack’”: The Gulf of Tonkin Incident 40 Years Later,” Military History Quarterly (Sum-
mer 2004).
33 Robert J. Hanyok, “Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of
Tonkin Mystery, 2–4 August 1964,” Cryptologic Quarterly 19–20 (Winter 2000/Spring
2001), 1–55.
34 Quotation from Draft Memo by McGeorge Bundy, June 10, 1964, “Alternative Pub-
lic Positions for U.S. on Southeast Asia,” FRUS, 1964–68, I, 493–496. On the internal
debate over seeking a congressional resolution, see Andrew Preston, The War Council:
McGeorge Bundy, the NSC, and Vietnam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006),
149–150.
35 Joint Chiefs, JCS and the War in Vietnam, 24–27.
36 William W. Momyer, Air Power in Three Wars (Washington, DC: Oce of Air Force His-
tory, 1978), 13.
37 JCSM-460-64 to SECDEF, May 30, 1964, “Air Campaign Against North Vietnam,”
JCS 2343/383; and JCSM-729-64 to SECDEF, August 24, 1964, “Target Study—North
Vietnam,” JCS 2343/383-2. For the origins and development of LeMay’s proposal, see
CSAFM 459-64 to JCS, May 28, 1964, “Objectives and Course of Action—Southeast
Asia,” JCS 2343/394; CSAFM 665-64, August 10, 1964, “Recommended Course of Ac-
tion—Southeast Asia,” JCS 2343/438; and CSAFM 667-64 to JCS, August 10, 1964, “Air
Strikes Against NVN,” JCS 2343/442.
38 CSAM 417-64 to JCS, August 6, 1964, “Planning Guidance for Outline Plan,” JCS
2343/439.
39 JCSM-746-64 to SECDEF, August 26, 1964, “Recommended Courses of Action—
Southeast Asia,” JCS 2343/444-1. See also McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 142–150, 225–
226; and Bruce Palmer, Jr., The 25-Year War: America’s Military Role in Vietnam (Lexing-
ton: University Press of Kentucky, 1984), 34–35.
40 “Remarks at a Barbecue in Stonewall, Texas,” August 29, 1964, Johnson Public Papers,
1963–1964, 1022.
41 See David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1969),
488, 500.
301
ViETnaM: GoinG To War
42 NSAM 314, September 10, 1964, “U.S. Actions in South Vietnam,” FRUS, 1964–68, I,
758–760.
43 SIGMA II–64 Collection (declassied) in War Games, vol. 2 folder, box 30, National
Security File, Agency File, JCS, LBJ Library; McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 156–158;
McNamara, In Retrospect, 153.
44 Memo, Valenti to LJB, February 14, 1964, Folder F6 115-4 JCS, box 21, Condential File
FC 115 (1966), LBJ Library.
45 See Preston, 161.
46 Futrell and Blumenson, 255.
47 McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 184–187.
48 JCSM-967-64 to SECDEF, February 18, 1964, “Courses of Action in Southeast Asia,”
JCS 2339/157-1; also in The Pentagon Papers (Gravel Edition), The Defense Department His-
tory of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam, 4 vols. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971–1972),
III, 639–640.
49 Memo, McNamara to CJCS, February 21, 1964, “Courses of Action in Southeast Asia,”
1st N/H to JCS 2339/157-1.
50 McNamara, In Retrospect, 160.
51 Message, COMU.S.MACV to JCS, February 27, 1964, cited in JCS and War in Vietnam,
1960–1968, Pt I, chap. 14, 13–14.
52 U.S. Grant Sharp, Strategy for Defeat: Vietnam in Retrospect (Novato, CA: Presidio Press,
1978), 52. See also JCS and War in Vietnam, 1960–68, Part I, chap. 14, 14.
53 JCSM-982-64 to SECDEF, February 23, 1964, “Courses of Action in Southeast Asia,”
JCS 2339/161-2; also in FRUS, 1964–68, I, 932–935.
54 “Position Paper on Southeast Asia,” December 2, 1964, FRUS, 1964–68, I, 969–974; JCS
and War in Vietnam, 1960–68, Part I, chap. 14, 33–35.
55 JCS and War in Vietnam, 1960–68, Part II, chap. 18, 5.
56 Summary Notes of 547th Meeting of the NSC, February 8, 1975, FRUS, 1964–68, II,
188; JCS and War in Vietnam, 1960–68, Part II, chap. 17, 17–25.
57 Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam (New
York: Free Press, 1989), 79–81.
58 JCS and War in Vietnam, Pt. II, chap. 18, 21–22; JCSM-221-65 to SECDEF, March 27,
1965, “Air Strike Program Against North Vietnam,” with Annex containing synopsis of
Joint Sta bombing program, JCS 2343/551.
59 JCS and the War in Vietnam, 18, 22–26.
60 Cosmas, 202–205; Sorley, 197.
61 McNamara, In Retrospect, 177. General Wallace Greene, Commandant of Marines, gave
a similar estimate during congressional testimony in the summer of 1965. General
Johnson’s prediction is in the recollections of General Andrew Goodpaster, Wheeler’s
assistant, following Johnson’s return from Vietnam and his meeting with the President
on March 15, 1965. See Senate Report No. 100-163, Pt. 3, 165–166; and John P. Burke
and Fred I. Greenstein, How Presidents Test Reality: Decisions on Vietnam, 1954 and 1965
(New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1989), 160–161.
62 JCS and War in Vietnam, 1960–68, Pt. II, chap. 20, 14–15.
302
CounCil of War
63 Jacob Van Staaveren, “U.S.AF Plans and Operations in Southeast Asia, 1965” (U.S.AF
Historical Liaison Oce, October 1966), chap. III, 21–22; JCSM-204-65 to SECDEF,
March 20, 1965, “Deployment of U.S./Allied Combat Forces to Vietnam,” FRUS, 1964–
68, II, 465–467.
64 Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1965–68, Pt. I, 114–115.
65 NSAM 328, April 6, 1965, “Decisions with Respect to Vietnam,” FRUS, 1964–68, II,
537–539.
66 JCS and War in Vietnam, 1960–68, Pt. II, chap. 21, 2–3.
67 Sharp, 77–90; McNamara, In Retrospect, 182–183; Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 342–343;
John Schlight, The War in South Vietnam: The Years of the Oensive, 1965–1968, in The
United States Air Force in Southeast Asia series (Washington, DC: Oce of Air Force
History, 1988), 31.
68 Commander in Chief Pacic: Command History, 1965, vol. II, 288; JCSM-321-65 to
SECDEF, April 30, 1965, “Program for the Deployment of Additional Forces into South
Vietnam,” JCS 2343/564-7.
69 Johnson, Vantage Point, 201.
70 Bruce Palmer, Jr., Intervention in the Caribbean: The Dominican Crisis of 1965 (Lexington:
University Press of Kentucky, 1989), 4.
71 Drea, McNamara, Cliord, and the Burdens of Vietnam, 289–315.
72 Walter S. Poole, The Joint Chiefs of Sta and National Policy, 1965–1968 (Washington, DC:
Oce of Joint History, Joint Chiefs of Sta, publication forthcoming), chap. 9.
73 Military strength gures from Richard W. Stewart, ed., American Military History, Vol. II,
The United States Army in a Global Era, 1917–2003 (Washington, DC: Center of Military
History, 2005), 306. Combat deaths from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of
the United States: 1969, 90th ed. (Washington, DC: GPO, 1969), 256; and U.S. Bureau of
the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1976, 97th ed. (Washington, DC: GPO,
1976), 337. Veterans organizations generally cite a gure of 58,000 killed in the Vietnam
War, which includes noncombat fatalities.
74 Johnson, Vantage Point, 50, 232, and passim.
75 Wheeler quoted in Poole, JCS and National Policy, 1965–68, Pt. I, 117.
76 See Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, 251–253.
77 Minutes of Meeting of the President’s Cabinet, June 18, 1965, Johnson Papers, Cabinet
Papers File, LBJ Library.
78 Brieng for SECDEF, July 16, 1965, JCS 2343/636; William C. Westmoreland, A Soldier
Reports (Garden City: Doubleday, 1976), 144–161; McNamara, In Retrospect, 211–212.
79 JCSM-652-65 to SECDEF, August 27, 1965, “Concept for Vietnam,” JCS 2343/646-1.
80 Quoted in Clodfelter, 117, from George W. Ball, “How Valid Are the Assumptions Un-
derlying Our Viet–Nam Policies?” Atlantic Monthly, October 5, 1964, 38.
81 See McNamara, In Retrospect, 175; and Palmer, Jr., The 25-Year War, 33–34.
82 Schlight, Years of the Oensive, 1965–68, 30–44; Cosmas, 134–135.
83 Wayne Thompson, To Hanoi and Back: The United States Air Force and North Vietnam,
1966–1973 (Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 2000), 31. Em-
phasis in original.
303
ViETnaM: GoinG To War
84 McNamara, In Retrospect, 160–161, 211.
85 Thompson, 42.
86 David C. Humphrey, “Tuesday Lunch at the Johnson White House: A Preliminary As-
sessment,” Diplomatic History 8 (Winter 1984), 81–101; Clodfelter, 118–122.
87 William W. Momyer, Air Power in Three Wars (Washington, DC: Department of the Air
Force, 1978), 23.
88 Cosmas, 120–122.
89 John M. Carland, Stemming the Tide: May 1965 to October 1966, in United States Army in
Vietnam series (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2000), 155–157.
90 JCSM-130-66 to SECDEF, March 1, 1966, “CY 1966 Deployments to SE Asia and
World-wide U.S. Military Posture,” JCS 2343/760-5.
91 U.S. casualty gures from Drea, McNamara, Cliord, and the Burdens of Vietnam,173.
92 McNamara, In Retrospect, 203.
93 Palmer, 25-Year War, 46.
General Earle G. Wheeler, USA; General Creighton W. Abrams, USA; and Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird, Vietnam, ca. 1969
Chapter 10
Vietnam: RetReat
and WithdRaWal
On March 31, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced over national televi-
sion that he would not seek reelection and would instead devote the remainder
of his tenure in the White House to nding a peaceful settlement in Vietnam. At
home, the President faced a rising crescendo of protests against the war, mount-
ing economic diculties brought on by war-induced ination, and challenges to
his political leadership from Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy.
Meanwhile, in Vietnam, recent heavy ghting—the Communist Tet oensive and
the ongoing battle for Khe Sanh—had shattered administration predictions that
the United States was winning and that the war would soon be over. With an
American-imposed solution appearing less and less feasible, the President ordered
a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam above the twentieth parallel. Henceforth,
the United States would concentrate on strengthening the South Vietnamese armed
forces to resist Communist aggression on their own.
1
Since committing U.S. com-
bat forces to Vietnam 3 years earlier, the United States had yet to suer a major
defeat. But it had also been unable to score a decisive victory. As a practical matter,
President Johnson’s announcement was the rst step toward U.S. disengagement
from Vietnam, a process that would still take 5 more years to yield what his succes-
sor, Richard M. Nixon, termed “peace with honor.”
Stalemate
Long before President Johnson announced his decision not to stand for reelection,
the war in Vietnam had degenerated into a stalemate. At the outset of large-scale
U.S. intervention in the summer of 1965, Secretary of Defense McNamara had
wanted to demonstrate to the North Vietnamese that their aggression would never
succeed and that their only choice was to withdraw their forces and accept a nego-
tiated settlement.
2
The stalemate that McNamara envisioned had indeed come to
pass, but it had not worked as he had predicted. Even though American intervention
305
306
CounCil of War
had thwarted a Communist takeover and bolstered the South Vietnamese govern-
ment and its armed forces, the U.S. presence had failed to intimidate the enemy.
Trained and equipped for a war in Europe, American forces initially found them-
selves awkwardly adjusting to unfamiliar tactics and terrain. Dominant in mobility
and repower, they repeatedly inicted heavy losses on the Viet Cong and North
Vietnamese, but could not achieve decisive results. The longer the war went on, the
more resilient the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese became. Rather than wear-
ing down the enemy’s will and ability to ght, General William C. Westmoreland’s
strategy of attrition was having the opposite eect. By demonstrating the limits of
American military power, it strengthened Viet Cong and North Vietnamese resolve.
While they might not prevail in every engagement, they fought with growing con-
dence that they could stand up to the Americans, inict enough casualties to turn
public opinion in the United States against the war, and eventually win.
3
Eorts by the Johnson administration to rally support for its involvement in
Vietnam yielded disappointing results. At home, a growing and increasingly strident
antiwar movement challenged the administration’s policies with mass protests, acts of
civil disobedience, and draft card burnings. In Europe and elsewhere overseas, opposi-
tion to the war was also on the rise. During the Korean conict, twenty-two nations
had contributed forces to help turn back the Communist aggressors; in Vietnam only
four countries—South Korea, Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand—sent combat
troops to ght alongside U.S. and South Vietnamese forces. (Thai troops did not ar-
rive in South Vietnam until mid-1968 and were not much of a factor in the war.)
South Korea’s participation came with numerous strings attached, including the Ko-
rean government’s insistence that the United States provide large nancial subsidies
and other incentives.
4
NATO, America’s long-time partner, evinced not the slightest
interest in helping. A few Alliance leaders, like West German Foreign Minister Ger-
hard Schroeder, discerned a clear link between the outcome in Southeast Asia and the
fate of Europe. Schroeder feared that, if the United States failed to prevail in Vietnam,
it would expose Europe to renewed Soviet pressure. But his was a minority view. Far
more prevalent among Europeans was the notion that Vietnam was a distraction, a
needless diversion of American attention and resources that would end up weakening
the Alliance and increase Europe’s share of the defense burden.
5
At no point did the Johnson administration attempt to develop or implement a
defense policy that brought the allocation of U.S. resources for Vietnam into line with
commitments elsewhere. While the Joint Chiefs were well aware of this gap in planning,
they could never persuade either President Johnson or Secretary McNamara to take
the necessary steps to bridge it. The foreseeable result was a draw-down of personnel
and equipment assigned to or earmarked for Europe and other contingencies. Calling
ViETnaM: rETrEaT anD WiTHDraWal
307
up the Reserves, a course the JCS consistently favored, would have alleviated some of
these problems. Yet any time they raised the issue, the President and the Secretary of
Defense rejected it as politically infeasible. As a result, planning for Vietnam followed no
coherent blueprint and became instead a series of ad hoc responses to an increasingly
intractable situation that consumed more and more American lives and treasure.
In the autumn of 1966, Westmoreland launched a major oensive aimed at put-
ting maximum military pressure on the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. According
to the available intelligence, inltration of regular NVA units from the North had
subsided and there were signs that the Viet Cong was having trouble replacing its
losses.
6
In light of these ndings and a recent surge in U.S. troop levels, Westmoreland
believed he had at his disposal sucient strength to deal a crippling blow that would
turn the war around. To augment the oensive in the south, the Joint Chiefs sought
permission for Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacic
(CINCPAC), to step up Operation Rolling Thunder attacks against North Vietnam.
By then, with Westmoreland in rm control of the ground war in the South, about
the only place where the JCS could make a dierence was in the air war against the
North. Following a lengthy debate with the White House, they nally persuaded the
President in June 1966 to relax some of the restrictions on bombing petroleum facili-
ties near Hanoi and Haiphong.
7
Though the ensuing attacks had limited eect, they
set the stage for the submission in August of a more ambitious Rolling Thunder pro-
gram package that included industrial and transportation targets in North Vietnam’s
Red River Delta. President Johnson approved the new bombing scheme in Novem-
ber, just as the ground campaign was getting under way, but at the State Department’s
urging he deferred its full implementation pending the outcome of a British initiative
exploring the possibility of negotiations. As it turned out, it was not until February
1967 that the President allowed the approved program to proceed in toto.
8
The uncoordinated execution of these measures, and delays in carrying them out,
virtually assured that they would have a limited impact on the course of the war. While
Westmoreland’s ground oensive scored some notable successes at the outset, it proved
more dicult to sustain than expected with the forces available. Taking territory held
by the Viet Cong was easier than holding it and making it secure. By the early spring of
1967, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese had begun a counterattack that reclaimed
lost ground as the American oensive became overextended and bogged down. Mean-
while, stepped-up enemy activity in the northern I Corps region along the Demilita-
rized Zone (DMZ) and against the heavily fortied American base at Khe Sanh sug-
gested that the North Vietnamese were massing for a conventional invasion of the South,
causing COMUSMACV to divert troops and airpower from other operations. Seeing
no other choice, Westmoreland (at Wheeler’s urging) served notice in mid-March 1967
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that he would need a minimum of 100,000 more troops within the coming year just to
hold his existing positions in I Corps, and probably double that number to maintain the
momentum of operations elsewhere. If approved, the additional buildup would bring
the American presence in South Vietnam to over 670,000 troops.
9
In Washington, Westmoreland’s request for more troops touched o a heated
internal debate that lasted well into the summer. One reason the review dragged on
was that it had to compete with a sudden emergence of other critical problems—
the ABM deployment issue, growing tensions between Greece and Turkey over Cy-
prus, the escalating militancy of the antiwar movement at home, and the outbreak
of war in early June 1967 between Israel and its Arab neighbors resulting in a series
of Israeli victories that recast the balance of power in the Middle East. Finding time
to address these issues challenged the Joint Chiefs no less than it did McNamara and
others in the Johnson administration and made it dicult to pursue an orderly and
systematic assessment of the situation in Vietnam.
Once they got down to business, the Joint Chiefs rallied in support of West-
moreland, feeling that now was not the time to cut and run. All the same, there
were continuing dierences among them over basic strategy, with the Army and
Marines favoring a greater eort on the ground in the south and the Air Force and
the Navy urging stronger air and naval action against the North. To get around their
disagreements, the chiefs linked a further buildup in the south such as Westmoreland
proposed with an expansion and intensication of the Rolling Thunder air campaign
against the North.
10
As far as Secretary McNamara was concerned, however, a re-
newed intensication of the war held no appeal. Since the previous autumn, he had
shown growing frustration over the lack of military progress and could not help
eyeing the rising nancial costs of the war, which had grown steadily to more than
a third of the defense budget.
11
Though he had once oered Westmoreland practi-
cally a blank check, he regretted having done so, and was inclined to level o U.S.
military action in hopes of enticing the enemy into negotiations.
12
Still, he wanted
Westmoreland’s request to receive a fair hearing and called him back to Washington
to explain his position directly to President Johnson. At one point in their meeting,
the President turned to Westmoreland and asked testily: “When we add divisions,
can’t the enemy add divisions? If so, where does it all end?”
13
As the debate progressed, it focused more and more on the air war against North
Vietnam. Condent that the results would show up sooner or later, General Wheeler
characterized the air campaign was one of two “blue chips” the United States possessed
(the other being the capacity to mount an aggressive ground campaign) that could
directly inuence the outcome of the war.
14
In practice, however, the United States
had never pursued the air war with the same degree of commitment it had shown on
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the ground. Under the allocation approved during the early days of the war, COMUS-
MACV had rst call on air assets, with the result that about two-thirds of the sorties
own by the Air Force and the Navy had been either in support of combat operations
in the South or for interdiction purposes against the Ho Chi Minh Trail; only about
one-third of the sorties had been against the North. Moreover, under the “graduated
response” rules that governed Rolling Thunder, many lucrative bombing targets in the
Hanoi-Haiphong area and Red River Delta remained untouched. Arguing that the
next step was obvious, Air Force Chief of Sta General John P. McConnell persuaded
his JCS colleagues that with or without a buildup in the South, they should press Mc-
Namara and the President to lift restrictions on the air campaign and pursue the rapid
and methodical destruction of North Vietnam’s war-supporting infrastructure.
15
While the chiefs’ position on the air campaign had strong support in military
circles, it met with unmitigated disdain from McNamara and the OSD “whiz kids.”
Labeling the air war as counterproductive, they considered JCS proposals for expand-
ing it dangerous and risky. McNamara had never put much stock in the bombing
to begin with, so it was no surprise to him as the war dragged on that study after
study reaching his desk showed it as having limited success in curbing inltration into
the South or on North Vietnam’s capacity to wage war. Citing the administration-
imposed restrictions on targets and bombing under which the Air Force and the Navy
operated, the JCS responded that such results were practically preordained. But under
the cost-eectiveness criteria he applied to practically everything, McNamara con-
cluded that the air war was becoming too expensive in terms of pilots and planes lost
and other factors and ought to be sharply curtailed rather than expanded.
16
The showdown between McNamara and the Joint Chiefs came in August 1967
during open hearings before the Senate Armed Services Preparedness Investigating
Subcommittee, chaired by John C. Stennis of Mississippi. The instigator of the hearings
was Senator W. Stuart Symington of Missouri, rst Secretary of the Air Force in the
Truman administration and an outspoken advocate of more vigorous use of airpower
against North Vietnam. Like other conservative Democrats, Stennis and Symington
had become impatient and thought that more could be done with airpower to win
the war and to avoid the need for additional ground troops. Not wanting to give the
committee any more opportunities than it already had to second-guess his conduct of
the war, President Johnson sent McNamara and Wheeler to Saigon in July to work out
a new statement of troop requirements and to review the air campaign. Following a
busy round of briengs, McNamara and Wheeler returned to Washington bearing a re-
vised request from Westmoreland for an additional 50,000 troops, the most the United
States could muster without calling up the Reserves or vastly curtailing draft defer-
ments. But despite heavy pressure from CINCPAC and the theater air sta, McNamara
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refused to endorse an expansion of the bombing operations.
17
Knowing how Stennis
and his colleagues would react, Johnson took matters into his own hands and on July
20, 1967, he approved a modication to the Rolling Thunder campaign that included
about a dozen new targets, some in the Hanoi-Haiphong sanctuary area.
18
Already severely strained, relations between McNamara and the Joint Chiefs
became even worse once the Stennis committee’s hearings began. Testifying in
executive session, the JCS, Admiral Sharp, and Lieutenant General William W.
Momyer, USAF, commander of the Seventh Air Force in Vietnam, all insisted that
the administration’s “doctrine of gradualism” toward bombing had proven inef-
fective and that the air campaign they were allowed to carry out was too little too
late. In rebuttal, McNamara defended the current concept of operations as carefully
thought out and “directed toward reasonable and realizable goals.” Indicating that
JCS proposals to ramp up the bombing were exactly the opposite, McNamara left
the clear impression that he considered his military judgment superior to that of the
professionals, while his choice of words challenged their soundness of mind.
19
The
chiefs were dismayed and in the aftermath of the hearings, relations between the
JCS and the Secretary of Defense sank to a new low. “Leaks” to the press of growing
dissension within the Pentagon inevitably followed. Attempting to repair the dam-
age, President Johnson held a news conference at which he insisted that there was
“no deep division” within the administration over the prosecution of the war.
20
A
lame defense, it convinced no one and only added to the administration’s widening
credibility gap. Like the conict in Vietnam, the policy process in Washington had
come practically to a standstill, unable to cope or to nd new ideas.
tet and ItS aftermath
The impasse over Vietnam was short-lived, broken by the tightening NVA siege of
Khe Sanh and the massive Viet Cong oensive launched in late January 1968 dur-
ing the Tet holidays. Though not the “bolt out of the blue” that the Korean invasion
of 1950 was, the Tet uprising still caught American and South Vietnamese forces o
guard by its nationwide scale and scope and by the Viet Cong’s determination to
take and hold urban areas. Fighting in the ancient capital city of Hue was especially
intense and required nearly a month of bloody house-to-house combat to dislodge
the enemy. In all, 2,100 American and 4,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died in com-
bat during the uprising. Viet Cong losses were put at 50,000 or more.
21
The enemy’s dramatic Tet oensive almost obscured the ongoing struggle for
Khe Sanh, a strategic outpost in the northwest corner of South Vietnam’s I Corps
region. Defended by a combined force of U.S. Marines and South Vietnam (SVN)
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Rangers, Khe Sanh straddled Route 9, a key east-west highway, and was an ideal
launching point for search-and-destroy operations against the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
In January 1968, the North Vietnamese started massing three divisions around Khe
Sanh, laying a siege that evoked memories of the 1954 contest for Dien Bien Phu.
While there were strong arguments for abandoning the base, the consensus among
the Joint Chiefs was that it should be held at all cost. Indeed, General Wheeler
termed Khe Sanh “the anchor of our whole defense of the northern portion of
South Vietnam,” and argued that defending it would tie down many North Viet-
namese who otherwise would be free to attack elsewhere.
22
Though condent that the outpost would hold, Westmoreland wanted to mini-
mize the risk and ordered what became the most intense air bombardment of the
war against enemy positions around Khe Sanh. Toward the end of January, taking
matters a step further, he notied the Joint Chiefs that he was exploring a plan, code-
named Fracture Jaw, to use nuclear or chemical weapons to relieve the enemy pres-
sure. Referred to the Joint Sta for review, Fracture Jaw remained a topic of discus-
sion between Washington and Saigon for several weeks. But as Khe Sanh’s prospects
improved, Westmoreland lost interest in any further nuclear planning. Eventually, the
plan reached President Johnson, who wanted nothing to do with it and ordered it
summarily withdrawn, thus bringing to a close the rst and only episode in which the
Joint Chiefs contemplated the specic use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam.
23
A failure militarily, the enemy’s Tet oensive was a stunning political success that
broke the back of support for the war in the United States. Almost overnight, opinion
in Washington and across the country changed, leaving the Joint Chiefs practically
alone in clinging to the administration’s original objectives. Instead of insuring the
survival of an independent, non-Communist South Vietnam, President Johnson now
declared that bringing the war to a peaceful resolution was his top concern. Earlier,
McNamara had made known his decision to leave oce and in late February 1968,
disillusioned and demoralized, he nally stepped down.
24
His successor, Clark M. Clif-
ford, promptly initiated a top-to-bottom review of the war. Unsure of what to expect,
the Service chiefs turned to Wheeler, who did his best to bolster their morale and
keep the momentum of the war going even while the President was renewing his call
for negotiations and ordering cutbacks in air operations against the North, all with an
eye toward eventual withdrawal. The result was a continuation of the conict, but at a
reduced tempo that left the outcome more in doubt than ever.
25
With McNamara’s departure, the JCS were cautiously optimistic that in reassessing
its options, the administration would not stray too far from its original course. By then,
Wheeler was both the dominant gure in JCS deliberations and an accepted member
of President Johnson’s inner circle. Shortly after the Stennis committee hearings in late
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summer 1967, he had suered a mild heart attack. Despite a swift recovery, he indicated
he might have to retire. Johnson refused to let him go. “I can’t aord to lose you,” the
President told him. “You have never given me a bad piece of advice.”
26
Starting in
October 1967, Wheeler was a regular participant in the Tuesday lunch, attended by the
President and his senior advisors. On March 22, 1968, Johnson announced that Wheeler
would serve an unprecedented fth year as Chairman.
27
Yet proximity to power did not
equate with inuence and, as was often the case, Wheeler returned to the Pentagon from
his meetings with the President appearing to his sta tired and discouraged.
28
Day in and day out, Wheeler and the other chiefs waged an uphill battle to be
heard. In fact, intelligence reports armed that the Tet oensive had decimated the
Viet Cong, resulting in an improved military situation across Vietnam. It was the
opportunity the Joint Chiefs had been waiting for and, wasting no time, Wheeler
urged Westmoreland to exploit the enemy’s weakness through a series of new op-
erations. Accordingly, Westmoreland revived his earlier request for another 200,000
troops to nish the job. Wheeler knew that an increase of that size was bound to be
controversial and that the odds of approval were against it, but he felt the war was
entering a new and more “critical phase” and couched his endorsement of West-
moreland’s request in an ominous assessment of the alternative.
29
What the President
wanted, however, was less conict, not more, and with that end in mind he accepted
the advice of his new Secretary of Defense and others whose political instincts he
trusted, that the time had come to deescalate the war, turn it over to the South
Vietnamese, and get American troops out in an orderly manner.
30
Disappointed by the turn of events, the Joint Chiefs of Sta felt increasingly
beleaguered and isolated. They regarded the President’s decision of March 31, 1968,
to stop bombing above the twentieth parallel and to expedite the search for a ne-
gotiated settlement as ill-advised and militarily unsound. As Wheeler characterized
it, the bombing halt amounted to an “aerial Dien Bien Phu.”
31
Yet neither he nor
the Service chiefs had anything better to oer that the President, Congress, or the
American public would have considered acceptable. As during bombing pauses in
the past, the JCS expected the North Vietnamese to use the respite to build up
their defenses and to resupply their troops, and were not disappointed. Yet even
airpower enthusiasts acknowledged that there was not much they could do for the
next month or so due to the onset of the monsoon season and poor ying weather.
Everything, it seemed, was conspiring against JCS eorts to keep the war on track.
32
Setting the stage for an American withdrawal became the de facto policy.
On October 31, 1968, President Johnson suspended the entire bombing campaign
against the North, a gesture aimed at jump-starting the stalled Paris peace talks.
Only armed reconnaissance ights continued. By now, the JCS realized that there
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was virtually nothing they could say or do that might convince the President to
change his mind. Treating the bombing halt as inevitable, they minimized the risks,
accepting them as “low and manageable,” even though they remained uneasy over
the ultimate consequences for South Vietnam. Slowly but surely, the United States
was winnowing its participation in the war and shifting the burden to the South
Vietnamese, a process that came to be known as “Vietnamization.”
33
Carrying out the draw-down fell to the new COMUSMACV, General
Creighton W. Abrams, who succeeded Westmoreland in mid-1968 when the latter
returned to Washington to become Army Chief of Sta. A leading expert in tank
warfare, Abrams’ combat experience dated from World War II when he commanded
an armored task force. As Vice Chief of Sta of the Army from September 1964 to
May 1967, he had been deeply involved in the massive deployments of Army units
to Vietnam. Though aggressive by instinct, he could sense that the war was winding
down and that he would soon be under strong political pressure to limit casualties
with low-risk operations and a more defensively oriented deployment of his forces.
The Joint Chiefs would have preferred a more proactive posture to keep the enemy
o balance. But by the time the Johnson administration left oce, the pursuit of a
military outcome was no longer a credible option. The best the chiefs could hope
for from that point on was a holding action to allow a graceful exit.
34
nIxon, the JCS, and the PolICy ProCeSS
It fell to a new President, Richard M. Nixon, to create something positive out of
the previous administration’s asco in Vietnam. As a candidate for the White House
in 1968, Nixon promised to bring American troops home and to end the war “with
honor.” Even so, he opposed a precipitous withdrawal because it might damage Amer-
ican prestige and trigger a chain reaction of Communist takeovers in Southeast Asia.
Once in oce, he ruled out seeking “a purely military solution,” but armed his
determination to use force as necessary to achieve his goals.
35
At the same time, he
and his assistant for national security aairs, Henry A. Kissinger, sought to enhance the
prospects for a negotiated settlement by pursuing “détente” with the Soviet Union
and a rapprochement with Communist China (see chapter 11). Though more open to
JCS advice than Kennedy and Johnson, he also had no qualms about second-guessing
or even belittling the chiefs’ advice. Indeed, he was fond of citing H.G. Wells’ observa-
tion that military people had mediocre minds because intelligent people would never
contemplate a military career.
36
But he had the good sense to realize that it was bet-
ter to have the Joint Chiefs on his side than against him. The result was a somewhat
smoother relationship than in the past between military and civilian authorities, even
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if at times Nixon followed a separate, secret agenda and seemed to have little use for
professional military advice if it conicted with his political objectives.
Those serving on the JCS during Nixon’s rst year in oce were holdover ap-
pointments from the Johnson administration. As their terms of service expired, Nixon
gradually brought in people of his own choosing. Like Kennedy and Johnson, Nixon
found it easier and more convenient to deal with the Chairman. Once a year, he held
a formal Oval Oce meeting with JCS for picture-taking. Otherwise, he seldom met
with them as a group. At Nixon’s request, Wheeler stayed on as CJCS until July 1970,
but his deteriorating health caused him to share his responsibilities with his heir-appar-
ent, Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations. An aviator in World War
II with a distinguished record of combat experience, Moorer had a reputation around
the Pentagon for being blunt but aable, cantankerous yet eective. As Commander in
Chief of the Pacic Fleet (CINCPACFLT) in 1964–1965, Moorer had a personal hand
in planning and overseeing the early stages of the Rolling Thunder air campaign against
North Vietnam. Known as a “hawk” on the war, he was denitely the right choice for
carrying out the administration’s strategy of stepping up military pressure on North
Vietnam. Following in Taylor’s footsteps, Moorer shunned the role of “team player” and
viewed himself rst and foremost as an agent and spokesman for the administration.
According to one ocial account, Moorer’s inuence as Chairman was so thoroughly
pervasive that he “was now the only JCS member who really counted.”
37
Moorer’s JCS colleagues were a typically diverse group with diverse interests.
General John D. Ryan, who succeeded McConnell in August 1969 as Air Force Chief
of Sta, was a leading airpower strategist in the Curtis LeMay tradition. An outspo-
ken advocate for his Service, he touted the ecacy of strategic bombing whenever
he could. His Army counterpart, General William C. Westmoreland, was the for-
mer COMUSMACV, whose frustration and brooding over his recent experiences in
Vietnam were all too apparent. Though not yet a full-edged member of the Joint
Chiefs, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Leonard F. Chapman, Jr.,
acted as if he were. Described as “quiet, articulate, and thoughtful,” he was an active
contributor during JCS deliberations.
38
But with ending the Vietnam War now a
foregone conclusion, most of the chiefs showed less interest in joint matters than in
protecting their respective Services against the inevitable eects of postwar cutbacks.
The exception was Moorer’s successor as CNO, Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr.,
who professed determination to demonstrate that Service and joint interests were
not mutually exclusive, as some in uniform believed. The rst surface commander
to become CNO since Arleigh Burke, Zumwalt wanted to augment the Navy’s eet
of expensive nuclear-powered aircraft carriers (CVANs) with smaller, convention-
ally-powered carriers and surface ships that could be built in greater numbers for
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less money. He also stressed the need for improved inter-Service cooperation and
collaboration to maximize available resources. One of his suggestions was that Army
helicopter pilots and Air Force iers train to operate from Navy vessels. While the
Army warmed to the idea, the Air Force wanted no part of it. Still, it did not stop
Zumwalt from continuing to explore other joint ventures for sharing assets.
39
While the policy process in which the Joint Chiefs operated remained outwardly
similar to that of previous administrations, decisionmaking became more entrenched
than ever in the White House, where Nixon and Kissinger, the national security advi-
sor, played the key roles. A complex and controversial gure, Nixon was exceptionally
well versed in world aairs. In Peter W. Rodman’s estimation, he had “the deepest
intuition and shrewdest strategic judgment of any modern president.”
40
Kissinger was
equally well informed. Like McGeorge Bundy and Walt Rostow, he came from an
academic background, but was far more practical and better steeped in the history of
great power politics. As a professor of government at Harvard University before join-
ing the Nixon administration in 1969, Kissinger had published at length on balance-
of-power politics and the concept of “limited” nuclear wars. He had built his reputa-
tion around studying the tactics and behavior of historic power brokers who excelled
in the behind-the-scenes art of Realpolitik—like Otto von Bismarck, Germany’s
19th-century “iron chancellor,” and Prince Clemens von Metternich of Austria. His
biographers generally agree that he saw himself in a similar light, operating as an Old
World diplomatist when raison d’état and personal diplomacy reigned supreme.
Coordination between the White House and the JCS took two forms—
through the resuscitated mechanisms of the National Security Council, and through
backchannel communications. One of Nixon’s declared goals was to restore the
NSC to an approximation of the system that had existed under Eisenhower. Toward
that end, he directed that the Council function as his “principal forum for the con-
sideration of policy issues.”
41
Initially, the Joint Chiefs welcomed this rearmation
of the NSC’s central role since it promised to restore more structured, reliable, and
predictable procedures to the policy process. But according to Zumwalt, it was not
long before the JCS began to question how much they could rely on Nixon and
Kissinger to match words with deeds.
42
As time passed, Nixon relied less and less
on the NSC and held fewer and fewer meetings.
43
Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a member
of the NSC Sta at the time, recalled that Nixon studiously reserved the right of
nal decision and treated NSC deliberations as “purely advisory meetings.”
44
Nor
did Nixon bring back Eisenhower’s practice of adopting detailed, all-encompassing
basic policy papers to guide budgetary decisions, the development of programs, and
the allocation of resources. Instead, he attacked problems piecemeal—an eective
means of keeping others o balance and concealing his overall purpose—with a
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barrage of directives, known as national security decision memoranda (NSDM) and
requests for reviews, called national security study memoranda (NSSM).
45
Below the NSC, JCS access to policy guidance was through a battery of in-
teragency committees, all closely overseen, if not personally chaired, by Kissinger.
These included the NSC Review Group, headed by Kissinger, to screen matters for
submission to the full NSC, and four specialized advisory bodies organized at the
Deputy Secretary level for Vietnam, defense policy, arms control, and crisis manage-
ment.
46
Outside this structure, Kissinger also established informal contacts with the
Pentagon through the JCS liaison oce. The proper channel of communication was
from the White House through the Oce of Secretary of Defense to the Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs. Kissinger, however, often bypassed OSD by calling Moorer di-
rectly and by transmitting documents to him through the JCS liaison oce, housed
next door in the Old Executive Oce Building. Melvin R. Laird, Secretary of
Defense during Nixon’s rst term, deeply resented Kissinger’s circumvention of
his authority and after an unseemly episode in 1971 involving the mishandling of
classied documents by a Navy yeoman assigned to the NSC as a stenographer, he
closed the JCS liaison oce. Whether the yeoman, Charles E. Radford, was “spying”
for the JCS or acting on his own was never conclusively ascertained. But despite
the closure of the oce, backchannel contacts continued to be one of Kissinger’s
preferred methods of doing business, a habit he found impossible to break.
47
WIndIng doWn the War
Nixon’s rst order of business in Vietnam was to create a politico-military environ-
ment favorable to the withdrawal of U.S. forces. When he became President in 1969,
the United States still had over half a million troops engaged there and no concrete
plans for getting them out.
48
Modeling his policy on Eisenhower’s strategy for end-
ing the Korean War, he sought to apply a combination of diplomacy and “irresistible
military pressure” to achieve a negotiated settlement with the North Vietnamese
that would include the mutual withdrawal of U.S. and NVA forces.
49
Known as
“linkage,” his diplomatic strategy was to encourage détente with the Soviet Union
and exploit signs of a Sino-Soviet ideological split to weaken Communist bloc
support of Hanoi. Simultaneously, he extended the war through covert means into
Cambodia and accelerated the Vietnamization and pacication programs to cover
the phased withdrawal of U.S. ground forces and to provide the government of
South Vietnam with increased capabilities for future self-defense. At the outset of his
Presidency, Nixon announced to his Cabinet that he expected the war to be over in
a year. Almost immediately, he was backtracking from his prediction.
50
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While the Joint Chiefs of Sta took close note of the negotiations, they were
rarely directly involved. Even though they had representatives on the various inter-
agency bodies dealing with the peace talks, the governing assumption within the JCS
organization was that negotiating strategy did not lie “within the normal purview”
of the Joint Chiefs of Sta.
51
Their more direct and immediate concern was to gure
out ways of keeping military pressure on the enemy while the United States scaled
back its participation in the war. With the loss of U.S. nuclear superiority in the 1960s,
Nixon was in no position, as Eisenhower was in 1953, to threaten the use of atomic
weapons. Casting about for options, he and Kissinger irted with the idea of resuming
the air war against the North and briey considered a plan (Operation Duck Hook)
to launch a series of quick, intense, and “brutal” strikes against key North Vietnamese
targets. But they quickly dropped the idea owing to the lukewarm support it enjoyed
among the Joint Chiefs, the political repercussions such actions could have at home,
and the danger of derailing plans for détente with the Soviet Union.
52
With the range of options limited, the preferred approach both at the White
House and in the Pentagon became a concerted bombing campaign with B−52s
against Viet Cong and NVA sanctuaries in neighboring Cambodia, targets previ-
ously o limits to U.S. air attack. The Joint Chiefs, COMUSMACV, and CINCPAC
had long favored the destruction of these enemy bases, but had had no luck per-
suading the previous administration to accept the political and diplomatic risks such
an operation might entail. With Nixon’s advent, they found a more receptive audi-
ence and on March 15, 1969, they received a green light to proceed.
53
Like the decision to intervene with ground troops in 1965, the “secret” bomb-
ing of Cambodia was one of the most controversial episodes of the war. Lasting into
May 1970, the attacks concentrated on six enemy bases along the Cambodian-South
Vietnamese border and involved the expenditure of over 180,000 tons of muni-
tions.
54
To keep the operation quiet, the White House, the Joint Sta, and COMUS-
MACV resorted to elaborate deception measures that concealed ight plans and the
expenditure of bombs. Privately, members of the Joint Chiefs grumbled at being
party to Nixon’s duplicity, some complaining that eorts to hide the bombing were
“stupid” and bound to fail.
55
But in Nixon’s view, preserving secrecy was essential
in order to avoid antiwar protests.
56
Actually, there was not much secret about the
whole aair. Cambodian leader Prince Norodom Sihanouk knew about the bomb-
ing from the outset and obligingly looked the other way. The North Vietnamese
were well aware, as were the Soviets, the Chinese, and key gures on Capitol Hill.
About the only group not privy to the secret was the American public.
While putting pressure on the enemy through the secret bombing campaign,
Nixon sought to expedite the U.S. withdrawal under cover of the Vietnamization
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program, the incremental substitution of SVN troops for U.S. forces. As the Joint
Chiefs repeatedly cautioned, however, the Vietnamization program devised under the
Johnson administration and inherited by Nixon was intended solely to develop a
security force and would not result in a SVN army that could tackle the North Viet-
namese.
57
After taking a personal look at the program in operation, Secretary of De-
fense Laird came back from a trip to Southeast Asia in March 1969 with an alternative
plan to increase the arming, training, and equipping of the South Vietnamese so they
could take on not only the Viet Cong but also the NVA.
58
Though Nixon viewed
Vietnamization as an integral part of his strategy, he had never envisioned developing
and rening South Vietnam’s military capabilities quite as fast or to the same degree.
Initially skeptical of Laird’s proposal, Nixon and Kissinger quickly changed their minds
after the Secretary of Defense, without consulting the White House, publicly outlined
his program on national television and “leaked” a story to the press, intimating that
it was agreed administration policy. “It was largely on the basis of Laird’s enthusiastic
advocacy,” Nixon recalled, “that we undertook the policy of Vietnamization.”
59
Whether the South Vietnamese were up to the task became a recurring issue in
JCS deliberations over the next several years. On paper, the South Vietnamese military
was a formidable force. With nearly a million men under arms, it ranked as one of the
largest in the world. Except for a few elite units, however, it was a heavily conscripted
army in which desertion rates were high and morale low. Barely a match for the Viet
Cong, it was virtually untested against North Vietnamese regulars. Recognizing the
ARVN’s weaknesses, the Joint Chiefs urged a paced withdrawal of U.S. forces, coor-
dinated with periodic assessments of the progress of Vietnamization, pacication, and
the enemy situation.
60
Nixon agreed that the chiefs’ “cut-and-try” approach made a
lot of sense and should be followed as much as possible.
61
But for economic reasons he
needed to curb defense spending and was under strong political pressure to bring U.S.
troops home at an accelerated pace. As a consequence, in setting timetables for the re-
deployment of U.S. forces, the Joint Chiefs came to realize that “other considerations”
than the progress of Vietnamization tended to be the decisive factors.
62
An early test of Vietnamization occurred during the allied invasion of Cambo-
dia in the spring of 1970. The results were inconclusive, however, owing to the heavy
involvement of U.S. forces alongside the South Vietnamese, the extensive presence
of U.S. advisors among SVN units, and because the NVA elected for the most part
not to engage the invaders. The event precipitating the invasion was a political
crisis in neighboring Cambodia, brought on by anti-Communist demonstrations
culminating in March 1970 in a coup d’état that replaced the nominally neutralist
regime of Prince Sihanouk with a pro-Western one headed by Premier Lon Nol.
As one of his rst acts, Lon Nol closed the port of Kampong Son (Sihanoukville) to
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NVA transfers, thus denying the enemy a major entrepôt for weapons and supplies
destined for South Vietnam. A wave of Communist counterattacks led by North
Vietnamese regulars soon followed, prompting COMUSMACV, CINCPAC, and
the Joint Chiefs to coordinate the development of contingency plans to shore up
Lon Nol’s regime and, at the same time, to complete the destruction of enemy
sanctuaries along the border. The plan initially presented by the Joint Chiefs called
for a cross-border operation into Cambodia with U.S. ground forces spearheading
the eort.
63
At the time, there were still substantial numbers of U.S. combat troops
in Vietnam and no clear picture of how well the ARVN would perform. Nixon
and Kissinger, however, wanted the South Vietnamese to be in the vanguard, partly
to deect expected criticism at home and to underscore the lowering of the U.S.
prole in accordance with recently announced troop reductions.
64
In late April, a combined U.S.–SVN invasion force entered Cambodia. Though
they captured large quantities of supplies, documents, and military hardware, the al-
lies made little contact with the enemy after the rst day. General Abrams wanted
to exploit the situation with deeper probes into Cambodia to draw the enemy out.
Back in the United States, the Cambodian invasion had aroused some of the largest
and most strident protests to that point in the war, suggesting that political support
was weak and continuing to decline. Feeling the pressure, President Nixon rejected
Abrams’ proposal to expand the operation and ordered U.S. troops back across the
border by the end of June. While it was not much of a test for the Vietnamization
program, Abrams praised the performance SVN forces and relayed word to Wash-
ington that he considered their planning and execution “very impressive.”
65
With growing condence in South Vietnamese forces, Abrams (with encourage-
ment from Nixon and Kissinger) began to envision even bigger operations. Thus, as
the Cambodian incursion drew to a close, he received the go-ahead from Admiral
Moorer for a new operation known as LAM SON 719, a “dry season” search and
destroy foray into Laos to disrupt enemy movement along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Initiated with the expectation of large-scale U.S. combat ground support inside Viet-
nam and heavy U.S. air support in Laos, LAM SON 719 was the product of planning
done late in 1970 at MACV headquarters in Saigon and in Hawaii by Commander in
Chief, Pacic, Admiral John S. McCain, Jr.
66
By then, Nixon and Kissinger had more
or less given up trying to negotiate a mutual reduction of forces with the North Viet-
namese and had decided to concentrate on a unilateral U.S. withdrawal. The function
of LAM SON 719, as Kissinger envisioned it, was to cut enemy supply lines, curb in-
ltration into the south, and buy time to complete an orderly pull-out of U.S. forces.
67
LAM SON 719 may have been doomed before it started. With advance warn-
ing from their spies in Saigon, the North Vietnamese had ample time to reinforce
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units and strengthen their defenses along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. By their own ac-
count, the NVA had amassed a force of 60,000 troops, against an ARVN invasion
force of 17,000. In Washington, meanwhile, following a lengthy and contentious de-
bate, Congress nally passed a foreign military sales bill early in 1971 incorporating
the Cooper-Church amendment banning U.S. advisors from assisting in operations
outside Vietnam. With U.S. advisory assistance thus curtailed, the South Vietnamese
faced serious problems coordinating their air and artillery support. Still, from all the
Joint Sta had seen and heard of the plan, there was nothing overtly objectionable
about LAM SON 719 and, indeed, much to recommend it, including Abrams’ bud-
ding condence in the ARVN and a growing awareness that this might be the last
time the South Vietnamese could conduct a dry-season oensive while U.S. forces
were still present in Vietnam in substantial numbers to provide backup.
68
As the operation began in early February 1971, however, condence in it began
to fade. Most skeptical of all was Army Chief of Sta General Westmoreland. Re-
luctant to second-guess the commander on the scene, Westmoreland had stied his
reservations, much as the JCS had mued their misgivings about plans for the Bay
of Pigs invasion a decade earlier. When pressed by Kissinger for his views, however,
Westmoreland lashed out against LAM SON 719, declaring it to be “a very high
risk” enterprise with a slim chance of success. Several times as COMUSMACV,
Westmoreland had studied the possibility of mounting a similar attack into Laos.
But he had never followed through due to the Johnson administration’s concern
that it would be too risky and would require an inordinate commitment of re-
sources—probably no fewer than four U.S. divisions, or nearly half the U.S. in-
country ghting force. In lieu of the invasion taking place under LAM SON 719,
Westmoreland urged the White House to consider short raids, feints, and mobile
operations to keep the North Vietnamese o balance and to interrupt trac along
the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
69
Bothered by Westmoreland’s comments, Kissinger turned
to Moorer, who downplayed the general’s concerns and oered his assurances, based
on Abrams’ assessments, that the concept behind the plan was sound.
70
Once underway, LAM SON 719 began running into one problem after another.
Outnumbered and outgunned, the South Vietnamese found their search-and-destroy
mission turned into a sustained conventional battle in which the enemy had the ini-
tiative. Determined not merely to repel the attackers and protect their lines of com-
munication, the NVA sought to inict a crushing defeat on the South Vietnamese
army that would discredit the American policy of Vietnamization. At a meeting with
the Secretary of Defense on March 15, Westmoreland criticized ARVN tactics and, in
Moorer’s words, “badmouthed the whole LAM SON 719 operation.” The next day
Moorer assured President Nixon that “things were going pretty well.” Nixon wanted
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the ARVN to keep the operation going into April, when he intended to announce
further U.S. troop withdrawals. But under heavy attack from the enemy, the ARVN
began a precipitous withdrawal. The tide had turned and, as Kissinger put it, the South
Vietnamese were “bugging out.” What the administration tried to depict as an orderly
tactical withdrawal, journalists on the scene described as a tragic and chaotic rout.
71
BaCk to aIrPoWer
Though it was not the total catastrophe some observers depicted, LAM SON 719 was
clearly a major setback for the United States and its Vietnamese allies. Most serious of
all, it had exposed glaring shortcomings in the administration’s Vietnamization program.
Given enough time and training, perhaps, the ARVN might someday become a formi-
dable ghting force; but for the foreseeable future, it was in no position to stop aggression
from the North on its own. One of the few positive things to come out of the whole
episode was Secretary of Defense Laird’s increased interest in providing more eective
measures to block enemy inltration along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Toward the end of
1971, with this in mind, he assigned a new Army Brigadier General, John W. Vessey, to
the U.S. Embassy in Laos. Working with the Ambassador and CIA station chief, Vessey
oversaw the allocation of funds for covert operations against North Vietnamese inltra-
tion. In 1982, under the Reagan administration, Vessey would again attract high-level
attention and become the President’s choice to chair the Joint Chiefs of Sta.
72
Despite ongoing eorts by the Nixon administration to shore up South Viet-
nam’s security, the danger from the North continued to grow, while U.S. troop
strength continued to drop. By the beginning of 1972, there were fewer than
150,000 American Servicemen left in Vietnam, and under approved troop with-
drawal schedules half of those would be gone in a few months. Shrugging o the
ARVN’s disappointing performance in LAM SON 719, the Nixon White House
repeatedly urged the Saigon regime to undertake new forays into Laos and Cam-
bodia. At the same time, to oset the loss of U.S. ground strength, Admiral Moorer,
often on his own initiative, pressed Secretary of Defense Laird to relax restrictions
on air attacks against North Vietnam and to increase the use of “protective reac-
tion strikes” against surface-to-air missile (SAM) and antiaircraft (AAA) sites that
threatened U.S. planes conducting interdiction ights over South Vietnam and Laos.
Laird had no objection to American pilots protecting themselves, but as for other
attacks against the North, he turned them down more often than not, feeling that
they would re-escalate the war and delay U.S. troop withdrawals. President Nixon,
however, proved more exible, and by the end of 1971 bombing against targets in
North Vietnam below the 20th parallel was again on the rise.
73
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CounCil of War
Convinced that even more was needed, General John D. Lavelle, USAF, Com-
mander of the Seventh Air Force in South Vietnam, took matters into his own hands
by stepping up air attacks against the North. Whether he had authority to do so
was never fully clear. Adopting “a liberal interpretation” of the rules of engagement,
Lavelle later estimated that he carried out “in the neighborhood” of 20 such raids
(the real number was closer to thirty) between November 1971 and March 1972. He
defended his actions, however, on the grounds that he had the tacit encouragement
of his superiors in Washington, including both Admiral Moorer and Secretary Laird,
who had urged him to “make maximum use” of existing authority to put pressure
on the North.
74
Still, in mounting preplanned attacks Lavelle had gone overboard and
risked reigniting the still smoldering bombing controversy between Congress and
the administration. Upon learning of the general’s interpretation of orders, Moorer
and Laird quickly arranged with Air Force Chief of Sta General John D. Ryan to
have Lavelle quietly relieved of his duties. But as rumors of the incident spread, they
prompted several well-publicized, albeit inconclusive, congressional investigations.
75
Meanwhile, across Vietnam, the threat of stepped-up combat continued to
mount. The showdown came around Easter, on March 30, 1972, when the North
Vietnamese launched a coordinated attack against the South, which they initiated
with a full-scale conventional invasion across the DMZ, using tanks and self-pro-
pelled artillery. Allied intelligence had known for months that the North Vietnam-
ese were preparing a large-scale operation but could not pinpoint either the date
or place. Throughout the ensuing crisis, Nixon and Kissinger frequently ignored
established lines of communication with the Pentagon and in the interest of expe-
diency dealt directly with Admiral Moorer and the Joint Sta, whose views were
more in harmony with those of the White House than Laird’s. Seeing the invasion
as a challenge to the credibility of his whole foreign policy, President Nixon be-
lieved that only a vigorous military response would convince Hanoi and its allies in
Moscow and Beijing that he meant business. With battleeld success his uppermost
concern, Nixon saw no choice but to remove all restrictions on the use of airpower,
something he had been loath to do earlier. In view of the North’s blatant aggression,
American public and congressional opinion largely acquiesced. Moorer agreed that
Hanoi’s leaders respected nothing more than the unstinting application of military
force, and to that end he helped arrange a swift buildup of airpower. Among the
forces added for action were 189 F–4 ghter-bombers, 210 B–52s (half of SAC’s
bomber force), and four carrier task forces, bringing to six the number of carriers
on station, the largest concentration of naval airpower yet seen in the war.
76
With the increased availability of airpower came friction between Washington
and the command in Saigon over how and where to apply it. Nixon, Kissinger, and
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ViETnaM: rETrEaT anD WiTHDraWal
Moorer envisioned a fairly broad-brush campaign aimed not simply at curbing the
current aggression, but at carrying out punitive raids against the north to break the en-
emy’s morale and force the North Vietnamese back into serious negotiations. Abrams,
supported by Laird, wanted the additional airpower available for operations in the
South, on the assumption that that was where the war would be won or lost. After the
LAM SON 719 debacle, however, Moorer grew increasingly frustrated with Abrams. At
one point during the early days of the enemy’s Easter oensive, with Kissinger present,
Moorer related the substance of a rambling telephone call they had just had in which
the COMUSMACV complained that he was “sick and tired” of civilians in Washing-
ton telling him what to do and would resign if he did not have his way. Eventually,
Abrams calmed down. But the damage was done. Thenceforth, Moorer often bypassed
the COMUSMACV and dealt with Abrams’ subordinate and Lavelle’s successor as
Commander of Seventh Air Force, General John W. Vogt, USAF, who until recently
had been Director of the Joint Sta. By transferring Vogt to Saigon, the Chairman had
a trusted ally on the scene whose appraisals and advice he valued more than Abrams’.
77
Like Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon took a strong personal interest in the
air campaign and participated actively in planning and overseeing its execution. Yet
there was none of the soul-searching or hemming and hawing that had gone on
during the Johnson years. In deference to Abrams’ expressed concerns, Nixon gave
rst priority to supporting the South Vietnamese and blunting the NVA invasion.
According to Vogt, the intensity of these air strikes on the invaders resembled the
eects of a “meat-grinder.”
78
Operations against the North, code-named Linebacker,
harkened to the “hard knock” bombing strategy advocated by the Joint Chiefs in the
mid-1960s, and stressed repeat attacks on bridges, rail lines, fuel supplies, cement and
power plants, airelds, and other high-prole military, industrial, and transportation
targets. In giving his approval to launch Linebacker, Nixon admonished Moorer to
mount an all-out eort and to avoid wasting bombs on “secondary targets.”
79
Going
further, he wanted to restrict North Vietnam’s resupply from external sources, and
on May 8, 1972, he announced the unprecedented step of mining Haiphong harbor,
something the Joint Chiefs had urged since the early stages of the war.
80
For a variety of reasons, Linebacker achieved results that were never feasible
under the Rolling Thunder campaign of 1965–1968. By shifting from guerrilla tactics
to conventional warfare and by incorporating tanks and other mechanized equip-
ment into their battle plan, the North Vietnamese became dependent, like other
modern armies, on long, readily identiable supply lines that made ripe targets for
air attack. Interdiction under the Linebacker campaign thus became more successful
than during Rolling Thunder. A further dierence between the two campaigns was
the increased availability by 1972 of precision-guided munitions (PGMs or “smart
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bombs”), which allowed more accurate attacks against targets previously o limits
in congested urban areas. While guided munitions had been around since the late
stages of World War II, they had been dicult to use and not very eective. Im-
proved models made their rst appearance in Southeast Asia toward the conclusion
of Rolling Thunder in 1968. Thereafter, technical problems limited their use to lightly
defended targets in Laos and South Vietnam. But by 1972, more sophisticated elec-
tronics employing laser guidance systems opened the way for PGM raids against
xed targets in the heavily built-up Hanoi-Haiphong area.
81
By early June, the North Vietnamese oensive was beginning to lose steam
and there were indications from Hanoi of a renewed willingness to negotiate. In the
United States, Nixon’s decision to resume bombing had provoked predictable reac-
tions from antiwar groups and liberals in Congress. But compared with the Cam-
bodian invasion and earlier episodes, the protests and demonstrations were relatively
mild, a sign that troop withdrawals and ending the draft were having the desired
eect of diusing the war as a political issue. Nixon’s popularity at home was in fact
at an all-time high, pointing toward an easy reelection in November. With his posi-
tion thus fairly secure at home, Nixon kept up the bombing pressure on the North
and did not call a halt until late October, when he was satised that the negotiations
were on course toward an agreement.
the ChrIStmaS BomBIng CamPaIgn
While Nixon had used airpower to thwart an NVA military victory in the spring of
1972, he also hoped that it would pay diplomatic dividends by coercing the North
Vietnamese back to the negotiating table and into a peace settlement. Once the
bombing stopped in late October, however, unexpected problems arose in convinc-
ing not only leaders in Hanoi but also the regime in Saigon, headed by President
Nguyen Van Thieu, to accept a ceasere. One of Thieu’s main objections to the deal,
which Kissinger negotiated, was that it would leave huge numbers of Communist
troops in place in South Vietnam. As many as 160,000 NVA regulars remained in
the South and another 100,000 were in Laos and Cambodia.
82
Despite months of
heavy air attacks, neither Kissinger nor the Joint Chiefs saw any way of dislodging
them without the large-scale reintroduction of U.S. ground forces.
Frustrated by this turn of events, Nixon again resorted to bombing to put pres-
sure on Hanoi to abide by the accords and to demonstrate to the Thieu government
that the United States would stand behind it once the peace settlement took eect.
A secret letter from Nixon to Thieu, pledging that the United States would “re-
act strongly” if South Vietnam were threatened again sealed the bargain.
83
However,
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Nixon informed no one of his promise, not even the Joint Chiefs. Yet even if he had, it
probably would have made little dierence. Congress, with antiwar liberals in the van-
guard, felt bound by no such guarantees, and when the Communists resumed their of-
fensive in 1975, it fell back on earlier legislation blocking U.S. forces from intervening.
The resumption of bombing in December 1972 thus helped to facilitate the
signing of a peace agreement which, in the long run, was largely inconsequential. Its
major accomplishment was to facilitate the return of U.S. prisoners of war.
84
Code-
named Linebacker II, the operation covered an 11-day period over the holidays and
became known as the Christmas bombing campaign. Militarily, the main dierence
between Linebacker II and previous bombing operations was the concerted use of B–
52s against targets in and around Hanoi and Haiphong. Ever since the secret bomb-
ing of Cambodia, Nixon had had a fascination with the use of B–52s and during the
buildup for Linebacker I, increasing B–52 deployments to Guam and Thailand had
been his top priority. The big bombers appeared for the rst time over the North
Vietnamese heartland in ve raids in April 1972. Without much evidence, Nixon
boasted to his sta that these attacks had been “exceptionally eective, the best ever
in the war.”
85
In fact, the results had not been particularly impressive, and the need
for heavy ghter escort had diverted assets from other missions. Meantime, Abrams
was clamoring for more B–52 support to help thwart the Communist oensive in
the South. The net result was that, from early May on, the B–52s ceased operations
against the North and concentrated on targets below the twentieth parallel.
86
As he contemplated launching Linebacker II, Nixon resolved that B–52s would
spearhead the eort. Underlying the operation was his determination to mount a
show of force that would break enemy leaders’ will to resist. Initially, both Moorer
and Kissinger doubted whether using B–52s would produce better results than
ghter-bombers. But as it became clear that Nixon was less interested in specic
military objectives than in achieving a strong psychological impact, their reserva-
tions evaporated. Working in unison, the Joint Sta, the Strategic Air Command, the
Air Sta, and the Pacic Air Forces quickly assembled a list of 55 key targets, aiming
in each case for “mass shock eect in a psychological context.” On December 7,
Moorer met at Camp David with the President, who reviewed the target plan and
“seemed to be pleased with it.” A few days later, Moorer notied the Commander
in Chief of Strategic Air Command, General John C. Meyer, USAF, that a major
air oensive against the North was “denitely on the front burner” and that Hanoi
and Haiphong would be the primary target areas. “I want the people of Hanoi to
hear the bombs,” Moorer told him, “but minimize damage to the civilian populace.”
Moorer also consulted by secure telephone with the CINCPAC, Admiral Noel
Gayler, and conrmed the punitive purpose of the bombing.
87
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CounCil of War
Attacks commenced on December 18, 1972, and lasted, with a brief pause over
Christmas, until December 29. Though Air Force and Navy ghter-bombers also
took part, SAC’s B–52s dropped 75 percent of the total bomb tonnage during Line-
backer II. In wave after wave, night after night, they pounded targets from Hanoi and
Haiphong to the Chinese border. The most impressive display to date of American
military power, these raids came closer than anything yet to threatening the survival
of the North Vietnamese regime. Realizing what was at stake, the North Vietnamese
put up a ferocious defense and during the rst few nights they inicted unexpectedly
high losses on U.S. aircraft. The most serious losses came on the third night (Decem-
ber 20–21) when enemy surface-to-air missiles claimed six B–52s out of an attacking
force of ninety. B–52 crews were used to ying over Laos and South Vietnam and
were unaccustomed to a hostile environment, so the downing of planes during the
early stages of Linebacker II came as a shock. Morale problems ensued, and there was a
jump in the number of crewmen reporting for sick call. A change in bombing tactics
and the compression of attacks into closer intervals, allowing the North Vietnamese
defenders less time to reload their SAMs, helped overcome the problem. “It worked
out beautifully,” Moorer conded to his diary. “I don’t think anybody in the world
could have coordinated an operation as well as we did.”
88
For the Joint Chiefs of Sta, the success of Linebacker II was the high-water mark
of the war. After years of frustration and setbacks, they had nally dealt the North
Vietnamese a crippling blow. Meyer and Moorer believed that the North Vietnamese
probably had to give up because they were running low on SAMs. With another week
of raids, Meyer estimated, “we could y anywhere we want over North Vietnam with
impunity.”
89
Nixon, however, had other plans. Feeling that he had made his point, he
ordered the B–52s to stand down rather than risk the loss of more planes and crews
or possibly jeopardize his budding détente with the Soviets and his rapprochement
with the Chinese. The Joint Chiefs had long contended that an unrestricted air cam-
paign would be decisive in Vietnam, and in December 1972 their advice appeared
vindicated.
the BalanCe Sheet
The ceasere signed in January 1973 lasted barely 2 years. During this interval,
the Joint Chiefs completed the withdrawal of the few U.S. troops still in Vietnam
and progressively redeployed their other forces from the region. For a while, the
United States continued to bomb NVA and Communist base camps in Cambodia,
but in August 1973 Congress called a halt. Congressional pressure likewise led to
the cessation of air reconnaissance ights over Laos a year later. Moorer suspected
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ViETnaM: rETrEaT anD WiTHDraWal
that the Communists would use the ceasere to regroup and rearm, and they did.
Launching a major oensive in April 1975, they quickly overwhelmed South Viet-
namese defenders, who were practically helpless without American airpower. While
Vietnamization had shielded the withdrawal of American ground troops, it had not
done much to strengthen South Vietnam’s security or to assure its continued inde-
pendence. The Joint Chiefs had no plans to rush U.S. forces back into Southeast Asia
or to intervene on the SVN government’s behalf. Yet even if such plans had existed,
political pressures at home doubtless would have blocked their implementation.
Despite the war’s outcome, the Joint Chiefs never felt that the United States had
erred by going into Vietnam. What they saw instead was a misguided eort, pursuing
awed goals and blunders in the way the war was planned, organized, and fought. Some
of these blunders, they admitted, were of their own making; others were not. In World
War II and initially in Korea, the attainment of military objectives had taken priority.
But in Vietnam the Joint Chiefs had found themselves from the outset prosecuting a
limited war heavy in diplomatic and political overtones. The initial objective was to
apply military power to achieve a stalemate, an outcome which from the chiefs’ point
of view squandered their resources and ran counter to the American military ethos.
Against an enemy bent on victory at any cost, such war aims were utterly unrealistic as
well. Set within these parameters, the American eort in Vietnam was doomed to fail.
After the Vietnam War, the Joint Chiefs’ role fell under close scrutiny. Calls for
reform proliferated and were eventually instrumental in passage of the Goldwater-
Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, an attempt by Congress
to improve future JCS eectiveness through institutional reorganization (see chapter
15). The most trenchant critique of the chiefs’ performance in Vietnam was by an
Army major (later brigadier general), H.R. McMaster. In his thoroughly researched
and well-written book, Dereliction of Duty, published in 1997, McMaster took the
chiefs to task for not being more forthright in oering advice to the Secretary of
Defense and the President. More than a generation removed from Vietnam, McMaster
found it hard to understand how the Joint Chiefs could disagree so strenuously with
the Johnson administration’s “graduated response” strategy, yet remain so compliant
as their superiors blatantly ignored their advice. Relegated to what he describes as a
“peripheral position in the policy-making process,” the chiefs became, in McMaster’s
words, the “ve silent men.”
90
What McMaster overlooks is that by the mid-1960s, when American interven-
tion in Vietnam took place, the Joint Chiefs of Sta had passed their prime. Though
they remained, as the National Security Act decreed, the President’s top military
advisors, their stature and institutional inuence had diminished considerably since
the 1940s when they came into being as a corporate body. During World War II,
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CounCil of War
they met regularly with the President and accompanied him to meetings around
the world. They knew every allied leader personally and were key gures at the
high-level wartime conferences at which strategy and postwar planning took place.
In terms of authoritative advice and inuence, they had no rivals.
By the 1960s, the situation had changed. For one thing, the wartime grandees were
long gone, succeeded by men who had been junior ocers in World War II. Those who
made up the Joint Chiefs of Sta during the Vietnam era were highly dedicated and
decorated military ocers. No one seriously questioned their professional credentials
or competence. But they operated on a dierent plane from those who had served on
the Joint Chiefs in World War II, the leaders who had shaped the allied victory over the
Axis. McMaster’s complaint that the JCS should have been more outspoken on Viet-
nam overrates their stature and inuence. Had they been Marshall, King, and Arnold or
their immediate successors, their advice would have been hard if not impossible for the
President, Congress, and the American public to ignore. But the men who served on
the JCS by the 1960s lacked the gravitas of their predecessors. Little wonder, then, that
Army Chief of Sta Harold Johnson dismissed the suggestion that he and his colleagues
ought to have resigned in protest as a hollow and pointless gesture.
91
Moreover, a new policy- and decisionmaking system had replaced the one in
eect when the JCS came into existence, resulting in a proliferation of overlapping
agencies and organizations, some in direct competition with the Joint Chiefs. By the
mid-1960s, the chiefs’ most formidable competitor was the Oce of the Secretary of
Defense, which had grown steadily in inuence and importance since its creation in
1947. Under McNamara, it had amassed a wealth of additional authority and capabili-
ties for analyzing military strategy and for oering alternative advice to that rendered
by the JCS. Given McNamara’s forceful personality and the precarious relationship
between the JCS and the White House under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, it was
hardly surprising that the chiefs’ credibility and inuence were on the wane.
Unable to bring their views to bear directly, the Joint Chiefs adopted an in-
cremental approach to the war. They assumed that any steps toward greater military
involvement would sooner or later develop into the course they advocated. In the
process, they lent their support to a military strategy they considered fundamentally
awed and became complicit in the administration’s folly. At the same time, as the
decision to intervene in force was taking shape, inter-Service bickering over whether
to stress ground operations in the South or a concerted air and naval campaign against
the North denied them a clear voice and focus. Yet even if the Joint Chiefs had spoken
as one, their limited inuence within the wider sphere of the policy process eectively
undercut their ability to sway key decisions on the conduct of the war.
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With the advent of the Nixon administration, the strategy debate came full
circle back to the chiefs’ original premise that the most eective approach was to
mount heavy military pressure directly against North Vietnam. Owing to the on-
going reduction in U.S. ground forces and limited South Vietnamese capabilities,
however, recourse to a combination of air and sea power became the only viable
option. Fearing Chinese intervention or a nuclear confrontation with the Soviets,
President Johnson had consistently scorned the chiefs’ advice in that regard. But by
Nixon’s time, the emergence of détente and the opening with China allowed the
President a degree of leverage and exibility that had not previously existed. Given
the decisive results achieved by the Linebacker operations, coupled with the mining
of Haiphong, one is tempted to speculate that a bolder strategy earlier might well
have avoided a long, drawn-out war. Yet without the diplomatic groundwork pains-
takingly laid by Nixon and Kissinger, the more aggressive strategy advocated by the
JCS in 1964–1965 could just as well have backred.
As disappointing to the Joint Chiefs as the outcome in Vietnam may have
been, it was not the serious setback to American global interests that many had
feared a Communist victory might be when the United States went into Viet-
nam. All the same, the nature and pervasive impact of the war had a devastating
eect. Not only did the war shatter the national consensus that had supported
and sustained faith in the containment concept for nearly two decades; it also
left American conventional forces in a state of near-disarray, weaker and less sure
of themselves than at any time since the 1930s. Especially hard-hit was the Army,
which emerged from the conict a shambles. Recovering from the trauma of
Vietnam became the Joint Chiefs’ rst order of business, and for the next decade
and a half, through the end of the Cold War, it would overshadow practically all
other aspects of their deliberations.
Notes
1 “President’s Address to the Nation Announcing Steps to Limit the War in Vietnam,”
March 31, 1968, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson,
1968–69 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1970), Pt. I, 469–476; Lyndon Baines Johnson, The
Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963–1969 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1971), 365.
2 Johnson, The Vantage Point, chap. 9.
3 Merle Pribbenow, trans., Victory in Vietnam: The Ocial History of the People’s Army of
Vietnam, 1954–1975 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 153–205 and passim.
4 Stanley Robert Larsen and James Lawton Collins, Jr., Allied Participation in Vietnam
(Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2005), 120–159.
330
CounCil of War
5 Lawrence S. Kaplan, “McNamara, Vietnam, and the Defense of Europe,” in Vojtech
Mastny, Sven G. Holtsmark, and Andreas Wenger, eds., War Plans and Alliances in the Cold
War: Threat Perceptions in the East and West (London: Routledge, 2006), 286–300.
6 George L. MacGarrigle, Taking the Oensive: October 1966 to October 1967 (Washington,
DC: Center of Military History, 1998), 25.
7 Jacob Van Staaveren, Gradual Failure: The Air War Over North Vietnam, 1965–1966 (Wash-
ington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 2002), 279–297.
8 Wayne Thompson, To Hanoi and Back: The United States Air Force and North Vietnam,
1966–1973 (Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 2000), 41–43.
9 Graham A. Cosmas, The Joint Chiefs of Sta and The War in Vietnam, 1960–1968 (Washing-
ton, DC: Oce of Joint History, 2009), Part 3, 43–45; MacGarrigle, 216–217.
10 JCSM-218-67 to SECDEF, April 20, 1967, “Force Requirements—Southeast Asia FY
1968,” JCS 2339/255-3; Cosmas, JCS and the War in Vietnam, 1960–68, Pt. 3, 48–50.
11 Robert S. McNamara with Brian VanDeMark, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of
Vietnam (New York: Times Books, 1995), 264–265.
12 See Draft Memo, SECDEF to President, May 19, 1967, “Future Actions in Vietnam,”
FRUS 1964–68, V, 423–438.
13 Notes on Discussions with President Johnson, April 27, 1967, FRUS 1964–68, V, 35 0 .
14 CJCS Statement, February 7, 1967, attached to Letter, JCSJ to SecState, February 8,
1967, JMF 9155 (February 18, 1965), NARA.
15 JCSM-288-67 to SECDEF, May 20, 1967, “Worldwide US Military Posture,” JCS
2101/538-5.
16 Draft Memo, SECDEF to President, June 12, 1967, “Alternative Military Actions Against
North Vietnam,” FRUS 1964–68, V, 475–481; McNamara, In Retrospect, 265–271.
17 William W. Momyer, Airpower in Three Wars (Washington, DC: Department of the Air
Force, 1978), 25–26.
18 Cosmas, JCS and the War in Vietnam, 1960–68, Pt. III, 62–67; Cosmas, MACV: Years of
Escalation, 1962–67, 419; Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Airpower: The American Bombing of
North Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 1989), 106–108.
19 McNamara testimony, August 25, 1967, in U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed
Services, Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee, Hearings: Air War Against North Viet-
nam, 90:1, Pt. 4, 281 (quote) and passim.
20 “President’s News Conference,” September 1, 1967, Public Papers of the Presidents of the
United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1967 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1968), Pt. I, 817.
21 Graham A. Cosmas, MACV: The Joint Command in the Years of Withdrawal, 1968–1973
(Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2007), 59.
22 CM-2922-68, January 19, 1968, quoted in Jacob Van Staaveren, “The Air Force in
Southeast Asia: Toward a Bombing Halt, 1968” (MS, Oce of Air Force History, Sep-
tember 1970), 8 (declassied).
23 Cosmas, JCS and the War in Vietnam, 1960–68, Pt. III, 142–143; Cosmas, MACV: Years of With-
drawal, 41; CM-2944-68 to SECDEF, February 3, 1968, “Khe Sanh,” FRUS 1964–68, VI, 120.
24 Deborah Shapley, Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1993), 432.
331
ViETnaM: rETrEaT anD WiTHDraWal
25 Walter S. Poole et al., “Chairmen and Crises: The Vietnam War” (MS, Joint History Of-
ce, Joint Chiefs of Sta, n.d.), 129–136 (declassied/publication forthcoming) gives an
excellent overview of JCS thinking during the immediate post-Tet period.
26 Interview by Dorothy P. McSweeny with Gen Earle G. Wheeler, May 7, 1970, 21–22,
Oral History Collection, Johnson Library.
27 “President’s News Conference,” March 22, 1967, Johnson Public Papers, 1968, 430.
28 Interview with Lt. Gen. John B. McPherson, USAF (Ret.), April 3, 1990, JHO Collec-
tion. See also Cosmas, MACV: Years of Withdrawal, 94.
29 Cosmas, JCS and the War in Vietnam, 1960–68, Pt. III, 149–160; Cosmas, MACV: Years of
Withdrawal, 88–97; Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 351 (quote); “Report of CJCS on
Situation in Vietnam and MACV Force Requirements,” February 27, 1968, JCS 2472/237.
30 Clark Cliord, with Richard Holbrooke, Counsel to the President: A Memoir (New York:
Random House, 1991), 492–526; Johnson, Vantage Point, 365–424.
31 Quoted in Van Staaveren, “Toward a Bombing Halt,” 39.
32 Momyer, 26–27.
33 “Notes on the President’s Meeting,” October 29, 1968, FRUS, 1964–68, VII, 399–401;
Cosmas, JCS and the War in Vietnam, 1960–68, Pt. III, 230–231.
34 Cosmas, MACV: Years of Withdrawal, 244–245.
35 “Address to the Nation on Vietnam,” May 14, 1969, Nixon Public Papers, 1969, 369–375. See
also Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 159–160.
36 Entry, January 17, 1972, in H.R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White
House (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994), 397.
37 Poole et al., “Chairmen and Crises,” 224.
38 Palmer, 25-Year War, 92.
39 Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., On Watch: A Memoir (New York: Quadrangle, 1976), 69–70.
40 Peter W. Rodman, Presidential Command (New York: Knopf, 2009), 69.
41 Department of State Bulletin 60, no. 1548 (February 24, 1969), 163. See also David J. Roth-
kopf, Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects
of American Power (New York: Public Aairs, 2004), 114–115.
42 Zumwalt, 317–318.
43 During Nixon’s rst year as President, the NSC met 37 times, 21 times in 1970 and only
10 times during the rst 9 months of 1971. See John P. Leacacos, “Kissinger’s Apparat,”
Foreign Policy 5 (Winter 1971–1972), 5.
44 Helmut Sonnenfeldt, “Reconstructing the Nixon Foreign Policy,” in The Nixon Presi-
dency, ed. Kenneth W. Thompson (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987), 319.
45 NSDM 1, January 20, 1969, “Establishment of NSC Decision and Study Memoranda
Series,” FRUS 1969–76, II, 29–30.
46 NSDM 2, January 20, 1969, “Reorganization of the NSC System,” FRUS 1969–76, II,
30–33. See also Chester A. Crocker, “The Nixon–Kissinger National Security Council
System, 1969–1972: A Study in Foreign Policy Management,” in Report of the Commis-
sion on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy: Appendices
(Washington, D.C.: GPO, June 1975), vol. 6, 79–99.
332
CounCil of War
47 Zumwalt, 369–376; Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979),
722–723; Mark Perry, Four Stars (Boston: Houghton, Miin, 1989), 234–235.
48 Kissinger, White House Years, 226.
49 Richard M. Nixon, No More Vietnams (New York: Arbor House, 1985), 101–107.
50 Alexander M. Haig, Jr., with Charles McCarry, Inner Circles: How America Changed the
World: A Memoir (New York: Time Warner, 1992), 224.
51 Willard J. Webb, History of the Joint Chiefs of Sta: The Joint Chiefs of Sta and the War in
Vietnam, 1969–1970 (Washington, DC: Oce of Joint History, 2002), 283.
52 Memo, Lake and Morris to Robinson, September 29, 1969, “Draft Memorandum to
the President on Contingency Study”; Memo, Kissinger to Nixon, October 2, 1969,
“Contingency Military Operation Against North Vietnam”; “Conceptual Plan of Mili-
tary Operations,” undated, all declassied in box 89, NSC Files: Subject Files, Nixon
Presidential Materials, NARA; and <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/
NSAEBB195/index.htm#1>. See also William Burr and Jerey Kimball, “Nixon’s Se-
cret Nuclear Alert: Vietnam War Diplomacy and the Joint Chiefs of Sta Readiness
Test, October 1969.” Cold War History 3:2 (January 2003), 113–156.
53 Cosmas, MACV: Years of Withdrawal, 283–286.
54 Webb, JCS and War in Vietnam, 1969–70, 136–137.
55 Palmer, 25-Year War, 96.
56 Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978),
382.
57 JCSM-6-69 to SECDEF, January 4, 1969, “Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces Improve-
ment and Modernization,” JCS 2472/272-28; JCSM–40–69 to SECDEF, January 21, 1969,
“Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces Improvement and Modernization,” JCS 2472/272-30.
58 Webb, JCS and War in Vietnam, 1969–70, 11–12, 64.
59 Dale Van Atta, With Honor: Melvin Laird in War, Peace, and Politics (Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 182–183; Nixon, RN, 392 (quote).
60 JCSM-522-69 to SECDEF, August 25, 1969, “Vietnamizing the War,” JCS 2472/467-4.
61 NSDM 24, September 17, 1969, “Vietnam,” FRUS 1969–76, VI, 407–408.
62 Webb, JCS and War in Vietnam, 1969–70, 75–82.
63 JCSM-149-70 to SECDEF, April 3, 1970, “Ground Strikes Against Base Areas in Cam-
bodia,” excerpted in “JCS Recommendations and SECDEF Actions with Respect to
Cambodia, 1 January 1969–15 February 1975” (MS, Historical Division, Joint Secre-
tariat, JCS, February 26, 1975), 14.
64 Kissinger, White House Years, 483–505; Nixon, RN, 446–451.
65 Willard J. Webb and Walter S. Poole, The Joint Chiefs of Sta and The War in Vietnam,
1971–1973 (Washington, DC: Oce of Joint History, 2007), 2.
66 Ibid., 2–3; Cosmas, MACV: Years of Withdrawal, 320–327.
67 Kissinger, White House Years, 990–991; Jerey Kimball, The Vietnam War Files: Uncovering the
Secret History of Nixon-Era Strategy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 133–134.
68 Cosmas, MACV: Years of Withdrawal, 326–335; Webb and Poole, JCS and the War in Viet-
nam, 1971–73, 3–4.
333
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69 Webb and Poole, JCS and the War in Vietnam, 1971–73, 2; Kissinger, White House Years,
995–996.
70 Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 271–273; Webb and Poole, JCS and War in Vietnam,
1971–73, 2–9.
71 Cosmas, MACV: Years of Withdrawal, 329–335; Webb and Poole, JCS and War in Vietnam,
1971–73, 12–16; Nixon, RN, 498–499.
72 Van Atta, 351–353.
73 Webb and Poole, JCS and War in Vietnam, 1971–73, 109–117.
74 Memo for the Record by Col Robert M. Lucy, USMC, Asst to CJCS, 21 Sep 72,
“Responses for the Record by General Lavelle to Questions from Senator Smith,” C,
Material on Replacement of Gen Lavelle 1972 folder, JHO 18-0020.
75 Thompson, To Hanoi and Back, 199–210; Webb and Poole, JCS and War in Vietnam,
1971–73, 126–128.
76 Clodfelter, Limits of Airpower, 152–153.
77 Webb and Poole, JCS and War in Vietnam, 1971–73, 156. On Nixon’s lack of condence
in Abrams, see Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries, 436–437.
78 Entry, May 4, 1972, Moorer Diary, cited in Webb and Poole, JCS and War in Vietnam,
1971–73, 163.
79 Webb and Poole, JCS and War in Vietnam, 1971–73, 162.
80 “Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia,” May 8, 1972, Nixon Public
Papers, 1972, 585.
81 Wayne Thompson, To Hanoi and Back: The United States Air Force and North Vietnam,
1966–1973 (Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 2000), 230–231.
Only Air Force F–4s had the necessary modications to carry PGMs.
82 Palmer, 25-Year War, 131.
83 Letter, Nixon to Thieu, January 16, 1973, quoted in Nixon, RN, 749–750.
84 See Vernon E. Davis, The Long Road Home: U.S. Prisoner of War Policy and Planning in
Southeast Asia (Washington, DC: Historical Oce, Oce of the Secretary of Defense,
2000), 453–490.
85 Entry, April 16, 1972, Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries, 441.
86 Thompson, To Hanoi and Back, 224–227.
87 Clodfelter, Limits of Airpower, 184; Webb and Poole, JCS and War in Vietnam, 1971–73,
291–294.
88 Moorer quoted in Webb and Poole, JCS and War in Vietnam, 1971–73, 298; Clodfelter,
Limits of Airpower,192–193, discusses morale problems; Thompson, To Hanoi and Back,
264–265 summarizes strategy and changes in tactics.
89 Quoted in Webb and Poole, JCS and War in Vietnam, 1971–73, 298.
90 H.R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of
Sta, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam (New York: HarperPerennial, 1997), 300–329.
91 Lewis Sorley, Honorable Warrior: General Harold K. Johnson and the Ethics of Command
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 223–224.
Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, USN, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Sta, 1970–1974
Chapter 11
Détente
As the war in Southeast Asia wound down, the Joint Chiefs of Sta began a slow
and sometimes uncomfortable reassessment of their military plans and policies.
Similar reassessments had followed previous wars and invariably had given rise to
passionate inter-Service rivalries and intense competition for resources. Some of
these elements, to be sure, were present in the aftermath of Vietnam. But compared
to the build-downs that followed World War II and Korea, the transition following
Vietnam was relatively smooth and easy. Indeed, the most serious problems that
arose were in developing military policies and a force posture compatible with a
rapidly changing international environment dominated by the prospect of a new era
in Soviet-American relations known as “détente.”
An evolving process, détente was the outgrowth of a series of Soviet-American
initiatives, some dating from the 1950s, to establish what political scientist Stanley
Homann termed “a stable structure of peace.”
1
Coming to fruition in the early
1970s, détente lasted roughly from the signing of the SALT I accords in 1972 until
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Historians generally agree that, while
the two sides shared certain common interests, they approached them from dif-
ferent perspectives and expected dierent outcomes. Hence the friction and dis-
agreements that sometimes accompanied détente and ultimately brought its demise.
For President Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry A. Kissinger, détente
was integral to the post-Vietnam restructuring of American foreign relations and
related defense policies. Persuaded that the two previous administrations had con-
centrated too much on the Third World, Nixon and Kissinger set about redening
the country’s vital interests. Shifting the focus from Asia to Europe, they wanted
to strengthen relationships with traditional allies and revitalize NATO, which had
gone into decline during the American preoccupation with Vietnam. At the same
time, acknowledging that the United States could never regain the strategic supe-
riority it had enjoyed into the early 1960s, they accepted parity in strategic nuclear
power with the Soviet Union as a fact of life and sought agreements with Moscow
that would curtail growth in both sides’ strategic arsenals. Overall, they envisioned a
new “era of negotiations” that would ease East-West tensions, facilitate the resolu-
tion of long-standing Cold War issues (e.g., Vietnam and Berlin), break new ground
335
336
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in arms control, and improve avenues of communication with the two Communist
behemoths, the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. As for obtaining
lasting results, Nixon was cautiously optimistic. “All we can hope from détente,” he
later wrote, “is that it will minimize confrontation in marginal areas and provide, at
least, alternative possibilities in major ones.”
2
In assessing the military requirements of détente, the Joint Chiefs found them-
selves under more pressure than usual to exercise restraint and to hold down requests
for new programs, despite a continuing buildup in Soviet military forces. Looking
beyond Vietnam, the JCS contemplated a list of requirements that included not only
the replacement of weapons and equipment worn out or lost in the war, but also
the modernization of the force structure to stay current with emerging technologies
and recent increases and improvements in Soviet capabilities. Strategic retaliatory
forces, they believed, were in especially urgent need of attention. Yet with détente
the watchword, a buildup on the scale and scope the JCS believed necessary became
increasingly unlikely. The Services might receive some of the modernization and im-
provements they wanted, and the Armed Forces would continue to be an important
instrument in American foreign policy. But after Vietnam, the emphasis for nearly a
decade would be increasingly on nonmilitary solutions to Cold War problems.
SALT I
The linchpin in the Nixon-Kissinger strategy of détente was the arms control pro-
cess, organized around the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). Conceived un-
der the Johnson administration, SALT was supposed to have started in the fall of
1968 but was called o at the last minute by the United States to protest the Soviet-
led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia that snued out the reformist govern-
ment of Alexander Dubc˘ek. Revived under Nixon, SALT nally got underway in
November 1969. Once a distant adjunct of defense policy, arms control by the late
1960s was becoming a critical element in shaping the size and capabilities of the
country’s strategic arsenal. After years of heavy military spending and bloodshed
in Vietnam, SALT seemed a welcome respite and soon acquired a high degree of
popular and congressional support. For many it also became a fairly accurate barom-
eter of U.S.-Soviet relations in general. Indeed, by the time SALT I was underway,
the idea had taken hold, both in the executive branch and in Congress, that progress
in controlling nuclear weapons would give impetus to progress in resolving other
thorny Cold War issues as well.
The Joint Chiefs of Sta welcomed progress in arms control that led to im-
proved U.S.-Soviet relations, but not if it meant crippling the country’s strategic
D E
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337
deterrent or postponing its modernization. Still chang from the constraints im-
posed by McNamara, the JCS felt increasingly hard-pressed to maintain credible
strategic nuclear deterrence in the face of a Soviet missile buildup of unprecedented
proportions. By 1969, while still inferior in the overall number of intercontinental
delivery vehicles, the Soviets had surpassed the United States in operational ICBM
launchers.
3
To cope with this threat, even if arms control talks proved productive,
the Joint Chiefs wanted a new manned strategic bomber (the B–1) and a new eet
of ballistic missile submarines (the Trident class) and were awaiting the outcome of
further developmental studies by the Air Force concerning an advanced ICBM.
4
As for the specics of an arms control accord, the Joint Chiefs insisted that,
above all, it should be fully veriable, a view shared by key members of Congress
who would be passing judgment on whatever agreements the administration might
reach with the Soviets.
5
For years, the Joint Chiefs had argued that on-site inspec-
tions were the only ironclad way of determining whether the Soviets were in com-
pliance. But in March 1967, they amended their position and agreed to accept the
results of unilateral verication derived from space-based satellites, known in arms
control parlance as “national technical means.” Under these rules, it would be up to
each side to determine whether the other was in compliance. This requirement vir-
tually assured that any agreement reached between the United States and the Soviet
Union would deal, in the rst instance, with numerical limitations on launchers and
only secondarily with payload, deployment mode, and performance characteristics.
6
The preparatory round of SALT I opened in Helsinki on November 17, 1969,
and lasted about 4 weeks. For the next 2½ years, negotiations alternated between
Helsinki and Vienna, averaging a round of talks every 3 months.
