Battle Ready (2004)

by Tom - Nf - Commanders Clancy

  It was hard to believe how far the great Soviet military machine had fallen.

  But they were still capable of grand, old-style Russian hospitality, highlighted by lavish banquets for the NATO delegation. For Vlad these were a gift from the gods. He had never seen such meals. He wolfed them down like a starving man (which was not far from the truth), and drank with no less fervor; he never left a banquet sober. "For God's sake," he pleaded with Zinni, "I've gotta eat. Keep your toasts and speeches short. If you make them long, I'll have to translate, and I'll starve."

  On a trip one evening to the famous Moscow Circus, Vlad grabbed the tour bus microphone and performed a politically incorrect monologue aimed at the Russian leaders. This did not amuse the senior Russian officers on the bus. When Zinni told him to cool it, he just laughed, "Hey, man, no pain, no gain."

  Vlad was always in trouble, but he was also shrewd and a survivor; and it turns out that he had what amounted to an escape clause from the Russian Army. Though his father was Russian, his mother was Latvian. This meant he'd be able to choose his homeland in the emerging breakup of the USSR--Latvia or Russia. Since Latvia was becoming independent and would have its own military, he could, if he chose, join the Latvian Army. . . . This was not an easy decision. The Russian Army was obviously a very bad fit; but did he want to make the big leap to Latvia? (Zinni never learned what happened to his irreverent young aide.)

  The Moscow Circus's grand finale was the magical appearance out of nowhere of a man on a white horse, who raced around the ring carrying a Russian flag. The crowd roared with joy. It was the Russian and not the Soviet flag they were cheering. One month later, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics officially ceased to exist.

  SOME THINGS took a long time to change.

  On a shopping expedition near the U.S. Embassy, Zinni got interested in a Christmas present for his wife Debbie. Since he was in uniform, he was treated with special attention (he didn't realize how special), but that did not spare him from the incredibly tedious process everyone had to go through to buy anything at a communist store. The idea was to provide as many jobs as possible, which meant that the purchaser had to pass through multiple lines, each presided over by a clerk who had zero interest in serving customers. First, you stood in a line to wait your turn to look at an item. Then, if you wanted it, you were given a chit to pay for it at the end of another line. You then took your chit to another line to wait for your purchase to be wrapped.

  Zinni went through this process to buy a Father Frost tea cozy (Debbie collected Santas; Father Frost is the Russian version of Santa).

  Back home a few weeks later, as she was getting the Zinni house ready for Christmas, Debbie took Father Frost out of his box, planning to put him on display in the dining room, when she discovered a strange device in his pouch of toys.

  The next day, curious, Zinni took the device into the EUCOM security section. They confirmed what he expected: It was a listening device . . . a bug.

  Before taking it in, he yelled into it: "The Cold War's over!"

  He doubted if anybody heard him.

  SHORTLY AFTER the Gulf War, Zinni took part in a Marine Corps delegation that visited several former Eastern bloc nations41--as part of the growing military-to-military exchange programs developed by EUCOM. Unlike his trip to Moscow, this proved to be a hopeful experience. Eastern Europe was adapting far more easily to democratization and a free-market economy than their eastern neighbors in the FSU. Unlike the Russians, they were ready and eager for the change, having, in their past, experienced free political and economic systems, while earlier Hungarian, Czech, and Polish rebellions against their Soviet masters had given their enthusiasm some bite.

  Since this visit came just after the Gulf War, the former Warsaw Pact militaries were in something like shock over the quick and total defeat of Iraq's military, trained, organized, and equipped as they were by the Soviets. Since the rout had serious implications for other Soviet-style militaries, Zinni was bombarded by questions about American tactics and capabilities, as well as considerable curiosity about how Americans had viewed them as potential adversaries. His answer: "We saw you as formidable enemies; we respected you; and we hoped we wouldn't have to fight you." His answer--which happened to be the truth--pleased them.

