Is it time to Revisit Defence Unification?
Organisational Utopias for defence do not exist and bruiting centralization and jointness for the sake of it avoid the big questions. Is it time to evolve unified defence?
Abstract: Reflecting on twenty years of studying defence unification and the relationship between organisation and strategy-making, I suggest it’s time to think about evolving unified defense and to start asking some questions.
Content: At the heart of national defence is an uncomfortable truth: that long has there been a focus on procedural panaceas as the road to organisational utopias that would solve problems, advance agendas and address criticism. The reality is that no such utopia exists; instead, choices were made for right or wrong reasons, leading to paths taken, often without pause, to reflect on whether they were the right ones. The concept that there is a perfect way to organise, command and control many military services and make all the apparatus of defense work while retaining civilian oversight was a dream for those who often sought sunny uploads to avoid addressing far more fundamental questions. The most pernicious yet maligned question: ‘What is our national strategy?’ was skewed over sixty years ago when the process of defence unification, in which nations created vast monolithic defence departments took form. Nevertheless, like any utopia, the expected destination, if ever defined, is often mis-sold from the outset or remains elusive: the organisation of defence is no different. Frequently, utopian solutions can only exist in minds, but when tested against harsh realities, those grand designs or those who argue with grander delusions lose sight of goals.
It is accepted without question that creating the US Department of Defense or the UK Ministry of Defence was the right thing to do, steadily centralising power and authority while placing each military service along with various aspects of defence into neat, convenient doctrinal boxes to keep administrators’ content. In the decades after the Second World War, the process of defence unification saw the independent free-standing government departments such as the British Admiralty or US Department of War homogenised into unified defence organisations. There is limited understanding of the process, unquestioningly believed to have been transparent, the debate rigorous and highly scrutinised where the intended outcome was thought to be understood by all those involved, including those in the highest offices. Research to understand the fundamental change that occurred with unification and its relationship with a national strategy recently completed1 challenges the purposefully crafted image that unification brought order to chaos, proving it as distant from reality, for their creation was neither simple nor unchallenged, the debate often distorted to suit varied ideologies and agendas. However, the fact remains, with such a questionable understanding of the process and the intended destination, why is there little incentive to revisit unification and higher-level organisation? Is it a matter that defence, or more specifically, the government, is unwilling to ask questions out of fear of more profound questions coming to the fore that few are reluctant to answer?
Space Forces shatter utopia
The creation of the US Space Force in 2019 was a watershed moment for defence organisation. On the one hand, it marked the growing influence of national space assets in orbit on Earth as well as the distinct importance of space itself beyond a mere matter of intelligence or operational support. However, on the other hand, the US Government had created yet another branch of the Armed Forces––Space Force––joining the Army, US Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and arguably Coast Guard/Merchant Marine. Creating Space Force was contrarian to arguments between 1944-1947, which initially resulted in the significant step towards a functional Department of Defense with the National Security Act in 1947. The Act, which also provided for founding the US Air Force, resulted from complex disagreements between the Army, Navy, Executive Branch and Congress 1941-1946. Rushed analyses, often based on dodgy data of tactical wartime engagements, were hastily formed. At the same time, air forces publicly made it clear that they believed defence organisation was biased toward dual-service, not tri-service––quietly hiding extreme air power voices fuelled by atomic warfare and Cold War hysteria collaborated with land power against sea power. The wartime professional head of the US Navy (CNO), Ernest J. King (1878-1956), warned Congress that poor thinking behind reorganisation would not provide sound foundations for the future defense of America. Only when President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) was convinced defense was taking sufficient steps to satisfy his long-held political crusade against defence, in particular pointing blame at the Navy and defense organisation over the 1941 attack of Pearl Harbour, did he hand the problem to James Forrestal (1892-1949) as the first Secretary of Defense (1947-1949) to try and make unified defence practical and nebulously, the aim to get the armed services ‘working together’. Forrestal had felt unease over the creation of the US Air Force, fearing that creating more armed services would push national defense away from unity of effort as he had been led to believe was the point of unification. Forrestal’s hopes as the first SECDEF were quickly shattered when some of the motives that led to 1947 were forgotten within months and replaced with the armed forces bickering over resources, roles and functions. In the end, Forrestal was betrayed as a bitter argument broke out over the roles of the services, leading to a tense stand-off between the Navy Department, the other armed forces, and branches of government. It exposed deepening post-war issues over civil-military relations as part of over a decade of jostling and competing views on defense organisation. It was in the late 1950s when CNO Arleigh Burke (1901-1996) convinced Congress against President Dwight D. Eisenhower's (1890-1969) plans for ever more centralisation of power through a European style military command and control, that the constant tinkering of defence organisation was resulting in the nation losing faith in defense and distracting the military from the more pressing issue of the Cold War. The matter was mainly parked into the 1980s as exhaustion gripped all those involved, military and civilian.
Forrestal’s British-inspired belief that service unity on national strategy should override the agendas of each military service was all but forgotten as he was also faced with Constitutionally guaranteed civilian oversight through the services having a voice while also ensuring the highest officeholders have a workable system of military advice.
