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Seventy-five years and counting of educating our military, and of late increasing numbers of government civilians and international military partners, have made an indelible mark on the ability of the U.S. joint force to fight and win our nation’s wars and every other mission assigned to it. Long before the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, this educational mission is what two of the National Defense University’s colleges, the National War College and the Joint Forces Staff College, have been doing since the immediate post–World War II period. Readers will remember we provided a great article celebrating the National War College’s 70th Anniversary in JFQ 87. The Joint Forces Staff College (JFSC) in Norfolk, Virginia, celebrated last summer to commemorate its founding on August 13, 1946. In June of this year, it again celebrated with the induction of new members of the college’s Hall of Fame. JFSC, originally the Armed Forces Staff College, was the idea of General Dwight Eisenhower and Admiral Chester Nimitz to find a way to forge a more effective fighting force based on the difficult lessons of World War II. Forty years later, the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 solidified this idea of jointness and made it the law of the land.
The Nation’s professional military education institutions have this joint requirement as an integral part of their missions, but I would offer that none is so deeply dedicated to making our midgrade officers advocates of optimizing the capabilities of the Services as the “purple” JFSC. One of the National Defense University’s five colleges, JFSC’s mission has evolved over the 75 years but remains focused on jointness as the college is dedicated “to educate national security professionals to plan and execute operational-level joint, multinational, and interagency operations to instill a primary commitment to joint, multinational, and interagency teamwork, attitudes, and perspectives.”
That second part of the mission is worth a few words. Each student at any staff or war college comes to the seminar table having accomplished many important qualifications and achievements. All have come from a Service, agency, or nation that has its own traditions, culture, missions, and history. Joint education does not seek to remove those thoughts or perceptions from the minds of the students. Quite the contrary, joint education is designed to show each student the value that he or she brings to the discussion. Even the most ardent supporter of one’s military Service cannot honestly assess warfighting today and show how that Service, or nation for that matter, can win a war by itself. Joint and combined operations lie at the heart of successful accomplishment of strategy that involves the military instrument of power. I welcome any author who can successfully challenge this fact. Services may be proponents of their operational concepts and budgets to bring capabilities to achieve those visions, but in the end, the way of war, as the United States has learned to fight it, rests clearly on our ability to work together for a common end.
I offer that jointness must be constantly taught and never taken for granted or marked as “done.”
Those of you who are more than casual readers of JFQ will have noticed that quite a few of our articles have multiple military officers, and those that do are likely teams from JFSC. I estimate 40 percent or so of our submissions come from the college, and I believe that is both a robust and continuing result of the efforts contributed by the leadership, faculty, and staff of that little purple college. What better evidence of the positive and enduring impact of the college’s efforts to achieve its mission, save the graduates’ work itself, than seeing its graduates’ and faculty’s thinking expressed so publicly. I offer that jointness must be constantly taught and never taken for granted or marked as “done.” To achieve the vision of Ike, Nimitz, General David Jones, Secretary Colin Powell, Senator Barry Goldwater, Representatives Bill Nichols, Ike Skelton, Owen Pickett, and all those who saw the better way to fight and win the nations wars, JFSC continues to help everyone who serves achieve mission success as it helps the next generation of joint leaders do so “That All May Labor as One.”
This edition’s Forum offers discussions on future cyber operations, learning within insurgent groups, and how law powerfully affects Great Power competition. In making the case that future cyber operations will be covert, Richard Manley sees the cyber advantage as being with weaker actors. In an interesting article especially for joint educators, Nicholas Dudek takes us inside the learning methods and practices used by al-Shabaab in recent conflicts in Somalia and Ethiopia that could be adopted by our education and training organizations. Law and warfare are a rising discussion area especially in the professional military education classroom, and Durward Johnson helps us see the nexus between international law and Great Power competition.
Commentary authors take us to the heart of classic discussions from World War II operations. Getting Allies to fight together has always had great advantages, especially in Europe, and these benefits find their way into how the war is controlled, as J. Bryan Mullins describes his insights on command and control at Eisenhower’s Allied Force Headquarters. Seeking to understand warfighting from the defeated enemy’s perspective is as ancient as war itself. Providing some useful insights to how contemporary challengers on the high seas might see events unfolding, Michael Major shows us how Japan’s military leaders viewed their options as they attempted to control their naval power.
Our Features section delivers on two important and timely topics. As the United States looks to balance its global security interests, Nicholas Melin suggests some practical steps to the continuing development of the U.S.-India relationship. For those who are looking at how other allies and partners dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic, Sharon Kim, Kenny Lee, Jason Tussey, Eric Dougherty, Derek Cooper, Douglas Lougee, Talib Ali, Michael Fea, Michael Cohen, Stephen Williams, Robert Abrams, and Clinton Murray team up to describe how U.S. Forces Korea worked with the Republic of Korea to assure U.S. readiness to “fight tonight” was maintained.
In Recall, we take you back to the 1980s for a different kind of operation in the Persian Gulf. Long before Iraq became a central stage of our nation’s wars, the Gulf region was the place where U.S. and our partners’ deterrence strategies were tested. Richard Mobley has done some important work taking us inside the U.S. decisionmaking of Operation Earnest Will, an operation to reflag and protect Kuwaiti tankers where the balancing act of using deterrence and preventing escalation to war played out. Going even further back in time to how operations in Vietnam could have been better adapted to conditions on the ground, Christopher Sims takes us into the details of the 1966 Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of Vietnam (PROVN) as a case study for future operations as discussed in Joint Publication 3-0, Operations. Tracking today’s Joint Doctrine developments is easy with our update and you will find three informative book reviews to help you dive deeper into the national security issues of the world today.
As always, we hope you have gained from what our authors have offered here, especially if it achieves our mission of helping the cause of jointness as JFSC has done for more than 75 years. JFQ
William T. Eliason
Editor in Chief