The Development of the Base Force, 1989 - 1992

Since the late 1940s the United States had based its national military strategy on the necessity of deterring and, if deterrence failed, successfully fighting a global war against the Soviet Union. In 1987 Joint Staff strategists began to examine some of the planning assumptions supporting this strategy. Their review led them to conclude that national military strategy should put greater emphasis on regional planning. While strategists were developing new approaches based initially on assessments of US capabilities but increasingly on their assessment of the reduced threat from the Warsaw Pact, Joint Staff force planners in 1988 began to analyze the force structure that supported current strategy. The prospect of an accelerated decline in defense funding, together with the sweeping changes taking place within the Warsaw Pact, prompted them to recommend significant force reductions. When General Colin L. Powell became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in October 1989, he brought to the position his own views on the likely shape of the world in the 1990s and a determination to restructure the US Armed Forces to meet this new environment. He not only gave direction to the efforts already under way on the Joint Staff but pushed them farther, shaping them to conform to his strategic vision. The result was a new national military strategy and a new conceptualization of force structure to support this strategy. This strategy and its supporting configuration of forces marked a major departure from the US approach to the world during the preceding forty-plus years. Their development influenced as well the development of a new national defense strategy and a new national security strategy.

Lorna S. Jaffe received her Ph.D. in history from Yale University and has served as a historian on the Joint Staff of the Joint History Office of the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.