Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation is, of course, all about Iraq. But the implications of Rumsfeld's departure go way, way beyond the conduct of today's war. The shape of America's military for decades to come is at stake.
Over his six year tenure at the Defense Department, Rumsfeld came to personify a number of technology-heavy efforts to remake the armed services. Rumsfeld's presumptive successor, Robert Gates, is going to have to make big decisions about what happens to those projects, soon after he settles into his office in the Pentagon's E-Ring.
For instance, Rumsfeld became a champion of the idea that the American military had to change itself -- from an array of heavy, plodding forces to a reconfigurable collection of lighter, quicker, better-networked units. Every vehicle, every commander, every drone, and every grunt would eventually be connected to a wireless Internet for combat, under the doctrine, known alternatively as "revolution in military affairs" or "force transformation." By sharing so much information, U.S. forces would be able to make decisions lightning-fast, outmaneuvering and outwitting any foe. Missions that used to take countless thousands of soldiers could be accomplished with a few, wired-up troops, the theory went.
Faith in "transformation" is one of the big reasons why Rumsfeld overruled his generals, and cut the invasion force for Iraq by more than half. It explains, in part, why troop levels were kept low, even as the war effort began to unravel. And the "transformation" guide star kept research and development funds for a networked military flowing, even as a cash crunch hit the rest of the military. Will the new Defense Secretary stick with those decisions?
It's one of several questions I ask in a piece for Popular Mechanics, which should be on-line soon. I'll let you know when it is.
UPDATE 8:40 PM: It's up.
UPDATE 8:58 PM: Go read John Noonan's almost poetic elegy for Rummy and transformation, now.
UPDATE 8:59 PM: For anyone that thinks I've been too harsh on Rummy -- the "good riddance" comment really seemed to piss folks off -- please do not read Phil Carter's latest piece in Slate. The Army captain, just back from Iraq, is absolutely withering in his critique of his former boss'-boss'-boss'-boss'-boss.
When Rumsfeld took office in 2001, he swept in with promises to transform America's military—to move from the industrial age to the information age by revolutionizing both America's military hardware and the way it does business. He presented himself as a successful CEO who would hammer the Pentagon's notoriously recalcitrant bureaucracy into shape. Yet, despite all his rhetoric, it's not clear that he actually accomplished much in this area. The Rumsfeld defense budgets allocated more money to areas that he prioritized, such as missile defense and sophisticated systems like the Joint Strike Fighter and Future Combat Systems, but these were marginal changes from the 1990s, consistent with the ways the services were moving already. Despite his best efforts, Rumsfeld never managed to fundamentally change the way the Pentagon does business, partly because he ran into a solid wall of opposition from the military establishment, defense contractors, and Congress.
In battling these foes and others, Rumsfeld didn't just lose the fight, he also did a great deal of damage to the military and to the country. Thanks to Bob Woodward, we now know a few more salacious details about his spats with senior military leaders—such as the way he emasculated former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers. We also know how he handpicked officers for key positions in order to ensure that every senior general or admiral was a Rumsfeld company man, a policy that had a tremendously deleterious and narrowing effect on the kind of military advice and dissent flowing into the office of the secretary of defense.
** I feel bad for Rumsfeld -- he was the right guy at the wrong time. I think his ideas on transforming the military were largely sound -- but for a wealthy republic seeking to remain wealthy but avoiding confrontations unless there was a direct threat, and limiting action againts such threats to pre-emption and/or punitive strikes/raids. Rumsfeld was totally out of step with his neo-Wilsonian boss and peers who needed a large, mass army to do all of their "democratization" ("nation-building" by any other name is just as costly, lengthy, bloody, and risky) as well as a high-tech/capital-intensive/stand-off precision attack capability. I think Rumsfeld is wrongly blamed for a policy that he was directed to execute by a president woefully ignorant in the foreign policy arena and too stubborn to learn from his mistakes.
** Bush appears totally out of touch with reality. Nothing conceivably definable as "victory" is achievable for the US either in Iraq or Afghanistan. His policies were ill-timed, reflected no grasp of the history and culture of the countries, and did not have the resolute and complete support of the nation. Bush has managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Afghanistan (by putting Karzai in power and pushing "democracy" instead of helping our United Front (aka northern alliance) allies conquer the country and break the tribalism and Islamism of the Pashtuns and especially of the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekhmatyar). He also took what might have been a sound and workable plan for Iraq -- back in 1991 -- and used it a decade too late, resulting in another "democratization" effort doomed almost from the start.
** Bob Gates strikes me as something of an odd choice, but I don't think Bush had a wide range of options. A man who spent most of his career at CIA would seem to have been a better choice for DNI than SecDef. Gates is also widely seen by Democrats as having lied to Congress about Iran-Contra. But OSD is pretty well tapped out, and putting in a retired flag/general officer is usually considered inappropriate, deleterious to the civilianization of the military (yes, I said it that way deliberately). (I like General Zinni, too, but I don't think that would fly, even if he were willing)
I don't have a strong impression of Gates one way or another from his previous posts. It is immaterial, as he is just a placeholder serving a lame duck president against a hostile and triumphant Congress. He knows precious little about the uniformed military, and will face a long confirmation fight.
--SteveD
Posted by: Steve Daskal at November 10, 2006 05:05 PM