7
A major dierence
between these negotiations and earlier arms control eorts like the negotiation of
the Test Ban Treaty under the Kennedy administration, was the presence through-
out SALT of JCS representation on the U.S. delegation owing to the persistence of
General Earle G. Wheeler, USA, the JCS Chairman. During Senate deliberations
over the Test Ban Treaty, General Wheeler heard grumblings from Congress over the
exclusion of the JCS from the negotiations. Using these signs of discontent as his
opening wedge, he arranged for the JCS, in the summer of 1968, to be part of an ad
hoc arms control study group in the Oce of the Secretary of Defense, chaired by
Morton H. Halperin, that was starting to draft a negotiating position. To represent
the JCS, Wheeler brought in Major General (later Lieutenant General) Royal B. Al-
lison, USAF, who had headed strategic planning at CINCPAC. Authorized a small
sta, Allison acquired the title of Assistant to the Chairman for Strategic Arms Nego-
tiations (ACSAN), but reported to the Joint Chiefs collectively through the Direc-
tor, Joint Sta. According to John Newhouse’s generally reliable behind-the-scenes
338
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account of SALT I, Cold Dawn, Wheeler bypassed the Joint Sta in selecting Allison
because he lacked condence in the arms control component in J-5 to provide
reliable advice. When the Nixon administration took oce, Allison continued to
represent the Joint Chiefs in the interagency arena and became their member on
the U.S. delegation to SALT I.
8
SALT’s ostensible goal, from the American standpoint, was to put a cap on the
further buildup of strategic arms. U.S. intelligence estimates routinely conrmed
that the Soviets were continuing to add to their arsenal of ICBMs, but shed little
light on the intentions behind the buildup. As a rule, the CIA and the State Depart-
ment downplayed the danger of a fundamental shift in the strategic balance, whereas
the Joint Chiefs, OSD, and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) refused to rule
out such a possibility. Speaking publicly, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird declared
that the Soviets were seeking nothing less than a disarming “rst-strike” strategic
capability.
9
President Nixon, however, refused to be quite so specic. According to
Kissinger, Nixon disdained the technicalities of arms control (the details bored him)
and regarded SALT mainly as a vehicle for improving relations with Moscow.
10
Going into the talks, the President approved a highly generalized set of instruc-
tions that glossed over disagreements among his advisors on Soviet intentions. For
negotiating purposes, the President left the door open to a wide range of limitations
as long as they were veriable and did not hinder eorts by the United States to
preserve “strategic suciency,” a rather vague concept that the White House de-
ned as rough parity in strategic nuclear power with the Soviet Union.
11
Adopting
a wait-and-see attitude, the Joint Chiefs declined to recommend their own specic
proposals, arguing that as advisors to the President and the Secretary of Defense, it
was not their place.
12
The Soviets, on the other hand, had a fairly rm SALT agenda that included
protecting the gains they had made in oensive strategic missiles in the 1960s and
curbing U.S. progress in ballistic missile defense (BMD). At the outset of the talks,
the Soviets also sought a broad denition of strategic systems that embraced any
nuclear weapon capable of hitting the other side’s homeland. This denition would
have encompassed all American aircraft carriers and nearly every theater system
in Europe and Asia, but not similar forward-based systems deployed by the Soviet
Union. Not surprisingly, the American side found it unacceptable.
13
Eventually, the
talks concentrated on only two sets of oensive systems—ICBMs and submarine-
launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs).
In addition to the formal talks held in Helsinki and Vienna, Kissinger and So-
viet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin engaged in substantive “backchannel” negotia-
tions in Washington. Carefully concealed from practically everyone, including the
339
D E
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TEnTE
Joint Chiefs, these backchannel talks gave Nixon and Kissinger a direct link to the
Kremlin and quickly became the true forum of the SALT I negotiations. Out of
these exchanges, it soon became clear that the best result SALT I could hope to pro-
duce on oensive strategic arms was a temporary moratorium or “freeze” on “new
starts.”
14
On May 20, 1971, Washington and Moscow jointly issued a brief statement
dampening the immediate prospects for a permanent oensive arms accord and
instructing negotiators to devote their energies for the next year to a treaty limiting
antiballistic missiles (ABMs).
15
This “breakthrough,” as the White House character-
ized it, completely surprised the Joint Chiefs and left them somewhat confused.
Indeed, Admiral Moorer, the JCS Chairman, initially misunderstood the deal and
thought it continued to link an agreement on oensive weapons with an agreement
on defensive ones.
16
Broadly worded and open to several interpretations, the freeze
imposed loose restrictions and left both sides more or less free to complete addi-
tions and improvements to their arsenals where construction was already underway.
In the absence of progress on controlling oensive weapons, missile defense
became the only area of U.S.-Soviet competition to be subjected to permanent
constraints as a result of SALT I. While both sides had ABM programs, the consensus
within the American intelligence and scientic communities was that the United
States had a denite advantage owing to its work on phased-array radars. Even so,
the systems under consideration were exceedingly expensive and far from foolproof.
Citing high costs and continuing technical diculties, the Johnson administration
had rejected JCS arguments in favor of a nationwide system and had endorsed
only a “point defense” ABM, known as Sentinel, to protect Minuteman missile
elds. But it had left the decision on actual deployment up to the next administra-
tion.
17
Though ambivalent about the military value of BMD, Nixon recognized its
potential as a bargaining chip with the Soviets and in March 1969 announced that
the United States would proceed with deployment of a limited ABM system, now
called Safeguard. Nixon’s decision kept the program alive, but it also touched o a
sharp debate in Congress that came down to a narrow Senate victory for the ad-
ministration’s authorization bill in August 1969.
18
Like the agreement to “freeze” oensive forces, negotiations on the ABM is-
sue took place to a considerable extent outside the ocial SALT framework. The
accord nally reached was largely the product of an informal exchange of views
between Paul H. Nitze, the OSD representative to SALT, and his Soviet counter-
part, Aleksandr Shchukin, an expert in radio wave electronics. A Deputy Secretary
of Defense in the Johnson administration and most well known as the “author” of
NSC 68, Nitze had been in the forefront of the lobbying eort as a private citizen
to preserve ABM during the congressional debate in the summer of 1969. Now,
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as a member of the SALT delegation, he took a leading role in negotiating ABM
away. The shift in Nitze’s thinking came from his realization, based on that expe-
rience, that for political reasons the current U.S. ABM eort faced an uncertain
future. “If the negotiations failed,” he believed, “we still were not going to have an
ABM program because the Senate wasn’t going to give it to us.” Out of his talks
with Shchukin between late 1971 and early 1972 emerged an agreement on radars
and associated technical matters that set the stage for the ABM Treaty. According
to Gerard Smith, who headed the U.S. SALT negotiating team, Nitze’s persistence
resulted in far more precise constraints on ABM radars than delegation members
expected to achieve or than agencies in Washington, including the Joint Chiefs,
would have preferred.
19
At their Moscow summit in May 1972, Nixon and Soviet General Secretary
Leonid I. Brezhnev unveiled the results of SALT I: an “interim” agreement impos-
ing a 5-year freeze on both sides’ oensive strategic missile launchers as of the date
of the agreement; a permanent treaty sharply limiting ABMs; and a set of state-
ments explaining and interpreting the agreements. For verication purposes, each
side was on its own. Disagreements would be referred to a U.S.-Soviet Standing
Consultative Commission, which would assist with implementation.
20
Reveling in
the accomplishments of SALT I, the Soviets clearly saw it as conrmation of their
superpower status on a par with the United States. That U.S. warplanes were at
the time engaged in a heavy bombardment of Moscow’s ally, North Vietnam, and
Communist positions in South Vietnam in retaliation for Hanoi’s “Easter Oensive,”
seemed outwardly of little consequence to Brezhnev and his colleagues. To them, all
that mattered was that détente had ocially arrived.
Back home, critics assailed SALT I as a limited success. In defense of the ac-
cords, the Nixon administration insisted that the interim agreement and the ABM
Treaty were mutually reinforcing and that a permanent, more restrictive oensive
arms accord would follow shortly. Even so, there were murmurings of dissatisfaction
with the deal, especially among the Joint Chiefs. As far as the JCS were concerned,
the “frozen” numbers spoke for themselves: an American arsenal of 1,054 ICBMs,
41 missile submarines, and 656 SLBM launchers, versus a Soviet force of more than
1,600 ICBMs, 43 missile submarines, and 740 SLBMs.
21
The JCS were incredulous
that between the announcement of May 20, 1971, that had supposedly suspended
the negotiation of an oensive arms treaty and the signing of the SALT I accords a
year later, Nixon and Kissinger had allowed the Soviets to add 91 ICBM launchers
to their arsenal (silos under construction at the time of the announcement) without
a word of protest. At the same time, the White House had dawdled on nailing down
an SLBM agreement, and in the end, much to the Joint Chiefs’ consternation, had
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given the Soviets virtually free rein to upgrade their eet ballistic missile submarine
force.
22
The administration’s defenders took the position that the United States still
had a two-and-a-half to one lead in long-range bombers (unaected by SALT I)
and a substantial advantage in targetable warheads through the ongoing retrotting
of many U.S. missiles with MIRVed reentry vehicles (RVs). But as the chiefs and
others were quick to point out, land-based bombers were the most vulnerable part
of the strategic triad, and the American lead in MIRVed RVs was temporary since
the Soviets were now well along on their own MIRV program.
23
Despite misgivings, the Joint Chiefs supported the SALT I accords, provided
the administration and Congress took the necessary steps to monitor Soviet com-
pliance, modernize the U.S. strategic deterrent, and support “vigorous” research and
development.
24
During a brieng for congressional leaders just prior to the signing
of the SALT I agreements, Admiral Moorer acknowledged that the Soviets “were
outstripping U.S. in every category with the exception of bombers.” To prevent
the United States from slipping farther behind, Moorer stressed the need for con-
tinuing modernization of the U.S. strategic arsenal and mentioned specically the
B–1 bomber and the Trident missile submarine. Without these improvements, he
insisted, “we could not live with this proposed agreement.”
25
While sympathetic to the chiefs’ concerns, most in Congress shared the Presi-
dent’s view that the SALT I agreements marked a major turning point in U.S.-
Soviet relations and that their political and diplomatic benets outweighed their
military drawbacks. With major restrictions on the further deployment of ABMs
and emerging parity in strategic oensive power, some theorists contended that a
new era, based on deterrence through “mutual assured destruction,” or MAD, had
arrived. The Senate approved the ABM Treaty on August 3, 1972, and the interim
agreement on September 14. Acceptance of the latter, however, carried an amend-
ment, sponsored by Democratic Senator Henry M. Jackson of Washington, stipulat-
ing that there should be equality in the number of launchers in any future treaty
on ICBMs.
26
Several years later, columnist Marquis Childs asserted that Senator Jackson had
harassed witnesses who had helped to negotiate SALT I when they appeared be-
fore the Senate Armed Services Committee. Childs said that the Chairman’s arms
control assistant, Lieutenant General Allison, had received the “heaviest Jackson re”
because he had publicly gone along with the agreement even though privately
he believed it would leave the United States vulnerable to a Soviet rst strike.
Convinced that Allison had not been completely candid with the committee, Jack-
son sent word to the JCS, Childs said, that he would “blackball” any promotion
for Lieutenant General Allison in the Air Force or his nomination to any future
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government post. The upshot was that the Joint Chiefs relieved Allison of his duties
in February 1973 and he took early retirement.
27
Tape recordings made by Nixon of Oval Oce conversations conrm that
Jackson did indeed put pressure on the White House to “purge” the American
SALT negotiating team and that Lieutenant General Allison was one of those he
singled out.
28
That the senator’s views could have had such an impact suggests not
only the inuential role he played in arms control and related issues, but also the
highly charged politics that surrounded the SALT process. In fact, within a year
of signing the SALT I accords, U.S. intelligence detected Soviet tests of four new
ICBMs, three of them—the SS–17, the SS–18, and the SS–19—with a demonstrated
MIRV capability.
29
SALT I had not provided much respite from the competition in
strategic arms. Time would tell if SALT II would do a better job.
ShorIng Up The ATLAnTIc ALLIAnce
At the same time as the Joint Chiefs were wrestling with SALT, they faced the
equally challenging problem of revitalizing the Atlantic Alliance. The war in Viet-
nam had shifted American attention from Europe to the Far East and in the process
had raised serious questions about whether the United States remained committed
to Europe’s security and welfare. Lacking the consistent American interest and lead-
ership it had known in the past, NATO had begun to drift. To be sure, MC 14/3,
the 1967 NATO strategy blueprint endorsing the “exible response” doctrine, and
the Harmel Report, approved around the same time and calling for stepped-up ne-
gotiations with the Soviets, had helped to paper over some of the emerging dier-
ences and disagreements. But for the longer term, the repairs needed to go deeper,
perhaps as far as forging a new transatlantic partnership.
On paper, the American commitment to NATO at the end of the 1960s ap-
peared nearly as sound and robust as ever—41/3 divisions, 2 armored cavalry regi-
ments, 32 air squadrons totaling 640 planes, and 25 combatant ships of the Sixth
Fleet, all at NATO’s disposal in the event of emergency. Under the “swing strategy”
adopted in the 1950s, the Joint Chiefs also earmarked certain air and naval units for
emergency transfer from the Pacic to Europe. Although Vietnam had depleted the
strategic reserve available from the United States, plans initiated under the Johnson
administration to preposition equipment in Europe promised to help surmount these
problems, save money, and over time improve NATO’s conventional capabilities. But
as the Joint Chiefs were acutely aware, these plans were still in the early stages of
implementation. Moreover, many of the units stationed in Europe were in “hollow”
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condition, stripped of experienced personnel and lacking up-to-date equipment.
Overall, U.S. troop strength was about 28 percent below what it had been toward the
beginning of the decade. Despite the increased emphasis in NATO planning on for-
ward defense and exible response, the Alliance’s true capacity to deter continued to
rest on a combination of U.S. strategic power and NATO’s tactical nuclear arsenal.
30
Even though the Nixon administration wanted to demonstrate a renewed in-
terest in European security, it had no plans for deploying additional forces or going
beyond routine modernization of those that were there. President Nixon wanted
to appear tough and strong to the Europeans and restore their condence in the
United States, but he also wanted to avoid precipitous action that might jeopardize
détente or drive up defense costs at home. Relying on diplomacy to achieve their
objectives, Nixon and Kissinger embarked on a series of initiatives in keeping with
the spirit of détente and the Harmel Report to lessen tensions by opening a broad
dialogue with the East. Among the results were a quadripartite modus vivendi on
Berlin, the normalization of relations between East and West Germany, the creation
of an East-West condence-building forum (the Conference on Security and Co-
operation in Europe, or CSCE), and the launching of talks, parallel to SALT, on mu-
tual and balanced force reductions (MBFR) in conventional capabilities between
NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Under the “Guam Doctrine,” a concept casually dis-
closed during a trip to Asia in the summer of 1969, President Nixon acknowledged
that there were limits to American power and that thenceforth, apart from its exist-
ing treaty commitments, the United States would avoid anything other than nan-
cial or military aid to the Third World. Europe, by implication, had moved back to
the top of the U.S. agenda.
31
With diplomacy in the forefront, NATO’s military problems practically slipped
from general view. Almost unnoticed was a progressive erosion of its capabilities that
left the Alliance eectively incapable of ghting as a single entity by the late 1960s.
Despite its unied command and elaborate mechanisms for consultation and col-
laboration, NATO remained a hodgepodge of armies, having made little progress
since the 1950s toward standardizing equipment or integrating communications.
Practically no one, least of all the West Germans, seriously entertained the idea of
ghting a war in Europe, conventional or otherwise. To save money, the European
allies had cut back on stockpiling to the point that the FRG had only enough artil-
lery shells for a week of ghting, rather than the 30-day combat period prescribed
in NATO planning documents. Worst of all, these deciencies appeared to be fully
known to Warsaw Pact commanders, who claimed to have ready access to such in-
formation from well-placed spies inside NATO headquarters.
32
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Meantime, NATO faced an increasingly imposing Warsaw Pact threat. While
paying lip-service to détente, the Soviets pursued a steady modernization of Warsaw
Pact forces, with the apparent purpose of enabling them to operate eectively in ei-
ther a nuclear-chemical or conventional environment. Dating from the mid-1960s,
the Warsaw Pact’s modernization plan stressed the introduction, at almost double
the normal replacement rate, of new and improved tanks, artillery, armored person-
nel carriers, and tactical ghter aircraft.
33
In the Joint Chiefs’ estimation, however,
the most dramatic and unsettling new development was the emergence of a sig-
nicant Warsaw Pact tactical nuclear capability, organized around a new generation
of more accurate and more usable short-range surface-to-surface missiles. Com-
paring nuclear capabilities, the JCS rated the Warsaw Pact’s as “militarily superior
to NATO’s.” Whereas NATO’s tactical nuclear weapons were mainly aging show
pieces for deterrence, the Warsaw Pact’s were more tailored-eect weapons for wag-
ing war. The Joint Chiefs further found that NATO’s conventional forces alone
could not survive a concerted tactical nuclear attack by the Warsaw Pact. For years,
the Joint Chiefs and other Western military planners had taken it for granted that,
despite NATO’s conventional inferiority vis-à-vis the Warsaw Pact, its superiority
in tactical nuclear weapons gave it a denite edge in a showdown. Now the tables
were turned.
34
Eorts by the Joint Chiefs to draw attention to the Warsaw Pact buildup and
to elicit support for osetting measures met with limited success. On Capitol Hill,
American involvement in Vietnam, the strategic arms race, and worries about the
mounting expense of keeping U.S. troops abroad continually overshadowed Euro-
pean security concerns. The issue of costs had been a constant refrain in congres-
sional debates since the early 1950s, when the United States rst assigned large
numbers of troops to the Alliance. By the early 1970s, with ination on the rise
and the dollar weakened by heavy expenditures on the Vietnam War, it was a cause
célèbre in some circles. Especially active in drawing attention to the problem was
Senate Majority Leader Mike Manseld of Montana, whose quasi-isolationist views
dovetailed neatly with the antiwar, antimilitary sentiments of his liberal Democratic
colleagues. Convinced that the Europeans could—and should—contribute more,
Manseld thought the United States could halve its presence “without adversely
aecting either our resolve or ability to meet our commitment under the North
Atlantic Treaty.”
35
Though the Nixon administration successfully fought o Manseld’s attacks,
it had its hands full and in the process became all the more cautious in considering
measures to bolster the Alliance.
36
According to Secretary of State William P. Rog-
ers, the United States would be doing well to keep forces at “essentially present
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levels.”
37
At the same time, disagreements within the Intelligence Community over
how to assess the Warsaw Pact buildup—whether it constituted an attempt by the
Soviets to achieve outright military superiority, as DIA, J-2, and the military in-
telligence stas believed, or whether, in the CIA’s view, such dangers were over-
blown—further complicated the administration’s eorts to develop a response.
38
In
November 1970, following a lengthy interagency debate, President Nixon nally
approved policy guidance (NSDM 95) that leaned toward the JCS on the need for
preserving a strong U.S. posture in Europe, with near-term emphasis on improving
conventional deterrence. Whether tactical nuclear capabilities should be addressed
as well was held over for further study.
39
Ostensibly a victory for the Joint Chiefs,
the triumph was short-lived when, in implementing the President’s decision, Sec-
retary of Defense Laird gave the lead to his Systems Analysis organization, which
took a more exible view of NATO requirements than did the JCS. There ensued
7 more months of bickering in the Pentagon between the Joint Sta and OSD,
culminating in yet another Presidential decision (NSDM 133) that relaxed overall
improvement goals.
40
Whether NATO could ever achieve a level of conventional capabilities on a par
with those of the Warsaw Pact remained a matter of debate and conjecture, both in
Washington and in Europe, throughout the remainder of the Nixon administration
and on into the Presidencies of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Although practically
everyone agreed that there was room for improvement, there was no consensus on
what to do or how to go about it. As a general objective, Secretary Laird suggested
the Allies aim for a 4 percent real increase in their annual military spending, a goal
the Europeans summarily rejected as beyond their means. More to their liking was
the European Defense Improvement Program (EDIP), a low-budget approach to
upgrading communications and infrastructure put forth by Britain, West Germany,
and eight other European nations in December 1970. A broader initiative, drafted
at NATO headquarters and known as AD–70, appeared at the same time. Project-
ing across-the-board improvements, AD–70 was the brainchild of General Andrew
J. Goodpaster, USA, who had become Supreme Allied Commander the year before.
A former aide to President Eisenhower and once Director of the Joint Sta, Good-
paster was a highly respected gure on both sides of the Atlantic. An inventory of
deciencies and anomalies rather than a plan of action, AD–70 elicited mixed pledges
of support from the Allies. But because it bore Goodpaster’s imprimatur, it probably
received a more favorable reception than would otherwise have been the case.
41
By 1973—the “Year of Europe” as the Nixon administration proclaimed
it—NATO realized that it faced major problems and was taking steps to upgrade
its equipment and improve interallied coordination and integration of functions.
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Slowly but surely, the EDIP and AD–70 were bearing fruit.
42
Just how far the Alli-
ance had progressed toward strengthening itself became the subject of yet another
Nixon administration internal review (NSSM 168), launched early in 1973, with the
Army and OSD (Systems Analysis) leading the eort.
43
Additional inputs came from
the new Secretary of Defense, James R. Schlesinger, who followed in McNamara’s
footsteps in believing that NATO could indeed mount a credible conventional
defense. All things considered, Schlesinger found NATO to be better prepared and
equipped to deal with a conventional threat at the outset of a war than it had been
only 3 or 4 years earlier. Because of limitations on naval forces, however, he was
less sanguine about NATO’s prospects in the event of a prolonged conict requir-
ing U.S. reinforcements who might not arrive in time to stave o an escalation of
the conict.
44
Though obviously more committed than they had been for some time, Eu-
ropean NATO leaders continued to shy away from elaborate and expensive mod-
ernization plans. As a rule, they preferred the less costly piecemeal approach that
involved improvements in selected areas such as anti-armor, aircraft shelters, and
stockpiling. Moreover, just as NATO was beginning to take a closer look at its
deciencies and do something about them, the Yom Kippur War of October 1973
erupted in the Middle East, causing the United States to divert equipment and mu-
nitions to Israel, much of it drawn from stockpiles allocated to NATO. Meanwhile,
the Watergate scandal continued to engulf Washington. Increasingly preoccupied
with its domestic diculties, the Nixon administration had signicantly less time
for NATO and saw its inuence and authority within the Alliance steadily recede.
Others, most notably the West Germans, stepped up to take America’s place, so that
by the mid-1970s the initiative in nuclear modernization and other key areas had
passed from Washington to Bonn.
NATO was making strides to improve itself, but it was still an Alliance with
serious problems. Raw numbers purporting to show enhancements to NATO ca-
pabilities covered up the underlying malaise. According to General Alexander M.
Haig, Jr., who succeeded Goodpaster as SACEUR in 1974, NATO forces faced
pervasive morale and discipline issues. “Alcoholism and drug abuse were serious
and widespread,” Haig found. “Our state of readiness was way below acceptable
standards. . . . There was little sense of organized purpose imposed from above, little
communication among subordinate commands.”
45
In assessing NATO’s prospects,
the Joint Chiefs remained condent that the Alliance would survive and even pros-
per as the bulwark of Western security. But despite the end of the Vietnam War and
the redeployment of U.S. forces, NATO seemed to be achieving limited headway
toward making a dierence and redressing the strategic balance in Europe.
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chInA: The QUASI-ALLIAnce
Nixon and Kissinger realized that NATO’s chronic diculties in raising and main-
taining forces could not be solved in isolation. Thus, instead of trying to meet
the Soviet threat to Europe head on, they sought to oset Soviet power via other
means—by attempting to curb the buildup of arms, encouraging détente, and last
but not least, exploiting the Soviet Union’s deteriorating relationship with the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China (PRC).
46
Evidence of worsening relations and ideologi-
cal conict between the two Communist giants had been accumulating for years,
steadily undermining the concept theretofore accepted in the West of a Communist
monolith.
47
By the late 1960s, there were reports of a buildup of opposing forces and
armed clashes along the Sino-Soviet border. Sensing a golden opportunity, Nixon
had indicated that forging a rapprochement between the United States and the
PRC would be part of his agenda if he was elected.
48
Once in oce, he and Kiss-
inger made a determined eort not only to mend dierences with Beijing, but also
to convince skeptics—the Joint Chiefs of Sta among them—that a rapprochement
with China would in the long run pay handsome dividends for the United States.
The resulting improvement in Sino-American relations, as Kissinger later described
it, amounted to nothing less than a “quasi-alliance.”
49
The opening gambit in the White House’s eort to bring the Joint Chiefs
around to its point of view on China was a military posture review (NSSM 3) or-
dered by President Nixon the day after taking oce.
50
Characterized by Kissinger as
“a highly esoteric discussion of military strategy,” the review’s unstated purpose was
to reexamine the Johnson administration’s practice of developing military plans in
the expectation of waging two-and-a-half wars—one in Europe, another in Korea
or Southeast Asia, and a smaller third contingency like the 1965 intervention in the
Dominican Republic. Though there had never been sucient forces to execute
such a strategy with any condence of success, it remained an integral part of the
Joint Strategic Objectives Plan (JSOP), the Joint Chiefs’ annual assignment of assets
to meet theater and strategic requirements.
From the review they had ordered, Kissinger and Nixon envisioned a wholesale
reordering of strategic priorities. At issue was whether it was still realistic and fea-
sible to allocate resources on the basis of a two-and-a-half war scenario, or whether
a more limited denition of risks, assuming minimal chances of a major conict
involving the PRC, would serve American interests just as well, if not better.
51
To be sure, a major incentive for downgrading the prospects of a war with China
was budgetary, since a key nding of the posture review was that a fully-funded
two-and-a-half war strategy would cost at least twenty percent more annually than
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adoption of a one-and-a-half war strategy.
52
But there were also important political
and diplomatic considerations involved. “The reorientation of our strategy signaled
to the People’s Republic of China,” Kissinger said, “that we saw its purpose as
separable from the Soviet Union’s, that our military policy did not see China as a
principal threat.”
53
The Joint Chiefs of Sta initially took a dierent view, arguing that the changes
Nixon and Kissinger were proposing would invite aggression, complicate the al-
location of resources, and invite the early use of nuclear weapons in certain cir-
cumstances.
54
No one doubted that one key underlying purpose was simply to save
money. Yet throughout the defense establishment, the implications were nothing
short of ominous. Indeed, for those in uniform, Communist China remained a
hostile power whose interests and worldview were sharply at variance with those of
the United States. Less than 2 decades earlier, U.S. and Communist Chinese forces
had fought pitched battles on the Korean Peninsula. Long-range appraisals done
since then by the Joint Chiefs and by the Intelligence Community had routinely
stressed China’s commitment to achieving political dominance in Asia, its support
for Communist insurgencies, and its close identication with leftist revolutionary
causes around the globe.
55
A nuclear power since 1964, China had also acquired a
thermonuclear capability in 1967, ostensibly the motivating factor in Secretary of
Defense McNamara’s decision to propose the deployment of a limited ABM system.
Against this background of conict and antagonism, a rapprochement with China
was, in the Joint Chiefs’ eyes, both hard to imagine and ill advised.
Brushing aside JCS objections, President Nixon formally embraced the one-
and-a-half war strategy in his rst annual report on U.S. foreign policy issued in
February 1970. In explaining the change, the President insisted that he was only try-
ing to harmonize strategy with capabilities.
56
By then, however, Nixon had rmly
made up his mind to improve relations with Beijing and was heavily engaged in ex-
ploratory talks using the American and Chinese Ambassadors to Poland. The change
in American military strategy was meant as an inducement to the Chinese. Later,
not getting the cooperation they wanted from the State Department, Nixon and
Kissinger turned to sensitive backchannel contacts established through Pakistan to
nalize a deal with the Chinese. The net eect was an extraordinarily high degree
of secrecy that sealed o the talks from practically anyone outside the White House
(including the Joint Chiefs) who had an interest in the matter and to present them
when the time came with a fait accompli.
Meanwhile, Nixon and Kissinger kept the State and Defense Departments oc-
cupied by commissioning a succession of studies through the NSC examining vari-
ous aspects of the China issue. The most serious impediment to a Sino-American
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rapprochement to be identied was the U.S. relationship with the Republic of
China (ROC), the rival government on Taiwan headed by the venerable Generalis-
simo Chiang Kai-shek, which the United States recognized as the de jure regime. A
staunch anti-Communist and long-time U.S. ally, Chiang once had a loyal following
in the United States, which had made sure over the years that the ROC received
unstinting American assistance. On at least two occasions—in 1954 and in 1958—
the United States had almost gone to war with Communist China in support of the
ROC’s continuing occupation of several oshore island groups in the Taiwan Strait.
Since the late 1950s, however, things had changed. Tensions over the oshore
islands had eased, the China Lobby that had been so active on Chiang’s behalf had
lost its clout in Washington, and more and more countries were recognizing the
PRC as the legitimate government of China. In October 1971, the UN General
Assembly expelled the ROC, forcing it to cede its seat on the Security Council to
the People’s Republic. Despite its declining fortunes, however, the ROC retained
a corps of supporters in Congress and continued to play a key role in American
defense policy for East Asia. Once described by General Douglas MacArthur as “an
unsinkable aircraft carrier,” Taiwan provided the United States with access to basing
and staging areas from which to control the Taiwan Strait, to assist in maintaining
lines of communication, and to bring military power to bear quickly against the
mainland should the need arise.
57
All in all, the Joint Chiefs of Sta considered Tai-
wan to be an essential link in their Pacic defense perimeter and, as such, a crucial
part of the “close-in” containment strategy applied against Communist China.
58
Still, as the Vietnam War wound down, Taiwan’s usefulness to American defense
planners steadily diminished, resulting in the closure of numerous installations, the
withdrawal of personnel, and reductions in U.S. subsidies and assistance to the ROC.
One of the cutbacks was the elimination of the Taiwan Strait Patrol, a money-saving
move instigated by the Nixon administration in mid-November 1969. Initiated by
President Truman in 1950 to protect Nationalist China from Communist attack, the
Taiwan Strait Patrol tied up the use of two U.S. destroyers. Recognizing that the
patrol had become largely symbolic, the Joint Chiefs accepted its elimination as a
sensible alternative to the reduction of naval forces elsewhere. Thenceforth, ships
of the Seventh Fleet transiting the Taiwan Strait would do the job. A small “ges-
ture to remove an irritant,” as Kissinger described it, the elimination of the Taiwan
Strait Patrol gured squarely, along with the adoption of the one-and-a-half war
strategy concept, in the administration’s ongoing eort to improve Sino-American
relations.
59
Continuing to pursue a conciliatory approach, Kissinger wanted to oer fur-
ther concessions—a nonaggression pact and/or the withdrawal of U.S. forces from
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Taiwan—to demonstrate U.S. readiness to extend détente to the mainland. But he
met with sti resistance from the JCS, who urged caution in dealing with Beijing
and no change in security arrangements with Chiang’s regime. Any new conces-
sions, the Joint Chiefs insisted, should be on a quid pro quo basis.
60
Undaunted,
Kissinger set o for a secret rendezvous with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai (Chou
En-lai) in the summer of 1971. Even though Kissinger tried to disguise the purpose
of his trip, Admiral Moorer, the JCS Chairman, later conrmed that he was able
to follow developments closely because Kissinger and Nixon used a special Navy
communications system part of the time to stay in touch.
61
Directed mainly at im-
proving the atmosphere of Sino-American relations, the principal accomplishment
of Kissinger’s meeting with the Chinese was the “announcement that shook the
world” on July 15, 1971, that President Nixon would visit China during the early
months of the new year.
62
Despite the prospect of improved relations with mainland China, the Joint
Chiefs continued to oppose any major concessions. Still unresolved by the time of
the President’s visit to Beijing in February 1972 was a rm administration position
on the future of U.S.-ROC defense arrangements, a matter of key importance to
the JCS.
63
But in attempting to raise the matter and make their views known, they
encountered repeated rebus from the White House and were unsuccessful in se-
curing an interagency review prior to the President’s departure.
64
Kissinger alone
handled the agenda and other details of the summit in one-on-one talks with Zhou
Enlai during a return trip to Beijing in October 1971.
65
A momentous event that attracted intensive news coverage, Nixon’s trip to
China seemed to herald a new era in Sino-American relations. Despite a large en-
tourage, no members of the Joint Chiefs accompanied the President, an apparently
intentional omission aimed at playing down military matters. Still, there were strong
politico-military overtones throughout the visit, with the threat posed by the Soviet
Union a subject of mutual interest and, from all appearances, the number-one Chi-
nese security concern. Though there were no discussions of specic collaboration
against that threat, President Nixon recalled that the Chinese took great pleasure in
the discomfort his visit seemed to cause to leaders in Moscow.
66
Taiwan also gured large in the discussions, though it was not the obstacle that
many (including the JCS) expected it to be. During an earlier exchange of views,
the Chinese had indicated that the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Taiwan and from
the Taiwan Strait should be the “rst question” addressed at any summit meeting.
67
During his talks with Zhou in October 1971, however, Kissinger had served notice
that the United States was not prepared to take a denitive position on Taiwan’s
future. The Chinese had backed o and during their meetings in February 1972,
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Nixon and his hosts—Zhou and Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Ze-
dong—downplayed the Taiwan issue. While the summit’s communiqué conrmed
that the United States regarded the withdrawal of its forces from Taiwan as the “ul-
timate objective,” it mentioned nothing about a timetable or other commitments.
68
“The overwhelming impression left by Chou, as by Mao,” Kissinger recalled, “was
that continuing dierences over Taiwan were secondary to our primary mutual
concern over the international equilibrium.”
69
The Joint Chiefs greeted the outcome of the President’s trip with relief and
reassurance. Major changes were clearly taking place in Sino-American relations.
But for the time being, the American security posture in the Far East remained
essentially unchanged. Even so, a Sino-American entente was beginning to take
shape. About a month after the President’s trip, the North Vietnamese launched
their “Easter Oensive” against South Vietnam, to which Nixon retaliated with the
mining of Haiphong harbor and two massive air campaigns (Linebacker I and II) that
brought American planes perilously close to the Chinese border. A few years earlier,
such actions by the United States might have provoked an overtly hostile Chinese
response, perhaps even direct intervention in the war. But by 1972, in light of the re-
cent Sino-American rapprochement and continuing tensions between Moscow and
Beijing, the threat of Chinese intervention barely gured in Nixon’s calculations.
In the event, Chinese forbearance spoke for itself. Though there were the custom-
ary public denunciations of American behavior, the PRC veered toward neutral-
ity and oered only token help to the North Vietnamese.
70
Most telling of all was
Beijing’s rejection of a plan, jointly put forth by the Kremlin and Hanoi, to bypass
the American bombing and mining of Haiphong by o-loading cargos at Chinese
ports and bringing supplies overland into North Vietnam.
71
Equally important was
the Joint Chiefs’ tacit appreciation of Chinese restraint. Indeed, from that point on,
JCS objections to further improvements in relations with the PRC became less fre-
quent and their tone in support of Taiwan less strident. The establishment of formal
diplomatic relations between the United States and the PRC was still some years
away. But increasingly, it seemed to the Joint Chiefs to be the next logical step.
DeepenIng InvoLvemenT In The mIDDLe eAST
If the American rapprochement with China seemed to test the durability of détente
with the Soviet Union, developments in the Middle East toward the end of Nixon’s
Presidency nearly brought it to a premature end. Here, more than anywhere else,
Soviet-American relations threatened to come full circle back to the confronta-
tional policies and behavior of the 1950s and early 1960s. The precipitating event
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was the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War of October 1973. In many respects a “proxy
conict,” the Yom Kippur War tested Eastern Bloc weapons and tactics used by the
Arabs against those of the West as adapted by the Israelis. At the outset, it seemed
that cooperation between Washington and Moscow would succeed in containing
the conict. Intensifying instead, it brought the threat of Soviet intervention and
prompted the Joint Chiefs to place U.S. nuclear forces on increased alert, making
it the most serious East-West confrontation since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
That détente survived the ordeal, at least for a while, suggests an underlying degree
of mutual respect brought on not only by the general improvement in U.S.-Soviet
relations, but also by the realities of nuclear parity and the resulting caution that
both sides felt compelled to observe.
Behind the headlines of the October War was the larger issue of American
involvement in Middle East security, a role that had been growing steadily since
the Suez crisis of 1956. With heavy obligations in Europe and the Western Pacic,
the Joint Chiefs had generally been averse to commitments in the Middle East and
had been content to rely on diplomacy and/or intervention by the British or the
French to hold matters in check. But after the Suez debacle, the 1958 coup in Iraq,
and the collapse of the Baghdad Pact, the Joint Chiefs had found themselves taking a
more direct hand in the management of the region’s security. Three issues predomi-
nated—the containment of Soviet power and inuence, the protection of Western
access to Persian Gulf oil elds, and the security of Israel.
While all three issues were interrelated, the Israeli situation overshadowed
all others. Oering arms and other assistance from the mid-1950s on, the Soviets
played on Arab nationalism and hostility toward the Jewish state in order to make
inroads across the region, notably in the confrontation states of Egypt, Syria, and
Iraq. To check the growth of Moscow’s inuence, the United States cultivated closer
ties with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and other Arab moderates, and encouraged Iran (a
Muslim but non-Arab country) to become an anti-Soviet bulwark protecting the
Persian Gulf. For domestic political reasons, however, shoring up Israel’s security be-
came Washington’s top regional priority, and led to a policy of occasional, selective
sales of sophisticated weapons, including tanks and Hawk antiaircraft missiles. By
the 1960s, U.S. arms transfers to Israel well outpaced American military assistance to
the Arab world. Predicting Middle East “polarization” should this trend continue,
the Joint Chiefs found the United States increasingly identied with Israeli interests
and the Soviet Union with those of the Arabs.
72
Tensions peaked during the Six Day War of June 1967, in which Israeli forces
seized the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and East Jeru-
salem and the West Bank from Jordan. Never close to begin with, relations between
353
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the Joint Chiefs and Israel’s high command grew even farther apart during the con-
ict when Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats attacked USS Liberty, an American
electronic intelligence ship operating in international waters o the Sinai coast.
Owing to an almost complete breakdown of inter-Service cooperation in trans-
mitting communications, the Liberty was actually operating closer to shore than
the Joint Chiefs had intended; orders for it to pull back were in transit at the time
of the attack.
73
Later, the Israelis insisted that they had mistaken the Liberty for an
Egyptian ship known to be in the area. The attack inicted heavy casualties on the
U.S. crew and elicited deep regrets from the Israeli government. Insisting that the
United States was as much to blame as they were, however, the Israelis refused to ac-
knowledge any negligence and characterized the incident as an unfortunate “chain
of errors.”
74
The Joint Chiefs did not belabor the point, but at both the Pentagon
and the White House suspicions lingered that the attack had not been accidental.
75
In the aftermath of the Six Day War, the Joint Chiefs found the Middle East
becoming more polarized than ever, a ripe environment for further strife.
76
Alarmed
by the rapidity with which Moscow replenished Egypt’s depleted arsenal, the John-
son administration responded in kind, by stepping up deliveries of tanks, ghter air-
craft (including Navy A–4 “Skyhawks,” then in critically short supply in Vietnam),
and other weapons to bolster Israel’s defenses.
77
A “war of attrition” ensued, during
which Israeli and Egyptian gunners routinely exchanged re across the Suez Ca-
nal, Israeli commandos launched attacks across the Gulf of Suez, and the Israeli Air
Force, ying freshly acquired U.S.-made F–4 “Phantoms,” carried out deep-pene-
tration raids into Egypt. Worried that the United States might nd itself isolated,
the JCS urged the Nixon administration to curtail arms sales to Israel and to use
its leverage to expedite a regional peace settlement through the United Nations. As
part of an overall agreement, the Chairman, General Wheeler, suggested a protocol,
backed by the “Big Four” (the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France),
guaranteeing enforcement of any settlement.
78
While the Nixon administration’s declared intention was a more balanced
policy in the Middle East, popular and congressional pressure preserved the tilt
toward Israel. As a result, there were few signicant curbs on arms deliveries and
no signicant pressure applied on the Israelis to make concessions toward a peace
settlement.
79
To maintain a “military balance” in the Middle East, the Joint Chiefs
advocated selling sucient weapons and equipment to the Israeli armed forces to
defend Israel against an Arab attack “without destabilizing losses.”
80
But as a practical
matter, until the October War exposed serious shortfalls and weaknesses in Israeli
defenses, it was hard to gauge how this principle applied. At the same time, despite
progress elsewhere on détente, U.S.-Soviet competition in the Middle East reached
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a new level of intensity. By the early 1970s, the Soviets were augmenting their naval
forces in the eastern Mediterranean and had markedly increased their personnel
strength in Egypt. Soviet pilots ew patrols in MiG–21s with Egyptian markings
and Soviet technicians operated a network of SA–3 surface-to-air point defense
missiles to prevent the Israelis from conducting further deep-penetration raids.
81
A
U.S.-brokered ceasere ended the war of attrition along the canal in August 1970,
but beneath the supercial calm that settled over the region, Arab-Israeli tensions
remained high.
A key turning point was the decision by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to
expel his Soviet advisors in July 1972, barely more than a year after signing a Treaty
of Friendship and Cooperation with Moscow. Exactly how many Soviets were
involved is unclear, though an Egyptian source states that as many as 21,000 went
home.
82
A career army ocer, Sadat had come to power shortly after the death of
Egypt’s charismatic Gamal Abdul Nasser in September 1970. While he vowed to fol-
low in Nasser’s footsteps, Sadat found the current situation of “no war, no peace” an
intolerable obstacle to his rst priority—reviving Egypt’s economy. Seeking West-
ern investment, he knew he would have to create an economic and political envi-
ronment more hospitable to capitalism, which meant moving away from socialism
(manifest most clearly by the Soviet presence) and making peace with Israel.
While relations between Cairo and Moscow remained cool for some months
after the expulsion of July 1972, Egypt continued to need Soviet military and eco-
nomic support. For the moment, Sadat only wanted to change the basis of his rela-
tionship with the Soviet Union, not end it. At the same time, seeking to improve his
contacts with the West, he reopened a backchannel, originally established in April
1972, with the Nixon White House to discuss ending the Israeli occupation of the
Sinai.
83
Sadat would have preferred a negotiated settlement, but he knew he had
little bargaining power and resolved to improve his position through the only means
available—military action against Israel. Expelling the Soviets was the rst phase of
his plan, since he suspected, not without cause, that Moscow would never risk jeop-
ardizing détente by overtly cooperating in launching a war. Sadat did not expect
to achieve a clear-cut military victory, but if Egypt could demonstrate a credible
limited war capability, he thought he stood a good chance of restoring his country’s
self esteem and prestige and of forcing the Israelis into negotiations.
84
On October 6, 1973 (Yom Kippur in Israel, Ramadan in Arab countries),
Egyptian forces mounted a successful surprise assault across the Suez Canal, timed
to coincide with a Syrian attack against Israeli positions on the Golan Heights. Ac-
cording to the “leaked” ndings of a congressional investigation, NSA intercepts
routinely available to the Joint Chiefs would have conrmed that the Egyptians
355
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were planning an attack; however, the sheer volume of the message trac and the
inability of the NSA and DIA to process all the data eciently gave rise to an “in-
telligence failure.” The Israelis were similarly caught o guard.
85
Named Operation
“Badr” after the rst victory of the Prophet Mohammad in 630 AD, the Egyptian
assault quickly breached Israeli defenses (the Bar-Lev Line) but carried only a few
kilometers into the Sinai. Following an initial period of indecision and confusion,
the Israelis regrouped and on October 8 launched a counterattack that thwarted
Egyptian eorts to extend their bridgehead.
A see-saw battle ensued over the next few days, during which time the Soviet
Union and the United States made half-hearted attempts to arrange a ceasere
through the UN. Meanwhile, Washington and Moscow both expedited the airlift of
weapons and supplies to their clients. By October 15, Israeli forces had gained the
oensive. As a UN-brokered ceasere was about to take eect, they broke through
Egyptian lines, crossed the Suez Canal with makeshift pontoon bridges, and pro-
ceeded to envelop the Egyptian Third Army—45,000 troops in all—trapping it on
the eastern side of the canal. With some of his best forces facing imminent annihila-
tion or surrender, Sadat appealed to Brezhnev for help. On October 24, the Soviet
leader responded. Declaring Israel to be in violation of the ceasere, he served
President Nixon with an “ultimatum,” as Kissinger characterized it, warning that
the Soviet Union was prepared to take “appropriate steps unilaterally” to bring the
conict to an end.
86
Until Brezhnev’s ultimatum, the Joint Chiefs played a low prole in the crisis.
For coordination they relied on the Washington Special Action Group (WSAG), an
interagency crisis-management subcommittee of the NSC that included Admiral
Moorer among its members and Kissinger as chairman.
87
Preoccupied with the
escalating Watergate aair and a separate scandal involving allegations of nancial
wrongdoing by Vice President Spiro Agnew (culminating in Agnew’s resignation
on October 10, 1973), Nixon deferred increasingly to Kissinger and the WSAG
to guide American policy. The Yom Kippur war, Nixon later observed, “could not
have come at a more complicated domestic juncture.”
88
The Joint Chiefs’ job during
those hectic days was to monitor events on the battleeld, expedite the transfer of
supplies to the Israelis, and take precautionary steps by reviewing contingency plans
for the evacuation of Americans and the deployment as necessary of U.S. forces.
Once the ghting began, the WSAG sought to establish and maintain a posi-
tion of quasi-neutrality insofar as the pro-Israeli bent of the United States would
allow. Despite a surge of Soviet naval power into the eastern Mediterranean, the
United States conned its presence there to a single naval task group. Organized
around the carrier Independence, the task group took up station southwest of Crete
356
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on October 7 where it remained for the duration of the crisis. Sixth Fleet’s most ur-
gent function was surveillance of the Soviet naval presence. To carry out his mission,
Sixth Fleet Commander Vice Admiral Daniel J. Murphy, Sr., proposed to move his
ships closer to the conict and augment them with a second carrier, the Franklin D.
Roosevelt, then operating o Sicily. Moorer and the WSAG, however, refused Mur-
phy’s request. Citing policy constraints, they reminded him that he was to distance
himself from possible involvement in keeping with the administration’s “low-key,
even-handed approach toward the hostilities.”
89
A similar policy of restraint initially governed American assistance to Israel. For
the rst few days of the conict, the Israelis could have whatever they reasonably
required as long as they transported it themselves. While the Joint Chiefs never had
occasion to adopt a corporate position, most of them—Moorer especially—be-
lieved the United States was playing a dangerous game by giving the Israelis even
limited help. Only the CNO, Admiral Zumwalt, a self-described “strong proponent
of resupplying Israel,” felt the United States should be more forthcoming.
90
But as
the ghting intensied and Israeli losses climbed, the voices of caution at the Pen-
tagon became drowned out by those in Congress and the public who demanded
that restrictions on aid to Israel be relaxed, if not lifted altogether. By October 10,
Israel’s situation had become precarious. Even if Israel did not lose the war, it would
emerge from the conict severely battered and crippled. Rumors spread that in a
last-ditch eort to save the country, the Israeli cabinet had authorized the deploy-
ment of nuclear-armed Jericho missiles.
91
Adding further to the tension were indi-
cations that the Soviets had mobilized several elite airborne divisions for possible
deployment to Egypt and the “ominous news,” as Kissinger called it, that Moscow
had launched an airlift to Syria.
92
Meanwhile, a stando had developed between Kissinger and Secretary of De-
fense James R. Schlesinger over the processing of Israeli assistance requests. The
results were a slow-down of deliveries and a rising level of irritation on Capitol
Hill that threatened President Nixon’s chances of surviving the Watergate scandal.
On October 12, demonstrating that he was still in charge, the President ung open
American arsenals to the Israelis. Authorizing the use of jumbo C–5A transport
planes to expedite deliveries, he brushed aside objections from the Joint Sta and
the Oce of the Secretary of Defense that his actions “might blight our relations
with the Arabs” and dangerously deplete U.S. war reserves. In the end, the American
airlift allowed the Israelis to prevail. But as the Joint Chiefs had feared, it raised other
problems in the form of Arab retaliation through an oil embargo against the West,
and friction within NATO over the draw-down of supplies allocated to Alliance
defense and the use of European bases for intelligence-gathering.
93
357
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Still, it was Brezhnev’s ultimatum that captured the Joint Chiefs’ attention more
than anything. By itself, Brezhnev’s threat to take unilateral action might have been
dismissed as diplomatic bluster. In all likelihood, as British foreign policy expert
Gordon S. Barrass has pointed out, it did not reect his true views.
94
But coming
on top of the Soviet naval buildup in the eastern Mediterranean, the mobilization
of combat divisions trained in rapid deployment, and stepped-up Soviet air activity,
there was every reason for the chiefs to be concerned. The ensuing decision to place
U.S. nuclear forces on heightened alert (DEFCON 3) emerged from a late night
WSAG meeting in the White House Situation Room on October 24.
95
Nixon
took no part in the deliberations and remained well out of the way, attended by
Alexander Haig, who was then Kissinger’s deputy.
96
Immediately after the meet-
ing, Moorer returned to the Pentagon and arranged that the alert be carried out
in conspicuous fashion to attract the attention of Soviet intelligence. A few hours
later, the fully assembled Joint Chiefs met with Secretary of Defense Schlesinger to
discuss further moves, including the possibility of raising the alert to DEFCON 2, a
level not used since the Cuban Missile Crisis. But by morning, a fresh message from
Moscow couched in conciliatory language laid the matter to rest. By late the next
day all U.S. commands had resumed their normal alert posture.
97
While Israel prevailed in the October War, it was at a tremendous cost that
approached a Pyrrhic victory: as many as 2,800 dead and another 9,000 wounded.
Arab losses were substantially larger. JCS estimates of the outcome hesitated to pro-
claim a clear-cut winner. Most predicted that another war was only a matter of time
and that in the long run the continuing identication of the United States with
Israel would work to the detriment of U.S. interests in the Middle East. Indeed, the
more closely the United States became aligned with Israel, the less inuence and
credibility it was apt to have in Arab countries and in the economically and strategi-
cally important Persian Gulf. It followed, in the JCS view, that the most important
objectives in the aftermath of the October War were to reestablish stable relations
with the moderate Arab states like Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and to shore up ties
elsewhere in the Muslim world, especially with Iran and Pakistan. Yet given the po-
litical realities in the United States, it was altogether likely that Washington would
continue to pursue a divided policy that supported Israel while trying to placate the
Arabs and curb further Soviet inroads.
Whether the Middle East was ready for peace remained to be seen. Détente
had helped to avoid a great power confrontation during the October War, but in the
aftermath of the ghting it did little to promote a more hospitable environment for
resolving the Arab-Israeli conict. Celebrated in the Arab world as a great victory,
the October War demonstrated that Israel was far from invincible and lifted Sadat’s
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reputation and prestige to unprecedented heights. Yet in moving toward a peace
settlement, he was practically alone. A multinational Geneva peace conference, co-
organized by the United States and the Soviet Union in November 1973, attracted
little participation from the Arab world and broke up inconclusively almost as soon
as it began. Thenceforth, it would be up to the Egyptians and Israelis themselves,
negotiating bilaterally and relying on the United States as intermediary, to reach a
modus vivendi.
Meanwhile, the Cold War, like the Arab-Israeli conict, refused to go away, dé-
tente notwithstanding. In his nal posture statement to Congress, submitted shortly
before the end of his term as Chairman in July 1974, Admiral Moorer cited the
ABM Treaty and the SALT I interim agreement as “rst steps . . . to establish some
control over the deployment of signicantly increased strategic forces by both the
U.S. and the USSR.” As encouraging as these agreements might have been, however,
Moorer remained concerned by the Soviet Union’s “aggressive modernization pro-
grams” in everything from strategic oensive weapons to general purpose forces for
ground, sea, and air warfare. Drawing on the recent experience of the October War,
he saw lessons to be learned. One was “that the military balance must be assessed on
the capabilities of potential adversaries rather than on their announced or estimated
intentions.” Détente, he argued, had created an atmosphere of increased “good will”
between the United States and the Soviet Union. But it had yet to slow the arms
race or curb the potential for confrontation that the competition implied.
98
Notes
1 See Stanley Homann, “Détente,” in Joseph S. Nye, Jr., ed., The Making of America’s
Soviet Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 231–263.
2 Richard M. Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap,
1978), 941.
3 NIE 11-8-69, September 9, 1969, “Soviet Strategic Attack Forces,” in Donald Steury,
ed., Intentions and Capabilities: Estimates on Soviet Strategic Forces, 1950–1983 (Washington,
DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1996), 253–254.
4 See JSOP 74-81, Book II (Strategic Forces), Vol. II, circulated under SM-802-71, De-
cember 21, 1971, JCS 2143/397; Walter S. Poole, Lorna S. Jae, and Wayne M. Dzwon-
chyk, “History of the Joint Chiefs of Sta: The Joint Chiefs of Sta and National Policy,
1969–1972” (MS, Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, Joint Sta, March 1991), 70–71
(declassied/publication forthcoming).
5 JCSM-377-69 to SECDEF, June 17, 1969, “Preparation of U.S. Position for Possible Stra-
tegic Arms Limitation Talks, JCS 2482/28-13; Poole, Jae, and Dzwonchyk, 140–141.
6 JCSM-143-67 to SECDEF, March 14, 1967, “Proposal on Strategic Oensive and De-
fensive Missile Systems,” JCS 1731/966-2.
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7 Thomas W. Wolfe, The SALT Experience (Cambridge: Ballinger, 1979), 8–9.
8 John Newhouse, Cold Dawn: The Story of SALT (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1973), 113–114; “JCS Organizational and Procedural Arrangements for Arms Control Mat-
ters” (MS, Historical Division, Joint Chiefs of Sta, Joint Secretariat, December 31, 1980), 5–6.
9 Lawrence Freedman, U.S. Intelligence and the Soviet Strategic Threat, 2d ed. (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1986), 131–133.
10 Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 148.
11 NSDM 33, “Preliminary Strategic Arms Limitation Talks,” November 12, 1969, Nixon
Papers.
12 SM-766-69, November 10, 1969, “SALT Preparation,” JCS 2482/58; Poole, Jae, and
Dzwonchyk, 145–146.
13 Kissinger, White House Years, 149.
14 Ibid., 820.
15 “Strategic Arms Limitation Talks,” May 20, 1971, Nixon Public Papers, 1971,
16 MFR by CJCS (M-41-71), “Meeting with the President, 20 May 1971,” entry May 20,
1971, Moorer Diary, cited in Poole, Jae, and Dzwonchyk, 165.
17 Ibid., chap. 8.
18 Donald R. Baucom, The Origins of SDI, 1944–1983 (Lawrence: University Press of Kan-
sas, 1992), 39–50.
19 Interview No. 2 with Nitze by James C. Hasdor, May 20, 1981, U.S. Air Force Oral History
Collection, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, 480 (quote); Paul H. Nitze, From Hiroshima to
Glasnost: At the Center of Decision—A Memoir (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989), 314–320;
Gerard Smith, Doubletalk: The Story of SALT I (New York: Doubleday, 1980), 41–42.
20 For the text of these agreements, see U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency,
Arms Control and Disarmament Agreements: Texts and Histories of Negotiations (Washington,
DC: GPO, 1982), 132–157.
21 Roger Labrie, ed., SALT Hand Book: Key Documents and Issues, 1972–1979 (Washington,
DC; American Enterprise Institute, 1979), 13–14. Under the interim agreement, the
United States could build up to 44 eet ballistic submarines and 710 launchers; the
Soviets could go as high as 950 SLBMs and 62 submarines but would have to make
o-setting reductions in land-based ICBMs to stay within the freeze.
22 Freedman, U.S. Intelligence and the Soviet Strategic Threat, 165–166; Poole, Jae, and Dz-
wonchyk, 178–191.
23 Raymond L. Gartho, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to
Reagan (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1994, rev. ed.), 213–223 and passim.
24 JCSM-258-72 to SECDEF, June 2, 1972, “National Security Assurances in a Strategic
Arms Limitation Environment,” JCS 2482/152; summarized in Poole, Jae, and Dz-
wonchyk, 189–91.
25 ADM Moorer, May 19, 1972, quoted in Poole, Jae, and Dzwonchyk, 185.
26 Anna Kasten Nelson, “Senator Henry Jackson and the Demise of Détente,” in Anna
Kasten Nelson, ed., The Policy Makers: Shaping American Foreign Policy from 1947 to the
Present (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleeld, 2009), 92–93.
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27 Marquis Childs, “Jackson and the Generals,” The Washington Post, December 14, 1976, 19.
28 See Nelson, “Senator Henry Jackson and the Demise of Détente,” 93–94.
29 Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, United States Military Posture for FY 1975 (Report by the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, February 26, 1974), 15–16.
30 Memo, SECDEF to President, February 20, 1969, “NATO Defense Issues,” JCS
2450/695; “NSC Review—US Policy Toward NATO,” undated, attach. to Memo, Da-
vis to Pedersen et al., March 17, 1969, JCS2450/676-1; DJSM-1644-69 to SECDEF,
October 23, 1969, “NSSM-65—Relationships Among Strategic and Theater Forces for
NATO,” JCS 2101/561-1; Poole, Jae, and Dzwonchyk, 193–195.
31 “Informal Remarks in Guam with Newsmen,” July 25, 1969, Nixon Public Papers, 1969,
549.
32 Gordon S. Barrass, The Great Cold War: A Journey Through the Hall of Mirrors (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 196.
33 Richard L. Kugler, Commitment to Purpose: How Alliance Partnership Won the Cold War
(Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1993), 250–251; Thomas W. Wolfe, Soviet Power and Europe,
1945–1970 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970), 471–472.
34 “ISA Summary of JCS Report and Supporting Study,” enclosure to Memo, Ware (ISA)
to DJS, December 3, 1969, “NSSM 65,” JCS 2101/561-2; Poole, Jae, and Dzwonchyk,
195–196.
35 Quoted in Lawrence S. Kaplan, NATO and the United States: The Enduring Alliance (Bos-
ton: Twayne Publishers, 1988), 131.
36 See Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), 134.
37 The New York Times, December 7, 1969, 18; see also John S. Dueld, Power Rules: The
Evolution of NATO’s Conventional Force Posture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1995), 196.
38 Kugler, 252.
39 NSDM 95, November 25, 1970, “US Strategy and Forces for NATO,” box H-208, Nix-
on Presidential Material; and <http://nixon.archives.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/
nsdm/nsdm_095.pdf>.
40 Poole, Jae, and Dzwonchyk, 207–210; NSDM 133, September 22, 1971, “US Strategy
and Forces for NATO; Allied Force Improvements,” box H-208, Nixon Presidential
Materials, available at <http://nixon.archives.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/nsdm/
nsdm_133.pdf>.
41 Lewis Sorley, “Goodpaster: Maintaining Deterrence during Détente,” in Robert S.
Jordan, ed., Generals in International Politics: NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, Europe
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987), 130–133; Kugler, 269–271; Dueld,
197–201. AD-70 was short for “Alliance Defense in the Seventies.”
42 How fast and eectively NATO was moving on these issues remained a matter of de-
bate. According to Goodpaster, “in true NATO style, you have to measure [progress] in
millimeters.” Quoted in Sorley, “Goodpaster,” 131.
43 NSSM 168, February 13, 1973, “US NATO Policies and Programs,” box H-207, Nixon
Presidential Materials, available at <http://nixon.archives.gov/virtuallibrary/docu-
ments/nssm/nssm_168.pdf>.
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44 Kugler, 302–304.
45 Alexander M. Haig, Jr., Inner Circles: How America Changed the World—A Memoir (New
York: Warner Books, 1992), 521.
46 Kissinger vehemently denied that the administration’s policy was to play o China
against the Soviet Union. He used the curious explanation: “We could not ‘exploit’ that
rivalry; it exploited itself.” See Kissinger, White House Years, 763.
47 Donald S. Zagoria, The Sino–Soviet Conict, 1956–1961 (New York: Atheneum, 1964),
was among the earliest to expose the “split” within the communist bloc.
48 Richard M. Nixon, “Asia After Vietnam,” Foreign Aairs 56 (October 1967), 111–125.
49 Henry Kissinger, On China (New York: Penguin, 2011), 275 and passim.
50 NSSM 3, January 21, 1969, “US Military Posture and the Balance of Power,” box H-207,
Nixon Presidential Materials, available at <http://nixon.archives.gov/virtuallibrary/
documents/nssm/nssm_003.pdf>.
51 Kissinger, White House Years, 220–221.
52 “US Military Posture and the Balance of Power: General Purpose Forces Section,”
September 5, 1969, 24, enclosure to Memo, DepSECDEF to NSC Members et al.,
September 5, 1969, “Final Report on U.S. Military Posture and the Balance of Power,”
JCS 2101/554-54, cited in Poole, Jae, and Dzwonchyk, 23–25.
53 Kissinger, White House Years, 221.
54 JCSM-743-69 to SECDEF, December 4, 1969, “Strategic Concept and Force Planning
Guidance for Military Planning (Revised)—FY 1972–1979, JCS 2458/632-4; Poole,
Jae, and Dzwonchyk, 28–30.
55 SNIE 13–69, March 6, 1969, “Communist China and Asia,” in Allen, Carver, and El-
more, eds., Tracking the Dragon, 527–539.
56 “First Annual Report to the Congress on U.S. Foreign Policy for the 1970s,” February
18, 1970, Nixon Public Papers, 1970, 176–177.
57 MacArthur quoted in D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur, vol. III, Triumph and
Disaster, 1945–1964 (Boston: Houghton, Miin, 1985), 460.
58 Poole, “JCS and National Policy, 1965–68” (MS), 717–728 (declassied/publication
forthcoming).
59 CM-4764-69 to SECDEF, December 6, 1969, “Taiwan Strait Patrol,” JCS 1966/172;
CINCPAC Command History, 1969, I, 141–144; Kissinger, White House Years, 187; Poole,
Jae, and Dzwonchyk, 445–446.
60 Talking Paper for SECDEF and CJCS for NSC Meeting, March 25, 1971, “United
States China Policy (NSSM 106),” JCS 2118/262-8; Poole, Jae, and Dzwonchyk, 431–
432.
61 See Poole, Jae, and Dzwonchyk, “JCS and National Policy, 1969–72,” 434, fn. 46.
62 “Remarks Announcing Acceptance of an Invitation to Visit the PRC,” July 15, 1971,
Nixon Public Papers, 1971, 819–820; Kissinger, White House Years, 742–755.
63 JCSM-446-71 to SECDEF, October 6, 1971, “Military Considerations for the Pending
Presidential Visit to the PRC,” JCS 2270/44-1; Poole, Jae, and Dzwonchyk, 436–437.
362
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64 CNOM 18-72 to JCS, February 3, 1972, “Military Considerations Concerning the
President’s Discussions with the PRC,” JCS 2270/47; JCSM-58-72 to SECDEF, Febru-
ary 16, 1972, same subject, JCS 2270/47-1; Poole, Jae, and Dzwonchyk, 437–438.
65 Kissinger, White House Years, 774–784.
66 Nixon, RN, 567–568.
67 Message, Zhou Enlai to Nixon, May 29, 1971, FRUS 1969–76, vol. XVII, China, 1969–72, 332.
68 “Joint Statement Following Discussions with Leaders of the PRC,” February 27, 1972,
Nixon Public Papers, 1972, 378.
69 Kissinger, White House Years, 783–784, 1073–1074 (quote).
70 The most signicant assistance provided by the PRC was the dispatch of 12 mine-
sweepers to North Vietnam, which cleared 46 mines between July 1972 and August
1973. Ocial U.S. sources indicate that the Navy laid down “thousands” of mines
during the operation. See Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 202–204; and Edward J. Marolda, ed.,
Operation End Sweep: A History of Minesweeping Operations in North Vietnam (Washington,
DC: Naval Historical Center, 1993), xi.
71 Gartho, 291.
72 JCSM-337-65 to SECDEF, May 6, 1965, “Impact on Area Arms Balance of Military Sales
to Israel,” JCS 2369/12-2; Poole, “JCS and National Policy, 1965–68,” Pt. II, chap. X.
73 Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945-1989, Book II, Cen-
tralization Wins, 1960-1972 (Washington, DC: National Security Agency, 1995), 432–39
(declassied), available at <http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_les/cryptologic_histo-
ries/cold_war_ii.pdf>, details the Liberty’s mission.
74 Israel Defence Forces, Attack on the “Liberty” Incident, 8 June 1967 (Tel Aviv: History
Department, Research and Instruction Branch, June 1982), 31.
75 Edward J. Drea, McNamara, Cliord, and the Burdens of Vietnam, 1965–1969 (Washington,
DC: Historical Oce, Oce of the Secretary of Defense, 2011), chap. 16; James Scott,
The Attack on the Liberty (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 138–141, 153–155.
76 JCSM-374-67 to SECDEF, June 29, 1967, “US Military Interests in the Near East,” JCS
1887/720-.
77 Drea, McNamara, Cliord, and Vietnam, chap. 16.
78 Poole, Jae, and Dzwonchyk, 297–300.
79 See Kissinger, White House Years, 363–377.
80 JCSM-521-71 to SECDEF, November 30, 1971, “Combat Aircraft Sales to Israel,” JCS
2369/46; also quoted and summarized in Poole, Jae, and Dzwonchyk, 328–329.
81 “The Military Balance in the Middle East,” May 27, 1970, enclosure to JCS 2369/37-1;
Poole, Jae, and Dzwonchyk, 300–301.
82 Mohamed Heikal, The Road to Ramadan (New York: Quadrangle, 1975), 175. Other
sources place the size of the Soviet contingent in Egypt at between 10,000 and 15,000.
83 Kissinger, White House Years, 192–193; Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 204–205.
84 See Anwar Sadat, In Search of Identity: An Autobiography (New York: Harper & Row,
1977), 215 and passim.
363
D E
’
TEnTE
85 CIA, The Pike Report (Nottingham, UK: Spokesman Books, 1977), 26–94. See also
Gerald K. Haines, “The Pike Committee Investigations and the CIA,” Studies in Intel-
ligence (Winter 1998–1999; unclassied edition), 81–92; and Christopher Andrew, For the
President’s Eyes Only (New York: HarperPerennial, 1995), 390–392.
86 Letter, Brezhnev to Nixon, October 24, 1973, Nixon Presidential Materials, Henry A.
Kissinger Files, box 69, Dobrynin/Kissinger vol. 20 (October 12–November 27, 1973);
Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 583.
87 Kissinger at this time served in a dual capacity. Appointed Secretary of State in Septem-
ber 1973, he continued to serve also as the President’s Assistant for National Security
Aairs.
88 Nixon, RN, 922.
89 Zumwalt, On Watch, 434–436; Robert W. Love, Jr., History of the U.S. Navy (Harrisburg,
PA: Stackpole Books, 1992), II, 654.
90 Zumwalt, On Watch, 434.
91 Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 517. Ac-
cording to U.S. intelligence, the Jericho had a range of 260 miles and was unsuitable
for conventional munitions. See SNIE 4-1-74, “Prospects for Further Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons,” August 23, 1974 (declassied with deletions), 2, 22, National Secu-
rity Archive, GWU, and <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB240/
snie.pdf>.
92 Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 497.
93 Nixon, RN, 924; Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 493.
94 Barrass, Great Cold War, 185, recounts Brezhnev’s growing frustration with the Arabs.
95 Message, CJCS 2733 to CINCPAC et al., October 25, 1973, National Security Archive,
GWU.
96 Haig, Inner Circles, 415–416.
97 Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 586–589; Entry, October 26, 1973, Moorer Diary; Strategic
Air Command, “Chronology: Middle East Crisis” (SAC History Study #139, Decem-
ber 12, 1973), 13 (declassied with deletions); Message, CJCS 5694 to CINCPAC et al.
October 28, 1973, National Security Archive, GWU.
98 United States Military Posture for FY 1975, 1–6.
James R. Schlesinger, Secretary of Defense, 1973–1975
Chapter 12
The Search for
STraTegic STabiliTy
Détente lasted for roughly 7 years, from the signing of the SALT I agreements in
1972 until the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. During that time, with the
exception of the 1973 October War in the Middle East, there were no repetitions of
the tense encounters that had been so commonplace in the 1950s and 1960s. From
all outward appearances, détente was a huge success. Barely below the surface, how-
ever, the situation was dierent. The Soviet military buildup in both conventional
and strategic nuclear forces continued, and with it came increased Soviet activity in
Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Often employing Cuban “proxies,” the
Soviets seemed more intent than ever on extending their power and inuence into
new areas where conditions were ripe for Communist penetration and U.S. interests
were most vulnerable.
For the Joint Chiefs, these were exceedingly trying times. With the military’s
reputation and credibility in tatters after Vietnam, they were hard put to mobilize
support for what they considered essential requirements to bolster the country’s de-
fense posture. Concentrating on disparities in strategic forces, they saw an especially
urgent need for modernization but faced budgetary and political constraints that
allowed only parts of their program to go forward as planned. Basically, the country
was in no mood for a postwar military buildup. Instead, the approach most people
preferred was a lowered prole abroad in line with the Nixon administration’s pro-
jections under the Guam Doctrine, and further pursuit of reduced tensions with the
Soviets through SALT and détente.
The PeaceTime “ToTal Force”
As they gradually shifted from a wartime to a peacetime footing in the early 1970s, the
Joint Chiefs expected demobilization and cutbacks in military spending to take a heavy
toll. What they failed to anticipate was a public and congressional backlash brought on
by Vietnam which, when coupled with competition for funds from domestic social
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programs, would depress military spending for nearly a decade. The result was virtu-
ally no real growth in the U.S. military budget, compared to a net annual increase of
3 percent in Soviet military spending.
1
Once the Vietnam “bulge” was gone by the
early 1970s, the Defense Department’s annual budget authority, as measured in con-
stant dollars, almost steadily declined. By FY80, it was about 1 percent less than what
it had been a decade earlier in FY71. During that time, U.S. defense spending dropped
from 7.2 percent of the country’s gross national product to 5.2 percent. Since the 1970s
were a decade of high ination, the impact on the Services’ buying power and their
ability to modernize weapons and equipment was more than an inconvenience—it
was nearly crippling.
2
Faced with no-growth and negative-growth budgets, the Joint Chiefs strained
to meet obligations abroad which until the end of the 1960s had revolved around a
two-and-a-half war planning scenario. Though that was reduced by the Nixon White
House to a one-and-a-half war requirement in 1970, the JCS still found themselves
facing the possibility of simultaneous conicts on two separate fronts—a major con-
ict, most likely in Europe, and a lesser one in Korea or the Middle East. Politically, this
change had much to recommend it. Not only did it accord with the administration’s
desire to improve relations with China, but also it limited overseas commitments, as
enunciated under the Guam Doctrine. A further advantage was that it simplied the
work of JCS and Service planners (the Army’s especially) by allowing them to focus
their research and development (R&D) and acquisition policies more closely on sup-
porting NATO.
3
At the same time, the one-and-a-half war strategy allowed air and
naval assets deployed in the Far East to be redeployed to Europe or the Mediterranean
more readily than in years past. But in the Joint Chiefs’ eyes, the new concept still left
U.S. forces spread exceedingly thin around the globe and took little or no account of
the ever-present danger of unforeseen contingencies.
In keeping with its limited view of U.S. obligations abroad, the Nixon admin-
istration also endorsed a peacetime “total force” that was smaller than any the JCS
had seen since the 1950s. Two key innovations were an all-volunteer Army (more
expensive to maintain than a conscripted force but less politically troublesome)
and increased reliance on Reserve capabilities. Once the Vietnam War was over, the
administration projected a peacetime defense establishment organized around an
Army of 13 active divisions (down from 18 at the height of the Vietnam conict)
and 8 divisions in the National Guard, a Navy of approximately 400 surface ships,
93 submarines, and 16 carriers, a Marine Corps of 3 Active divisions and 1 Reserve,
and an Air Force of 21 Active and 11 Reserve wings.
4
While the Joint Chiefs would have preferred a larger active peacetime force,
inter-Service skirmishing over the allocation of resources prevented them from
THE SEarCH for STraTEGiC STaBiliTY
367
coming up with rm, prioritized recommendations. Unable to agree among them-
selves, the Joint Chiefs eectively ceded the determination of force levels to OSD,
the White House, and the Oce of Management and Budget (OMB). In these
circumstances, scal considerations invariably triumphed over military ones. Most
impacted of all was the Army, which faced a 20 percent cut in strength, compared
with 10 percent cuts in the Air Force and Navy. As Admiral Moorer described
the scene at one JCS meeting in February 1970, Army Chief of Sta General
Westmoreland, was “running scared,” disparaging the contributions of the other
Services, and “grasping in every direction” for ways to stave o troop reductions.
5
In fact, the force reductions after Vietnam were no more severe than those the
Services experienced after Korea and far less debilitating than the massive post-
World War II demobilization. The retention of air and naval power rather than large
ground forces also followed earlier patterns and reected the continuing practice
of turning to technology to shore up the country’s security in peacetime. Mean-
while, ending the draft allowed the Army to be more selective in the recruitment of
personnel, a major step toward creating a more elite, cohesive institution. The net
result was a smaller, more professional defense establishment with a lowered overall
public prole, which was a distinct advantage at a time of strong skepticism toward
the military in Congress and lingering anti-war sentiment in the country at large.
modernizing The STraTegic deTerrenT
The most urgent task facing the Joint Chiefs as the Vietnam War drew to a close
was to reequip and modernize the Armed Forces. Hardware worn out in Vietnam
had to be replaced, while advances in technology oered the possibility of a refur-
bished arsenal of more sophisticated and versatile weapons. Much of the attention
focused on improving conventional forces: a new main battle tank (the M–1) and a
new armored personnel carrier for the Army, new ghter aircraft for the Air Force
and Navy, and new ships for the eet. But as important as these acquisition pro-
grams may have been, they paled in comparison to what loomed in the strategic
arena—arresting the ongoing decline in U.S. nuclear power through a concerted
modernization of the strategic deterrent.
By the early 1970s, the Joint Chiefs of Sta agreed that bolstering strategic
forces could no longer wait. Decisions taken in the mid-1960s at McNamara’s insti-
gation to freeze the number of launchers in the U.S. nuclear arsenal and President
Nixon’s acceptance of “strategic equivalence” with the Soviet Union in strategic
forces, all the while negotiating arms control accords, had unsettling eects on JCS
assessments of the military balance. Worried that the Soviets were on the verge
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of achieving a decisive advantage, the Joint Chiefs continued to look at a broad
range of improvements to bolster the U.S. strategic posture. They realized that these
improve ments were unlikely to restore the strategic superiority the United States
had previously enjoyed. But without them, the chiefs were skeptical of their ability
to preserve eective deterrence or stability in future crises.
A tenuous consensus had emerged among the JCS in support of three new
strategic systems by the early 1970s—the B–1 strategic bomber, the Trident eet
ballistic missile submarine, and the MX, a third generation ICBM. The oldest of the
three, the B–1, dated unocially from 1961 when the Air Force began exploring
alternatives to the cancelled B–70. By the mid–1960s, the project had evolved into
a formal request for a supersonic (Mach 2) low–level penetration bomber which
Air Force Chief of Sta General John P. McConnell labeled “the top priority pro-
gram within the Air Force” at the time.
6
Designated to replace older B–52 models,
the proposed new plane (then known as the advanced manned strategic aircraft, or
AMSA) encountered sti resistance from McNamara and his civilian advisors, who
considered manned strategic aircraft obsolete and less cost-eective than missiles.
7
In place of the AMSA, McNamara insisted that the Air Force make do with the
F–111, a medium-range ghter-bomber with limited capabilities. Try as he might,
however, McNamara was never able to kill the AMSA, which remained alive as a
drawing board concept owing to the combined support of the Air Force and key
members of Congress. Weighing the pros and cons, neither the Army, Navy, nor
Marines saw an urgent need for the AMSA. All wanted closer study before going
into production. But like the ABM issue, they endorsed the AMSA program seem-
ingly in deance of McNamara, as much as anything, and out of frustration over his
persistent refusal to pay attention to military advice and to authorize new systems.
8
With the advent of the Nixon administration, the AMSA became the B–1 and
the Air Force received authorization to develop several prototypes for testing. If all
went well, the JCS expected an initial operational capability (IOC) in FY78. Under
the division of labor in eect at the time, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird con-
centrated on Congress and Vietnam, while his deputy, David Packard (cofounder
of the computer giant Hewlett-Packard), looked after procurement and adminis-
tration. In an eort to control costs, Packard adopted a “y-before-you-buy” ac-
quisition policy which required hardware demonstrations of new weapons at pre-
determined intervals before the Defense Department would commit to full-scale
production and procurement. For planning purposes, the Air Force estimated an
eventual force of 241 planes, but could not guarantee the prime contractor, Rock-
well International, that the government would purchase that many aircraft ow-
ing to the y-before-you-buy requirement. A complex plane with state-of-the-art
369
THE SEarCH for STraTEGiC STaBiliTY
electronics and avionics, the B–1 was an expensive undertaking to begin with and
became even more so as the project gathered momentum.
9
With the Vietnam War
winding down and money again becoming tight, pressure was growing for the JCS
to take a more critical look at the B–1 and other new weapons.
Like the B–1, the Trident program faced chronic criticism and money troubles.
Originally known as the undersea long-range missile system (ULMS), Trident was an
outgrowth of the Strat-X study, an eort organized by Secretary of Defense McNa-
mara in the mid-1960s through the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) to explore
alternative strategic systems of the future. Treated as a follow-on to the Polaris and
Poseidon programs, the original ULMS design was for a slow-moving underwater
platform carrying up to 24 long-range missiles. To stay within McNamara’s cost-ef-
fectiveness criteria, the Navy’s Special Projects Oce proposed using extended range
Poseidon missiles and an existing nuclear power plant, but ran afoul of Vice Admiral
Hyman G. Rickover, head of the Navy’s nuclear propulsion program, who insisted on
a new reactor system. By 1970, costs had escalated dramatically as requirements became
more sophisticated and as the size of the boat grew to more than twice that of a Polaris
submarine. A source of controversy within the Navy, the ULMS project (renamed
Trident in May 1972) soon attracted widespread congressional attention as well and
became a favored object of attack by Capitol Hill liberals, who considered it a wasteful
and redundant drain on resources that could be better spent on other projects.
To distinguish Trident from other submarines and to increase its appeal, the Navy
proposed to equip it with two new missiles. Initially, Trident boats would carry the C4
missile (also known as Trident I), virtually identical in size to the Poseidon missile but
with up to twice the range. For boats going to sea in the mid- to late 1970s, the Navy
proposed to deploy the D5 (Trident II) which would have the range, payload, and ac-
curacy approximating a land-based ICBM, giving Trident a counterforce potential to
threaten the highest priority enemy targets. Until then, to avoid charges of duplicating
Air Force functions, the Navy had eschewed the development of sea-based missiles
that could eectively attack military facilities other than Soviet submarine pens and
similar “soft” targets. With Trident, the Navy would be moving into a new realm of
military strategy by acquiring a true counterforce capability for the rst time, one less
vulnerable than the Air Force’s ICBMs but no less eective.
10
Even though the JCS agreed that Trident had unique potential, opinions dif-
fered on taking the next step and putting it into production. A majority of the Joint
Chiefs—the CNO, the CMC, and the CJCS, Admiral Moorer—saw no reason to
hesitate and wanted boats in the water by the mid to late 1970s. In contrast, the
CSA and the CSAF, citing the uncertainties of the program and the Nixon admin-
istration’s determination to negotiate arms control accords, adopted a wait-and-see
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attitude and urged that Trident be limited to the R&D phase for the time being.
11
Secretary of Defense Laird initially sided with the Army and Air Force, and in Sep-
tember 1971 he issued a formal public statement indicating that design studies and
other work on a new missile submarine would proceed at a measured pace, with a
production decision held in abeyance. But under pressure from the White House, he
reversed course almost immediately and agreed to accelerate the Trident program,
with a view toward strengthening the U.S. negotiating position in SALT and blunt-
ing possible conservative opposition in Congress to an arms control agreement.
12
If Trident thus seemed headed for production and deployment, the same could not
be said for the MX, the Air Force’s proposed new state-of-the-art ICBM, which ran into
one niggling problem after another. Like the B–1, the MX reected the Air Force’s an-
noyance with McNamara for blocking new programs and for refusing to countenance
a strategic posture with predominantly counterforce capabilities. Emerging from design
studies done in the mid-1960s, the MX (known at that time as the Advanced ICBM, or
AICBM) grew directly out of the Air Force’s desire for a weapon that would be larger,
more powerful, and more accurate than the Minuteman, with an initial operational ca-
pability by the early to mid-1970s. Design specications stipulated that it should be able
to lift a payload of 7,000 pounds and have a range of 6,500 nautical miles and a circular
error probable (CEP) of .2 nautical miles. A formidable undertaking in and of itself, the
development of such a missile proved to be less of an obstacle than nding a survivable,
politically plausible basing mode, an issue that would dog the MX throughout its check-
ered history and delay its deployment for more than a decade.
13
During the Nixon administration, the MX had joined the B–1 and Trident as
a staple in the Joint Chiefs’ inventory of future weapons systems in the JSOP.
14
Even
so, assessments of the missile’s importance and ultimate role in the strategic arsenal
varied from Service to Service. Least enthusiastic of all was the Navy, which saw the
MX competing directly with Trident for funds and mission. At issue was whether the
United States needed, and could aord, two new strategic systems performing rough-
ly the same functions.
15
To observers with long memories, the situation was analogous
to the competition between the Air Force and the Navy during the carrier-B–29
controversy in the late 1940s. In this instance, however, the Navy had the edge with
a more versatile weapons system. Perhaps with Louis Johnson’s untoward experience
in mind, Secretary of Defense Laird and his immediate successors made no attempt
to adjudicate the dispute and instead adopted the course of least resistance by allow-
ing both programs to go forward simultaneously, reserving judgment on their relative
merits for later. A temporizing approach, this solution avoided what could have been
an ugly inter-Service battle. Yet it also left important decisions dangling with steadily
diminishing prospect of ever nding a clear resolution acceptable to all involved.
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THE SEarCH for STraTEGiC STaBiliTY
TargeTing docTrine reviSed
As the competition between Trident and the MX heated up, it boiled over into
two other areas—arms control and strategic targeting. A moderate-to-low priority
since the Kennedy administration tried with limited success to introduce greater
exibility in the early 1960s, targeting doctrine emerged during the Nixon years to
become the source of renewed interest and controversy. Shortly after taking oce,
Nixon and Kissinger visited the Pentagon and received their rst formal brieng on
the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) then in eect detailing programmed
attacks against the Sino-Soviet bloc in the event of a general war. According to pub-
lished accounts, Nixon was “appalled” by the high levels of death and destruction
that a nuclear exchange would cause and by the corresponding lack of exibility in
the SIOP to limit and control attacks. Seeking a remedy, Kissinger secured the Presi-
dent’s approval in the summer of 1969 for a reexamination of targeting practices “to
meet contingencies other than all-out nuclear challenge.”
16
Several factors reinforced Kissinger’s concern that targeting policy needed re-
form. One was the inexorable increase during the 1960s in Soviet strategic nuclear
power, which had gone beyond what most intelligence analysts had predicted. Once
the Soviets reached strategic parity with the United States, Kissinger believed, the
concept of assured destruction was less likely to deter and the Soviets might be tempt-
ed to launch a less than full-scale nuclear attack against the West. The results might
not be incapacitating, but without the ability to respond in kind, the President’s only
practical choice under the existing SIOP would be a suicidal act of all-out destruc-
tion—something Kissinger felt no sane individual would seriously countenance. Ever
since the revisions introduced under Kennedy and McNamara’s subsequent institu-
tionalization of the assured destruction concept, the Joint Chiefs had held the line on
all but piecemeal changes to the SIOP.
17
Now, Kissinger argued, the time had come
to think in more exible and creative terms, where nuclear war “is more likely to be
limited” and “smaller packages will be used to avoid going to larger one[s].”
18
The outcome of the ensuing inquiry—NSDM 242—was nearly 5 years in the
making. Part of the explanation for why the project took so long was the continuing
lack of urgency associated with targeting policy, compared with the immediate demands
of other issues such as SALT and Vietnam. Also, there was a widely shared reluctance on
the part of JCS planners to grant civilians (other than the President and the Secretary of
Defense) access to the inner workings of strategic nuclear war plans and the process by
which they were formulated. Highly classied, these plans were rarely discussed outside
a restricted circle of uniformed strategic planners who scoed at the notion that all they
had to do was push a button to alter a plan. Initiating even limited changes in the SIOP
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CounCil of War
was a time-consuming and complex process. To be sure, with the pending introduction
of more sophisticated weapons systems like the B–1, the MX, and Trident, and ongo-
ing improvements to command and control capabilities, the amount of time and eort
needed to amend a plan and reprogram forces was shortening. But it was still an oner-
ous, dicult, and sensitive technical process that JCS planners guarded with utmost care.
The Joint Chiefs’ uneasiness over the whole question of strategic nuclear tar-
geting was further exacerbated by diculties in determining what Kissinger and
the President hoped to accomplish. Even if the United States exercised restraint in
launching nuclear attacks, there was no assurance the Soviets would respond in a
similar fashion. On the contrary, JCS targeting planners operated on the assumption
that any use by the West of strategic nuclear weapons, even in a limited capacity,
was almost certain to elicit a wholesale nuclear response from the Soviet Union.
19
At various points during the deliberations surrounding NSDM 242, Kissinger asked
the Joint Chiefs for examples of how limited strategic nuclear power might be
applied. But according to David Aaron, who served on the NSC Sta, Kissinger
rejected every JCS response. Either the proposed uses were excessive, in Kissinger’s
opinion, or too limited to convey a clear message and serve a constructive purpose.
20
NSDM 242 had its origins in an intradepartmental study initiated at the Pentagon
under the supervision of John S. Foster, Jr., the long-time Director of Defense Research
and Engineering (DDR&E) and a highly respected gure among military planners.
Secretary of Defense Laird had become worried that unless the Defense Department
took a rm hand in the matter, Kissinger might unilaterally produce a new targeting
directive. Accordingly, in January 1972, Laird gave Foster practically carte blanche to
review targeting practices and to explore the feasibility of a more “exible range of
strategic options.” While the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Moorer, was a
designated member of Foster’s study panel, the Director of the Joint Sta usually served
in his stead. Until then the Joint Chiefs had done their best to discourage a reworking
of targeting doctrine. But with an array of new strategic weapons awaiting the nod for
production, they were hard pressed not to cooperate without acknowledging that the
new arsenal they wanted would be no better or more versatile than the old.
21
Throughout the review process, the Joint Chiefs and Foster’s task force carried
on a brisk exchange of opinions and ideas. Not since the preparation of the rst
SIOP in 1960 had the JCS played such an active role in shaping targeting doctrine.
Drawing on advice from the JCS, the Director of the Joint Strategic Target Plan-
ning Sta, and others, Foster and his colleagues came up with an extensive, but not
fundamental, reworking of targeting guidance, which it submitted to the Secretary
of Defense in tentative form in May 1972. In late July, Foster briefed Kissinger and
members of the NSC on the panel’s ndings, which one NSC Staer characterized
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as a “radical departure from the current policy.”
22
A more accurate description would
have been the rearmation of assured destruction under conditions of controlled
escalation. A nal report, reecting further inputs from the Oce of the Secretary
of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Sta followed, and Secretary of Defense Laird
forwarded it to President Nixon in December. As Laird described it to the Presi-
dent, the purpose behind the proposed changes in targeting doctrine was to satisfy
“your expressed desire for useable nuclear options other than mass destruction, and
the needs of our basic strategy of realistic deterrence.”
23
On the basis of the Defense Department’s report, Kissinger moved the target-
ing review up a notch to the interagency level in February 1973. Again, Foster took
charge of the eort.
24
Though it made minor alterations and additions, the interagen-
cy panel essentially concurred in the Pentagon’s ndings, and by the summer of 1973 a
draft Presidential directive had emerged. Approved by President Nixon the following
January, NSDM 242 rearmed that the assured destruction concept remained basic
U.S. strategic doctrine, but with modications in targeting practices that interjected
a greater degree of exibility into attack plans. The principal innovation was the re-
quirement for “limited employment options” that would enable the United States
“to conduct selected nuclear operations, in concert with conventional forces, which
protect vital U.S. interests and limit enemy capabilities to continue aggression.” Should
these limited attacks fail to deter the Soviets from further military action, the United
States might then launch large-scale attacks against the Soviet Union that would limit
damage to the United States and its allies and cripple enemy recovery for years to
come, a concept known as “counter-recovery” targeting.
25
Translating this guidance into a working doctrine fell mainly to the new Secre-
tary of Defense, James R. Schlesinger, who, as an analyst at the RAND Corporation
in the 1960s, had been involved in critiquing the old strategy. Since then, having
served as director for national security aairs at the Bureau of the Budget, as Chair-
man of the Atomic Energy Commission, and as Director of Central Intelligence,
Schlesinger had come to certain conclusions on his own about what constituted
eective deterrence. Sworn in as Secretary of Defense in July 1973, he took charge
at the Pentagon too late to have an impact on the content of NSDM 242, but just
in time to interpret how the directive ought to be applied. To Kissinger’s chagrin,
it was Schlesinger’s name, not his, that came to be associated with the new strategy.
