Leadership: October 23, 2002

Archives

Throughout the 1990s, the services made a real, and largely successful, effort to achieve "jointness" (all the services working together without interservice bickering and resistance to cooperation.) But there is still substantial opposition to jointness, and transformation of the military, and it's coming from a generally unnoticed direction. It turns out that the retirees and the service associations, like the Navy League, are more enthusiastic about preserving past practices (good and bad). Both groups are mired in the past and fiercely jealous of anything they think is encroachment on their favorite service's rights, traditions, roles, and so on. And these retirees are not be dismissed. They left the service with a high rank and years of experience. They know what political and media buttons to push and why it's better to do it subtly. It's becoming a major problem, but politicians and Department of Defense officials can't find an effective way to denounce thousands of high ranking veterans for "getting in the way."

 

X

ad

Help Keep Us From Drying Up

We need your help! Our subscription base has slowly been dwindling.

Each month we count on your contribute. You can support us in the following ways:

  1. Make sure you spread the word about us. Two ways to do that are to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
  2. Subscribe to our daily newsletter. We’ll send the news to your email box, and you don’t have to come to the site unless you want to read columns or see photos.
  3. You can contribute to the health of StrategyPage.
Subscribe   contribute   Close