The extent and forms of JCS deviation in practice from its assigned military role have been analyzed previously. While descending from their wartime peaks of power and glory, the Joint Chiefs still remained conspicuously above the timber line separating the sequestered shades of professionalism from the bare and open rocks of politics. Throughout the postwar decade informed observers of the defense establishment commented on the extent to which JCS political power exceeded that appropriate for a purely military organ. In wandering afield from military planning, the Chiefs also tended to get bogged down in minor administrative matters.* The performance by the Joint Chiefs of their primary military functions suffered seriously from the time and energy devoted to these extraneous issues, the absence of effective objective civilian control adversely affecting the achievement of military security.5 The extent to which JCS practice was divorced from its statutory role was manifested in one peculiar characteristic of JCS behavior: the repeated assertions by the Chiefs or their Chairman that they spoke purely from the “military viewpoint.” The ritualistic incantation of this phrase was the deference which they paid to the theory of the National Security Act. The extent to which that phrase in the mouths of the Chiefs was followed by political advice on nonmilitary subjects was an index of the difference between structural form and political reality.
The most important reasons for the failure of the Joint Chiefs to conform to their statutory role lay deep in the currents of American politics and public opinion. One organizational factor which supplemented these other forces, however, was the position of the Chairman of the JCS. The Chairmanship was created in 1949 upon the recommendation of Forrestal to aid the Chiefs in rising above service loyalties and in reaching agreement on major military policies. His creation was urged because it would aid unification, and it was opposed because it would aid unification too much. Consequently, Congress carefully circumscribed his powers. The principal impact of the Chairmanship, however, was not on unification but on civil-military relations. In the absence of total war, military policy occupied a relatively small proportion of the President’s time, and consequently he did not regularly consult with the Joint Chiefs as a body. Instead, the Chairman emerged as the link between the Chiefs and the White House. Although by statute the Joint Chiefs collectively were the military advisers to the President and the NSC, it was the Chairman who regularly briefed the President on military matters and represented the Chiefs at NSC meetings.* In acting as an intermediary, however, the Chairman went beyond a military role: he represented the political views of the Administration to the Joint Chiefs as well as the military views to the government. In addition, the first two occupants of the Chairmanship — General Bradley and Admiral Radford — were men of exceptional stature, intelligence, and vigor. They tended to become symbols of the military policy of the administrations they served: Bradley representing containment, land warfare, and Europe; Radford identified with a more dynamic approach, sea-air power, and Asia. In six short years they made the office of Chairman one of the most significant posts in the national government. They were true samurai, military statesmen rather than military experts, assuming many roles which more properly belonged to the Secretary of Defense. At times the reluctance of the Secretary to take the initiative in policy matters resulted in a tendency toward a coordinate organization with the Secretary handling administration and the Chairman handling policy. Only the strengthening of the Secretary so that he could become the dominant figure representing administration policy would permit the Chairman to serve as the spokesman for the more permanent professional military viewpoint.
THE COMPTROLLER: SUPEREGO OF THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
The principal antagonist of the Joint Chiefs within the central defense organization was the Comptroller. Like the JCS, however, his office afforded an excellent illustration of the deceptive quality of formal legal structure. On the organization charts the Comptroller was lost among the crowd of nine assistant secretaries of defense. In the actual operation of the Department, however, he was a political force rivaled only by the military leaders themselves. He became the preëminent representative of the civilian demands for economy and efficiency in the military establishment. Just as the power of the Joint Chiefs extended beyond the purely military, the power of the Comptroller extended beyond the bounds of strictly administrative and fiscal matters. His influence rested on four pillars: theoretical, legal, functional, and personal.
The theoretical foundation of the power of the Comptroller was the identification of civilian control with budget control. The Comptroller’s office was thoroughly civilian in both psychology and personnel. At the end of 1953, for instance, it included only 6 military personnel among a total staff of 160 people, a ratio of military to civilian personnel far lower than that of any other major unit in the Department. The Comptroller’s staff and the Budget Bureau officials who cooperated with it looked upon the fiscal-administrative function as the principal means by which the Secretary could control his Department. In the words of Ferdinand Eberstadt: “The budget is one of the most effective, if not the strongest, implement of civilian control over the Military Establishment.”6 This outlook was carried to the point where cuts in the military budget were justified simply on the grounds that they were necessary to remind the military of the supremacy of civilian authority.7 The identification of civilian control with budget control enhanced the authority of the Comptroller, but it weakened the authority of the Secretary. For it oriented the Secretary away from policy and toward a function which was inherently at a lower level than where he should operate. It downgraded him from umpire to participant. Furthermore, as Secretary Lovett pointed out, in any crisis, the budget, as an instrument of civilian control, would dissolve in his hands. Effective and responsible civilian control must be policy control not budgetary control.
