The United States Marine Corps is no longer capable of effectively conducting combat operations across the spectrum of conflict.  Who is responsible? Over the past five years, some Marine Corps senior leaders have myopically reorganized and restructured Marine forces to perform regional small unit operations focused on a single enemy. The results of these efforts have become clear: the Marine Corps’ ability to project force “in every clime and place” to maintain global deterrence and to fight and win the Nation’s battles has been compromised.

Today, the Marine Corps is hard pressed to field a robust and resilient combined arms Marine Expeditionary Brigade (brigadier general level command) and unable to field a  Marine Expeditionary Force (lieutenant general level command), such as those that fought in Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom.  As a result, the Marine Corps can no longer support those combatant commander requirements that call for major combined arms forces to engage in mid-to-high intensity sustained ground combat.

How did this happen? A flawed operational concept termed Force Design 2030 eliminated Marine Corps capabilities to maintain forces forward in global hotspots and fight and win across the warfighting spectrum should deterrence fail. But one needs to look deeper to truly understand the genesis of this destruction.

In theology and philosophy there is a theory known as “first cause”: an acknowledgement that any event or outcome has a precipitating cause. What was the “first cause” for Force Design 2030? The culprit was a lack of operational competence in some current and recently retired senior Marine Corps leaders.