Pentagon Reform Is His Battle Cry

Donald H. Rumsfeld has won two wars and won them his way, overruling military traditionalists. But to the secretary of Defense, Afghanistan and Iraq were merely two battles in a larger crusade.

Even as he directs military operations around the world, Rumsfeld has seized a leading role in the national security debate in Washington, giving the Pentagon new clout in administration debates on foreign policy and intelligence.

He has set out to “transform” the military establishment. He wants everything to move more quickly, whether it’s getting Marines to trouble spots or designing and delivering new weapons systems.

Pentagon officials would write fewer reports to Congress, get raises based on performance rather than seniority, and buy weapons and supplies at the best value for the dollar. And overseas troops would shift from Cold War garrisons in Europe to terrorism hot spots like East Asia and the Middle East.

All that at the age of 71, on the final lap of a long political career.

If Rumsfeld succeeds on all those fronts, he may enter the history books as one of the most powerful secretaries of Defense since the office was created -- as powerful as Robert S. McNamara, who remade the Pentagon in the 1960s.

But the prickly Defense secretary can only hope the analogy ends there. McNamara was undone by the war in Vietnam. Will Rumsfeld be undone by the “peace” in Iraq?

For Rumsfeld, peace -- or the half-peace that has followed the end of major combat on May 1 -- is proving at least as difficult as war. Another 129 soldiers have been killed since then. The 148,000-strong U.S. force in Iraq is tied down battling guerrillas loyal to the deposed regime of Saddam Hussein, delaying the homecoming of thousands of troops and straining the armed forces.

Enlisting other countries to help has been more difficult than some Pentagon officials anticipated; fewer than 6,000 troops from nations besides the United States and Britain have arrived so far.

And despite his clout in Washington, Congress has pared back some of Rumsfeld’s bureaucratic reforms -- to the point that he may ask President Bush to veto this year’s defense bill.

Rumsfeld says he believes that he is making progress on all fronts; Iraq, he vows, will not be another Vietnam.

“I don’t do quagmires,” he told reporters last month.

Rumsfeld’s record suggests that it might be foolish to doubt him. Admirers and critics alike, many of whom would only speak anonymously about him for this article, credit the Defense secretary with unusual prowess as a war leader and bureaucratic gladiator.

“There’s no question he’s one of the strongest and most powerful secretaries of Defense we’ve had,” said Robert S. Strauss, the longtime Democratic Party patriarch. “Whether you like him or dislike him, you have to recognize that he’s smart as hell, and he understands bureaucracy and bureaucratic infighting better than almost anyone in town.”

Rumsfeld is pugnacious, demanding, brusque and, to his rivals, infuriating. That, admirers say, is what makes him effective.

Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger collided with Rumsfeld almost 30 years ago, when Rumsfeld was on his first tour as Defense secretary under President Ford. Kissinger described the young Rumsfeld in his memoirs as “a special Washington phenomenon: the skilled full-time politician-bureaucrat in whom ambition, ability and substance fuse seamlessly.”

To quote “Rumsfeld’s Rules,” a collection of aphorisms the Defense secretary has compiled over half a century: “Don’t necessarily avoid sharp edges. Occasionally they are necessary to leadership.”

Or, more succinctly: “If you try to please everybody, somebody’s not going to like it.”

“Rumsfeld has a black belt in both proactivity and reactivity,” said a former senior official. “[Secretary of State Colin L.] Powell is spending most of his time being reactive.... The result is that Rumsfeld often dominates. On a lot of issues, he’s this administration’s thought leader.”

State Department officials complain that Rumsfeld sometimes plays unfair by sending underlings to negotiate on policy decisions, only to withdraw his assent later -- leaving the decision-making process in chaos.

An official in a third agency said there is some truth in that but added another factor. The Department of Defense is “chaotic, but at least it has a policy,” he said. “State is orderly, but it has no policy.”

Rumsfeld also keeps rivals and underlings off balance with a constant blizzard of dictated memos -- known as “snowflakes” inside the Pentagon and “Rummygrams” elsewhere -- asking questions and proposing new policies.

