A word from the chairman: shift to a global perspective.

   In ancient India, six blind men encountered an elephant for the
   first time and quickly began to squabble about the nature of
   elephants.
   The first blind man bumped into the elephant's side and declared
   that the beast was like a wall.
   The second, discovering the ear, concluded it was like a fan.
   The third blind man came across the tail and thought the elephant to
   be very much like a rope.
   The fourth, encountering the elephant's leg, was sure the animal
   resembled a tree.
   Finding the tusk, the fifth blind man proclaimed the elephant to be
   like a spear.
   And the sixth, grasping the elephant's trunk, concluded the giant
   pachyderm most resembled a snake.

WE ALL KNOW from the ancient Oriental story of the six blind men and the elephant that how we perceive something determines our understanding of it and, by implication, our response to it. With that in mind, the US military must shift from a regional to a global view of our security environment in order to better understand and respond. In the past, America's security needs were served adequately by having its uniformed leaders in Washington maintain the global vision, while the majority of US military organizations maintained a regional or functional focus. However, to provide effectively for the nation's defense in the twenty-first century, we must all come to understand and appreciate the global perspective. Examining trends in the global-security environment and the ways in which the US military has organized to deal with past challenges provides the foundation for understanding the implications for America's armed forces today, as we transform our military into one that is ready to effectively provide missile defense, information operations (IO), space operations, and other capabilities that do not respect our traditional regional boundaries.

Trends in the Global-Security Environment

During the last decade of the twentieth century, we witnessed dramatic shifts in the global-security environment. Revolutionary technological advances and monumental political changes rendered our world safer in some ways, though less predictable and arguably less stable. While students of international affairs debated the broader meaning and impact of globalization, defense professionals worked to understand the security implications of these global trends.

Technological changes since 1990 have occurred at an extraordinary pace. Consider for a moment where you were and what you were doing as the Berlin Wall came down. How many people at that time owned a cellular phone or a personal computer, had logged onto the Internet, or knew what a global positioning satellite system was? Whereas television news coverage of the Vietnam War took 36 to 48 hours to reach American viewers, stories of the Gulf War were broadcast around the world instantaneously. During the Gulf War, Cable News Network was unique in providing continuous coverage of global news. Now, several major networks in the United States cover global events as they happen--24 hours a day, 365 days a year--not to mention the variety of international news programs produced and broadcast by foreign broadcast corporations. Al-Jazeera provides programming that shapes perceptions of the United States in much of the Arabic-speaking world. Imagery satellites capable of better than one-meter resolution were at one time the sole purview of superpowers but are now operated by companies in the United States and Europe for the benefit of whoever is willing to pay for the images. In August 2002, commercial-satellite images of airfields in the Horn of Africa were broadcast around the world, allegedly showing potential staging areas for attacks against Iraq. For those who missed the news, the satellite photographs were available on the Internet.

Political changes in the 1990s were no less staggering. As a fighter pilot, I spent the first 25 years of my Air Force career studying Soviet fighter aircraft that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would have to confront in deadly combat if the Cold War ever heated up. Now Soviet fighters that could be seen in the West only in classified photos are performing at air shows over America's heartland. Today, officers from the former Soviet Union attend professional military education at our staff colleges and war colleges, and three former Warsaw Pact members have joined NATO. The end of the Cold War lowered the threat of nuclear Armageddon and brought an end to many of the proxy wars through which the two sides struggled to exert their influence. But the Cold War imposed a certain element of stability and predictability to international affairs that no longer exists. Alarming numbers of customers--including state and nonstate actors--seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them, including long-range ballistic missiles. In short, the technological and political changes that have improved our quality of life and brought us all closer together can also be perverted to empower those who would do us harm.

Historical Context

As we chart our way ahead, we do not begin with a clean sheet of paper. We must first know how we arrived at our current way of organizing for national security in order to understand why we are better off organizing functionally or globally for some mission areas rather than relying entirely on regional combatant commands. At the same time, we should appreciate, not abandon, the value of regional expertise in implementing our national security strategy and national military strategy.

The experiences of the Second World War and early Cold War helped dispel lingering illusions about America's security and its proclivity for isolationism; those experiences drew America's new international responsibilities into tighter focus. Responding to America's changed role in the world, Congress passed the National Security Act of 1947, creating the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Defense (DOD). While Congress legislated the overarching security structure, President Harry Truman established the first Unified Command Plan (UCP), which established our regional and functional combatant commands. Among these newly created commands were US European Command (USEUCOM), US Pacific Command (USPACOM), US Atlantic Command (USLANTCOM), and Strategic Air Command (SAC). The containment policy our armed forces helped to support was a global one, but, arguably, little need existed for our regional commanders to focus globally. In any case, the regional commanders lacked the technological means needed to gain and maintain a global perspective.

