Department of Defense

Steven L. Rearden

A major change in the conduct of American foreign policy after World War II was the growing involvement of the military, represented by the Department of Defense. The explanation stems in part from the heightened concern for national security during the postwar period when much of the U.S. government became transfixed with waging the Cold War. During these years, as foreign affairs eclipsed domestic policy as the government's top concern, discussion of foreign policy options often dwelt on military courses of action, thereby assuring the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and the military services numerous opportunities to contribute views. Indeed, some secretaries of defense, like James Forrestal, Robert S. McNamara, Caspar Weinberger, and William Perry, played such a conspicuous role in foreign affairs that they seemed at times to rival the secretary of state. The result was a foreign policy that increasingly reflected the priorities and concerns of the Pentagon.

Even without the Cold War, however, a case can be made that the Defense Department's role and influence in policy circles would have grown appreciably anyway as the logical outcome of American experiences in World War II and its immediate aftermath. As the war ended, the security problems that preoccupied Washington policymakers were not just those associated with deteriorating Soviet-American relations, but also the obligations the United States was apt to acquire as a member of the recently created United Nations, the threats posed by atomic weapons and other new technologies, and the lingering memories of recent military setbacks like Pearl Harbor. The upshot was a growing acceptance that the country would have to have a larger, better-trained, and better-equipped peacetime military force than it had known in the past.

Created in 1949, the Department of Defense was an outgrowth of the National Security Act of 1947, which unified the armed services under a civilian secretary of defense. The debate in Congress leading up to passage of the 1947 legislation had its origins in the experiences of World War II, which, despite the overall success, revealed numerous flaws and shortcomings in command relationships and the allocation of resources among the military services. Aiming to avoid such problems in the future, President Harry S. Truman endorsed a War Department plan calling for a highly centralized and closely unified postwar military structure. The navy, fearing that such a setup would threaten the future of naval aviation and the independence of the Marine Corps, championed a competing plan that rejected outright unification in favor of closer coordination. The resulting compromise, enshrined in the National Security Act, borrowed from both sides but leaned more toward the navy plan, in the interest of avoiding what many in Congress worried might become "a Prussian-style general staff" at the Pentagon.

The responsibilities of the secretary of defense, as head of the new organization, cut across traditional lines. His main job was to provide "general direction, authority, and control" over the military departments, made up of the army, the navy, and a newly independent air force, which were now grouped together under a hybrid organization known as the National Military Establishment. But the secretary was also "the principal assistant to the President in all matters relating to the national security." Exactly where the latter language came from or how it was meant to be applied are unclear. The most likely explanation is that it reflected the philosophy and influence of James Forrestal, secretary of the navy during the unification debate, who believed that the secretary of defense should be primarily a coordinator rather than an executive administrator. Truman never liked this loose description of the secretary's duties, and when the opportunity presented itself in 1949 to amend the National Security Act (at which time Congress converted the National Military Establishment into the present-day Department of Defense and strengthened the secretary's authority), he insisted that the wording of the secretary's mission be changed to "principal assistant to the President in all matters relating to the Department of Defense."

In addition to providing a framework for unification, the 1947 National Security Act created new machinery to promote closer coordination within the policy process. In practice this meant balancing competing claims of authority, influence, and resources among rival departments and agencies. In an effort to impose order on this situation, Congress created new mechanisms to help the president: the National Security Council to advise him on the formulation of overall policy; the National Security Resources Board to oversee future mobilization planning; and the Central Intelligence Agency to coordinate the gathering and analysis of intelligence. Although it was generally assumed that the military would be represented on each of these bodies, the only stipulation in the law was that the secretary of defense and the service secretaries would sit on the National Security Council.

EARLY EXPERIENCES

As a result of the National Security Act, the military establishment stood to gain considerably in its exercise of influence over peacetime foreign and defense policy. Forrestal, as one of the principal architects of the law, hoped that it would lead to closer politico-military collaboration, an area he thought had been slighted during World War II by what he saw as President Franklin D. Roosevelt's casual management style and haphazard approach to postwar planning. After the war, as relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated, Forrestal thought it all the more imperative that military planning and foreign policy be brought into closer harmony. As the first secretary of defense (1947–1949), he looked initially to the Joint Chiefs of Staff to be his principal politico-military advisers and adopted the practice of consulting with them on nearly every foreign policy matter that crossed his desk. In view of the proliferating number of foreign crises—in Greece, Italy, Palestine, Berlin, China, and elsewhere—the Joint Chiefs had numerous occasions to express their views and to exert their influence. Yet rarely did they make as much of these opportunities as they might have. Divided among themselves over budgetary issues, the allocation of resources, and the assignment of service roles and missions, they seldom presented a united front. Where the use of force might be involved, their recommendations tended to be so unrealistic that they scarcely received serious consideration outside the Pentagon. A case in point was their finding in the spring of 1948 that 100,000 U.S. troops would be needed for peacekeeping duties in Palestine, an estimate built on worst-case scenarios that officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and at the White House dismissed as overblown for budgetary purposes.