The fact that the creation of Space Force, the first new service since 1947, was legally pushed through in record time with limited debate compared to the creation of the USAF sent worrying signals for being furthest away from intent for unified defence.2 It was a missed opportunity to reflect just as was feared would result from the snowballing agendas and issues that came to play out in post-war decades. Forrestal encouraged pre-emptive rather than reactionary approaches to defence to avoid whipping politicians into a frenzy that could lead to ill-constructed solutions. King and Forrestal argued that unification should allow one to reflect on fundamental questions in mature, evidence-based debates that use the best experience with proven methodology rather than guesswork and assumptions. The aim should have been to drive a relevant and comprehensive strategy the nation could trust while developing doctrine the military could realistically execute. Whether or not that has been achieved can be questioned even more because of how space force was created.
The case for more focused expertise in space was seemingly argued and justified—still, the organisation and ligaments to broader defense or even the need for another service poorly so. Concerns should have been raised when it appeared that Space Force was to be organized under the Department of the Air Force, that even with good intentions, was going to bring in cultural baggage, let alone interservice rivalry. Hints of old disagreements appeared: the USAF had not forgotten how the US Marine Corps––a branch of the Navy Department–– was used to outflank them on funding for the US Navy in the post-war decades. If unification was working as the utopians believe, the golden opportunity was missed to build something new with space force by taking the best of all services from the outset by creating something new. It was precisely this kind of childish rhetoric which was covered over in jargoned-filled promises using the latest slogans like ‘jointness’, which saw more critical and pressing questions like strategy thrown in the gutter just as King and Forrestal feared would grip unification: for power, agenda, motives, and loyalties were powerful instigators of change, for better or worse.
Uncomfortable Realities over the Foundations of Unified Defence
The influence of agenda, motives, service loyalty, authority and power affects every aspect of unified defence. The process in the post-war decades saw every apparatus of the state across defence, intelligence and security affected. Policymaking, fiscal controls, procurement, intelligence and operations, some of which were less popular topics, became day-to-day discussion points for politicians and the public. What seemed the simplest of questions on the outside, like:
‘What is the role of a Secretary of Defense?’
became a hot topic to the point that civil-military relations––how much politicians should interfere and how much free-reign the military should have over their affairs––had broken, where prior to unification many of these matters drew limited attention. These types of questions and the bitter debates that followed tested stable national institutions. It is one of the reasons that US defence reform did not occur at scale until the controversial 1986 Goldwater Nichols Act, and even that was tempered chiefly to the topic of commands. The irony is that bitter arguments and rivalry of the past long echoed in political establishments' minds, even if institutional and public memory waned. Official histories of unification have done little to shed light on the past nor to guide future debate. Many countries far less than what could be deemed an ‘official history’ to the point that unification could almost considered a topic to be swept under the carpet for what may be found. That such a situation has arisen is no fluke, and burying the details of one of the most significant changes in the organisation of government––even more so for countries like Britain––raises more questions than it answers. Trepidation to understand the why and the how exists, nor are many across politics, government and defence inclined to question the organisation they serve, for they have no experience of ‘defence by service ministry’ by which to compare. They are, after all, a product of this ‘system’ and have little reason to think outside of its existence or organisational culture; civilian and military personnel must make unified defence work rather than question it. The day-to-day running of defence takes precedence. Elsewhere, risk-averse government employees and politicians seek to maintain an organisational status quo, avoiding awkward questions that might generate unwanted answers. There is a straightforward reason behind this: the quaint idea that better strategy, enhanced jointness, and better procurement, amongst others, are valiant ambitions if managed correctly and free of bias––some have improved––but the reorganisation of defence was never and has never been about these matters for intent and execution have been different. Many of the issues, as mentioned earlier, are public relations talk to quell military rivalry and convince the public to have confidence in national defences, while the fundamental objective is about political power and financial levers of defence.
This reality was exposed in Britain in the late 1950s, which is one of the reasons why the process of British defence unification was delayed into the 1960s. Observing the turmoil it had caused in the United States, those few who wanted to pursue a ‘mini-Pentagon’ through an integrated Ministry of Defence sought to make the matter more secret with as little oversight as possible. Time and again, British governments had rejected unification when they detected that it was about distracting from mistakes or promoting a cause. The warnings of the British Admiralty in the 1950s that unification would lead to endless defence reviews and fiscal uncertainty, mainly if long-term institution experience maintained in places like the Admiralty were not grandfathered, has arguably played true. More fundamentally, the argument made by the Admiralty was that defence organisation must keep the goal in sight, one that endures political whims and transitions for long-term planning is the key to success, not short-term guesswork. At the same time, it also reflects culture and harsh national realities like geography and resources from which ways of war and peace have developed and should shape organization, not the other way around. After all, that is why Britain had an Admiralty in the first place; the fact that Britain has no option but to have maritime strategy at its core was something once understood before unified defence. In short, the Admiralty was arguing that the driving question must be how defence organisation supports a national strategic doctrine, and from that, answers to other questions would flow more freely, not the other way around.
