I particularly enjoyed the closing paragraph, which hits on one of my (many) betes noirs:
Span of control is frequently an argument against merger as well. How, for example, is a single command going to manage engagement with all the countries of Europe and Africa combined? The response is as uncomfortable as it is necessary. As resources decline, larger COCOM AoRs [areas of responsibility] will ultimately demand greater discrimination about where and how limited means are applied. To secure core U.S. interests in a specific AoR, four-star commanders will increasingly need to allocate resources and effort according to consideration of what absolutely must and can be done with what’s on hand and not what could and might be done with additional time and money.What Freier is describing here is, in my consistent refrain, the essence of strategy. It's also basically the opposite of how the military develops budgets and petitions for resources. Particularly now, as the operational demands of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars begin to decrease, the services are looking for combatant commanders to articulate a "demand signal" for forces to satisfy other missions, like security cooperation (or what Freier refers to with the fraught and awful term "building partner capacity"). If CCDRs are telling the services they need forces to meet their requirements (God, the Pentagon loves this word!), then the service chiefs can justify expensive force structure and personnel retention. Which means bigger budget asks, and so on and so on...
It's nice to imagine a world where combatant commanders set priorities and adjust their appetite to available forces and resources, but usually the nation is instead made to sacrifice its social unnecessaries to the "needs of the warfighter."