“What are you doing about this? How long is it going to take?” a senior Pentagon official said, describing the memos. “It’s a management technique to keep people on their toes.... We joke about how we’d like to steal his Dictaphone.”

At the State Department, though, Powell and his aides consider the Rummygrams -- and their peremptory tone -- a disruptive nuisance. “We don’t even answer some of them,” one official said.

On key issues of defense policy, Rumsfeld is even more relentless, aides say.

The U.S. war plan in Iraq, for example, came together through what one aide called “literally countless conversations” between Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. military commander in the Middle East.

By contrast, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who commanded U.S. forces in Kosovo in 1999, wrote that he had almost no direct contact with then-Defense Secretary William S. Cohen in the run-up to that conflict.

Rumsfeld insisted that the lean, swift plan that conquered Iraq was “Tommy Franks’ plan,” but to many generals it looked like the secretary’s plan.

A top Pentagon aide described a typical decision: “Rumsfeld got on the VTC [video teleconference] with Franks ... [and] said to Franks, ‘What do you want to do?’ And Franks ran through the whole rationale, and there was lots of give and take.”

Aides say Rumsfeld’s decision-making process is “iterative,” a management term meaning the secretary intervenes on important issues again and again -- and again. “When Rumsfeld says he iterates with people, he iterates with people,” an aide semi-explained.

During the war, when the U.S. advance on Baghdad momentarily faltered, traditionalists in the Army’s retired officer corps struck back, charging that Rumsfeld had fatally under-planned. When it turned out they were largely wrong and Rumsfeld largely right -- just as he had been right under similar circumstances in Afghanistan -- the argument, to many, was settled.

“The importance of having won two wars, and won them quickly, should not be underestimated,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a military scholar at the Brookings Institution think tank who is often critical of Rumsfeld. “Success in war is, in a sense, the first test of any secretary of Defense.”

Victory in Afghanistan and Iraq made officers more willing to accept Rumsfeld’s ideas for pushing rapid change through the military establishment, and made Congress more willing to accede to Rumsfeld’s demands for funding and legislative changes.

Rumsfeld has spoken candidly of the war’s usefulness as a catalyst for institutional change.

“The war is like a giant laboratory,” he said in April, when U.S. forces were fighting their way to Baghdad, “an opportunity to take those lessons learned from that and plug them into this building -- this institution, the department -- in a way that makes it a much better institution.”

Now, however, Iraq has turned into a laboratory for two missions that Rumsfeld had never willingly embraced: nation-building and counter-insurgency.

Rumsfeld and his aides waged a determined bureaucratic battle last year to win full control over the occupation of postwar Iraq. The State Department wanted a role too, officials said, but Powell recognized that the Pentagon -- with thousands of troops on the ground and assets beyond any his department could muster -- was, in the end, going to be the lead dog.

“There were hurt feelings,” a senior official acknowledged. “That’s the price of big organizations. And, obviously, it means Rumsfeld has a big responsibility.”

But the occupation was immediately set back by unwelcome surprises. Pentagon officials did not expect Baghdad to descend into looting when Hussein fell, did not expect to find public services in a state of collapse, and did not expect to face a determined guerrilla resistance waged by remnants of the Baathist regime. And one price of Rumsfeld’s lean-force, high-speed invasion plan turned out to be an occupying force unprepared for the violence and looting that followed.

Rumsfeld has responded by putting his head down, declaring that “progress is being made” and promising that staying the course will bring results.

“The coalition effort is succeeding, and the Baathists will not be returning to Baghdad, except to answer for their crimes,” he said July 24.

He has bristled at criticism. He spent the better part of two weeks insisting that the well-armed, apparently organized military attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq should not be referred to as “guerrilla war,” even though his own newly appointed commander in the area, Gen. John Abizaid, agreed that the term applied.

A reporter recited the Pentagon’s own definition -- “military and paramilitary operations conducted in enemy-held or hostile territory by irregular, predominantly indigenous forces” -- and observed: “This seems to fit a lot of what’s going on in Iraq.”

“It really doesn’t,” Rumsfeld replied.

