Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

Basically, rivalry among the American armed services was a rivalry for congressional appropriations, a struggle over slicing the annual budget. In this struggle each service sought to convince congressmen that its particular weapons provided the best defense for the United States. The air force, which in 1946 was still a branch of the army, touted the claims of the manned bomber; the navy, only recently disillusioned with its old love, the battleship, had now shifted its affections to the aircraft carrier; the army had to stick with the humble foot soldier but almost concealed him from view with its insistence on trucks, tanks, and cannon. As a matter of fact, the manned bomber, the aircraft carrier, and the tank were all obsolescent in 1946, but their supporters were unwilling to concede this, since such a concession would, they thought, shift appropriations to the other services. The manned bomber was threatened by rockets with homing devices which would bring such rockets, at speeds higher than manned bombers could ever reach, in for the kill by seeking out the plane’s engine exhaust heat or by use of radar and electronic-eye devices. The aircraft carrier was threatened by atomic bombs, since it was too vulnerable to these to justify its cost of over $100 million. The tank was threatened by shaped charges, and, in general, the whole tactical outlook of ground forces, with their traditional emphasis on mass and concentration, was challenged by nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons which put great value on dispersal.

In these struggles between the services, the clashes are particularly bitter in a period of demobilization, and this bitterness is accentuated by the fact that each service has alliances with the industrial complexes which supply their equipment. These complexes not only supply funds, such as advertising, for each service to carry its message to the Congress and the people, but also exert every influence to retain equipment and tactics in obsolescent modes and types (but newer models) by dangling, before the high officers who can influence contracts, offers of future well-paying consultant positions with the industrial firms concerned. Most high officers of the American armed forces in the war and postwar period retired before the fixed age of sixty-two, often on a disability basis (which exempted retirement pay from income taxes), and then took consultant jobs with industrial firms whose chief business was in war contracts.

Thus, four-star general Brehon B. Somervell, chief of Army Service Forces in World War II, retired on a disability salary of $16,000 a year at the age of fifty-four to join a number of industrial firms, including Koppers, which paid him $125,000 a year; three-star general L. H. Campbell, chief of ordnance in World War II, retired on disability at $9,000 a year at age fifty-nine and became an executive, at $50,000 a year, of firms from whom he had previously purchased $3 billion in armaments. Four-star General Clay retired at fifty-two on $16,000 a year, but signed up at once with General Motors and Continental Can at over $100,000 a year. Three-star air-force General Ira C. Eaker left the service at age fifty with $9,000 a year and joined Hughes Tool Company at $50,000. Another three-star air-force general, Harold C. George, went with Eaker to Hughes, at $40,000. General Joseph T. McNarney, in 1952, took his four stars, and $16,000 a year, to join Consolidated Vultee at $100,000.

These are but a few of more than a hundred general officers whose postretirement alliances with industrial firms encouraged their successors, still on active service, to remain on friendly terms with such appreciative business corporations. These connections undoubtedly inhibit officers of the armed services in their efforts to obtain fresh ideas, fresh tactics, and fresh equipment for America’s defense.

In this struggle there occurs rivalry between the services to secure larger shares of existing budgets, but there also occurs cooperation to increase the total joint budget. The best way to do the latter is by war scares, which undoubtedly increase appropriations for all services. The spectacular increase in the joint defense budget of the United States from about $14 billion in the late 1940’s to about $60 billion in the early 1960’s is partly caused by a real Soviet threat to the United States, but it is also partly caused by a scare engendered by the armed services. If the Soviet Union has been deterred from aggression by those expenditures, the money was well spent, but, since the Soviet Union never has had any intention of engaging the United States in open war, it is legitimate to believe that many of the billions spent could have been used to fight the Soviet Union in more remunerative ways than by the purchase of manned bombers, aircraft carriers, or tanks.

The struggles between the services in the United States after 1945 have been vigorous and often unscrupulous. They have involved putting pressure on administrators in the executive branch from the President down, and especially on the high civilian heads in the Pentagon, of misleading congressmen, and of propagandizing the public.

The air force, for a variety of reasons, was the most successful of the three services in this propaganda war. After all, flyers had plenty of experience, since they had been propagandizing the world since about 1908, five years after the first plane flew, without benefit of publicity, in 1903. The air force was interested only in strategic bombing, and had little interest in tactical work under command of ground forces which, the flyers insisted, hampered their special genius. To get free of the army and become a separate service, coequal with the navy and army, the army air forces in 1946 put their full pressure behind legislation to “unify” the armed services. “Unify” here really meant change two into three. This was done by reducing the two Cabinet posts for war and navy to a single post for defense, with three equal secretaries for army, navy, and air outside the Cabinet. The “unity” presumably was to be obtained from the secretary of defense’s control over the three service secretaries, but this was impossible since they were named by the President, not by the secretary of defense, and they had little influence over their services, each of which looked to its chief commander on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The fact that the Joint Chiefs had operational command of their departments meant that they had to defend the diverse interests of these, and could contribute little to unity or to any general ideas, even strategic ones; while if they had been separated from their actual commands in order to be free to reach a general consensus on strategic ideas they would have retained no control over their services. The only real lines of authority in the whole system were those in the hands of the President himself and those lines of command going downward from the Joint Chiefs to their own services. There were only very weak lines between the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs or to his service secretaries, or between the latter and the services for which they were responsible. As a result, very little unification was achieved, even after amendments to the Act, and in 1949 the interservice rivalries reached their most intense peak. By the end of that year UMT, the supercarrier, and the 70-group air force were all dead, killed off by interservice rivalries, in spite of the fact that all public-opinion polls showed strong support for all of them.

James Forrestal, who had been secretary of the navy since 1944, and who, on behalf of the navy, had emasculated the unification bill, was made first secretary of defense, and was called upon to administer it in 1947. Within a year he had reversed his opinions and was demanding amendments to strengthen the Act, especially the powers of his own post. His mind collapsed under the strain, and he resigned in 1949, committing suicide shortly afterward. Although public-opinion polls showed that two-thirds of Americans approved UMT and only a quarter or less opposed it, the air force in 1948 was able to persuade the Congress that there was a necessary choice between UMT and the 70-group air force; accordingly, the air-force budget was raised $822 million and UMT was buried in committee.