As it became clear that the Joint Chiefs were a less reliable source of advice than Forrestal had expected, he found himself turning to members of his immediate staff to deal with politico-military affairs. This was not something Forrestal had anticipated, nor did it fit easily into the organization he had planned for his office. During the unification debate, he had told Congress that in the interests of preserving service autonomy it would be counterproductive for the new secretary of defense to surround himself with too many aides and assistants who might interfere in the services' business. A small staff, he contended, would be more than adequate. Politico-military affairs became the responsibility of John H. Ohly, one of the secretary's three statutory special assistants, who oversaw a mixed staff of civil servants and uniformed officers borrowed from the military departments. Although Ohly usually stayed in the background, operating more as an administrator than as an adviser, his role was such that he could, and did, freely offer suggestions when it seemed appropriate.

Under Forrestal's successor, Louis A. Johnson (1949–1950), politico-military affairs acquired a more formal and centralized structure, in line with Johnson's philosophy (as well as the increased authority he wielded as a result of the 1949 amendments to the National Security Act), that the secretary of defense should exercise closer control over departmental policy. The impetus for the changes Johnson made in handling foreign affairs came initially from the State Department, which wanted a single point of contact with the Pentagon instead of having to deal separately with the OSD, the JCS, and the military services. One proposal up for consideration at the time Johnson took office in March 1949 was to vest primary responsibility for politico-military affairs in the JCS. Johnson, however, vetoed the idea in favor of keeping control in his immediate office, thereby setting a precedent that would guide all future secretaries of defense. Over the next several months he moved policy responsibility for occupied areas from the army to OSD, ordered his immediate staff to monitor all correspondence between the military services and the State Department, and set up the State Liaison Section to serve as the central point of contact for all communications with the State Department other than sensitive intelligence matters.

An isolationist at heart, Johnson faced the somewhat personally awkward task of having to help implement two major foreign policy initiatives: the defense of Europe as part of America's obligations as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), created in April 1949; and arming the allies under a companion measure, the Mutual Defense Assistance Program, enacted that autumn. Less than enthusiastic about either, Johnson turned coordination of these matters over to an assistant, James H. Burns, a retired army officer whose heart ailment allowed him to work only part-time. Fortunately, Burns had two exceptionally able deputies: Major General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who handled military assistance; and Najeeb E. Halaby, who specialized in foreign military affairs, including NATO. Meanwhile, Johnson became involved in a running feud with Secretary of State Dean Acheson, which put a serious strain on State-Defense relations. Business between the two still managed to get done, but at a reduced pace with limited contacts and cooperation all around.

The low point came with the drafting of NSC 68 in the spring of 1950, when the State Department team, led by Paul H. Nitze, director of the Policy Planning Staff, effectively usurped leadership of what was supposed to have been a joint State-Defense endeavor. The product of the exercise was a paper tailored to Acheson's specifications, warning of great dangers ahead unless the United States abandoned the strict economy measures Johnson had imposed and stepped up the level of its military preparedness. From this point on, Johnson's credibility at the White House steadily diminished, until reverses at the outset of the Korean War that summer cast doubt on his continuing ability to manage the Pentagon and provided Truman with an excuse to fire him.

THE MARSHALL-LOVETT ERA

To replace Johnson, Truman turned in September 1950 to General George C. Marshall, army chief of staff in World War II and secretary of state from 1947 to 1949, who brought with him his former undersecretary of state, Robert A. Lovett, to be his number two (and successor, beginning in 1951) at the Pentagon. Truman held Marshall in the highest regard, and it is not surprising that, with Marshall's return to government, Acheson found his authority and influence somewhat eclipsed. Meanwhile, Truman also decided to upgrade the National Security Council, thereby imposing greater discipline and efficiency on the policy process and opening avenues for shaping high-level policy that had not existed for either Forrestal or Johnson. With the additional impetus of the Korean War generating a growing list of U.S. politico-military commitments around the globe, the Defense Department became immersed in foreign affairs to an unprecedented degree. Not until the Kennedy and Johnson administrations of the 1960s would a secretary of defense exert as much influence over foreign policy as did Marshall and Lovett.

In sharp contrast to the confrontational tone of Johnson's tenure, Marshall and Lovett both promoted cordial working relations between the State and Defense departments. Truman was disgusted with the constant bickering between Acheson and Johnson, and he looked to his new team at the Pentagon to put politico-military collaboration on a more sound and professional basis. The goal, as Lovett later described it while testifying before Congress, was "constant, close, and sympathetic cooperation" between the two departments. This included not only increased contacts at the uppermost levels of policymaking, but also direct consultations on a regular basis involving the State Department's regional assistant secretaries, the Policy Planning Staff, and the Joint Chiefs, something that Johnson had sharply curtailed.

