Passage 70

The National Security Act of 1947 created a nationalmilitary establishment headed by a single Secretary of Defense.The legislation had been a year-and-a-half in themaking-beginning when President Truman first recommendedthat the armed services be reorganized into a single department.During that period the President's concept of a unifiedarmed service was torn apart and put back together several times,the final measure to emerge from Congress being a compromise.Most of the opposition to the bill came from the Navy and itsnumerous civilian spokesmen, including Secretary of the NavyJames Forrestal. In support of unification (and a separate airforce that was part of the unification package) were the Army airforces, the Army, and, most importantly, the President of theUnited States.

Passage of the bill did not bring an end tothe bitter interservice disputes. Rather than unify, the actserved only to federate the military services. It neither haltedthe rapid demobilization of the armed forces that followed WorldWar II nor brought to the new national military establishment theloyalties of officers steeped in the traditions of the separateservices. At a time when the balance of power in Europe and Asiawas rapidly shifting, the services lacked any precise statementof United States foreign policy from the National SecurityCouncil on which to base future programs. The services bickeredunceasingly over their respective roles and missions, alreadycomplicated by the Soviet nuclear capability that for the firsttime made the United States subject to devastating attack. Noteven the appointment of Forrestal as First Secretary of Defenseallayed the suspicions of naval officers and their supportersthat the role of the U.S. Navy was threatened with permanenteclipse. Before the war of words died down, Forrestal himself wasdriven to resignation and then suicide.

By 1948, the United States militaryestablishment was forced to make do with a budget approximately10 percent of what it had been at its wartime peak. Meanwhile,the cost of weapons procurement was rising geometrically as thenation came to put more and more reliance on the atomic bomb andits delivery systems. These two factors inevitably madeadversaries of the Navy and the Air Force as the battle betweenadvocates of the B-36 and the supercarrier so amply demonstrates.Given severe fiscal restraints on the one hand, and on the otherthe nation's increasing reliance on strategic nucleardeterrence, the conflict between these two services over rolesand missions was essentially a contest over slices of anever-diminishing pie.

Yet if in the end neither service was theobvious victor, the principle of civilian dominance over themilitary clearly was. If there had ever been any danger that theUnited States military establishment might exploit, to thedetriment of civilian control, the goodwill it enjoyed as aresult of its victories in World War II, that danger disappearedin the interservice animosities engendered by the battle overunification.