Because the nations of each subregion had their own problems, we also had an articulated strategy for each country. In addition, I assigned each of our military components “focus” countries that fit their capabilities and their compatibility with the militaries of these nations. This spread the burden and balanced the span of control in managing our various engagement programs and crisis response requirements.
I then broke down our strategic goals into three areas: war fighting, engagement, and development.
The war-fighting goals were designed to have in place the right plans, forces, and basing options for any possible crisis. We also built a basis for responding to crises cooperatively with regional allies through training, exercises, military assistance, intelligence sharing, military schooling, and the like.
Three more practical war-fighting issues also had to be dealt with.
The first was agreement on a Joint Fires standing operating procedure (SOP) to coordinate fires on the battlefield. Up to this point, the services had been unable to agree on a joint doctrine for battlefield coordination, direction, and procedures for our air and ground-based fires systems. This may have seemed to be a mere intellectual issue back in the States, but for us it was life or death. In our AOR, war was always a near possibility. If war broke out, without coordination of fires we could expect serious friendly fire casualties or even battlefield failures. We couldn’t wait for the services to work through their bickering and rivalries. I therefore directed my component commanders to work together to produce the CENTCOM Joint Fires SOP (if they hit issues they couldn’t resolve, I told them I would make the call). These superb professionals delivered, providing an SOP that their services and service chiefs accepted (although only for the CENTCOM AOR).
My second objective was to finish work already started under General Peay to set up a command element, or small forward headquarters, in the AOR for each of my components, providing them command facilities they could rapidly fall into if the balloon went up. When I became CINC, the Navy already had its full headquarters in the region, and the Air Force had its air operations center there. But I also wanted the Army and Marine Corps to establish a forward element for the Joint Force Land Component Command (JFLCC), which would run the coordinated ground battle in Kuwait. As a result, we established Joint Task Force (JTF) Kuwait; and I had the CENTCOM Special Operations Command establish a forward command element in Qatar. This gave me a base to build on for all the functional component headquarters (air, ground, naval, and special operations) if we had to quickly respond to a crisis. Though this was controversial and caused grumblings among rear echelon doctrinal purists, who didn’t understand the purpose of these JTFs forward, we ignored their criticisms.
My third objective—never fully accomplished during my tenure—was to create one logistics command for the theater, to control and coordinate the massive logistics effort we would have to undertake in a major crisis. The system of separate and competing service and coalition systems, all putting stress on the limited lines of communications and infrastructure in the region, would really cause us problems if we didn’t have one umbrella organization to pull all the support needs together and ensure security for our rear area networks.
Though the components developed a basic design before I left command, and the U.S. Army was chosen to be the core of this joint/combined Theater Support Command for CENTCOM, the plan drew criticism and resistance again from doctrinal traditionalists, who didn’t understand the realities of the battlefield; and I was unable to accomplish this innovation before I left.
OUR ENGAGEMENT goals were designed to build strong security relationships and allied capabilities, and to enhance the education of military leaders and familiarize them with principles and values that drove our military system. Though much of this area was related to war fighting, it went beyond that to work in cooperative areas that were not strictly military, such as environmental security issues and natural disaster responses. This built the day-to-day military relationships and capabilities needed to respond to crises and work as a combined team.
OUR DEVELOPMENT goals were objectives for establishing new relationships, improving regional stability, and countering emerging threats. They were also related to the development of CENTCOM itself as it evolved to meet future challenges and a changing defense environment. These were the primary “shaping” efforts directed by the QDR.
In designing this ambitious strategy, we cooperated closely with the Joint Staff, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and our State Department partners at embassies in the AOR and at the regional bureaus in State’s Washington headquarters. Our strategy also reflected ideas contained in the Clinton administration’s new global strategy . . . and from my own lifetime experience in the military, in conflict resolution, and in peacemaking.
The Clinton strategy represented a significant shift in the way the United States related to the rest of the world. Though the administration did not always handle this shift as effectively as they could have, their overall approach was, in my view, correct. Unfortunately, the Clinton strategy lacked the resources to be fully and effectively implemented.
In America, we look at the world from two powerfully opposed angles of vision. We are either “engaged” or “isolationist.”
The engaged—people like Wilson, Marshall, and Truman—believe we can prevent conflicts by actively shaping the environment that produces them, by directly involving our military, diplomatic, and economic capabilities in the world to make conditions better, to stabilize the various regions, to build partnerships, and to do it collectively—by using the UN and regional (or larger) multilateral coalitions and institutions. In the long run, they see engagement as less costly than any of the alternatives.