The first UCPs merely codified the command structures that existed at the end of the Second World War. What had once been Gen Dwight Eisenhower's command became USEUCOM; Gen Douglas MacArthur's command became Far East Command; and Adm Chester Nimitz's command became USPACOM. Other regional commands had responsibility for Alaska, for the Caribbean, and for guarding the northeastern air approaches to the United States, but vast areas of the world remained unassigned to any combatant command. (1) When our first combatant commands were established, the service chiefs played an active role in the commands and served as the Joint Chiefs of Staff's (JCS) executive agents in overseeing the commands.

From the outset of the Cold War, regional commands focused on their regions while the JCS kept a global perspective. Although this arrangement served the nation well enough to see us through the Cold War, signs of trouble appeared as early as 1951, when President Truman dismissed General MacArthur in the midst of the Korean War. After serving as chief of staff of the Army in the 1930s, MacArthur lived in Asia until his dismissal. He first served as military advisor to the Philippine government and then was made commander of US troops in the Southwest Pacific area during the Second World War. After the war, MacArthur became military governor of Japan, overseeing its occupation and reconstruction. With the outbreak of the Korean War, General MacArthur's Far East Command provided the US underpinning to the war effort of the United Nations. In response to MacArthur's protest against limited objectives in the Korean War--"no substitute for victory" (2)--Gen Omar Bradley, chairman of the JCS, informed Congress that he and the joint chiefs unanimously agreed that in the global struggle against communism, a wider war in Asia represented "the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy." (3) Though partly a clash over the utility of limited objectives in war, the disagreement largely reflected the two sides' differing perspectives--MacArthur's Asia-centric regional view and the joint chiefs' global outlook, which had to account for Europe as well as Asia.

In the 56 years since the first UCP, our combatant-command structure has been expanded geographically and empowered legally. The Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 strengthened the role of our combatant commands, and with UCP '02, the last remaining unassigned regions of the world--Russia, the Caspian Sea, Antarctica, and the countries of North America--were finally placed within our combatant commanders' areas of responsibility (AOR). Now, the entire globe is encompassed within the AORs of our five regional combatant commands--USEUCOM, USPACOM, US Central Command (USCENTCOM), US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), and US Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM).

In addition to regional combatant commands, the United States has had functional combatant commands since the inception of the UCP. In fact, SAC was technically the first, formally becoming a combatant command just two weeks before USPACOM, USEUCOM, and USLANTCOM did so. Still, today's functional, unified combatant commands are relatively recent creations that began with the establishment of US Space Command (USSPACECOM) in 1985. (4) In the 15 years that followed, successive administrations established US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), US Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM), US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), and US Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM). The rise of these functional commands highlights the reality that some military missions or responsibilities can be better fulfilled by carving out functions from our regional commands' responsibilities than by having the functions dispersed among our regional commands.

The newly established USSTRATCOM--formed by joining its capabilities and resources with those of USSPACECOM--is taking on some missions that have been unassigned previously and that overlap the responsibilities of our regional combatant commands. USSTRATCOM's nuclear focus broadened considerably with the latest Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), signed by the secretary of defense in December 2001. In addition to specifying the road ahead for America's nuclear arsenal, the 2001 NPR introduced a new strategic triad. The old triad of intercontinental ballistic missiles, long-range bombers, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles has given way to a triad of strategic offensive capabilities, strategic defenses, and the infrastructure and research and development needed to sustain America's strategic capabilities. Strategic offensive capabilities include nonnuclear, even nonkinetic, strikes as well as the traditional employment of nuclear force. As described in the NPR, the new triad is enabled by command and control (C2), intelligence, and planning capabilities. The president's decision to join USSPACECOM and USSTRATCOM to form a new US Strategic Command was a major step in fulfilling the vision for a new strategic triad. Despite the familiar name of the new command, it is as different from the former USSTRATCOM as it is from the former USSPACECOM. It is an entirely new command--and greater than the sum of its two predecessors. Obviously, the new USSTRATCOM will have global responsibilities, and its commander and staff must have a global perspective for dealing with threats to US security.

USSOCOM has also been given new responsibilities and a greater role in the global war on terrorism. The very phrase global war on terrorism highlights the global approach needed for dealing with the problem of terrorism. At the first DOD press conference of 2003, the secretary of defense announced the change of focus at USSOCOM, pointing out that "Special Operations Command will function as both a supported and a supporting command." (5) In the past, USSOCOM, with very few exceptions, has been the supporting command to our regional combatant commands. Obviously, terrorist networks today have a global presence, with members and cells around the world, and we can no longer adequately counter the scourge of terrorism by relying solely on regional strategies. We also need a global approach to the problem.