Behind the bluster, though, Rumsfeld has allowed Abizaid and the top U.S. civilian in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, considerable leeway to change course. Bremer has reorganized the staff that Pentagon officials initially sent to Baghdad and pushed the quick formation of a 25-member Iraqi Governing Council. Abizaid is replacing the armored units used in the invasion with new counter-insurgency formations.

And Rumsfeld has even said he would welcome troops from France and Germany, which opposed the war, to assist American forces in Iraq.

Behind the scenes he has been less diplomatic. Because of his continuing ire at Paris, the U.S. military and even U.S. aerospace firms largely stayed away from the annual Paris Air Show and froze other exchanges with the French.

In a speech in Germany in June, Rumsfeld pointedly praised Romania and Albania for sending troops to Afghanistan -- but somehow forgot to mention his German hosts’ much-larger contingent in Kabul.

To State Department officials who are trying to repair traditional U.S.-European alliances, Rumsfeld seems bent on making things worse.

“To a lot of Europeans, Rumsfeld is the face of America -- and it’s a pretty scratchy face,” one senior U.S. diplomat said.

Like all secretaries of Defense, Rumsfeld has sometimes disagreed with his opposite number at the State Department. But in the Bush administration, the rivalry is not only bureaucratic, it’s also ideological. Rumsfeld and Powell are on opposite sides of a foreign-policy fault line: How far should the United States bend to accommodate its traditional European allies, and how ready should the United States be to act alone if the allies disagree?

More often than not, Rumsfeld has been in the “go-it-alone” camp. And more often than not, he has a key ally in Vice President Dick Cheney, with whom he has worked since 1969 (when a young Rumsfeld hired an even-younger Cheney into the administration of Richard Nixon).

“Part of Rumsfeld’s power is due to the fact that his view of the world is more in keeping with the administration’s view of the world than Colin Powell’s -- and by the administration, I don’t mean just the president; I mean the vice president and other people in the White House,” said Kenneth Adelman, a former official in the Reagan administration who is a friend of Rumsfeld and Cheney.

But Rumsfeld probably doesn’t qualify as a neoconservative of the crusading stamp of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. Where Wolfowitz has described the U.S. mission in Iraq as part of a drive to implant democracy across the Arab world, for example, Rumsfeld has cast it in a more traditional (and potentially less expansive) mold of eliminating threats to U.S. security.

As a byproduct of the war on terrorism, Rumsfeld has already won his main foreign policy priority: restoring U.S. readiness to use military force.

Before he took the job as secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld told friends that he worried the United States under Bill Clinton had become “risk averse.” One thing he wanted the newly elected Bush to do, he reportedly said, was “to correct the widespread view that the United States would fold after taking casualties.”

That perception is gone, a senior aide to Rumsfeld said.

“Can you imagine what our enemies think of us right now?” asked the aide, Undersecretary Douglas Feith. “The deterrent value of what we’ve accomplished far overshadows the direct results.”

But the most difficult part of Rumsfeld’s agenda may not be winning the peace in Iraq, or even winning the war against terrorism, which he has warned will long outlast his tenure. It’s his crusade to transform the armed forces and the Pentagon’s civilian bureaucracy into leaner and more flexible organizations.

“His interest is, No. 1, changing the way people think about defense strategy and policy,” Feith said. “That is what he mainly cares about.”

To be sure, Rumsfeld is only the latest in a long line of Defense secretaries who have promised to change the Pentagon; would-be military reformers have been proposing to transform the armed services for decades. And with support for defense spending high, Rumsfeld has done little to pare spending on military equipment; his proposals for procurement reform won’t be unveiled until the fall.

“I would actually put transformation last among his achievements,” said O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. “I know he would put it toward the top ... but I’m skeptical that he has accomplished much in that domain.”

So far, some of Rumsfeld’s bureaucratic changes have had the effect of shifting decision-making power from the four armed services to the civilians around the secretary of Defense -- a trend unpopular among traditionalists, especially in the Army.