The identification of civilian control with fiscal control received legal embodiment in Title IV of the National Security Act Amendments of 1949. Prior to this, one of the three assistants to the Secretary of Defense advised him on budgetary and fiscal matters. The authority of the central organization in this area was, however, somewhat hazy, and the Hoover Commission Task Force recommended a thoroughgoing overhaul of Pentagon budget procedures and a strengthening of the central budget office. Title IV established the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) as the adviser and assistant to the Secretary in the performance of his budgetary and fiscal functions. The Comptroller was to supervise and direct the preparation of the budget estimates of the Defense Department and generally to supervise the fiscal and accounting aspects of the Department. These provisions, which were not included in either Forrestal’s recommendations or the presidential message on defense organization, reflected the joining of the administrative management approach of the Hoover Commission with the existing concern with fiscal devices on the part of the Secretary’s budgetary adviser. They were in part responsible for the subsequent exclusion of the Joint Chiefs from the budget process except for the formulation of the initial statement of force levels.8
The position of the Defense Department Comptroller after the passage of Title IV was unusual among federal agencies. The only other executive department to have a comptroller at the departmental level was the Post Office. Normally in the national government the principal representation of the interests of economy with respect to an agency’s program comes from outside the agency itself, from the Treasury, the Budget Bureau, and the Appropriations Committees. But to an extent unique among federal agencies, the Department of Defense internalized the representation and implementation of the economy viewpoint. The primary reason for this was simply the size of the Department. It was, in effect, a defense government within a government, larger in personnel and funds than all the rest of the national government combined. It was difficult if not impossible for any agency outside this defense government to exercise effective control over its farflung operations. It would be a pigmy on the back of an elephant. The agency princip
ally responsible for representing the economy viewpoint, the Bureau of the Budget, did not have in its Military Division the staff, the knowledge, or the influence necessary to master the defense establishment. Consequently, there was a unique fusing of the activities of the Budget Bureau with those of the Comptroller, the staffs of the two agencies cooperating together closely. For the fiscal years 1952 through 1955, the Budget Bureau and the Comptroller conducted a joint review of budget estimates, a practice not generally duplicated elsewhere in the federal government.9 Thus, the Comptroller’s office developed as the Freudian superego of the Department: an internal mechanism of restraint and control reflecting external demands and interests. It was the “garrison in the conquered city,” giving powerful representation to an essentially unmilitary and alien element within the Department.
A final factor enhancing the power of the Comptroller was the continuity in office of Wilfred J. McNeil. McNeil had been the Fiscal Director of the Navy under Forrestal. In 1947 he became the budgetary and fiscal assistant to Forrestal as Secretary of Defense. In 1949 he became Comptroller, a position he still held in 1955. He was unique among the higher leaders of the Defense Department in that he performed the same job for all of the first five Secretaries of Defense. It is not surprising that he was labeled the “virtually indispensable man” of the Pentagon.10 The Comptroller’s office possessed knowledge and experience in a way which even the military could not rival and which was quite beyond the grasp of transient political appointees. Thus, McNeil was able to maintain his position as the principal balance to the JCS, despite occasional challenges from other civilian units, such as the General Counsel’s office, the Joint Secretaries, and General McNarney’s Defense Management Committee.11
The combination of these theoretical, legal, functional, and personal factors put the Comptroller’s office deep into matters of strategy and policy. Here, as with the military, there was a contrast between ritualistic form and substantive reality. Just as the Chiefs argued that their advice was solely “from the military viewpoint,” McNeil and his associates claimed that their recommendations dealt only with “fiscal management.” In actuality, the Comptroller’s office played a key role in determining the nature of America’s military policy. For the fiscal years from 1950 through 1954, the Comptroller carried an important share of the responsibility for eliminating $62 billion from total service budget requests of $273 billion.12 A reduction of 5 per cent in military estimates might be the result of acute fiscal management; a reduction of 22 per cent necessarily implied basic decisions on strategy. In formulating the budget for Fiscal 1954, McNeil played a major role in removing $5 billion from the Air Force request for $16.7 billion, thus bringing about a shift in Air Force goals from 143 wings in 1955 to 120 wings in 1956. So long as the Secretary of Defense was unable to arrive at an independent balancing of military and fiscal demands, the basic decisions on military policy were inevitably the result of the political battle of the Comptroller versus the Chiefs.
THE ROLE OF THE SECRETARY
The most important duty of the Secretary is to make the annual force-level recommendation to the President. This includes advice as to: (1) the strength of forces: how many divisions, ships, wings; (2) the level of forces: percentage strengths of divisions, etc.; (3) readiness dates of forces; and (4) deployment of forces. The translation of this advice into dollar terms furnishes the basis of the military budget recommendations. The decision on force levels and the budget is, of course, made by the President and ratified by Congress through appropriations. But the recommendation has to come from someone who devotes time and study to the problem. This official can be no one else but the Secretary of Defense. Normally the President would be expected to accept his recommendations. If there were continued serious disagreement between the two, the President would have to get another Secretary.
