Cartwright at USSTRATCOM Defines Change Agent, Part 1
June 19, 2006
If ever there was someone who defines the term change agent, it would be General James Cartwright, the commanding general of USSTRATCOM. Right away, you can tell he is cut from a different cloth; a Marine Corps general commanding what has, by prior tradition, usually been an Air Force billet. He has proceeded to completely re-make the organization in ways that have rarely been seen in the Department of Defense, and in a timeframe that is breathtakingly short by the standards of that organization.
So just what is USSTRATCOM?
For those who are not steeped in the organization of the Department of Defense USSTRATCOM is one of a series of what are called Combatant Commands. Of these, the one familiar to most Americans is USCENTCOM or United States Central Command. CENTCOM is responsible for a geographic region that happens to include Iraq and Afghanistan, hence its current prominence. STRATCOM on the other hand was mostly comprised of what started out as Strategic Air Command or SAC, and is the keeper of the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Needless to say, since the end of the Cold War, the role of organizations that became USSTRATCOM grew rather vague. That all changed after General Cartwright defined the role of USSTRATCOM in the Global War on Terror.
How He Helped Redefine the Mission
Under his command, STRATCOM has moved from bit player to center stage in the war on terror. Cartwright has expanded and redefined its role. The word strategic had become a cliché in military parlance and a synonym for nuclear. Under Cartwright’s direction STRATCOM has begun to view the word strategic in terms of its more traditional meaning and thus given STRATCOM both a global reach and a role across the entire breadth of offensive and defensive activities using and defending against both kinetic and non-kinetic weapons. (Kinetic weapons are what we more traditionally think of as weapons, things such as bombs and missiles, while non-kinetic weapons may include the tools for such things as computer network attack or defense, and psychological operations.)
STRATCOM now owns overarching command and control, the military term for planning and leading the nation’s war fighting activities. It ensures that all operations conducted by the other combatant commanders are executed with an eye to their global implications and with global coordination, irrespective of their geographic scope. For example, the commander in Iraq may wish to order the destruction of a local target but STRATCOM will inform him that this may have the effect of provoking a reprisal somewhere in Europe. Without STRATCOM playing this critical coordinating role, poor decisions could be made because the global consequences were not fully accounted for by the local commanders.
The new official mission of STRATCOM is global integrator charged with the missions of Space Operations; Information Operations; Integrated Missile Defense; Global Command & Control; Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance; Global Strike; and Strategic Deterrence. STRATCOM is also the lead Combatant Command for integration and synchronization of DoD-wide efforts in combating weapons of mass destruction.
(Part 2 discusses some of the innovative changes that General Cartwright put in place to change the organizational structure and the culture of STRATCOM to make it more effective in its mission. - Ed.)
Thoughts or reactions? Please send them to us.