The secretary has decreed that all promotions to three-star and four-star rank must go through his office, which is being perceived as a blunt message that only officers who fully agree with his vision will reach the top. He has criticized the Army as wedded to old defense concepts focusing on large, heavy forces; he undercut his first Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, by naming a replacement 14 months ahead of schedule.

In the search for a new Army chief, two generals turned Rumsfeld down, and he bypassed several others to reactivate a retiree, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, who made his career in special operations -- the light, swift soldiering that Rumsfeld likes most.

In a final signal, he fired his first secretary of the Army, Thomas White, a retired Army general, and replaced him with Air Force Secretary James Roche -- making the Army’s top leadership all Rumsfeld picks.

The relentless drive for change has left many officers feeling bruised.

“He has the military terrified,” said a retired officer who has worked as a consultant in Rumsfeld’s office.

Asked whether he likes Rumsfeld, a senior Army officer paused and said, finally: “ ‘Like’ is such a strong word.”

“If you have a thin skin, don’t work here,” said Roche, who then cited, from memory, one of Rumsfeld’s Rules: “You have to be prepared to say goodbye every day.”

Rumsfeld, in a speech to business executives in June, acknowledged that the job of transformation is largely undone. “Big institutions

But he said his changes at the top are having some effect. “It’s like dropping a pebble in a pond and watching the ripples go out,” he said.

Congress has been a tough target as well.

In this year’s Defense Authorization Bill, Rumsfeld sought a long list of changes to give him more flexibility in running the department, including new hiring and firing rules, a system for giving raises based on performance more than seniority, the right to suspend employees’ collective bargaining rights, and easing the “buy American” rule that requires most defense equipment to be U.S.-made.

The House bill gave Rumsfeld most of what he wanted on the personnel front; Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the secretary had earned the right to remake the bureaucracy through his victory in Iraq. But instead of easing the “buy American” rule, Hunter proposed toughening it. Rumsfeld replied with a warning that he will ask Bush to veto the entire bill if that provision stays.

But a Senate bill written by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) scaled back Rumsfeld’s proposals significantly, denying him the right to waive collective bargaining and preserving more elements of the current civil service system. The two houses will try to reconcile the bills in a conference this fall.

And for three years in a row, Rumsfeld has sought to pare down the number of reports that Pentagon officials are required to write to Congress. Every year, Congress has largely ignored his requests.

Rumsfeld has not said how long he wants to remain as secretary of Defense, or whether he would stay another four years if a reelected Bush were to ask.

His main objectives -- stabilizing Iraq, pressing institutional reforms -- will take longer to achieve than the year and a half remaining in this term.

Illinois Republican leaders sounded out Rumsfeld on running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated this year by Republican Peter Fitzgerald, but he wasn’t interested.

On domestic issues, friends say, Rumsfeld is a closet moderate, reflecting his roots as a traditional Republican from Chicago’s affluent North Shore.

As a member of the House of Representatives, he voted for the landmark Civil Rights Bill of 1964. He drew protests from social conservatives in 2001 when he hired a prominent gay Republican as a consultant on personnel issues.

His Chicago friends include Democrats like William Daley, who was secretary of Commerce under President Clinton, and Newton N. Minow, a former aide to President Kennedy. “He believes in civil liberties and civil rights,” Minow said. “He gets on with people who don’t agree with him.”

Rumsfeld rebuffed a request for an interview for this article. An aide said the secretary was willing to talk about Iraq but not an assessment of his overall record. One aide, noting that Rumsfeld’s tenure could run out in only 19 months at the end of the presidential term, said the secretary wanted to avoid putting himself in a “straitjacket” by being explicit about his remaining goals.

Aides and friends scoff at the notion that Rumsfeld is thinking about his legacy or worried about the history books. But they acknowledge that they -- and he -- know that this is his final lap.

“This is his last job, and that’s an important factor,” Adelman said. “He is no longer on the make. That helps.... My feeling is there is nothing else in life he’d rather be doing.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Donald H. Rumsfeld

* Age: 71

* Born: July 9, 1932, in Chicago

* Education: Bachelor of arts, politics, Princeton University, 1954; varsity wrestling team

* Military service: Navy pilot, 1954-57

* Hobbies: Skiing, ranching (Taos, N.M.)