  But their chief concern was not about facing the past but about facing the future. At that time NATO's expansion was beginning to surface; and all of them badly wanted to bring their military services up to speed to join it. They were eager to show Zinni the military reforms they had already implemented, they briefed him on those that were planned . . . and of course they were quick to tell him that they needed all the help the U.S. could give.

  The most striking change for Zinni was the reorientation of defenses. For obvious reasons, Warsaw Pact nations had not been permitted forces facing to the east. Now that had changed; and they had organized allaroundsecurity, with forces positioned on all of their borders. This must have been demoralizing to the Russians.

  YUGOSLAVIA, even then, was already a special and dangerous case. After the death of Tito and the fall of the Soviets, the country had fragmented, and old ethnic hatreds had reemerged. In 1990, the descent into ethnic violence had started in Bosnia, with Serbs, Croats, and Muslims all fighting each other. Of course, the ordinary people who just wanted to live their lives suffered.

  That year, EUCOM put together the first of many aid missions to Bosnia, a humanitarian airlift operation called "Provide Promise." Though Provide Promise was actually implemented by the Air Force, the EUCOM J-3, as the Unified Command headquarters, monitored and controlled the operation and supplied intelligence. This new priority caused Zinni to take in the Balkan reports and briefings provided by the command's intelligence experts and analysts--an extremely knowledgeable and insightful collection of young majors and captains.

  They were not optimistic about the future of what had been called Yugoslavia. "This place was an artificial nation," they reported. "Tito was strong enough to hold it together by force of personality, but there was never such a thing as Yugoslavia. Its pieces were never meant to be joined together; and it's ready to burst. It's going to come apart like an old suitcase."

  Though these insights won't be news to anyone now, better than ten years later, at the time they were prescient. The EUCOM analysts saw the future of the Balkans much earlier than anybody else. Other than Zinni, they got few listeners. And he was in a quandary about how to respond.

  "How important are the Balkans?" he asked himself. "Are they vital to American or European security? Can we just let the region go and blow itself up?"

  Zinni's answer: "If we want to stop it, we're going to have to get involved in this. Provide Promise does not go far enough. It's a small Band-Aid on a sucking chest wound, and it's only going to get worse. We need to get involved early, when the situation is resolvable. We need to consider an international peacekeeping mission that only the U.S. can put together. It's pay me now or pay me more later."

  Meanwhile, everybody in Europe and the West in general was in the euphoric stage of the peace dividend. Nobody was interested in taking on the problem. Though others in EUCOM, like General McCarthy, saw the value of early involvement, they couldn't generate interest in the kind of operation that would have to be mounted.

  Eventually, of course, the problems spread throughout the region and forced the UN and NATO to face them.

  Flash forward to 1992, near the end of Zinni's EUCOM tour. Zinni was asked to sit in for his boss on a first-time staff brief for the new CINC, General Shalikashvilli. During the briefings, General McCarthy asked each person on the staff to give the new CINC their prediction of the single most challenging issue that would dominate his time and attention during his tour.

  "That's going to be the Balkans and the former Yugoslavia," Zinni told Shalikashvilli, without hesitation, basing this statement not on intuition or inspiration but on hard analysis and the day-to-day involvement he and his colleagues had already been go
ing through in handling the growing problems in the Balkans. These could easily be seen by anyone who was paying attention.

  His words, however, did not sit well with everyone at the briefing. The EUCOM director of intelligence, for example, an Air Force major general, jumped all over him. "You're crazy, Zinni," he declared. "Everyone knows that dealing with the former Soviet Union will be the major issue facing us."

  What would that general say now?

  The other regions in the EUCOM area of responsibility also generated their share of crises.

  In Africa, three Non-combatant Evacuation Operations (NEO) were launched during Zinni's time at EUCOM. All of them were run out of the EUCOM Operations Directorate.

  The first of these was Zinni's earliest EUCOM crisis.