Implications for the US Military

The establishment of a new USSTRATCOM and an expanded role for USSOCOM does not come at the expense of our regional combatant commands. This is not a zero-sum equation. Our regional combatant commands provide essential regional expertise; they represent an enduring basis for US presence around the globe; they are the keys to successful theater-security cooperation with our allies and friends; and they form the basis for pursuing multinational interoperability and military coalitions. In both peace and war, our regional combatant commands give direction to and exert C2 over US military activities around the world. The challenge for our armed forces today is to balance these regional responsibilities with the need to address missions that are global in nature.

Whether we divide our combatant commanders' responsibilities and authorities along functional lines and address them on a global basis or whether we choose to deal with them along regional lines, we create seams--discontinuities where one command's responsibilities end and another's begin. These are unavoidable unless we take the impractical step of making one commander responsible for everything, everywhere, all the time. However, seams can become vulnerabilities that our adversaries might exploit. Therefore, when organizing our combatant commands, we strive to place seams where it makes the most sense to place them--where they provide us the greatest effectiveness and efficiencies and present our adversaries with the least opportunity to do us harm.

Missions that cross all regional boundaries require a global approach. One of those is computer-network defense. Electrons do not respect geographic boundaries, and requiring each of our geographic commands to plan independently for protecting computer networks would create unacceptable seams. Thus, we assigned the lead for computer-network defense to USSPACECOM in 1999. This assignment of a global mission to a commander with a global perspective was a precursor of the new missions assigned to the new USSTRATCOM.

Many inherently global military-mission areas are of increasing importance to our security and cannot be addressed well from a regional perspective. Such inherently global areas include (1) integration of missile defense across AORs; (2) certain elements of IO; (3) space operations; (4) global strike operations; (5) certain intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) activities associated with global strike, missile defense, IO, and space operations; and (6) counterterrorism.

Missile defense is a responsibility of all of our regional combatant commands. However, no such command, including the newly established USNORTHCOM, is more suited than any other to integrate missile defense operations across AORs in support of the president's stated goal of providing protection for deployed US forces, allies, and friends. When missiles in a distant theater can be used against targets anywhere on the globe, the United States needs global ISR and global C2 to integrate its missile defense capabilities, which, by the way, include offensive capabilities to preempt or prevent missile attacks. We cannot afford to think of missile defense merely in terms of actively intercepting missiles after launch.

Similarly, certain elements of IO require a global perspective and better integration of our nation's capabilities. Although IO should become a core war-fighting capability of all our combatant commands, certain IO activities could create effects of such magnitude that focusing on regional consequences would become unnecessarily restrictive and ultimately unhelpful. Even when the effects of IO are limited to a single AOR, we will need a global perspective to ensure that theater IO is compatible with IO in other AORs. A global perspective will often provide the essential starting point for success, whether we are attempting to get a message across to an audience that spans more than one theater, conducting electronic warfare (EW) activities to inhibit long-distance communications, performing computer-network operations, or carrying out military-deception programs. Even within a single theater, USSTRATCOM will add value to the regional combatant commands by integrating efforts previously stovepiped in different organizations (e.g., C2 warfare, psychological operations [PSYOP], EW, and computer network attack [CNA]).

Space operations present another military-mission area requiring a global perspective rather than a regional focus. Given the vital role space operations play in global communications, one cannot always determine precisely where space operations end and IO begins. In the past, the supported-supporting relationships between regional combatant commands and USSPACECOM were predominantly one way, with the latter supporting the regional commands. In the future, we are much more likely to see regional commands supporting the new USSTRATCOM to ensure the success of military operations taking place in space. This change in roles will require our regional combatant commands to develop a deeper appreciation for the global perspective of America's security needs.

Given the nature of threats facing America in the twenty-first century, including fleeting targets such as mobile ballistic missiles or leaders of terrorist networks, we must develop the ability to take appropriate military action rapidly, anywhere on the globe. The instruments of such action include today's long-range bombers, shipborne weapon systems, and special forces, but we will need new global capabilities in the future. Regional combatant commands could play either supported or supporting roles in global strike operations, depending on the scenario and weapon systems involved. However, one need look no further than our current global war on terrorism to appreciate the need for a global perspective in planning for and prosecuting global military operations.

