TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/031191/03119921.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.8 KB | 124 lines

                                                                                THE GULF WAR, Page 58

THE ARMED FORCES

A New Breed of Brass


From the ashes of Vietnam, the Pentagon has shaped a
sophisticated military that speaks well and fights smart

By JESSE BIRNBAUM -- Reported by Bruce van Voorst/Washington


    In the catalog of astonishments that will forever mark the
chronicles of the gulf war, none is more dramatic than the
remarkable professionalism of the U.S. soldiers who planned and
fought the battles. That was exemplified most visibly by the
smooth TV performances of top military officers in Washington
and Saudi Arabia. Intelligent, frank, sometimes eloquent, these
men seemed to personify a new class of American military
leaders who not only have a thorough grasp of their trade but
also demonstrate broad political and worldly sophistication --
not to mention p.r. savvy.

    It was not always thus. During the Vietnam era, many
Americans came to regard the U.S. officer class as a band of
dissemblers and incompetents. As for the grunts, their ranks
had long been considered a repository for society's dropouts.
From the Revolutionary War to the early 1900s, it was not only
common but legal for a conscript to pay someone else to take
his place in the armed forces. Some criminal court judges even
sentenced miscreants to military service.

    But the armed forces have undergone a top-to-bottom
transformation since the end of Vietnam. Nowadays, says U.S.
Air Force Academy spokesman Colonel Mike Wallace, "the military
is a different breed of cat. It is no longer a place to hide
society's misfits; it represents a large section of America's
middle class, who are better informed and better trained than
before." Today every man and woman entering the armed forces
has at least a high school diploma, and nearly all officers
have earned at least a bachelor's degree in subjects ranging
from political science to European history. Lieut. General
Thomas Kelly, who skillfully led the Pentagon's Washington
briefings on Operation Desert Storm, has a B.S. in journalism;
Marine Brigadier General Richard Neal, the main briefer in
Saudi Arabia, has a master's degree in education. Allied
Commander H. Norman Schwarzkopf has an M.S. in mechanical
engineering. General Colin Powell, who never attended a
military academy, has earned a B.S. in geology and a master's
degree in business administration.

    For senior military officers, the intellectual challenges
hardly end with their college days. Some attend a two-week
national-security program at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School
of Government that is held every year, as well as numerous
seminars on a variety of political and military issues. In
addition, the Council on Foreign Relations provides an
internship program for military officers. The Pentagon even
runs a "charm school" (properly called the General Officer
Orientation class), where freshly baked brigadiers are taught
social graces that include the proper choice of forks as well
as the finger-bowl ritual.

    The new emphasis on the culturization of the officer corps
came with a reassessment that followed the Vietnam War and the
subsequent changeover to an all-volunteer military. One
distressing result of the Vietnam experience was that large
numbers of disillusioned officers resigned from the services.
The Pentagon needed not only a new infusion of talent but also
a major overhaul in organization and training. Most important,
the traditional interservice bickering that often hobbled
performance in the field and sowed distrust between officers and
men had to end.

    What helped make the changes possible was the advent of the
all-volunteer military, which lured educated and motivated
young men and women with promises of good pay, first-class
training and career advancement. As a consequence, says Anthony
Cordesman, professor of national-security studies at Georgetown
University (and now something of a minor celebrity as a result
of his sophisticated military analysis on ABC television), the
Pentagon can boast of "an unprecedented level of professionalism
that in every way is superior to the old conscript." This,
says Cordesman, has bred "a new civil-military relationship"
that permitted Schwarzkopf and his commanders to pursue their
goals with a minimum of political interference.

    In addition, the Pentagon made major revisions in key
military practices. Items:

    -- The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thanks to the
little-noted 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Reorganization Act, was
given new powers,  changing his ole from head of the service
chiefs to that of the sole, authoritative military adviser to
the President.

    -- Training was revised from "doing it by the book" to
"training to win." In place of the customary set pieces that
passed for classroom exercises, officers were encouraged to
roam a figurative battlefield intellectually, looking for
tactical possibilities.

    -- Command activities changed from isolated service-based
operations -- which in Vietnam had often seemed to permit each
service to fight its own war -- to close, integrated
cooperation.

    These revisions were accompanied by a curriculum reform at
the military academies. Today's future officers are allowed
more flexibility in their studies. They can take elective
courses either in their major subjects or in the humanities and
sciences, and of course spend a good deal of time absorbing the
new battlefield thinking that has emerged over the past two
decades. The Pentagon, says Martin Binkin, a defense expert at
the Brookings Institution, "literally rewrote the textbook on
war. It's a new ball game in every way. The battle cry is
`Fight smart!'" The merits of that approach are written all
over Operation Desert Storm.