The public unveiling of the “Schlesinger doctrine” occurred on January 10,
1974, during a question-and-answer period before the Overseas Writers Association
in Washington, DC. Though it had been an open secret for months that the admin-
istration was conducting a targeting review, Schlesinger’s comments were the rst
ocial conrmation. The United States, he said, had decided to amend the assured
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CounCil of War
destruction concept and embrace, on a selective basis, attacks against “certain classes”
of Soviet military installations. Missile silos and airelds were among those he speci-
cally mentioned. Realizing that this was an exceedingly sensitive issue, he added that
he was speaking “hypothetically” and repeatedly stated that the United States had no
intention of using such attacks to attempt a disarming rst strike. Rather, the intention
would be to convince the other side that the United States was bent on protecting its
interests without necessarily resorting to all-out nuclear war. While outwardly similar
to the counterforce/no-cities doctrine that McNamara had unsuccessfully pushed 12
years earlier, Schlesinger’s approach was more discriminating and restricted, keeping
counterforce targeting within reach of current and projected JCS capabilities. Insisting
that this was not a fundamental departure from current targeting practices, Schlesinger
also armed that sucient forces would be held in reserve to achieve assured destruc-
tion goals, should the conict escalate. But if the United States could achieve its aims
without going that far, so much the better.
26
Reactions to the Schlesinger doctrine were mixed. While some strategic theo-
rists proclaimed it potentially destabilizing to the new era of “mutual” assured de-
struction, or MAD, that the SALT I agreements had ushered in, others reserved judg-
ment.
27
A key consideration that contributed to muting criticism was Schlesinger’s
caution and obvious reluctance to use the new strategy as justication for expensive
new weapons or other requirements. The Foster Panel had looked into that ques-
tion but had refrained from making detailed recommendations because it did not
believe that weapon systems acquisition policy could be formulated solely or even
primarily on the basis of employment policy. Secretary Schlesinger drew a similar
distinction. In assessing requirements, he acknowledged the eventual need for the
B–1 and the MX, but saw no urgency in proceeding with the acquisition of either
pending the resolution of technical problems. Until then, he favored keeping both
programs in an advanced state of testing and development. Instead of rushing to de-
ploy new land-based delivery systems, he stressed modest improvements in existing
Air Force capabilities—a higher yield and more accurate MIRVed reentry vehicle
(the Mark 12A) for the Minuteman III, and two more powerful and sophisticated
thermonuclear bombs (the B–61 and the B–77) carried aboard B–52s. At the same
time, part of the Poseidon eet would be tted with C4 (Trident I) missiles to im-
prove their range and eectiveness. The only new system he envisioned playing a
key role under the recently adopted strategy was Trident—rst, because it was far-
ther along than either the MX or B–1, and second, because it combined a potential
counterforce capability with relative invulnerability.
28
All in all, the targeting review leading to adoption of the Schlesinger doctrine
probably came out better for the Joint Chiefs than they initially expected. While
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THE SEarCH for STraTEGiC STaBiliTY
laying down new targeting priorities, it generally reinforced their preferences, espe-
cially in the counterforce category, and provided a strong rationale for completing
the strategic modernization program. What it failed to do was establish a specic link
between the need for the B–1 and the MX, on the one hand, and on the other, the
execution of tasks delineated in NSDM 242, including the additional functions en-
tailed in carrying out limited options. Only Trident emerged with a denite mandate
to proceed under the new targeting scheme. But with the foundations thus laid, the
chiefs could be reasonably condent that if they continued to press their case, sooner
or later resources would catch up with the changes in employment policy.
SalT ii BeginS
Like the targeting review leading to adoption of the Schlesinger doctrine, arms con-
trol negotiations gured prominently in the post-Vietnam debate over U.S. strategic
modernization. The JCS position was that with or without arms control, moderniza-
tion should go forward to stay abreast of increases and improvements in Soviet capa-
bilities. But in the wake of SALT I, there was considerable caution, both at the White
House and on Capitol Hill, about pressing ahead with new strategic weapons that
might poison the atmosphere of future negotiations and provoke, in Kissinger’s words,
“an explosion of technology and an explosion of numbers” in delivery vehicles.
29
Not
everyone agreed that slowing down or postponing modernization was a wise move,
certainly not the Joint Chiefs of Sta and certainly not Democratic Senator Henry M.
Jackson of Washington, who had done as much as anyone to draw attention to the im-
perfections of the SALT I accords. But from the momentum generated by the earlier
talks, there was growing optimism for the prospects of SALT II and a corresponding
reluctance to jeopardize those negotiations with hasty spending on new weapons.
The Soviets were less reticent about their programs. Though eager for SALT II,
they were not about to let it get in the way of eorts to bolster their strategic forces,
an ongoing process since the mid-1960s. While SALT I had “frozen” long-range of-
fensive launchers (ICBMs and SLBMs) at existing levels, it had left both sides more
or less free to replace those weapons with newer models and to conduct research and
development as needed. During 1973, with the ink on the SALT I accords barely dry,
the Soviets began testing four new ICBMs, three with MIRV capability. All had new
guidance and reentry systems, making them more accurate and lethal than the missiles
they were slated to supersede. According to intelligence sources, the impetus behind
developing these new weapons was “almost certainly . . . a desire for improved ability
to strike at U.S. strategic forces—a factor long stressed in Soviet strategic doctrine.”
30
The disclosure that the United States might be moving in the same direction under
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CounCil of War
the Schlesinger doctrine—toward an enhanced counterforce capability—met with
typically sharp criticism and stern warnings from the Kremlin, which accused the
United States of jeopardizing the strategic balance and endangering arms control.
What the Soviets conveniently overlooked was that the United States was taking its
time in upgrading its capabilities and had categorically ruled out trying to regain stra-
tegic superiority or to acquire a disarming rst-strike capability.
31
Begun under Nixon’s Presidency in December 1972, SALT II stretched over two
subsequent administrations and was supposed to provide a permanent replacement for
the temporary SALT I interim agreement on oensive arms. Instead, it yielded only
a limited-duration treaty that the United States never ratied. Shortly after the nego-
tiations began (now conducted on a permanent basis from Geneva), Senator Jackson
insisted that the Joint Chiefs replace Lieutenant General Royal B. Allison, USAF, as
their representative to SALT. His successor, appointed in March 1973, was Lieutenant
General Edward L. Rowny, USA. Insisting that Allison had been ineectual, Jackson
wanted someone with tougher negotiating instincts and “dragooned” Rowny, a per-
sonal friend, into the job. A West Point graduate with additional degrees from the Johns
Hopkins University, Yale, and American University, Rowny had commanded troops
in World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam and had served as a nuclear planner at
NATO. His friendship with Senator Jackson dated from the 1950s, when Rowny was
assigned to the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and Jackson, then a Con-
gressman, was doing his 2-week obligated tour of duty as an Army Reservist.
32
At the time of his appointment to SALT, Rowny was deputy chairman of the
NATO Military Committee, in charge of organizing the Mutual and Balanced
Force Reduction (MBFR) Talks. Rowny was personally skeptical whether SALT
would ever accomplish much and would have preferred to remain with the MBFR
negotiations where he saw more opportunities, both for an agreement and for ca-
reer advancement. He distrusted Kissinger, who returned the sentiment by lumping
Rowny in the category of the “undisputed hawks.”
33
Leery of the Soviets as well,
Rowny became even more so the longer he was associated with SALT and the
more contact he had with them at the negotiating table.
Rowny’s appointment was only one of several key personnel changes that
aected the JCS role in SALT II. Though not directly engaged in the negotia-
tions, the Joint Chiefs were part of a large and complex arms control “commu-
nity” in Washington that had grown up over time to develop and assess proposals,
evaluate verication measures, and monitor the progress of the talks.
34
In keeping
with the pattern of JCS involvement in other areas of national policy, the Service
chiefs looked to the Chairman to handle the day-to-day chores connected with
SALT, arrange interagency representation, and convey their views to the appropriate
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THE SEarCH for STraTEGiC STaBiliTY
authorities. In other words, arms control work was increasingly concentrated around
the Chairman.
With the departure of Admiral Moorer in July 1974, the Chairmanship fell for
the rst time in nearly a decade and a half to an Air Force ocer, General George S.
Brown. A bomber pilot in Europe in World War II, Brown’s career had been a suc-
cession of high-prole command and sta jobs that led him steadily up the ladder to
become Chief of Sta of the Air Force in 1973. Though he stayed in that job only a
year before Nixon appointed him CJCS, he established himself as a strong proponent
of the B–1 and other Air Force interests. As Chairman, he continued to champion
the plane, terming it “a virtually indispensable element of our deterrent force.”
35
At
the same time, he adopted a cautious outlook on arms control and relied heavily on
Rowny (a friend from their days at West Point) to help shape JCS positions on SALT.
The Joint Sta acquired a fresh look under Brown. Responding to budget cuts
and criticism growing out of the Vietnam War that the JCS organization was inef-
cient and ineective, Brown decided to streamline the Joint Sta by abolishing two
directorates, Personnel (J-1) and Communications-Electronics (J-6).
36
As part of a
Defense-wide eort to reduce costs, he also cut extraneous Joint Sta billets in line
with a targeted 25 percent personnel reduction in the OSD-JCS headquarters sta,
and supported the consolidation of analytical functions, a process that included the
dissolution of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG). Created in 1949
to provide analytical support for the Joint Chiefs, WSEG had grown increasingly
independent of and less useful to the JCS. By the mid-1970s, about three-quarters of
its work was for non-JCS interests. Ordered abolished by the Secretary of Defense
in March 1976, most of WSEG’s ongoing projects for the Joint Chiefs transferred
directly to the Studies, Analysis, and Gaming Agency (SAGA), a JCS in-house ana-
lytical body that operated in conjunction with but separately from the Joint Sta.
37
Around the same time that General Brown became Chairman, the Joint Chiefs
acquired three other new members, making it the most extensive turnover in JCS
membership since the end of World War II. Brown’s successor as Chief of Sta of the
Air Force was General David C. Jones, a B–29 bomber pilot during the Korean War
and former aide to Curtis E. LeMay. With Zumwalt entering retirement, Admiral
James L. Holloway III, a highly decorated aviator, became Chief of Naval Operations.
Finally, in October 1974, General Fred C. Weyand became Army Chief of Sta, suc-
ceeding General Creighton W. Abrams, who had died in oce the month before. The
only holdover was the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Robert E. Cush-
man, Jr., a veteran of three wars and one time deputy director at the CIA.
The most dramatic personnel change was at the White House. On August 9, 1974,
barely a month after Brown’s appointment as Chairman, Nixon nally succumbed
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CounCil of War
to the pressures of the growing Watergate scandal and relinquished the Presidency to
Gerald R. Ford, a former Republican Congressman from Michigan. Appointed Vice
President the previous October following Spiro Agnew’s ignominious resignation,
Ford had little experience in defense and foreign aairs. To maintain continuity, he
turned to Kissinger, who was then serving as both Secretary of State and National
Security Advisor. “Henry,” he said, “I need you. . . . I’ll do everything I can to work
with you.”
38
As a result, the NSC, with its elaborate structure of committees and sup-
port groups, all either chaired or overseen by Kissinger to aord the President and his
national security assistant maximum control, remained the focal point of interdepart-
mental deliberations and decisionmaking. Normally, the Joint Chiefs would have wel-
comed the retention and rearmation of what was outwardly a carefully structured
and predictable policy environment. But after the discovery of Kissinger’s backchannel
negotiations with Dobrynin during SALT I, there was a growing awareness at the
Pentagon that formal policy mechanisms might not count for much since Kissinger
seemed inclined to circumvent them whenever it suited his purpose.
If the Joint Chiefs were by then deeply suspicious of Kissinger, their immediate
boss, Secretary of Defense Schlesinger, was even more so. Indeed, not since the days of
Louis Johnson and Dean Acheson had a Secretary of Defense and a Secretary of State
been more at odds. Following a custom adopted during Laird’s tenure, Schlesinger and
Kissinger met regularly for breakfast to discuss common problems and to try to nar-
row their dierences. Rarely were they totally successful. As Kissinger described it, the
two became locked in a “personal rivalry” that amounted to “an old-fashioned strug-
gle for turf.”
39
According to Zumwalt, their dierences went deeper and amounted to
an intellectual tug-of-war. “In Jim Schlesinger,” he claimed, “Henry Kissinger met his
superior as a strategic theorist. But since Henry is a superior bureaucrat, he was able
to impose his policy positions on Jim most of the time.”
40
vladivoSTok
It was against this background of rivalries, feuds, intrigue, and turf wars that the new
Ford administration attempted to carry forward the work begun by its predecessor
in shaping a SALT II treaty. Realizing that they had been overly reticent in express-
ing their views at the outset of SALT I, the Joint Chiefs resolved that in SALT II
they would take a more active and prominent role in shaping U.S. policy. All the
same, they were in no rush to conclude an agreement and generally worked closely
with Schlesinger and his sta to develop common OSD-JCS positions that would
give the Pentagon more unity and better leverage in dealing with Kissinger and
the White House. According to Admiral Zumwalt, JCS members further sought to
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THE SEarCH for STraTEGiC STaBiliTY
strengthen their position by establishing “backchannel” contacts with Senator Jack-
son and others in Congress who were sympathetic to military views.
41
The most critical stumbling block in SALT II was the limitation of multiple
independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), a subject that SALT I had ig-
nored. As SALT II began, Kissinger wanted to constrain MIRV deployment by
limiting ICBM throw-weight, but could not convince the Joint Chiefs that such
arrangements were sound or workable. Arguing that Kissinger’s approach would be
too hard to verify, the Joint Chiefs favored equality (“equal aggregates”) in numbers
of delivery vehicles—missiles and heavy bombers—with each side free to MIRV
its missiles to the extent it saw t. To keep MIRV deployment contained, the Joint
Chiefs suggested a maximum of around two thousand strategic delivery vehicles
on each side. Actually, the JCS position came closer to that proposed by the Soviets
than Kissinger’s, but would have required cuts in the number of Soviet launchers to
bring them into compliance with the U.S. ceiling, something Moscow was initially
loath to accept. In an attempt to bridge dierences at home and make the American
position more palatable to the Soviets, President Nixon in February 1974 approved
a new negotiating oer (NSDM 245) calling for equal overall aggregates (2,350
ICBMs, SLBMs, and bombers) and equal ICBM MIRV throw-weight.
42
Despite the new oer, the talks remained deadlocked, needing something imagi-
native or dramatic to break the impasse. By the spring of 1974, with the Watergate af-
fair bearing down on Nixon more heavily than ever, the Soviets lost condence in the
President’s capacity to lead and for all practical purposes suspended serious negotia-
tions.
43
Eorts by Kissinger to jump-start the talks during a visit to Moscow in March
1974 came up empty.
44
Desperate for a SALT II deal to help resuscitate his reputation
and to stave o impeachment, Nixon began exploring further concessions. At the
Pentagon there were growing suspicions that the President’s judgment had become
clouded and that his behavior was suspect. Attempting to make Schlesinger and the
Joint Chiefs his scapegoats, Nixon accused them of intentionally sabotaging détente
by taking “an unyielding hard line against any SALT II agreement that did not ensure
an overwhelming American advantage” in oensive strategic power.
45
The charge was
patently untrue and unfair. But it put Schlesinger and the Joint Chiefs on the defen-
sive. They had to justify themselves anew when the Ford administration took over.
Under Ford, Kissinger quickly solidied his position as the President’s closest
advisor, while Schlesinger and the JCS suered repeated setbacks that reduced them
to marginal roles. Ford had the utmost respect for military power and was inclined to
grant the Defense Department modest increases in its budget, the rst in several years.
But he struggled to mobilize support for the idea after the JCS Chairman, General
Brown, delivered a tirade against “Jewish bankers” during a seminar at Duke University
380
CounCil of War
in October 1974. A gross indiscretion, Brown’s remarks came at an especially inop-
portune time when the United States was trying to engage Israel and the Arab states
in peace talks and as the new administration sought to establish a working relation-
ship with Congress. Furious condemnations of the Chairman’s behavior followed
promptly from Capitol Hill. Brown apologized for the gae and insisted to friends
that he was in no way anti-Semitic, as critics claimed. But his comments remained an
embarrassment that reected poorly on the JCS and the military in general.
46
The most visible evidence of the Joint Chiefs’ limited inuence was their ex-
clusion from the Vladivostok mini-summit between Ford and Brezhnev in late No-
vember 1974. Hurriedly arranged by Kissinger, the summit’s purpose was to breathe
new life into the practically moribund SALT II negotiations. Since the agenda at
Vladivostok was heavily weighted toward military issues, it would have made sense
for the White House to include JCS representation in its party. But apparently
there was no room on the plane, even though 140 other people accompanied the
President.
47
In preparation for the meeting, Schlesinger and the Joint Chiefs urged
Ford not to be hasty but to hold out for equal aggregates. Rather than risk the
talks breaking down, Kissinger made a pre-summit trip to Moscow, where he and
Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko worked a deal.
48
What emerged at Vladivostok
was a numerical-parity formula that imposed an overall ceiling of 2,400 on strategic
launchers, giving the appearance of strategic equality (as mandated by Congress),
and a sub–limit of 1,320 on the number of MIRVed vehicles. The net eect was to
reconrm the status quo by allowing the Soviets to retain their lead in ICBMs and
the United States to keep its relative advantage in SLBMs and bombers. But since
the Joint Chiefs had no plans to build up to the allowed numbers under the Vladi-
vostok formula, the only side that stood to gain was the Soviet Union.
49
While there was probably not much that the chiefs’ presence at Vladivostok
could have done to change the overall outcome, it might have helped avoid later
controversy over two issues—cruise missiles and the Soviet “Backre” bomber. Ex-
periencing a revival, the U.S. cruise missiles under development in the 1970s were
updated versions of a technology dating from the German V-1 “buzz bomb” of
World War II. Equipped with exceedingly precise guidance systems, the new cruise
missiles could y at low altitudes, carry either a conventional or nuclear warhead,
and penetrate existing radar nets virtually at will. While the precise mission of these
weapons had yet to be dened, the operating assumption in R&D circles was that
they could have both tactical and strategic uses. The Soviets also had cruise missiles,
but had not as yet shown any interest beyond tactical applications.
50
The Soviets knew that one of the variants being developed by the U.S. Air
Force was an air-launched cruise missile (ALCM) for deployment aboard B–52s,
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THE SEarCH for STraTEGiC STaBiliTY
and at Vladivostok they sought to curb the program indirectly by proposing range
limitations on air-to-surface missiles. The Joint Chiefs of Sta opposed range con-
straints on cruise missiles, but with no representative present during the talks, they
were unable to advise on how to address the issue. Later, while brieng Congress,
Kissinger insisted that there had been no agreement to limit the range of ALCMs
and that only ballistic missiles were aected. The Soviets, however, disagreed, setting
o a dispute that lasted for years.
51
The most serious faux pas committed at Vladivostok that the chiefs’ presence
might have avoided was the decision to treat the new Soviet Backre bomber as an
intermediate range weapon and not as a strategic one. While there were few details
known about the plane in the West, the Joint Chiefs expected it to be deployed in
signicant numbers within a few years and were convinced from its general design
and performance characteristics that it was fully capable of intercontinental mis-
sions.
52
The Soviets, however, wanted the Backre to be accorded the status of an
intermediate range bomber, a designation Kissinger saw no reason not to accept.
53
In exchange, Brezhnev oered at Vladivostok to drop previous Soviet demands to
bring French and British nuclear forces and U.S. forward-based systems in Europe
and the Far East under SALT counting rules. At Kissinger’s urging, Ford accepted
the tradeo Brezhnev proposed, only to discover upon his return to Washington
that the Joint Chiefs and others thought the Backre decision had been ill-advised.
54
Despite imperfections, the Vladivostok accords received a generally favorable re-
ception in the United States. Among those oering their endorsements, albeit some-
what grudgingly, were Secretary of Defense Schlesinger and the Joint Chiefs of Sta.
Others, like Senator Henry Jackson, would have preferred lower numerical ceilings. But
by and large public and congressional opinion welcomed the agreements as a major step
toward curbing the arms race. In January and February 1975, both houses of Congress
passed resolutions endorsing the Vladivostok accords. SALT II was back in business.
marking Time
Based on the outcome at Vladivostok, the Ford administration estimated that it
would be only a few months before a SALT II treaty materialized. In fact, negotia-
tions dragged on for 4 more years. Part of the problem was the lack of formal or
authoritative minutes of the decisions taken at Vladivostok. The “ocial record”
comprised a broadly worded joint press release handed out at the end of the confer-
ence, a subsequent aide-mémoire, and the conicting recollections of the partici-
pants.
55
Trying to sort out what had been decided at Vladivostok proved beyond the
capacity of the negotiators in Geneva. By the summer of 1975, it was clear that the
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CounCil of War
talks were for all intents and purposes again at an impasse and that key provisions of
the Vladivostok agreement needed to be renegotiated.
56
At the same time, the Soviets showed no sign of being in a hurry to conclude
a treaty and seemed content to mark time. Many in Moscow, including some of
Brezhnev’s top military advisors, thought the General Secretary had been too accom-
modating at Vladivostok by making needless concessions to the Americans. Seeing the
United States as a spent force with its power in decline, they argued that Brezhnev
should have held out for better terms. According to one account, Brezhnev had to
force his defense minister, Marshal Andrei Grechko, to “eat the Vladivostok agree-
ment.” Even though Brezhnev’s views prevailed, he remained under intense personal
and political pressure, and on the trip home from the Far East he suered a stroke.
Brezhnev recovered and resumed his duties in a short while, but his health deteriorat-
ed from that point on, and he was less and less able to keep the hard liners in check.
57
If waning American military power was apparent to the Soviets, it was even
more visible to the Joint Chiefs of Sta. In his annual posture statement summariz-
ing the situation at the outset of 1975, General Brown characterized the U.S.-Soviet
military balance as being in a state of “unstable equilibrium.” Decisions made earlier
by Moscow and programs already in progress, he warned, “display massive momen-
tum toward signicant force increase and modernization.” In contrast, the United
States, with its “modest programs,” was barely keeping up. Mindful of the President’s
injunction against openly criticizing the Vladivostok accords, Brown acknowledged
the agreement as a stabilizing inuence, but pointed out that arms control by itself
was no guarantee of security. “Arms control is a means, not an objective,” he argued.
“The objective is peace.”
58
Without a stronger defense commitment from Congress and the White House,
however, the Joint Chiefs saw little chance of turning the situation around. Cer-
tainly the most stunning evidence of U.S. decline was the collapse of South Vietnam
in the spring of 1975. In early April, with the North Vietnamese oensive in full
swing, President Ford sent General Fred C. Weyand, former COMUSMACV and
now Army Chief of Sta, to Saigon on a fact-nding mission. Based on what he saw,
Weyand returned to Washington convinced that the South Vietnamese were “on
the brink of total military defeat,” a view shared by Schlesinger, Brown, and senior
members of the Intelligence Community.
59
Refusing to give up, however, Weyand
recommended immediate emergency assistance to the South Vietnamese totaling
over $700 million in military aid. A face-saving gesture at best, Weyand’s proposal
received grudging approval from the White House but fell on deaf ears when it
reached Congress.
60
South Vietnamese resistance collapsed shortly thereafter, and
within a few years bases like the sprawling facility at Cam Ranh Bay that had once
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THE SEarCH for STraTEGiC STaBiliTY
played host to American forces were being used by the Soviets to project their air
and naval power into the Western Pacic and Indian Oceans.
South Vietnam’s demise ushered in a progressive erosion of U.S. power and in-
uence across the Third World. Seizing on American weakness, Moscow launched
vigorous eorts to restore its position in the Middle East and the Arab world by shor-
ing up ties with Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, establishing close relations with Libya, and
stepping up covert assistance to Palestinian terrorist groups.
61
In Somalia and south of
the Sahara, the Soviets made further inroads. Almost as soon as the Portuguese empire
collapsed, Soviet advisors and thousands of Cuban military “volunteers” began arriv-
ing in Angola and Mozambique to help prop up Marxist regimes. A decade and a half
earlier, in 1960−1962, when Communist inuence threatened to overtake the Congo,
the Joint Chiefs had favored strong countermeasures, including military intervention
if necessary. But by the mid-1970s, with the experience of Vietnam behind them, they
were far more cautious and reserved and generally urged diplomacy and covert opera-
tions to counter Soviet moves rather than direct military action.
An exception to this pattern was the Mayaguez aair in May 1975 involving the
seizure of a U.S. cargo ship by the Khmer Rouge, who had taken control of Cambodia
about the same time South Vietnam collapsed. As news of the capture of the Mayaguez
reached Washington, it brought back memories of the 1968 Pueblo incident when the
United States had done nothing more than vent its “outrage” at North Korea’s seizure
of one of its spy ships and, later, oer an abject apology to secure the crew’s release. Re-
solving not to be put in a similar position, President Ford took a tough line from the
beginning and wound up authorizing military action to take back the ship and its crew.
As the debate over what to do unfolded, it became a test of wills between
Kissinger and Schlesinger, with the Joint Chiefs caught in the middle. Frustrated
by the recent setback in Vietnam, Kissinger encouraged Ford to believe that only
a strong show of force would suce, while Schlesinger adopted a wait-and-see at-
titude. Schlesinger knew that the Khmer Rouge had detained ships sailing near the
Cambodian coast on previous occasions and usually released them without incident
within a day or so. So it stood to reason that sooner or later they would let the
Mayaguez go free. Kissinger, however, disagreed and in making his case convinced
Ford that this was too serious a provocation to go unpunished.
62
Despite the Pueblo incident, the Joint Chiefs had no contingency plans for such
situations and had to improvise by relying on a hastily assembled operational concept
prepared under the supervision of Admiral Noel Gayler, commander in chief of the
Pacic theater. Among the options on the table for putting pressure on the Cambo-
dians were air attacks from Navy carriers, punitive raids using B–52s, and the massing
of a surface naval force o the Cambodian coast. Eventually, drawing on Gayler’s
384
CounCil of War
inputs, the JCS recommended, and President Ford approved, a more limited operation
involving a rescue party of several hundred Marines backed by tactical air. While one
party of Marines boarded and secured the ship, the others would land on a small is-
land, Koh Tang, just o the Cambodian coast, where the crew was thought to be held.
Securing the ship, which the Cambodians had abandoned, went without incident.
The landing at Koh Tang, however, was a dierent matter. Operating from sketchy
intelligence, the Marines encountered stronger resistance than expected and suered
heavy casualties. Soon withdrawn under re, they discovered that the Mayaguez crew
had been released unharmed 4 hours before they landed on Koh Tang. Small wonder
that some historians rate the Mayaguez operation as a prominent “military failure.”
63
Still, the Mayaguez episode was not without useful lessons. By revealing gaps in
JCS planning and organization, the operation stimulated interest in the theretofore
neglected eld of “special operations” and by extension helped generate support for
JCS organizational reform resulting in the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 and the
subsequent Nunn-Cohen amendment. Given the heavy emphasis on preparing for
large-scale conventional conict since adoption of the “exible response” concept
in the mid-1960s, the Joint Chiefs and the Services had not paid much attention to
developing the necessary doctrine, arms, and forces for rescue missions and other spe-
cialized tasks. Nor had the political and budgetary climate at the time been conducive
for it. But as a result of the Mayaguez aair and the rising tempo of international ter-
rorism during the 1970s, interest in special operations began to grow to the point that
by the end of the decade each Service was taking a closer look at its requirements.
64
A further consequence of the Mayaguez incident was to set the stage for a high-
level “purge” within the Ford administration, with Schlesinger the primary target.
Never comfortable with Schlesinger to begin with, Ford considered him aloof, pa-
tronizing, and arrogant; after Mayaguez, he lost condence in Schlesinger altogeth-
er.
65
The precipitating event leading to the Secretary’s dismissal was Schlesinger’s
decision to call o a nal air strike against the Cambodians once news reached the
Pentagon that the crew was free and the Marines had withdrawn from Koh Tang.
Secretaries of Defense going back to Forrestal had routinely taken it upon them-
selves to cancel Presidential orders when they judged them to be “OBE” (overtaken
by events). Kissinger, however, seems to have gone out of his way to put it in Ford’s
mind that Schlesinger had been willfully insubordinate.
66
With relations between Ford and Schlesinger continuing to deteriorate, the Presi-
dent nally decided in late October 1975 that the time had come to nd a new Sec-
retary of Defense. Named as Schlesinger’s successor was Donald H. Rumsfeld, then
White House director of operations. In what the press called the “Halloween Massa-
cre,” Ford also recalled George H.W. Bush from his post as envoy to China to replace
385
THE SEarCH for STraTEGiC STaBiliTY
William E. Colby as Director of Central Intelligence and stripped Kissinger of his title
as Assistant for National Security Aairs. The ouster of Kissinger from his national se-
curity job (his former deputy, retired Air Force Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft,
replaced him) was aimed at quieting criticism from Congress that Kissinger had grown
too powerful through occupying two major positions. But with his former deputy now
managing the NSC, Kissinger’s power and inuence were little diminished.
The Joint Chiefs, as they were prone to do, took these changes in stride. Like
President Ford, they had found Schlesinger’s detached manner o-putting at times,
but they had the utmost respect for his intellectual ability and his commanding grasp
of nuclear strategy. Rumsfeld, in contrast, came from a political background, and his
experience in defense aairs was conned primarily to recently serving as Ambas-
sador to NATO. According to the Washington rumor mill, he had his sights set on
someday becoming President. Kissinger remembered him as “tough, capable, person-
ally attractive, and knowledgeable.”
67
Whatever else, he made a favorable impression
on the chiefs and, being well connected at the White House, increased the military’s
prole where it counted.
Under Rumsfeld, the Joint Chiefs moved several steps closer to realizing the
aims of their strategic modernization program. Echoing JCS concerns that the stra-
tegic balance was shifting in favor of the Soviet Union, Rumsfeld urged a go-slow
approach to further arms control talks until the United States could reassess the full
range of its strategic requirements. “The level of deterrence suitable for Brezhnev,”
he argued, “is not necessarily the level of deterrence suitable for us.”
68
Meanwhile,
he advocated a modest strategic buildup that included continuation of Trident, ac-
celeration of both the B–1 and MX programs to get them ready for production,
and deployment of the Mark 12A warhead (previously authorized but delayed for
technical reasons) to enhance the eectiveness of the Minuteman III force. Aban-
doning the no-growth defense budgets of the past, he proposed modest increases to
keep military spending slightly ahead of ination. Not all of these decisions would
survive the scrutiny of the incoming Carter administration in 1977, but at the time
they were cause for cautious optimism among the JCS that senior policymakers
were aware of U.S. weakness and prepared to do something about it.
69
While détente survived the stresses and strains of this period, the reasons prob-
ably had less to do with the commonality of U.S. and Soviet interests than with the
reluctance of either side to admit that this latest version of “peaceful coexistence”
was not bound to last. “If détente unravels in America,” Nixon warned Brezhnev
shortly before he relinquished the Presidency, “the hawks will take over, not the
doves.”
70
Brezhnev could well have said the same thing about the situation in the
Soviet Union. Neither leader liked to think of the Cold War as having become a
386
CounCil of War
winner-take-all or zero-sum game. But that in eect was what it had become—and
how increasingly it seemed destined to play out.
Notes
1 United States Military Posture for FY 1983 (Washington, DC: Organization of the Joint
Chiefs of Sta, n.d.), 15 (unclassied edition).
2 U.S. Department of Defense, Oce of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Comptroller),
National Defense Budget Estimates for FY 1985 (Washington, DC, March 1984), 108–109, 135.
3 Richard L. Kugler, Commitment to Purpose: How Alliance Partnership Won the Cold War
(Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1993), 264.
4 U.S. Department of Defense, Fiscal Year 1972–76 Defense Program and the 1972 Defense
Budget (Washington, DC: GPO, 1971), 77–82, 181.
5 Admiral Moorer, February 21, 1970, quoted in Walter S. Poole, Lorna S. Jae, and Wayne
M. Dzwonchyk, “History of the Joint Chiefs of Sta: The Joint Chiefs of Sta and Na-
tional Policy, 1969–1972” (MS, Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, Joint Sta, March
1991), 96 (declassied/publication forthcoming).
6 Quoted in History of Strategic Air Command, 1965, Vol. I (History and Research Division,
HQ Strategic Air Command, April 1967), 141.
7 Marcelle Size Knaack, Post-World War II Bombers, 1945–1973 (Washington, DC: Oce of
Air Force History, 1988), 575–579.
8 Lawrence S. Kaplan, Ronald D. Landa, and Edward J. Drea, The McNamara Ascendan-
cy, 1961–1965 (Washington, DC: Historical Oce, Oce of the Secretary of Defense,
2006), 486, 490; “Discussion” section (Enclosure C) to JCSM-925-64 to SecDef, Octo-
ber 31, 1964, “The Strategic Aircraft Program,” JCS 1800/900-1.
9 Knaack, 579–583.
10 D. Douglas Dalgleish and Larry Schweikart, Trident (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Uni-
versity Press, 1984), 41–44; Graham Spinardi, From Polaris to Trident: The Development of U.S.
Fleet Ballistic Missile Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 113–123.
11 Poole, Jae, and Dzwonchyk, 53–68.
12 Spinardi, 119–120; Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979),
1129.
13 Bernard C. Nalty, “USAF Ballistic Missile Programs, 1964–1966” (MS, USAF His-
torical Division Liaison Oce, March 1967), 45–47, available at <http://www.gwu.
edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb249/doc04.pdf> (accessed July 18, 2011); and Barnard C.
Nalty, “USAF Ballistic Missile Programs, 1967–1968” (MS, Oce of Air Force History,
September 1968), 56–59, available at <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/
ebb249/doc05.pdf> (accessed July 18, 2011).
14 Walter S. Poole, “The History of the Joint Chiefs of Sta and National Policy, 1965–
1968,” (MS, Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, Joint Chiefs of Sta, May 1985), part
I, 45 (declassied/publication forthcoming).
15 See CNO views as presented in JSOP FY71–78, Book II, “Strategic Oensive and
Defensive Forces,” Vol. II, enclosure to Note by Secretaries to the JCS, January 27, 1969,
JCS 2143/339 (Book II); summarized in Poole, Jae, and Dzwonchyk, 52–53.
387
THE SEarCH for STraTEGiC STaBiliTY
16 William Burr, “The Nixon Administration, the ‘Horror Strategy,’ and the Search for
Limited Nuclear Options, 1969–1972—Prelude to the Schlesinger Doctrine,” Journal
of Cold War Studies 7 (Summer 2005), 34, 40–46; Kissinger, White House Years, 216. See
also NSSM 64, July 8, 1969, “US Strategic Capabilities,” National Security Council
Institutional File, box H-207, Nixon Presidential Materials; available at <http://nixon.
archives.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/nssm/nssm_064.pdf>.
17 Poole, 24–31; Desmond Ball, “The Development of the SIOP, 1960–1983,” in Desmond
Ball and Jerey Richelson, eds., Strategic Nuclear Targeting (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univer-
sity Press, 1986), 62–70.
18 Notes on NSC Meeting, February 14, 1969, quoted in Burr, 49.
19 Poole, 29–30.
20 Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), 370–371;
Janne E. Nolan, Guardians of the Arsenal (New York: HarperCollins, 1989), 114–115.
21 Kissinger, White House Years, 217; Burr, 70; Terry Terri, The Nixon Administration and the
Making of U.S. Nuclear Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 61–62.
22 HAK Talking Points, DOD Strategic Target Study Brieng, July 27, 1972, NSC Files,
Nixon Papers; and <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB173/
SIOP–18.pdf> (accessed July 18, 2011).
23 Memo, Laird to Nixon, December 26, 1972, “Nuclear Weapons Planning” (declassied),
National Security Archive collection, copy in JHO.
24 NSSM 169, February 13, 1973, “US Nuclear Policy,” NSC Institutional Files, Box
H-207, Nixon Presidential Materials, available at <http://nixon.archives.gov/virtual-
library/documents/nssm/nssm_169.pdf> (accessed July 18, 2011).
25 NSDM 242, January 17, 1974, “Policy for Planning the Employment of Nuclear
Weapons,” NSC Institutional Files, Box H-208, Nixon Presidential Materials, NARA;
and <http://nixon.archives.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/nsdm/nsdm_242.pdf> (ac-
cessed July 18, 2011). See also Scott D. Sagan, Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National
Security (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 44–45;
26 Remarks by Schlesinger to Overseas Writers Association, Washington, DC, January 10, 1974,
in U.S. Department of Defense, Public Papers of James R. Schlesinger, Secretary of Defense, 1974
(Washington, DC: Historical Oce, Oce of the Secretary of Defense, n.d.), I, 17–31.
27 Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1983), 379–382, summarizes reactions pro and con.
28 U.S. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger to the
Congress on the FY 1975 Defense Budget and FY 1975–1979 Defense Program (Washington,
DC: GOP, 1974), 42, 51–57; U.S. Department of Defense, Report of the Secretary of Defense
James R. Schlesinger to the Congress on the FY 1976 and Transition Budgets (Washington, DC:
GPO, 1975), chaps. 2 and 3.
29 Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), 1175.
30 NIE 11-8-73, “Soviet Forces for Intercontinental Attack,” January 25, 1974, in Don-
ald Steury, ed., Intentions and Capabilities: Estimates on Soviet Strategic Forces, 1950–1983
(Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1996), 326.
31 Raymond L. Gartho, Détente and Confrontation: American–Soviet Relations from Nixon
to Reagan (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1994, rev. ed.), 466–467, summarizes Soviet
responses to the Schlesinger doctrine.
388
CounCil of War
32 Edward L. Rowny, It Takes One to Tango (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1992), 1–20.
33 Henry Kissinger, Years of Renewal (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 849.
34 Mark M. Lowenthal, “US Organization for Verication,” in William C. Potter, Verication
and SALT: The Challenge of Strategic Deception (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980), 77–94,
gives a comprehensive overview of the formal arms control structure in the 1970s.
35 George S. Brown, United States Military Posture for FY 1976 (Washington, DC: Depart-
ment of Defense, February 5, 1975), 30–31.
36 Historical Division, Organizational Development of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, 1942–1989
(Washington, DC: Joint Chiefs of Sta, November 1989), 48–50.
37 Memo, Rumsfeld to CJCS et al., March 9, 1976, “Organizational Changes—Dises-
tablishment of WSEG,” U, JCS 1977-380; John Ponturo, Analytical Support for the Joint
Chiefs of Sta: The WSEG Experience, 1948–1976 (Washington, DC: Institute for Defense
Analyses, 1979), 343–363.
38 Gerald R. Ford, A Time to Heal (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 30.
39 Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 1154, 1187.
40 Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., On Watch: A Memoir (New York: Quadrangle, 1976), 432.
41 Ibid., 429.
42 NSDM 245, February 19, 1974, “Instructions for the SALT Talks, Geneva,” National Security
Council Institutional Files, Box H-207, Nixon Presidential Materials, available at <http://
nixon.archives.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/nsdm/nsdm_245.pdf> (accessed July 18, 2011).
43 See Gartho, 473–485.
44 Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 1020–1031.
45 Richard M. Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap,
1978), 1024.
46 Edgar F. Puryear, Jr., George S. Brown, General, U.S. Air Force: Destined for Stars (Novato,
CA: Presidio Press, 1983), 246–257; George M. Watson, Jr., Secretaries and Chiefs of Sta of
the United States Air Force: Biographical Sketches and Portraits (Washington, DC: Air Force
History and Museum Program, 2001), 150–151; The Chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of
Sta, 1949–1999 (Washington, DC: Joint History Oce, Joint Chiefs of Sta, 2000), 123.
47 Gartho, 497. Unlike Ford, Brezhnev brought many of his senior military advisors with
him to Vladivostok.
48 Kissinger, Years of Renewal, 277–279.
49 Thomas W. Wolfe, The SALT Experience (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1979), 174–175.
50 Robert Emmet Mot, “The Cruise Missile and SALT II,” International Security Review
4 (Fall 1979), 271–293; Richard K. Betts, ed., Cruise Missiles: Technology, Strategy, Politics
(Washington, DC: Brookings, 1981), 83–100, 339–358.
51 Gartho, 497–499.
52 Joint Chiefs of Sta, Report by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta: United States Mili-
tary Posture for FY 1975 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, February 1974), 24
(unclassied edition).
53 Kissinger, Years of Renewal, 301; and Rowny, 73–74.
54 Kissinger, Years of Renewal, 301, 847.
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THE SEarCH for STraTEGiC STaBiliTY
55 Wolfe, 174–175.
56 Gartho, 501–503.
57 Gordon S. Barrass, The Great Cold War: A Journey Through the Hall of Mirrors (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 190–191.
58 Brown, 53–54, 200–201.
59 Minutes, NSC Meeting on Indochina, April 9, 1975 (declassied), National Security
Advisers Files, Gerald R. Ford Library; available at <http://www.fordlibrarymuseum.
gov/library/document/nscmin/750409.pdf> (accessed July 18, 2011).
60 Willard J. Webb and Walter S. Poole, The Joint Chiefs of Sta and The War in Vietnam,
1971–1973 (Washington, DC: Oce of Joint History, Joint Chiefs of Sta, 2007), 359.
61 SNIE 11/2-81, “Soviet Support for International Terrorism and Revolutionary Vio-
lence,” May 1981, in Gerald K. Haines and Robert E. Leggett, eds., CIA’s Analysis of
the Soviet Union, 1947–1991: A Documentary Collection (Washington, DC: Center for the
Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 2001), 106.
62 Ford, 275–281; Kissinger, Years of Renewal, 547–566.
63 See Richard A. Gabriel, Military Incompetence: Why the American Military Doesn’t Win
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1985), 61–83.
64 David W. Hogan, Jr., Raiders or Elite Infantry? The Changing Role of the U.S. Army Rangers
from Dieppe to Grenada (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992), 205–210.
65 Ford, 320–324.
66 Kissinger, Years of Renewal, 570–572. Kissinger incorrectly asserted (ibid., 573) that “in
our system” the Secretary of Defense was “not directly in the chain of command,” and
that Schlesinger therefore had no authority to issue the orders he did. Kissinger was
apparently unaware of the 1958 amendments to the National Security Act, which es-
tablished the chain of command as running from the President, through the Secretary
of Defense, to the combatant commanders.
67 Kissinger, Years of Renewal, 177.
68 Minutes, NSC Meeting on SALT, January 19, 1976, 22 (declassied), National Security
Advisers’ Files, Ford Library; available at <http://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/
document/nscmin/760119.pdf>. Library le copy reads “necessary,” an apparent typo.
69 Department of Defense, Annual Defense Department Report, FY 1977 (Washington, DC:
Department. of Defense, January 27, 1976), i–vii; U.S. Department of Defense, Report of
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld on FY 1978 Budget, FY 1979 Authorization Request,
and FY 1978–1982 Defense Programs (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, January
17, 1977), 123–130.
70 Nixon, RN, 1031.
General David C. Jones, USAF, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Sta, 1978–1982
Chapter 13
The ReTuRn To
ConfRonTaTion
By January 1977, when President Jimmy Carter took oce, détente was beginning
to show unmistakable signs of wear. In both Washington and Moscow, opposition to
further accommodations with the other side was on the rise. While Brezhnev had
managed to force the hard-liners to “eat” the Vladivostok accords, the prevailing mood
within the Soviet elite was that the United States was losing the arms race and that the
correlation of forces had turned in favor of the Kremlin.
1
Many in the West—includ-
ing the Joint Chiefs—agreed that U.S. military credibility was at its lowest ebb since
World War II and that the balance of power was in a precarious state. Never, it seemed,
had America’s prestige been lower or its status as a superpower so uncertain.
The new Carter administration was, if anything, even more committed to pre-
serving détente than its two immediate predecessors. If he achieved nothing else
during his Presidency, Jimmy Carter wanted to reduce the threat of nuclear war, cut
the number of opposing strategic weapons, and lessen the drain that military expen-
ditures placed on the world’s resources. Ultimately, he hoped to shift attention from
the Cold War to other issues—the global crisis in energy supplies, the protection of
human rights, and especially the need to improve relations and the distribution of
resources between the developed and developing worlds. Instead of military power,
Carter proposed to rely more on diplomacy and moral suasion to achieve American
security objectives.
2
While he did not dismiss the need for armed force in support of
foreign policy, he thought it had been overused in the past. Thenceforth, he said in
his inaugural address, the United States would “maintain strength so sucient that
it need not be proven in combat—a quiet strength based not merely on the size of
an arsenal but on the nobility of ideas.”
3
Carter and the Joint Chiefs
Almost from the moment the Carter administration arrived, the Joint Chiefs of
Sta found themselves on the defensive, with their advice treated as suspect and
their methods and procedures under close scrutiny. Despite a succession of austere
391
392
CounCil of War
budgets since Vietnam, defense spending remained at what many in the incoming
administration deemed excessive, driven by outmoded force-sizing practices, lax
management, and inecient allocation and use of resources. As an immediate target
upon taking oce, Carter proposed to trim ve to seven billion dollars from the
military budget. Hoping eventually to reduce military spending even further, Carter
never ceased to push and prod the Pentagon to save money, do more with less, and
above all keep in mind the greater humanitarian good.
Carter was unlike any President the Joint Chiefs had known. An Annapolis
graduate (Class of ’46), he resigned from the Navy in 1953 to manage his family’s
Georgia peanut business. After turning the business around, he went into politics,
became governor of Georgia, and acquired a national following. A populist, he
identied himself with the center-left wing of the Democratic Party. Like John F.
Kennedy, he appeared uneasy, almost awkward, around “the brass.” If he dealt with
the JCS at all, it was generally through his Secretary of Defense, Harold Brown, or
the Chairman. Despite his celebrated penchant for mastering detail, he had little
patience for lengthy JCS threat assessments and posture statements and preferred
crisp summaries prepared by White House aides. In his memoirs, he insisted that
he enjoyed “good relations” with the JCS during his 4 years in oce.
4
Yet he rarely
met with the chiefs as a corporate body. His trips to the Pentagon were few and
usually for ceremonial functions rather than substantive discussions. On one of the
few occasions when he did listen to JCS advice—in planning the failed Iran hostage
rescue mission in 1980—the results were a disaster, conrming Carter’s belief that
the military was anything but infallible.
Under Carter, as under his immediate predecessors, the CJCS continued to be
the pivotal link between civilian authority and the military. Though there was some
speculation as the new administration took oce that General George S. Brown,
USAF, the serving Chairman, would be replaced, Carter brushed such talk aside
and kept Brown on until he stepped down from active duty for health reasons in
June 1978, 10 days before the expiration of his term. His successor, General David
C. Jones, had previously been the Air Force Chief of Sta. A Curtis LeMay protégé,
Jones had served on the Air Sta in Washington while McNamara was Secretary of
Defense, when civil-military relations were at low ebb. As Chairman, he made it his
goal to achieve a harmonious partnership between OSD and the JCS.
5
Carter’s choice of another Air Force ocer as Chairman was the source of
endless speculation. Some thought that it was a reward for Jones’s acquiescence
in Carter’s decision a year earlier, fullling a campaign pledge, to cancel the B–1
bomber. Proponents of the B–1, feeling that Jones had accepted the cancellation
order too easily, argued that he should have fought harder to keep the plane. Jones
THE rETurn To ConfronTaTion
393
disagreed. “There were those who said I should have fallen on my sword,” he re-
called. But he doubted whether it would have served a useful purpose. “Carter had
campaigned on cancellation of the B–1. Who am I to sit in judgment?”
6
Jones’s appointment as CJCS seemed to some observers to be consistent with an
emerging pattern by the Carter administration of naming competent yet low-prole
ocers to sit on the Joint Chiefs of Sta. At the same time he nominated Jones, Carter
also sent the names of two other new JCS members to the Senate: General Lew Allen,
Jr., to become the Air Force Chief of Sta; and Admiral Thomas D. Hayward to suc-
ceed the popular and respected Admiral James L. Holloway III as Chief of Naval Op-
erations. Allen, a Ph.D. in physics, was at heart a scientist, while Hayward’s background
was in naval aviation and program analysis. Both were able and dedicated ocers. But
they were virtually unknown outside their respective Services and came from techni-
cal backgrounds that did little to prepare them as high-level politico-military advisors.
The net eect, wrote Bernard Weinraub of the New York Times, was “an awareness
within the defense hierarchy that the inuence of the Joint Chiefs is on the decline.”
7
Eorts by the Joint Chiefs to reestablish their inuence and authority initially
met with limited success. A case in point was their handling of reforms to the joint
strategic planning system, which one administration after another had deplored. As
initiated under the Carter administration, these reforms targeted the Joint Strategic
Objectives Plan (JSOP), the Joint Chiefs’ mid-range (7-year) estimate of military
requirements which they updated annually as their major contribution to the bud-
get process. Urged by the administration to modernize their planning methods, the
Joint Chiefs introduced the Joint Strategic Planning Document (JSPD) in place
of the JSOP over the course of 1978−1979. Like its predecessor, the function of
the JSPD was to appraise the threats to U.S. interests and objectives and to recom-
mend a level of programmed forces to address those dangers. Even so, the JSPD was
little better than the JSOP in providing a strategic framework for the allocation of
resources since it made no attempt to prioritize programs; instead, it treated each
Service’s needs as having more or less equal importance. Since allocating resources
invariably posed the most dicult problems at budget time, the absence of a pri-
oritized list rendered the JSPD almost useless. As a result, few outside the Joint Sta
paid any more attention to the JSPD than they had to the JSOP.
8
Carter was convinced that the only way to make the Joint Chiefs more ef-
cient and eective was through a top-to-bottom reorganization, the subject of a
Defense-wide review initiated in November 1977 by Secretary of Defense Harold
Brown.
9
Richard C. Steadman, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense,
chaired the panel that examined the role of the JCS. Reporting its ndings in July
1978, the Steadman group recommended streamlining Joint Sta procedures and
394
CounCil of War
increasing the power and authority of the CJCS. Arguing that it was virtually im-
possible for the Service chiefs to render wholly objective advice, the panel looked
to the Chairman as the only military ocer with no current or prospective Service
responsibilities to interfere with providing the necessary leadership and administra-
tive authority to make the JCS organization more responsive and eective.
10
The Joint Chiefs were notably unenthusiastic about the Steadman group’s nd-
ings. At his rst press conference as Chairman, General Jones downplayed their prob-
able impact, indicating that there was as yet no consensus on how to proceed. “We
have a long ways to go,” he said, “before we can really gure out how to merge all
of these conicting views in the joint arena and come up with recommendations on
some of these dicult issues.”
11
Privately, Jones told Secretary of Defense Brown that
while he saw “a number of things” that would improve JCS performance, he expected
the changes, if any, to be minor. “I rmly believe,” he added, “that the fundamental or-
ganizational structure is sound.”
12
Commenting as a corporate body, the Joint Chiefs
concurred that the Steadman report contained many “innovative, positive sugges-
tions,” but cautioned that implementation eorts should be “evolutionary in nature.”
13
Undaunted, President Carter continued to treat JCS reform as unnished busi-
ness. Had he been reelected in 1980, he undoubtedly would have proposed legisla-
tion along the lines the Steadman report recommended. But as a one-term Presi-
dent, he never had the time or opportunity to go beyond piecemeal changes. The
only legislative reform enacted during Carter’s Presidency was a law he signed on
October 20, 1978, granting the Commandant of the Marine Corps coequal status
with the Service chiefs, thereby recognizing in statute what had become common-
place in practice. While the movement for JCS reform was indeed beginning to take
denite form, it would still be some time before it gathered sucient momentum
to produce more than supercial changes.
strategiC forCes and Pd–59
The most striking dierence between Jimmy Carter and the Joint Chiefs was
in their respective views of the world and the threat posed from Moscow. While
Carter acknowledged the Soviet Union as a hostile power, animated by an ideology
sharply at odds with Western values, he entered oce brimming with optimism
that he could do business with the Soviets and reach an early SALT agreement that
would obviate both sides’ need for new or additional strategic forces. He liked the
idea of tailoring basic national security policy accordingly, and favored renements
in strategic-targeting and weapons-employment policy that would reduce the
death and destruction from a possible military confrontation. Even though the Joint
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THE rETurn To ConfronTaTion
Chiefs applauded the President’s idealism, they also considered it somewhat naïve
and could not help but question the practicality of some of his proposals. As they
had for years, the chiefs continued to measure Soviet intentions in terms of Mos-
cow’s large and growing military arsenal. As time went on, to be sure, Carter’s views
on the Soviet Union changed, especially after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan late
in 1979. Yet he never accepted the chiefs’ basic premise that the United States was
falling dangerously behind the Soviet Union in eective military power and could
only redress this situation through a major strengthening of U.S. capabilities.
For Carter, as for his two immediate predecessors, strategic modernization was
often a source of intense friction between the Pentagon and the White House. Cart-
er was determined to reduce military spending and saw no better place to begin
than with the increasingly expensive B–1 bomber, which he summarily cancelled
in June 1977, thus fullling a campaign pledge.
14
Carter and Secretary of Defense
Brown both questioned the B–1’s penetration capabilities and concluded that it had
become superuous with the advent of air-launched cruise missiles which could be
delivered from existing B–52s and other platforms. Later, they argued that emerg-
ing “stealth” technology oered more promising possibilities than the B–1.
15
But
according to General David Jones, the Air Force Chief of Sta at the time, stealth
R&D then concentrated on developing smaller planes and cruise missiles and was
not seriously involved in producing a bomber alternative to the B–1.
16
Carter’s cancellation of the B–1 proved far more contentious than the White
House expected and came in the wake of another controversial decision, announced
in May 1977, to withdraw U.S. troops from Korea. Like his handling of the B–1,
Carter had been thinking about pulling troops out of Korea well before the elec-
tion. According to published accounts, he was heavily inuenced by analysts at the
Brookings Institution who believed that the continuation of a large U.S. presence
amounted to a dangerous “trip wire” that could easily ensnarl the United States in
another unpopular Asian war.
17
That the pullout of U.S. forces would in the long run
save money, free up assets for deployment elsewhere, and distance the United States
from what President Carter considered the South Korean government’s wobbly hu-
man rights record became in the nal analysis the decisive factor in his thinking.
18
Underlying Carter’s foreign and defense policies was his faith in détente to
move the United States and the Soviet Union permanently away from the confron-
tational politics of the past. While he acknowledged the contributions of military
power to an eective foreign policy, he was satised with maintaining “essential
equivalence” in strategic forces and a balance of power “at least as favorable as that
that now exists.”
19
But after the contretemps over cancel lation of the B–1, he was
under constant pressure to reassure the JCS and pro-defense members of Congress
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CounCil of War
that he remained committed to preserving a credible deterrent posture. Thus, he
showed continuing strong support for the Trident program in the face of allegations
of shoddy management and enormous ination-driven increases in construction
costs, and let stand the Ford administration’s decision to proceed with production
of the Mark 12A warhead to increase Minuteman III’s accuracy and eectiveness
against hardened targets. Most signicant of all was his determination to resolve the
MX controversy, resulting in his approval in 1979 of a plan to deploy 200 MX mis-
siles in a mobile-basing mode. Yet it was a decision he found personally repugnant,
and in his diary he characterized the MX deployment as “a nauseating prospect to
confront, with the gross waste of money going into nuclear weapons of all kinds.”
20
Perhaps because he disliked nuclear weapons so much, Carter was determined
to exercise the closest possible control over them. Not since Harry S. Truman had
a President been so personally involved in the management of the country’s nu-
clear arsenal, its conguration, and how it would be used. Most far-reaching of all
were the changes President Carter made in the targeting and employment policies
governing U.S. nuclear forces. The Joint Chiefs regarded these matters as basically
closed after adoption of the Schlesinger doctrine (NSDM 242) in 1975. But to Cart-
er and his national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, NSDM 242 was merely
the rst step. Convinced that targeting doctrine should have specic political as well
as military objectives, Brzezinski wanted it to include renements that amounted
to the “ethnic cleansing” of the Soviet Union by threatening the heaviest casualties
among the Great Russian population, as opposed to the Latvians, Ukrainians, and
other nationalities that had been more or less coerced into joining the Soviet state.
21
The upshot was the appearance in November 1978 of the “countervailing strat-
egy,” the product of an interagency review headed by Leon Sloss, a respected strate-
gic analyst and consultant to Secretary of Defense Brown.
22
Presented to the Joint
Chiefs as more or less a fait accompli, the countervailing strategy was in many re-
spects a logical extension of the Schlesinger doctrine. As Secretary Brown described
it, its function was the maintenance of “military (including nuclear) forces, contin-
gency plans, and command-and-control capabilities to convince Soviet leaders that
they cannot secure victory, however they may dene it, at any stage of a potential
war.”
23
But in carrying out these tasks, it imposed a far more sophisticated and rigor-
ous set of targeting requirements. A formidable assignment, Chairman Jones prom-
ised to give it his utmost attention but was somewhat skeptical of achieving quick
results. In fact, Jones believed strategic nuclear planning and targeting had become
so exceedingly complex that he foresaw few signicant changes resulting anytime
soon, no matter what the declared targeting policy might be.
24
397
THE rETurn To ConfronTaTion
The most strenuous objections to the countervailing strategy came from the State
Department. According to Brzezinski, Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance found the
whole inquiry into nuclear targeting emotionally disturbing and gave it limited coop-
eration.
25
As a direct result, approval of a Presidential directive (PD–59) sanctioning the
new strategy was held up until July 1980.
26
By then, however, the Joint Chiefs were well
along toward putting the countervailing strategy into operation since many of its provi-
sions could be implemented on orders of the Secretary of Defense. The main function
of PD–59 was to pave the way for issuance of a new Nuclear Weapons Employment
Policy (NUWEP-80), which the Joint Chiefs received in October 1980.
27
President Carter and Secretary of Defense Brown both insisted that it was never
their intention under the countervailing strategy to make sweeping changes in U.S.
policy or doctrine. According to Brown, the countervailing strategy amounted to
nothing more than a “modest renement in U.S. nuclear strategy as a response to
charges that the USSR had achieved strategic nuclear superiority.” Its aim, he insisted,
was to strengthen deterrence and not to boost war-ghting capabilities.
28
Carter’s view
was essentially the same. As much as he abhorred nuclear weapons, he accepted the
necessity of their role in U.S. defense policy, but sought to narrow their use for strate-
gic purposes in carefully pre-planned ways, avoiding wholesale destruction. Hence the
emphasis on options that would theoretically allow the President to choose from an
almost endless array of measured responses to almost any level of Soviet provocation.
29
By and large, the Joint Chiefs agreed that the more options they and the Presi-
dent might have, the better. As during previous strategic reviews, however, their
main concern was one of feasibility. The most complex and demanding targeting
policy to that point, the countervailing strategy required them to prepare for almost
any contingency, from a limited nuclear exchange to a fully generated nuclear war.
Most military professionals involved in this process shared the view of the Chair-
man, General Jones, that implementing the new doctrine would be a slow and
laborious process, testing the patience and resourcefulness of all involved. That it
would require signicant improvements in technology, from weapons in the eld
to command, control, and communications, was practically a given. In other words,
implementing the countervailing strategy was a long-term process that JCS plan-
ners approached with mixed feelings about achieving ultimate success.
saLt ii
As intent as President Carter was on exercising closer command and control over
the targeting and use of nuclear weapons, he was even more determined to reach
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CounCil of War
agreement with the Soviets on reducing nuclear arms. Not satised with the ten-
tative ceilings set at Vladivostok in 1974, he wanted “deep cuts” and speculated at
one point that he saw no need for either side to keep more than 200 ICBMs.
30
Indicative of his thinking was the sweeping statement in his inaugural address that
his “ultimate goal” was nothing less than “the elimination of all nuclear weapons”
from the face of the earth.
31
“I want the level of our capability as low as possible,”
Carter told his senior advisors, “but I’m not naive. Possibly 1,000 ICBMs, each with
one warhead, with some limitations on the size of the warhead.” In any case, Carter
added, “we should work for dramatic reductions, carefully monitored and not un-
favorable to either side.”
32
Carter’s deep cuts plan left the Joint Chiefs stunned. Having never envisioned
reductions on the scale Carter proposed, they found it hard to imagine how they
could eectively deter the Soviets with such a small strategic arsenal. While the
Chairman dutifully pledged his support in helping the President realize his goal,
he was uncertain how much cooperation to expect from his JCS colleagues, whom
he described as “staunch proponents of reductions, but with caution.” “Trying to
lead the [Service] Chiefs on this issue,” he warned, “is like putting three wild dogs
through a keyhole.”
33
With his authority as President, Carter could nesse any objections raised by
the Joint Chiefs. The Soviets, however, were another matter. To the leadership in
Moscow, as one Soviet foreign minister later estimated, arms control constituted “95
percent of the total relationship, more or less,” with the United States.
34
Complaints
from the hardliners notwithstanding, SALT more often than not had yielded hand-
some dividends for the Soviets (most notably conrmation of strategic parity with
the United States) which many now saw Carter trying to wrest away. Irritated also
by the President’s human rights campaign and its strident support for the celebrated
dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov, the Soviets viewed the deep cuts proposal not
merely with suspicion but with utter dismay. Thus, when Secretary of State Vance
arrived in Moscow in late March 1977 to discuss the matter, he received both a
chilly reception and a at rejection of the oer.
35
Despite the setback in Moscow, President Carter continued to believe that a
SALT II treaty with signicant reductions was attainable. But from that point on,
he was more cautious and never substantially departed from the Vladivostok formu-
la. Nevertheless, the negotiations proved more dicult than expected and moved
forward slowly, requiring high-level intervention from time to time to revive the
momentum and to overcome deadlocks on key details. Finally, in June 1979, Carter
and Brezhnev met in Vienna to sign the SALT II treaty modeled on the Vladivostok
accords. A complicated agreement, SALT II was to run for 5 years and imposed a
399
THE rETurn To ConfronTaTion
series of ceilings and subceilings on strategic weapons, including not only missiles
but also manned bombers, to create a complex web of quantitative and qualitative
constraints. Already a source of growing controversy in the United States, the SALT
II treaty faced an uncertain fate in the Senate, where sentiment was almost evenly
divided for and against.
Throughout the negotiation of the SALT II treaty, the JCS played a limited
role in shaping U.S. policy. A common complaint among ocers on the Joint Sta
and from the JCS representative to SALT II, Lieutenant General Edward L. Rowny,
USA, was that they were often excluded from high-level deliberations and denied
access to sensitive exchanges of information between the delegations. While Rowny
respected Carter’s idealism and enthusiasm, he considered the President inexperi-
enced, closed minded, and ill-served by advisors like Secretary of State Vance and
Paul Warnke, the administration’s chief arms control negotiator, who seemed to
Rowny overly eager to cut a deal with the Soviets. Frustrated and disappointed,
Rowny retired from the Army shortly after the Vienna summit to devote his ener-
gies to defeating the SALT II treaty in the Senate.
36
Before stepping down, Rowny tried to persuade the JCS to come out in oppo-
sition to the treaty. Broadly speaking, the charges that he and others lodged against
it were four-fold: 1) it did nothing to reduce the threat to U.S. land-based forces
(missiles and bombers) and risked weakening deterrence by preserving the Soviet
Union’s overwhelming superiority in “heavy” ICBMs; 2) it failed to impose eec-
tive constraints on the Soviet Backre bomber; 3) it mandated undue curbs on the
U.S. cruise missile program; and 4) as a limited duration agreement, it would require
immediate renegotiation. The net eect, opponents argued, was an unequal agree-
ment slanted toward the Soviets. Some critics also argued that the treaty would be
hard to verify, but most opponents dismissed verication concerns as inconsequen-
tial since there were so many concessions to the Soviets that it would be pointless
for them to cheat.
37
The Joint Chiefs agreed that the SALT II treaty was awed. But they rejected
Rowny’s basic contention that the United States would be better o without the
treaty than with it, and were prepared to accept it provided there were no further
delays in deploying the MX and in completing the other remaining elements of the
strategic modernization program. Thus, during the debate in Congress, the Joint
Chiefs steered clear of evaluating the treaty’s merits and concentrated on giving
their assessment of its strategic implications. They adopted the position that SALT II
was “a modest but useful contribution to our national interests” and could produce
eective results only in conjunction with improvements in the overall U.S. defense
posture. “Our priority must go to strategic nuclear force modernization,” General
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CounCil of War
Jones told Congress, “but increases are needed across the board for nuclear and non-
nuclear forces.” A tepid endorsement, it still satised the White House and avoided
the embarrassment the administration would have suered had the JCS followed
Rowny’s advice and opposed the treaty.
38
Just as support for ratication seemed to be building in the Senate, there came
disclosures in August-September 1979 that U.S. intelligence had conrmed the ex-
istence of a Soviet combat brigade in Cuba. At issue was whether the presence of
these forces violated the precedents barring the reintroduction of Soviet military
power set by the 1962 Kennedy-Khrushchev agreements ending the Cuban Mis-
sile Crisis. In fact, rumors and reports of Soviet military activity in Cuba circulated
almost constantly and normally caused little stir. But with the SALT II debate ongo-
ing, the Soviet brigade became a cause célèbre that played into the hands of the treaty’s
opponents, dimming its chances of approval. The fatal blow to SALT II’s prospects
was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, which Carter himself
later admitted doomed any chance the administration might have had of gaining the
two-thirds vote needed for approval.
39
To demonstrate U.S. displeasure with Soviet
behavior, President Carter withdrew the treaty from Senate consideration and made
no recommendation that it be rescheduled for a vote in the foreseeable future. But
having come this far with the treaty, he refused to repudiate it outright and in May
1980 announced that the United States would abide by its terms as long as the So-
viet Union did the same.
40
To the Joint Chiefs, Carter’s decision to withdraw the SALT II treaty while
abiding by its terms seemed a reasonable if not altogether satisfying outcome. Even
though the JCS disliked the treaty, they were more concerned by what could hap-
pen should there be no treaty at all, a situation that could arguably open the way to
a further buildup of Soviet strategic forces and an expensive escalation of the arms
race. Flawed as it might be, the JCS were prepared to accept SALT II and work
within its terms until something better came along.
nato and the inf Controversy
The same concerns that prompted uneasiness in the Senate over the SALT II trea-
ty were also reshaping attitudes toward the security of Europe. While NATO lead-
ers had initially welcomed the improved atmosphere of détente, many were in-
creasingly apprehensive as the 1970s wore on lest Moscow exploit this situation to
extend its power and inuence, undermine support within the Alliance for strong
defense policies, and ultimately drive NATO apart. By mid-decade, with the on-
going buildup of Warsaw Pact capabilities showing no evidence of abating, alarm
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THE rETurn To ConfronTaTion
bells began sounding throughout NATO capitals. While the evidence was by no
means conclusive, signs indicated that the Soviets were building up for a large-scale
confrontation and posturing their forces for a Blitzkrieg-style attack against the West
should war erupt. In assessing the probable outcome, Joint Sta and intelligence analysts
in Washington reached the uncomfortable conclusion that the chance of stopping a
Warsaw Pact attack with minimal loss of territory “appears remote at the present time.”
41
The most ominous development was the appearance of the SS–20, a land–
based triple–warhead mobile missile that the Soviets began deploying in March
1976, apparently as a replacement for their aging SS–4s and SS–5s. Derived from
an experimental ICBM (the SS–X–16), the SS–20 had a range of 5,000 kilometers
and thus fell just outside the SALT I limits, making it an intermediate-range bal-
listic missile. Some observers described it as the “pocket battleship” of its time. Like
the German and Japanese heavy cruisers built in the 1930s, it eluded arms control
constraints but still had almost the same range and payload as a fully functional
strategic weapon.
42
“Our new SS–20 missile,” boasted one Soviet general, “was a
breakthrough unlike anything the Americans had. We were immediately able to
hold all of Europe hostage.”
43
With the SS–20, the Soviets could target not only
every major capital in Europe, but also much of North Africa and practically the
entire the Middle East.
As President Carter took oce, JCS and NATO planners were still in the
preliminary stages of assessing the SS–20’s military and strategic impact. Still un-
known were how many launchers the Soviets might eventually deploy or how they
intended to use them. Operating in this thin air of uncertainty, the new administra-
tion downplayed the need for an immediate response and decided to concentrate
on improving NATO’s conventional capabilities under a new initiative known as
the Long-Term Defense Program (LTDP). Calling for a 3 percent real increase
in NATO funding (at the same time the United States was preparing cuts in its
overall defense budget), the LTDP stressed the increased prepositioning of U.S.
supplies and equipment in Europe, better management of resources, and across-the-
board upgrades in the Alliance’s conventional forces. Even though previous admin-
istrations had espoused similar goals, the enthusiasm shown by Washington for the
LTDP, coupled with President Carter’s well-known antipathy for nuclear weapons,
brought to the fore what many Europeans (the West Germans especially) had feared
since the adoption of the exible response strategy in the 1960s—that Washington
would try to move NATO away from nuclear deterrence toward almost exclusive
(and more costly) reliance on conventional forces.
44
Shortly after taking oce, with a view to allaying these concerns, the adminis-
tration dispatched State-Defense brieng teams to update European leaders on the
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CounCil of War
status of U.S. nuclear planning and to reassure them that the United States remained
committed to maintaining robust nuclear capabilities by developing the neutron
bomb and ground- and sea-launched cruise missiles. Apparently, however, these
brieng teams were exceedingly frank in discussing the technical diculties associ-
ated with cruise missiles and conveyed the impression that these weapons would
have a limited bearing on the strategic balance if and when they became opera-
tional.
45
Shortly thereafter, in June 1977, came the inadvertent and premature public
disclosure of the neutron bomb—a tactical nuclear warhead capable of generating
high levels of lethal radiation with a small explosion—that left the Carter admin-
istration mired in a public relations debacle that eventually sidelined the program.
The net result was that many European leaders remained uneasy about American
promises and wanted to see more in the way of concrete programs to strengthen
their security, lest they take matters into their own hands.
46
The catalyst for what became the most far-ranging reassessment of NATO’s nu-
clear requirements since the 1950s was a speech by West German Chancellor Helmut
Schmidt before the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London in late
October 1977. Based on the progress made thus far in SALT II, Schmidt was convinced
that the United States and the Soviet Union were moving toward an agreement that
would suit the superpowers but bargain away capabilities like cruise missiles that could
be crucial to European security. Schmidt believed that once the Soviet SS–20 force
became fully operational, Europe would be increasingly at the mercy of Soviet military
and political pressure, no matter how strong its conventional forces might be, unless
it had its own comparable, osetting nuclear forces. Accordingly, in his speech to the
IISS, he called for preserving “the full range of deterrence strategy,” and implied that
the United States was not doing enough either to curb the SS–20 threat through arms
control or, failing that, to provide NATO with more credible theater nuclear forces.
47
The White House’s answer to Schmidt’s challenge was to turn the question over
to the High Level Group (HLG), a new advisory body to NATO’s Nuclear Planning
Group. Averse as ever to nuclear weapons, President Carter favored exercising restraint
and looked to the HLG to explore policy options that would avoid or lessen the
need for additional new deployments. While the President refused to countenance a
one-for-one deployment with the Soviets, he knew he had to do something to show
his support for NATO or risk irrevocably weakening Alliance solidarity. After much
personal agonizing, he nally yielded and endorsed a compromise, formally adopted
by NATO in December 1979, that called for the limited modernization of the Alli-
ance’s intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF). Simultaneously, NATO announced
unilateral plans to reduce its nuclear arsenal by 1,000 warheads (weapons scheduled
for decommissioning anyway) and extended an oer to scale back or cancel its INF
modernization program if the Soviets would do likewise with their SS–20s.
48
403
THE rETurn To ConfronTaTion
Slated to begin around the end of 1983, NATO’s modernization measures
consisted of deploying 572 mobile launchers, broken down into 464 U.S. ground-
launched cruise missiles (GLCMs) and 108 U.S. Pershing II (P–II) ballistic missiles
to replace an identical number of obsolescent Pershing IAs based in West Germany.
The decision to include ballistic missiles in the mix was largely at the instigation of
the Joint Chiefs and aimed at placating the West Germans, who wanted the reassur-
ance of an up-to-date, fast-reaction weapon. Though the U.S. programs were still
in the developmental stage, each GLCM and P–II would have sucient range to
threaten targets along the western edge of the Soviet Union, a capability that land-
based NATO forces had previously lacked. The cruise missiles would be dispersed
around Western Europe, while the P–IIs would be based entirely in the Federal Re-
public. All would be subject to NATO authority under the operational command
and control of the U.S. Army.
Though not as extensive as the Joint Chiefs had hoped, NATO’s nuclear mod-
ernization program satised their basic requirements and seemed to point the Al-
liance in what the JCS considered the right direction. For Carter, however, it was
a dreadful setback—the acceptance of more weapons he loathed and an acknowl-
edgement that, at bottom, the security of the NATO area continued to rest directly
on the threat to use them. Worse still, from Carter’s standpoint, the pending deploy-
ment was a further tacit admission that détente in Europe was on the wane. Yet it
was probably the only sound decision he could have made without risking a perma-
nent rupture within the Alliance. Whether arms control negotiations would obviate
the need for NATO to follow through on its INF deployment plans remained to
be seen. But by the time the Carter administration left oce, there were few signs
that NATO and the Soviet Union would soon reach a deal, if ever. Not until the
Reagan administration would talks begin in earnest.
the arC of Crisis
While they were instrumental in shaping the Carter administration’s policy toward
nuclear modernization in Europe, the Joint Chiefs were less successful in persuad-
ing the White House to adopt a tougher stand against Soviet encroachment on
the Third World. In some ways, the chiefs had only themselves to blame. Insisting
that they lacked sucient resources, they had consistently downplayed U.S. military
involvement in Third World conicts in the aftermath of Vietnam and had instead
urged the use of diplomacy and covert operations to block the Soviets from mak-
ing further inroads. This remained the basic JCS position throughout the Carter
administration and on into Ronald Reagan’s Presidency. But as the 1970s drew to
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CounCil of War
a close, it was increasingly apparent to the Joint Chiefs that Third World problems
were more intractable than they had assumed and that a larger military role for the
United States was becoming unavoidable.
Though President Carter eventually came to a similar conclusion, he remained
apprehensive about the application of military force to solve problems in Asia, Af-
rica, and Latin America and believed the key to countering Communism in those
parts of the world lay in promoting democratic values, economic improvements,
and better living conditions. His preference, as always, was for diplomatic initia-
tives that would ease the threat of future conicts and improve the North-South
dialogue. Toward those ends, he managed to broker two signicant breakthroughs:
a new treaty with Panama, approved by the Senate in April 1978, ending both the
American colonial presence and American control of the Panama Canal; and the
Camp David peace accords reached later that year between Egypt and Israel. Cau-
tiously optimistic about both, the Joint Chiefs welcomed the peace deal between
Israel and Egypt in hopes that it would strengthen the U.S. strategic posture in the
Middle East, but were decidedly cool toward giving up the Panama Canal, which
they continued to regard as a vital American interest. Eventually, they gave the treaty
a tepid endorsement.
49
Meanwhile, avoiding U.S. involvement in Third World conicts was proving
increasingly dicult. At the outset of the Carter administration, perhaps the most
volatile situation likely to engage the United States was the simmering dispute be-
tween Ethiopia and Somalia for control of the barren Ogaden plateau in the Horn
of Africa. Overshadowing all was the apparent determination of Moscow to extend
its inuence throughout the region. Once strong allies of the Somalis, the Soviets
had changed sides and thrown their support to the self-proclaimed Marxist regime
in Ethiopia that had overthrown the decrepit monarchy of Haile Selassi in 1974.
Toward the end of November 1977, on the heels of a series of secret aid agreements,
the Soviets launched a massive airlift—larger than anything they had undertaken in
Angola or elsewhere in Africa—to fortify Ethiopia with an estimated $1 billion in
new arms and supplies and 17,000 elite Cuban combat troops. During the ensuing
conict, Ethiopia and its Soviet bloc allies easily overwhelmed the Somalis, setting
o alarm bells in Washington that would reverberate for years to come.
50
The leading advocate for a more forceful policy to counter Soviet encroach-
ments in the Third World was the President’s national security advisor, Zbigniew
Brzezinski. During the deliberations surrounding the Ogaden crisis, it became clear
that U.S. options were limited. About the most the United States could do to inu-
ence the situation directly was to deploy a naval task force o the coast of Somalia.
Long before the crisis erupted, Brzezinski had foreseen an urgent need for a broader
405
THE rETurn To ConfronTaTion
range of capabilities and had persuaded President Carter, as part of the administra-
tion’s review of basic policy in the summer of 1977, to include a requirement for a
“force of light divisions with strategic mobility,” backed by adequate air and naval
support, that could respond quickly to emergencies. Out of the bureaucratic process
thus set in motion eventually emerged the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force and
its successor, the U.S. Central Command.
51
Despite high-level endorsement, the creation of a rapid reaction force lan-
guished “on the back burner” for the next several years.
52
A reluctant supporter to
begin with, President Carter gradually lost interest in the idea and seems to have
forgotten it altogether once the Ogaden crisis eased early in 1978. Previous eorts
to create such a force, starting in 1962 with the establishment of U.S. Strike Com-
mand (USSTRICOM) at McNamara’s instigation, had little success owing to the
initial reluctance of the Navy and Marine Corps to dedicate forces. During the
Vietnam War, Strike Command’s role further declined as available units for rapid
reaction missions virtually disappeared. In 1971, acknowledging that USSTRICOM
had outlived its usefulness, the Joint Chiefs replaced it with a new organization they
called U.S. Readiness Command (USREDCOM). Based at MacDill Air Force Base,
Florida, USREDCOM operated without assigned geographical responsibilities and
mainly performed training, doctrinal, and advisory functions connected with joint
deployments.
53
Meanwhile, the “arc of crisis,” as Brzezinski called it, was moving steadily east-
ward from the Horn of Africa into the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, and South-
west Asia. Across the Middle East and on into Central Asia, conict and political
turmoil were the order of the day. Although the origins of many of these problems
had more to do with local feuds and rivalries than with the Cold War, the percep-
tion in Washington was that conditions were ripe for Soviet penetration. In light of
the West’s heavy dependence on Persian Gulf oil, the Carter administration had all
the more reason to be alarmed.
The most dangerous threat to U.S. interests was the declining power and au-
thority of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran, a longtime ally of the United
States. Awash in oil revenues, the Shah aspired to modernize his country and turn it
into a major partner of the West. Eager to cooperate, the Nixon administration had
supplied Iran with an arsenal of sophisticated weapons and advanced technologies,
including help for a nascent atomic energy program. The policy that emerged was
to develop a “twin pillar” system of security relying on Iran and Saudi Arabia to
police the region. Of the two, however, Iran was clearly the preferred partner. Henry
Kissinger remembered the Shah as “an unconditional ally . . . whose understanding
of the world situation enhanced our own.”
54
The Joint Chiefs, after some initial
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CounCil of War
hesitation, became similarly impressed with the Shah’s leadership. By the early 1970s
they regarded Iran’s role as an anti-Soviet bastion as practically indispensable. In an
area where American friends were few and far between, the Joint Chiefs of Sta
pointed out that Iran was “a stabilizing inuence” and as “strong and trusted [an]
ally” as the United States was likely to nd.
55
The Carter White House had a somewhat dierent image of Iran. Brzezinski
dismissed the Shah as a megalomaniac whose overly ambitious policies sowed the
seeds of his destruction. Although President Carter was more charitable, nding
much about the Shah and his regime to admire, he also saw much that left him un-
easy. A founding member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Coun-
tries (OPEC), the international oil cartel, Iran had played a key part in setting the
high energy prices that were a major contributing factor to the soaring ination of
the 1970s. At the same time, as a direct result of his eorts to liberalize Iranian society,
the Shah had alienated a number of powerful interest groups, including conservative
Muslim religious leaders. As opposition to his policies mounted, the Shah turned
increasingly to his secret police (SAVAK) to quell the dissent, a practice replete
with alleged human rights abuses that President Carter found especially repugnant.
But despite challenges to the Shah’s regime, intelligence estimates soft-peddled the
severity of the disturbances and in so doing contributed to a false sense among the
Joint Chiefs and others in Washington that Iran was a safe and stable ally.
56
The collapse of the Shah’s power was as sudden as it was unexpected. In late
November 1978, with unrest, strikes, and antigovernment demonstrations escalating,
it became clear that the level and intensity of the demonstrations were suciently
serious to threaten the survival of the monarchy itself. Amid the turmoil, the Joint
Chiefs endorsed precautionary measures that included the evacuation of American
citizens from Iran and stepped-up naval deployments in the Indian Ocean.
57
As the
crisis deepened, talk turned to the possibility of a military solution, a discussion cut
short by the realization that about anything the United States did would be too
little too late.
58
The dénouement began on December 27, 1978, which one press ac-
count described as “a day of wild lawlessness and shooting in the capital and a strike
that eectively shut down the oil industry.”
59
By then, many middle-class Iranian
moderates had joined the religious radicals in calling for the Shah to step down.
Hoping that the Iranian generals might intervene and restore order, Brzezinski per-
suaded President Carter to send General Robert E. Huyser, USAF, the Deputy
Commander of U.S. forces in Europe, to Tehran on a fact-nding mission. What
Huyser found was an Iranian military in utter disarray, thoroughly demoralized and
too poorly organized to make a dierence. In mid-January 1979, the Shah ed the
country, leaving it in the hands of a weak civilian government with little experience
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THE rETurn To ConfronTaTion
and even less popular support. For all practical purposes, the real head of state in Iran
was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a charismatic cleric recently returned from exile
in France who was determined to rub out Western inuence and establish a way of
life based on fundamentalist Muslim principles. As bad as the Shah’s downfall may
have seemed for U.S. interests in the region, worse things were yet to come.
rise of the sandinistas
Half a world away in the Central American country of Nicaragua, a similar drama
was playing out, though on a far smaller scale than the crisis in Iran. Relatively stable
and prosperous by Latin American standards, Nicaragua was the virtual efdom of
a right-wing dictator, Anastasio Somoza, whose family had ruled the country with
the help of the U.S.-trained and equipped Guardia Nacional since the 1930s. Vehe-
mently anticommunist, the Somoza regime had earned a reputation in U.S. military
circles as being a strong and dependable ally against the threat of Cuban-instigated
Communist expansion. But by the mid-1970s, Somoza’s support both at home and
in Washington was beginning to erode. Though known more for political corrup-
tion than brutality, Somoza had come under re from the Carter administration
for alleged human rights abuses and soon became the target of U.S. sanctions that
included a cut-o of military aid. Starting with the Panama Canal treaty, President
Carter hoped to change the U.S. image in Latin America. Withdrawing support for
Somoza was part of that process.
60
In September 1978, with opposition mounting and his back against the wall,
Somoza authorized the National Guard to launch an all-out oensive against the
most immediate threat to his regime—a leftist insurgency led by the Sandinista
National Liberation Front (FSLN). Even though the Guard dealt the rebels a severe
military setback, it also destroyed many towns and villages and inicted heavy civil-
ian casualties. Signicant segments of the population became alienated and went
over to the FSLN. While the Carter administration had no use for Somoza, it was
also leery of the FSLN, whose Marxist rhetoric and Cuban connections seemed
certain to place it on a collision course with the United States should it ever come
to power. Seeking middle ground, President Carter approved a diplomatic initiative
early in 1979 aimed at persuading Somoza to step aside voluntarily to make way for
a more representative regime. Negotiations broke down, however, and by late May
Somoza’s forces and the Sandinistas were again engaged in pitched battle.
As with the Shah of Iran, the consensus in Washington was that Somoza would
survive the Sandinista challenge. By early June, however, it was clear that U.S. intel-
ligence had misjudged the situation and that the Sandinistas were gaining the upper
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CounCil of War
hand, in part as a result of weapons covertly supplied by Cuba. Operating without
fresh supplies, the National Guard steadily disintegrated, paving the way for a San-
dinista victory. When at last on July 17, 1979, Somoza nally stepped down and ed
to Miami, he left a country in physical ruin and political disarray. In the view of
the Joint Chiefs, Nicaragua was now a ripe target for Communist penetration and a
potential launch pad for Cuban adventurism elsewhere in Central America.
During its remaining time in oce, the Carter administration wrestled with
limiting the consequences of the Sandinista victory. The stated goals in Central Amer-
ica were “the development of democratic societies, the observance of human rights,
the ending or diminution of violence and terrorism, and the denial of the region
to forces hostile to the U.S.”
61
Persuaded that the United States had overreacted to
Castro’s takeover of Cuba in 1959, many on the NSC Sta and at the State Depart-
ment believed that the United States should work with the Sandinistas to establish
good relations, promote political pluralism in Nicaragua, and steer the country away
from becoming “another Cuba.” The Joint Chiefs were skeptical of this approach, but
among the President’s senior advisors, only Brzezinski seemed to share their concerns.
Meanwhile, the security situation in Central America continued to deteriorate as in-
telligence reports conrmed an inux of Cuban-supplied Eastern Bloc arms. But in
trying to persuade the White House or the State Department to act, the JCS found
little interest in anything that smacked of a military solution. In consequence, develop-
ment of a comprehensive policy toward Central American became practically impos-
sible, leaving decisions to emerge in a fragmented, reactive manner.
62
Toward the end of his Presidency, Carter evinced signs of having second thoughts
about trying to work with the Sandinistas. Slowly but surely he began to adopt a posi-
tion more akin to that advocated by the Joint Chiefs and Brzezinski. Hoping to get a
better picture of the situation, he authorized the National Security Agency to step up
its monitoring of developments in Nicaragua and to expand its coverage of Sandinista
communications.
63
Even so, Carter continued to view military action as a last resort
and refused to abandon his belief that a political settlement, acceptable to all involved,
was ultimately feasible. But in Central America, as elsewhere, his faith in détente and
nonviolent solutions had been badly shaken and, as he left the White House, it was
with a clear awareness that the next administration would be less reticent and adopt a
more forceful course of action to prevent the spread of Sandinista and Cuban inuence.
Creation of the raPid dePLoyment forCe
The fall of the Shah and the ensuing collapse of the Somoza regime had distinctly
unsettling eects on JCS thinking. Alarmed by the sudden escalation of threats to
409
THE rETurn To ConfronTaTion
U.S. interests, the Joint Chiefs acknowledged a pressing requirement for a more
responsive force posture capable of interjecting a measure of stability into troubled
parts of the world. Although the JCS had been moving steadily in that direction
ever since Brzezinski raised the issue in the summer of 1977, it was not until 2 years
later that they felt their studies had progressed far enough to begin seriously dis-
cussing a mission statement, the assignment of forces, and command arrangements.
Assuming that the focus of such a force would be the Middle East, JCS planners
generally agreed that the most practical solution would be a joint task force or per-
haps a new joint command and that either way, because it was almost certain to have
a high political prole, it would be “the force except Europe and Korea.”
64
The central gure throughout the subsequent planning and preparations culmi-
nating in activation of the Rapid Deployment Force (RDF) was Secretary of Defense
Harold Brown. Having previously served as Secretary of the Air Force and in other
high-level Pentagon positions, Brown was well aware of the potential for inter-Service
competition and rivalry that new programs presented. He repeatedly cautioned the
Joint Chiefs and Service planners against using the RDF as leverage for more money
or resources. What Brown and the President envisioned was a rather small fast-reac-
tion force drawn mainly from available assets. Nonetheless, the opportunities were too
inviting for the Services to ignore. Competition became especially acute between the
Army and the Marine Corps as each jostled for a larger role on the assumption that
the new organization would be rst and foremost a ground-based intervention force,
with supplemental air and naval support. Advised by Brzezinski that the President was
growing impatient, Brown nudged the Services along as best he could and achieved a
tentative agreement breaking the impasse by November 1979.
65
Meanwhile, the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979,
and the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan the following month sent a
shudder through Washington resulting in a wholesale reassessment of U.S. defense
and security requirements for the Middle East and Southwest Asia. Both events
produced an escalation of tensions and posed serious challenges to the protection
of U.S. interests. Of the two, it was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Decem-
ber 24–25, 1979, that most alarmed the Joint Chiefs and their superiors. Aimed
at assuring a pro-Moscow regime in Kabul, the Soviet invasion drew sharp and
swift international condemnation. Remote as Afghanistan seemed, Carter and his
advisors saw its fate tied directly to that of the United States. “A Soviet-occupied
Afghanistan,” the President told the country, “threatens both Iran and Pakistan and
is a steppingstone to possible control over much of the world’s oil supplies.”
66
To be
sure, many of the responses that followed had been set in motion earlier. But with
Afghanistan providing the catalyst, they came to fruition sooner rather than later
410
CounCil of War
and helped expedite the transformation of the RDF from a drawing board concept
into a functioning organization.
At the heart of this transformation was the Carter Doctrine, announced in
the President’s State of the Union Message on January 23, 1980. In eect, Carter
conrmed publicly what he and his subordinates had been saying privately to one
another and in o-the-record talks with reporters for some time—that Washington
had major interests at stake in the Persian Gulf and that the necessary response was a
military buildup. Under that policy, President Carter served notice that the United
States would not allow the Gulf to fall into hostile hands, that it would pursue a “co-
operative security framework” in the area, and that it would back up those initiatives
with requisite military force.
67
As evidence of his resolve, the President pointed to
the pending creation of the Rapid Deployment Force, which he said would “range
in size from a few ships or air squadrons to formations as large as 100,000 men.”
Among the specic initiatives being taken to support the RDF, the President men-
tioned the development and production of a new eet of large cargo aircraft with
intercontinental range and the design and procurement of a force of pre-positioned
ships to carry heavy equipment and supplies for three Marine brigades.
68
Announcement of the Carter Doctrine caught the Joint Chiefs largely o
guard. Learning of the decision only a few days before the President’s speech, they
saw the administration acting hastily and without adequate preparations. Nonethe-
less, from that point on, JCS planning accelerated quickly, culminating in the activa-
tion of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF) on March 1, 1980. Head-
quartered at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, RDJTF was technically a subordinate
element of USREDCOM. But because of its prominent political prole, RDJTF
reported directly to the Joint Chiefs of Sta. At Secretary of Defense Brown’s re-
quest, it also maintained a liaison sta at the Pentagon for politico-military interface
with the Joint Sta, OSD, and other agencies.
