Why the Joint Force Isn’t Very Joint

The U.S. Department of Defense makes much of the Joint Force, stressing its overriding importance. Particularly since the advent of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols legislation, “jointness” became a mantra, amplified by reams of joint doctrine and scores of “joint” organizations. The importance of a truly joint approach to warfighting is, or should be, obvious. In theory, the synergistic employment of all forms of military power across all domains generates effects greater than the sum of the parts, optimizing all military operations. In practice, however, the U.S. military often falls far short.

The evidence is everywhere around us and reaches back at least to the Second World War, if not before. In WWII, interservice rivalry was intense and pervasive. In the Pacific, Army and Navy disputes forced the bifurcation of the region into Army and Navy bailiwicks: MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific theater and Nimitz’s Pacific Ocean Areas theater.  Arguments over Pacific strategy forced President Roosevelt to personally intervene by flying to Pearl Harbor in July 1944 to referee. In Europe, tensions between the nearly-independent Army Air Forces and General Eisenhower, the European theater commander, over strategic bombing permeated the campaign, at one point prompting Ike to threaten resignation.

The National Security Act of 1947 and subsequent amendments attempted to smooth over inter-service rivalry by formalizing the Joint Chiefs of Staff organization, establishing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and “unifying” the services under a Department of Defense in place of the War and Navy Departments.   In practice, that rivalry if anything intensified, as seen in the 1949 “Revolt of the Admirals,” when senior navy leaders attempted to unseat Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson following the adoption of the B-36 bomber and the cancellation of the “supercarrier” USS United States. In Korea, furious battles over the best use of airpower persisted throughout the war.  In Vietnam, controversy over control of airpower again surfaced, leading to bitter disagreements at the highest levels; like Eisenhower, General Westmoreland threatened to resign over the issue.