Dan Caldwell

And it was a reform that made sense at the time and actually worked very well in operations like Desert Storm.

and the opening days of post 9-11 wars.

But since then, these combatant commands like Central Command in the Middle East and European Command in Europe have become incredibly powerful.

My friend Justin Logan wrote a piece in National Interest where essentially he compares them to Roman proconsuls.

They in effect run their own semi-independent foreign policy.

And they are incentivized and positioned to prioritize their own commands and to ensure that they get more resources and that they have their own lobbies and own special interests here back in DC.

I've heard you and Jack, for example,

describe Washington DC as a central command company town.

And I think that perfectly sums up the problem.

So what the Secretary of War supposedly is considering is consolidating these commands from six to three, which will reduce bloat, and in my mind, reduce the power of some of these combatant commanders.

which is incredibly important to ensuring civilian control of the military.

about the system and the incentives it creates.

It wasn't just Carilla, General Cavoli, in my mind was worse.

We were talking about what was going on in Ukraine.

In my view, he was running his own foreign policy the first few months vis-a-vis Ukraine and UCOM.

And so I think it's the incentives the system creates.

And it's also the bloat too.

It's these staffs at these combatant commands have grown by over 50% since 9-11.

And that matters.

Some of these combatant commands, in terms of their size, they're actually bigger than the Office of Secretary of Defense.