The isolationists fight this view. They see the world as so big, so messy, so out of control, that nobody can fix it. And even if we could help a little here or there, dozens of other hopeless cases lie festering. And besides, who says we have any responsibility for the rest of the world anyway? Who made us the policemen of the world? We should be bringing troops home, not committing them to useless foreign “engagements.” Who said we have to suffer all the risks and shoulder all the costs of making the world better? Foreign aid is just another way to throw good money down a bottomless hole. We could use it better at home tending—and protecting—our own garden. Yes, we have friends whom we will continue to support. We have interests that we will protect. But that’s all the involvement in the world that we want or need. During the Clinton years, Congress generally tended to back the isolationist side and was not supportive of providing resources for engagement.
“Engagement” was not an airy concept (though many portrayed it that way). It came with nitty-gritty specifics (though these varied, depending on whether the country in question was an adversary, a friend, or potentially a friend). We had very formal ways to “engage” both militarily and diplomatically (the two had to work in tandem). And we expected these to lead to clear and specific results.
For example, in a form of military engagement we call “Security Assistance,” 73 specific components—foreign military sales, foreign military financing, provision of excess defense articles, training, education in our school system, intelligence sharing, and so on—were expected to create a formal and developing military-to-military relationship.
Thus when we embarked on a new relationship of engagement (as we did in my time with the Central Asian states or Yemen), we’d usually begin programs informally, in a small way, and later we’d make them more formal . . . put them into one or more of the categories, set up a program to develop their actual resources, set up and fund joint training programs, and the like. In other words, engagement might start informally, but it was expected to grow into a more formal relationship. I felt that if we were more aggressive and planned and coordinated engagement programs better—military, diplomatic, economic, cultural, etc.—we could truly “shape” a more stable, secure, and productive environment in tr
oubled regions of the world.
THE CLINTON administration’s engagement policies had the added effect of building on a process that the Goldwater-Nichols Act and the end of the Cold War had already started—the expansion of the role of the CINCs in their regions. Goldwater-Nichols, passed in the mid-’80s, gave more power to the CINCs, but primarily as war fighters. By the end of the ’90s, Goldwater-Nichols had come into bloom; the CINCs had become far more than war fighters; and the Clinton administration gave the CINCs all around the world a mission to shape their regions and use multilateral approaches in ways that went beyond the CINCs’ traditional military role.
This was not simply a wish. The administration strongly promoted and stressed this change; and they made it very clear that they wanted the CINCs to implement it.
But not everyone welcomed it, including the CINCs themselves. The change came because there was no other choice. No one else could do the job.
When I took over as commander of CENTCOM, I found a tremendous void in the diplomatic connections in our AOR. There was a void in expanding the personal relationships that Generals Hoar and Peay had worked hard to create. There was a void in establishing and implementing policy.
The void came from several causes.
One, the State Department had not been given the resources they needed to do their job. The neo-isolationists had cut foreign aid, leaving the State Department without the wherewithal—the people, the money, the programs—to make the impact they should have been making.
Two, while the end of the Cold War had greatly diminished any chances of a world-spanning conflict, crises had begun to pop up all over the place; and the military found itself involved in confronting all of them, even those that were not totally military problems.
Three, the CINCs now had resources the State Department did not have; the power of the CINCs was now growing (a reality recognized throughout our region); and the CINCs soon became the chief conduit to personal connections and to the resources State did not have. Much of what got done was done through the CINCs.
During my time as a CINC, I was asked to carry out presidential and other diplomatic missions that would normally have fallen to diplomats. I’m sure such things frustrated the State Department, but I don’t think they disapproved. In fact, they were very supportive. It was more a case of: “Well, if we can’t do it, at least somebody is taking care of it. If it’s the CINCs, then God bless them.”
Like most CINCs, I tried to work very closely with the State Department. In every country, our ambassador is the President’s representative. I never did anything that an ambassador did not know of and approve.
Moreover, the CINCs often had more personal presence and far more connections than the ambassadors. In many countries in CENTCOM’s region, for example, the senior government leadership is also the senior military leadership. This is not our system (and the downsides are obvious), yet the fact had practical consequences. They were usually more comfortable with soldiers than with diplomats in many cases.
In fact, more often than not, the ambassadors were very glad we were there. We not only brought them the connections we’d made, but we provided them with the ability to get things done they couldn’t ordinarily do . . . some small, some larger.