  Operation Sharp Edge in Liberia (mentioned earlier) was conducted by the Sixth Fleet's Amphibious Ready Group, after fighting between various brutal local factions threatened foreigners. It started out as an evacuation mission, but when the ambassador realized he had Marines on hand to protect him he decided he might as well hang in there. And the quick in-and-out evacuation turned into a several-months-long operation to provide security for the embassy. This required a large military presence, because of the chaos and slaughter in the streets of Liberia's capital, Monrovia. And this in turn stirred up a serious debate over whether the mission was worth tying up key Navy-Marine assets of EUCOM's fleet. The embassy was not in fact doing anybody in Liberia much good. Though the battle went upstairs to the State Department and the Department of Defense, months went by before it was finally ended as Liberia calmed after the assassination of the President of the country, Samuel K. Doe.

  The other two African NEOs were executed by Dick Potter's Special Operations Command, who conducted flawless operations in Sierra Leone (Operation Silver Anvil) and Zaire.

  THE GULF WAR

  The Persian Gulf War added tremendous and unexpected demands on top of all the changes and crises EUCOM was facing.

  In the Cold War, EUCOM had always been the center of focus--the priority Unified Command. The theater had traditionally been the receiver of forces from elsewhere for NATO employment. Even during a major war (like Vietnam), the command never gave up forces. It was totally geared to take forces in, not to give forces out. That was about to change. EUCOM was now being called on to be a supporting Unified Command and to flow forces out to another theater of operations.

  General Galvin immediately saw the significance of this new role for EUCOM: It was ideally suited to become a forward base supporting operations elsewhere from the well-established bases in Europe. The strong relationships among NATO nations, forged over half a century, could be used to build the strategic bridge necessary to reach both the Gulf, and, later, other world trouble spots.

  The job ahead was enormous. Creating the strategic bridge meant working out air and sea lines of communications, overflight rights, diplomatic clearances, sea transit permissions. Since most of the troops and supplies for CENTCOM from the States had to flow through EUCOM's area of responsibility, EUCOM was responsible for it all. EUCOM had to worry about getting them down there, protecting them, and coordinating with the countries involved.

  It was an entirely new experience for the command, which had to redesign not only their philosophy of getting such things done but the mechanics of doing it. They had to work through all the complexities of the German rail system, barges, road transport, and convoys to the ports. They had to work through the most efficient use of all the ports--using Rotterdam and the ports on the North Sea and the Baltic as well as the more obvious Mediterranean ports.

  Galvin's direction to the staffs and commands was simple: "When you get a request for support from CENTCOM, the answer is yes. Then you can ask what the question is."

  During Operation Desert Shield, the buildup phase of the war, the EUCOM J-3 formed the Battle Staff to handle the massive transit of air and sea craft moving forces and supplies to the Persian Gulf. Early in this process, they were tasked with sending the U.S. Army Europe's (US-AREUR) largest fighting unit, the heavily armored 7th Corps,42 plus other units and material to the U.S. Central Command in the Gulf. This significant accomplishment was superbly handled by General Butch Saint's USAREUR.

  Though the EUCOM staffs were working round the clock on the massive logistics effort, they all hoped for a more direct involvement. But it appeared that this would be their only role in the conflict . . . until a much more interesting mission dropped in their lap (and allowed Zinni to "get out in the field" on a series of operations generated by the Desert Storm attack).

  Tony Zinni continues:

  As Desert Shield was beginning to fall in place, Major General Jim Jamerson, the USAFE43 operations officer, called up and said, "Hey, for what it's worth, a number of our young, energetic, bright young majors have looked at the upcoming attack on Iraq and come up with a pretty good new idea. This is what they've been saying: 'Look, we have a chance to open up a northern second front in the air. The air defenses at that end of Iraq are not very formidable. If we could base out of Turkey, we could conduct air operations from up there.' "

  My first reaction was, "No way. Turkey will never approve this, and neither will CENTCOM. This is CENTCOM's fight; they're not going to like EUCOM coming in and adding their piece."

