A Transformer in Disguise
Donnelly, Thomas
A Transformer in Disguise Robert Gates’s surprise shake-up of the Pentagon BY THOMAS DONNELLY Donald Rumsfeld’s primary mission when he returned to the Pentagon as secretary of defense in...
...A civilian secretary of defense who can help generals digest bitter pills marks a true transformation in recent American military affairs...
...But now Gates seems to be on a mission to impose change, and in a hurry...
...Gates is a man who believes in institutions,” one of his early advisers told Fred Kaplan of Slate...
...Gates is less confrontational but more decisive...
...Today it seems more likely that it is his successor, Robert Gates, who will leave the lasting legacy...
...Counterinsurgency is more than counterterrorism, and irregular war is long and protracted rather than rapid and decisive...
...evaluating and judging the confl icting professional advice...
...He was an intimate of “Poppy” Bush, a member of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, and a representative of the permanent Washington establishment...
...It wasn’t supposed to be this way...
...The Rumsfeld version of transformation— a transparent battlefi eld, long-range precision strikes, and “rapid, decisive operations”—had a narcotic effect...
...But, though they were remarkable, they were not decisive...
...In a series of recent speeches he’s taken on “the professionals” at almost every turn...
...They had to bring in someone from the old gang,” wrote Maureen Dowd in the New York Times...
...His agenda was to restore “a whole series of relationships— with [Capitol] Hill, with other agencies and with the senior military leadership...
...Notably, Admiral Fallon has refused to complain about his need to resign...
...It’s not just the high-profile firings— Air Force secretary Michael Wynne and Chief of Staff Michael Moseley recently joined former Army secretary Francis Harvey, CENTCOM chief Admiral William Fallon, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace on the list of senior defense offi cials Gates has pushed out...
...Though he’s only been in the job for 18 months and will presumably be gone with the rest of the Bush administration next January, Gates has managed to push aside what he calls the “next-war-itis” that metastasized during Rumsfeld’s reign and became almost as intractable a problem as al Qaeda or the Taliban...
...The republic would be saved by saner men...
...In interviews he has reaffi rmed the importance of the military’s “confi dence . . . in the chain of command” and that any “perceptions” of “disloyalty” were “unsettling” to him...
...In particular, watch the debate over the soon to be released National Defense Strategy and National Military Strategy documents...
...And he saw the need to repair the institution of the Defense Department...
...The Joint Chiefs of Staff prepared the second...
...Gates was also supposed to soothe the ruffled feathers of the generals in revolt against Rumsfeld and the “adventurism” of Bush’s foreign policy...
...military to meet the missions of the new century...
...And not without justifi cation: The initial invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were unprecedented triumphs...
...So while the fi rings and departures hog the headlines, it’s the wrestling behind the curtains that matters the most...
...The fi rst, prepared by defense civilians, refl ects the Gates Transformation...
...There are no signs yet of another “revolt of the generals...
...The enemy was different than we thought, not Saddam’s “elite” Republican Guard tank divisions and Taliban militias but Al Qaeda in Iraq, Jaish al Mahdi and Iranian-backed “Special Groups,” and the Taliban in “Pashtunistan...
...The Gates Transformation is not just, as the media have cast it, about breaking the grip of the “fighter mafi a” on the Air Force or holding service leadership to account and rewarding combat performance more than seniority, though those all matter...
...government, to come to grips with the realities of a long war...
...When he replaced Rumsfeld after the Republican “thumping” in the 2006 elections, Gates was widely viewed as the man who was going to end the futile fi ghting in Iraq, slay the neocon dragons, and return a sensible “realism” to the land...
...And even if they were able to implement that change in the short term, it ended the day they left offi ce...
...What matters is the manner in which the debate is conducted, and here too Gates departs from Rumsfeld...
...A Transformer in Disguise Robert Gates’s surprise shake-up of the Pentagon BY THOMAS DONNELLY Donald Rumsfeld’s primary mission when he returned to the Pentagon as secretary of defense in 2001 was to transform the U.S...
...Nor is it simply the critical promotions of General David Petraeus to replace Fallon and General Raymond Odierno to take Petraeus’s place in Iraq...
...He was, in the words of William Webster, the former head of the CIA and FBI, a “consensus builder...
...With Bob, the door is opened again to 41 and Baker and Brent...
...And so far, despite the fi rings, better received for it...
...What these decisions reflect is Gates’s larger purpose: to make the U.S...
...It’s been very diffi cult for the Pentagon, and indeed the whole of the U.S...
...It’s really important, if you want lasting change, to involve the professionals in the institution...
...It’s about reorienting the current American way of war, making the generals understand that irregular warfare is not only the most likely form of confl ict but, as our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan strongly suggest, the most complex form of fi ghting and the highest priority in building our forces...
...The “Gates Transformation” is, in many ways, a simple recognition of reality...
...Gates certainly promoted this image: “I saw too many instances, when I was very junior in the C.I.A...
...He’s listening to one set of professional voices—not just Petraeus and Odierno, but the collective voice of the younger generation of offi cers who have learned the hard way how to fi ght and win in Iraq and Afghanistan—pushing back against the other...
...Where Rumsfeld has been abrasive, Gates would be smooth...
...They are worried by other challenges— and have already said that the defense strategy is too risky...
...military focus on the war they’ve got rather than the war they’d like to have...
...and elsewhere,” he recalled in an interview, “where somebody would come in and try to impose change from the top and not listen to people...
...Gates, as civilians who run the military ought to do, seems to be Thomas Donnelly is resident fellow in defense and national security studies at the American Enterprise Institute...
Vol. 13 • June 2008 • No. 39