Despite an atmosphere of improved cooperation, Marshall and Lovett continued the practice begun by Johnson of exercising close administrative control of foreign affairs through OSD, under what became in November 1951 the Office of International Security Affairs, headed by Frank C. Nash, one of the many Forrestal protégés still around the Pentagon. Nash had a broad charter that gave him the authority to coordinate "all activities" within the Department of Defense relating to international security affairs. Nash himself was intimately involved in practically every detail of the office's operations, serving as principal liaison with the National Security Council and as a key aide to Marshall and Lovett. It was one of the Pentagon's most high profile jobs, requiring a judicious mix of administrative and diplomatic skills that continuously underscored the increasingly close relationship between military affairs and foreign policy.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS DURING THE EISENHOWER YEARS

During Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidency (1953–1961), the Defense Department's involvement in foreign affairs continued to expand as military responses increasingly became a part of the U.S. strategy for containing communist expansion. Ironically, however, the secretary of defense himself was a relatively minor figure in shaping foreign policy decisions during most of this period. Stressing the need for sound management, Eisenhower selected former business executives as his first two secretaries of defense —Charles E. Wilson (1953–1957), who had headed General Motors, and Neil H. McElroy (1957–1959), former president of Procter and Gamble. Hired for their ability to run large enterprises, they operated on the philosophy that, above all, the secretary of defense should concern himself with the managerial side of the department and leave policy and strategy decisions to be hammered out in the National Security Council by the president, the Joint Chiefs, and Eisenhower's number one foreign affairs adviser, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

Despite the limited role that Wilson and McElroy embraced for themselves, Defense Department involvement abroad continued to grow. Often the responsibilities were routine and dealt with administrative chores requiring prior defense arrangements with U.S. allies, such as those in NATO and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), access to overseas bases, and the buildup, equipping, and training of allied forces under U.S. military aid programs. Accordingly, provisions had to be made to handle the influx of U.S. military personnel into foreign countries, arrange for the administration and allocation of assistance, define the duties and responsibilities of U.S. advisers, and negotiate agreements governing the status of forces, usually with the International Security Affairs office providing the initial liaison and coordination on the Washington end.

At the same time the department also faced a wholly new set of security problems arising from advances in military technology and corresponding decisions by the president and the National Security Council on how these advances would be exploited. The advent of thermonuclear and tactical nuclear weapons and of ballistic missile technology, coupled with Eisenhower's decision to "conventionalize" the atomic arsenal, raised problems of unprecedented political complexity and diplomatic sensitivity. Never before had any country possessed such enormous power with so few guiding precedents on how to manage it. As it turned out, some of these new weapons would be deployed abroad and shared with America's allies. How much control, if any, the host country would have over the storage, movement, and use of these weapons invariably invited prolonged discussion, both within the U.S. government and between Washington and foreign capitals.

The inherent importance of being able to deal effectively with these problems was manifest when in February 1953 Wilson promoted the International Security Affairs assistant to the rank of assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. The decision to elevate the job (a move Lovett was on the verge of making when he left office) was long overdue, but as a practical matter its only real significance was to reaffirm the office's already well established place among the Pentagon's elite. In 1956, Wilson tried to upgrade the office to the rank of undersecretary, to place it on a par with the service secretaries. However, legislation that would have effected the change died in the House Armed Services Committee.

In fact, the mandate of the International Security Affairs office was never so clear as to give it undisputed control of politico-military affairs. Each of the services continued to maintain its own politico-military and international affairs section, which could be used to circumvent the secretary of defense and his deputies. Best organized for this purpose was the navy, which maintained regular informal communications with the State Department through its Politico-Military Policy Division. In addition, the chief of naval operations had his own "back channel" contacts abroad, which infuriated Secretary of Defense Wilson when he learned of them. And while International Security Affairs was supposed to be responsible for policies governing the programming of foreign military aid, it often encountered resistance from the Joint Chiefs and the military departments when it attempted to probe the details of their recommendations concerning program development and implementation practices. Had Wilson and McElroy taken a greater personal interest in foreign affairs, many of these problems might have been avoided. But with secretaries of defense whose interests lay elsewhere, the assistant secretaries for International Security Affairs knew that they could count on little support and generally felt constrained from pressing their authority too far.

The situation started to change with the appointment in December 1959 of Thomas S. Gates, a Philadelphia banker, as Eisenhower's third secretary of defense. Although his tenure was short (1959–1961), it reestablished the secretary of defense as a major figure in foreign policy decision making. Occasionally criticized for trying to usurp the secretary of state's functions, Gates pursued a State-Defense partnership that would yield more truly integrated policies with less interdepartmental friction and parochialism. As a first step, Gates abandoned the practice of trying to control the flow of State-Defense business through his immediate office. Indicative of the results he hoped to achieve, he initiated regular one-on-one meetings with Secretary of State Christian A. Herter and encouraged subordinates to do the same with their State Department counterparts in an effort to improve interagency cooperation and coordination.

