Joint Failure

Washington was briefly abuzz last week with the news that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will not recommend the reappointment of General Peter Pace for a second two-year term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gates is instead nominating Admiral Michael Mullen for the post. The political classes reacted first with surprise and then with approval. The New York Times editorial page declared Mullen a "good choice." Senate confirmation seems assured.

A better idea might be to abolish the position of JCS chairman altogether -- and the entire JCS system along with it.

History will render this judgment of Pace, who succeeded General Richard B Myers as chairman in September 2005: As U. S. forces became mired ever more deeply in an unwinnable war, Pace remained a passive bystander, a witness to a catastrophe that he was slow to comprehend and did little to forestall. If the position of JCS chair had simply remained vacant for the past two years, it is difficult to see how the American military would be in worse shape today.

Softening history's verdict will be this fact: Long before Pace arrived on the scene the JCS had established a well-deserved reputation as one of the most ineffective institutions in Washington. Dissatisfaction with the Joint Chiefs dates virtually from the moment in 1947 when Congress passed the legislation creating it. Trying to fix the JCS soon became a cottage industry. The widespread unhappiness with Pace's performance, culminating in his de facto firing, affirms that these various reforms have failed.

Expectations that a permanent mechanism for providing military advice could improve the quality of civilian decision-making inspired the creation of the Joint Chiefs in the first place. After all, this had seemingly been the case during World War II, when Franklin Roosevelt had created a precursor of the modern JCS whose members had collaborated effectively with FDR in successfully directing a massive global war.

The creation of a permanent JCS two years after the war was intended to replicate that success: drawing on the accumulated wisdom of their profession, the new Joint Chiefs would help the president and Congress maintain adequate but economical defenses, avoid unnecessary wars, and wage effectively those wars that proved unavoidable.

Measured by these criteria, over the course of six decades the Joint Chiefs of Staff have performed miserably. Attempts to fix the institution only introduced new varieties of dysfunction, culminating in the rise of General Colin Powell, the most talented -- and most problematic -- officer ever to preside over the JCS. After Powell, things would only get worse.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff inhabit the seam at which war, statecraft, and domestic politics intersect -- an environment saturated with political considerations. Charged with providing professional advice to civilian policymakers, they also represent the institutional interests of the armed services. In pursuit of those interests, the natural tendency of the chiefs is to encroach on territory ostensibly reserved for civilians. Likewise, the tendency of strong-willed civilians -- for example, defense secretaries in the mold of Robert McNamara or Donald Rumsfeld -- is to encroach on the territory claimed by the generals.

As a consequence, instead of military professionals offering disinterested advice to help policymakers render sound decisions, the history of this civilian-military relationship is one of conniving, double-dealing, and mutual manipulation. As generals increasingly played politics, they forfeited their identity as nonpartisan servants of the state. Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy, each for different reasons, came to see the members of the Joint Chiefs as uniformed political adversaries.

Although himself a five-star general, Eisenhower railed in private throughout his presidency about members of the Joint Chiefs conspiring to undermine his policies whenever they happened to collide with cherished interests of the military services. His Farewell Address, warning that the "military-industrial complex" could well "endanger our liberties or democratic processes," amounted to a tacit admission that as commander-in-chief he had lost control of his generals.

Kennedy, from the outset of his presidency, viewed the JCS with skepticism. After the Bay of Pigs, skepticism became unvarnished mistrust. "Those sons-of-bitches with all the fruit salad just sat there nodding, saying it would work," he complained. As Kennedy later remarked to a friendly journalist, "The first advice I'm going to give to my successor is to watch the generals and to avoid feeling that just because they were military men their opinions on military matters were worth a damn."

In his now-classic 1997 book, "Dereliction of Duty," Colonel H. R. McMaster, an active-duty army officer who has served in Iraq with considerable distinction, described how a civil-military relationship based on mutual dishonesty and suspicion reached its pre-Iraq low-point during the US intervention in Vietnam. In his blistering indictment, McMaster charged the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the early 1960s -- the "five silent men," he called them -- with complicity in the lies and deceptions that produced the debacle of that war.

Both before and after Vietnam critics blamed the Joint Chiefs' failures on rampant parochialism, as interservice rivalry either paralyzed the JCS or prevented the chiefs from rendering timely and effective counsel. To address this problem, advocates of reform first created the office of JCS Chairman in 1949, then steadily vested the position with more authority. A more powerful chairman, they believed, would cure the chronic dysfunction by rising above the parochial concerns of his own service, tending instead to the national interest.

In 1986, these efforts culminated in the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which designated the chairman (no longer the Joint Chiefs collectively) as principal military adviser to the president and the secretary of defense. In effect, Goldwater-Nichols demoted the service chiefs while greatly expanding the clout and standing of the chairman.

