L’U.S. Army en panne de chef d’état-major

L’U.S. Army en panne de chef d’état-major

7 juin 2003 — La crise que connaît aujourd’hui le Pentagone est immense, bien que peu d’échos publics ne nous en parvienne. L’un de ses aspects concerne la crise opposant le secrétaire à la défense Rumsfeld et son équipe (OSD, pour Office of Secretary of Defense) à la hiérarchie militaire (avec des nuances souvent très significatives entre les armes). Selon une source américaine, « le climat est détestable, sans précédent pour qui connaît l’histoire du Pentagone, et l’on parle même de réunions secrètes entre certains généraux, pour suivre la situation et éventuellement entreprendre des actions ».

(Il existe un climat similaire du côté de la CIA, de la DIA et des services de renseignement en général, de façon spectaculaire à cause de l’affaire des WMD, — les armes de destruction massive qu’on ne trouve pas en Irak, — de façon plus générale à cause des relations entre les SR et le pouvoir. De ce côté également, des structures parallèles, non-officieuses, se mettent en place pour exprimer l’opinion des opposants aux méthodes imposées par le pouvoir civil, notamment une association d’anciens officiers du renseignement qui apparaît depuis plusieurs semaines comme l’interlocuteur critique (du gouvernement) favori des médias.)

Au Pentagone, l’opposition se cristallise autour du cas de l’U.S. Army, parce que c’est le service le plus visé par Rumsfeld. La bataille est d’autant plus vive que l’Irak a constitué un facteur important en faveur de l’Army, qui est décrite partout comme l’architecte essentiel de la victoire. Face à la puissance et à l’activisme de Rumsfeld, cela renforce l’Army et durcit sa résistance. On a pu avoir une idée de l’intensité de la bataille avec les déclarations récentes de l’ancien secrétaire à l’Army, Thomas White, qui a été mis à pied par Rumsfeld à la mi-mai, et de façon assez brutale, à-la-Rumsfeld c’est tout dire. Ces déclarations, reprises et commentées par le Daily Telegraph, sont complètement inhabituelles, surtout venant d’un homme du “sérail” (White est un homme de l’industrie d’armement, par ailleurs impliqué dans le scandale Enron). Il ne s’agit pas d’un affrontement idéologique ou d’un “affrontement de classes” mais d’une formidable bataille entre deux groupes d’intérêts opposés à l’intérieur de l’establishment de la sécurité nationale.

Ci-après, quelques observations sur White, en gardant à l’esprit un autre aspect de cette polémique. Il est également inhabituel de voir un homme de cette sorte, qui fait partie de l’establishment et dont le groupe d’intérêts n’est pas celui des militaires, continuer une polémique, en défendant implicitement l’officier qui est le chef d’état-major (le général Shinseki, CEM), et qui s’oppose de façon ouverte au secrétaire à la défense. Shinseki, qui va quitter son poste dans quelques semaines, est sans aucun doute une des figures tragiques de cet affrontement.

« The former civilian head of the United States Army yesterday effectively accused the Pentagon of misleading the American public about how many troops would be needed to occupy Iraq, and how long they might have to stay.

» Thomas White, who was sacked as army secretary a month ago, told USA Today that senior defence officials ''are unwilling to come to grips'' with the huge scale of the task.

» Before the war started, Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, and Paul Wolfowitz, his deputy, rejected any talk of an open-ended occupation by large numbers of troops. In February, Mr Wolfowitz publicly slapped down the army chief of staff, Gen Eric Shinseki, for telling Congress that an occupation could require “several hundred thousand troops”.

» Mr Wolfowitz called Gen Shinseki's estimate “wildly off the mark”. Mr White's pointed refusal to criticise Gen Shinseki was the final blow to his already stormy relationship with Mr Rumsfeld, and he was asked to resign last month.

» However, Mr White noted that there were still 150,000 troops in Iraq, and that the Third Infantry Division, which had expected to return home after seizing Baghdad, has just been told its tour of duty is extended indefinitely.

»“This is not what they were selling [before the war],” Mr White said. “It's almost a question of people not wanting to 'fess up to the notion that we will be there a long time and they might have to set up a rotation and sustain it for the long term.” »

Aujourd’hui, la situation est originale, et là aussi inédite : on n’a pas de successeur pour le poste de CEM de Shinseki ni pour le poste d’adjoint au CEM, qui sont tous les deux vacants au 1er juillet. Ce fait montre combien l’affrontement entre l’équipe actuelle de direction de l’Army et OSD reflète une situation qui concerne toute la hiérarchie de l’U.S. Army.