Gates was also highly instrumental in shaping Defense Department responses in the increasingly important area of arms control and disarmament, where prior to Gates the Pentagon's support and endorsement of such measures had been lukewarm. Although Wilson and McElroy had spent considerable time and energy studying arms control proposals passing across their desks, they were forever confronted by the unremitting skepticism and apprehension of the Joint Chiefs, whose opinions on such matters carried considerable weight both inside the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. Since the chiefs knew that it was impossible for political reasons to keep arms control off the national agenda, they focused their objections instead on technical matters—the lack of adequate and effective verification measures, for example, or the debilitating consequences for research and development programs. As delaying tactics, these arguments worked well against such proposals as an atmospheric test ban and a cutoff of nuclear production. But they were also the kinds of arguments that wore thin after awhile and gave the Defense Department a reputation for contentiousness.

Gates was decidedly more inclined than his two immediate predecessors to bring arms control and disarmament into the mainstream of American defense policy. While he readily acknowledged to the press that there was a "negative attitude" in the Pentagon toward arms control, he was prepared to entertain any and all suggestions and told Eisenhower that he was thinking of appointing a special assistant on disarmament matters. Still, about the only arms control measures Gates was seriously willing to consider (without, as he put it, "a complete review of our force structure") were those that promised to result in some sort of U.S. advantage over the Soviets. Personally, Gates favored a cutoff of nuclear production, preferably sooner rather than later, not so much for disarmament purposes but to preserve what he estimated as a two-to-one American advantage over the Soviets in nuclear bombs and warheads. Moreover, he fully agreed with the Joint Chiefs that arms control for the sake of arms control was inherently dangerous, and that the administration should not allow itself to be stampeded into reaching agreements merely because of public opinion.

Whether Gates could or should have been tougher with the military on accepting the need for arms control falls into the realm of conjecture. Gates himself, although more open-minded toward such matters than Wilson and McElroy had been, was still very much committed to the concept of foreign and defense policies resting on ready military power rather than the negotiation of agreements with one's potential adversaries. Like Forrestal and Lovett, he was part of a generation whose view of international politics derived from memories and experiences of the 1930s, when military weakness and appeasement had seemed to invite oppression and aggression. International communism, to Gates's way of thinking, was basically no different from the Axis alliance that had bound Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and imperial Japan in World War II. Despite rumors and diplomatic reports of a growing Sino-Soviet rift, Gates remained convinced that there were no fundamental ideological differences between Moscow and Beijing, and that American foreign policy should treat such stories with utmost caution. It was, perhaps, a quintessential Cold War viewpoint, but not one that was uncommon or out of place for its times.

THE MCNAMARA ERA

If there was one individual who had more impact than anyone else on the Defense Department's role in foreign affairs, it was Robert S. McNamara. Appointed by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, McNamara served as secretary of defense until 1968, when the stalemated war in Vietnam prompted his resignation. Throughout most of his tenure, McNamara was an ardent advocate of American involvement in Southeast Asia and a key figure in planning and prosecuting the war. Indeed, in a very real sense, foreign policy toward Southeast Asia during these years was a product of the Pentagon, which was largely responsible for orchestrating the war. Victory, however, proved elusive, and as time passed McNamara saw his self-confidence and credibility steadily erode. Disillusioned and frustrated, he left office counseling withdrawal and stepped-up efforts at a negotiated settlement.

Yet the frustrations of Vietnam and their ripple effects were only part of the McNamara story. Indeed, without Vietnam, McNamara's tenure would probably be remembered as a period of extraordinarily positive accomplishments, from improved management of the Pentagon to reduced reliance on nuclear weapons and the initiation of the first serious efforts at strategic arms control. Outwardly, McNamara was an unlikely candidate to play such a major part in foreign affairs. A former president of Ford Motor Company, he seemed destined at the outset of his tenure to follow in the footsteps of Wilson and McElroy and become a business manager of the Pentagon. That he emerged instead as a pivotal figure in foreign policy was as much a product of his approach to the job of secretary of defense as it was the unique circumstances in which he found himself. The result was a far more active and involved Defense Department at all levels of the policy process, including especially high-level decision making.

Much of the power and authority that the Pentagon wielded under McNamara accrued by default rather than by design. President Kennedy had little use for the elaborate National Security Council system developed under Truman and Eisenhower, and in its place he substituted a slimmed-down version with limited capabilities for independent policy analysis. Further, he discontinued the practice of conducting elaborate annual national security reviews and expected the State Department to exercise primary responsibility for developing and coordinating policy. The weak link in this system proved to be Dean Rusk, Kennedy's choice as secretary of state. Although affable and intelligent, it soon became apparent that Rusk lacked the temperament and drive to carry out the job entrusted to him. Eventually it fell to McNamara to fill the void.

