The Navy and Jointness

OPNAV N51 and CNA sponsored a day-long workshop today entitled "Developing Navy Strategic Perspectives for 2011 and Beyond", and I was asked to present on the topic below.   It was a fascinating day, spent in the company of a lot of really smart people who are thinking deeply and insightfully about the future.  I've included my remarks below. The conference was non-disclosure, so I cannot comment on what anyone else said.  I received permission to post these remarks.


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Should the Navy Become More Joint and More Supporting of the Other Services to Achieve Navy Goals for the Nation?
Bryan G. McGrath
(Remarks as prepared for delivery)

Thank you for that introduction.

This panel’s charge is to discuss “whether the Navy should become more Joint and more supportive of the other services, in order to achieve Navy goals for the nation.”  In a word, my answer is no.  Please permit me to elaborate.

For the past year, I have advocated what some consider to be an unreasonable and iconoclastic position on what I refer to as the “secular religion” of Jointness.  Simply put, the pendulum swing begun with Goldwater-Nichols in the mid-80’s has swung too far, Jointness has become a constituency all its own, one as equally powerful and pernicious as any Service had become in the unenlightened days of before Goldwater-Nichols.  Jointness is no longer a means, but has become the desired end.

I make these arguments fully aware of the lonely position I and a few others occupy.  After all, Jointness is cool.  Jointness is reasonable—after all, how could anyone possibly argue against something so self-evidently correct.  And finally, Jointness is here to stay—or to use Supreme Court parlance, it is “settled law”. 

So, you may ask, why would anyone—or at least anyone who wishes to be taken seriously in this town—continue to cling to the outdated notions that I have about Jointness?  My answer comes from the pen of George Bernard Shaw, who tells us that “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”   And I am just unreasonable enough to suggest that turning back the clock a bit on Jointness actually represents progress.

So let’s begin with a little history or at least history as I’ve been taught.

Before I started on this quixotic quest to undermine Jointness, I figured I had better do a little research, specifically the evolution of Goldwater-Nichols.  So I read “Victory on the Potomac” by James Locher, a man some of you in this room know, and know well.  Obviously, from the title he chose, he considered the defining legislative act of Jointness to be a great victory, aided and abetted in no small part by his searing insight, dogged determination, and transcendent intelligence.  Since the book presented 100 percent of 50 percent of the story, I sought out the opinions of others who were in the Pentagon in the late 70’s and through the 80’s to get a sense of balance.  And here’s what I found.

One cannot adequately understand the rising tide of Jointness without considering the context in which the debate was held—and when I say “context”, I mean the abiding of course, the Cold War. 

For the vast majority of that time—the main conventional war fight—should it ever come—was seen as a struggle of land forces on the plains of Europe.  Because of the centrality of the central front, the Army came to be seen as the supported force, with the Navy, Marines and Air Force serving as the supporting forces.  If you think about it, the Navy’s role was to support the Army’s right flank (in the Med), its rear (the Atlantic) and its left flank (North Sea, fjords, etc). 

One can read into Locher’s history a general acceptance of a higher level of Jointness from US Army officers, which some believe was because they realized from the beginning that Jointness essentially meant the other services supporting the Army’s main effort.  I believe many Naval officers also came to that conclusion, which may have attributed to the Navy’s slowness to accept Jointness. 

The truly revolutionary thing about the original maritime strategy of the 1980s was the degree to which it challenged the canon by asserting that the Navy had a role in the defeat of the Soviet Union that was NOT directly associated with the direct support of the Army on the central front. To some, it seemed as if the Navy were pursuing its own course, thinking they could win the war on their own.  And keep in mind—this debate played out WHILE the Goldwater-Nichols debate was developing.

Here we are, three decades later, and the secular religion of Jointness is transcendent.  Here’s one vignette to illustrate the depth of its reach.  I was at a “Joint Operational Access” workshop last Spring, and there was a real undercurrent of frustration from the Army and Marine Corps members in attendance about the Navy and Air Force’s ongoing “Air Sea Battle Initiative”.  At one point, the representative from the Joint Forces Command—may it soon rest in peace—made that charge that what the Navy/Air Force were doing wasn’t “Joint”.  I took issue with that, saying that my—perhaps out of date view—of what Jointness was consisted of the forces of two or more military departments operating in a coordinated manner to achieve military objectives.  Oh no.  Where was the Army?  Where were the Marines?  Where was the presence of a legitimate “Joint” organization to lend “credibility” to the effort?  No—for this JFCOM Grandee, clearly Jointness consisted of ALL the services having some piece of the action, with some attending Joint organization there to mediate it all.  

Jointness has a constituency of its own, and Jointness has effectively  replaced what was previously the rough and tumble of inter-service rivalry with a consensus-driven, least common denominator seeking, debate and conflict anesthetizing, OSD aggrandizing, paradigm for inefficiently distributing and  expending resources and in turn, hastening our decline on the world scene. 

Rather than unleashing debate within the Pentagon as to whether equal or near equal  shares of the defense budget parceled out to the military departments--irrespective of the strategy pursued—makes sense, we will continue to spend massive amounts of money on defense inefficiently building, improving, and maintaining capabilities and capacities that sap our resources and do little to extend and sustain our position of global leadership.  We will continue to pay for military power that has little or no use in peacetime, which begs the question as to whether that investment invariably contributes to its promiscuous use.  All the while, we will wring our hands about the “massive expenditure” of 2% of the total defense budget on shipbuilding, assets which provide return on investment throughout their service lives.

We can do better, and we must.  I cling to a forlorn hope that the fiscal crisis and the ascendance of budget hawks in the House will lead us to enter into a real debate about what mix of capability is best to preserve and extend our national interests, but if history prevails, we’ll simply wind up with a military that continues to do the same things it does now, except less well, to a lesser extent, and in fewer places.

Which brings me to the subject of Vic Addision and his work over the last year.

I have to admit that for much of its roll-out, I understood very little of it, except to cringe at what I took to be a slavish devotion to “Jointness”.  Vic even had me into his office for a near two-hour discussion, from which I emerged respectful of his intellect, but without a solid understanding of what it was he was getting at.  All the while, though—whether in his office or via email—Vic continued to tell me that he and I had the same goals in mind—but that we were coming at it from very different angles of attack. 

It wasn’t until the last of his articles came out that I finally came to understand where Addison was going with his argument.  And while I am agnostic on the subject of the force packaging ideas he’s putting forward, there is one element of his work that I think is entirely consistent with my thinking and probably offers a “rational” approach to implementing it. 

Addison is clearly a fan of Jointness; he just wants to stand it on its head.  Whereas the Jointness we have come to know (and in my case, disdain) was born of a sense of the centrality of land force—Addison is putting forth a notion of Jointness in which Naval power is central, and in which Land and Air Power play crucial, supporting roles. 

Eureka.  I think Addison’s done it.  I think he’s described a vision of Jointness that I can embrace.  I think he’s putting forth a big idea, one that portends a fundamental shift in thinking about military power and its contribution to American Grand Strategy—without harkening a shift so dramatic that it could not be politically viable.

So in a bit longer answer to the question posed to this panel, I do not believe the Navy should become more Joint and more supportive of the other services, in order to achieve Navy goals for the nation.  However I am all for the other Services becoming more supportive of the Navy in order to achieve broader national security objectives. 

Congratulations Vic (Addison).  You’ve done the nearly impossible, and created a view of Jointness that even I can like.

Bryan McGrath