Donald Rumsfeld was a strong but flawed Secretary of Defense. He asserted civilian control of the U.S. military and tried to reshape it for 21st century warfare, only to embrace conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq that turned into forever wars.
I started writing SecDef: the nearly impossible job of Secretary of Defense during his second tour and published it a few months before he was fired. At the time I was impressed by his performance in office. I believed in civilian control as a principle and liked his assertiveness. I believed DOD needed radical reforms and welcomed his efforts at “transformation.” I began to question his management of the war in Afghanistan and became disillusioned by his handling of the war in Iraq.
Then I began to hear stories from my students at the National War College and read insider journalistic accounts of his conduct.
He was so determined to assert civilian control that he often demanded that military officers sit as backbenchers rather than at the main table. He told subordinates that, in interagency meetings, they could not agree to anything that had not already been decided within DOD, nor could they agree to anything else. This attitude constipated the interagency process.
Rumsfeld managed the Pentagon with “snowflakes,” short memos on major and petty topics, that forced officials into crisis response modes rather than careful deliberation. While many subordinates appreciated his demanding style and were willing to respond to his challenges, others found him abusive.
As I write in SecDef, the job has 4 major responsibilities: managing the Pentagon, advising the president and the NSC, planning wars, and serving as an important diplomat. He did reasonably well only in that last case.
His management of DOD was flawed by his over-reliance on snowflakes. His NSC role undermined the interagency process. He criticized the National Security Council processes and meetings run by Condoleezza Rice and worked to avoid them. As the youngest Secretary of Defense, under President Gerald Ford, he fought Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on policy grounds, especially policy toward the Soviet Union. In his second tour, now the oldest SecDef, under President George W. Bush, he again fought the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, over policy, turf, politics, and governmental processes.
As a war planner, he often excluded others, including the State Department and even the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He nitpicked deployment plans, causing numerous disruptions. He cuts military requests for troops for Iraq in a risky effort to prove he was transforming the military. He demanded control over operations but cleverly avoided responsibility when problems arose, blaming others instead.
He once told an audience of soldiers who complained about problems in the Iraq war, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
Rumsfeld was the secretary of defense we had at the time, not necessarily the one we might have wanted or needed.
Here are some of the other, more critical assessments of his service. From George Packer, Spencer Ackerman, and Sarah Jones.
