Powell, Colin

Powell, Colin (1937–), twelfth chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).Born 5 April 1937 in the Harlem section of New York City and raised in the South Bronx, Colin L. Powell, the son of Jamaican immigrants, rose to become the first African American chairman of the JCS. After his 1958 graduation from City College, New York, where he had been a member of the ROTC, Powell received a commission in the regular army.

As a young officer in the recently integrated army, he had opportunities for leadership not then generally available to blacks in segregated civilian society. He received accelerated promotions to major and colonel, and in 1979 became at forty‐two the youngest general then in the army.

A turning point in Powell's career was his 1972 selection as a White House Fellow. Assigned to the Office of Management and Budget, he learned firsthand the workings of the federal bureaucracy and met individuals who later played key roles in his career. He served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense during both Democratic and Republican administrations, and in 1983 became military assistant to the secretary. Appointed President Ronald Reagan's deputy national security adviser in 1987, he soon became national security adviser.

Selected by President George Bush, Powell became chairman of the JCS on 1 October 1989. In addition to being the first African American, he was the first ROTC graduate and the youngest man to hold the position. Powell was also the first chairman to serve his entire tenure under the 1986 Goldwater‐Nichols Act that made the chairman, rather than the corporate chiefs, the nation's principal military adviser.

During his four years in office, Powell made full and unprecedented use of the chairman's enhanced authority. He directed the reorientation of U.S. military strategy at the end of the Cold War and introduced the concept of a “base force” that reduced the size of the armed forces while maintaining U.S. superpower status. He played a central role during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The army's experience in Vietnam, where he served two tours, profoundly affected Powell's approach to the use of military force. He advocated deploying U.S. forces in combat only for clear political objectives, and then applying overwhelming force to achieve quick victory.

Powell's active exercise of the chairman's authority greatly strengthened the position. As a result, his tenure became the subject of press and scholarly debate about the proper role of the military in policy formulation.
[See also African Americans in the Military.]

Bibliography

Colin L. Powell with and Joseph E. Persico , My American Journey, 1995.

Lorna S. Jaffe