  But the plan caught the interest of Generals Galvin and McCarthy; and the young majors came down to EUCOM headquarters, bearing maps, intel on the Iraqi radar rings and air defenses, info on the bases in Turkey--and all the other elements a good plan requires.

  "Well, hell," McCarthy said when he'd given it a look, "let's give it a shot."

  After clearing the proposal with Washington and the Central Command, Jim Jamerson, Snuffy Smith, and I went down to Ankara to brief our ambassador, Mort Abramowitz, and (if all went well) to present the plan to the Turkish general staff.

  Again, my expectations were not high. I thought we'd get told: "Dumb idea. Go home. Are you kidding?"

  But Mort Abramowitz proved to be positive. "It's possible," he said. "Let's do it. I think the Turks will be open to the idea."

  He was right. When we briefed the Turks, they approved the plan to conduct the operations from air bases in southeastern Turkey. I was amazed not only that this thing was falling into place, but how quickly.

  A joint task force was formed under Jim Jamerson's command, consisting of the air component to conduct attacks in northern Iraq and a Special Operations component, under Dick Potter, tasked to provide Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) and some psyops. Both the JTF and the operation were called "Proven Force."

  During Desert Storm, the JTF attacked numerous targets that would have been difficult or impossible for allied air forces based in the south to hit. The sanctuary of Iraq's northern air bases was taken away and Saddam was forced to send his planes to Iran in order to avoid destruction.

  The EUCOM planners kept thinking: "Since the Turks were being so remarkably cooperative, maybe we could open up a second ground front." When we talked about the possibility, the Turks seemed game to do it. But by the time we took the plan to Schwarzkopf, it was fairly late in the air war (and too close to the launch of the ground attack), and he said no. "I don't object to the principle," he said, "but it's too late. My plan is in place. Adding to it now would screw things up too much."

  Back to the drawing board: The Army had developed a deception capability that created the appearance of a major headquarters. Now seemed to be a good time to use it. The idea was to seem to move 5th Corps headquarters down to Turkey as a prelude to a major ground effort from the north.

  But once again, we came in too late. "It's a great idea," CENTCOM said, "but we just can't accommodate it. We're just too far into our other plans." If we had come to him earlier, I think Schwarzkopf would have bought into it.

  Another disappointment came when they were making the choice for Jim Jamerson's ground deputy. I would have loved the job, but Snuffy wouldn't let me go. However, at my suggestion, t
he job went to Charlie Wilhelm, another Marine. It actually worked out later that I was able to spend a lot of time down in the AOR; Snuffy and I were down there often. And I also had a chance to spend time in the field with Dick Potter and his troops doing CSAR training exercises in the snow-covered hills of southeastern Turkey.

  I also had the opportunity to fly on the AWACS over Mosul and Kirkuk in northern Iraq as B-52s and F-111s bombed airfields there. You can't beat the view from the cockpit as the bombs explode and the sky is filled with antiaircraft fire.

  These missions were obviously interesting and exciting, but the real learning experience for me came from getting ready for them--going through the planning and briefs. Because Jamerson and Potter let me spend a great deal of time both with the planners and the troops who executed these operations, I was able to get a detailed understanding of how air campaigns and special operations missions were run. This invaluable joint experience served me well in the future.

  I was especially fascinated with the complexities of air campaigning, a new experience for me. Though I had run air operations at a much smaller level in the Marine Corps as a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) commander, this was my first exposure to planning and developing an air mission, generating the air tasking orders, and actually taking part in the operation. . . . And watching the operation unfold with a master like Jim Jamerson was worth a year at War College. I went through all the briefings, the planning, the workups; and during the AWACS mission, I was in back with the guys watching them pull all their thousands of pieces together--the barrier CAPs (Combat Air Patrols--the fighter umbrella), the tankers, and the bombers.