By MG Paul E Vallely (RET)
Model One of Two
Developed by the Stand-Up America US Foundation
Our dedicated team of seasoned military strategists and experts with a wealth of experience will meticulously craft two models for the new President to consider when restructuring the Armed Forces of America.
Issues/Initiatives:
Eliminating the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a crucial step. This outdated structure provides no advanced command advisory capabilities to deal with current and future threats to America. It must be converted to a Command-driven military rather than an advisory/staff organization of the Armed Forces of America. This is not just critical; it’s urgent and cannot be ignored. Action will begin the week of January 20th after the inauguration. This is necessary to ensure the safety and security of our nation and eliminate all domestic and foreign threats to America.
History: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, born as the U.S. members of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, was established on February 9, 1942, to coordinate the war effort between Great Britain and the United States. JCS continued to function after the war and was given statutory authority by the National Security Act of 1947. The need for an overall command structure to coordinate the efforts of various military services became evident during World War II. This historical significance underscores the weight of the decision to restructure, a decision that will shape the future of the Armed Forces of America. The weight of this decision is a testament to the importance and impact of the restructuring proposal.
Establish: Focus on a command-driven Force.
· Commander of the US Armed Forces – 5 stars
· Commander of the US Army -4-star positions
· Commander of the Marine Corps
· Commander of the Air Force.
· Commander of Space Command.
· Commander of US Naval Forces.
· Cut 50% of the higher-level GO/Admiral/SES positions.
· Develop new War Fighting Commands
· Develop/redesignate new training and Support Logistical Commands!
· Redesign all Unified Commands
· Designate all Three Star Commands
· Designate Two Star and One Star Commands
· Modernize the Intelligence Commands
· Eliminate political appointees below the Secretary Level Appointees
· Consider the Global Joint Strike Force and Lily Pad Strategy
· Change the Department of Defense name to the Department of the Armed Forces of America
The formal choices, documents, and events that established the roles, missions, and functions of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the military services in the early postwar years are over 70 years old.
- The vision for the future must address all alternative roles, missions and courses of action.
- There is no single trigger for disputes, but interservice tensions are most associated with ownership of new capabilities or control of a significant function.
- Major DoD reorganization and reform efforts have often failed. President Trump needs to recall 4-6 Generals /Admirals as an action group to restructure the Military. Since WWII, the Pentagon has often failed to align and structure forces to win wars. Under the current structure and leadership, we have been unable to win any wars since 1945 and secure total victory over America’s war operations.
The Crisis in the Armed Forces[1]
A cold civil war is won or lost by the capture of institutions. Even today, many conservatives regard the military as one of the last institutions resisting capture by the new regime. Will Thibeau, director of the American Military Project at the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life, argues that precisely the opposite is true: that the Armed Forces were “among the first American institutions to embrace the radical logic of group quotas formally. “This new organizing principle is directly linked to a steep decline in military standards and performance, with life-and-death consequences for Americans and America.
Part I of Identity in the Trenches: The Fatal Impact of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion on U.S. Military Readiness.
In August 2021, the world watched as American forces scrambled to evacuate Afghanistan as the Taliban reclaimed power. The panicked withdrawal reached a tragic climax on August 26, when 13 American service members (and more than 100 Afghan civilians) were killed by a suicide bomber in the Kabul airport, where security was a U.S. responsibility. Four days later, when the last military planes took off from that same airport, hundreds of American citizens were left behind. A month later, when the secretary of Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the CENTCOM commanding general were called before Congress to account for the failure, they neither offered explanations nor accepted responsibility. The message was clear: Incompetence would be the new norm for the U.S. military — a predictably lethal status quo.
The Afghanistan debacle was dramatic, but it was only one small part of a larger picture. The United States Armed Forces were once the envy of the world, largely because we selected the best of the best and instilled in our fighting men an unshakeable military ethos. Both the philosophy and the selection, however, have been in steady decline as the Department of Defense succumbs to a dangerous ideology: that of group quotas or forced outcome equality for identity groups based on race and sex.
Critics of the current state of affairs in our Armed Forces waste precious breath on disturbing but minor issues like reading lists, drag shows, and TikTok trends. This paper serves as a call for focus and precision on the prevalence of race and sex-based quotas and the accompanying collapse in professional standards in the fight to reclaim the integrity of the institution of the military.
Quotas, by name or another, have been defense policy since 1965 when Secretary Robert McNamara decided to make the Pentagon the leading edge of the effort to adhere to the principles and policies of the Civil Rights Act. This history is critical to understand because it clarifies the mission ahead.
Well-meaning Americans often perceive the military as the last holdout in the progressive march through the institutions. However, it was among the first American institutions to formally embrace the radical logic of group quotas: that anybody must proportionally represent the nation’s demographics or else enjoy the presumption of wrongdoing and discrimination.
To recover from this institutional overreach, Congress and the executive branch need to commit to a few specific policy changes alongside a bold reorganization of the military personnel process and the structure of the Joint Staff. The policy solutions in this paper do not amount to an exhaustive list of the range of actions to confront DEI but instead define the minimum necessary action to rebuild the military’s institutional health.
Before we can recommend policy or even analyze history, we must come to understand the military as an institution. The prevailing consensus seems to regard our warfighting forces as just one more institution in civil society, bound by every social norm of the country they stand to defend. This is the logic by which group quotas are justified. However, The United States military cannot serve its primary purpose unless set apart.
[1] Will Thibeau, Thomsa Klingenstein, August 27,2024