69
The rst commander of RDJTF,
Lieutenant General P.X. Kelley, USMC, publicly described the new organization as
“an exceptionally exible force” that would eventually pull together “the capabili-
ties of all four services into one harmonized ghting machine with a permanent
command and control headquarters.”
70
For the time being, however, RDJTF had no
assigned forces and functioned mainly as a headquarters, planning, and advisory or-
ganization, much like USREDCOM. For the next several years, RDJTF’s primary
functions were to organize and supervise exercises acquainting U.S. forces with the
peculiarities of operating in the Middle East, and to make plans and preparations for
eventually establishing a permanent forward headquarters there.
With the creation of the RDJTF, the Joint Chiefs expected the United States to
emerge as the predominant outside power in the Middle East. In years past it had been
411
THE rETurn To ConfronTaTion
the British and, to a lesser extent, the French who had carried out that function. Now
it was the turn of the United States. Looking ahead, the chiefs could not help but
be uneasy. Apart from the political complications involved (most notably the Ameri-
can relationship with Israel), they saw Washington moving into unfamiliar territory
where a continuous U.S. military presence could become unavoidable and require a
far larger allocation of resources than the current administration was willing to make.
The Carter administration had hoped to avoid such commitments. But as it departed
in 1981, it passed along a growing list of obligations that left the United States more
deeply embroiled in the Middle East and Southwest Asia than ever before.
the iran hostage resCue mission
The creation of the RDJTF was a major step toward coping with the volatility that
increasingly plagued the Middle East and Southwest Asia in the late 1970s. By the
same token, it signaled a partial revival and resurgence of JCS inuence within the
policy process in Washington. While the chiefs’ role had been growing steadily fol-
lowing the Shah’s downfall and the ensuing acceleration of contingency planning
for Southwest Asia, it came even more to the fore during the subsequent seizure
of the American Embassy in Tehran and eorts by the U.S. military in the spring
of 1980 to liberate those held hostage. Even though the mission ended in failure, it
conrmed that the United States was far from averse to the use of force and that in
keeping with the decisions that had given rise to the RDJTF, it would not hesitate
to intervene militarily if its interests became threatened.
The event precipitating the hostage crisis was President Carter’s decision in late
October 1979 to allow the Shah, then in exile in Mexico, to enter the United States
for emergency medical treatment. Outraged by what they considered continuing
U.S. support of the Pahlavi regime, a mob of Iranian militants stormed the Ameri-
can Embassy in Tehran on November 4 and seized between fty and sixty Foreign
Service ocers and Marine guards. Two days later, with the militants still controlling
the Embassy and showing no sign of leaving, President Carter authorized Brzezinski
to begin exploring options other than diplomacy for securing the hostages’ release.
One possibility mentioned by General Jones was a rescue eort using helicopters
launched from aircraft carriers in or near the Persian Gulf. Yet even though a rescue
attempt appeared feasible in theory, the consensus among the Joint Chiefs was that
because of the uncertainties involved it stood a “very high risk of failure” and did
not appear viable. Brzezinski disagreed and with President Carter’s concurrence he
ordered the JCS to proceed immediately with preparation of a contingency plan
along the lines the CJCS had proposed.
71
412
CounCil of War
By November 12, 1979, the JCS had established the nucleus of a joint task force
within the Joint Sta (J-3) under the command of Major General James E. Vaught,
USA, with advisory support from Major General Philip C. Gast, USAF, the for-
mer chief of the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group in Iran. From that point
on, Joint Sta planners ceased to be regularly involved in the rescue. To preserve
secrecy, Vaught and his sta worked in isolation and reported directly to the Joint
Chiefs through the Chairman. A high-level ad hoc committee chaired by Brzezinski
provided overall coordination and interagency liaison from the White House. Ac-
cording to General Jones’s retrospective account, he and his JCS colleagues “went
through many, many dierent options.” He recalled that, “In the initial stages, we did
not see any option that had a reasonable chance of success.”
72
But by late November
1979, he and Vaught agreed that the use of helicopters oered the most practical
and eective means of conducting the rescue. From this decision evolved plans for
Operation Eagle Claw. While Jones later denied any explicit deal-cutting to give
each Service a share of the action, his assistant, Lieutenant General John S. Pustay,
USAF, remembered things dierently. According to Pustay, there was a feeling “that
it would be nice if everyone had a piece of the pie.” Pustay hastened to add, how-
ever, that in his view the multi-Service nature of the operation was dictated by its
complex requirements and in no way interfered with its execution.
73
Even though planning was continuous and intense from mid-November 1979
on, it was not until early March 1980 that Jones recalled feeling “a growing con-
dence” that the rescue mission was coming together in terms of a feasible plan,
trained personnel, suitable equipment, and reliable intelligence.
74
To get the hostages
out, the Joint Chiefs proposed launching helicopters from carriers in the Arabian
Sea, which would then rendezvous with a Delta Force assault team at a remote lo-
cation in Iran (code-named Desert One) and proceed to Tehran. There, they would
liberate the hostages, secure the airport, and y out. A complicated and risky plan,
it rested heavily on exploiting the element of surprise and achieving eective inter-
Service cooperation and coordination every step of the way.
75
Whether President Carter would sanction such a hazardous and complex op-
eration remained to be seen. Toward the end of an all-day meeting at Camp David
on March 22, Jones presented what Brzezinski described as the “rst comprehensive
and full brieng on the rescue mission” the President had yet received. Disap-
pointed over the latest failure of diplomacy to free the hostages, Carter was more
ready than ever to contemplate military action. But he thought the plan that Jones
presented “still needed more work.” To help determine its feasibility, he authorized a
reconnoitering mission deep inside Iranian territory, the rst step toward establish-
ing the Desert One base camp for the planned operation.
76
413
THE rETurn To ConfronTaTion
With JCS preparations nearing the “go-or-no-go” point of the mission, pres-
sure was growing for President Carter to make a decision. While he continued to
favor a diplomatic settlement, he thought time was running out and concluded
that forceful action was now his most viable—perhaps only option. Accordingly, on
April 11, he assembled the National Security Council for a nal look at the rescue
plan. The meeting lasted nearly 2 hours. Using a pointer and visual aids to illustrate
the logistics involved, General Jones insisted that the rescue option had been well
rehearsed and was on schedule to commence in late April. Armed with a list of pre-
pared questions, the President found Jones’s answers to be much more satisfactory
than at previous meetings. The only dissenting view came from Deputy Secretary
of State Warren M. Christopher, sitting in for Cyrus Vance, who was on vacation
in Florida. Christopher had attended earlier NSC meetings on the rescue mission
but had taken no active part in the discussion. Opposed to military interventions
in general, he urged caution and thought there were still important diplomatic and
economic avenues to be explored. Carter, however, said he had already discussed
the matter privately with First Lady Rosalynn, Presidential advisor Hamilton Jor-
dan, Vice President Walter Mondale, Secretary of State Vance, and Jody Powell, the
White House Press Secretary, and made up his mind. Shutting o further debate, he
announced: “We ought to go ahead without delay.”
77
Despite over 5 months of intensive training and preparation, Eagle Claw
remained a perilous undertaking in which much could—and did—go wrong.
Launched on April 24, 1980, the operation experienced equipment breakdowns
almost from the beginning. By the time of the rendezvous at Desert One, there were
too few helicopters still operational to complete the mission. While preparing to
turn around and go home, one of the helicopters collided with a C–130 transport,
causing both aircraft to explode. Eight U.S. Servicemen and an Iranian translator
died. The ignominious withdrawal that followed (leaving behind most of the dead)
eectively doomed President Carter’s hopes of ending the hostage stando and rep-
resented a humiliating blow to the power and prestige of the United States.
In the aftermath of the Desert One disaster, the Joint Chiefs sought to piece to-
gether what happened and why and to learn how similar failures might be avoided in
the future. By far the most detailed and thorough examination of the hostage rescue
mission was that undertaken at the Chiefs’ request by the Special Operations Review
Group (SORG), chaired by retired Admiral James L. Holloway III, a former Chief
of Naval Operations. The review group drew two general conclusions—that there
had been undue emphasis on untested ad hoc arrangements throughout the opera-
tion, and that an overriding concern for operational secrecy (e.g., the exclusion of
the National Security Agency) had crippled the planning process. Anticipating future
414
CounCil of War
missions of the kind, the SORG recommended, and the Joint Chiefs concurred, that
there should be a permanent Counterterrorist Joint Task Force (CTJTF), with as-
signed sta and forces, backed by a special operations advisory panel comprised of
high-ranking ocers with backgrounds in special operations and joint planning.
78
While the Joint Chiefs sought to draw constructive lessons, critics leapt on the
failure of the hostage rescue mission as further evidence, along with Vietnam and
the Mayaguez aair, that the JCS had become an ineectual organization in urgent
need of institutional reform. Many of the legislative changes later incorporated into
the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act drew their immediate inspiration and impetus from
the Desert One disaster. To be sure, Eagle Claw was a awed operation. Yet its failure
stemmed not from any one cause but from a variety of factors. As much as anything, it
revealed the Joint Chiefs’ lack of familiarity with the Middle East and the unforeseen
diculties of projecting military power into that part of the world. With tactics, weap-
ons, and training oriented since the onset of the Cold War toward conicts in Europe
or East Asia, the Joint Chiefs of Sta were largely unacquainted with the unique prob-
lems of the Middle East and lacked a well-established infrastructure there to support
military operations. The creation of the Rapid Deployment Force was supposed to
help overcome these problems. But until it became a tested, working reality, the JCS
had no choice but to rely on makeshift arrangements and learn as they went along.
The hostage crisis was a desperate, almost unprecedented situation, and it
seemed to cry out for desperate, unprecedented measures. Carter knew that the
rescue mission was a long shot and never blamed anyone other than himself for its
failure. Still, like John F. Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs, he was clearly disappointed
with the performance of his military advisors. Never strong to begin with, Carter’s
condence in the Joint Chiefs sank even further in the aftermath of Desert One. By
all accounts, the JCS had done the best they could, but with resources stretched thin
in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, their ability to respond eectively in emergen-
cies was severely constrained. In Desert One as elsewhere, the eects of the “hollow
force” were all too apparent. Carter may have felt that if given a second term, he
could have turned the situation around. However, he never had that opportunity. As
it happened, that task fell instead to a new administration, operating from a dierent
worldview and a dierent set of assumptions about national security.
Notes
1 See Gordon S. Barrass, The Great Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
2009), 190–191.
2 Jimmy Carter, Why Not the Best? (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1975), laid out the Presi-
dent’s foreign policy agenda. See also Gaddis Smith, Morality, Reason, and Power: American
415
THE rETurn To ConfronTaTion
Diplomacy in the Carter Years (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986); and Burton I. Kaufman,
The Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993).
3 “Inaugural Address of President Jimmy Carter,” January 20, 1977, in Public Papers of the
Presidents of the United States: Jimmy Carter, 1977 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1977), 3.
4 Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1982), 222.
5 Erik B. Riker-Coleman, “Political Pressures on the Joint Chiefs of Sta: The Case of
General David C. Jones” (Paper presented before the Society of Military History An-
nual Meeting, Calgary, Alberta, May 2001), 3–5 and passim, available at <www.unc.
edu/~chaos1/jones.pdf> (accessed July 18, 2011).
6 Quotations from Gen David C. Jones, USAF (Ret.), former CJCS, interviewed by
Steven L. Rearden and Walter S. Poole, February 4, 1998, Arlington, VA, transcript, JHO.
See also Mark Perry, Four Stars (Boston: Houghton, Miin, 1989), 268–269.
7 Bernard Weinraub, “Joint Chiefs Losing Sway Under Carter,” The New York Times, July
6, 1978: A11.
8 Walter S. Poole, The Evolution of the Joint Strategic Planning System, 1947–1989 (Wash-
ington, DC: Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, Joint Sta, September 1989), 15–18;
letters, Lt Gen Richard L. Lawson, J-5, to Brzezinski and Aaron, January 14, 1980, U;
Memo, Shoemaker, Utgo, and Welch to Brzezinski, February 21, 1980, U; and Draft
Memo to Dir, OMB, U, all in National Security Adviser Collection, Agency File, box
10, JCS 1/79-2/80 folder, Carter Library.
9 Memo, Carter to Brown, September 20, 1977, “Defense Reorganization,” U, JCS
1977/392; OASD(PA) news release no. 529–77, November 17, 1977, cited in JCS
1977/409-5.
10 “Report to the Secretary of Defense on the National Military Command Structure
(The Steadman Report),” July 1978, in U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Armed
Services, Hearings: Reorganization Proposals for the Joint Chiefs of Sta, 97:2 (Washington,
DC: GPO, 1982), 912–924.
11 Transcript of News Conference by Gen David C. Jones, CJCS, July 25, 1978, 2–3, Na-
tional Security Adviser Collection, Agency File, box 10, JCS 3/77-12/78 folder, Carter
Library.
12 CM-79-78 to SECDEF, September 1, 1978, “NMC Structure and Departmental Head-
quarters Studies,” U, JCS 1977/409–5.
13 JCSM-290-78 to SECDEF, September 1, 1978, “Comments on NMC Structure and
Departmental Headquarters Studies,” U, Enclosure A JCS 1977/409-5.
14 “President’s News Conference, June 30, 1977,” Carter Public Papers, 1977, 1197–1200.
15 Carter, Keeping Faith, 80–83; Harold Brown, Thinking About National Security (Boulder,
CO: Westview Press, 1983), 72–74.
16 Jones Interview, February 4, 1998.
17 See Larry A. Niksch, “U.S. Troop Withdrawal from South Korea: Past Shortcomings and
Future Prospects,” Asian Survey 21 (March 1981), 326–328; and Don Oberdorfer, “Carter’s
Decision on Korea Traced to Early 1975,” The Washington Post, June 12, 1977: A15.
18 Ernest W. Lefever, “Withdrawal from Korea: A Perplexing Decision,” Strategic Review 6
(Winter 1978), 28–35; Franklin B. Weinstein and Fuji Kamiya, eds., The Security of Korea:
U.S. and Japanese Perspectives on the 1980s (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980), 69–106.
416
CounCil of War
Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 127–128, and Zbig-
niew Brzezinski, Power and Principle (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983), 127, both
mention human rights abuses as a factor shaping the administration’s attitude toward
South Korea.
19 PD/NSC-18, August 24, 1977, “US National Policy,” U, NSC Collection, Carter Li-
brary; available at <http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/documents/pddirectives/
pd18.pdf> (accessed July 18, 2011).
20 Diary entry, June 4, 1979, in Carter, Keeping Faith, 241.
21 Raymond L. Gartho, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon
to Reagan (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1994, rev. ed.), 868; and David M. Walsh, The
Military Balance in the Cold War: U.S. Perceptions and Policy, 1976–85 (London: Routledge,
2008), 26.
22 Leon Sloss and Marc Dean Millot, “U.S. Nuclear Strategy in Evolution,” Strategic Review
12 (Winter 1984), 19–28; and Walter Slocombe, “The Countervailing Strategy,” Interna-
tional Security 5 (Spring 1981), 18–27.
23 Brown, Thinking About National Security, 81.
24 Jones Interview with author, February 4, 1998.
25 Brzezinski, Power and Principle, 458–459.
26 PD/NSC-59, July 25, 1980, “Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy,” National Security
Advisor’s Papers, Carter Library (declassied/sanitized), available at <http://www.jim-
mycarterlibrary.gov/documents/pddirectives/pd59.pdf> (accessed July 18, 2011).
27 Desmond Ball, “The Development of the SIOP, 1960–1983,” in Desmond Ball and
Jerey Richelson, eds., Strategic Nuclear Targeting (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1986), 79.
28 Harold Brown, “Domestic Consensus and Nuclear Deterrence,” in Defence and Consen-
sus: The Domestic Aspects of Western Security, Adelphi Paper No. 183 (London: IISS, 1983),
Part II, 21. See also Brown’s testimony explaining the countervailing strategy in U.S.
Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearing: Nuclear War Strategy, 96:2
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1981), 6–28.
29 See Carter’s interview in Michael Charlton, From Deterrence to Defense: The Inside Story
of Strategic Policy (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 88.
30 Brzezinski, Power and Principle, 157.
31 “Inaugural Address of President Jimmy Carter,” January 20, 1977, Carter Public Papers,
1977, 3.
32 Minutes, SCC Meeting, February 3, 1977 (declassied), sub: SALT, National Security
Adviser Collection, Sta Oces, box 3, SCC Meeting No. 2 folder, Carter Library.
33 Ibid.
34 Former Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh quoted in Barrass, 206.
35 Vance, 53–55; Gartho, 629–634, 883–892.
36 Edward L. Rowny, It Takes One to Tango (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1992), 94–103.
37 Patrick Glynn, Closing Pandora’s Box: Arms Races, Arms Control, and the History of the
Cold War (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 301–304, summarizes arguments against the
treaty. See also Thomas W. Wolfe, The SALT Experience (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger,
417
THE rETurn To ConfronTaTion
1979), 236–239, which inventories the pros and cons; and Dan Caldwell, The Dynamics
of Domestic Politics and Arms Control: The SALT II Treaty Ratication Debate (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1991), oers a balanced account of the ensuing
debate in Congress.
38 Jones’s testimony, July 24, 1979, in U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Servic-
es, Hearings: Military Implications of the Treaty on the Limitation of Strategic Oensive Arms
and Protocol Thereto (SALT II Treaty), 96:1 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1979), Pt. 1, 151–160.
39 Carter, Keeping Faith, 264–265.
40 “Address Before the World Aairs Council,” May 9, 1980, Carter Public Papers, 1980–81,
872.
41 PRM/NSC-10 “Final Report: Military Strategy and Force Posture Review,” undated,
9, enclosure to Memo, SECDEF to SecState et al., June 6, 1977, “PRM–10 Force Pos-
ture Study” (declassied/sanitized), available at <http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/
documents/prmemorandums/prm10.pdf> (accessed July 18, 2011).
42 Glynn, 312.
43 Gen Andrian Danilevich quoted in Barrass, 212–213.
44 James A. Thomson, “The LRTNF decision: evolution of U.S. theatre nuclear policy,
1975–9,” International Aairs 60 (Autumn 1984), 603–604.
45 Robert J. Art and Stephen E. Ockenden, “The Domestic Politics of Cruise Missile
Development, 1970–1980,” in Richard K. Betts, ed., Cruise Missiles: Technology, Strategy,
Politics (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1981), 400–401.
46 For a colorful account of the problems surrounding the neutron bomb, see Sam Co-
hen, The Truth About the Neutron Bomb (New York: William Morrow, 1983). For more
analytical treatments, see Sherri L. Wasserman, The Neutron Bomb Controversy (New
York: Praeger, 1983), 21–36; and Milton Leitenberg, “The Neutron Bomb––Enhanced
Radiation Warheads,” Journal of Strategic Studies 5 (September 1982), 341–369.
47 Helmut Schmidt, “The 1977 Alastair Buchan Memorial Lecture,” October 28, 1977,
Survival 20 (January-Februay 1978), 3–4.
48 Special Meeting of Foreign and Defence Ministers, Brussels, Communiqué of Decem-
ber 12, 1979, NATO Final Communiqués, 1975–80 (Brussels: NATO Information Service,
n.d.), 121–123.
49 JCS views on the Panama Canal Treaty in U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign
Relations, Hearings: Panama Canal Treaties, 95:1 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1977), Pt. 1.
50 Jerey A. Lefebvre, Arms for the Horn: U.S. Security Policy in Ethiopia and Somalia, 1953–
1991 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991), 175–196.
51 PD/NSC-18, “US National Strategy,” August 24, 1977, NSC Collection, Carter Li-
brary; available at <http://www.fas.org/irp/odocs/pd/pd18.pdf>. See also Brzezin-
ski, Power and Principl, 177–178, 455–456; and Robert P. Haa, Jr., The Half War: Planning
U.S. Rapid Deployment Forces to Meet a Limited Contingency, 1960–1983 (Boulder, CO.:
Westview Press, 1984), 50–52.
52 P.X. Kelley, “Rapid Deployment: A Vital Trump,” Parameters 11 (March 1981), 51.
53 Ronald H. Cole et al., The History of the Unied Command Plan, 1946–1999 (Washington,
DC: Joint History Oce, 2003), 30–31, 36–38.
54 Kissinger, White House Years, 1261.
418
CounCil of War
55 JCSM-525-70 to SECDEF, November 10, 1970, “US Military Mission with Iran and
U.S. Military Advisory Group to Iran,” JCS 2315/498-2.
56 Brzezinski, Power and Principle, 354; Carter, Keeping Faith, 437–439.
57 Brzezinski, Power and Principle, 390–391; Vance, 335–338; Daniel L. Haulman, The Unit-
ed States Air Force and Humanitarian Airlift Operations, 1947–1994 (Washington, DC: Air
Force History and Museums Program, 1998), 360–361.
58 See Robert E. Huyser, Mission to Tehran (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), 283–284.
59 The New York Times, December 28, 1978: 1.
60 Robert A. Pastor, Condemned to Repetition: The United States and Nicaragua (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 50–56.
61 PRM/NSC-46, May 4, 1979, “Review of U.S. Policies Toward Central America,” NSC
Files, Carter Papers; available at <http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/documents/
prmemorandums/prm46.pdf> (accessed July 18, 2011).
62 Pastor, 192–194.
63 Matthew M. Aid, The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency
(New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009), 166–167.
64 Handwritten notes labeled “Meeting w/CJCS and MG Dyke,” August 14, 1979, with
emphasis in original, U, RG 218, 898/320 (January 11, 1979).
65 Historical Division, “The Rapid Deployment Mission” (MS, Joint Secretariat, Joint Chiefs
of Staf, February 4, 1981), U, 6; Amitav Acharya, U.S. Military Strategy in the Gulf (London:
Routledge, 1989), 63–67; Henrik Bliddal, Reforming Military Command Arrangements: The
Case of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, Letort Papers Series (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army
War College, Strategic Studies Institute, March 2011), 25–34, and <http://www.strategic-
studiesinstitute.army.mil/pdles/PUB1048.pdf> (accessed July 18, 2011).
66 “Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: Address to the Nation,” January 4, 1980, Carter Public
Papers, 22.
67 “State of the Union Address,” January 23, 1980; ibid., 194–199.
68 “State of the Union: Annual Message to the Congress,” January 21, 1980; ibid., 166.
69 Cole et al., History of the UCP, 58–59.
70 A Discussion of the Rapid Deployment Force with Lieutenant General P.X. Kelley (Washing-
ton, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1980), 3–4.
71 Carter, Keeping Faith, 459; Gary Sick, All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran
(New York: Random House, 1985), 213–216.
72 “News Conference by SECDEF Brown and CJCS Jones,” April 29, 1980, Public State-
ments of Harold Brown, Secretary of Defense, 1980–1981 (Washington: Historical Oce,
Oce of the Secretary of Defense, n.d.), IV, 1446–1447.
73 John E. Valliere, “Disaster at Desert One: Catalyst for Change,” Parameters 22 (Autumn
1992), 78.
74 “News Conference by SECDEF and CJCS,” April 29, 1980, Brown Public Statements,
1980–81, IV, 1450.
75 Charlie A. Beckwith and Donald Knox, Delta Force (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jo-
vanovich, 1983), 253–256; Carter, Keeping Faith, 509–510; Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The
419
THE rETurn To ConfronTaTion
Failed Mission: An Inside Account of the Attempt to Free the Hostages in Iran,” The
New York Times Magazine, April 18, 1982: 30–31; Sick, 285–287; Paul B. Ryan, The Iranian
Rescue Mission: Why It Failed (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1985), 1–2.
76 Carter, Keeping Faith, 501; Brzezinski, Power and Principle, 487.
77 Carter, Keeping Faith, 506–507; Vance, 409; and Brzezinski, Power and Principle, 492–493.
78 Iran Hostage Rescue Mission Report, August 1980, 57–62, Naval Historical Cen-
ter les, available at <http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/hollowayrpt.
htm#execsum> (accessed July 18, 2011).
General John W. Vessey, Jr., Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Sta, 1982–1985
Chapter 14
The Reagan Buildup
By 1981, détente was dead, the victim of overoptimism by its proponents in Wash-
ington and presumptive behavior by Moscow. That it waxed and waned came as no
surprise to the Joint Chiefs of Sta, who were skeptical all along of whether détente
would last, let alone fundamentally alter East-West relations. Toward the end of his
Presidency, Jimmy Carter reluctantly agreed and initiated upward adjustments in
the military budget. The “Carter buildup” was a limited aair, however, and did not
go much beyond bolstering capabilities for the Rapid Deployment Force. As use-
ful as these increases may have been, they were not enough, in the opinion of the
Chairman, General David C. Jones, USAF, to oset the gains made by the Soviets
in nuclear and conventional arms over the past decade or to reverse the “long term
decline in our defense spending.”
1
To the incoming Reagan administration, strengthening the country’s defense
posture was top priority. During the 1980 Presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan
had mounted a relentless attack on the Carter administration for neglecting na-
tional defense and for accepting the expansion of Communist power and inuence
around the globe. Rekindling memories of the “liberation doctrine” advocated by
John Foster Dulles 3 decades earlier, Reagan swept into oce promising to “roll
back” Communist inuence and seeking a stronger military to back him up. The
ensuing buildup, soon to become the touchstone of Reagan’s Presidency, dwarfed
any the country had seen since World War II.
Reagan and the MilitaRy
Underlying President Reagan’s commitment to strengthening the Nation’s military
posture was his belief that for it to succeed he would need to change the country’s im-
age of the Armed Forces, which was little improved since Vietnam. If he accomplished
nothing else during his Presidency, Reagan wanted to lay the ghosts of that war to rest
and revive respect for those serving in uniform. The credibility of his whole approach
to foreign and defense policy depended on it. An old-fashioned patriot who was proud
of having been an Army ocer in World War II (even though he remained in Hol-
lywood making training movies for the War Department), Reagan regarded service in
the Armed Forces as character-building and the military itself as an integral part of the
421
422
COUNCIL OF WAR
country’s historic greatness. “I told the Joint Chiefs of Sta,” he recalled, “that I wanted
to do whatever it took to make our men and women proud to wear their uniforms.”
2
The President’s high esteem for the military notwithstanding, the leading archi-
tects of the Reagan buildup were predominantly civilians. Some, such as Secretary of
Defense Caspar W. Weinberger and Director of Central Intelligence William J. Casey,
were long-time political associates and personal friends of the President’s. Others,
including Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Fred C. Iklé, Assistant Secretary of
Defense Richard N. Perle, arms control specialist Paul H. Nitze, and Russian expert
Richard E. Pipes who came down from Harvard to work on the NSC, were people
Reagan had met in the 1970s through his participation in the Committee on the
Present Danger.
3
Only two high-level advisors—Alexander M. Haig, Jr., a former
SACEUR, and retired Army Lieutenant General Edward L. Rowny—came from
career military backgrounds. Haig served as Reagan’s rst Secretary of State and lasted
barely a year and a half before policy disputes with Weinberger forced him to step
down. His successor at State, George P. Shultz, was a corporate executive in private
life and another of the President’s personal friends. Rowny, the former JCS represen-
tative to SALT II, served as Reagan’s senior advisor and chief negotiator on strategic
arms control but made only limited inputs into shaping the buildup.
Reagan was business-like and initially cautious in dealing with the Joint Chiefs.
Being holdovers from the Carter administration, the chiefs served under a cloud
from that association. According to former Secretary of the Air Force Thomas C.
Reed, they must have “cringed as Reagan and Weinberger talked about the ‘de-
cade of neglect’ over which these ocers had presided.”
4
The most suspect was
the Chairman, General David Jones, who had come under repeated attack from
the President’s conservative Republican supporters for being “too political” and
too closely linked to the policies of the previous administration. Some wanted him
sacked immediately. Seeing himself as “a nonpolitical moderate,” Jones vowed to
ght any attempt at dismissal. Weinberger, weighing the pros and cons, eventually
became convinced that trying to re him would be more trouble than it was worth.
5
While Jones nished his term as Chairman, he was never part of “the family,” as
Reagan’s inner circle of advisors was called. Nor did his advice carry much weight at the
White House or with Weinberger. “Jones was an able man,” Weinberger recalled, “but I
never felt that he was quite as comfortable with me as his successors were.”
6
Jones, for
his part, observed tactfully that he and the Secretary of Defense labored under a “cool,
never close relationship.”
7
Personalities obviously entered in, but there were also serious
substantive dierences covering a wide range of issues, from the size and allocation of re-
sources under the buildup, to strategic weapons policy, arms control, and the reenergized
debate over JCS organizational reform. Though Jones and Weinberger tried to keep
THE REAGAN BUILDUP
423
their dierences behind closed doors, it was not long before their disagreements spilled
over into high-level interagency deliberations and eventually into the public arena.
In March 1982, President Reagan announced that General John W. Vessey, Jr.,
USA, Vice Chief of Sta of the Army, would become Chairman when Jones retired
that summer. At the same time, Reagan announced that Admiral James D. Watkins,
a former nuclear submarine commander, would succeed Thomas Hayward as Chief
of Naval Operations, and that General Charles A. Gabriel, a ghter pilot, would
replace Lew Allen, Jr., as Air Force Chief of Sta.
8
A year later, Reagan completed
the transformation by naming General John A. Wickham, Jr., to be the next Army
Chief of Sta, succeeding General Edward C. Meyer, and General Paul X. Kelley,
the organizer and former commander of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force,
to be the next Commandant of the Marine Corps.
9
As a practical matter, the “new” Joint Chiefs of Sta were not much dierent in
outlook from the “old.” But as Reagan appointees, they bore a greater degree of per-
sonal responsibility for helping to develop and implement the administration’s policies
and programs. The member who had the most dealings with the White House and
who was by extension the most closely identied with the administration’s policies
was the Chairman, General Vessey. Lauded by President Reagan as a “soldier’s soldier”
in the tradition of General of the Army Omar N. Bradley, Vessey was the last World
War II combat veteran to serve as Chairman. He was also the only one who had never
been a Service chief or the head of a unied or specied command. His tour of duty
in the 1970s as the U.S.-UN commander in Korea was, however, easily comparable
to that of a unied command and in some ways far more demanding. Like Jones, his
training and education had been on-the-job and at public universities, not at one of
the Service academies. Popular and respected among his peers, he had fought in three
wars and was well known and highly regarded by key foreign leaders. As Chairman, he
spent a good deal of time traveling in troubled locales such as East Asia and the Middle
East, where he had numerous friends and contacts.
Vessey and Weinberger formed a highly eective and productive partnership
almost immediately. “I have rarely worked with anyone,” Weinberger recalled, “for
whom I had greater respect and admiration.” In contrast to his intermittent contacts
with Jones, Weinberger met with Vessey practically every morning for half an hour
or more to go over business. Each Tuesday, Weinberger would meet collectively with
Vessey and the Service chiefs in the “Tank,” the JCS conference room in the Penta-
gon’s National Military Command Center. Though Weinberger and the chiefs did
not always see eye-to-eye, each one knew where the others stood on key issues.
10
Vessey’s advent sparked an immediate improvement in White House–JCS rela-
tions. Reagan and Vessey got on well (both were avid storytellers and enjoyed trading
424
COUNCIL OF WAR
jokes) and usually saw one another two or three times a week at NSC meetings and
other high-level functions. Operating in the “team player” tradition, Vessey saw him-
self as a bridge between the JCS, on the one hand, and the Secretary of Defense and
the President, on the other. As one of the conditions for accepting the Chairmanship,
Vessey insisted that the President meet regularly with the JCS as a group for an infor-
mal review of major issues and to become better acquainted. The rst such meeting
took place in early July 1982, shortly after Vessey became Chairman. Afterwards, Vessey
sent Judge William P. Clark, the President’s Assistant for National Security Aairs, a
handwritten note recommending that similar meetings be held about every 6 months.
The next meeting took place in December 1982 and proved so successful that Reagan
wanted such sessions to be a regular part of his agenda. Thereafter, the meetings were
held quarterly, continuing on through the end of Reagan’s Presidency. In 1987, the
chiefs broadened the format to include presentations by the combatant commanders
at the President’s invitation. Though the specic impact of these meetings is hard to
assess, the overall impression is that they resulted in closer ties between the President
and his military advisors and a more informed decisionmaking process all around.
11
Improved cooperation at the top did not automatically translate into more
useful and eective military policies. Indeed, the Reagan years were notorious for
lapses and mismanagement of foreign and defense aairs that left the Joint Chiefs at
times bewildered over what the President was trying to accomplish. In keeping with
their military culture, the Joint Chiefs preferred clearly dened organizational roles
and lines of authority. What they often got during the Reagan years were vague
directives, lax assignments of authority, and contradictory behavior from the Presi-
dent and his subordinates. Whenever Reagan was personally interested or involved
in a problem, things were apt to get done. Otherwise, the looseness of the overall
structure led to a day-to-day system that often broke down and repeatedly failed to
assure consistent policies or eective execution and follow-up. The most celebrated
example was the 1986 Iran-Contra aair, in which rogue elements of the NSC Sta,
including a Marine lieutenant colonel, Oliver L. North, used the proceeds from
clandestine arms sales to Iran to nance unauthorized assistance to anti-Communist
guerrillas in Central America. Though not involved directly in Iran-Contra, the
Joint Chiefs were aected nonetheless. Iran was under a U.S.-imposed arms em-
bargo that the JCS were responsible for helping to administer and enforce. But, with
key elements of the President’s own sta undercutting that policy, its credibility be-
came immediately suspect and all the harder for the JCS to oversee and implement.
In addition to coordination breakdowns with the White House, the Joint Chiefs
faced recurring diculties with the Oce of the Secretary of Defense. The explana-
tion for these persistent confrontations lies in part in the basic friction-prone nature
425
THE REAGAN BUILDUP
of civil-military relations and in the overlapping functions that OSD and the JCS had
come to perform. But there was also a strong element of resentment on the part of the
JCS and serving ocers on the Joint Sta toward what many regarded as the unneces-
sary and unwarranted intrusion by the Secretary of Defense and members of his sta
into the military planning process. In the critical areas of nuclear and conventional
strategy, the allocation of resources, and defense budget planning, the oversight and
direction exercised by upper- and mid-level OSD ocials during Weinberger’s tenure
easily matched or exceeded that of previous administrations. While the Service chiefs
welcomed and appreciated the budget increases the Reagan administration provided,
they would have preferred less direct and heavy-handed supervision in managing the
buildup, something more in line with the easygoing working partnership and sense of
trust and understanding Vessey enjoyed with Weinberger and Reagan.
FoRces and Budgets
The Reagan buildup was anything but orderly and systematic. According to David
A. Stockman, Director of the Oce of Management and Budget, the Reagan ad-
ministration entered oce with few specic plans and only a generalized estimate
of military requirements.
12
Promises and pronouncements made during the cam-
paign looked ahead to a 600-ship Navy containing “more aircraft carriers, subma-
rines, and amphibious ships,” early deployment of the MX intercontinental ballistic
missile in “a prudent survivable conguration,” revival of the B–1 bomber program,
and an all-around increase in the readiness and industrial preparedness of the Armed
Forces. Left unclear were the priority of programs and the strategic concept that
would guide the allocation of resources in achieving these goals.
13
The absence of a detailed blueprint notwithstanding, the new administration
moved promptly with requests for line-item amendments to the already enacted
FY81 defense budget and to the FY82 estimates President Carter submitted to
Congress before he left oce. Known as the “get well” budget, these amendments
proposed immediate net increases of $32.6 billion in budget authority (i.e., cash and
unfunded contracts), mostly in the form of add-ons to existing programs.
14
At the
time, defense accounted for just over 5 percent of the country’s gross national prod-
uct (GNP). Assuming the President and his advisors were serious about making a
dierence, the Joint Chiefs recommended aiming for a target of between 6 and 7
percent of GNP, a fairly close approximation of what the administration achieved.
15
Despite the Joint Chiefs’ eagerness to be included in shaping the buildup, they
found themselves more or less relegated to the sidelines while Weinberger and Stock-
man and their aides thrashed out the details of a future military spending program.
16
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COUNCIL OF WAR
Under the agreed formula, the target would be an annual 7 percent real increase in
defense budget authority over the next 5 years, starting in FY83 and using FY82 as the
base. The net increase, when ination, the get-well additions, and other supplements
were gured in, would boost defense spending by about 14 percent above projected
levels in President Carter’s last 5-year projection. Later, claiming that Weinberger had
hoodwinked him, Stockman declared the proposed 7 percent increase “agrantly
excessive as a matter of pure scal aordability” and predicted it would cause crip-
pling budget decits.
17
But despite his scal conservatism, Reagan accepted the risk.
“He said frequently to me,” Weinberger remembered, “that if it ever came down to a
choice between balancing the budget and spending enough to regain and keep our
military strength, he would always come down on the side of the latter.”
18
These decisions produced the largest and most sustained expansion of military
spending since World War II. In current dollars, defense budget authority rose from $178
billion in FY81 to $291 billion by the end of the decade, an increase of over 60 percent.
The buildup would have been bigger had Congress not trimmed the administration’s
requests almost every year, starting with the FY82 budget. In constant (FY92) dollars,
the picture was somewhat dierent and showed the administration reaping most of its
gains during its rst 5 years in oce, when defense spending increased in real terms
by roughly a third. At its peak in scal years 1986 and 1987, the buildupconsumed 6.6
percent of the country’s GNP. Thereafter, defense spending tapered o, so that by the
end of the decade the military budget was again experiencing negative growth and had
fallen to 5.8 percent of GNP (see gure 14-1). All the same, the Reagan buildup was an
impressive “peacetime” accomplishment, with only the rearmament program initiated
during the Korean War oering anything comparable in scale and scope.
19
While the Joint Chiefs of Sta welcomed the Reagan buildup as long overdue,
they were also concerned that it might not be enough to do the job the administration
had set for itself. Even with the additions the President proposed, the JCS saw a yawning
gap between available capabilities and the administration’s perceived objectives. Along
with the proered increases in defense spending came heavier demands on the Armed
Forces and a succession of unplanned tasks (e.g., naval deployments against Libya, peace-
keeping operations in Lebanon, and the intervention in Grenada) that put unexpected
stresses and strains on the military (see below). Also, the initial absence of a coordinated,
high-level statement of basic national policy encouraged inter-Service competition for
funds and stymied the development of JCS strategic plans that might have helped to
clarify the allocation of functions and resources, especially in the Middle East and South-
west Asia. The only guidance the Joint Chiefs had before them came from the Oce of
the Secretary of Defense in the course of the normal budget process. In October 1981, in
place of the one-and-a-half war planning scenario used since the Nixon administration,
427
THE REAGAN BUILDUP
Figure 14–1.
Department of Defense Budget Authority FYs – (in billions)
FY81 FY82 FY83 FY84 FY85 FY86 FY87 FY88 FY89
Current Dollars $178 $214 $239 $258 $287 $281 $279 $284 $291
Constant
Dollars (FY 92)
$272 $304 $328 $343 $366 $350 $337 $329 $324
Percentage
Real Growth
13.1 11.5 8.1 4.6 6.7 -4.4 -2.1 -1.5 -2.4
Percentage
Distribution
of GNP
5.4 6.0 6.3 6.2 6.4 6.6 6.6 6.2 5.8
Source: U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Comptroller, National Defense Budget Estimates for FY92 (Washington, DC: Department of
Defense, March 1991), 98, 147.
OSD substituted a more demanding requirement that the JCS prepare for up to three
near-simultaneous conicts—a major NATO–Warsaw Pact war in Europe, and lesser
conicts in Korea and the Persian Gulf. The Joint Chiefs duly complied but thought that
OSD was setting an unrealistic agenda. In General Jones’ opinion, the administration
seemed bent on “trying to do everything.”
20
Even though the buildup was an across-the-board aair, its rst order of busi-
ness was to redress “the deteriorated strategic balance with the Soviet Union.”
21
Reagan abhorred nuclear weapons as much as his predecessor and routinely called
for their complete abolition. But he was even more averse to the risks entailed
in falling farther behind the Soviet Union in eective strategic power and sided
with the Joint Chiefs, believing the time had come for the United States to regain
and maintain at least essential strategic nuclear equivalence with the Soviet Union.
Strategic forces had been declining almost steadily as a share of the defense budget
since the mid-1960s. Under Reagan, they rose from 7 percent of military spending
in FY81 to a peak of 9.5 percent in FY85. Shortly after taking oce, the admin-
istration set the stage for a major expansion of strategic capabilities to close what
the President and his advisors often characterized as the “window of vulnerability.”
Among the strategic program objectives the President approved were the tempo-
rary deployment of up to one hundred MX ICBMs in existing Minuteman III or
Titan silos, creation of a more survivable command and control system for nuclear
war, modernization of the strategic bomber force with the introduction of two
428
COUNCIL OF WAR
new types of bombers (a revived B–1 program and the recently inaugurated B–2
“Stealth”), an increase in the accuracy and payload of submarine-launched ballistic
missiles, and stepped-up research and development of ballistic missile defense.
22
The emphasis on improving strategic systems notwithstanding, spending on con-
ventional capabilities accounted for the largest part of the buildup. During the 1970s,
general purpose forces had averaged 35 percent of the military budget; under Reagan
they rose to more than 40 percent. Much of the conventional buildup focused on im-
proving power-projection capabilities, which involved nearly tripling the budget for air-
and sealift support and building three new carrier battle groups for the Navy. Although
the administration paid close attention to strengthening ground and tactical air capa-
bilities, Weinberger acknowledged that naval expansion received preferential treatment
because of its unique capacity to mount “oensive missions.”
23
Aiming eventually for a
eet of 600 combatant vessels, Navy planners justied their shipbuilding and modern-
ization goals under a “maritime strategy” involving forward deployment and vigorous
oensive operations against the Soviet eet in the North Atlantic.
24
Skeptics, pointing to
the losses inicted by Argentine stand-o EXOCET cruise missile attacks on the Royal
Navy in the 1982 Falklands conict, questioned the wisdom of heavy new investment
in surface vessels. Nonetheless, the Navy’s maritime strategy fascinated President Rea-
gan and enjoyed strong backing among key members of Congress.
25
The Joint Chiefs
never explicitly endorsed the maritime strategy but did support the expansion of naval
forces in conjunction with the overall buildup. As a practical matter, they found the most
urgent demands for naval power during the Reagan years arising from increased U.S.
involvement in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf.
In May 1982, the President nally approved a statement of basic national security
policy (NSDD 32) to help guide the buildup. The most detailed treatment of its kind
in years, NSDD 32 rested on an alarming depiction of Soviet military power and
sanctioned across-the-board preparations for possible conict, from low-intensity en-
counters with Soviet “client” states like Libya, Cuba, and Nicaragua, to regional con-
ventional wars and even nuclear exchanges between the United States and the Soviet
Union. Adopting the long-haul philosophy that had guided the Eisenhower adminis-
tration’s defense policy, Reagan’s strategic concept accepted the threat of tensions and
confrontations with the Soviet Union as a continuous condition and suggested that
maintaining a high level of military preparedness would have to go on indenitely.
26
As bleak as the outlook seemed, there was also cause for guarded optimism. Short-
ly after approving NSDD 32, President Reagan received a British intelligence report
via the CIA pointing to a progressive disintegration of the Soviet system. Entitled
The Malaise of Soviet Society, the British assessment cited extensive evidence of crime,
corruption, and economic deterioration throughout the Soviet Union. For all its
429
THE REAGAN BUILDUP
military power, the report suggested, the Soviet Union was a giant with feet of clay
that was crumbling from within.
27
This was not the rst such depiction of the Soviet
Union that President Reagan saw, nor would it be the last. Yet it was a stark conr-
mation of what the President himself had been saying for years—that communism
was a failed concept and that with time and patience, Western-style democracy and
capitalism would triumph. With the military buildup, Reagan saw the United States
not only protecting its interests but adding further to the economic and political
pressure that would sooner or later end the Cold War and help bring down the
Soviet Union.
MilitaRy PoweR and FoReign Policy
Even before the buildup’s full eects could be felt, the prospect of a stronger de-
fense establishment encouraged the President and his senior advisors to adopt more
forceful foreign policies to push back the frontiers of Communist power and inu-
ence. While cautious in challenging Moscow directly, Reagan was less restrained
when opportunities arose to undermine the Soviet Union elsewhere, by encourag-
ing the Polish democratic trade union movement “Solidarity,” for example, or by
putting politico-military pressure on Soviet “puppet” regimes in the Middle East,
Southern Africa, and Latin America. Basically, the administration’s strategy com-
bined overt and covert assistance to “those who are risking their lives . . . to defy
Soviet-supported aggression,” with the selective application of U.S. military power.
The result, sometimes known as the Reagan Doctrine, was a more proactive anti-
Communist foreign policy than anything seen since the Vietnam War.
28
Early instances of this policy in operation included the U.S. naval exercises
in the Gulf of Sidra in August 1981, held in an eort to destabilize Libyan strong-
man and Soviet collaborator Muammar Qadda; military intervention in Beirut
in 1982−1984; the invasion of Grenada in October 1983; and the steady expansion
of U.S. economic and military assistance to Central America from late 1981 on.
Strictly speaking, the Beirut intervention was part of a multinational peacekeep ing
operation to promote stability in the aftermath of Israel’s thrust into Lebanon to
destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization, while the invasion of Grenada was a
spur-of-the-moment rescue mission to protect U.S. citizens caught in the middle
of a leftist putsch. Both, however, had similar underlying objectives that aimed at
thwarting Soviet proxies—the Syrians who aspired to dominate Lebanon and the
Cubans who were entrenching themselves in Grenada. Meanwhile, the administra-
tion dropped nearly all the Carter-era prohibitions on foreign arms sales, rescinded
the previous administration’s “leprosy letter” that had proscribed embassy assistance
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to American weapons dealers operating overseas, and declared arms transfers to
friendly governments to be an “essential element” of American foreign policy.
29
The stepped-up pace of American involvement abroad imposed unexpected re-
quirements on the Joint Chiefs at a time when the buildup was still in its infancy and
available resources were as yet little improved from those on hand in the 1970s. Exhibit-
ing customary caution, the JCS urged restraint in dealing with the unpredictable Qad-
da and initially argued against military intervention in both Lebanon and Grenada
until diplomatic and other options had been thoroughly explored and exhausted.
30
Invariably overruled, the JCS became the targets of sharp criticism when things went
wrong, as exemplied by the awed inter-Service coordination during the awkwardly
executed Grenada operation and command and control problems preceding the Is-
lamist terrorist attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983 that left 241
U.S. Servicemen dead. In both instances, the JCS acknowledged that they could—and
should—have done a better job. As a result, they found their image more tarnished
than ever, with their methods and procedures increasingly under scrutiny by a skeptical
Congress that was eyeing the possibility of wholesale JCS reorganization and reform.
Despite the problems the administration’s proactive foreign policy posed, the
Joint Chiefs welcomed the change. In reviewing President Carter’s record, they found
it lacking in long-range vision and replete with inconsistency in fullling U.S. com-
mitments. Expecting the Reagan White House to do better, they were encouraged
that the United States no longer appeared to be in retreat from problems abroad and
soon found that they had Oval Oce leadership that would back them up. During
the planning for the Gulf of Sidra exercises, for example, the question arose of how the
Navy should respond if threatened by Libyan aircraft. Without hesitating, Reagan as-
sured the chiefs that they should not be afraid to let U.S. pilots chase opposing Libyan
planes “right into the hangar.” Critics denigrated this kind of guidance as “cowboy
antics,” but it was clear enough to the Joint Chiefs to give them rules of engagement
they could readily understand and apply in dicult situations.
31
Where the Joint Chiefs were least comfortable with the administration’s foreign
policy was in its lack of explicit sanction, other than the President’s authority as Com-
mander in Chief, to use U.S. military power. This issue was a recurring theme in admin-
istration debates and reected the lingering eects of Vietnam on military thinking. It
was especially troublesome for the JCS in developing responses to the Sandinistas and
Soviet- and Cuban-sponsored insurgencies in Central America. The Joint Chiefs had no
doubt that these movements posed a serious threat to U.S. security interests and required
prompt and decisive action. However, they balked at the prospect of a protracted strug-
gle undertaken without clear support from the public and Congress. President Reagan
was no more inclined than his military advisors to see U.S. combat troops introduced
431
THE REAGAN BUILDUP
into Central America. But he was equally determined to block any further Communist
takeovers. The upshot was a quasi-covert war orchestrated by the CIA and organized
around support of the Nicaraguan Contras, a coalition of anti-Sandinista insurgents
formed after Somoza’s downfall.
32
Repeatedly attacked by liberal Democrats in Con-
gress, the administration’s Central America policy became intensely controversial and
hard to manage amid frequently changing legislative mandates that restricted the types
and amounts of aid the administration could provide. Though the Joint Chiefs arranged
occasional air drops and other logistical support to the Contras, they studiously avoided
direct U.S. military contact and involvement. Meanwhile, U.S. Southern Command,
headquartered in Panama, simply looked the other way whenever the Contras mounted
operations against the Sandinistas and their Cuban allies.
33
A similar pattern emerged with respect to administration policy toward Af-
ghanistan where, again, the CIA had the lead. Here, however, given the recent cre-
ation of the Rapid Deployment Force and a growing security mission across South-
west Asia, the JCS would have preferred a more active role and a corresponding
regional strategy with a clear-cut allocation of resources and responsibilities. Instead,
as Secretary of State Shultz described it, the policy that evolved placed the CIA
in charge of running the war and assisting the anti-Soviet “freedom ghters” (the
mujahideen). Shoring up U.S. defense and security interests fell to the Joint Chiefs of
Sta. A rather ambiguous governing directive (NSDD 99), adopted in the summer
of 1983, acknowledged that the United States had vested interests across the region
that would require involvement at various levels, the prepositioning of military sup-
plies and equipment, and a U.S. presence for the indenite future.
34
To handle their growing responsibilities in the Middle East and Southwest
Asia, the Joint Chiefs upgraded the Rapid Deployment Force to a separate unied
command on January 1, 1983. Known as U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM),
the new organization was supposed to be less susceptible to the pressures of inter-
Service rivalry and friction than the RDJTF, in part because it operated with a more
dened charter that placed it in charge of protecting U.S. interests within a specic
area of responsibility (AOR) stretching from Pakistan to the Horn of Africa. Care-
fully excluded, however, was any USCENTCOM involvement with Israel, a move
taken at JCS insistence to protect the new command’s credibility and operational
exibility in the Arab world. As a practical matter, guaranteeing the security of the
Persian Gulf and its oil supplies was USCENTCOM’s uppermost concern.
35
The Joint Chiefs initially identied a Soviet invasion of Iran launched through
neighboring Afghanistan as the primary threat to the region.
36
But as they became
more familiar with the Persian Gulf and its problems, they recognized that the
dangers were more complex than previously assumed. The turning point in JCS
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COUNCIL OF WAR
thinking was the 1984 “tanker war” between Iran and Iraq during which the United
States, in cooperation with other Western powers, accepted responsibility for escort-
ing neutral shipping through the Persian Gulf. As a rule, however, the Joint Chiefs
shied away from major force commitments to the Middle East and embraced in-
stead a “current force strategy” that relied on periodic show-of-force deployments,
the expansion of support facilities on Diego Garcia, and combined exercises with
friendly governments to underscore the U.S. commitment. Prior to the rst Gulf
War of 1990−1991, the only forces permanently attached to USCENTCOM were
a small otilla, the Middle East Force, which had routinely patrolled the Persian
Gulf since the late 1940s. Meanwhile, under a deployment instigated by the Carter
administration, two carrier task forces—normally one from U.S. Pacic Command
and the other from U.S. Atlantic Command—operated periodically in the adjacent
Arabian Sea. According to General Vessey, the Joint Chiefs wanted Central Com-
mand “to be very visible in the region” as a deterrent, but to carry limited capabili-
ties. Vessey characterized this strategy as “deception of a grand order.”
37
Like the military buildup, the Reagan administration’s foreign policy was part of
the resurgence of American power. It served notice that the United States refused to
accept Moscow’s hegemonic ambitions and would take whatever steps it deemed neces-
sary to block further Soviet inroads and, where opportunities presented themselves, to
roll back Communist inuence. Critics, arguing that the administration exaggerated the
Soviet threat, viewed such behavior as unduly provocative and indierent to the aspira-
tions of struggling Third World countries, a throwback to the controversial practices
of the 1950s and early 1960s that some felt had brought on Vietnam. The Joint Chiefs
of Sta concurred that the administration’s foreign policy had its limitations—that its
authority to apply force was questionable and that it placed demands on the military
without taking full account of available resources and commitments elsewhere. But as
the Reagan buildup progressed and the chiefs became more familiar with what was
expected of them, JCS objections became fewer and fewer. The net eect by the time
Reagan left oce was to increase the role of military power in foreign policy to a point
where it was stronger and more pronounced than at any time since World War II.
the PRoMise oF technology: sdi
The Reagan buildup involved not merely expanding the capabilities of the Armed
Forces, but doing it in the time-honored American tradition with the most up-to-date
weapons and equipment. The 1970s had witnessed a stunning array of breakthroughs
and improvements in technologies with military applications, from the expanded use
of computers and space-based satellites for communications and battle management
433
THE REAGAN BUILDUP
on the ground and in the air, to more sophisticated “smart bombs” and high-energy
lasers. The potential seemed limitless. Some military analysts even suggested the pos-
sibility that in the not-too-distant future increasingly accurate and lethal conventional
munitions could replace strategic nuclear weapons as the mainstay of the country’s of-
fensive deterrent force.
38
But until the Reagan buildup, limited funding had prevented
the Services from fully exploring the opportunities these new technologies presented.
The Reagan administration’s most ambitious eort to exploit this situation was
the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a program conceived and instigated in large
part on the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Sta. The pivotal decision was the President’s
announcement in a nationally televised speech on March 23, 1983, that the time had
come to draw a halt to the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union
and to move away from deterrence based on oensive arms and the threat of “mutual
assured destruction,” or MAD. In the absence of a negotiated bilateral agreement,
Reagan was taking unilateral action. Summoning the scientic community to help,
he called for an aggressive R&D program aimed at determining the feasibility of using
new technologies to render ballistic missiles “impotent and obsolete.” For more than
10 years, since the signing of the 1972 ABM Treaty, ballistic missile defense (BMD) had
languished as a low priority. Now it was suddenly back atop the national agenda.
39
While the Joint Chiefs played no part in drafting the President’s speech, their role
in shaping his decision to launch SDI was fundamental. As a rule, the Joint Chiefs had
never taken a close corporate interest in research and development. Leaving R&D
choices largely in the hands of the military Services, the JCS had concentrated on
establishing general guidelines consistent with overall strategic plans. But by the early
1980s, they faced a unique situation that saw the rapid rise of new technological pos-
sibilities in BMD converge with a growing political controversy in the United States
over the future of the ICBM force. The upshot was the emergence of a consensus
among the chiefs that more needed to be done to coordinate and promote missile de-
fense, a recommendation that appealed to the President’s antinuclear prejudices with-
out diminishing the administration’s commitment a strong military posture. The result-
ing Strategic Defense Initiative (ridiculed as “Star Wars” by critics) undoubtedly went
farther than anything the JCS had in mind. Yet once Reagan endorsed the program,
it seemed to acquire a momentum of its own, which its proponents saw as having the
potential of revolutionizing warfare, much like the Manhattan Project of World War II.
The revival of ballistic missile defense was initially a haphazard aair, drawn from
scattered research carried out by the Army’s ballistic missile defense organization at
Huntsville, Alabama, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
in Washington, DC, and the two key government-run research laboratories—
Los Alamos in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore in California. Out of a dozen
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or more such projects dating from the late 1960s and 1970s came encouraging
progress in such elds as kinetic kill vehicles, high energy lasers, particle beams,
and other directed-energy systems operating from land-, sea-, and space-based plat-
forms. With the Armed Forces increasingly dependent on space-based communica-
tions, the Joint Chiefs were mainly interested in these systems as a hedge against the
possibility that the Soviet Union might develop an antisatellite (ASAT) capability
to cripple U.S. communications systems.
40
But as the impact of these breakthroughs
became more apparent, the JCS began to recognize that they oered a possible new
counter to increasingly capable ground, air, and space-borne military threats.
Popular interest in these new technologies was also catching on. Among the more
enthusiastic supporters of an increased BMD eort was Republican Senator Malcolm
Wallop of Wyoming. A member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Wal-
lop favored stepped-up work on U.S. space-based chemical lasers to counter the grow-
ing Soviet missile threat. Instead of a strategy of deterrence resting on mutual assured
destruction, Wallop and a handful of others in Congress foresaw the coming of a new
era they termed “mutual assured survival” built around defensive rather than oensive
technologies.
41
A private citizens’ group known as High Frontier envisioned a similar
future. Headed by Lieutenant General Daniel O. Graham, USA (Ret.), a former direc-
tor of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a defense adviser to Ronald Reagan’s 1976
and 1980 campaigns, High Frontier gained widespread public notice by promoting a
Buck Rogers-style, space-based missile defense system utilizing futuristic and existing
technologies. But because of questionable technical data and dubious cost estimates,
High Frontier’s proposals received a tepid reception at the Pentagon.
42
Even though the Joint Chiefs took no position on which specic BMD tech-
nologies to pursue, they made it plain that they were far from satised with the
constrained level of R&D since the signing of the ABM Treaty. While it prohibited
large-scale deployments, the treaty had not banned either the United States or the
Soviet Union from conducting research and laboratory testing. With the advent of the
Reagan administration, the JCS saw an opportunity to accelerate the pace and repeat-
edly urged the White House to do so. The chiefs’ call for increased attention to ballis-
tic missile defense took place against the backdrop of a growing popular movement at
home and abroad for a “freeze” on further nuclear deployments. Adopting a “liberal-
pacist” orientation, the freeze movement used sit-ins and large-scale demonstrations
to convey its message. Its members ranged from prominent liberal members of Con-
gress to social activists and middle class professionals who had participated in antiwar
causes during Vietnam. An international phenomenon, the freeze was especially ac-
tive in the United Kingdom and Western Europe, where it became a prime candidate
for penetration by the KGB, the Soviet espionage service. But as Christopher Andrew
435
THE REAGAN BUILDUP
revealed in his authorized history of MI5, Britain’s counterintelligence organization,
the KGB backed o on discovering that competing Western intelligence agencies had
already heavily penetrated the freeze movement.
43
A favorite target of freeze advocates in the United States was the MX, the Air
Force’s new ICBM, which continued to enjoy a precarious fate. Shortly after taking
oce, President Reagan had jettisoned the Carter administration’s “race track” de-
ployment plan for the MX as too expensive and had ordered that one hundred of the
missiles (half the planned force) be deployed temporarily in Minuteman silos.
44
In the
spring of 1982, the Oce of the Secretary of Defense advanced a longer-term solution
it called the Closely Spaced Basing (CSB) plan, known commonly as “dense pack.”
Under the plan, the Air Force would deploy the remaining one hundred MX missiles
in closely spaced, super-hardened silos near Cheyenne, Wyoming. The principle behind
dense pack was that incoming Soviet warheads would destroy or divert themselves
upon detonating, a phenomenon known as fratricide. But without the protection of
a layered ballistic missile defense system, some analysts warned, dense pack was likely
to become increasingly vulnerable to expected improvements in Soviet capabilities.
45
The Joint Chiefs split over how to proceed. While the Air Force member, Gen-
eral Gabriel, praised the dense pack concept, the other chiefs doubted whether it of-
fered sucient survivability and recommended against it. Suggesting that long-range
land-based missiles had outlived their usefulness, they thought the future lay in phas-
ing out ICBMs and shifting primary reliance to a sea-based deterrent force organized
around Trident submarines, backed by a heavy BMD overlay to prevent the Soviets
from holding U.S. cities “hostage” in a crisis. Unwilling to give up on the MX so
easily, General Vessey proposed a middle course that involved accepting dense pack
and stepping up ballistic missile defense R&D, while holding an ABM deployment in
abeyance pending a clearer picture of Soviet intentions. Warming to Vessey’s proposal,
President Reagan in late November 1982 gave it the green light to proceed.
46
Despite the President’s endorsement of the dense pack plan, Congress deemed
it too risky and in December 1982 cut o MX funding while directing the admin-
istration to review the program. By then the Joint Chiefs were more divided than
ever over the MX (recently named the Peacekeeper by the Air Force) and could
only agree that, if it went forward, it should be in conjunction with a vastly en-
hanced ballistic missile defense R&D eort. The leading opponent of the MX was
Admiral James D. Watkins, the Chief of Naval Operations, who considered further
investment in ICBMs a waste of money. Deeply religious, Watkins saw the adminis-
tration losing moral ground to the nuclear freeze movement and sought to shift the
focus of the debate away from oensive weapons by stressing the deterrent potential
of strategic defenses. While not as averse as Watkins to the MX, Vessey shared the
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COUNCIL OF WAR
CNO’s worry that it constituted a huge political liability and could interfere with
completion of the rest of the JCS strategic modernization program. Matters came
to a head during an executive session of the Joint Chiefs in the Chairman’s oce
on February 5, 1983, held to prepare for a meeting less than a week later with the
President. Citing the recent progress that BMD-related research had made, Watkins
reiterated his support for an intensied ABM program and persuaded his colleagues
that they should put the matter before the President for his consideration.
47
Although not part of the formal agenda, strategic defense emerged as the prin-
cipal topic at the chiefs’ meeting with the President on February 11, 1983. Going
into the meeting, Weinberger wanted to conne the discussion to issues relating to
Peacekeeper, dense pack, and alternative basing modes. But at Vessey’s request, he
agreed to give the chiefs leeway. “I have asked the JCS to present their views to you
today,” Weinberger reportedly told the President, “because they dier from mine.
. . . I don’t agree with their recommendation, but you should hear it.”
48
Vessey then
devoted half an hour to presenting a detailed critique, with visual aids, of Soviet war
aims, U.S. weapons employment policy, targeting concepts, and the capabilities of
U.S. strategic and intermediate-range systems. The thrust of Vessey’s talk was that
the United States faced growing problems of maintaining eective deterrence with
its existing and foreseeable arsenal of oensive weapons and that the time had come
to take a fresh look at defensive alternatives. On the conclusion of Vessey’s remarks,
Reagan polled the Service chiefs to see if they agreed with the Chairman’s analy-
sis. Finding that they did, he opened the oor to discussion, whereupon Watkins
jumped in with a strong endorsement of an enlarged BMD program. “Would it not
be better,” he asked the President, “if we could develop a system that would protect,
rather than avenge, our people?” Deeply moved, Reagan seized on the idea and
indicated that he wanted to pursue it. “Don’t lose those words,” he said.
49
Exactly what the chiefs expected to achieve remains a matter of conjecture. At
no point during the meeting did they indicate whether they were thinking about
a comprehensive air and missile defense against nuclear weapons or against ICBMs
only. Nor was it clear whether they were proposing a nationwide system or merely
the protection of missile silo elds, or whether they favored a treaty-compliant,
land-based BMD system or a more sophisticated space-based system that might re-
quire revision or abrogation of the ABM Treaty. Instead, their apparent aim was the
more general wish to alert the President to the problems of the current system of
deterrence, make him more aware of the possible alternatives, and stimulate greater
interest in and funding for research and development. “It was the idea that defense
might enter the equation more than in the past,” Vessey recalled. “It was the idea that
new technologies were more promising than they had been in the past.”
50
437
THE REAGAN BUILDUP
While the Joint Chiefs were fairly certain as they left the White House that
they had an impact on the President’s thinking, it was not until his speech to the
Nation on March 23 that they nally learned the extent of it. By calling for in-
creased eorts to render ballistic missiles “impotent and obsolete,” Reagan was
not merely setting an objective; he was charting his vision of the future, when
dependence on deterrence through MAD would end and a new era of security
resting on defense-based systems would begin. The avowed intent, in other words,
was nothing less than a new strategic posture that would rid the world of having to
live under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. Critics were soon insisting
that what Reagan had in mind was a leakproof, impenetrable shield—costly, risky,
and doubtless unattainable. But others, including the Joint Chiefs, thought it was at
least worth exploring the possibility while reaping whatever benets the program
might yield.
Reagan’s speech of March 23, 1983, was, as it turned out, the high point of JCS
inuence on the President’s Strategic Defense Initiative, as it soon became known.
Indeed, from that point on, their role in the program steadily diminished as Wein-
berger, sensing enormous opportunities, gathered its components as closely as he
could under his immediate control. Expecting the Services to carry out most of the
R&D, the Joint Chiefs in May 1983 oered a plan known as “Project Defender” (the
same name used for an experimental missile defense system in the 1960s) that would
have created a joint JCS-OSD oversight body to provide the military departments
with policy guidance and coordination for the program. Weinberger, however, had
other ideas. Instead of two or three loosely linked Service-run programs, he wanted
a centralized eort structured along functional lines. The upshot was the creation in
April 1984 of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO), an OSD sta
agency with its own director who reported to the Secretary of Defense.
51
Although denied a direct hand in managing SDI, the Joint Chiefs remained
strong advocates of the program and were condent that with the necessary re-
sources and political support, it would show dramatic results in due time. They be-
lieved it only prudent to maintain a vigorous missile defense R&D program to stay
abreast of what the Soviets might be doing and to take advantage of the spin-os in
such areas as antisatellite systems and space-based surveillance, reconnaissance, and
communications. Adopting a long-term view, they projected a transition period of
30 years or more—time enough, if judiciously managed, to move away from reli-
ance on oensive forces and MAD without the attendant risks that many strategic
analysts predicted. In sum, the chiefs were upbeat about the program. But unlike
many who found the President’s vision enticing, they had no illusions about the
problems involved and the chances of SDI succeeding.
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COUNCIL OF WAR
Meanwhile, the Peacekeeper program experienced a slow but inexorable de-
mise, ushered along by the ndings of a bipartisan Presidential commission chaired
by former national security advisor Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, USAF
(Ret.).
52
The commission’s report, released to the public in early April 1983, es-
sentially signaled that, like the dreadnought, the era of the large, heavy ICBM was
drawing to a close. Convinced that the dense pack deployment was awed, the
commission recommended against it and favored scaling back the Peacekeeper pro-
gram to fty or so units, all housed in Minuteman silos. Had it not considered the
Peacekeeper to have some residual value as a “bargaining chip” in arms control, the
Scowcroft Commission might well have advised terminating the program entirely.
Looking ahead, the panel saw the Nation’s security better served by a mobile eet
of small, single-warhead ICBMs dubbed “Midgetmen,” which would be harder for
the Soviets to target in a surprise attack.
53
Scowcroft reportedly observed that after the President’s SDI speech, the Peace-
keeper was doomed no matter what the commission recommended.
54
Not everyone,
to be sure, agreed, least of all the Joint Chiefs of Sta. Even though some members had
doubts, they continued to endorse the MX as part of the country’s mix of strategic
forces for the foreseeable future. In assessing the impact of the Scowcroft Commission
report, the JCS worried that its recommendation to downsize the Peacekeeper pro-
gram was apt to delay other strategic modernization measures and generate pressures
to shift money from strategic to conventional weapons. Consequently, even though
they were divided over Peacekeeper’s ultimate contribution, they remained unied in
their support of full funding for all Service-recommended strategic programs in the
interest of preserving a proper balance between strategic and conventional capabilities.
But in light of the commission’s report and the renewed interest in strategic defenses,
political support for the Peacekeeper continued to wane and in 1985 Congress limited
further deployment to the Scowcroft-recommended force of 50 launchers.
55
aRMs contRol: a new agenda
With its focus on restoring U.S. military power, the Reagan administration seemed at
times to have little patience for or interest in arms control. Like his predecessor, Jimmy
Carter, however, Ronald Reagan wanted nothing more than to do away with nuclear
weapons and end the threat of nuclear war. But his means of doing so often diverged
sharply from those of previous administrations and could just as easily stress unilateral
actions like SDI over negotiated agreements like SALT. Many within the administration,
from the President on down, shared Secretary of Defense Weinberger’s view that
the 1970s had been “a melancholy chapter” in the history of arms control, resulting
439
THE REAGAN BUILDUP
in agreements that had done more to increase U.S. vulnerability than to lessen it.
56
Learning from these presumed mistakes, the Reagan administration adopted the posi-
tion that it was almost pointless to take new initiatives in the arms control eld until
the country had rebuilt its defenses and could negotiate from a stronger posture.
The Joint Chiefs concurred that the more the United States did to bolster its
defenses, the stronger its negotiating position would be. Nevertheless, they con-
sidered it impractical not to include arms control as a factor in shaping the overall
content and thrust of the buildup. During the 1950s and 1960s, the JCS had been
among the staunchest skeptics of arms control, mainly because they had little faith
in available verication measures. But as the arms control process gathered mo-
mentum during the 1970s, they began making adjustments in their thinking to ac-
commodate the new reality. Though they may have preferred other outcomes, they
found themselves operating under negotiated accords that impinged directly on the
development, size, and conguration of military programs. Whether the JCS liked it
or not, arms control had become an integral part of the military planning process.
During the debates over arms control policy in the Reagan years, the Joint
Chiefs found themselves often advocating positions that, only a generation earlier,
their predecessors would have dismissed out of hand. Given the limitations on avail-
able verication measures, they seriously questioned whether some arms control
measures were feasible to carry out with condence. Yet overall, they believed that
the United States should continue to adhere to existing agreements and negotiate
suitable replacement accords consistent with allowing improvements in the coun-
try’s strategic posture. Since they considered the United States to have fallen behind
the Soviet Union in eective military power, they looked to arms control as a means
of buying time to protect programs that had yet to come to fruition and to preserve
the tenuous military balance from a possible Soviet “breakout.”
Under Reagan, arms control initially comprised three separate but related sets of
negotiations—strategic nuclear forces, intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF), and
conventional forces. In the last category were the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduc-
tion (MBFR) talks launched in 1973 in the euphoric early days of détente. Part of the
“condence-building” agenda at the time, the MBFR negotiations were supposed to
help ease tensions in Europe by reducing conventional forces in the area surround-
ing East and West Germany where NATO and the Warsaw Pact had the greatest
concentration of troops and equipment. The fundamental diculty was that by the
West’s calculations the Warsaw Pact had signicantly more troops, tanks, and other
hardware deployed there than did NATO. Initially, the Western powers sought phased
reductions to reach parity of forces, while the Soviet side wanted equal reductions
in soldiers and equipment, a formula the West rejected because it would perpetuate
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COUNCIL OF WAR
and eectively institutionalize Soviet supremacy in conventional arms. Finding the
talks essentially deadlocked as it entered oce, the Reagan administration adopted a
relaxed attitude and appeared in no rush to seek a breakthrough.
57
Far more urgent—and unavoidable—were the problems growing out of
NATO’s 1979 “dual track” decision to deploy new American intermediate-range
missiles in Europe to counter the Soviet SS–20 threat. A legacy of the Carter years,
it fell to the Reagan administration to determine whether a negotiated settlement
could be reached before NATO deployment began. The administration’s publicly
stated goal was the “zero-zero option” under which both sides would forego their
INF deployments, dismantle their weapons, and restore the status quo ante. But with
the Soviets so heavily invested in SS–20s, there was little optimism in the West that
Moscow could be easily talked into doing away with its missiles.
Like the MBFR talks, the INF negotiations hit one snag after another. Convinced
by the summer of 1982 that a zero-zero outcome was unattainable, the senior U.S.
representative, Paul H. Nitze, on his own initiative, persuaded his Soviet counterpart,
Yuli Kvitsinskiy, to entertain the possibility of an alternative solution known as the
“walk in the woods” formula.
58
Under this the United States would deploy a reduced
number of ground-launched cruise missiles, forego deployment of the Pershing II,
and accept curbs on intermediate-range ghter bombers in exchange for scaled-back
deployment of the Soviet SS–20s.
59
Over the years, ocers in the military had come
to have the highest regard for Nitze, who had a reputation as a hard-nosed negotiator
and ardent proponent of a strong defense posture. But by oering concessions that the
JCS had specically cautioned against, Nitze tarnished his credibility with the chiefs.
As it turned out, neither Reagan nor the leadership in Moscow thought very highly
of the walk in the woods oer and the deal fell through. Lest there be similar episodes
in the future, the JCS began to monitor the negotiations more closely.
In November 1983, the Joint Chiefs commenced the deployment of INF sys-
tems to Western Europe. When completed, NATO would have a refurbished arse-
nal of 572 up-to-date mobile INF launchers—464 ground-launched cruise missiles
(GLCMs) and 108 Pershing II ballistic missiles, all armed with single warheads.
Almost immediately, in protest over the deployment, Kvitsinskiy and his delegation
walked out of the INF talks in Geneva and served notice that they were “discontin-
uing” further negotiations.
60
By coincidence, NATO at this time was wrapping up
its annual Autumn Forge series of exercises with a command post exercise called Able
Archer 83, a test of release options for nuclear and chemical weapons. More exten-
sive and realistic than previous such exercises, Able Archer 83 included the simulated
use of Pershing II missiles. The KGB suspected that by coinciding with the INF
deployments, Able Archer might be the cover for a surprise nuclear and chemical
441
THE REAGAN BUILDUP
attack against the Warsaw Pact. The Soviets were so worried that Marshal Nikolai
Ogarkov, Chief of the Soviet General Sta, reportedly moved his headquarters into
a reinforced bunker buried deep below Moscow. From all indications, however, the
Joint Chiefs were unaware that they were on the verge of a serious crisis. Fritz W.
Ermarth, a senior intelligence analyst, recalled that none of the steps taken by the
Soviets “crossed the thresholds that would have made our warning lights begin to
ash.” The incident passed without serious consequence and the INF deployments
proceeded as planned, but in an atmosphere ripe for accidental war.
61
At the same time the Soviets withdrew from the INF talks, they also suspended
their participation in parallel negotiations on strategic arms. Now known as the Stra-
tegic Arms Reduction Talks (START), these negotiations had been underway since
June 1982 and were supposed to nd a replacement accord for the stillborn SALT II
Treaty, which was due to expire toward the end of 1985. The chief U.S. negotiator at
these talks was Edward Rowny, previously the JCS representative to SALT II. As a
general objective, President Reagan wanted nothing less than “substantial reductions”
in the strategic arsenals of both sides.
62
Adopting a dierent negotiating strategy from
his predecessors, the President declined to engage in back-channel discussions of the
sort Kissinger had conducted between 1971 and 1977, and discontinued the practice of
separate high-level talks that had accompanied SALT II negotiations under President
Carter. Thus, when INF and START both collapsed at the end of 1983, the United
States and Soviet Union were for the rst time in 14 years without a forum of any
kind for discussing limitations and controls on nuclear arms.
Ignoring the dire predictions of the news media, the administration took the
collapse of the talks in stride. Personally, President Reagan had a low opinion of
the whole arms control process and privately characterized the unratied SALT II
Treaty as a “lousy” agreement.
63
The Joint Chiefs basically agreed, but they were
also uneasy that the longer the talks were in recess, the greater the temptation for
the Soviets to take matters into their own hands. Without a SALT II replacement
accord, the JCS were afraid that Moscow might forge ahead with new deployments
that could negate the eects of the Reagan buildup. Rather than risk a renewed So-
viet buildup, the JCS had been among those warning the President, almost from the
moment he took oce, to avoid any actions prior to the conclusion of a START
accord that would be inconsistent with existing U.S.-Soviet strategic arms control
agreements as long as the Soviet Union exercised similar restraint. The President
had accepted this advice and in the jargon of the day had agreed not to “undercut”
earlier SALT agreements. Later, he amended that position by refusing to abide by
those accords if they came into conict with “the survivability of our ICBM force”
as the U.S. buildup progressed.
64
442
COUNCIL OF WAR
To reach his goal of “substantial reductions,” President Reagan in May 1982
publicly unveiled a complex formula that called for equal numbers of strategic war-
heads at levels one-third below current inventories, and further limitations leaving
no more than half the remaining warheads on land-based ICBMs.
65
A departure
from the previous philosophy toward arms control, which had emphasized numeri-
cal restraints on launchers rather than curbs on their destructive power, the Presi-
dent’s proposal was the product of lengthy bureaucratic bargaining and compromise
to address the dierences among his advisors. The Joint Chiefs had doubts about the
plan but recognized that, if implemented, it would practically eviscerate the Soviet
ICBM force, reducing it by two-thirds, while leaving major elements of the U.S.
buildup (the MX, the B-1, and Trident) virtually untouched. Not surprisingly, once
the negotiations began, the Soviets countered with proposals, based largely on an
extension of the SALT II accords, for curbing U.S. programs while leaving theirs
basically intact. Some give and take ensued, yet by the time the Soviets walked out,
there was nothing to suggest that a breakthrough was imminent.
66
While the abrupt cessation of the START negotiations took many people by
surprise, no one in the Reagan administration regarded it as a fatal setback. Those in
Washington familiar with Moscow’s negotiating techniques, including the Joint Chiefs,
scoed at the notion that the talks were dead and expected the Soviets to return to
START in the spring or summer of 1984.
67
From everything the JCS could glean, the
Soviets appeared interested in resuming a dialogue with the United States that would
end the spiraling deterioration in relations between Washington and Moscow. But with
the U.S. Presidential election coming up, Moscow was probably reluctant to do anything
to enhance the current administration’s prospects by being able to claim a major success
in the areas of arms control or U.S.-Soviet relations. Hence, there was the likelihood of
a continuing impasse even if the START negotiations resumed.
Increasingly, the issue that bothered the Soviets most was President Reagan’s
determination to press ahead with his Strategic Defense Initiative. While critics in
the West dismissed SDI as a fanciful notion, the Soviets took it very seriously. Hav-
ing invested enormous eort and resources into bolstering their strategic oensive
forces, they now found themselves confronted with a revolutionary strategic para-
digm that could seriously cripple, if not negate, everything they had accomplished.
Condemning SDI as “irresponsible” and “insane,” Soviet leaders saw it as nothing
less than a “bid to disarm” their country.
68
Whether the decrepit and inecient
Soviet economy could rise to the occasion and compete with the United States in
the new arena remained to be seen. Reagan suspected that no matter how Moscow
responded, whether by trying to develop a competing missile shield or by embark-
ing on a further oensive buildup in the hope of overwhelming U.S. defenses, the
443
THE REAGAN BUILDUP
Soviets would end up bankrupting themselves. One way or another, Reagan said,
he was determined to “lean on the Soviets until they go broke.”
69
The Joint Chiefs agreed that bit by bit under the Reagan buildup the United States
was regaining the initiative. But they were less optimistic than the President that the So-
viets would come around to the West’s way of thinking anytime soon, if ever. To them,
the Soviet Union remained rst and foremost a military colossus—a nuclear superpow-
er whose military capabilities, if unleashed upon the West, could inict enormous death
and destruction. Like others who had wrestled with the problem over the years, the Joint
Chiefs of Sta had grown so accustomed to the Cold War that they assumed it would
go on indenitely and paced themselves accordingly, with military programs designed
for the long haul. Under the Reagan buildup, they were nally making strides toward
redressing the strategic balance in ways they believed would carry the country’s security
into the next century. Little did they suspect that with the advent of new leadership in
Moscow, the entire security environment was about to undergo a fundamental change
and make way for the Cold War to end sooner than anyone expected.
Notes
1 Jones’s Statement, “Perspectives on Security and Strategy in the 1980s,” in U.S. Joint
Chiefs of Sta, United States Military Posture for FY82 (Washington, DC: Organization
of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, n.d.), vii (unclassied edition).
2 Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 235.
3 A public information organization, the Committee on the Present Danger had been
a leading critic of the SALT II Treaty and had been in the forefront of advocating a
stronger defense posture.
4 Thomas C. Reed, At the Abyss: An Insider’s History of the Cold War (New York: Ballantine
Books, 2004), 247.
5 Erik B. Riker-Coleman, “Political Pressures on the Joint Chiefs of Sta: The Case of
General David C. Jones” (Paper Presented before the Society of Military History An-
nual Meeting, Calgary, Alberta, May 2001), 16–18; copy in JHO Files.
6 Caspar W. Weinberger, In the Arena: A Memoir of the 20
th
Century (Washington, DC: Reg-
nery, 2001), 293.
7 Jones quoted in James R. Locher III, Victory on the Potomac (College Station: Texas
A&M Press, 2002), 34.
8 “Nomination of Gen. John W. Vessey, Jr., To Be CJCS,” March 4, 1982, and “Remarks
Announcing the Nominees for CSAF and CNO,” March 18, 1982, Public Papers of the
Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1982 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1982), 265,
324–325. Hereafter cited as Reagan Public Papers with year.
9 “Nomination of General John A. Wickham, Jr., To Be CSA,” March 15, 1983, and
“Nomination of General Paul X. Kelley To Be Commandant of the Marine Corps,”
March 24, 1983, Reagan Public Papers, 1983, 396, 444.
444
COUNCIL OF WAR
10 Weinberger, In the Arena, 293.
11 Letter, Vessey to Clark, July 2, 1982, U, NSC Executive Secretariat Collection, Agency
Files, box 11376, DOD Vol. VI folder, Reagan Library; Deborah Hart Strober and Ger-
ald S. Strober, eds., Reagan: The Man and His Presidency (Boston: Houghton, Miin,
1998), 78. Records of JCS meetings with the President are led randomly in the NSC
Executive Secretariat Collection, System Files, Reagan Library.
12 David A. Stockman, The Triumph of Politics: How the Reagan Revolution Failed (New York:
Harper & Row, 1986), 105; Caspar Weinberger, Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in
the Pentagon (New York: Warner Books, 1990), 47.
13 “Republican Party Platform of 1980,” Adopted July 15, 1980 at Detroit, Michigan, available
at <http://www.Presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25844> (accessed July 18, 2011).
14 Daniel Wirls, Buildup: The Politics of Defense in the Reagan Era (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1992), 35–37.
15 Jones et al. testimony, February 4, 1981, U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Armed
Services, Hearings: Military Posture 97:1 Pt. 1 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1981), 207; Memo,
Weinberger to Reagan, March 9, 1981, “Joint Strategic Planning Document,” U, White
House Situation Room, Agency Files, box 91376, DOD Vol. VI folder, Reagan Library;
United States Military Posture for FY84 (Washington, DC: Organization of the Joint
Chiefs of Sta, n.d.), 3 (unclassied edition).
16 Stockman, 106–108; Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, 49.
17 Stockman, 277. Carter budget estimates from Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1982, 73.
18 Weinberger, In the Arena, 275.
19 U.S. Oce of the Comptroller, National Defense Budget Estimates for FY92 (Washington, DC:
Department of Defense, March 1991), 98. Even though the Reagan administration set new
records for long-term military spending, the largest single-year Cold War military budget
(in constant dollars) remained that enacted under the Truman administration for FY52.
20 Jones quoted in Richard Halloran, “Military Forces Stretched Thin,” The New York
Times, August 10, 1983: 1.
21 NSDD 12, “Strategic Forces Modernization Program,” October 1, 1981 (sanitized),
NSC Executive Secretariat Collection, Reagan Library, available at <http://www.fas.
org/irp/odocs/nsdd/nsdd–12.pdf> (accessed July 18, 2011).
22 Budget percentages derived from National Defense Budget Estimates for FY92, 74–75. For
strategic objectives under the buildup, see NSDD 12, loc. cit.
23 Weinberger testimony, February 2, 1982, in U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on
Armed Services, Hearings: Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal
Year 1983 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1982), 18.
24 See John Allen Williams, “The U.S. Navy Under the Reagan Administration and Glob-
al Forward Strategy,” in William Snyder and James Brown, eds., Defense Policy in the Rea-
gan Administration (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1988), 273–303.
25 See Entry, May 18, 1982, in Douglas Brinkley, ed., The Reagan Diaries (New York: Harp-
erCollins, 2007), 85.
26 NSDD 32, “US National Security Strategy,” May 20, 1982 (declassied), NSC Execu-
tive Secretariat, box 91311, NSDD 32 folder, Reagan Library, available at <http://www.
fas.org/irp/odocs/nsdd/nsdd–032.htm> (accessed July 18, 2011).
445
THE REAGAN BUILDUP
27 Gordon S. Barrass, The Great Cold War: A Journey Through the Hall of Mirrors (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 284.
28 Quote from “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union,”
February 6, 1985, Reagan Public Papers, 1985, 135.
29 NSDD 5, “Conventional Arms Transfer Policy,” July 8, 1981, in Reagan Public Papers, 1981,
615–617. See also Roy A. Werner, “The Burden of Global Defense: Security Assistance
Policies of the Reagan Administration,” in Snyder and Brown, eds., Defense Policy in the
Reagan Administration, 143–165.
30 See Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, 143–144; Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 106–107; Edgar
F. Raines, Jr., “The Interagency Process and the Decision to Intervene in Grenada,” in
Kendall D. Gott and Michael G. Brooks, eds., The U.S. Army and the Interagency Process:
Historical Perspective (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2009), 33–64.
31 Minutes, NSC Meeting on July 31, 1981, 4, (declassied), NSC Executive Secretariat
Collection, NSC 00018, Reagan Library, available at <www.thereaganles.com> (ac-
cessed July 18, 2011); and Reagan, An American Life, 289.
32 Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 289; NSDD 17, “Cuba and Central America,” January 4, 1982
(redacted), available at <http://www.fas.org/irp/odocs/nsdd/nsdd–017.htm>(accessed
July 19, 2011); NSDD 37, “Cuba and Central America,” May 28, 1982 (declassied), avail-
able at <http://www.fas.org/irp/odocs/nsdd/nsdd–037.htm> (accessed July 19, 2011);
and NSDD 37A, “Cuba and Central America,” May 28, 1982 (redacted), available at
<http://www.fas.org/irp/odocs/nsdd/nsdd–037a.htm> (accessed July 18, 2011).
33 Author’s interview with former USCINCSOUTH Gen Paul F. Gorman, USA (Ret.),
July 27, 2000.
34 George Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years As Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scrib-
ner’s Sons, 1993), 570, 692; Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows (New York: Simon and Schus-
ter, 1996), 251–252; NSDD 99, “United States Security Strategy for the Near East and South
Asia,” July 12, 1983 (sanitized), available at <http://www.fas.org/irp/odocs/nsdd/nsdd–099.
htm> (accessed July 18, 2011); entry, July 12, 1983, in Brinkley, ed., Reagan Diaries, 165.
35 Ronald H. Cole et al., The History of the Unied Command Plan, 1946–1999 (Washington,
DC: Joint History Oce, 2003), 63–67.
36 United States Military Posture for FY83 (Washington, DC: Organization of the Joint
Chiefs of Sta, n.d.), 39 (unclassied edition).
37 Letter, Vessey to BG David A. Armstrong, USA (Ret.), September 23, 1995, U, JHO
Files.
38 See Gen Bennie L. Davis, USAF, “Indivisible Airpower,” Air Force Magazine (March 1984),
46–50; and Carl H. Builder, The Prospects and Implications of Non–Nuclear Means of Strategic
Conict, Adelphi Paper 200 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1985).
39 “Address to the Nation on Defense and National Strategy,” March 23, 1983, Reagan
Public Papers, 1983, 442–443.
40 Paul B. Stares, The Militarization of Space: U.S. Policy, 1945–1984 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1985), 201–215.
41 Malcolm Wallop, “Opportunities and Imperatives of Ballistic Missile Defense,” Strategic
Review 7 (Fall 1979), 13–21. See also Angelo Codevilla, While Others Build (New York:
Free Press, 1988), which sets forth Wallop’s strategic defense rationale and blueprint.
446
COUNCIL OF WAR
Codevilla was Wallop’s sta assistant. The two worked extremely closely together to
promote legislation and interest in BMD.
42 Daniel O. Graham, Confessions of a Cold Warrior (Fairfax, VA: Preview Press, 1995), 117–
146; Sanford Lako and Herbert F. York, A Shield in Space? Technology, Politics, and the
Strategic Defense Initiative (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 10–11.
43 Christopher Andrew, Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (New York: Knopf,
2009), 673–676.
44 John Edwards, Superweapon: The Making of MX (New York: W.W. Norton, 1982), 210;
Patrick Glynn, Closing Pandora’s Box: Arms Races, Arms Control, and the History of the Cold
War (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 324–325.
45 Christian Brahmstedt, Defense’s Nuclear Agency, 1947–1997 (Washington, DC: Defense Threat
Reduction Agency, 2002), 262; David H. Dunn, The Politics of Threat: Minuteman Vulnerabil-
ity in American National Security Policy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 153–157.
46 Donald R. Baucom, Origins of SDI, 1944–1983 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,
1992), 185; Minutes, NSC Meeting, November 18, 1982, “M–X Basing Decision” (de-
classied), NSC Executive Secretariat Collection, NSC 00066 folder, Reagan Library,
and <http://jasonebin.com/nsc66.html> (accessed July 18, 2011); NSDD 69 (sanitized),
November 22, 1982, “The M–X Program,” NSC Executive Secretariat Collection, box
91286, NSDD 69 folder, Reagan Library, and <http://www.fas.org/irp/odocs/nsdd/
nsdd–069.htm> (accessed July 18, 2011).
47 Baucom, Origins of SDI, 184–190; Interview by Donald R. Baucom with ADM James
D. Watkins, September 29, 1987, Revised by Watkins, October 22, 1989, U, 6, Missile
Defense Agency Historian’s Files.
48 Baucom Interview with Watkins, 6–7.
49 Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, 304–305. See also Baucom, Origins of SDI, 191–192; Wil-
liam J. Broad, Teller’s War: The Top-Secret Story Behind the Star Wars Deception (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1992), 124–125; and Don Oberdorfer, The Turn (New York: Poseidon
Press, 1991), 26–27.