We will need global ISR activities for gathering indications and warning data and for otherwise enabling global strike, space operations, certain elements of IO, and integrated missile defense. Moreover, we need global C2 capabilities to enable integrated global missile defense, facilitate global strike, integrate regional operations with global operations, and integrate regional operations in one AOR with those of another. Knitting together various regionally focused ISR activities is unlikely to yield a coherent global perspective. Simply put, we cannot obtain a relevant global perspective without ISR activities that, to some degree, are globally coordinated and directed--a function performed by the Defense Intelligence Agency. The new factor is that, given the low-density/high-demand nature of many of our ISR resources, regional combatant commands are more likely than before to be required to conduct ISR activities in support of global operations tasked to USSOCOM or USSTRATCOM.

Conclusion

Often, discussions about the need to shift from a regional focus to a global perspective lead to debates about supported-supporting relationships. Inevitably, someone will make the claim that functional combatant commands should always support regional combatant commands. Implied, if not stated, is the belief that conducting operations or executing missions is the sole purview of regional combatant commands and that no functional combatant command should conduct operations in a regional combatant commander's AOR. Such hard-and-fast rules have never existed, and supported-supporting relationships continue to depend on the situation and mission objectives. That is why supported-supporting relationships are spelled out in planning orders, deployment orders, execution orders, the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan, operations plans, and concept plans. Moreover, the term supported does not imply sole responsibility for execution. A supporting combatant commander can execute or conduct operations in support of the supported commander--something USTRANSCOM does every day. Ultimately, our combatant commanders support the president and secretary of defense in the pursuit of American security, and the array of possible command relations between combatant commanders should not be constrained unnecessarily. To the extent we can harness the ability to observe and operate globally, without self-imposed artificial limitations, we will generate new military capabilities to add to the ones we have today, thereby yielding a greater number of military options from which the president can choose.

The president and secretary of defense must maintain a global perspective, and so must the military officials charged with supporting them. Communications from the president and secretary of defense to the combatant commanders normally pass through the chairman of the JCS, but the joint chiefs and the chairman are not in the chain of command. If ever a time existed when our nation's security could be adequately provided for by having uniformed leaders in Washington maintain a global perspective while commands around the world focus exclusively on their regions, that time has long since passed into history. To fulfill faithfully the "commander's intent" from the president on down, combatant-command staffs, service staffs, the Joint Staff, and US officials serving on allied staffs must appreciate our commander in chief's perspective--a global one. If we attempt to do otherwise, we will surely end up like the six blind men of the ancient Eastern parable in their first encounter with an elephant, endlessly disputing the nature of something we fall to perceive fully. By shifting our view from a regional to a global perspective, we will better comprehend and respond to America's security needs in the twenty-first century.

Notes

(1.) Ronald H. Cole et al., The History of the Unified Command Plan, 1946-1993 (Washington, D.C.: Joint History Office, February 1995), 11-15.

(2.) Gen Douglas MacArthur, speech before Congress, 19 April 1951, reproduced in Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 459.

(3.) Gen Omar Bradley, testimony to Congress, 15 May 1951, cited in Omar N. Bradley and Clay Blair Jr., A General's Life: An Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 640.

(4.) Prior to the formation of USSPACECOM in 1985, purely functional combatant commands tended to be specified com mantis (i.e., all of their forces came from a single service). SAC was an example of a specified command. The last specified command, US Forces Command (USFORSCOM), became the Army component to USLANTCOM in 1993 (USLANTCOM became US Joint Forces Command [USJFCOM] in 1999).

(5.) Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, transcript of a DOD press conference, the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., 7 January 2003. See Elizabeth G. Book, "Rumsfeld: Special Operations Command Slated for Growth," National Defense, February 2003, on-line, Internet, 13 June 2003, available from http://www. nationaldefensemagazine.org/article.cfm?Id=1033.

Gen Richard B. Myers (BS[ME]. Kansas State University; MBA, Auburn University) is the 15di chairman of tie Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and the principal military advisor to die president, secretary of defense, and National Security Council. As vice chairman of the JCS during the 19 months prior to be* coming chairman, he served as chairman of die Joint Requirements Oversight Council, vice chairman of the Defense Acquisition Board, and member of the National Security Council Deputies Committee and the Nuclear Weapons Council. General Myers has commanded North American Aerospace Defense Command, US Space Command, Air Force Space Command, and Pacific Air Forces. At the tactical level, he commanded the 335th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 1st Tactical Fighter Wing, and 825di Tactical Training Wing in addition to serving as commandant of die USAF Fighter Weapons School. A command pilot, he has more than 4,000 flying hours in die T-33, C-21, F-4, F-16, and F-15, including 600 combat hours in the F-4. General Myers is a graduate of Air Command and Staff College and Army War College.