Separate ground, sea and air warfare is gone forever. If ever again we should be involved in war, we will fight it in all elements, with all services, as one single, concentrated effort.
So saying, President Eisenhower last week sent Congress a hardheaded, sense-making set of recommendations for Defense Department reorganization that, if fought through to fulfillment, may be ranked among the major accomplishments of his Administration. The chief point: in cold war, and under threat of instant hot war, the U.S. military organization must be designed for instant action.
To give the U.S. the power of action, the President proposed a tremendous increase in the authority of the Secretary of Defense. Bypassing the Army, Navy and Air Force Secretaries, the Defense Secretary would command the armed services directly through the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Though emphatically subordinate to the civilian Defense Secretary and the civilian President, the Joint Chiefs would have the kind of direct operational control over the fighting forces that they have in wartime, would, in effect, outrank the cadres of civilian service secretaries and assistant secretaries who have laid a heavy bureaucratic hand on peacetime operations.
The "I" Appeal. Into the plan's making went three months of hard work by Defense Secretary Neil McElroy. service chiefs, former commanders. Congressmen, civilian experts, a staff of advisers—and by General Eisenhower. Fortnight ago McElroy began sending his conclusions to the President, who took the recommendations as raw material, retooled them in the shape of his own convictions on military organization. Almost every paragraph bristles with Ike's first person singular, e.g., "I have long been aware . . ." "I have directed . . ." "I therefore propose . . ." Many conclusions are based directly on his service as World War II Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, his postwar tour of duty as Army Chief of Staff (1945-48) and adviser on earlier unsuccessful attempts at unification. Principal recommendations:
SECRETARY or DEFENSE. As the unchallenged boss of the Pentagon, the Defense Secretary should have the right to transfer, reassign, abolish or consolidate functions in his department. He should also have "adequate authority and flexibility" to transfer funds within and between the Army, Navy and Air Force, including not only research and development funds but also funds for strategic planning and for operations. With the consent of Congress, the President would remove one present stumbling block to the Defense Secretary's authority: the incongruous statement in the National Security Act that the Army, Navy and Air Force must be "separately administered." Since the same act also states that the Defense Secretary should work out "integrated policies and procedures," this requirement, originally inserted to preserve traditional service prerogatives, has caused needless confusion and misunderstanding. Said the President: "Let us no longer give legal support to efforts to weaken the authority of the Secretary."