50 Vessey quoted in Hedrick Smith, The Power Game: How Washington Works (New York:
Random House, 1988), 607–608.
51 Memo, Weinberger to DepSECDEF et al., April 24, 1984, “Management of the Strate-
gic Defense Initiative,” U, JCS 1977/449.
52 NSDD 73 (declassied/sanitized), “Peacekeeper Program Assessment,” January 3, 1983,
NSC Executive Secretariat Collection, NSDD 73 folder, Reagan Library, available at
<http://www.fas.org/irp/odocs/nsdd/nsdd–073.htm> (accessed July 18, 2011).
53 President’s Commission on Strategic Forces, Report of the President’s Commission on Strategic
Forces (Washington, DC: The President’s Commission on Strategic Forces, 1983), 16–19. See
also NSDD 91 (declassied), “Strategic Forces Modernization Program Changes,” April 19,
1983, NSC Sta and Oce Files: Oce of the Secretariat, NSDD 91 folder, Reagan Library.
54 See Janne E. Nolan, Guardians of the Arsenal: The Politics of Nuclear Strategy (New York:
New Republic/BasicBooks, 1989), 15–16.
55 Joseph Kruzel, ed., American Defense Annual, 1986-1987 (Lexington, MA: Lexington
Books and the Mershon Center, 1986), 68-71.
56 U.S. Department of Defense, Annual Report of the Secretary of Defense to Congress: FY83
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1982), chap. I, 19.
447
THE REAGAN BUILDUP
57 Raymond L. Gartho, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon
to Reagan (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1994, rev. ed.), 533–537; Terrence Hopmann,
“From MBFR to CFE: Negotiating Conventional Arms Control in Europe,” in Rich-
ard Dean Burns, ed., Encyclopedia of Arms Control and Disarmament (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1993), II, 970–974.
58 The name “walk in the woods” came from the manner in which Nitze and Kvitsinskiy
negotiated the deal. To preserve secrecy, they met privately in the forested hill country
outside Geneva.
59 Paul H. Nitze with Ann M. Smith and Steven L. Rearden, From Hiroshima to Glasnost:
At the Center of Decision—A Memoir (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989), 376–389.
60 Ibid., 397.
61 Ermarth quoted in Barrass, 300. See also Ben B. Fischer, A Cold War Conundrum: The
1983 Soviet War Scare (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, Center for the
Study of Intelligence, 1997), 24–26; and Peter Vincent Pry, War Scare: Russia and America
on the Nuclear Brink (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999), 33–44.
62 “Remarks to the National Press Club on Arms Reduction and Nuclear Weapons,”
November 18, 1981, Reagan Public Papers, 1981, 1066.
63 Reagan’s comments in Minutes, NSC Meeting, April 21, 1982, 6 (declassied), NSC
Executive Secretariat Collection, NSC 00046 folder, Reagan Library; available at
<http://jasonebin.com/nsc46.html> (accessed July 18, 2011).
64 NSDD 36 (declassied), “US Approach to START Negotiations—II,” May 25, 1982,
available at <www.fas.org/irp/odocs/nsdd/nsdd–036.htm> (accessed July 18, 2011).
President Reagan approved this modication to his no-undercut policy in the expecta-
tion of deploying the MX/PEACEKEEPER in the “dense-pack” mode which would
violate the SALT I-imposed ban on the construction of new ICBM launchers.
65 “Address at Commencement Exercises at Eureka College in Illinois,” May 9, 1982,
Reagan Public Papers, 1982, 584–585.
66 Gartho, Great Transition, 511–512.
67 Talks resumed, but not until March 1985. See below, chap. 15.
68 Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov quoted in The New York Times, March 27, 1983.
See also Paul Lettow, Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (New
York: Random House, 2005), 114–115.
69 Quoted in Reed, At the Abyss, 227.
Admiral William J. Crowe, Jr., USN, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, 1985–1989
Chapter
A New
RAppRochemeNt
By the mid-1980s, as Ronald Reagan embarked on his second term, the military
buildup launched at the outset of the decade was beginning to show results. Increas-
ingly reassured, the Joint Chiefs believed that they had turned the corner and were
now better poised to compete eectively in military power with the Soviet Union
than at any time since the Vietnam War. Despite the re-imposition of congressio-
nally mandated funding constraints, starting with the FY86 budget, they saw the
balance of forces shifting back in their favor. As always, the JCS wanted more to be
done than available money allowed and urged the President and Congress to be, if
nothing else, consistent in their level of support for military programs. Yet, all things
considered, the buildup seemed to be having the desired eect of restoring both a
stronger defense posture and a renewed respect for the country’s Armed Forces. Not
since the early 1950s had the Nation’s Military Establishment felt so assured.
Though more condent in the future than they had been for some years, the
JCS were hardly complacent. As the President’s second term began, changes in the
Soviet Union, highlighted by the emergence of new leadership under the reform-
minded Mikhail S. Gorbachev, created uncertainties in assessing the future direction
of Soviet policy. At the same time, the ongoing modernization of Moscow’s strategic
forces, the heavy concentration of Soviet troops in Europe backed by SS–20 mis-
siles, the continuing intervention in Afghanistan, and a surge of Cuban and Eastern
Bloc “advisors” into Nicaragua suggested that the Communist threat remained as
real and dangerous as ever. Against this backdrop, the Joint Chiefs saw no choice but
to continue the defense policies and programs already in eect and to maintain a
high level of military preparedness for the indenite future.
Debating JCS ReoRganization
Of the challenges facing the Joint Chiefs at the outset of President Reagan’s second
term, none took up more of their time or was more frustrating than the growing
COUNCIL OF WAR
movement in Congress for JCS reform. While dissatisfaction with the JCS system
had existed ever since passage of the National Security Act of 1947, it had grown
appreciably in the aftermath of Vietnam, the hurried execution of the 1975 Maya-
guez rescue operation, and the failed Desert One mission in 1980 to free the Tehran
hostages. Over the years it had become virtually an article of faith in some academic
and congressional circles that the Joint Chiefs were little more than a committee
of bickering military bureaucrats, wholly incapable of detaching themselves from
parochial interests and rendering objective advice on such cross-Service matters as
the allocation of resources and the impartial assignment of military functions.
1
At the outset of the Reagan administration, some of the most severe critics of
the JCS system were, in fact, its own members, including the serving Chairman,
General David C. Jones, USAF. During his early days as CJCS, Jones had dismissed
talk of restructuring the JCS as unwarranted and had taken the position “that the
fundamental organizational structure is sound.”
2
But he had changed his mind by
the early 1980s. Having served on the JCS as Air Force Chief of Sta and as CJCS
for a combined total of 8 years by the time he retired—longer than any other of-
cer—he found himself increasingly frustrated with what he saw as a lengthening
list of JCS lapses, failures, and “lowest common denominator” solutions. “The tough
issues,” he recalled, “got pushed under the rug.”
3
Jones’ discontent rst surfaced outside the Pentagon in early February 1982
when he and Secretary of Defense Weinberger appeared at a closed-door session of
the House Armed Services Committee. During an exchange with committee mem-
bers, Jones acknowledged his dissatisfaction with the current system and conrmed
his support for measures to augment the powers of the Chairman, curb the heavy
personnel turnover on the Joint Sta, and create a more ecient and responsive JCS
organization.
4
A few weeks later, he went public with interviews to the news media
and an article (cleared in advance with Secretary Weinberger), “Why the Joint Chiefs
of Sta Must Change,” in the February 1982 issue of Directors & Boards, which was
reprinted a month later in Armed Forces Journal International, with a somewhat larger
readership. Characterizing current arrangements as a “cumbersome committee pro-
cess,” Jones described the system as rife with inter-Service rivalry and competition.
“We need to spend more time on our war ghting capabilities,” Jones insisted, “and
less on an intramural scramble for resources.” Toward that end, Jones endorsed reforms
to strengthen the authority of the Chairman over the combatant commanders, limit
Service sta involvement in JCS actions, and broaden the training, experience, and
rewards for joint duty. To facilitate attainment of these goals, Jones also favored provid-
ing the Chairman with a deputy.
5
A NEW RAPPROCHEMENT
Among the Service heads at the time, only Army Chief of Sta General Edward
C. Meyer showed any interest in Jones’ proposals. Arguing that times had changed
since World War II when the JCS came into existence, Meyer considered the existing
system obsolete. Going well beyond Jones’ proposals, Meyer wanted to abolish the
Joint Chiefs and vest full authority over military planning and direction of the Joint
Sta in the CJCS.
6
But after General Vessey’s appointment as Chairman in the sum-
mer of 1982, Meyer muted his criticism. Vessey and Weinberger agreed that while the
JCS system could be improved, its corporate structure and organization were sound
and whatever reforms were needed could be achieved through administrative means.
Indeed, for Vessey, the very essence of the JCS system was its corporate character,
which he was loath to tamper with in the name of progress and reform.
After discussing the matter at length with the Service chiefs, Vessey notied
the Secretary of Defense on November 22, 1982, that he could nd no consensus
among his colleagues in support of “sweeping changes.” While conceding that their
operations were not without “aws,” there was agreement among the Joint Chiefs
that the problem stemmed largely from tensions that had developed over time be-
tween OSD and the JCS because of overlapping responsibilities. Vessey declined to
assign blame for this situation but did acknowledge that the JCS needed to be more
professional and objective in providing military advice. Still, he and his colleagues
saw little they could do directly and felt that it was up to the Secretary of Defense
to take corrective action by according them larger stang and a more substantive
role “on major decisions of strategy, policy, and force requirements.”
7
Meanwhile, inspired by Jones, Meyer, and a lengthening list of think-tank stud-
ies, key members of Congress began taking a closer look at alleged JCS shortcom-
ings. Many on Capitol Hill initially agreed that Vessey’s advent had improved the
overall eciency, eectiveness, and image of JCS operations. But after the bombing
of the Beirut barracks and reports of breakdowns in coordination during the Gre-
nada operation in October 1983, sentiment in Congress began to coalesce around
the need for legislative action to strengthen the JCS system and make it more
responsive. Stung by the untoward publicity, Vessey rushed through a series of ad-
ministrative reforms aimed at improving JCS performance in the areas of resource
allocation, the evaluation of cross-Service needs, and participation by the combatant
commanders in the programming and budgeting process.
8
But it was too little too
late, and in October 1984 Congress added a provision to the Defense authoriza-
tion (P.L. 98-525) broadening the powers of the Chairman over the Joint Sta and
simultaneously serving notice that it intended to revisit the entire question of JCS
organization in the next session.
9
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Vessey now found himself unexpectedly at the center of a looming battle royal
with Congress. While acknowledging that he faced “considerable outside pressure
to reorganize,” he continued to believe that through the stringent application of ad-
ministrative reforms he could fend o the imposition of congressionally-mandated
changes. If he could improve the eectiveness of the Joint Sta, he thought he could
demonstrate that “we’re doing our job as laid out in the law.”
10
But despite Vessey’s
best eorts to nd in-house solutions, support in Congress for legislative action
continued to grow and by the summer of 1985 both the House and the Senate
were actively considering bills to reform the JCS. In June 1985, hoping to head o
a wholesale reorganization, President Reagan created a Blue Ribbon Commission
on Defense Management, chaired by former Deputy Secretary of Defense David
Packard, to review the overall status of defense organization and suggest appropriate
remedies.
11
Undeterred, reformers in Congress refused to await the Packard Com-
mission’s ndings and pressed ahead along a course of their own that would culmi-
nate in the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act.
Feeling that he had done as much as he could, Vessey stepped down as Chair-
man of the Joint Chiefs on September 30, 1985, more than 6 months before the
end of his term. His successor, Admiral William J. Crowe, Jr., USN, came with a
lengthy résumé of sta and joint command jobs. Like Vessey, Crowe saw room for
improvement in the quality and eectiveness of the Joint Sta.
12
But he was far
less averse than his predecessor to accepting legislatively-mandated changes and
had once testied before Congress in support of increased statutory powers for the
Chairman and a stronger joint system.
13
Realizing that his views were at variance
with the prevailing sentiments of his fellow Navy ocers, he explained that his
position was the result of experience. “I happened to be one of the people [in the
Navy] who agreed that some reorganization was appropriate,” Crowe recalled. “For
three years, from 1977 to 1980, I had served as the Navy’s JCS deputy, and during
that time I had done a lot of thinking about the subject.”
14
As Chairman, Crowe
tempered his views somewhat to bring them more into line with Weinberger’s. Yet
overall, Crowe’s advent was highly instrumental in tipping the balance in favor of
the reform movement.
Soon after becoming Chairman, Crowe established informal sta-level con-
tacts with the congressional committees considering the new legislation and sound-
ed out the Service chiefs about a possible compromise. Crowe acknowledged that
some degree of legislatively-imposed reorganization was unavoidable, but he shared
his colleagues’ concern that Congress, in its zeal to reform, had “overdramatized”
the problem of inter-Service rivalry and its impact on JCS eectiveness.
15
While
favoring measures to streamline the system, Crowe and the chiefs unanimously
A NEW RAPPROCHEMENT
condemned any eort by Congress to abolish the JCS organization and replace it
with a joint military advisory council. “While this proposal may have some theo-
retical appeal to some,” they told the Secretary of Defense, “it has no ‘real world’
merit and, if adopted, would dramatically compromise the quality of advice to
you and to the President.”
16
Incorporating these views with his own, Weinberger
notied the Senate Armed Services Committee on December 2, 1985, that while
he was prepared to entertain modest changes, including a stronger advisory role
for the Chairman and creation of a Vice Chairman to help expedite JCS busi-
ness, he saw no need for the sweeping reorganization some in Congress insisted
was needed.
17
By now, dierences had become so pronounced that an easy and amicable
reconciliation of views between the congressional reformers and the administration
was practically out of the question. The most contentious issues were those involv-
ing personnel policy centering on the creation of a joint ocers corps, a proposal
that had especially strong support in the House Armed Services Committee. Wor-
ried that a joint ocer corps would deprive them of their best ocers, the Service
chiefs opposed the measure. In an eort at compromise, Crowe invited members
of the committee, including Congressman Bill Nichols of Alabama, a key gure in
shaping the emerging legislation in the House, to a breakfast meeting with the Joint
Chiefs at the Pentagon on June 24, 1986. As the meeting progressed, the atmosphere
became visibly strained. Finally, in an emotional outburst, the Chief of Naval Op-
erations, Admiral Watkins, said: “You know, this piece of legislation is so bad it’s, it’s
. . . in some respects it’s just un-American.” Nichols, who had lost a leg in combat in
World War II, was personally oended and left the meeting indignant, less disposed
than ever to listen to the chiefs or to accept Pentagon advice.
18
After this regrettable incident, the Joint Chiefs played a diminishing role in
the legislative process that culminated in passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act.
As often happens in the legislative process, the reorganization bills passed by the
House and Senate required a conference to iron out dierences. Working together,
the co-chairs of the conference committee, Nichols and Barry Goldwater of Ari-
zona, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote the nal law. As
the conference was getting underway, Admiral Crowe made a last-minute appeal to
delete all provisions relating to personnel policy.
19
But his request fell on deaf ears.
The nal legislation—approved in the Senate on September 16 and in the House
the next day—reected congressional preferences far more than anything the White
House or the Pentagon wanted. Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman, Jr., suggested
that President Reagan ought to veto the legislation, but the President, facing other
problems in Congress, signed it into law on October 1, 1986.
20
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the golDwateR-niCholS aCt of 1986
Culminating nearly 4 years of public debate and legislative maneuvering, the Gold-
water-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 (P.L. 99-433)
was the most extensive revision of the National Security Act since 1958. The most
signicant changes were those aecting the Joint Chiefs of Sta and the military
command structure. Throughout the new law, the emphasis was on achieving a
higher level of inter-Service cooperation and collaboration and a greater degree
of integrated eort in practically every level and area of military activity, a concept
increasingly referred to as “jointness.” Though military leaders by and large agreed
that it was a worthy objective, many if not most would have preferred a less detailed
and less prescriptive law.
The most striking features of the law were those aecting the Chairman who
now became “principal military advisor” to the President, the National Security
Council, and the Secretary of Defense, superseding the JCS in that role. Functions
and duties previously conferred collectively on the Joint Chiefs of Sta now passed
to the Chairman, thus ending the days of corporate decisionmaking and consensus
recommendations. In eect, the Service chiefs became a committee of senior mili-
tary advisors to the Chairman. For assistance in discharging his expanded duties, the
CJCS acquired a Vice Chairman and unfettered authority over the Joint Sta. Held
to its current strength of 1,627 military and civilian personnel (a ceiling repealed
in 1991), the Joint Sta remained barred from becoming “an overall Armed Forces
General Sta,” a prohibition rst introduced in 1958. Still, with an added proviso in
the law requiring ocers to have joint duty for high-level promotion, the Joint Sta
stood poised at last to gain primacy over the Service stas.
In addition to increasing the Chairman’s stature and authority, the new law gave
him more specic responsibilities vis-à-vis the combatant commands and the mili-
tary command structure. Although there had been talk of including the Chairman
in the military chain of command, Goldwater-Nichols made only slight changes in
the interests of protecting and preserving civilian control. Command lines, as laid
out in 1958, continued to run from the President to the Secretary of Defense to the
combatant commanders. However, the new law also authorized the Secretary to use
the Chairman as his channel of communication with the combatant commanders,
a practice already in eect. With the added authority of Goldwater-Nichols, the
Chairman’s role as the routine channel of communications between the National
Command Authority (NCA) and the combatant commanders became fully insti-
tutionalized. In consequence, even though the Chairman had no statutory author-
ity to exercise command, his responsibility for receiving political directives and
A NEW RAPPROCHEMENT
translating them into operational orders gave him a de facto measure of command
authority.
21
The most controversial feature of the new law was its treatment of military
personnel policy. Admiral Crowe and others had tried to persuade Congress not to
include these provisions or, at least, to tone them down. But by the time the nal
legislation came to be written, relations between the Pentagon and Capitol Hill had
become so strained that members of the conference committee were in no mood
to listen. The result, bearing the designation of Title IV, was a highly prescriptive set
of regulations for joint duty and promotion aimed at improving professionalism and
eradicating alleged Service parochialism. Although the conferees dropped the idea
of a joint ocer corps, they agreed that ocers should be encouraged to develop
a “joint specialty” and armed a practice already in use requiring new ag ocers
to attend a “Capstone” course to prepare them for joint assignments with senior
ocers from other Services.
Implementing the Goldwater-Nichols Act fell largely to the Chairman, Ad-
miral Crowe, who adopted an “evolution-not-revolution” philosophy modeled on
Forrestal’s approach to unication in the late 1940s. Crowe hoped to complete the
process with “as little trauma and disruption as possible.”
22
On November 6, 1986,
he approved a directive restructuring the Joint Sta to meet expected Goldwa-
ter-Nichols needs. To augment the ve existing directorates, Crowe revived the
moribund Command, Control, and Communications Systems Directorate (J-6) and
added two new ones—the Operational Plans and Interoperability Directorate (J-
7), later renamed the Directorate for Operational Plans and Joint Force Develop-
ment, and the Force Structure, Resource, and Assessment Directorate (J-8).
23
Crowe
also put considerable personal eort into clarifying the role of the Vice Chairman
(VCJCS), whose only assigned duty under the law was to preside at JCS meet-
ings in the Chairman’s absence. Secretaries of Defense had customarily regarded
their deputies as their “alter ego” since Forrestal coined the phrase in 1948; Crowe
believed the Vice Chairman should be prepared to function in a similar capacity.
24
The rst Vice Chairman, General Robert T. Herres, USAF, took oce on February
6, 1987, but did not receive a specic assignment of functions until April, when the
Secretary of Defense, at Crowe’s suggestion, directed that the VCJCS should con-
centrate on acquisition and resource management issues in order to free up time for
the Chairman to deal with military policy and strategic matters.
25
The toughest adjustments were those of redening the Service chiefs’ role un-
der Goldwater-Nichols. Operating initially under a modied version of the old
system, Crowe armed existing procedures that allowed his colleagues to present di-
vergent views to the Secretary of Defense.
26
But since the JCS were no longer bound
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Figure 15–1.
JCS Organization Chart,
by the corporate unanimity rule, “split” recommendations became a thing of the
past. As required by law, Crowe held “regular” (weekly) JCS meetings. In consider-
ing cross-Service matters such as arms control and the Strategic Defense Initiative
(SDI), he routinely sought the collective advice of the Service chiefs and made it a
practice to submit recommendations to the Secretary on a corporate basis. Crowe’s
caution and restraint disappointed those in Congress who expected the new law to
have an immediate and dramatic impact on the way the JCS conducted business.
27
But it seemed to Crowe the right thing to do. “I started gently,” he said, “but as time
passed and the chiefs grew used to the idea of the new arrangements, I exerted my
authority more and more.”
28
Like the original National Security Act passed in 1947, the Goldwater-Nichols
amendments were a venture into uncharted territory. An intricate set of prescrip-
tions, the law established many new responsibilities and created new relationships
which only time and experience could sort out. It needed to be interpreted, applied,
and tested. Within the military, it was a less than overwhelmingly popular piece of
legislation, partly owing to some of its contents, but also because of the legislative
process that brought it about. As the rst Chairman to operate under Goldwater-
Nichols, Crowe was understandably hesitant to make dramatic changes and sought
A NEW RAPPROCHEMENT
to ease the Services into the new system. Subsequent Chairmen would be less pa-
tient and less reticent. But as far as Crowe was concerned, the implementation of
the Goldwater-Nichols Act was an ongoing process and had barely begun by the
time he left oce.
nato ReSuRgent
While Congress and the Reagan administration were dueling over the future or-
ganization of the Joint Chiefs, a slow but steady transformation was taking place in
Europe toward equalizing the military balance between East and West. For years, the
Joint Chiefs had complained that NATO trailed the Warsaw Pact in eective mili-
tary power and lacked the full spectrum of tactical nuclear and conventional capa-
bilities to realize the goals set for itself under the exible response doctrine and the
forward defense strategy. But with the impetus of the Reagan buildup, the situation
began to change. Determined to eliminate the deciencies of the past, the Reagan
administration lent its support to programs it saw as crucial to the restoration of
NATO’s power and credibility. Among them were the revival of the neutron bomb,
which President Reagan announced in August 1981, and the decision to press ahead
with deployment of a new generation of intermediate-range ballistic and cruise
missiles. Both were controversial decisions that went forward despite public protests
and sharp criticism. Yet as the process advanced, it became increasingly clear that the
United States remained not only rmly committed to NATO but to reasserting its
own inuence and leadership within the Alliance as well.
The most dicult problems, as always, were those surrounding NATO’s con-
ventional capabilities, which routinely fell short of projected requirements. By the
mid-1980s, having wrestled with this problem for decades to no avail, the Joint
Chiefs and others in the Pentagon reached the sobering conclusion that the Eu-
ropeans would probably never meet their agreed conventional force goals and that
it was pointless to continue badgering them. Rather than seeking quantitative
improvements in NATO’s capabilities, U.S. defense planners looked to new and
emerging technologies to provide qualitative multipliers to improve NATO’s de-
fenses. That approach had been tried numerous times, invariably with mixed results.
But in light of the wide range of breakthroughs and improvements such as those
driving the Strategic Defense Initiative, the chances of success seemed better than
ever this time around. The upshot was the Conventional Defense Initiative (CDI),
which the NATO defence ministers embraced at their May 1985 meeting. While
many of the taskings were identical to those of the defunct Long-Term Defense
Plan of the Carter years, the CDI was less ambitious than LTDP (thereby rendering
COUNCIL OF WAR
it more attainable in theory) and relied squarely on advances in technology as a key
means of improving NATO’s conventional defense.
29
Adoption of the CDI followed in lockstep with a related breakthrough in mili-
tary thinking known as the Follow-On Forces Attack (FOFA) concept. Much of
the impetus behind FOFA came from General Bernard W. Rogers, the NATO Su-
preme Commander from 1979 to 1987. As Army Chief of Sta immediately prior to
becoming SACEUR, Rogers had encouraged the development of a new doctrinal
concept known as AirLand Battle, which emphasized close coordination between
land forces pursuing an aggressive maneuvering defense and air forces attacking the
enemy’s rear echelon units.
30
FOFA emerged from that broad operational concept.
Meant as an enhancement to the exible response strategy, FOFA envisioned the
use of sophisticated surveillance aircraft (called JSTARS) to direct conventional
attacks behind enemy lines against Warsaw Pact armored formations and other re-
inforcements. NATO would still need strong ready forces along the central front
to meet the enemy’s initial attack. But with FOFA, Rogers argued, NATO stood a
better chance of reducing the number of Warsaw Pact reinforcements to “manage-
able proportions,” thus lifting the nuclear threshold.
31
While the Joint Chiefs applauded NATO’s eorts, they cautioned against over-
optimism and warned that the full impact of the CDI and FOFA initiatives was
dicult to predict and, in any case, would not be felt for some time. Technically
complex and expensive, FOFA relied on advanced computer systems and precision-
guided munitions that were still experimental or in exceedingly limited supply.
JSTARS, a joint Army-Air Force surveillance and tracking system around which the
FOFA concept revolved, was barely more than a drawing-board concept. Initially,
by speeding up the deployment of their reinforcements, the Soviets thought they
could overcome whatever deep attacks NATO might launch.
32
But as they took a
closer look at the situation and the possibility that not all would go according to
plan, they came to the conclusion that they were steadily losing ground and that
the initiative was passing to NATO. Publicly, the Soviets denounced FOFA as a
veiled instrument of aggression, while privately Warsaw Pact military planners en-
gaged in a frantic search for something to counter it. Increasingly they worried that
the mainstay of their ground attack force—the heavy battle tank—might soon be
obsolete. With the potential of President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative fac-
tored into the equation, Moscow’s long-term military prospects had never seemed
bleaker. NATO’s, conversely, were looking up, though as those familiar with the
Alliance’s condition were well aware, a lot of work remained.
33
Still, according to
British intelligence expert Gordon S. Barrass, “NATO leaders felt that they had
nally gained the upper hand.”
34
A NEW RAPPROCHEMENT
goRbaChev’S impaCt
It was against this background of a resurgent NATO, the intensifying application of
new technologies by the West, and signs of wavering condence among Soviet de-
fense planners that Mikhail S. Gorbachev ascended to power in Moscow as General
Secretary of the Communist Party in March 1985. A dedicated Marxist, Gorbachev
led a younger generation of reformers whose goal was to protect and preserve the
Soviet system through the restructuring of the crumbling Soviet economy (per-
estroika), greater openness in public aairs (glasnost), and improved East-West rela-
tions. Curbing the drain caused by heavy defense expenditures was a top priority.
35
While some in the West proclaimed Gorbachev’s advent as the rst step toward
ending the Cold War, others—including the Joint Chiefs of Sta—adopted a more
reserved outlook. Despite an improved atmosphere in East-West relations, JCS pos-
ture statements and threat assessments remained essentially unchanged throughout
the 1980s. Outward improvements in U.S.-Soviet relations aside, the Joint Chiefs
continued to view the Soviet Union as an implacable enemy with a “heavy depen-
dence on military capabilities.” Afraid of letting down their guard, the Joint Chiefs
repeatedly recommended a high level of military preparedness across the entire
spectrum of conict contingencies, from sub-limited conventional conicts to all-
out nuclear war, until there was clear-cut evidence that the global force-to-force
balance had shifted in favor of the United States and its allies.
36
Still, the sincerity and seriousness of Gorbachev’s overtures were hard to ig-
nore. Wary at the outset, Reagan initially dismissed Gorbachev as “a conrmed
ideologue,” while Gorbachev looked on the President as “a product of the military-
industrial complex” prone to “right-wing” extremism.
37
But as they became more
familiar with one another, they reached a meeting of the minds and formed a close
and productive partnership which, though far from perfect in solving problems,
proved of fundamental importance in easing East-West tensions and eventually in
ending the Cold War. Although the Joint Chiefs were slower to come around, their
gradual acceptance of Gorbachev’s initiatives as more than propaganda ploys eec-
tively set the stage for a wholesale reconsideration of military requirements under
the next administration.
Among the breakthroughs that Gorbachev’s advent helped to facilitate, two
in particular had a major impact on JCS thinking: the 1987 INF Treaty mandating
the complete elimination of such weapons, and the withdrawal of Soviet troops
from Afghanistan initiated a year later. Both involved signicant concessions which
in years past the Soviets had strenuously resisted and which the JCS had likewise
been disinclined to contemplate without adequate assurances of Soviet compliance.
COUNCIL OF WAR
Resumed in the spring of 1985, the INF negotiations proceeded in tandem with
talks on START and space-based defensive weapons (i.e., SDI). The ostensible goal
was a comprehensive agreement. Unable to make headway on an overall accord,
Gorbachev indicated in October 1985 that he would entertain dealing with INF
separately from other systems, a change of procedure that allowed the INF talks to
go forward at a faster pace.
38
The main concern raised by the Joint Chiefs was that
as the elimination of nuclear weapons gathered momentum, the Soviets would
be in an even stronger position than before because of their numerical superior-
ity in conventional forces. President Reagan, however, was skeptical and sought to
reassure the chiefs that their concerns would be addressed one way or another.
39
What nally emerged in the form of the INF Treaty, signed in December 1987,
was practically unprecedented: a worldwide ban on all U.S. and Soviet ground-
launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5500 kilometers, backed
by enforcement provisions allowing each side to conduct on-site inspections of the
other’s facilities.
40
For Gorbachev, the INF Treaty was both a spectacular gesture of goodwill that
cemented his reputation as a peacemaker in the West and the coup de grace to the
Kremlin’s hard-line defense planners who orchestrated the military buildup under
Brezhnev. Soviet strategy as laid down from the mid-1970s on by Marshal Nikolai V.
Ogarkov, chief of the General Sta, had relied on the SS–20 to spearhead a massive,
surprise nuclear strike in conjunction with an immediate, high-speed conventional
air and ground assault, to overwhelm NATO defenses.
41
What Ogarkov and other
Soviet defense planners had failed to anticipate was that NATO would have the
unity and resolve to respond with a theater missile modernization program resulting
in the deployment of a new generation of more eective and usable weapons (the
Pershing II especially) that could strike the Soviet homeland. Instead of an asset in-
timidating the West, the Soviet arsenal of SS–20s had become one of Moscow’s most
notorious liabilities.
42
All the same, the hard-liners gave way grudgingly. While Og-
arkov’s successor, Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, dutifully endorsed the INF Treaty
in public, he disparaged it in private as a “lopsided deal.”
43
As yet, discontent within
the Soviet military appeared manageable, but as a massive letter-writing campaign
against the treaty by retired ocers indicated, it was far from popular among the
former rank and le.
44
In the West, the most strenuous objections to the INF Treaty were raised by
the former NATO Supreme Commander, General Bernard Rogers. Characterizing
the treaty as the product of “short-term political expediency,” Rogers believed that
eliminating the Alliance’s INF capability would cripple its capacity to oer the full
range of eective deterrence.
45
Others, however, disagreed. While Crowe recalled
A NEW RAPPROCHEMENT
some grumbling from Army and Marine Corps leaders, the consensus among the
Joint Chiefs was that the INF Treaty marked a major breakthrough and was “too
attractive a proposition to pass up.”
46
As the most far-reaching arms control agree-
ment thus far negotiated, President Reagan hailed it as “a realistic understanding”
capable of providing a “framework” for a fundamentally improved relationship.
47
Likewise, it tended to conrm Reagan’s philosophy that patience and persistence
pay o in the long run and that the elimination of nuclear weapons, a goal his
critics derided as a fanciful notion, was not so impractical after all. Buoyed by the
positive outcome of the INF talks, the President indicated that he looked forward
to signing a START treaty, incorporating a 50 percent reduction in heavy missiles,
when he and Gorbachev met in Moscow in the summer of 1988. But as the date
of the summit approached, continuing objections by the Soviets to SDI and a su-
perabundance of unresolved details, many having to do with verication, prevented
the two heads of state from consummating a deal. Not until 1991 did a START
agreement materialize.
48
No less signicant than the INF Treaty in changing JCS thinking was the
Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan brought on by a combination of diplomatic
pressure from the West and military pressure from the American-backed mujahideen.
Dating from the waning days of the Carter administration, U.S. covert involvement
in Afghanistan had remained a fairly low-key aair until President Reagan took
steps in March 1985 to bolster the U.S. role.
49
As part of the eort, the Joint Chiefs
waived their self-imposed prohibition on sharing high-technology weapons and
released shoulder-red Stinger antiaircraft missiles to the insurgents. A major turn-
ing point in the war, the advent of the Stingers severely restricted the Soviets’ use
of the air and compelled them to make signicant changes in strategy and tactics. If
not decisive, the introduction of the Stingers certainly helped to even the playing
eld and allowed the mujahideen to ght the Soviets and their allied Afghan forces
to a virtual standstill.
Even before the Stingers were introduced, Gorbachev was convinced that the
war in Afghanistan (increasingly costly and unpopular at home) could not be won,
and in the autumn of 1985 he received approval from the Politburo to explore a
strategy of withdrawal. Yet it was not until after the Stingers made their appearance
on the battleeld that UN-brokered peace talks began to bear fruit. Eventually,
under accords signed on April 14, 1988, the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw half
its troops by August, and the rest by mid-February 1989.
50
Assuming Soviet com-
pliance with the accord, the Joint Chiefs expected the logical result to be a steady
decline in the power and authority of the Soviet-backed Islamic regime in Kabul.
Whether it would be an inward-looking Islamic state, reserved in its dealings with
COUNCIL OF WAR
the United States and the Soviet Union alike, or a “fundamentalist” regime compa-
rable to neighboring Iran, remained to be seen.
The impending withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan was by any mea-
sure a triumph for the Reagan administration’s hard-line foreign policy. Like the
INF Treaty, it further validated the President’s contention that steady pressure from
all directions would elicit signicant changes in Soviet behavior. A major defeat for
Kremlin policy, analogous in many ways to the American setback in Vietnam, the
withdrawal from Afghanistan was perhaps the clearest indication to that point that
Soviet power and authority were in decline. Yet for the Joint Chiefs and others in
Washington, recognition of the full implications of the Soviet withdrawal emerged
slowly. All that seemed to matter at the time was that the Soviets had given up and,
in so doing, had removed what the JCS had once considered a major menace to U.S.
interests in Southwest Asia and the Middle East.
teRRoRiSm anD the ConfRontation with libya
With American military power on the rise and signs emerging that the Cold War
might be winding down, the Reagan administration operated more freely in ac-
cepting risks. One of the areas where it stepped up U.S. involvement was against
the growing threat of state-sponsored terrorism. Bolstered by assistance and coach-
ing from Moscow, state-sponsored terrorist groups had become a favorite means
among radical Third World regimes of putting pressure on the West. By the mid-
1980s, one of the most notorious culprits in the eyes of President Reagan, the Joint
Chiefs, and many others was Libyan strongman Muammar Qadda. Charismatic
and unpredictable, Qadda pursued a unique brand of revolutionary ideology that
combined militant Islam, popular democracy, and communal ownership of property
to create something approximating an Islamic socialist state. In foreign policy, he
aligned himself with the Soviet Union in return for military assistance and regarded
Israel and the “bourgeois” countries of the West, led by the United States, as his
enemies. He openly oered his support to international terrorist groups to bring
them down. As one observer put it, “No country . . . not even Syria or Iran, matched
the record of Libya under Qadda as an epitome of lawlessness and contempt for
international norms.”
51
During his rst term, President Reagan had authorized varying combinations
of naval exercises, economic sanctions, and diplomatic pressure to try to persuade
Qadda to moderate his policies and behavior, all to no avail. A major export-
er of high-grade crude oil, Libya enjoyed close political and economic ties with
many European countries, including Italy and France, despite its reputed links to
A NEW RAPPROCHEMENT
terrorism. The net eect was lukewarm support for sanctions and other nonmilitary
forms of pressure that Washington tried to apply. Then, in June 1985, Hizballah ter-
rorists hijacked a U.S. airliner ying from Athens to Rome. During the episode the
hijackers tortured and murdered an American passenger, Navy Petty Ocer Robert
Stethem. While there was no direct evidence connecting Libya to the hijacking, the
assumption of the Joint Chiefs and others in Washington was that Qadda ’s role in
terrorism overall was too pervasive to rule out the possibility and that curtailing that
role would go far toward curtailing terrorism in general.
52
Though committed to a strong stand against Qadda and terrorism, the Joint
Chiefs wanted to avoid overreacting. Supported by Secretary of Defense Wein-
berger, they urged caution in responding and resisted eorts by Secretary of State
George P. Shultz, National Security Advisor Robert C. McFarlane, and others who
wanted to make greater use of military power. But during the waning months of
1985 came a rapid succession of bloody terrorist incidents—the seizure of the cruise
liner Achille Lauro, the hijacking of an Egyptian airliner, and the machine gun attack
on the passenger lounge of the Vienna, Austria, airport. As a result, the JCS found
themselves under mounting pressure to conduct a major retaliatory campaign that
would severely punish Qadda and weaken his power and prestige if not topple
him. Finding the options limited, Chairman Crowe initially relied on a resump-
tion of large-scale naval operations o the Libyan coast to convey the message to
Qadda that the United States meant business. But after the April 5, 1986, terrorist
bombing of a discotheque in West Berlin frequented by U.S. Service personnel,
President Reagan ordered the JCS to prepare immediately for stronger measures.
As the President characterized it, the intelligence was “pretty nal” that the Libyans
had helped plan the attack.
53
The discotheque bombing set a planning process in motion culminating in the
most deliberate and deadly military action yet taken by the United States against
Qadda—the bombing raid on Libya carried out jointly by Air Force and Navy
planes on April 14–15, 1986. Hurriedly assembled, the operational plan preferred in
the Joint Sta drew on prior contingency planning and exercises conducted by the
Air Force. It envisioned attacks carried out by F–111 medium-range ghter-bomb-
ers ying from bases in the United Kingdom. The President wanted to retaliate as
soon as possible, and since the British had not as yet approved use of their facilities,
the Joint Chiefs developed an alternative plan that relied on carrier-based planes
already in the Mediterranean. A third option—to mount a raid with Tomahawk sea-
launched cruise missiles—also received brief consideration but was soon dropped
for lack of suitably armed and programmed missiles. Eventually, the British came
around and gave the green light to use their bases. But by then the JCS, working
COUNCIL OF WAR
in collaboration with the U.S. European Command, had settled on a composite
operation (Eldorado Canyon), which incorporated attacks by land- and carrier-based
air simultaneously.
The decision to use both land- and sea-based air was a practical move. Though
derided by some naval aviation enthusiasts as a needless display of “jointness,” it
reected the approved rules of engagement prescribing minimum collateral damage
to civilians in urban areas. To obtain the accuracy the President wanted mandated
the use of precision-guided munitions that Air Force F–111s were better equipped
to deliver than Navy planes were at the time. Thus, while the F–111s spearheaded
the raid with attacks on Tripoli, where the targets tended to be in built-up areas,
carrier-based F–18s and A–6s hammered the more dispersed military targets across
the Gulf of Sidra in Benghazi.
54
Cleary punitive, Eldorado Canyon was never intended to inict permanently
crippling damage. Like the Doolittle raid on Tokyo in the early days of World War II,
it was a demonstration of American resolve. Its objectives, as outlined by President
Reagan prior to the attack, were to highlight Libya’s vulnerability and to demon-
strate that Qadda’s continuing pursuit of terrorism would not go unpunished. “I
have no illusion that these actions will eliminate entirely the terrorist threat,” the
President told his close friend, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. “But it
will show that ocially sponsored terrorist actions by a government—such as Libya
has repeatedly perpetrated—will not be without cost.”
55
Still, the raid on Libya moved the war on terrorism up a notch or two. A steadi-
ly growing menace, terrorism was destined in little more than a decade to succeed
the Cold War as the number one security issue facing the United States and its allies.
But in President Reagan’s day, compared with the weighty issues of the Cold War,
terrorism still seemed a problem of secondary importance and received ad hoc re-
sponses. Even so, it was beginning to loom larger and posed challenges that the JCS
were as yet unsure how to handle. As the head of a country with close economic ties
to the West through its oil sales, Qadda was in some respects a unique case. But he
was also the same kind of leader, driven by fanatical religious zeal and messianic vi-
sions, that the Joint Chiefs were fated to come up against again and again. Inconclu-
sive in its results, the clash with Libya during the Reagan years was a foretaste of the
much more serious confrontations with terrorism and terrorist states yet to come.
ShowDown in CentRal ameRiCa
Despite the new rapprochement in Europe and waning Soviet enthusiasm for the
conict in Afghanistan, the Cold War elsewhere continued almost unabated. Nowhere
A NEW RAPPROCHEMENT
was that more true than in Central America, where the United States remained locked
in an escalating struggle with the Soviet- and Cuban-backed Sandinista regime of
Nicaragua. Throughout President Reagan’s rst term, the Joint Chiefs of Sta had
consistently opposed direct military intervention in Central America and had en-
couraged the administration to rely on surrogates, known as counterrevolutionaries
or “contras,” to carry the ght to the Sandinistas. But as the President’s second term
was getting underway, there were growing signs that the contras were running out
of steam, causing the JCS to reassess their position and to accept the possibility of a
larger, more direct military role. Out of the ensuing give-and-take emerged a revised
covert action program which President Reagan approved in January 1986, subject to
the approval of legislative authority by Congress.
56
The new program attempted both to revitalize the contra movement at the
grass roots level in Nicaragua and to mobilize additional support in the United
States. Controversial throughout their history, the contras resembled a rump version
of the deposed Somoza regime and enjoyed barely lukewarm backing on Capitol
Hill, where there was a general reluctance to provide much beyond humanitarian
assistance. Under the new program, the administration proposed to expand its help
to the contras with government-funded arms aid and professional training orga-
nized under the Joint Chiefs of Sta. In October 1986, after a lengthy and spirited
debate, Congress nally approved the administration’s request under its revised “co-
vert” action program for $100 million to help the contras—$70 million in military
aid and $30 million in humanitarian assistance.
57
Almost immediately, however, implementation of the administration’s program
fell under the gathering cloud of the Iran-contra aair, a scandal that blew up
over revelations of clandestine arms sales to Iran and the skimming of prots by
members of the NSC Sta to subsidize the purchase of arms and ammunition for
the contras. The precipitating event occurred on the morning of October 5, 1986,
when a Soviet-made surface-to-air missile brought down a chartered C–123 cargo
plane that was on a resupply mission to contras operating in northern Nicaragua. It
turned out that the plane and its cargo were part of an o-the-books covert assis-
tance program going back more than a year to circumvent aid prohibitions imposed
by Congress in 1984. The Joint Chiefs knew of the contra resupply program, but
they had no part in organizing it and assumed it to be part of a privately-nanced
and privately-run operation. If they had reason to think otherwise, they kept the
information to themselves.
Reverberations from the Iran-contra aair extended far and wide, and by the
summer of 1987 it was a full-blown scandal. Talk of impeaching the President was
in the air. Ironically, at the same time the administration’s Central America policy
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was falling under renewed attack in Washington, its revamped covert assistance pro-
gram was beginning to show signs of turning the military situation to the contras’
advantage. Better trained and indoctrinated, they were gradually becoming more
eective ghters and more accepted by the local population. All the same, many
Central American leaders, even those aligned with the United States in opposition
to the Sandinistas, were uneasy about the contras’ activities, and in August 1987 they
joined in support of a new diplomatic initiative sponsored by Costa Rican President
Oscar Arias to end the conict through new, supervised elections.
With momentum building behind the Arias peace plan, Congress in February
1988 suspended further funding for the contras. Shortly thereafter, backed by Soviet
attack helicopters and Cuban troops, the Sandinistas launched an all-out assault on
the contras’ base camps along the Nicaragua-Honduras border. Amid the escalating
crisis, President Reagan met with his senior advisors and congressional leaders on
the afternoon of March 16, but was unable to enlist the support of House Speaker
Jim Wright and other key Democrats who were either noncommittal or opposed
to any U.S. military action.
58
The next day, responding to a formal request from the
Honduran government for U.S. assistance, President Reagan ordered a brigade-
sized task force of the 82
d
Airborne to conduct a 10-day “readiness exercise” in
Honduras. Meanwhile, U.S.-piloted helicopters began ferrying Honduran troops
into the battle zone.
59
Though the JCS rules of engagement governing these de-
ployments made it highly unlikely that U.S. and Sandinista forces would ever con-
front one another, the implied threat of American military intervention appeared to
have the desired eect, and within days the Nicaraguans curtailed their oensive. Yet
even though the contras avoided annihilation, the ghting had taken a heavy toll on
their numbers. On March 23, 1988, seeing no other choice, their leaders declared a
unilateral ceasere.
From that point on, the contras’ fortunes entered a steep decline, a process
hastened by political inghting within its leadership, dwindling resources, and the
Reagan administration’s grudging acceptance of the Arias peace plan. By May 1988,
the contras were down to 400 front-line troops, too few to pose a serious threat to
the Sandinista regime. Feeling that it had run out of options, the Reagan admin-
istration let matters drift until it left oce in January 1989. By then, the incoming
Bush administration, hoping to eliminate Central America as a source of continuing
domestic political discord, had settled on a dierent course that abandoned further
military pressure on Nicaragua in favor of negotiated solutions through multilateral
diplomacy.
60
Though disappointed by the turn of events in Central America, the Joint
Chiefs took the outcome in stride. While it was a setback in certain respects, the
A NEW RAPPROCHEMENT
emerging settlement was not the disaster that some within the Joint Sta had wor-
ried it might be. Indeed, as the dust settled, it became clear that the Sandinistas were
far weaker politically than previously supposed. In agreeing to elections—nally
held in 1990—the Sandinista regime virtually sealed its own demise. Even though
the Joint Chiefs had not played a large or conspicuous role, their insistence that aid
and training to the contras be placed on a more systematic and professional basis
had gone far toward rescuing a faltering program and turning it around. All things
considered, the chiefs’ involvement helped to produce a more favorable outcome
than would otherwise have been the case.
tenSionS in the peRSian gulf
While the struggle for Central America tested the Joint Chiefs’ capabilities and
willingness to cope with low-intensity conict, the resumption of tensions in the
Persian Gulf challenged their resourcefulness in more traditional ways. Since taking
oce, using the prism of the Cold War, the Reagan administration had treated a
Soviet invasion or attack against the Gulf oil elds as the primary danger in that part
of the world and urged the JCS to plan accordingly.
61
Even so, the source of greatest
volatility in the region was the ongoing conict between Iran and Iraq. Precipitated
by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s attack on Iran in 1980 over a border dispute,
the Iran-Iraq war had degenerated into a World War I-style conict, complete with
trench warfare, human-wave assaults, and chemical weapons. Deadlocked on the
battleeld, the two antagonists took to crippling one another’s economic base by
attacking their respective capacities to produce and export petroleum products. So
intense did the “tanker war” become that in the summer of 1984 the United States
and other Western powers joined together to provide naval protection for non-
aligned (primarily Kuwaiti) shipping. But by the end of the year, the attacks mostly
stopped and the international protection eort relaxed.
The ocial policy of the United States toward the Gulf War was neutrality.
Unocially, the Reagan administration leaned in favor of Iraq. Characterizing Sad-
dam as a “no good nut,” President Reagan was fully aware that the Iraqi leader’s
regime was one of the most corrupt, ruthless, and repressive in the Middle East.
62
All the same, he was determined to block Iranian and radical Shia expansionism and
worried that an Iranian victory over Iraq would destabilize the region. The policy in
eect at the outset of President Reagan’s second term was to do what was feasible
and practicable, short of overt assistance or direct intervention, to avoid an Iraqi
defeat or collapse. In practice, this meant seeking other governments’ cooperation
in enforcing an arms embargo against Iran (Operation Staunch), encouraging Saudi
COUNCIL OF WAR
Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, France, and other countries friendly with Iraq to keep its war
machine going, and from time to time providing the Iraqi armed forces with limited
operational assistance and intelligence.
While tilting toward Iraq, the Reagan administration also pursued backchan-
nel contacts with Iran that had the unintended side-eect of complicating JCS ef-
forts to assure the safety of neutral shipping in the Gulf. The leading gures in this
enterprise were former National Security Advisor Robert C. McFarlane and an
assistant, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North, USMC, who secretly helped arrange
arms transfers to the Iranians in an eort to secure the release of Western hostages
being held by Islamist militants in Lebanon. Limited initially to a handful of HAWK
antiaircraft missiles purchased from Israeli stocks and a few hundred antitank TOW
missiles, the arms-for-hostages deal was never large enough to tip the military bal-
ance in Iran’s favor. But it carried immense weight as a symbolic gesture. Privately,
as North and his associates expanded their contacts with the Iranians, President
Reagan became concerned that they would send the wrong signal and lead Tehran
to think that the United States was on its side.
63
The initiation of U.S. covert aid to Iran late in 1985 roughly coincided with
Tehran’s decision to pursue a bolder, more aggressive strategy in its war with Iraq.
Reeling from years of heavy casualties and mounting costs, Iran’s leadership was
desperate for a breakthrough, and in February 1986 it launched a two-pronged
counterattack—a diversionary operation north of the Hawizeh Marshes followed
by a major amphibious assault in the south that seized the strategically important
Faw Peninsula. Eventually, the line stabilized, but only after heavy ghting that
brought the Iranians to the outskirts of Basra, Iraq’s second largest city. Even though
the chances of Basra falling appeared remote, Iran’s battleeld successes suggested a
looming strategic shift in the war in Iran’s favor. In March, Iran resumed its attacks
on Gulf shipping, scoring eight hits, all but one against non-Arab vessels.
64
The turning point resulting in U.S. intervention was Kuwait’s request in No-
vember-December 1986 for Western and Soviet protection against further Iranian
attacks on its shipping.
65
Until that time, the Joint Chiefs had held stubbornly to
their current force strategy under which for years they had managed to limit U.S.
commitments in the region. Playing down the impact of renewed threats to ship-
ping, the JCS cautioned against hasty action. Indeed, during interagency delibera-
tions extending from late 1986 into early 1987, Admiral Crowe and members of his
sta made the point repeatedly that while they appreciated the seriousness of the
situation, they saw the Kuwaiti request as opening Pandora’s Box by pressuring the
United States to protect other noncombatants’ shipping. As Crowe later recalled:
A NEW RAPPROCHEMENT
“I had done more agonizing over this issue than over any other since my appoint-
ment as Chairman.”
66
After weighing the pros and cons, President Reagan concluded that the re-
sumption of Iranian raids on Kuwaiti shipping, coupled with the possibility of direct
Soviet intervention, left the United States no choice but to play a more active and
direct role. By early March 1987, hoping to head o Soviet involvement, he and his
advisors settled on a policy of escorting 11 Kuwaiti tankers reagged as American
vessels, part of a multinational eort to protect shipping in the Gulf.
67
Working out
the details fell to Admiral Crowe, who arrived in Kuwait a few days later on a previ-
ously scheduled visit to the Middle East. By the time he returned to Washington,
Crowe was convinced that reagging the Kuwaiti tankers held the key not only to
the maintenance of regional stability, but also to the preservation of friendly rela-
tions with the Arab world. “My conclusion,” he recalled, “was that we should go
into the Persian Gulf . . . because it was the best chance we had to repair our Arab
policy and to make some signicant headway in an area where it was absolutely
crucial for us to forge the strongest ties we could manage.”
68
opeRation EARNEST WILL
The ensuing escort operation (Earnest Will ) nally got underway in July 1987 and
lasted until September 1988. Though undertaken on a multinational basis, it had
only token contributions from other Western countries and was predominantly a
U.S.-led and U.S.-directed aair. At its height, Earnest Will involved 27 U.S. surface
vessels and 13,700 American Service personnel. It was also the rst major test of
the recently reconstituted joint system under the Goldwater-Nichols Act. Over
the years, the Rapid Deployment Force and its successor, U.S. Central Command
(USCENTCOM), had done extensive planning for ground and air operations in
the Middle East. But having been unable to nd a well-qualied senior naval ocer
for his sta, the USCINCCENT, General George B. Crist, Jr., USMC, had as yet
made limited headway toward developing a maritime plan for the region. Seeking
to consolidate his authority, Crist sought full control of the operation and in so do-
ing found himself at odds with his Navy counterparts. In late August 1987, to end
the squabbling, Secretary of Defense Weinberger established a new subcommand—
Joint Task Force Middle East (JTFME)—headed by a naval ocer, Rear Admi-
ral Dennis M. Brooks, who exercised day-to-day responsibility for escort duties,
while Crist oversaw strategic direction of the operation from his headquarters in
Tampa, Florida.
69
COUNCIL OF WAR
This inauspicious introduction to the era of “jointness” under Goldwater-
Nichols was soon followed by the need for a wholesale reappraisal of the U.S. role
and objectives under Earnest Will. As originally envisioned, the operation was to
have been a fairly passive enterprise focusing on escort functions. But by the time
it commenced, the security situation in the Persian Gulf had deteriorated to the
point that U.S. warships were becoming as much the target as commercial shipping.
A case in point was the cruise missile attack against the American frigate USS Stark
on May 17, 1987, by an Iraqi ghter that nearly sank the ship and left 37 U.S. sailors
dead. Though the Iraqis promptly apologized, insisting that the attack had been a
mistake, the incident underscored the dangers involved by the very presence of U.S.
warships in the Persian Gulf and helped to usher in a more aggressive approach by
the Joint Chiefs toward their escort responsibilities.
The Iraqi attack on the Stark notwithstanding, the assumption in the Pentagon
and at USCENTCOM headquarters continued to be that Iran was the principal
troublemaker and the most likely to come into conict with U.S. forces. Operating
on that assumption, JCS planners expected the Iranian threat to take several forms.
With replacement parts and pilots in short supply, Iran had all but abandoned air at-
tacks on shipping since the spring of 1986 and had turned to unconventional tactics
carried out by Revolutionary Guards, who proved adept at hit-and-run raids using
small speedboats and powerful rocket-propelled grenades. At the same time, Iran
also acquired a small arsenal of short-range Chinese SILKWORM antiship mis-
siles, which it deployed adjacent to the Strait of Hormuz and on the Faw Peninsula
within range of Kuwait.
70
The most dangerous and persistent threat, however, came
from Iranian antiship mines. Initially, the Iranians denied any involvement in mining
operations. But on September 21, 1987, a U.S. Army helicopter-gunship, ying from
a Navy frigate, strafed and disabled the Iran Ajr, a converted Iranian troop ship, as it
was laying mines in the path of the convoying oil tankers. The next day, U.S. Navy
SEALS boarded the ship and seized a sizable cache of military documents conrm-
ing Iran’s involvement in mine-laying and other operations.
71
Following the Iran Ajr incident, American and Iranian forces became engaged
in a steadily escalating contest for control of the Persian Gulf. By the end of 1987,
Iranian attacks on shipping were up 53 percent over the year before. Avoiding ships
under U.S. escort, the Iranians concentrated their attacks on vessels without pro-
tection. As a result, the JCS came under mounting pressure (primarily from Saudi
Arabia) to expand the scale and scope of the U.S. protection regime by providing
assistance, upon request, to all nonbelligerent vessels under attack. On April 14, 1988,
the on-again-o-again conict nally boiled over when the missile frigate USS
Samuel B. Roberts found itself in the middle of a freshly laid Iranian mineeld. In
A NEW RAPPROCHEMENT
attempting to escape the Roberts suered heavy damage when it struck one of the
mines. U.S. retaliation was inevitable.
The day after the incident, Admiral Crowe attended a breakfast meeting at the
Pentagon hosted by Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci to discuss retaliatory
measures. Also present were Secretary of State Shultz and the President’s assistant for
national security aairs, Lieutenant General Colin L. Powell, USA. Feeling that the
United States had exercised restraint long enough, Crowe, with Carlucci’s support,
urged destruction of an Iranian warship to demonstrate that “we were willing to
exact a serious price.” Around 11 a.m., the meeting adjourned to the White House,
where President Reagan joined in. In the President’s mind there was no doubt that
retaliation was imperative. Moreover, he oered no objection to further military ac-
tion should Iran resist or challenge U.S. forces. Around noon, Crowe placed a secure
telephone call to Crist at USCENTCOM headquarters in Tampa, Florida, relaying
the President’s decision and setting in motion Operation Praying Mantis, which got
underway on April 18.
72
The immediate targets were the Sassan and Sirri gas-oil platforms in the cen-
tral and southern Persian Gulf. While it was against U.S. policy to attack “economic”
targets, these (like other Iranian oil platforms) were heavily fortied and served as
bases for raids on shipping. Only the Sirri platform was still pumping oil.
73
In retali-
ation for the destruction of the oil rigs, Iranian air and naval forces counterattacked,
precipitating a major naval battle. During the engagement, U.S. air and surface units,
using laser-guided bombs and other advanced technologies, destroyed a missile pa-
trol boat and several smaller craft, sank the British-built Iranian frigate Sahand, and
severely damaged its sister ship, the Sabalan. By the time the engagement was over,
Iran had lost half of its navy. The only U.S. loss, apparently the result of a mechanical
failure, was a Cobra attack helicopter and its two-member crew.
74
Still, in assessing
the overall outcome, Crowe was quite pleased. Feeling that the United States had
made a much more forceful statement of its resolve this time around, he was also
deeply impressed by the high degree of joint action achieved in the eld.
75
By mid-1988, with its economy in a shambles, much of its navy at the bottom
of the Persian Gulf, and its air force down to a handful of yable planes, Iran was
no longer in a position to mount a serious challenge to the United States. Sens-
ing that the worst had passed, JCS planners began to prepare for the drawdown of
U.S. forces. In April 1988, for air defense purposes, the Navy added an Aegis missile
cruiser, the USS Vincennes, to its otilla operating in the Persian Gulf. The decision
to do so was at the instigation of the NSC Sta, which wanted to avoid a repetition
of the Stark incident, and went against the better judgment of JCS and Navy plan-
ners, who considered Aegis cruisers ill-suited to the relatively shallow “green water”
COUNCIL OF WAR
environment of the Persian Gulf.
76
According to Admiral Crowe, who reluctantly
supported the NSC’s recommendation, the deployment of the Vincennes was a be-
lated development and came about only after intelligence reports that the Iranians,
having become desperate, were reconguring what was left of their air force to
attack U.S. warships.
77
On July 3, 1988, while on patrol duty in the Persian Gulf, the Vincennes shot
down an Iranian civilian airliner, killing all 290 passengers and crew aboard. Unable
to distinguish one type of plane from another, the Vincennes’ radar mistook the air-
liner for an Iranian F–14, which had been prowling the same area the past few days.
Immediately after, as if sobered by the incident, Iran and Iraq dramatically scaled
back their military operations in the Persian Gulf. The last reported attack against
neutral shipping by either belligerent occurred on July 20. Having fought one an-
other almost continuously for 8 years, both sides were showing marked signs of
war-weariness, especially Iran. The end of the war was anticlimactic, as Iran and Iraq
both grudgingly accepted a UN-brokered cease-re, which took eect on August
20, 1988. Escorts ended a month later, though as a precaution the Navy continued
to operate a less demanding regime of protection, termed an “accompany mission,”
that lasted until June 1989.
Throughout Earnest Will, the approaching end of the Cold War undoubtedly
allowed the Joint Chiefs to operate more freely and to take greater risks. A major
factor in Middle East politics from the mid-1950s on, the Soviet Union was barely
noticeable during the escort operation and its aftermath. Still, it was the possibility
that Moscow might steal the march on the West by taking over protection of Ku-
wait’s tankers that prodded the United State into action in the rst place. Though
not as strong as it was, the specter of Soviet power remained a formidable factor.
Overall, however, the demise of Soviet power was steadily reshaping JCS per-
ceptions of American security interests and the accompanying need for military
forces. For two generations, the Joint Chiefs had framed their assessments of U.S.
defense requirements around the dangers posed by a nuclear-armed Soviet Union
and its satellites. But by the end of the Reagan Presidency, the chiefs’ image of the
Communist threat had begun to change. Although they still credited the Soviet
Union as having formidable military capabilities, they could not ignore the emerg-
ing changes in Soviet policy instigated by new leadership in Moscow. While it was
too soon to tell with certainty how the Gorbachev reforms would play out, one
clearly intended result was to loosen the Soviet military’s grip on resources. Should
that trend continue, it would doubtless fundamentally alter JCS perceptions of their
own military requirements.
A NEW RAPPROCHEMENT
In sum, as the Reagan administration drew to a close, decades of tension and
competition between East and West were starting to give way, a situation far dier-
ent from only 8 years earlier. Whether the current rapprochement would last or, like
“peaceful coexistence” and détente degenerate into another round of the Cold War,
remained to be seen. As usual, the Joint Chiefs were cautiously optimistic, not want-
ing to let down their guard but aware also that change was in the air. They could
sense that they were entering a period of transition but could not as yet foresee its
outcome or full impact.
Notes
1 On the background and origins of the JCS reorganization debate, see Gordon Na-
thaniel Lederman, Reorganizing the Joint Chiefs of Sta: The Goldwater-Nichols Act of
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), chaps. 1–2; Daniel Wirls, Buildup: The Politics of
Defense in the Reagan Era (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 79–101; and Archie D.
Barrett, Reappraising Defense Organization (Washington, DC: National Defense Univer-
sity Press, 1983).
2 CM-79-78 to SECDEF, September 1, 1978, “National Military Command Structure
and Departmental Headquarters Studies,” U, JCS 1977/409-5.
3 Interview with General David C. Jones, USAF (Ret.), by Walter S. Poole and Steven L.
Rearden, February 4, 1998, Arlington, VA.
4 James R. Locher III, Victory on the Potomac: The Goldwater–Nichols Act Unies the Penta-
gon (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002), 33–37.
5 David C. Jones, “Why the Joint Chiefs of Sta Must Change,” Armed Forces Journal
International (March 1982), 62–72.
6 Edward C. Meyer, “The JCS—How Much Reform Is Needed?” Armed Forces Journal
International (April 1982), 82–90.
7 CM-143-82 to SECDEF, November 22, 1982, “JCS Reorganization,” JCS Reorganiza-
tion Notebook No. 3, JHO; see also Locher, 79–80.
8 JCS Historical Division, Organizational Development of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, –
(Washington, DC: Joint Secretariat, Joint Chiefs of Sta, November 1989), 60–62.
9 P.L. 98-525, October 19, 1984; H. Rpt. No. 98-1080.
10 “CJCS Guidance to the OJCS Special Study Group,” January 7, 1985, JHO Collection.
11 NSDD 175, “Establishment of a Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Management,”
June 17, 1985, U, available at <http://www.fas.org/irp/odocs/nsdd/nsdd-175.htm>.
12 CM-152-86 to Service chiefs, January 29, 1986, “Nomination and Selection of Qual-
ity Ocers for Assignment to OJCS,” U; and CM-153-86 to Directors and Heads of
Agencies, OJCS, January 29, 1986, “Selection of Ocers to the OJCS,” U, both in JHO
15-009.
13 See Crowe’s testimony in U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Armed Services, Sub-
committee on Investigations, Hearings: Reorganization of the Department of Defense, 99:2
COUNCIL OF WAR
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1986), 343; see also Lederman, Reorganization of the JCS, 72, 138
note no. 39.
14 William J. Crowe, Jr., The Line of Fire (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 148.
15 JCSM-397-85 to SECDEF, November 13, 1985, “Joint and Service Improvement Initia-
tives,” U, JHO 15-006; Crowe, Line of Fire, 155.
16 JCSM-401-85 to SECDEF, November 12, 1985, “DOD Organization,” U, JHO 15-006.
17 Letter, Weinberger to Goldwater, December 2, 1985, U, JHO 15-007.
18 Crowe, Line of Fire, 158–159; Locher, 423–424.
19 Letter, Crowe to Aspin, August 13, 1986, U, JHO 15-0012.
20 Congressional Quarterly Almanac, , 459. Although a major event in the history of the
Department of Defense, passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act received no mention in
either Reagan’s or Weinberger’s memoirs.
21 See Christopher M. Bourne, “Unintended Consequences of the Goldwater-Nichols
Act,” Joint Force Quarterly (Spring 1998), 103–104.
22 Crowe, Line of Fire, 16 0.
23 CM-424-86 to DJS, November 6, 1986, “OJCS Restructuring,” U; and DJSM 1915-86
to Directors and Heads of Agencies, OJCS, November 7, 1986, “OJCS Restructuring
Directive,” U, both in JHO 15-0012; Organizational Development of the Joint Chiefs of Sta,
– (Washington, DC: Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, Joint Chiefs of Sta,
November 1989), 64–65.
24 Crowe, Line of Fire, 159.
25 CM-660-87 to SECDEF, April 6, 1987, “Duties of the VCJCS,” U, JHO 15-0012; Memo,
SECDEF to CJCS, April 15, 1987, “Duties of the VCJCS,” U, in notebook labeled
“OCJCS Restructuring Nov 1987,” JHO Collection.
26 CM-465-86 to CNO, December 5, 1986, “Implementation of the Special Operations
Command,” U; DJSM 226-87 to SECDEF, February 6, 1987, “Timely Advice,” U, both
in OCJCS Restructuring November 1987 Notebook, JHO Collection.
27 See Paul Y. Hammond, “Fullling the Promise of the Goldwater-Nichols Act in Op-
erational Planning and Command,” in James A. Blackwell, Jr., and Barry M. Blechman,
eds., Making Defense Reform Work (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1990), 127–129.
28 Crowe, Line of Fire, 161.
29 Richard L. Kugler, Commitment to Purpose: How Alliance Partnership Won the Cold War
(Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1993), 428–430; John S. Dueld, Power Rules: The Evolution
of NATO’s Conventional Force Posture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), 227.
30 Though Rogers was instrumental as Army Chief of Sta and SACEUR in promoting
the AirLand Battle concept, much of the inspiration behind the idea came from two suc-
cessive heads of the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC)—Gen-
eral William E. DuPuy and General Donn A. Starry. See John L. Romjue, “The Evolution
of the AirLand Battle Concept,” Air University Review 35 (May–June 1984), 4–15.
31 Bernard W. Rogers, “Follow-on Forces Attack: Myths and Realities,” NATO Review,
No. 6 (December 1984), 1–9.
A NEW RAPPROCHEMENT
32 William E. Odom, The Collapse of the Soviet Military (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1998), 75–78.
33 According to General Sir Peter de la Billière, who led British troops during Desert
Shield/Desert Storm in 1990-1991, eorts by the British Army of the Rhine to assemble
one fully operational armored brigade for that operation “turned the whole system
inside-out.” “Some of our armoured vehicles were old and plain worn out; others
were run down and not properly maintained or else not used due to the lack of spares,
money and training.” General Sir Peter de la Billière, Storm Command: A Personal Account
of the Gulf War (London: HarperCollins, 1992), 26.
34 Gordon S. Barrass, The Great Cold War: A Journey Through the Hall of Mirrors (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 341.
35 Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs, trans. by Georges Peronansky and Tatjana Varsavsky (New
York: Doubleday, 1995), 401f.
36 Joint Sta, United States Military Posture FY , 1–9 and passim, U, JHO 13-005.
37 Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 615; Gor-
bachev quoted in Jonathan Haslam, Russia’s Cold War (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2011), 354.
38 Maynard W. Glitman, The Last Battle of the Cold War: An Inside Account of Negotiating the
Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 117–119.
39 Reagan Diary, October 27, 1986, available at <http://www.reaganlibrary.com/white–
house–diary.aspx>.
40 Joseph P. Harahan, On–Site Inspections Under the INF Treaty (Washington, DC: On–
Site Inspection Agency, U.S. Department of Defense, 1993), 169–175, reprints the INF
Treaty. The treaty did away with 2,692 missiles and banned eight types of systems. For
the NATO powers, these were the Pershing II, the BGM–109 ground–launched cruise
missile, and the Pershing 1A. For the Soviet Union, they were the SS–20, SS–4, SS–5,
SS–12, and SS–23. Two missiles that had been tested but not deployed were also banned
because of their ranges: the U.S. Pershing 1B and the Soviet SSC–X-4 cruise missile.
41 Joseph D. Douglass, Jr., The Soviet Theater Nuclear Oensive (Washington, DC: Oce
of Director of Defense Research and Engineering, Net Technical Assessment, 1976),
examines the origins of this strategy and his philosophic underpinnings.
42 Haslam, 359.
43 Akhromeyev quoted in George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of
State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), 1012.
44 Barrass, 212–214, 342–343; Odom, 134–135.
45 Hugh A. Williams, “Flexible Response and the INF Treaty: What Next? (Study Project,
U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA, March 14, 1988), 1, 13–17.
46 Crowe, Line of Fire, 2 64.
47 “Remarks on the Departure of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev,” December 10,
1987, Reagan Public Papers, , 1498–1499.
48 Reagan, An American Life, 697–705; Raymond L. Gartho, Détente and Confrontation:
American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1994, rev.
ed.).
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49 Shultz, 1086–1087.
50 Tom Rogers, The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan: Analysis and Chronology (Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 1992), 31–36.
51 Brian L. Davis, Qadda, Terrorism, and the Origins of the U.S. Attack on Libya (New York:
Praeger, 1990), 18.
52 NSDD 179, July 20, 1985, “Task Force on Combatting [sic] Terrorism,” available at
<http://www.fas.org/irp/odocs/nsdd/nsdd-179.htm>.
53 Diary Entry, April 7, 1986, Douglas Brinkley, ed., The Reagan Diaries (New York: Harp-
erCollins, 2007), 402–403. Also see Charles G. Cogan, “The Response of the Strong to
the Weak: The American Raid on Libya, 1986,” Intelligence and National Security 6 (July
1991), 618.
54 Stanik, Operation Eldorado Canyon, 176–205, summarizes the operation. For criticism of
the operation as a joint endeavor, see John F. Lehman, Command of the Seas (New York:
Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1988), 300–301; and Davis, 120.
55 Quoted in Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (New York: HarperCollins,
1993), 444.
56 U.S. Congress, Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran–Contra Aair,
100:1 H. Rpt. No. 100-433 and S. Rpt. No. 100-216 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1987),
64–65.
57 PL 99-500, October 18, 1986. See also NSDD 248 (sanitized), “Central America,”
available at <http://www.fas.org/irp/odocs/nsdd/nsdd-248.htm> (accessed July 19,
2011).
58 Robert Kagan, A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, – (New York:
Free Press, 1996), 588–589.
59 Brinkley, 587–588.
60 See James A. Baker, III, with Thomas M. DeFrank, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution,
War and Peace, – (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995), 48–53.
61 Michael A. Palmer, Guardians of the Gulf: A History of America’s Expanding Role in the
Persian Gulf, – (New York: Free Press, 1992), 116–117.
62 Entry, June 11, 1981, Brinkley 25.
63 Entry, February 11, 1987, Ibid., 474.
64 Nadia El–Sayed El–Shazly, The Gulf Tanker War: Iran and Iraq’s Maritime Swordplay (Lon-
don: Macmillan, 1998), 224–225.
65 Palmer, 122–123.
66 Crowe, Line of Fire, 18 0.
67 Caspar Weinberger, Fighting for Peace (New York: Warner Books, 1990), 397; Shultz, 925–
926.
68 Crowe, Line of Fire, 181.
69 Palmer, 132.
70 U.S. intelligence identied these missiles as the HY–2, a Chinese copy of the Soviet-
made SS–N-2 STYX. The Joint Sta referred to these missiles as the SILKWORM, a
generic term used to encompass several slightly dierent models.
A NEW RAPPROCHEMENT
71 Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, 414–415; El–Shazly, 248.
72 Crowe, Line of Fire, 200–201.
73 Hans S. Pawlisch, “Operation Praying Mantis,” Appendix A in Palmer, On Course to
Desert Storm, 141–146, places output of the Sirri platform at around 180,000 barrels per
day.
74 David B. Crist, Gulf of Conict: A History of U.S.–Iranian Confrontation at Sea, Policy
Focus No. 95 (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2009), 8–9.
75 Crowe, Line of Fire, 201–202.
76 Palmer, 146.
77 CM-1485-88 to SECDEF, August 18, 1988, “Formal Investigation into the Circum-
stances Surrounding the Downing of Iran Air Flight 655 on 3 July 1988,” (declassied),
887/546 (July 28, 1988); and <http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/reading_room/172.pdf>.
General Colin L. Powell, USA, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, 1989–1993
Chapter 16
Ending thE Cold War
Reagan and Gorbachev met for the last time in New York City in December 1988.
By then the two leaders had developed an easy collaboration that both hoped would
carry over into the presidency of Reagan’s recently elected successor, George H.W.
Bush. A former member of Congress, Director of Central Intelligence, ambassador
to China, and Reagan’s vice president for 8 years, Bush came to the White House
with more practical experience in national security aairs than any President since
Eisenhower. As part of his agenda while in New York, Gorbachev addressed the
UN General Assembly and used the occasion to announce that the Soviet Union
would unilaterally reduce its armed forces by half a million men and withdraw
50,000 troops and 5,000 tanks from Eastern Europe over the next 2 years. Moscow,
Gorbachev insisted, wanted military forces only for defensive purposes and would
use them for nothing else. A dramatic, headline-grabbing gesture, Gorbachev’s an-
nouncement convinced Secretary of State George Shultz that the Cold War was
more than drawing to a close. Indeed, Shultz insisted: “It was over.”
1
While Shultz’s declaration may have been premature, it aptly captured the prevail-
ing mood. After decades of tension and confrontation, the prospect of establishing a
peaceful modus vivendi between East and West was too appealing for anyone, including
the Joint Chiefs, to ignore. Practically no one expected the Soviet Union to disappear
or its Warsaw Pact allies to lay down their arms. But with Gorbachev continuing to
tender the olive branch, the opportunities for normalizing relations, settling dierences
in a peaceful atmosphere, and creating new partnerships seemed measurably improved.
Policy in TransiTion
Like others in Washington, the Joint Chiefs were hard pressed to draw a fully coher-
ent picture of the future from the rapid changes taking place in East-West relations.
Typically cautious, they believed that relaxed tensions with the Soviet Union oered
opportunities to improve relations but were reluctant to let down their guard. Their
attitude at the outset of the Bush administration remained essentially the same as it
had been during the last few years of Reagan’s Presidency when the motto had been
“Trust but verify.” The Bush White House was of a similar persuasion, eager to explore
479
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the settlement of outstanding issues yet leery of taking too much for granted. As the
new national security advisor, Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, USAF (Ret.),
recalled: “I was suspicious of Gorbachev’s motives and skeptical of his prospects.”
2
Scowcroft’s concerns were not unfounded. True, there had been dramatic
improvements in East-West relations since Gorbachev’s advent and the signing of
the 1987 INF Treaty. But since then, progress in the strategic arms reduction talks
and parallel negotiations aimed at limiting conventional forces in Europe had been
negligible. Gorbachev’s pledge to withdraw 50,000 troops from Europe may have
sounded like a major concession, but to the Joint Chiefs of Sta and other military
experts it would do little to alter the overall strategic balance, which remained
heavily weighted toward the Warsaw Pact. Despite denials by Gorbachev, reports
reaching the West also pointed to a high priority Soviet program to develop a new
range of biological weapons.
3
Meanwhile, Moscow continued to pursue policies in
other areas that were inimical to U.S. interests. Even as it withdrew its troops from
Afghanistan, the Soviet Union still poured heavy amounts of assistance into prop-
ping up a pro-Communist regime in Kabul. Likewise, it remained a rm ally of the
Sandinistas in Nicaragua who, with the help of Cubans and East Germans, contin-
ued to export Communist revolution throughout Central America.
Thus, even though the Cold War might have appeared to be over, the Bush admin-
istration found itself up against problems that suggested an ongoing, albeit lower-keyed,
competition with the Soviet Union. Neither friend nor foe, Moscow fell awkwardly in
between. Pointing to the “challenges and uncertainties” that the waning Cold War pre-
sented, President Bush decided to launch a comprehensive review of basic U.S. policy
(designated NSR 12) shortly after taking oce.
4
Among other things, he wanted to
know how he should balance policy toward Moscow with the steady decline of sup-
port for defense spending, a reection of expectations in Congress and with the public
at large that as East-West relations improved, the United States could reduce the size of
its armed forces. Actually, the process of reaping a “peace dividend” was well underway.
From consuming a post-Vietnam high of 6.6 percent of the country’s GNP in scal
years 1986 and 1987, national defense had declined to 5.8 percent by the time President
Bush entered the Oval Oce. When he left in 1993, it would be down to 4.7 percent,
the lowest since the end of demobiliza tion immediately following World War II.
5
Within the Pentagon, a debate quickly developed between the Oce of the
Secretary of Defense and the Joint Sta over how and where to allocate resources
to meet the “challenges and uncertainties” mentioned in the President’s directive.
OSD wanted to maintain the force structure more or less within its current con-
guration, with a continuing focus on Europe, while the Joint Sta wanted to strike
a balance with other regions of the world. Assuming a low level of threat to Europe
ENDING THE COLD WAR
481
and a reduced force posture in years to come, JCS planners sought to make better
use of available resources by shifting from the Cold War strategy of “forward de-
fense,” with forces deployed at static points along the Soviet Union’s periphery, to a
strategy of “forward presence” emphasizing exibility to move forces around and to
insert them as needed in the event of regional contingencies.
6
As these debates were taking place, events in Eastern Europe were acquiring a
dynamic of their own, bringing down one Communist regime after another over
the course of 1989 and culminating in the toppling of the infamous Berlin Wall
that November. Unable to keep up with the rapid changes sweeping Europe, the
Bush administration suspended work on NSR 12 and several other reviews it had
requested on the future of U.S.-Soviet relations until things settled down. Rather
than relying on recapitulations of past policies, President Bush wanted fresh ideas
and new insights.
7
As Colin Powell later remarked, NSR 12 failed to measure up
and became “doomed to the dustbin.”
8
All the same, not all was lost. Out of the
give and take connected with the project at the Pentagon emerged a new National
Military Strategy for 1992–1997 (NMS 92-97), which Admiral Crowe, the Chair-
man of the Joint Chiefs, submitted to Secretary of Defense Richard B. Cheney and
President Bush in late August 1989. Though not as far reaching a change as the Joint
Sta had originally intended, the new strategy—described by the Chairman as “for-
ward defense through forward presence”—clearly downplayed prior commitments
to Europe and stressed instead the role of force projection and exible response to
deal with regional crises and instability and to preserve worldwide U.S. inuence.
9
Powell’s imPacT as chairman
Presentation of the new National Military Strategy was one of Admiral Crowe’s last
formal functions as Chairman. On October 1, 1989, he relinquished his duties to Gen-
eral Colin L. Powell, USA, the rst African-American to become Chairman, and at age
52 the youngest CJCS. A product of the Reserve Ocers’ Training Corps program at
City College of New York, Powell had served two tours in Vietnam, earning two purple
hearts, and had decided to make the Army his career. A rising star, his military duty for
the next two decades alternated between eld assignments and high-prole jobs in
Washington either at the Pentagon or the White House. During the Reagan years, he
served as military assistant to Secretary of Defense Weinberger and as the President’s as-
sistant for national security aairs from 1987 to 1989. Promoted to general in April 1989,
he served briey as head of U.S. Army Forces Command (FORSCOM), then a JCS
specied command, at Fort McPherson, Georgia, before President Bush named him as
Crowe’s successor, passing over about a dozen more senior ocers.
10
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COUNCIL OF WAR
With Powell’s appointment as Chairman, the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act nally
came of age. While Crowe had done a faithful job of implementing the law, his tenure
had straddled two stools, from the corporate decisionmaking practices that had existed
prior to Goldwater-Nichols, to the new era that vested primary authority and respon-
sibility in the CJCS. Embracing an evolution-not-revolution philosophy, Crowe had
made changes slowly in order to gain the Service chiefs’ cooperation and condence in
the new system. Though he had restructured the Joint Sta to meet Goldwater-Nich-
ols requirements, his alterations were relatively minor and basically involved reshuing
existing oces and personnel. In February 1989, seeing room for improvement, the
Director of the Joint Sta, Lieutenant General Hansford T. Johnson, USAF, initiated
an in-depth review of Joint Sta functions, looking to reduce Service inuence while
broadening the scope of Joint Sta participation in DOD aairs. The immediate results,
however, were minimal. Overall, the Joint Sta continued to operate much as it had, as
a long-range planning and strategic advisory body dominated by inter-Service com-
mittees whose ocers’ primary loyalty remained to their respective Services.
11
Under Powell the emphasis within the Joint Sta shifted to addressing more
current aairs and to providing up-to-date joint assessments to assist the Chairman
and the Secretary of Defense in the policy process. Determined to exercise the pow-
ers given him under Goldwater-Nichols, Powell siphoned o the best ocers from
the Services. In so doing he vastly enhanced the stature, inuence, and eectiveness
of the Joint Sta over the Service stas and within the interagency system.
12
With
representation at practically every level, the Joint Sta was assured “a seat at the table”
in every major policy discussion and could assert its prestige and power on a range of
issues extending beyond those of the Chairman’s personal interest. In sharp contrast to
the ponderous methods associated with it in years past, the post-Goldwater-Nichols
Joint Sta as Powell redesigned it acquired a reputation for incisive and fast responses.
The upshot was a more visible, active, and aggressive Joint Sta with institutionalized
inuence placing it on a par with OSD, the State Department, the CIA, and other es-
tablished agencies in the policy process. By the time he returned to civilian life, Powell
considered it “the nest military sta anywhere in the world.”
13
Like Crowe, Powell placed high priority on developing eective working rela-
tionships with the Service chiefs and his deputy, the Vice Chairman. The serving Vice
Chairman when Powell took oce was General Robert T. Herres, USAF, who opted
for early retirement in 1990. Both he and his successor, Admiral David E. Jeremiah,
USN, were able and respected ocers. A former astronaut, Herres had been rst head
of the United States Space Command, while Jeremiah was a former naval task force
commander in the Mediterranean and scal advisor to the Secretary of the Navy. In
theory, they functioned as the Chairman’s alter ego. But like all deputies, they operated
483
ENDING THE COLD WAR
in their boss’s shadow and performed whatever chores he might assign, more often
than not the less glamorous administrative tasks.
The situation with respect to the Service chiefs was more delicate and com-
plicated. With the strength of Goldwater-Nichols behind him, Powell knew that he
was under no obligation to seek a corporate consensus before making recommen-
dations. But after friction developed over his handling of the base force plan (see
below), he realized that it was preferable to have the chiefs’ cooperation and support
than their opposition. Taking the lesson to heart, he met with them over 50 times
during Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm but held most of the meetings in his
private oce rather than in the “tank,” thereby removing all doubt as to who was in
charge. Attempting to establish an air of collegiality, he sought to work with the Ser-
vice chiefs as a team and often referred to the JCS as the “six brothers.” Yet he was
also not averse to acting on his own when he deemed it necessary and thought it
more important to win the approval of the Secretary of Defense and the President.
14
According to journalist Rick Atkinson, Powell was “the most politically deft” CJCS
since Maxwell Taylor.
15
Having been Weinberger’s protégé and Reagan’s national secu-
rity advisor, Powell knew the ins and outs of power as well as anyone and moved easily
in the raried atmosphere of high-level policymaking. Under Bush, he was welcomed
immediately into the President’s “Core Group” of close friends and advisors.
16
One of
the assets he brought with him as Chairman was a personal familiarity with many senior
members of the Bush administration, including the President himself. Even though
Bush wanted his administration to be distinct and separate, not merely an extension of
his predecessor’s, there were still many familiar faces from Reagan’s presidency. Powell
was on a rst-name basis with practically all of them. As much as anything, Powell’s in-
uence derived from the thoroughgoing sense of professionalism he projected and what
President Bush described as the Chairman’s “quiet, ecient” manner.
17
At the Pentagon, Powell’s most dicult challenge was to develop a productive
partnership with his immediate superior, Secretary of Defense Richard B. Cheney.
A former congressman from Wyoming, Cheney impressed Powell as incisive, smart,
and tough. Yet even though the two generally worked well together most of the
time, there were stresses and strains in their relationship which, according to one
account, left “an intellectual divide and a residue of mistrust” between them that
lasted for years.
18
Cheney took a narrow view of the Chairman’s advisory role and
on more than one occasion rebuked Powell for oering what he regarded as un-
solicited political opinions. “I was not the National Security Advisor now,” Powell
recalled; “I was only supposed to give military advice”
19
Indeed, in dealing not only with Powell but with other senior ocers, Cheney
insisted on close civilian control and oversight of the military. Shortly after taking
484
COUNCIL OF WAR
oce, he publicly reprimanded Air Force Chief of Sta General Larry D. Welch for
“freelancing” to gain a congressional committee’s support for the Peacekeeper mis-
sile. Later, in September 1990, in part at Powell’s instigation, he red Welch’s succes-
sor of less than 3 months, General Michael J. Dugan, for “poor judgment” stemming
from comments Dugan made to the press about Iraq’s recent invasion of Kuwait
and how the United States should respond. Aware of the Secretary’s sensitivities,
Joint Sta action ocers became increasingly cautious in their public remarks and
learned to double check whatever they were working on with OSD to avoid any
appearance of an “end run” around Cheney’s authority.
20
While Powell left his mark as Chairman in many ways, one of his most well-
known contributions was the “doctrine” that bore his name concerning the use of
military power. Modeled on six “tests” that Secretary of Defense Weinberger had
enumerated in 1984, the Powell Doctrine laid out broad guidelines to help shape
any decision committing U.S. forces to combat. Weinberger’s purpose had been to
preempt critics and allay their concerns that the Reagan administration’s proactive
use of military power might lead, as in Vietnam, to open-ended commitments or
“unwinnable” wars.
21
For Powell, the function of the guidelines he developed was
more personal. Having witnessed the debacle in Vietnam rst-hand, he resolved that
the lessons of that war should not be lost. Powell was no pacist, but his caution in
committing U.S. troops to combat often frustrated and irritated his superiors. Some
called him the “reluctant warrior.” As a professional soldier Powell believed that
military force should be applied in careful and deliberate ways, with the full support
of Congress and the American public, toward achieving identiable political objec-
tives, and that once involved in a conict the United States should use all power at
its disposal to bring the campaign to a swift and successful conclusion.
22
Powell’s thoughts on these matters had been evolving for 20 years and came to
fruition with his service as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, rst in the aftermath of the
Panama operation in 1989 and, later, in connection with the liberation of Kuwait.
Though the JCS never formally endorsed the Powell Doctrine, parts of it found
their way into an updated version of the National Military Strategy issued in 1992.
Powell wanted to include a statement that the ability to use “overwhelming force,”
as during the operations in Panama and Kuwait, was the most eective deterrent
in a regional crisis. At the White House, however, the prevailing sentiment was that
Powell’s prescription went too far. “I was strongly opposed to the Powell doctrine,”
recalled Scowcroft. “I thought it precluded using force unless we went all out. I
thought it was nonsense.”
23
At the suggestion of Under Secretary of Defense Paul
D. Wolfowitz, Powell toned down his rhetoric and called instead for the application
of “decisive force,” a somewhat less explicit concept. Yet as far as Powell was con-
cerned, the fundamental strategic purpose remained the same.
24
485
ENDING THE COLD WAR
The Base Force Plan
One of Powell’s most signicant contributions as Chairman was his “base force” blue-
print for the post-Cold War defense establishment. Although the Joint Chiefs had
considerable experience in downsizing after previous wars, they had yet to nd a
formula that avoided erce inter-Service rivalry and competition for dwindling re-
sources, accompanied by a precipitous drop-o in the eectiveness of the Armed
Forces. Past build-downs had invariably yielded low morale among the Services and a
defense establishment of either hollow capabilities, as after World War II and Vietnam,
or a seriously unbalanced force structure, as after Korea, that had severely constrained
the plausible range of military options in crises. As they looked to the future, Cheney
and Powell agreed that the post-Cold War demobilization should be dierent, and
that it should retain the essential elements of a balanced, robust military.
25
Developing the base force went hand in hand with fashioning a military strat-
egy adapted to the emerging post-Cold War spectrum of threats. While Crowe had
begun the process with the submission of NMS 92-97, his assessments still reected a
fairly rigid Cold War outlook, stressing preparations for global and regional conicts.
Powell’s rst task was to interject greater exibility into strategic planning. Expecting
regional contingencies in Southwest Asia, the Far East, and Latin America to predomi-
nate, he downplayed the danger of a global war and made a leap of faith that the Soviet
threat would steadily diminish. At the time, there was considerable uncertainty in the
Intelligence Community over whether Gorbachev would remain in power and much
speculation that sooner or later a conservative reaction would bring his authority and
reforms to an end. Indeed, by 1990 there were signs that in response to these pressures,
Gorbachev was veering toward a more conservative stance and that the process of
reform and restructuring was losing its momentum.
26
Powell assumed, however, that
even though Gorbachev might waver from time to time, he would stay the course.
Convinced that the Soviet Union was changing for the better, Powell believed that
the Gorbachev reforms were practically irreversible and that the net eects would
be a progressive weakening of centralized Communist Party authority, a decline in
Soviet military power, and eventually the transformation of the Soviet Union into a
federation or commonwealth-type state. One clear sign that Soviet power was on the
wane was the disestablishment of the Warsaw Pact in the summer of 1991. In light of
this and other evidence of diminishing Soviet authority, Powell anticipated a reduced
need by the United States for either a large arsenal of expensive strategic weapons
for deterrence purposes or costly ground and air forces built around ghting a war of
attrition in Europe.
27
During the early stages of planning the base force, estimated reductions for
U.S. forces remained in ux. Projected manpower cutbacks ranged from a low of 10
486
COUNCIL OF WAR
Figure 16–1.