For the record, McNamara accepted the conventional wisdom that defense policy derived from foreign policy and that the Pentagon's function was to serve and assist the State Department. But in day-to-day practice, McNamara, with Kennedy's blessing, generally followed his own lead. The approach McNamara adopted was to supply his own foreign policy guidance, which he included with each budget submission to the president and in his annual reports (termed "posture statements" to give them more prestige) to Congress. Going beyond a purely military rationale, McNamara's posture statements offered broad justification for new and ongoing defense programs based on the manner in which they would contribute to furthering U.S. foreign policy objectives. "It was essential," McNamara recalled in an interview, "to begin with a discussion of foreign policy because that had to be the foundation of security policy." Although the State Department routinely submitted advice and comments, its views often arrived too late in the budget process to be reflected in the final documents forwarded to the White House and Capitol Hill.

For support, McNamara assembled a highly skilled and talented staff, dubbed the "whiz kids," who implemented a host of far-reaching administrative and managerial reforms. Some of the changes they and McNamara made, including the extensive use of computer-driven "systems analysis" models and mission-oriented budgeting techniques, proved controversial and hard for the military services to swallow. But there is no doubt that they gave the secretary a stronger and firmer hand, both in running the department and in projecting his influence into foreign policy. Moreover, they liberated the secretary from having to draw as often on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military services for advice and analysis of politico-military problems. By the middle of the decade, McNamara had at his fingertips the most sophisticated and effective organization for analyzing and managing politico-military affairs that Washington had yet seen. Whether, as some critics charged, McNamara's reforms invited the further "militarization" of American foreign policy is debatable. Within the Pentagon, McNamara exercised an unprecedented degree of civilian control over the military and routinely used civilians in International Security Affairs and in other key positions to perform chores previously reserved for the services or the JCS. If this was militarization, it was most definitely of the civilian-shaded variety.

All the same, the tendency to apply military solutions to serious problems abroad grew steadily during the 1960s. This was true not only in Southeast Asia but also in dealing with incidents in Cuba, Berlin, the Dominican Republic, and other Cold War flashpoints. During the late 1940s and 1950s, U.S. military power had relied in the first instance on the presumed deterrent effects of nuclear retaliation to cope with the threat of communist aggression. But by the 1960s, with the United States and the Soviet Union approaching effective parity in strategic nuclear power, it was no longer realistic to threaten wholesale nuclear destruction. Seeking a more credible posture, McNamara seized on the doctrine of flexible response as a means of providing the president with a wider range of options for dealing with critical international problems.

The essence of flexible response was a varied mixture of forces allowing a greater choice in military actions, with emphasis on containing any conflict below the level of a nuclear exchange. Developed initially with Europe in mind, McNamara hoped that flexible response would provide an alternative to the all-or-nothing mentality that then dominated NATO strategic planning. To achieve the desired posture, he urged stepped-up procurement of conventional forces and changes in the programmed use of nuclear weapons to allow for a "pause" or "firebreak" between conventional conflict and a larger war. European critics countered that such a strategy would be prohibitively expensive and that it would under-mine nuclear deterrence and increase the risk of a conventional conflict. But with patience and perseverance, McNamara gradually brought the Europeans around. Adopted by NATO in 1967, flexible response was, on paper at least, a major break with the past, although in practice its effects were somewhat negated by the reluctance of the European allies to commit themselves to a sustained conventional buildup. Even so, flexible response remained NATO's governing strategic doctrine for the duration of the Cold War and into the early 1990s.

Another of McNamara's contributions was to help institutionalize a more serious attitude within the Defense Department toward strategic arms control and disarmament. What prompted McNamara's involvement was mounting evidence by the mid-1960s that the Soviet Union had embarked upon the deployment of two prototype antiballistic missile (ABM) systems, thus putting pressure on the United States to respond in kind. Dubious of the technologies involved, McNamara sought to avoid a costly and perhaps futile ABM competition by proposing negotiations with the Soviets to curb both offensive and defensive strategic weapons. Although the Joint Chiefs remained skeptical about whether such talks would amount to much, they agreed with McNamara's basic premise that the strategic arms competition was getting out of hand and that restraint on both sides could serve a useful purpose. This was a dramatic turnaround from military thinking in the 1950s, and it went far toward paving the way for the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and other arms control accords growing out of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) between Washington and Moscow in the 1970s.

Outside Europe, flexible response played a less conspicuous role in shaping American foreign policy. The escalating conflict in Southeast Asia defied the conceptual models that McNamara was so fond of applying, and by 1966 the United States found itself engaged in a war of attrition with North Vietnam. Nevertheless, McNamara approached the war as he generally approached other problems, seeking to reduce it to quantifiable proportions. Knowing McNamara's preferences, subordinates tailored programs and recommendations accordingly, stressing systems analysis techniques over less quantifiable means of assessing the war's progress and possible outcome. The use of statistical models, whether involving kill ratios, construction rates, frequency of incidents, or other indicators, gave a distorted picture of the war, often because the U.S. command in Saigon and the South Vietnamese government, knowingly or otherwise, provided erroneous data. By the time McNamara realized what was happening, the United States was so committed to prosecuting the war that there was no turning back without doing what he and President Lyndon B. Johnson considered serious damage to U.S. prestige and credibility.