The responsibility for the force-level recommendation is one which the Secretary cannot avoid. It is the basic element of military policy. If he attempts to escape this duty, he is only delegating it to someone else and tacitly approving his conclusions. Consequently, the real issue is not whether the Secretary will discharge this responsibility, but rather how he will discharge it. There are three broad ways in which he may act. He may simply endorse the views of his military advisers and pay little heed to the demands of economy and efficiency. In this event, he is acting as a military spokesman. He may listen to the fiscal experts, and adopt their recommendations without reference to strategic implications. Here he functions as a business manager. He may attempt to integrate military and economic considerations into an overall defense policy. In this case, he acts as a policy strategist.
The National Security Act is sufficiently broad and ambiguous to permit him to function in any or all of these capacities. In practice, each Secretary has embodied some elements of each role. Nonetheless, the roles are essentially conflicting. Each requires somewhat different legal authority, staff assistance, and outlook and ability on the part of the Secretary. More important, each implies a fundamentally different pattern of civil-military relations. No one role for the Secretary and no one pattern of civil-military relations has yet emerged as dominant. During war, the military spokesman conception appears to prevail. In peace, the practice has been to oscillate between the other two. In the end, accumulated practice rather than statutory enactment will determine the place of the Secretary in the national scheme of civil-military relations.
MILITARY SPOKESMAN. The requirement that the Secretary be a civilian, the permeation of the government with liberal values, the widespread acceptance of those values by the military themselves, all combined to make the military-spokesman concept of the office the least prevalent one. The Secretary has been more the delegate of the American people to the military than the delegate of the military to the American people. If no professional military organ existed, the Secretary might legitimately attempt to act as military spokesman, as, for instance, the Navy secretary did during the nineteenth century. But, with the Joint Chiefs in existence, the Secretary, if he essayed that role, could only endorse what they said, which would be useless, or offer conflicting advice, which would be confusing. There is, of course, a sense in which the Secretary must function, in the phrase of The Economist, as the “Defender of Defense.”13 But the interest which the Secretary defends before the legislature and the people should be broader than mere military interest.
No American Secretary of Defense has ever functioned purely as a military spokesman. As Secretary of War and Secretary of the Navy, Stimson and Knox tended to play this role in World War II. Since 1947, however, the closest approximation was perhaps achieved by Secretary Marshall from September 1950 to September 1951. This was due both to personality and circumstance. As a professional officer, Marshall’s attitudes were similar to those of the Joint Chiefs. As an Army man, he leaned toward the vertical system of civil-military relations under which the Army had operated since 1903. His service also coincided with the Korean rearmament when the needs of the military necessarily had high priority. The United States, after going through the famine period of its normal cycle, was swinging back toward the other extreme. Marshall’s inclination toward the military spokesman role was indicated by the essentially passive concept he had of his duties. He did not attempt to be a positive, creative initiator of, and contributor to, policy and the resolution of policy conflicts. Nor did he organize his office for this role. The supplementary budget estimates formulated under his direction in the fall of 1951 reflected the prééminence of the military requirements determined by the Joint Chiefs as the “principal item” of concern. The requests of the Chiefs were not, in Marshall’s view, to be balanced off against the needs of economy and other claims. Failure to meet the minimum requirements of the Chiefs would seriously endanger the security of the nation and of its military forces.14
BUSINESS MANAGER. The business-manager Secretary devotes his energies primarily to the civil activities of the Department: administration,
organization, logistics, supply, fiscal management, construction, procurement, and personnel. He also conceives of himself as primarily the representative of the civilian interest in economy. He sides with the Comptroller against the Joint Chiefs. The two Secretaries whose performance in office most closely approximated the business-manager role were Louis Johnson and Charles E. Wilson. Their tendencies in this direction were one aspect of their general embodiment and reflection of liberal values and forces. Both stressed the importance of a strong economy to the nation’s defense. Johnson justified economies in the name of unification and unification in the name of economies. Wilson argued for “more defense for less money.” Both leaned primarily upon their fiscal advisers and organized their offices so as to de-emphasize staff aids which might enable them to function as independent policy strategists. Johnson ended the policy secretariat which Forrestal had strived to develop under John Ohly and instead created a Defense Management Committee because of the necessity for “a continuing program to reduce Department of Defense expenditures.”15 Similarly, Wilson did not follow the recommendations of his predecessor for a combined civil-military policy staff. He believed that government should be organized on the same principles as business, and he added six additional functional assistant secretary “vice presidents” to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.16
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