Comparison of Projected Base Force and
Actual Convential Capabilities, FYs –
FY 1986
(Reagan Buildup)
FY 1991 (Actual at
End of Cold War)
Projected Base
Force by FY 1999
Active Duty Personnel 2.2 million 2 million 1.6 million
Army Active Divisions 18 16 12
Air Force Active Divisions TFWs 24 22 15
Navy Carriers* 13 12 13
Other Navy Combatants 363 307 259
USMC Divisions/Wing Teams 3/3 3/3 3/3
*Total is number of carriers on active duty; does not include one ship normally in service life extension and/or nuclear refueling
overhaul and one training carrier.
Source: 1991 Joint Military Net Assessment (March 1991), chapter 3.
percent envisioned by the Oce of the Secretary of Defense, to as much as 25 per-
cent in planning papers generated by the Joint Sta. As it turned out, the JCS gure
proved the more accurate.
28
Based on his estimate of future strategic requirements,
Powell saw no Service emerging unscathed, though he expected the cutbacks to fall
most heavily on the Army and the Air Force. Anticipating strenuous objections from
the Services (not to mention the “leaks” to the press that would inevitably follow),
Powell avoided discussing these matters in detail with his JCS colleagues prior to
brieng the Secretary of the Defense and the President.
29
By late November, Powell had a green light from the Secretary and the Presi-
dent for further planning and had completed a preliminary round of consultations
with his budget and resource advisors, the Service chiefs, and the combatant com-
manders. By then, the Berlin Wall had fallen and Communism was in open retreat
across Eastern Europe. Even the most die-hard skeptics were coming around to the
view that the Cold War was over and that the time was rapidly approaching to make
corresponding adjustments in the U.S. force posture. Still, there were legitimate
dierences of opinion among the Service chiefs and the CINCs over where to cut
and how far to go.
30
Powell realized that with the power and authority he possessed
under Goldwater-Nichols, he had no need to consult with anyone other than the
President, the Secretary, and the NSC. But as an experienced military bureaucrat, he
487
ENDING THE COLD WAR
also recognized that without the Service chiefs and the CINCs behind him, he was
unlikely to get the cooperation he needed to carry his plan forward.
One of Powell’s main concerns as planning progressed was to avoid reductions
imposed arbitrarily by either the OMB or Congress. The most serious challenge
came from Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, a prominent Democrat and chairman
of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Focusing his public career on defense
matters, Nunn had been instrumental in drafting the Goldwater-Nichols Act and
had played a key role in a companion measure (the Nunn-Cohen Act) to bolster
special operations forces by mandating the creation of a unied command for that
purpose.
31
Rumored to have his eye on a run for the Presidency, Nunn repeatedly
accused the Bush administration of being slow to recognize the benets of the Cold
War’s demise. Nunn was well aware of the strong sentiment in Congress in favor of
cutting defense and sought to turn it to his advantage. Urging fellow Democrats not
to act rashly, he laid out an alternative strategic concept for the post-Cold War era
which he termed “exible readiness—high readiness for certain forces and adjust-
able readiness for others.” Elaborating his views in a series of speeches between late
1989 and the spring of 1990, Nunn called for a large-scale pull-back of U.S. troops
from Europe, greater reliance on tactical nuclear weapons for deterrence purposes,
and increased emphasis on Reserve capabilities.
32
Toward the end of April 1990, with Nunn nipping at his heels, Chairman Pow-
ell conrmed in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington that,
in response to the changes taking place in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, the Bush
administration was reexamining its long-term military requirements. Shortly there-
after, he told the Washington Post that he was looking at reductions in force strength
of up to 25 percent over the next 5 years.
33
Predictably, cuts of such magnitude en-
countered objections from the Service chiefs, who had already agreed to signicant
reductions as part of the normal budget process. The base force cuts would be on
top of that. But through continuous reworking of the gures and augmentations to
the force structure here and there, Powell was able to overcome their resistance and
produce a broadly acceptable plan.
34
Accompanied by Secretary Cheney and Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wol-
fowitz, the Chairman briefed President Bush on June 26, 1990, on the development
thus far of the base force plan and the strategic concept behind it. After a lengthy
discussion Bush approved the plan and indicated he wanted to highlight it in a
public speech. Delayed because of a mix-up between the White House and the
Pentagon over who was responsible for drafting the speech, Bush nally unveiled
his administration’s new defense strategy in an appearance at the Aspen Institute
in Colorado on August 2, 1990, the same day Iraqi troops invaded and occupied
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Kuwait. Though Bush oered few specics, he conrmed that cutbacks of 25 per-
cent in conventional forces were on the way by the end of the decade and that un-
der the forward presence concept “regional contingencies” would replace Europe
as the focus of future U.S. military planning. He also indicated that sooner or later
there would be cutbacks in strategic forces as well, but implied that for the time
being the requirements of preserving an “eective deterrent” while negotiating a
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with the Soviet Union would take pre-
cedence in determining the size and conguration of the strategic arsenal.
35
While preparations to implement the base force plan were ongoing throughout
the fall of 1990 and on into the winter of 1991, the emergency in Kuwait and the Bush
administration’s decision to mount a military challenge to the Iraqi invasion left JCS
planners in the awkward position of overseeing a major buildup in the Middle East
even as they were preparing for general reductions in force levels. Budget estimates
forwarded to Congress in February 1991 reected some of these downward adjust-
ments. As more details appeared, the vision grew of a permanent post-Cold War de-
fense establishment of 1.6 million uniformed personnel (down from 2.2 million at the
height of the Reagan buildup) organized into an Active-duty Army of 12 divisions, an
Air Force of 15 tactical ghter wings, a Navy of 272 combatant vessels (including 13
carriers), and a Marine Corps of 3 division-air wing teams.
36
For some, especially those reluctant to admit that the Cold War was over, the Gulf
War was a clear warning against large defense cuts. But for Chairman Powell, it was a
distraction from the unavoidable process of adjusting to a new security environment
in which large defense establishments would play a diminishing role. Once the Kuwait
emergency was over, Powell expected calls from Congress and the public for a “peace
dividend” to intensify. The base force was the most realistic way Powell saw of pro-
viding the expected cuts while avoiding the pitfalls of previous demobilizations and
preserving a credible long-term defense posture. No one, least of all the Service chiefs,
saw it as the ideal solution. But as regional contingencies and humanitarian assistance
missions replaced the threat of a large-scale conict in Europe as the country’s top
security concerns, it became harder and harder to justify the maintenance of a defense
establishment comparable in size and capabilities to that of the past.
Despite the time and energy invested in developing it, the base force concept
proved relatively short-lived. Under the planning done by the Chairman and his aides,
force structure targets were to be reached between scal years 1995 and 1997, with the
overall structure rmly in place by FY99 (see gure 16–1). But with the change of ad-
ministrations in 1993 came pressure to take a fresh look at the country’s defense posture
and to achieve larger reductions. The result was the Clinton administration’s bottom-
up review (BUR), something the new President had promised during the campaign.
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ENDING THE COLD WAR
Resting on a strategic concept similar to that of the base force, the BUR continued to
stress the importance of eective capabilities for regional conicts, but envisioned force
cuts of one-third or more and comparable savings in spending based on FY90 levels.
37
A more ambitious agenda than Powell’s, the BUR’s goals also proved more dicult to
achieve without producing shortfalls in capabilities which Joint Sta planners saw as
increasing the level of risk in executing the approved military strategy.
38
oPeraTions in Panama
As Powell grappled with shaping a new force structure, the kinds of post-Cold War
problems he expected Washington to face were already beginning to appear. One
was the uneasy situation in Panama, where the United States had enjoyed a military
presence and well-established security interests for nearly a century. At the center of
the controversy was Panamanian strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega, who came
to power following the 1981 death of General Omar Torrijos in a suspicious air-
plane crash. A career soldier, Noriega had been Torrijos’ military intelligence chief
and boasted that one of his jobs was to provide liaison between the CIA and Cuban
president Fidel Castro.
39
In August 1983, Noriega enhanced his position by promot-
ing himself to general and becoming the de facto head of state. Shortly thereafter, he
pressured the legislature into converting the National Guard into the Panama Defense
Forces (PDF), over which he alone exercised authority. As his power grew, so did graft,
corruption, illegal drug tracking, and the repression of political opponents.
Throughout Noriega’s rise to power, the Joint Chiefs’ primary concerns were
the security of the Panama Canal and the integrity of the extensive network of
U.S. military installations in the former Canal Zone (CZ), where U.S. Southern
Command (USSOUTHCOM) had its headquarters. While the 1977 Panama Canal
Treaty had ended U.S. ownership and control of the canal, the United States and
Panama continued to share joint responsibility for its defense until the end of 1999.
After that, any further presence of U.S. forces in Panama would be by the agree-
ment of both parties. Economically, there was little to justify continuing the U.S.
military presence in Panama. The canal was too narrow to accommodate modern
supertankers and other large ships, and by the 1980s its revenues had fallen into a
steady decline, much to the consternation of the Panamanian government. But as
long as there remained a leftist insurgency in nearby El Salvador and a Soviet and
Cuban presence in Nicaragua, the JCS balked at giving up their base of operations.
Now was not the time, the chiefs believed, to cut and run.
Despite Noriega’s unsavory reputation and brutish behavior, the Joint Chiefs
were cautiously condent that they could do business with him. But as the political
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COUNCIL OF WAR
climate in Panama continued to deteriorate, they became less and less optimistic.
Aware that many in Washington were having second thoughts about backing him,
Noriega turned to Libya, Nicaragua, and Cuba for economic and military assis-
tance.
40
In response to PDF harassment of U.S. personnel, the commander of US-
SOUTHCOM, General Frederick F. Woerner, Jr., USA, became openly critical of
Noriega and his regime. Though advised by both Crowe and Powell (who was still
at the White House serving as National Security Advisor) to tone down his rheto-
ric, Woerner persisted in attacking Noriega. Persuaded that Woerner had become
a political liability, President Bush named General Maxwell R. Thurman, USA, as
his successor. In early July 1989, without consulting Crowe, who was out of town,
Secretary of Defense Cheney arranged for Army Chief of Sta General Carl E.
Vuono to go to Panama to deliver the news to Woerner that he was to be relieved.
41
By then, President Bush knew that sooner or later he would have to seek Norie-
ga’s removal from power. Approved policy (NSD 17) sanctioned by the National Se-
curity Council in July 1989 authorized the Joint Chiefs of Sta and the Secretary
of Defense to develop plans for asserting U.S. treaty rights in Panama and to keep
Noriega and his supporters o balance. Authorized operations fell into four categories
based on an escalating scale of risks and visibility, all aimed in one way or another at
grinding down Noriega’s power and authority. Only as a last resort would the United
States undertake direct military action to overthrow Noriega’s regime.
42
Much of the
preparatory work and logistical planning for these operations fell under Powell’s aegis
while he headed FORSCOM at Fort McPherson, Georgia. Thus, as he made ready
to take up new duties as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Powell was already well versed
in the plans and preparations that would eventuate in Noriega’s downfall.
Rather that resorting to military intervention, the Bush administration would have
preferred that the Panamanians take matters into their own hands and remove Noriega
themselves. However, there were few people left in Panama by then who were willing
to risk defying Noriega’s authority. One of the exceptions was a respected Panamanian
ocer, Major Moisés Giroldi Vega, a senior member of Noriega’s security detail who
had become disenchanted with the regime. At some point, Giroldi’s wife made contact
with the CIA and sought American help for her husband in staging a coup to topple
Noriega.
43
Giroldi originally scheduled the coup for October 1, 1989, but because of
changes in Noriega’s schedule he delayed acting until 2 days later. By then, Thurman,
the newly arrived SOUTHCOM commander, had become suspicious of the whole
aair, as had his superiors in Washington, including General Powell. When at last Giroldi
did act, elite PDF units loyal to Noriega promptly intervened to rescue their leader. By
that evening they had routed the plotters and Giroldi had been tortured and executed.
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ENDING THE COLD WAR
In the aftermath of the failed October 3 coup, a reign of terror descended on
Panama as Noriega dramatically increased repression of the civilian opposition and
carried out a blood-purge of dissident elements in the PDF. Reliable reports estimat-
ed that he executed as many as 70 soldiers and arrested 600 more.
44
Heavily criticized
for not giving Giroldi more credence and support, the Bush administration began ac-
tive preparations for toppling Noriega’s government under a joint military interven-
tion plan called Blue Spoon. Although Powell as always was uneasy about the use of
force and the casualties that were bound to result, he was increasingly convinced that a
military solution might be the only viable option for ending Noriega’s control. Insist-
ing that the job be done thoroughly, Powell favored the application of overwhelming
military power, not only to assure Noriega’s downfall but to neutralize his primary
source of support—the PDF—and “pull it up by the roots.”
45
Despite preparations to intervene, neither Bush nor Powell was eager for a
showdown. Remembering earlier interventions, Bush wanted to avoid a repetition
of the failed 1980 Iran hostage rescue mission or a recurrence of the debilitating
inter-Service rivalry that had hampered the 1983 Grenada invasion.
46
No less con-
cerned than Bush that the intervention should succeed, Powell paid meticulous at-
tention to the planning process and insisted on numerous rehearsals to make sure U.S.
forces were fully trained and prepared. Gaining in complexity, Blue Spoon called for
a closely coordinated all-arms attack using around 25,000 troops, supported by four
separate combatant commands. In contrast, Noriega had at most 4,000 eective ght-
ers, backed by 8,000 paramilitaries. By mid-December 1989, about half of the U.S.
ground troops allocated to the operation were already in-country, with the rest on
72-hour alert at bases in the United States, awaiting airlift. Thurman wanted as much
repower as possible to be in place before action commenced, and toward that end he
arranged to have Sheridan light tanks and Apache attack helicopters brought in under
the cover of darkness, then concealed them at secure secret locations.
47
Even with the United States poised to strike, Powell declined to recommend a
timetable for launching operations. Preferring to bide his time, he hoped that Ameri-
can economic and political sanctions would nudge Noriega into stepping down with-
out recourse to military action. But as the stando continued, Noriega’s deance only
grew stronger. On December 15, 1989, he delivered a ery speech to the Panamanian
National Assembly, after which the lawmakers adopted a resolution proclaiming a
state of war “while [U.S.] aggression lasts.” The next evening, members of the PDF
shot and killed an American Marine lieutenant riding in a car that ran a roadblock,
beat up a U.S. Navy ocer who witnessed the incident, and threatened to rape his
wife. Convinced that Noriega had “gone over the line,” Powell held an emergency
meeting with Cheney and Wolfowitz on the morning of Sunday, December 17. All
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agreed the time had come to intervene, whereupon Cheney arranged a meeting with
the President that afternoon. Remembering the mistake he made with the base plan,
Powell wanted to make sure he had the support of the Service chiefs before going to
the White House, and later that morning he invited them to his ocial quarters at
Fort Myer, adjacent to the Pentagon. Following an impromptu brieng and a review
of the latest intelligence, all agreed that Blue Spoon was a sound plan. The only res-
ervations were those expressed by the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General
Alfred M. Gray, Jr., who regretted that it did not give the Marines a larger role.
48
The meeting with the President that afternoon lasted nearly 2 hours and pro-
duced no surprises. Besides Powell, Cheney, and President Bush, the only others to
attend were Scowcroft, his deputy Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State James A. Baker
III, and Marlin Fitzwater, the President’s press secretary. Like everyone else, Bush was
fed up with Noriega and wanted him removed before he killed or roughed up more
Americans, seized hostages, or launched a surprise attack on U.S. installations. According
to Baker’s recollections, there was very little if any debate over the merits of invading
Panama. Instead, discussion focused on the mechanics of the operation, clearing it with
congressional leaders, and the myriad diplomatic and logistical details linked to the inva-
sion. Earlier, echoing views they heard repeatedly from Capitol Hill, Baker and others
at the State Department had been urging more forceful action against Panama. Now
that Powell had come around to their point of view, they felt vindicated and somewhat
smug. “After years of reluctance,” Baker later wrote, “the Pentagon was ready to ght.”
49
Three days later, during the early hours of December 20, the attack com-
menced, with Navy special forces, Army Rangers, and Air Force “stealth” ghters
spearheading the assault against key strategic installations. Now called Just Cause,
the operation proceeded in methodical fashion to suppress PDF resistance. Fighting
around the Comandancia, Noriega’s headquarters, was the most intense of all. But by
the next day, except for occasional skirmishes, the conict was over and Guillermo
Endara, whose election as president earlier in the year Noriega had nullied, was
installed in oce. Given the size of the overall eort, U.S. casualties were relatively
light: 23 killed and 312 wounded. Panamanian losses were 297 killed, 123 wounded,
and 468 detained.
50
Unable to ee the country, Noriega initially hid in a brothel,
then took sanctuary in the Papal Nunciatura in Panama City. Quickly wearing out
his welcome there, he surrendered in early January 1990 and was returned to Miami,
Florida, where he was jailed under a 1988 warrant for drug tracking.
A complex and dicult operation to mount, Just Cause was the Joint Chiefs’
most all-encompassing joint venture under the new Goldwater-Nichols law to that
point. To be sure, there were some complaints that it had been “an Army-run show
from start to nish.”
51
Others, however, praised it as a model of inter-Service col-
laboration. “Just Cause,” said one senior commander afterwards, “was a joint opera-
493
ENDING THE COLD WAR
tion in every sense of the word.”
52
Its success stemmed not only from the availability
and use of overwhelming force to subdue Noriega and his followers, but also from
the meticulous advance planning, streamlined command and control, and improved
coordination at all levels—all products to one degree or another of the Goldwater-
Nichols legislation. Unlike the haphazard Grenada operation, where the Marines
invaded one half of the island and the Army the other with limited coordination
between attacking units, the United States went into Panama in a unied eort, us-
ing inter-Service task forces to achieve designated objectives. While similar results
might been have been achieved under the Joint Chiefs’ old corporate decisionmak-
ing system, there doubtless would have been longer debates, less assurance of eec-
tive inter-Service cooperation, and in the end higher casualties. As the rst real test
under Goldwater-Nichols, the new JCS system rose to the challenge.
The cFe agreemenT
Part of the success behind the Panama operation was that the United States was able
to carry it out with virtually no worry of interference from the Soviet Union, even
while Moscow continued to have strong ties to nearby Cuba and Nicaragua. But as
the Cold War drew to a close, the Soviets, heeding Gorbachev’s lead, seemed to oer
fewer challenges, as if they were no longer in a position to resist. Most striking of
all was a more relaxed and exible Soviet approach toward negotiations. To be sure,
the Soviets did not give way easily, nor did their interpretations of accords always
match those of the West. But for the rst time, they began to show an uncommon
interest in harmonizing dierences sooner rather than later, a sharp departure from
past negotiating practices. For the Joint Chiefs as for others in Washington, it was a
novel experience that was in many ways hard to comprehend.
Among the notable accomplishments were those in the eld of arms control,
which for decades had been the Cold War’s most contentious diplomatic battleeld.
Even with the Cold War winding down, the JCS remained as uneasy and suspi-
cious of arms control as ever. But over the years they had learned to accommodate
themselves and to t strategy and programs within arms control connes. Building
on the momentum of the 1987 INF Treaty, President Reagan hoped to conclude
reduction agreements for conventional and strategic forces before leaving oce but
did not have time to complete his mission. What he bequeathed to his successor
was a half-nished agenda: a “mandate,” approved jointly by NATO and Warsaw
Pact leaders in January 1989, laying out a work plan for achieving limitations on
conventional forces in Europe (CFE); and a draft Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty
that aimed at a 50 percent cut in oensive strategic arms.
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COUNCIL OF WAR
For the incoming Bush administration and for the Joint Chiefs as well, President
Reagan had been moving too fast. In surveying the scene, Scowcroft thought Rea-
gan had “rushed to judgment about the direction the Soviet Union was heading”
under Gorbachev and had lost his sense of priorities. Instead of paying attention to
the “strategic aspects of arms control,” Scowcroft believed, Reagan and his advisors
became absorbed in trying to promote Gorbachev’s success at home and ended up
“placing emphasis on reductions as a goal in itself.”
53
By and large, the Joint Chiefs
agreed. The rst order of business was to determine whether progress was feasible in
the CFE arena, which was the subject of resumed negotiations in Vienna in March
1989. Previously known as the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction (MBFR)
talks, these negotiations had dragged on inconclusively since 1973, a tribute to both
sides’ perseverance and latent optimism if nothing else. Energized by Gorbachev’s
pledge to withdraw 50,000 Soviet troops from Eastern Europe, the CFE talks re-
ceived a further boost in May 1989, when the Warsaw Pact agreed in principle to
accept a NATO proposal calling for equal levels of heavy weapons, a long-standing
Western goal. A year and a half later emerged the CFE Treaty, signed in Paris in No-
vember 1990 amid growing euphoria over improved East-West relations. By then,
popular discontent had swept Communist governments from power throughout
Eastern Europe, the Warsaw Pact seemed to be on its last legs, and Gorbachev had
endorsed the need for political pluralism in the Soviet Union.
In light of the sweeping changes taking place in Eastern Europe at the time, the
impact of the CFE Treaty was largely symbolic. With or without an agreement, NATO
and the Warsaw Pact were disarming posthaste anyway. What the treaty provided were
guideposts, coupled with provisions for on-site inspections to make sure that both sides
duly complied. Dealing only with military hardware from the Atlantic to the Urals
(ATTU), the treaty capped total deployment in the 2 alliances at 40,000 battle tanks,
40,000 artillery pieces, 60,000 armored combat vehicles, 13,600 combat aircraft, and
4,000 attack helicopters.
54
But since NATO’s combat holdings were already at or below
the treaty’s levels in several categories, the JCS expected its restraints to have a limited
eect on curbing Western capabilities.
55
To accompany the treaty, there was a joint dec-
laration proclaiming “the end of the era of division and confrontation” which the two
sides promised to replace with “new partnerships and . . . the hand of friendship.”
56
While many commentators heaped praise on the CFE Treaty, the Joint Chiefs of
Sta reserved judgment. Shortly before the treaty was signed, the Soviets withdrew
large amounts of military equipment behind the Urals rather than proceeding with
destruction as called for in the agreement. On the day before the signing ceremony,
they tabled new data indicating the sudden discovery of three “coastal defense divi-
sions” subordinate to the Soviet Navy. Since the CFE agreement did not cover naval
495
ENDING THE COLD WAR
forces, the Soviets argued that none of the arms assigned to these divisions (5,400
pieces) should count against the allowed Eastern Bloc total.
57
As British historian
Jonathan Haslam observed, “The [Soviet] General Sta were digging in their heels.”
58
Suspicious of Moscow’s intentions, the Joint Chiefs of Sta gave the CFE Treaty a
tepid recommendation during testimony before Congress in the summer of 1991. At-
tempting to put the best face possible on the deal, Chairman Powell called it “a major
success story for the Atlantic Alliance” that would “strengthen stability and security in
Europe” and help establish “a stable and secure balance of conventional armed forces
. . . at much, much lower levels.” His JCS colleagues, however, oered notably more
restrained endorsements. All the same, the treaty represented greater progress toward
limiting conventional forces than anything else to that point, and on that basis alone it
stood out as a major contribution toward ending the Cold War.
59
sTarT i and iTs consequences
With the CFE talks nally bearing fruit, the Bush administration turned its atten-
tion to the unnished Strategic Arms Reduction Talks Treaty. Deeming Reagan’s
goal of a 50 percent cutback in oensive arms excessive and probably unattainable,
the Bush White House, with JCS concurrence, set its sights on lesser objectives.
60
But with the Cold War abating, there was far less political pressure either at home
or abroad than in years past to demonstrate progress on controlling strategic arms.
Thus, in addressing the problem the Bush administration avoided seeking wholesale
changes to what had already been agreed upon and decided to wait until follow-on
talks (START II) to launch any major initiatives. At the same time, however, senior
Bush administration gures saw a clear link between eectively addressing arms
control issues and preserving the U.S. leadership role with its friends and NATO
allies. “If we performed competently in arms control,” Scowcroft believed, “alliance
condence in our ability to manage the broader relationship would soar.”
61
While working on the base force plan, Powell skirted the issue of reductions in
strategic forces on the assumption—conrmed by President Bush in his Aspen In-
stitute speech—that the principal sizing mechanism for the strategic arsenal would
be a nished START agreement. Thus, Powell had no choice other than to treat
estimates of strategic capabilities as highly tentative. Since reaching a post-Vietnam
peak in FY 1985, U.S. spending on strategic forces had fallen steadily, so it stood to
reason that the trend would continue for the foreseeable future. Like the cutbacks
in conventional forces, Powell expected reductions in strategic forces to level o
around the middle of the decade and stabilize by the end. Even before factoring in
arms control, he estimated that to stay within projected spending limits, it might be
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COUNCIL OF WAR
necessary to eliminate the entire air-breathing leg of the strategic triad including the
B–2 stealth bomber, a proposal that drew sharp objections from the Air Force.
62
Bow-
ing to political realities, Powell revised his estimates and came up with projections
of a strategic force by the end of the decade comprising 18 Trident missile subma-
rines, 550 ICBMs, and about 250 manned bombers, including 50 B–2s.
63
The trouble in reaching a START agreement had less to do with overall num-
bers of delivery vehicles than with the characteristics and performance of weapons, the
continuing proliferation of MIRVed systems, and sublimits on air- and sea-launched
cruise missiles. These issues had vexed arms controllers and military planners for years
and came no closer to permanent resolution in START I than they had during earlier
negotiations. To help facilitate progress, President Bush authorized what amounted to
two sets of negotiations: the formal talks held in Geneva, and parallel discussions be-
tween Secretary of State Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. It was
largely through the latter that the START I agreement emerged. In the past, the use of
back-channel negotiations to broker deals had been a major source of irritation to the
Joint Chiefs. But owing to the changes in lines of authority brought about by Goldwa-
ter-Nichols, coupled with the regular and direct access that Powell enjoyed to the Oval
Oce, there were rarely any serious problems of this sort during the Bush years.
A major dierence between the Reagan and Bush administrations was the
waning enthusiasm of the latter for the Strategic Defense Initiative and its cor-
responding eect on gaining Soviet cooperation on reaching an oensive strategic
arms agreement. By the time the Bush administration took oce, it was increasingly
clear that support for SDI in Congress was declining and that, on technical grounds
alone, an eective system of strategic defense was still decades away. Under consid-
eration for possible validation were no fewer than six competing technologies.
64
In assessing SDI’s long-term prospects, neither Crowe nor Powell saw it playing
a signicant role in foreseeable American defense plans. Both endorsed continu-
ing research and development but reserved judgment on full-scale production and
deployment.
65
Weighing one thing against another, Bush concluded that “a shield
so impenetrable” that it would obviate the “need for any kind of other defense”
was too expensive and impractical.
66
By deciding to downgrade SDI and turn it
back into an R&D program, Bush removed a source of intense friction in Soviet-
American relations and made it easier to negotiate a START agreement.
67
The rst big breakthrough in the START negotiations came in February 1990
when, in a sharp turnaround, the Soviets indicated their readiness to accept U.S.
loading rules and verication procedures dealing with air- and sea-launched cruise
missiles. What prompted the Soviets to drop their previous objections is unclear,
though it probably had something to do with Gorbachev’s desire for a further
497
ENDING THE COLD WAR
improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations in order to increase Moscow’s chances of ob-
taining economic aid from the West. Whatever the reason, it seemed at the time that
a START agreement was near at hand. But by April, when Shevardnadze visited
Washington for further discussions, the Soviets had retreated from their earlier posi-
tion and now demanded new conditions and more restrictions. From the increased
presence of senior military ocers on the Soviet delegation and their apparent
inuence, the signs were unmistakable that Gorbachev’s strategy of accommodation
with the West was under attack at home and that the conservatives were striving to
regain a larger voice in Soviet policy. As one observer described it, Secretary of State
Baker “swallowed hard” and went back to the bargaining table.
68
By then, keeping
Gorbachev in power had become as important to Bush and his advisors as it had
been to Reagan, and in some ways it overshadowed the particulars of any agree-
ment. “We in the Bush Administration,” Baker recalled, “knew we could not reform
the Soviet Union. But we realized nonetheless that we could assist the process.”
69
Still, it took more than a year of further negotiations before a START agreement
reached nal form. Signed on July 31, 1991, the START I Treaty required the United
States and the Soviet Union to cap their strategic warheads at 6,000, with sublimits on
various missile types, and to reduce the number of strategic launch vehicles on each
side by about one-third, to 1,600 from 2,250 (the limit allowed under SALT II). For the
United States, which had fewer delivery vehicles to begin with, the reductions were more
like 25 percent, while for the Soviets they were closer to 35 percent overall and more than
50 percent in heavy ICBMs, the mainstay of the Soviet strategic arsenal. Under a separate
“political agreement” dealing with long-range nuclear sea-launched cruise missiles, the
two sides embraced controls that generally accorded with American preferences. For
verication purposes, the treaty relied on on-site inspections, regular exchanges of test
data, and national technical means. According to Powell and Cheney, the thrust of the
agreement was to move both parties away from land-based ICBMs, which might be used
precipitously in a crisis, and to encourage greater reliance on less destabilizing systems
such as ballistic missile submarines and “slow yers” like cruise missiles.
70
Nearly 10 years in the making, the START I Treaty was a historic achievement—
the rst oensive strategic arms accord that actually mandated force reductions. But
while it was generally applauded in the West, it met with stiening resistance in Mos-
cow, where the consensus among conservatives was that Gorbachev had gone too far
in making concessions. On top of the CFE treaty, the recent collapse of the Warsaw
Pact, and Gorbachev’s penchant for political and economic reform, the START I
agreement was the last straw. In August 1991, while Gorbachev was vacationing in the
Crimea, hard-line Communists attempted a coup. Observing events from Washington,
Powell was initially alarmed that the plotters might succeed in installing a reactionary
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COUNCIL OF WAR
regime. But by the second day, his worries began to subside as evidence appeared that
the coup had little or no support from either the KGB or the military rank and le.
71
Rallying behind Boris Yeltsin, head of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation
(i.e., Russia’s state president), supporters of the regime formed a phalanx to protect
the Russian parliament building where Yeltsin had his headquarters. The coup leaders,
unable to generate signicant popular backing for their cause, soon lost heart and the
revolt was over within 4 days. Gorbachev immediately returned to Moscow to claim
victory, but from that point on it was Yeltsin’s power and authority that were on the
rise. By the end of the year, Gorbachev was out of a job, the Soviet Union had dis-
solved, and a federation of former Soviet states had taken its place.
As the Soviet Union was breaking up, a debate was taking place in Washington
between the Pentagon and the White House over how the United States should
respond. To show his solidarity with the reformers and to keep the Soviet Union’s
large arsenal of nuclear weapons from falling into the wrong hands, Bush proposed
seeking immediate additional cuts in strategic nuclear arms, a so-called START-plus
agreement. Skeptical whether the time was right in view of the unsettled political
situation in Eastern Europe, Secretary of Defense Cheney declared such measures to
be “premature” and perhaps “imprudent.” Meanwhile, Powell and the Joint Chiefs
submitted a list of less ambitious suggestions, including a lowering of the alert sta-
tus of U.S. strategic bombers and the removal of short-range nuclear missiles from
surface ships and attack submarines. More discussions followed, culminating in late
September 1991 in a televised address by the President outlining his START-plus
plan to remove all remaining U.S. short-range nuclear missiles from Europe (those
under 500 kilometers which the INF Treaty did not cover), cancel further work on
a rail-garrison version of the Peacekeeper missile program, and seek a complete ban
on all remaining U.S. and Soviet MIRVed ICBMs.
72
As part of his initiative, President Bush also announced that the Strategic Air Com-
mand (SAC), long the symbol and repository of American nuclear power, would stand
down and that a new U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) would replace it.
This change had been in the making for some time and grew out of the recognition
among the Joint Chiefs and the combatant commanders that as Cold War tensions
relaxed and the defense budget shrank, there was less justication for a single command
devoted exclusively to strategic operations. A key gure in creating the new organiza-
tion was SAC’s last commander in chief, General George Lee Butler, USAF, who as
director of strategy and plans (J-5) on the Joint Sta had been instrumental in helping
Powell develop the base force plan. Butler believed that SAC suered from an outdated
mission focus that equated “strategic” with “nuclear” operations and that the new com-
mand should have a broader vision of its responsibilities combining functions previously
499
ENDING THE COLD WAR
assigned to SAC with similar conventional and nuclear tasks performed by other com-
mands. As usual, there were lengthy debates and considerable competition among the
Services for authority and inuence within the new organization. After sorting out the
various proposals, Powell recommended and President Bush approved a revision to the
Unied Command Plan that took eect on June 1, 1992. Now a unied rather than a
single-Service “specied” command, as SAC was, USSTRATCOM consolidated ele-
ments of the old Strategic Air Command with components drawn from the former
Atlantic command, Pacic Command, and U.S. Space Command.
73
Many people believed that the Cold War began with the advent of the atomic
bomb in 1945 and gathered momentum as both sides sought to outdo each other in
nuclear weapons. If so, the 1991 START I agreement, more than anything else, marked
the end of the Cold War and the onset of a new era in which the United States and
the remnants of the Soviet Union began the laborious process of turning back the
clock and doing away with their nuclear arsenals. Having been key participants in the
buildup, the Joint Chiefs of Sta were now in the forefront of the process of disarm-
ing. Testifying in the summer of 1992 in support of the START I agreement, General
Powell lauded it as “a critical foundation” for further reductions in strategic arms and,
as such, a major step from “a confrontational to a cooperative relationship” between
East and West. This time, in sharp contrast to the lukewarm endorsement they had
given the CFE Treaty the year before, the Service chiefs enthusiastically praised the
START I agreement as being in the country’s best interests.
74
The chiefs’ change of attitude doubtless had a lot to do with the collapse of
the Soviet Union and, with it, the dissolution of the Soviet armed forces, once one
of the most formidable military organizations in history. As it became apparent that
the Soviet state would not survive the abortive coup of August 1991, the military
also knew its days were numbered. Under a deal reached that December, the lead-
ers of the former Soviet republics—soon to be the Confederation of Independent
States (CIS)—agreed to preserve unied command and control of the armed forces
insofar as feasible, including the strategic rocket forces. But it was too little too late
to keep the old organization intact, and as the year ended, the Soviet armed forces
along with the Soviet Union itself formally ceased to exist. A rump establishment,
the CIS armed forces continued to function, but with no practical way of exercising
authority, it was out of business in a year and a half as Russia, the Ukraine, and the
other former Soviet states set up their own ministries of defense.
75
The downfall of the Soviet Union sealed the end of Cold War. By then, as an on-
going institution, the Joint Chiefs of Sta had seen it all, from the uneasy collaboration
between Washington and Moscow in World War II, down through the collapse of co-
operation after the war, the dark days of the Korean conict, the tense moments of the
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COUNCIL OF WAR
Cuban Missile Crisis, the agony of Vietnam, and the decades of costly competition in
strategic nuclear arms. With these experiences before them, Powell and the Joint Sta
had done their best to prepare the U.S. military for the expected transition into the
post-Cold War world. But they scarcely imagined the scale and scope of the changes
that would actually take place. As the Cold War ended, it ushered in a new era that was
in some ways more dangerous and certainly less predictable than the one it replaced.
Notes
1 Comments by Shultz at a conference in Princeton, NJ, February 1993, in William C.
Wohlforth, ed., Witness to the End of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1996), 91.
2 George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1998), 13.
3 David E. Homan, The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its
Dangerous Legacy (New York: Doubleday, 2009), 349–351.
4 NSR 12, March 3, 1989, “Review of National Defense Strategy,” (declassied), available
at <http://www.fas.org/irp/odocs/nsr12.pdf>.
5 U.S. Department of Defense, National Defense Budget Estimates for FY 1992 (Washington,
DC: Oce of the Comptroller, March 1991), 147.
6 Lorna S. Jae, The Development of the Base Force, 1989–1992 (Washington, DC: Joint His-
tory Oce, Oce of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, July 1993), 3–4.
7 Robert Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How
They Won the Cold War (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 440. See also David Rothkopf,
Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of
American Power (New York: Public Aairs, 2005), 273–275; and Michael R. Beschloss
and Strobe Talbott, At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (Bos-
ton: Little, Brown, 1993), 24–25.
8 Colin Powell with Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey (New York: Random House,
1995), 437.
9 Jae, 4.
10 The Chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, 1949–1999 (Washington, DC: Joint History
Oce, Oce of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, 2000), 159–165, gives a synopsis of
Powell’s career.
11 DJSM-147-89 to VDJS, February 11, 1989, “Joint Sta”; SM-508-89 to DJS, June 13,
1989, “Examination of Joint Sta Responsibilities and Structure”; and MFR by Colo-
nel James A. Moss, Jr., USAF, October 15, 1989, “1989 Review of Joint Sta Functions,
Structure and Administrative Support,” U, all in Notebook “1989 Review of Joint Sta
Functions,” JHO Notebook Collection, No. 172.
12 Charles A. Stevenson, “The Joint Sta and the Policy Process” (Paper for 1997 Annual
Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, August 28–31,
1997), 7–9, 14–15.
13 Powell, My American Journey, 445.
501
ENDING THE COLD WAR
14 Jae, 49–50; Powell, My American Journey, 438–439; and Peter J. Roman and David W.
Tarr, “The Joint Chiefs of Sta: From Service Parochialism to Jointness,” Political Science
Quarterly 113 (1998), 104–106.
15 Rick Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War (Boston: Houghton
Miin, 1993), 123.
16 Peter W. Rodman, Presidential Command (New York: Knopf, 2009), 181.
17 Bush and Scowcroft, 23.
18 James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Viking,
2004), 184.
19 Powell, My American Journey, 464 (emphasis in original).
20 Bob Woodward, The Commanders (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), 76–80; Powell,
My American Journey, 404–406, 476–478; Joint Sta Memo for Distribution, April 28,
1989, “Yr Paper—Strategy Review,” U, JHO 16-0076.2; R.W. Apple, Jr., “Confronta-
tion in the Gulf: The General’s Error,” The New York Times, September 19, 1990.
21 Caspar Weinberger, Fighting for Peace (New York: Warner Books, 1990), 397, 401–402,
433–445.
22 Powell, My American Journey, 434; Powell, “US Forces: The Challenges Ahead,” Foreign
Aairs (Winter 1992), 32–45. See also Walter LaFeber, “Colin Powell: The Rise and Fall
of the Powell Doctrine,” in Anna Kasten Nelson, ed., The Policy Makers: Shaping American
Foreign Policy from 1947 to the Present (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleeld, 2009), 153–177.
23 Scowcroft quoted from an interview in Jon Western, “Warring Ideas: Explaining U.S.
Military Intervention in Regional and Civil Conicts” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia Univer-
sity, May 2000), 324.
24 U.S. Department of Defense, National Military Strategy of the United States, 1992 (Wash-
ington, DC: GPO, January 1992), 10 (unclassied); Jae, 48.
25 A collaborative eort, the development of the base force plan reected inputs from a variety
of sources. While Powell remained in overall charge of the eort, giving it a high degree of
personal attention, he relied heavily on advice and analytical inputs provided by Lieutenant
General George Lee Butler, USAF, and Major General John D. Robinson, directors of the
Joint Sta responsible for strategy and resource allocation, respectively. At the same time,
to avoid any misunderstandings later, Powell maintained an ongoing dialogue with Under
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who advised Cheney on strategy and policy matters.
26 Raymond L. Gartho, The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the
Cold War (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1994), 437–444, looks at the diculties Gor-
bachev faced and the shifts in policy that took place at that time.
27 Don M. Snider, Strategy, Forces and Budgets: Dominant Inuence in Executive Decision Mak-
ing, Post-Cold War, 1989–91 (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 1993),7–13.
28 Jae, 9–10; Eric V. Larson, David T. Orletsky, and Kristin Leuschner, Defense Planning in
a Decade of Change (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001), 9.
29 Powell later characterized his failure to brief the Service chiefs prior to brieng the
Secretary and the President as a “mistake.” See Powell, My American Journey, 438–440.
30 Snider, 13–18.
31 John Partin, United States Special Operations Command History (MacDill AFB, FL: HQ
USSOCOM/ SOCS-HO, 2002), 4–5; SM-54-87 to DJS, January 16, 1987, “Implemen-
tation Planning for Activation of USSOCOM,” U, Enclosure B to JCS 2542/175.
502
COUNCIL OF WAR
32 Quote from “Sen. Nunn on Vision of Military,” The New York Times, April 20, 1990. See
also “Nunn Says U.S. Should Negotiate Deeper Cuts on Troops in Europe,” The New
York Times, January 1, 1990; and “Nunn Opens a Double Attack In Military Spending
Debate,” ibid., March 23, 1990.
33 The Washington Post, May 7, 1990.
34 Powell, My American Journey, 451–455; Jae, 30–35.
35 “Remarks at the Aspen Institute Symposium in Aspen, Colorado,” August 2, 1990, Bush
Public Papers, 1990, 1089–1094.
36 Force levels from 1991Joint Military Net Assessment (March 1991), chap. 3, 5–8, JHO 14-
010. In its general outline, the force structure proposed in Powell’s base force bore ex-
ceedingly close similarities to the force structure incorporated into the FY50 military
budget, the rst unied defense budget prepared by the JCS after World War II.
37 Les Aspin, Report on the Bottom-Up Review (Washington, DC: Department of Defense,
October 1993), 107–109.
38 See Larson et al., 41–81.
39 Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober, eds., Reagan: The Man and His Presidency
(Boston: Houghton Miin, 1998), 164–165.
40 Ronald H. Cole, Operation Just Cause: The Planning and Execution of Joint Operations in
Panama: February 1988–January 1990 (Washington, DC: Joint History Oce, 1995), 6.
41 Lawrence A. Yates, The U.S. Military Intervention in Panama: Origins, Planning, and Crisis
Management, June 1987–December 1989 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History,
2008), 223–224; Woodward, 96–97.
42 NSD 17, July 22, 1989, “US Actions in Panama,” summarized in Yates, 232; and Cole, 11–12.
43 Yates, U.S. Military Intervention in Panama, 249; James A. Baker, III, The Politics of Diplo-
macy: Revolution, War and Peace, 1989–1992 (New York: G. Putnam’s Sons, 1995), 185.
44 Frederick Kempe, Divorcing the Dictator: America’s Bungled Aair with Noriega (New York:
G. Putnam’s Sons, 1990), 396.
45 Powell quoted in Cole, Operation Just Cause,14.
46 Cole, Operation Just Cause, 29.
47 Yates, 270; Cole, Operation Just Cause, 19, 37–38.
48 Yates, 274–76; Herspring, The Pentagon and the Presidency, 307; Woodward, 162–167;
Powell, My American Journey, 422–423.
49 Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, 189.
50 U.S. losses from JS Form 136, J-1 to DJS, July 18, 1990, “Congressional Request . . .
Regarding American Casualties during the Invasion of Panama,” SJS 1778/473-00;
Panamanian losses from Cole, Operation Just Cause, 65. Cole gives U.S. wounded as 322,
an apparent misprint.
51 Bernard E. Trainor, “Jointness, Service Culture, and the Gulf War,” Joint Force Quarterly
(Winter 1993–1994), 71.
52 LTG Carl W. Stiner, USA, quoted in Cole, Operation Just Cause, 71.
53 Bush and Scowcroft, 12.
54 ‘Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe,” November 19, 1990, and “White
House Fact Sheet,” ca. November 19, 1990, Public Papers of George Bush, 1990, 1640–1641.
503
ENDING THE COLD WAR
55 See the statement by USAF/CoS Gen Merrill A. McPeak, July 16, 1991, in U.S. Congress,
Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on European Aairs, Hearings: The CFE
Treaty, 100:1 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1991), 130 (hereafter cited as CFE Treaty Hearings).
56 “Joint Declaration of Twenty-Two States,” November 19, 1990, Public Papers of George
Bush, 1990, 1644.
57 Lambert W. Veenendaal, “Conventional Stability in Europe in 1991: Problems and Solu-
tions,” NATO Review 47, no. 4 (August 1991), 3–8. See also Bush and Scowcroft, 500.
58 Jonathan Haslam, Russia’s Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 379.
59 Quote from Powell testimony, July 16, 1991, CFE Treaty Hearings, 86; Service chiefs’
statements, ibid., 129–131.
60 See NSD 40, May 14, 1990, “Decisions on START Issues,” U, available at <www.fas.
org/irp/odocs/nsd/nsd40.pdf> (accessed July 19, 2011).
61 Bush and Scowcroft, 40.
62 Jae, 23, 39,
63 1991 Joint Military Net Assessment, chap. 3, 5–6.
64 Steven L. Rearden, “Congress and the Strategic Defense Initiative, 1983–1989” (Study
Prepared for the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, January 31, 1992), chap. 7,
U; and Sanford Lako and Herbert York, A Shield in Space? Technology, Politics, and the
Strategic Defense Initiative (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 116.
65 In his National Military Strategy for 1992–1997, Crowe recommended that the United States
“actively pursue a strategic defense program” to determine its “feasibility.” Powell concurred
in the need for further R&D but endorsed a “smaller and less expensive” program than SDI
oriented toward providing protection against limited attacks. See Colin L. Powell, The Na-
tional Military Strategy of the United States (Washington, DC: GPO, January 1992), 6–7.
66 “President’s News Conference,” January 27, 1989, Bush Public Papers, 1989, 26.
67 Beschloss and Talbott, 117–118.
68 Don Oberdorfer, The Turn: From the Cold War to a New Era—The United States and the
Soviet Union, 1983–1990 (New York: Poseidon Press, 1991), 407. See also Gartho, 422–423.
69 Quoted in Gordon S. Barrass, The Great Cold War: A Journey Through the Hall of Mirrors
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 349–350.
70 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings: The START Treaty,
100:2 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1992), 122 (hereafter cited as START Treaty Hearings).
71 Powell, My American Journey, 538–539.
72 Beschloss and Talbott, 445–446; Bush and Scowcroft, 541–542; “Address to the Nation on
United States Nuclear Weapons,” September 27, 1991, Bush Public Papers, 1991, 1220–1224.
73 Ronald H. Cole et al., The History of the Unied Command Plan, 1946–1999 (Washington,
DC: Joint History Oce, 2003), 92–95.
74 START Treaty Hearings, 114, 144–147.
75 William E. Odom, The Collapse of the Soviet Military (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1998), 370–374.
Night Attack, by Mario Acevedo (Courtesy of the Center of Military History)
Chapter 17
Storm in the DeSert
As the Cold War drew to a close, other problems took its place. None was more
threatening to American interests than Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s invasion
of Kuwait in early August 1990. The Joint Chiefs of Sta had long viewed the
Middle East and Southwest Asia as potential trouble spots, and over the years they
steadily became more mindful of the region’s diculties. Indicative of the growing
importance they attached to the Middle East was their decision in 1983 to create
a regional planning organization, the U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM).
While maintaining a limited U.S. presence in the area, USCENTCOM conducted
combined training exercises with friendly countries, bolstered diplomatic support
for U.S. interests, and coordinated multilateral protection of international shipping.
Assuring unfettered access to the Persian Gulf oil elds was normally USCENT-
COM’s top concern. But with the Soviet threat to Europe and an unstable situa-
tion on the Korean peninsula still claiming priority, the JCS had refused to allocate
signicant resources to the region on a permanent basis and had dealt with it in ad
hoc fashion as the need arose.
The demise of the Cold War combined with Saddam Hussein’s covetous de-
signs on his oil-rich neighbor, Kuwait, changed JCS perceptions of U.S. security
requirements in Southwest Asia. As the Soviet threat to Europe receded, the JCS
also adopted a more relaxed outlook toward the Far East where improved relations
with China pointed to a more stable geopolitical environment. As a result, the Joint
Chiefs felt more comfortable earmarking assets for regional contingencies else-
where in line with the emerging “forward presence” doctrine. Though Southwest
Asia was not the only place that caught their eye, it loomed larger than the others
because of its strategic location, economic importance to the West, and growing
potential for trouble.
Origins Of the Kuwait Crisis
Following the UN-brokered armistice ending the Iran-Iraq War in the summer of
1988, the United States intensied its eorts to broaden relations with Baghdad,
always the U.S.-favored party in the conict. Shortly after taking oce, the Bush
505
506
CounCil of War
administration launched a comprehensive review of U.S. policy toward the Persian
Gulf (NSR 10), focusing on U.S. interests there, the role of the Soviet Union, rela-
tions with Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf states, and the level of U.S.
military involvement. The key issue raised in NSR 10 was whether U.S. interests
in the region—economic, political, and military—remained vital in view of the
changed strategic environment there and, if so, whether the existing investment of
U.S. power and resources reected that importance.
1
The review conrmed that major changes in the strategic environment of
the Persian Gulf over the past decade mandated greater American interest and in-
volvement, and recommended that the United States bolster regional peace and
stability through closer cooperation and collaboration with friendly governments.
Step-by-step improvements in U.S.-Iraqi relations were crucial to the success of
this policy. While aware that problems with Saddam were bound to arise, the Bush
administration was cautiously optimistic that it could moderate his behavior and
increase U.S. inuence in Iraq through carefully targeted economic, political, and
military assistance. In exchange for U.S. help, Saddam should be prepared to give
up his chemical and biological weapons, curb his nuclear ambitions, break his ties
with terrorist organizations, and stop meddling in the internal aairs of Lebanon
and other Mideast countries.
2
Saddam, however, had his own agenda, which involved nothing less than es-
tablishing an Iraqi hegemony across the region. Bloodied but undefeated in the
war with Iran, the Iraqi dictator was at the pinnacle of his power and prestige,
a formidable, dangerous, and unpredictable gure who had the largest and most
powerful military force in the region at his disposal. Aiming to regain some of the
oil export market he lost to other Gulf producers during the conict, Saddam ac-
cused neighboring Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf states of undercutting
Iraq’s recovery by surreptitiously increasing oil production and driving down prices,
even though these countries had been among his staunchest allies in the recent
conict. According to former Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who
knew Saddam personally, the Iraqi leader assumed that he had a more or less free
hand, based on U.S. help against Iran, and could do virtually as he pleased without
risking American retaliation as long as Iran remained under the control of a radical
anti-Western regime.
3
Meanwhile, the United States launched a progressive military draw-down in the
Persian Gulf. With Operation Earnest Will coming to a close, the Joint Chiefs saw no
justication for the sizable air and naval forces they had assembled to escort neutral
shipping at the height of the Iran-Iraq war in 1987−1988. By the summer of 1989
USCENTCOM’s presence in the Gulf was essentially back to its pre-escort level—a
STorM in THE DESErT
507
handful of naval vessels backed by the intermittent presence of a carrier battle group
in the Indian Ocean and North Arabian Sea. Whether the retention of a larger U.S.
naval presence in Southwest Asia would have assured greater stability, deterring Iraq
from aggression against Kuwait, remains an open question. Saddam’s ruthless drive
to dominate Middle East politics and his insatiable ambitions would have been hard
to check in any case. Nonetheless, as U.S. forces withdrew, the odds increased that
they would be back again sooner or later. The retreat may have been unavoidable, but
it left the Joint Chiefs, among others, decidedly uneasy and created a political and
military vacuum in the region that Saddam was only too happy to ll.
4
During the summer of 1990 Saddam steadily increased the pressure on Kuwait.
While complaining that his neighbor was pumping excessive oil and driving down
prices, Saddam precipitated a border dispute with Kuwait, the same pretext he used
for going to war with Iran in 1980. He also became highly critical of the United
States and stepped up menacing rhetoric and gestures toward Israel by deploying
Scud ballistic missiles aimed at Tel Aviv. Still committed to the constructive engage-
ment policy, the Bush administration hoped to diuse the situation and elicit coop-
erative behavior from Saddam with pledges of nonlethal military assistance, loans,
and credit guarantees to help nance grain imports and to rebuild Iraq’s battered
economy. Much to Saddam’s irritation, however, the proered assistance was slow
to materialize.
5
Increasingly belligerent, Saddam began massing forces along Iraq’s common
frontier with Kuwait in a show of gunboat diplomacy. While the Intelligence Com-
munity declined to rule out the possibility of an invasion, it could nd no hard
evidence that Saddam was preparing an attack. Indeed, the absence of Iraqi logistical
support led General Powell and analysts on the Joint Sta to suspect that Saddam
was blung and was more interested in eliciting concessions from Kuwait and its
neighbors than in starting another war.
6
Following the Chairman’s lead, JCS action
ocers dealing with the Middle East shied away from recommending anything re-
motely resembling a military response without rst exploring other options and as-
certaining clear-cut political objectives. But with tensions building, a military con-
frontation seemed increasingly unavoidable. On July 25, 1990, Saddam summoned
April Glaspie, the U.S. Ambassador to Baghdad, to an impromptu interview. Profess-
ing friendship for the United States, Saddam expounded at length on his desire for a
peaceful resolution of the dispute with Kuwait but did not rule out military action.
In return, Glaspie assured him that President Bush was also interested in a peaceful
outcome but also wanted close U.S. relations with Iraq. Subsequently, critics of the
Bush administration pounced on Ambassador Glaspie’s remarks as a virtual invita-
tion for Saddam to invade Kuwait. Whether Saddam viewed them in that light is
508
CounCil of War
unclear. More than likely, he had already made up his mind to attack Kuwait and
in summoning Glaspie, was trying to gauge how the United States would respond.
7
While continuing to give lip service to a diplomatic solution, Saddam moved
more units into position and by the end of July had approximately 140,000 troops
and 2,000 Soviet-made T-72 tanks and other armored vehicles along the border
with Kuwait. On August 2, 1990, he launched his attack. The invaders met light
resistance and within a few days were in full control of the country, which Saddam
proceeded to annex. Demanding that Saddam withdraw his forces immediately,
President Bush declared that Iraqi aggression “will not stand.”
8
But despite a tough
declaratory policy, the administration had no rm plan of action. For the time be-
ing, containing Saddam’s aggression and deterring him from attacking neighboring
Saudi Arabia were the administration’s only rm objectives. Only time would tell
whether the United States would be willing to go further and take steps to evict
Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
framing the u.s. respOnse
Even though General Powell and the Joint Sta had been closely monitoring the
situation in the Middle East for some time, looking at alternative contingency plans
as they went along, Saddam’s invasion still caught them by surprise and unprepared.
Like almost everyone else in Washington at the time, they expected the confronta-
tion between Iraq and Kuwait to end peacefully. As Lieutenant General George
Lee Butler, USAF, director of J-5, described the state of mind in the Joint Sta, “We
had the warning from the intelligence community—we refused to acknowledge
it.”
9
When the Iraqis attacked Kuwait, the Joint Chiefs of Sta had few forces in
or near the vicinity of the Persian Gulf and were only beginning to take steps to
get more there. Most of the planning done prior to the Iraqi invasion centered on
OPLAN 1002-90, an updated version of a Cold War-era USCENTCOM plan to
defend Iran against a Soviet invasion. Arguing that the threat of Iraqi aggression now
outweighed the danger of a Soviet attack, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA,
Commander in Chief of Central Command (USCINCCENT), had requested JCS
permission to shift the geographic focus of OPLAN 1002-90 to reect a possible
Iraqi invasion of either Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. In December 1989 the Joint Chiefs
gave Schwarzkopf permission to proceed.
10
While the detailed work of revising OPLAN 1002-90 had just begun by the
time Iraq invaded Kuwait, its broad outlines were fairly clear and well known. Basi-
cally, OPLAN 1002-90 envisioned war on a grand scale, with the mobilization and
deployment of 200,000 U.S. ground troops and supporting air and naval units taking
509
STorM in THE DESErT
on an Iraqi force of comparable if not larger size and capabilities. With a strength
of over one million men, the Iraqi Army was one of the largest in the world. But it
relied heavily on conscripts armed with older models of Eastern Bloc and Chinese
weapons. The core of Iraq’s defense establishment consisted of eight elite Repub-
lican Guard divisions (expanded to 12 divisions following the invasion of Kuwait)
commanded by ocers who had sworn personal allegiance to Saddam. Made up
of volunteers, the Republican Guard carried more up-to-date weapons than the
regular army and constituted Saddam’s most eective and reliable force. Military
and political analysts in the West generally considered it a key prop of Saddam’s
regime. Iraq’s air component, though strong on paper with over 800 planes, had few
experienced pilots and operated under a defensive doctrine that limited its range
and eectiveness. On the other hand, Iraq’s air defenses, though somewhat outdated,
were rated among the best in the world, built around sophisticated low-level anti-
aircraft artillery and portable surface-to-air missiles.
11
The greatest dangers Iraq posed sprang from the uncertainties surrounding
its capabilities for chemical, biological, and nuclear warfare, known collectively as
“weapons of mass destruction,” or WMD. Available delivery means included short-
range Scud missiles, aerial bombs, artillery shells, rockets, and spray tanks mounted
on aircraft. Saddam’s desire to make Iraq a nuclear power was well known. Even
though the Israelis dealt his program a major setback by destroying the Tuwaitha
atomic reactor in 1981, rumors persisted that he was continuing to explore ways
of acquiring atomic bombs and might have stockpiled enough ssionable material
for a small arsenal. Biological weapons were also of interest to Saddam but seemed
to hold less promise and appeal than chemical weapons. During the 1980s, Saddam
mounted poison gas attacks against local insurgencies and Iranian troop formations.
Since then, he had continued to replenish his chemical weapons stockpile, threaten-
ing to use it against anyone who got in his way.
In surveying what they were up against, senior members of the Bush administra-
tion were understandably wary. By far the most cautious was the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs, General Powell. Convinced that Saddam should be contained, Powell
readily agreed to rush reinforcements to the Middle East to block the Iraqis from
moving against Saudi Arabia (Operation Desert Shield). But he initially opposed oen-
sive operations aimed at liberating Kuwait, a much larger and more complicated task
which, based on preliminary estimates, would require substantially more troops and
eight months to a year of preparation. In view of the risks involved, he was prepared to
treat Kuwait as expendable and concentrate on protecting Saudi Arabia. “I think we’d
go to war over Saudi Arabia,” he told Schwarzkopf, “but I doubt we’d go to war over
Kuwait.”
12
Recalling the popular backlash against Vietnam, Powell believed that any
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CounCil of War
attempt to liberate Kuwait by force would need full congressional and public support.
Without that, he saw little hope of success. As an alternative to military action, Powell
endorsed a regime of economic, political, and diplomatic sanctions against Iraq and
was prepared to wait up to 2 years for them to have an eect.
13
Powell’s strategy of restraint contrasted sharply with the emerging determi-
nation in the White House to restore the status quo ante one way or another as
quickly as possible. Like the Chairman, President Bush hoped to avoid going to
war. But he had less condence than Powell in the ecacy of sanctions and felt that
the longer the West delayed in acting, the more entrenched Saddam would become.
Applying a historical perspective, Bush saw a “direct analogy” between the invasion
of Kuwait and Nazi Germany’s aggression against Poland in World War II. Prodded
by Scowcroft, who considered Powell overly cautious, the President moved steadily
toward a policy of liberation through military action and looked to Cheney to
manage the details and bring the Joint Chiefs of Sta into line. “Cheney recognized
early that sooner or later it would come to force,” Bush recalled. “Dick was probably
ahead of his military on this.”
14
During the early days of the crisis, as the administration sought to dene its
position, Powell and Cheney seemed to go separate ways. Resisting hasty decisions
and commitments, Powell played for time and tried to focus the debate on political
objectives and whether military action was in the best interest of the United States.
Cheney became frustrated and
insisted that Powell concentrate more on developing
and rening military options.
15
“Colin,” he said, “you’re Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
You’re not Secretary of State. You’re not the National Security Advisor anymore. And
you’re not Secretary of Defense. So stick to military matters.” Looking back, Powell
agreed that Cheney was right, but he gave way grudgingly and oered military advice
that was almost always framed, as only Powell could do, around its potential political
impact during the ensuing planning process and buildup of forces.
16
OperatiOnal planning Begins
Despite the Goldwater-Nichols reforms, operational planning for Desert Shield–Desert
Storm encountered many of the problems the Joint Chiefs had experienced dur-
ing crises in the past. This included initial confusion and uncertainty, followed by
largely improvised responses, with inputs from several sources at the same time. While
Powell was gradually turning the Joint Sta into an unrivaled planning and sta-
action organization, he had yet to complete the process. Thus, the door remained
open for the Services’ planning stas to make inputs, often on their own initiative.
With limited sta available and his own plans in ux, Schwarzkopf desperately needed
511
STorM in THE DESErT
help from wherever he could get it. The result was a rather chaotic period at the outset
of the crisis that saw planning diverge along two separate lines, one running through
the Joint Sta where Powell’s inuence predominated, the other through a wholly
separate Air Sta planning cell known as Checkmate. Eventually, these lines converged
at Schwarzkopf’s USCENTCOM headquarters, where they became integrated into
an overall strategic concept. But in their origins and purpose, they reected two
sharply dierent military philosophies for coping with the crisis.
Powell and the Joint Sta initially occupied the stronger and more inuential
position owing to their statutory role and increasing preeminence within military
planning circles. After the extraordinary success of the Panama invasion, few dared
to gainsay the Joint Sta’s growing skill for organizing and coordinating joint oper-
ations. While the President had not yet fully made up his mind about Kuwait, those
close to him could sense the drift in his thinking. As a precaution, in addition to
the defensive actions taken under Operation Desert Shield at the outset of the crisis,
Secretary Cheney ordered the CJCS and USCENTCOM to develop an oensive
option that would be available to the President in case Saddam Hussein chose to
engage in further aggression or other unacceptable behavior, such as killing Kuwaiti
citizens or foreign nationals in Kuwait or Iraq.
17
As characterized by one account,
the Joint Sta ’s earliest response resembled “a typical cold-war, limited-option sort
of thing.”
18
Using OPLAN 1002-90 as their guide, Joint Sta planners initially es-
timated that evicting the Iraqis could be done with a force not much larger than
that being organized at the time for Operation Desert Shield—about 200,000 troops
plus supporting air and naval units. Powell, however, found these estimates insuf-
cient. With his eye on avoiding a military confrontation, the Chairman hoped to
intimidate Saddam and convince him through a combination of sanctions and a
highly visible military buildup to back down without a ght. Should that approach
fail, he wanted to be prepared to conduct “a full-scale air, land, and sea campaign”
that would quickly overwhelm Saddam, just as he had overwhelmed Noriega. “We
had learned a lesson in Panama,” Powell contended. “Go in big and end it quickly.”
With these as Powell’s planning guidelines, Joint Sta estimates of the required force
varied almost daily and became practically open-ended.
19
Initially, Powell operated under very few constraints. Looking at the military
possibilities and various options, a consensus developed early on in Washington
that the United States would need sizable forces to counter Saddam and that the
build-down under the base-force plan, only recently announced by the President,
should be put on hold. Yet as projected force requirements for the Middle East be-
gan to mount, they pointed to increased expenditures that left senior administration
ocials decidedly uneasy. Hoping to defray some of the “staggering” expense, as
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CounCil of War
Secretary of State Baker described it, the Bush administration actively solicited con-
tributions of money and/or troops from around the world to create a multinational
coalition to liberate Kuwait. Eventually, nearly fty countries agreed to provide
assistance in one form or another. But even with those inputs, there was still a high
likelihood that the United States would bear the brunt of the costs.
20
Cheney never presumed to challenge Powell’s professional expertise, but as
Secretary of Defense, his rst concern was to weigh the nancial impact of the
operation. It was on that basis that he began to take a closer look at the proposals
coming out of the Joint Sta. The Goldwater-Nichols Act may have streamlined
the advisory process, making it more timely and responsive, but it also inadvertently
created barriers to the ow of military ideas and information reaching the Secre-
tary, the President, and the NSC. Though he continued to rely heavily on Powell
and the Joint Sta, Cheney decided to shop for other views as well. As one military
analyst described it, “Cheney adroitly and informally bypassed Powell for additional
military opinions to assure himself of diering views. . . . This technique did not sit
well with Powell and, although he never challenged Cheney’s right to solicit advice
from others, it angered him.”
21
The most attractive alternative to a large-scale buildup on the ground was
increased reliance on airpower. Actually, Powell and Cheney were both skeptical
of strategies built around airpower and could not nd much evidence that the air
campaigns of previous wars had been either very successful or decisive. In years past,
even some airpower enthusiasts would have agreed. But since Vietnam, as the Air
Force shed its dependence on nuclear weapons and turned to reviving its conven-
tional capabilities, its condence in the ecacy of airpower rose steadily. By the end
of the Cold War, with the advent of improved planes employing stealth technology,
increasingly reliable precision-guided munitions, and more eective command and
control using high-speed computers and space-based satellites, the chances of a con-
ventional bombing campaign having a decisive impact on future wars seemed more
assured than ever. Little by little, as interest at the White House in developing an
airpower-oriented strategy began to grow, views on airpower around the Pentagon
likewise began to change.
22
Powell concurred that airpower had a major role to play, and in the immediate
aftermath of the Iraqi invasion both he and Schwarzkopf turned to airpower as their
most readily available and eective means of deterring Saddam from further aggres-
sion or punishing him if he should make a move against Saudi Arabia.
23
Of the forces
rushed to the Middle East under Operation Desert Shield, Joint Sta planners put
major emphasis on large Air Force deployments of combat aircraft and aerial recon-
naissance planes as the bulk of the initial “package.” All the same, Powell resisted the
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STorM in THE DESErT
notion, popular in some quarters of the Air Force, that a carefully orchestrated air
campaign could practically win a war alone.
24
To Powell’s consternation, the Air Force
Chief of Sta, General Michael J. Dugan, openly suggested such a possibility shortly
after Iraq invaded Kuwait. During the return ight from a fact-nding trip to the
Middle East in August 1990, Dugan regaled reporters with his views, which subse-
quently appeared in the Washington Post. While making the Iraqis “look like a push-
over” with airpower, Powell recalled, Dugan further suggested that American military
planners were “taking their cue from Israel” on how to deal with Saddam, a remark
that was sure to antagonize many Arabs. Cheney agreed that Dugan’s behavior was
“dumb, dumb, dumb” and promptly red him for “poor judgment.” The ignominious
departure meant that Dugan’s tenure as Chief of Sta lasted only 3 months.
25
Even though airpower advocates had lost one of their strongest and most inu-
ential spokesmen, their cause remained very much alive. Hints of growing interest
in airpower at the White House doubtless fueled the process. Soon to emerge as the
initial architect of the air campaign against Iraq was Air Force Colonel John A. War-
den III, who headed a planning cell in the Air Sta known as Checkmate. Trained
as a ghter pilot, Warden served in Vietnam and during the 1970s and 1980s steadily
rened his views on the role and application of airpower. Some regarded him as the
most innovative thinker the Air Force had produced since Billy Mitchell after World
War I. Basi cally, Warden took issue with the AirLand Battle doctrine, the dominant
mili tary concept since Vietnam, which urged closer coordination between ground
and air forces, with the aim of using airpower to achieve decisive maneuver on the
ground. In Warden’s scheme of things, air superiority should take precedence; once
achieved, “in many circumstances it alone can win a war.”
26
Amid rising tensions in the Middle East, Warden emerged as the leading spokes-
man for increased reliance on airpower in the expected showdown with Saddam.
One of Warden’s admirers was Secretary of the Air Force Donald B. Rice, a former
president of the RAND Corporation (originally an Air Force think tank) and an
ardent proponent of airpower. If previous U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf had
been primarily a Navy show and toppling Noriega predominantly an Army aair,
Rice and like-minded others wanted the looming conict with Iraq to be rst and
foremost an air war. Warden and his sta (a group comprised initially of about two
dozen young Air Force ocers) were eager to oblige. Within days of Iraq’s invasion
of Kuwait, they received an urgent request from the Vice Chief of Sta of the Air
Force to provide General Schwarzkopf with advisory assistance. Expecting to be
called upon sooner or later, Warden had initiated work the day before on an outline
plan called “Instant Thunder” for strategic air operations against Iraq. As described
by Air Force historian Richard G. Davis, “Instant Thunder” was “a stand-alone
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CounCil of War
war-stopper” that called for a concerted 6-day eort designed to incapacitate the
Iraqi leadership and destroy its key military capabilities.
27
While Powell duly acknowledged Checkmate’s contributions, terming them
“the heart of the Desert Storm air war,” he took issue with the single-Service ap-
proach and around mid-August directed that Army, Navy, and Marine Corps of-
cers be included in Warden’s organization. Thenceforth, Checkmate’s papers and
reports bore the logo of the Joint Sta, and its activities acquired the appearance, if
not always the reality, of jointness under the Directorate of Operations (J-3).
28
The
spirit of Goldwater-Nichols notwithstanding, inter-Service coordination, especially
with the Navy, remained tenuous throughout the crisis. As eager as the Air Force
was to leave its mark, the Navy disliked having its carrier-based aircraft placed under
a joint tasking system and would have preferred to operate on its own.
29
During the
conict, applying its own priorities as the opportunity arose, the Navy withheld as
many as a third of its aircraft to protect its carriers. Of the Navy planes that did par-
ticipate in oensive operations, only a limited number were equipped to deliver the
precision-guided munitions that were crucial to the execution of Warden’s strategic
bombing concept. The Navy’s most signicant contribution to the air campaign
was its Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles (TLAMs). Launched from surface ships
and attack submarines, the low-ying TLAMs were ideal for daytime attacks against
highly defended targets and could also be used when adverse weather grounded
ghter-bombers.
30
Checkmate’s direct involvement in shaping the air war was relatively short-
lived. At Schwarzkopf’s request, Warden ew to Riyadh and on August 20 briefed
Lieutenant General Charles A. Horner, USAF, Schwarzkopf’s air deputy and US-
CENTCOM’s acting forward commander. Horner accepted Checkmate’s target
scheme but rejected Warden’s “airpower alone” strategy because it ignored the large
number of Iraqi troops and tanks poised on the border with Saudi Arabia.
31
Assert-
ing control from there on out, Horner created his own Special Planning Group for
air operations, a multi-Service unit (later expanded to include NATO and Saudi
representatives), and placed Brigadier General Buster C. Glosson, USAF, in charge.
Dubbed the “Black Hole,” it operated in utmost secrecy out of the basement of the
Royal Saudi Air Force headquarters in downtown Riyadh. Throughout the crisis,
Glosson was in constant contact with Warden and drew heavily on Checkmate for
advice, ideas, and personnel. But from that point on, primary responsibility for air
war planning became an inter-Service operation, with Checkmate, the Joint Sta,
and Glosson’s Black Hole organization in Saudi Arabia working in unison.
32
Checkmate’s eclipse brought a fundamental change of philosophy that steered
planning for the air campaign back into line with Powell’s view of airpower as a
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STorM in THE DESErT
supporting element of the ground war. On that point, Powell and Schwarzkopf—
both Army ocers—thought exactly alike. “Instant Thunder” disappeared and in
its place emerged a more conventional plan for an integrated air-ground cam-
paign. Though still built around Warden’s phased sequence of attacks and basic tar-
get scheme, Schwarzkopf’s integrated approach took a larger range of military and
related targets into account. As the target list grew, so did the need for aircraft,
intelligence, and logistical support. What Warden and his colleagues in Checkmate
had originally envisioned as an intensive 6-day bombing and interdiction campaign
turned into plans for a month or more of round-the-clock air operations aimed not
just at driving the Iraqis out of Kuwait but at eliminating Saddam and his armed
forces as a future threat to the region.
the rOad tO war
By late September 1990, working closely with Schwarzkopf, Powell had assembled a
plan to defend Saudi Arabia and was gradually developing a military strategy to expel
the Iraqis from Kuwait, starting with an intense air campaign, should sanctions and
diplomacy fail. Major elements of the Desert Shield force were now in place, while the
remainder were either en route to Saudi Arabia or being tted out for deployment.
Whether more would follow remained to be seen. Although Powell had repeatedly
discussed the various options in general terms with Cheney and the President, he had
yet to receive a clear signal of the President’s intentions. As a result, nal preparations
remained in limbo. Privately, the President was increasingly reconciled to a military
showdown. Frustrated by Saddam’s intransigence in the face of eorts by Gorbachev
and others to broker a settlement, Bush saw the chances of a peaceful resolution
steadily slipping away and now looked on the looming confrontation as “a moral cru-
sade.” Rumors had already begun to spread that should armed intervention become
necessary, the JCS expected a minimum of 10,000 casualties and up to 50,000 if Sad-
dam used chemical and biological weapons. Even though public and congressional
opinion generally endorsed the administration’s “get tough” approach toward Saddam,
the prevailing sentiment leaned more toward sanctions than the exercise of military
power. Among leaders on Capitol Hill, reliance on air and sea capabilities received
preference over a potentially bloody ground campaign.
Realizing that the country was in no mood for a war if one could be avoided,
President Bush continued to defer a nal decision on military action. Before mak-
ing further commitments, he wanted a clearer picture of what it would take to de-
feat Saddam and arranged with Powell for a formal brieng at the White House on
October 11, 1990.
33
Schwarzkopf had recently moved his headquarters from Tampa
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CounCil of War
to Riyadh and, pleading that his plans were still gestating, wanted to come to Wash-
ington to explain the situation and lead the brieng himself. At Powell’s insistence,
however, he stayed behind and designated his chief of sta, Major General Robert
B. Johnston, USMC, to lead the USCENTCOM delegation. The day before going
to the White House, Powell held a dry-run presentation at the Pentagon for Cheney,
the Service chiefs, and senior members of the Joint Sta. Glosson summarized the
progress on the air war while an Army lieutenant colonel gave the brieng on the
ground campaign. Afterwards, Powell drew Glosson aside and admonished him for
making the air war look too easy. For the presentation the next day, Powell wanted
Glosson to “tone it down” and curb his estimates of the outcomes. “Be careful over
at the White House tomorrow,” Powell said. “I don’t want the President to grab
onto that air campaign as a solution to everything.”
34
The White House brieng on October 11 revealed a military planning process at
midstream. Glosson’s toned-down presentation notwithstanding, it was clear that plan-
ning for the air campaign was well ahead of preparations for the ground war, which
was now designated Phase IV in the planned sequence of operations. Utilizing forces
and equipment currently deployed, Phase IV was basically a single-corps thrust into
the middle of the Iraqi defenses, a strategy that one senior OSD ocial mocked as the
“charge of the light brigade into the wadi of death.”
35
While bypassing Iraqi strong
points, the proposed attack would still encounter key Iraqi ground units. Heavy casual-
ties were almost certain.
36
As Scowcroft remembered the brieng, it “sounded unen-
thusiastic, delivered by people who didn’t want to do the job. . . . I was appalled with
the presentation and afterwards I called Cheney to say I thought we had to do better.”
37
Like many of Roosevelt’s meetings with the Joint Chiefs of Sta during the
early days of World War II, the White House brieng on October 11, 1990, was a
largely exploratory aair. If Powell’s underlying purpose was to dissuade Bush from
hasty action, he was eminently successfully. “The brieng made me realize,” Bush
recalled, “we had a long way to go before . . . we had the means to accomplish our
mission expeditiously, without impossible loss of life.”
38
But the episode also deep-
ened the rift between Powell and Cheney and made the Secretary of Defense more
aware than ever that he needed an alternative to the CJCS as a source of advice.
Disappointed in what Powell and Schwarzkopf came up with, Cheney established
a special advisory unit in OSD headed by retired Army Lieutenant General Dale A.
Vesser. A former Director of J-5 and currently Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of
Defense for Resources and Plans, Vesser had been involved in deployment planning
for Desert Shield almost from the outset. His new tasking from the Secretary was to
double check the planning coming out of the Joint Sta and USCENTCOM and
to look into alternative strategic concepts.
39
517
STorM in THE DESErT
Shortly after the ill-starred White House brieng, at the urging of the President
and the Secretary of Defense, Powell ew to Saudi Arabia in hopes of nding a “more
imaginative” Phase IV strategy. He carried assurances from the President that Schwar-
zkopf could have “whatever forces he needed to do the job.”
40
Earlier, to augment his
planning sta, USCINCCENT requested help from the Jedi Knights, an elite Army
planning team from the Command and General Sta College at Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas. To overcome the defects in the earlier concept, they proposed a strategy that
promised a higher degree of success with fewer casualties through a anking maneu-
ver west of the Iraqi defenses in Kuwait. Though bolder and more innovative, the
new plan would also require more troops, more heavy armor, and additional air and
sea support. By the time Powell arrived, Schwarzkopf had already given the plan his
enthusiastic blessing and had a request in hand for at least another mechanized corps.
Powell cautioned that it might be necessary to secure “a clear mandate from Congress
and the American people” before bringing more forces into the Gulf or committing
them to combat. But his immediate concern was to reassure Schwarzkopf that, as the
President had indicated, he could have whatever he needed to complete his mission.
“If we go to war,” the Chairman said, “we will not do it halfway.”
41
Returning to Washington, Powell held a series of briengs starting with
Cheney and the Service chiefs to present the new strategy and its force require-
ments, now approaching half a million troops. While acknowledging that the new
plan needed work, he still saw it as a signicant improvement. By and large, the
Service chiefs agreed. The sole exception was General Merrill A. McPeak, who
succeeded Dugan as Air Force Chief of Sta. Suspecting that the available intel-
ligence had inated Iraqi capabilities, McPeak doubted the need for the massive
ground build-up that Powell and Schwarzkopf were planning and saw it mainly as
an attempt by the Army to embellish its role at Air Force expense. But his eorts to
dissuade Powell were apparently half-hearted and he soon gave up, realizing that the
momentum was against him.
42
On October 30, Powell personally presented the new strategy to the President
and his core group of advisors. Powell recalled that as he ran down the list of force
requirements, there were gasps and gulps from practically everyone in the room ex-
cept the President. Scowcroft thought the proposed augmentations were “so large
that one could speculate they were set forth by a command hoping their size would
change [the President’s] mind about pursuing a military option.”
43
Bush, however, was
unfazed. Remembering Glosson’s brieng of a few weeks before, he inquired about
the increased use of airpower in lieu of ground forces but found the Chairman more
adamantly opposed than ever. “Mr. President,” he said, “I wish to God that I could as-
sure you that airpower alone could do it, but you can’t take that chance.”
44
518
CounCil of War
To speed up deployment of the heavy armor Schwarzkopf requested, Powell
proposed withdrawing VII Corps from Germany (comprising half of the Army’s
strength in Europe) and moving it en masse to Saudi Arabia. Assuming all went well,
U.S. forces would be in a position to commence oensive air operations around the
middle of January 1991 and launch a ground attack a month later. Only a few years
earlier, with the Soviet threat hanging over Western Europe, the unilateral with-
drawal of U.S. forces from Germany on this scale was utterly unthinkable. But in
the light of recent events—the pending CFE Treaty and the collapse of Communist
power in Eastern Europe—the situation changed.
45
On November 8, President Bush announced a signicant augmentation in
the number of troops being sent to the Persian Gulf, setting o a political battle in
Washington that lasted into the new year.
46
At issue was the 1973 War Powers Act,
a legacy of Vietnam, which curbed the President’s authority to commit to combat
without explicit approval from Congress. Bush and Scowcroft both scoed at the
law, arguing that it infringed on the President’s duties as Commander in Chief and
was therefore unconstitutional. Powell, however, took the matter more seriously and
welcomed an open airing of the issues. During the preparations for the Panama op-
eration, he had not paid much attention to gathering congressional support, mainly
because he found sentiment on Capitol Hill to be ahead of the administration on
the need for intervention.
47
A large-scale war in the Middle East involving the
call-up of Reserves, with possibly thousands of U.S. casualties, was another matter.
Echoing positions taken by the Joint Chiefs from the early days of the Reagan ad-
ministration on, Powell wanted congressional preferences clearly on record before
taking military action against Saddam. The upshot was a vigorous debate in Con-
gress culminating on January 12, 1991, in the adoption of resolutions by both houses
authorizing the President to use force to expel the Iraqis from Kuwait in accordance
with UN directives. At long last, Powell had the mandate he wanted.
final plans and preparatiOns
President Bush’s decision to augment the U.S. buildup in the Persian Gulf set the
stage for the largest U.S. military campaign since Vietnam—the liberation of Kuwait,
also known as Operation Desert Storm. Like the 1944 D-Day invasion of Europe,
Desert Storm was both a joint and combined operation. As such, it tested not only
the Bush administration’s diplomatic skills in coalition-building, but also its progress
toward fullling the goals of the Goldwater-Nichols Act. While not the resounding
display of “jointness” that some hoped it would be, the overall operation still reected
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STorM in THE DESErT
an increased level of inter-Service cooperation and collaboration, a positive sign that
the Goldwater-Nichols reforms were slowly but surely taking hold.
At the heart of the American-led eort to liberate Kuwait was an unusual set of
command and control arrangements. From his temporary headquarters in Riyadh,
General Schwarzkopf exercised broad strategic direction over an international coali-
tion that grew to 700,000 troops representing 28 countries by the time military ac-
tion commenced early in 1991. His direct operational control (OPCON) extended
to about two-thirds of the total, mostly U.S. and British forces. French forces oper-
ated independently but coordinated closely with USCENTCOM. Egyptian, Syrian,
and other Islamic forces invited to participate in military operations did so with the
understanding that they would be subject to Saudi OPCON. A tricky arrangement
in theory, it worked remarkably well in practice. By the time the ground oensive
began in February 1991, the coalition had eectively evolved into two combined
commands—the Western allies under Schwarzkopf, and the Islamic members under
the senior Saudi commander, Prince Khalid bin Sultan.
48
Final planning and preparations for Desert Storm took place through
Schwarzkopf’s USCENTCOM organization. Like other combatant commands
under the Joint Chiefs, USCENTCOM operated at the top with an integrated
military sta but functioned through Service-oriented subcommands for ground,
sea, air, and amphibious operations.
49
The only one of those that approached truly
joint-combined status during Desert Shield–Desert Storm was Horner’s air compo-
nent, U.S. Air Forces Central Command (CENTAF), which from September 1990
on included Navy, Marine, and British representatives.
50
Among his duties, Horner
functioned as Joint Forces Air Component Commander (JFACC), in which capac-
ity he had authority to plan the air war, but not Service-specic command for any-
thing other than Air Force assets.
51
Still, his control of coalition air assets exceeded
that of any U.S. commander in either the Korean or Vietnam Wars.
52
Despite its
joint appearance, CENTAF retained a distinctly Air Force perspective that heavily
inuenced the use of intelligence, targeting priorities, and the allocation of re-
sources for the air campaign—all sources of friction to some degree with the other
Services, which had their own views on how airpower should be applied. The Navy,
which operated under less rigid planning procedures than the Air Force, found
CENTAF’s methods especially onerous.
53
As a rule, CENTAF either worked around
those problems or relied on informal agreements to paper over them. Though not
always the ideal solution, these ad hoc agreements seemed to avoid any serious
misunderstandings. One of the earliest and most successful compromises, dating
from September 1990, was the agreement reached between CENTAF and the
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CounCil of War
Marine Corps, under which the Marines allocated roughly half their combat planes
in-theater to CENTAF-directed strategic operations in exchange for assurances of
B–52 and Air Force tactical support of their ground operations.
54
While providing overall strategic direction, Schwarzkopf was determined to
avoid micromanaging eld operations as he and Powell often complained McNamara
and President Johnson did in Vietnam, to the detriment of the war eort. Preferring
a system of decentralized command, he allowed his subordinates maximum freedom
of action as long as they adhered to USCINCCENT’s overall strategy. That applied to
planning for the air war as well as for the ground campaign and resulted in less than
ideal coordination between USCENTCOM’s component commands. The upshot
was that Schwarzkopf personally assumed operational control of all ground forces in
the Kuwait Theater of Operations (KTO) but was still unable, once the ghting be-
gan, to achieve much more than nominal synchronization between USCENTCOM’s
advancing Army (ARCENT) and Marine Corps (MARCENT) components.
55
Despite his reputation for fastidious planning and attention to detail, Powell left
Schwarzkopf more or less alone once they had an agreed plan of action. Describing
him as “testy by nature” and “short-tempered,” Powell acknowledged that Schwarzkopf
could be dicult to work with. But he had the utmost condence in the USCINC-
CENT’s leadership and wanted to protect the longstanding American tradition that
accorded commanders independence and initiative in the eld, a concept he thought
the Vietnam experience had assailed. In eect, Powell extended this doctrine a step
further by applying it to the planning process. Using his CJCS position as a buer,
he allowed Schwarzkopf to move ahead with nal preparations for Desert Storm with
minimal interference from the “armchair strategists” in Washington.
56
On December 19, 1990, Powell and Cheney arrived in Riyadh for 2 days of
briengs, the nal review before the President approved launching Desert Storm.
Back in Washington, there was growing pressure from Secretary of the Air Force
Rice and ocers on the Air Sta to suspend preparations for a ground assault and to
rely exclusively on airpower to defeat the Iraqis. At issue was Europe’s overburdened
transportation network, which was causing intermittent disruptions in redeploying
VII Corps’ heavy equipment from Germany to the Middle East.
57
Seizing the op-
portunity, Rice launched an eleventh-hour eort to derail the ground oensive and
arranged for Warden to conduct a special brieng for the Secretary of Defense on
December 11 to persuade Cheney that an airpower-alone strategy could crush Iraqi
resistance and win the war. Giving a heavy-handed performance, Warden insisted
that a concerted air campaign could cut the strength of the Republican Guard in
half and with enough time and bombs reduce Iraqi armor and artillery in the KTO
521
STorM in THE DESErT
by 90 percent. Cheney was noncommittal, but as he and Powell arrived in Riyadh
they knew they faced some hard decisions.
58
Much of what they heard covered familiar ground. While Horner defended
the particulars of the air campaign as currently planned, Schwarzkopf did the same
for the ground war. Wanting to leave no stone unturned, Cheney peppered both
commanders with tough questions and eventually asked them point blank whether
Warden and other airpower enthusiasts were right in claiming that air strikes could
take the Republican Guard down by 50 percent. Horner and Schwarzkopf ac-
knowledged that computer analysis deemed it feasible and that Glosson and his
sta were operating with that goal in mind. But with the moment of truth fast ap-
proaching, they conceded that it was a tall order and that nothing like it had ever
been tried. While oering a generally positive assessment, Horner made no secret
of his doubts.
59
As for the ground oensive, Schwarzkopf oered assurances that despite delays,
the buildup was moving ahead and would continue under cover of the air strikes.
He estimated that he would be ready to launch his land attack (G-Day) sometime
between mid-February and March 1. Ground combat would entail several inter-
related operations. XVIII Airborne Corps and a French division would attack to
the west and cut o Iraqi forces in the KTO. VII Corps and British units would
conduct the main Coalition eort and attack to the east of XVIII Corps, engaging
and destroying the Republican Guard. Finally, along the coast, U.S. Marines and
Arab units would launch a combined oensive to hold enemy forces and eventually
open the way for retaking Kuwait City. Schwarzkopf expected to have Kuwait back
in safe hands in 2 weeks and spend another 4 weeks consolidating his victory. What
would happen after that was apparently not discussed.
60
Seeing no better alternative, the Secretary of Defense approved USCINC-
CENT’s plans and returned to Washington where he and Powell discussed them
further with the President. While lauding the professionalism of the air campaign
planners, Cheney admitted to being less impressed with preparations for the ground
war. Though there was still the debate in Congress to contend with, Bush agreed
to go ahead with scheduling the air oensive but determined that the actual start
of the land campaign would require a subsequent Presidential decision in February.
Only a few weeks earlier, Bush had listened to what he characterized as an “upbeat
brieng” by McPeak on the air campaign and may have hoped it would rule the
day and avoid the need for a bloody confrontation on the ground. Powell, as always,
remained skeptical, but everyone involved realized that the time for planning and
for theoretical discussions was fast drawing to a close.
61
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CounCil of War
On January 15, 1991, President Bush approved a general statement of war aims
(NSD 54) authorizing U.S. military action in accordance with various UN resolu-
tions. Despite the enormous force the United States and its coalition partners were
assembling, the stated objectives in the President’s directive were limited to bringing
about “Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait” and restoring the region to the status quo
prior to the invasion. Only if Saddam resorted to the use of chemical, biological, or
nuclear weapons, carried through on threats to mount a terrorist campaign against
the United States and its allies, or adopted a scorched earth policy by destroying
Kuwait’s oil elds, should steps be taken to replace his regime.
62
In contrast, US-
CENTCOM’s preparations for military action both on the ground and in the air—
plans approved at the highest levels—envisioned a much more ambitious agenda
that included not only the restoration of Kuwait’s sovereignty but also the de facto
disarmament of Iraq and the annihilation of Saddam’s most formidable military
forces, the Republican Guard. Under the air campaign, U.S. forces planned to “frag-
ment and disrupt Iraqi political and military leadership,” a goal sometimes described
as “decapitating” the Iraqi government. In short, there would be no holding back.
If the opportunity presented itself, Schwarzkopf and his eld commanders had tacit
authority to go all the way and eradicate Saddam’s regime.
63
liBerating Kuwait: the air war
Operation Desert Storm commenced during the early hours of January 17, 1991, with
an attack by Army Apache helicopters against enemy radar installations in western
Iraq. As the Iraqi installations burned, more than one hundred coalition ghter-
bombers swept through the “hole” in the enemy radar fence bound for various
targets across the country. Almost simultaneously, a squadron of Air Force Stealth
F–117s using precision-guided bombs struck key command, control, and communi-
cations nodes in Baghdad, while British Tornados bombed key airelds with special
munitions designed to incapacitate the runways. There soon followed additional at-
tacks from conventional air-launched cruise missiles (CALCMs) delivered by B–52s
based in the United States and Tomahawk missiles red from Navy vessels in the
Persian Gulf and Red Sea. All in all, it was a dazzling display of joint and combined
airpower and the most closely coordinated operation of its kind in history. Five
hours into the air campaign, a voice identied as Saddam Hussein’s declared over
state radio: “The great duel, the mother of all battles, has begun.”