McNamara's tenure at the Defense Department thus left a mixed legacy. While there was progress in curbing the menace of nuclear war, the United States found itself plunging ever more deeply into an ill-advised and ill-conceived conflict in Southeast Asia. McNamara demonstrated that a strong-minded and strong-willed secretary of defense could exercise enormous influence on American foreign policy. However, his immediate successors were leery of following suit.

POST-VIETNAM CHANGES

After Vietnam the role of military power in American foreign policy became less pronounced than it had been previously, a clear sign of popular misgivings over the war and of diminished confidence in military solutions to problems abroad. Indicative of the trend was the decision by Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird (1969–1973) in 1970 to cease prefacing his annual reports to Congress with foreign policy reviews, as had been the custom during McNamara's tenure. Nevertheless, the Defense Department continued to figure prominently in the foreign policy process through its representation on interagency committees and the secretary's membership on the National Security Council. As a rule, the Defense Department supplied two representatives—one from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, another from the Joint Chiefs of Staff—to each interagency forum while providing many of the action officers who made up the National Security Council staff. Although it was entirely conceivable that the president and his staff could have curtailed their contacts with the military, relying more on civilians from the State Department or elsewhere for advice, it was practically impossible to do so. The resulting policies may have been less overtly military in character, but they were still subject to military involvement in their development and execution.

One reason why the Pentagon acquired a lower foreign policy profile after Vietnam was that defense-related security problems in the 1970s gave way in importance to political and economic problems. The major exceptions were the SALT negotiations with the Soviet Union, which required military participation on technical as well as policy grounds, and ongoing U.S. involvement in NATO and foreign military assistance programs to American client states like Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and the Philippines. But otherwise attention focused on such matters as inflation, energy shortages, and other disruptions to the global political economy that were not normally high on the Pentagon's agenda. At the same time, a general improvement in relations between Washington and Moscow, known as détente, lessened the more overt dangers of an East-West confrontation.

The growing range and complexity of problems abroad invited the Defense Department to acquire more sophisticated means for approaching and handling foreign affairs. This included the staffing of a net assessment office in 1973, which operated under a broad charter to initiate studies of current and projected U.S. and foreign military capabilities; and the appointment in 1977 of an undersecretary of defense for policy, to oversee politico-military affairs, arms control, and the integration of defense plans and policies with basic national security policy. At the command and staff colleges run by the armed services and at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., lectures and courses on national security affairs became more commonplace alongside traditional studies in military science. Language training likewise received closer attention at service schools.

The net effect was to generate a far greater appreciation within the military for the complexities of foreign affairs than at any time in the past. Many junior officers who had served in Vietnam were highly critical of what they found to be their superiors' simplistic and naive views on foreign policy; as these younger officers rose to prominence in the late 1970s and 1980s they brought with them a keen interest in developing U.S. policies less wedded to Cold War stereotypes. A case in point was the Pentagon's more flexible attitude toward the communist regime on mainland China during the 1970s and early 1980s and its ready acquiescence in dropping support for Taiwan, once a bulwark against communism and a stalwart American ally.

FROM COLD WAR TO POST–COLD WAR

By the late 1970s the pendulum was beginning to swing back toward more active military participation in foreign affairs. The faltering of détente, an across-the-board Warsaw Pact buildup in Europe, and the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan all suggested that the Cold War was far from over and that U.S. foreign policy still needed the support of a strong U.S. military establishment. The response was a U.S. peacetime military buildup of unprecedented proportions. Begun toward the end of Carter's presidency, it gathered momentum under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to become the largest such effort in American history. Among the programs that Reagan initiated were the creation of a 600-ship navy to give the United States a more effective global power-projection capability, offensive strategic forces that would be more survivable in a general nuclear war, and the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars" to its critics) to explore the feasibility of rendering intercontinental ballistic missiles "impotent and obsolete."

Whereas Carter sent U.S. forces into harm's way only once, during the Iran hostage crisis in 1980, and even then with great reluctance, Reagan did so time and again with rarely a second thought. His operating premise was that a successful and effective foreign policy and readiness to use military power went hand in hand. Insisting that military involvement overseas was unavoidable, he often turned to the Defense Department to conduct operations in direct furtherance of American policy. This included providing a buffer between the warring factions in Lebanon, escorting neutral tanker traffic in the Persian Gulf, punitive raids against Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, counterinsurgency operations in Central America, and the rescue of American civilians following a Marxist coup on Grenada in 1983.