Anything we did for the ambassadors had to have some military overlap. We couldn’t simply blatantly set up an aid program. But even here we had some room to maneuver. In Africa, for example, we might be engaged in teaching a country’s military how to conduct peacekeeping or humanitarian operations, and we might set up training exercises in the villages. I would send out my military veterinarians, dentists, and doctors (who needed the training; they needed to practice these kinds of operations) to go into the villages with the African country’s military, and they’d conduct the exercises together. In the context of the military exercise, we’d build an orphanage or paint a school or set up a clinic as a Civic Action project. We’d be providing our guys with useful training while showing the African troops actually how to do it; and at the same time, we were benefiting needy people. When the exercises were over, we would have the American ambassador cut the ribbon for the new clinic. It was important, in my mind, to always demonstrate civilian leadership of our military and the close cooperation between our diplomats and soldiers.
The countries of Central Asia are prone to frequent and often devastating natural disasters such as earthquakes and mud slides (made all the more devastating because buildings are often made from mud bricks). When disasters hit, the normal procedure in these countries is to call in the military to preserve order and help pick up the pieces. We take care of this mission in a very different way. Our national military normally does not get involved. Rather, our National Guard units in the states are trained to handle the aftermath of earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and the like.
We decided to hold conferences on disaster assistance in some of these countries. They brought their fire, police, emergency service units, and military; we brought experts from the U.S., who showed them how to intermix the civilian and military and cooperate with each other; and we did all this in the name of the U.S. ambassadors.
We held other conferences in the region on environmental security issues—justifying them from the point of view that the military had to be good stewards of the environment, too. (We actually have many restrictions aimed at protecting the environment; and, of course, military training can damage it.) And sometimes the military is called in to police the environment—oil spills, violation of protected fisheries, hazardous waste, and so on.
In organizing environmental security conferences, the term “security” was key. An “environmental” conference on disposing of hazardous waste, for example, would not have played well back at the Pentagon. We had to have a “military” or “security” connection. Armed with that, we could bring in the EPA to talk about how to deal with hazardous waste material. Then I could bring in the ambassador and expand the conference to other issues—even human rights. (Human rights issues are very important militarily when you are trying to teach the importance of “winning hearts and minds” to military forces with no history of these considerations in their operations.)
All of these forms of engagement build strong relationships with the various countries. They tie in important military and nonmilitary programs. And from there we are able to move on to more sophisticated joint training and military assistance projects that promote strong military-to-military relationships and build better capabilities. Everybody benefits.
Not everybody back home saw things that way. The struggle went on and on between those longing to lean forward into the world and to do what we could to shape it, and the isolationist passion to block all that.74
DURING THE nearly fifteen years since the end of the Cold War, talking heads and op-ed writers have spilt a lot of words on the “emergence of the American Empire.”
We are the last-man-standing superpower. No other nation or combination of nations can seriously threaten the existence of the United States (though people who can grievously hurt us are working night and day to accomplish that aim). History suggests that the eight-hundred-pound gorilla among nations will eventually yield to the temptation to defend itself, protect its interests, maintain stability, and keep itself on top by gradually taking ever greater control (direct or indirect) beyond its immediate borders. It begins to impose its will by direct force, unilaterally. Because it has the power to change distasteful situations or governments on its own, it asserts that power. The gorilla metamorphoses into an octopus, with ever-stretching tentacles. It becomes an empire.75
“Is that the destiny of the United States?” many have asked.
In my view, it’s not likely. . . . I pray not.
The truth is more subtle and complex.
True, the United States is now in a situation that is historically unprecedented. No nation has ever wielded such physical power, and the capability to project that power quickly anywhere in the world.
Yet, also true, no great power has ever before existed in such interdependence with so many other nations. No nation today can go it alone—economically, politically, diplomatically, culturally, or religiously.
The word empire does not cover this case. I don’t know of any word that does. We are not an empire of conquest, occupation, or colonies. We are in a new relationship with a new kind of world. If I were to risk putting a label on America’s new position in this world, I’d call us “an empire of influence.”
FOR THE CINCs, our strategies are operational models—policy where the boots hit the ground. Once the CINCs have drawn their regional strategies out of the realities of their AORs and the global strategy of the President, they then have to implement them. Since doing that depends on the vicissitudes of Washington politics and the often dysfunctional Washington bureaucracy, and not on the intent of the President, executing our strategy was, at times, a frustrating process. We’d have a charter from the President that told us to go out somewhere and do such and so, and then we’d get our knees cut out from under us before we could go out and do it. Since the Congress tended to fall more in the isolationist camp, they usually resisted the President’s engagement policies . . . meaning, practically, that we didn’t get the resources we needed to do what the President wanted done or we would get ill-thought-out sanctions or restrictions that were counterproductive and limited our ability to engage.
Though I’ve had many disagreements with the Clinton administration, its basic global strategy was right. I was out in the world and saw the needs, the newly emerging conditions, and how we can help to change them. I also saw that if we failed to change them, we were doomed to live with the tragic consequences.