The Armed Forces: A New Breed of Brass

By Jesse Birnbaum

In the catalog of astonishments that will forever mark the chronicles of the gulf war, none is more dramatic than the remarkable professionalism of the U.S. soldiers who planned and fought the battles. That was exemplified most visibly by the smooth TV performances of top military officers in Washington and Saudi Arabia. Intelligent, frank, sometimes eloquent, these men seemed to personify a new class of American military leaders who not only have a < thorough grasp of their trade but also demonstrate broad political and worldly sophistication -- not to mention p.r. savvy.

It was not always thus. During the Vietnam era, many Americans came to regard the U.S. officer class as a band of dissemblers and incompetents. As for the grunts, their ranks had long been considered a repository for society's dropouts. From the Revolutionary War to the early 1900s, it was not only common but legal for a conscript to pay someone else to take his place in the armed forces. Some criminal court judges even sentenced miscreants to military service.

But the armed forces have undergone a top-to-bottom transformation since the end of Vietnam. Nowadays, says U.S. Air Force Academy spokesman Colonel Mike Wallace, "the military is a different breed of cat. It is no longer a place to hide society's misfits; it represents a large section of America's middle class, who are better informed and better trained than before." Today every man and woman entering the armed forces has at least a high school diploma, and nearly all officers have earned at least a bachelor's degree in subjects ranging from political science to European history. Lieut. General Thomas Kelly, who skillfully led the Pentagon's Washington briefings on Operation Desert Storm, has a B.S. in journalism; Marine Brigadier General Richard Neal, the main briefer in Saudi Arabia, has a master's degree in education. Allied Commander H. Norman Schwarzkopf has an M.S. in mechanical engineering. General Colin Powell, who never attended a military academy, has earned a B.S. in geology and a master's degree in business administration.

For senior military officers, the intellectual challenges hardly end with their college days. Some attend a two-week national-security program at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government that is held every year, as well as numerous seminars on a variety of political and military issues. In addition, the Council on Foreign Relations provides an internship program for military officers. The Pentagon even runs a "charm school" (properly called the General Officer Orientation class), where freshly baked brigadiers are taught social graces that include the proper choice of forks as well as the finger-bowl ritual.

The new emphasis on the culturization of the officer corps came with a reassessment that followed the Vietnam War and the subsequent changeover to an all-volunteer military. One distressing result of the Vietnam experience was that large numbers of disillusioned officers resigned from the services. The Pentagon needed not only a new infusion of talent but also a major overhaul in organization and training. Most important, the traditional interservice bickering that often hobbled performance in the field and sowed distrust between officers and men had to end.

What helped make the changes possible was the advent of the all-volunteer military, which lured educated and motivated young men and women with promises of good pay, first-class training and career advancement. As a consequence, says Anthony Cordesman, professor of national-security studies at Georgetown University (and now something of a minor celebrity as a result of his sophisticated military analysis on ABC television), the Pentagon can boast of "an unprecedented level of professionalism that in every way is superior to the old conscript." This, says Cordesman, has bred "a new civil-military relationship" that permitted Schwarzkopf and his commanders to pursue their goals with a minimum of political interference.

In addition, the Pentagon made major revisions in key military practices. Items:

-- The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thanks to the little-noted 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Reorganization Act, was given new powers, changing his role from head of the service chiefs to that of the sole, authoritative military adviser to the President.

-- Training was revised from "doing it by the book" to "training to win." In place of the customary set pieces that passed for classroom exercises, officers were encouraged to roam a figurative battlefield intellectually, looking for tactical possibilities.

-- Command activities changed from isolated service-based operations -- which in Vietnam had often seemed to permit each service to fight its own war -- to close, integrated cooperation.

These revisions were accompanied by a curriculum reform at the military academies. Today's future officers are allowed more flexibility in their studies. They can take elective courses either in their major subjects or in the humanities and sciences, and of course spend a good deal of time absorbing the new battlefield thinking that has emerged over the past two decades. The Pentagon, says Martin Binkin, a defense expert at the Brookings Institution, "literally rewrote the textbook on war. It's a new ball game in every way. The battle cry is 'Fight smart!' " The merits of that approach are written all over Operation Desert Storm.

With reporting by Bruce van Voorst/Washington