Reagan also drew heavily on the military and Pentagon professionals to help staff his administration. His first secretary of state, Alexander M. Haig, Jr., was a retired four-star army general who had recently served as NATO Supreme Commander. Haig first came to prominence during the Nixon administration as Henry Kissinger's deputy at the National Security Council. During his year and a half as secretary of state under Reagan, Haig was often in the forefront of suggesting military pressure when diplomacy appeared to falter, especially in trying to counter Soviet and Cuban adventurism in the Caribbean, Central America, and Africa. Of the six national security advisers that Reagan had, two—Vice Admiral John M. Poindexter and Lieutenant General Colin L. Powell—were active-duty military officers. A third, Frank C. Carlucci, was a former deputy secretary of defense. Meanwhile, military officers "on loan" from the Pentagon continued to occupy key positions on the National Security Council staff; and after a succession of civilian heads, Reagan in 1987 named retired army Major General William Burns to direct the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Not surprisingly, Defense Department influence rose appreciably during the Reagan years, though not always in ways that yielded predictable outcomes. Indeed, in certain respects, the department found itself ill-prepared for the more demanding role that Reagan thrust upon it. The unpopularity of the military after Vietnam and years of flat defense spending had left what many at the Pentagon considered a hollow force by the beginning of the 1980s. Although the Joint Chiefs of Staff planning mechanism was now capable of generating an enormous array of military options from which the president could choose, the effective implementation of these plans was often hampered by the lack of trained personnel, reliable equipment and spare parts, interservice friction, and limited access to foreign bases. For these reasons, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger (1981–1987) and the Joint Chiefs were often averse to taking risks abroad, at least until the Reagan buildup had gathered its full momentum.

A further concern within the Pentagon was that stepped-up military involvement overseas would draw hostile reactions from Congress and the American public. Fearing another Vietnam, the Joint Chiefs cautioned against committing U.S. combat troops in Central America and insisted upon limiting U.S. military participation to a relatively small-scale assistance program, occasional exercises, and support of CIA-directed covert operations. The Joint Chiefs were likewise leery of becoming drawn into Lebanon, and when a terrorist bombing incident in October 1983 killed 241 U.S. servicemen, they believed their worst fears were confirmed. U.S. troops withdrew shortly thereafter. In a well-publicized speech of November 1984, entitled "Uses of Military Power," Secretary Weinberger laid down specific criteria that he thought should govern U.S. military commitments abroad. At the minimum, Weinberger argued, the armed forces should have a firm declaration of support at home, a clear-cut mission, and an agreed exit strategy from any operation in which they might become involved.

With so much at stake, Weinberger took a proactive stance toward foreign affairs that frequently led to friction with the State Department and the National Security Council. Like many of his predecessors, Weinberger required that State-Defense contacts have his prior approval. Adopting a broad view of his responsibilities, he insisted that the Defense Department should have a voice in practically every major foreign policy decision, not just those that might involve the use of military forces. As a direct consequence, he and Haig quarreled often and openly, so much so that the policy process seemed at times to grind to a halt. Weinberger's relations with Haig's successor, George C. Shultz, were only slightly better. In interdepartmental deliberations Weinberger fought hard for his views, often with success.

Weinberger was especially active in shaping the administration's stand on arms control and related issues. While framing an intermediate-range ballistic missile negotiating policy in 1981, he convinced President Reagan, over the objections of the State Department, the Joint Chiefs, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, to hold out for a total global ban on theater-range ballistic missiles, a goal eventually realized in 1987. Weinberger also encouraged Reagan to persevere with the Strategic Defense Initiative, which critics dismissed as unworkable, but which Weinberger regarded as an exceedingly valuable military asset. Unlike Shultz and others in the administration, Weinberger was highly averse to seeing it bargained away. Although not as hostile to arms control as some of his critics maintained, Weinberger believed in negotiating from a position of strength and was dubious of being able to reach fair and reasonable agreements with the Soviets until the United States had improved its strategic posture.

While Weinberger sought to clarify the ground rules for the military's role in foreign policy, others sought to make it more responsive to such problems. Defense reform had been in the air since the debacle in Vietnam, and by the 1980s it took the form of a concerted effort in Congress to improve the performance of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the joint command structure, under which the worldwide deployment of U.S. forces operated. Long criticized as unreliable and ineffectual, the JCS was a prime candidate for legislative reform. Even many senior military officers agreed that the system was inefficient and sorely in need of an overhaul. In the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, Congress attempted to address these concerns by providing for a stronger and more active JCS chairman, with full control over the Joint Staff. The joint commands received added authority to participate in the budget, procurement, and planning process, and there was to be increased training and emphasis on "jointness" throughout the armed forces.

The intent of the Goldwater-Nichols reforms was to create a more unified and responsive defense establishment, although it was not until the Gulf War of 1990–1991 that the new machinery received its first major test. The war confirmed that in planning and executing such operations, the Department of Defense was probably better prepared and better organized than at any time since its creation. With the resources accumulated during the Reagan buildup, it was all the easier to prevail. Simply having a large, well-equipped defense establishment may not have made a military response to Iraq's seizure of Kuwait any more likely than the use of other options. But it certainly proved to be an asset that President George H. W. Bush and his advisers fell back on when the time came to take action. Knowing that they had such assets readily available undoubtedly increased their sense of confidence and resolve to see the crisis through.

