James R. Locher IIIVictory on the Potomac: The Goldwater-Nichols Act Unifies the Pentagon (Volume 79) (Williams-Ford Texas A&M University Military History Series)

I received this a birthday present and thought it would be an interesting to read this about this major defense reform legislation in the Goldwater-Nichols Act. However, I must say for a book written by a legislative aid and a former defense insider; and edited by a major university press the number of typos and grammatical errors in this book is depressing. These errors, detract from what should be a very interesting and enlightening story on how this legislation was passed.Beyond that the author seems to make a point that the whole reason the Department of the Defense lost every war since the Korean conflict was because of the inability to operate jointly. He attempts to describe that the JCS wasn't unified during WW2 and their inability to get anything done probably extended the war because of poor management by this organization. However, this view of the history of the US military actions seems very simplistic and fails to account for the lack of understanding the historical constraints or even historical failures of organizations outside of what a unified command structure that Goldwater-Nichols obtained. After the long history lesson, we roll into the 1980s and the election of Ronald Reagan and General David C. Jones who was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time when the legislation was being proposed. That General Jones went around the SecDef Weinberger and the President to try and get this legislation passed. The author then goes on to say that nearly everything from the fiasco of Lebanon to the mistakes made during the Grenada invasion were because the military forces were unified or joint in any way shape or form. As well the author argues that the service secretaries, in particular he reserves a whole chapter on the US Navy and John Lehman's reluctance to stand behind the idea of Goldwater-Nichols as being a major stumbling block. That even number of years passed seemed to have watered down the major intent of the legislation. After which the author seems to say, that the success of Desert Shield/Storm/Sabre proves his points. All while hand-waving away the fiasco that was Operation Just Cause (ie invasion of Panama in '89) and the fiasco that was Somalia in '92. As well the book stops the clock in the year 2000. Without mentioning how the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should be viewed thru the use of Goldwater-Nichols driving the jointness bus for those wars.My biggest issue with this book beyond the typos and grammar errors; is the lack of the author to show historically where a unified service system like was was proposed during the drafting of the legislation. There are historical examples of unified command headquarters, whether we are talking the Prussians just prior to WW1 or even the experiences of the British/Commonwealth nations post WW1 and post WW2 where due to budgetary reasons they unified all of the services under one command structure. That explaining how these organizations worked or didn't work. Let alone compare or contrast with what the intent of the US legislation was compared to the other nations. Instead the constant drum beat seems to have been that the services needed to be unified and they needed to be unified even if they were dragged kicking and screaming into this scheme. The why appears to be so that we could win wars again.As well, the author doesn't seem to address that two other major elephants in the room that is with officer promotion and education pipelines. Since the passing of the legislation it appears that officer and senior enlisted promotions have only shrank and the potential for growth of a person at a certain pay grade in a career is being rushed thru now a days so individuals can hit certain wickets on certain times to meet the intent of the legislation so that we have folks on equal footing with the other services. As well, the author seems to do nothing to address the outrageous growth of the procurement system costs to have everything developed jointly. To the point that we are seeing massive budgetary cost over-runs and excessive lead times for new tech to arrive that is already obsolete by the time it has entered the services inventory in good quantities.The book is a good starting point for the history of how the legislation was passed and one person, who was intimately involved with its drafting and passage, view of the needs for this legislation. Yet, it doesn't feel effective in answering the larger why it was needed, a good postmortem of what success with DoD operations was, and I really think it needed a section on what if any reforms to the legislation is required as we have seen changes to the world and DoD operations post legislation.

This book is an outstanding history of the four year process necessary to introduce meaningful reforms of the command structure into the U.S. Defense Establishment. The process involved courageous champions from the military services, equally courageous and bipartisan senators and congressman, and dedicated and knowledgeable legislative staffers. It is a story of persistence and dedication to the cause of reform in the U.S. Military.In the wake of WWII the U.S. Congress passed the 1947 National Security Act. This act was meant to unify the U.S. Defense Establishment and enhance inter-service cooperation. Unfortunately, the military services, especially the U.S. Navy, pushed back hard and in the end were able to maintain their services autonomies within the newly created Defense Department and Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). In the same way the so-called unified commands were unified in name only. And most seriously the command and control (C2) system under the Act was so convoluted that it contributed to the repeated breakdown of military C2 systems and tragically led to a lot of preventable U.S. military casualties.Locher provides what appears to be an accurate and authentic history of the execution of a complex process to reform the command structure of the U.S. Military. He also notes that two military officers, General David Jones and Admiral William Crowe were willing to rise of above service parochialism to strongly support this process. But it is the late Senator Berry Goldwater and Senator Sam Nunn of the SASC who Locher singles out for specific praise. Both men put national security well ahead of partisan politics and joined with Representative Bill Nicholls to build a comprehensive reform bill. Yet it was the SASC staff that actually made the reform process move forward. In the end the reformers prevailed and the Goldwater-Nichols act became law. The changes it introduced were important and clearly needed. Both the positions of Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the JCS were considerably strengthened and the military C2 system immensely improved. The U.S. Navy was strongly opposed to the reform movement and argued that it would destroy the competency of all four services. It would be easy to pillory the Navy as an obstructionist and parochial institution, but Locher does not do this. He is even handed and fair throughout this book. In truth hard fought though the battle over reform was there were no villains of the same magnitude as the two heroes of the story Goldwater and Nunn. The only person in this tale that comes off somewhat dubious is John Lehman then Secretary of the Navy who is portrayed as both devious and disloyal.This book is an important contribution to the history of the U.S. Military Establishment and Locher did an excellent job. But the book is more than that. It is a blueprint showing how reform can be implemented against large and bureaucratically entrenched organizations. The U.S. Intelligence Community comes immediately to mind.

My rating is in the middle because the book should be required reading for anyone who wants to know how Goldwater-Nichols came about, however, at the same time, it is extremely biased in its delivery, analysis and conclusions. The author was appointed by Senators Nunn (D) and Goldwater (R) to be the senior reorganization staffer who, "led the team that helped congress 'get smart' on this complex but critically important subject." Because of Locher's involvement from the Act's beginning through to its approval, which gives him unique insight, he has a vested interest in presenting his justifications for the Act in a positive light. This is best seen in his portrayals of the principals involved; those who supported reform are heroes who were not afraid to stand up to the establishment and the institutionalized bureaucracy. Those who opposed Goldwater-Nichols were more interested in their own power and often presented emotional rather than factual or issues based arguments.Unfortunately, the book was published in 2002, which means the work was done before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003; it would be interesting to see his analysis of the relationship between the SECDEF and the JCS now.Bottom line: if you're interested in how Goldwater-Nichols evolved, buy the book; I did, and I have no regrets. But read it with a (big) grain of salt.

Any military officer, from any nation in the world, should read this epic story. The lessons are legion. And just because 'the adventure' happens in the 1980s, the truth is that the same battles are being fought today, with the same examples of partisanship, tribalism and the seemingly default position of man 'not to cooperate with his fellow man'.We need to change that paradigm and this book helps show you how.