* Family: wife Joyce; three children

Government and

political experience

Administrative assistant, U.S. House of Representatives, 1957-59

Republican congressman from Illinois, 1963-69

Director, U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity,

1969-70

Counselor to President Nixon, 1971-72

U.S. ambassador to NATO, 1973-74

Chief of staff to President Ford, 1974-75

Secretary of Defense, 1975-77

Special envoy to Middle East, 1983-84

National chairman, Bob Dole presidential campaign, 1994-97

Chairman, bipartisan Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the U.S., 1998

Secretary of Defense, 2001-present

Business experience

President, later chairman, G. D. Searle

& Co., 1977-85

Chairman and CEO, General Instrument Corp.,

1990-93

Chairman, Gilead Sciences, 1997-2001

Chairman, Rand Corp., Santa Monica, 1981-86; 1995-96

Source: Times Research

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Unfinished business

On what may be the final stop of his long career in public life, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has already won two wars. But he has plenty left on his reform plate:

* Achieving peace in Iraq and Afghanistan: He is in control not only of allied military operations but of the civilian governing authority in Iraq. These tasks might well outlast his tenure as Defense secretary.

* ‘Transforming’ the military: More so than any predecessor since Robert S. McNamara, Rumsfeld is attempting to overhaul the Pentagon, especially the Army. He wants to shake off old habits and make fighting forces leaner, faster and more creative, with planes, ships and weapons to match.

* Moving troops around: Rumsfeld is reshuffling the permanent presence of U.S. troops around the world to better match post-Cold War, terrorism-driven issues. The Pentagon is bolstering its presence in South Asia and East Asia and setting up small outposts that troops can use as needed to respond quickly to trouble spots.

* Attacking bureaucracy: Rumsfeld is trying to eliminate what he sees as an obstacle (and Congress considers a safeguard) to cutting costs and improving efficiency in the military-industrial bureaucracy. His proposals, from easing civil service job protections to circumventing some oversight of weapons decisions, are already being trimmed by lawmakers.

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The poet

Americans have gotten to know Donald H. Rumsfeld from his off-the-cuff ruminations and robust exchanges with reporters at his frequent televised briefings and other public appearances since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Some of his remarks have been compiled in “Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld,” by journalist Hart Seely. A sampling:

As we know,

There are known knowns.

There are things we know we know.

We also know

There are known unknowns.

That is to say

We know some things

We do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns,

The ones we don’t know we don’t know.

*

Needless to say,

The president is correct

Whatever it was he said.

*

I don’t find it hard to change,

But some people seem to,

And some countries seem to,

And some institutions seem to.

But it is particularly important.

*

What we are doing

Is that which is doable

In the way we’re currently doing it.

*

I haven’t been briefed on it.

I’m not knowledgeable about it.

Anyone who is concerned ought

not be.

Anyone with any concern

Ought to be able to sleep well tonight.

Nothing terrible is going to happen.

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The rules

Here are samples from “Rumsfeld’s Rules,” a collection of more than 150 aphorisms that Donald H. Rumsfeld has used about management, politics and life, some by him, some from others:

Learn to say, “I don’t know.” If used when appropriate, it will be often.

*

If you foul up, tell the president and correct it fast. Delay only compounds mistakes.

*

Don’t divide the world into “them” and “us.” Avoid infatuation with or resentment of the press, the Congress, rivals or opponents.

*

Don’t think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. As Charles de Gaulle said, the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.

*

If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.

*

Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the president and do wonders for your performance.

*

The federal government should be the last resort, not the first.

*

If you try to please everybody, somebody’s not going to like it.

*

Don’t necessarily avoid sharp edges. Occasionally they are necessary to leadership.

*

If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it. (President Dwight D. Eisenhower)

*

With the press there is no “off the record.”

*

If you get the objectives right, a lieutenant can write the strategy. (Gen. George C. Marshall)

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If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem but a fact -- not to be solved, but to be coped with over time. (Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres)

*

If you develop rules, never have more than 10.

Source: Times research

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Times staff writers John Hendren and Esther Schrader contributed to this report.