Give Us Back Our Marine Corps

There is an intellectual war being waged within the United States Marine Corps. It centers on Force Design 2030, a force structure and mission reform that has pitted recent and current Marine leadership against a growing group of retired Marines who contend that the reforms, in retired Marine Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper’s words, have “destroyed the Corps’ combined arms capabilities” and will transform the Marine Corps from an offensive mobile warfighting force to a defensive “stand-in-force” that undermines “the very ethos of the Corps and not for the good.” The latest salvo in this war of words was fired by Ryan Evans, the founder of the web journal War on the Rocks, who writes that the critics of Force Design 2030 are a “small but vocal group of retired Marine officers” who have employed “doomsday rhetoric and distortions with . . . shameless fervor” and who falsely claim that there is a “crisis” within the Corps because of the reforms.

Evans essentially accuses the critics of Force Design 2030 of resisting needed change in the Corps’ mission and of wanting to fight the last war. The critics, he writes, “advocate for a Marine Corps divorced from strategic reality, current joint doctrine, and policy directives.” Evans claims he is for reasoned debate and responsible critiques of Force Design 2030, but he characterizes most of the critics as “unelected, unappointed cabals of retired octogenarians and nonagenarians” who have no legitimate role in running the military services. His use of the word “cabal” is revealing—it connotes a group of people secretly united in a nefarious plot. But there is nothing secret or nefarious about the critics of Force Design 2030. They are quite public with their criticism of the reforms, using a platform titled “Compass Points” to air their concerns.

The critics’ concerns are anything but “divorced from strategic reality, current joint doctrine, and policy directives.” Gen. Van Riper notes that seven of the eight living former Marine Corps commandants oppose Force Design 2030, the online platform used by the critics has more than 100,000 views per month, and email chains with at least 1300 members voice serious reservations or outright opposition to the reforms. That can hardly be called a “small but vocal group,” let alone a “cabal.”

Evans also complains that the critics have sought meetings with senior defense officials and elected officials, including in the White House. Perhaps Evans would deny retired Marines, including former commandants, their First Amendment rights of free speech and to petition their government. After all, many of those retired Marines fought to defend those rights for themselves and others.