The result was Colin Powell. Appointed chairman in 1989, Powell proved himself in short order to be the savviest, most charismatic, and most influential officer ever to occupy that post. In some respects, he was enormously effective, seemingly fulfilling the expectations of the reformers who had devised Goldwater-Nichols. In the end, however, he overplayed his hand.

Politically, Powell posed a problem. As he skillfully exploited his superstar status to insert himself into a range of controversial issues, Powell demonstrated a capacity and willingness to preempt the politicians, limiting their options and investing his own policy preferences with an almost irresistible authority.

Powell proved that the JCS chairman could now in effect tie the president's hands. During Operation Desert Storm, he convinced President George H. W. Bush to end the ground war after just 100 hours; he insisted that U. S. forces after the Cold War retain the capability to fight two large-scale conventional wars simultaneously; he questioned the wisdom of humanitarian intervention in the Balkans and elsewhere; and he torpedoed President Bill Clinton's efforts to permit gays to serve openly in the military.

The ultimate testimony to Powell's influence lies in the "Powell Doctrine" -- the general himself defining the criteria for when and how the United States would fight its wars. By 1993, with the Clinton administration stumbling as it left the gate, the JCS chairman had established himself as perhaps the dominant figure in Washington, a situation that persisted until Powell's second two-year term expired that fall and he retired.

Having learned from Powell's tenure that a talented, high-powered JCS chairman can produce big-time political headaches, the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have opted for officers who could be counted on not to make waves. They have done so by selecting anti-Powells to serve as JCS chairmen -- officers who, whatever their other admirable qualities, have possessed few of the attributes that made Powell so formidable. Since 1993, the position of JCS chairman has been filled by a succession of colorless, compliant generals -- honorable and good soldiers to the man, but none demonstrating anything approaching Powell's smarts, flair, and shrewdness. Mediocrity can be a cruel word, but as a description of those who have succeeded Colin Powell as the nation's top military officer, it is apt.

When Donald Rumsfeld served as defense secretary, silent assent became an absolute requirement, as army chief of staff Eric Shinseki learned, to his chagrin. When Shinseki testified, during the run-up to the Iraq invasion, that occupying the country might require many more troops than were available, Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz went out of their way to humiliate and discredit the general for having the temerity to venture an independent opinion. The message to the senior officer corps was clear: those interested in getting ahead were expected to toe the party line.

Pace exemplifies this breed. Only once during his time as chairman has Pace asserted himself -- and that, somewhat bizarrely, was to express his view that homosexuality is immoral. Apart from that uncharacteristic outburst, he has loyally accommodated himself to whatever the boss has wanted, even to calamitous policies that have done immeasurable harm not only to the country but to the armed services to which he has devoted his life.

Perhaps symbolic of that willingness to accommodate, even as Iraq continued to unravel, Pace found time to write a pre-sentencing letter on behalf of convicted perjurer Lewis "Scooter" Libby, assuring the trial judge that Libby is a selfless team player. Pace's involvement in an issue so tinged with partisan overtones was at the very least unseemly, and raises troubling questions about his priorities, if not about the hierarchy of his loyalties.

Let there be no mistake: primary responsibility for the failure of US policy in Iraq lies with civilian policymakers, beginning with the president. As Mr. Bush rightly insists, at the end of the day he remains "the decider." Yet senior military advisers like Pace cannot fully absolve themselves of responsibility for the disasters that have occurred on their watch. To charge Pace with something akin to "dereliction of duty" may go too far. He has, after all, served precisely as his civilian masters wished him to serve. And yet for precisely that reason, his dismissal is richly deserved.

The armed forces deserve top-notch professional leadership. Civilian policymakers need expert military counsel, offered clearly and candidly. Yet to charge one small group of senior officers with fulfilling both functions makes it unlikely that either will be adequately performed. The dismal saga of the Joint Chiefs has demonstrated this in spades. At the highest levels a line should exist between the senior officers who advise on matters of national security policy and those expected to implement policy decisions. One way to draw that line might be to select advisers from the ranks of retired generals and admirals, independent-minded "wise men" no longer involved in running their services.

Secretary Gates has described Pace's successor as an officer of "vision, strategic insight, and integrity." No doubt similar words were spoken when Pace himself was appointed chairman, perhaps with equal sincerity.

Yet whatever personal attributes Admiral Mullen may possess -- even if he ends up being more like a Powell than another Pace -- the real problem lies with the institution over which he will preside. Six decades of trying to fix the Joint Chiefs of Staff have produced little positive effect. Further tinkering will only waste more money and, alas, more lives.

The JCS lies beyond salvaging. Before you build a new house, you tear the old one down. For the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it's wrecking-ball time. A chairman possessing vision, strategic insight, and integrity ought to be the first to acknowledge that.

Andrew J. Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at Boston University, is editor of "The Long War: A New History of U.S. National Security Policy Since World War II," published this month by Columbia University Press.