Coalition air and missile strikes continued with only occasional let-up until
the cessation of hostilities on February 28, 1991. Though a few Iraqi jets made it
into the air to oer a challenge, most stayed on the ground. Some pilots ew their
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planes to sanctuary in neighboring Iran. Initially, the bombing campaign adhered
closely to the targeting and phased sequence of attacks as recommended by War-
den’s Checkmate organization and as subsequently modied by Glosson’s Special
Planning Group. Directed against 12 separate target sets, the intended goals of the air
campaign were to assure coalition forces’ air superiority, cripple Saddam’s political
and military command and control, disrupt essential industries and public services,
isolate Iraqi forces in Kuwait and eventually defeat them, and deny Iraq the where-
withal to carry out future aggression or to pose a threat with nuclear, biological, or
chemical weapons. In pursuit of those objectives, coalition forces ew nearly 65,000
combat sorties during the war, with 75 percent of them directed against Iraqi forces
in the KTO.
64
Shortly after the air war began, planners came under unexpected political pres-
sure to amend their objectives. The day after the air campaign commenced, Saddam
made good on a threat to launch Scud missiles armed with high-explosive warheads
against Israel. Six hit Tel Aviv and two landed on Haifa, doing little physical dam-
age but having immense psychological impact.
65
Since the onset of the crisis, the
Bush administration did everything it could to dissuade the Israelis from becoming
involved and now faced the prospect of Israeli retaliation unless U.S. forces took
out the Scuds. With an eective range of only 500 miles, a relatively small warhead
(between 200 and 500 pounds), and limited accuracy, the Scud missile, in Horner’s
opinion, was “militarily insignicant.” Only if the Iraqis armed their Scuds with
chemical or biological agents did Horner or other military planners see a serious
danger. Weighing one thing against another, CENTAF planners downplayed the
Scud threat. After destroying the xed sites targeted at the outset of the bombing
campaign, they looked to the Army’s Patriot missile defense system to cope with
the problem.
66
Following the attacks on Israel, however, Schwarzkopf and Horner came under
mounting pressure from Washington to divert more air assets than they had intended
to neutralize the Scuds. Intelligence was sketchy and proved to be on the low end,
but as a working estimate planners assumed an Iraqi arsenal of 600 Scud missiles (and
variants), 36 mobile launchers, and 28 xed launchers in 5 complexes in western
Iraq.
67
The mobile systems proved the most vexing. Out of roughly 2,000 sorties
per day during the early stages of the air campaign, Schwarzkopf estimated that US-
CENTCOM and its allies diverted approximately a third of their assets to the mobile
“Scud hunt,” largely to no avail other than to placate the Israelis.
68
Meanwhile, NATO
reassigned four Patriot antimissile batteries to Israel, while the Joint Chiefs established
a special planning cell within the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, headed by a senior Joint
Sta intelligence ocer, to coordinate with the Israelis.
69
As a rule, Schwarzkopf had
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CounCil of War
a low professional opinion of special operations forces and used them sparingly. But
to help get the air campaign back on track, he called in the Joint Special Operations
Command (JSOC), which deployed a 400-man unit to western Iraq in late January
1991. Joined by British commandos, the JSOC teams scoured the Iraqi desert for mo-
bile Scuds and claimed a dozen “kills,” though none were conrmed.
70
According to after-action reports, the hunt for the elusive Scuds caused pre-
planned attacks against some targets to be postponed but did not signicantly de-
grade the eectiveness of the air campaign. Equally if not more detrimental to the
air war was a weather front that stalled over Iraq on the third day of the conict,
disrupting operations for the next 3 days and resulting in the cancelation of some
attacks. But by the tenth day of the oensive (D+10), the coalition had achieved
undisputed air superiority over Iraq, permitting operations at high and medium
altitudes with “virtual impunity.” From that point on, coalition aircraft went about
their tasks with systematic thoroughness.
71
After the war, the air campaign’s role in Iraq’s defeat became a hotly debated
issue. For those who had been around long enough, it conjured up memories of
the contentious strategic bombing controversy after World War II (see chapter 3).
Most assessments gave the air campaign mixed marks. On the plus side, it was with-
out doubt a striking success in demonstrating the capabilities of new technologies
(especially Stealth ghter-bombers and precision-guided munitions) in crippling
Iraq’s communications and war-supporting infrastructure. But it was less eective
in undermining Saddam’s leadership and eliminating the residual capabilities of his
armed forces. Intelligence on Saddam’s chemical, biological, and nuclear programs
proved so poor that many key installations that were carefully hidden remained
untouched. While air bombardment destroyed thousands of Iraqi tanks and other
vehicles, about half of the losses occurred during the Iraqi Army’s headlong retreat
in the face of advancing coalition ground forces. The goal of a 50 percent reduction
in eective Iraqi military strength through airpower prior to launching the ground
war was never achieved.
72
A large part of the explanation for the air campaign’s
shortcomings was the brief duration of the war. Hence, even in areas where air-
power achieved all of its objectives, it still fell below expectations. “It was prudent to
have done so,” observed the authors of the Gulf War Airpower Survey, “but attack-
ing oil reneries and storage in Iraq bore no signicant military results due to the
swift collapse of the Iraqi Army.” The same was essentially true of strategic attacks
against Iraq’s electrical power grid and other public services.
73
Yet without the air war, the liberation of Kuwait doubtless would have taken far
longer at far greater cost. Assured by their superiors that the air campaign would last
no more than a week, many Iraqi units found the month-long bombing intolerable
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STorM in THE DESErT
and surrendered at the rst opportunity when the ground campaign began.
74
As an
exercise in jointness, the air war was probably the most successful and eective single
part of the campaign. Air Force planners played the leading role in orchestrating the
air war and in overseeing its execution. The Air Force also provided more planes than
any other Service and ew the largest number of sorties—three and half times more
than the Navy and over 60 percent of the total for the conict.
75
As the dominant
Service in the air war, the Air Force tended to impose its judgments and values on
the other Services and coalition partners. Friction, especially with the Navy, became
virtually inevitable. But by the same token, there was a predisposition on the part of
all involved to compromise and cooperate as the need arose. In a very real sense, there
was no other choice. Mounting the air campaign was the most complex and techni-
cally demanding aspect of the Gulf War. It created an operational environment in
which success was directly dependent on eective joint collaboration.
phase iV: the grOund Campaign
While the United States and its allies achieved air superiority against Iraq with
relatively little diculty, indications were that they would have a much tougher
time overcoming resistance on the ground in Phase IV. Evicting an estimated half
million Iraqi troops from Kuwait, many of them heavily dug in and experienced in
trench warfare from years of conict with Iran, was a daunting prospect. More omi-
nous was the possibility that Saddam might employ chemical or biological weapons
against advancing coalition forces. Assessments, both ocial and unocial, ranged
from a few hundred to tens of thousands of American casualties. Preparing for the
worst, USCENTCOM’s medical sta expected as many as 20,000 U.S. killed and
wounded.
76
Though Scowcroft, McPeak, and a few others considered these esti-
mates of Iraqi capabilities exaggerated, most policymakers and planners were too
cautious not to take them seriously; hence the willingness of Bush and Cheney to
follow Powell’s advice and expedite a massive buildup of land armies.
In pushing for the buildup, Powell’s purpose had been twofold: to intimidate
Saddam into capitulating without a ght or, failing that, to apply overwhelming
force that would crush Iraqi resistance with as few losses as possible to the United
States and its allies. The air war was the critical rst step, but under the strategy em-
braced by Powell and Schwarzkopf it was never an end in itself. Though both lauded
the role of airpower, neither saw it as decisive. As in Panama, they expected the fate
of Kuwait to be decided on the ground.
Thinking along similar lines, Saddam was condent that his forces could ride
out an air bombardment and eectively resist a ground assault.
77
Drawing on his
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experience in positional warfare against Iran, Saddam created a layered defense with
elaborate trenches, sand berms, and mine elds to slow the attackers’ advance and
inict heavy casualties. Bolstering his strategic reserve, he quietly began removing
his Republican Guard divisions from Kuwait in September 1990 and redeployed
them to rear echelon positions. Regular army infantry replaced them. Time and
again during the war with Iran, Saddam used similar battleeld tactics. Once the
thrust of the attacker’s oensive was apparent and had been reduced by the forward
units, the reserve force made up of Republican Guard divisions would move in for
the kill and destroy the enemy. A successful strategy against the limited capabilities
of the Iranians, it proved considerably less eective against the coalition’s relent-
less air bombardment, heavy armor, mechanized artillery, and other sophisticated
weapons.
78
Coalition ground forces had limited contact with the opposing Iraqis prior to
launching their main oensive in late February 1991. Up to then, the largest and
most intense engagement was the battle of Khafji, a coastal Saudi town just south
of the Kuwaiti border. Believing that the coalition was massing its forces there for
a thrust up the coast, Saddam ordered a division-sized preemptive attack against
Khafji on January 29, 1991. Heavy ghting raged for two days. In the end both sides
claimed victory—the Iraqis for having requited themselves reasonably well in the
face of overwhelmingly stronger opposition and the coalition for inicting heavy
losses on the invaders and driving them back to their lines using intense air, artillery,
and naval bombardment. Militarily, the battle had little impact on the course of the
war. But it did much to bolster the morale of Saudi forces who had taken part in
the ghting and convinced Schwarzkopf that Iraqi combat skills were overrated.
79
By the time the main attack to liberate Kuwait commenced on February
23–24, Schwarzkopf had at his disposal one of the most impressive arrays of con-
ventional repower ever assembled including all the best of the Reagan buildup,
from the planes, helicopters, and missiles ying overhead, to the tanks and armored
personnel carriers on the ground, to the ships oshore. Since the Iraqis were armed
largely with Soviet tanks and other Eastern bloc weapons, some in the press likened
Desert Storm to a Cold War proxy conict. In line with the Bush administration’s
pending base force reorganization plan, many U.S. units and their equipment were
slated for immediate demobilization once Kuwait was liberated. Desert Storm was to
be their last hurrah.
Under the weight of this awesome force, Iraqi resistance crumbled faster than
anyone expected and the ghting was over in 100 hours. Some Iraqi units held their
ground and oered credible resistance, but many gave up quickly and surrendered
or deserted the battleeld. It turned out that allied intelligence had consistently
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STorM in THE DESErT
overestimated the size and capabilities of the Iraqi Army, so when the showdown
came it was almost anticlimactic. Instead of the half million or more Iraqi troops in
Kuwait as originally believed, there were probably between 200,000 and 220,000.
Prewar intelligence also credited the Iraqis with 800 more tanks and 600 more
artillery pieces than they had.
80
Enemy casualties were likewise far fewer than the
10,000 that were widely reported. A revisionist account, intentionally aimed at de-
ating such claims, asserted that there were as few as 4,500 Iraqi military losses
during both the air and ground wars. This conjecture, based on selective anecdotal
evidence, is probably too low. But remembering the unfavorable publicity and sor-
did controversy arising from McNamara’s enemy “body count” in Vietnam, Powell
suppressed the issuance of ocial gures on Iraqi losses.
81
Like the air war, the ground campaign fell short of achieving some of its key
objectives due in large part to its relatively brief duration. The greatest disappoint-
ment was the coalition’s failure to destroy the Republican Guard, one of the cor-
nerstones of Saddam’s political and military power. Eliminating the Guard as an ef-
fective ghting force was a declared objective in NSD 54 and was the responsibility
of the all-mechanized VII Corps commanded by Lieutenant General Frederick M.
Franks, Jr., USA, which spearheaded the main assault. Brought in on short notice
from Germany, VII Corps was organized, trained, and equipped to operate against
the Warsaw Pact along a fairly static front in Central Europe and did not have
much time to acclimate itself to the faster pace of desert warfare. “I do not want a
slow, ponderous pachyderm mentality,” Schwarzkopf declared. “I want VII Corps to
slam into the Republic Guard.”
82
Though Franks did what he could to pick up the
tempo, it was still not fast enough to suit the USCINCCENT. Ultimately, in com-
bination with ongoing air attacks, VII Corps inicted heavy equipment losses on
some of the Republican Guard’s best units, including the elite Medina, Hammurabi,
and Tawakalna divisions. Franks declared it “a victory of staggering battleeld di-
mensions.”
83
Conrming Franks’ assessment, Powell told President Bush that, based
on initial reports, U.S. forces were “crucifying” the enemy.
84
Later, however, Powell
learned that much of the Republican Guard never committed to battle and that
three divisions escaped essentially intact to the safety of fallback positions near the
Iraqi city of Basra.
85
Failure to destroy the Republican Guard meant that Saddam remained a cred-
ible and dangerous military power. As a result, instead of a prompt withdrawal from
the Persian Gulf, the United States became entangled for more than a decade in a
low-intensity conict using air and naval power to contain Saddam’s rogue regime
and police the region. While toppling Saddam was never an overt objective of Desert
Storm (indeed, some Islamic governments would never have joined the coalition if it
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was), it was always one of the Bush administration’s preferred outcomes. An elusive
goal, it would continue to haunt American foreign policy until the combined U.S.-
British invasion of Iraq in 2003 nally brought down Saddam’s government.
the pOst-hOstilities phase
On March 3, 1991, Schwarzkopf and senior ocers of the U.S.-led coalition met
with Iraqi generals at Safwan aireld just inside Iraq to conclude a ceasere. Look-
ing back, Bush and Scowcroft acknowledged that they agreed to halt the war based
on mistaken information that the Republican Guard had been largely destroyed
and that air strikes had rendered Saddam’s WMD research and production facilities
inoperable. By the time they learned otherwise, it was too late to reconsider. Sad-
dam’s politico-military base of power remained secure. Still, they insisted that they
had done the right thing by bringing the war to a prompt conclusion. The Bush
administration had achieved its declared aim of evicting the Iraqis from Kuwait,
but as the ghting subsided it faced an unexpected backlash of “bad press” arising
from reports of civilian casualties, televised bomb damage in Baghdad, and pictures
of destroyed enemy tanks and assorted vehicles along the “highway of death” out
of Kuwait City. President Bush wanted the United States to emerge from the war
with improved relations and a favorable image in the Arab world, and it served his
purposes better to limit further carnage.
86
After the war, there was much second-guessing that by ending the conict too
soon the United States and its partners had passed up the opportunity to topple
Saddam. Army planners attached to USCENTCOM had in fact sketched out a
plan for a march on Baghdad if the opportunity arose. But the concept they pro-
posed lacked dened objectives and assumed that the mere presence of U.S. forces
nearing the city would be enough to compel Saddam to capitulate and step down.
How U.S. forces would respond if Saddam refused was unclear. Not surprisingly,
the plan received a cool reception followed by a curt rejection at Schwarzkopf’s
headquarters.
87
Weighed against Desert Storm’s initial accomplishments, moreover,
U.S. and coalition casualties were incredibly light, and no one was eager to incur
more. While some in the Air Force would have preferred additional time to test
their theories about the role and impact of airpower, most were satised that they
made large strides toward proving their case. With enemy resistance collapsing on
all fronts, Powell and Schwarzkopf concurred that the Iraqi Army was a spent force
and that a ceasere would be in the interest of all concerned.
88
Compared to the meticulous planning that went into the military preparations for
the Gulf War, planning for the postwar period was sketchy and haphazard. According to
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STorM in THE DESErT
Charles W. Freeman, Jr., the U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, the Bush administration
downplayed long-term political planning lest leaks “unhinge the huge and unwieldy
coalition” the United States had so painstakingly put together to ght the war.
89
As a
result, preparing for the postwar period was not a high priority on anyone’s agenda. Still,
to some extent it was unavoidable. Undertaken on a close-hold basis, postwar planning
became largely an interagency distillation of views by the NSC Deputies Committee,
where the Vice Chairman, Admiral David E. Jeremiah, represented the JCS.
In early February 1991, while testifying on Capitol Hill, Secretary of State
Baker presented the gist of the deputies’ deliberations to that point. One propos-
al under active consideration was to create a permanent Arab peacekeeping force
backed by an increased U.S. naval presence in the Persian Gulf. During preliminary
discussions of this and other issues aecting postwar security arrangements, Joint
Sta (J-5) planners opposed an increased U.S. military presence in Southwest Asia
on the grounds that it would divert resources from other missions and go against
promises the United States made to the Saudis and other Arab governments that
Western forces would promptly withdraw from the region once Kuwait was liber-
ated. As the deputies’ deliberations progressed, however, a consensus emerged that
there was no alternative other than for the United States to assume a larger, more
active postwar role in Gulf aairs. While the UN was likely to have overall respon-
sibility, the United States, operating through USCENTCOM, had the only reliable
organization in place with the necessary resources to police the region, assure the
delivery of humanitarian aid to refugees displaced by the war, and assist Kuwait with
its reconstruction. The deputies agreed that to the extent feasible the U.S. presence
should be discrete and inconspicuous. For planning purposes, they were looking at
the prepositioning of supplies and equipment for several Army brigades that could
be quickly airlifted to the Middle East in case of renewed trouble, the permanent
stationing of an Air Force tactical ghter wing somewhere in the Persian Gulf, ad-
ditional units of Marines aoat oshore at all times, and an unspecied increase in
naval forces with more frequent carrier visits to the region.
90
The rest of Baker’s plan traversed familiar ground and envisioned regional arms
control agreements to curb the proliferation of conventional arms and prevent Iraq
from reviving its WMD capability, a program of regional economic development,
renewed energy conservation to lessen U.S. dependence on Middle East oil, and last
but not least a revived peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. The for-
midable agenda looked good on paper. But as the Secretary of State acknowledged,
the plan was still very tentative. To succeed it would need the full cooperation of all
involved, including the Iraqis. Hardest of all would be a revived Arab-Israeli peace
process that did not include substantial prior concessions from Israel.
91
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CounCil of War
Eorts by the Deputies Committee to clarify a postwar strategy for the Middle
East were still underway when the coalition’s senior military ocers met with their
Iraqi counterparts in early March to sign the Safwan ceasere accords. Some of
Cheney’s aides wanted the ceasere to include tough restrictions on Iraq’s military
capabilities and full Iraqi disclosure of all WMD research sites. But the Joint Sta
saw no need for such detail and argued successfully that specic guidance would
only complicate Schwarzkopf’s mission of negotiating an eective truce.
92
Modeled
on a recently adopted UN Security Council resolution (S/RES 686), the ceasere
imposed limited constraints on enemy forces and left Iraq’s military establishment
essentially intact. Toward the end of the Safwan meeting, the Iraqis requested per-
mission to use helicopters, which they insisted were essential for communication
purposes owing to the damage coalition bombing had caused to ground transporta-
tion systems. Schwarzkopf was without instructions on the matter and, treating it as
a reasonable request, agreed. He soon regretted his decision.
93
Shortly after the truce,
Iraqi armed forces began using helicopter gunships to help suppress rebellions that
had broken out among dissident Shiites in southern Iraq and Kurds in the north.
Press accounts exaggerated the role the helicopters actually played, but the impres-
sion in the West was that the coalition had seriously blundered by not banning them.
Thus, despite the setback in Kuwait, Saddam remained as deant and danger-
ous as ever and a source of continuing tensions in the Persian Gulf. All the same,
the most lasting impression from the Gulf War was that it was a stupendous military
triumph for the United States. Shaking o the stigma of Vietnam, U.S. forces had
put on an awesome display of military power that achieved stated objectives with
stunning eciency and eectiveness. The Powell Doctrine of applying overwhelm-
ing force against the enemy had again prevailed, probably saving countless American
lives. Not since World War II had the American public’s condence in the military
and its leadership been so high. Much of the adulation fell on Schwarzkopf, whose
gru, no-nonsense manner, and commanding bearing made him an instant celebrity.
Yet others basked in approbation as well. Indeed, for the vast majority of the Persian
Gulf veterans it was an exhilarating experience as they returned home to tickertape
parades and open-arm welcomes, honors that had eluded Vietnam veterans.
An unintended side eect of the Gulf War was the impetus it gave to reassess-
ing the nature of future conicts. In orchestrating such a lopsided victory, American
planners exploited the latest military technologies to the fullest and in so doing
made the defeat of Saddam’s forces look easy—maybe too easy. Underlying the
American success was a phenomenon known as the revolution in military aairs
(RMA), which helped give the United States swift military dominance over Iraq.
Dating from theoretical studies initiated in the 1970s, RMA stressed the interaction
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STorM in THE DESErT
of new forms of communications, improved battleeld management techniques,
and the application of “smart” weaponry to gain superiority over the enemy. As
the “lessons” of RMA’s application in the Gulf War emerged, the notion took hold
in some circles that future wars could be short, precise, and relatively painless. No
member of the JCS, least of all General Powell who had done as much as anyone
to engineer the victory, seriously believed that. But as the conict ended, it seemed
that a new era in warfare might be near at hand.
A further result of the war was the growing recognition that “jointness” had
been an integral part of the victory. Iraq’s defeat had come about not merely by
superior force of arms but through carefully coordinated planning and the joint
application of military power. While Service planning stas played key roles at the
outset of the crisis in shaping both the air and ground campaigns, and while the
conict had not always gone as scripted (especially during the ground war phase),
it was clear by the war’s end that joint direction and control had a major impact in
shaping the outcome. Indeed, in Powell’s estimation, the Gulf War saw the “triumph
of joint operational art.”
94
That jointness would be a prerequisite to the success of
future military operations as resources continued to contract was almost certain.
Implementation of the Goldwater-Nichols Act may not yet have been in full stride
as its authors intended, but things were moving inexorably in that direction.
Notes
1 NSR 10, “US Policy Toward the Persian Gulf,” February 22, 1989 (declassied), Bush Presi-
dential Records, available at <http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/pdfs/nsr/nsr10.pdf.
2 NSD 26, October 2, 1989, “US Policy Toward the Persian Gulf,” U, Bush Presidential
Records, available at <http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/pdfs/nsd/nsd26.pdf>.
3 Yevgeny Primakov, Russia and the Arabs, trans. Paul Gould (New York: Basic Books,
2009), 314–315.
4 Powell mentions the military’s apprehension in his Oral History, PBS “Frontline,” aired
January 9, 1996, transcript, 3–4, available at <www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/
gulf/oral/decision.html>.
5 NSD 26, October 2, 1989, loc. cit.; James A. Baker III, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolu-
tion, War and Peace, 1989–1992 (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995), 266–267.
6 Powell Oral History, PBS “Frontline,” transcript, 3.
7 Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, 272.
8 “Remarks and an Exchange with Reporters on the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait,” August
5, 1990, Bush Public Papers, 1990, 1102.
9 Quoted in Matthew M. Aid, The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security
Agency (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009), 192.
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CounCil of War
10 Robert H. Scales, Jr., Certain Victory: United States Army in the Gulf War (Washington,
DC: Oce of the Chief of Sta, United States Army, 1993), 43.
11 Alexander S. Cochran et al., Gulf War Airpower Survey, Vol. I., Part I, Planning (Washing-
ton, DC: GPO, 1993), 203–207 (series hereafter cited as GWAPS); and U.S. Department
of Defense (DOD), Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress (Washing-
ton, DC: GPO, 1992), 9–16.
12 Quoted in H. Norman Schwarzkopf, with Peter Petre, It Doesn’t Take a Hero (New York:
Bantam Books, 1993), 344.
13 Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, The Generals’ War: The Inside Story of the
Conict in the Gulf (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995), 130–131.
14 George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Knopf, 1998), 354, 375.
15 Dick Cheney, with Liz Cheney, In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir (New York:
Threshold Editions, 2011), 185.
16 Colin L. Powell, American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), 465–466.
17 DOD, 65.
18 Richard T. Reynolds, Heart of the Storm: The Genesis of the Air Campaign Against Iraq
(Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 1995), 16.
19 Powell, American Journey, 479, 487.
20 Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, 288.
21 Bernard E. Trainor, “Jointness, Service Culture, and the Gulf War,” Joint Force Quarterly
(Winter 1993–94): 72.
22 Richard G. Davis, On Target: Organizing and Executing the Strategic Air Campaign Against
Iraq (Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 2002), 3–9.
23 Diane T. Putney, Airpower Advantage: Planning the Gulf War Air Campaign, 1989–1991
(Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 2004), 24.
24 See Powell’s testimony of December 3, 1990, in U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on
Armed Services, Hearings: Crisis in the Persian Gulf Region—U.S. Policy Options and Im-
plications, 101:2 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1990), 662–663; and Putney, 263–264.
25 Powell, American Journey, 476–477.
26 John A. Warden III, The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat (Washington, DC: Na-
tional Defense University Press, 1988), 169. Also see Richard P. Hallion, Storm over
Iraq: Airpower and the Gulf War (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992),
116–117.
27 Thomas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen, Gulf War Airpower Survey: Summary Report
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1993), 36–37; Richard G. Davis, “Strategic Bombardment in
the Gulf War,” in R. Cargill Hall, ed., Case Studies in Strategic Bombardment (Washington,
DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1998), 546–547.
28 GWAPS, I, Pt. I, 114; DOD, 65.
29 Edward J. Marolda and Robert J. Schneller, Jr., Shield and Sword: The United States Navy
and the Persian Gulf War (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1998), 184.
30 Putney, 344.
31 GWAPS, I, Pt. I, 125–126, and Pt. II, 158.
533
STorM in THE DESErT
32 Davis, “Strategic Bombardment in the Gulf War,” 545.
33 Bob Woodward, The Commanders (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), 303.
34 Powell quotations from Putney, 221.
35 Henry Rowen quoted in Gordon and Trainor, 144.
36 Frank N. Schubert and Theresa L. Kraus, eds., The Whirlwind War: The United States Army
in Operations DESERT SHIELD and DESERT STORM (Washington, DC: Center of
Military History, 1995), 107.
37 Bush and Scowcroft, 381; Cheney Oral History Interview, no date, PBS “Frontline,”
transcript, 4, available at <www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/cheney>.
38 Bush and Scowcroft, 381.
39 Cheney, “Frontline” Oral History, 5; Putney, 228; Gordon and Trainor, 144–145. One of
Vesser’s tasks was to evaluate the so-called “Western Excursion,” a proposal developed
in OSD to occupy western Iraq and from there to launch or threaten an attack on
Baghdad. Arguing that it was logistically unsupportable, USCENTCOM strenuously
opposed the plan and it eventually died. Still, it was a lingering source of friction be-
tween OSD and USCENTCOM. See Schwarzkopf, 428–429.
40 DOD, 66; also see Schwarzkopf, 419.
41 Scales, Certain Victory, 131–133; Powell quotes from Schwarzkopf, 426–427.
42 Rick Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War (Boston: Houghton,
Miin, 1993), 123–124; Woodward, 313–314.
43 Bush and Scowcroft, 431.
44 Powell Oral History, PBS “Frontline,” transcript, 2; see also Powell, American Journey, 488–489.
45 Schubert and Kraus, 107–110; Bush and Scowcroft, 393–395.
46 “President’s News Conference on the Persian Gulf Crisis,” November 8, 1990, Bush
Public Papers, 1990, 1580–1581.
47 See Powell, American Journey, 419–20.
48 DOD, 42–45; Schubert and Kraus, 130.
49 USCENTCOM also included a fth combat component command for special opera-
tions, but lacking a full-blown organization it functioned in a limited capacity and had
no operational role. A separate organization, the U.S. Joint Special Operations Com-
mand (JSOC), carried out special operations during Desert Storm.
50 Davis, “Strategic Bombardment in the Gulf War,” 545.
51 DOD, 101–102.
52 James A. Winnefeld and Dana J. Johnson, Joint Air Operations: Pursuit of Unity in Command
and Control, 1942–1991 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press and RAND Corp., 1993), 126.
53 See Marolda and Schneller, 183–190.
54 Putney, 175, 274–294 and passim; Gordon and Trainor, 311–312.
55 Atkinson, 67–68; John R. Ballard, From Storm to Freedom: America’s Long War with Iraq
(Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2010), 52–53; and Trainor, “Jointness, Service Culture,
and the Gulf War,” 73.
56 Powell, American Journey, 503.
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CounCil of War
57 See James K. Matthews and Cora J. Holt, So Many, So Much, So Far, So Fast: United
States Transportation Command and Strategic Deployment for Operation Desert Shield/ Desert
Storm (Washington, DC: Joint History Oce and Research Center, U.S. Transportation
Command, 1995), 167–169, 174–175.
58 Gordon and Trainor, 186–190; Putney, 262–263.
59 Putney, 305–309.
60 DOD, 230–231, 243.
61 Davis, On Target, 161; Bush and Scowcroft, 431–432; DOD, 70.
62 NSD 54, “Responding to Iraqi Aggression in the Gulf,” January 15, 1991, Bush Presi-
dential Records, NSC Collection; and <http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/pdfs/
nsd/nsd54.pdf> (accessed July 19, 1911).
63 DOD, 95–96.
64 Davis, “Strategic Bombardment in the Gulf War,” 528; DOD, 253.
65 During the war, Saddam also launched Scud attacks against coalition positions in Saudi
Arabia; 39 Scuds struck Israel and 44 hit Saudi Arabia. The most deadly attack came on
February 25, 1991, when a Scud landed on barracks in Dhahran killing 25 U.S. military
personnel and injuring another 100.
66 Atkinson, 85–90; Putney, 267–270. Developed originally as an antiaircraft missile, the
Patriot was upgraded in 1988 to provide a limited capability against tactical ballistic
missiles. The Gulf War was its rst practical test.
67 DOD, 97.
68 Schwarzkopf, 486. Coalition air crews reported destroying around 80 mobile Scud launchers,
nearly all of which were later found to have been decoys. A few actual launchers may have
been destroyed but probably not more than a dozen. See GWAPS Summary Report, 83–90.
69 DOD, 168.
70 Gordon and Trainor, 244–246.
71 DOD, 124–129.
72 GWAPS, II, Pt. 2, 202–220.
73 GWAPS Summary Report, 77 (quote) and passim.
74 See Perry D. Jamieson, Lucrative Targets: The U.S. Air Force in the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations
(Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 2001), 144–145 and passim.
75 Table 64, “Total Sorties by U.S. Service/Allied Country by Mission Type,” GWAPS, V, 2 3 2.
76 Woodward, 349.
77 Aid, 193.
78 DOD, 83–84.
79 Schwarzkopf, 496.
80 GWAPS, II, Pt. 2, 218–220.
81 See John G. Heidenrich, “The Gulf War: How Many Iraqis Died?” Foreign Policy 90
(Spring 1993): 108–125.
82 Schwarzkopf, 502. Emphasis in original.
535
STorM in THE DESErT
83 Tom Clancy with Fred Franks, Jr., Into the Storm: A Study in Command (New York: G.P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1997), 447.
84 Powell quoted in Atkinson, 469.
85 Scales, Certain Victory, 300–301, 314–315; DOD, 281; Ballard, 74.
86 Gordon and Trainor, 412; Bush and Scowcroft, 488–489.
87 Gordon and Trainor, 452–454.
88 Schwarzkopf, 542–543; Powell, 519–525. Shortly after the war, in a televised interview,
Schwarzkopf changed his mind and indicated that he would have preferred to continue
ghting a few more days but neglected to mention what specic objectives he had in mind.
89 Freeman interviewed March 31, 1998 and quoted in Andrew Cockburn and Patrick
Cockburn, Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein (New York: HarperCol-
lins, 1999), 33.
90 Baker testimony, February 6, 1991,U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Foreign Af-
fairs, Hearings: Foreign Assistance Legislation for Fiscal Years 1992–93, 102:1 (Washington,
DC: GPO, 1991), Pt. 1, 6–7 and passim; Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, 412–413.
91 Baker, Politics of Diplomacy, 412–414.
92 Gordon and Trainor, 444.
93 Schwarzkopf, 566–567.
94 Gordon and Trainor, 464.
Chapter 18
ConClusion
Like the defeat of Germany and Japan in World War II, the victory over Iraq in 1991
proved to be a watershed in the history of American military policy and strategy.
The biggest military operation mounted by the United States since the Vietnam
War, Desert Shield/Desert Storm was also exceedingly complex and dicult to ex-
ecute. One of the keys to its success was the coordinated planning and direction
provided by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Colin Powell, and the of-
cers of the Joint Sta, working in collaboration with the military Services; the
theater commander, General Norman Schwarzkopf; and the allies who made up
the anti-Iraq coalition. The result was not only an awesome display of American-led
military power, but also a rearmation that joint planning and joint direction of
components in the eld were increasingly essential to success in modern warfare.
What may seem to have been a relatively easy victory was far from preordained.
Rather, it was the product of a long and complicated process, with antecedents
reaching back to the creation of the Joint Chiefs of Sta in World War II. Established
in January 1942 to expedite wartime planning and strategic coordination with the
British, the Joint Chiefs operated initially under the direct authority and supervision
of the President, performing whatever duties he assigned in his capacity as Com-
mander in Chief. After the war, as part of the 1947 reorganization of the Armed
Services under the National Security Act, the JCS acquired statutory standing with
a list of assigned duties and became a corporate advisory body to the President, the
Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Council. The corporate nature of
the Joint Chiefs’ advisory role ended upon passage of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols
Act, which transferred the tasks and duties previously performed collectively by
the JCS to the Chairman. But in retaining the Joint Chiefs of Sta as an organized
entity, the new law armed that they should continue to hold “regular” meetings
and act as “military advisors” to the Chairman.
Prior to Goldwater-Nichols, the role, inuence, and reputation of the Joint
Chiefs of Sta waxed and waned. World War II undoubtedly marked the high-water
mark of JCS authority and inuence. Operating without a formal charter, they
exercised a virtual monopoly on national security, oversaw the formulation of strat-
egy, maintained essential military liaison with America’s allies, and provided general
537
538
CounCil of War
direction for a broad array of key war-related activities. Despite their wide-ranging
mandate, however, the JCS never became a fully functioning general sta. The great-
est weakness of the JCS system, then as later, was its composition as a committee of
coequal Service chiefs. Expected in theory to rise above their individual concerns,
they were all too susceptible to inter-Service pressures and rivalries, a legacy of the
separateness between the Services in years past and a harbinger of things to come.
With the Army focused on the war in Europe and the Navy concentrating on
the Pacic, two sets of interests invariably competed for manpower and industrial
production, resulting in disagreements over strategy and the allocation of resources.
With the emergence of the Army Air Forces as a de facto separate Service, reach-
ing consensus decisions became even more dicult. Fortunately, the level-headed
inuence of Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Sta to the Commander in Chief,
and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s imposing presence prevented these quarrels
and rivalries from getting out of hand. Yet given the personalities involved and the
entrenched institutional interests each JCS member represented, it was remarkable
that they accomplished what they did.
As World War II drew to a close, the role and functions of the Joint Chiefs
began to change. In addition to their planning and advisory duties, the JCS ac-
quired oversight responsibilities for the various unied and specied commands
that sprang from the 1946 Unied Command Plan (UCP). An extension of the
World War II practice of creating “supreme commands,” the UCP armed that
joint planning and joint operational control should go hand in hand. However, the
most far-reaching changes aecting the chiefs’ functions were those arising from the
postwar debate over unication of the Armed Services. Embracing a War Depart-
ment proposal, President Harry S. Truman sought to abolish the JCS and replace
them with a single chief of sta and a closely unied structure overseen by a civilian
secretary of defense. Opponents of unication, led by the Navy, championed a less
centralized system. Arguing the need for improved coordination in lieu of outright
unication, they opposed the single chief of sta concept and urged a loosely knit
committee-style system that included preserving the JCS more or less unchanged.
The ensuing compromise under the National Security Act of 1947 leaned toward
the Navy’s model and kept the JCS intact, subject to the direction, authority, and
control of the Secretary of Defense. The Joint Sta, which had been an integral part
of JCS operations during the war, also acquired statutory standing, but with a ceiling
of only one hundred ocers it was a mere shadow of its former self and was soon
swamped with more work than it could handle.
The next few years were a period of painful adjustment for the Joint Chiefs of
Sta. Promising “evolution, not revolution” to ease the transition, the rst Secretary
ConCluSion
539
of Defense, James Forrestal, took a go-slow approach to unication. Seeing himself
as a coordinator, he looked to the Joint Chiefs for much-needed assistance and lead-
ership in keeping the Services in line and in recommending the most eective and
ecient allocation of resources. A daunting task, it tested the chiefs’ patience with one
another practically to the breaking point. Despite the menacing behavior of Moscow
and several “war scares,” the chiefs were often at odds over the assignment of Service
functions and the choice of weapons and strategy for coping with the Soviet threat.
As more and more of the disputes became public, they left the JCS with a tarnished
image and a growing reputation as a committee of quarrelsome military bureaucrats
intent on protecting vested interests at the expense of the common good.
Whether a more centralized system with stronger authority at the top could
have avoided these early diculties is open to question. While it might have helped,
it would not have solved the underlying problem—a fundamental dierence of
opinion within the defense establishment on how to arm, train, and prepare for fu-
ture wars. New technologies—the atomic bomb premier among them—and rapid
advances in aviation, missiles, electronics, and other elds created fresh opportunities
for the Services and new ways of looking at military strategy. But with money in
short supply, inter-Service competition and friction displaced rational discussion.
Treating one another as rivals rather than partners, the Services scrambled to lay
claims to military functions that would guarantee them continuous future funding.
Early eorts to improve JCS performance met with mixed success. While Con-
gress welcomed greater military eciency and eectiveness, it refused to tamper
with the basic JCS corporate structure lest it acquire the traits of a “Prussian-style
general sta.” Moving cautiously, Congress agreed in 1949 to add a full-time JCS
Chairman who was without Service responsibilities and to double the size of the
Joint Sta. While the Chairman’s powers were initially narrowly dened, his desig-
nation as the Nation’s senior military ocer heightened his stature and prestige well
beyond his legal authority. The rst JCS Chairman, General Omar Bradley, USA,
was initially guarded in exercising his authority and in oering advice. But as he be-
came more familiar with what was expected of him, Bradley realized that he had no
choice and had to become more actively involved. Adopting a procedure that other
Presidents would copy, Truman directed that only the CJCS attend NSC meetings
on a regular basis. As a result, it became almost routine for the Secretary of Defense,
the President, and the National Security Council to work directly with or through
the Chairman, a practice that further enhanced his de facto role as spokesman for
the military. In dealing with the Service chiefs, however, the Chairman’s powers
to resolve disputes remained limited. He could coax and cajole and sometimes
engineer compromises, but he could not compel cooperation. To preserve JCS
540
CounCil of War
credibility, Chairmen often resorted to advancing their own interpretation of JCS
advice rather than trying to compose dierences and achieve a common view.
Meanwhile, the intensication of the Cold War, new U.S. commitments under
the North Atlantic Treaty, and the emergence in the summer of 1949 of the Soviet
Union as a nuclear power increased pressure on the United States to strengthen its
defense posture. Driven by domestic budgetary considerations and recent break-
throughs in nuclear weapons design, the evolving U.S. strategy downplayed the role
of conventional forces and stressed air-atomic retaliation by the Air Force’s long-
range bombers in case of Soviet aggression. Not everyone agreed that this was a
sound course to follow, certainly not the Navy, which had its own competing view
of national security built around a proposed eet of ush-deck “super carriers.” But
as an all-around solution to the country’s defense needs, the air-atomic strategy
was irresistible. An intimidating threat, it was technologically feasible, commanded
strong bipartisan support in Congress, and could be priced to t practically any
reasonable spending limit the White House might impose.
Following the outbreak of the Korean War, the brakes on military spending came
o as the Truman administration launched a “peacetime” military buildup of un-
precedented proportions. Under the guidelines laid down in NSC 68, defense plan-
ning pointed to a “year of maximum danger” in anticipation of which each Service
received roughly an equal allocation of resources, an expensive but expeditious ap-
proach that allowed the JCS to go about their business amid reduced competition
and rivalry. But as costs climbed and the expected showdown with the Soviets failed
to materialize, attention shifted to developing a more stable defense posture for the
“long haul.” The process accelerated with the change of administrations in 1953. Find-
ing the Joint Chiefs unable to agree on what should be done, President Dwight D.
Eisenhower took matters into his own hands and gave defense policy a “new look.”
Convinced that atomic energy held the key, he developed a long-term deterrence
posture resting on the threat of “massive retaliation” by the Air Force, backed by gen-
eral purpose forces armed increasingly with tactical and battleeld nuclear weapons.
Eisenhower assumed that sooner or later the JCS would come around to his
view that low-yield nuclear weapons represented the new “conventional” weap-
ons and were suitable for limited warfare. Toward that end, both Admiral Arthur
Radford and General Nathan Twining, the rst two Chairmen he appointed, did
what they could to elicit cooperation from the skeptical Service chiefs. Presented
with repeated opportunities to test the President’s theory during the Indochina and
Formosa crises, they declined. For them as for others, crossing the nuclear threshold
was becoming almost synonymous with all-out war. Since the objectives were in-
variably in Asia, there were awkward racial implications as well. Nonetheless, the
541
ConCluSion
JCS accepted tactical nuclear weapons as an integral part of the American arsenal
and encouraged NATO to follow suit as a means of osetting the numerical Soviet
advantage in conventional forces. NATO’s “new approach” mirrored the new look
on a lesser scale and relaxed pressures on the European allies to maintain sizable and
expensive general purpose forces. But it also left NATO more dependent than ever
on a nuclear response as its rst line of defense, a problem that would dog the Alli-
ance down to the dying days of the Cold War.
Despite strenuous eorts to hold down military spending, the Eisenhower ad-
ministration achieved limited savings. Faced with unexpected increases in Soviet ca-
pabilities, it became involved in a steadily escalating strategic arms competition with
the Soviet Union, rst in long-range bombers and later in intercontinental ballistic
missiles. Though the Air Force’s monopoly on strategic bombers was well estab-
lished, the missile eld was wide open and soon produced a free-for-all competition
among the Services that required direct intervention by the Secretary of Defense.
Meanwhile, the Joint Chiefs continued to endorse across-the-board force proposals
that exceeded available funding. Unable to overcome their “splits” and recommend
an integrated statement of requirements, they eventually adopted a catch-all ap-
proach that lumped Service requirements together in no particular order of priority
under the Joint Strategic Objectives Plan (renamed the Joint Strategic Planning
Document in the late 1970s), which critics likened to a Christmas “wish list.”
Frustrated by the disarray among his military advisors, Eisenhower sought fur-
ther changes to the National Security Act aimed at improving JCS performance. Un-
der revised legislation passed in the summer of 1958, the Chairman acquired about as
much power and authority as he could reasonably exercise while still operating within
the traditional JCS corporate structure and the consensus-based advisory system. At
the same time, however, the new law bestowed additional responsibilities and author-
ity on the Secretary of Defense that diminished the JCS role. From that point on, the
Secretary of Defense and those around him—not the Chairman, the Service chiefs,
or the Joint Sta—would be the center of military policy and decisionmaking, the
galvanizing force, as it were, within the Department of Defense (DOD).
The nadir of JCS inuence came during the 1960s as Secretary Robert S. Mc-
Namara took charge of the Pentagon and the Vietnam War. Given a free hand by
Presidents Kennedy and Johnson to reform DOD, McNamara imposed a tight and
highly sophisticated system of planning, programming, and budget management
that gave the Oce of the Secretary of Defense more control of the military than
ever before. By the time he nished, the JCS had become a marginalized institu-
tion. Though McNamara insisted that he wanted the closest possible cooperation
and collaboration with the Joint Chiefs, he did not hesitate to act unilaterally if it
542
CounCil of War
suited his needs or he perceived the chiefs to be dragging their heels. Pushing the
doctrine of “exible response,” he made reducing military dependence on nuclear
weapons his rst order of business, a goal popular with some in the military and
with a growing number of civilian military theorists. But it was less appealing to
planners on the Joint Sta and their counterparts in Europe who had to cope
with limited resources to oset overwhelming Soviet superiority in conventional
forces. Extending his writ into areas previously the exclusive domain of the JCS, he
challenged prevailing assumptions about strategic requirements and established new
targeting criteria, limiting them mainly to the needs of a retaliatory (second-strike)
“assured destruction” capability. To curb future costs and growth in nuclear forces,
McNamara capped the size of the U.S. strategic oensive arsenal (a ceiling which,
in terms of launchers, remained more or less intact until the end of the Cold War)
and practiced unilateral restraint in the acquisition and deployment of both anti-
missile defense systems and of new weapons, especially those he deemed to have
“rst-strike” potential.
To the Joint Chiefs, the constraints McNamara imposed seemed almost certain
to bring about parity if not inferiority in strategic forces vis-à-vis the Soviet Union
as well as weakening deterrence and inviting Soviet aggression. But from Kennedy’s
Presidency on, JCS access to and inuence within the Oval Oce fell o sharply,
limiting the chiefs’ inuence over defense policy and the weapons acquisition pro-
cess. As a result of the Bay of Pigs debacle, Kennedy lost practically all trust in JCS
advice and appointed his own in-house consultant on military aairs, retired Army
Chief of Sta General Maxwell D. Taylor. A personal friend of Kennedy’s, Taylor
returned to active duty to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs on the eve of the
Cuban Missile Crisis and was the only JCS member who participated regularly in
high-level meetings during that episode.
Taylor was the rst Chairman to see himself almost exclusively as a “trusted
agent” for the President and the Secretary of Defense. With the possible exception
of Admiral Radford, previous Chairmen had adopted a middle-of-the-road ap-
proach, acting both as spokesmen for the “military viewpoint” (i.e., their Service
colleagues) and as the administration’s representative to the military. Once the Cu-
ban Missile Crisis was behind him, however, Taylor devoted his time as Chairman to
bringing the chiefs into line with White House and OSD preferences. A thankless
task, it produced mixed results and diminished his stature and respect in the eyes
of his JCS colleagues. The CJCS during Johnson’s Presidency, General Earle G.
Wheeler, USA, served both as a go-between for the JCS and the White House,
and as an Oval Oce advisor who eventually gained access to the President’s in-
ner circle. Subsequent Chairmen generally followed Wheeler’s lead, though they
543
ConCluSion
sometimes found it hard to tell where their responsibilities as JCS spokesmen ended
and those of trusted agents of the President or Secretary began. Until Goldwater-
Nichols redened the CJCS’s role and responsibilities, Chairmen customarily func-
tioned as a little of both. None, however, came even close to matching the level of
inuence exercised collectively by the JCS in World War II.
The most trying times for the Joint Chiefs were during the Vietnam War. Find-
ing their views and recommendations consistently rejected as too extreme, they
gave in to a military strategy of graduated responses that they regarded as ineectual
and doomed to fail. That they dutifully went along with the Johnson administra-
tion’s conduct of the war reected not only their professionalism and dedication,
but also their underlying belief that sooner or later the President, the Secretary of
Defense, and the other civilians running the war would see the light, accept the JCS
view, and initiate the necessary changes. But by the time that opportunity arose,
public and congressional opinion had turned so strongly against the war that ramp-
ing up the conict, as the JCS favored, was utterly unthinkable. In the wake of the
Viet Cong’s Tet oensive in early 1968, the JCS were about the only ones left in
Washington who still rated the war as winnable.
As the Vietnam War wound down, the JCS struggled to adjust to the realities
of a country that had lost condence in its military and was increasingly skepti-
cal of the anti-Communist containment policies of the past. Among the various
consequences of the conict, none was more profound than the breakdown of the
bipartisan Cold War consensus that had governed and sustained American foreign
policy since World War II. Opposition to Vietnam by a large and vocal sector of the
American public had realigned the political landscape, while the emergence of the
Great Society gave domestic programs a growing claim on resources in direct com-
petition with the military’s. The result was a greater-than-expected retrenchment in
post-Vietnam military spending. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Defense Depart-
ment had routinely consumed around 10 percent of the country’s gross national
product; from the early 1970s on, it was lucky to get half of that. Yet despite the se-
vere cutbacks, competition among the Services for funds was less intense than after
previous wars, thanks in large part to McNamara’s programmatic and procedural
changes, which now pre-allocated the bulk of the military budget around functional
categories that changed little from year to year.
The most serious military problem facing the Joint Chiefs in the aftermath
of Vietnam was the surge in Soviet oensive strategic power. Given the limited
support in Congress for new defense programs, the Nixon administration turned
to adroit diplomacy—détente with the Soviet Union and the quasi-alliance with
China—to shore up the precarious American position. Forced to adjust, the JCS
544
CounCil of War
became reluctant converts to the virtues of arms control, a key pillar of détente, as a
means of curbing the threat posed by Soviet strategic forces. While they had shown
a eeting interest in the Baruch Plan for international control of atomic energy
immediately after World War II, the JCS had since been among the most consistent
skeptics and critics of arms control and disarmament. But with the Soviets steadily
gaining in strategic nuclear power, and with little prospect that the United States
would take up the challenge, the chiefs were compelled to reassess their position.
Indeed, no issue caused the Joint Chiefs more headaches during the later de-
cades of the Cold War than the strategic arms control negotiations with the Soviet
Union. While the Joint Chiefs saw no choice but to go along, they were uneasy with
the whole arms control process and found the initial results—a 1972 treaty severely
restricting antimissile deployments and a temporary “freeze” on oensive strategic
launchers—deeply disturbing and generally at odds with U.S. interests. Missile de-
fense was an area where the United States had been technologically ahead of the
Soviets all along, and with the cap on land-based missile deployments, the Soviets
now enjoyed a 60-percent advantage over the United States in ICBM launchers.
The United States remained ahead in the number of targetable strategic warheads,
though even that advantage was slipping away as the Soviets (copying the United
States) turned increasingly to arming their long-range missiles with multiple inde-
pendently targetable reentry vehicles. In debating the SALT I agreements before
Congress in 1972, the Joint Chiefs made their endorsement of the accords condi-
tional upon signicant improvements in the U.S. strategic posture, including a new
manned strategic bomber (the B–1), a more powerful ICBM (the MX), and a eet
of Trident submarines carrying more missiles with bigger payloads. Yet even with
those enhancements, the JCS knew that the strategic balance was likely to remain
about the same. The days of American strategic superiority were past, and whatever
advantages that position may have conferred were long gone.
A curious anomaly of the post-Vietnam period was the extent to which the
country’s political leaders played down the role of military power in American for-
eign policy while trying to nd new ways of making the Department of Defense
and the JCS appear more ecient and eective. The explanation for this apparent
paradox lies in the obvious desire of senior policymakers to avoid complications
abroad like those that led to involvement in Vietnam, while shoring up the public’s
weakened condence in its Armed Forces. One means of doing so was to revive
JCS participation in the policy process on something other than the ad hoc basis
of the Kennedy-Johnson years when military advice was practically ignored. Start-
ing with the revival of the NSC system under President Richard M. Nixon and his
assistant for national security aairs, Henry A. Kissinger, the JCS steadily regained
545
ConCluSion
a regular voice in interagency deliberations that allowed them to make inputs to
decisions and to have their ideas at least heard at practically every level.
Larger, more fundamental changes in the JCS system seemed inevitable but
were slow in coming due to a lack of agreement on what they should entail. Presi-
dent Jimmy Carter leaned toward a more streamlined system that would do away
with consensus-based advice. But he gave JCS reform low priority and became
preoccupied with other matters—making peace between Israel and Egypt, transfer-
ring U.S. control of the Panama Canal, and, above all, negotiating a SALT II Treaty
with the Soviet Union—that required JCS acquiescence if not outright support to
get through Congress. In those circumstances, Carter could ill aord to engage in
a reorganization battle with the chiefs and still expect them to endorse his policies
enthusiastically. Letting the reorganization issue drift, he expected to return to it in
his second term but never had the opportunity.
With the advent of the Reagan administration in 1981, attention turned to re-
building the country’s military power, a task begun cautiously in the dying days of the
Carter administration as relations with the Soviet Union again deteriorated. Under
Reagan, bolstering the Armed Forces mushroomed into the longest and largest peace-
time military expansion in American history. Still, in terms of GNP, annual military
spending during the Reagan years never came close to what it was between the Ko-
rean and Vietnam wars. By now, Soviet troops were heavily engaged in Afghanistan,
Communist-backed insurgencies were gaining ground from southern Africa to Cen-
tral America, and the Soviets were threatening NATO with the deployment of a new
generation of highly accurate and more usable intermediate-range missiles known as
the SS–20. With détente dead, the Cold War was again front and center.
Despite his high regard and lavish praise for the military, President Ronald
Reagan used the Joint Chiefs sparingly to help orchestrate his administration’s re-
armament program. The chiefs’ desires for improvements in the force posture were
well known and were not much dierent from the agenda the President and his
advisors brought with them into oce. Like the expansion under NSC 68, the
Reagan buildup was an all-Service aair, with a slight tilt toward the Navy for
power-projection purposes. Once underway, it acquired a momentum of its own
under spending guidelines negotiated between OSD and the Oce of Manage-
ment and Budget, a practice dating from McNamara’s time. The chiefs’ most last-
ing and innovative contribution came in February 1983 when, during a routine
meeting with the President, they proposed a stepped-up research and development
program for ballistic missile defense to explore new space-based technologies, thus
planting the seeds of the Strategic Defense Initiative. The chiefs assumed that as the
progenitors of the project they would play a major role in its development and act
546
CounCil of War
as coordinators with the Services. But after giving SDI an enthusiastic endorsement,
the President looked to Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger rather than the
JCS to carry it forward.
Being well aware of the aws and limitations of the JCS system, Reagan and
Weinberger were content to work around the Joint Chiefs. Indeed, they saw noth-
ing fundamentally wrong with the existing setup despite the ingrained culture of
inter-Service rivalry and competition. By the early 1980s, power and control within
the Defense Department were concentrated more than ever in the hands of the
Secretary of Defense and his immediate sta. The Joint Chiefs, with their inuence
dimmed by Vietnam, were a relatively weak and pliable organization. Weinberger
liked it that way and saw no need for changes that might dilute his authority. His
critics in Congress, however, had other ideas, and with defense expenditures soaring
they wanted more checks and balances within DOD. Pointing to a lengthy list of
lapses in joint operations (the Mayaguez incident, the abortive Iran hostage rescue,
the Grenada intervention, and the terrorist bombing of the Marine barracks in
Beirut), they seized on proposals for improvements from a former CJCS, General
David C. Jones, USAF, and revived the dormant campaign to reform the JCS. Out
of the legislative action that followed emerged the Goldwater-Nichols Act in 1986.
A sharp departure from the pattern of previous defense reform measures,
Goldwater-Nichols marked the triumph of congressional preferences over those of
the Executive. During the debate leading to passage of the legislation, consultation
between the administration and the reformers on Capitol Hill was perfunctory,
strained, and limited. Many of the objections the administration raised had to do
with the enormous amount of prescriptive detail that Congress wanted included
to institutionalize “jointness” and root out alleged Service parochialism, much of
it dealing with ocer promotion and other personnel matters. Once the law was
passed, there was little enthusiasm for it at OSD or the White House and even less
among serving senior military ocers. Realizing that it would take time to bring
the Services around, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral William J. Crowe, Jr.,
adopted “evolution, not revolution” as his motto, an echo of Forrestal’s sentiments
toward unication four decades earlier.
Like the 1947 National Security Act, Goldwater-Nichols was a product of its
times. While the earlier law drew its inspiration from the experiences of World War
II, Goldwater-Nichols reected a distinctly Cold War outlook. Addressing threats
associated with the missile age, when rapid decisions based on prior planning could
make all the dierence, it stressed more streamlined command and control and crisp,
clear-cut military planning and advice in lieu of the ponderous deliberations and
sometimes ambiguous recommendations inherent in the traditional JCS corporate
547
ConCluSion
system. By the time Goldwater-Nichols became law, however, the Cold War was
already in the initial stages of winding down, rendering the need for such reforms
less acute. With the advent of new, more moderate leadership in Moscow, the con-
clusion of the INF Treaty, the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the disinte-
gration of Communist power in Eastern Europe, Washington and Moscow were on
track toward a more durable modus vivendi. Increasingly, as the Cold War receded
into the history books, the threats facing American military planners became less
obvious and the requirements of national security more complex and subtle than
coping with a heavily armed adversary like the Soviet Union.
Early tests of the Goldwater-Nichols reforms seemed to pass with ying col-
ors, helped along by the pursuit of narrowly dened objectives—assuring the safe
passage of oil tankers through the Persian Gulf for one, and overthrowing the brut-
ish Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega for another. Neither of those operations
required more than a fraction of the enormous military power the United States
amassed during the Cold War and both probably could have been carried out with
equally eective results under the old JCS system. But with the benets of the
Goldwater-Nichols reforms gradually coming into play, their execution appeared
to go more smoothly and eciently.
Iraq’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait in the summer of 1990 posed a big-
ger challenge. Yet from all outward appearances, the JCS seemed to take the mat-
ter in stride. Citing an uncommonly high level of cross-Service collaboration and
integrated eort, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Colin L. Powell, USA,
decreed Desert Shield/Desert Storm to be a model of joint operational art. Even so,
there was a heavy dependence on the Services’ planning stas in shaping the air
and ground campaigns and numerous instances of inter-Service friction stemming
from continuing dierences over doctrine and operating procedures. At the same
time, Secretary of Defense Richard B. Cheney sometimes bypassed Powell and the
Joint Sta and sought alternative recommendations outside the normal chain of
command. Yet even if the rst Gulf War was not the unqualied endorsement of
Goldwater-Nichols principles that the law’s proponents hoped, it amply demon-
strated that the system was sound and likely to stay.
The rapid eviction of Iraqi forces from Kuwait also erased the remaining stains
of Vietnam and restored the American public’s condence in its Armed Forces. One
untoward consequence of the campaign, however, was that it fostered the erroneous
and rather naïve belief that modern military technology could achieve wonders
and that future wars could be fought quickly and successfully at limited cost and
sacrice. Underlying the American success against Iraq was the availability of over-
whelming military power augmented by the Reagan buildup. Yet even before Desert
548
CounCil of War
Shield/Desert Storm began, plans were well advanced to dismantle the Nation’s huge
Cold War defense establishment and replace it with a smaller, more ecient “base
force.” Recalling the debilitating eects of previous build-downs, the architect of
the base force plan, General Powell, sought to preserve residual capabilities that
would avoid the harsh and disruptive cutbacks of the past. But after the collapse
of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1991, the lure of further “peace dividends”
became irresistible. While the United States emerged from the Cold War as the only
remaining “superpower,” it was a title won by default that was soon to be accompa-
nied by a signicantly less robust military establishment.
The demise of the Cold War did not, of course, bring a cessation to threats
from abroad. Likened sometimes to a marathon rather than a sprint, the challenge
of preserving national security remained an ongoing problem. As the focal point of
the Nation’s military planning, the Joint Chiefs of Sta organization continues to
play an active and prominent role in national policy. Because of the changes man-
dated under the Goldwater-Nichols Act, JCS participation increasingly reects the
judgments, preferences, and recommendations of the Chairman and the Joint Sta,
rather than the corporate assessments of the past. All the same, the JCS remains a
unique organization whose individual members can still approach the Secretary of
Defense directly to discuss contentious issues. Over time JCS contributions have
profoundly helped to shape the role and impact of the United States in world af-
fairs. To be sure, the JCS system as it emerged and evolved from World War II on
was hardly perfect. Yet without it, military planning would have been far dierent
and more haphazard, and the outcomes would have been both less certain and less
favorable to the protection of U.S. interests.
549
Glossary
AAF Army Air Forces
ABDACOM Australian-British-Dutch-American
Command
ABM antiballistic missile
AEC Atomic Energy Commission
ARVN Army of the Republic of Vietnam
BMD ballistic missile defense
BOB Bureau of the Budget
BUR bottom-up review
C
3
I command, control, communications,
and intelligence
CBI China-Burma-India Theater
CCS Combined Chiefs of Sta
CDI Conventional Defense Initiative
CFE Conventional Forces in Europe
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CENTAF U.S. Air Forces Central Command
CINCNELM Commander in Chief, U.S. Naval Forces,
Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean
CINCPAC Commander in Chief, Pacic
CINEUR Commander in Chief, Europe
CINCFE Commander in Chief, Far East
CINCUNC Commander in Chief, United Nations
Command (Korea)
CIP counterinsurgency plan
CIS Confederation of Independent States
CJCS Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta
CNO Chief of Naval Operations
550
Glossary
COMUSMACV Commander, U.S. Military Assistance
Command, Vietnam
DARPA Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency
DASA Defense Atomic Support Agency
DCI Director of Central Intelligence
DEW distant early warning
DIA Defense Intelligence Agency
DMZ demilitarized zone
DSTP Director of Strategic Target Planning
EAC European Advisory Commission
EDIP European Defense Improvement Program
EDP European Defence Community
ERP European Recovery Program
EWP emergency war plan
FAL Forces Armées de Laos
FCDA Federal Civil Defense Administration
FOFA Follow-on Forces Attack
FRG Federal Republic of Germany
FSLN Sandinista National Liberation Front
FY scal year
FYDP Five-Year Defense Program
GLCM ground-launched cruise missile
GNP gross national product
GPO U.S. Government Printing Oce
IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency
ICBM intercontinental ballistic missile
551
IOC initial operational capability
INF intermediate-range nuclear forces
IPCOG Informal Policy Committee on Germany
IRBM intermediate range ballistic missile
JAAN Joint Action of the Army and Navy
JCS Joint Chiefs of Sta
JFACC Joint Forces Air Component Commander
JHO Joint History Oce
JIC Joint Intelligence Committee
JLRSE Joint Long-Range Strategic Estimate
JOEWP joint outline emergency war plan
JPWC Joint Post-War Committee
JSCP Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan
JSM [British] Joint Sta Mission
JSOP Joint Strategic Objectives Plan
JSPC Joint Strategic Plans Committee
JSPD Joint Strategic Planning Document
JSSC Joint Strategic Survey Committee
JSTARS Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System
JSTPS Joint Strategic Target Planning Sta
JWPC Joint War Plans Committee
KMAG Korean Military Advisory Group
KTO Kuwait Theater of Operations
LTDP Long-Term Defense Program
MB Munitions Board
MBFR mutual and balanced force reductions
MDAP Mutual Defense Assistance Program
Glossary
552
Glossary
MED Manhattan Engineer District
MILREP Military Representative to the President
MIRV multiple independently targetable
reentry vehicle
MLC Military Liaison Committee
MLF multilateral nuclear force
MRBM medium-range ballistic missile
MRV multiple reentry vehicle
MTDP Medium Term Defense Plan
NAC North Atlantic Council
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NCA National Command Authority
NCO noncommissioned ocer
NESC Net Evaluation Subcommittee
NIE national intelligence estimate
NME National Military Establishment
NORAD North American Air Defense Command
NPG Nuclear Planning Group
NSA National Security Agency
NSC National Security Council
NSDM National Security Decision Memorandum
NSRB National Security Resources Board
NSTL National Strategic Targeting List
N VA North Vietnamese Army
OCB Operations Coordinating Board
ODM Oce of Defense Mobilization
OMB Oce of Management and Budget
553
Glossary
ONI Oce of Naval Intelligence
OPEC Organization of the Petroleum
Exporting Countries
OSS Oce of Strategic Services
PDF Panama Defense Forces
PPBS planning, programming, and budgeting system
R&D research and development
RDB Research and Development Board
RMA revolution in military aairs
RV reentry vehicle
POL petroleum, oils, and lubricants
RDF Rapid Deployment Force
RDJTF Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force
ROC Republic of China
ROK Republic of Korea
SAC Strategic Air Command
SACEUR Supreme Allied Commander Europe
SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
SAM surface-to-air missile
SDI Strategic Defense Initiative
SEAC Southeast Asia Command
SEATO Southeast Asia Treaty Organization
SHAPE Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers
Europe
SIGINT signals intelligence
SIOP Single Integrated Operational Plan
SLBM submarine-launched ballistic missile
554
Glossary
START Strategic Arms Reduction Talks
SVN South Vietnam
SWNCC State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee
TFW tactical ghter wing
UAR United Arab Republic
UCP Unied Command Plan
ULMS undersea long-range missile system
UMT universal military training
UN United Nations
UNC United Nations Command
USCENTCOM U.S. Central Command
USCINCCENT Commander in Chief of Central
Command
USFORSCOM U.S. Army Forces Command
USMACV U.S. Military Assistance Command,
Vietnam
USREDCOM U.S. Readiness Command
USSOUTHCOM U.S. Southern Command
USSTRATCOM U.S. Strategic Command
VCJCS Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta
WSAG Washington Special Action Group
WMD weapons of mass destruction
WSEG Weapons Systems Evaluation Group
INDEX
Page numbers with n indicate notes.
Italicized page numbers indicate illustrations.
A–6s, 464
A–12 spy plane, 182, 183, 205n47
Able Archer 83 exercises, NATO’s, 440–441
Abrams, Creighton W., 304, 313, 319, 323, 377
Acheson, Dean
on Berlin access rights, 216
on Bradley as CJCS, 113
on European versus Asian issues, 117
Korean War onset and, 103, 104
MacArthur and, 107, 114–115
military spending projections and, 101
on MTDP goals and German rearmament, 120
on U.S. and China, 97–98
on U.S. role in NATO, 96
as Z Committee advisor, 99
Ad Hoc Requirements Committee, CIA and, 162
AD–70, on NATO improvements, 345, 346
Adams, Sherman, 200
Advanced ICBM (AICBM), 370. See also MX
advanced manned strategic aircraft (AMSA), 262, 368
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), 265
Aegis missile cruisers, 471–472
Afghanistan
CIA and mujahideen of, 431
Soviet invasion of, 335, 395, 400, 409–410
Soviet Union and pro-Communist regime in, 480
Soviet withdrawal from, 459, 461–462
Africa. See North Africa
African-Americans, Ledo Road building from Burma
to China by, 35
Agnew, Spiro, 355, 378
Air Force
airpower for Desert Shield/Desert Storm and,
512–513, 520–521, 524–525
Ballistic Systems Division, 262
on counterforce of bombers and missiles, 174–175
intelligence estimates on Soviet missile program by,
180, 182
on land-based aviation for antisubmarine warfare,
72
McNamara on massive retaliation doctrine of, 248
on McNamara’s assured destruction strategy, 250
missile development and, 175, 176, 177, 183
NATO retardation bombing plan and, 118–119
as New Look beneciary, 143–144
nuclear weapons for, 79
on U.S. Strategic Command to replace SAC, 187
X–16 photoreconnaissance plane and, 161
aircraft. See also specic types of
for the Soviets during World War II, 19
aircraft carriers, swing strategy for, 145
AirLand Battle, 458, 474n30, 513
air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs), 380–381
airpower. See also Vietnam War
for Desert Shield/Desert Storm, 512–513, 520–521,
524–525
Akhromeyev, Sergei F., 460
Algeria, 156
Allen, Lew, Jr., 393, 423
Allison, Royal B., 337–338, 341–342, 376
Ambrose, Stephen E., 195
amphibious operations, 67, 69, 72
ANADYR (Soviet missiles to Cuba), 226–227,
241n74
Anderson, George W., Jr., 219, 224, 231, 233
Andrew, Christopher, 434–435
Angola, Soviet support for Marxist regimes in, 383
anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system
as essential, JCS on, 263–264
McElroy on Army and, 181
McNamara on, 268
testing of, 146
U.S.-Soviet negotiations on, 266, 339–340
Vietnam War and, 308
Watkins on, 436
antisatellite (ASAT) weapons, 434
antiwar movement
Fulbright and, 285
Johnson and, 293
Nixon and, 317, 325
Vietnam War and, 297, 306, 308, 319, 543
Arab-Israeli conict. See also Middle East
Gulf War (1990) and, 529
October War (1973) and, 346, 352, 354–357
partitioning of Palestine and, 76–77
Six Day War (1967) and, 308, 352–353
CounCil of War
State Dept. on Baghdad Pact and, 190–191
Árbenz Guzmán, Jacobo, 196
ARCADIA meetings (1941), 1–2, 9, 34
Arias, Oscar, 466
Armed Forces
Bush review of size of, 480
demobilization after World War II of, 59
JCS on Reagan buildup and capabilities of,
426–427
nuclear weapons for, 79
planning for post-World War II organization and
composition of, 38–40
post-Desert Storm public opinion on, 547–548
post-Vietnam war modernizing of, 367–370
post-World War II defense policy for, 61–64
Powell’s base force plan for, 485–489
Reagan on image of, 421–425
reorganization and reform of, 64–69
Roosevelt’s personal control of, 2–3
arms control. See also détente; Strategic Arms Limita-
tion Talks
Chinese Communists’ testing H-bomb and,
267–268
at end of Cold War, 493–495
INF Treaty (1987), 459–461, 475n40
JCS concerns on détente and, 336–337, 543–544
Reagan buildup and, 438–443
U.S. and Soviets negotiations on, 159
U.S. scientists on ABM development and, 266
use of term, 160
arms sales, foreign, Carter-era versus Reagan-era,
429–430
Army, U.S.
on amphibious operations, 67, 72
inter-Service rivalry between Navy and, 3
MacArthur on proposed postwar Navy–Marine
Corps merger, 65–66
missile development and, 177, 183
New Look defense budget and, 145–146
peacetime total force (1970s) and, 367
Plans Division, Navy’s joint general sta proposal
and, 4–5
post-World War II projections for size and capabili-
ties of, 39
Special Forces, JFK’s expansion of, for Vietnam
War, 279
Vietnam War eect on, 329
Army Air Forces (AAF)
on air transport control, 67
ARCADIA meetings (1941) and, 1–2
China as base for targeting Japan by, 35, 37
Combined Chiefs of Sta and, 2
509th Composite Group of, 48
Flying Tigers absorbed into, 36
JCS consensus decisions and, 538
MacArthur on proposed postwar Navy–Marine
Corps merger and, 65–66
Pacic Ocean Area command support by, 32
Army-Navy Petroleum Board, 7
Arnold, Henry H.
atomic bomb and, 47, 48
CCS at the Second Quebec Conference and, xiv
Chinese aairs and, 35
Combined Chiefs of Sta and, 2
on post-World War II organizational reform, 39, 40
steps down from JCS, 60
strategic bombing of Germany and, 13
Twentieth Air Force in the Pacic under, 30–31, 46
Asia-Pacic War (1942–1945)
China-Burma-India Theater, 33–37
dawn of the atomic age and, 46–52
ending war with Japan, 43–46
post-World War II planning beginning during,
38–43
strategy and command in the Pacic, 29–33
two-front war and, 29
assured destruction strategy
controlled escalation and, 373
McNamara on, 248–250, 265, 268
Schlesinger on selective changes to, 374–375
SIOP on, 371
Aswan Dam, Egypt, 191
Atkinson, Rick, 483
Atlantic Alliance. See North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-
tion
Atlas (ICBM), 176, 202n1
atomic bomb. See also nuclear weapons
development of, 46–47
interdepartmental Interim Committee on, 48–49
post-World War II war debates on, 62–63, 544
Roosevelt on Soviets and, 19
testing of, 47–48, 63–64, 78–79
UMT in light of, 61–62
Atomic Energy Act (1954), 155
Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), 62, 69–70,
78–79, 99, 115, 234
“Atoms for Peace” speech, Eisenhower’s, 160
Attlee, Clement R., 114, 252
attrition, war of, in Vietnam, 294, 296, 297, 306
Australia, 147, 306
Australian-British-Dutch-American Command
(ABDACOM), 30
Autumn Forge exercises, NATO’s, 440
Awarding the Channel Command (ACCHAN),
NATO’s, 121
B–1 bomber
inDEX
Brown as CJCS and, 377
Carter’s cancellation of, 392–393, 395
y-before-you-buy policy and, 368–369
JCS requests for, 262, 337, 341, 544
Reagan buildup and, 427–428
Rumsfeld on, 385
Schlesinger on, 374, 375
B–2 stealth bomber, 428, 496, 524
B–29s
to Britain in 1950, 118
ending war with Japan and, 45
modied for atomic bomb, 48
Pacic Ocean Area command support by, 32
as reinforcement of American airpower in Europe
(1948), 78
retirement of, 143
SILVERPLATE, nuclear-delivery system of, 72
Soviet targets and, 82, 91–92n89
U.S. bombing missions from China and, 37,
53–54n34
B–36s, 82, 143
B–47 medium range aircraft, 143, 248
B–50s, 82, 143
B–52s
bombing in Vietnam by, 295, 325–326
intercontinental, New Look defense budget and,
143
JCS requests for, 262
LeMay’s objection to cancellation of, 248
Soviets on ALCMs for, 380–381
transfer to Western Pacic (1965), 289–290
B–70 supersonic bomber, 248
Backre bomber, Soviet, 380, 381
Baghdad Pact, 190–194, 352
Baker, James A., III, 492, 496, 497, 511, 529
Ball, George W., 226, 232, 289, 294
ballistic missile defense (BMD)
McNamara on, 265
Reagan’s revival of, 433–438, 545–546
resource allocation controversy for, 181–182
Soviet Union and, 264, 338
Barrass, Gordon S., 357, 458
Baruch Plan, 62, 69, 160, 544
base force plan
collaborative development of, 501n25
force levels for FY 1950 compared to, 502n36
Powell and, 485–489, 501n29
Soviet Union collapse and, 548
START agreement and, 495–496
Batista, Fulgencio, 197
Baxter, James Phinney, 178
Bay of Pigs operation, 198, 213–216, 225, 542
Belgium, NATO and, 157, 259
Beneš, Eduard, 73
Berlin. See also West Germany
access rights to, 216–217
contingency plans for, 199–200
Live Oak plans for, 200–201
Nixon and Kissinger on solution for, 343
Soviet blockade of, 73, 77–78, 90n53
Berlin Task Force, interdepartmental, 217
Berlin Wall, 210, 218, 219–220, 481, 486
Bermuda conference (1953), 154
Betts Report (DOD, 1964), 265
Bevin, Ernest, 78
Bikini Atoll, atomic bomb testing at, 64
biological weapons, 480, 506, 509, 522–525
Bissell, Richard M., Jr., 170n123, 183
Black Hole organization, Saudi Arabia, 514
Blandy, William H. P., 63
Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Management,
452
Blue Spoon (against Noriega government), 491–492
Blue Steel Mk1 missile, 254
Blue Streak air-to-surface missile, Britain’s, 253–254
body counts, for Vietnam War, 297
BOLERO-ROUNDUP plans for Continental inva-
sion, 10–11
bomb shelter programs, 1950s, 178
Bomber Command, Britain’s, 78, 117
Boone, Walter F., 194, 195
bottom-up review (BUR), Clinton’s, 488–489
Bradley, Omar N.
defense reorganization (1958) and, 184–185
as Eisenhower political supporter, 134–135
on ending the Korean War, 139–140
Far East tour by Johnson and, 102
increased role of CJCS and, 124, 539
JCS meeting at Naval War College (1948) and, 58
joins the JCS, 74
Korean War and, 103, 107, 109, 110, 128n56
MacArthur’s dismissal and, 115–116
on nuclear weapons for Europe, 119
Truman on NSC meetings and, 113
on U.S. involvement in Asian mainland wars, 290
Brezhnev, Leonid I., 340, 355, 357, 380–381, 382,
398–399
Britain. See also Bomber Command, Britain’s; Chiefs
of Sta Committee; Churchill, Winston S.;
United Kingdom
AAF on air-atomic missions from, 64
Arab-Israeli conict and, 191–192
Baghdad Pact and, 192–193, 194
Casablanca Conference and, 13–14
Communist attack against Korea and, 119
Desert Shield/Desert Storm and, 519, 522
CounCil of War
Grand Alliance during World War II and, 18–19
Live Oak (planning body) and, 200–201
Middle East presence of, 190
MLF demise and, 257
NATO and, 121, 157, 259
on NATO improvements, 345
on NATO’s Conventional Defense Initiative,
475n33
North African decision and, 10
on nuclear weapons, 114, 147
on Palestine withdrawal by, 77
Skybolt program and, 253–255
Soviet blockade of Berlin and, 78
U.S. bombing Libya and, 463–464
Vietnam War and, 307
war on the periphery and, 11
Brooke, Alan F., xiv, 1, 16, 17
Brooks, Dennis M., 469
Brown, George S., 377, 379–380, 382, 392
Brown, Harold, 254, 392, 393–394, 395, 396, 409
Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 396, 404–405, 406, 408, 411,
412
Budget Advisory Committee, 80
Bundy, McGeorge
Cuban missile crisis and, 227, 232
on ending the Korean War, 140
on JCS estrangement with JFK, 233
JCS unhappiness with graduated pressure and, 287
joint congressional resolution on Southeast Asia
and, 285
NSC under Kennedy and, 212
Vietnam War strategy and, 288, 291
Bundy, William P., 288
Bureau of the Budget, 101, 137
BURIA (Warsaw Pact exercise in Berlin), 220
Burke, Arleigh A.
on Bay of Pigs operation, 214, 215–216, 225
on defense reorganization, 184, 185–186, 188
on McNamara and his sta, 212
on military operation against Cuba, 197–198
on Nasser’s strength, 191
on swing strategy for carriers, 145
Burma, 33, 36–37
Burma Road, 28, 35
Bush, George H.W. See also Operation Desert Shield/
Desert Storm; Powell, Colin L.
on air campaign for Desert Storm, 521
base force plan under, 485–489
brieng Desert Shield for, 515–516
CFE Treaty under, 493–495
as CIA director, 384–385
on halting Gulf War, 528
on Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, 510
military policy in transition under, 479–481
Panama operations under, 489–493
Powell on forces for Desert Storm and, 517
Powell’s impact as CJCS under, 481–484
START I and its consequences under, 495–500
Bush, Vannevar, 47, 56n79, 85–86
Butler, George Lee, 498, 501n25, 508
C4 missiles, 369, 374
Cairo Conference (SEXTANT, Nov. 1943), 37
Cambodia
bombing halted in, 326
invasion of (1970), as Vietnamization test, 318–319
Mayaguez aair (1975) and, 378, 379
secret bombing in, 317–318
Vietnam War and, 294, 316
Canada, need for U.S. bases in, HALFMOON plan
and, 75
Carlucci, Frank C., 471
Carney, Robert B., 135, 145, 151, 154, 155
Carter, Jimmy
Iran hostage rescue mission under, 411–414
JCS relationship with, 391–394, 545
NATO and INF controversy under, 400–403
Rapid Deployment Force creation under, 408–411
SALT II and, 397–400
strategic forces and PD-59 of, 394–397
Third World crises under, 403–407
Carter, Rosalynn, 413
Carter Doctrine, 410
Casablanca Conference (Jan. 1943), 12–13
Casey, William J., 422
Castro, Fidel, 196, 197, 198–199, 227, 228. See also
Cuba
Central America. See also Latin America; Nicaragua
Carter administration goals for, 408
Cold War in, 464–465, 480
economic and military assistance under Reagan
for, 429
Reagan on Communist takeovers in, 430–431
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). See also Intel-
ligence Community
Afghanistan’s mujahideen and, 431
Bay of Pigs operation and, 214
British deception on Suez crisis for, 192
on Chinese forces in Korea (1950), 110
covert action against Castro and, 198–199
creation of, 68
JCS under Powell and, 482
MacArthur’s conicts with, 102
OPLAN 34A for Vietnam and, 280–281
on Soviet bloc forces’ preparedness (1956–1957),
158
inDEX
on Soviet missile capabilities in 1950s, 182
on Soviet missiles in Cuba, 227–228
on Soviet Order of Battle, 253
on Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons program, 98
U–2 photoreconnaissance plane and, 161, 162–163,
170n123
U.S. overthrow of Árbenz regime and, 196
on Warsaw Pact buildup, 345
Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), 196
chain of command
defense reorganization (1958) and, 186
Goldwater-Nichols legislation on, 454–455
Johnson and McNamara in Vietnam War and,
297–298
Key West Agreement (1948) removing JCS from,
134
Kissinger and, 316, 322, 389n67
Nixon in Vietnam War and, 322
in North Africa and Europe under CCS, 29–30
in Pacic under JCS, 30–31
Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Sta (CJCS). See also
individual CJCSs
Defense authorization broadening powers of
(1984), 451
Eisenhower on strengthening powers of, 134, 184,
185
evolution of role of, 542–543
Goldwater-Nichols legislation on, 454–455, 548
Korean War and emergence in importance of, 124
legislation establishing role for, 82, 539
nuclear test ban and, 236
President’s Special Committee on Indochina and,
148
SALT II talks and, 376–377
target selection for air war in Vietnam and, 295
Truman on NSC meetings and, 113, 539
U–2 photoreconnaissance plane and, 161–162
Chamberlin, Stephen J., 74
Chamoun, Camille, 194, 195
Chapman, Leonard F., Jr., 314
Checkmate (Air Sta planning cell), 511, 513,
514–515, 523
Checkpoint Charlie. See also Berlin Wall
confrontation at, 219–220
chemical weapons
Korean War and, 139
Saddam Hussein and, 467, 506, 509, 515, 522–525
U.S. work on, 434, 440–441
Vietnam War and, 311
Warsaw Pact and, 344
Cheney, Richard B.
Panama operations (1989) and, 491–492
planning Desert Shield/Desert Storm, 511, 512, 513,
520–521
on post-Cold War demobilization, 485, 487
Powell and, 483–484, 510, 516
Powell’s brieng on Desert Storm and, 516, 517
as Sec. of Defense, 481, 547
on START I Treaty, 497
Chennault, Claire L., 36
Chiang Kai-shek. See also China; Nationalist Chinese;
Republic of China; Taiwan
Cairo meeting with Roosevelt, Churchill, and the
CCS, 17
CCR and JCS diculties of working with, 37
JCS coordination during World War II with, 9
Nationalist regime collapse and, 95, 96–97
retreat to interior China by, 34
Stilwell as chief of sta for, 34–35
Stilwell’s contempt for, 35–36
Taiwan Strait crisis (1955) and, 152
on U.S. bombing missions from China, 53–54n34
Wedemeyer as chief of sta for, 38
Chiefs of Sta Committee, Britain’s, 1, 9, 121, 153,
190
Childs, Marquis, 341–342
China. See also Chiang Kai-shek; Mao Zedong;
People’s Republic of China
becomes Communist People’s Republic, 95–97
Soviet engagement during World War II in, 21
U.S. military in World War II and, 33–34
China Lobby, in Washington, D.C., 98, 349
China Theater, 37–38
China-Burma-India Theater (CBI), 33
Chinese Communists, 150, 267. See also Mao Zedong;
People’s Republic of China
Chinese Nationalists. See Chiang Kai-shek; Taiwan
Chou En-lai, 152, 350, 351
Christopher, Warren M., 413
Chromite attack on North Korea, MacArthur’s,
107–108
Churchill, Winston S.