The homogenized global model now seen for unified defence means that weaknesses within it expose all; what may be suitable for one nation is not for another, importing defence culture antithetical to their national needs. Long has centralization been associated with land-based and continental nations drawn from Prussian teachings of war. Japan and continental European countries' organisations resulted from the destruction of their military; others like Australia followed suit to match allies, often failing to pause to think for longer about their own needs. Those with different models, like Britain, favoured decentralized ones because they understood the only way to combat the default human instinct to view the world through the lens of land, ignoring sea, air and even space, was by having the protection for voices to educate politicians about them.
There are trends from the history of unification we should not ignore; much of its history cannot be covered here, but what we do see today is often redressing of the ‘shop window’, where jargon, slogans and the unending invention of acronyms suggest ignorance to the past for many of this issue have come up before; raising the issue of if the organization of defence learns anything at all. Elsewhere issues often discussed, including criticism, like financial management and equipment procurement, which the poor execution of was a charge levelled at the system before centralized defence, underlining that perfect organization is rare: while this evidence supports grievances once aired at the free-standing service ministries are often misplaced. Technology or operational failure has been bruited as a case for organisational change to force an overhaul that only distracts from the root issue, ones better served by other professional solutions.
To upturn organisation for change’s sake is a well-trodden path, but limiting risk in something nations can ill-afford to get wrong means organisations have to learn from where they have been before, for wishful thinking by politicians or even the military rarely delivers.
Poor Organisation and Culture as a Pathway to National Defeat
Defense unification should be seen as an incomplete project, if not an experiment, from which we can draw insight for the future. It has left numerous questions unaddressed and quashed some long-forgotten problems while creating new ones. The system of procurement and fiscal management would be easy targets, while with all the strains on modern defense: operationally, geopolitically, domestically, let alone technologically from seabed to space, suggest that unity of effort behind planning is struggling. It is at least worth pondering if the political establishment's understanding or education of defense has skewed or declined under unified defense. There is a balancing act on civilian oversight––the principal is not negotiable––but heavy-handed involvement has a historical precedent that often is not kind to it.
It is not to argue for a move back to free-standing service ministries of government and the disbanding of defense departments. Yet, decentralization may offer advantages in some areas, while centralization and collaboration are vital across various civilian and military matters. A one size fits all can equally suck out effectiveness, quality and experience for the sake of slogans like ‘efficiency’, ‘effectivness’, ‘one defence’ or even ‘jointness’ for jointness sake. Nevertheless, the evidence supports that under unification, defense on balance has been no more or less in turmoil than under service ministries; a stark fact that few in defense will want to accept. Issues once levelled at the previous system, like waste and financial inefficiency, are just as common now as before, in some cases more so. Considering the sixty or so years before unification, that defence was managed successfully in the broadest sense, and the fact that it was faced with multiple conflicts and two global wars somewhat makes a point of caution regarding the idea of organizational utopias solves problems, defense departments are far from utopias or what the few vocal voices who were had their own agendas or service bias were attempting in the post-war decades. Defense departments as we know them are products of the Cold War nuclear weapon dominated age that have struggled to shrug off this legacy, making them long overdue for an overhaul. To start that process means rejecting the blind acceptance by the military and governments that unification was inevitable and accepting its true motives. This means that to look ahead, we must be willing to ask fundamental questions, the ones that should have been asked sixty years ago, for example:
‘How many branches of the armed forces should there be?’,
‘Does the Joint Chiefs, Secretary of Defense style of system work?’
‘Is there centralization and jointness for the sake of it and does it have limits?’
We should rightfully be suspicious that questions such as these are not willing to be explored and the fact they are not reflect on defence poorly. These types of debates should not be stifled or mocked; failing to ask big questions leads to stagnation, while competing civilian agendas––in and beyond defence––and military interservice rivalry are both the enemy of national strategy, for it often means rejection of facts based on experience in favour of emotion. Strategy is not complex with the proper education. Still, it has been made more challenging to follow because authentically executing a national strategy would lead to decisions along the lines of the aforementioned questions that few politicians want to risk their political careers over.
In conclusion, shaking the nervousness to open the unification question, or more precisely, revisit the point of: ‘Where is this going?’ and ‘What is it for?’ are vital because the foundations of policy, strategy, operations and more rest on the organizations behind them. If poorly organized or culturally unsound, it provides a fertile breeding ground for failure elsewhere, even defeat. Unified defence, as we know it, is a product of the past; it is time to start the process to evolve to the next thing, but where we go must be guided by the past's debates, the right and, more importantly, the wrong ones.
I’ll be publishing further in the future my research including new histories of the creation of the US Defense Department and UK Ministry of Defence and how to evolve these organizations in the future by emphasizing national strategic doctrine.
Read an abstract of my completed PhD here: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/studentTheses/deconstructing-the-seapower-state
https://warontherocks.com/2020/09/space-force-creation-warrants-revisiting-defense-unification/