In his first six months on watch as commander of US forces in the Pacific and Asia, Admiral Robert Willard has gotten his command to put greater emphasis on strategic thinking instead of operational planning.
“This is what combatant commanders across the globe should be attending to,” Willard said in his headquarters overlooking the naval base at Pearl Harbor.
Most US military leaders are comfortable with day-to-day operations, he said, but needed “more of a focus on alignment with our national strategies and policies and more of a focus on understanding the strategies and policies of our regional counterparts.”
The admiral suggested four targets for the strategic thinking of the Pacific Command (PACOM):
● The PACOM staff and the assigned Navy, Air Force, Army and Marine Corps components should ensure that their actions “make sense and are in alignment with our national security interests and in alignment with our objectives for the region.”
● The Pentagon in Washington: Although the admiral didn’t say so, many officers in the Pacific and Asia think that US military posture is still Euro-centric despite the US having fought in the Korean and Vietnam wars and having large forces in this region.
● The US State Department, the intelligence community, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies in Washington should be pulled in for a “whole-of-government” approach, about which so much is said these days, but so little is done.
● The chiefs of the armed forces in 36 other nations in the Pacific and Asia should meet. In addition, Willard said, “we spend time with the ministers of defense to understand their priorities. So it’s very much a study of the region and its changing issues.”
Asked if a key part of the emphasis on strategic thinking was to educate himself, Willard was succinct: “It is.”
Then he elaborated: “For me, this has been a tremendous education to try and adapt to what is a very different way of thinking, a different set of counterparts and to try to understand our nation strategically as it relates to this half of the world. It’s been a fabulous education.”
Until he became the PACOM commander, Willard had been steeped in operations. Trained as a fighter pilot, he was executive officer of the Navy Fighter Weapons School, in Nevada. He was the aerial coordinator for the film Top Gun with Tom Cruise and flew in the movie as the pilot of an enemy fighter.
Later, Willard commanded the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, the Kitty Hawk carrier battle group, and the 7th Fleet based in Yokosuka, Japan. As a four-star admiral, he began the transition from operations to strategy as commander of the Pacific Fleet based at Pearl Harbor.
Shortly after taking over PACOM, the admiral organized five focus groups to produce strategic studies for himself, his staff and subordinate commanders. One concentrates on China, which is rapidly modernizing its armed forces and may one day challenge the US in Asia. Another looks at India, an emerging power that the US has been cultivating. Willard has already visited New Delhi twice.
A third analyzes North Korea, which is developing nuclear weapons and daily threatens South Korea. The fourth concentrates on treaty partners such as Japan and South Korea, and on friends such as Singapore or potential friends such as Indonesia. The fifth studies transnational issues such as terror, piracy, drug smuggling and human trafficking.
Sometimes, the admiral said, these groups produce recommendations about “things that PACOM can control. I can either advocate changes or I can make changes.”
At other times, he said, “it can be more complex to do the policy comparison or the legal comparison, in which case I’m taking suggestions back into the Pentagon for consideration.”
Richard Halloran is a freelance writer in Hawaii.
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