The Gulf War was the last hurrah for the large military establishment built up over the Cold War. The collapse of communism across Eastern Europe, starting with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and culminating with the dissolution of the Soviet Union late in 1991, signaled a fundamental geopolitical change. Henceforth regional security problems began to replace the threat of global war as the focus of American military planning. The principal architect of this shift in U.S. strategy was the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman from 1989 to 1993, General Colin Powell, whose concept of a smaller, more mobile "base force" helped guide the Defense Department through its post–Cold War downsizing. Subsequently, the department came to operate under what Secretary of Defense William J. Perry (1994–1997) described as a policy of "preventive defense." In practice, this meant trying to head off problems before they arose through Defense support of such measures as dismantling the former Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal, curbing the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and NATO's Partnership for Peace program with the former Soviet satellite states.

By far the most demanding post–Cold War foreign policy tasks that the department encountered were those associated with peacekeeping and humanitarian missions. Little anticipated when the Cold War ended, they proliferated rapidly in the 1990s and ranged from the policing of Iraqi air space (a carryover from the Gulf War) to refugee and famine relief in Africa and power-brokering in Haiti and the Balkans. For the Defense Department these were somewhat new or unique responsibilities that required a delicate weighing of diplomacy and military power, often under the aegis of a multinational or United Nations command. One such mission was the protection of UN famine relief workers in Somalia, which led to a bloody firefight in October 1993 between U.S. special forces and troops loyal to Somali strongman Mohamed Farah Aideed. Thereafter, the Joint Chiefs urged using technology in place of manpower in similar operations to reduce the risk to U.S. forces, advice the Clinton administration readily accepted. When called upon to help evict Serb troops from Kosovo in 1999, it insisted upon doing so at a distance, with a NATO-directed air campaign to apply the necessary pressure.

The beginning of the twenty-first century saw an emerging debate over the military's future role in American foreign policy. Many military planners and analysts still believed that the proper primary function of the armed forces was to guarantee the national security with ready warfighting capabilities, and that doctrine, training, and procurement should be tailored accordingly. An opposing group, citing the growing U.S. involvement in peace enforcement, drug interdiction, and other low-intensity types of conflicts, argued for a more flexible force, with lighter, less sophisticated weapons, more mobility, and closer coordination with international organizations. The debate is ongoing and how it will play out remains to be seen. Either way, however, it seems clear that, as long as the United States is involved in the world arena, military and foreign policy will remain inextricably linked and that the Defense Department will continue to be a major factor in both the policy process and the conduct of American affairs abroad.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Betts, Richard K. Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises. Cambridge, Mass., 1977. Crisis-oriented study of the military's role in policy.

Goldberg, Alfred, ed. History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Vols. 1, 2, and 4. Washington, D.C., 1984–1997.

Historical Division, Joint Chiefs of Staff. History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy. 7 vols. Washington, D.C., 1986–2000.

Hoopes, Townsend, and Douglas Brinkley. Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal. New York, 1992. Most complete biography of the first secretary of defense.

Kinnard, Douglas. The Secretary of Defense. Lexington, Ky., 1980. Biographical profiles of key secretaries of defense.

Lederman, Gordon Nathaniel. Reorganizing the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986. Westport, Conn., 1999.

McNamara, Robert S. In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. New York, 1995. McNamara's reflections on Vietnam and what went wrong.

Shapley, Deborah. Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara. Boston, 1993. Perceptive account of McNamara's successes and failures.

Trask, Roger R., and Alfred Goldberg. The Department of Defense, 1947–1997: Organization and Leaders. Washington, D.C., 1997.

Weinberger, Caspar W. Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon. New York, 1990. A quasi-memoir dealing with selected issues.

Yarmolinsky, Adam. The Military Establishment: Its Impacts on American Society. New York, 1971. A dated but still insightful examination of the military's role.

See also Department of State; Presidential Advisers .

CASPAR WEINBERGER ON MILITARY POWER

"I believe the postwar period has taught us several lessons, and from them I have developed six major tests to be applied when we are weighing the use of U.S. combat forces abroad….

"First, the United States should not commit forces to combat overseas unless the particular engagement or occasion is deemed vital to our national interest or that of our allies….

"Second, if we decide it is necessary to put combat troops into a given situation, we should do so whole-heartedly, and with the clear intention of winning….

"Third, if we do decide to commit forces to combat overseas, we should have clearly defined political and military objectives. And we should know precisely how our forces can accomplish those clearly defined objectives….

"Fourth, the relationship between our objectives and the forces we have committed—their size, composition, and disposition—must be continually reassessed and adjusted if necessary….

"Fifth, before the U.S. commits combat forces abroad, there must be some reasonable assurance we will have the support of the American people and their elected representatives in Congress…. We cannot fighta battle with the Congress at home while asking our troops to win a war overseas….

"Finally, the commitment of U.S. forces to combat should be a last resort."

— Excerpts from "Uses of Military Power," address by Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger at the National Press Club, 28 November 1984 —