20070209 Transformation and the Commander-in-Chief

On 7 February 2007, I posted a commentary on Lee Harris’s TCS Daily article about the idea of the President delegating the role of Commander-in-Chief to a military commander to remove the political morass that currently surrounds the war in Iraq from the forces fighting there. This idea hints at another, more revolutionary idea that sits at the heart of military transformation itself.

One of the most difficult problems the US Military faces today is the problem of too many chiefs. With the advent of highly regionalized, highly joint, combined arms operations, the question of who commands what forces is ever present. This question becomes more confused when dealing with the logistics of supporting multiples services in a combat operation when those services are all independent with competing and sometimes contrary motivations and goals.

One of the first steps toward rectifying that problem could be for the President to delegate specific Commander-in-Chief responsibilities during a conflict to the military commander tasked with fighting that conflict. Such delegation would remove potential political problems by making the person primarily responsible for the conduct of the conflict the person also commanding it. This person would then be the one directly interacting with the President and Congress, creating a direct connection to the conflict and easing potential political infighting.

Another solution to the problem of too many chiefs is to eliminate the services as their source, not by combining them into a single, unwieldy organization, but by changing their roles as part of warfighting operations. Not one of the individual services is capable of waging modern war single-handedly, yet very often the interests of the service branches serve to obscure the ability of a joint force to fight effectively.

The Joint Combatant Commanders

The first part of this solution is to create the Joint Combatant Commanders as the highest military operational and advisory organization within the Pentagon. The Joint Combatant Commanders would perform a function similar to the current Joint Chiefs of Staff, however the Joint Combatant Commanders would have the advantage of actually being combatant commanders, meaning their view of military strategy, command and control, and the military relationship to politics would be governed by the actual requirements of their areas of responsibility.

Granted there would be a practical limitation on the Joint Combatant Commanders as their primary role would be to command their areas of responsibility. As a result, the day-to-day activities of the Joint Combatant Commanders could be delegated to subordinate officers whose charge it would be to represent those commanders when they were unavailable.

By creating the Joint Combatant Commanders, the needs of the actual combat forces engaged in missions around the world could be represented directly to the President and to Congress. The Chairman of the Joint Combatant Commanders would have a clear vision of the manning, training, funding, and equipment requirements of the military due to direct access to the operational realities of the military that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff often lacks.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff

The modern role of the service components is to provide trained, capable, and well-equipped forces to the combatant commanders. When focused on that goal, the service components perform admirably and provide a great asset to the military as a whole. However, the service components often stray from their primary mission, attempting to fight the conflicts of the Combatant Commands by proxy through their component forces in the field. Since each service has competing interests, goals, and methodologies at the service level, this state of affairs lessens the ability of the Combatant Commander to effectively conduct operations.

If the role of the service components is to support the combatant commands, then the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be subordinate to the Joint Combatant Commanders. This subordination accomplishes two important things. First, it places the service components directly in the role of supporting the combatant commanders by placing them in the chain of command of those Combatant Commanders. Second, it allows the Joint Chiefs of Staff to retain their place of representing the interests of the individual service components to the President and Congress in that support capacity.

Combatant Commanders and the Commander-in-Chief

Bringing the idea of reform full circle, in the case of combat operations, the Combatant Commander responsible for those combat operations would become the Commander-in-Chief by nomination of the President. Obviously, this concept creates a problem if there are combat operations in multiple areas of responsibility, but each case should be judged on a case-by-case basis. In some cases, a single unifying commander-in-chief might be appropriate. In other cases, this responsibility could be narrowed by creating multiple commanders-in-chief, even by naming subordinates of the Combatant Commanders to those roles.

Granted, such a concept dilutes the idea of a single, ultimately responsible decision maker, however this final arbitrating authority in the case of multiple commanders-in-chief would likely lie with Joint Combatant Commanders and their Chairman. Within the function of that organization, the requirements of competing areas of responsibility could be worked out by the commanders responsible for those areas, leading to a far more balanced sharing of resources and capabilities.

As an example, due to their different natures and requirements, the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq likely require different commanders-in-chief. These commanders-in-chief would be limited to their areas of responsibility, however in this example, both would be represented to the Joint Combatant Commanders by the commander of Central Command, and then to the President and Congress by the Chairman of the Joint Combatant Commanders. Since all of the Combatant Commands end up supporting the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq in some fashion, the interests of the actual warfighters are now directly represented.

Limits to This Solution

This solution obviously demands some significant limitations, but those limitations really fall under the notion of executive and legislative oversight. As the Constitutionally appointed Commander-in-Chief, even when delegated, the President would necessarily retain the right to nominate the Combatant Commanders and any delegated commanders-in-chief. Further, the President would retain direct access to these commanders for the purpose of reviewing the conduct of military operations against gross negligence.

Congress would retain the right to approve nominated Combatant Commanders, delegated commanders-in-chief, and obviously to right to approve funding of current and ongoing operations. Further, Congress would act as a direct conduit between the military and the American people with regard to reviewing the ongoing conduct of military operations; however, this review would be conducted directly with the people responsible for commanding those operations on almost all occasions.

Conclusions

Modern warfare requires a different way of thinking about how war is fought, including rethinking how militaries are commanded. The Constitution provides safeguards to prevent the abuse of military forces and to prevent military forces from becoming a government to themselves. However, this framework allows for a far greater amount of flexibility than is currently exercised in the organization, command, and employment of those forces, and that flexibility must be exercised if success in current and future combat operations is to be achieved.

Of course, this post is a loose outline of complex changes that would have to be brought about in order for its ideas to become a reality. The solutions discussed here, however, bring to bear the point that modern military forces, deployed around the world in often politically sensitive operations, should be commanded by military commanders, from the commander-in-chief down, who are singly focused on the goal of successfully completing those operations and bringing their forces home.

While these solutions may seem radical, they complement well the reality of a modern, well trained, well equipped, highly capable, all-volunteer fighting force whose dedication to their mission is proven by the fact that each member is present to carry that mission out at all. Commanded by equally capable professional military commanders focused on the completion of the mission, success will be the almost inevitable outcome, whether that mission is in Afghanistan, Iraq, or anywhere in the world.

-=DLH=-

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