Ci-dessous, nous présentons un article de l’expert William S. Lind sur cette situation qui a fort peu de précédent (texte publié sur le site “Défense and National Interest). On mesure également le paradoxe, bonne indication de la vigueur de la crise, dans le fait que la crise est bien au sein du système (au Pentagone) et non pas à l’extérieur, par exemple dans les sables irakiens : cette abstention actuelle de la hiérarchie de l’U.S. Army concerne une armée présentée comme triomphante en Irak, et il s’agit d’une occasion où le poste de CEM devrait être extrêmement convoité. La crise au sein de l’establishment est en complet contraste avec l’image triomphante et idyllique qu’on donne de la puissance US à l’extérieur. On devine où se trouve la réalité.

The Men Who Would Not Be King

By William S. Lind, 3 Jun 2003

Normally, the position of Chief of Staff of the Army is the ultimate brass ring an Army officer can hope to grab. There is no higher Army job, and merely holding it guarantees a man at least a small place in the history books — though not necessarily a favorable one. In fact, the last Army Chief of Staff to merit Clio's praise was General ''Shy'' Meyer, who held the post twenty years ago. Since he left, the Army has been stuck in a Brezhnevite ''era of stagnation.''

It is therefore surprising that at present, no one seems willing to take the job, nor the position of Vice Chief. Both current incumbents leave this summer, and instead of the usual line of hopefuls standing hat in hand, the eligibles have headed for the hills. Rumor has it they may have to recruit the hall porter and the charwoman.

The interesting question is why. Part of the answer is Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. To put it plainly, Rumsfeld treats people like crap. Working for him is like working for Leona Helmsley, except that Leona is less self-centered. Unless you are one of his sycophants, equipped with a good set of knee-pads and plenty of lip balm, you can expect to be booted down the stairs on a regular basis.

Truth be told, some senior officers deserve to be treated that way, because that is how they always treated their subordinates. But Rummy does not discriminate between perfumed princes and the real thinkers and leaders. He has driven more than one of the latter to hang up his hat in disgust, to his service's and the nation's loss.

But that is not the whole story. Part of the reason no one wants the Army's top job are two fundamental contradictions in the Administration's policy toward the Army. Unless they are resolved, any Army Chief of Staff will find himself in a difficult position.

The first contradiction is that the Administration puts the Army last in line among the services at the same time that it is getting us into wars only the Army can fight. We are already fighting one Fourth Generation war in Afghanistan, we are becoming enmired up to our necks in another Fourth Generation war in Iraq, and we are sticking our noses into still more in the Philippines, maybe Indonesia, and possibly Iran.

Only the Army can fight Fourth Generation war, to the degree anyone can (and no one really knows how). The Navy is irrelevant, the Air Force almost irrelevant, and the Marines want to get in and get out, fast, while Fourth Generation war plays itself out with agonizing slowness. Volens nolens, the Army is left holding the bag.

Logically, that should make the Army the Administration's focus, its Schwerpunkt. Instead, OSD is in love with the Air Force, to the point where it wants to make the Army into a second Air Force, waging the high-tech, video-game warfare that exists only in the minds of children and Pentagon planners.

That leads to the second contradiction. The Army needs and has long needed genuine military reform. Reform means such basic changes as adopting Third Generation, maneuver warfare doctrine and the culture of decentralization and initiative that goes with it; instituting a radically different personnel system that creates cohesive units, eliminates the bloat in the officer corps above the company grades and suppresses rather than mandates careerism; making free play training the norm rather than a rare exception; and getting rid of dual standards for men and women.

Secretary Rumsfeld also preaches reform, but what he means by reform is just more of the high-tech illusion. Again, the Air Force is the model: the more a system costs and the more complex it is, the better it must be. The result is absurdities such as the Stryker, where Light Armored Vehicles, which are wonderful for operational maneuver, are instead to be used for urban combat where they will be instant coffins for their crews, and the Future Combat System, a conglomeration of robots, tanks, drones and kitchen sinks that surpasses anything envisioned by Rube Goldberg. Meanwhile, the real reforms so badly needed go unaddressed.

In the face of all this, becoming Chief of Staff of the Army is somewhat less enticing than becoming mayor of Baghdad. But at the same time, it leaves the troops desperately in need of not just a Chief of Staff, but of a highly talented and morally courageous Chief of Staff, someone who can defend his men against the follies emanating from the civilian side of the Pentagon. Those who know him believe the current Vice Chief, General John M. ''Jack'' Keane, is such a man. Some think he could be the Army's Al Gray, the reforming Commandant of the Marine Corps of the early 1990s who left an enduring and powerful legacy. So far, General Keane is refusing the job, on the legitimate grounds of his wife's health problems. Many are praying he will reconsider. If the job goes instead to one of Rummy's lickspittles, God help our soldiers.

William S. Lind is Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation.

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