ARCADIA meetings (1941) and, 1–2
on Axis surrender, 13
on combined unied command, 29–30
on Continental invasion (May 1943), 15–16
Grand Alliance during World War II and, 18–19
on North African invasion, 11
post-World War II plan for Germany and, 42
on propping up Chiang, 37
QUADRANT talks and, 16
at Second Quebec Conference, xiv, 18
Clark, Mark W., 138–139
Clark, William P., 424
Claude V. Ricketts, USS, 258
Clay, Lucius D., 74, 77–78
Cleveland, Harlan, 153
Cliord, Clark M., 268, 311, 312
Cline, Ray S., 162
Clinton, Bill, 488–489
Closely Spaced Basing (CSB) plan, for MX missiles,
435
Codevilla, Angelo, 445–446n41
Colby, William E., 385
Cold Dawn (Newhouse), 338
Cold War. See also détente; specic administrations; specic
wars or conicts
Lippmann’s naming of, 69
Cold War, ending of
CFE Treaty (1990) and, 493–495
East-West relations and, 479–481
operations in Panama and, 489–493
Powell as CJCS and, 481–484
Powell’s base force plan and, 485–489
START I and its consequences for, 495–500
collateral damage estimates, for Harmon Commit-
tee, 85
Collins, J. Lawton, 107, 113, 115, 134–135
color plans, Joint Army and Navy Board on, 3–4
Combined Chiefs of Sta (CCS). See also Quebec
Conference
Asia-Pacic War plans and, 32
Atlantic-European strategy during World War II
under, 9
command chain in North Africa and Europe under,
29–30
conrmation of Overlord and diminished involve-
ment of, 17–18
JCS formation and, 2, 5, 23n6
JSSC on tripartite United Chiefs of Sta replacing,
26n76
at the Second Quebec Conference, xiv
Command, Control, and Communications Systems
Directorate (J-6), 455
command, control, communications, and intelligence
(C
3
I), 249
Commander in Chief, Far East (CINCFE), 105, 115,
116
Commander in Chief, Pacic (CINCPAC)
McNamara, Tonkin Gulf incident and, 284–285
OPLAN 34A for Vietnam and, 280–281
Vietnam conict assessment (1960) and, 278
Commander in Chief, U.S. Naval Forces, Eastern
Atlantic and Mediterranean (CINCNELM),
190, 194, 208n109
Committee on the Present Danger, 422, 443n3
Communications and Electronics Directorate (J-6),
185
Communist China. See People’s Republic of China
Communists. See also Cuba; Soviet Union; Warsaw
Pact
Greek insurgency and, 69
Conant, James B., 56n79
Confederation of Independent States (CIS), 499
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe
(CSCE), 343
Congress. See also Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reor-
ganization Act
on defense spending, 426, 428, 435, 480, 487
on Desert Shield/Desert Storm, 515, 518
JCS reform during second Reagan term and,
450–453, 546
on Kissinger’s power under Ford, 385
McNamara on defense spending and, 246
McNamara on MLF for NATO and, 258
mobilization of Reserves for Vietnam and, 297
nuclear test ban and, 234
post-World War II nuclear program oversight by, 61
on SALT I agreements, 341
SALT II and JCS backchannel talks with, 379
on Strategic Defense Initiative, 496
on Vietnam War, 285–286, 325
Vinson and, 185
contras, Nicaraguan, 424, 431, 465–466
controlled response, assured destruction strategy and,
248–249
Conventional Defense Initiative (CDI), NATO’s,
457–458
Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty,
494–495, 518. See also Mutual and Balanced
Force Reduction Talks
Coolidge, Charles A., 184–185
Cooper-Church amendment, 320
counterforce/no-cities doctrine, 249, 374–375
counterinsurgency plan (CIP), for South Vietnam, 278
Counterterrorist Joint Task Force (CTJTF), 414
countervailing strategy (1978), 396–397
covert operations
Berlin crisis and, 201
in Cuba, RFK and, 225
in Egypt to undermine Soviet inuence, 192
under Eisenhower, 198–199, 202
in Indochina, direct military involvement versus,
148
to prevent Soviet presence in Western Hemisphere,
196
Taylor as MILREP and, 213
in Third World conicts, 383, 403
in Vietnam, 279, 281, 286, 321
Crist, George B., Jr., 469
cross-Channel operation, World War II, 15, 21, 46
Crowe, William J., Jr.
as CJCS, 448, 482
Congress on JCS reorganization and, 452–453
CounCil of War
implementation of Goldwater-Nichols by, 455–457,
531
on INF Treaty, 460–461
on Iranian aggression in Persian Gulf, 468–469, 471
Libyan terrorism and, 463
NMS 92–97 and, 481
on Strategic Defense Initiative, 496
cruise missiles, 380–381, 403, 514
Cuba
Burke on military action against, 197–198
Ethiopian–Somalia conict and, 404
Grenada and, 429
missile crisis, 228–233, 243n105, 542
missile crisis origins, 224–228, 240–241n71
revolution (1959) in, 196
Sandinistas in Nicaragua and, 408
Soviet combat brigade in (1979), 400
State Department halts shipments (1958) to, 197
Cunningham, Andrew B., xiv
current force strategy, Middle East policy during
Reagan era and, 432
Cushman, Robert E., Jr., 377
Cutler, Robert, 178
Cypress, Greece and Turkey tensions over, 308
Czechoslovakia, 73, 90n53, 269, 336
D5 missiles, 369
damage limitation debate, Soviet nuclear stockpile
and, 261–262
Davis, Richard G., 513–514
Davy Crockett (spigot mortar), 146
DC 6/1 (NATO’s organizing defense plan), 117
DC 13 (Medium Term Defense Plan), 119
de Gaulle, Charles, 257, 258–259
Deane, John R., 20–21
Decker, George H., 219, 222
DEFCON 3, 357
Defense, Secretary of. See also Defense Department;
Oce of the Secretary of Defense; specic
individuals
Eisenhower on ballistic missiles as responsibility
of, 176
Eisenhower’s relationships with, 136
Forrestal on JCS chair as, 82
on functional responsibility of Services for missile
development, 177
on FY 1952 military budget, 110
Key West Agreement on advise on Service func-
tions for, 203n19
National Military Establishment under, 68
NSA’s 1958 amendments on authority of, 246, 541
review of NESC targeting priorities and, 188
SACEUR communication with, 120
on U–2 program oversight committee, 170n123
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA), 265, 433
Defense Atomic Support Agency (DASA), 188, 234
defense budget. See military budget
Defense Department. See also War Department
budget authority FYs 1981–1989 of, 427
Eisenhower on aerial reconnaissance over Soviet
Union and, 161
on y-before-you-buy acquisitions, 368
McNamara system for, 245–247
reorganization (1958) of, 184–186, 206n63
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), 338, 345, 355
Denfeld, Louis E., 58, 74, 81, 85, 86, 99
Dennison, Robert L., 85, 230
dense pack, for MX missiles, 435, 436, 438, 447n64
Dereliction of Duty (McMaster), 327
Desert One, 412, 413–414
Desert Storm. See Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm
Desoto Patrol Program, Gulf on Tonkin incident and,
284, 286
détente (1972–1979). See also strategic stability
arms control and, 543–544
China quasi-alliance and, 347–351
Middle East involvement and, 351–358
Moorer’s summary of, 358
overview of, 335–336
SALT I and, 336–342
shoring up NATO and, 342–346
Diem, Ngo Dinh, 278, 279, 281
Dien Bien Phu, 1954 siege at, 148
Dill, John, xiv, 5, 22–23n3
Director of Strategic Target Planning (DSTP), 189
Directorate for Operational Plans and Joint Force
Development (J-7), 455
disarmament negotiations. See arms control
Discoverer spy satellite, 205n53, 218
Dobrynin, Anatoly, 232, 338–339, 378
Dominican Republic crisis (1965), 292
domino theory, 293
Donovan, William J., 7
DOWNFALL plan for Japan, 45
draft Presidential memorandums (DPMs), 246, 247
DROPSHOT (long-range plan 1950–51), 111
dual-basing, McNamara on, 259
Dubcek, Alexander, 336
Dugan, Michael J., 484, 513
Dulles, John Foster
Bay of Pigs operation and, 214, 215–216
as Latin America specialist, 196
on liberation doctrine, 421
on massive retaliation policy, 142
inDEX
on military budget (1956), 157
on missile gap and national intelligence estimates,
182–183
NATO’s New Approach and, 154
on nuclear weapons against Chinese Communists,
151
President’s Special Committee on Indochina and,
148
DuPuy, William E., 474n30
East Germany, 158, 201, 217, 343. See also Warsaw
Pact
Easter Oensive, by North Vietnamese Army, 323,
340, 351
Eastern Europe, 42, 157–158, 220, 481, 486. See also
Warsaw Pact
Eden, Anthony, 192, 193
Egypt. See also Arab-Israeli conict; Suez Canal
Anglo-French-Israeli coalition invasion into, 193
covert operations in, 192
Desert Shield/Desert Storm and, 519
HALFMOON plan and, 75
Soviet support for, 352, 353, 354
Eighth Air Force, 66–67
Eighth Army, 107–108
Einstein, Albert, 47
Eisenhower, Dwight D.
on Bay of Pigs operation, 214
defense spending under, 245–246
on Indochina conict, 278
JCS service by, 60, 65, 66, 74, 82
Laos crisis and, 221, 239n45
as military ocer in World War II, 17–18, 30
on MLF in Grand Design for European union, 256,
272n50
as NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe,
118–123
Eisenhower, Dwight D., rst term
arms race curbing under, 158–163
elected president (1952), 133–134
on ending the Korean War, 137–140
Indochina as test for New Look, 146–149
on JCS reorganization, 134–137
NATO’s conventional posture and, 156–158
New Approach in Europe and, 152–156
New Look security strategy under, 140–146, 540
Taiwan Strait confrontation, 149–152
Eisenhower, Dwight D., second term
Berlin pressured by Soviets, 199–202
Cuba, Castro, and Communism, 196–199
Gaither Committee report and, 177–179
on JCS reorganization, 184–185
Middle East defense under, 190–196
missile gap and BMD controversies during,
179–183
missile program evolution, 174–177
reorganization and reform (1958–1960), 183–190
Sputnik I, Third World issues and, 173–174
Eisenhower, Milton, 196
Eisenhower Doctrine (1957), 194, 195
Ely, Paul, 148–149
Embick, Stanley D., 11
Endara, Guillermo, 492
Eniwetok, nuclear weapons testing at, 78
Enterprise (nuclear-powered carrier), 144
ERASER (nonnuclear alternative to HALFMOON),
75–76
Ermarth, Fritz W., 441
Essex-class attack carriers, 31–32
Ethiopia, war with Somalia and, 404
Europe. See Eastern Europe; North Atlantic Treaty
Organization; Western Europe; specic countries
Europe, war in (1942–1945)
North African decision and, 10–12
origins of joint planning and, 2–9
preparing for Overlord, 15–18
second front debate and JCS reorganization during,
12–15
two-front war and, 29
unied command after, 65
U.S. collaboration with Soviet Union during,
18–22
European Advisory Committee (EAC), 42
European Defence Community (EDC), 120, 123, 155
European Defense Improvement Program (EDIP),
345, 346
European Recovery Program (ERP), 69, 75
executive agent system, in Asia-Pacic during World
War II, 30–31
Executive Committee (ExCom), Kennedy’s, 229, 230
Executive Order 9877, delineating Service roles and
missions, 67, 69
F–18s (carrier-based bombers), 464
F–111 (medium-range ghter-bomber), 368, 464
Fairchild, Muir S., 11
Faisal II, King of Iraq, 194–195
FAL (Forces Armées de Laos), 221–222, 223–224
Farouk, King of Egypt, 191
Fat Man bomb, 48, 50
Fechteler, William M., 134–135
Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA), 178
Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). See West
Germany
Felt, Harry D., 221–223, 224
Fermi, Enrico, 47
Fifteenth Air Force, SAC and, 66–67
5412 Committee, 198
CounCil of War
Finletter Commission, 72
Fitzwater, Marlin, 492
509th Composite Group, 48, 66–67
Five-Year Defense Program (FYDP), 247
FLAMING DART reprisal raids against Viet Cong,
289
FLEETWOOD plan, for unied defense budget, 75,
80
exible-response force posture. See also Follow-On
Forces Attack concept; graduated pressure or
response
Berlin access rights and, 217
JFK on, 211, 247–248
McNamara on, 542
NATO and, 251–253, 342–343
NATO’s MC 14/3 strategy on, 260–261
Nitze on, 179
U.S. reserves for NATO versus Vietnam War and,
259–260
y-before-you-buy acquisitions (1970s), 368–369
Flying Tigers, 36
Follow-On Forces Attack (FOFA) concept, 458
force de frappe, France’s, 256–257, 258
Force Structure, Resource, and Assessment Director-
ate (J-8), 455
Ford, Gerald R.
becomes President, 378
Mayaguez aair (1975) and, 383–384
personnel changes under, 384–385
SALT II and, 379, 380–382
Foreign Aairs, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct”
(Kennan, 1947), 70–71
foreign policy, Reagan buildup and, 429–432
Formosa. See Taiwan
Formosa Strait. See Taiwan Strait
Forrestal, James V.
on absence of presiding JCS chair, 82
on coordinating role of JCS after World War II, 60
on custody and control of nuclear weapons, 79
death of, 82–83
on ERASER as alternative to HALFMOON,
75–76
inter-Service bickering and, 69
on JCS as key to unication law, 71–73, 538–539
on McCloy on atomic bomb to Truman, 49–50
military budget for FY 1950 and, 76, 79–81, 89n46
push to increase military budget by, 73, 74
reliance on U.S. nuclear monopoly by, 98
as Sec. of Defense meeting with JCS, 58
Truman on holding military budget limits by, 76
unication bill and, 67
unied command in Pacic and, 65–66
Weapons Systems Evaluation Group and, 85, 86
Forrestal, Michael, 288
Forrestal-class super carriers, 144–145
Foster, John S., Jr., 372–373, 374
Foster, William C., 178
Fracture Jaw plan, 311
France
Communist attack against Korea and, 119
deferring action on the EDC, 155
Desert Shield/Desert Storm and, 519
Live Oak (planning body) and, 200–201
Nasser’s nationalization of Suez Canal and, 192–193
NATO and military commitments at end of 1950s
by, 156
NATO buildup in Europe and, 122–123
on nuclear weapons against expansion of Chinese
Communist power, 147
opposition to MLF by, 256–257
Pleven Plan, European Defence Community and,
120
Soviet blockade of Berlin and, 78
Treaty of Paris (1952) and, 123
war-weariness for Indochina conict and, 146–147
Franklin D. Roosevelt (carrier), 356
Franks, Frederick M., Jr., 527
Freedman, Lawrence, 263
Freeman, Charles W., Jr., 529
FRG (Federal Republic of Germany). See West
Germany
FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front),
407–408
Fulbright, J. William, 285–286
“Functions of the Department of Defense and Its
Major Components” (DOD Directive 5100.1,
1958), 186
Gabriel, Charles A., 423, 435
Gaddis, John Lewis, 142
Gaither, H. Rowan, 178
Gaither Committee, 177–179
Galahad commando unit (Merrill’s Marauders), 33
Galosh (Soviet air defense system), 264, 265
Gardner, Trevor, 175
Gast, Philip C., 412
Gates, Robert M., 492
Gates, Thomas S., Jr., 136, 182–183, 188
Gayler, Noel, 325, 378–379
General Advisory Committee, AEC’s, 62
Geneva conference(s), 162, 171n134, 277, 358
Geneva Convention, on repatriation of POWs (1949),
138
Germany. See also West Germany
ARCADIA meetings (1941) on defeat of, 9
Casablanca Conference (Jan. 1943) on combined
bombing of, 13
Informal Policy Committee on, 43
inDEX
post-World War II treatment of, 42–43
Soviet troops in (1948), 73
Gilpatric, Roswell L., 218, 219, 232
Giroldi Vega, Moisés, 490–491
Glaspie, April, 507–508
Glass, Henry E., 213
Glosson, Buster C., 514, 516, 517, 521, 523
Goldwater, Barry, 286
Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act
(1986)
backchannel talks and, 496
CJCS authority under, 537
controversial features of, 454–455
Desert Shield/Desert Storm and, 518–519
diminished JCS role in passage of, 453
ow of military ideas and information and, 512
implementation of, 455–457
Joint Task Force Middle East under, 469–470
Operation Just Cause under, 492–493
Packard Commission and, 452
planning procedures under, 112
post-Vietnam War JCS role and, 327, 546–547
Powell as CJCS and, 482
special operations and, 384
Goodpaster, Andrew J., 345, 360n42
Gorbachev, Mikhail S.
on armed forces reductions, 479, 480
coup against, 497–498
Powell on reforms by, 485
as reform-minded Soviet leader, 449
Saddam Hussein and, 515
Soviet Union restructuring by, 459–462
START negotiations and, 496–497
graduated pressure or response
air war in Vietnam and, 309, 310
JCS and, 543
Kennedy on, 211
McMaster on JCS acceptance of, 327
McNamara on, SIGMA I–64 testing of, 283
SIGMA II–64 testing of, 287
Taylor on, 282–283
as Vietnam War strategy, 287–289
Graham, Daniel O., 434
Grand Alliance, 18–19, 61. See also Britain; Soviet
Union; United States
Gray, Alfred M., Jr., 492
Gray, Gordon, 178
Great Debate (1951), on U.S. commitment to NATO,
121
Great Society, Johnson’s, 250, 293, 543
Grechko, Andrei, 382
Greece, 69, 121–122, 123, 308
Green Berets, 279
Greene, Wallace M., Jr., 282, 301n61
Greeneld, Kent Roberts, 7
Grenada invasion (1983), 429, 430
Gribkov, Anatoli I., 240–241n71
Gromyko, Andrei, 380
ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs), 403
Groves, Leslie R., 47, 48, 51
Gruenther, Alfred M., 58, 154, 162, 184–185
Guam Doctrine, Nixon’s, 343, 366
Guantanamo Bay, U.S. naval base at, 198
Guatemala, 196
Gulf of Tonkin incident, 284–292
Gulf War (1990). See Iraq; Kuwait; Operation Desert
Shield/Desert Storm
Gulf War Airpower Survey, 524
Haig, Alexander M., Jr., 346, 357, 422
Haile Selassi, 404
HALFMOON plan, for unied defense budget,
75–76, 80
Halloween Massacre (1975), 384–385
Halperin, Morton H., 263, 337
Halsey, William F., 31
Handy, Thomas T., 1
Hanyok, Robert J., 285
hard-knock option
for Dominican Republic crisis (1965), 292
for Vietnam War, 288, 289, 290, 291, 323
Harmel, Pierre, 261
Harmel Report, on NATO’s MC 14/3, 261, 342
Harmon, Hubert R., 84–85
Harriman, W. Averell
on Laos crisis, 223
MacArthur’s dismissal and, 115
named Ambassador to the Soviet Union, 20
named special assistant for national security aairs,
113
nuclear test ban and, 235
on waning Soviet interest in military collabora-
tion, 21
Harrison, William K., Jr., 138
Haslam, Jonathan, 495
Hawaiian Conference (1966), 296
Hayes, Grace Person, 32
Hayward, Thomas D., 393, 423
Herres, Robert T., 455, 482
High Frontier, 434
High Level Group (HLG), 402
Himalayas (“the Hump”), supplies and equipment for
China and, 35
Hiroshima, bombing of, 50, 51
Hitch, Charles J., 254
Hizballah terrorists, airliner hijacking by (1985), 463
CounCil of War
Ho Chi Minh Trail, 296, 309, 311, 319–320, 321
Homann, Stanley, 335
Hollis, Leslie, C., xiv
Holloway, James L., Jr., 195
Holloway, James L., III, 208n115, 377, 393, 413
Honolulu conference (1965), 292
Hopkins, Harry, 8, 10
Horner, Charles A., 514, 519, 521
Hound Dog missile, 254
House Armed Services Committee, 450, 453
Hull, Cordell, 8
Hull, John E., 86–87
human rights, Carter on, 395, 416n18
Hungarian rebellion (1956), 158, 193
Hussein, King of Jordan, 194, 195
Huyser, Robert E., 406
hydrogen bomb (H-bombs), 98–99, 141, 144, 159,
174
I Corps region, South Vietnam’s, 307, 308, 310–311
Ia Drang Valley conict, Vietnam (1965), 296
ICBMs. See intercontinental ballistic missiles
Iklé, Fred C., 422
IL–28 ghter-bombers, Soviet, 243n105
Inch’on Operation, MacArthur and, 107–108
Independence (carrier), 355–356
India, 33, 159
India-Burma Theater, 37–38
Indochina. See also Vietnam War
crises of 1954–1955 in, 135
French and Communist Viet Minh struggle in,
146–147
JCS debate on involvement in war in, 147–148
Informal Policy Committee on Germany (IPCOG),
43
initial operating capability (IOC), for Soviet ICBMs,
175
Instant Thunder plan against Iraq, 513–514, 515
Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), 369
Intelligence Community. See also specic intelligence
units
accuracy of intelligence on Soviet capabilities and,
142
British deception on Suez crisis for, 192
on China’s political dominance in Asia, 348
concerns on 1948 Soviet buildup in Germany,
73–74
on Cuba and the Soviet Union in late 1950s, 197
on Gorbachev, 485
JCS interpretations of same data dierently from,
180–181
overlooking Far East before North Korea attacked
South Korea, 102
on Saddam’s forces against Kuwait, 507
on South Vietnam collapse, 382
on Soviet bloc forces’ preparedness (1956–1957),
157–158, 160–161
on Soviet ICBM arsenal (late 1960s), 338
on Soviet missile in 1950s, 175, 182
on Soviet missile in 1960s, 264
on Soviet missiles in Cuba, 227
on Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons program, 98
on Warsaw Pact buildup, 345
Intelligence Directorate (J-2), 185
intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)
Air Force development of, 183, 337
Carter on reductions in, 398
Gaither Committee report on, 177–179
intelligence on Soviet development of, 180–181
interim SALT agreement on, 359n21
Jackson on SALT agreements and, 341
JCS estimates on quantity needed for assured
destruction strategy, 249–250, 270n23
JCS on frozen numbers for, 340–341, 544
land-based, assured destruction strategy and, 248
post-SALT I Soviet testing of, 342, 375
Powell’s estimates for, 496
on SALT I agenda, 338
small, single-warhead, Scowcroft Commission on,
438
Soviet, surprise attacks during 1950s by, 144
Soviet launch of (1957), 173
Soviet R&D on, 264
START I Treaty on, 497
U.S. concerns on 1950s Soviet development of,
174–177
Interim Committee, interdepartmental, on atomic
bomb policies and use, 48–49, 50
intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs). See also
SS–4; SS–5; Thor
Air Force development of, 183
French development of, 257
land-based, Army testing of, 146
Soviet testing of, 175
intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF)
NATO on modernization of, 402, 440–441
Treaty mandating elimination of (1987), 459–461,
475n40
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 160
inter-Service rivalry
during and after World War II, 3
conferences on (1948 and 1949), 69
Crowe on overdramatization of, 452–453
Desert Shield/Desert Storm and, 514, 517, 525
fundamental dierences of opinion and, 539
JCS in Vietnam era and, 328
in JCS under Radford and Eisenhower, 135–137
inDEX
Jones on JCS organizational structure and, 450
of mid- to late-1950s, 173–174
missile development and, 176–177, 183–184
MX missile and, 370
over joint strategic targeting, 187–190
peacetime total force (1970s) and, 366–367
Rapid Deployment Force and, 409
Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force and, 431
Reagan buildup and, 426, 546
rearmament for Korean War and, 112
Richardson Committee study on post-World War
II organizational reform and, 40
Vietnam War strategy and, 308
during World War II, 3, 538
Zumwalt on inter-Service cooperation and, 315
Iran. See also Iran-Iraq war
antiship mines in Persian Gulf of, 470–471
as anti-Soviet U.S. ally, 405–406
Baghdad Pact and, 190
hostage rescue mission (1979–1980), 411–414
Khomeini’s rise to power in, 406–407
U.S. embassy seizure in, 409
U.S. on Baghdad Pact and, 191
U.S. relations with (1970s), 352
Iran Ajr (minelayer), 470
Iran-contra aair (1986), 424, 465–466
Iran-Iraq war, 432, 467–468, 472, 505
Iraq. See also Iran-Iraq war; Operation Desert Shield/
Desert Storm
Baghdad Pact and, 190
defense establishment of, 509
Kuwait invasion by, 487–488, 505, 508
post-hostilities phase of Gulf War and, 528–531
rebellion (1958) against monarchy of, 194–195, 352
Soviet support for, 352, 383
U.S. on Baghdad Pact and, 191
USS Stark attack by, 470
Ismay, Hastings, xiv, 124
Israel. See also Arab-Israeli conict
Lebanon invasion by, 429
Nasser and, 191, 192–193
Saddam Hussein’s belligerence against, 507,
523–524, 534n65
U.S. arms sales to, 352, 353
USCENTCOM excluded from involvement with,
431
USS Liberty attacked by, 353
Italy, 15–16, 257
Jackson, C.D., 148
Jackson, Henry M., 265–266, 341, 375, 376, 379, 381
Japan
ARCADIA meetings (1941) on defeat of, 9
atomic bomb development and use against, 46–52
ending war with, 43–46
War Plan Orange against, 3, 31–32
Jedi Knights (Army planning sta), 517
Jeremiah, David E., 482–483, 529
Jews, partitioning of Palestine for homeland for, 76–77
Joe 1 (Soviet’s rst nuclear device), 98
Johnson, Hansford T., 482
Johnson, Harold K., 286, 290–291, 301n61, 328
Johnson, Louis
becomes Sec. of Defense, 83
briefed on ROK Army strength, 103
on military spending projections under NSC 68,
101–102
Revolt of the Admirals (1949) and, 99–100
steps down as Sec. of Defense, 107, 128n56
on U.S. troops sent to Korea, 104
on weapons eects and WSEG studies, 85
as Z Committee advisor on U.S. atomic energy
program, 99
Johnson, Lyndon B. See also McNamara, Robert S.;
Vietnam War
air war in Vietnam and, 295
arms sales to Israel under, 353
on call-up of Reservists for NATO, 260
Dominican Republic crisis and, 292
on ending Vietnam War, 311
Glassboro summit with Kosygin and McNamara
and, 267
on JCS strategy for Vietnam, 329
McNamara as Sec. of Defense under, 245
MLF demise and, 258
on not seeking reelection, 305
SALT and, 336
strategic review of Vietnam War (1966) and, 296
Vietnam bombing suspended by, 312–313
Vietnam War chain of command and, 297–298
Johnston, Robert B., 516
Joint Action of the Army and Navy (JAAN), 4, 23n16
Joint Administrative Committee, 14
Joint Analysis Directorate (JAD), 206n73
Joint Army and Navy Board, U.S., 3, 5
Joint Chiefs of Sta (JCS). See also Chairman, Joint
Chiefs of Sta; détente; inter-Service rivalry;
National Security Council
Bay of Pigs operation and, 214–216
on catalog of commitments military budget would
support, 80
chain of command in Vietnam War and, 297–298
on China as threat, 348
Cold War and niche for, 124–125
contingency plans for U.S. troops supplied to
NATO by, 122
Cuban missile crisis and, 229–231, 232–233
CounCil of War
divergences from CCS organization, 6–7
early meetings and work of, 5–6
formation of, 1–2
Goldwater-Nichols legislation on, 454–455, 482
Intelligence Community and, 180–181
Johnson’s deescalation of Vietnam War and,
312–313
Kennedy administration and, 211–213
Korean War onset and, 103–104
Laos crisis and, 221–224, 240n55
leadership at Tehran Conference (Nov. 1943) by,
17–18
legal status of, 8–9, 67–68, 538
MacArthur and, 106–107
McNamara on increased defense spending and, 246
NCA amendments (1948) on diminished role for,
82, 541–542
North African decision and, 10–11
nuclear test ban and, 234
as obstacle to Eisenhower’s plans, 141–142, 150
organization chart (1942), 6
organization chart (1947), 68
organization chart (1959), 187
organization chart (1987), 456
Pacic strategy during World War II under, 9
on post-World War II atomic bomb use, 63, 64
post-World War II defense establishment and, 51–52
on post-World War II military readiness, 61–62
Reagan’s meetings with, 424
Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative and, 433,
436–438
rearmament for Korean War and, 112–113
redened mission (1947) of, 68
reorganization after Casablanca Conference of,
13–14
SACEUR communication with, 120
showdown with McNamara over air war in Viet-
nam and, 309–310
strategic bombing of Germany and, 13
Tonkin Gulf incident and, 284–285
TRIDENT Conference and, 14–15
Truman on unication debate and, 60
Vietnam War and, 286–292, 326–329
World War II inuence of, 7–8, 537–538
Joint Forces Air Component Commander (JFACC),
519
Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), 4, 5, 70, 72
Joint Intelligence Group, 72
Joint Logistics Committee, 6, 14, 72
Joint Logistics Group, 72
Joint Long-Range Strategic Estimate (JLRSE), 112
Joint New Weapons Committee, 6
Joint Outline Emergency War Plan (JOEWP), 111,
114
Joint Planning Committee, U.S., 4
Joint Post-War Committee (JPWC), 42
Joint Program for Planning, 246
Joint Psychological Warfare Committee, 6
Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), 524,
533n49
Joint Sta Mission (JSM), Britain’s, 2
Joint Sta Planners (JPS). See also Joint Strategic Plans
Committee
on ending war with Japan, 45
McNarney’s JCS reorganization and, 14
Operation Crossroads under, 63
stang for, 5
Unied Command Plan and, 66
war in the Pacic and, 44
Wedemeyer on State Dept. liaison with, 41
Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP), 112, 136, 194
Joint Strategic Committee, U.S., 4
Joint Strategic Objectives Plan (JSOP)
under Carter, 393
McNamara’s use of systems analysis and, 246–247
Nixon and Kissinger on reordering priorities in,
347–348
rearmament for Korean War and, 112
as Service requirements without priorities, 136, 541
timeframe for, 269n5
Joint Strategic Planning Document (JSPD), 393, 541
Joint Strategic Plans Committee (JSPC), 72, 83,
84–85, 138–139. See also Joint War Plans Com-
mittee (JWPC)
Joint Strategic Survey Committee (JSSC)
on atomic bomb’s military and strategic impact, 51
Casablanca Conference on combined bombing of
Germany and, 13
creation of, 11
rst objectives of, North African decision and, 12
FY 1952 military budget review and, 100
JPWC under, to work with State and EAC, 42
on naval blockade of Cuba, 228
part-time inter-Service oces on, 72
on replacing CCS with tripartite United Chiefs of
Sta, 26n76
Service functions report (1946) by, 67
as State Dept. and JCS liaison, 41
to study Marshall’s proposal for post-World War II
organizational reform, 39–40
on Weapons Systems Evaluation Group, 85–86
World War II membership on, 6
Joint Strategic Target Planning Sta (JSTPS), 186–187,
188, 189, 206n78, 252
joint task force (JTF 116), 221–222
Joint Task Force Middle East (JTFME), 469
Joint War Games Agency, 206n73, 283
Joint War Plans Committee (JWPC), 14–15, 41, 45,
46, 71. See also Joint Strategic Plans Committee
inDEX
jointness. See also Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reor-
ganization Act
Checkmate and, 514
Desert Storm as, 518–519, 525, 531, 547–548
Goldwater-Nichols legislation on, 454, 546
Gulf War (1990) and, 531
Kuwait shipping escort operation and, 470
Libyan bombing raid as display of, 464
Jones, David C.
as CJCS, 390, 392–393
on countervailing strategy (1978), 396
on increasing the military budget, 421
Iran hostage rescue mission and, 411, 413
on JCS organizational structure, 450, 546
joins the JCS, 377
on SALT II, 399–400
on Steadman group’s reorganization plan for JCS,
394
on stealth technology, 395
on three near-simultaneous conicts’ planning, 427
Weinberger’s relationship with, 422–423
Jordan, 195, 352, 357
Jordan, Hamilton, 413
JSTARS (surveillance and tracking system), 458
Jupiter (medium-range ballistic missiles, MRBMs)
Army and Navy development of, 176
Khrushchev on Cuban missile crisis and, 232–233
with NATO host countries (1950s), 252
retirement of, 272n46
Soviet IRBMs in Cuba comparable to, 228–229
testing of, 146
in Turkey, Soviets’ complaints about, 226
Wilson assigns to Air Force, 177
Karch, Frederick J., 277
Kassim, Abdul-Karim, 195
KC–135 jet tankers, 143
Kelley, Paul X., 410, 423
Kennan, George F., 70, 80, 100
Kennedy, John F. See also McNamara, Robert S.
assassination of, 245
Bay of Pigs operation under, 213–216
Berlin under siege and, 216–220
Cuban missile crisis origins under, 224–228,
241n84
Cuban missile crisis under, 228–233
defense spending increases under, 246
on exible response doctrine, 211
JCS estrangement with, 233–234
Laos crisis under, 221–224
Macmillan meeting on Skybolt or Polaris with,
254–255
on McNamara’s FYDP, 247
nuclear test ban and, 234–236
Vietnam commitment under, 278–279, 280, 281
Kennedy, Robert F., 213, 215–216, 222, 225, 232, 305
Kenney, George C., 31
Key West Agreement (1948), 113, 134, 203n19
KGB, 434–435, 440–441. See also Soviet Union
Khalid bin Sultan, Prince, 519
Khe Sanh battle, Vietnam War, 305, 307–308, 310–311
Khomeini, Ruhollah (Ayatollah), 407
Khrushchev, Nikita S.
on Berlin and the West, 199
deploying missiles to Cuba, 226–227
Eisenhower meetings with, 201
on liberation wars in Latin America, 225–226
on McNamara’s counterforce/no-cities doctrine,
249
on MRBMs in Turkey versus Cuba, 232, 243n105
nuclear test ban and U.S. relations with, 234, 235
on Open Skies proposal, 162
Powers’ U–2 mission and summit with Eisenhower
and, 183
propaganda and deception campaign on missile
development by, 180
Vienna meeting with JFK and, 217
Vietnam War and, 296
on wars of national liberation, 278
Killian, James R., Jr., 161, 162, 173
Kim Il-song, 103
King, Ernest J.
atomic bomb development and, 47
Casablanca Conference (Jan. 1943) and, 13
on casualty estimates for ending war with Japan, 46
CCS at the Second Quebec Conference and, xiv
on charter for JCS during World War II, 8
Combined Chiefs of Sta and, 2
ending war with Japan and, 44–45, 49
on JSSC’s objective for landing in Europe, 12
Leahy appointment as Chief of Sta to Command-
er in Chief and, 7
MacArthur friction with Nimitz and, 32
on major oensive in Central Pacic, TRIDENT
Conference and, 14, 15
on numerical superiority for Pacic Ocean Area
command, 31–32
on post-World War II organizational reform, 39, 40
QUADRANT (Aug. 1943) talks on Overlord and,
16
on Russia’s role in Europe during World War II, 9
steps down from JCS, 60
on Truman’s decision to use atomic bomb, 50
on unied combined commands, 30
working in harmony with Marshall during World
War II by, 3
Kinkaid, Thomas C., 31
CounCil of War
Kissinger, Henry A.
on air campaign against North Vietnam, 322–323
on ALCMs discussed at Vladivostok, 381
backchannel contacts by, 316, 322
on chain of command, 389n67
on Christmas bombing in Vietnam, 325
on concessions to PRC involving Taiwan, 349–350,
351
on détente, 335
dual roles in Nixon administration of, 363n87
ending Vietnam War and, 313
Ford and, after Nixon’s resignation, 378, 379
Ford on role of, 385
Laird’s plan for Vietnamization and, 318
on LAM SON 719 operation, 319, 320
on MIRV limitation for SALT II, 379
on new strategic weapons after Vietnam, 375
NSC system and, 544–545
October War (1973) and, 355
policy process under, 315
on reorienting U.S. strategy on PRC, 348
Rowny and, 376
SALT I backchannel talks with Dobrynin and, 339,
378
Schlesinger rivalry with, 378, 383
Schlesinger stando on Israeli assistance with, 356
secret talks with China and, 348
on Shah of Iran, 405–406
on Sino-Soviet relations (1970s), 361n46
on Soviet ICBM arsenal, 338
on targeting practices in SIOP, 371
on Vietnamization, 319
Kistiakowsky, George B., 182, 189
Knox, Frank, 8
Korean Military Advisory Group (KMAG), U.S., 103
Korean War (1950–1953)
Chinese intervention in, 110
Cold War and outbreak of, 96
ending, Eisenhower and, 137–140
impact of Chinese intervention in, 111–113
as JCS turning point, 124
MacArthur, Inch’on Operation, and, 105–108
onset of, 102–105
Truman meeting with MacArthur and, 109
Truman on NSC 68 and, 108–109
Kosygin, Alexei N., 267
Kuwait. See also Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm
appeal for shipping protection by, 468–469
Iraq’s invasion of, 487–488, 505, 508
origins of 1990 crisis in, 506–508
shipping escorts for, 469–472, 547
Kvitsinskiy, Yuli, 440, 447n58
Kwantung army, Japanese, 21
Kyes, Roger M., 148
Laird, Melvin R.
on air campaign in Vietnam War, 321, 322, 323
on Kissinger and targeting doctrine, 372
on Kissinger’s circumvention of authority, 316
on Soviet ICBM arsenal (late 1960s), 338
on targeting doctrine revisions to Nixon, 373
on Trident missile submarines, 370
on U.S. support for NATO, 345
in Vietnam, ca. 1969, 304
Vietnamization strategy and, 318
LAM SON 719 operation and, 319–321
Land, Edwin H., 162
land-based aviation for antisubmarine warfare, 67,
69, 72
Landon, Truman H., 100
Lansdale, Edward G., 278–279
Laos, 221–224, 286, 294, 326
Latin America. See also Central America
Eisenhower’s anti-Communist policies in, 196–197
Soviet focus on, 225–226
Lavelle, John D., 322
Lawrence Livermore research laboratory, 433
Lawton, Frederick J., 101
Leahy, William D.
atomic bomb development and, 47
aversion to political-military aairs by, 40–41,
55n49
CCS at the Second Quebec Conference and, xiv
on charter for JCS during World War II, 8
as Chief of Sta to Commander in Chief, 7, 538
on ending war with Japan, 45
interdepartmental Interim Committee on atomic
bomb and, 49
as JCS chair during World War II, 82
opposition to unication by, 64–65
post-World War II JCS service by, 60
on post-World War II organizational reform, 40
Roosevelt’s meeting with MacArthur and Nimitz
and, 44
on Truman’s decision to use atomic bomb, 50
Lebanon, 194, 195, 429, 430
Ledo Road, from Burma to China, 35
Lehman, John F., Jr., 453
LeMay, Curtis E.
on ABM, 263–264
becomes Air Force Chief of Sta, 224–225
Berlin crisis and, 219
Cuban missile crisis and, 230, 232, 233–234
McNamara’s exible response force posture and,
248
inDEX
NATO retardation bombing plan and, 119
Operation Crossroads under, 63
as SAC commander, 79
on Taylor and McNamara’s plan for Vietnam, 283
on troops and bombing after Tonkin Gulf incident,
286
Lemnitzer, Lyman L.
Berlin crisis and, 217, 219
on Cuban surveillance, 228
on 8000-man force versus Win Plan, 279–280
on Laos crisis, 221
Laos crisis and, 223–224
on McNamara and his sta, 212
McNamara’s FYDP and posture statement from,
247
on nuclear weapons for NATO, 252
steps down as CJCS, 224
Taylor as MILREP and, 213
lend-lease program, 21, 34–35, 37, 54n35
liberation doctrine, Reagan on, 421
Liberty, USS, 353
Libya, 383, 429, 430, 463–464
Lilienthal, David E., 99
limited employment options, in revised targeting
doctrine (1973), 373
Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963), 235, 266
Lincoln, George A., 178–179
Linebacker, 323–324, 329, 351
Linebacker II, 325–326, 329, 351
Lippmann, Walter, 69
Lisbon Conference (1952), on NATO force goals,
123
Little Boy bomb, 48, 50
Live Oak (planning body), 200–201, 219
Logistics Directorate (J-4), 185
log-rolling process, 136
Lon Nol, 318–319
long-range bombers, 248, 341
Long-Term Defense Program (LTDP), NATO’s, 401,
457
Los Alamos, New Mexico, 48, 433
Lovett, Robert A., 96, 134
MacArthur, Douglas
on Chinese forces inside Korea’s borders, 110
Collins’s reports on Korean War and, 113–114
command of war under, 31
as Commander in Chief, Far East, 105–106
ending war with Japan and, 44–45
friction between Nimitz and, 32
Intelligence Community conicts with, 102
on Republic of China, 349
Southwest Pacic Area command under, 30–31
Truman meeting on Wake Island 1950 with, 94,
109–110
Truman’s dismissal of, 113–116
unied command in Pacic and, 65–66
Macmillan, Harold, 222, 254–255
Maddox, USS, 284
Mahan, Erin R., 257
The Malaise of Soviet Society (British intelligence
report), 428–429
Malinovskiy, Rodion, 226
Manhattan Engineer District (MED) (Manhattan
Project), 47–50, 51, 62, 86
Manseld, Mike, 344
Mao Zedong, 34, 36, 37, 95–96, 351. See also People’s
Republic of China
March Crisis of 1948, 73–76, 90n53
Marine Corps
on amphibious operations, 67, 69, 72
arrival in Vietnam, 277, 290
CENTAF compromise with, 519–520
coequal status with Service chiefs for, 394
Johnson on Vietnam mission for, 291–292
post-World War II projections for size and capabili-
ties of, 39
proposed post-World War II merger with Navy,
65–66
Truman on, 59–60
Mark 12A warhead, 385, 396
Marshall, George C.
on alternative to atomic bomb, 50
atomic bomb development and, 47
becomes Sec. of Defense, 107
cautions Wedemeyer on role in China, 38
CCS at the Second Quebec Conference and, xiv
on charter for JCS during World War II, 8
Chiang Kai-shek and, 97
Chinese aairs and, 35
Combined Chiefs of Sta and, 2
on Continental invasion in 1942 or 1943, 10
Dill’s collaboration with, JCS development and, 5
on direct link between President and JCS, 7
on European Recovery Program, 69
interdepartmental Interim Committee on atomic
bomb and, 49
MacArthur friction with Nimitz and, 32
MacArthur’s dismissal and, 115–116
on MacArthur’s operations in North Korea, 109
military budget for FY 1950 and, 81
on post-World War II organizational reform, 39, 40
relaying Deane’s sobering assessment of the Soviets,
20
Roosevelt and, 24n28
Roosevelt’s North African decision and, 10–11
on Soviet collaboration during World War II, 22
CounCil of War
Truman’s reliance on, 60
on universal military training, 61–62
on U.S. support for NATO, 121
on waning Soviet interest in military collabora-
tion, 21
working in harmony with King during World War
II by, 3
Marshall Plan, 100
Martin, Joseph W., Jr., 115
Masaryk, Jan, 73
massive retaliation doctrine, 248–249, 251, 258, 261
Matsu Islands, Taiwan Strait, 135, 150, 151–152
Mayaguez aair (1975), 383–384
MC 14/1 (NATO’s forward strategy, 1952), 121–122,
251
MC 14/2 (NATO’s strategy on tactical weapons,
1957), 157, 251
MC 14/3 (NATO’s exible-response strategy,
1966–1967), 258–261, 342
MC 48 (NATO’s New Approach strategy), 152–156,
541
MC 48/3 (NATO’s implementation strategy,
1966–1967), 260–261
McCain, John S., Jr., 319
McCarthy, Eugene, 305
McCloy, John J., 49–50
McConnell, John P., 264, 290, 309, 368
McDonald, David L., 233
McElroy, Neil H., 136, 181, 182, 184, 185, 186
McFarlane, Robert C., 463, 468
McMaster, H.R., 283, 327
McNamara, Robert S.
AMSA opposition by, 368
Bay of Pigs operation and, 215, 225
Berlin Task Force and, 217, 218
chain of command in Vietnam War and, 297–298
Cuban missile crisis and, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232
damage limitation debate and, 261–267
disdain for JCS’s position on air campaign by, 309
Honolulu conference (1965) on Vietnam War and,
292
JCS and, 214, 249–250, 328, 541–543
Laos crisis and, 222, 223–224
on LeMay on the JCS, 233–234
MLF demise and, 255–258
NATO’s MC 14/3 strategy and, 258–261
reconguring strategic force posture under,
247–251
refused expanding bombing in Vietnam, 309–310
as Sec. of Defense, 211–212, 213, 244
Sentinel and seeds of SALT, 267–269
on SIGMA II–64 testing graduated pressure
hypothesis, 287
Skybolt aair and, 253–255
on stalemate in Vietnam, 305–306
steps down as Sec. of Defense, 311
systems analysis used by, 211, 245–247
target selection for air war in Vietnam and, 295, 296
Trident missile development and, 369
U.S. involvement in Vietnam and, 282
Vietnam assistance policy and, 280
Vietnam War strategy and, 288, 291, 294
McNarney, Joseph T., 14, 80
McNaughton, John T., 288
McPeak, Merrill A., 517, 521, 525
Mediterranean
combined unied command for campaigns in,
29–30
U.S. Navy during Reagan years in, 428
Voroshilo questions Brooke on campaigns in, 17
Mediterranean Command (CINCAFMED), NATO’s,
121
Medium Term Defense Plan (MTDP), 119, 120, 123
medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs), 256,
272n50
Merchant, Livingston, 257
Merrill’s Marauders (Galahad commando unit), 33
Meyer, Edward C., 423, 451
Meyer, John C., 325, 326
Middle East. See also Persian Gulf; specic countries
Carter Doctrine on, 410–411
Eisenhower Doctrine on, 194, 195
Operation Blue Bat in, 194–196
Palestine partitioning for Jewish state in, 76–77
politico-military vacuum in, 193–194
Reagan Doctrine and, 429
Soviet inuence in, 190, 383
Soviet-American relations and (1970s), 351–352,
353–354, 355–356, 357, 358
Suez crisis in, 191–193
U.S. Commander in Chief for, 208n109
Midgetmen ICBMs, 438
military budget
Carter’s proposed reductions in, 392, 395
for Desert Shield/Desert Storm, 511–512
Eisenhower on stable level for, 141, 541
Eisenhower’s reduction of rate of growth in, 143
for FY 1950, gap between requirements and Tru-
man’s limits on, 79–80
for FY 1950, integrated defense plan and, 76
for FY 1950, international situation and, 76–77
for FY 1950, submitted by Forrestal, 81
for FY 1952, Johnson’s hold-the-line spending
policy for, 99–100
for FY 1952, Korean War onset and, 108–110
for FY 1952, Reagan’s compared with, 444n19
for FY 1981 and FY 1982, Reagan buildup and,
425–429
inDEX
JCS concerns on NATO budget and, 96
Johnson as JCS Chairman and, 83
Johnson’s Great Society and, 250, 293, 543
March Crisis of 1948 and, 73–74
McNamara’s assured destruction strategy and, 250
McNamara’s use of systems analysis and, 246–247
Nike-X (1966) and, 266
NSC 68 projecting military threat in 1950s and,
101, 540
Powell’s base force plan and, 495–496
under Reagan, 545
rearmament for Korean War and, 111
Rumsfeld on growth in, 385
supplemental, Kennedy’s call for, 217–218
Truman’s limitation on, integrated statement of
service and, 71–73
unied, HALFMOON plan for, 75
unied, omitted from NSA (1947), 89n46
Vietnam War and allocation of, 306–307, 365–366
Vietnam War as portion of, 308
Military Committee, NATO’s, 120
Military Liaison Committee, AEC’s, 62, 70
military personnel policy. See also military budget
Goldwater-Nichols legislation on, 455, 546
military technologies. See also specic weapons
Gulf War (1990) and, 530–531
reorganization and challenges of, 65
stealth aircraft, 395
Unied Command Plan and, 66–67
Vessey on strategic defense and, 436–437
MILL POND (interagency plan for Laos), 221–222
mines, Iranian antiship, 470–471
mining North Vietnamese ports, 289, 323, 329, 351
Minuteman (intercontinental ballistic missile), 176,
248, 374
Minuteman III (MIRVed ICBM), 263
missile gap, 180–183, 218
missile program. See also specic types of missiles
JSTPS and growth of, 186–187
Momyer, William W., 310
Mondale, Walter, 413
MONGOOSE (covert operations in Cuba), 225
Montgomery, Bernard Law, 18, 120, 124
Moorer, Thomas H.
on air attacks against North Vietnam, 321, 322–323
on Christmas bombing in Vietnam, 325, 326
as CJCS, 314, 334
nal posture statement to Congress (1974) by, 358
Foster’s study panel on targeting and, 372
Kissinger’s secret rendezvous with Zhou Enlai and,
350
LAM SON 719 operation and, 319–320
on modernizing U.S. strategic arsenal, 341
October War (1973) and, 355, 356, 357
on peacetime total force (1970s), 367
SALT I agreement and, 339
Morgenthau, Henry, Jr., 42
Mountbatten, Louis, 36–37
Mozambique, 383
mujahideen in Afghanistan, U.S.-backed, 431, 461
multilateral nuclear force (MLF), 252, 255–258
multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles
(MIRVs), 262–263, 379
multiple reentry vehicles (MRVs), 262
Munitions Board (MB), of National Military Estab-
lishment, 68
Murphy, Daniel J., Sr., 356
MUSKETEER (British-French-Israeli military
operation against Egypt), 192–193
mustard gas, Truman on, 139
Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction (MBFR)
Talks, 343, 376, 439–440, 494
mutual assured destruction (MAD), 341, 433
mutual assured survival, 434
Mutual Defense Assistance Program (MDAP), 96, 117,
125n3
MX (intercontinental ballistic missile)
Carter on deployment of, 396
development problems for, 370
as freeze movement target, 435
JCS requests for, 262, 368, 544
Reagan buildup and, 427–428, 438
Rumsfeld on development of, 385
Schlesinger on NSDM 242 and, 374, 375
Nagasaki, bombing of, 50, 51
Nassau agreement (1962), 254–255, 257
Nasser, Gamal Abdul, 191–192, 193
National Command Authority (NCA), 186, 454
national intelligence estimate (NIE 11-5-57), 175
national intelligence estimate (NIE 11-8-59), 175
National Military Establishment (NME), 67–68, 82.
See also Defense Department
National Military Strategy for 1992–1997 (NMS 92-
97), 481, 484, 485
National Security Act (1947)
on accountable civilians, 134
integration of military budget omitted from, 89n46
on JCS duties as corporate advisory body to
President, 537
1948 amendments to, increased JCS size under, 72
1948 amendments to, on Chairman, JCS, 82
1958 amendments to, Sec. of Defense authority
and, 246, 541
statutory standing for JCS under, 67–68, 538
National Security Agency (NSA), 175, 227, 355, 408
National Security Council (NSC)
CounCil of War
Bundy on JCS participation in meetings of, 287
creation of, 68
on Cuban invasion after Bay of Pigs, 225
on curbing expansion of Chinese Communist
power, 147
to develop national objectives for military require-
ments, 76
disarmament debates within, 160
as Eisenhower’s high-level policy forum, 136–137
on Foster’s targeting panel’s ndings, 372–373
Iran hostage rescue mission and, 413
Kennedy’s changes to, 212–213
Kissinger’s circumvention of, 378
Korean War and changes in, 124
national security policy analysis, Service require-
ments and, 80
Nixon’s use of, 315, 331n43
on nuclear weapons for Armed Forces, 79
planning FY 1952 military budget and, 111
Review Group, Kissinger as head of, 316
State-Defense review of FY 1952 military budget
for, 100–101
Truman and enhanced role during Korean War for,
112–113
national security decision memoranda (NSDM),
Nixon’s, 316
National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM
95), 345
National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM
109), 219
National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM
133), 345
National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM
242), 371–373
National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM
245), 379
National Security Resources Board (NSRB), 68
National Security Study Memoranda (NSSM),
Nixon’s, 316, 347
National Strategic Targeting List (NSTL), 189
national technical means, arms control verication
using, 337
Nationalist Chinese. See Chiang Kai-shek; Taiwan
Navy, U.S.
air oensive against Soviet war-making capacity
(1948) and, 75
CENTAF in Desert Storm and, 519
Combined Chiefs of Sta and, 2
inter-Service rivalry between Army and, 3
on Johnson as JCS Chairman, 83
on land-based aviation for antisubmarine warfare,
67, 69, 72
missile development and, 176, 177, 183
New Look defense budget and, 144
nuclear weapons for, 79
post-World War II projections for size and capabili-
ties of, 39
proposed post-World War II merger with Marines,
65–66
Reagan buildup and expansion of, 428
Special Projects Oce, 262
on Trident missile submarines, 369–370
Navy Department, 3, 6, 40
Navy General Board, 4–5
Navy Plans Division, 4–5
Net Evaluation Subcommittee (NESC), 188
Netherlands, 157, 259
Neutrality Act (1937), U.S., 34
neutron bomb, 402, 457
New Frontier, JFK’s, 211, 236n1
New Look (national security policy). See Eisenhower,
Dwight D., rst term
New Zealand, 147, 306
Newhouse, John, 337–338
Nicaragua
Iran-contra aair (1986) in, 424, 465–466
logistical but not military support for contras in,
431
Sandinistas in, 407–408, 467
Nichols, Bill, 453
Nike-X ballistic missile defense system, 264–268
Nike-Zeus ballistic missile defense system, 181, 183
NIKE-ZEUS interceptor missile, 146
Nimitz, Chester W.
command of war under, 31
divided command at Pearl Harbor and, 66
ending war with Japan and, 44–45
friction between MacArthur and, 32
joins the JCS, 60
leaves the JCS, 74
Pacic Ocean Area command under, 30–32
on single Pacic command, 65–66
Nitze, Paul H.
ex-ocial SALT talks and, 339–340
Gaither Committee report and, 178–179
JCS on ABM and, 268
on military power in foreign policy, 100
military spending projections under NSC 68 by,
101
NSDM 109 and, 219
Reagan’s buildup and, 422
on walk in the woods formula for arms control,
440, 447n58
Nixon, Richard M. See also détente; Vietnam War
air campaign against North Vietnam and, 322–323,
324
China and, 348, 350–351
inDEX
on détente, 335–336
on hawks in U.S. after end of détente, 385
on Jackson pressure on SALT negotiating team, 342
JCS and, 313–314, 544–545
Laird’s plan for Vietnamization and, 318
on LAM SON 719 operation, 319, 320–321
Middle East involvement and, 354, 355, 356
modernizing the strategic deterrent under, 367–370
on peace with honor in Vietnam, 305
peacetime total force under, 365–367
policy process under, 315
SALT I under, 336–342
SALT II under, 375–379
on SIOP limitations, 371
on Soviet ICBM arsenal, 338
targeting doctrine revised under, 371–375
on Vietnamization, 319
Watergate scandal and, 346, 355, 356, 377–378
winding down Vietnam War under, 316–321
on Year of Europe (1973), 345–346
Noriega, Manuel Antonio, 489–492, 547
Normandy invasion, planned invasion of Japan versus,
46
Norstad, Lauris
B-29s in Europe and, 78
on Berlin access rights, 216, 218
contingency plans for Berlin and, 200–201
Executive Order on Service functions and, 69
JCS meeting at Naval War College (1948) and, 58
multilateral nuclear force concept and, 255
NATO retardation bombing plan and, 118–119
NATO’s New Approach and, 154
on nuclear weapons for NATO, 169n98, 252
unication bill and, 67
North, Oliver L., 424, 468
North Africa, World War II and, 10–12, 29–30, 76. See
also Mediterranean
North American Air Defense Command (NORAD),
144
North Atlantic Council (NAC), 117–118, 120, 123
North Atlantic Treaty (1949), 95, 96
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
Carter on conventional forces for, 401
conventional posture in late 1950s of, 156–158
creation of, 75
at a crossroads (1952), 124
defense planning for, 117
Desert Storm and, 523
exible-response force posture and, 251–253
France on MLF and, 256–257
Gorbachev’s restructuring of Soviet Union and, 460
on limiting conventional forces in Europe, 493–495
modernization by (late 1970s), 402–403
morale and discipline (mid-1970s) in, 346
as multilateral nuclear force, 255–256, 272n50
Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction Talks and,
439–440
Mutual Defense Assistance Program of, 96
New Approach and nuclear weapons for, 152–156,
541
Nixon and Kissinger on revitalization of, 335
Nixon’s Israeli assistance during Watergate and, 356
one-and-a-half war strategy and support for, 366
Reagan buildup and, 457–458
recognizing upgrades needed by, 345–346, 360n42
Soviet inuence in Middle East and, 190
U.S. commitment at end of 1960s to, 342–343
U.S. disagreements on need for support of, 344–345
U.S. Great Debate on commitment to, 121
Vietnam War and, 306
Vietnam War and U.S. power and inuence within,
258–259
Warsaw Pact as threat to, 343–344
Warsaw Pact buildup and, 400–401
North Korea. See also Korean War
invasion of South Korea by, 102–105
repatriation concerns of POWs from, 138
North Vietnam. See also Vietnam War
Laos crisis and, 223
mining ports of, 289, 323, 329, 351
Tonkin Gulf incident and, 284–285
North Vietnamese Army (NVA). See also Ho Chi
Minh Trail
air defenses of, 295
air strikes on, 323–325
base camps in Cambodia and Laos of, 294, 317
Cambodian invasion (1970) and, 318–319
Khe Sanh siege by, 310
LAM SON 719 operation and, 320
Nixon on withdrawal of, 316
war of attrition and, 297
North Vietnamese Communist Party, 296
NSC 68 (State-Defense review of FY 1952 military
budget ), 100–101, 108–109, 540
NSC 162/2 (nuclear weapons for use as other muni-
tions), 142
NSD 54 (Desert Storm), 522, 527
NSDD 32 (Reagan’s national security policy), 428
NSDD 99, 431
NSR 10 (Bush’s review of Persian Gulf policy), 506
NSR 12 (Bush’s review of national security), 480, 481
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), 266–269
Nuclear Planning Group (NPG), NATO’s, 258, 402
nuclear weapons. See also arms control; atomic bomb;
Soviet Union; specic types of
CounCil of War
air war in Vietnam and, 295
allies’ objections to use in Western Pacic of, 147
assured destruction strategy under McNamara for,
248
atmospheric testing of, 159, 162–163
B-29s in Europe implying threat of, 78
Brezhnev’s ultimatum to Nixon on Israel’s October
War (1973) and, 357
Carter’s control of, 396
China’s development of, 348
freeze movement during Reagan era against,
434–435
French development of, 256–257
JCS reluctance to use in Indochina, 149
JSPC’s plan to end Korean War using, 138–139,
164n12
as key to future security, Eisenhower on, 141, 142,
540–541
Korean War and potential use of, 104
Laos crisis and consideration of, 222–223, 240n55
MacArthur on tactical use in Korea for, 114
McNamara’s assured destruction strategy and,
250–251, 542
for NATO, exible-response force posture and,
251–253
for NATO, JCS in 1960s and, 259–260, 272n61
for NATO, Norstad on, 169n98
for NATO retardation purposes (1951), 118
NATO’s forward strategy on conventional weapons
versus, 122
NATO’s intermediate-range, 402, 440–441
NATO’s New Approach and, 152–156, 541
production increases under Truman and Eisen-
hower of, 158–159
Reagan buildup and strategic balance with Soviet
Union on, 427–428
Saddam’s, intelligence on, 524
Soviet, deployed to Cuba, 226–228, 240–241n71
stockpile of U.S. versus Soviet, 159, 169–170n113
strategic plans for, as classied, 371–372
Taiwan Strait confrontation and, 150–151
test ban, Kennedy and, 234–236, 243n110
Truman on restoring production of, 69–70
Vietnam War contingency planning and, 288
Warsaw Pact’s buildup of, 344
Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy (NUWEP-80),
397
Nunn, Sam, 487
Nunn-Cohen amendment, 384
Nuri al-Said, 195
October War (1973), 346, 353–358
Oce of Defense Mobilization (ODM), 178
Oce of Management and Budget (OMD), 367. See
also Stockman, David A.
Oce of Naval Intelligence (ONI), 231
Oce of Strategic Services (OSS), 6–7, 21, 102
Oce of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). See also
Defense, Secretary of
on ballistic missile defense, 182
defense reorganization (1958) and, 184–185, 186
JCS authority in Vietnam era and, 328
JCS under Powell and, 482
JCS under Reagan and, 424–425
Kissinger bypassing of, 316
McNamara’s FYDP and posture statement from,
247
peacetime total force (1970s) and, 367
planning FY 1952 military budget and, 111
reorganization of 1953 and, 183–184
SALT II talks and, 378–379
on Soviet ICBM arsenal, 338
on three near-simultaneous conicts’ planning,
426–427
OFFTACKLE plan for European defense, 117–118
Ogarkov, Nikolai V., 441, 460
oil embargo (1973), 356
Okinawa, 44–45
OMEGA (Anglo-American plan for Middle East),
192
one-and-a-half war strategy, 348, 366, 426–427
Open Skies proposal, Eisenhower’s, 160, 162
Operation Badr (Egyptian), 355
Operation Blue Bat (Lebanese intervention), 195–196
Operation Broadaxe (deception plan against Japan), 46
Operation Coronet (invasion near Tokyo), 45, 46
Operation Crossroads, 63–64
Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm
air war phase of, 522–525
coordinated planning and direction of, 537
nal plans and preparations for, 518–522
framing U.S. response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait,
508–510
ground campaign in, 525–528
operational planning for, 510–515
origins of Kuwait crisis and, 505–508
post-hostilities phase of, 528–531
road to war and, 515–518
Operation Dominic (atmospheric nuclear weapons
testing), 234–235, 243n110
Operation Duck Hook, 317
Operation Eagle Claw, 412, 414
Operation Earnest Will, 469–473
Operation Eldorado Canyon, 464
Operation Husky (against Sicily), 12
Operation Just Cause (against Noriega government),
492–493
inDEX
Operation Matterhorn (B-29s to China), 37, 53–54n34
Operation Nougat (underground nuclear tests), 234
Operation Olympic (invasion of southern Japan), 45,
46
Operation Overlord, 16, 17
Operation Praying Mantis, 471
Operation Rolling Thunder
air campaign against North Vietnam, 290, 292,
294–295, 307
graduated rules and, 309
Johnson’s modication to, 310
Linebacker compared to, 323–324
Moorer on, 314
Operation Staunch, 467–468
Operation Torch (against North Africa), 10–11, 12
Operational Plans and Interoperability Directorate
(J-7), 455
Operations Coordinating Board (OCB), 137, 212
Operations Directorate (J-3), 185–186
OPLAN 34A for Vietnam, 280–281
OPLAN 1002-90 plan for Middle East, 508–509
Organization of American States (OAS), 197
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC), 406
Pacic. See also Asia-Pacic War
JCS strategy during World War II in, 9
strategy and command in, 29–33
unication challenges in, 65–66
Pacic Ocean Area command, 30–32
Packard, David, 368, 452
Pahlavi, Mohammed Reza (Shah of Iran), 405–406,
411
Pakistan, 190, 191
Palestine Liberation Organization, 429
Palestinian terrorist groups (copy), 383
Palmer, Bruce, Jr., 293, 298
Panama Canal, 196, 404, 407, 489
Paris, Treaty of (1952), 123
Pate, Randolph McC., 186
Pathet Lao (Laotian Communists), 221, 223–224
Patterson, Robert P., 67, 73, 89n46
Peacekeeper program demise, 438
peacetime total force. See also Truman, Harry S.,
peacetime challenges for
Nixon administration on, 366
Reagan buildup and, 426
Pearl Harbor, 66, 160
Penkovskiy, Oleg, 218
pentomic divisions, 145–146, 155, 166n51
People’s Liberation Army, 110
People’s Republic of China (PRC). See also Chinese
Communists; Mao Zedong; Zhou Enlai
JSTPS comprehensive target list against countries
of, 189
Korean War onset and, 109
Laos crisis and, 223
MacArthur’s overcondence against, 113–114
military divisions operating in Korea (1950) of, 110
Nixon and Kissinger’s quasi-alliance with, 347–351,
543–544
Nixon on rapprochement with, 313, 316
North Vietnamese Army support by, 362n70
repatriation concerns of POWs in Korean conict
from, 138
Taiwan Strait confrontation and, 152
Perle, Richard N., 422
Pershing II (P–II) ballistic missiles, 403
Persian Gulf. See also Operation Desert Shield/Desert
Storm; specic countries
Bush administration review of U.S. policy on, 506
Carter Doctrine on cooperative security framework
for, 410
Kuwait shipping escort operation in, 469–473, 547
Reagan and tensions in, 467–469
Soviet threats during Reagan era in, 431–432
troops for, 517–518
U.S. military draw-down by 1989 in, 506–507
U.S. Navy during Reagan years in, 428
Personnel Directorate (J-1), 185, 377
Philippines, 44, 45
Phoumi Nosavan, 221
Picher, Oliver S., 185
PINCHER studies on potential U.S. war with Soviet
Union, 71
Pipes, Richard E., 422
planning, programming, budgeting system (PPBS),
McNamara’s, 246
Planning Board, interagency, 137, 139, 212
Plans and Policy Directorate (J-5), 185, 206n73, 214
plausible deterrence, NATO’s New Approach and,
155
Pleiku, South Vietnam, Viet Cong strike against, 287,
289
Pleven Plan, French-sponsored, 120
Pogue, Forrest C., 50
Poland, 429. See also Eastern Europe
Polaris A–3 missile, multiple warheads on, 262
Polaris eet ballistic missile system
Cuban missile crisis and, 232–233
Eisenhower’s New Look and development of, 144,
176, 183
integration of, with other strategic forces, 187,
188–189
McNamara’s acceleration of, 248
missile testing, 234–235
CounCil of War
for NATO, JFK on, 256
as Skybolt substitute, British agree to, 254–255
political-military aairs, JCS and, 40–43, 55n49
poodle blanket paper, 219
Portal, Charles, xiv, 1
Poseidon (submarine-launched MIRV), 262–263
posture statements, 247, 270n8, 358
Postwar Foreign Policy Advisory Committee, U.S., 41
Potsdam Conference (TERMINAL, July-Aug. 1945),
43, 50
Pound, Dudley, 1
Powell, Colin L.
base force plan and, 485–489, 495–496, 501n25,
501n29
brieng Bush on Desert Storm, 515–516
as CJCS, 478, 481–484
Desert Shield/Desert Storm coordination and, 537,
547
Desert Shield/Desert Storm planning and, 510–513,
514–515, 520–521
on Desert Storm ground campaign, 525
on Iranian aggression in Persian Gulf, 471
on Iraqi army, 527, 528
on Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, 509–510
on NSR 12, 481
Panama operations (1989) and, 490, 491–492
Schwarzkopf and, 517, 520
on START I Treaty, 497, 499
on Strategic Defense Initiative, 496
on War Powers Act (1973), 518
Powell, Jody, 413
Powell Doctrine, 484
Power, Thomas S., 249, 270n23
Powers, Francis Gary, 183, 205n52
precision-guided munitions (PGMs), 323–324
Presidential directive (PD–59), 397
President’s Military Representative (MILREP), 213.
See also Taylor, Maxwell D.
President’s Special Committee on Indochina, 148
Primakov, Yevgeny, 506
prisoners of war (POWs), 138, 325
program packages, McNamara’s use of systems analysis
and, 246
Project Defender, 265, 437
Project SILVERPLATE, 48
Project SOLARIUM, 141
public opinion. See also antiwar movement
on defense spending, 480
Pueblo incident (1968), 383
Pustay, John S., 412
Qadda, Muammar, 429, 430, 462–464
Qingdao, China, U.S. military base at, 97–98
Quebec Conference (OCTAGON, Sept. 1944), xiv,
42
Quebec Conference (QUADRANT, Aug. 1943), 16,
32–33, 36–37, 38
Quemoy Islands, Taiwan Strait, 135, 150, 151–152
Quick Reaction Alert Force, SACEUR’s, 233
Quinlan, Michael, 260
Radford, Arthur W.
as CJCS, 132, 135–136, 144, 540, 542
cooling o Taiwan Strait tensions and, 152
defense reorganization (1958) and, 184–185
Dien Bien Phu siege (1954) and, 148–149
French requests for assistance for Dien Bien Phu
siege and, 148
JCS meeting and, 58
Korea fact-nding tour with Eisenhower and, 139
on military budget reductions (1956), 157, 158
on Nasser, 191
on New Look defense policy, 142
OMEGA plan for Middle East and, 192
on Soviet development of ICBMs, 174
on Taiwan Strait intervention, 150–152
U–2 reconnaissance over Soviet Union and, 162
unication bill and, 67
Radford, Charles E., 316
Rainbow plans, 4
Ramgarh Training Center, India, 36
RAND Corporation, 188, 248
Rapid Deployment Force (RDF), 408–411, 414, 421,
431
Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF), 405,
410, 431
Reagan, Ronald. See also Reagan buildup
arms control plans of, 493–494
Central American showdown under, 464–466
changes in Soviet Union and, 449, 472–473
debating JCS reorganization under, 449–453
Goldwater-Nichols legislation under, 454–457,
474n20
Gorbachev and, 459–462, 479
JCS role in SDI concept development by, 436–437,
545–546
Kuwait shipping escort operation and, 469–472
NATO resurgent under, 457–458
Persian Gulf tensions and, 467–469
terrorism and confrontation with Libya, 462–464
Reagan buildup
Armed Forces’ image and, 421–425
arms control and, 438–443
forces and budgets and, 425–429, 545
military power and foreign policy and, 429–432
Strategic Defense Initiative and, 432–438, 545–546
inDEX
Reagan Doctrine, 429
REAPER (mid-range plan), 111–112
Reed, Thomas C., 422
Reorganization Plan Number 6, 134
Republic of China (ROC). See Taiwan
Republic of Korea (ROK), 102–105, 306, 395. See
also Korean War
Republican Guard, Iraq’s, 509, 526, 527–528
Research and Development Board (RDB), 68, 86
Reserves, U.S., 259–260, 297, 307
retardation bombing, NATO defense plan on, 118,
130n96
Revolt of the Admirals (1949), 99, 135
revolution in military aairs (RMA), 530–531
Rhee, Syngman, 103, 108, 140
Rice, Donald B., 513, 520
Richardson, James O., 40
Rickover, Hyman G., 369
Ridgway, Matthew B.
on Dien Bien Phu air support, 149
joins the JCS, 135
Korean War and, 114, 116–117
as NATO and U.S. Supreme Allied Commander,
Europe, 123–124
NATO’s New Approach and, 154, 155
on New Look defense budget, 145
on Taiwan Strait intervention, 151–152
on U.S. in Indochina war, 147–148
Roberts, Samuel B., USS, 470–471
Roberts, William L., 103
Robertson, Walter S., 152
Robinson, John D., 501n25
Rockefeller, Nelson A., 134, 160, 161–162
Rockwell International, 368–369
Rodman, Peter W., 315
Rogers, Bernard W., 458, 460
Rogers, William P., 344
Roosevelt, Franklin D. See also Asia-Pacic War;
Europe, war in
ARCADIA meetings (1941) and, 1–2
on Axis surrender, 13
on combined unied command, 29–30
Grand Alliance during World War II and, 18–19
JCS and, 2–3, 7, 8–9
loans to China under, 34
MacArthur and Nimitz in Pearl Harbor with, 44
Manhattan Project and, 47
Marshall and, 24n28
North African decision and, 10–12
political-military aairs during World War II and, 41
post-World War II plan for Germany and, 42
at Second Quebec Conference, xiv
Top Advisory Group of, 47, 56n79
Rosenberg, David Alan, 159
Rostow, Walt W., 279, 280, 285, 288
Rowny, Edward L., 376, 377, 399, 422, 441
Royal Lao Government (RLG), 221
Rumsfeld, Donald H., 384–385
Rusk, Dean, 217, 218, 222, 227, 230, 232, 289, 295
Russell, Richard, Jr., 265–266
Russia. See Soviet Union
Ryan, John D., 314, 322
SA–2 surface-to-air missile (SAM), 183, 227, 228
SAC ZEBRA, 119
Sadat, Anwar, 354, 355, 357–358
Saddam Hussein, 467, 505, 506, 507–508, 522,
525–528, 530
Safeguard (missile defense system), 339
Safwan ceasere accords, for Gulf War, 528, 530
Sakharov, Andrei, 398
SAMOS (Satellite and Missile Observation System),
205n53
Samuel B. Roberts, USS, 470–471
Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN),
407–408, 430, 465, 466, 467, 480
SANDSTONE nuclear weapons testing, 78–79
Saudi Arabia
Saddam Hussein’s threats against, 506, 514, 534n65
U.S. on protection of, 508, 509–510, 512, 515
U.S. relations with, 352, 357
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., 213
Schlesinger, James R.
Ford and, 379, 384
Kissinger and, 356, 378, 383
on NATO preparedness, 346
NSDM 242 interpretation by, 373–375, 396
SALT II talks and, 378, 381
as Sec. of Defense, 364
on South Vietnam collapse, 382
Schlesinger doctrine, 373–375, 396
Schmidt, Helmut, 402
Schroeder, Gerhard, 306
Schwarzkopf, H. Norman
conventional repower for Gulf War under,
526–527
Desert Shield/Desert Storm coordination and, 519,
537
Desert Shield/Desert Storm planning, 510–511,
515–516
on Desert Storm ground campaign, 525
on forces for Desert Storm, 517, 521
on Iraqi army as spent force, 528, 535n88
micromanaging concerns of, 520
on OPLAN 1002-90 plan for Middle East, 508
CounCil of War
Saddam’s attacks on Israel and, 523–524
Scowcroft, Brent
on arms control, 494, 495
on Gorbachev, 480
on Gulf War, 510, 525, 528
Panama operations (1989) and, 492
Peacekeeper program demise and, 438
on Powell Doctrine, 484
on Powell’s brieng to Bush on Desert Storm, 516
Scud missiles, 523–524, 534n65
Security Resources Panel (SRP), 178. See also Gaither
Committee
Sentinel (ballistic missile defense system), 268, 339. See
also Nike-X ballistic missile defense system
Service chiefs. See also inter-Service rivalry; unica-
tion debate
CJCS on SALT II and, 376–377
Commandant of the Marine Corps and, 394
Eisenhower and, 148, 151–152, 157, 540
on exible response doctrine, 282–283
Goldwater-Nichols legislation and, 453, 454,
455–456, 482–483
JCS executive agent system and, 30–31
Johnson on ending Vietnam War and, 311, 312
Kennedy’s ExCom and, 229
on nuclear weapons, 149, 200, 201
Powell on forces for Desert Storm and, 517
Powell on Goldwater-Nichols legislation and, 483,
486–487
Powell on Panama operations (1989) and, 492
Reagan buildup and, 425
Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative and, 436
SALT I and, 235, 236
on Skybolt program, 254
on START I Treaty, 499
on Taylor as CJCS, 225, 283
Truman on NSC meetings and, 113, 539–540
Weinberger and, 423
Service Secretaries, 8
Seventh Fleet, 105, 349
SEXTANT. See Cairo Conference
Shah of Iran, 405–406, 411
Sharp, Grant, 288–289, 290, 292, 297, 307, 310
Shchukin, Aleksandr, 339, 340
Shepherd, Lemuel C., Jr., 135, 151
Sherman, Forrest P., 67, 69, 107, 144–145
Shevardnadze, Eduard, 496, 497
Shultz, George P., 422, 463, 471, 479
Sicily, Operation Husky against, 12
signals intelligence (SIGINT) intercept program,
106–107, 109, 221, 285
Sihanouk, Norodom, 317, 318
SILKWORM antiship missiles, Chinese, 470, 475n70
Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP), 189, 218,
248–249, 250, 371
Six Day War of June 1967, 308, 352–353
Sixth Fleet, 190, 195, 356
Skybolt air-to-surface missile, 253–255
SLEDGEHAMMER plans for Continental invasion,
10
Slessor, John, 3
Sloan, Stanley R., 153
Sloss, Leon, 396
smart bombs, for Vietnam War, 323–324
Smith, Walter Bedell, 148
Somalia, Ethiopian war with, 404
Somoza, Anastasio, 407–408, 465
Sonnenfeldt, Helmut, 315
Sorensen, Theodore C., 213, 232
“The Sources of Soviet Conduct” (Kennan, 1947),
70–71
South Korea, 102–105, 306, 395. See also Korean War
South Vietnam. See also Vietnam War
collapse of (1975), 382–383
South Vietnamese Army (ARVN)
LAM SON 719 operation and, 319–321
setbacks (1963) for, 280, 281
Vietnamization and, 318–319
Southeast Asia. See also specic countries
end of Cold War and JCS outlook on, 505
joint congressional resolution on U.S. in, 285–286
Laos crisis and widening conict in, 222–223
Southeast Asia Command (SEAC), 36–37
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), 190
Field Force, 222, 223
Southwest Pacic Area command, 30–31
Soviet Union. See also Cuba; Eastern Europe; specic
leaders and ministers of
Afghanistan invasion by, 335, 395, 400, 409–410
Arab-Israeli conict and, 354, 355, 356, 357
armed forces reductions in, 479, 480
arms sales to Egypt by, 191
atomic bomb and, JSSC’s concerns on, 51
atomic bomb testing (1949) in, 96, 98, 540
ballistic missile development in 1960s by, 264
Berlin pressured by, 199
Berlin Wall confrontation by, 219–220
British and U.S. planners on World War II role of, 9
British intelligence on malaise of, 428–429
Carter’s view versus JCS’s view of, 394–395
CFE Treaty (1990) and, 494–495
containment strategy for, 70–71
coup against Gorbachev in, 497–498, 499
coup in Czechoslovakia and, 73–74
Cuba’s alignment with, 196
inDEX
Ethiopian war with Somalia and, 404
on Follow-On Forces Attack concept, 458
freeze movement in the UK and, 434–435
Gorbachev’s restructuring of, 459–462
ICBMs of, 144
JSTPS comprehensive target list against, 189
Kuwait shipping escort operation and, 472
Live Oak plans for Berlin and, 200–201
MC 14/3 as message to, 260
Middle East inuence by, 190, 352
on MIRV limitation for SALT II, 379
missile buildup by, détente and, 337
Nixon on détente with, 313, 316, 317, 543–544
Nixon’s trip to China and, 350
NSC 68 projecting military threat in 1950s by,
100–101, 540
nuclear test ban and, 234–236
Order of Battle, McNamara’s analysis of, 252–253
Panama operations (1989) and, 493
post-SALT I testing by, 342, 375
post-World War II unsettled relations with, 61, 75,
89n39
post-World War II Western powers’ disputes and, 42
SALT I backchannel talks and, 338–339
SALT II talks and, 398
on Schlesinger doctrine, 375–376
South Vietnam’s collapse and, 383
SS–20 missile of (1976), 401
START negotiations and, 496–497
strategic nuclear power of U.S. in early 1970s and,
251
Suez crisis and, 193–194
TCP on preemptive strike capability by, 161–162
thermonuclear weapons testing (1953) in, 141
U.S. on surprise attack threats by, 161–163
Vietnam War and, 296
on Vladivostok concessions, 382
World War II collaboration with, 18–22, 50–51
Spaatz, Carl, 60, 66–67, 74
Spaatz-Tedder Agreement (1946), 64
special operations, 384, 533n49
Special Operations Review Group (SORG), 413–414
Sprague, Robert C., 178
Sputnik satellites, 173, 180
SR–71 spy plane, 205n47
SS–4 (medium-range ballistic missiles, MRBMs),
Soviet, 227, 228, 232
SS–5 (intermediate-range ballistic missiles, IRBMs),
Soviet, 228
SS–20, Soviet land–based triple–warhead mobile mis-
sile, 401, 402, 440, 460, 545
Stalin, Josef, 17, 18–19, 22, 98, 103, 138
Standing Group, NATO’s, 120, 154
Standing Liaison Committee, U.S., 41
Standley, William H., 20
Star Wars, 433
Stark, Harold R., 2, 5
Stark, USS, 470
Starry, Donn A., 474n30
START-plus agreement, 498. See also Strategic Arms
Reduction Talks
State, Secretary of, 170n123
State Department
on Baghdad Pact and Arab-Israeli tensions, 190–191
Batista regime in Cuba and, 197
British on negotiating end to Vietnam War and, 307
under Eisenhower, JCS and, 137
FY 1952 military budget review and, 100–101
JCS under Powell and, 482
JSSC as liaison between JCS and, 41
MacArthur and, 105
Policy Planning Committee’s national security
policy analysis of, 80
State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee
(SWNCC), 43
Steadman, Richard C., 393–394
Stennis, John C., 265–266, 309
Stethem, Robert, 463
Stevenson, Adlai E., 230
Stilwell, Joseph W., 34–36, 37, 97
Stimson, Henry L., 8, 30, 42, 48, 49, 51, 56n79
Stinger antiaircraft missiles, for Afghanistan, 461
Stockman, David A., 425, 426
Stoler, Mark A., 15
Strategic Air Command (SAC)
air oensive against Soviet war-making capacity
(1948) and, 75
atomic attack plan against Chinese Communist
forces and, 147
atomic-capable aircraft of, 82, 91–92n89
Britain’ Bomber Command and, 78
Bush on USSTRATCOM as replacement for,
498–499
Cuban missile crisis and, 230
inter-Service rivalry over 1958 reforms and,
187–188
LeMay’s transformation of, 82
McNamara’s assured destruction strategy and, 250
NATO defense plan and, 117, 118, 119
New Look defense budget and, 143–144
nuclear weapons for, 79
U–2 ights over Cuba and, 228
Unied Command Plan and, 66–67
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I)
criticism in U.S. on, 340–341
damage limitation debate and, 262
CounCil of War
détente starting with, 335, 336–342
interim agreement, 359n21
JCS on B–1 bomber and, 544
Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963) and, 235
Nixon administration and, 269
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II)
Carter and, 397–400
JCS’s work with OSD on, 378–379
modernizing the strategic deterrent and, 375–378
Reagan on, 441, 447n64
Vladivostok mini-summit and, 380–382
Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), 441–442,
447n64, 460, 461, 488, 495–500
strategic bombing. See also strategic forces; strategic
stability
appeal of, 81–82
of Germany during World War II, 13
as Soviet deterrent in Europe (1948), 78
Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO), 437
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), 432–438, 456, 496
strategic forces. See also strategic stability
Carter’s PD-59 on, 394–397
McNamara on restructuring of, 247–251
Polaris eet ballistic missile system and, 187,
188–189
Reagan buildup and, 427–428
Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF), 181
strategic stability (1970s). See also détente
Ford administration after Vladivostok and, 381–386
modernizing the strategic deterrent, 367–370
peacetime “total force” and, 365–367
SALT II start and, 375–378
targeting doctrine revisions and, 371–375
Vladivostok mini-summit and, 378–381
Strat-X study, 369
Studies, Analysis, and Gaming Agency (SAGA),
206n73, 377
submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), 248,
262–263, 338, 340–341, 359n21
submarines. See Poseidon; Trident missile submarines
Suez Canal, 191–192, 352
Sultan, David I., 38
Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR),
NATO, 118–119, 120, 123–124, 218
Supreme Allied Commander, North Atlantic
(SACLANT), 120–121
Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe
(SHAPE), 120. See also North Atlantic Treaty
Organization
surface-to-surface missile complex, in Banes, Cuba,
227
Symington, W. Stuart, 67, 309
Syria, 352, 383, 519
systems analysis, 211, 246, 252–253, 309
Szilard, Leo, 47
Tachen Islands, Taiwan Strait, 150, 151
Taiwan, 44, 97, 139, 150, 349, 350–351. See also
Chiang Kai-shek
Taiwan Strait, 105, 135, 149, 150, 151–152
Taiwan Strait Patrol, 349
Tallinn Line (Soviet air defense system), 264
target selection, 295, 296, 371–375, 396–397. See also
Joint Strategic Target Planning Sta; Vietnam
War
Taylor, Maxwell D.
as Ambassador to Vietnam, 286
Berlin crisis and, 200, 217, 219
as CJCS, 224–225, 264
Cuban issues and, 215–216, 229, 230–231
Honolulu conference (1965) and, 292
McNamara’s FYDP and posture statement from,
247
on New Look defense budget, 145, 195
nuclear test ban and, 235, 236
as President’s Military Representative, 213, 225, 542
on Skybolt, 254
Vietnam War strategy and, 279, 280, 282–283, 291
Teapot Committee (1954), 175
Technological Capabilities Panel (TCP), 161
technology. See military technologies
Tehran Conference (Nov. 1943), 17, 18, 21, 41
terrorists
Libyan, 463–464
Palestinian, 383
Test Ban Treaty, Kennedy administration and, 337
Tet oensive, 305, 310, 543
Thailand, 224, 306
thermonuclear weapons, 99, 141, 144, 267, 348, 374.
See also hydrogen bomb
Thieu, Nguyen Van, 324
Third World
Carter and Soviet encroachment in, 403–408
nationalism and discontent of 1950s in, 173
Soviet focus on, 225–226
U.S. power erosion in Vietnam and, 383
Thompson, Llewellyn E., 232
Thompson, Wayne, 295
Thor (intermediate-range ballistic missile, IRBMs),
146, 176, 228–229, 252, 272n46
Thorneycroft, Peter, 254
three near-simultaneous conicts’ planning, 426–427
313th Bombardment Wing of 509th Composite
Group, 48
Thurman, Maxwell R., 490
Titan (intercontinental ballistic missile), 176
inDEX
Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles (TLAMs), 514
Tonkin Gulf incident, 284–292
Top Advisory Group, Roosevelt’s, 47, 56n79
Torrijos, Omar, 489
Towers, John H., 23n6
Treasury Department, 137
Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, Soviet-Egyp-
tian, 354
Treaty of Paris (1952), 123
triangular infantry divisions, U.S. Army, 146
TRIDENT Conference (May 1943), 14–15
Trident missile submarines
Carter’s support for, 396
development of, 369–370, 385
JCS requests for, 337, 341, 368, 544
Powell’s estimates for, 496
Schlesinger on, 374
trip wire theory, 251, 252
TROJAN (emergency war plan), 84
Truman, Harry S., military challenges for
atomic bomb and, 48–49, 50, 62, 63–64
Chinese intervention in Korean War and, 111–113
on ending the Korean War, 138
European defense and security issues and, 116–125
on H-bomb and NSC 68, 98–102
on JCS organizational structure, 538
Korean War onset and, 102–105
Korea’s Inch’on Operation under, 105–108
MacArthur and, 94
MacArthur and military buildup for Korean War
under, 108–110
MacArthur’s dismissal and, 113–116
nuclear weapons’ production under, 158–159
pressures to expand military power under, 95–98
Truman, Harry S., peacetime challenges for
as Commander in Chief, 59–60
defense budget for FY 1950, 76–81
defense policy in transition, 61–64
reorganization and reform and, 64–69
Soviet Union and, 22
strategic bombing controversy, 81–87
war plans, budgets, and March crisis of 1948, 69–76,
89n45
Tsar Bomba (King of Bombs), 234
Tsingtao, China, U.S. military base at, 97–98
Tuesday lunch, Vietnam War and, 295, 312
Turkey, 69, 121–122, 123, 190, 191, 308
Turner Joy, USS, 284, 285
Twentieth Air Force, 30–31, 45
Twining, Nathan F.
on Berlin contingency plans, 200
as CJCS, 172, 540
defense reorganization (1958) and, 184–185, 186,
187–188
on Dien Bien Phu air support, 149
joins the JCS, 135
on Lebanese intervention, 195
on missile gap, 181, 182–183
NATO’s New Approach and, 154
on Taiwan Strait islands, 151
on U–2 ights, 182
unied command decision (1960) and, 188
two-and-a-half war strategy, 347–348
Tyuratam ICBM test facility, Soviet Union, 182
U–2 photoreconnaissance plane
development of, 161, 170n123
Eisenhower on, 180
Gaither Committee report and, 179
intelligence gathering by, 162–163, 192, 227
Powers shot down in, 183, 201, 205n52
U–boats, German, 11, 13
ULTRA radio intercepts by U.S., 49
undersea long-range missile system (ULMS). See
Trident missile submarines
unication debate, 39, 64–65, 72–73, 135, 538–539.
See also Combined Chiefs of Sta; inter-Ser-
vice rivalry; universal military training
Unied Command Plan (UCP), 66–67, 498, 538
United Arab Republic (UAR), 194
United Chiefs of Sta, 26n76
United Kingdom. See also Britain
HALFMOON plan and, 75
United Nations Command (UNC), in Korea,
107–108, 110, 114–115, 140
United Nations commander (CINCUNC), 105, 138,
139
United Nations (UN)
Baruch Plan to ban atom bomb debate at, 62–63
disarmament negotiations before, 159–160
Middle East peacekeeping force and, 77
postwar Persian Gulf aairs and, 529
Republic of China expulsion by General Assembly,
349
Roosevelt on postwar planning and creation of, 41
Security Council resolution on Gulf War ceasere,
530
United States. See also specic administrations
Grand Alliance during World War II and, 18–19
Middle East presence of, 190
NATO commitments, European concerns on
reductions in, 157
Operation Overlord conrmation and leadership
by, 17–18
preparation for Casablanca Conference by Britain
versus, 13–14
CounCil of War
Soviet blockade of Berlin and, 77–78
United States, USS (super carrier), 83
unity of command. See unication debate
universal military training (UMT), 39, 54n41, 61–62
U.S. Air Forces Central Command (CENTAF),
519–520
U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM), 405,
431–432. See also Schwarzkopf, H. Norman
U.S. European Command (USEUCOM), 199–200
U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam
(COMUSMACV), 280, 284, 288, 294–295,
297–298, 309
U.S. Readiness Command (USREDCOM), 405, 410
U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM),
498–499
U.S. Strike Command (USSTRICOM), 405
U.S.-Soviet Standing Consultative Commission, 340
Valenti, Jack J., 287
Vance, Cyrus R., 397, 398, 413
Vandenberg, Hoyt S., 58, 74, 85, 104, 115, 134–135
Vandenberg Resolution (1948), 75
Vaught, James E., 412
Vesser, Dale A., 516, 533n39
Vessey, John W., Jr., 321, 420, 423–424, 432, 435–437,
451, 452
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta (VCJCS),
454, 455
Viet Minh, later Viet Cong. See also Vietnam War
Dien Bien Phu siege (1954) by, 148
France ending war with, 146–147
French conict with, NATO buildup and, 122–123
history of U.S. combat with, 277–278
objectives and commitment to war by, 296
Operation Rolling Thunder against, 290, 292,
294–295, 307
Pleiku, South Vietnam, strike by, 287, 289
resilience of, 306
Vietnam War. See also McNamara, Robert S.; Opera-
tion Rolling Thunder; target selection
American power and inuence within NATO and,
258, 259
as American war, 281–284
balance sheet for, 326–329
bombing after LAM SON 719 operation, 321–324
Chinese restraint with (1970s), 351, 362n70
Christmas bombing campaign (1972), 324–326
JCS reassessment after, 335, 336
Johnson and advisors consider bombing in,
287–288, 289
Johnson’s curtailing of bombing in, 311, 312–313
military budget and, 250
Nixon, the JCS, and the policy process, 313–316
as quagmire, 292–298
roots of U.S. involvement in, 277–281
Senate hearings on bombing in, 309, 310
as stalemate, 305–310
support for bombing in, 288–289
Tet and its aftermath, 310–313
Tonkin Gulf incident and aftermath and, 284–292
winding down, under Nixon, 316–321
Vietnamization
Cambodian invasion (1970) and, 318–319
ceasere and regrouping by NVA and, 327
Johnson on, 313
LAM SON 719 operation and, 319–321
Nixon’s plan for, 316
U.S. withdrawal and, 317–318
VII Corps, 518, 520, 521, 527
Vincennes, USS (Aegis missile cruiser), 471–472
Vinson, Carl, 185, 205n62
Vladivostok mini-summit (1974), 380–382, 388n47
Vogt, John W., 323
Voroshilo, Klementy, 17
Vulcan bombers, Britain’s, 253
vulnerabilities panel, Rockefeller and, 162
Vulture operation, 148–149
Vuono, Carl E., 490
walk in the woods formula, for arms control, 440,
447n58
Walker, Walton H., 107–108
Wallace, Henry A., 56n79, 59
Wallop, Malcolm, 434, 445–446n41
War Department, 2, 3, 6, 10–11, 40, 42, 47, 48–49. See
also Defense Department
war gaming, 188, 206n73, 283, 287
War Plan Orange, 3, 31
War Powers Act (1973), 518
Warden, John A., III, 513, 514, 520–521, 523
Warsaw Pact. See also specic countries of
Berlin Wall confrontation and, 220, 239n43
on conventional forces in Europe, 493, 494
creation of, 158
Czechoslovakia invasion by (1968), 269, 336
disestablishment of, 485
on Follow-On Forces Attack concept, 458
JSTPS comprehensive target list against, 189
Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction Talks and,
439–440
NATO on, 343–344, 400–401
Washington Special Action Group (WSAG), 355–356,
357, 363n87
Watergate scandal, 346, 355, 356, 377–378, 379
Watkins, James D., 423, 435, 436, 453
inDEX
weapons eects study (1949), 83, 84–85
weapons of mass destruction (WMD), 147, 509, 528,
529, 530
Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG), 83,
85–86, 181–182, 188, 248, 377
Wedemeyer, Albert C., 13, 37–38, 41, 58
Weinberger, Caspar W.
on arms control, 438–439
on Goldwater-Nichols legislation, 474n20
on JCS organizational structure, 451, 453
JCS’s relationship with, 424–425, 546
Joint Task Force Middle East and, 469
Jones and, 422–423
military budget and, 425–427, 428
Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative and, 437
Weinraub, Bernard, 393
Welch, Larry D., 484
Wells, H.G., 313
West Germany. See also Berlin; Berlin Wall
France on rearmament of, 123
French nuclear weapons and, 257
Live Oak (planning body) and, 201
MLF demise and, 257
NATO and, 345, 346
Nixon and Kissinger on East Germany and, 343
rearmament of, 119–120, 156–157
Treaty of Paris (1952) and, 123
U.S. on strengthening ties with, 258
on Washington moving NATO away from nuclear
deterrence, 401
Western Europe, in World War II, 9, 19–20
cross-Channel operation and, 10–11, 15–16, 21, 46
Western Excursion proposal, on Iraq, 533n39
Westmoreland, William C.
air campaigns under, 294–295, 311
chain of command in Vietnam War and, 297–298
on graduated response, 288
ground war in South Vietnam and, 292, 306,
307–308, 312
on Ia Drang Valley conict (1965), 296
joins the JCS, 314
on LAM SON 719 operation, 320
on peacetime total force (1970s), 367
on U.S. bases in Vietnam, 290
Weyand, Fred C., 377, 382
Weyland, Otto P., 67
Wheeler, Earle G.
arms control negotiations and, 337–338
becomes Army Chief of Sta, 224
becomes CJCS, 264, 283–284
JCS reorganization and, 184
on Middle East peace settlement, 353
military budget under McNamara and, 247
Nixon and, 314
as senior Johnson advisor, 311–312, 542
Vietnam War strategy and, 288, 290, 292, 293, 304,
308, 311
White, Thomas D., 184, 212, 224
whiz kids (McNamara’s advisors), 245, 309
“Why the Joint Chiefs of Sta Must Change” (Jones,
1982), 450
Wickham, John A., Jr., 423
Willson, Russell, 11
Wilson, Charles E., 136, 139, 157, 162, 176, 177
Wilson, Henry Maitland, 23n3
Win Plan, for Vietnam War, 280
Wizard ballistic missile defense system, 181
Woerner, Frederick F., Jr., 490
Wolfowitz, Paul D., 484, 487, 491–492, 501n25
Wooldridge, E.T., 129n77
World War I, 11
World War II. See also Asia-Pacic War; Europe, war in
JCS authority and inuence during, 537–538
planning, JCS on politico-military aairs and,
40–41
planning Armed Forces organization and composi-
tion after, 38–39
planning for Germany after, 42–43
Wright, Jim, 466
X–16 photoreconnaissance plane, 161
XVIII Airborne Corps, 521
XX Bomber Command, 33, 53–54n34
Yalta Summit Conference (Feb. 1945), 21, 43
Yeltsin, Boris, 498
Yemen, Soviet ties with, 383
Yom Kippur War (1973). See October War
York, Herbert F., 189
Z Committee, 99
zero-zero option, in arms control talks, 440
Zhou Enlai, 152, 350, 351
Zumwalt, Elmo R., Jr., 314–315, 356, 377, 378–379
CounCil of War
About thE
Author
Dr. Steven L. Rearden holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University
of Nebraska and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University. His association
with the Joint History Oce dates from 1996. He has written and
published widely on the history of the Joint Chiefs of Sta and the Oce
of the Secretary of Defense, and was co-collaborator on Ambassador Paul
H. Nitze’s From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the Center of Decision—A Memoir
(Grove Weidenfeld, 1989).
Tara Parekh (NDU Press)
